No Such Thing As Musical Toads

0:00Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the lung comedy festival in Sweden! My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Huntson Murray and James Harkin and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one and that is my fact, my fact this week is that in many Indian languages, Lund University means penis university. Does that make it popular? Well yes and no. Okay. Okay so we are in Lund in Sweden and we're a five minute walk from the university and

1:00it's an extraordinary university it was established in 1666, often ranked as one of the top 100 universities globally. In Sweden. In Sweden. And there was a moment where it sort of became a meme because the Facebook page that was the official Lund University Facebook page put out a statement saying could everyone stop tagging their friends who were nothing to do with this university because everyone was just doing it so that they could go look it's penis university because in Hindi and a few other languages in India that is the translation in the written word of it. So I suppose actually the Lund comedy festival that we're here at right now is the penis comedy festival is why I thought we'd sign up for it. Usually disappointing. So this as Andy was asking was this a problem at all it was actually for students who were applying from India because they did feel a bit embarrassed that they would be going to some way called penis university and there was a person who had to deal with

2:05this a lot and they were interviewing her about it and they said how do you deal with it trying to get these students from overseas and she said we like to do it by word of mouth and she says that because the pronunciation is different the word is the same written but it's more like land when you pronounce it in say Hindi. So word of mouth is the way to do it and then if you are a student from India you might just say I go to a university in Sweden and not specify the details of where you are. It is a great city about which I knew nothing before coming here and researching for this fact that I like the fact that you can do a walk of Lund's most amusing attractions. What's on the walk? Oh all sorts. There's a monument to nothing which is a monument to administrative inability to decide what statue should go in the spot for the statue. They had a really long debate and eventually they just put up a plaque saying this is to nothingness. I believe the plaque was then stolen? Is that correct? Oh is there. So then it was missing and missing monument to

3:08nothingness which they had to replace. You lost me quite a lot. But that is amusing. There's no question about it. The university I think is pretty cool. Like you say it's very old Dan. Founded in 1666. And I believe it was and people here will know this but I believe it was founded to sort of sweetify the area because there was a lot of those dastardly daines. Any dastardly daines in the audience? I just want to restart the walk. Yeah so this area was kind of owned by Denmark and then Sweden took it over and they thought well one way to make sure it's definitely Swedish is to start a university here. And it was someone called Hedvik Ilanora who was the queen Dowager I think at the time who signed the founding documents. And she's famous. You guys here do you guys know about the got-op fury?

4:12No maybe not. Okay so Charles the 12th of Sweden. He became King when he was 16 years old and like anyone who becomes King when they're 16 years old probably just went on a massive drunken rampage. I ran the whole country and especially in Stockholm. He did loads of crazy stuff. I think some of the stories maybe not true like they were exaggerated later but one of the stories is that somehow he got really really drunk and a bear fell out of a window and we're not sure how the bear got up there in the first place or exactly what happened that the bear fell out of the window. But everyone was so astonished that he'd done this and got really drunk that his mother who was Hedvik kind of went over to him and she just looked at him. Just looked at him in the eye and he felt so ashamed that he never drank again for the rest of his life. Really? I actually didn't know but didn't want to interrupt and ask during that story whether it was the bear that was so drunk or him that

5:13was so drunk. Because you said that but why is it his fault that bears full of a window? That's like that's on the bear. Did he put the bear out of the window? No Andy. We don't know what I have to say. Oh no it's that everyone was getting pissed and then the next thing you know bears falling out the window. But it wasn't the bear who swore off the beat. We don't know Anna. Tell us the 12th isn't he the absolutely crazy king? He sort of went to war with Russia and Prussia and France? Everyone, someone at the front row just said yeah at the same time. He was mad but then he wasn't. I read him saying this article that said he never drank again but then he read another article that he said he never drank very strong alcohol again. So he might have had a few beers. Anything under 40%? It doesn't really count does it? I don't think. Can I tell you my favorite thing that's at London University? Oh yeah about which I'm so excited please. It's the European Spalation Source. Ah okay it has some fans in the room. This is so exciting. It's the

6:13biggest microscope in the world. It's sorry it's not the smallest telescope in the world. I've never known the difference. Is it just a telescope as soon as you point it upwards? Yeah yeah okay. Yeah of course. You just look through the other end. Yeah yeah yeah they should be multi-functional. Yeah this is such a cool thing. It's a microscope which uses a particle accelerator. It's it's it's between 13 different nations. Billions of pounds has gone into it and you basically you have to fire protons at a target atom and knock chunks off it. It's going to be unbelievably useful for things like testing materials to see how they react under extreme conditions. So you know the world of tomorrow will be built of things that have been tested in this lab and the heat that it generates because it's this huge great science project is heating the homes of 20,000 people in lund. Really? Yeah isn't that good? Anyone here being heated by? Well lund the university is an amazing university for the innovations that have come out of it.

7:16It has produced well in 2023 it got its first proper in-house Nobel Laureate in physics. And Lulie is that her name? Lulie yeah yeah she wanted in physics but there's been four other scientists who had started their work here but they moved on to other universities so it doesn't quite get the credit but not only have they technically produced five Nobel prizes in physics. They've also got at least five ignoble prizes. Oh that's a good name. If you know the ignoble prizes it's the science that makes you laugh that makes you think and it was at this university lund university that scientists worked out that chimpanzees and humans in zoos imitate each other to an equal extent. That horse flies prefer horses with dark coats and so if you've got a white horse they don't really get those flies. That dumb beetles navigate using the Milky Way. They've done studies of how cats talk to people and then finally they got one for working out

8:19that a Chinese alligator sounds different after inhaling helium enriched air. So it's amazing stuff going on here. What's that going to be useful for? Do we know? I'm not sure they're working on big things still. I think that one is that if we have helium our voices go higher by think with crocodiles the voices go lower. Yeah and that's all I remember about it. I don't remember. Any fans of upseller university in? Oh really? Oh yes that's what I was expecting. I was expecting some booze. So you know we have Oxford and Cambridge in England. Well here we have upseller and lund and the phrase I kept seeing in my research was plugger e upseller Liga elund. And you know what I was going to explain it but the luck on these three spaces we get equally respect and like each other. So I think plugger e-yupsula means studying upseller right

9:23because they're all kind of they're they're were suits and they're very important and they do their important research and stuff but Liga it seems to me live or be in bed or Google translate says it means sleep around. Oh yeah you've got to use that lund for something haven't you? So it means studying upseller and sleep around in lund and the idea is that students in lund are having much more fun. I think that's is that the idea? Yeah. That's a big cheer for everyone saying yeah we're sleeping around all the time so good on you guys. I only realised reading up on this fact that the academic quarter was a thing which seems to be universally known in Europe in mainland but we don't have it. The academic quarter is if your lecture is scheduled to start at 10 AM guys in the audience what time does it start? 10 15. 10 15. What the heck? Well I can tell you in the UK

10:29if the teachers doesn't stand up for five minutes we all fuck off. The lecture were done at every day go still no one coming hey weird. Yes this is so mad and it seems to be like is it lund university which has a plaque that claims to mark the meridian of the academic quarter so it says you know we took this meridian from Greenwich and it's an hour and a quarter after GMT and it's because back in the olden days if a lecture started at 10 or at two then you heard the bells ring the cathedral bell ring but then you needed 15 minutes once you've heard the bells to get there you know pre watches and so I guess that that habit has hung over and it is the case and then you observe the double quarter I believe after six pm so if you're going to a banquet after six and it's scheduled at seven you actually turn up at seven thirty. So are you saying us a thing in other countries? It's in many European universities yes. I know that German has a word the academic fiatal. What's that? The academic quarter of an hour. What I mean what? Right I think that's I bet that's related you know. Well I thought it was that if you were an

11:34intellectual you were allowed to be 15 minutes late for something but that might just be a joke that someone told me once. No everyone everyone officially does unless and I believe this is correct you have to write the word dot if you really want people to turn up at 10 o'clock you have to write 10 o'clock and then the word dot or prick I think it is. You guys you cannot stop can you? God I can't. If I had a pound for every time I've seen the word sluts today. Yeah. I have literally no idea what it means in Swedish but it is everywhere. We've seen it everywhere we have no idea. Can I give you a couple more unfortunately named universities? Yeah yeah. So Kinky University in Japan had to change its name to Kindai University because so many English speaking people were making jokes about it. Beaver College in America changed its name to Arcadia University in 2001 for the same reason and I found two schools here unfortunately named

12:37and I wanted you to see if you can think of the link between them. Okay. They are sexy school in Bruton and Pawnee school in Eton and what's the link? Yeah. It's like they both have rude names. Yeah one more link. Is it that they're both named? They both sound like they should be named after one thing. But sexy school was named after Hugh Sexy who lived there in the 16th century and Pawnee school was named after a Frenchman called Mark Anthony Pawnee. Oh my goodness. Fantastic. That's brilliant. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Everyone we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by NordVPN. Dan what is NordVPN? NordVPN is the finest VPN out there. It is the fastest VPN out there. It allows scams to be blocked before it gets to your computer.

13:43It also allows you to make it look as if you were sitting in a different country so you can get access to lots of different countries materials that you might not get in your own country. Absolutely. I very recently was sat in the country of Sweden when we went on tour that to play the London comedy festival. But my computer and my phone thought I was in the UK and so I tricked them into showing me the snooker. I really believe it. But yeah, it's not just that kind of thing. I would call it the all-in-one digital security app because like Dan says, it stops you from getting viruses. It offers protection against malware, dangerous websites, ads, all that kind of stuff. They're very privacy first and they're very good against the horrors of the internet. That's right. We got a hell of a deal for you because you can get NordVPN's two-year plan plus four months extra if you go to nordvpn.com slash fish. It is risk-free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. Absolutely. You don't have to be in a Nordic country like I was in Sweden.

14:43You could be in any country to use Nord VPN. And again, that URL is nrdvpn.com slash fish. And when you do that, you can buy a two-year plan and get four months extra free. It is risk-free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. It is time for fact number two and that is Anna. My fact this week is that one of the biggest fashion designers of the 90s now works as a Toad Facilitator. Oh, the natural forage is Taylor. He's ugly. A Toad Facilitator. Yes, you look like you're going to try and guess what it is. Well, I know what a Toad is. Yeah. But a facilitator. Someone who makes Toads possible. He makes it possible to smoke them. So this is a guy called Patrick. It actually doesn't harm

15:43the Toads even though I know it sounds like it does. But this is a guy called Patrick Cox who was a huge shoe designer mostly and sort of bags and accessories in the early 90s. He made a shoe called the Wanna Be Lofer which you probably recognise. If you want to be my Lofer. That's what the Lyric actually were. Yeah. Wow. Sorry, Patrick Cox. Priste by his girls. He was like a mad party animal, took all the drugs, mates with Elton John and Liz Helian people. But now he's changed his ways. He lives in Ibiza and he doesn't drink any alcohol. His only vice is taking drugs smoked from a Toad. And not only does he do this smoking Toad Poison, but he is like a doula for other people who want to smoke Toad Poison. And it is in the whole world of Toad smoking. Toad Facilitator is an accepted job. It's a thing that's referred to and you have your Toad Facilitator and the lingo is they hold the space so that you can smoke it while feeling okay. Yeah, but sitting by

16:46people walking them through the situation. I just don't think this guy's had a massive change in his life. If you say, oh wow, it's incredible. He doesn't drink anymore apart from all the like hallucinogenic Toads that he helps other people. Yeah, that's the thing. Because he did go to rehab. And Elton John paid for his whole rehab and then he went and visited him and he said, I'm totally cured. I'm now just licking Toads every day. And... When you say licking Toads, so people don't write in in the Toad Facilitating world, you can't lick the Toads and get the right effects. It's very dangerous. It caused lots of terrible health outcomes. I think it's not good for you in any way, I'm gonna say. And it's definitely not good for the Toads. You can have an effect from licking the Toad. We're just saying you shouldn't. You shouldn't. And so what people do is they dry the Toxins that it excreats. Sorry, you have to milk the Toads first. Yes, tickle the Toad. Well, obviously Andy, you can milk the Toads. And then the venom comes out and then that's what you dry, isn't it? You dry it, then it's like the venom comes out like squeezing a pimple. You kind of tickle it and squeeze it and it goes, so satisfying. Not for me. I'll take that job.

17:53Toad milker. And you can... But what you end up smoking is a type of it's DMT, right? Well, it's not exactly DMT. It's sort of related, but it's eight times, six to eight times stronger. And you can synthesize what that produced to make DMT. That's been a thing that's been a byproduct. Sorry, it's my first question. What's DMT? DMT is the thing in ayahuasca, but this gets you way more high. This is actually the most time-eatful trip to mean just to say. You was that? Die-meatful trip to mean. That's how the police test if you've had any. But I think it's interesting about the fact you can synthesize it, but people still want to lick the toads and they still want to squeeze the pimples from the toads and all that when you can get just as good stuff from the lap. And that's a real problem because when you start messing around with toads, they get really sick and there's a whole big problem with funguses going through the amphibian world at the moment. And a lot of his due to people doing this. And the reason that people

18:53try and use the actual toads instead of using the stuff off the shelf is because they think that this is like an amazing indigenous sacrament that people have been doing in Native America for you know thousands and thousands of years. But the truth is it probably really isn't and it was probably just one guy who kind of went to this group in North America and said oh you should guys should do this. And then he said oh look they've been doing it for ages. And then suddenly everyone now thinks that that's like some ancient thing but it's really not. And so if you do want to do this and I don't think you should but if you do want to do it, do the fake stuff. Do the fake stuff. And the fake stuff doesn't have, when you do I wasca, there's the whole thing of purging when you have you vomit, when you're doing synthesized DMT it's basically a 15 minute visit to this fractal illusionary world inside your brain and you don't vomit. It's a they call it the death of the ego at certain points of it. And if you put in the offer codes, and toad, Dan. It has a lot of famous users. Mike Tyson has said that this stuff changed his entire life.

19:56Yeah. His entire life. Although he has been punched in the head repeatedly for a long time. But we know I think the first person to be arrested for possession of toads. So as you were saying James, this is a more recent thing. A Californian teacher called Bob Shepard was arrested in 1994 and his four toads, Hans, Franz, Peter and Brian, were seized as evidence. But Shepard was such an enthusiast about his way of life, much like Dan is today apparently. Shepard made an informational video tape for the people who were prosecuting him. Saying, look, this is how you do it. This is how great it is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are obsessed. One of the bad things about it is that the person who actually discovered it was this guy, a Texan called Ken Nelson. And he's kind of cool. He was a total recluse. His identity was only revealed really publicly after he died in about 2020. But he had read about these thousands of toad bones being dug up in North Carolina on an archaeological dig. And he just thought,

20:59well, I bet that's a weird historic ceremonial thing, like Native American spiritual ceremony. And I bet those toads were hallucinogenic. And then he got into his research and he found the toad most likely to be hallucinogenic. He went with his girlfriend and her dog into Arizona, turned up a bunch of toads. Eventually the dog actually found the toad which turned out to be the right one. And you know, he let he sort of tickled it under the chin and let it secrete its milk onto his windscreen, the milk dried. He smoked it. He discovered the most powerful hallucinogenic known to man. The thing is, the ones that had been dug up that he'd read about were probably just ones that had all fallen into a pit thousands of years ago. It's complete coincidence that he went looking for a reason. Maybe they were all like in each other these toads. There's been a lot of evidence about psychedelics like this good for treating depression. And it does seem that they work in some way. But the truth is a lot of the headlines say that they're way better than actual antidepressants

22:01as in the ones you get over the counter. But in truth, they're probably about the same. And the reason is the studies that have shown that the psychedelics are better, it's really hard to come up with a placebo in that effect. Because if you've had the sugar pill and you know a big toe isn't sort of kicking you in the head, then you know that you haven't had the real thing. And so when they test for that, they found that actually they're about the same as modern sort of synthesized antidepressants. So interesting. Wow. Which is still pretty good to be there. But it's really hard to get this stuff right? Like as in I'm not saying I've tried. I just mean I think it's pretty clear at which the four of us is trying. I think it's illegal at a lot of places to do it. But a lot of these these toad parties have been at mine. But I'm not doing it Andy. I'm just facilitating. Okay. Can I tell you about my favorite toad? Yes please. Okay. My fav toad is the Santa

23:04Marta Harlequin. And this is an amazing toad. So with a lot of species, the mating happens by via a thing called amplexus which you may have heard of which is where the male clings onto the female's back. It's basically a piggyback thing. Doggy style. I think we called it before this amplexus word came into use. Let's keep a PG and say piggyback. Okay. The thing is because I think the amplexus is before the mating right? And the thing is for these toads the Santa Marta Harlequins it's sometimes very hard for them to find each other for a male to find a female at all. So if you find a lady toad you cling on and basically it's a bit like musical chairs. If you get on the back of a female toad that's your girlfriend and you know you'll make with her eventually and you can powerfully kick away the males. That's not what like a musical chairs. You then start the music again and everyone runs around to jump on another toad. That's one difference. Yeah. I've been letting Dan organize my children's parties. It's going

24:08absolutely disaster. But basically the male will get on, get a piggyback and if the female says she's not ready to mate the male is simply patient and says don't worry I'm fine here just on your back. Males have been found waiting for up to five months. Wow. Before the female is ready to mate and they will lose 30% of their body weight because they can't get off to get food. So they're just staying there starving to death losing all their weight. Does she not pass some food over? Yeah. Well she's eating. I don't think she does. How often do they check in with other like the headache still happening? What's the way? Yeah. Okay I'm just back here. Just back here. Some of them will start to death. I'm afraid. Clicking all waiting waiting for her to be in the frame of mind. Yeah. And that's my favourite toad. That's not read too much into what that tragically reflects about Andy's life. Cain Toads they're probably the most famous toxic toads

25:12aren't they? Okay. Super toxic cane toads. There were lots of rumours that people licked cane toads and got poisoned by them but they are a massive problem in places where they're invasive. They're invasive in the Caribbean. They're invasive in Australia. Called cane toads because they were introduced to get rid of the cane beetle that was eating all the sugar cane. So another classic example of when we tried to solve a problem and make it a million times worse. Yeah. And anywhere they're killing lots of crocodiles in Australia which a lot of people would think fine by me but conservationists don't and so they've done this amazing thing. Scientists in some parts of Australia have started collecting cane toads and they euthanase them. They remove all the poison from them and then they inject their corpses with drugs that just make you really really sick and feel really really crap and then they hang them from sticks over rivers and so crocodiles seed them jump up and snap them. So you've got all these dead cane toads if you go to certain parts of Australia like the Kimberley region. Wow. You've got dead cane toads like a

26:12weird baby's mobile hanging above the crocodiles and then they eat them they throw up a lot and then after a few days the crocs go okay I'm not leaving them anymore and it saved their lives. I mean in places where they've done this it's completely eradicated crocodile deaths from cane toads. Amazing. Wow. Those cane toads they were just as you said they were released with zero thought. It was the 1930s and Australia had just had a big success with another kind of introduction to solve a pest problem. So they thought let's just release. How much was it? I think 64,000 totalits in one place and now it's something like it's thousands of miles of Australia has fallen to them. One of the only people at the time who was warning against the release was a man named Walter Frogget. No. Wow. The the toad that gets used that we were talking about that is squeezed for its toxins. That's the Bufal avarius and this is the hallucinogenic. It's been changed its name's been changed but that was the original name that it had and that frog used to be the

27:16constellation in the night sky. This is back in the 1700s and it was named by a man called Sir John and he was a composer, he was an actor, he was an author, he wrote quite a seminal botanical compendium called the vegetable system and he used Carl Leneas who was I believe connected to Lund. He used the system. Oh, I think. Was Leneas not bar-upsela? Opsala. Yeah. And you see what you know he worked hard and he made something of himself. I think he just came down here for a good time every day. Hey, we got to move on very shortly. Anyone got anything for you? I just thought soon as these toads and stuff is illegal then maybe I've got some other ways to get high for you. See if any of these. Oh yeah. The Mayans would take alcohol and infuse it with seeds from the morning glory plant so they get high and drunk at the same time and they would use those as

28:16enemas so they would go right up the bum. I'm still in. Yeah. In Antarctica a lot of scientists have said that when they're working with penguins especially when the pooing a lot the guano sort of gets in the nose and they start to get a little bit high from that so maybe some penguin poo. Okay. Yeah. I won't do both things at the same time I don't think. Have you heard of these, you know, cicadas? Yeah. So cicadas can get this kind of fungus that goes in them and it turns them into hypersexual zombies but the chemicals that it releases in this cicada if you crush it up and snort it will also get you high as well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Hypersexual zombie was my tender profile bioxane. And the other thing that can make you hallucinate is too much quiet. If you go into a room that is completely quiet if you stay in there for any more than about 25 minutes you'll start hallucinating. So do be careful here tonight everybody

29:21because my fact is coming up. So we have a dry one. Well speaking of which we must move on to our next fat and that is of course Andy. My fact is traditionally the people of Iceland liked to bring a sheep into the bedroom. Seems like they knew that hair already. So I was reading a fantastic article via a wonderful website called The Browser which is all about Icelandic turf houses. And these are, if anyone has seen Lord of the Rings, these are the inspiration for the Hobbit houses that you get in the rings. And they are packed earth on the floor and they're really pretty uncomfortable to live in. Most of them. They were not nice places to live in. There is a reason now that we don't all live in turf houses. It was quite a hard way of life. And there was one bedroom called the Bath Stoffer for absolutely everyone which was just upstairs and everyone your grandparents,

30:25your servants, maybe the couple of the house would get their own bedroom but maybe another kind of 10 or 15 people would have to share another bedroom. And sometimes you'd need to bring a sheep into the bedroom simply for warmth. Oh, it was just for warmth for you over the sheep. For you. Just because it has a bit more body warmth. It does feel like if you've got 15 people cuddling together the sheep is a bit of overkill. That's a good point actually. Yeah. But it's very woolly isn't it? Oh, sheep. Yeah. That is uncontroversial. Yeah. But it is because Iceland was not very forested for when people moved there and if the trees, the few trees that were on the other side of the island, you weren't able to go and get them. So you had to cut to that. Yeah. And like the weather's unpredictable. There's volcanoes sometimes as earthquake stuff. You don't have many resources. So like a turf house is kind of a good thing to, because it's quite quick to make and yeah, and it was very, you know, I take against this whole uncomfortable. I'm thinking of transitioning to a turf house. Okay. Because they're very well

31:27insulated, weren't they? And they look beautiful. Well, like Hobbit houses look and they change they started off just like one you go in through the door and it was like one very, very long corridor that went deeper and deeper into the hill. But then they turned into little villages. So every family would have its own little turf village. But it did mean that Iceland had by a long way until the mid 19th century the highest rates of high-datter disease in the world. Which is only very straight because I was talking to my friend the day before yesterday, who's the UK's consultant on high-datter disease is dog tapeworm. So it's when dogs have tapeworms that they get from eating dead sheep and then humans get from eating dog poo, not intentionally. I'm not suggesting they're doing it intentionally, but sometimes Dan and other hallucinogenic world too. Guys, I think I read it wrong. It's penguin poo. It's penguin poo, my fault. Sorry Anna, and this is what you're saying is your dream home. I just think it sounds like this disease. No, but I can see why Anna's into it. When you read the descriptions about how life

32:30was inside as families, you know, there's no screen time back in the medieval times. They would sleep two to a bed and they would sleep in a slight sitting up position. No one slept fully vertical, which is very interesting. Out of interest is your wife convinced you that sleeping two to a bed is abnormal in our society. You know I'm not in my bed because I have three kids and they sleep with my mind. I'm at the bottom of a bunk bed for the last two years right now. That's a very sensitive subject you brought up. Yeah, so I knew I was doing it as well as I thinking. As you were. It's annoying because I'm not allowed to sleep on the top bunk because I'm not cool enough. You. But no, it's they so they're two to a bed and then because in the winters they just have to stay inside they get the sheep inside. Everyone's huddled together, storytelling goes on and that's why the oral tradition was so big and Iceland is just constant stories were being told to while away the hours. That sounds pretty cool to me. I like the idea and I also like that the turf itself

33:30you're living in a living house as in the house itself keeps growing into itself. I'm absolutely I'm sorry. I'm absolutely sick of this campaign to live in soil. I'm sorry there is a reason we don't live in soil anymore which is that everyone's ill all the time and it's cold and it's filthy and there are living things in the walls and in the floor. That's not the reason they live and the bizarre thing about it is they lived people. I think I'm actually building. There's a lot of problems with modern life and you know we're all over our computers all the time. Yeah. You know it's not very good ventilation in the last house. I do want to say you three can shack up in a hole in the ground with your sheep all right and I will be in a brick home. Oh yeah. Why do I feel like this is how it started with a three little pigs? You know well maybe the wall thing says but we have more fun and the the main thing about them is that it wasn't medieval times it was literally all of time until just after the second world

34:35so in about 1945 more than 50% of Icelanders lived in turf houses so most people in Iceland lived in turf houses and after 20 years so 20 years from World War II only one percent did. So that's how quickly it absolutely plummeted and it was just better. What does that say? Guess it shows that the people have Iceland are wrong to want warmth. I've really want to check they were very well insulated. Followed out the floors. I think it would be quite an odd experience for a sheep if they really understood what was going on inside there. Well because they would eat the sheep right so you're like in this house they're like having oh they're having some me actually I've just made that up I don't know if they eat the sheep I've completely I'm sure eventually they they probably do and they use a very like it's these hard conditions I don't think you throw a way of sheep that's made of lamb. Yeah even if it's even if it's what you've slept with. I'm sorry darling. They're using their wool obviously they use that all the time

35:36for the clothing but then on top of it they didn't have windows but they did have spaces for windows and what they would do is they take the innards of a sheep and they would stretch it out so that the see through intestine of a I believe it's the intestine of a sheep would be the window so you're sort of sheep and they're they're eating you they're wearing you you're looking outside through you yeah I suppose what advantage of the sheep in there while you're all sleeping as you could all count it to get to sleep. Okay everyone go sleep. I think it was the amniotic sack wasn't it that they often use as well the amniotic sack of the sheep and the amazing thing about it is they retain this word so this amniotic membrane that used to be their windows is still the Icelandic word for a computer screen. No so there we go we do have computers now because we got rid of the turf houses and they still retain that isn't that so cool. That's incredible but also kind of gross that every time you've read to a computer in Iceland you're talking about the amniotic sack of a lamb. That is crazy. Yeah some of those famous for houses made of kind of mud

36:39earthy stuff is Santa Fe and I really didn't know about this but it's so the capital of New Mexico Santa Fe I really want to go to now because all of the houses are Adobe and I actually look this up because I wanted to know the connection between Adobe the building material and the Adobe suite on computers. Yeah and it's just the guy who made the Adobe suite had a river running behind his house called the Adobe river. But Adobe is you know it's like that red mud that places in central America what often made of looks kind of like Moroccan suki very popular with Native Americans there and then very popular with Spanish settlers and anyway it was what everything looked like it is about 1900 and then in Santa Fe they started modernizing and making it all look American and suddenly the town of Santa Fe said hang on we don't like this American just like any other American city look we are going to mandate that every single house here has to be Adobe like a mud and mud hot house basically and it's still true so if you go there it looks so neat I mean yes it's

37:41sort of very gentrified now and the people who originally lived in them have been forced out because people like you know idiots like me who are like oh what a pretty house want to go and move there but like it all matches the whole place matches isn't that cool and you get faux doby now which is like mock tudor so you know you build a normal house out of bricks or timber and then you have to put mud all over it to make it look like in the doby house if it's in Santa Fe I know and you can join me there. Oh great yeah yeah finally we've got a house which has shittled over the walls for you. That's a structural integrity for me. I think shitts on the walls is Wattlandov isn't it? Yes you're right and that's a very proud old English journalist. It's an English thing yeah so we would make lots of houses out of poo and straw and it's been going on for a thousand of years but there's still a few of them in the UK and you could buy in 2007 a one bedroomed house made of animal poo in Kent for £250,000. That's incredible. Yeah wow

38:44but if you want to build like an extension of it do you have to make it with poo yeah. Wow I live in Kent. I haven't tested my walls. Well maybe if you just smear some on the outside it'll be the same. I'll just do that just look. Well do you know actually in my house you know what we have in our roof so we had to replace a lot of the roof because the tiles were breaking and those huge worries of leaking and then the builders said your roof is really structurally sound because it's built with horse hair. Wow. And it stops any rain coming through and that was an old thing and they call it horse hair but you would use pig hair you would use all sorts of animal hair as well but horse hair was the best because it was the longest. That's so cool. Horse hair is quite short. Horse mains along. They would use their mains. They're using the mains okay nice. Which bit of hair do you think they were using? Like the skin for the skin for. Yeah. I think that's that. Andy I really appreciate you helping me patch up the missing bits of horse hair but that's that's

39:47but also that could I just say sometimes they use pig hair. What part of the pig were they getting the hair from? It's just so hairy. Pigs are hairy they've got those long rank hairs it's like a very building old person isn't it pig hair. Can I tell you a very with a serious point about flooring materials? Absolutely. So I'm here at the comedy festival Andy. Sometimes. I imagine every comedian in the town is doing this material. Sometimes you say a sentence out loud you realise you've just expressed your absolute essential core. Any alright I'm going to tell you it's just a lovely story. There was a time in Mexico a few decades ago where you would get a charity handout and what it consisted of would be a concrete truck driving up to your house sticking its nozzle through your window and blasting concrete into your living room and this was a charity handout

40:48that people got right. Did you know they were coming? You did. What a beautiful new floor we're going to have to chisel grandma at some point but otherwise stunning work. The right the basically the award was 118 pounds worth so not a huge amount of ready mix concrete and they would just pour it into your living room and then drive off and before that this point is because before concrete floors floors were dirt and children got parasitic worms they were shorter they were missing school and then when you had a concrete floor in the room suddenly you had healthier children they grew more they did better at school. There are all these amazing measurable things that can improve simply from replacing a dirt floor with a concrete one. And it's like in terms of an intervention to help a families chances in life 118 pounds of concrete is very very very cheap to have that kind of amazing measurable effect so that's there you

41:49go there's a serious point. Yeah flooring material. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Everyone this week's episode is sponsored by Sally. Are you a jet satter like Daniel Shriver? Hello. Every time I see him he's flying off to a different country. Bonjour. Was it Sweden for instance you were in recently when I was there as well actually but you did go to Croatia straight afterwards. Yeah via Denmark so I have done a lot of traveling and I've been doing a lot of phone using as well James. Well what you need to do and I'm not sure if you did but what you needed to do was use Sally you download the Sally app onto your phone and you get really good cheap internet. Yeah you got amazing internet 200 destinations it's available in. Therefore I could have extended that trip by 197 places and still it would have worked. You get 24 seven support and you don't get a stinking big bill at the end of your trip. Yeah it's so easy I've used it in loads of different

42:52countries I've used it in Australia. I was getting cost of that shows just two different parts of the world for instance. Yeah. So it's definitely worth doing and if you are interested in Sally then you should go to salie.com slash fish that's S-A-I-L-I dot com slash fish and when you go there you can get an exclusive 15% discount on salie data plans if you use the code fish at checkout. Okay on with the show. On with the podcast. It is time for a final fact of the show and that is James. Okay my fat this week is that in 2011 a candy bar called toxic waste nuclear sludge was recalled for containing actual toxic waste. There it is. So I just want to say straight away that it was quite a small issue and no one got sick they pulled them off the shelves and then they fixed it and now they're

43:53fine because the company is still going and I just want to say that these candies are absolutely no problem I've got some now. Oh wow. Would you like to try them? Okay. I think legally we have to now Andy just to save us from any lawsuits. Oh my goodness. I know on the front row. Oh. So these got these things in 2011 they were found to contain some lead which is a toxic metal which doesn't break down in your body and if you have too much of it it can be bad for you. These particular ones I think would have been kind of fine unless you were pregnant or you were very young or whatever. So I think it's just funny but I just want to say that if you go to the show I know you guys can't talk at the moment. How's it? I accidentally gave away all the mind this one. Oh how is it Andy? Have mine. Is it toxic? Because nothing pisses me off more than a sweet that pretends to be the sourest thing you've ever tasted and is actually just a bit sugary. Is your mouse being exploded inside right now? I had a very small bite but it's quite it's pretty. These are

44:55like the like people at home who don't have the pitch of it that we have behind us. It's like the you kind of get these candies these days which are very sour and they have lots of sort of like yellow and black stripes of warning warning these are the most dangerous sweets in the world kind of thing and kids love them. Extreme candy. Extreme candy. Can children taste sour flavors better or more? I think there was something too. Because obviously you've got more tastes but it's having you when you're a child and sort of we lose them gradually as we get older so I think they do taste sour things more. I tell you who wouldn't like sour sweets. Who's that? Oh no sorry everyone likes. Sorry wait, go back a bit. I tell you well I tell you one thing about the sour flavor of these sweets. Yeah all vertebrates like them or should like them all vertebrates. Well the thing here is all vertebrates can taste sourness and that is very unusual every other flavor there's at least one big animal group that can't taste it. A lot of them can't taste sweetness can they.

45:59Cats can't taste sugar. Dolphins can't taste sweet or savory. Pandas cannot taste umami. Oh my god really? The irony in China. I know. I know. But sensing sourness is universal to vertebrates as far as we know and it might be that it has a useful signal that your food is rancid. Extreme candy really became a thing in the 90s. I read a really good article by Wired magazine in 1999 about this sudden explosion of extreme candy and he said it split into three categories interactive sweet makers the mega sour sweet makers and the gross out sweet makers so like gross out are things like there's a brand called hotlicks where you get a lot of pop with a real amt inside it you know the really you're five year old will beg you for those really sour and then the interactive stuff is the stuff that comes with sweets or like you can blow a whistle through it remember those and anyway interviewed the kings of extreme candy at the time and this was a bad

47:03enterprises B A A T because it was founded by Bill Anne Anne and Tom that and they were all just postal workers postmen and post women and Bill and Tom were two postmen who fell in love with two women called Anne who also worked the post office and said you know what we should try making some sweets that make funny noises or spin round and round and they did and they became multi millionaires and had their own massive sweet factory where people got around on tricycles and rolled the roost such a nice story isn't it so awesome yeah here are some candies well actually I'll give you three and two of them are real candies and one of them isn't and see if you can guess okay so the toe of Satan Satan spawn or Randy candy which of those is not a real candy toe of Satan Satan spawn and Randy candy I think Satan spawn isn't it's not Randy candy I'll say

48:05toe of Satan okay well Dan is right Randy candy is actually a friend of the podcast he was the Chicago tattoo artist who will ink you anywhere you want and give you a discount if you choose your bum hole Satan spawn is a kind of habanero infused gummy bears and the toe of Satan which I also have here which I'm going to offer to her Andy is supposedly the hottest candy in the world oh man it's equivalent to nine million on the Scoville heat unit rating yeah are you gonna do it yeah nine thousand times hotter than a jalapeno I gotta say thank you to the guys that American Fizz who sent me this because they did they went out of the way to send me and I have this festival I'm gonna decide whether or not I say thank you to the guys at American Fizz the amazing thing is the other night I said to my wife this salad what's the dressing on it it's very spicy

49:09it was no dressing on the salad oh this is like a lollipop that we're looking at yeah it's a lollipop that's red in the shape of a toe and it looks all right doesn't it how much does Andy need to take for it to kick in I think a big old suck on the toe please it takes me back right and it claims to be how much hotter than jalapeno nine millions go nine million Scoville unit chilly extract guaranteed the scorch any mortals tongue can you keep the toe of Satan in your mouth for five minutes oh five minutes okay I'm putting it in here we go put it in it all right well while while we lose Andy for five minutes let's continue on with this oh Andy he's his eyes are doing something oh he's heading oh my goodness I'll just roll it a bit and

50:15it very very very warm what's warm sorry we're singing very warm why is it just sabotage them oh my god oh my god you're crying I'm not crying you're crying oh my god it's getting worse oh my god oh wow I think that's how it works right it slowly kicks in more and more end the show end the show now oh sorry I actually put some told venom in there as well we'll talk for a bit while I talk for a bit while you deal with that to be fair you read the package you took it out you put it in your own mouth um wow the paramedics on backstage don't worry I read that pick a mix was invented in Sweden wasn't it yeah really and they had a government initiative called Saturday candy and the idea was that kids will only eat candy one day a week and you're allowed one piece of candy per year old that you are

51:20really yeah this is a bit like I was reading about a seven-up bar which I wish they would bring back are you I just never seen Andy like this this is I'm not all right okay okay yeah it's very hot under these lights isn't it but except well we should probably plow on the seven-up bar are you gonna need to take some time off stage I'm gonna need to take some time off work so you should never see daddy like this as a while I'm really sorry do you do it we I chose to yeah yeah wasn't your fault it was your fault it was made you might have you made a saved a bigger glass of water for him uh on stage and a key plus your water yeah absolutely I think we do need more water on stage if it is possible to get some there's a fire hydrant there I can see um so on other dangerous things you can eat yeah yeah still can't get Kinder surprise in America oh yeah um I haven't been to the 1930s health and safety was a thing back then uh because you know

52:26stuff hidden inside food might be a choking hazard and 60,000 eggs a year are smuggled in because people are that desperate for it well that was one year 2011 how did they smuggle them um I didn't ask which bodily orifice the Kinder eggs were inside um they just came in a suitcase and so now you can buy them with the egg and then next what you get the toy right how shit is that that's very cool and people wonder why America's going downhill we we passed on the way here today on the train and because our our plane was unfortunately delayed sorry the water has just arrived and for the listener at home um Andy is drinking direct from the carat he's charging it's it stayed in your mouth for so long yeah I think I did pretty well you did amazingly well oh god and it has an effect at the show at all uh we we were our plane was delayed today so unfortunately when we were on the train over from Copenhagen we were not able to get off at Maumau in order to go to the

53:27disgusting food museum which is another friend of the podcast yeah um and actually I I told them I was quite excited to go I actually had alternative motives because I have a bone to pick with them and that is as a half Australian someone who grew up in Australia for my high school years um there were three items in there that are connected to Australia one of which which has been classified as disgusting food is Vegemite one of the finest finest things that you can get in the world if you add some right now Andy you'd be feeling great yeah what for that yeah huh I think it uh I think it calms the heat it's known for that says on the side it's uh what's hilarious is the owner of it was interviewed about it and he said it's the only time there's ever been a complaint in the food museum was an angry Australian walked up to the counter banged his fist down and went who dead put Vegemite in here and he explained actually it's just like it's kind of cool because we sell in the give shop and people try and so actually like doing the sales and so on but um

54:31they sell things in there the idea sorry doxel they display things in there the idea is is things that you might not necessarily find disgusting but someone around the world might so they have haribos in there and the idea is like to us or to me certainly I love haribos but then someone around the world they might be like well this is just like melted down bones of an animal with fruit juice in it like that is weird isn't it sweet that yeah why they don't call it that other thing thank you yeah Andy's just been brought some parts in of milk is that a tetrapack it's certainly as a tetrapack born in London you know what guys Andy has not shut up about tetrapacks all day I actually didn't mention them in the lunch section because I had too much research and I feared that if I started I would not be able to stop but I think it's really appropriate you've been saved by a tetrapack in there yeah don't you have one in your pocket right now there's been leaking I'm just pleased to see you don't well listen we do need to wrap up because there is another

55:36act that's coming in but anyone else not like it go on the toe of Satan I don't want to hog it all for myself all right look we need to wrap up thank you so much lune comedy festival this has been absolutely awesome if anyone wants to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said we're all online so go find us there but the most important thing is if you want to say something about the episode if you want to tell us something more that you learned yourself that we didn't mention email podcast at qi.com because Andy reads all those emails and he brings them to yeah yeah it's just the idea of reading an email is quite a lot other my way yeah yeah so but and he's going to be on a break for the next two weeks so you've got plenty of time to send it in but otherwise we just want to thank you so much for having us here what a thrill it is to be in this room in lund this has been awesome thank you so much everyone maybe we'll see you again at another comedy

56:40festival until then goodbye