No Such Thing As Musical Toads

Live from the Lund Comedy Festival in Sweden, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss toads, turf and Toxic Waste. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish http://apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon http://nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon Edited by James Harkin Produced by Leying Lee Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia Get NordVPN two-year plan + four months extra ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fish It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee. Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Dan Schreiber?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Lund Comedy Festival in Sweden.

• 0:23Dan Schreiber?

  My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin, and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that, in many Indian languages, Lund University means Penis University.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Does that make it popular?

• 0:53Dan Schreiber?

  Uh, well, yes and no.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 0:56Dan Schreiber?

  Well, okay, so, we are in London, Sweden, and we're a five-minute walk from the university, and it's an extraordinary university, it was established in 1666, often ranked as one of the top 100 universities globally.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  In Sweden.

• 1:09Dan Schreiber?

  In Sweden.

• 1:13Dan Schreiber?

  And there was a moment where it sort of became a meme, because the Facebook page, that was the official Lund University Facebook page, put out a statement saying, "Could everyone stop tagging their friends who had nothing to do with this university?", because everyone was just doing it, so they could go, "Look, it's Penis University", because in Hindi and a few other languages in India, that is the translation in the written word of it.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  So, I suppose actually the Lund Comedy Festival that we're here at right now is the Penis Comedy Festival.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  That's why I thought we'd signed up to it.

• 1:49Dan Schreiber?

  Hugely disappointing to find out the reality. So this, as Andy was asking, was this a problem at all? It was actually for students who were applying from India, because they did feel a bit embarrassed that they would be going to somewhere called Penis University. And there was a person who had to deal with this a lot, and they were interviewing her about it, and they said, "How do you deal with it, trying to get these students from overseas?", and she said, "We like to do it by word of mouth",

• 2:16Dan Schreiber?

  and she says that because the pronunciation is different, the word is the same written, but it's more like "land" when you pronounce it in, say, Hindi.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:24Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, so word of mouth is the way to do it. And then if you are a student from India, you might just say, "I go to a university in Sweden", and not specify the details of where you are.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  It is a great city, about which I knew nothing before coming here and researching for this fact. I like the fact that you can do a walk of Lund's most amusing attractions.

• 2:47Dan Schreiber?

  What's on the walk?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Oh, all sorts. There's a monument to Nothing, which is a monument to administrative inability to decide what statue should go in the spot for the statue. They had a really long debate, and eventually they just put up a plaque saying, "This is to Nothingness". I believe the plaque was then stolen, is that correct?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  So then it was missing, a missing monument to Nothingness, which they had to replace.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  You lost me quite a long time ago.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  But that is amusing, there's no question about it.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  The university, I think, is pretty cool. Like you say, it's very old, Dan. Founded in 16...

• 3:25Dan Schreiber?

  66.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  1666. And I believe it was, and people here will know this, but I believe it was founded to sort of Swedify the area, because there was a lot of those dastardly Danes.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Any dastardly Danes in the audience? I just want to restart the war.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this area was kind of owned by Denmark, and then Sweden took it over, and they thought, "Well, one way to make sure it's definitely Swedish is to start a university here". And it was someone called Hedvig Elinorah, who was the Queen dowager, I think, at the time, who signed the founding documents. And she's famous. You guys here, do you guys know about the Gotorp Fury? No, maybe not, okay. So, Charles XII of Sweden, he became king when he was 16 years old, and like anyone who becomes king when they're 16 years old, probably, just went on a massive drunken rampage, ran the whole country, and especially in Stockholm.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  He did loads of crazy stuff. I think some of the stories, maybe not true, like they were exaggerated later, but one of the stories is that somehow he got really, really drunk, and a bear fell out of a window. And we're not sure how the bear got up there in the first place, or exactly what happened that the bear fell out of the window, but everyone was so astonished that he'd done this and got really drunk, that his mother, who was Hedvig, kind of went over to him, and she just looked at him, just looked at him in the eye, and he felt so ashamed that he'd never drank again for the rest of his life.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  I actually didn't know, but didn't want to interrupt and ask, during that story, whether it was the bear that was so drunk, or him that was so drunk, because you said that, but why is it his fault a bear's fallen out of a window? That's like, that's on the bear, surely.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Did he push the bear out of the window?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  We don't know, Andy. We don't know what happened.

• 5:21Dan Schreiber?

  Sorry.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  All we know is that everyone was getting pissed, and then the next thing you know, a bear's fallen out the window. But it wasn't the bear who swore off the booze. We don't know, Anna.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Charles XII, isn't he the absolutely crazy king? He sort of went to war with Russia and Prussia and France? Everyone, someone in the front row has just said, "Yeah, at the same time".

• 5:41Speaker 02

  He was mad, but then he was... I read, I read him saying, this article that said he never drank again, but then I read another article that he said, "He never drank very strong alcohol again",

• 5:54Speaker 02

  so he might have had a few beers, maybe.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Anything under 40%. It doesn't really count, does it? I don't think.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Can I tell you my favourite thing that's at Lund University?

• 6:02Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  About which I'm so excited?

• 6:04Dan Schreiber?

  Please.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It's the European Spalation Source.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Okay, it has some fans in the room. This is so exciting. It's the biggest microscope in the world!

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Are you sure it's not the smallest telescope in the world?

• 6:23Speaker 03

  I've never known the difference. Is it just a telescope as soon as you point it upwards? Yeah, okay.

• 6:29Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, of course, of course. You just look through the other end.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They should be multifunctional, yeah. This is such a cool thing. It's a microscope which uses a particle accelerator. It's amazing, it's between 13 different nations, billions of pounds has gone into it, and you basically, you have to fire protons at a target atom and knock chunks off it. It's going to be unbelievably useful for things like testing materials to see how they react under extreme conditions, so you know, the world of tomorrow will be built of things that have been tested in this lab. And the heat that it generates, because it's this huge, great science project, is heating the homes of 20,000 people in Lund.

• 7:06Dan Schreiber?

  Really?

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Wow!

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Isn't that good?

• 7:08Dan Schreiber?

  Anyone here being heated by...

• 7:12Dan Schreiber?

  Well, Lund, the university, is an amazing university for the innovations that have come out of it. It has produced, well, in 2023, it got its first proper in-house Nobel laureate in physics.

• 7:24Dan Schreiber?

  And Luiet, is that her name?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Luiet, yeah.

• 7:27Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, she won it in physics, but there's been four other scientists who had started their work here but then moved on to other universities, so it doesn't quite get the credit. But not only have they technically produced five Nobel Prizes in physics, they've also got at least five Ig Nobel Prizes.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  They're the main ones.

• 7:45Dan Schreiber?

  If you know the Ig Nobel Prizes, it's the science that makes you laugh, that makes you think, and it was at this university, Lund University, that scientists worked out that chimpanzees and humans in zoos imitate each other to an equal extent.

• 8:02Dan Schreiber?

  That horseflies prefer horses with dark coats, and so if you've got a white horse, they don't really get those flies. That dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way. They've done studies of how cats talk to people. And then finally, they got one for working out that a Chinese alligator sounds different after inhaling helium-enriched air.

• 8:26Dan Schreiber?

  So, amazing stuff going on here at Lund.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  And what's that going to be useful for, do we know?

• 8:33Dan Schreiber?

  I'm not sure, they're working on big things still.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  I think that one is that, if we have helium, our voices go higher, but I think with crocodiles, their voices go lower. And that's all I remember about it, I don't remember why. Any fans of Uppsala University? Oh, really? Oh, yes, that's what I was expecting. I was expecting some booze.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Is there a rivalry?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  So, you know we have Oxford and Cambridge in England? Well, here we have Uppsala and Lund, and the phrase I kept seeing in my research was, "Plugga i Uppsala, liga i Lund".

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And you know what? I was going to explain it, but the luck on these three spaces.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  We get it, it means we both equally respect and like each other at all times.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  So I think "plugga i Uppsala" means "study in Uppsala", right? Because they're all kind of, they're all wetsuits and they're very important, and they do their important research and stuff. But "liga", it seems to mean "live", or "be in bed", or Google Translate says it means "sleep around".

• 9:38Speaker 01

  You've got to use that "lund" for something, haven't you?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  So it means studying up to LA and sleep around in London. And the idea is that the students in London are having much more fun. I think that's, is that the idea?

• 9:59Speaker 03

  That's a big cheer for everyone saying, yeah, we're sleeping around all the time. So good on you, guys. I only realised, reading up on this fact, that the academic quarter was a thing, which seems to be universally known in Europe, in mainland Europe, but we don't have it.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  The academic quarter.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  The academic quarter is if your lecture is scheduled to start at 10am, guys in the audience, what time does it start?

• 10:23Dan Schreiber?

  10:15.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  10:15.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  10:15.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  What the hell?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Well, I can tell you in the UK, if the teacher doesn't turn up for five minutes, we all fuck up.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  The lecturer would turn up every day, go, still no one coming, hey, weird. Yes, this is so mad. And it seems to be like, it's at London University, which has a plaque that claims to mark the meridian of the academic quarter. So it says, you know, we took this meridian from Greenwich and it's an hour and a quarter after GMT. And it's because back in the olden days, if a lecture started at 10 or at 2, then you heard the bells ring, the cathedral bell ring. But then you needed 15 minutes, once you've heard the bells, to get there, you know, pre-watches. And so I guess that that habit has hung over. And it is the case. And then you observe the double quarter, I believe, after 6pm. So if you're going to a banquet after 6 and it's scheduled at 7, you actually turn up at 7.30.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So are you saying that's a thing in other countries?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  It's in many European universities, yes.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  I know that German has a word, academicische Viertel.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  The academic quarter of an hour. What, I mean, what?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Right. I think that's, I bet that's related, you know?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Well, I thought it was that if you were an intellectual, you were allowed to be 15 minutes late for something. But that might just be a joke that someone told me once.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  No, everyone, everyone officially does. Unless, and I believe this is correct, you have to write the word dot. If you really want people to turn up at 10 o'clock, you have to write 10 o'clock and then the word dot or prick, I think it is, in Swedish.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  You guys, you cannot stop, can you?

• 11:55Speaker 03

  You've got to calm down.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  If I had a pound for every time I've seen the word slut today.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  I have literally no idea what it means in Swedish, but it is everywhere.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  We've seen it everywhere, we have no idea.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Can I give you a couple more unfortunately named universities?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  So Kinky University in Japan had to change its name to Kindai University because so many English-speaking people were making jokes about it. Beaver College in America changed its name to Arcadia University in 2001 for the same reason. And I found two schools here, unfortunately named, and I wanted you to see if you can think of the link between them.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  They are Sexy School in Bruton and Porny School in Eton.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  And what's the link?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Aside from the fact that they both have rude names?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, one more link.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Is it that they're both named?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  They both sound like they should be named after one thing.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  But Sexy School was named after Hugh Sexy, who lived there in the 16th century. And Porny School is named after a Frenchman called Marc Anthony Porny.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Really? Oh my goodness. Fantastic.

• 13:20Dan Schreiber?

  That's brilliant.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Stop the podcast.

• 13:28Dan Schreiber?

  Stop the podcast.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. We'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by NordVPN. Dan, what is NordVPN?

• 13:34Dan Schreiber?

  NordVPN is the finest VPN out there. It is the fastest VPN out there. It allows scams to be blocked before it gets to your computer. It also allows you to make it look as if you are sitting in a different country. So you can get access to lots of different countries' materials that you might not get in your own country.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I very recently was sat in the country of Sweden when we went on tour there to play the Lund Comedy Festival. But my computer and my phone thought I was in the UK and so I tricked them into showing me the snooker. Can you believe it? But yeah, it's not just that kind of thing. I would call it the all-in-one digital security app. Because like Dan says, it stops you from getting viruses. It offers protection against malware, dangerous websites, ads, all that kind of stuff. They're very privacy first and they're very good against the horrors of the internet.

• 14:26Dan Schreiber?

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• 14:40Speaker 02

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• 15:01Dan Schreiber?

  On with the show.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  My fact this week is that one of the biggest fashion designers of the 90s now works as a toad facilitator.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Oh, Nigel Farage's tailor, is that?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Lovely, lovely. A toad facilitator.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Yes, you look like you're going to try and guess what it is, but...

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Well, I know what a toad is.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  But a facilitator, someone who makes toads possible? Someone who...

• 15:37Speaker 03

  He makes it possible to smoke them. So this is a guy called Patrick. It actually doesn't harm the toads, even though I know it sounds like it does. But this is a guy called Patrick Cox, who was a huge shoe designer mostly and sort of bags and accessories in the early 90s. He made a shoe called the wannabe, wannabe loafer, which you probably recognise.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  If you wanna be my loafer.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  That's what the lyrics actually were, yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So, sorry, sorry, Patrick Cox.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Yep, pre-spice girls. He was like a mad party animal, took all the drugs, mates with Elton John and Liz Hurley and people. But now he's changed his ways. He lives in Ibiza and he doesn't drink any alcohol. His only vice is taking drugs smoked from a toad. And not only does he do this, smoking toad poison, but he is like a doula for other people who want to smoke toad poison. And it is in the whole world of toad smoking. A toad facilitator is an accepted job. It's a thing that's referred to and you have your toad facilitator. And the lingo is they hold the space so that you can smoke it while feeling okay.

• 16:45Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, but sitting by people, walking them through the situation.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I just don't think this guy's had a massive change in his life. If you say, oh, wow, it's incredible, he doesn't drink anymore, apart from all the hallucinogenic toads that he helps other people smoke.

• 16:57Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, that's the thing, because he did go to rehab and Elton John paid for his whole rehab. And then he went and visited him and he said, I'm totally cured. I'm now just licking toads every day. And...

• 17:07Speaker 03

  When you say licking toads, so people don't write in, in the toad facilitating world, you can't lick the toads and get the right effects. It's very dangerous, it causes lots of terrible health outcomes.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  I think it's not good for you in any way, I'm going to say. And it's definitely no good for the toads.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  You can have an effect from licking the toad. We're just saying you shouldn't.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  You shouldn't. And so what people do is they dry the toxins that it excretes.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Well, you have to, sorry, you have to milk, milk the toad first.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Yes, tickle the toad. Well, obviously, Andy, milk the toad.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  And then the venom comes out and then that's what you dry, isn't it?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  I read that it's like the venom comes out like squeezing a pimple. You kind of tickle it and squeeze it and it goes, pff, oh.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  So satisfying.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Not for me.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  I'll take that job. Toad milker.

• 17:54Dan Schreiber?

  And you can... But what, what you end up smoking is, it's a type of, it's DMT, right?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's not exactly DMT. It's sort of related, but it's eight times, six to eight times stronger.

• 18:08Dan Schreiber?

  And you can synthesise what that produced to make DMT. That's been a thing, that's been a by-product of it.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Sorry, next question, was DMT ads?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  DMT is the thing in ayahuasca. But this gets you way more high. This is actually the most...

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Dimethyltryptamine, just to say.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Dimethyltryptamine.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  That's how the police test if you've had any.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  But I think it's interesting about the fact you can synthesise it, but people still want to lick the toads and they still want to squeeze the pimples from the toads and all that, when you can get just as good stuff from the lab. And that's a real problem because when you start messing around with toads, they get really sick. And there's a whole big problem with funguses going through the amphibian world at the moment. And a lot of it is due to people doing this. And the reason that people try and use the actual toads instead of using the stuff off the shelf is because they think that this is like an amazing indigenous sacrament that people have been doing in Native America for, you know, thousands and thousands of years. But the truth is, it probably really isn't. And it was probably just one guy who kind of went to this group in North America and said,

• 19:13Speaker 02

  oh, you guys should do this. And then he said, oh, look, they've been doing it for ages. And then suddenly everyone now thinks that that's like some ancient thing, but it's really not. And so if you do want to do this, and I don't think you should, but if you do want to do it, do the fake stuff.

• 19:26Dan Schreiber?

  Do the fake stuff. And the fake stuff doesn't have, when you do ayahuasca, there's the whole thing of purging, where you have, you vomit, you, when you're doing synthesised DMT, it's basically a 15-minute visit to this fractal illusionary world inside your brain. And you don't vomit. It's, they call it the death of the ego at certain points of it. And if you put in the offer codes, toad.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It has a lot of famous users. Mike Tyson has said that this stuff changed his entire life.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  His entire life, although he has been punched in the head repeatedly for a long time. But we know, I think, the first person to be arrested for possession of toads. So, as you were saying, James, this is a more recent thing. A Californian teacher called Bob Shepherd was arrested in 1994, and his four toads, Hans, Franz, Peter and Brian, were seized as evidence. But Shepherd was such an enthusiast about his way of life, much like Dan is today, apparently, that Shepherd made an informational videotape for the people who were prosecuting him, saying, "Look, this is how you do it, and this is how great it is."

• 20:36Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, right.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, people are obsessed. One of the mad things about it is that the person who actually discovered it was this guy, a Texan called Ken Nelson. And he's kind of cool. He was a total recluse. His identity was only revealed, really publicly, after he died in about 2020. But he had read about these thousands of toad bones being dug up in North Carolina on an archaeological dig. And he just thought, "Well, I bet that's a weird historic ceremonial thing, like Native American spiritual ceremony, and I bet those toads were hallucinogenic." And then he got into his research, and he found the toad most likely to be hallucinogenic. He went with his girlfriend and her dog into Arizona, turned up a bunch of toads. Eventually, the dog actually found the toad, which turned out to be the right one.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  And, you know, he sort of tickled it under the chin and let it secrete its milk onto his windscreen. The milk dried. He smoked it. He discovered the most powerful hallucinogenic known to man. The thing is, the ones that had been dug up that he'd read about were probably just ones that had all fallen into a pit thousands of years ago. It's complete coincidence that he went looking for a hallucinogenic toad and found one.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Maybe they were all licking each other, these toads. There's been a lot of evidence about psychedelics like this are good for treating depression. And it does seem that they work in some way. But the truth is, a lot of the headlines say that they're way better than actual antidepressants, as in the ones you get over the counter. But in truth, they're probably about the same. And the reason is, the studies that have shown that the psychedelics are better, it's really hard to come up with a placebo in that effect. Because if you've had the sugar pill and, you know, a big toe isn't sort of kicking you in the head, then you know that you haven't had the real thing. And so when they test for that, they found that actually they're about the same

• 22:26Speaker 02

  as modern synthesized antidepressants.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which is still pretty good, to be fair.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  But it's really hard to get this stuff, right? Like, as in, I'm not saying I've tried. I just mean...

• 22:38Dan Schreiber?

  I think it's pretty clear which of the four of us has tried.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I think it's illegal at a lot of places to do it. But a lot of these toad parties happen.

• 22:49Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, do they?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  At mine. But I'm not doing it, Andy.

• 22:54Dan Schreiber?

  No.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I'm just facilitating. Okay? Can I tell you about my favorite toad?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Okay. My fave toad is the Santa Mata Harlequin. And this is an amazing toad. So with a lot of species, the mating happens via a thing called amplexus, which you may have heard of, which is where the male clings onto the female's back. It's basically a piggyback thing.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Doggy style, I think we called it, before this "amplexus" word came into use.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Let's keep it PG and say "piggyback."

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  The thing is, I think the amplexus is before the mating, right? And the thing is, for these toads, the Santa Mata Harlequins, it's sometimes very hard for them to find each other, for a male to find a female at all. So if you find a lady toad, you cling on. And basically, it's a bit like musical chairs. If you get on the back of a female toad, that's your girlfriend, and you know you'll mate with her eventually, and you can powerfully kick away at the males.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  That's not what, like, in musical chairs, you then start the music again, and everyone runs around to jump on another toad.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That's one difference, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  I've been letting Dan organise my children's parties. This is going to be an absolute disaster. But basically, the male will get on, get a piggyback. And if the female says she's not ready to mate, the male is simply patient and says, "Don't worry, I'm fine here, just on your back." Males have been found waiting for up to five months

• 24:24Dan Schreiber?

  Wow.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  before the female is ready to mate. And they will lose 30% of their body weight because they can't get off to get food. So they're just staying there, starving to death, losing all their weight. How desperate.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Does she not pass some food over while she's eating?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I don't think she does.

• 24:38Dan Schreiber?

  How often do they check in with... Are they like, the headache's still happening? What's the...

• 24:46Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah? Okay, I'm just back here, I'm just back here.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Some of them will starve to death, I'm afraid, clinging on, waiting, waiting for her to be in the frame of mind. Yeah? And that's my favorite toad.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Let's not read too much into what that tragically reflects about Andy's life. Cane toads, they're probably the most famous toxic toads, aren't they? Super-toxic cane toads. There were always lots of rumours that people licked cane toads and got poisoned by them. But they are a massive problem in places where they're invasive. They're invasive in the Caribbean, they're invasive in Australia. Called cane toads because they were introduced to get rid of the cane beetle that was eating all the sugar cane. So another classic example of when we try to solve a problem and make it a million times worse. And anyway, they're killing lots of crocodiles in Australia, which a lot of people would think, "Fine by me." But conservationists don't. And so they've done this amazing thing. Scientists in some parts of Australia

• 25:49Speaker 03

  have started collecting cane toads. And they euthanase them, they remove all the poison from them. And then they inject their corpses with drugs that just make you really, really sick and feel really, really crap. And then they hang them from sticks over rivers. And so crocodiles see them, jump up and snap them. So you've got all these dead cane toads. If you go to certain parts of Australia, like the Kimberley region, you've got dead cane toads, like a weird baby's mobile, hanging above the crocodiles. And then they eat them, they throw up a lot. And then after a few days, the crocs go, "Okay, I'm not going to eat them anymore." And it saved their lives. I mean, in places where they've done this, it's completely eradicated crocodile deaths from cane toad.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Those cane toads, as you said, they were released with zero thought. It was the 1930s, and Australia had just had a big success with another kind of introduction to solve a pest problem. So they thought, "Let's just release..." How much was it, I think? 64,000 toadlets in one place. And now it's something like, it's thousands of miles of Australia has fallen to them. One of the only people at the time who was warning against the release was a man named Walter Froggett.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  The toad that gets used, that we were talking about, that is squeezed for its toxins, that's the Bufo alvarius.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  This is a hallucinogenic one?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  It's a hallucinogenic one. It's been changed, its name's been changed, but that was the original name that it had. And that frog used to be the constellation in the night sky.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  No way.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  This was back in the 1700s, and it was named by a man called Sir John Hill. And he was a composer, he was an actor, he was an author, he was a botanist. He wrote a quite seminal botanical compendium called The Vegetable System. And he used Carl Linnaeus, who was, I believe, connected to Lund. He used the system for the first time.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  More upsala, I think, wasn't he? Was Linnaeus not more upsala?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Upsala, yeah. And you see what? You know, he worked hard, and he made something of himself.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  I think he just came down here for a good time every now and then.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, we've got to move on very shortly. Anyone got anything for you?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  I just thought, seeing as these toads and stuff is illegal, Dan, maybe I've got some other ways to get high for you? See if any of these...

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  The Mayans would take alcohol and infuse it with seeds from the morning glory plant, so they'd get high and drunk at the same time. And they would use those as enemas, so they would go right up the bum.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I'm still in.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. In Antarctica, a lot of scientists have said that when they're working with penguins, especially when they're pooing a lot, the guano sort of gets in their nose and they start to get a little bit high from that. So maybe some penguin poo?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  I won't do both things at the same time, I don't think.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Have you heard of these, you know, cicadas?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  So cicadas can get this kind of fungus that goes in them, and it turns them into hypersexual zombies. But the chemicals that it releases in this cicada, if you crush it up and snort it, it will also get you high as well.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah. Hypersexual zombie was my Tinder profile bio, so...

• 29:09Speaker 02

  And the other thing that can make you hallucinate is too much quiet. If you go into a room that is completely quiet, if you stay in there for any more than about 25 minutes, you'll start hallucinating.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  So do be careful here tonight, everybody, because my factor's coming up.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  It's a bit of a dry one.

• 29:32Dan Schreiber?

  Well, speaking of which, we must move on to our next fact. And that is, of course, Andy.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  My fact is, traditionally, the people of Iceland liked to bring a sheep into the bedroom.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Seems like they knew that here already.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  So I was reading a fantastic article via a wonderful website called The Browser, which is all about Icelandic turf houses. And these are, if anyone has seen Lord of the Rings, these are the inspiration for the hobbit houses that you get in Lord of the Rings. And they are packed earth on the floor, and they're really pretty uncomfortable to live in, most of them. They were not nice places to live in. There is a reason now that we don't all live in turf houses. It was quite a hard way of life. And there was one bedroom called the bathstofa for absolutely everyone, which was just upstairs. And everyone, your grandparents, your servants, maybe the couple of the house would get their own bedroom, but maybe another kind of 10 or 15 people would have to share another bedroom.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  And sometimes you'd need to bring a sheep into the bedroom, simply for warmth.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Oh, so the warmth for you or for the sheep?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  For you.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Just because it has a bit more body warmth.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  It does feel like if you've got 15 people cuddling together, the sheep is a bit of overkill.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yes, that's a good point, actually, yeah. But it's very woolly, isn't it?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Oh, sheep, yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  That is uncontroversial.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's because Iceland, you know, was not very forested for when people moved there. And if the trees, the few trees there were on the other side of the island, you weren't able to go and get them, so you had to cut turf.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, the weather's unpredictable. There's volcanoes sometimes, there's earthquake stuff. You don't have many resources, so like, a turf house is kind of a good thing to... Because it's quite quick to make and...

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they were very... You know, I take against this whole uncomfortable. I'm thinking of transitioning to a turf house.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Because they're very well insulated, weren't they? And they look beautiful. Well, like hobbit houses look. And they changed, they started off just like one... You'd go in through the door and it was like one very, very long corridor that went deeper and deeper into the hill. But then they turned into little villages, so every family would have its own little turf village. But it did mean that Iceland had, by a long way until the mid-19th century, the highest rates of high-datted disease in the world.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Which is only very strange, because I was talking to my friend the day before yesterday, who's the UK's consultant on high-datted disease. It's dog tapeworm. So it's when dogs have tapeworms that they get from eating dead sheep, and then humans get from eating dog poo. Not intentionally, I'm not suggesting they're doing it intentionally, but sometimes...

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Dan, another hallucinogen for you to go well to.

• 32:15Dan Schreiber?

  Guys, I think I read it wrong. It's penguin poo, it's penguin poo, my fault, my fault.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Anna, and this is what you're saying is your dream home, apparently.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  I just think it sounds like...

• 32:24Speaker 01

  It's full of this disease.

• 32:26Dan Schreiber?

  I can see why Anna's into it. When you read the descriptions about how life was inside as families, you know, there's no screen time, you know, back in the medieval times. They would sleep two to a bed, and they would sleep in a slight sitting-up position. No one slept fully vertical, which is very interesting.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Out of interest, has your wife convinced you that sleeping two to a bed is abnormal in our society?

• 32:51Dan Schreiber?

  You know I'm not in my bed, because I have three kids and they sleep in it with my... I'm at the bottom of a bunk bed for the last two years right now. That was a very sensitive subject you brought up there.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm so sorry, I knew I was doing it as well, what was I thinking? As you were.

• 33:05Dan Schreiber?

  It's annoying, because I'm not allowed to sleep on the top bunk, because I'm not cool enough.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Well, you got it.

• 33:11Dan Schreiber?

  But no, it's, they, so they're two to a bed, and then because in the winters they just have to stay inside, they get the sheep inside, everyone's huddled together, storytelling goes on, and that's why the oral tradition was so big in Iceland. It's just constant stories were being told to while away the hours. That sounds pretty cool to me, I like the idea. And I also like that the turf itself, you're living in a living house, as in the house itself keeps growing into itself.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I'm absolutely, I'm sorry, I'm absolutely sick of this campaign to live in soil. I'm sorry, there is a reason we don't live in soil anymore, which is that everyone's ill all the time, and it's cold, and it's filthy, and there are living things in the walls and in the floor.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  That's not the reason. They lived, and the bizarre thing about it is, they lived...

• 33:55Dan Schreiber?

  I'm sorry, this is taken to... What are we doing? Why are we re-litigating buildings? This is insane.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  There's a lot of problems with modern life, Andy, you know. We're all over our computers all the time.

• 34:05Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  You know, there's not very good ventilation in the landhouses.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  I do want to say...

• 34:09Speaker 01

  You three can shack up in a hole in the ground with your sheep, all right? And I will be in a brick home.

• 34:15Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Why do I feel like this is how it started with the three little pigs?

• 34:24Speaker 03

  You know what, maybe the wolf eats us, but we have more fun, Andy. The mad thing about them is that it wasn't medieval times, it was literally all of time until just after the Second World War. So in about 1945, more than 50% of Icelanders lived in turf houses. So most people in Iceland lived in turf houses. And after 20 years, so 20 years from World War II, only 1% did. So that's how quickly it absolutely plummeted.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Well, what does that say? Guess it shows that the people of Iceland are wrong to want warmth.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  I really want to check, they were very well insulated for all their other flaws.

• 35:01Dan Schreiber?

  I think it would be quite an odd experience for a sheep, if they really understood what was going on inside there. Well, because they would eat the sheep, right? So you're like, in this house, they're like having, ooh, they're having some meat... Actually, I've just made that up, I don't know if they eat the sheep. I mean, I've completely made that up.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  I'm sure eventually they eat the sheep.

• 35:18Dan Schreiber?

  They apparently do.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I think probably, it's a very, like, it's, these are hard conditions. I don't think you'd throw away a sheep that's made of lamb.

• 35:25Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Even if it's, even if it's one you've slept with.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Even if it's one you've slept... I'm sorry, darling.

• 35:33Dan Schreiber?

  They're using their wool, obviously, they use that all the time for the clothing. But then on top of it, they didn't have windows, but they did have spaces for windows. And what they would do is they'd take the innards of a sheep, and they would stretch it out so that the see-through intestine of a... I believe it's the intestine of a sheep, would be the window. So you're sort of sheep in there, they're eating you, they're wearing you, you're looking outside through you, you're...

• 35:56Speaker 02

  I suppose one advantage of the sheep being there while you're all sleeping is you could all count it to get to sleep.

• 36:03Dan Schreiber?

  One. Okay, everyone go to sleep.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  I think it was the amniotic sac, wasn't it, that they often use as well? The amniotic sac of the sheep. And the amazing thing about it is, they retain this word. So this amniotic membrane that used to be their windows is still the Icelandic word for a computer screen.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  So there we go, we do have computers now, because we got rid of the turf houses. And they still retain that, isn't that so cool?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  That is incredible.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  But also kind of gross that every time you refer to a computer in Iceland, you're talking about the amniotic sac of a lamb.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  That is crazy.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Somewhere that's famous for houses made of kind of mud, earthy stuff, is Santa Fe. And I really didn't know about this, but it's, so the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe, I really want to go to now, because all of the houses are adobe. And I actually looked this up, because I wanted to know the connection between adobe, the building material, and the adobe suite on computers.

• 36:58Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  And it's just that the guy who made the adobe suite had a river running behind his house called the Adobe River. But adobe is, you know, it's like that red mud that places in Central America were often made of. Looks kind of like Moroccan suki, very popular with Native Americans there, and then very popular with Spanish settlers. And anyway, it was what everything looked like until about 1900. And then in Santa Fe, they started modernizing and making it all look American. And suddenly, the town of Santa Fe said, hang on, we don't like this American, just like any other American city, look. We are going to mandate that every single house here has to be adobe, like a mud, a mud hut house, basically. And it's still true. So if you go there, it looks so neat. I mean, yes, it's sort of very gentrified now,

• 37:43Speaker 03

  and the people who originally lived in them have been forced out, because people like, you know, idiots like me who are like, oh, what a pretty house, want to go and move there. But, like, it all matches, the whole place matches, isn't that cool?

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  And you get faux adobe now, which is like mock Tudor. So, you know, you build a normal house out of bricks or timber, and then you have to put mud all over it to make it look like an adobe house, if it's in Santa Fe. I know, Andy, you can join me there.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Great, yeah, yeah. Finally, we've got a house which has shit all over the walls for you.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  And structural integrity for me.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  I think shit's on the walls is wattle and dob, isn't it?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yes, you're right, and that's a very proud old English tradition, isn't it?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  It's an English thing, yeah. So we would make lots of houses out of poo and straw. And it's been going on for thousands of years, but there's still a few of them in the UK. And you could buy in 2007 a one-bedroomed house made of animal poo in Kent for £250,000.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  But if you want to build like an extension on it, do you need...

• 38:47Speaker 02

  You have to make it with poo, yeah.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:50Dan Schreiber?

  I live in Kent.

• 38:53Dan Schreiber?

  I haven't tested my walls.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Well, maybe if you just smear some on the outside, it'll be the same.

• 38:58Dan Schreiber?

  I'll just do that, just look. Do you know, actually, in my house, do you know what we have in our roof? So we had to replace a lot of the roof, because the tiles were breaking and there was huge worries of it leaking. And then the builder said, your roof is really structurally sound, because it's built with horsehair.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 39:14Dan Schreiber?

  And it stops any rain coming through. And that was an old, that was an old thing. And they'd call it horsehair, but you would use pig hair, you would use all sorts of animal hair as well. But horsehair was the best, because it was the longest.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  That's so cool.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Because horse, I mean, horse hair is quite short, horse manes are long, obviously.

• 39:28Dan Schreiber?

  They would use their manes.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  They're using the manes, okay, nice.

• 39:30Dan Schreiber?

  Which bit of hair, what hair did you think they were using?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Like, the skin, the skin fur. The skin fur.

• 39:36Dan Schreiber?

  The skin fur.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  I think that's fair.

• 39:42Dan Schreiber?

  Andy, I really appreciate you helping me patch up the missing bits of horsehair, but that's, that's...

• 39:47Speaker 02

  But also, now, can I just say, sometimes they use pig hair. What part of the pig were they getting the hair from?

• 39:52Dan Schreiber?

  Pigs are so hairy. Pigs are very hairy.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Pigs are hairy, they've got those long, rank hairs. It's like a very balding old person, isn't it, pig hair?

• 40:00Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Can I tell you a very, with a serious point about flooring materials?

• 40:05Dan Schreiber?

  Absolutely, that's why we're here at the comedy festival, Andy.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  I imagine every comedian in the town's doing this material.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Sometimes you say a sentence out loud and you realise you've just expressed your absolute essential core.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Anyway, all right, I'm gonna tell you. It's just a lovely story. There was a time in Mexico, a few decades ago, where you would get a charity handout, and what it consisted of would be a concrete truck driving up to your house, sticking its nozzle through your window and blasting concrete into your living room. And this was a charity handout that people got, right?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Did you know they were coming?

• 40:51Speaker 01

  You did.

• 40:56Dan Schreiber?

  What a beautiful new floor. We're gonna have to chisel grandma out at some point, but otherwise stunning work.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Basically, the award was £118 worth, so not a huge amount of ready-mixed concrete. And they would just pour it into your living room and then drive off. And the point is because before concrete floors, floors were dirt and children got parasitic worms. You know, they were shorter, they were missing school, and then when you had a concrete floor in the room, suddenly you had healthier children. They grew more, they did better at school. There are all these amazing measurable things that can improve simply from replacing a dirt floor with a concrete one. And it's like, in terms of an intervention to help a family's chances in life, £118 of concrete is very, very, very cheap to have that kind of amazing measurable effect. So there you go. There's a serious point there.

• 41:50Dan Schreiber?

  Flooring material.

• 41:57Dan Schreiber?

  Stop the podcast.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Stop the podcast.

• 41:59Dan Schreiber?

  Hey, everyone. This week's episode is sponsored by Saly.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Are you a jet-setter like Daniel Schreiber?

• 42:05Dan Schreiber?

  Hello.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Every time I see him, he's flying off to a different country.

• 42:09Dan Schreiber?

  Bonjour.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Was it Sweden, for instance, you were in recently? Well, I was there as well, actually. But you did go to Croatia straight afterwards.

• 42:16Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, via Denmark. So I have done a lot of travelling and I've been doing a lot of phone using as well, James.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Well, what you need to do, and I'm not sure if you did, but what you needed to do was use Saly. You download the Saly app onto your phone and you get really good, cheap internet.

• 42:34Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, you get amazing internet. 200 destinations it's available in. Therefore, I could have extended that trip by 197 places and still it would have worked. You get 24/7 support and you don't get a stinking big bill at the end of your trip.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's so easy. I've used it in loads of different countries. I've used it in Australia, I've used it in Kosovo. That shows just two different parts of the world, for instance.

• 42:58Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  So it's definitely worth doing. And if you are interested in Saly, then you should go to saily.com/fish. That's S-A-I-L-Y dot com slash fish. And when you go there, you can get an exclusive 15% discount on Saly data plans if you use the code FISH at checkout.

• 43:19Dan Schreiber?

  Okay, on with the show.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  On with the podcast.

• 43:26Dan Schreiber?

  It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Okay, my fact this week is that in 2011, a candy bar called Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge was recalled for containing actual toxic waste.

• 43:42Dan Schreiber?

  There it is.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  So I just wanna say straight away that it was quite a small issue and no one got sick. They pulled them off the shelves and then they fixed it, and now they're fine because the company is still going. And I just wanna say that these candies are absolutely no problem. I've got some now.

• 44:00Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Would you like to try them?

• 44:02Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 44:05Dan Schreiber?

  I think legally we have to now, Andy, just to save us from any lawsuits.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 44:09Dan Schreiber?

  Chuck one over, James.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  No, on the front row, won't they?

• 44:11Dan Schreiber?

  Oh.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  There you go. So these things in 2011, they were found to contain some lead, which is a toxic metal, which doesn't break down in your body. And if you have too much of it, it can be bad for you. These particular ones, I think, would have been kind of fine unless you were pregnant or you were very young or whatever. So I think it's just funny, but I just wanna say that if you go to the show... I know you guys can't talk at the moment.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  How dare? I accidentally gave away all of mine. There's one of them.

• 44:39Dan Schreiber?

  How is it, Andy?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Have mine.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Is it toxic? Because nothing pisses me off more than a sweet that pretends to be the sourest thing you've ever tasted and is actually just a bit sugary. Is your mouth being exploded inside right now?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  I had a very small bite, but it's pretty...

• 44:55Speaker 02

  These are like the... like people at home who don't have the picture of it that we have behind us. It's like you kind of get these candies these days, which are very sour, and they have lots of sort of like yellow and black stripes of warning, warning, these are the most dangerous sweets in the world, kind of thing. And kids love them.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Extreme candy.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Extreme candy.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Can children taste sour flavours better or more? I think there was something... Children have a slightly different... Because obviously you've got more taste buds, haven't you, when you're a child? And sort of we lose them gradually as we get older. So I think they do taste sour things more. I'll tell you who wouldn't like sour sweets.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Who's that?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Oh, no, sorry. Everyone likes... Sorry, wait. Go back a bit.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  I'll tell you... Well, I'll tell you one thing about the sour flavour of these sweets.

• 45:42Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  All vertebrates like them, or should like them.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  All vertebrates, really?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Well, the thing here is all vertebrates can taste sourness, and that is very unusual. Every other flavour, there's at least one big animal group that can't taste it.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of them can't taste sweetness, can they?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Cats can't taste sugar.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Dolphins can't taste sweet or savoury. Pandas cannot taste umami.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. Really?

• 46:09Speaker 03

  The irony. In China.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  I know. I know.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  They're missing out.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  But sensing sourness is universal to vertebrates, as far as we know. And it might be that it has a useful signal that your food is rancid.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Extreme candy really became a thing in the 90s. I read a really good article by Wired magazine in 1999 about this sudden explosion of extreme candy. And he said it split into three categories: interactive sweet makers, the mega-sour sweet makers, and the gross-out sweet makers. So gross-out are things like... There's a brand called Hot Licks where you get a lollipop with a real amt inside it. You know, the really... Your five-year-old will beg you for those. Really sour. And then the interactive stuff is the stuff that comes with sweets, or like you can blow a whistle through it. Remember those? And anyway, interviewed the kings of extreme candy at the time.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  And this was Bat Enterprises, B-A-A-T, because it was founded by Bill, Anne, Anne and Tom, Bat. And they were all just postal workers, postmen and postwomen.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Really?

• 47:14Speaker 03

  And Bill and Tom were two postmen who fell in love with two women called Anne, who also worked at the post office, and said, "You know what? We should try making some sweets that make funny noises or spin round and round." And they did, and they became multimillionaires and had their own massive sweet factory where people got around on tricycles and ruled the roost.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  That's such a nice story.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Isn't it?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  It's heartwarming.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  It's so wholesome. Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Here are some candies. Well, actually, I'll give you three, and two of them are real candies and one of them isn't. And see if you can guess.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  So the toe of Satan, Satan's spawn, or Randy candy?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I've smoked two of those.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Which of those is not a real candy?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Toe of Satan, Satan's spawn.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  And Randy candy.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  I think Satan's spawn isn't.

• 48:03Dan Schreiber?

  It's not Randy candy.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  I'll say Toe of Satan.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Okay, well, Dan is right. Randy candy is actually a friend of the podcast. He was the Chicago tattoo artist who will ink you anywhere you want and give you a discount if you choose your bumhole.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Satan's spawn is a kind of habanero-infused gummy bears. And the toe of Satan, which I also have here, which I'm gonna offer to Andy, is supposedly the hottest candy in the world.

• 48:36Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, man!

• 48:38Speaker 02

  It's equivalent to 9 million on the Scoville heat unit rating.

• 48:43Dan Schreiber?

  Are you gonna do it?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  That's 9,000 times hotter than a jalapeno.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  I gotta say thank you to the guys at American Fizz who sent me this, because they went out of their way to send me in time for this festival.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna decide whether or not I say thank you to the guys at American Fizz. The amusing thing is, the other night, I said to my wife, "This salad, what's the dressing on it? It's very spicy."

• 49:11Speaker 01

  There was no dressing on the salad.

• 49:16Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, this is like a lollipop that we're looking at here.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lollipop that's red in the shape of a toe. And it looks all right, doesn't it?

• 49:23Dan Schreiber?

  Looks fine. How much does Andy need to take for it to kick in?

• 49:27Speaker 02

  I think a big old suck on the toe, please.

• 49:31Dan Schreiber?

  Takes me back. Right.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  And it claims to be how much hotter than jalapeno?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Nine million Scoville unit chili extract guaranteed to scorch any mortal's tongue. Can you keep the toe of Satan in your mouth for five minutes?

• 49:49Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, five minutes, okay.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  I'm putting it in. Here we go.

• 49:53Dan Schreiber?

  Put it in.

• 49:58Dan Schreiber?

  All right, well, while we lose Andy for five minutes, let's continue on with this. Oh, Andy. His eyes are doing something. Oh, he's heading.

• 50:12Dan Schreiber?

  Oh my goodness.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I just swallowed a bit and it's very, very, very warm.

• 50:18Dan Schreiber?

  What's warm, sorry?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  The thing is very warm.

• 50:21Dan Schreiber?

  Why is it?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  It's just sabotage, Stan.

• 50:25Dan Schreiber?

  Oh my god, Andy.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 50:26Dan Schreiber?

  You're crying.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I'm not crying, you're crying.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Oh my god, it's getting worse. Oh my god.

• 50:36Dan Schreiber?

  Oh wow, I think that's how it works, right? It slowly kicks in more and more.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  End the show, end the show now.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Oh, sorry, I actually put some toad venom in there as well, by the way.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  We'll talk for a bit while Andy's recovering.

• 50:51Dan Schreiber?

  We'll talk for a bit while you deal with that. To be fair, you read the package, you took it out, you put it in your own mouth.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Oh dear.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  The paramedics are backstage, don't worry.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  I read that pick and mix was invented in Sweden.

• 51:05Dan Schreiber?

  Was it?

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Really?

• 51:08Speaker 02

  They had a government initiative called Saturday Candy. And the idea was that kids will only eat candy one day a week. And you're allowed one piece of candy per year old that you are.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  Really?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  This is a bit like, I was reading about a 7-Up bar, which I wish they would bring back. Are you okay?

• 51:27Dan Schreiber?

  I've just never seen Andy like this, this is...

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I'm not all right.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  It's very hot under these lights, isn't it?

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Well, we should probably plough on. The 7-Up bar.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Are you gonna need to take some time off stage?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  I'm gonna need to take some time off work, Anna.

• 51:52Dan Schreiber?

  So, I've just never seen Andy like this, this is wild.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I'm really sorry.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  It's all right, it's all right. I chose to do it.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:58Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, it wasn't your fault, it was your fault.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  It wasn't your fault.

• 52:01Dan Schreiber?

  You maybe saved a bigger glass of water for him on stage. Anna, can you pass your water in there?

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely, I think we do need more water on stage, if it is possible to get some.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  There's a fire hydrant there, I can see.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  So, on other dangerous things you can eat.

• 52:16Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Still can't get Kinder Surprise in America.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Oh yeah?

• 52:20Dan Schreiber?

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  I haven't been since the 1930s. Health and safety was a thing back then, because, you know, stuff hidden inside food might be a choking hazard. And 60,000 eggs a year are smuggled in, because people are that desperate for it. Well, that was one year, 2011.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  How did they smuggle them?

• 52:38Speaker 03

  I didn't ask which bodily orifice the Kinder Eggs were inside. They just came in a suitcase. And so now you can buy them with the egg, and then next to it you get the toy.

• 52:48Dan Schreiber?

  Right.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  How shit is that?

• 52:49Dan Schreiber?

  That's very good.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  And people wonder why America's going downhill.

• 52:53Dan Schreiber?

  We passed on the way here today, on the train, and because our plane was unfortunately delayed. Sorry, the water's just arrived.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  And for the listener at home, Andy is drinking direct from the carafe.

• 53:08Dan Schreiber?

  He's charging it.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  It stayed in your mouth for so long.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I did pretty well.

• 53:13Dan Schreiber?

  You did amazingly well.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Oh god.

• 53:15Dan Schreiber?

  And it hasn't affected the show at all.

• 53:19Dan Schreiber?

  We were, our plane was delayed today, so unfortunately, when we were on the train over from Copenhagen, we were not able to get off at Malmo in order to go to the disgusting food museum, which is another friend of the podcast.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:31Dan Schreiber?

  And actually, I told them I was quite excited to go. I actually had alternative motives, because I have a bone to pick with them. And that is, as a half-Australian, someone who grew up in Australia for my high school years, there are three items in there that are connected to Australia. One of which, which has been classified as disgusting food, is Vegemite.

• 53:53Dan Schreiber?

  One of the finest, finest things that you can get in the world. If you had some right now, Andy, you'd be feeling great on top of that.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, would I?

• 54:03Dan Schreiber?

  I think it calms the heat, it's known for that, it says on the side. What's hilarious is, the owner of it was interviewed about it, and he said it's the only time there's ever been a complaint in the food museum. Was an angry Australian, walked up to the counter, banged his fist down and went, "Who dared put Vegemite in here?" And he explained, actually, it's just like, it's kind of cool, because we sell it in the gift shop and people try it, and so we're actually like, doing the sales and so on.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  They sell things in there, the idea, sorry, don't sell, they display things in there. The idea is, is things that you might not necessarily find disgusting, but someone around the world might. So they have Haribo's in there.

• 54:42Dan Schreiber?

  Ah.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  And the idea is like, to us, or to me certainly, I love Haribo's, but then someone around the world, they might be like, well, this is just like melted down bones of an animal with fruit juice in it. Like, that is weird, isn't it, to eat that?

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why they don't call it that other thing.

• 54:57Dan Schreiber?

  Thank you.

• 55:00Dan Schreiber?

  Andy's just been brought.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  A carton of milk.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Is that a Tetrapak?

• 55:05Speaker 01

  It certainly is a Tetrapak, born in Lund.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  You know what, guys? Andy has not shut up about Tetrapaks all day.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  I actually didn't mention them in the Lund section, because I had too much research and I feared that if I started, I would not be able to stop.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  But I think it's really appropriate, you've been saved by a Tetrapak in there.

• 55:25Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah. Don't you have one in your pocket right now that's been leaking?

• 55:29Speaker 01

  I'm just pleased to see you, Dan.

• 55:33Dan Schreiber?

  Well, listen, we do need to wrap up, because there is another act that's coming in, but...

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Would anyone else not like a go on the toe of Satan? I don't want to hog it all for myself.

• 55:55Dan Schreiber?

  All right, look, we need to wrap up. Thank you so much, Lund Comedy Festival, this has been absolutely awesome. If anyone wants to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said, we're all online, so go find us there. But the most important thing is, if you want to say something about the episode, if you want to tell us something more that you learnt yourself, that we didn't mention, email [email protected], because Andy reads all those emails and he brings them to, yeah?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just, the idea of reading an email is quite a lot at the moment.

• 56:23Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Andy's gonna be on a break for the next two weeks, so you've got plenty of time to send it in. But otherwise, we just want to thank you so much for having us here. What a thrill it is to be in this room in Lund, this has been awesome. Thank you so much, everyone. Maybe we'll see you again at another comedy festival. Until then, goodbye!