When the doors of the Iroquois Theater opened in 1903, it was said to be the most beautiful in all of Chicago. A masterpiece adorned with mahogany and glass doors, marble and gold pillars, and a grand central staircase. Boasting a seating capacity of 1,600 people on three levels, the Iroquois promised a night of enchantment to all. Better still, it was declared in playbills and advertising to be “absolutely fireproof”.

Open plan workplaces. How do we feel about them? Now, we’re all up for modernism and advancement but when it comes to actually being able to get work done, open-plan workplaces SUCK. And there’s a lot of science to back that up. Basically, nobody gets shit done if they’re distracted all day long. The Isolator was designed to minimise visual reach, granting the wearer absolute concentration on whatever they were doing. Picture a helmet that looks like a cross between Darth Vader's headgear and a Victorian diving bell.

Imagine harnessing the power of the sun using nothing more than high school science lab equipment and household ingredients. Desktop cold fusion - it would be the biggest invention of the century! Well, that's exactly what Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann thought they’d discovered in 1989. After experimenting with a palladium cathode in a simple heavy water electrolysis cell, they observed an unexpected rise in temperature. Confusingly, they concluded the solution was nuclear fusion! (Try saying that 3 times fast)

If you think cinema is just audiovisual entertainment, hold onto your popcorn folks, because today we're diving into an aromatic abyss of olfactory oddity when Hollywood engaged in the battle of the smellies. This isn't just a whiff of the absurd, but an honest-to-goodness tale of when Hollywood tried to tickle our nostrils along with our imagination. So did cinematic innovation cut the mustard or was it all just passing wind?

Everyone loves a good hack these days. It’s all about efficiency and finding ways to be even more productive. Well, that’s great for things like finding a quicker way to fold your clothes but when it comes to the workplace, the quest for more productivity can be taken a little too far. And by a little, we mean a lot. Death by overwork is so common in Japan there’s an actual term for it: Karoshi.

The history of science is peppered with some pretty dubious research… grafting second heads onto dogs, growing bits of human brains inside mouse embryos, experiments with syphilis, and the list goes on. We have delivered many episodes on some pretty horrific things done in the name of science back in the day which is why we’re suitably discomforted by a study on orphan kids called “The Monster Study”.

By the beginning of the 19th century, it was believed that one of the causes of mania was ‘hot brain’, a violent heat that boiled the blood and dried out the brain. Cooling the brain seemed an obvious solution. And so throughout the 19th century, various apparatus that harnessed therapeutic forces of water emerged to aid in “curing” the insane. And here we find the less relaxing and more barbaric origins of the shower. As we’ve discovered in many cases from that period of history, some people took it way too far.

Imagine exactly what you were doing 20 years ago. This hypothesis formed the groundbreaking research of Harvard psychology Professor Ellen Langer: Could you reverse the age-related physical and mental decline by immersing yourself in the environment of your younger self? Can you shatter the societal expectation of aging and live a youthful life until expiry?

Imagine being serenaded with an accordion and indulging in a chocolate croissant overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Who wouldn’t want to lean into an old-fashioned smooch? But not all kissing is romantic in nature. Sometimes it’s necessary to save a life. In fact, one girl has inadvertently saved countless lives by being the world’s most kissed face. It’s our pleasure to introduce to you the beautiful Resusci-Anne.

Take us back to the good old days when the air was clean, the grass was green and the milk was pure and unadulterated. Straight from the cow, gallons of creamy goodness for all to drink. But while Granny’s farm may have been fine, milk wasn’t always some magical pure product. In fact, there was a time when milk was goddamn disgusting. Let’s go back to the 1800s when there were hundreds of whiskey distilleries in New York State. Some lunatic had the great idea to feed the leftover rank grain goop to the cows. Weirdly, they noticed that this increased their milk production. Thus began the distillery dairies.

Humans have always been fascinated by the unexplained. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and, one of the most intriguing unknowns that has captured our imagination for centuries, the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Washington lobbyists Steve Bassett and John Podesta are advocating for the disclosure of government information on unexplained phenomena that could prove the existence of intelligent life outside Earth. This raises the question, what the heck has the government been hiding? Usually, they’re so transparent!

In the early 20th century, lithium was seen as a bit of a "cure-all". It was even in the original 7-Up recipe! But when it comes to using lithium to treat bipolar, the credit must go to Dr John Cade. Born in country Victoria in 1912, as a young boy, Cade actually lived in a number of asylums. His father was a doctor working in the Mental Hygiene Department so the whole family lived on campus.

Administered by the seaman librarian every Sunday morning, the library (a red wooden crate filled with books) would be opened for the sailors to peruse and borrow. But could books really turn these rascally seamen into upright citizens?

Have you seen the anime short film, Stink Bomb? A flu-ridden lab technician’s body omits vapours that are lethal to everyone around him. Turns out that Stink Bomb was actually based on a true story. Say WHAT?

We all love a good race. The competition, the rivalry, the winner revelling in their victory at the finish line. But some races don’t have a clear winner. In fact, some destinations aren’t all that clear either.

Since 1923, if not earlier, scientists have excluded female animals in trials, even when studying effects on issues that only affect women. The argument was “fluctuating hormones would render the results uninterpretable”. But wait, what about the male mice who, when housed together, establish a dominance hierarchy boosting testosterone levels of the alphas to 5 times that of the betas? Clearly, science hasn’t removed itself from the patriarchy.

There are some things we know not to do. Crossing the road without looking, not wearing a seatbelt…and looking at the sun. But some people throughout history have rallied against this fundamental human law. One of them is an orange quack who ruled America for a brief, nightmarish period of time. Another is an eyeball guy (an actual ophthalmologist) William Horatio Bates, born in 1860. But did this guy start out as a rule-breaking, sun-staring charlatan?

Indiana Jones is a cool guy. An archaeologist, an adventurer who tore shit up, stumbled his way through tunnels and over invisible bridges to uncover priceless ancient artefacts. But that’s Hollywood. In real life, ancient discoveries happen in far less exciting ways…Or do they?

For centuries, religious relics have been the only means by which devout followers could interact with the divine. Let us journey into some of the gross holy relics. The bones of saints, the milk of the virgin Mary, perhaps a little finger of St Thomas. What about something even more precious? Like Jesus Christ’s foreskin.

Some of the best things in life were never meant to be. Just think of your favourite food, breed of dog or childhood toy - some of these were the result of accidents and batshit crazy experiments. The good old-fashioned slinky was accidental, superficially bland and, yes, a little bit dangerous.