The BrainFood Show

Hand based games have been around seemingly as long as humans have been humaning. As to the exact genesis of Rock, Paper, Scissors, however, this appears to originate in hand games from China, supposedly going back about two thousand years, though primary documented evidence of this is scant. That said, the trail gets much more clear starting around the 17th century which saw some of these games having migrated over to Japan and explicit references to them in surviving text. One of those games, in turn, spread from Japan throughout the world in surprisingly recent times. We are, of course, referring to Rock, Paper, Scissors. As noted, in the early going, there were a myriad of these hand games using a series of hand gestures, sometimes even using various chants. As for the many three hand gesture variants, these are called sansukumi-ken. As an example of one variant of this, we have the Japanese “mushi-ken” which instead of using Rock, Paper, and Scissors, used hand gestures representing a frog, a slug, and a snake. The specific gestures were the thumb as the frog, which defeats the slug. The slug is represented by the pinky finger and defeats the snake. The snake is represented by the index finger and defeats the frog. If you're now wondering how a snake is beaten by a slug in the Japanese version, it's hypothesized that when the Japanese adopted the game from the Chinese, they simply misinterpreted the character for a certain poisonous centipede used in said Chinese version, with that then representing the slug in Japan because of it. 0:00 Who Invented Rock, Paper, Scissors and What's the Best Way to Win Consistently? 10:27 Who Invented Chewing Gum? 18:22 Who Invented the Food Pyramid and Why You'd Be Crazy to Follow It 27:40 Who Invented the Pencil Sharpener? 33:34 Who Invented the Hot Air Balloon? 44:14 Who Invented the Taser? 50:07 Who Invented Jeans? 58:20 Who Invented Nachos and Why are They Called That? 1:07:36 Who Invented Hawaiian Pizza? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Just an addendum to one of the tangents I forgot to mention- pulling up like crazy in a plane while rapidly hurtling towards the ground is a phenomenal way to ensure the wings of the plane cease to remain attached to it. In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at the little known much more massive big brother to the Roman Colosseum and the astounding number of people it held. Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at how it came to be that some countries have their populaces drive on the left while others choose the keep right model. In the Bonus Facts, we look at some interesting things about the keep left and keep right rules with regards to boats, airplanes and helicopters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conceived in early 1990, the MagiCan campaign was supposed to be the spearhead of a massive summer promotion the cola giant dubbed “Magic Summer ’90”. In a nutshell, the promotion involved hiding cash prizes ranging from $5-$500, as well as some other goodies such as coupons for free Coke, inside of 750,000 of the several hundred million cans of Coke that would be distributed during the summer. As part of the campaign, Coke created (and patented) a unique mechanism that, as soon as the can was opened, would eject the prize inside via a spring loaded mechanism. Coke dubbed the cans “MagiCans”. In order to ensure people didn’t end up with water-logged prizes, the part of the can containing the aforementioned mechanism was sealed off and the reservoir that was left was filled with chlorinated water to make the weight of the can approximately the same as a normal full can of Coca-Cola. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the early 1970s conspiracy theorists have created ever more elaborate stories about how NASA faked the moon landings, much to the annoyance of the literal hundreds of thousands of people who worked in some capacity to make these missions a reality, and even more so to the men who were brave enough to sit in front of a massive controlled explosion, take a little jaunt through the soul crushing void of space in an extremely complex ship built by the lowest bidder, then get into another spacecraft whose ascent engine had never been test fired before they lit the candle, and all with the goal of exiting said ship with only a special suit between them and oblivion. And don’t even get the astronauts started on the paltry government salary they earned in doing all that and the hilarious lengths they had to go to to provide some semblance of a life insurance policy for their families should the worst happen during the missions. So who first got the idea that the moon landings were faked? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Filet-O-Fish is one of the more curious items on the McDonald’s menu in that it receives virtually no advertising whatsoever, yet still continues to be sold by the chain despite the fact that it seems like nobody ever orders one and it’s been a problem item for years for the company due to difficulty in finding a sustainable, tasty source of fish meat at the volume the behemoth needs, as well as the fact that it requires a separate fryer to cook in than their other items. As it turns out, they keep it around because the Filet-O-Fish is actually intended to be eaten by a very specific kind of customer- people who abstain from eating non-seafood meat for religious reasons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices