No Such Thing As The Otters Circling

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss cows, crisps, spots, stripes and a very specific skunk. 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

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is made with 100% fresh beef, cooked when you order it. Then comes the melted cheese, the slivered onions, the pickles, the ketchup and the mustard. Add hot crispy fries and an ice cold Coke, all for $8. And if things go well, one loose fry at the bottom of the bag. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, now $8. Ba da ba ba ba.

• 1:08Dan Schreiber?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tashinsky and Andrew Hunter Murray. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Anna.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  My fact this week is that cheese and onion crisps contain twice as much salt as salt and vinegar crisps.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:44Dan Schreiber?

  No Such Thing as a Fish, blowing things wide open.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  This, now this is a heavy hitter.

• 1:49Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, this is.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  And it's gonna get pretty serious here.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Cut to Anna banging on the door of Walkers. What do you have to say about this, guys?

• 1:58Dan Schreiber?

  Nailing her 95 DCs to the door.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  DCs, oh, I've been nailing the wrong thing to the door.

• 2:11Dan Schreiber?

  That was a podcast goes as quickly from crisps to Martin Luther and then poo. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that's our guarantee.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  It's an amazing journey.

• 2:19Dan Schreiber?

  So do salt and vinegar crisps contain twice as much cheese and onion as cheese and onion crisps as well?

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, they've just, they've just mislabelled them for years. This is, if we're allowed to say brands, this is actually specifically Walkers crisps. Each flavour has its own website page, and so the website page for salt and vinegar crisps says that they have 0.6 grams of salt per 100 grams. And then I thought, I wonder how many salt grams cheese and onion crisps have. So I went on the cheese and onion website page, 1.2 grams per 100 grams. What?

• 2:48Dan Schreiber?

  Did you, did you do the other flavours?

• 2:50Speaker 03

  I went to Ready Salted, which is also higher than salt and vinegar, and in fact it's higher salt than both at 1.3 grams.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  You would expect that because their main selling point is the salt.

• 2:58Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I know, but they don't taste that. I feel like salt and vinegar tastes more salty, but I think maybe I'm being tricked by the vinegar.

• 3:03Dan Schreiber?

  That's the vinegar. Maybe you can't put too much salt in because the vinegar would then...

• 3:07Speaker 03

  You wouldn't taste the vinegar maybe. Yeah, yeah. And I've got no explanation for this, but I did wonder about other flavours, so I looked up KP Salted Peanuts, and they contain less salt than dry roasted peanuts.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  What?

• 3:17Speaker 03

  What's happening?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 3:19Dan Schreiber?

  Tell us more about these webpages for each packet.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're colour coded the same way as the crisp packet.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  What colour is the cheese and onion page?

• 3:28Speaker 03

  It's a great question, James, because of course there's a misconception.

• 3:31Dan Schreiber?

  Is there? Cheese and onion is the blue packet, isn't it? Yeah, in Walkers world, isn't it?

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Well, it is in Walkers world, but Walkers didn't invent cheese and onion crisps. Golden Wonder did. And they put them in a green pack.

• 3:44Dan Schreiber?

  Really?

• 3:45Speaker 04

  And so lots of people think that really crisps, that are cheese and onions, should be in a green pack.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  And I think, isn't there loads of people misremember and think that cheese and onion used to be green and they never did?

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Miriam Holland, who was a spokeswoman for Tato, which now owns Golden Wonder, she said the packets of course should be green because that's the colour of the shoots of onions.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Obviously.

• 4:07Dan Schreiber?

  And there's so much onion in those packets. Sometimes, I don't know about you, I open a pack and I have to clear out onions for a few minutes just before I get into the crisp.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Not everything can be the colour of salt.

• 4:19Dan Schreiber?

  Post-World War II in America, there was a magazine called Potato Chipper. Did you guys spot Potato Chipper? Amazing magazine, and they used to sort of preview all the upcoming new flavours that were being invented, but they also used to have Miss Potato Chip, which was an annual beauty pageant where someone was awarded the title. And that went on for years. The first person I found was in 1956, she was an X-ray nurse from Cincinnati, Elaine Kuntz, and she, she made the front cover holding potato crisps and...

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Was she using the crisps to cover her genitals or her name?

• 4:58Speaker 04

  She was completely naked and holding the potato crisps.

• 5:04Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, but there's a lot of them and it went on for many, many years. She was 1956. For some reason, in 1952, Miss Potato Chip went to a chipmunk, but it was, the publication looks amazing. It's sadly no longer going.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Oh, Andy was just about to subscribe.

• 5:21Dan Schreiber?

  Crisp flavours.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:23Dan Schreiber?

  There is a whole line of crisps which only used to be available in American prisons.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:30Dan Schreiber?

  They were called the whole shebang, and they were only, it was only if you were locked up in an American prison that you could get hold of them.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 5:37Dan Schreiber?

  And there was, the flavour sounds amazing. It was a composite flavour of barbecue and salt and vinegar and a load of other things, just all mixed up.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Why?

• 5:45Dan Schreiber?

  What do you mean?

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Why, why were they just targeting prisoners?

• 5:49Dan Schreiber?

  I think they were targeting, I think there are like, there are shops in prisons sometimes where you can buy food and it was the official supplier to the prison estate, basically, because it's a huge, great estate in America, obviously, millions of people in there. And apparently they're fantastic crisps, and they have recently been made available to the public. But there are plenty of Facebook groups of kind of ex-cons saying, absolutely love these things and, you know, I'm considering doing some more crimes just to get back in there. Yeah, yeah, just to taste the whole shebang again.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Do they make like themed flavours like Walkers do sometimes, like a salt and vinegar?

• 6:23Dan Schreiber?

  Oh dear, you've unleashed...

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Podcast at QI.com.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Imagine if that's the cause of the high rates of recidivism all over the world. It's literally just people desperate to get back to those crisps.

• 6:37Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  I read an amazing article about crisp flavours, actually, and I want to shout out to Amelia Tate, who writes for The Guardian. It's such a brilliant feature. And she said she set out on a quest to answer something that's plagued her for years. Why can you get lasagna flavour Lay's crisps in Thailand but not Italy? And she went deep.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  I mean, I can pretty much answer that.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  God.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  Well, an Italian would just go, what the fuck is this?

• 7:04Speaker 03

  So after about 19...

• 7:05Speaker 04

  So close to doing the accent there, and then just pulled out of it at the last second.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  I heard it in the edge of your mind. Yes, that is the answer exactly at the end of her 14,000 word long review, but the rest is fascinating. She interviewed some people who work in seasoning house, the people who make flavours for not just Lay's, like all crisp companies. They wouldn't let her actually print the company's proper name, they wouldn't let us know it. It's hard to explain the secrecy. I think it's basically because they're providing all the crisp flavours for all the crisp companies, but the different companies don't really want to acknowledge that they're all getting their flavours from the same place.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  And they weren't, she interviewed two people who worked there, they weren't allowed to give their real names. She called them Peggy and Reuben, but she was like, these of course aren't their real names. And they revealed some quite cool stuff, things like spicy flavours, chili Doritos, they do different spice levels around the world, but they say there's only one country that really likes spicy food when they've done the testing. And I was very surprised at this, there's only one country that has genuinely spicy chili Dorito crisps.

• 8:05Dan Schreiber?

  Switzerland.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Not as surprising as that, to be fair.

• 8:11Dan Schreiber?

  Isn't it, isn't it America?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  It's Mexico.

• 8:13Dan Schreiber?

  Mexico, yes, yes.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Mexico, you are geographically close, yeah.

• 8:17Dan Schreiber?

  No, because I remember that there was, there's a movie that's been made about someone inventing the chili Dorito, and it was a janitor. A janitor who has this golden idea...

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Oh, hang on, I've seen a trailer for this film.

• 8:31Dan Schreiber?

  I've sent it to you because of your, because of your janitor obsession.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Dorito janitor.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  I've seen a trailer for this. I've sent it to you.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Dorito janitor. Sea cucumbers.

• 8:45Dan Schreiber?

  Sea cucumbers, the janitors of the sea.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  The guy from Good Will Hunting.

• 8:48Dan Schreiber?

  Matt Damon.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  We've got our only connect question right there.

• 8:51Dan Schreiber?

  And while we're just on a slight pause, prawn cocktail.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  Very good, yeah.

• 8:56Dan Schreiber?

  Sending me to prawn cocktail.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  Everyone in here has a penis that looks like a shrimp.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  That's why they were arrested.

• 9:09Dan Schreiber?

  I don't know how well they'd sell in the jail tax shop.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  There's so many bags of prawn cocktail left.

• 9:16Dan Schreiber?

  Sour crime and onion.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  Like cream.

• 9:19Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Cream or chives?

• 9:21Dan Schreiber?

  Sour crime and onion, yeah, like cream, sour cream and onion.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, good.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  So we all loved prawn cocktail, sour crime and onion gets diddly squatch. Isn't it just?

• 9:32Dan Schreiber?

  On this show.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  The Guardian, Adam, you were talking about the Guardian article. The Guardian seems to have a bit of a thing for crisps because just last week, they, a journalist called Amar Kalia ate 100 different flavours of crisps for the Guardian and ranked them all.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Oh my god, this is what it's become.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Number 100, grouse and windbury.

• 9:54Speaker 05

  I've had those.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Smelling as meaty as a butcher's but tasting sweet. This is truly the worst of all worlds.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  I genuinely have had those. There was a posh farm shop I went to not long ago and they had grouse and I can't remember some other game bird. Yeah, yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Right. 98, blue heat. Leaves a luminescent blue powder on your fingers, smells of urinal cakes and tastes of synthetic lime and chili.

• 10:17Dan Schreiber?

  Wow.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Six out of 10.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Hot pick ketchup. Tastes like the stale rubbery nubbin of ketchup you find crusted on the rim of the bottle.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  It's a brilliant article.

• 10:30Dan Schreiber?

  That's amazing.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Anyway, the winners were falafel, extra virgin olive oil and French fry sauce. All made by different companies, but I won't name the companies.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Falafel? Never tried that.

• 10:39Speaker 05

  They did this last year with the Christmas crisps.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  Duck and Clementine, Camembert, chili and honey, and the worst, the one that gave zero stars to gingerbread Doritos. The reviewer said, "They are the only crisp I have ever wanted to spit out."

• 10:54Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  Which is damning.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Wow, even when you cut your mouth on a crisp, you don't want to spit it out.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  I've never cut my mouth on a crisp.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  You're kidding?

• 11:01Speaker 04

  What?

• 11:01Speaker 05

  Because I've got a strong mouth.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  You cut your mouth, right?

• 11:04Dan Schreiber?

  On my tongue, my tongue gets a bit.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Between your teeth and then it just, ugh.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I go with trepidation towards the packet of crisps because it's happened.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say, I say it might have happened to me twice in my life, but just have a lot of empathy.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  I really felt like you were coming with me on that.

• 11:20Dan Schreiber?

  I've just teeth and crisps. I've lost the ability, this is just a personal anecdote, to bite open a pack of crisps in a pub. You know how you buy a pack for everyone and you, and you open it with your teeth to lay it out?

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:31Dan Schreiber?

  Can't do it anymore. I don't know what's happened. If I've lost the sharpness of all my teeth, if the packs have changed.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  That is a thing that is unique to Britain, I think.

• 11:39Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  You go to the bar, buy a pack of crisps and then bite it open and put it on the table for everyone to take one.

• 11:45Dan Schreiber?

  Yes, because it's our tradition of hospitality. It's not much of one, but it's all we got.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  It's not like the ancient Greek zinnia where you have to invite a stranger into your house and give them all of your food.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  With us, it's just like open a packet of crisps and take the biggest ones and let the rest of them have their crumbs.

• 12:01Dan Schreiber?

  Do you remember a few weeks ago, we talked about the yak meat distribution in Tibet and the strangers share? That's their equivalent of opening a packet of crisps on the table.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  If you went to the pub, bought a packet of crisps, opened it up, put it on the table with your mates and then a stranger came along and took the biggest crisp. Do you think that would be frowned upon that?

• 12:18Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, I think it would. Yeah, yeah. Everyone does leave the last crisp for a little while.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  They do.

• 12:23Dan Schreiber?

  And then someone who's hungry will just take it.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Can I just mention some pretentious salts?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Please.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  This is about salt, isn't it? You can go to the shop and you can spend a lot of money on salt these days, can't you? I mean, there's a thing called Lahinalayan salt, which is the product of unpolluted ancient seas dried up over 200 million years ago. And they probably just add 10 quid to the price.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, amazing.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  But actually, it dates back to at least the 18th century. There was something in England you could buy called salt upon salt. And you would get rock salt that was mined in Cheshire and then it was taken to the coast, dissolved in water and then left by the side of the sea to recrystallise and then you would get that and that was supposed to be tastier than any other salt you could get.

• 13:09Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  Was it?

• 13:11Speaker 04

  It's just sodium chloride, isn't it?

• 13:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  It's like the water cycle. The water just goes around and around. We're not making new salt. It's all salt that's just gone.

• 13:19Dan Schreiber?

  But there is a thing of, I mean, the crystal formation, I suppose, might be different. I don't know. I've, I say this as someone who's got, I don't like to boast. I've got a packet of Maldon sea salt knocking about in the cupboard, which I've had for 10 years. I use about one pinch a month. But yeah, that's posh salt, isn't it? Maldon in Essex.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  I don't want to get big salt on my back, but I feel like.

• 13:39Dan Schreiber?

  It's all salt.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Mostly all salt.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  The texture, to that flakiness.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Well, that's because table salt, they have to put loads of anti-caking agents in to make it really sort of granular.

• 13:49Dan Schreiber?

  Iodine to stop us all getting goiters.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:52Dan Schreiber?

  That's in salt, isn't it?

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Friend of the podcast, goiters.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  What do you think one hand crisps are for?

• 13:59Dan Schreiber?

  Well, what, when you're driving, you need to keep one hand on the wheel and two hands on the wheel.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:05Dan Schreiber?

  What? Sorry, one hand's out the side, slapping the side of the car to the song.

• 14:14Dan Schreiber?

  One arm's over your honey in the front seat.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Those balls aren't going to itch themselves.

• 14:23Dan Schreiber?

  One out the side, one round the honey, one on the balls, one in the back.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  It's just. To solve the problem of greasy phone screens, this is Koi Keia in Tokyo have made one hand crisps. And actually, so they come, A, pre-crushed. In the back.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Because the best bit is the little crushed bits at the bottom that you empty into your mouth.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Right, so this is what inspired them. They thought that's everyone's favourite bit, we'll make them pre-crushed. And then it's one hand because they've got a corner of the pack, which you can just rip off the corner perfectly. So it forms a little spout for your mouth and then you can tip the crisp straight into your mouth like a lad and you can continue doing all those amusing things that you're doing with your other hand.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  And also if you have like one of those mouths that is very easily cut by crisps. The tiny ones presumably won't hurt you so much.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 15:12Dan Schreiber?

  What if you've got teeth that can't open the pack little corner to get to the tiny crisps?

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Thank god you and I don't have the same mouth.

• 15:24Dan Schreiber?

  Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact this week is that for many years, the USA's chair of the Congressional Advisory Board on Missile Defence was a guitarist called Skunk.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Sounds like the kind of person Trump might put into very strategic importance.

• 15:43Dan Schreiber?

  No, this guy, this guy is amazing. His name is Jeffrey Baxter, but he's known as Skunk. He had big stints in bands like Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. He played with Hendrix, he did albums with Dolly Parton, name any major artist and he's probably worked with them. And parallel to him being a musician, he got very interested in engineering. And he ended up writing a five-page document where he described a type of defence that the army could use. And it got handed to someone who was high up there and they brought him in and he slowly just went up the ranks because his ideas have been so good about repurposing existing technology to be used as part of missile defence.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  It is awesome and it does seem to come from him being an expert in music technology and him thinking, look, I understand that and I understand all the like algorithms that go with that and I can transfer that into military.

• 16:30Speaker 05

  He is, I mean, he's very funny. He's, he says that there was a moment where he was being recruited and, you know, you've got to go and do your session in front of the committee where you're being interviewed and all this. And the chair of the committee said to, to an assistant, is this the guy from Raytheon or the guy from Boeing? And the, the answer came, no, sir. This is the guy from the Doobie Brothers.

• 16:49Dan Schreiber?

  Well, I wonder how much the Doobie Brothers are at least quite a well-known name. At least he was in a band that was well-known. Because had he not joined them and they had to say his original band that he was in, I don't know if he would have got the gig. The original band was called Ultimate Spinach and he joined them on their third album.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  To be fair, Doobie Brothers sounds stupid, right?

• 17:07Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  It sounds, if you don't already know, it's a band.

• 17:09Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  Is a Doobie a spliff?

• 17:12Dan Schreiber?

  It's a spliff, yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Do they call themselves that after the fact that it's a spliff or is the spliff named after the fact that the Doobie Brothers liked spliffs?

• 17:18Dan Schreiber?

  I don't know the answer to that. I do know why Ultimate Spinach is called Ultimate Spinach. It's because the lead singer one day was tripping on pure LSD and he looked at himself in the mirror, grabbed the green marker, drew all over his face and when he was done, he looked at himself and went, whoa, I am Ultimate Spinach.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 17:34Dan Schreiber?

  So it's always good to know the origins.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  This is a band that didn't quite do as well as the Doobie Brothers or Steely Dan.

• 17:38Dan Schreiber?

  They, uh.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  I wonder why.

• 17:40Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah. But we don't know why he's called Skunk. He's never revealed the origins of the, the name Skunk.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  There is a theory.

• 17:47Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  I've read quite a, quite a compelling theory, actually. Supposedly, he was outside a recording studio where there was a session going on. He hadn't quite got back and he'd been locked out or something. So he was relieving himself outside the recording studio and someone stepped out of the door and into his line of fire.

• 18:03Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  So I'm presuming number one, but.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  But just going wee on you. They wee these ass in, don't they?

• 18:10Speaker 05

  They spray from their anus.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Got it. Yeah, that counts, that counts.

• 18:14Dan Schreiber?

  So maybe a number two.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  It's quite weird, isn't it? Because the normal thing to do is to do your national service, like Elvis, then become a musician. It's quite unusual to do your music career and then go into the Pentagon.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  I guess in America it is, but definitely not in, like in Korea, for instance. All these like BTS and stuff had to go into the military, didn't they?

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Well, you can't have a military career when you're between the ages of five and nine, can you?

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Like, and this week, Tom Kim, who's a golfer, won some big, um, big competition. And that meant that he didn't have to do military service because if you win a world championship, you don't have to.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  But don't you get really shamed if you're a K-pop's boy band star and you dodge your national service?

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Most of them wouldn't dodge it in fairness.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  And can I say one more thing about Mr. Doobie? What's his name again?

• 18:59Dan Schreiber?

  Baxter, Skunk.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Skunk Baxter. Have you seen his face?

• 19:02Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  He's got this very peculiar beard and moustache combo.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  Where the moustache has kind of grown down over the beard. It looks like he's just got one single.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Like a walrus?

• 19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, like a walrus, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'd say not quite as suave and distinguished as a walrus, but yeah. Anyway, this is allegedly part of the reasons that he is one of the inspirations for the Muppet Floyd. So Floyd in the Muppet Show, you know, there's the band of Muppets, animals on the drums.

• 19:32Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  Floyd is the guy in the Amazing Sergeant Pepper jacket with the great big moustache and the goatee beard. And I think Skunk Baxter is the inspiration for Floyd.

• 19:40Dan Schreiber?

  Personal theory.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  I've read it online as well.

• 19:43Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  I don't want to take credit for the theory.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Missile defence?

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:50Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  Well, Britain has missile defence. We have for some time. Obviously in the Cold War, we thought that the USSR might send us missiles.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Send us missiles?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  How can you?

• 20:03Speaker 04

  We've got special delivery, they're going to be there in four minutes. No, he's blown up my bin area. They thought they might send missiles and they decided that what they wanted to do was to alert the Prime Minister if they had the like four minute warning kind of thing, right? In America, the guy could respond immediately if he had to. In Britain, what we decided to do was we would use the radio system that the AA was using at the time. If there was a missile being sent to us from the Soviets, the driver would hear on the radio that the Prime Minister had to get to a telephone immediately. They would go to the nearest AA telephone and then he would ring Whitehall and say, yeah, send the response.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  I see.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Okay. Now, the problem was, in order to use those phones, you needed four pennies.

• 20:51Dan Schreiber?

  Right.

• 20:53Speaker 04

  Okay. So the private secretary to the Minister of Works, Brian Saunders, when they were talking about this, said, well, we're going to have to give all of our drivers four pennies that they keep, just in case this ever happens.

• 21:04Dan Schreiber?

  Yep.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  To which the person who was organising it all, who was called Bligh, said, that shouldn't be a problem, because what we can do is dial 100 and reverse the charges to Whitehall.

• 21:15Dan Schreiber?

  Right.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  And it doesn't take any extra time, and we know that that works. So the plan was, if the Soviets were going to attack during Macmillan's prime ministership, that the driver would go to an AA phone box, they would reverse the charges, speak to someone at Whitehall, and then say yes or no to send the missile.

• 21:34Dan Schreiber?

  Firearm nukes back. Right. Imagine England gets absolutely decimated because of one old lady who's in front on the phone already, refusing to hang up. You've got problems? I've got a flat tyre. I'm going to get to Bolton by six.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Where's she from?

• 21:49Dan Schreiber?

  Where is she from?

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Everywhere.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Um, on missiles, we've made a lot of missile cookups in our defence history.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  There was, there's that great book, uh, I've said we to mean America.

• 22:05Dan Schreiber?

  Wow.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  I know, it's weird, isn't it?

• 22:07Dan Schreiber?

  Ah, who's a fuck?

• 22:08Speaker 03

  We are still just a shill. Um, so one good one was actually 2006, where the US was meant to be shipping some helicopter batteries to Taiwan. Taiwan, quite a contentious place, I would say, politically. It accidentally shipped four nuclear fuses. So these are the bits that detonate nuclear bombs on missiles.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  It's the one you set on fire and then run in the other day, actually, as quickly as you can.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  You've got to run so far.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  By the Acme Corporation.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  But weirdly, even though they do quarterly inventories of all their equipment, they didn't notice for 18 months. So these are literally the, and it's very complicated, uh, chemical, like ignition equipment, the thing that ignites the nuclear bomb that you've got on board your missile. Um, they didn't notice at all until Taiwan eventually called, presumably because they still didn't have the helicopter batteries and said, by the way, when you meant to pack up the helicopter batteries, you sent us this instead. Um, but I did learn, looking at this, how do you spell fuse?

• 23:07Dan Schreiber?

  F U.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  F U S E. In America with a Z, maybe?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Well, it is with a Z, but not necessarily in America. The difference is, they're the same thing. So a fuse that you lie, you know, in your garage when you're trying to do a little explosion. So you like the end of a rope and then it blows up a little petrol filled cup at the other end.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Or a firework.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Or something more socially acceptable, yeah.

• 23:30Dan Schreiber?

  Tell us more about.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:31Dan Schreiber?

  So you're petrol in a cup? Are you punishing the cup? Like, what's, what's the deal?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Sometimes our parents wouldn't let us buy fireworks. We all.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  We've got perfectly good cups of petrol at home.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay. So we get what that is, a fuse. Um, and that is spelt F U S E. A nuclear fuse is the same thing. It's the bit that you kind of light, the bit that ignites a nuclear bomb, but it's spelt F U Z E. And the difference is just the stuff that we use, like commercially as people, normal people, is S E. And the stuff for the military is Z E. And I'm like, what the hell has this happened? And I found in my recreational reading time, the minutes of a hearing in Congress on the transportation of explosives in 1920.

• 24:24Dan Schreiber?

  And I'm sorry, but you don't get this on off menu.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  I just had to put down the 1890 Indian census.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Well, it was, it was a scintillating debate, actually.

• 24:35Dan Schreiber?

  Was it?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Um, and it was about how we distinguish between military fuses and recreational fuses. And they said, well, if we spell one with a Z, uh, because this one's a more dangerous one, and people need to know that that's the one we're talking about.

• 24:47Dan Schreiber?

  And 1920, you said that was?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  1920 was this debate, yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  Z is like, considered to be inherently dangerous.

• 24:54Dan Schreiber?

  Yes.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  I guess you can imagine that, can't you?

• 24:57Dan Schreiber?

  It's more.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Like if Skunk was Skunk with a Z, you would think he was much more hardcore. Zgunk.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Zgunk, yes.

• 25:04Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, I think it is just a more alien letter because it's much less used in our language, isn't it? Probably there are other languages which use Z all the time where it's common as anything.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:11Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah. A friendly letter.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Like Russian, for instance.

• 25:14Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Is it big in Poland as well?

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Is Z big in Poland? Is Z big here, guys? I've got loads of Zs to use.

• 25:23Dan Schreiber?

  Tzajinski.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Tzajinski.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  Indeed, there's one in that. Yeah.

• 25:26Dan Schreiber?

  Big in China.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Big in China.

• 25:27Dan Schreiber?

  These Zs all my childhood.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:28Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:30Dan Schreiber?

  I've got one last thing. This is just, uh, going back to musicians who've had an influence on the military. Potentially, it was a musician who helped Saddam Hussein be tracked down, according to this person, uh, which is Mark Hoppus of the band Blink 182. Now.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  You mean Blink 182?

• 25:48Dan Schreiber?

  Don't.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Podcast at Q I dot com.

• 25:51Dan Schreiber?

  Box has already suffered enough. I'm happy to say Blink 182.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  How many emails do you think you've had about it?

• 25:59Speaker 04

  Uh, more than a dozen.

• 26:01Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, you can see where it was.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Somewhere between 1 and 82.

• 26:09Dan Schreiber?

  So check this out. Uh, Mark Hoppus was on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, chatting, as you do, to a Navy Admiral. And he was talking about the problem of Saddam Hussein being hidden. Now, at the time, Saddam was releasing a lot of videos. So this is after the invasion. Yeah, this is, this is while he's hiding and while they're trying to find him. So Mark Hoppus says, what you should do is sort of fly a whole load of drones, because drone technology was around then, they were using drones, in a pattern, a carpeted pattern, it was called, all across the area where they think he might be. And all of them need to be emitting an exact time signature, right? So it's just, it's just playing out. Then if you did that, and you got one of the videos that Saddam had, you can listen to the video,

• 26:53Dan Schreiber?

  and you can pull out the data that would have recorded that time data on there. And then you can triangulate and you can find him. And he said it was only a few months later that Saddam was located and captured in Iraq.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  And did they catch him with that?

• 27:07Dan Schreiber?

  We don't know, but he says, you're welcome, everyone, in his autobiography.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  He suggested it. A few months later, they catch the guy and he says. Because often they do find them, like with all the small things, don't they? It's just, you know.

• 27:20Dan Schreiber?

  It's a Blink 182 reference there.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  Oh, is it?

• 27:24Dan Schreiber?

  Yes.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  That was brilliant.

• 27:25Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Went over my head.

• 27:31Dan Schreiber?

  Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  Okay, my fact this week is that zebras sometimes have spots instead of stripes.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:41Dan Schreiber?

  Why?

• 27:41Speaker 04

  So this is the most rock and roll of all the animals, because it has a Z in the name.

• 27:47Dan Schreiber?

  And of course, the white stripes.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 27:50Dan Schreiber?

  Very good.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Good spot. And this is basically me just learning that all children's books have lied to us.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Because they don't claim to be showing us all zebras. They just happen to show us the stripy ones.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Like, I don't know about you, but in my house, I have a lot of books with zebras in them.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  And no spotty ones to be there.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  No single one.

• 28:08Dan Schreiber?

  The alphabet books, it's, it's the go to Z, isn't it?

• 28:11Speaker 04

  It is.

• 28:12Dan Schreiber?

  But James, you could write the book on the spotty zebra.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  Oh, there is one already. Yeah. Um, so basically, they found a spotty zebra, and it's not the first one they've ever found, but it was in 2019, and a photographer called Frank Liu was looking for rhinos. He saw this zebra, photographed it, and it went kind of viral on the internet. But as a result, there has been a children's book called Zeke, The Polka Dotted Zebra, uh, which talks about uniqueness and self-acceptance, like all children's books do these days.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  Tell me I'm wrong.

• 28:46Dan Schreiber?

  No argument here.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  But yeah, um, so it went a little bit viral, but then it's a really beautiful looking zebra, but it's got pseudomelanism type of genetic mutation where the stripes, basically, they just get more and more black coloured, until the stripes almost disappear and just turn into spots.

• 29:04Dan Schreiber?

  And in this book, Zeke, did you say Zeke the?

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Zeke, the polka dotted zebra, or zebra.

• 29:10Dan Schreiber?

  Does it include a bit where Zeke, the polka dotted zebra, is, uh, caught and eaten by a lion? Because I think this was in the link you sent around, James. Several foals, zebra foals, have been spotted with this pattern of spots, but there is only one photo where the zebra in question even made it to teenager status, basically.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Really?

• 29:28Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, they're just very easy to spot and therefore to eat.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Oh, is that what it is?

• 29:31Dan Schreiber?

  It is not a good survival strategy. They're terrifically easy for lions to, to catch.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Because I would, I mean, I know everyone always says all the stripes are a bit good for camouflage, but really, we don't know that. And I can't imagine it would make that much of a difference. Do we think they're less fit in other ways, maybe?

• 29:45Speaker 04

  No, I don't think so.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 29:47Speaker 04

  But also, if my daughter ate zebras for her dinner every day, and then you gave her one that was spotty instead of stripy, not in a million years is she going to eat that.

• 29:55Dan Schreiber?

  Exactly.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  She's like, ooh, it looks spotty, this one.

• 29:57Dan Schreiber?

  You'd think there'd be an advantage, that it looks spoiled. But it's weird, because normally baby animals are spotted. So baby deer, for example, they've got those lovely little white spots on their back, and that can keep babies hidden from predators, because it kind of mimics the effect of dappled sunlight and, you know, breaks the animal up and all of this. And so it's weird, because you would think that, well, why wouldn't that be true for zebras as well?

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:17Dan Schreiber?

  I don't know. I think they, they form their stripes inside while they're still being cooked by the mum. They literally, it's what gives a, a unique kind of fingerprint element to it, is that the folds, as they're coming and being developed, are made stripy on the inside. They don't develop it once they're outside.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Oh, no, they, yeah.

• 30:33Dan Schreiber?

  They come out striped.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:35Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Oh, I didn't think they did.

• 30:38Dan Schreiber?

  You didn't think they'd just come out bold and sort of build the stripes up? It's like earning scout badges. You get one stripe.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  It's like tree rings.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  You've earned your stripes.

• 30:47Dan Schreiber?

  Tree rings, yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  There is this thing about stripes and spots and all actual patterns on animals, which is that they were explained by Alan Turing. So Alan Turing, most famous probably for solving the Enigma machine, like big World War II codebreaker, real hero, very sadly killed himself in the mid 1950s. But before he did that, he wrote a paper called "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis." It was the last paper he wrote, and it explained why animals have certain patterns. Before that, everyone thought that if you get a zebra or a cheetah or like nice coloured fish or whatever, it's got a blueprint of its pattern from when you're an embryo. But he showed that it's way simpler than that.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  And it's basically, you get two chemicals, one called an activator and one called an inhibitor, and the activator will make a pigment, and it goes around making this pigment. But it also makes these things called inhibitors, which stop the activator working. And it's this constant wrestling between the activator and the inhibitor on your skin. And that means that the bits where the inhibitor's won are going to be like the white bits, and the bits where the activator's won are going to be the black spots or whatever. And it's more complicated than that because it's slightly hardcore maths. But it suddenly explains everything in nature, like the ridges behind your teeth, apparently, are Turing patterns.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  Really?

• 32:07Speaker 04

  I think that's a crisp.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Has been there for years.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  Isn't it weird how the ridges behind your teeth taste like salt of vinegar?

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Explain that, Turing.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Another little children's book thing.

• 32:21Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Have any of you ever read the...? This is actually just from my own personal thing that I was looking at because I really love the book. I really love the book Greedy Zebra.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  1920s.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  After I'd finished on the minutes of the Congress hearing in the 1920s.

• 32:34Speaker 05

  There's a children's book in this. Is it a fuse? No, it's a fuse.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Greedy Zebra is a great book. It's by Mwenye Hadithi. And I don't know if you guys have read it. It's just "How the Zebra Got Its Stripes."

• 32:48Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  And so I decided to look into that because this is adjacent.

• 32:51Speaker 04

  Does it explore themes of uniqueness and self-acceptance?

• 32:55Speaker 03

  It actually does not because fortunately it was written in 1984. And so it explores the fact that the zebra is so greedy and lazy that it doesn't go to the cave in time to pick up its skin. And when it gets there, it's only got a crap bit of black rag, and it's so fat because it's eaten too much that it bursts out of it, and that's how it gets its stripes. And that's what books should be like.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  That's very Just So Stories.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Yes, it is. And these are great, but these are all based on African mythology. And they're by this guy called Mwenye Hadithi, who I did find out when I researched him, his name is actually Bruce Hobson, but he did grow up in Nairobi.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  How did he get his name? Did he go to a cave and all they had was these letters that he didn't know what to do with?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Bruce!

• 33:33Speaker 05

  You've only got Bruce Hobson left. Sorry about that.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  He did, to be fair to him. He grew up in Nairobi by a river, and he picked up all these stories of Kenyan folklore. And so I've only raised this because I read his obituary on his little publisher's page. And he died in 2022 in the middle of a game of pickleball, which he was winning at the time.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Ah, oh dear.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  A game that he loved. It was a very positive write-up of his death.

• 33:57Dan Schreiber?

  Good detail that he was winning at the time, just a nice little win at the end.

• 34:01Speaker 05

  It feels like those were his last words.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Tell them I was winning.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  Lucky escape, guys.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Do you know what a zonki is?

• 34:13Dan Schreiber?

  It's a zebra donkey.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 34:16Dan Schreiber?

  Presumably.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Very good. Do you know where you find them? You only find them in one place in the world.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  In a very lax zoo.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, two places in the world. They are native to Mexico. They are actually donkeys that are painted with zebra stripes. But they have been now. Don't sound disappointed though, because they've been around for 100 years now. In the 1930s, when tourists really wanted to take pictures of themselves with burrow carts, like traditionally, you know, burrows are Mexican donkeys with these donkey carts because they thought that's so Mexican. The Mexicans would paint big Mexican scenery behind them, and then they'd put the burrow cart there with the donkey. And then they started taking photos. And they realised, in the 1930s, when everyone's photos are black and white, this guy said, "We realised that because our little burrito, our little burrow, was white, she didn't show up in the pictures."

• 35:09Speaker 03

  So he and his brother bought some dye and painted them with zebra stripes, and it caught on. And to this day, in Tijuana, you've got hundreds of zebra donkeys.

• 35:19Dan Schreiber?

  They might have less flies. They don't know for certain in science whether or not that is a thing that works necessarily for donkeys, but they do constantly keep painting different animals like cows and so on and finding that roughly 50% less bites happen with them, with mozzies and flies and so on.

• 35:32Speaker 05

  I'm convinced by that.

• 35:33Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  The photos of the cows that are painted like zebras are pretty funny. I will say that. Can I derail the conversation totally for a moment?

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, please.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  I was on a website called Stripes.

• 35:43Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Because I was researching stripes.

• 35:46Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  But it turns out Stripes is just a US military website.

• 35:49Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 35:52Speaker 05

  Did you know that the US Army has recently recruited a corpse-finding otter?

• 35:57Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:58Dan Schreiber?

  Don't just say okay. Like, that's the most normal thing you've ever heard. Well, I mean, it sounds like you can train lots of animals to sniff out stuff like dogs and so on. Maybe you can do it with otters and so that...

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Well, you can.

• 36:08Dan Schreiber?

  Or you hire an otter to do that.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just think a corpse-finding otter would be a good character, maybe for a children's book.

• 36:13Dan Schreiber?

  Yes.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  About uniqueness and self-acceptance.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  He wasn't invited to the parties because he always had a corpse under each arm.

• 36:24Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  And what corpse is this on Battlefield Corpses, come and take them out and take them back?

• 36:29Speaker 05

  I think he's... So he's an Asian river otter called Splash, who's just absolutely expert wizzo at finding dead people. Described in the article as "the two-year-old fuzzy investigator."

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Finding dead people in civilian areas, just stumping upon...

• 36:42Speaker 05

  Well, it's when people go missing. And so in the last year with his handler, Splash has been deployed on 33 searches for bodies and found 11.

• 36:51Dan Schreiber?

  Wow.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Wow!

• 36:51Speaker 05

  That's an extremely good hit rate.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  So I just find that extraordinary. And the US lieutenant, who was accompanying the exercise, said, "We have previously incorporated detection canines," boring, "and even vultures into our scenarios."

• 37:07Dan Schreiber?

  Okay.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  More fitting of vulture. Come on.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  It feels like that is true. Like, if you get in trouble in the water, you don't get a load of otters circling you waiting for you to die.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  That's how adorable that is.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  That's often the last thing you see, but it means you die with a smile on your face.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  I was just about to beat you as well!

• 37:28Dan Schreiber?

  Just got one last thing on spots, which is, I quite like how a lot of animals in nature develop a spot on the backside of them that act as eyes. Because it turns out a lot of death in the natural world is by eating the face of the creature. Yeah, sorry.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  Can we just unpack that a tad?

• 37:46Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, sure, yeah. We're talking spots here, so it is a spot that acts as a pseudo eye, a fake eye, to predators that are coming towards them. So you get things like butterfly fish, or you get, in fact, butterflies that will have them on the tips of their wings. And the idea is that it makes it look like the animal is actually in reverse. And so if a predator comes, it bites them, but it's biting a bit that is almost livable with if you lose a chunk of it. So for a butterfly, they can lose a bit of their wing and make their way away. They can't lose their face and survive, right? So there are...

• 38:20Speaker 04

  I still think if you bite a big chunk off a butterfly's wing, it's just going to flap in circles, isn't it, and come straight back at you?

• 38:27Dan Schreiber?

  Oh, yeah, that's a terrible escape method.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  But we talked about the experiment where they painted eyes on cows' bottoms to deter... That actually put lions off attacking them.

• 38:37Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  Because they didn't want to approach an animal that was staring at them.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  I think surely, isn't that the idea more that you think they can see you so you don't attack?

• 38:44Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  I think if you take a bit of a butterfly's wing off, it is fucked.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  I think it is.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  Unless it's in my children's book, the fucked butterfly.

• 38:57Speaker 05

  Coming this autumn, a sequel to the beloved Very Hungry Caterpillar.

• 39:10Dan Schreiber?

  Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

• 39:14Speaker 05

  My fact is, weighted blankets were originally designed for cows.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Brilliant fact.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  And this is sort of tying the whole show together because we've done zebras and we've done skunks.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. What's the obvious next then? What? Blankets and cows.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Blankets and cows. But it's all been black and white things, hasn't it? And if we're talking about Frisian cows, they are black and white.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Oh, I see. Black and white.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  Wait a minute, and haven't loads of crisp packets been made black and white in Japan this year?

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yes, because of the shortages of oil, which they use in the colouring due to the Hormuz closing.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 39:50Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Hormuz, and what noise the cows make. They're going back to cows! What a boomerang that was!

• 40:00Speaker 05

  So this fact came from a piece about weighted blankets. I read it in The Economist. And for anyone who doesn't know, they're basically just heavy duvets full of, I read, glass beads, but I think they can be plastic as well. Just unbelievably heavy blankets and duvets.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  I haven't realised how heavy they are.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  They're really heavy.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Like, four times as heavy as my duvet, I realise.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And they were created, or rather inspired, by a bit of work by an American academic called Temple Grandin. She's quite famous, actually. She noticed that the cows on her aunt's ranch relaxed when they were squeezed in tight metal traps. Now, that doesn't sound brilliant, but basically pressure on the sides of the cow meant that it calmed down and just chilled out a little bit. And she, she's famously autistic, and she's been advocating for people with autism for a lot of her career. She built her own squeeze machine, which was a wooden chute, and found that it really calmed her down. And, you know, she sometimes felt that she wanted deep pressure stimulation, but not always from a person.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  You know, sometimes it's just nice to be squeezed without actually having to have a hug. And this was the original underpinning work that eventually, some years later, turned into the weighted blanket, which is now a big industry and, you know, has made a lot of the business.

• 41:16Dan Schreiber?

  What year is this that we're talking?

• 41:17Speaker 05

  I think this was in about... Oh, gosh, you're testing me now. I think it was in the 60s, 50s or 60s.

• 41:21Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, right.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Late 50s, yeah.

• 41:22Dan Schreiber?

  Because the first sort of commercial weighted blanket happened in 1997, as far as I can see.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  It was a long gestation period.

• 41:29Dan Schreiber?

  You will know, but there's maybe just two ideas happening at different times, but...

• 41:32Speaker 04

  It was a big weight.

• 41:34Dan Schreiber?

  So what it was is that there was...

• 41:38Speaker 05

  It was because it's a long time, the weight.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Oh, my god, I've just got it!

• 41:41Dan Schreiber?

  And then it's also heavy.

• 41:45Dan Schreiber?

  Don't worry, James got your back. So 1997, there was this family where one of the, the daughter of this family put a beanie baby on the shoulder of the mum and she was like, oh wow, that just feels really comforting and nice. And she thought, imagine if that was all over my body. And so she created a blanket that was called the Beanie Blanket. And this was the original weighted blanket. Well, it wasn't called that for long because Beanie Babies got in touch and sued or threatened to sue them if they didn't change. They, they did change and they were the main people that were selling these weighted blankets. And if you can picture what's inside a beanie baby, when we talk those beads, it's the kind of same thing.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Beads. So are they related to Temple Grandin? Or did they both come up with the idea independently?

• 42:31Speaker 05

  I think it was, she had been working on this idea and, and the idea of the squeeze machine and all this. And then I think other people took it forward and monetized it as it were.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  And Grandin certainly wasn't trying to target the people, maybe that this beanie lady is targeting. Hers were specifically for autistic people, weren't they? Whereas they seem to have blossomed out to become for the general public if they're feeling a bit.

• 42:52Dan Schreiber?

  Well, everyone, yeah, yeah. It's, it's an anti-anxiety blanket is how it was originally marketed.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  It's haunting to think how many beanie babies have had to be slaughtered for a reason to wait. Blanket, that's really.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  There are now weighted pillows as well.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  What?

• 43:08Speaker 05

  It's for cuddling.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Hug, hug onto this.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Oh, I see. But why do you want it to be heavy?

• 43:14Speaker 04

  I think you want it to have the weight of a human, do you?

• 43:16Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Oh, dear me.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, what?

• 43:20Speaker 03

  No, that's nice. It's lovely. Sorry. That's not sad at all. It's lovely.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  You gotta, you gotta hug on something.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Oh, and if you're sleeping in the car again, then it's nice to have a bit of company.

• 43:31Dan Schreiber?

  Can you shape it? Cause presumably it's all the beads inside.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  My dad's asking all the right questions.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Trying to turn it into a human, you know, Pamela Anderson.

• 43:38Dan Schreiber?

  Well, maybe some beanie, beanie boobs would be a nice cuddle.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  Beanie boobies.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  You were sued, weren't you?

• 43:49Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  The dragons are not just out. They've all left the building.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  All the dragons quit the show Dragons Dead today. I can't hear that. That is so horrible.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Everyone in the patent office has left.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  Guys, beanie boobies is what we'll be remembered for.

• 44:04Dan Schreiber?

  Did you know the Beanie Booby guys used to make a podcast?

• 44:09Dan Schreiber?

  Crazy.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  Oh, as well as the weighted pillows. Sorry. I'll just say one other thing. There's, have you seen the sleep pod?

• 44:18Speaker 05

  The sleep pod is, as far as I can tell, a straitjacket for grownups.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 44:24Speaker 05

  Not the straitjacket.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  You all kids receive some harsh discipline, don't they?

• 44:30Speaker 05

  A swaddle for grownups is what I mean.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  And it's, it looks absolutely mad as it, cause you have to really wriggle into this thing. And once you're inside, you can't really move your arms as far as I can tell. So I have no idea how people get out of them ever.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  But they just swaddle you and they stop you from compulsively tossing in the night.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Well, you can't move your arms.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  But these sleep pods, they, they do say if you need to get up for a wee in the night.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  Tough shit.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Tough.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  Go in the pod, yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  He's in the pod.

• 45:05Dan Schreiber?

  And I'm sorry, he's in the pod. We are not even just creating an idea. We are creating an entire wellness franchise.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  From the people who brought you beanie boobies.

• 45:18Speaker 05

  Have you ever wanted to piss the bed as a grownup? We introduce peace in a pod.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Why should the kids get all the fun?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  I'm out. Um, you're lying under heavy things. That reminds me of something I learned in the research for this, which is about the origin of blankets, or duvets in fact. So Britain didn't get duvets for a really long time. We didn't get them until the 1960s. That's why, you know, our grandmas slept under, and grandpas slept under like loads of blankets and sheets and quilts.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  I'm sure some people listening to this today are also sleeping under blankets and sheets.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And hotels still have them, which I never understand. But anyway.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Easier to wash. You just strip them off.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Of course, he works in a hotel. Don't bring up hotels around James.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  They're all duvet covers as well. You can strip off everything from a bed, can't you?

• 46:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yes. You can, but then if every time you're making a bed, you have to put the duvet into the cover in a hotel, you're going to have to employ about five more people.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  Pee in the arse. Very disingenuously, actually, they were marketed as the 10 second bed when Habitat finally introduced proper duvets in 1964. I've never heard of more of a lie, the idea that that's 10 seconds to make your bed. But anyway, I was reading about how duvets, like stuffed blankets existed in Europe, in Germany specifically, for like 400, 300, 400 years before they came to England. And in fact, travellers went to Europe. This diplomat called Paul Riko visited Hamburg and wrote back to his friends saying, they've got this amazing invention. I've sent you a bunch of goose feathers and some instructions on how to turn it into a blanket. You need to do it. And it just didn't catch on. And in fact, people kept travelling to Europe and saying, they've got these weird things.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  And anyway, there was an anecdote I read from 1749. It was in a book called The Grand Tour by an author called Thomas Nugent. He heard about a French person visiting Switzerland and the Swiss family who were welcoming the French going to their house said, okay, here's, here's your bedroom. And he thought that the duvet on the bed was a second mattress and it was supposed to act like a bunk bed for him and his friends. And it was made so that you'd put the duvet on top of you so someone could lie on top. And so he said, would you mind choosing one of my more lightweight companions to sleep above me as we are not accustomed to lie in this manner in France? So that would be a really weighted blanket, actually. That's the early weighted blanket.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Someone we've mentioned earlier in this podcast, or something, someone or something.

• 47:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  Surprisingly uses blankets.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  I'm gonna say splash the corpse detecting otter.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  Is the correct answer.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Straight in there.

• 47:59Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Amazing. Sea otters, mothers, sea otter mothers wrap their babies in seaweed blankets.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  That's horrible.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  And the reason is that a baby otter can't swim until it's four months old, but it's living in the water.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  It's absolutely mad. So they have to basically live on their mother's chest the whole time. But when the mother's away foraging, what do you do? Well, you tie it up, put it in a seaweed blanket.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Oh, so it's like putting a dog on a lead? Cause you can't.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  More like a nice blanket.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  Or a kind of straitjacket, I would say. That's amazing.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Basically starts her from floating away and it can sleep in place until she comes back.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  That's really nice. That's incredible.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, isn't it cool?

• 48:42Speaker 03

  I discovered something about Manchester. Cause I was looking into Manchester, cause my favourite thing which I learned being married to an Australian is what they call bedding. What they call blankets.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 05

  Don't look at me.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  They call it Manchester.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  They call it Manchester. Should we buy some new Manchester?

• 48:59Speaker 05

  I don't call it that.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And I have read online, it's like mostly older generations, but I think my husband would take against that as a 42 year old.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  Dan doesn't need any, Dan doesn't need any bedding because he has so much Manchester.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  There we go.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  You've got some kind of a disease.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  It's called Fitzl sucks and it's just an obsession with making puns.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  It is that, isn't it?

• 49:20Speaker 05

  It is. It's a literal.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Fitzl sucks.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Fitzl sucked.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Fitzl sucked.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  Is that real?

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. If you have a stroke, like some people have had a stroke and they can't stop making puns.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Sometimes I wonder, what's your excuse?

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Yes, it's called Manchester.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Anyway, it's called Manchester. So sorry, I did. So I was looking into Manchester and.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Cause they did a load of weaving, right? That was a big cloth place.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  They were the home of cloth and weaving and stuff like that. The cottonopolis was what Manchester was called. And then in the mid 19th century, there was the Lancashire cotton famine and it was caused by the American Civil War. So 75% of the cotton that was grown in the south went to Lancashire, to the Lancashire cotton factories.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  Right. In the South of America.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  In the South of America. And then there's a civil war and Lincoln blockaded all the ports that exported cotton. Cause obviously he wanted to shut down the south.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  This flipping guy Lincoln.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  This, well, I know what you're saying.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  The more I hear about him, the less I like him.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  I'm so glad you've taken that side because this hell needs an enemy.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  How did the civil war end? So he blockades it. So none of the cotton gets through to Manchester.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we've got all these mills in Lancashire, but we've got nothing to spin.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  And then there's something called the Lancashire cotton famine. Everyone's starving. They're doing really badly. And there's a big campaign, the Manchester Guardian writes this article saying, look, the mill workers need to turn on this. We need to get the government to go and smash the blockade. Like the navy needs to go and sort out this blockade. So Manchester Guardian writes a letter saying, look, the mill workers are going to turn against this. Mill owners are like, yeah, the mill workers, you've got to get on side here. All importers are saying, this is really bad. You're all starving.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  It's what the British army needs to intervene in the American Civil War.

• 51:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. Either intervene and smash the blockade or the British need to talk to Lincoln and say, look, you rely on us in various ways. You need to stop this blockade.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  Certainly wouldn't be the first time that the British ever got involved in another country's war for their own self-interests.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Okay, look, this is actually one to show Britain in a good light. So the mill workers got together of their own accord and they met in a factory and they drafted a resolution about this under all this pressure. And the resolution was to affirm their support for Lincoln. And they wrote that they recognise the common brotherhood of mankind and the sacred and inalienable right of every human being to personal freedom and equal protection. And they said, we do not want the cotton from the south if it's under these conditions, grown by slavery. Yeah. Isn't that unbelievable? They're starving, starving at the time. And Lincoln sent them a letter in 1863 praising their selfless act of sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  It's amazing. I had no idea.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  That's terrific.

• 52:00Speaker 03

  And if Andy Burnham gets wind of this, god, he's gonna make a big song and dance about it, isn't he?

• 52:11Dan Schreiber?

  Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to get in contact with any of us, we're all online. I'm on @Shriverland on Instagram. James?

• 52:20Speaker 04

  My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin.

• 52:23Dan Schreiber?

  Andy?

• 52:23Speaker 05

  Mine is at AndrewHunterM.

• 52:24Dan Schreiber?

  Yeah, and we're also on there as a group. Anna, where do they go?

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Instagram at nosuchthing, or you can email [email protected].

• 52:31Dan Schreiber?

  Yep, [email protected], the most important of email addresses in the world because if you send either the best facts that you've ever found there, or you have something to say about things that we've said, Andy will go through the inbox and he will cherry pick the best of them for two different reasons. One is we have a bonus show on Monday, Little Fish. We bring all your best facts there and we read them out. We love getting them, so continue to send them in, please. Or Andy will take the other batch to a secret show that we have as part of a club that we call Club Fish. That show is called Drop Us A Line. We like to read out your experiences, extra details, quibbles, whatever you have, send it that way. And if you want to be part of Club Fish, by the way, patreon.com/clubfish

• 53:14Dan Schreiber?

  is the place to join. So many fun things there. Excel versions of the episodes that we make, so the episode right now, you'll get like an extra 10, 20 minutes, something like that, depending.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  And having just done that episode, I think there's going to be some pretty spicy stuff at that.

• 53:30Dan Schreiber?

  So yeah, so Too Hot to Broadcast, head there for that, or just come here next week because we're going to be back with another episode of Fish. We'll see you then. Thank you as ever to our producers, Leung Lee, to Ethan Ruparalia, and as well the other Fishbuster members. We'll see you again next week. Goodbye.

• 54:00Speaker 06

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  in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678. Monday Night brings one more big matchup to settle into. And when every play matters, the last thing you want to do is step away to figure out dinner. That's where DiGiorno comes in. Get a DiGiorno pizza ready before kickoff, then enjoy restaurant-quality taste fresh from your own oven while you stay locked into every play. Stock up on DiGiorno over the weekend, so when Monday night rolls around, the only thing you sweat is the game. Shop now at the link in the episode description. It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno.