FACTORALY - E99 THE BEST OF FACTORALY (SO FAR)

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

We're very nearly at our 100th episode, so we thought we'd go on holiday. Well, actually, we thought we'd do what other audio series do when they fancy a break and put together some of the best bits from the last 99 episodes.So, this one includes snippets from Cucumbers; Typography; Vikings; Curry; Pipes; Bells; Shoes; Bottles; Jelly; Nuts; Spectacles; Camels; Cereal; and Chefs.If you'd like to learn more about any of these subjects, please check out the show notes on our blog pages.We look forward to bringing you the next 100 episodes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Simon. Hello, Bruce. How are you today? I'm feeling holiday-ish. Thank you very much. How are you? I'm equally feeling well-rested. Good. You look like you've got a lovely tan there. Well, thank you very much. I should have taken the sunglasses off.

Yes, I wasn't going to mention, but... The panda rise. Are you somewhere sunny right now? I think I can hear gulls and the waffling of waves in the background. Yes, there is that going on. Excellent. Lovely. So what are we going to do, Bruce?

Because it's holiday time and you and I deserve a rest. We need a holiday. We do. I think what we could do. Why don't we do a best of? Like the best of radio shows. Why don't we do a best of factoring? That's a lovely idea. A few snippets from previous episodes. Yes. What a great idea. And of course we are rapidly approaching our 100th episode. So this could be a sort of a let's look at what we've done so far. Yes. A little amused boosh before we get to 100.

Before we get to the main course. Yes. Great idea. Well, in that case, hello everyone listening. This is factorily. I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. Please enjoy this best of factoring. And if you're a regular listener, then you'll be hearing things again. Yes, indeed. You'll be going, oh, that's right. I remember that now. I remember that. I don't remember them doing anything on potatoes. So sit back and enjoy.

I found out so many interesting things. I always thought that cucumber plants grew up vertically and cucumbers hung off them. That's just the way. that us humans have, you know, worked them out. That's just the way we cultivate them and the way we grow them for maximum efficiency. But naturally, the cucumber plant grows horizontally on the ground. It's kind of a tendrilie creeping plant.

And the cucumbers come out of all of these little tendrils and grow horizontally along the ground. So a bit like a strawberry, really. If I knew how a strawberry grew, I could agree with that. Is that how strawberries grow? It is strawberries grow along the ground and on bushes and tendrils, which is interesting because cucumbers are actually a fruit. Yes, they are.

They're related to the melon. So you could actually mix a fruit salad with tomatoes and cucumber. I wonder at what point does it become a sound? There's a great phrase I heard a while back that says, intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you shouldn't put it in a fruit salad. Exactly. So I think the same applies for cucumbers.

So, Bruce, what interesting topic are we going to chat about this week? Well, this is one of my favourite subjects. This is typography and printing. Very good. Can I just say at the very, very beginning? Go on. I'm going to get this off my chest because I will shout at anybody who gets this wrong. A typeface is the actual face like, but don't.

or Times or Helvetica. Right. A font is what you do with the face. So that's whether it's bold or italic or which, what point size it is or anything like that. So if you imagine, if you imagine the typeface is the body and the font is the clothes. Oh, nice. Okay. So that's an easy way to think about it.

So when you're talking about a tight face, you're talking about the big picture, the actual thing itself, whereas the font is very much how you treat it. So when we're all on our computers, there's a little drop-down menu that says font. Yes. From which you can pick things like Ariel Helvetica Times New Roman. So that's incorrect, is it? Yep. They actually mean typeface. Yes.

Well, there we go. I've learned something already, and we're only a couple of minutes in. I tend to shout at the radio, at people in general, if they use font when they mean typeface. Right, okay. I wonder who first made that error. Whoever it was, it was quite substantial, because that's what I, you know, will automatically think a font is. It's the name of the typeface.

Yes, no, no. The name of the typeface is the name of the typeface. Right, okay. I feel the need to start off with identifying what is a Viking, because we all know what a Viking is, right? We picture either a blonde or red-headed fella from Norway, big, menacing, threatening, angry, unkempt, wearing a helmet with horns sticking out of it,

plundering and pillaging everywhere they went. And that is precisely what everyone will think of when they think of a Viking. It turns out that's not what it is. Oh. That's partly what it is. Okay. Should we take those one at a time then?

Yeah, go on then. Which want to start? Well, look, let's start with the biggie. Horned helmets. Okay, horned helmets. Uh-uh. No horned helmets. Never happened.

Never happened. I mean, it doesn't make, if you think about it, if you've got a horn on your helmet, it gives, in somebody who's coming down with their sword on your head, it actually stops the sword from sliding off the side of your head, which is what a helmet's there for is, is to make the sword slide off. It actually gives it more grip, doesn't it? Yeah. So it's not a practical.

No logic. They did have the nose bits, though, the nose defending bits. Yes, yes. I found out there is actually one particular event that led rise to the idea of Vikings wearing horned helmets. and this was in the 19th century Richard Wagner created a series of operas based around the Norse sagas which were written by various Norse folk

to sort of tell their histories and their chronicles for future generations and he wrote these operas based on that his costume designer a fellow called Carl Doppler simply said hey wouldn't it look cool if we put horns on these helmets for our Vikings in this opera was Doppler the guy who started to go no yeah that's a fella

we need more horns and I love the fact that so many of our listeners will understand that because they're that kind of person yes exactly so yes it's totally attributable to these two fellas doing an opera having horns on their helmets and everyone just sort of latched onto it and went yeah that's

that's what a Viking looks like yeah there was a religious sect that had horns on the inside of their of their head gear but I think that's something else entirely. That's very odd. These things always bring me back to a blackout a quote of some kind of other,

testing my memory. There hasn't been a war run this badly since Olaf the Hairy ordered 80,000 helmets with the horns on the inside. Ladies and gentlemen, Curry! Do you like curry?

I do like curry. I do love a, well, let's, hmm, okay, so, mm, caveats. Curry is a weird word. Let's start off here and say, technically speaking, there is no such thing as a curry. Correct. Just like there is no such thing as a fish. Or a sea gull or anything else. All those things we think of things aren't things.

Yes, those. But there is a carry, isn't there? Ah, talk about carry. So a carry, Carrie Fisher, is that? No, we talked about fishing on another episode. Oh, yes, that's true. So, carry is a soup. Aha.

It's a Tamil soup. But people over here just call anything that tastes a bit sort of cumini and spicy and tamariki and all those other nice, lovely things that go into a curry. They call it a curry. Yes, exactly that. So this word carry or cari, depending on your persuasion, K-A-R-I, first appears in the 16th century. It's a Tamil word, as you say, and it literally means a sauce. Oh, a sauce, okay. Which then became a soup, which then became a stew, which then became various other things.

Yes. But there is no identifiable single dish that you can look at and say that is a curry. Even though you would go to a restaurant and you would order a vegetable curry or whatever it might be, curry does not exist. In that sense. Oh, it doesn't exist. The curry houses not exist either. We've just opened up a can of curried worms here, haven't we?

In ancient Egypt, the pyramid of Shura has roughly 380 metres worth of copper piping copper piping. Copper piping. Wow. Isn't that 3,000 BC in Egypt? Copper piping used as drainage on a pyramid. That's impressive.

I had to double check that because it just didn't seem reasonable. So they've been around for a while. They certainly have. Can you imagine calling an Egyptian plumber to come and source out your piping? You can't sort of picture it in the hieroglyphics, can't you? Yes, yes. The Egyptians would like turn sideways going.

I have a pencil sharpener, which is like the ones you used to get at school. With the crank handle. Yes, they sound a bit like this. Oh, childhood. You could, that's really dangerous. I remember, you know, whittling down an entire pencil from fresh to rubber using one of those. Well, the guy that invented that actually invented the bicycle bell. Oh, interesting. Yes.

And his name was, because I found out a bit about him as well, John Richard Dedicoat. That's the one, John Dedicote, 1877. Right. A man who invented a pencil sharpener and a bicycle belt. Yes. It's interesting, isn't it? That's great. Ford, we're talking about

doorbells. Yes. Henry Ford's first vehicle which was an 1896 quadricycle. It wasn't the model T or anything. It was effectively a four-wheel bicycle with an engine. Okay, right. Called a quadrucycle in 1896. And that was fitted with the

domestic doorbell instead of a horn. Was it really? Yeah. That's wonderful. Now, because doorbells have changed, haven't they? I remember growing up with a doorbell which it's sort of roughly the shape of those countertop bells that you ping the little button on top with a rotating thing inside

and it sort of made a charming pring noise and it lasted for as long as you pressed the button nowadays it's a horrible digital rendition of green sleeves or something like that or just a bing bing bong a bing bong yeah who doesn't love a bing bing bong but actually thinking about cycle bells

when bicycles first appeared on the roads by law between 1888 and 1930 cyclists were forced to continually ring a bicycle bell when they were in motion

the whole time they were going to be annoying isn't it I mean you're going to get sort of Nintendo thumb aren't you I was going to say it sounds like that

middle eight section of bicycle race by Queen they just go mad on the bells well it would constantly yeah So what are we talking about on this week's episode, Bruce? Shoes.

Right, okay. So the etymology of the word shoe. The English word shoe comes from the German word shoe, which comes from the Dutch word shoe, which comes from the old English word shoe, which means a shoe. One of the dullest etymologies ever. Do you know what the German for glove is?

No. Handshua. Hand shoe. A shoe on your hand? Yes. Brilliant. I love that. Shall you go back a bit in time?

Go on then. We've known that people have worn shoes for about 6,000 years. That's quite a while. They've probably wore them before that as well, but we're certain. We found a pair of flip-flops, basically. You personally went and found a pair of flip-lops. Which I will now call thong sandals, because that's technically what they are. Is that right?

Yes. And there were sort of like made. from all sorts of things, made from leaves, animal skins, bark, just lots and lots and lots of different things that you could make footwear out of, basically to stop your feet from getting hurt by whatever was underneath your feet. Yes, whether that was rocks or animals that bite or spiky plants, whatever. Yes. I mean, you know, it's a bit sketchy because frankly they're all made of stuff that degrades and decays and decays and vanishes from sight. Yeah.

And then you get into like the medieval type of shoe. You know, you look at Blackadder and you sort of see the, you know, shoes that are, there were some shoes up to like four feet long. Good grief. I mean, that's, in medieval terms, that's almost a whole person. I know. But what they did was they curled the toe up. Ah, yes. So it was only four feet long when it been fully extended.

Right. So I'm sort of picturing a very comical jester like curly-toed shoe. Yes. Exactly. Then we took, we can talk about high heels. So first high heels were around about 15th century. Really? How long ago is that?

Well, Louis XIV, um, decided that high heels were only for courtiers. Ah. And it was actually outlawed. Anybody who wasn't a courtier could be put in prison for wearing high heels. Oh, really? I think he was quite short. So maybe basically like, you know, 15th, 16th century lifts. My fact about champagne bottles, essentially it comes down to the fact that the champagne bottle, as we know it, was invented in England.

Sorry, France. Sparkling wine has been around since medieval times, but it was originally seen as a flaw to have bubbles in your wine. The wine had been left in the cold cellar for too long. It's gone off. It's gone off. Yeah, the fermentation process has continued. It's got bubbles in it. No one wants that.

um the the bubbles uh would would break the the glass bottles which back then were thinner and not as sturdy as they are now so it was a problem and over the years people sort of started quite liking this these bubbles you know the bottles that did survive were quite rare and therefore the rich took them on and said oh look at this i've got this sparkling wine how exciting but the bottles were never strong enough to be mass produced and and used for that intention in 1650s 15, James the first, who was warring with some country or other, I remember which one, might be France, might be Spain, we alternate. Was this James the first who was James the sixth? That's the one, James the first of England. So the one country that it wouldn't have been is Scotland. Scotland, exactly. Unless they were having an off day. So James the first or the sixth, depending on which way you look at it, he was at war.

he was making lots of ships for his navy, he made it law that no oak trees could be felled in this country for any purpose other than making ships for his navy. The bottle manufacturers, glass manufacturers, had always used charcoal for their furnaces, which is obviously made out of wood. So they had to suddenly switch to coal because they weren't allowed to use wood for that purpose anymore. Their coal furnaces burned at a higher temperature. Higher temperature in making glass makes tougher, stronger glass. That makes sense. And so it was only as a result of that that the glass used in wine bottles could be made thicker, stronger, tougher, and withstand the pressure of the fizz. Wow. You can also, there's a third thing you can use in

in jelly, which is tonic water. Oh, really? If you use tonic water in, you don't have to use a whole lot of tonic water, but when you fill up the second half pint in the jelly, if you use tonic water and you happen to go into a disco, then your jelly will glow in the dark. No way. Yeah. It's quite good. It's quite good for like birthdays and celebrations and obviously things like Halloween. But yeah, so quinine has that property where it glows under black light. Yes.

So if you use tonic water, you get glow-in-the-dark jelly. That's brilliant. Let's try that now. There's a recipe for you immediately on factorial. Perfect. Well, one of the things I'm eating is quite a lot of nuts. Okay. I think I'm eating nuts anyway.

Well, you would hope that you would know whether you're eating nuts or not. Well, this is the thing. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about nuts. Oh, what a coincidence. It's that wonderful. But a lot of nuts aren't nuts. No. They kind of fall into three different groups.

There are nuts. There are legumes. And there are droops. I just love the word droops. And droops specifically spelt D-R-U-P-E-S. Yes. As opposed to droops. As a double-O.

Yes. Okay, so can you tell us the difference in a nutshell? I knew you were going to do that. Yes, I can. So a nut is a hard shell containing only one fruit. Okay. So, for example, a walnut is a nut because it's a hard shell that contains only one fruit. Yes.

A legume is a shell that contains more than one fruit. Okay. So it comes in a pod. So like a peanut contains two peanuts in a pod. Yes. And a droop is a seed that's contained within a hard shell within something soft and fruititious. Congratulations on the use of fruititious. That's charming.

Yes. Okay. So it's confusing. I read very similar definitions to what you've just said. I found that an awful lot of foodstuffs sort of cross over into different categories. and there are things in some categories that you really don't think should be there. Yes. But cashews and peaches are in the same family.

They're both by your explanation just there. Droops, aren't they? They are. So a peach or anything that has a hard stone, it's just about what we do with it. We focus on the sweet, fleshy bit and we throw away the hard thing in the middle. But a cashew, or a cashew, depending on how you're disposed. I'm a cashew.

You're a cashew, I'm a cashew. Bless you. Cushues have a soft, fruity outer, which gets thrown away, and all we know of the cashew is the hard, nutty bit inside. It's kind of inside. It actually hangs down from the bottom. If you look at a cashew, it's like a pear. If you can imagine a pear with like a very large cashew nut, like black underneath it. Yeah.

That's kind of what a cashew nut looks like. Oh, I see. Interesting. And you can eat the pear bit. quite nice. Is it? But don't eat the cashew because the outside is poisonous. Crikey. There's a lot of trial and error involved in that, isn't there? Yeah. You can imagine someone seeing this thing

growing on a tree for the first time. Let's try this bit. Ooh, let's try this bit. I thought, you have that bit there, and I'll have this bit here, and we'll see how we do. Yes. The French are accredited with industrialising the manufacturer of glasses. I mean, the... Oh, really?

French glasses in the Morayze region of France, in 1796, they started manufacturing glasses. Okay. And by 1900, that area of France was producing 12 million pieces a year. Oh, my goodness. And it's actually still considered the birthplace of modern eyewear. Really? And they have, like, very famous brands. And actually, if some glasses are made in France, they are stamped with made in France as deliberately.

Oh, really? Oh. So yeah, the French. Well, I'll go one up on the French and say that the Italians were making eyeglasses in the 13th century. Oh, okay. So the idea has been around for ages. A good old friend... Is it the Egyptians?

No, no, no, no. A good old friend Pliny take it with a pinch of salt the elder. Okay. mentioned the Emperor Nero holding up an emerald to his eye and looking through it to correct his vision. So the Romans. It's either the Egyptians or the Romans. Exactly, yeah. He claims that the Greeks and the Romans were using some form of corrective lens.

That doesn't mean they were walking around with glasses, but that's that. But there was an Arabian scholar, mathematician, astronomer called Ibn Sal, around 970, 980 AD, who first sort of suggested that you could actually take a lens and smooth it out and put it in a frame and stick it on your face. didn't really do anything with the idea but then like I say Italy came along in the 13th century apparently Venice became a real hub of eyeglasses manufacturer in the 13-1400s

because they produced really good quality glass famous for glass exactly yeah and by the 14th century they were a relatively common site in Italy so a couple of hundred years before the French industrialised the whole process and in Holland as well apparently there's a pair in a museum

in Bergen-Obsum, from the 14th century as well. Oh, really? And another pair from Japan. I mean, what's quite interesting is that there wasn't, there wouldn't been too much sort of traveling between sort of Italy and Japan and Holland. Yeah. And yet, there's a pair of glasses from the 15th century in Kyoto. Oh, really?

Yeah. They belong to the eighth shogun, made of carved white ivory. Huh. Let's dive straight in here and work out essentially what is a camel. It occurred to me earlier on. When I think of a camel out in the desert, I automatically picture the thing with one hump. When I think about a camel in a zoo, I automatically picture the thing with two humps. Okay, let me tell you the easy way to tell the difference between the two.

Go on. There are two, well, there are actually technically three sorts of camel. Oh. There's a dromedary, a bactrian camel, and a wild bactrian camel. The wild Bactrian camel is very rare So it lives in Mongolia But the very easy way to tell the difference Between a dromedary and a Bactrian camel

Is to imagine the capital letter That starts dromedary and bactrian Yes So you've got a D and a B Yes If you rotate it to anti-clockwise Of course to turn You've got a D on its back and a B on its back

A D on its back has one hump That's correct A bee on its back has two humps. Oh, that's wonderful. Easy. That's very good indeed. Now, so I've, there have been quite a few myths dispelled for me during this research. I've always been one of those smug people who goes around saying,

ah, but is it a camel or is it adromedry? Thinking they're two different things. Right. Adromedry is a type of camel. Correct. A bactrian is a type of camel. Correct. So they are both camels, and therefore I've been saying the wrong thing.

So to prove the fact that they are both camels, the dromedary, its Latin name is Camelus Dromedarius and the Bactrian camel's Latin name is Camelus Bactrianus. So they both begin with Camelus. Which kind of proves the fact that they're both camels. Yes, they are definitely both camels. What makes a camel a camel? Go on.

It never occurred to me before, but it's obvious when you realise it. If you want to stay cool in a hot place, you're best off being skinny because you don't want to be surrounded by fat which heats up and makes you sweat and makes you hot however if you want to survive in a environment that's quite hostile

you do need to be able to store food and water somehow so you can survive what the camel does is the most of the camel is skinny apart from the humps or hump

and that's where all the fat is and the water is actually all in the blood but yes all the fat is in is in the hump and the camel can live off the fat in its hump for quite some time several weeks and doesn't get hot because the rest of it's skinny yes so that was another myth that was dispelled for me I remember as a kid being rigorously informed

that camels stored water in their humps of course they don't as you say it's fat Yes. Up to about 80, 40 kilos of fat. Yeah, yeah. Quite a lot. And if a camel goes through a prolonged period of not eating or drinking, you can actually see that the fat in the hump being used, being drained away, and their humps sort of start to flop over and look a bit saggy. Yes.

Camels can, I had a look at how long exactly a camel can go without food and water. It varies depending on their environment, the time of year and so on and so on. in wintertime they can go up to several months sort of four or five six months without eating or drinking when it's blazing hot we're talking about a few days but either way yes they can go without I had a quick look at the the Kellogg's Cornflake

and this goes back further than I realized all the way back to 1898 the Kellogg brothers William and John Kellogg they were making granola about which I know even less than musely so if you've got anything to tell me about granola later on please do

they were making granola and somehow rather they got the recipe slightly wrong and they ended up accidentally making flakes of wheat wheat flakes and they thought oh that's quite nice I wonder if we can turn that into a thing and they changed the recipe

and they experimented a few times they ended up using corn instead of wheat and, ta-da, corn flakes were born. I didn't realize they were that old or that unintentional. One of my favorite facts of all time is regarding Escoffier. And it's a slightly long-winded fact,

so brace his health. But essentially, Escofié invented the Peach Melba dessert. Oh, yes. He invented it whilst working at the Savoy. and this fact is that the Peach Melba is indirectly named after a mill in Derbyshire. Oh, okay, because I was expecting something else entirely. Right, okay, well, it will probably go via what you're thinking of. Okay.

Ascoffier invented the Peach Melba in honour of Dame Nellie Melba, the Australian opera singer, who was on tour in London and staying at the Savoy. Yes. Dame Nelly Melba, not her real name. She called herself that in honour of her hometown Melbourne in Australia. Melbourne Australia was founded in the Victorian era and it was named after Lord Melbourne who was the British Prime Minister at the time

Lord Melbourne was given his title because his family owned Melbourne Hall Melbourne Hall is in Derbyshire and named after the town of Melbourne The name of Melbourne originally was called Millbourne which means mill stream because there was a stream in a mill So via that chain of events

The Peach Melba is named after a mill in Derbyshire congratulations you win today's prize thank you so much what do i win some peach melba well there we go uh we hope you've enjoyed listening to the best bits of factorily so far i'm just putting on a bit more suntan lotion simon so i'm just going to go for another ice cream if you've enjoyed listening to this please get in touch with us tell us which have been your favorite bits which episodes did you love even more than the other ones i mean those are our favourite bits, but you must have loads of favourite bits. That's true.

Let us know. Go to our Facebook page. Yep. Or go to hello at factorily.com. Yes. Or just tell other people in the street that you've heard something that you thought was a real giggle. Indeed. And if you also happen to be on holiday whilst listening to this, please tell all your other fellow

holiday makers about it. Oh, yes. If you're listening to this on the beach or by the pool and people are looking at you in a slightly inquisitive way. It would be a great way of finding an extra bit of space to your ourselves on the beach. So please share the joy. Definitely, and they'll go away. Yes, perfect.

Thank you all very much for listening to this episode. Please come again next time for another fun-filled escapade on Factorelli. Bye-bye. O'Vois.