A Little Bit Of Science

440Hz! (Or, What's Going On With Conspiracy Theories!)

12 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know that the world is controlled by the tuning frequency of our music industry? (It's not). That this was deliberately designed by the Rothsc...

Why The Government Made The Sky! (According To Steven Brandenburg!)

05 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Anti-Vaccination movement is... a broad church. Steven Brandenburg takes a leaf from every pew!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will G...

Thou Art The Man! (Or, The Great Moon Hoax)

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Here's a story about things (lies) going viral. It involves moon beavers, 24 tonnes of glass, and a scientist jumping into the air declaring 'thou art...

The Weird Thing About Body Temperature!

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Here's a question for you - if you're healthy, what temperature is your body? Did you say 37 (or 98.6) degrees? Congratulations, you're kinda right! B...

The Year Of Silver Linings

24 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, 2020 sucked. But surely it wasn't 100% disaster?To round off the year, Will explores some of the silver linings of 2020 with Rod and special guest...

The Feejee Mermaid!

18 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Real physical mermaids - do they exist? (No). But if they don't exist, where do the fake ones come from?Rod tells Will the story of the Feejee Mermaid...

IQ!

11 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Listener, it's pretty obvious from here you have an IQ of 158, maybe 159. But what does that mean? Where did it come from? And what percentage of it i...

What Caused The Crime Drop?

04 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

From about 1990 onwards, something really, undeniably good happened, on a vast - near global - level.But no one really knows why.Will tells Rod the st...

A Brief History of Penis Panics

27 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mass psychotics illnesses suck. Some are about dancing, some are about nervous ticks, some... are about genitals.Rod tells Will the history (and scien...

The Nazi War on Tobacco

20 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The usual history says that the link between smoking and lung cancer was first shown by the British epidemiologist Richard Doll in 1952. But that's no...

The Sverdlovsk Outbreak of 1979!

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's horrible when a lot of people die... but what if they all die in a line?Will tells Rod the story of the Sverdlovsk outbreak of 1979!(Spoiler it's...

Head Transplants! (actually body transplants)

06 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Speculating here listener, but would you swap your body for a younger, hotter, healthier version of yourself? Well, there are a few surgeons out there...

The Science of Near Death Experiences!

30 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's a common trope - you do something catastrophically silly, and next thing you know you're watching your life flash before your eyes. Or you're sta...

Things People Have Done In An MRI!

23 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What is Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and what is an MRI machine? What have people done in them? And are they 100% science? Rod tells Will and special g...

Musical Maladies - And Fakes!

16 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Playing a musical instrument is fun, rewarding, and lets you strut your stuff in front of a crowd of thousands! But it comes with a downside... some i...

The Science of Daylight Savings Time!

09 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Daylight savings time is beautiful. An extra hour of the day for walking the dog, drinking daiquiris or listening to podcasts that require you to be o...

Astrology For the Fortune 500 - The Myers Briggs Type Indicator!

02 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is used by thousands and thousands of high profile companies... But should it?The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and ...

Food Hacks... or P-Hacks? The Dodgy Insights of Brian Wansink!

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

You've known for years that things like portion size, food availability and the colour of your plates affect your food intake... But it turns out the ...

The Myth of the Bee Apocalypse!

18 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Apparently, Albert Einstein once claimed that “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”...

A Brief History of Aphrodisiacs!

11 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, we know that old timey people had some weird ideas about medicine... but when it comes to cures for sexual issues, it seems they'll try... anythin...

The Hunt for the Fourth Order Island!

04 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We all know about islands... and we all know about lakes. We know we can have islands in lakes, and even lakes on islands.But did you know that there ...

The Actual Genius of Paul Erdős

28 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of people are held up as geniuses (genii?)... But most of them are just pretty smart and pretty lucky. Paul Erdős though, he was something diff...

The Strange Things People Have Smuggled Into Space!

21 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As of recording on the 21 August 2020, some 566 have been to space. 345 have been American, 121 Russian Soviet. 65 have been women... And at least 7 h...

Exploring the Carbon Diet with Jo Clay!

14 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Should you 'diet' to reduce your carbon impact? In this episode we discuss the carbon diet with Jo Clay, candidate for the Greens Party here in the cu...

The Science of Swearing!

07 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

***Warning, there is a *lot* of swearing in this episode!***Listener, have you always wanted to have a swear word for those people who aren't impresse...

Balloonomania!

31 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For a few short months between 1783 and 1785, France went absolutely nuts for balloons. In this episode, Will tells Rod the origin and development of ...

The Martyrs To The X-Ray

24 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Early scientific labs had a fairly different understanding of workplace health and safety to what we might see in labs today. In this episode, Rod tel...

The History And Future Of The Death Certificate

17 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

No one likes doing paperwork. Even worse when that paperwork is about your own death... Today Will is joined by Dr Arnagretta Hunter to tell Rod the h...

Red Mercury!

10 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the Cold War, Soviet scientists apparently developed an explosive so potent it could be used to make nuclear fusion bombs the size of...

What Actually Is Stockholm Syndrome?

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

'Stockholm Syndrome' is a very widely used term, used to describe supposed feelings of affection and love held for a captor by a hostage...But when yo...

The People Who Don't Get Cancer

19 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What would you trade to never get cancer?Well, that's not a real question, because it's not really an option. But there are a group of people with one...

White Academics, Trying To Do Better

12 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's no secret listener, we're part of perhaps the most problematic demographic - white middle aged podcasting academics. And, quite legitimately, we'...

The Biggest Robot Ever Made!

05 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, it's the Cold War in America, and you're building nuclear everything - nuclear ships, nuclear subs, nuclear aeroplanes! But what if there's an oop...

A Brief History of the Nanny State Critique!

29 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since people have tried to make our world just a tiny bit healthier - you know, to not be coated in open sewage - idiot libertarians have screame...

"Earth Has An Anus" - The Weird Ideas of Alfred Lawson

22 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

You can be, on the outside, a normal - even successful - person, but still hold a core of quackery on the inside.Alfred Lawson was one such person.A s...

Henry Cotton's Terrible Psychiatry

15 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Henry Cotton had some interesting ideas about the causes of psychiatric disorders. The problem wasn't the ideas, it was the dogged pursuit of followin...

The Woman Who Felt No Fear

09 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nobody likes being afraid - but even so, fear is a pretty useful emotion. It protects us from tigers and bad parties and what not. But what if you don...

The Eradication of Smallpox

01 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For thousands of years smallpox was the worst virus in the world. It killed more people than any other disease - perhaps as many as half a billion in ...

The Made Up Asia Of George Psalmanazar

24 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 18th Century the people of Europe had heard of Asia - but they didn't know much about it. And so to fill the information vacuum, some enterpris...

Documenting the Infodemic!

19 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

While we're living through a pandemic, we're also in the midst of a tsunami of misinformation, a plague of snake oil, a veritable shit-storm of bad co...

Horace Fletcher, King of Chewing!

10 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We're all told as kids to chew our food properly - but people don't usually go as far as The Great Masticator, Horace Fletcher. As Fletcher held it, f...

The Spanish Flu!

03 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1918-1919, the Spanish Flu killed perhaps as many as 100 million people. More than anything else ever. But for decades, we barely spoke about it - ...

Munchausen's, Munchausen's by Proxy, Munchausen's by Internet!

27 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The internet, you may be shocked to learn, is full of lies - half truths, fraud, fakery! Some of the lying may in fact be diagnosable... Rod tells Wil...

The History and Science of Panic Buying!

18 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pandemics suck. You know that. You also know that panic buying sucks, particularly when everyone is buying your delicious brand of muesli. But what ca...

The Life and Times of Alfred Nobel

13 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Nobel Prizes are really pretty famous. But what about the guy who set them up? Rod tells Will the story of Alfred Nobel!The Wholesome Show is Dr R...

Weather War!

04 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1996 the US Air Force released an 'ideas paper' exploring how "US aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalising on emerging technologi...

Bioweapons Testing!

27 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1966 a group of US Army scientists wanted to find out just how vulnerable the New York Subway system was to a biological attack.The good news? They...

The Science of Heavy Metal

20 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. For people who listen to Heavy Metal, that means categorisi...

The Dunning-Kruger Effect!

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's a sad fact of humanity that people who don't know much about something wildly over estimate how good they are at that thing. Heard about Iran's n...

The Difficult Legacy of J Marion Sims

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Can an enslaved person suffering a terrible condition consent to an experimental medical procedure?The short answer is no! The long answer is still no...

Faecal Microbiota Transplants!

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Listener you knew it was coming - if you were going to draw a Venn diagram of Wholesome Show topics (juvenile and science being the key circles), then...

The Sugar Experiments of Vipeholm

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We all know sugar is bad for our teeth.But... how did we come to know that?Rod tells Will the story of the Vipeholm Hospital sugar experiments!The Who...

The Pedoscope!

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What's a pedoscope, and why were they banned? Will tells Rod the weird story of this weird invention from the dark ages of the 20th Century...The Whol...

A Weird Marshmallow Experiment

01 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Listener, are you the type to delay gratification? To study for your test now, and save the night of partying till afterwards? To save your pennies fo...

Fighting Big Corpse!

26 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hey listener, what are you going to do with your body when you die? Like most sensible people, you're going to get turned into a diamond and fired int...

The Harvard Psilocybin Project!

19 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1960s a team of Harvard researchers... got high. All good, each to their own!But because they were researchers, they decided to become a ...

Animals in Space!

11 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1957 a stray dog was rescued from the streets of Moscow - and then strapped to the top of a rocket and sent into space! She died :(But she paved th...

Drug Smuggling Logistics!

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Supply chain logistics is one of the fastest growing and most innovative industries in the world. In shipping companies around the world scientists an...

Radioactive Snake Oil!

29 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 19th century Marie and Pierre Curie conducted some groundbreaking work on radioactivity. Their results were exciting - so exciting, we wen...

The Fake Money of JSG Boggs

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What even is money? Is it even really real?Money, as all you wise Wholesome Show listeners know, is a social construct. We made it up and we believe i...

Phrenology!

13 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of studying the bumps on people's heads to understand their personality is often held up as one of the dumbest mistakes ever made in science....

A Brief History Of Anti-Vaccination!

08 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The first vaccination was invented in 1796 by Edward Jenner.The first anti-vaccination movement was invented mere moments later - and their ideas then...

Domesticating The Fox!

28 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How did wolves turn into dogs? Dmitri Belyaev wanted to find out, so he launched a secret experiment in the middle of Stalinist Soviet Union to domest...

Stats Porn!

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

PornHub is one of the biggest porn sites on the planet - and every year they release a data dump of what the world watches! Rod tells Will all about i...

The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt!

16 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of the 20th Century the French colonisers in Hanoi had a problem with rats. Sure, rats had always been out there in the streets and t...

The Resurrectionists!

11 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 19th Century medical schools in England and Scotland were in a bit of a pickle. They needed a regular supply of bodies to demonstrate ana...

The Death Penalty in Japan, with Mai Sato!

04 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 quadruple murder. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada ...

Isaac Newton, Coin Detective!

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Isaac Newton had an amazing career as a scientist. But did you know he also had a secret follow up career as an undercover detective chasing bad guys ...

The Fake Stanford Prison Experiment!

20 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly 50 years the Stanford Prison Experiment has been held up as the most famous experiment in psychology. Ethically flawed, sure, but at least ...

Is Reality An Illusion?

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Edgar Allan Poe once declared that 'all we see or seem is but a dream within a dream'. Poetic thoughts, sure.But what if they're true? What if we're a...

Asteroid Impact!

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

You know dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid - but did you know how horrible it was?Spoiler alert, it was very horrible! Anyway, neither of us want t...

John Paul Stapp And The Rocket Sled!

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A drag racer can accelerate from a dead stop to 160 km/h in 0.86 seconds. That's a horizontal acceleration of 5.3 g. For most of us that would mush ou...

Wilhelm Reich And The Orgone!

21 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever tried to bring together a grand unified theory of character development, proletarian revolution, alien invasion and orgasms? Well, Wilhe...

The Highest Fecal Time Bomb In The World!

16 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

I hate to break it to you, but the highest mountain in the world is no longer a wilderness. Far from the distant unclimbable of Mallory and Hillary, M...

Human Zoos!

07 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Between the 1870s and the 1930s hundreds of zoos in Europe and America included people - yes human people - as part of their display collections. Will...

The Vague Silver Lining of Tobacco

01 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

I don't want to - ahem - blow smoke up your arse, but tobacco is not 100% satanically evil. Wait wait, before you shoot us, yes - tobacco is 99.9999% ...

Peaceful Nuclear Explosions!

26 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s and 70s the United States and the Soviet Union had a shitload of nuclear weapons... and when all you have is a hammer, the whole world is...

Poll Failures - With Kevin Bonham

10 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Political polls... aren't having a good run. After spectacular failures of polling in the UK in the Brexit vote and the US in the 2016 election, the m...

Injected With Plutonium

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On May 14, 1945, Albert Stevens was injected with 131 kBq (3.55 µCi) of plutonium - the highest known radiation dose in any human - without his knowl...

A Brief History Counting People!

26 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Statistics, you might be surprised to learn, is the science of the state. At heart the whole discipline was born from an effort to count how many peop...

Unexplained Aerial Phenomena! (It's The New Name For UFOs!)

20 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In our galaxy there are billions of stars like our Sun, many of them probably billions of years older. In all likelihood, many of these stars will hav...

Oceans Of Nuclear Waste!

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1946 and 1993 a bunch of countries dumped 85 PBq* of radioactive waste into the ocean. Slurries, solids, reactors - you know, the stuff you fi...

The Unusual Health Beliefs of John Harvey Kellogg!

06 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Corn flakes are delicious. But did you know they were originally invented to lower sexual desire? (Try it yourself next time you have a bowl, but be c...

The Bone Collectors

29 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the dying days of the Second World War, allied troops entering Strasbourg made a grisly discovery - the purpose built beginnings of a skeleton coll...

Anthropophagy! (It Means Cannibalism)!

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has food they hate eating. For some people it's mushrooms, for others it's onions, for others it's aniseed. (For Will it's watermelon. It's t...

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch!

15 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Do you listen to The Wholesome Show in the shower? You can, it's totally fine with us! So... if you're in the shower now, take a look down at the floo...

Poo-In-A-Box!

08 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Listener I distinctly remember being told, when I was about 4, that even the Queen does poos. (It's true, she does!)Well, there's nothing to be ashame...

Piltdown Man and Other Fossil Fakes!

01 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wished the made up dinosaurs from the latest Jurassic Park movies were real? Well, you're not the only one! It turns out fossil hunters ...

Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation!

25 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wanted to be just a little bit smarter? To think a little bit more clearly, to remember better, to have a higher IQ? Well it turns out, ...

The Moral Entrepreneurs of The Momo Hoax!

10 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year teenagers around the world began* to receive* sinister text messages... from a half bird half woman half ghoul thing from the depths...

Dehumanisation!

03 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Human brains are, quite simply, one of the most astounding things in the cosmos. They've written the works of Shakespeare, composed the lyrics to most...

Wherefore Art Thou Dinosaur Erotica?

27 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Warning - this episode somewhat less safe for work than normal! Azog is an underappreciated cavewoman in her tribe. The cavemen treat her like a piece...

The Paradox of Meritocracy!

20 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On first glance, the idea of meritocracy sounds like a pretty sensible way of organising society. Put simply, all the good things - rewards and privil...

Wandering Teeth!

13 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

An adult - if they've been good and brushed their teeth properly and haven't had any removed - can have 32 teeth in their mouth.That's right, 32 teeth...

Phantom Itches!

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What do you do if you have an itch? You scratch it! Of course you do, you're only human. But what if the itch is on a limb YOU NO LONGER HAVE? How do ...

Getting to Graham's Number!

20 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Numbers, by definition, go on forever. Whatever number you think of, you can always find one bigger - all the way out to infinity. But have you ever s...

People Who... Drink Their Own Urine!

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ok... to people who don't do it, it's weird and gross and wrong. But to people who do do it, it's basically the golden fountain of youth.That's right,...

Animals On Trial!

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Bartholomew Chassenée, a distinguished French jurist of the sixteenth century, made his reputation at the bar as counsel for some... rats. That's rig...

The 1947 Children's New Illustrated Encyclopedia!

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The past - they say - is a different country. They do things differently there... And the best way to see those differences (and laugh and cry at them...

The Indiana Pi Bill!

25 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The number pi (π) is... rather unwieldy. It starts with a fairly simple '3', but then continues past the decimal place with a collection of basically...