No Such Thing As Musical Toads

9:19Andy Dawson:So I think Pluga i Uppsala means studying Uppsala, right? Because they're all kind of, they all wear suits and they're very important and they do their important research and stuff. But Ligga, it seems to mean live or be in bed. Or Google Translate says it means sleep around.

9:38Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, you've got to use that Lund for something, haven't you?

9:47Andy Dawson:So it means study in Uppsala and sleep around in Lund. And the idea is that students in Lund are having much more fun. Is that the idea?

9:59Dan Schreiber:That's a big cheer for everyone saying, yeah, we're sleeping around all the time. So good on you, guys. I only realized, reading up on this fact, that the academic quarter was a thing, which seems to be universally known in Europe, in mainland Europe, but we don't have it. The academic quarter. The academic quarter is, if your lecture is scheduled to start at 10 a.m., guys in the audience, what time does it start? 10.15.

10:25Andy Dawson:10.15.

10:25Dan Schreiber:10.15. Right. What the hell?

10:27Andy Dawson:Well, I can tell you in the UK, if the teacher doesn't turn up for five minutes, we all fuck up. Exactly.

10:34Dan Schreiber:The lecturer would turn up every day and go, still no one coming, hey, weird. Yes, this is so mad. And it seems to be like, it's at 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 pre-watches and so I guess that habit has hung over and it is the case and then you observe the double quarter I believe after 6pm so if you're going to a banquet after 6pm and it's scheduled at 7pm you actually turn up at 7.30pm

11:17Anna Ptaszynski:So are you saying that's a thing in other countries?

11:19Dan Schreiber:In many European universities yes

11:21Anna Ptaszynski:I know that German has a word, die akademische führte

11:23Dan Schreiber:What's that?

11:24Anna Ptaszynski:The academic quarter of an hour

11:28Dan Schreiber:Right I think that's I bet that's related you know

11:32Anna Ptaszynski:Well I thought it was that if you were an intellectual you were allowed to be 15 minutes late for something but that might just be a joke that someone told me once

11:40Dan Schreiber:Everyone Everyone officially does unless and I believe this is correct you have to write the word dot if you really want people to turn up at 10 o 'clock you have to write 10 o 'clock and then the word dot or prick I think it is in Swedish You guys

11:53Anna Ptaszynski:you cannot stop

11:54Andy Dawson:can you

11:55Dan Schreiber:You've got to calm down.

11:57Andy Dawson:Honestly, 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.

12:07James Harkin:We've seen it everywhere. We have no idea.

12:10Andy Dawson: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. And I want you to see if you can think of the link between them. They are Sexy School in Bruton and Pawnee School in Eton.

12:49Dan Schreiber:And what's the link?

12:50Andy Dawson:Yeah.

12:51Dan Schreiber:aside from the fact that they both have rude names

12:53Andy Dawson:yep one more link

12:54Anna Ptaszynski:is it that they're both named after

12:57Andy Dawson:they both sound like they should be named after one thing

13:05Andy Dawson:but sexy school was named after Hugh Sexy who lived there in the 16th century and Pawnee School was named after a Frenchman called Marc Anthony Pawnee fantastic

13:17James Harkin:Oh my goodness. Fantastic. That's brilliant.

13:27Andy Dawson:Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi everyone. We'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by NordVPN. Dan, what is NordVPN?

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13:52Andy Dawson:recently was sat in the country of sweden when we went on tour there to play the lund comedy festival but my computer and my phone thought i was in the uk and so i tricked them into showing me the snooker can you believe it but yeah it's not just that kind of thing i would call it the all-in-one digital security app. Because like Dan says, it stops you from getting viruses. It offers protection against malware, dangerous websites, ads, all that kind of stuff. They're very privacy first and they're very good against the horrors of the internet.

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14:40Andy Dawson:Absolutely. You don't have to be in a Nordic country like I was in Sweden. You could be in any country to use NordVPN. And again, that URL is nordvpn.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.

15:05James Harkin:It is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

15:11Dan Schreiber:My fact this week is that one of the biggest fashion designers of the 90s now works as a toad facilitator.

15:20Andy Dawson:Oh, okay. Nigel Farage's tailor? Lovely.

15:25Anna Ptaszynski:A toad facilitator.

15:27Dan Schreiber:Yes. You look like you're going to try and guess what it is.

15:30Anna Ptaszynski:Well, I know what a toad is. But a facilitator, someone who makes toads possible?

15:37Dan Schreiber:He makes it possible to smoke them. So this is a guy called Patrick... It actually doesn't harm the toads, even though I know it sounds like it does. But this is a guy called Patrick Cox, who was a huge shoe designer, mostly, and sort of bags and accessories in the early 90s. He made a shoe called the Wannabe Loafer, which you probably recognise.

15:57Anna Ptaszynski:If you want to be my loafer. that's what the lyrics actually were yeah wow so sorry sorry Patrick Cox

16:08Dan Schreiber:Priest Vice Girls um he was like a mad party animal took all the drugs mates with Elton John and Liz Hurley and people but uh 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 um a toad facilitator is an accepted job it's a thing that's referred to and you have your toad facilitator and the lingo is they hold the space so that you can smoke it while feeling okay yeah but sitting by people walking them through the

16:48Anna Ptaszynski:situation i just don't think this guy's had a massive change in his life if you say oh wow Oh, it's incredible. He doesn't drink anymore apart from all the hallucinogenic toads that he helps other people smoke.

16:58James Harkin: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.

17:07Dan Schreiber: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 effect. It's very dangerous. It caused lots of terrible health outcomes.

17:16Andy Dawson:I think it's not good for you in any way, I'm going to say.

17:19Anna Ptaszynski: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.

17:25Dan Schreiber:You shouldn't. So what people do is they dry the toxins that it excretes.

17:31Anna Ptaszynski:Sorry, you have to milk the toad first.

17:34Dan Schreiber:Tickle the toad. Well, obviously, Andy, milk the toad.

17:37Anna Ptaszynski:And then the venom comes out, and then that's what you dry, isn't it? I read that it's like the venom comes out like squeezing a pimple.

17:44Andy Dawson:You kind of tickle it and squeeze it, and it goes...

17:48Dan Schreiber:So satisfying. So satisfying. Not for me. I'll take that job Toad milker and you can

17:56James Harkin:But what what you end up smoking is it's a type of its DMT, right?

18:02Dan Schreiber:well, it's it's Not exactly DMT. It's sort of related, but it's eight times strong six to eight times stronger

18:08James Harkin:And you can synthesize what that produced to make DMT. That's been a thing. That's been a byproduct Sorry, that's question. What's DMT?

18:15Dan Schreiber:It's DMT is the thing in ayahuasca. Okay, this gets you way more high This is actually the most...

18:20Andy Dawson:Dimethyltryptamine, just to say. What was that? Dimethyltryptamine. That's how the police test if you've had any. 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 lab. And that's a real problem because when you start messing around with toads, they get really sick, and there's a whole big problem with funguses going through the amphibian world at the moment and a lot of it is due to people doing this. And the reason that people try and use the actual toads instead of using the stuff off the shelf is because they think that this is like an amazing indigenous sacrament that people have been doing in Native America for thousands and thousands of years.

19:06Andy Dawson: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 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

19:25James Harkin:do the fake stuff do the fake yeah and the fake stuff doesn't have when you do ayahuasca there's the whole thing of purging where you have you vomit you when you're doing synthesized dmt it's a it's basically a 15 minute visit to this fractal illusionary world inside your brain and you don't vomit, they call it the death of the ego at certain points of it.

19:44Anna Ptaszynski:And if you put in the offer code, Toad. Damn. It has a lot of famous users. Mike Tyson has said that this stuff changed his entire life. Yeah. 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, that Shepard made an informational videotaped for the people who were prosecuting him, saying, look, this is how you do it, this is how great it is.

20:37Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, right. Yeah.

20:38Dan Schreiber:People are obsessed. One of the mad things about it is that the person who actually discovered it was this guy, a Texan called Ken Nelson. And he's kind of cool. He was a total recluse. His identity was only revealed really publicly after he died in about 2020. But he had read about these thousands of toad bones being dug up in North Carolina on an archaeological dig. And he just thought, well, I bet that's a weird historic ceremonial thing, like Native American spiritual ceremony. And I bet those toads were hallucinogenic. And then he got into his research, and he found the toad most likely to be hallucinogenic.

21:12Dan Schreiber: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 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 a complete coincidence that he went looking for a hoax and a jacked toad and found one.

21:42Andy Dawson:Maybe they were all licking each other, these toads. There's been a lot of evidence about psychedelics like this are good for treating depression. And it does seem that they work in some way. But the truth is, a lot of the headlines say that they're way better than actual antidepressants, as in the ones you get over the counter. But in truth, they're probably about the same. And the reason is the studies that have shown that the psychedelics are better, it's really hard to come up with a placebo in that effect. Because if you've had the sugar pill and, you know, a big toe isn't sort of kicking you in the head, then you know that you haven't had the real thing.

22:23Andy Dawson:And so when they test for that, they found that actually they're about the same as modern sort of synthesized antidepressants. Oh, interesting. Oh, wow.

22:31Dan Schreiber:Which is still pretty good, to be fair.

22:33James Harkin:But it's really hard to get this stuff right As in, I'm not saying I've tried I just mean

22:38Anna Ptaszynski:I think it's pretty clear which of the four of us has tried

22:41James Harkin:I think It's illegal at a lot of places To do it, but a lot of these Toad parties happen At mine But I'm not doing it Andy I'm just facilitating

22:58Anna Ptaszynski:Can I tell you about my favourite toad? Yes please My fave toad is the Santa Marta harlequin. And this is an amazing toad. So with a lot of species, the mating happens via a thing called amplexus, which you may have heard of, which is where the male clings onto the female's back. It's basically a piggyback thing.

23:19Dan Schreiber:Doggy style, I think we called it before this amplexus word came into use.

23:24Anna Ptaszynski:Let's keep it PG and say piggyback. Okay.

23:29Anna Ptaszynski:The thing is I think the amplexus is before the mating 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 mate with her eventually and you can powerfully kick away at the males

23:55Andy Dawson:It's not what, like in musical chairs, you then start the music again and everyone runs around to jump on another toad. That's one difference.

24:06Anna Ptaszynski:I've been letting Dan organise my children's parties. It's been an absolute disaster. But basically the male will get on, get a piggyback, and if the female says she's not ready to mate, the male is simply patient and says, don't worry, I'm fine here, just on your back. Males have been found waiting for up to five months 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.

24:33Andy Dawson:Does she not pass some food over while she's eating?

24:37Anna Ptaszynski:I don't think she does.

24:39James Harkin:How often do they check in? Are the headaches still happening? Yeah?

24:46Anna Ptaszynski:Okay, I'm just back here. Some of them will starve to death, I'm afraid. Clinging or waiting for her to be in the frame of mind. And that's my favourite toad.

25:04Dan Schreiber:Let's not read too much into what that tragically reflects about Andy's life. Cane toads, they're probably the most famous toxic toads, aren't they? Super toxic cane toads. There was lots of rumours that people licked cane toads and got poisoned by them. But they are a massive problem in places where they're invasive. They're invasive in the Caribbean. They're invasive in Australia. Called cane toads because they were introduced to get rid of the cane beetle that was eating all the sugar cane. So another classic example of when we try to solve a problem and make it a million times worse. And anyway, they're killing lots of crocodiles in Australia, which a lot of people would think, fine by me.

25:42Dan Schreiber: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 euthanise 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, you've got dead cane toads like a weird baby's mobile hanging above the crocodiles, and then they eat them, they throw up a lot, and then after a few days the crocs go, okay, I'm not going to eat them anymore, and it saved their lives.

26:22Dan Schreiber:I mean, in places where they've done this, it's completely eradicated crocodile deaths from cane toads.

26:26Anna Ptaszynski:That's 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 toadlets in one place. And now it's something like 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 Froggart.

26:57James Harkin:No. Wow. The toad that gets used that we were talking about, that is squeezed for its toxins, that's the buffo alvarius. This is the hallucinogenic one? It's the hallucinogenic one. Its name's been changed, but that was the original name that it had. and that frog used to be the constellation in the night sky. No way. This was back in the 1700s and it was named by a man called Sir John Hill. And he was a composer, he was an actor, he was an author, he was a botanist. He wrote a quite seminal botanical compendium called The Vegetable System. And he used Carl Linnaeus, who was, I believe, connected to Lund.

27:35James Harkin:He used the system. More Uppsala, I think, wasn't he?

27:38Andy Dawson:Was Linnaeus not more Uppsala?

27:40Anna Ptaszynski:Uppsala, yeah. And you see what? He worked hard and he made something of himself.

27:48Andy Dawson:I think he just came down here for a good time every now and then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, we've got to move on very shortly.

27:54James Harkin:Anyone got anything for you?

27:55Andy Dawson:I just thought, seeing as these toads and stuff is illegal, Dan, maybe I've got some other ways to get high for you. See if any of these... 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 enemas, 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 they're pooing a lot, the guano sort of gets in their nose and they start to get a little bit high from that. So maybe some penguin poo.

28:38Andy Dawson: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, it will also get you high as well. Okay. Really? I mean, yeah, hypersexual zombie was my Tinder profile, Bioxai. And the other thing that can make you hallucinate is too much quiet. If you go into a room that is completely quiet, if you stay in there for any more than about 25 minutes, you'll start hallucinating.

29:18Anna Ptaszynski:So do be careful here tonight, everybody, because my fact is coming up. It's a bit of a dry one.

29:32James Harkin:Well, speaking of which, we must move on to our next fact, and that is, of course, Andy.

29:38Anna Ptaszynski:My fact is, traditionally, the people of Iceland liked to bring a sheep into the bedroom. Seems like they knew that here 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 Lord of the Rings. and they are packed earth on the floor and they're really pretty uncomfortable to live in, most of them. They were not nice places to live in. There is a reason now that we don't all live in turf houses. It was quite a hard way of life.

30:19Anna Ptaszynski:And there was one bedroom called the Bath Stoffer for absolutely everyone, which was just upstairs, and everyone, your grandparents, your servants, maybe the couple of the house would get their own bedroom, but maybe another kind of 10 or 15 people would have to share another bedroom. and sometimes you'd need to bring a sheep into the bedroom simply for warmth. Oh.

30:38Dan Schreiber:For warmth for you or for the sheep? For you. Okay.

30:41Anna Ptaszynski:Just because it has a bit more body warmth.

30:43Andy Dawson: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.

30:49Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. But it's very woolly, isn't it? Oh, sheep, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is uncontroversial. Yeah. That's cool. It's because Iceland, you know, was not very forested for when people moved there. And if the trees, the few trees there were, were on the other side of the island, you weren't able to go and get them. So you had to cut turf.

31:10Andy Dawson:Yeah, and like the weather's unpredictable. There's volcanoes sometimes. There's earthquake stuff. You'd have many resources. So like a turf house is kind of a good thing to, because it's quite quick to make.

31:21Dan Schreiber:Yeah, and they were very, you know, I take against this whole uncomfortable. I'm thinking of transitioning to a turf house. Okay. Because they're very well insulated, weren't they? and they look beautiful. Well, like hobbit houses look. And they changed, they started off just like one, you'd go in through the door and it was like one very, very long corridor that went deeper and deeper into the hill. But then they turned into little villages so every family would have its own little turf village. But it did mean that Iceland had by a long way until the mid-19th century the highest rates of high-datted disease in the world.

31:51Andy Dawson:Oh.

31:51Dan Schreiber:Which is only very strange because I was talking to my friend the day before yesterday who's the UK's consultant on high-datted disease. 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...

32:12James Harkin:Dan, another hallucinogen for you to give a whirl to. Guys, I think I read it wrong. It's penguin poo. It's penguin poo. My fault. My fault. Sorry, Anna.

32:20Anna Ptaszynski:This is what you're saying is your dream home. I just think it sounds like I am. It's full of this disease.

32:25James Harkin:I can see why Anna's into it. When you read the descriptions, about how life was inside as families. You know, there's no screen time. You know, back in the medieval times. They would sleep two to a bed and they would sleep in a slight sitting up position. No one slept fully vertical, which is very interesting.

32:44Dan Schreiber:Out of interest, has your wife convinced you that sleeping two to a bed is abnormal in our society?

32:51James Harkin:You know I'm not in my bed because I have three kids and they sleep in it with my mum. I'm at the bottom of a bunk bed for the last two years right now. That was a very sensitive subject you brought up.

33:01Dan Schreiber:Yeah, I'm so sorry. I knew I was doing it as well. What was I thinking?

33:04James Harkin:As you were. It's annoying because I'm not allowed to sleep on the top bunk because I'm not cool enough. Where are you going? But no, so they tutu a bed. And then because in the winters they just have to stay inside, they get the sheep inside, everyone's huddled together, storytelling goes on. And that's why the oral tradition was so big in Iceland. It's just constant stories we're being told to while away the hours. That sounds pretty cool to me. I like the idea. And I also like that the turf itself, you're living in a living house, as in the house itself keeps growing into itself.

33:35Anna Ptaszynski:I'm absolutely, I'm sorry. I'm absolutely sick of this campaign to live in soil. I'm sorry. There is a reason we don't live in soil anymore, which is that everyone's ill all the time. And it's cold and it's filthy. And there are living things in the walls and in the floor.

33:51Dan Schreiber:That's not the reason. The bizarre thing about it is they lived... I'm saying this is... What are we doing? Why are we relitigating buildings?

34:00Andy Dawson:This is insane. There's a lot of problems with modern life, Andy. You know, we're all over our computers all the time. Yeah. There's not very good ventilation in a lot of houses.

34:09Anna Ptaszynski:You three can shack up in a hole in the ground with your sheep, all right? And I will be in a brick home.

34:15Andy Dawson:Oh, yeah. Why do I feel like this is how it started with the three little pigs?

34:24Dan Schreiber:you know what maybe the wolf eats us but we have more fun andy um the mad thing about them is that it wasn't medieval times it was literally all of time until just after the second world war so in about 1945 more than 50 percent 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. Well, what does that say?

34:51Anna Ptaszynski:Guess it shows that the people of Iceland are wrong to want warmth.

34:56Dan Schreiber:I really want to object. They were very well insulated for all their other floors.

35:01James Harkin:I think it would be quite an odd experience for a sheep if they really understood what was going on inside there. Well, because they would eat the sheep, right? So you're like, in this house, they're like having, ooh, they're having some meat. Actually, I've just made that up. I don't know if they eat the sheep. I mean, I've completely made that up. I'm sure eventually they do. They probably do. I think probably.

35:20Anna Ptaszynski:These are hard conditions. I don't think you'd throw away a sheep that's made of lamb. Yeah. Even if it's one you've slept with. I'm sorry, darling.

35:33James Harkin:They're using their wool, obviously. They use that all the time for the clothing. But then on top of it, they didn't have windows, but they did have spaces for windows. And what they would do is they'd take the innards of a sheep and they would stretch it out so that the see-through intestine of a sheep would be the window. So you're sort of a sheep in there. They're eating you. They're wearing you. You're looking outside through you.

35:56Andy Dawson:I suppose one advantage of the sheep being there while you're sleeping is you could all count it to get to sleep.

36:03James Harkin:One.

36:03Andy Dawson:Okay, everyone go to sleep.

36:07Dan Schreiber:I think it was the amniotic sac, wasn't it, that they often use as well? The amniotic sac of the sheep. And the amazing thing about it is they retain this word. So this amniotic membrane that used to be their windows is still the Icelandic word for a computer screen.

36:20Anna Ptaszynski:No.

36:21Dan Schreiber: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 is incredible. But also kind of gross that every time you refer to a computer in Iceland, you're talking about the amniotic sack of a lamb.

36:34Anna Ptaszynski:That is crazy. Yeah.

36:36Dan Schreiber:Someone that's famous for houses made of kind of mud, earthy stuff, is Santa Fe. And I really didn't know about this. but it's so the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe I really want to go to now because all of the houses are adobe and I actually looked this up because I wanted to know the connection between adobe, the building material and the adobe suite on computers and it's just that the guy who made the adobe suite had a river running behind his house called the adobe river but adobe is, you know, it's like that red mud that places in Central America were often made of, looks kind of like Moroccan Suki, very popular with Native Americans there, and then very popular with Spanish settlers.

37:17Dan Schreiber:And anyway, it was what everything looked like until about 1900. And then in Santa Fe, they started modernizing and making it all look American. And suddenly, the town of Santa Fe said, hang on, we don't like this American, just like any other American city look. We are going to mandate that every single house here has to be adobe, like a mud and mud hut house, basically. And it's still true. So if you go there, it looks so neat. I mean, yes, it's sort of very gentrified now, 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.

37:50Dan Schreiber:But, like, it all matches. The whole place matches. Isn't that cool? Lovely. 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 an adobe house If it's in Santa Fe. I know, Andy, you can join me there.

38:08Anna Ptaszynski:Great, yeah, yeah. Finally, we've got a house which has shit all over the walls for you. And structural integrity for me.

38:17Andy Dawson:I think shit on the walls is wattle and dove, isn't it? Yes, you're right.

38:20Anna Ptaszynski:That's a very proud old English tradition. It's an English thing, yeah.

38:23Andy Dawson:So we would make lots of houses out of poo and straw. And it's been going on for thousands of years. But there's still a few of them in the UK. and you could buy in 2007 a one-bedroomed house made of animal poo in Kent for£250 ,000. That's incredible.

38:44James Harkin:Yeah.

38:44Anna Ptaszynski:But if you want to build an extension on it, do you need... You have to make it with poo, yeah. Wow.

38:49Andy Dawson:I live in Kent.

38:53James Harkin:I haven't tested my walls.

38:55Andy Dawson:Well, maybe if you just smear some on the outside, it'll be the same. I'll just do that.

38:59James Harkin:Actually, in my house, Do you know what we have in our roof? So we had to replace a lot of the roof because the tiles were breaking and there was huge worries of it leaking. And then the builder said, your roof is really structurally sound because it's built with horse hair. Wow.

39:14Anna Ptaszynski:And it stops any rain coming through.

39:15James Harkin:And that was an old thing. And they'd 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.

39:23Anna Ptaszynski:That's so cool. Because horse hair is quite short. Horse manes are long. They would use their manes. They're using their manes. Okay, nice.

39:30James Harkin:Which bit of hair do you think they were using?

39:32Anna Ptaszynski:Like the skin fur. The skin fur. The skin fur. Yeah.

39:41James Harkin:Andy, I really appreciate you helping me patch up the missing bits of horse hair, but that's...

39:47Andy Dawson:But also, can I just say, sometimes they use pig hair. What part of the pig were they getting the hair from? Pigs are so hairy.

39:54James Harkin:Pigs are hairy. Pigs are hairy.

39:55Dan Schreiber:They've got those long, rank hairs. It's like a very balding old person, isn't it? Pig hair.

40:01Anna Ptaszynski:Can I tell you a very with a serious point about flooring materials Absolutely, that's why we're here at the comedy festival Andy

40:13Andy Dawson:Sometimes I imagine every comedian in the town is doing this material

40:21Anna Ptaszynski:Sometimes you say a sentence out loud and you realise you've just expressed your absolute essential core Anyway, 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 That people got, right? Did you know they were coming? You did

40:56James Harkin:what a beautiful new floor we're going to have to chisel grandma out at some point but otherwise stunning work

41:06Anna Ptaszynski: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 the 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 family's chances in life, 118 pounds of concrete is very, very, very cheap to have that kind of amazing measurable effect.

41:48Anna Ptaszynski:So there you go. there's a serious point in our flooring materials stop the podcast

41:57James Harkin:stop the podcast hey everyone this week's episode is sponsored by Saley

42:02Andy Dawson:are you a jet setter like Daniel Schreiber hello every time I see him he's flying off to a different country bonjour was it Sweden for instance you were in recently well 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 Saley. You download the Saley app onto your phone and you get really good, cheap internet.

42:34James Harkin:Yeah, you get amazing internet. 200 destinations it's available in. Therefore, I could have extended that trip by 197 places and still it would have worked. You get 24-7 support And you don't get a stinking big bill At the end of your trip Yeah, it's so easy

42:51Andy Dawson:I've used it in loads of different countries I've used it in Australia I've used it in Kosovo That shows just two different parts of the world For instance Yeah So it's definitely worth doing And if you are interested in Saley Then you should go to Saley.com Slash fish That's S-A-I-L-Y Dot com Slash fish And when you go there you can get an exclusive 15 % discount on Saley data plans if you use the code FISH at checkout. Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast.

43:26James Harkin:It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

43:29Andy Dawson:Okay, my fact this week is that in 2011, a candy bar called Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge was recalled for containing actual toxic waste.

43:42Andy Dawson:There it is. So I just want to say straight away that it was quite a small issue. No one got sick. They pulled them off the shelves, and then they fixed it, and now they're fine because the company is still going. And I just want to say that these candies are absolutely no problem. I've got some now. Oh, wow. Do you? Would you like to try them?

44:02Anna Ptaszynski:Okay.

44:04Andy Dawson:I think legally we have to now, Andy, just to save us from any lawsuits. Oh, my goodness.

44:09James Harkin:Talk one over, James.

44:10Andy Dawson:One on the front row, open them.

44:11Anna Ptaszynski:Oh.

44:12Andy Dawson:There you go. So these things in 2011, they were found to contain some lead, which is a toxic metal, which doesn't break down in your body. And if you have too much of it, it could 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?

44:37James Harkin:I accidentally gave away all of mine. There's one. Oh, how is it, Andy? Have mine. Is it?

44:42Dan Schreiber:Is it toxic? Because nothing pisses me off more than a sweet that pretends to be the sourest thing you've ever tasted and is actually just a bit sugary. Is your mouth being exploded inside right now?

44:53Anna Ptaszynski:I had a very small bite, but it's pretty...

44:55Andy Dawson:These are like people at home who don't have the picture of it that we have behind us. It's like you kind of get these candies these days, which are very sour, and they have lots of sort of like yellow and black stripes. So warning warning these are the most dangerous sweets in the world kind of thing and kids love them

45:13Dan Schreiber:extreme candy

45:15Anna Ptaszynski:Can children taste sour flavors better or more? I think there was something different because obviously you've got more taste buds having you when you're a child and Sort of we lose them gradually as we get older. So I think they do taste our things more I'll tell you who wouldn't like sour sweets. Who's that? Oh, no. Sorry. Everyone likes sorry wait go back a bit I'll tell you one thing about the sour flavor of these sweets. Oh, yeah? All vertebrates like them. Or should like them. All vertebrates, really? 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.

45:57Andy Dawson:Yeah, a lot of them can't taste sweetness, can they?

45:59Anna Ptaszynski:Cats can't taste sugar. No. Dolphins can't taste sweet or savory. Pandas cannot taste umami. Oh, my God. Really?

46:09Dan Schreiber:The irony in China.

46:10Anna Ptaszynski:I know.

46:11Dan Schreiber:I know. They're missing out.

46:13Anna Ptaszynski:But sensing sourness is universal to vertebrates, as far as we know. And it might be that it has a useful signal that your food is rancid.

46:21Dan Schreiber: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 hot licks where you get a lollipop with a real ant inside it you know the really your five-year-old will beg you for those really sour and then the interactive stuff is the stuff that comes with sweets or like you can blow a whistle through it remember those um and anyway interviewed the kings of extreme candy at the time and this was Bat Enterprises, B-A-A-T, because it was founded by Bill, Anne, Anne, and Tom, Bat, and they were all just postal workers, postmen and postwomen.

47:13Dan Schreiber:Really? And Bill and Tom were two postmen who fell in love with two women called Anne, who also worked at the post office, and said, you know what, we should try making some sweets that make funny noises or spin round and round. And they did, and they became multimillionaires and had their own massive sweet factory where People got around on tricycles and ruled the roost.

47:32Andy Dawson:That's such a nice story. Isn't it? It's heartwarming. It's so wholesome. 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's Spawn, or Randy Candy? I'd smoke two of those. Which of those is not a real candy?

47:57Anna Ptaszynski:Toe of Satan, Satan's Spawn, and Randy Candy.

48:01Dan Schreiber:I think Satan's Spawn isn't. It's not Randy Candy.

48:04Andy Dawson:I'll say Toe 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's 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. Are you going to do it?

48:44Anna Ptaszynski:That's 9 ,000 times hotter than a jalapeno.

48:51Andy Dawson:I gotta say thank you to the guys at American fizz who sent me this because they did they went out of the way to Sending me in time of this festival.

48:59Anna Ptaszynski:I'm gonna decide whether or not I say thank you to the guys at American fizz The amusing thing is the other night. I said to my wife this salad. What's the dressing on it? It's very spicy There was no dressing on the salad.

49:16Oh

49:16James Harkin:This is like a lollipop that we're looking at here.

49:19Andy Dawson:Yeah, it's a lollipop that's red in the shape of a toe. And it looks all right, doesn't it? It looks fine. How much does Andy need to take for it to kick in? I think a big old suck on the toe, please.

49:31Anna Ptaszynski:Takes me back. Right.

49:35Dan Schreiber:And it claims to be how much hotter than jalapeno?

49:38Anna Ptaszynski:Nine million Scoville unit chili extract. Guaranteed to scorch any mortal's tongue. Can you keep the toe of Satan in your mouth for five minutes? Oh Five minutes, okay. I'm putting it in here.

49:52James Harkin:We go put it in

49:58James Harkin: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.

50:08Anna Ptaszynski:Oh

50:09James Harkin:He's heading oh Oh my goodness.

50:13Anna Ptaszynski:I just troll it a bit and it's very, very, very warm. What's warm? Sorry. The thing is very warm. Why is it? It's a sabotage, Dave. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're crying. I'm not crying. You're crying.

50:31Anna Ptaszynski:Oh my God. It's getting worse.

50:34James Harkin:Oh my God. Oh wow. I think that's how it works, right? It slowly kicks in more and more.

50:41Andy Dawson:End the show. End the show now. Oh, sorry. I actually put some toad venom in there as well, by the way. We'll talk for a bit while... We'll talk for a bit while you deal with that.

50:52James Harkin:To be fair, you read the package, you took it out, you put it in your own mouth.

50:59Dan Schreiber:Oh, dear.

51:00Andy Dawson:The paramedics are backstage. Don't worry. I read that pick and mix was invented in Sweden. Was it? Yeah. Really? 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. Really?

51:21Dan Schreiber:Yeah. This is a bit like, I was reading about a 7-Up bar, which I wish they would bring back. Are you okay? I've just never seen Andy like this.

51:29Anna Ptaszynski:I'm not all right. Okay. It's very hot under these lights, isn't it?

51:37Dan Schreiber:Well we should probably plow on The seven up bar Are you going to need to take some time off stage?

51:46Anna Ptaszynski:I'm going to need to take some time off work Anna

51:52James Harkin:So I've never seen Andy like this This is wild I'm really sorry

51:57Anna Ptaszynski:I chose to do it

51:58James Harkin:Yeah it wasn't your fault

52:01Anna Ptaszynski:You may have saved a bigger glass of water for him on stage. Anna, can you pass your water?

52:06Dan Schreiber:Yeah, absolutely. I think we do need more water on stage if it is possible to get some.

52:10James Harkin:There's a fire hydrant there, I can see.

52:14Dan Schreiber:So, on other dangerous things you can eat, still can't get Kinder Surprise in America.

52:19Andy Dawson:Oh yeah?

52:21Dan Schreiber:I haven't been since the 1930s. Health and safety was a thing back then because, you know, stuff hidden inside food might be a choking hazard. And 60 ,000 eggs a year are smuggled in because people are that desperate for it. Well, that was one year, 2011.

52:36Andy Dawson:How did they smuggle them?

52:38Dan Schreiber:I didn't ask which bodily orifice the Kinder Eggs were inside. They just came in a suitcase. And so now you can buy them with the egg, and then next week you get the toy. How shit is that? That's very cool. And people wonder why America's going downhill.

52:53James Harkin:We passed on the way here today on the train, and because our plane was unfortunately delayed, sorry, the water's just arrived.

53:05Andy Dawson:And for the listener at home, Andy is drinking direct from the carafe. He's chugging it.

53:10Dan Schreiber:It stayed in your mouth for so long.

53:12Andy Dawson:Yeah, I think I did pretty well. You did amazingly well.

53:14Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, God.

53:15James Harkin:And it hasn't affected the show at all. Our plane was delayed today, so unfortunately, when we were on the train over from Copenhagen, we were not able to get off at Malmo in order to go to the disgusting food museum, which is another friend of the podcast.

53:31Andy Dawson:Yeah.

53:32James Harkin:And actually, I told them I was quite excited to go. I actually had alternative motives because I have a bone to pick with them. And that is, as a half Australian, someone who grew up in Australia for my high school years, there are three items in there that are connected to Australia. One of which, which has been classified as disgusting food, is Vegemite. One of the finest, finest things that you can get in the world. If you had some right now, Andy, you'd be feeling great on top of that. I think it calms the heat. It's known for that. It says on the side. What's hilarious is the owner of it was interviewed about it, and he said it's the only time there's ever been a complaint in the food museum was an angry Australian walked up to the counter, banged his fist down, and went, who dared put Vegemite in here?

54:24James Harkin:And he explained, actually, it's just like, it's kind of cool because we sell it in the gift shop and people try, and so we're actually, like, doing the sales and so on.

54:30Andy Dawson:They sell things in there. Sorry, don't sell. They display things in there. The idea 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, to eat that? Yeah.

54:55Anna Ptaszynski:That's why they don't call it that on the thing. Thank you.

54:58James Harkin:Yeah. Andy's just been brought a carton of milk Is that a Tetra Pak? It certainly is a Tetra Pak born in Lund

55:09Andy Dawson:You know what guys Andy has not shut up about Tetra Paks all day

55:15Anna Ptaszynski:I actually didn't mention them in the Lund section because I had too much research and I feared that if I started I would not be able to stop

55:22Andy Dawson:But I think it's really appropriate you've been saved by a Tetra Pak Yeah

55:26James Harkin:Don't you have one in your pocket right now that's been leaking?

55:29Anna Ptaszynski:I'm just pleased to see you, Dan.

55:33James Harkin:Well, listen, we do need to wrap up because there is another act that's coming in.

55:38Anna Ptaszynski:But anyone else not like a go on the toe of Satan? I don't want to hog it all for myself. Oh.

55:55James Harkin:All right, look, we need to wrap up. Thank you so much, Loon 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. Yeah.

56:20Anna Ptaszynski:It's just the idea of reading an email is quite a lot at the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

56:24James Harkin:So, but Andy'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 festival. Until then, goodbye!

56:50Thank you.