Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Each year, the Ig Nobel prizes honor the weirdest and wackiest contributions to humanity's scientific understanding of the natural world. In this pair of Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast episodes, Robert, Joe and Christian unpack each of this year's winners. In this episode, explore the wonders of unboiled eggs, urination speed, "huh" literature, police bribes and disastrous managers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did the human fist evolve to punch faces? Did our faces evolve to take punches? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore University of Utah biologist David Carrier's research into human evolution -- including his 2015 study that involves a cadaver-armed punching machine. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do we know precisely what constitutes "normality" or mental illness? And if there is a difference, can anybody detect it? Even professionals? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the groundbreaking 1973 study that saw eight otherwise-healthy "pseudopatients" admitted to 12 different psychiatric facilities and diagnosed with mental illness. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If your fictional diet contains significant quantities of horror or dark fantasy, then you've likely encountered the ghoul: a scavenging, grave-robbing race of unnatural beings with an insatiable hunger for the dead. As Robert and Joe explore in this episode, the roots of ghouldom sink back into pre-Islamic Arabic folklore -- as well into the distant evolutionary history of humanity itself. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Global myth cycles are rife with blood-drinkers and blood bathers. Often, the tale centers around the notion of young blood as a fountain of youth. The aging countess or decrepit monster needs only to drink from young veins in order to restore a failing body. Yet science has a way of catching up with myth, and in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the history of medicinal blood drinking and the startling scientific reality of rejuvenation through transfusions of young blood. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There was a time when strange lights appeared in the marshlands. Commoners might have known the eerie luminescence as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" or "Hinky Punk," while the learned pondered the mysteries of "Ignis Fatuus." Superstitions aside, what natural phenomenon was at work here, before accounts of false fires in the night largely vanished from history? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe search for answers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The "final girl" trope has become a standard horror cinema convention, in which a single strong female character outruns, outsmarts and outstabs her murderous pursuer to stand victorious amid the slain. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore the film roots, cultural resonance and symbolic power of the final girl. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Surf the Internet long enough and you'll happen upon creepypasta: little cut-and-paste snippets of horror that blur the lines between reality and the fantastic. These collectively assembled amalgams of pop culture influences take on their own amorphous power -- and more than a few of them seem to involve shadowy science experiments. So in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore the real-life science behind a handful of experiments from the world of creepypasta. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Humanity currently stands at a crossroads in the treatment of its dead. Forced to contend with the environmental and economic downsides to modern mortuary customs, various innovators look back to our most basic burial customs and recreate them with a suitably high-tech design twist. Join Robert and Joe for a look at human remains and the way we help (or hinder) their return to the soil. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when we slip into a costume? Be it a monster pelt, a sexy witch or a simple children's ghost mask, a psychological transformation takes place. Join Robert and Christian for a fittingly seasonal look at enclothed cognition and deindividuation. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.