The brain freeze or “ice cream headache” you get when you consume too many frozen treats is the ultimate representation of the wheel of karma that grinds us all under its merciless crushing weight of consequence. Shove too many ice cream sandwiches down your gullet? BAM! Instant, horrible pain. It’s a simple cause-and-effect relationship that’s vital in teaching children that everything they do will eventually bring them misery.
But now, YouTube baron Hank Green and his SciShow program have threatened to destroy this valuable teaching tool by not only explaining what causes brain freeze (or “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia,” as the shamans call it), but also quick ways to get rid of it. (It turns out you just drink some warm water, or put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. IF YOU DARE.) Bask, then, heretics, in the warm, headache-eroding glow of science, knowing that, uncoupled from the consequences of your Icee-gorging actions, you will soon be as akin to the gods. Not even the ”hedonistic nectar of greed and power” known as the Orange Lazarus will be able to bring you down.