565: No Such Thing As Tickling A Monk

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Speaker 2 From wine country weekends to scenic drives through the Sierra foothills, fall is the perfect time to explore California. And there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

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Speaker 2 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today so you can be prepared for wherever the road takes you this fall. Toyota, let's go places.

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Speaker 3 Hi everyone, happy new year. Welcome to 2025.
It's a square number, so it's going to be a great year, I am sure.

Speaker 3 Why am I here speaking to you today? Well, it is because we have a slightly different show today. It's a normal show.
It was one that we filmed live in Wellington.

Speaker 3 But unfortunately, on the day of this show, Andrew Hunter Murray was unexpectedly called back to the UK. He had to leave.
And so to save the day, in his place, came Leon Buttons Kirkbeck.

Speaker 3 Now, some of you will have heard that name and got very excited.

Speaker 3 A lot of you might not know it, but he is is one of the three members of another podcast called The Cryptid Factor with himself, Rhys Darby, and some little-known guy called Daniel Schreiber.

Speaker 3 Those of you who have heard that will know that he's absolutely brilliant, as he was on our show. And those of you who haven't heard it, well, why not?

Speaker 3 Once you've listened to this show, why not go to your podcast provider of choice and search for the Cryptid Factor and listen to their show?

Speaker 3 Anyway, not much more to say apart from hope all is going well for you in January. I'm recording this in in December so goodness knows what's happened since then.
On with the podcast.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to another episode of My Such Thing as a Fish

Speaker 2 a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from running time

Speaker 2 My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tashinski, James Harkin, and Leon Buddens-Kirkback.

Speaker 2 And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go.

Speaker 2 Starting with fact number one, and that is buttons. My fact this week is the fact that the world's longest conductor's baton is actually more than three times longer than Frederick Chopin.

Speaker 2 Stactor, stacked

Speaker 2 the height of him times three.

Speaker 3 That is amazing. Did he ever use this baton? Because that would be honest.

Speaker 2 No, it wasn't actually. Chopin didn't actually own this.
That would have been quite amazing. And was he tiny?

Speaker 4 Was Chopin? Was he a borrower?

Speaker 2 No, he was 170 centimeters. And so that makes the world's longest baton 20 feet long.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 Is there a useful reason for having such a big baton?

Speaker 2 Careful.

Speaker 3 Or is it just someone trying to break a record?

Speaker 2 Or what's the reason? Well, is ego is the reason,

Speaker 2 largely. It is a record.
It was a record set by Brown University band in Province, Rhode Island. And it happened just this year.

Speaker 2 And it actually happened as a form of competition to another band that was in Penn State. And they had one that was 15 foot long.

Speaker 2 And they thought, what are we going to do that's going to really break their egos? And it was like, make a bigger baton. So they went five more foot.
Yeah. And then they won.

Speaker 2 But well, they had a first attempt, which was they managed to get a 16 foot baton, but it was disqualified because the handle was too skinny. So that didn't count as a baton.

Speaker 2 There were so many interesting rules that needed to be adhered by in order for this record to happen.

Speaker 2 So if you were shifting the baton to conduct the audience, you weren't allowed it to sort of like go

Speaker 2 and bend up and down. It needed to stay.
So the guy conducting had to like slowly bring it across while the Guinness World Records officiators stared at it.

Speaker 4 So it wasn't allowed to be like, you couldn't pull vault with it.

Speaker 2 You couldn't, no. It's like the opposite of a pole vault.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It had to be straight.

Speaker 2 And they conducted three songs. with the baton and so that's what set the record.
But it is interesting because we tried to break a Guinness World Record recently recently on stage.

Speaker 3 Oh yeah, those rules are tough. They're really tough.

Speaker 2 What was it? We had to eat.

Speaker 3 We had to eat as many cheese slices. You know, like that plastic cheese you put on burgers.
Yeah. But the rule was that you had to take the plastic off as well.

Speaker 3 And it just meant that it was impossible because

Speaker 2 yeah, and we had one minute to do it. We had to eat 15 in one minute.

Speaker 2 And you're not allowed to drink water in between. And I trained with water.
It's the only way I could do it.

Speaker 4 You didn't, if you trained for that, then I'm worried about about shit. You ate about a quarter of a slice.
I know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. Because they didn't let me drink water.
I got stuck on stage and it was horrible. So we didn't get a Guinness World Record.

Speaker 2 Interesting fact, though, you got New Zealand a Guinness World Record the other day, didn't you? Oh, stop it. Stop it.
Okay, I helped get a world record with the hacker, the world's largest hacker.

Speaker 2 We took it from the slimy French. The French.
Did you know that? The French.

Speaker 2 French hackering. Exactly.

Speaker 3 That feels culturally inappropriate to start off with.

Speaker 2 And funnily enough, the people who, the Guinness World Record officiators, actually acknowledged that. But they didn't rescind the record, but they said, you're welcome to break it.

Speaker 2 But of course, then the rules were a lot harder. They came down real hard.
But we did it and we took it back. And so it is now officially ours.

Speaker 2 And I'd like to see another country going, now we're going to take it back off them.

Speaker 2 The rules in that country. That would be not going to happen.

Speaker 4 I'm not saying that people who are just doing these things to break records have something else missing in their lives.

Speaker 4 But I am saying that you don't see the Berlin Philharmonic or the London Symphony Orchestra competing over who's got the longest baton.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't sound like it's that useful. Maybe they should, because not as many people are going to classical concerts.

Speaker 4 Do you think this is what would turn it around?

Speaker 2 It would make me want to go.

Speaker 4 You couldn't have anyone sitting in the front 10 rows.

Speaker 4 I hadn't realized quite how late the conductor came about as a position in an orchestra, or the conductor as we know it, as in someone who faces the orchestra

Speaker 4 and with their right hand keeps the beat and with their left hand does things like bring new instruments in, inject emotion into it, things like that. But that's relatively modern.

Speaker 4 And actually, composers used to do so much more than they do today.

Speaker 4 So in the 16th and 18th centuries, composers would also usually be playing the harpsichord, piano, in their pieces while performing and they would be conducting and it's weird this lasted at least 200 years and I don't know how it was effective because obviously often to play the piano you need two hands or in the article I read it said to play the harpsichord well you do need two hands

Speaker 3 it's a very low bar so they'd have to nod their heads vigorously conducting the orchestra it's crazy sometimes it would be the violinist as well like the first violinist would do it with their bow yes but again it seems difficult because how do you play while you're waving the bow i don't get it yeah that was

Speaker 2 but do we need it? Do we need the baton?

Speaker 3 Oh, don't start Dan.

Speaker 2 Oh my god.

Speaker 3 Well, so on the show a little while ago, Dan did say that people who are in orchestras shouldn't need sheet music

Speaker 3 because Bruce Springsteen's band don't need sheep music.

Speaker 2 All I was saying was there was a, there was an orchestra incident where the composer got angry with what was going on and took all the sheet music away.

Speaker 2 And then the concert had to be cancelled because no one knew the songs. And I just thought, well, I mean, learn them.
Is that not? And I know it's controversial.

Speaker 2 I've had a lot of bassoonists write to me and threaten my life and children's lives. As you should.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 but there has been an example where we have seen conducting happening without a baton or even the movement of hands. And that was Leonard Bernstein.

Speaker 2 There was that movie Maestro that was made not too long ago about him.

Speaker 2 There's a very great video that you can watch online of him conducting an orchestra simply with the movements of his eyebrows.

Speaker 2 And it's amazing. So he's just like, it's a

Speaker 2 and it's just like, you know, a little, and then his eyes poke that way.

Speaker 2 And it's not that song, that's the one that came to mind.

Speaker 4 Dirty had his arms amputated.

Speaker 2 He wanted to show the power of when the synergy of an orchestra is so great that you can simply rely on looks and impressions.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 3 There was a time in Soviet Russia where they did away with the conductors.

Speaker 4 In what sense, did away with.

Speaker 2 They went a bit too close to those windows.

Speaker 3 No, the idea was in a non-hierarchical communist society where everyone's equal, you don't need one person at the front who's like lording it over everyone else.

Speaker 3 And for quite a while, they did do that. And actually,

Speaker 3 in the 70s, Andre Previn in the UK, he did the same thing. He did a TV show where he said, okay, I'm conducting and now I'm going to stop.

Speaker 3 And they thought, everyone thought, oh, everything's just going to go to shit as soon as he leaves.

Speaker 4 But actually, it was kind of fine It's like when countries don't have governments You know like Ireland Northern Ireland don't have a government for about three years and everyone always goes huh didn't realize Yeah

Speaker 2 We were talking earlier about is there an importance to the length of a baton and some conductors have a preference for the size they have a preference for the shape Some of them have lucky batons because they had an amazing experience so they become superstitious about it.

Speaker 2 So it almost becomes like a like a wizard's wand in a way to them. They sort of feel that there's power embodied in it, right?

Speaker 2 Fritz Reiner, who was a 20th century Hungarian conductor, he used one that was so small, it was such a tiny baton, that one musician at the back brought a pair of binoculars along to mock him to show that he needed to do that to see him.

Speaker 2 Fritz Reiner saw that and then replied when he was using the binoculars by lifting up a piece of paper that read, you're fired on it.

Speaker 2 Written really small.

Speaker 3 That's so funny.

Speaker 2 You know, the conductors officially live longer longer than any other profession.

Speaker 2 Do we know why they live longer?

Speaker 3 Is it because they're basically richer and, you know, they come from...

Speaker 2 And live off nothing but caviar. No,

Speaker 2 it is because what they can only speculate. But they think this on the back of this study, they think it's because you get so much upper body workout.

Speaker 2 Because some of these pieces that they're conducting go for like three hours.

Speaker 3 It could be because you only really get a job as a conductor when you're quite old. So it's kind of self-selecting.

Speaker 2 All the people who died in their 20s and 30s, they never took another.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because I just feel like a workout, but it's not like you're an Olympic athlete, is it? As a conductor, I've seen some of the famous conductors out there.

Speaker 4 In the 19th century, when conducting became a thing, it was really controversial. Lots of composers didn't like it.
I think

Speaker 4 there were, Schumann called conductors a mania and evil. Verdi was outraged that they got to take a bow because these composers thought these guys are pointless.

Speaker 4 But there was, at the time that conductors were suddenly appearing, this one called louis julien and he was so in awe of beethoven that whenever he played a piece of beethoven he he wore white gloves anyway to conduct but he had a specific jewelled baton that was presented to him on a cushion every time he conducted and i should tell so i should tell you his full name do you know his full name no no do you want me to tell you his full name oh please do

Speaker 4 it was um

Speaker 4 Louis George Maurice, Adolphe Roche, Albert, Abel, Antonio, Alexandra, Noah, Jean-Lucien, Danielle, Eugene, Joseph Robron, Joseph Barrém, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Pierre Arbon, Pierre Morel, Barthélemy, Artus, Alphonse, Bertrand, Diodome, Emmanuel, Rosuet, Vança, Luc, Michel, Jude de la Plain, Jules Betin, Julius Cesar, Julien.

Speaker 2 What's his full name?

Speaker 2 I think I followed him on Instagram.

Speaker 2 He could never get a driver's license, could he?

Speaker 2 Did you have a stroke halfway through that? Or was there

Speaker 3 like five Thomases in a row?

Speaker 4 I actually think I said one too many Thomases. There were four Thomases.
And two of them seem to be hyphenated. But the reason was.

Speaker 2 He's got a double-barreled Thomas? He's got a mid-name?

Speaker 4 There's Thomas Thomas, Thomas Thomas.

Speaker 4 But the reason for this name is that his dad, so this is one of the leading conductors of the 19th century.

Speaker 4 His dad was a musician who played in an orchestra. He was a violinist.
And he was playing a concert just before his son was going to be baptized.

Speaker 4 And he said to the orchestra he was playing with, Does anyone want to be godfather? And they all said yes.

Speaker 2 And so he named him after them all.

Speaker 2 That's amazing. I did not know we knew so many Thomases.

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Speaker 2 It's time for fact fact number two, and that is James.

Speaker 3 Okay, my fact this week is that in Japan you can buy rice bowls that are shaped by women's armpits.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 3 Well, I don't want to get into the mental state of the people who buy these things.

Speaker 3 All I can say is that they exist.

Speaker 4 I would say there's nothing I can shape with my armpit that I can't shape with my hands.

Speaker 2 So...

Speaker 4 they're not achieving a magical shape, are they?

Speaker 3 No, well, let me explain how they're made and it might give you a bit more of an insight. So

Speaker 3 these are onigiri, these

Speaker 3 little sort of rice triangle things.

Speaker 3 And they're kind of rice on the outside and they usually have a filling on the inside.

Speaker 3 And what happens is that the women who are going to make them, they have their body parts disinfected, but then they exercise to produce sweat.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 3 And then they use their armpits to put the rice bowls into that exact shape.

Speaker 3 And apparently they sell for as much as 10 times the price as regular rice balls. But a diner in an article that I read said they actually tasted no different to any other rice balls.

Speaker 3 And this is just a thing that happens. And I'm not judging anyone.

Speaker 2 That's fine. It's wild.

Speaker 2 The inviting people back to watch them be made is pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 So that's a thing that happens. You go to the restaurant and they say, would you like to see them being molded in the armpits live? And you can do that.
Do you got to pay extra for that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, possibly. Or maybe it's part of the deal.

Speaker 3 Well, otherwise they might do it with their hands.

Speaker 2 If you're not seeing it happen, maybe you don't trust them. It sounds like this restaurant has an OnlyFans page.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It sounds like something else is going on.

Speaker 4 The only thing that makes it slightly less gross, I guess, is that they're like most people in japan about 90 of people don't have odorful sweat right because they're lacking the gene that makes um sweat smell really bad so it's not going to be the very like if we um you know white westerners did it even worse i'm not saying it's not disgusting but this would be even more disgusting one interesting thing about this is that onigiri in japan there was a study done where they found that 62 percent of japanese people would only eat an onigiri that was made by someone they know what

Speaker 3 And only 30% said that they would eat one that was made by someone who was completely unfamiliar to them. Right.

Speaker 3 And that comes from like a historical thing where there's been quite a few times in history where people have been poisoned by rice balls.

Speaker 3 Or at least according to the stories, they have been. And so there's kind of this superstition that you should always see the person who's made your rice ball.

Speaker 4 You're most likely to be killed by someone that you do know. So what a stupid rule.

Speaker 2 You should only eat rice balls made by someone you don't know.

Speaker 4 Don't let your wife make them for you, for God's sake.

Speaker 2 It's very popular globally, Onigiri. There's even a society, there's the Onagiri Society, and it attracts members who love it so much.

Speaker 2 There's one guy who was the owner of a thing called Onagiri Bongo, and she has said that she would like to come back in her next life as a rice ball. And

Speaker 2 the follow-up question in the interview: what flavor would you like to come back? She said, it doesn't matter. Onigiri isn't about the shape.
It is about the soul.

Speaker 2 I want to come come back as one that has been made with the whole heart. So it's a bill.

Speaker 4 I thought they make them with the heart as well.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I want to know if the flavors for these rice balls are sort of like Rick Sona type things like sea breeze. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 2 Africa.

Speaker 2 But hang on.

Speaker 2 Isn't rice got that whole thing with bacteria? That you like it's really bad at...

Speaker 3 Yeah, you're not supposed to like double cook it, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that it's like it's really good at holding bad bacteria. And you're putting it somewhere where

Speaker 2 you're such a bacteria.

Speaker 3 Honestly, like the bacteria that's in your armpit, generally speaking, is not going to be super bad stuff.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Also, and this is less a fact and more just like a useful life act that I always remind myself. It's not a problem.
The rice bacteria thing has been hugely overblown.

Speaker 4 Reheating rice is absolutely fine for many days afterwards.

Speaker 4 The only thing to do, if you really do want to avoid the still quite slim risk of the sort of poisoning that we're talking about, is you need to make it cool very quickly.

Speaker 4 So as soon as you've cooked rice, put all the shit you're not going to eat in the fridge.

Speaker 4 Like have it every mouthful, take it out of the fridge and eat another mouthful, then put it back in the fridge. And then it's fine for days.

Speaker 2 Here's another thing. So sushi kind of predates, we all associate it with Japan, but there's evidence of it in China.

Speaker 2 And so sushi, you would have bits of fish, salted fish, and you would have the rice. In the very earliest days of sushi, when you pulled out the fish with the rice, you threw away the rice.

Speaker 2 They just didn't eat the rice to begin with. It was part basically of a refrigeration process and making sure exactly about bacteria and so on, not getting into it.

Speaker 2 So it took ages before someone went should we eat that bit as well and they did and then they went well that's actually good and so if a time traveler came forward and saw us doing that they'd be like whoa

Speaker 4 it's like eating a haribo packet

Speaker 4 well actually on rice waste i didn't realize because obviously rice is such an important um foodstuff in japan because it's used as an ingredient for so many other things obviously including sake and with sake when they make it they lose if you're making really high level sake you have to lose about 70 of the rice so they polish it every little grain of rice has to be polished until you've sanded down almost all of the outside of it so where's that going

Speaker 3 down the train down the train yeah um so really really good white rice really gleaming white rice that's been polished and and looks amazing that was a status symbol for a long time in japan and there was a problem because if you remove those outer layers so what you do when you're polishing rice is you're basically washing it again and again and again but if you remove those layers, then it removes quite a lot of the good stuff, especially the vitamin B1 or thiamine.

Speaker 3 Okay, so without thiamine, you get this terrible disease called beriberi and it can kill.

Speaker 2 Meriberry. Maryberry.

Speaker 2 Jeez, that's a bit harsh, James.

Speaker 4 I mean, it might not be up your street, but.

Speaker 3 It's beriberi. And it's really, I mean, you can die from it for sure.

Speaker 3 And it really is strange because it's very similar to, you know, the thing in the West, people would get on ships and they wouldn't eat oranges and lemons and stuff and they would get scurvy Well in Japan they had a similar thing because they were eating this white rice They would get this berry berry and so there's a guy called Takaki who was a doctor and he did an experiment where he sent two ships on the same route on the same route sorry and one of them would eat rice all the time and then the other one would be allowed to have like meat and bread and stuff like that and he thought this is going to prove that the problem is the rice and sure enough when they came back, the people who were on the rice ship were suffering, but the people who weren't were much better.

Speaker 3 And that's when they realized that you can't just eat rice all the time. And he said that if the experiment failed, he was going to kill himself.

Speaker 3 But yeah, within a few years of that, they got rid of this vitamin B1 deficiency in the same way that in the Western world, we got rid of scurvy by just giving people

Speaker 3 it. It's not funny, but it's interesting.

Speaker 2 It is.

Speaker 4 I wish more scientists scientists said that they would kill themselves if their experiment failed.

Speaker 4 I just think that would really raise the caliber, wouldn't it?

Speaker 2 If there was that risk.

Speaker 4 Japan eats more dairy than rice.

Speaker 2 Interesting, really.

Speaker 2 I thought they didn't really eat much dairy.

Speaker 4 Well, that's bloody bewildering, isn't it? Because most of them are lactose intolerant.

Speaker 2 What are you doing? So where are they eating?

Speaker 4 Any Japanese people in the audience, why are you eating so much dairy?

Speaker 4 Well, they're eating it as milk. I suppose.
So I think about 85%,

Speaker 4 and estimates always vary. It's somewhere between 80 and 95%

Speaker 4 of East Asians are lactose intolerant and it's actually related to the gene that means your sweat doesn't smell. But still dairy has become very popular and if you eat little bits of it, so what?

Speaker 4 You have diarrhea, you know, it's worth it for a pizza. But

Speaker 4 yeah, the rice consumption has halved in the last 40 years and dairy's consumption has gone up.

Speaker 2 So I grew up in Hong Kong, right, until I was 12 years old. And the thing that always was said about me is that I smell of milk because it's not a big thing in Hong Kong as well.

Speaker 2 Milk is not a massive thing.

Speaker 2 And that was like a nickname that I always used to like. There was this one particular mum who was always like, oh, milk boy's here, is he? Oh, yeah.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 3 So you weren't being bullied by the other kids in the school.

Speaker 2 You were being bullied by the parents. Yeah, by this one mum.
Yeah, I used to go to her son's house. He was called Daniel as well.
And she was, yeah, she was like, oh, milk boy's here again.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so that really stuck with me that I was like, reeked of milk all the time.

Speaker 3 That's so funny.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, the Great Wall of China they found has been held together largely by rice, sticky rice. Sticky rice.
Yeah, that's part of the mortar that they made.

Speaker 2 A university in China, the Zhijiang University, they were researching the mortar of the Great Wall of China and they found that in the mortar along with the lime is sticky rice. Interesting.

Speaker 2 And back to your point around the polishing of the rice, they think that a lot of it was actually used with polished rice, which means there's a lot of extra work needed to make that rice.

Speaker 4 Why have they polished that rice?

Speaker 2 To get stickier, I guess. Maybe it makes stickier sticky rice.

Speaker 4 Maybe it gets it stickier.

Speaker 2 Why do we not use it anymore then?

Speaker 2 Because that wall is going pretty strong, isn't it? It's right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but they did actually, it is actually the world's first example of composite mortar, which where you're including organic and inorganic material together.

Speaker 2 And they say that it is actually very, very good.

Speaker 2 That's what the architect says in the report.

Speaker 2 Very, very good. Very, very good.

Speaker 2 Sorry.

Speaker 4 I think we've, in answer to your question, Dan, we might have gone with even more efficient building materials now. No offense to the ancient Chinese.
Okay. If anyone is in from ancient China.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Baduz.

Speaker 4 Rice, a huge source of pride in Japan, in Japan and China, in fact, but like it's a real patriotic thing.

Speaker 4 Maybe slightly less so now but I haven't realized that it was illegal to import any rice into Japan until the mid 1990s because 90s until the 90s or early to mid 90s yeah when America sort of bullied Japan into saying you've got to accept some of our exports because it was Japan always wanted to be rice self-sufficient and be able to grow all of its own rice and even now there's a lot of skepticism I was talking to my friend who has Japanese family in America and was saying that they will often buy at a much higher price rice that's been imported to America from Japan because that they think it's much higher quality even though in blind taste tests they almost always can't tell any difference whatsoever between American rice and Japanese rice but the idea is that it's much higher quality

Speaker 2 I've got one last thing quickly that I can mention this is just going back to armpits there's an amazing thank god yeah there's an amazing festival that used to happen I think it's just stopped but hopefully the mention on this podcast will bring it back

Speaker 2 in Nevada, in a place called Battle Mountain. And basically, there was a journalist who called this particular town the armpit of America.
And

Speaker 2 they were very upset by this. And so they set up a competition, which was sponsored by a deodorant company.
I believe it was Old Spice. And they turned it into a plus.

Speaker 2 And so they had the armpit beauty queen contest, whereby you're brilliant. So you would go and it would be a big festival and you would have a sweaty t-shirt contest.

Speaker 3 Can I just say so? Is it who has the most beautiful armpit?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then in light beauty contests, you have to do like a skill as well. Yes.
So they're doing that thing where they make fart noises.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah, they do the fart noises.
There's deodorant throwing competitions. So I think who can throw the deodorant the furthest?

Speaker 2 There's quick draw deodorant competitions. Who can get it and spray it as quickly as possible?

Speaker 2 And then eventually they crown the armpit queen. But yeah, they've really leaned into it.

Speaker 2 Their motto, which they now have on a sign as you enter Battle Mountain, says, make Battle Mountain your next pit stop.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Brilliant.

Speaker 2 It is time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

Speaker 2 My fact this week is that 2,500 years ago, Buddha taught the world that the road to enlightenment could be achieved through compassion, mindfulness, and the eradication of the game hopscotch.

Speaker 2 He hated hopscotch. What? Buddha hated any game whereby you drew on the ground and you were using your feet to sort of be confined by the drawing on the ground.
And hopscotch is exactly what that is.

Speaker 2 It might not have existed during the day, but if Buddha came back now,

Speaker 2 he'd be like, what the hell's this? Did you learn nothing?

Speaker 3 I guess these kind of hopscotch type games are very, very old, aren't they? And they were all over the world.

Speaker 3 So there would have been something that we would have seen that would have looked a bit like hopscotch. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 No, I just checked. Did he say he banned drawing on the ground and stepping in the squares that you've created, didn't he?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd say that's

Speaker 2 hopscotch.

Speaker 3 He also banned all dice games, all stick games, all marble games, all games where you blow through tie pipes,

Speaker 3 all games where you turn somersaults, games where you play with tie windmills, games where you play with tie chariots, tie bows, games where you guess the letters drawn in the air or they're on the back of the body,

Speaker 3 and games where you mimic deformities.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think the last one, fair enough, actually,

Speaker 2 he sort of got into a good rhythm right at the end there, didn't he?

Speaker 2 Also, guessing a friend's thoughts,

Speaker 2 not allowed by Buddha,

Speaker 2 playing with someone's ears. Why is this?

Speaker 2 No wet willies in the world,

Speaker 2 Buddha.

Speaker 4 Why is this guy such a killjoy?

Speaker 4 I know. Why is he always smiling?

Speaker 2 Twin.

Speaker 4 And or eyes or nose, to be fair. No facial parts.

Speaker 4 And no Jenga and no pickup sticks either.

Speaker 2 Was Jenger around back then?

Speaker 4 Well, again, he specified, and it is interesting to see how these concepts go back. He specified no games that involve adding pieces or removing pieces from piles.

Speaker 2 We're still unimaginative humans.

Speaker 4 We just generate the same old shit.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 And why was it? It was to stop people getting distracted from scripture and holiness, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 You know, it's a philosophy, and Buddha did say that this should all be altered as we go along, hence why we now have hopscotch.

Speaker 4 I don't think that's he said that, therefore we have hopscotch. I don't think we were waiting for the thousand-year cutoff, and then we went, right, Buddha said it's okay now.
Get the chalk out.

Speaker 2 Well, you say that. There was no hopscotch then, and there is now.
So I don't know.

Speaker 2 One thing we should say, you say, why is he smiling all the time? That's not Buddha, is it? Yeah, you're right. That's someone who we've accidentally labeled as Buddha.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so Buddha's birth name was Siddhartha

Speaker 2 Gautama, and he was someone who was born into royalty. He was a very well-to-do person, but then he found a path of enlightenment, basically, and then he brought all his his followers on.

Speaker 3 And by the smiling one, you mean the big sort of fat Buddha that you get on like yes, the smiling, jolly Buddha.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a Chinese monk who was called Budai, so you can understand the

Speaker 3 tomato tomata.

Speaker 2 Yeah. One thing that he banned as well was playing with toy carts.
Like a little toy cart.

Speaker 2 But I mean, it'd be easy, wouldn't it because you'd be like you'd be like oi you with the toy cart be like no it's not a toy i'm actually this is legit i'm just a little kid carrying these stones over there it could be work it could be child labor i'm just transporting fluff

Speaker 2 there's lots of ways out of it is this um is this stuff all from there's a book of rules called the vinaya I think it might be from that.

Speaker 3 There's some other rules in there that says a monk shall not tickle another monk.

Speaker 3 Yeah, or lie down in a bed scattered with flowers.

Speaker 4 Well, that's always a prelude to something more sexy, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Especially when a tickling comes straight afterwards. Yeah, it's fair enough.
Well, but so was playing with someone's ears, eyes, or nose, which he was against as well.

Speaker 2 And that sometimes is a prelude to. Well, I mean, where I come.
Anyway,

Speaker 2 probably.

Speaker 3 I guess all of this stuff in really specific circumstances could be the prelude to some sex.

Speaker 2 Particularly the one with the guessing letters traced with a finger and the u are on somebody's back.

Speaker 2 That's definitely cock and balls. Cock and balls again.
Stop. Can you stop doing cock and balls on my back?

Speaker 2 Isn't that that's all you can say.

Speaker 4 But they were Sanskrit letters, weren't they?

Speaker 2 Cock and balls.

Speaker 4 I have found out a really interesting thing about the etymology of Buddha.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that is that it's so that's from a Sanskrit term, which is buddh, to awaken,

Speaker 4 you know, enlightenment, awakening. You can see how it comes from that.
But what I find amazing is of course that word originated in India where Buddhism originated

Speaker 4 and that

Speaker 4 nonetheless has the same origin as the word bode.

Speaker 4 Our word bode, it bodes well, which is just from old English Saxon languages because they both date back even further to Pai, which I'm sure you all know is Proto-Indo-European.

Speaker 4 And so 8,000 years ago, these two languages sort of split and we got bode from the same origin as they got Buddha. And now they've met again.
I find that amazing.

Speaker 4 A language can travel that far and then meet again.

Speaker 2 Look, it's not funny, but it's really momentum. That's not funny.
That's amazing. It's quite romantic.
Well, I also have an unfunny etymology, I think of hop scotch.

Speaker 2 Okay. So the word

Speaker 2 scotch can mean an incensed line or scratch in the ground. Yeah.
So hop and a scratch, scratching on the ground.

Speaker 2 And in fact, that got a young girl, a 10-year-old girl, in trouble with the police, believe it or not, in Ramsgate a few years ago.

Speaker 2 A young 10-year-old girl was putting a hop scotch scratching and sensing a line in the ground.

Speaker 2 And she was done for criminal damage. So mad.
A 10-year-old,

Speaker 2 the police officer came along and frightened this Bob Allen, the father of Lily May Allen. She could be Lily Allen.
Maybe

Speaker 2 I'm.

Speaker 2 I should check these facts. Maybe someone's

Speaker 2 anyways.

Speaker 2 He came along and said, oi, that's you're defacing public property. Yeah, that's crazy.
It's mad, isn't it?

Speaker 4 Why isn't it in because this happens a lot, these news stories about people being arrested for, or not arrested for, given warnings by the police for drawing hopscotch things?

Speaker 4 It should be page one, police handbook. Don't accuse a 10-year-old of graffiti and criminal damage because she's drawn a fucking hopscotch.

Speaker 4 We're all trying to get kids out of the house, playing games.

Speaker 2 She did, to be fair, in the place where you have to write the letters and stuff, she did write fuck the police. But I mean, to be fair,

Speaker 2 that also probably should be checked. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Hopscotch, you're talking about the etymology of it. Do you know what it was called before it was called hopscotch? No.
Oh, don't know. Scotch hop.
Oh,

Speaker 2 just at some point we just went, oh, let's turn that around. It's like the rice and the sushi.

Speaker 3 We just flipped it around and started using using it differently the first mention is in a book by francis willoughby and it's in the 17th century book of games and it's a big old book full of loads and loads of different games you can play and there's one chapter that's kind of disappeared and we don't really know much about it now and that chapter is called tricks to abuse and hurt one another

Speaker 3 So he had all it was like games you can play in the garden, games you can play by running around, and then this one, which is abusing and hurting one another.

Speaker 3 And the thing is, we do do have the chapter heading, so we know what's in it, but we don't know what the games are.

Speaker 2 So, there was a also a sexy book.

Speaker 2 Because where I'm from, that's also a sexy. Anyway,

Speaker 2 keep going. Sorry.

Speaker 3 There's one called Buying of Mustard. We don't know what it is.
Selling of Millstones. Bum to bus a fool.

Speaker 2 Bum to butter. Bum to buss a fool.
Oh, see, sexy as hell.

Speaker 4 But lots of names. It was called Hicketty Hackety and Hickety Hackety Hocketty and Just Hocketty and Paliali and Hitchabed.
I like the fact that games used to have so many different names.

Speaker 2 Why have we codified them? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did she just have another stroke?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Lele and Kit Kit and Thomas Thomas Thomas Thomas.

Speaker 3 When I was a kid, it used to be like we would play British Bulldog where you have to run across the field and then it's up to someone to rugby tackle you and beat you to the ground.

Speaker 3 And then the school would ban it and then we would just play it again under a different name.

Speaker 2 And we thought that this was a loophole.

Speaker 3 And it's like, oh, they banned British Bulldog, but they didn't ban Blue Boy, which is exactly the same game. And then they go, yeah, that's banned as well.

Speaker 3 And then the next day we call it something else.

Speaker 2 So maybe that was it.

Speaker 3 Another bit of enlightenment. So

Speaker 3 in Buddhism, you have enlightenment. In the Jain religion, you also have enlightenment.
They're really, really very similar religions. They grew up from the same place.

Speaker 3 And in the Jain religion, there are 24 Ford makers, and these are people who have gone through all of the different cycles and been reborn, reborn, reborn, and now they're out of the cycle.

Speaker 3 These are perfect people. So, one of them is said to have floated perfectly still in his mother's womb, sending not so much as a ripple so that he didn't harm his mother, right? Which is nice.

Speaker 3 They tended to be really tall and really old. So, there's a guy called Nemanatha who lived for 1,054 years, 300 years as a bachelor, 54 days as a monk, and then 700 years as an omniscient being.

Speaker 2 And then another 200 years as a conductor.

Speaker 2 And he was, this guy was 30 meters tall.

Speaker 3 So if he was a building in London, he would need a second staircase due to fire regulations.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 4 I can't believe he tolerated 300 years being single before going, you know what, I'm just going to say I'm a monk.

Speaker 2 Five years for me. So, the idea of Buddhism largely is to achieve enlightenment, and this goes through many different disciplines involved in philosophy.

Speaker 2 And so, George Harrison, who joined that whole movement,

Speaker 2 he was Buddhist and he went through various other things, became Hare Krishna at the end of his life. From the Beatles.
From the Beatles, yes, for anyone who's not heard of George Harrison.

Speaker 2 We have lots of young, cool listeners, Dan.

Speaker 2 Not cool if they don't know George Harrison.

Speaker 2 So he had, I don't know if you all remember, but it was a horrible moment that happened just after the turn of the millennium where someone broke into his house and stabbed at him and he got stabbed multiple times.

Speaker 2 He miraculously survived. It was really amazing.
But the account of when he was dying was George Harrison basically was waiting for the moment to achieve enlightenment to take him to the next level.

Speaker 2 So at one point when he was being attacked by this guy, he sort of gave in to it and just said, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. And he repeated it over and and over.

Speaker 2 And it was, I need to get to enlightenment before I die. He survived because his wife leapt on the back of this guy and beat him down with a side lamp that was on a bedside table.

Speaker 2 And so blood was everywhere. It was an astonishingly bad thing.
And he should have died. Everyone said he should have died, the doctors and so on.

Speaker 2 And there's a great story that Eric Idol tells, which is as he's leaving the house and he's on a gurney and they're bringing into the ambulance.

Speaker 2 He passes two new members of staff who started that day.

Speaker 2 And that was their first morning. And as they passed, a weak and almost dead George Harrison went, so how are you finding the job so far?

Speaker 2 And that could have been his last words ever, but yeah.

Speaker 2 I love that. And so according to Olivia Harrison, his wife, he did achieve enlightenment right at the end.
She saw him as a message. According to his wife,

Speaker 2 sorry.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying it's a happy ending.

Speaker 4 I think, yeah, sure, the second person ever to achieve enlightenment, according to George Harrison's wife.

Speaker 4 There is a type of Buddhist meditation that I quite fancy and I didn't know about, which requires you to find a corpse. This is such a dark note to end on.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 And dig it up. And no, not dig it up.
To find a corpse and sit there and watch it decay. I didn't know about this.
And it's the nine stages of decay.

Speaker 2 And you have to sit in front of a corpse.

Speaker 4 I don't know what the family are doing at the time. They just let you do it.

Speaker 4 And you start, and it's amazing. So you start with bloat and then rupture, and then you know, like I won't take you through all nine stages because I think I might stick with my meditation app

Speaker 4 because coming up is in the next lesson, but it's it's done in a very sexy American woman's voice, so you'll find it really nice.

Speaker 2 And you would like to do that,

Speaker 4 sounds pretty fun of a week, you know.

Speaker 2 So, where I'm from, that's actually quite sexy.

Speaker 2 Sorry, no,

Speaker 2 sorry, no, I'm from Thames, by the way. So

Speaker 2 we do things proper there.

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Speaker 2 All right, look, we need to get to our final fact of the show. It is time for our final fact, and that is Anna.
My fact this week is that

Speaker 4 a patio for cats is called a catio.

Speaker 2 It's very silly. silly.
I just, I really want to say now

Speaker 4 this is the most stupid fact I've ever said on the show.

Speaker 2 And I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 3 No, listen, but she's always like this.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I'm ashamed, but I'm going to tell you now because you're here. So, catios are a thing.
And maybe it'll come in handy with your cat-loving friends. You know, you can be like, have you got a catio yet?

Speaker 4 Because every site that's on every company that sells stuff for pets is just like, hey, have you got the best catio available? And apparently, that's just an accepted way to refer to cat patios.

Speaker 4 And, you know, it's so that you can let them outside without them.

Speaker 4 It's like a patio as we know it, but with a cage around it as they know it, so that they can't escape onto the roads and get run over. And so that they also can't kill all of them.

Speaker 2 Are you being paid for this?

Speaker 2 Is this a secret ad?

Speaker 4 It's bizarre, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Is there an offer code fish at the end of this? It's not even a brand.

Speaker 4 It's not a brand. It's a generic term.
It's probably in the OED by now. It's just a generic term that pet owners are accepting: a catio.
So get one. Ramps, tunnels, swing bridges, they can be yours.

Speaker 4 So we just had a heckle from the audience, and I am going to address it. I wouldn't usually, but it said, Did you know about our native birds?

Speaker 4 And we're in New Zealand, and the whole point of a cat patio is to protect the native birds. So they're very in demand in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 You don't get other comedians dealing with hecklers like that, do you?

Speaker 2 Where you go, fuck off, mate.

Speaker 2 But that was beautiful.

Speaker 4 No, it's a good question, actually.

Speaker 2 It was a great question.

Speaker 4 Yes. The Lyles Wren.
I mean, how famous is the Lyle's Wren in New Zealand? Do you all know the Lyle's Wren? And the fact, well, okay, I feel like no.

Speaker 2 No, I don't. I don't know.
Do it for my benefit.

Speaker 4 So the Lyle's Wren was a New Zealand bird. It was having an absolute whale of a time for thousands of years.

Speaker 4 And the Maoris arrived almost a thousand years ago, and they gradually sort of wiped it out, not intentionally, by bringing rats with them, which killed it.

Speaker 4 But there were a few left by the 19th century, and then European settlers arrived and they really fucked it.

Speaker 4 And the only ones left were of this lovely Lyles wren were on a place called Stephen's Island, which I'm sure a lot of you know.

Speaker 4 And there was a lighthouse set up in 1894, but the lighthouse keeper brought cats. And the very, very last Lyles wren was eaten by Tibbles the cat

Speaker 4 but the owner kept the kept the body so we do have the last body of the Lyles Wren from the Middle Canada.

Speaker 3 Domestic cats they're responsible for the extinction of at least like almost a dozen species I would say right yeah they were

Speaker 3 and they're even eating penguins in New Zealand they're running up mountains eating lizards because when you say a dozen you mean in New Zealand right yeah it's just in New Zealand that meant i know so are we saying death to cats wow

Speaker 2 jesus

Speaker 2 wow wow

Speaker 2 controversial controversial what's his name the trade meet guy that's trying to get them all killed That guy, yeah, it's a big thing in New Zealand. There's people advocating.

Speaker 2 I think there's even a political party, isn't there? Kill the cats. What?

Speaker 2 Or something. I don't know.
I might be. You might want to check that.

Speaker 2 I got to say, I've watched a lot of New Zealand comedy. I didn't know that this death of cats was a thread.

Speaker 2 So we're slightly also talking about luxury for pets, right? This has a practical purpose, but if you say to anyone, my cat has a catio, you're gonna be, I think, slightly mocked.

Speaker 2 And there's amazing examples throughout history of people who've built extraordinary structures for their animals.

Speaker 2 So there was a British surgeon who had two great Danes, and she built what was a 250,000 pound, so that's like 550,000 New Zealand dollars, a giant house for for these two dogs.

Speaker 2 It was known as Barkingham Palace. And

Speaker 2 it was designed by an architect called Andy Ramis, a thousand foot square. And it had everything from 18-inch deep doggy spas.

Speaker 2 It had temperature control beds. It had a 52-inch plasma television.

Speaker 3 And did they just live there on their own, these dogs? Yeah.

Speaker 2 The designer lived in another house.

Speaker 3 So was it just covered in feces?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm sure there were servants who came to

Speaker 2 servant cats.

Speaker 4 Dogs know how to poo outside it's fine all you need to do is give them a dog flap and they poo outside give them a dog flap yeah

Speaker 4 presumably oh imagine if they missed the dog flap off that 250 grand budget imagine they were like we can't stretch

Speaker 3 uh on the other side is a guy called bruce robinson in the uk who he started taking in cats that had been abandoned during covert 19.

Speaker 3 He just took in one or two at the start and then a couple more and then they all started multiplying.

Speaker 3 And in the end he had 300 cats.

Speaker 3 And he told a newspaper, he said, I made a bad decision.

Speaker 3 I thought I could handle the cats.

Speaker 3 And he ended up spending thousands of pounds every month.

Speaker 3 He had to go without food himself because he had to buy so much food for the cats and buying cat litter for the 10 little boxes for these 300 cats. And in the end, they were taken away by the SPCA.

Speaker 3 But they, in actual fact, they were all in very good condition.

Speaker 4 So I'm going to say, I'm going to come out and say it. 10 litter boxes is not enough for 300 cats.

Speaker 2 No, I agree.

Speaker 4 You can't have 30 cats to a box.

Speaker 3 I think that's when they saw this is not working.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 There's a Japanese architect, quite a famous one, called Tan Yamanuchi. And he recently designed, and it was very interesting to watch the video of how the design worked.
He designed a house.

Speaker 4 for his cats, but that he also lives in, but it was based around the desires of his cats.

Speaker 4 And the really difficult thing about being an architect with your bosses being cats is that they obviously don't speak your language. And so you need to work out what they want.

Speaker 4 So he followed them around everywhere to work out what temperatures they like best. And then he'd take a reading.

Speaker 4 And so he's created this amazing house where, for instance, the staircase of the house goes all around the outside of the inner wall.

Speaker 4 And that's so that the cats on their way up can always see everything in the house. So that there's never any threat, there's never any tension.

Speaker 4 And each step is exactly measured to be the height of the cat, so it works for them. Lots of hiding spots for them.

Speaker 4 At the top of this spiral staircase, in this beautiful house, you know, millions of dollars, is just a window at cat height. They get to the top of the steps and they can look out of the window.

Speaker 4 It's amazing. And there are also shed loads of books in it, which I don't understand.

Speaker 4 The whole thing is I designed a house specifically for my cats. And you're looking at this video and you're going, there's bookcases everywhere.

Speaker 2 What are they reading?

Speaker 4 It's just pictures of mice.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 Some other inventions for cats. There's a new thing which you can get, which is like a mat for your house.
And it's got a wire that goes down into the ground.

Speaker 3 And it's for, according to the people who invented it, when there's a lightning storm that goes past, there's enough static electricity in the air that your fluffy cat gets loads of static inside them.

Speaker 3 And you know, when you walk on a carpet and you accidentally touch something metal and you get a shock, they reckon that this is happening to cats all the time.

Speaker 3 And so the only way to solve it is to get one of these mats which your cat can go and sit on and it grounds them. What?

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 2 That's amazing. That's amazing.
What the hell?

Speaker 4 We would know if cats were having electric shocks all the time.

Speaker 2 I didn't think so. Are you saying I wasted my money?

Speaker 2 Okay, I got one more invention. This is a good one.

Speaker 3 I think this is a good one, actually. So we don't like cats in New Zealand.
Okay, we've decided. We've decided we don't want any animal pets, but you still kind of want a pet.

Speaker 3 So in 2010, they invented a thing called a pot pet. And this is a flower pot that lives in your house with a flower in it.
And whenever it needs water, it kind of follows you around

Speaker 3 and sort of makes a little squeaking noise. And then you have to pour water in it.

Speaker 3 And then when it needs some sunshine, it goes into a nice sunny place and stuff like that. So it's like a plant, but it has all the mobility of a pet.

Speaker 2 Wow. It's like a a sentient plant.
It's I need light, I need water.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's saving. It's like a Tamagotchi, basically, right? But more 3D.
You fancy one of those? Sorry? You fancy one? A Tamagotchi or the

Speaker 3 thing that I just

Speaker 3 explained.

Speaker 4 No, I'm not encouraging this industry. I think the energies of scientists are going in the wrong direction here.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, the scientist who invented this then killed himself because it didn't sell any.

Speaker 2 We're going to have to wrap up fairly soon.

Speaker 2 Andy told me a great anecdote. He read this book recently, which was by Craig Brown, amazing journalist in the UK.
And it's all about the Queen.

Speaker 2 So it's a new book out, might be out in New Zealand as well. A voyage around the Queen, it's called.

Speaker 2 And basically, we've spoken many times on this podcast about dictators who have dogs, who have more rights and more power than most of the people in their life.

Speaker 2 That was kind of the same with the Queen and the Queen Mother with the Corgis.

Speaker 4 The Corgis didn't have more legal rights than British citizens.

Speaker 2 I just need to know that. What I mean is

Speaker 2 they were

Speaker 2 big deals in Buckingham Palace.

Speaker 2 And so there's a story that Craig Brown tells in the book, which is that the Queen Mother was walking through the halls when suddenly she saw a giant pile of dog poo sitting on the carpet.

Speaker 2 And she went, who did that? That wasn't one of my dogs.

Speaker 2 And everyone... was just tense because they were like, well, it definitely was one of the dogs.
What do we do?

Speaker 2 So her private secretary, Markin Gilliatt, stepped in and said, well, mom, if it wasn't your dogs, it certainly wasn't you.

Speaker 2 So it must have been me.

Speaker 2 That's the power of the toys.

Speaker 2 That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for being here.
We're going to be back again next week with another episode. Wellington, you were incredible.
Thank you for having us. We will be back.

Speaker 2 We'll see you then. Goodbye.

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