A Little Bit Of Science

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 balloonomania!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 tells Will some of the horror stories of the early work on x-rays!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 history - and the future - of the death certificate!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, joined today by Dr Arnagretta Hunter. The Wholesome Show is proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 a baseball.But was it real?Rod tells Will the story of Red Mercury!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, and is proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

'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 you dig a little deeper, the story turns into something a little bit different.Will tells Rod the story of Stockholm Syndrome!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly supported by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 hell of a side benefit...The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's no secret listener, we're part of perhaps the most problematic demographic - white middle aged podcasting academics. And, quite legitimately, we're being asked to do better.So - this is us, going a little bit meta and drawing on the advice of Prof Jasmine Roberts of Ohio State University to try to explore what we can do to help make a better world.The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. Prof Jasmine Roberts' White Academia: Do Better is available at https://medium.com/the-faculty/white-academia-do-better-fa96cede1fc5See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 oopsie - how do you clean it up? With the biggest robot ever made of course!Rod tells Will the story of the Beetle, the biggest robot ever made!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 screamed that it's their freedom to be covered in shit.In this episode, Will hosts Rod and special guest Professor Penny Hawe in a special quiz on the history of the nanny state critique!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, joined today by Professor Penny Hawe! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 successful journalist, aircraft manufacturer and pilot - and the first person to commute by plane - Lawson also had some intensely weird Ideas about how the world works. Rod tells Will his story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Henry Cotton had some interesting ideas about the causes of psychiatric disorders. The problem wasn't the ideas, it was the dogged pursuit of following them through..The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joined today by Dr Madeleine Hinwood! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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't experience it?Rod tells Will the story of S. M., the woman who feels no fear!The Wholesome Show is made by Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 20th Century alone.But then, following a concerted global effort of vaccination, we wiped it out - the only disease threatening humans to have been fully eradicated.Will tells Rod how this happened!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 enterprising folk... filled the gap with bullshit. The champion of this was George Psalmanazar... Rod tells Will his story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 communication!And we wanted to document it. So today, Will tells Rod - and special guest Darren Saunders - all about some of the awful people spreading awful lies in this Covid-19 world!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, food should be chewed until liquefied before swallowing. "Nature will castigate those who don't masticate."Rod tells Will all about him!The Wholesome Show is made by Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, and proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 - in fact it was called the forgotten pandemic. Will tells Rod all about it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Will about Munchausen's syndrome, Munchausen's by proxy, and Munchausen's by Internet! This is our first social distancing podcast, bear with us while we polish our tech :)The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pandemics suck. You know that. You also know that panic buying sucks, particularly when everyone is buying your delicious brand of muesli. But what causes it? Will tells Rod a little about the history and science of panic buying!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science - take care everybody!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1996 the US Air Force released an 'ideas paper' exploring how "US aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalising on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications."In short, they were looking at making weather a weapon against their enemies!Will tells Rod about the history behind this idea...The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 found it was... pretty vulnerable.The bad news? The way they found this out was... pretty dodgy.Will tells Rod and Hans all about it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, joined today by Dr Hans Thulstrup, and proudly presented by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. For people who listen to Heavy Metal, that means categorising music with the most awesome array of sub-categories you can imagine!Rod tells Will (and Hans!) all about the science of Heavy Metal!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Hans Thulstrup! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 nuclear program? Then you're basically an expert. Played a video game with a helicopter? You're basically a pilot.This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.But it's not just a reason we should calm down our self-estimation, it has real world consequences. Rod tells Will more!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, but with a side order of 'it's complicated'. But can the rest of society benefit?Will tells Rod about the difficult legacy of J Marion Sims!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 poo transplants would sit right in the middle!So this episode, Rod tells Will the history and science of Faecal Microbiota Transplants!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 for a sensible purchase only when you have the money? To avoid eating one marshmallow now, to get two later? Or do you need what you need/want right now, and consequences be damned?Either is fine, we're not judging. But for years, perhaps the most famous experiment in cognitive psychology has...Will tells Rod and Hannah the story of the weird marshmallow experiment!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joined today by Hannah Carle! We're proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 into the sun (of course!) - but if that's not quite for you, what's an environmentally and socially responsible solution for your mortal remains?Rod tells Will and Hannah about the science and politics of Big Corpse! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joined today by Hannah Carle and proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 little more rigorous on what happens when you take psychedelic drugs. Will tells Rod the story of the Harvard Psilocybin Project!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 the way for the rest of us to reach the stars, so that's nice!Hannah Carle joins the Wholesome Show today to tell Rod and Will about the animals who've gone to space!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, joined today by Hannah Carle from ANU's Research School of Biology! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Supply chain logistics is one of the fastest growing and most innovative industries in the world. In shipping companies around the world scientists and engineers are working on robot factories and drone delivery and ways to get your packages to you faster and faster.And the drug industry is keen on this too! Rod tells Will about the innovative ways drug barons are shipping drugs around the world...The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the late 19th century Marie and Pierre Curie conducted some groundbreaking work on radioactivity. Their results were exciting - so exciting, we went around putting radioactive ingredients in everything!Will tells Rod the story of radioactive snake oil!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 in it because it's useful.And so we know making fake money is naughty... But what if you fake it as an art project?Rod tells Will the story of JSG Boggs and his fake money!The Wholesome Show is Will Grant and Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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... But the story of phrenology is a little more complicated than that.Will tells Rod why!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first vaccination was invented in 1796 by Edward Jenner.The first anti-vaccination movement was invented mere moments later - and their ideas then parallel strongly with the ideas you see pushed now.Rod tells Will their story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 domesticate the fox!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Hannah Carle! Normally brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, today we're also brought to you by the Research School of Biology at ANU as the final Director's Seminar for 2019!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 the Vietnamese neighbourhoods... But something new was happening...The rats were poking their furry noses up in the toilets of the rich and powerful. Ugh! Will tells Rod and Kim Ballestrin how they tried to solve the problem!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, joined today by Kim Ballestrin! Normally brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, today we're also brought to you by #LASTConf!Sources:Michael G Vann: OF RATS, RICE, AND RACE: THE GREAT HANOI RAT MASSACRE, AN EPISODE IN FRENCH COLONIAL HISTORY. French Colonial History Vol. 4, 2003, pp. 191-204New York Times: Dog a Fake Hero, 1908Wikipedia: Paul DoumerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 anatomy lessons on, but there just weren't enough being produced via 'offical' means... So they turned to some 'grey area' associates to help them out. Will tells Rod their story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 quadruple murder. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world's longest-held death row inmate.Cool record huh! (Very very not cool).Today we explore his story with Mai Sato, from the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 around London?Rod tells Will the story!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 it told us a whole lot about how bad situations make bad people...But it was bullshit.Will tells Rod why!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!This episode draws on Thibault Le Texier’s Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment, originally published in French as Histoire d’un mensonge: enquête sur l’expérience de Stanford. Available at https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/mjhnp/providers/osfstorage/5d4bd52522a88600184ed20c?action=download&version=1&directSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 actually living in a simulation? I hate to break it to you, but some people think it's more likely than not - and they're trying to break out! Rod tells Will all about it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 to die that way, so we explored what science is doing to stop it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 our brains to the backs of our skulls and leave us in a state of piddling confusion.But to John Paul Stapp that's baby steps.Rod tells Will about John Paul Stapp's mission to see just how fast the human body can start and stop! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever tried to bring together a grand unified theory of character development, proletarian revolution, alien invasion and orgasms? Well, Wilhelm Reich certainly tried, and this is his story!The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Sam Vilkins! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, Mt Everest is now a heaving festival of the best and worst of humanity, and an oversize garbage dump with its own nightclub. Rod tells Will all about it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 tells Rod all about it!The Wholesome Show is Will Grant and Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.