No Such Thing As A Fish - NSTAAF International Factball: Brazil v Croatia

Episode Date: June 12, 2014

Brazil v Croatia: The QI Elves in association with www.visitengland.com bring you the first episode of this No Such Thing As A Fish Factball special - the only football podcast that has absolutely nothing to do with football. Today Dan Schreiber (@schreiberland), James Harkin (@eggshaped), Andrew Hunter Murray (@andrewhunterm) and Anna Ptaszynski (@qikipedia) pit Brazil against Croatia to find out which is the most Quite Interesting country.

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of no such thing as a fish presents the World Cup of Facts This is the only football podcast out there with no mention of football whatsoever We are the QI elves this podcast is brought to you by visit England comm and each day We're gonna be pitting each country playing in this year's World Cup against each other to find out who the most quite interesting is And we begin with Brazil versus Croatia Okay, I've got a flashback Brazil go for it. You want to hear it? Yeah, okay? There's an island in Brazil. It's the size of booking and palace gardens, but it contains more than half a million venomous snakes Wow, yeah, you want me to go that would you that's in favor of Brazil being a better country?

Don't go there Well, I mean doesn't it have a great flora and fauna for instance of which this is a mostly for no But they can't be as far as I know the most venomous snakes in the world of the top 10 all 10 are in Australia So they haven't got particularly no ruthless venomous snake. Yeah, but I think The animals in Brazil have got to be top of their list of great things. Haven't they? Yeah Well parrots I have a lot of parrots right because it was the country is named after a Brazil tree But initially Italian merchants called it the land of parrots due to the number of parrots that were there Okay. Yeah, but yeah, so okay, so they've got parrots. What else they got there?

They have piranha those little fish that bite you that everyone else calls piranha The Kayapo people of Brazil they have a writer passage called Hornet fighting Where men climb up ladders and assault Hornet's nests with their bare hands I think to prove that they're men we've got to develop better ways of showing women like the 18th birthday Oh Yeah Brazil also has in the Amazon you just have larger animals of every kind so they also have the giant river otter Which gets up to about two meters long. Wow. I know. Isn't it fantastic?

My favorite thing is that the leading exporter of Brazil nuts in the world is Brazil Bolivia Oh That's great, so they lose out on Brazil nuts, but they do have the world's largest cashew tree, right? Which is 7,500 meters squared in area I haven't seen a picture of it. Does that it must have lots of sprouting roots? Yeah, a lot of cashew nuts you get out of that a lot of bar snacks Having said the thing about the snakes and not having particularly venomous snakes

Australia having them all they do in fact have the most venomous spider in the world the wandering spider Brazilian wandering spider Yeah, so that's a point in their favor. That's the one that if it bites you it gives you priapism gives you very long Very painful erections. Oh, yeah Well, that's the last days as in long you mean like they lost a long time not as it measured in minutes not inches But although there are some people I think Nick name James measured in minutes I There are some people I think they're in Brazil are they called the topami people or something the ones who put snakes down their trousers and Get them to bite their penises to give them longer

Minutes not inches ferrets, aren't you and Yorkshire Just just to turn it away for a second from penises. Um, I like any country that still has a sense of mystery about it Brazil seems to right this is this is so interesting It was only until 1950 that they found the highest area of Brazil up until then they just didn't know where it was And it just so happened to be a pilot who was flying over a mountain when it was a cloudless moment Yeah, well, and then the pilot just went hey, that looks high. Yeah He thought well, there's no way higher than 10,000 feet here And they are unidentified flying objects in Brazil are there

Yeah, they have a UFO group of UFO hunters and their center of ufology is a town called vagina It's probably pronounced Virginia Speaking of vaginas, there's a thing called the lotus flower project There's a prison in Brazil where all the inmates spend their time knitting There was a Brazilian fashion designer who was running short of knitters and she'd she'd designed some knitted goods and the prisoners for every three days They spend knitting goods they get three they get a day knocked off their sentence And so there's these hilarious pictures of these like super tough kind of hardcore inmates in this prison and they're just knitting away Wow, there's also another prison in Brazil where the inmates cycle exercise bikes and the exercise bikes are attached to

The generators and can provide electricity for the local town and the longer you cycle for the more time you can get off your sentence No, really, that is really good. So the fitter and stronger you are the earlier you can be released That's not how you want to send a criminal back Okay, and now it's time for our half-time show which comes in the form of a quiz sponsored by visit England comm We've got three questions for you. And if you listen to the end of the podcast, you will get the answer So here we go James first question. Okay, my question is about a golf course that I play in in Silverdale and Lancashire and my question is what can you find there that you can't find anywhere else in England? Okay, Anna in

1949 what caused big Ben to slow down by five minutes? No idea Question three Andy. What incredible service has West Country academic Dr. Robert Dunning done the county of Somerset Tough okay, so those are the three questions stay tuned to the end of the podcast in order to find out the answers to it Unfortunately, no prizes whatsoever. Just so fun. Just so fun. But for now, let's return back to the match and it's Croatian Dalmatians oh, yeah, oh, yeah Dalmatian coast. That's what the name after the named after the dog Croatia used to be called Dalmatia Croatia's not named after the dog. That would be a sad source for a country name

Brazil was almost named after a parrot and was named after a tree. Yeah Another word we get from Croatia really obviously cravat Cracky move from Croatia in the 17th century from a Croatian mercenary I think they used to call Croatians cravats I think the troops are filled with cravats and tartars hossars and Cossacks Frightening on me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we I think we've covered on the show before that Croatia literally means Thailand Land of ties. Yeah, that's a good one Speaking of scary that Croatia was home to the first ever historical vampire as in not just a story

It was a person who people actually thought was a vampire who actually lived he was called Durae Grando and he lived in the 17th century and he died and then his wife thought that He was coming back having sex with her in the night and he was bothering all of the people in his village But a few years later they they went back to his grave and he still had a rosy complexion So they cut his head off. Well, that's a rational response Well in death And it stopped. Yeah, it stopped. It worked. Oh, that's the trick then dead person causing you trouble. Yeah

One of my favorite things about Croatia is there's a museum of broken relationships there And this is some museum and they keep things which when you split up with your with your ex If you have an object which reminds you of that of that time, then you give it to those guys One of the things they have there is a candy thong Okay, and the woman who who gave that to the museum said he never bought me flowers because flowers He said were for boring people Instead I got sausages or new parts for my bicycle She said I didn't mind because I loved him after four years

He turned out to be as cheap and shabby as his presence He cheated on me with a colleague from the office and dumped me via email Was this all on the little museum? I can tell you also the world's ugliest man that comes from Croatia Self-styled world's what he calls himself the world's This is a guy called his surname is cats. It's I don't know which is what his first name is He's from sat and he's from Zagreb and he's asked people to marry him at 5,000 times And they've all said no and he thinks the only the only reasonable

Reason that he might be still single is because he must be the ugliest man in the world He said I've got to the point where I've even been asking people I'm meeting in the streets to marry me And they always say no it's assuming a level of superficiality among women that I object to Maybe he's an asshole. Yeah, or maybe he's a creepy guy who asked people to marry him on the street Yeah, but they've also got the world's ugliest goat. What it's called octo goat It was born with eight legs. Wow. It looks like a furry octopus Wow survived as well That's incredible. It also has the world's smallest town. That's excitingly population of 17

Croatia does what town is that? It's called hum, which is nice because you can imagine that being a very low hum all the time They never really got above three decibels. I have another great Croatian invention Maybe the best ever Nicola Tesla. Oh, he was creation was born in Croatia and was possibly the most interesting man Who's ever lived he was fantastic. Some people thought he came from Venus. Yeah, give us secrets. We didn't he came from Croatia I stand corrected obviously that's ridiculous. Only women are from Venus, right? Yeah, although he was called Nicola But he develops alternating current he is responsible for he supposedly invented a death ray just before he died Didn't he the seconds before he died?

Pointing the wrong way The idea was invented death ray and that will stop all wars because no one will want to attack each other because everyone has a death Ray. Yeah, he wasn't a practical man in many ways. He just was a genius He was a Da Vinci like once in a century mind the main relationship in his life was with a pigeon He was a very very strange man. Can you yes? Unfortunately, there's some feathers in the Museum of Broken Relationships He there was a pigeon which came to his room every day. He lived out his last years in a hotel Yeah, he said he loved her like like he you would love a woman, didn't he? Yes, and we can only assume he was speaking metaphorically

We're we're quickly approaching full-time So if anyone's got any final Croatia facts last one most popular ice cream flavor in Croatia last year Facebook flavor Invented by a guy called Admir Adili whose teenage daughter asked him to create an ice cream flavor inspired by Facebook And it became a huge hit. What flavor is Facebook flavor? It's blue and white. That's all I can tell Well, so if you what when you when you lick it do you sort of creepily see photos of people who used to go to university You don't lick it you like it Okay, that's the end of the match Brazil versus Croatia before we find out the scores and who won Let's get the answers to that visiting lindoc.com quiz from our halftime show James starting with you

Yes, and the thing that you can find on Silverdale golf course in Lancashire is England's rarest orchid the lady's slipper orchid and that's nowhere else It's found nowhere else. Just where my wayward golf balls end up Okay, question number two is Anna. Yep in 1949 Big Ben was slowed down by five minutes when a flock of starlings landed on its minute hand Really? Yep. Wow what an interesting fact Andy question number three Robert Dunning It started in 1967 writing the Authoritative history of Somerset and he worked at it for 40 years and has had to retire with only nine of his outlined

22 volumes finished. Wow. It's a very impressive As he handed it on to someone he's handed it on to another researcher Okay, all right. Well, there you go there's the answers to the questions and now it's time to find out who has won the match and To make that decision. We're gonna go to James. Okay. Um, I think arbitrarily We are gonna say the most quite interesting country of the two is Brazil I think those big raindrops have just about won it. I agree. Okay. There you go. Brazil has won so if you want to get in contact with any of us to

Dispute that or just ask us about any of the facts that we've spoken about you can reach us all on our Twitter handles I'm on at Shriverland Andy at Andrew Hunter M James at egg shapes and Anna You can write at quikipedia or you can email podcast at qi.com okay, so That's it for this episode, but we're gonna be back again tomorrow with the next match of the World Cup and that will be Spain versus Netherlands Spain versus Netherlands exciting. Okay. Hope you enjoyed the show guys and tune in again tomorrow We'll see you then. Bye