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What’s the deal with redheads? It sounds like the beginning of a Seinfeld bit but in all fairness (pun intended), for a group of people who make up only 2% of the population, our flame-haired ginger guys and gals have attracted much attention throughout history. Some of that attention is due to the obvious: redheads are babes.

 

But the fascination with redheads over the centuries hasn’t all been positive. They’ve also received far more hostile attention like being labelled barbarians by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In Ancient Egypt, redheaded men were burnt as human sacrifices at the grave of Osiris (god of the deceased) and their ashes were scattered to the four winds in the name of a bountiful harvest; red hair symbolised the golden wealth of the corn after all, so… makes sense.

 

In medieval times, people with green eyes and red hair were considered either witches, werewolves or vampires. There were even alchemical recipes requiring the blood of a redhead to turn copper into gold. Just mix the blood up with the ashes of a basilisk, easy as pie. 

 

Scientific or not, redheads do seem to carry the reputation of having a somewhat spicy temperament and the people from Charles University in Prague wanted to know if this translated into the bedroom… The science says yes but not in the way you think!



CHAPTERS:


00:00 Why do redheads fascinate us?
03:42 Barbarians and human sacrificing
05:40 Alchemical recipe with the blood of a redhead
07:30 19th century study: Most criminals were redheads
09:31 Ayurvedic medicine and genetics
13:42 Opiate response, Vitamin D and adrenaline 
17:48 Redheads smell like ambergris
19:12 Pain studies: Stabbing and electric currents
21:50 Sexism in redhead stereotypes
24:21 Study on Redheads and Sexuality 
27:08 What’s next on The Wholesome Show

 

PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:


What The Hell Happened To The Left-Handers?

 

SOURCES:


Myths about red hair are rooted in fear of difference | Aeon Ideas
The Truth About Redheads


Ginger hair: 13 fascinating facts about redheads


World Redhead Day: 16 fun facts about red hair - Indianapolis


Redheaded women are more sexually active than other women, but it is probably due to their suitors


Science Confirms Redheads Are Equipped With Some Weird Genetic Superpowers - GQ Australia


Red hair - Wikipedia

 
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When you think about the Cold War, you immediately think about whale songs right? Okay, maybe not everyone makes that connection, but in a delightfully random way, the political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s had a lot to do with the discovery of the beautiful whale song, and ultimately, the collapse of the commercial whaling industry altogether. 

 

Back in the 1950s, the United States had gone gangbusters with submarines. Travelling under the Arctic Ocean, they were set on going the longest, the deepest, the hardest. But they were worried about other countries doing it too… particularly the Soviets.  

 

They knew they couldn’t stop them, but they at least wanted to know where the Red subs were. That’s when Frank Watlington was tasked by the US Navy to develop hydrophones (microphones they could stick in the ocean) to listen for submarine sounds. 

 

So Watlington set off to Bermuda and got to work. One day he dropped his hydrophone 1,500 feet into the ocean and heard strange, eerie sounds coming from the deep. For the Navy, these sounds were just annoying distractions from detecting submarine activity but for Watlington, well, they were captivating. Ditching his original task of detecting Soviet submarines, Watlington became obsessed with the ethereal sounds he had recorded and he played them to anyone who would listen...



CHAPTERS:


00:00 Everyone knows the whale song
02:08 A dog’s breakfast: 20th century whaling
03:32 The Cold War and the end of whaling
05:21 Frank Watlington and hydrophones
07:22 Roger Payne: From science to viral sensation
10:35 Patterns and rhythm in the whale song 
12:19 Humpback Whale record goes viral
14:58 Rock stars, Greenpeace and whaling ban
16:49 What next on The Wholesome Show

 

SOURCES:


Francis W. Watlington; Recorded Whale Songs, NY Times  
'It always hits me hard': how a haunting album helped save the whales, The Guardian  
It Took A Musician's Ear To Decode The Complex Song In Whale Calls, NPR  
Listening to Whales by Douglas Allchin in The American Biology Teacher  
Number of whales killed, World, Our World In Data  
Oral conception. Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic  distal vagina. Case report, by Douwe A A Verkuyl, in BJOG 
Whale song: A grandfather's legacy, CBS News  
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Politicians get a bad rap, don’t they? Every mutterance and every action falls under intense scrutiny from the press and the public eye. If they make one wrong move, we’ll know about it and keep talking about it for ages too.

 

Maybe that’s why politicians go to such great lengths to win the people over. Like when Governor Carey of New York volunteered to drink a glass of PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls - highly carcinogenic chemical compounds) to prove a state building was safe. 

 

It seems that drinking a cup of toxic liquid is the go-to political move. Punjab State Chief Minister, Bhagwant Mann, downed a glass of polluted water from a holy river in 2022 on the heels of a campaign to clean water bodies. He was hospitalised for 2 days. Then there’s the bizarre demonstration from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who allegedly drank fracking fluid in a ritual-like manner around a table. Bit culty.

 

While you could argue that demonstrations like these showcase leadership and a willingness to share risks with the public, they could also just be downright reckless and stupid. 



CHAPTERS:


00:00 Don’t put torpedos in your mouth
03:06 Mad Cow Disease: Putting beef to the test
05:47 President Obama drinks lead-lined Flint Water 
08:35 East Palestine toxic chemical water
11:58 The Fracking fluid ritual
15:41 Proving that New York Midtown is safe
18:41 Nuclear bombs are perfectly fine
20:35 Dining Dangers: From COVID to Cholera
25:38 Product safety testing downfalls
32:03 What’s next on the Wholesome Show

 

SOURCES:


Communications and Politics, in The Public Health Crisis Survival Guide: Leadership and  Management in Trying Times by Joshua M Sharfstein  
Ex-N.Y. Gov. Hugh Carey dies at 92, Politico  
Factiva archive 
Food Irradiation by the CDC  
New York Times Archive 
Trove 
The cholera epidemic in Latin America, Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen  
What became of Cordelia Gummer, the Mad Cow girl?, Daily Express 
Vets dismiss fears of 'mad cat' disease, New Scientist  
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On November 24, 1971, Dan Cooper, a quiet, nondescript man (wearing the classic business suit everyone wore back then) wandered into Portland airport and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle. He drank his bourbon and soda in the lounge and boarded the plane like every other passenger. 

 

Cooper was your average guy, at least until shortly after takeoff, when he handed the flight attendant a note. And no, it wasn’t an attempt to flirt his way into the mile-high club. This note said that there was a bomb in his briefcase and that she should sit down next to him. She sat down.

 

Dan opened his briefcase to reveal a mass of wires and red coloured sticks to the flight attendant, who promptly followed his instructions to send a message to the captain. He demanded that $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and 4 parachutes be delivered to him upon landing. 

 

The flight landed in Seattle, Cooper exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes and then, with some crew still on board, took off again for Mexico City. 

 

Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, ordinary Dan walked to the back of the plane, opened a door and jumped out with a parachute and the money. The pilots landed safely and DB Cooper, as he became known, disappeared. 

 

50 years later, we’re still looking for him, and amazingly, there have been very recent (as in March 2024) updates to this cold case! 



CHAPTERS:


00:00 The Mysterious Case of DB Cooper
03:15 Investigations, Theories, and Folk Hero Status
05:36 Copycats and Confessions 
08:54 The Hunt for DB Cooper: Suspects, Clues, and Dead Ends
12:26 Tom Colbert’s case against Robert Rackstraw
15:38 DB Cooper Wannabes 
18:36 Case closed after 45 years
20:31 DNA Evidence: A New Hope in the Cold Case
27:40 Speculations and Theories: Where is DB Cooper?
29:32 What’s next on The Wholesome Show



SOURCES:


D.B. Cooper Hijacking — FBI
https://www.the-sun.com/news/10528799/db-cooper-dna-sample-fbi-new-culprits/
7 People Have Confessed to Being DB Cooper. A Twist in the Case Says One Told the Truth.
Who Was D.B. Cooper? | HISTORY
D.B. Cooper Hijacking - Topics on Newspapers.com
'Missed crucial DB Cooper clue' left behind by mystery plane hijacker doesn't have to be turned over by FBI, rules judge | The US Sun
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We all forget things sometimes. We leave the car keys in random places. We look all over the house for our sunglasses, only to find them already on our heads. And we’ve all experienced the angst of double booking, completely (or conveniently) forgetting about a dentist appointment booked for the time we were meant to meet up with friends at the pub.

 

Sometimes our brains just have enough stuff in there and there’s no room for anything new.

 

Kinda like how the world forgot about the time when millions of people died within a six month period from the Spanish Flu. Sure, we talk about it now but back then, when the pandemic was over, no one talked about it. 5 per cent of the population died, it sucked, let’s just forget about it…? 

 

But how could a catastrophic event of this magnitude be collectively forgotten? And perhaps it’s not the only tragedy we’ve tossed into the black memory hole of history…



CHAPTERS:


00:00 Exploring the concept of memory holes
00:44 The Spanish Flu: A case study of collective forgetting
02:31 Have we forgotten COVID-19?
03:36 Memory hole from George Orwell’s book, 1984
06:17 Beyond Pandemics: Forgetting wars and cockroaches
09:15 Collective forgetting of the Allied bombing of Germany
11:37 The science behind why we forget
13:16 Collective memory requires communication and narrative
16:00 Should we memorialise Covid-19?
19:48 What’s next on The Wholesome Show 



PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:


Wittenoom: Australia's Asbestos Chernobyl Wiped Town Off The Map

 

SOURCES:


Building a collective memory: the case for collective forgetting, by William Hirst and Alan  Coman in Current Opinion in Psychology 
Collective Memory and Forgetting: A Theoretical Discussion by Cindy Minarova-Banjac Page 4 of 5
The rising of collective forgetting and cultural selectivity in inventors and physicists communities by Cristian Candia and Brian Uzzi 
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What are the most common fears and phobias that people have today? Most of us can relate to having a healthy fear of sharks or getting sweaty palms at the idea of being stuck in a tiny space. It’s also pretty socially acceptable for someone to opt out of bungee jumping, or for a fellow aeroplane passenger to need a few deep breaths to calm themselves before takeoff. 

 

Then of course there’s the fear of public speaking - which we all fear more than death, right? Maybe not… This claim seems to link back to a publication from 1977 called The Book of Lists, which in turn cites the London Times… which in turn references the 1973 Burskin Report. This claims that 41 per cent of people feared speaking before a group, whereas only 19 per cent feared death. 

 

But is it really true? 



CHAPTERS:


00:00 The fear of public speaking
05:29 Defining fear and phobia
10:24 Research findings: 1977 Book of Lists 
13:04 The fear of heights and deep water
15:29 Top 10 Fears in America
16:31 White Supremacists and High Medical Bills
18:02 Fear of Ghosts and Zombies
20:49 Australia’s fears: Social Phobias and Agoraphobia
22:22 Fear of Swooping Magpies
26:26 The Boring Apocalypse
28:28 What’s next on the Wholesome Show

 

PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:


Mary Shelley, Taphophobia and Life-Preserving Coffins

 

SOURCES:


Solomon, Robert C., 'Self-Reproach in Guilt, Shame, and Pride', True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (2008; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011) 
The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?
https://www.speakschmeak.com/2008/04/public-speaking-vs-death.html
Top 10 Most Common Phobias List — Talkspace
Top 10 phobias and what they reveal about the strangeness of life | Mental health | The Guardian
America's Top Fears 2020/2021 | Chapman University
Phobias: The ten most common fears people hold - ABC News
Is Public Speaking Really More Feared Than Death?.
Full article: Is Public Speaking Really More Feared Than Death?
The Thing We Fear More Than Death | Psychology Today Australia
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