A lesson every kid needs to learn is how to share. Little ones usually want everything for themselves, but as we grow and mature, we learn that sharing is caring. But there are some who have perhaps taken sharing too far.

Sperm donation. It’s a massive industry, helping hundreds of thousands of families enter into the joy of parenthood. Whether it's for altruistic reasons, the inherent desire to spread their wild oats, or just to earn some quick cash (2 minutes is all it takes), many men choose to donate.

But for whatever reason, some men seem to like living that donor lifestyle a little too much, popping off as much as they can to germinate their genes far and wide.

By the second half of the 20th century, humans were captivated by the idea of taming nature, making their mark on the world with colossal concrete structures. They’d gone absolutely - sorry about this - dam mad.

From democrats to dictators, the latest craze for politicians around the globe was to build dams. And for good reason! Dams are used to produce hydroelectricity, provide irrigation, protect against floods and give more work for more citizens. What could be bad about a dam? Well, many many things.

Every once in a while, somebody does something in the name of science that turns out to be really useful. Their research changes the world, a eureka moment catapults them onto the world stage for making scientific history. They might even be awarded a Nobel prize.

But what about the science we don’t hear about?

We don’t often witness the shock, the surprise, and, most importantly, the humour behind the scenes in moments of discovery. The things people set out to do that really matter to them and turn out to be hilarious. Enter the Ig Nobel Prizes.

Cereal, the food of the gods. Who can resist the crunchy, sugary deliciousness in a box? Kids (admit it - adults too) would eat it for every meal if they had the chance.

But have you ever wondered why you choose the cereal that you do? Did one in particular catch your eye?

There’s a heck of a lot of money that goes into marketing, especially products made for kids, and especially cereal. Fruit Loops, Coco Pops, Frosties - what do they all have in common? Those happy spokes characters on the box suggest to us how delicious the cereal is with their inviting facial expressions! It’s almost like they’re gazing right into your eyes telling you to pick them up and put them in your trolley.

While some people shuffle off this mortal coil in rather ordinary ways, there are those adventurous souls who seem hell-bent on making the grim reaper scratch his head in confusion. Like drowning in a pool of beer, throwing dynamite out the window of a moving vehicle (but forgetting to roll the window down), tripping on your world record breaking beard, and death during sex. Yes, that’s right. As much as we all like getting it on, there are some people throughout history who literally went out with a bang.

One question that pervaded the minds of early European physicians was not whether we should eat human flesh, but rather which part and how much. While cannibalism might conjure up images of wild savages, it turns out medical cannibalism was all the rage back in the day... and continues to be (say what?!).

Ahhh 1920s psychology… back when you could do anything in the name of science. Like traumatising a baby or making people believe they'd killed someone. The good old days. Picture this: It's 1924, and Carney Landis, a psych graduate student at Minnesota University, has an ambitious idea. He wanted to determine if humans had universal facial expressions for various emotions.

So did Landis reveal any universal facial expressions in response to his ever-escalating stimuli? Or did the aftermath of this classic 1920s psych experiment leave only electrocuted frogs, blown eardrums, and traumatised children?

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?