No Such Thing As The Otters Circling

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Toshinsky and Andrew Hunter Murray, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Anna. My fact this week is that cheese and onion crisps contain twice as much salt as salt and vinegar crisps. Oh! No such thing as a fish, blowing things wide open. No, this is the heavy hitter. Yeah, this is. And it's going to get pretty serious here. Cut to Anna by noon on the jar of walkers. Why do you have to say about this, guys? Nailing her 95 pieces to the door. Leases? Oh, I've been nailing the wrong things to the door. That was a podcast goes as quickly from Chris to Martin Luther and then Poe. I'm sorry. I was sorry. That's our guarantee. It's an amazing journey. So do salt and vinegar crisps contain twice as much cheese and onion as cheese and onion crisps as well? Is it not? They've just mislabeled them for years. This is if we're allowed to say brands, this is actually specifically walkers crisps. Each flavor 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? Did you do the other flavors? I went to Reddy Salted which is also higher than salt and vinegar and in fact it's higher salt than both at 1.3 grams. You would expect that because their main selling point is the salt. Yeah. I know but they don't taste that. I feel like salt and vinegar tastes more salty but I think it may be I'm being tricked by the vinegar. That's the vinegar. Maybe you can't put too much salt in because the vinegar would then taste the vinegar maybe. Yeah. And I've got no explanation for this but I did wonder about other flavors so I looked up KP salted peanuts and they contain less salt than dry roasted peanuts. What? It's happening. Wow. Tell us more about these web pages for each packet. Yeah. So they're color coded the same way as the crisp packet. What color is the cheese and onion page? It's a great question James because it's a big concession. It's a big concession. Yeah. The cheese and onion is the blue packet hasn't it? Yeah. In Walker's World. Well it is in Walker's World that's it. But Walker's didn't invent cheese and onion crisps golden wonder did and they put them in a green pack. Really? It's a people think that really crisps that a cheese and onion should be in a green pack. Right. And I think isn't that loads we will misremember and think that cheese and onion used to be green and they never did. They do. Miriam Holland who is a spokeswoman for Tato which now owns golden wonder as she said the packets of core should be green because that's the color of the shoots of onions. Oh yeah. And there's so much onion in those packets. Sometimes I don't know about you I open the pack and I have to clear our onions for a few minutes just before I get into the Chris. I can't be the color of salt. 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 flavors that were being invented but they also used to have mis 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 ex-rain nurse from Cincinnati, Elaine Kuntz. And she made the front cover holding potato crisps and was she using the crisps to cover her genitals or her name? She was completely naked the whole time and I was so upset. Yeah but there's a lot of them and went on for many many years. She was 1956 for some reason in 1952 Miss Potato Chip went to a chipmunk but the publication looks amazing it's sadly no longer going. Oh Andy was just about to subscribe. Chris Flavours there is a whole line of crisps which only used to be available in American prisons. Okay. They were called the whole Shabang and it was only if you were locked up in an American prison that you could get hold of them. And the flavor sounds amazing. It was a composite flavor of barbeque and salt and vinegar and a load of other things just all mixed up. Why? Why? Why were they just targeting prisoners? I think they were targeting. I think there are shops in prison 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, yeah, just to taste the whole Shabang again. Did they make like themed flavors like walkers do sometimes like a salt and vinegar? Cool. Come on. Oh dear, you've unleashed like podcast2i.com. That's the question 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. Yeah. I read an amazing article about crisp flavors 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's set out on a quest to answer something that's plagued her for years. Why can you get lasagna flavor lays crisps in Thailand but not Italy? Okay. And she went deep. I mean, I can pretty much answer that. Go on. Well, and Italian would just go what the fuck is this? Yes. So I'll show you about 19. It's so close to do the accent there and then just pull that out of it. The last. I heard it in the edge of your mind. Yes, that is the answer. Exactly. At the end of third, like 14,000 words, but the rest is fascinating. She interviews some people who work in seasoning house. The people who make flavors for not just lays like all crisp companies. Oh. They wouldn't let her actually print the company's proper name. They wouldn't let us know what it's hard to explain the secrecy. I think it's basically because they're providing all the crisp flavors for all the crisp companies. But the different companies don't really want to acknowledge that they're all getting their flavors from the same place. Sure. And they weren't she interviewed two people who weren't there. They weren't allowed to give their real names. We called them Peggy and Ruben, but she was like these, of course, aren't their real names. And they revealed some quite cool stuff. Things like spicy flavors, 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. Switzerland. Not as surprising as that to be fair. Isn't it America? It's Mexico. Mexico. Yes. Yes. Mexico, you are geographically close. Yeah. 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. Oh, how can I see the trailer for this? I sent it to you because of your janitor obsession. Dorito janitor. It's like I've seen a trailer for this. I've sent it to you. Dorito janitor, sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers, the janitors of the sea. The guy from Goodwill Hudson, Matt Damon, we've got our only connect question right there. And while we're just on the slight pause, prawn cocktail. Very good. Yeah. I'm sending me to prawn cocktail. Everyone in here has a penis that looks like a shrimp. That's my, they were arrested. I don't know how well they'd sell in the jail satchel. There's so many bags of prawn cocktail left. It's sour cream and onion, like cream or Chinese sour cream and onion, yeah, like cream, sour cream and onion. Yes, yes. Yeah, good. So we all love prawn cocktail, sour cream and onion gets diddly squashed. There's no justice on this show. Um, 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 Kaliah ate 100 different flavors of crisps for the guardian and ranked them all. Oh, my God. This is what has become number 100, Grayson Winbury. I've had those smelling as meaty as a butchers, but tasting sweet, this is truly the worst of all worlds. I genuinely have had those. There was a posh farm shop. I went to not long ago. I had Grayson, come on, some other game bird here. Right. 98 blue heat leaves a luminescent blue powder on your fingers. Lots of urinal cakes and tastes of synthetic lime and chili. Wow. Six out of ten. Hot kick ketchup. Taste like the stale rubbery nubbin of ketchup you find crusted on the rim of the bottle. Oh, it's a brilliant article. That's amazing. Anyway, the winners were falafel, extra virgin olive oil and french fries sauce or made by different companies. My one name, the company. Falafel. Yeah. Never tried that. They did this last year with the Christmas crisps. Oh, yeah. Buck and Clementine, Camembert, Chili and Honey and the worst, they won against zero stars to gingerbread Doritos. Oh. Oh. The viewers said they are the only crisp I have ever wanted to spit out. Wow. Which is damning. Wow. Well, when you cut your mouth on a crisp, you don't want to spit it out. I've never cut my mouth on a crisp. You're kidding. Because I've got a strong mouth. You cut your mouth, right? Like, it's just. Oh, my tongue. No, no, you get it. It's between your teeth and then it just, ugh. I go with trepidation towards the packet of a crisp because it's happening. Oh, I would say it might have happened to be twice in my life. Ah. But just have a lot of empathy. Yeah. You do. I would have felt like you were playing with me on that. I've just teeth and crisps. I've lost the ability. This is just a personal anecdote. You bite open a packet of crisps and a pub. You know how you buy a pack for everyone and you open it with your teeth to lay it out? Yeah, yeah. You 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, that is a thing that is unique to Britain, I think. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Is this our traditional hospitality? Yeah. It's not much of them. It's not like the ancient Greek Xenia where you have to invite a stranger. A stranger into your house and give them all of your food. Yeah. With us, it's just like open a packet of crisps and take the biggest ones and let them rest in the room. Do you remember a few weeks ago? We talked about the Yak meat distribution into that and the strangers share. Yeah. That's their equivalent of opening a packet of crisps for the table. 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 crisps. Do you think that would be proud upon that? Yeah, I think it would. Yeah, yeah. Everyone does leave the last crisps for a little while. They do. And somebody who's hungry will take it. Could I just mention some pretentious salts? Please. 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. Okay. Can't you? I mean, there's a thing called Lehinolayan salt which is the product of unpolluted ancient seas dried up over 200 million years ago and they probably just add ten quid to the price. Yeah, that's amazing. 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. Wow. Okay. Was it? It's just sodium chloride, isn't it? I mean, 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-- But there is a thing of, I mean, the crystal formation, I suppose, might be different. I don't know. I say this as someone who's got, I don't like to boast, I've got a packet of mold and sea salt knocking about in the cupboard, which I've had for ten years because I've never used that one pinch a month. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like that's posh salt, isn't it? It's mold and in Essex, which, yeah. I don't want to get big salt on my back, but I feel like it's all salt. Mostly all salt. I mean, text. To that particular-- The cuckiness. Well, that's because table salt, they have to put loads of anti-caking agents in to make it really sort of granular. Iodine to stop us all getting goiters. Oh, yes. That's insulted, isn't it? Friend of the podcast? Goiters? What do you think? One hand crisps a full. Well, when you're driving, you need to keep one hand on the wheel, and two hands on the wheel. Yeah. What? Sorry. One hand's out the side. Slap the side of the cat onto the sun. One on's over your honey in the fancy. Those balls aren't going to wish themselves. Goal. One out the side. One round the honey. One on the ball. One in the back. It's just to solve the problem of greasy phones, greens. This is coiqueier in Tokyo, I have made one hand crisps. And actually, they come a pre-crushed in the back. Yeah. Because the best bit is the little crush bits at the bottom that you empty into your mouth. Right, so this is what inspired them. They thought that's everyone's favourite bit, or 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 holds a little spout for your mouth. And then you can tip the crisps straight into your mouth like a lad, and you can continue doing all those amusing things that you're doing with your other hand. And also, if you have like one of those mouths that is very easily cut by crisps. Yes. The tiny ones, presumably, won't hurt you so much. Oh, my God. Good. What if you got teeth that can't open the pack, little corner, to get the tiny crisps? Thank God you and I don't have the same mouth. Okay, there's 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 Defense was a guitarist called Skunk. It sounds like a kind of person Trump might put into a great strategic importance. 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 Partson, named 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 defense 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 Defense. Yeah. It is awesome. And it does seem to come from him, big and expert, in music technology and him thinking, look, I understand that, and I understand all the algorithms that go with that, and I can transfer that into military. He is very funny. He says that there was a moment where he was being recruited, and you know, you've got to go into your session in front of the committee where you're being interviewed and all this. And the chair of the committee said to an assistant, is this the guy from Raytheon or the guy from Boeing? And the answer came, no sir, this is the guy from The Dooby Brothers. Right. Well, I wonder how much The Dooby 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. To be fair, The Dooby Brothers sounds stupid, right? Yeah, yeah. It doesn't sound so, if you don't already know it's a band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Dooby. It's a split. It's a split. Yeah. Do they call themselves that after the fact that it's a split, or is the split named after the fact that The Dooby Brothers liked splits? 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." Cool. He's always good to know the answer. And this is a band that didn't quite do as well as The Dooby Brothers is stealing that. They. The live. Yeah. But we don't know why he's called Skunk. He's never revealed the origins of the name Skunk. There is a theory. Oh, yeah. I've read 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. Okay. So I'm presuming number one, but. Yeah. Just going to weigh on you. They were supposed to work. They spray. They do spray. From the anus. Got it. Yep. That counts. So maybe a number two. Maybe a number two. Yeah. 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. 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? Well, you can't have a military career when you're between the ages of five and nine. And this week, Tom Kim, who's a golfer, won some 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. But don't you get really shamed if you're a K-pop boy band star and you dodge your national service? I think most of them wouldn't dodge it in fairness. Can I say one more thing about Mr. Doobie? What's his name again? Baxter. Skunk Baxter. Have you seen his face? Yeah. He's got this very peculiar beard and moustache combo where the moustache has kind of grown down over the beard. He looks like he's just gone. Like a walrus? Bellic walrus, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 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 and animals on the drums. Yeah. Floyd is the guy in the amazing Sergeant Pepper Jacket with the great big moustache. And that does he beard. Right. And I think Skunk Baxter is the inspiration for Floyd. Personal theory. I've read it online as well. Okay. I don't want to take credit for this thing. Right? Missile Defense? Oh, yeah. Well, Britain has Missile Defense. We have for some time. Obviously in the Cold War, we thought that the USSR might send us Missiles. Send us Missiles? How come? 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 have 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. I see. Now, the problem was in order to use those phones, you needed four pennies. Right. 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," to which the person who was organising it all, who was called "Bly" said, "That shouldn't be a problem because what we can do is dial 100 and reverse the charges to Whitehall." 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 Millens Prime Minister ship, that the driver would go to an AA phone box, they would reverse the charges, speak to someone at Whitehall and then say, "Yes, I'll know," to send themselves. Fire on, fire on, you expect. Right. Imagine England gets absolutely decimated because of one old lady who's in front of your phone already refusing to hang up. You know, problems, I got a flap tie. I got to bolt in by six. Where is she from? Everywhere. Oh my god. On missiles, we've made a lot of missile cook-ups in our defence history. There was, there's that great book. I've said "we" to mean America. Wow. I know it's weird, isn't it? We are still just a chill. 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. It's the one you set on fire and then run in the other direction as quickly as you can. You've got to run so far. By the accurately cooperation. But weirdly, even though they do quarterly inventories, if all their equipment, they didn't notice for 18 months. So these are literally the, and it's very complicated chemical like ignition equipment, the thing that ignites the nuclear bomb you've got on board your missile. 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." But I did learn, looking at this, how do you spell fuse? A few F-U-S-E. In America with a Z maybe? Well, it is with a Z, but not necessarily in America. The differences that the same thing. So a fuse that you like, 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 petal field cup or a firework or something more socially acceptable. Tell us more about it. Yeah, see your petal in that truck cup. Are you punishing the cup? I like, what's the deal? Sometimes our parents wouldn't let us buy fireworks. We're not perfectly good cups of petrol at home! Yeah, okay, so we get what that is. A fuse. And that is spell F-U-S-E. A nuclear fuse is the same thing as the bit that you kind of light the bit that ignites a nuclear bomb, but it's spell 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 of the military is Z-E. I don't know why 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. And I'm sorry, but you don't get this on off menu. I just had to put down the 1890 Indian Census class. Well, it was an assimilating debate, actually, and it was about how we distinguish between military fuses and recreational fuses, and they said, well, if we spell one with a Z, because this one's a more dangerous one, and people need to know that that's the one we're talking about. And 1920s, other was? 1920 was this debate? Yeah. It's sad. It's like, consider it to be inherently dangerous. Yes. I guess you can imagine that, can't you? It's more like if Skunk was Skunk with a Z, you would think he was much more hardcore. Skunk. Skunk? Yes. 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 with anything. Yeah. Yeah. I would explain the letter. Like Russian, for instance. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Is it big and potent as well? Yeah. Is that big and potent? Is that big here, guys? I'm going to let it be. It's a jinsky. It's a jinsky. Indeed. There's one in that. Yeah. Big and China. Big and China. New Zs all my childhood. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I got one last thing. This is just 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, which is Mark Hopper's of the band Blink 182. Now, you mean, what eight two? Don't. The podcasted QI.com box is already suffered in that. I'm happy to say Blink 182. How many emails do you think you've had about it? More than a dozen. You can see where I was. Sorry. Some of these we want an 82. So Jaglis out. Mark Hopper's 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 Hopper's says what you should do is sort of fly a whole load of drones because drone technology was around them. 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 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. And did they catch him with that? We don't know, but he says you're welcome everyone. He's his owner biography. A few months later, they catch the guy and he says, 'cause often they do find them like with all the small things, don't they? It's just, you know, you can see. Yeah. It's a link 182 reference there. That was brilliant. Yeah. Went over my head. Yeah. Okay. It is time for fact number three and that is James. Okay. My fact this week is that Zebras sometimes have spots instead of stripes. Why? So this is the most rock and roll of all the animals because it has a zed in the name. And of course the white stripes. Very good. It's very good. It's fun. And this is basically me just learning that all children's books have lied to us. They don't claim to be showing us all Zebras. They're just happened to hear this by people. Like, I don't know about you, but in my house I have a lot of books with Zebras at them. And no spotty ones to know that. For the alphabet books, it's the go to z, doesn't it? It is. But James, you could write the book on the spotty Zebra. Oh, there is one already. Yeah. 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 Lu was looking for rhinos. He saw this Zebra photograph there 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, which talks about uniqueness and self-acceptance like all children's books do these days. Tell me I'm wrong. No argument here. But yeah. So it went a little bit viral, but then it's a really beautiful looking Zebra, but it's got pseudo-melanism type of genetic mutation where the stripes, basically they just get more and more black colored until the stripes almost disappear and just turn into spawns. And in this book Zeke, did you say Zeke, the Zeke, the polka dotted Zebra or Zebra? Does it include a bit where Zeke, the polka dotted Zebra is caught and eaten by a lion because I think this was in the link you sent around James. Several folds, Zebra folds have been spotted with this pattern of spots, but there is only one photo where the Zebra in question even made it a teenager status base. Really? Yeah, they're just very easy to spot and therefore to eat. It's just not a good survival strategy. They're terrifically easy for lions to catch. I mean, I know everyone always says all the stripes are a bit good for camouflage, but really, we don't know that. I can't imagine it. We make that much of a difference. Do we think they're less fit in other ways maybe? No, I think so. Also, if my daughter at 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? Exactly. It looks spotty this one. 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, 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 breaks the animal up a lot of this. So it's weird because you would think that well, why wouldn't that be true for Zebras as well? I don't know. I think they form their stripes inside while they're still being cooked by the mum. They literally, it's what gives 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. Oh no, they come out striped. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't think they didn't think they just come out bold and sort of build the stripes up. It's like earning scout badges. You get one stripe. It's like tree rings. Yeah, just stripes. 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 code breaker real hero Very sadly killed himself in the mid-1950s But before he did that he wrote a paper called the chemical basis of morpho genesis 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 colored 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 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 inhibitors one are gonna be like the white bits And the bits where the activators one are gonna 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 Parenting are cheering patterns. I really that's a crisp Has been there for years We had to have the ridges behind your teeth taste like socks Explain that cheering Another little children's book thing If any of you ever read the this is actually just for my own personal thing that I was looking at because I really love the book I really love the book greedy zebra On the minutes of the congress hearing that I did Wendy's there's a children's book in this It's a few Greenie's ever is a great book. It's by Mowen. Yeah, it had Deethy Don't know if you guys have read it. It's just how those ever got its stripes And so I decided to look into that because this is adjacent does it Explore themes of uniqueness and self-acceptance It actually does not because I was written in 1984 and so it explodes apart 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 facts. It's eaten too much that it bursts out of it And that's how it gets it's stripes and that's what books should be like and very just so stories Yes, it is and these are great, but these are all based on African mythology And they're by this guy called Mowen. Yeah, had Deethy who I did find out when I researched him his name is actually Bruce Hobson But he did grow up in Nairobi How did he get his name? Did he go to a cave and they all know they had these letters that he didn't know what to do with Bruce really got Bruce Hobson left sorry about that He did to be first him he grew up in Nairobi by 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 publishers page And he died in 2022 in the middle of a game of pickleball, which he was winning at the time Ah, oh dear A game that he loved it was very positive right up of his day Good good detail that he was winning at the time just like I see a little win at the end It feels like those were his last words Tell them I was winning Lucky escape guys Do you know what a zonky is? It's a zebra donkey Very good Very good do you know where you find them you only find them in one place in the world in a very lax zoo Okay, yeah two places in the world Um, they are native to Mexico um, they are actually Donkeys that are painted with zebra stripes But they have been mad don't sound disappointed though because they've been around for a hundred years now in the 1930s when Tourists really wanted to take pictures of themselves with burrow carts like traditionally in a burrow They're 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 Uh, and they realized in the 1930s when everyone's photos are black and white This guy said we realized that uh, because our little burrito our little burrow was white She didn't show up in the pictures So here in his brother bought some dye and painted them with zebra stripes and it caught on and to this day in tier one You've got hundreds of zebra donkeys. 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 marzies and flies and so on I'm convinced by that. Oh yeah The photos of the cows that are painted like zebra's are pretty funny. I'll say that Can I do rather conversation totally for a moment? Yeah, please I was on a website called stripes. Okay, because I was researching stripes. Yeah, but it turns out stripes It's just a US military website. Okay Do you know that the US army has recently recruited a corpse finding otter? Okay, okay, don't just say okay like that's the most normal thing you've ever heard What I mean, it sounds like you can train lots of animals to sniff out stuff like dogs and so on Maybe he'll do it with otters. Well, you can or you hire an otter to do that Yeah, I just think a corpse finding otter would be a good character maybe for a children's books Yes about it. It's about uniqueness and self-acceptance He wasn't invited to the parties because he always had a corpse under each arm Yeah, and one corpse is on battlefield corpses come and take them back I think it's a he's an Asian river otter called splash who's just absolutely expert whizzo at finding dead people Described in the article as the two-year-old fuzzy investigator And finding dead people in civilian areas just one people with one people go missing and so in the last year With his handler splash has been deployed on 33 searches for bodies and found 11 wow Extremely good head rate. Yeah, so I just found that extraordinary and the US Lootment who was accompanying the exercise said we have previously incorporated detection canines or ring And even vultures into our scenarios. Okay more fitting about yeah come on 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 wait It's all adorable That's often the last thing you see but it means you die with a smile on your face I was just about to meet you as well 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 of the creature Sorry, let me just unpack that a tip. 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 they're still thinking if you bite a big chunk of a butterflies wing It's just going to flap in circles isn't that and come straight back at you. Oh, yeah That's that's a terrible escape but we talked about the experiment where they painted Eyes on cows bottoms to turn that actually put lions off attacking them Yes, as they thought they didn't want to approach a animal that was staring at them Yes, I think surely isn't that the idea more that that you think they can see so you don't attack Yeah, yeah, I think if you take a bit of a little butterfly's wing off it is fucked So I think it is And that's in my children's pocket, but it's butterfly Coming this autumn a sequel to the beloved very hungry caterpillar Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy my fact is weighted blankets were originally designed for cows Brilliant fact and this is sort of tying the whole show together because we've done zebras and we've done skunks I'm sure What's the obvious next step? Blankets and cows But it's all been black and white things hasn't it and if we're talking about region cows, they are black and white Okay, I see black and white wait a minute and haven't loads of crisp packets been made black and white in Japan this year Yes, because of the shortages of oil which they use in the coloring due to the horn mousse closing Oh my god, wow, horn mousse and what noise the cows They were back to cows What a boomerang that one So this this fact came from a piece about weighted blankets. I read it in the economist and For anyone who doesn't know that they're basically just heavy two veys full of I read glass beads But I think they can be plastic as well. It just unbelievably heavy blankets and doves and I haven't as how heavy they are Really heavy like four times as heavy as my dovey I realize yeah, yeah, yeah, and they were Created or rather inspired by a bit of work by an American academic called temple Grandin which is 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. Yeah, just and just chill that a little bit And she She's sort of famously autistic and she's been advocating for people with autism for a lot of her career And she built her own squeeze machine which was a wooden shoot and found that it really calmed her down and And she sometimes felt that she wanted deep pressure stimulation, but not always from a person. 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, what is this that we're talking about? I think this was in about, oh gosh, you're testing it out. I think it was in the '60s, '50s or '60s. Yeah, '50s, yeah. The first sort of commercial weighted blanket happened in 1997, as far as I can see. It was a long gestation period. You all know, but this maybe just two ideas happening at different times, but it was a big weight. So what it was is that there was, what's going to be a long time to wait until you know. Oh my God, I've just got it. And then it's also heavy. Don't worry James, got you back. So 1997, there was this family where one of 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 the blanket, that was called the beanie blanket. And this was the original weighted blanket. It wasn't called that for long because beanie baby's got in touch and sued or threatened to sue them if they didn't change. 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. Yeah. The way to beads. So are they related to temple granted or did they both come up with the idea independently? I think it was, she had been working on this idea and the idea of the squeeze machine and all this. And then I think other people took it forward and monetized as it were. And granted certainly wasn't trying to target the people, maybe that this beanie lady is targeting. Heres 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. Yeah, yeah. So it's an anti-anxiety blanket. It's how it was originally marketed. Yeah. It's wanted to think how many beanie babies have to be slaughtered for a recent weighted blanket. Actually. There are now weighted pillows as well. What? Why? It's for covering. Oh, yeah. Hug on to this. Oh, I see. Why do you want it to be heavier? You want it to have the weight of a human, do you? Absolutely. You want it to be. Yeah, it was. No, that's nice. It's lovely. Sorry, that's not saddest for all it's lovely. You've got to hug on something. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And if you're sleeping at the car again, then it's a nice, better company. Can you shape it? Because presumably, it's all the beads inside. What dad's asking all the right questions? No, no, no. I'm trying to turn it into a human pattern. I'm just saying. Some beanie boobs would be a nice cuddle. Beauty boobies. You were silly. I was like, oh my God. The dragons are not just out. They've all left the building. All the dragons quit the show. Dragons are dead today. I'm actually hearing about this. So horrible. Everyone in the Peyton office has left. Guys, beanie boobies. It's what we'll be remembered for. But do you know the beanie booby guys? You used to make a podcast? Yeah. Crazy. Oh. As well as the weighted pillow. Sorry, I'll just say one other thing. Have you seen the sleep pod? No. The sleep pod is as far as I can tell, a straight jacket for grown-ups. Oh, okay. It's not the straight jacket. Yes, it is. You all kids receive some harsh disciplines, isn't it? A swaddle for grown-ups is what I mean. Yeah. And it looks absolutely mad. Because 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. Yeah. But they just swaddle you and they stop you from compulsively tossing in the night. Well, I can't move your arms. But the sleep pods, they do say if you need to get up for a wee in the night. Tough shit. Tough. Yeah. Go in the pod. Yeah. He's in the pod. And I'm sorry. He's in the pod. We are not even just creating an idea. We are creating an entire wellness plan. For the people who brought you beady boobies. Have you ever wanted to piss the bed as you grown up? We introduced peace in the pod. Why should the kids get all the fun? Oh, I'm out. You're lying under heavy things. It reminds me of something I learned in the research for this. Which is about the origin of blankets. Or do they, in fact? Yeah. So Britain didn't get to do these for a really long time. We didn't get them to the 1960s. That's why, you know, our grandmas slept under, and grandpas slept under loads of blankets and sheets and quilts. I'm sure some people listen to this today. Or also sleeping on the blankets and sheets. Yes, yes. And hotels still have them, which I never understand. But anyway. Easiest wash. You just strip them off. Of course, he works in a hotel. Don't bring out hotels around James. They're on duvet covers as well. You can strip off everything from bed, can't you? Yeah, 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 can have to employ about five more people 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 more of a lie. The idea that that's 10 seconds to make your bed. But anyway, I was reading my book. 10 seconds to make your bed. But anyway, I was reading about how duvets, like stuff blankets, existed in Europe in Germany specifically for like 400, 300, 400 years to fall. They came to England. And in fact, travelers went to Europe. There's diplomats called Paul Reiko, 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 traveling to Europe and saying, "They've got these weird things." 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 were welcoming the French going to their house. They said, "Okay, 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. Yeah. So what we've mentioned earlier in this podcast or something, someone or something. Yeah. Surprisingly, he uses blankets. I'm going to say splash the corpse detecting author. Is the correct answer. Oh! Straight in there. Amazing. Seattle's mother's wrap their babies in seaweed blankets. And the reason is that a baby otter can't swim until it's four months old, but it's living in the water. Oh my god. 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. I thought it was like putting a dog on a lead. Because you can't. Or like a nice blanket. Or a kind of straight jacket, I wouldn't say. That's amazing. Basically starts it from floating away and it can sleep in place until she comes back. That's really nice. That's incredible. Yeah. That's cool. I discovered something about Manchester. Because I was looking to Manchester. Because my favourite thing which I learned being married to an Australian is what they call bedding. What they call blankets. Oh yeah. Yeah. Don't look at me. They call it Manchester. You should buy some new Manchester. I call that. Yeah, yeah. And I have red or nine. It's like mostly older generations. But I think my husband would take against that as a 42 year old. That doesn't need any bedding because he has so much Manchester. Oh. There we go. It's got some kind of a disease. It's called Fizzle Circus. It's just an obsession with making puns. Fizzle Circus. Fizzle Circus. Fizzle Circus. It was a real. Yeah. Fizzle Circus. If you have a stroke. Like some people have had a stroke and they can't stop making puns. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder. What's your excuse? Yes, it's called Manchester. Anyway, it's called Manchester. So sorry. I was looking to Manchester. Because they did a lot of weaving, right? That was a big cloth place. They were the home of cloth and weaving and stuff like that. The cotton operas 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. Right. In the South of America. And then there's the Civil War and Lincoln blockaded all the ports that exported cotton because obviously he wanted to shut down the South. There's a flipping guy, Lincoln. Well, I know what you're saying about him. I'm so glad you've taken that side because this tail needs an enemy. How does the Civil War end? He blockades it. So none of the cotton gets through to my system. None of the cotton gets through. We've got all these mills in Lancashire but we've got nothing to spin. 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 blockades. Like the navy needs to go and sort out this blockade. So Manchester Guardian writes, let us say, look, the mill workers are going to turn against this. Mill owners are like, yeah, the mill workers, you've got to get on site here. All importers are saying. saying this is really bad, you're all starving. - Well, the British army needs to intervene in the American Civil War. - 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, look." - I mean, certainly wouldn't be the first time that the British ever got involved in another country's war and their own self-interests. - Okay, look, this is actually one to show Britain in a good light, so the millworkers 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 recognized 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." - It's like, by slavery. - It's like, by slavery. Yeah, isn't that unbelievable? They were all 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. - Wow. - Wow. - It's amazing, I don't know why I do. - That's terrific. - Great. - And if Andy Burnham gets wind of this, God, he's gonna make a big song and dance party, isn't he? (laughing) (upbeat music) - 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 online, I'm on @Streiberland on Instagram, James. - My Instagram is no such thing, those James Harkin. - Andy? - Mine is @AndroHunterAb. - Yeah, and we're also on there as a group. Anna, where did they go? - Instagram at no such thing or you can email [email protected]. - Yeah, [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. I 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 Align. We like to read out your experiences, extra details, quibbles, whatever you have, send it that way. And if you wanna be part of Club Fish, by the way, patreon.com/clubfish 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 on having just done that episode. I think there's gonna be some pretty spicy stuff like that. (laughing) So yeah, so too hot to broadcast head there for that. Or just come here next week 'cause we're gonna be back with another episode of Fish. We'll see you then. Thank you as ever to our producers, Leigh Ng Li, to Ethan Ruperallia and as well, the other Fish Buster members. We'll see you again next week. Good bye. (upbeat music)