No Such Thing As The Otters Circling

0:00Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Office lunch shouldn't be a struggle. Meal Manager from DoorDash for Business lets employees pick a meal, consolidates into one delivery, and runs on autopilot. Learn more at business.doordash.com slash products slash meal-manager. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tyshinsky, and Andrew Hunter-Murray.

0:55And 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 that is anna my fact this week is that cheese and onion crisps contain twice as much salt as salt and vinegar crisps no such thing as a fish blowing things wide open this now this is a heavy hitter yeah this is yeah and it's going to get pretty serious here. Cut to Anna banging on the door of Walker's. What do you have to say about this, guys? Nailing her 95 theses to the door. Theses? Oh, I've been nailing the wrong thing to the door. That one of the podcast goes as quickly from crisps to Martin Luther and then poo.

1:47I'm 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? Yeah, they've just mislabeled them for years. This is, if we're allowed to say brands, this is actually specifically Walker's crisps. Each flavour has its own website page. And so the website page for salt and vinegar crisps says that they have 0.6 grams of salt per 100 grams. And then I thought, I wonder how many salt grams cheese and onion crisps have. So I went on the cheese and onion website page. 1.2 grams per 100 grams. What? Did you do the other flavors? I went to ready salted, which is also higher than salt and vinegar. And in fact, it's higher salt than both at 1. 100 grams. What? Did you do the other flavors? I went to ready salted, which is also higher than salt and vinegar.

2:27And 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 maybe 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... You wouldn't taste the vinegar maybe. Yeah. 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'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 what color is the cheese and onion page it's a great

3:02question james because of course there's a misconception is there cheese and onion page. It's a great question, James, because of course there's a misconception. Cheese and onion is the blue packet, isn't it? In Walker's world. Well, it is in Walker's world. But Walker's didn't invent cheese and onion crisps. Golden Wonder did. And they put them in a green pack. Really? And so lots of people think that really crisps, cheese and onion, should be in a green pack. And I think, isn't there loads of people who misremember and think that cheese and onion should be in a green pack and i think isn't there loads of people misremember and think that cheese and onion used to be green and they never did

3:29miriam holland who is a spokeswoman for tato which now owns golden wonder as she said the packets of course should be green because that's the color of the shoots of onions obviously and there's so much onion in those packets sometimes i don't know about, I open a packet and I have to clear out onions for a few minutes just before I get into the crib. Not everything can be the colour of salt, I think. That's a good point. 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 Miss Potato Chip, which was a annual beauty pageant where someone was awarded the title.

4:10And that went on for years. The first person I found was in 1956. She was an X-ray nurse from Cincinnati, Elaine Kuntz. And she made the front cover holding potato crisps and- Was she using the crisps to cover her genitals or her name? She was completely naked, not holding the potato crisps. It's her name. Yeah, but there's a lot of them. It 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. Crisp flavors. There is a whole line of crisps, which only used to be available in American prisons. They were called the whole shebang. And it was only if you were locked up

5:08in an American prison that you could get hold of them. Wow. And the flavor sounds amazing. It was a composite flavor of barbecue and salt and vinegar and a load of other things just all mixed up. Why? What do you mean? Why were they just targeting prisoners? I think they were targeting, I think there are shops in prisons sometimes where you can buy food and it was the official supplier to the prison estate basically because it's a huge great estate in America obviously millions of people in there and apparently they're fantastic crisp and they have recently been made available to the public but there are plenty of Facebook groups of ex-cons saying absolutely love these things and I'm considering

5:43doing some more crimes just to get back in there, just to taste the whole shebang again. Do they make themed flavours like walkers do sometimes, like a salt and vinegar? Oh dear, you've unleashed the next 20 minutes of that. Podcast at QI.com Imagine if that's the cause of the high rates of recidivism all over the world. It's literally just people desperate to get back to those crisps. 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 set out on a quest to answer something that's plagued her for years. Why can you get lasagna flavor Lay's crisps in Thailand, but not Italy?

6:27And she went deep. I mean, I can pretty much answer that. Go on. Well, an Italian would just go, what the fuck is this? So after about 19 years. So close to do the accent there. And then just pulled out of it at the last second. I heard it in the edge of your mind. Yes, that is the answer exactly at the end of her sort of 14,000 word long read. The rest is fascinating. She interviews some people who work in Seasoning House, the people who make flavours for not just Lay's, like all crisp companies. So they wouldn't let her actually print the company's proper name. They wouldn't let us know it. It's hard to explain the secrecy. I think it's basically because they're providing all the crisp flavors for all the crisp companies but the different

7:08companies don't really want to acknowledge that they're all getting their flavors from the same place sure sure and they weren't she interviewed two people who worked there they weren't allowed to give their real names we called them peggy and reuben but she was like these of course aren't their real names and they revealed some quite cool stuff. Things like spicy 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?

7:45It's Mexico. Mexico, yes. Mexico, you are geographically close, yeah. No, because I remember that 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, hang on, I've seen a trailer for this film. I sent it to you. Because of your janitor obsession. Dorito janitor who has this golden idea. Oh, hang on. I've seen a trailer for this. I sent it to you because of your janitor obsession. Dorito janitor. 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 hunting. Back to Eamon. We've got our only Connect question right there.

8:24And while we're just on a slight pause, Prawn Cock Jail. Very good, yeah. Sending me to Prawn Cock Jail. Everyone in here has a penis that looks like a shrimp. That's why they were arrested. I don't know how well they'd sell in the jail, to actually show up. There's so many bags of prawn cocktail left. Sour crime and onion. Like cream. Oh, yeah. Cream or chives? Sour crime and onion. Yeah, like cream. Sour cream and onion. Yes, yes. Yeah, good. So we all loved prawn cocktail. Sour crime and onion gets diddly squash. There's no justice on this show. Anna, you were talking about the Guardian article. The Guardian seems to have a bit of a thing for crisps because just last week, a journalist called Amar Kalia

9:18ate 100 different flavors of crisp for the Guardian and ranked them all. Oh my God. This is what it's become. Number 100, grouse and winbury i've had those smelling as meaty as a butcher's 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 grouse and i can't remember some other game bird here yeah right um 98 blue heat leaves a luminescent blue powder on your fingers smells of urinal cakes and tastes of synthetic lime and chili wow six out of ten hot kick ketchup tastes 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

10:05Falafel, extra virgin olive oil And french fry sauce All made by different companies But I won't name the companies Falafel? Yeah Never tried that They did this last year With the Christmas crisps Oh yeah Duck and clementine Camembert, chilli and honey And the worst The one that gave zero stars to Gingerbread Doritos The reviewer said They are the only crisp I have ever wanted to spit out. Wow. Which is damning. Wow, even 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. What? Because I've got a strong mouth. You cut your mouth, right? On my tongue? No, no, you get it between your teeth and then it just, ugh. I go with trepidation towards a packet of crisps

10:44because this happens. Really? I wouldn't say, I say it might have happened to me twice in my life but just have a lot of empathy yeah i really 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 to uh bite open a pack of crisps in a pub you know how you buy a pack for everyone and you and you open it with your teeth to lay it out yeah yeah can't do it anymore i don't know what's happened if i've lost uh 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

11:18yes it's our tradition of hospitality it's not much of fun but it's not like the ancient greek senior well you have to invite a stranger into your house and give them all of your food yes with us it's just like open a packet of crisps and take the biggest ones and let the rest of them do you remember a few weeks ago we talked about the yak meat distribution in tibet and the stranger's share that's their equivalent of opening a packet of crisps if you went to the pub bought a packet of crisps at the table. Do you think if you went to the pub, bought a packet of crisps, opened it up, put it on the table with your mates, and then a stranger came along and took the biggest crisp, do you think that would be frowned upon?

11:51Yeah, I think it would. Everyone does leave the last crisp for a little while. They do. And then someone who's hungry will just take it. Can 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 lehinolean salt which is the product of unpolluted ancient seas dried up over 200 million years ago and they probably just add 10 quid to the price yeah yeah 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

12:37of the sea to recrystallize and then you would get that and that was supposed to be tastier than any other salt you could get okay was it it's just sodium chloride isn't it oh yeah 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've 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 10 years because i never's about one pinch a month. But yeah, that's posh salt, isn't it? Maldon and Essex. I don't want to get big salt on my back, but I feel like...

13:13It's all salt. Mostly all salt. It's the texture, it's that flakiness. 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, yeah. That's in salt, isn't it? Friend of the podcast, goiters. What do you think one hand crisps are for? Well, when you're driving, you need to keep one hand on the wheel. Two hands on the wheel. What? Sorry, one hand's out the side slapping the side of the car to the song. One arm's over your honey in the fancy. Those balls aren't going to itch themselves. One out the side, one round the honey, one on the balls, one in the back. It's just to solve the problem of greasy phone screens this is koi keiya in tokyo have made

14:08one hand crisps and actually that's where they come a pre-crushed um okay 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 favorite bit we'll make them pre-crush and then it's one hand because they've got a corner of the pack which you can just rip off the corner perfectly. So it forms a little spout for your mouth. And then you can tip the 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. The tiny ones presumably won't hurt you so much.

14:43Oh my god. What if you've got teeth that can't open the pack little corner to get to the tiny crisps yes the tiny ones presumably won't hurt you so much oh my god what if you got teeth that can't open the pack little corner to get to the tiny crisps thank god you and i don't have the same mouth build your menu from the bread up with the power of flowers bakeries food service harness the power of an unrivaled portfolio of diverse products. Collaborate with us for your own custom creations. Depend on our dedicated distribution time after time. And use legendary breads and buns from behemoth brands like Nature's Own, Canyon Bakehouse, and Dave's Killer Bread. Build your menu with the power of flowers.

15:25Hi, I'm Sherry Harris, owner of LifeSource Water. Are you sick of harsh, chlorinated water and dry skin and hair? Fed up with hard water buildup and plastic bottles? A LifeSource whole home water filtration system is your solution. And now LifeSource is offering new customers a double dip in savings. You get free basic installation plus an extra $250 off. That's up to $1,250 in savings. Call 1-800-WATER-99 to claim your double deal or visit LifeSourceWater.com. Offer ends September 30. Warranty limitations apply. Okay, it'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.

16:14Sounds like the kind of person Trump might put into 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 Parton, name any major artists, 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.

16:56It is awesome. And it does seem to come from him being an expert in music technology and him thinking, look, I understand that. And I understand all the algorithms that go with that. And I can transfer that into military. He i mean he's very funny he's he says that there was a moment where he was being recruited and you know you've got to go and do your session in front of the committee where you're being interviewed and all this and the chair of the committee said to to an assistant is this the guy from raytheon or the guy from boeing and the the answer came no sir this is the guy from the doobie brothers well i wonder how much the doobie brothers are at least quite a well-known name. At least he was in a band that was well-known.

17:30Because 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, Doobie Brothers sounds stupid, right? Yeah, yeah. If you don't already know it's a band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it Doobie- It's a- A spliff. It's a spliff. Do they call themselves that after the fact that it's a spliff, or is the spliff named after the fact that the Doobie Brothers liked spliffs? 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

18:02mirror, 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. So it's always good to know. And this is a band that didn't quite do as well as the Doobie Brothers' Steely Dan. They, uh, yeah. But we don't know why he's called Skunk. He's never revealed the origins of the, uh, the name Skunk. There is a theory. Oh yeah. I've read quite a, quite a compelling theory actually. Supposedly he was outside a recording studio where there was a session going on. He hadn't quite got back in. He'd been locked out or something. So he was relieving himself outside the recording studio and someone stepped out of the door and into his line of fire.

18:38Okay. So I'm presuming number one. But do skunks wee on you? They squirt. They spray from their anus. Got it. Yep. That counts. Zooming number one. But, yeah. But, do skunks wee on you? They release a scent, don't they? They spray. They do spray. From their anus. Got it. Yep, that counts. So, maybe a number two. 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

19:10when you're between the ages of five and nine, can you? Like in 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 most of them wouldn't dodge it in fairness and can i say one more thing about mr doobie what's his name again baxter scum baxter have you seen his face yeah yeah he's got this very peculiar beard and mustache combo okay where the mustache has kind of grown down over the beard he looks like he's just got one single like a walrus belica walrus yeah yeah yeah um i'd say

19:52not quite as suave and distinguished as a walrus but yeah um 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. Floyd is the guy in the Amazing Sergeant Pepper jacket with the great big moustache and the doughty beard. 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 the theory. Missile defense? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Britain has missile defense. take credit for the theory. Missile defence? Oh, yeah. Well, Britain has missile defence. We have for some time. Obviously, in the Cold War,

20:32we thought that the USSR might send us missiles. How come? Britain, you've got special delivery. They're going to be there in four minutes. No, he's blown up my bin area. They thought they might send missiles and they decided that what they wanted to do was to alert the prime minister if they had the like four minute warning kind of thing right in america the guy could respond immediately if he had to in britain what we decided to do was we would use the radio system that the AA was using at the time. If there was a missile being sent to us from the Soviets, the driver would hear on the radio that the prime minister had to get to a telephone immediately. They would go to the nearest AA telephone and then he would

21:17ring Whitehall and say, yeah, send the response. I see. Okay. Now the problem was in order to use those phones you needed four pennies. 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 organizing 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 Macmillan's prime ministership, that the driver would go to an AA phone box.

22:06They would reverse the charges, speak to someone at Whitehall and then say yes or no to send the... Firearm nukes back. Imagine England gets absolutely decimated because of one old lady who's in front on the phone already, refusing to hang up. You've got problems? I've got a flat tyre. I'm going to get to Bolton by six. Where's she from? Everywhere. Everywhere. I got a flat tire. I'm going to get to Bolton by six. Where is she from? Where is she from? Everywhere. Oh, my God. On missiles, we've made a lot of missile cook-ups in our defense history. Yeah. 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 shill. 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.

23:06It'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 Akbeak Corporation. But weirdly, even though they do quarterly inventories of all their equipment, they didn't notice for 18 months. So these are literally the, and it's very complicated, chemical ignition equipment, the thing that ignites the nuclear bomb that you've got on board your missile. for 18 months. So these are literally the, and it's very complicated chemical like ignition equipment, the thing that ignites the nuclear bomb that 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,

23:37you sent us this instead. But I did learn looking at this, how do you spell fuse? F-U-S-E. In America with a Z, maybe? Well, it is with a Z, but not necessarily in America. The difference is they're the same thing. So a fuse that you light, you know, in your garage when you're trying to do a little explosion. So you light the end of a rope and then it blows up a little petrol-filled cup at the other end. Or a firework. Or something more socially acceptable, yeah. Tell us more about it. Yeah, so you put petrol in a cup? Are you punishing the cup? Like, what's the deal? Sometimes our parents wouldn't let us buy fireworks. We've got perfectly good cups of petrol at home. yeah okay so we get what that is a fuse um and that is spelled f-u-s-e a nuclear fuse is the

24:35same thing it's the bit that you kind of like the bit that ignites a nuclear bomb but it's spelled 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 Zeddy. And I'm like, what the hell has just 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. Well, it was a scintillating 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.

25:20And people need to know that that's the one we're talking about. In 1920, you said there was? 1920 was this debate yeah um said it's like considered to be inherently dangerous yes yes i guess you can imagine that can't you it's 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 as anything. Yeah. Like Russian, for instance. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Is it big in Poland as well? Yeah. Is Z big in Poland? Is Z big here, guys? I've got loads of Zs to use. Tijinsky. Tijinsky. Indeed, there's one in that.

26:01Big in China. You Zs all my childhood. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I've got one in that. Big in China. Big in China. You Z's 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 Hoppus of the band Blink-182. Now... You mean Blink-182? Don't. PodcastingQI.com. The inbox has already suffered enough. I'm happy to say Blink182. How many emails do you think you've had about it? More than a dozen. Oh, you can see where I was. Somewhere between one and 82. So check this out. Mark Hoppus was on an aircraft carrier in the Persian

26:49Gulf 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 while he's hiding and while they're trying to find him. So Mark Hoppus says, what you should do is sort of fly a whole load of drones, because drone technology was around then, they were using drones, in a pattern, a carpeted pattern it was called, all across the area where they think he might be. And all of them need to be emitting an exact time signature, right? So it's just playing out. Then if you did that and you got one of the videos that Saddam had, you can listen to the video

27:28and 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, in his autobiography. He suggested it. A few months later, they catch the guy, and he says... Because often they do find them with all the small things, don't they? It's just, you know. I could see. It's a blink 182 reference there. Oh, is it? Yes. That was brilliant. Yeah, it went over my head. 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.

28:16What? Why? So this is the most rock and roll of all the animals, because it has a Z in the name. And of course, the white stripes. Very good. Good stripes. Very good. Good spot. 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 just happen to show us the stripy ones. Like, I don't know about you, but in my house I have a lot of books with zebras in them. And no spotty ones to be there. For the alphabet books, it's the go-to z isn't it it is but james you could write the book on the spotty zebra oh there is one already yeah um so basically they found a spotty zebra and it's not the first one they ever found but it was in 2019 and a photographer called frank lou was looking for

29:03rhinos he saw this this zebra, photographed it, and it went kind of viral on the internet. But as a result, there has been a children's book called Zeke, the polka-dotted zebra, 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 spongebob 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 uh caught and eaten by a lion because i think this was in the link you

29:53sent around james several foals zebra foals have been spotted with this pattern of spots but there is only one photo where the zebra in question even made it to teenager status basically really yeah they're just very easy to spot and therefore to eat. Oh, is that what it is? It is not a good survival strategy. They're terrifically easy for lions to catch. Because I would, I mean, I know everyone always says, oh, the stripes are a bit good for camouflage, but really, we don't know that. And I can't imagine it would make that much of a difference. Do we think they're less fit in other ways, maybe? No, I don't think so. But also, if my daughter ate zebras for her dinner every day and then you gave her one that was spotty instead of stripy not in a million years is she gonna eat that

30:30exactly like oh 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 they've got those lovely little white spots on their back and that can keep babies hidden from predators because it kind of mimics the effect of dappled sunlight and it breaks the animal up and all of this and so it's weird because you would think that well why wouldn't that be true for zebras as well i don't know i think they they form their stripes inside while they're still being cooked by the mum they literally it's what gives a unique kind of fingerprint element to it is that the folds as they're coming and being

31:04developed are made stripy on the inside they don't develop it once they're outside. Oh no, they don't. They come out striped. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think they did. You 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, tree rings. 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 um solving the enigma machine like big world war ii code breaker real hero um very sadly killed himself in the mid 1950s but before he did that he wrote a paper called the chemical basis of morphogenesis it was the last paper he wrote and it explained why animals have

31:53certain patterns before that everyone thought that if you get a zebra or a cheetah or um 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 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 won are going to be like the activator and the inhibitor on your skin and that means that the

32:25bits where the inhibitors one are going to be like the white bits and the bits where the activators one are going to be the black spots or whatever and it's more complicated than that because it's slightly hardcore maths but it suddenly explains everything in nature like the ridges behind your teeth uh apparently are cheering patterns i really i think that's a crisp. That's been there for years. Isn't it weird how the ridges behind your teeth taste like salt and vinegar? Explain that, Turing. Another little children's book thing. Oh, yeah. Have any of you ever read the... This is actually just from my own personal thing that I was looking at because I really love the book. I really love the book Greedy Zebra.

33:091920s. After I tried finished on the minutes of the congress hearing in the 1920s there's a children's book in this is it a fuse no it's a fuse greedy zebra is a great book it's by muwenye hadithi and don't know if you guys have read it it's just um how the zebra got its stripes Okay. 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 fortunately it was written in 1984. And so it explores the fact that the zebra is so greedy and lazy that it doesn't go to the cave in time to pick up its skin. And when it gets there, it's only got a crap bit of black rag and it's so fat because it's eaten too much that it bursts out of it and that's how it gets its stripes and

33:48that'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 muwenye hadithi 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 they had was these letters that he didn't know what to do with? Bruce! I've only got Bruce Hobson left, sorry about that. He did, to be fair to him, he grew up in Nairobi by a river and he picked up all these stories of Kenyan folklore. And so I've only raised this because I read his obituary on his little publisher's page and he died in 2022 in the middle of a game of pickleball, which he was winning at the time.

34:28Oh, dear. A game that he loved. It was a very positive write up of his death. Good detail that he was winning at the time. Just a nice 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 zonkey is? It's a zebra donkey. Very good. Presumably. 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. They are native to Mexico. They are actually donkeys that are painted with zebra stripes. But they have been, now don't sound disappointed though, because they've been around for 100 years now. In the 1930s, when tourists really wanted to take pictures of themselves

35:19with burro carts, like traditionally burros are Mexican donkeys with these donkey carts because they thought that's so Mexican. The Mexicans would paint big Mexican scenery behind them and then they'd put the burrow cart there with the donkey and then they started taking photos and they realised in the 1930s when everyone's photos are black and white, this guy said, we realised that because our little burrito, our little burrow was white, she didn't show up in the pictures. So he and his brother bought some dye and painted them with zebra stripes, and it caught on. And to this day in Tijuana, you've got hundreds of zebra donkeys. 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

36:02like cows and so on and finding that roughly 50% less bites happen with them with mozzies and flies and so on. I'm convinced by that. The photos of the cows that are painted like zebras are pretty funny. I will say that. Can I derail the conversation totally for a moment? Yeah, please. I was on a website called Stripes because I was researching stripes. Yeah. But it turns out Stripes is just a US military website. Okay. Did 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. Well, I mean, it sounds like you can train lots of animals to sniff out stuff like dogs and so on. Maybe you can do it with otters.

36:42Well, 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 book. Yes. About uniqueness and self-acceptance. He wasn't invited to the parties because he always had a corpse under each arm. What corpses? Is it some battlefield corpses come and seek them out and take them back? I think he's an Asian river otter called Splash, who's just absolutely expert, wizzo, at finding dead people. Described in the article as the two-year-old fuzzy investigator. Finding dead people in civilian areas? Well, it's when people go missing. And so in the last year with his handler, Splash has been deployed on 33 searches for bodies and found 11 wow that's

37:27an extremely good hit rate yeah so uh i just found that extraordinary and the the u.s uh lieutenant who was accompanying the exercise said we have previously incorporated detection canines or ring and even vultures into our scenarios okay More fitting, a vulture. 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 waiting for you to die. How 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 beat 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

38:14death in the natural world is by eating the face of the creature. Sorry, can we just unpack that a tinge? 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. Right. So there are a few parts of that.

38:55I still think if you bite a big chunk of a butterfly's wing, it's just going to flap in circles, isn't it? And come straight back at you. Oh yeah. That's a terrible escape. But we talked about the experiment where they painted eyes on cows' bottoms to deter, that actually put lions off attacking them. Yeah. Because they didn't want to approach an animal that was staring at them. I think surely, isn't that the idea? More that you think they can see you so you don't attack. Yeah, yeah. I think if you take a bit of a butterfly's wing off, it is fucked. I think so. I think it is. Unless it's in butterfly's wing off it is fucked i think it is unless it's in my children's book the fucked butterfly coming this autumn a sequel to the beloved very hungry

39:35caterpillar shag here what's it like to buy a car from Carvana 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you. Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10 once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Feeding a team is limited options, changing schedules, people not showing up. Meal Manager makes daily team meals effortless, with curated restaurant picks, easy ordering,

40:22and lunch that arrives on time, every time. Daily Meals, managed. 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. Oh, sure. What's the obvious next step? What? Blankets and cows. But it's all been black and white things, hasn't it? And if we're talking about Friesian cows, they are black and white. Oh, 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 colouring due to the Hormuz closing.

41:10Oh my God. Wow. Hormuz, and what noise the cows make. We're back to cows. What a boomerang that was. So this fact came from a piece about weighted blankets. I read it in The Economist, and for anyone who doesn't know they're basically basically just heavy duvets full of, I read, glass beads. But I think they can be plastic as well. Just unbelievably heavy blankets and duvets. I haven't realised how heavy they are. They're really heavy. Like four times as heavy as my duvet, I realised. Yeah, yeah. And they were created or rather inspired by a bit of work by an American academic called Temple Grandin. She's quite famous, actually. She noticed that the cows on her aunt's ranch relaxed when they were squeezed in tight metal traps.

41:56Now, that doesn't sound brilliant, but basically pressure on the sides of the cow meant that it calmed down and just chilled out a little bit. And she's famously autistic, and she's been advocating for people with autism for a lot of her career. She built her own squeeze machine, which was a wooden chute, and found that it really calmed her down. And she sometimes felt that she wanted deep pressure stimulation, but not always from a person. 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. What year is this that we're talking?

42:38I think this was in about, oh gosh, you're testing me now. I think it was in the 60s, 50s or 60s, late 50s, yeah. Because the first sort of commercial weighted blanket happened in 1997, as far as I can see. It was a long gestation period. You will 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- Well, it's because it's a long time, you wait. Oh my God, I've just got it. And then it's also heavy. Don't worry, James just got it. And then it's also heavy. Don't worry, James, got your back. So 1997, there was this family where one of the daughter of this family put a beanie baby on the shoulder of the mom. And she was like, oh, wow, that just feels really comforting and nice.

43:19And 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. Well, it wasn't called that for long because beanie babies got in touch and sued or threatened to sue them if they didn't change. They 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, the weighted beads. So are they related to temple grandin or did they both come up with the idea independently i think it was she had been working on this idea and and the idea of the squeeze machine and all this and

43:56then i think other people took it forward and monetized as it were and grandin certainly wasn't trying to target um the people maybe that this beanie lady is targeting. Hers were specifically for autistic people, weren't they? Whereas they seem to have blossomed out to become for the general public if they're feeling a bit. Well, everyone. Yeah, yeah. It's an anti-anxiety blanket is how it was originally marketed. It's haunting to think how many beanie babies have had to be slaughtered for every single blanket. That's really. There are now weighted pillows as well. What's for cuddling oh yeah hug on to this oh i see but why do you want it to be heavier i think you want it to have the weight of a human do you or the heft of a human oh dear me

44:39what no that's nice it's lovely sorry that's not sad at all it's lovely you gotta you gotta hug on something yeah absolutely yeah and if you're sleeping in the car again then that's nice. It's lovely. Sorry, that's not sad at all. It's lovely. You've got to hug on something. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And if you're sleeping in the car again, then it's nice to have a bit of company. Can you shape it? Because presumably it's all the beads inside. Dad's asking all the right questions. I don't know if you can. I'm trying to turn it into a Pamela Anderson pillow. Maybe some beanie boobs would be a nice cuddle. Beanie boobies? You assumed, weren't you? Oh my god. The dragons are not just out, they've all left the building.

45:13All the dragons quit the show Dragons Den today. I'm hearing about this. It's so horrible. Everyone in the patent office has left. Guys, beanie boobies is what we'll be remembered for. Did you know the beanie boobie guys used to make a podcast on such things as that? Crazy. As well as the weighted pillows. Sorry, I'll just say one other thing. Have you seen the sleep pod? The sleep pod is, as far as I can tell, a straight jacket for grown-ups. Not the straight jackets of normal children. Your kids receive some harsh discipline, don't they? A swaddle for grown-ups is what I mean. 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

46:02as 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 these 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 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 franchise from the people who brought you beanie boobies have you ever wanted to piss the bed as a grown up we introduce peas in a pod why should the kids get all the fun? I'm out. You're lying under heavy things. It reminds me of something I learned in the research for this,

46:57which is about the origin of blankets, or duvets, in fact. So Britain didn't get duvets for a really long time. We didn't get them to the 1960s that's why you know our grandmas slept under and grandpas slept under like loads of blankets and sheets and quilts and i'm sure some people listening to this today are also sleeping under yeah blankets and sheets yes yes and hotels still have them which i never understand but anyway easier to wash you just strip them off of course he worked in hotel. Don't bring up hotels around, James. Anyway. There are duvet covers as well. You can strip off everything from a 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,

47:37you can have to employ about five more people. Pain 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 about how duvets like stuffed blankets existed in Europe, in Germany specifically for like 400, 300, 400 years before they came to England and in fact, travellers went to Europe this diplomat called Paul Ryko 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.

48:15And it just didn't catch on. And in fact, people kept travelling 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 who were welcoming the French going to their house said, OK, 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 put 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 put the duvet on top of you so someone could lie on top and so

48:50he 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 uh surprisingly uses blankets uh i'm gonna say splash the corpse detecting otter is the correct answer oh straight in there amazing um sea otters mothers sea otter mothers wrap their babies in seaweed blankets adorable 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 um basically live on their mother's chest

49:39the whole time uh but when the mother's away foraging, what do you do? Well, you tie it up, put it in a seaweed blanket. Oh, so it's like putting a dog on a lead? Because you can't... Or a kind of straitjacket, I would 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, isn't it cool? I discovered something about Manchester, because I was looking into Manchester, because my favourite thing which I learned being married to an Australian is That's really nice. Lovely. That's incredible. Yeah. Isn't that cool? I discovered something about Manchester. Because I was looking into Manchester because my favorite thing, which I learned being married

50:08to an Australian is what they call bedding. What they call blankets. Oh yeah. Don't look at me. They call it Manchester. Should we buy some new Manchester? I don't call it that. Yeah. And I have read online, it's like mostly Older generations But I think my husband Would take against that As a 42 year old Dan doesn't need any Dan doesn't need any bedding Because he has so much Manchester Oh There we go We've got some Kind of a disease It's called Fitzel sucks And it's just An obsession With making puns It is that isn't it It is Fitzel sucks Fitzel sucked Is that real? Yeah, yeah. Wow. If you have a stroke, like some people have had a stroke and they can't stop making puns. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder,

50:52what's your excuse? Yes, it's called Manchester. Anyway, it's called Manchester. So sorry, I was looking into Manchester and... Because they did a lot of weaving, right? That was a big cloth place. They were the of um cloth and weaving and stuff like that the cottonopolis was what manchester was called and then in the mid-19th century there was the lancashire cotton famine and it was caused by the american civil war so 75 of the cotton that was grown in the south went to lancashire um to the lancashire cotton 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

51:34because obviously he wanted to shut down the South. This flipping guy, Lincoln. This guy. Well, I know what you're saying. The more I hear about him, the less I like him. I'm so glad you've taken that side because this hill needs an enemy How does the civil war end? He blockades it so none of the cotton gets through to Manchester 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 the mill workers need to turn on this we need to turn on this. We need to get the government to go and smash the blockade.

52:10Like the Navy needs to go and sort out this blockade. So Manchester Guardian writes a letter saying, look, the mill workers are going to turn against this. Mill owners are like, yeah, the mill workers, you've got to get on side here. All importers are saying this is really bad. You're all starving. 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 blockade. I mean, it certainly wouldn't be the first time that the British ever got involved in another country's war for their own self-interests. Okay, look, this is actually one to show Britain in a good light.

52:38So the mill workers got together of their own accord and they met in a factory and they drafted a resolution about this under all this pressure and the resolution was to affirm their support for lincoln and they wrote that they 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, grown by slavery. Isn't that unbelievable? They were 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. It's amazing, I had no idea.

53:19That's terrific. And if Andy Burnham gets wind of this, God, he's going to make a big song and dance about it, isn't he? Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to get in contact with any of us, we're all online. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram. James? My Instagram is nosuchthing, goes James Harkin. Andy? Mine is at Andrew Hunter M. Yeah, and we're also on there as a group. Anna, where do they go? Instagram at nosuchthing, or you can email podcast at qi.com. Yeah, podcast at qi.com. 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,

54:02Andy will go through the inbox and he will cherry pick the best of them for two different reasons. One is we have a bonus show on Monday, Little Fish. We bring all your best facts there and we read them out. We love getting them, so continue to send them in, please. Or Andy will take the other batch to a secret show that we have as part of a club that we call Club Fish. That show is called Drop Us a Line. We like to read out your experiences, extra details, quibbles, whatever you have, send it that way. And if you want to be part of Clubfish, by the way, patreon.com slash clubfish is the place to join. So many fun things there. Excel versions of the episodes that we make. So the episode right now,

54:41you'll get like an extra 10, 20 minutes, something like that, depending. And having just done that episode, I think there's going to be some pretty spicy stuff. So yeah, so too hot to broadcast. Head there for that. Or just come here next week because we're going to be back with another episode of Fish. We'll see you then. Thank you as ever to our producers, Ling Li, to Ethan Ruperalia, and as well, the other Fish Buster members. We'll see you again. Thank you as ever to our producers, Ling Li, to Ethan Ruperalia, and as well, the other Fishbuster members. We'll see you again next week. Office lunch shouldn't feel like a logistics problem. Meal manager from DoorDash for Business auto-builds your weekly meal calendar with vetted local and national restaurants.

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