The Wholesome Show

The teen years can be tough. Let’s be real, it was an awkward time for the best of us. During those tender years, we all did our best to navigate the tumultuous world between childhood and adulthood amidst raging hormones, love triangles and knife fights... the usual teenage stuff.

Ok, perhaps not every teenager gets in a knife fight, but this particular case has all the drama you would expect to find in a daytime soap opera.

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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 f...

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 gon...

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 chem...

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...

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 an...

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...

It’s the end of the science as we know it! And I feel fine! But seriously though, is it? As a global community, we are investing 10 times more money and resources into scientific research than we did in the 1950s, yet the number of groundbreaking discoveries is dwindling. 

We’ve gone to the moon. We’ve discovered massive black holes. We’ve split the atom and peered through high-resolution microscopes to observe those tiny littl...

Everyone loves a good loophole. From a clever workaround that outsmarts the tax man to exploiting a glitch in a video game (Sega Mega Drive all the way), there's something undeniably thrilling about circumventing the system. It taps into our innate desire for freedom, creativity, and that little touch of rebellion. While avoiding tax bills and gaining high scores on Sonic the Hedgehog can certainly get us going, some people have di...

Remember as a kid, having to wear that uncomfortable school uniform every single day? We were told when to sit, when to stand, when to eat, when to play, even when we were allowed to go to the toilet. Myriad rules to crush us into oppressive obedience! 

Now imagine a similar scenario in your workplace. Employees are given insultingly basic commands and training that even the most sheltered individual would have learned simply i...

Mother Nature, in all her brilliance, has birthed some fascinating phenomena. Take the magical skies of the Aurora Borealis in Iceland for example, or the bioluminescent Maldives shores where the ocean lights up like neon blue fairy lights. 

Here in Australia, we have Lake Hillier, where the water is the colour of a strawberry milkshake. In England of course, they have the synchronised sheep panic at 8pm. Wait… what? 

Altho...

Back in the day, before robots and the internet, guys and gals who longed for the company of a significant other had one move up their sleeve: pluck up the courage to leave the house and talk to another human. Nowadays-ish, people search for love from home aided by computers and a social media background check (thanks Wayback Machine). Nowadays proper, the pool from which to select a lover has expanded to include artificial intelli...

After the horrors of World War I, the Australian Federal Government gave thousands of discharged veterans money, land and the promise of a bright and happy agricultural life in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. Life as a farmer wasn’t easy, but at least these veterans had seen the last of the battlefield. Or so they thought. 

The war was over but followed soon after by the great depression in 1929. Hoping to ease the p...

In our modern society, most people live their lives lurching from fix to fix from the digital syringe; relying on social media and telecommunication advances to feel connected to the world around them. Facetime, Instagram, LinkedIn, we froth it. Well, most people do. Some people want absolutely nothing to do with not only modern technology but with the rest of the world in general. 

Around the globe, there are 100 or more "unco...

We’re all afraid of something. Many people live with significant anxiety due to their fear of things such as heights, flying, public speaking, the number 8 for example (Octophobia - it’s a real thing). But one fear puts disproportionately more heebies in our jeebies: taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. To a mad few, it may seem a genuine irrational fear (like omphalophobi...

The 20th century was a golden era for ethically dubious brain studies. In 1950, Dr Jose Delgado had a vision to control aggressive behaviour using a device surgically implanted in the brain known as the Stimoceiver. How science fictiony is that?!

Delgado's journey toward creating a peaceful human race started with a bully macaque monkey who had been terrorising his cage mates. After successfully pacifying the angry monkey with ...

There are a lot of patron saints out there in the Catholic multiverse. They have saints for every day of the year and then some. We’ve all heard of the more famous saints like St. Paul, St. Peter and St. Patrick. What, no Saint Gary? Pfft. But then there are some lesser-known saints, but by no means less holy. 

Take St. Bernardino for an example. He travelled all over Italy and preached to the public instead of reading boring s...

When we think of champions in the battle against climate change, names like Greta Thunberg, David Suzuki, and David Attenborough come to mind. But would you ever associate former US President Donald Trump with climate action? Probably not. But, his 2016 presidential campaign manager, Steve Bannon - you know the former investment banker, Hollywood executive, the guy who’s continuously being charged and convicted of crimes - well, he...

Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year. Festive feasting on sweet delicacies, children filled with wonder, awaiting Santa’s visit on Christmas Eve. Unless of course, you subscribe to some of the lesser-known Northern European traditions. Then Christmas is downright horrifying. 

Hans Trapp for example. After being excommunicated from his local catholic church, Hans Trapp roamed the countryside disguised as a scarecrow, o...