Facts Machine

This is a podcast about Pythagoras and beans, Oklahoma and the truth, and Princess Alice and her pet Spinach. Everything you think is a vegetable is a fruit. Ben Franklin has a plan for your farts.

Don't you just hate it when people only want to talk about how you discovered universal gravitation, but not about your passion project, making proportionately-sized doors for cats? Or when the press loves how you revolutionized the automobile industry by mass producing affordable cars but not how you tried to make them out of soy beans? Or how no matter how many times you explain that you discovered what E equals, they don't want to use the special refrigerator you invented? Misery loves company, so listen along to our latest episode, all about the lesser known and lesser appreciated ideas of famous scientists and inventors!

Emily, Rob, and Noah went to Science Friday’s science trivia night, and they won! They also learned some interesting facts that they have brought back to share with you in this episode. Listen to find out why you shouldn’t cast your margaritas before swine, how to distinguish between a blue whale and a Soviet submarine, and whether the aurora borealis thinks you are worthy of applause.

When Facts Machine does an episode about sports, somehow you leave with more information about the mysteriously accurate predictions of 19th century authors, the ability to pinpoint the true origin of referred pain in the tip of your right shoulder blade, and possibly the first viral marketing campaign than you do about sports themselves. Play ball!

Live at Caveat in NYC, Noah, Emily, and Rob head back to class with their first ever guest host, chemistry teacher extraordinaire Rich Fisler! In this episode, the facts are elementary, the laughs are periodic, and discussion of fewer puns was tabled. 

In this episode, Facts Machine makes a PAWEDcast! Noah, Rob, and Emily learn all about dogs — the good boys and good girls who make life worth living. Listen to find out how good the first good boy was, how some good girls are helping reseed forests after fires, and how some good boys and good girls (and one especially good boy) braved wind and snow to save a bunch of kids from Diptheria!

Hail to the Chief! It's an episode of Facts Machine all about U.S. presidents. Listen to find out why it's not safe to run for president in 2020, how to win friends and influence people to crowdfund your mausoleum, and which president was arrested for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage.

“More intellectual than I expected.” Our listeners should expect nothing less from an episode of Facts Machine all about poop! Would you believe that in this episode we discuss the natural philosophy of Aristotle, the finer points of long-term space exploration, AND cutting-edge (or should we say, “surface-level”) biomimicry in engineering? Just to be clear, though, this is definitely an episode about poop. There will be jokes.

Top of the morning to ya! In honor of St. Paddy’s day, we’re Dublin down on this week’s theme: Guinness! Listen to find out why nitrogen is “an obvious gas”, how the t-test was invented by a Guinness employee, and how “factual fisticuffs” inspired the Guinness Book of World Records!

This week, Facts Machine becomes FaXXX Machine as Emily, Rob, and Noah discuss facts of a more...intimate...nature. Get your mind in the gutter with our titillating (hehehe) tales about the Urban Dictionary of the Victorian era, that time when Hemingway and Fitzgerald compared their penises at the Louvre, and a divine foreskin of purportedly cosmic proportions.

Have your lassos, pistols, and...sarsaparilla (?) at the ready, because this week Facts Machine is comin' atcha with some Wild West facts! Tune in to learn about real life re-enactments of your favorite dysentry-ridden computer game, the dromedaries that were once at home on the range, and the most infamous stagecoach robber in frontier herstory. Yee-haw!

You can learn a lot in a New York minute, but you can learn even more in sixty! Facts Machine is back with an episode all about our hometown, the Big Apple. Listen to learn why The Strand bookstore is the last shop standing from New York's legendary Book Row, why electric cars caught on in the 19th century only to be undermined by fragile masculinity, and why a New York sculptor has been creating monuments to fictional disasters all over the city.

It would be criminal to miss this episode of Facts Machine! Let us steal your attention with gritty tales of (surprisingly) true crime, featuring Ohio bank robberies, anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theories, and mysteriously damp socks. Do your ears some justice and tune in!

Noah, Emily and Rob are back with a BAN-tastic episode all about bans, censorship, and prohibitions! Listen to find out why Ray Bradbury should have gone with Fahrenheit 2577, why you should watch your back if you’re the king who banned coffee, and which beloved children’s book character is not allowed in a Polish playground because he doesn’t wear pants. But be quick, before you know it, we could be banned too!

Podcast ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! For Noah, Emily, and Rob have come to you to say: Remember facts like Ol’ Saint Nick was skinny in his day! Oh tidings of Facts Machine pod! Give us five stars! Ohhhh tidings of Facts Machine pod! It’s a holiday episode of Facts Machine! Come learn about how Martin Luther wanted to split from the Catholic Church but didn’t want to split from getting presents, why 17th century Christians banned people from saying Merry Christmas, and how mistletoe and vampires have a lot in common!

Bottoms up! It's an episode of Facts Machine all about booze. Tune in to learn how John Chapman planted cider apple trees until he became known as Johnny Appleseed, how a ban on eggnog incited a violent riot among cadets at West Point, and how drunk birds are wreaking havoc in a small Minnesota town.

Grab some peanuts and Cracker Jacks and get your glove out from under your mattress. The baseball season might be over, but it's opening day for America's *real* pastime: trivia! There will be more twists than one of those curvy, slidy pitches...what are they called again? Settle in for a long, boring episode about the long, boring game that we can't help but love. We'll discuss the story behind the song "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", possibly make a mortal enemy of the National Peanut Board, debate the beneficial effects of lightning strikes on ERA, learn all about "outlaw" baseball leagues, and, of course, touch on Merkel's Boner, probably the worst play in baseball history! Wait, why are you snickering?

Boo! Did we scare you? No? Well maybe our most recent episode will do the trick (or treat)! This week, Rob, Noah, and Emily explore the overuse of Franken as a prefix, the spooky physics (or lack thereof) of ghosts, and the sex politics of ancient Egyptian mummies.

"I was laughing for half of the episode, and thinking for the other half!", "As funny as 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!'", "I love Facts Machine, but please don't open any more cellophane packages on-air." The above are all real reviews that our podcast has received! In this episode, Emily, Rob, and Noah review the reviewers--the professional and amateur opinion-havers whose input we've learned is apparently essential (please give us five stars!!!). Listen to find out how a little premature slander resulted in the Nobel Prizes, how a stay-at-home dad inspired the world to throw rotten comedy tomatoes at classic films in 140 characters or fewer, and why Parisians initially gave the Eiffel Tower two thumbs down.

Food fight!!! Grab a gluten-free communion wafer, a rotten tomato, or a cookie that thinks it's a cake, and get ready to throw them at Noah, Emily and Rob as they set the table and dig in to find out the precise gluten content of Jesus of Nazareth, the best uses for tomatoes, and the legal definition of a cookie.