300 épisodes

Brain Junk is an off-the-wall, totally unbelievable but true podcast where Amy Barton and Trace Kerr shake up science & history in the hunt for answers to questions you never knew you wanted to know. We bring you the inside scoop on things like: Can goldfish drive? How do whales not drown while eating? Who had the first prosthetic eye?
We cannonball off the question high dive every other Tuesday -- those of you in the front seats, bring your ponchos. We're out to flood your brain.

Brain Junk Trace Kerr and Amy Barton

    • Sciences

Brain Junk is an off-the-wall, totally unbelievable but true podcast where Amy Barton and Trace Kerr shake up science & history in the hunt for answers to questions you never knew you wanted to know. We bring you the inside scoop on things like: Can goldfish drive? How do whales not drown while eating? Who had the first prosthetic eye?
We cannonball off the question high dive every other Tuesday -- those of you in the front seats, bring your ponchos. We're out to flood your brain.

    307: 52 Cards

    307: 52 Cards

    From poker to games played to pass the time, those 52 cards are so ubiquitous it's hard to figure just when we started using them. We go all the way back to ancient China for a possible origin of cards.













    images: Cloisters Deck from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and and example of cards from today from pixabay



    Show Notes:



    The strange coincidence of the Instagram guy & 52 card decks



    Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Cloisters Playing Cards



    Atlas Obscura: Playing cards around the world and through the ages



    JSTOR: an excerpt from The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards



    Wikipedia: Chinese Playing Cards



    Transcript:



    [00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey there. Trace here. So Amy and I have a couple projects coming up over the next couple months. She's taking some classes. She's got to do homework. I've got some projects, a fiction podcast that I'm working on writing, and a novel that I'm working on editing. And we need a little more space, a little more time. So we're not stopping brain junk. Absolutely not. We love it too much to quit. But we are going to move to every two weeks instead of every week. So that means this week is an episode, and then we won't have another episode until April 2. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get your brain junk fixed. We got lots of old episodes. You can head over to YouTube for the really old episodes. I'm slowly uploading more. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to dial it back a little bit for a little while. So enjoy this episode. Yeah, we'll see you in two weeks.



    Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.



    [00:00:59] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about playing cards.



    Are you a card family? Like old school? Not like games, but the traditional four suit deck.



    [00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. Well, you know, it's funny because I grew up as a card family. Chaz did not grow up as a card family. They were a scrabble family. And I have converted him to the crazy eights and the Kings in the know, the old people card games.



    [00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Now, I have never played kings in the corner. My family is a rummy family. I think there's some cribbage in there, too, with the little pegs. Children were not allowed to touch that. I think it was an adult escape game because they played it out at the lake and they're like, shouldn't you guys be swimming? Grandpa's out watching go swim, so I need to learn to play that one.



    [00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, I can teach you how to play cribbage. Chaz and I play cribbage all the time. Neither of my children like to play cards, which is funny. It began and ended with us. That's it. We're done.



    [00:02:05] Speaker B: Now.



    It's a generational thing in my family because my grandpa was a military fella for a long time, and so it was an officer's. It's a clubby thing.

    • 15 min
    306: The Flip That Flopped

    306: The Flip That Flopped

    Call them slippahs, flip flops, chanclas, slops, plakkies, slaps, pantofles, or thongs...whatever word you choose says a lot about your age and what part of the world you grew up in. We came up with this episode topic as kind of a joke. Turns out there's way more about to know about these summer shoes than we thought.







    Show Notes:



    Wikipedia on the history of flip flops



    The Paduka



    Kanye West being weird as usual with diamond studded flips



    Satra: History of the flip flop



    Forbes: This Brand Reinvented Flip-Flops (And Made Them A Sustainable Product)



    Business Wire: Global Flip Flops Market to Reach $28.5 Billion by 2030, Fueled by Work-from-Home Trend and Growing Demand in Developing Countries - ResearchAndMarkets.com



    Obama first US President photoed in slippahs



    Guinness account on X: Andre Ortolf running in flip flops



    Longest flip flop throw



    Flip Flops History and Production Process

    • 23 min
    305: Deadly Animal Mimics

    305: Deadly Animal Mimics

    It's easy to believe that a snake might be a deadly mimic. But butterflies that start life as carnivorous caterpillars? Oh heck yeah!







    Show Notes:



    YouTube BBC: Ants Adopt a Caterpillar



    YouTube Entomological Society of America: Ants and Blues



    The Pattern of Social Parasitism in Maculinea teleius Butterfly Is Driven by the Size and Spatial Distribution of the Host Ant Nests



    Entomology Today: Carnivorous Caterpillars Fool Ants by Sounding like Queens



    PLOS One: Variation in Butterfly Larval Acoustics as a Strategy to Infiltrate and Exploit Host Ant Colony Resources



    Scientific American: Actual audio of the caterpillar mimicking an ant



    Avian deception using an elaborate caudal lure in Pseudocerastes urarachnoides (Serpentes: Viperidae)



    Herpetological.org Pseudocerastes urarachnoides: the ambush specialist (great pictures of the viper!)



    Discover: Meet the Snake







    Transcript:



    00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.



    [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about deadly animal mimics.



    [00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know a lot about that.



    [00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, I have two. It's double header. I can't make up my mind about subjects lately and I'm just going to mash it together.



    [00:00:21] Speaker C: Bonus.



    [00:00:24] Speaker B: So the first one, I'm going to give you a little scenario. You have a child pretending to be a queen, infiltrating a city, deceiving soldiers into taking care of her, all the while eating the real queen's children.



    [00:00:37] Speaker C: Oh, my word.



    [00:00:38] Speaker A: That sounds like a marvel plot.



    [00:00:40] Speaker C: It does, right?



    [00:00:40] Speaker B: Horror movie, Sci-Fi it's not. It's the real life of the large blue butterfly caterpillar.



    [00:00:47] Speaker A: I was sure we were going down an ant road.



    [00:00:50] Speaker C: Well, wow.



    [00:00:52] Speaker

    • 12 min
    304: The Wrong Wipe

    304: The Wrong Wipe

    If you haven't figured it out by now, Amy is not afraid to ask tough questions! Today she talks butt health, bidets, and the dangers of wet wipes. It's funnier than you'd think, we promise.



    Show Notes:



    Business Insider: interview with Dr. Goldstein







    Am I Doing it Wrong? Jan 2024



    The Spruce: 7 Best Bidet Attachments



    Splinter free toilet paper



    History Channel: All the Ways We've Wiped



    CBS news article about Johnny Carson creating a toilet paper shortage



    And just in case you're not a dinosaur like Trace and Amy, this is Walter Cronkite



    Transcript:



    [00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.



    [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to be discussing personal care, which is, I know, one of the things you come to brain junk for, because we care about you, and we want you to know you might not be wiping correctly.



    [00:00:21] Speaker A: Oh, no.



    [00:00:22] Speaker B: This is a hard truth that we need to share with you.



    And this comes from Chris Barton.



    [00:00:29] Speaker A: Oh, no.



    [00:00:29] Speaker B: Who, like, we're sitting watching whatever we're watching on Saturday or Sunday morning, and he's, uh, is this a brain junk? And he sends me this article that's entitled bad news. You're probably wiping all wrong. And I'm like, yes, it is.



    Okay, are you ready?



    [00:00:50] Speaker A: No.



    [00:00:55] Speaker B: Parents is going to be some low key anatomical terms. Shall we talk about Dr. Evan Goldstein? Absolutely. And he is a nationally renowned anal surgeon.



    [00:01:05] Speaker A: Oh, wow.



    [00:01:05] Speaker B: That is a very specific specialty. But if you need an anal surgeon, you want them to be nationally renowned.



    [00:01:15] Speaker A: That's true.



    [00:01:16] Speaker B: Proper functionality there is valuable.



    So Dr. Evan Goldstein says that the preferred method of wiping is actually not wiping. He describes when you're looking at s

    • 14 min
    303: The Birds!

    303: The Birds!

    Trace found some delightful random facts about birds! Today we're talking "anting", talons locked to the death, and musical cockatoos.







    Show Notes:



    Journal of Ornithology: Anting behavior in birds



    Video of crow anting: aka the spicy spa



    Bird Note: anting



    Facebook video of bald eagles cartwheeling



    Bird Note: Eagles cartwheeling



    Palm Cockatoos playing their instruments



    Research paper on Palm Cockatoos



    Funny vid with Conan O'Brien and a palm cockatoo guest



    Transcript:



    [00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton.



    [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I just saw a spider and I'm terrified. But we're going to do this episode because I'm an adult.



    Today we're going to, today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about birds.



    [00:00:20] Speaker A: Just everything about birds.



    [00:00:21] Speaker B: Everything.



    [00:00:22] Speaker A: People grab a hot beverage.



    [00:00:24] Speaker C: Yep.



    [00:00:24] Speaker B: This episode, it's going to be like 12 hours. It's an eight part episode. No, it's like three things that I really thought were cool. And that's everything. So there you go.



    [00:00:33] Speaker A: Excellent.



    [00:00:34] Speaker C: Yeah.



    [00:00:34] Speaker B: We're winning at information, but I saw the spider. You mentioned ants, and the first thing we're going to talk about is this thing called anting. A-N-T-I-N-G. So it's perfect. It's just synergy. We're just coming together.



    [00:00:48] Speaker A: Love it.



    [00:00:51] Speaker B: If you don't like ants, just, you have to skip through this beginning little part.



    [00:00:56] Speaker A: If you see a whole nest of them, do your feet tingle? If I see a whole pile of them, my feet are like having accidentally.



    [00:01:04] Speaker B: Stood with my foot in a red ant nest in Georgia.



    They're so spicy.



    [00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah.



    [00:01:12] Speaker A: I feel like the warmer it gets, the spicier the ants get.



    That far south. Those are some very exciting ants.



    [00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, and here's the thing.



    [00:01:22] Speaker C: Okay.



    [00:01:22] Speaker B: So there's at least 250 species of birds like crows and robins and jays that love that acidic spa treatment.

    • 21 min
    302: Potato Chip Taste Test

    302: Potato Chip Taste Test

    We recorded IN PERSON!



    Trace brought back a whole bunch of fun flavored chips from Uwajimaya, a fantastic Asian grocery store in Seattle! Check out the show notes for our 5 other taste test episodes!



    Show Notes:









    P.S. If you like the Non Newtonian fluid cup, it's in our Merch store!



    P.S.S. in defense of the Pizza flavored chips, when Trace tried them the next day, she could taste the peperoni.



    Other Taste Test episodes:



    9: Crazy food (we eat cherry pickles)



    138: Turkey Candy Corn



    142: Socially Distanced Taste Test



    229: Taco Truck Jelly Bean Taste Test!



    235: Tailgate Candy Corn







    Transcript:



    [00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton.



    [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And we're in the same room together.



    [00:00:09] Speaker A: I was just debating. Can I interrupt and say we're here together, right by each other.



    [00:00:14] Speaker B: It's kind of weird. And we only have one microphone because equipment. And so we're very close. We're standing very not. We're not huggers. We're very close to each other. But we're here because we're going. I know. We're going to talk about. We're going to do a taste test.



    [00:00:28] Speaker A: Yes. And we're having a whole sensory experience right now already. Actually, there are some smells happening here.



    [00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I wanted to do the fun, different potato chips that we don't get here in the United States. But every time I go on, like Amazon or something, the teeny tiny bags were an insane amount of money.



    [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yes. Like 39 99 for two bags or something. Absurd.



    [00:00:52] Speaker B: And then shipping.



    [00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah.



    [00:00:54] Speaker B: And I was at Wajamaya, which is an asian grocery store over in Seattle this weekend, and they had like a wall of a variety of chips.



    [00:01:06] Speaker A: Do you remember when lay's did? They had a whole series, so it was like biscuits and gravy and there was like a korean barbecue or something. That was delightful. But that's as close as we've gotten here in the US to anything unique. Yeah.



    [00:01:18] Speaker B: So all different. I immediately texted Amy and I was like, how do you feel about this? And you were like, no seafood. But what we're doing is I put tags on the little chip bags of numbers one through seven.



    [00:01:33] Speaker A: Nice.



    [00:01:33] Speaker B: And then I made plates with one through seven and then gave it to Chaz. And he was like, we should have double blind randomized. And I was like, no, do not take the numbers off of the bags so we don't know. So we can try to figure out what the flavor is just by tasting it, and then we can check the bags.



    [00:01:52] Speaker A: Excellent.



    [00:01:53] Speaker B: See how close we were, because I love that idea.



    Science. Although it's only two people, I predict.



    [00:02:01] Speaker A: That I

    • 26 min

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