Mental Floss: List Show

Imagine if you were allergic to water. Or if eating bread could make you drunk. For some, this is part of their everyday life. Today, we're discussing some very rare medical conditions.

Tea bags, matches, kilts, and so much more. On this episode of The List Show, we're breaking down inventions, foods, and even words that are much more recent than you'd expect.

In this episode of The List Show, host and Editor-in-Chief of Mental Floss Erin McCarthy delves into colleges and universities that offer something other than your typical bachelor’s degree in engineering or boring medical degrees. From here on out it’s death, gelato, and a fair amount of nudity as we look at some of the quirkiest institutions of higher learning around. Rent your textbooks, grab a snack from the dining hall, and subscribe to Mental Floss on YouTube for new videos every week.

Ending sentences with a preposition? That's a big no-no. Or... is it? From splitting infinitives to the controversial use of the word "hopefully", we're covering all of the strict rules of grammar that you can actually break.

Old maps are littered with islands that have vanished. What happened to these strange and unexplainable lost lands? Did they ever exist in the first place? On today's episode of The List Show, host Erin McCarthy explores the history of these mysterious phantom islands.

Space is inaccessible to the vast majority of us, but it’s not as far away as you might think. In this episode of The List Show, host and Mental Floss Editor-In-Chief Erin McCarthy covers some facts about space that we’re covering today that are going to warp your perspective. Don your spacesuits, subscribe to Mental Floss on YouTube for new videos every week, and let’s lift off.

Lobsters, pigs, and severed ears... people have gone to war for pretty ridiculous reasons. On today's episode, we're covering six of the silliest wars ever fought.

From the Irish pirate queen to the angel of prisons, there are many important historical figures who don't pop up in history books. On today's episode of The List Show, we're covering a handful of our favorite people from history you might have missed.

There’s a word for the final remaining member of a species: endling. In this episode of The List Show, host and Mental Floss Editor-in-Chief Erin McCarthy talks about a few endlings. There are so many animals that have gone extinct through the ages that we’re choosing to focus just on creatures that went extinct relatively recently: from 1800 onward. So even though we’ll be talking about animals that went the way of the dodo, we won’t be talking about the dodo itself, which, incidentally, went extinct in the late 17th century. Let’s get started.

What is actually inside the Nickelodeon time capsule? Or the Star Wars time capsule? Cleopatra's Needle? Or the Future Library? We're exploring the contents of seventeen awesome and strange time capsules.

Peeling a banana? Cleaning your blender? Breathing?? Yeah, unfortunately, you're probably doing those wrong. On today's episode of The List Show, we're giving you 28 life hacks to improve your everyday life.

It's like a heist movie. Armed robbers break into a museum and steal one of the most famous paintings of all time, The Scream. And get this, it was stolen TWICE. On today's episode of The List Show, we're covering some of the most amazing stories of stolen art. Incredibly, all of them were recovered... eventually.

What exactly is a flop? To us, it’s something that arrived with great fanfare and big expectations, then ate pavement. Hard. On this episode of The List Show, host and Mental Floss editor in chief Erin McCarthy recalls several historical flops, failures, and misses with very little fondness.