Leila: Hello and welcome back to Fun Fact Friday.
David: Fun Fact Friday with Leland. David. I'm David.
Unknown: I'm Leila. That's right. We finally got it right.
David: We got to write 193 episodes. 193 episodes it took
us to get the intro, right? Absolutely. We are what is the
show? What are we? Oh, we're okay. weekly podcast we're
discussing fun facts surrounding a different topic each week.
It's not always fun. We don't always have facts, and we don't
always release on Friday. But you know, at least what happens,
right?
Unknown: Nobody's perfect.
David: Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect this week. This
week. As we teased last week, we have a very special guest.
Claire, from the creativity found podcast who I met down in
Florida once say hello, Claire. Hello,
Claire: how
David: are you? Good. Good. And we met at pod Fest in Orlando in
January, on the very last night of pod fest, and where you meet
the most interesting people. And where's that in the queue for
the bar in the queue for the bar. And for us American folks,
ACU is a line where folks wait one after the other, typically
single file for an event or something like that. And that's
what we're talking about this week, we're talking about the
differences between, you know, just cultural differences,
language differences between America and where are you from?
Exactly.
Claire: I'm in Oxford,
David: Oxford. Great, that great accent that we talked about
accents.
Claire: I can't believe you got one in so quickly with Q and
line.
David: I'm always the wheels are always spinning. Sometimes
they're creating smoke and nothing useful. But they're,
they're always spinning the. So yeah, this isn't a normal
episode where we do our you know, just our normal facts.
We're just going to be another I've got some questions, another
spider
Unknown: or so many spiders in the shed. Okay,
David: well, looks like I'm gonna have to spray. I've been
saying that for months. Oh, well. So I wanted to ask you
right off the bat, because I I should know this. And I don't I
hear United Kingdom are UK, England, and Britain, or Great
Britain. I use those. I hear those used interchangeably. And
I don't know. Exactly. I know that. England is like part of
Unknown: I'm still trying to kill this guy.
David: While I'm you while you're while you're doing that.
So what what is that? What is the difference in the proper
nomenclature for everything? Yeah,
Claire: so actually, now there is a difference between the UK
and Great Britain, but I don't actually know what that is. So
England is the country that I live in, which is in the UK, and
it is in Great Britain. And then you've got Scotland and Wales,
which are on the same island as England. And then across the
water. You've got Northern Ireland, and then the Republic
of Ireland. And it's something to do with those with regards to
what is the difference between UK and Great Britain, I believe.
But I've only started using the term UK from speaking with more
and more American people, it seems the term that is used is
UK so that that basically means you know, what side of the sea
I'm on,
David: right as like us for us. You know, I live in the US makes
it really easy. You know two letters.
Claire: UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain. I think
Kingdom of Great Britain and something else. Maybe Maybe
Northern Ireland. Let's have a look. I don't know.
David: We'll do the we do we do
Unknown: live so I'm big on history. Maybe no one actually
no.
David: There's no authority on it. It means different things to
different people does.
Claire: Oh is a Northern Ireland. So it's the United
Kingdom. So I didn't know deep down. United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland. Okay. Yeah, so great. Britain
must be England, Scotland, Wales, because we're all on one
island. Okay, United Kingdom then includes over the water
that includes Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is
completely independent, and
David: this whole thing and there's a whole history behind
that. Yeah, yeah, we won't go into the so before we go any
further I just want to get that out of the way before I forgot
it because I was thinking about it. Earlier when I was cooking
the ramen noodles. Oh, they're so good. We went to the Asian
store, down the street and They have, like a whole aisle of
different types of ramen noodle. And this one's called What's it
called? Anyway, it's got this Bulldog. And it's got this like
chicken on the front. And it's the hottest and it like, it's so
red and it just stains everything red. So I've got like
red spots on my hands and fingers. And I had to wipe my
mouth off like four times, because it just gets everywhere,
but it's super spicy and delicious. I'm
Claire: actually going to an Asian buffet for dinner. I'm not
sure is going to be Oh, no. Apologies gonna be like sea
freight.
David: Right? Yeah, you know, we we stopped at one we went to see
a Bob Ross exhibit. It was a bunch of his paintings. And we
got we touched them. And then we started just a random strip
mall, Chinese buffet. And it was terrible. There was an exposed
electrical socket, where we were eating right next to me in the
booth. Like it was the wires were sticking out. And it was
like sitting next to me in the booth. And I was like, this is I
don't I don't feel like this is safe.
Claire: But health and
David: safety. Why don't you tell us I like I like I love the
concept for your, for your podcast. So why don't you tell
us a little bit about that real quick.
Claire: Thank you. Yeah, so basically, I've just done my
100th episode, actually, I've just released 103. Now
congratulations. Thank you. And I speak with people who have
found or refound their creativity in adulthood. And it
all came from I was, I was doing some drama and singing classes
that I organized, because I wanted to do something creative
as a grown up. And I was meeting people through that, who were
saying, Oh, I used to love doing this stuff when I was a kid. But
then I stopped doing it because I was told I was no good or
because I had to work or because of looking after family or
because I was academically bright bla bla bla. And then
coming back to having a creative thing they love doing whatever
it may be, and how it benefits the rest of their lives. So I
started speaking with more and more people like that went into
lockdown thought, Oh, I could I could podcast this. And it just
grew and grew. Obviously I started with people I knew. And
then it's just grown and grown. And I was speaking this morning,
in fact, with my third guest from Australia, actually. So she
was in an evening and I was in an early morning with the
wonders of digital digital communications. We can speak to
anybody anywhere. That's a relation with
David: it's like I've worked with on my meters pod podcast,
which I haven't put an episode out, like, almost all year. But
I've worked with people from like, I think eight different
countries to do audio drama stuff. And it's really nice to
be able to do all that. But yeah, I'd really do enjoy your
podcast. And if you're into that sort of thing, check it out, you
get you talk to some, some interesting people. And then I
love that you've got your website set up. So you can go
and see, you know, like you can get creative tools.
Claire: Yeah, the idea was that, you know, for these are really
inspiring stories and their stories from ordinary people.
And you know, like, you might be listening and think, Well, if
that person can do that, I can give it a go. Because
oftentimes, the guests will say I was really rubbish at it when
I started or I didn't like it and I tried something else, all
these kind of encouraging words, for someone who as a grown up
will go, oh, it shouldn't start because I might be rubbish or I
won't be perfect, blah, blah. So then, yeah, I started the
website so that listeners could actually go to places and find
creative activities to try but also helping out. It's
promotional, it's networking for the small businesses that teach
there are tea and crafty activities. And so we have a
lovely little community now as well so as well as podcast
community of guests I've spoken with there's also all the people
in the creativity fan collective, who are spread
around the country doing the same thing but kind of spread
out and we can get together and be together and promote what
each other does and stuff like that. Right. The
David: class isn't what she said there a minute ago remind me of
something. Nelson Hi high school I believe it was our English
teacher had this quote on the wall. I have no idea who was
from. But the quote was somewhere along the lines of if
man waited until he was so good. If a man waited to do something,
until he was so good at it that no one could find fault. Nothing
would ever get done. So you you just you get out there and you
start doing it. Go back and listen to our couple first
episodes. Yeah,
Unknown: don't ya?
David: We had scripts, and we had like, we read. We read the
scripts. She was 10. So she had good ideas.
Unknown: You had like the whole dad personality,
David: right? And I was playing it up real hard. Sweet. And then
Oh, it's okay sweetie, you know, just pick on you. But yeah, and
we had not we edited it we we record for for it was terrible
30 minutes, and we would edit it down it would be like 12
minutes.
Claire: So I do edit I'm, I did books from my day job. So I
think I'm just made to edit and yeah, I know a fine tooth comb
but I do do quite a bit of editing. You
David: said do too. We, we edit if one of us if one of us makes
says something inappropriate because we we were. We don't
Bill ourselves as a kid show. We're a family friendly show.
But if something's you know, we know some kids listen, we know
for a fact that some kids under 10 Listen, so we try and keep it
you know? Or if Leila has just straight up said some of her
classmates names or teachers names. Oh no crap that out. And
we don't need to have Doc's? Anybody. Yeah. But yeah, it's
this show, we don't really edit. But you know, of course me this
pod is an audio drama, I've got it 40 hours of editing on one
episode, you know, dealing with how to edit 7878 tracks, audio
tracks and special effects and plugins. And
Leila: we just don't get out here recorded and posted.
David: And we we try and be as good live as we can to not have
to worry about it. And
Claire: you are and you appreciate you appreciate that.
Getting back to not being perfect, though. You remind me
of and I'm getting a visa Mary Poppins that's a very bad
English accent. Another Dick Van Dyke. One of my favorite films
is Chitty Chitty Bang, bang. And they have the song up from the
ashes, which is exactly that sentiment that we keep trying
and we get it wrong. And we learn from it. And we try again.
This is to invent the flying car. So Oh,
David: yeah. Oh, I Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All I remember is
that there's a flying car and it has Dick VanDyke. Yeah. And we
watched a million times when I was a kid we had on VHS. We
didn't have a lot of money. So we
Claire: know petrified of the child catcher. You got been like
completely haunted forevermore by the the
David: only things that I remember being horrified of and
I still they freak me out a little bit from when I was a kid
is darts because of an incident involving a dark going into my
eye socket. Yeah. He's told, I've told that story on the show
before a couple of times. So I'll tell you after we after we
hit in the recording. Yeah. And then Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
The Peewee Herman movie. Yeah, the large March scene with the
truck driver, whose face turns into the claymation scary face.
And it's supposed to be funny. It's supposed to be funny, but
when I was I don't even know how it was. But it scarred me. So
bad
Unknown: details made me afraid of manatees. Yep.
David: manatees, I
Leila: have no idea how there was an episode about this. Like,
I think plush Manatee and it scared the crap out of me. For
no reason.
David: I'm gonna see cow. Exactly. Okay, so let's get to
that. Let's get to the topic at hand here. Yeah. All right.
Let's start let's start with a couple of couple of big ones. In
in America, a biscuit is just just like a Adobe bready like,
fluffy thing that doesn't have a lot of flavor until you put
butter on it, or jam or jelly or, you know, whatever you're
like, in the mornings, I'll have a sausage biscuit or sausage and
egg biscuit. And if if you were to say a sausage and egg biscuit
over there, because what's a biscuit over there?
Claire: That would be really very confusing. But I was
thinking about this one as well, actually. So Whoo, I believe
we're so I believe for you. It would be a cookie. So it's a
sweet snack that is baked. But when I think of cookies,
certainly here, we do have cookies we have like chocolate
chip cookies. But we also have things like digestive biscuits
and rich tea biscuits and Borbon biscuits and hobnobs, which are
all different kinds of biscuits and I can't imagine that those
would be called cookies. Have you heard of mittens?
digestives, I think I have
Leila: them but we never really get them. Like I've
David: seen them and And
Claire: then shortbread for example, shortbread is a
biscuit.
David: Okay, so when I think yeah when I think British
biscuit I think of like a smaller harder. Yeah cookie like
I can like in like way it's mixed in like a Biscoff Have you
ever seen the Biscoff cookies?
Claire: Yeah delicious
David: Have you ever uh Hold on let me let me let me tell you my
my pro tip for everybody out there they sell them at the
store. I thought you could only get them on Delta flights but
Claire: in this country it's in the head
David: so I got some My wife always grabs extra she takes
business trips and she always gets extra when she's on the
plane for me because she knows a loved one one time she had them
in her purse and they got all crumbly right. And I was about
to eat some ice cream. So I took and we just had regular vanilla
ice cream and I've took the Biscoff crumbles and put it on
the wall
Claire: you know you can get cakes make made from them. I
have seen this scarf like mfine type cakes or people now have
cakes with biscuit, biscuit icing and you can buy Biscoff
branded cakes
David: and you can buy amazing they had Biscoff donuts at
Christmas they had I mean you can also buy just the crumbles
now just like bread crumbs or cookie crumbs are making roll
Yeah. The levens oh my god but you can make you can make a pie
crust out of them you know, something like that or not
Claire: small biscuits and biscuits can have if you watch
the Great British Bake Off for example.
David: Leila loves so much.
Claire: It's a brilliant, it's beautiful. They will have
biscuit week and they will make different types of biscuits and
throughout Europe there are loads of different types of
biscuits and they're not always as hard as a Biscoff Yeah, they
might be a bit softer. They sound then you got the age old
debate about whether a Jaffa Cake is a biscuit.
David: I don't know what a Jaffa Cake is. Google time. J A FFER.
Unknown: A Oh, got
David: it. Got it got it looks
Unknown: amazing.
David: Oh, that's a cookie. That was like really good. We
Claire: made it but it's very soft. The dough is very cake
like wait and then you've got that soft orange in the middle
and then the chocolate in the top.
David: Why does it Why does the package look like Kraft macaroni
and cheese? It looks exactly like Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Oh my gosh.
Unknown: At least that brand the least.
David: Well yeah, this brand of it. Kraft mac is amazing.
Unknown: I'm gonna find a recipe for those.
David: Well they've got them on Amazon. Well I don't want them
$13 For for lamb, like point two seven kilograms whatever that
means. Okay, so I'm going to share my screen real quick with
you Claire and just show you let's see Kraft mac and cheese
allow you got some Kraft mac and cheese right and then you got
your jaffa cakes. Same colors, mac
Claire: and cheese where's the mac and cheese I could complain
about the colors of that cheese because it shouldn't be orange.
David: Oh we that's one of those we eat it that's one of those
things but we just we just look the other way on to talk about
we look the other way on and
Unknown: don't care. It tastes
David: like my my childhood.
Unknown: And I cannot I don't like those little ones in the
cups.
David: I've I've only seen like maybe five episodes of The Great
British Bake Off and I like the ones with no fielding on him.
Yeah, he's hilarious. He's he's so much fun. First time I ever
saw him was on The IT Crowd. Yeah. Which I don't know if
you've seen The IT Crowd. I've seen The IT Crowd Scott. RICHARD
I watched a and Chris O'Dowd. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's one of
my favorite shows of all time, not the American version that
only had one episode and was terrible.
Claire: No fielding has recently done and you'll be able to find
it now that we can share all of our Telly these days. And he's a
highway man and it is so quintessentially silly and
British comedy and very sweet. And of course I can't remember
what it's called.
David: What's a highway man?
Claire: Dick Turpin, I think it might even be called dicta up
and you know, like when the stagecoaches and then someone
holds up the stagecoach with their gun and they ignore the
stagecoach Ah, okay, so let's highway man. Okay, okay. Gotcha.
Yeah. With his mask around is is
David: from from Old West COVID
Claire: because it looks cool.
David: Oh, gotcha. No, I I guess Yeah, I've heard However before
that's, I was thinking it was maybe. Anyway. Right. So it's so
it's a old timey thing with with him in it or is it current? And
he likes current
Claire: Okay, currently and it's got it we'll probably even have
Richard ID and oh, they all it's so sweet and very funny. It's
filmed now and it's, but it's very it's kind of very modern in
its themes as well. Okay,
David: okay. I'm sure it is. His comedy is very funny. So let's
see what else is another big, big cultural difference t. When
we say we're in North Carolina, you know, the South. When we say
a T, it is assumed that it's iced tea, sweet tea. Yeah. If
you're going to a place and you say I want tea. It's going to be
I believe it's black tea. Is that what so it's black tea
cooked or you know, brewed, iced cooked. And then they pour
almost an equal amount of sugar as there is tea and
Leila: I'm not a fan. I don't like the sweetness of it. I
drink it fun. Sweet. So I just drink cold black tea pretty
much,
David: right? But yeah, that's so tea. If I go into a
restaurant and say, I'll have some tea over there. What am I
gonna get?
Claire: Well, the problem with that as well, David, is that
what you'd have to really say? You wouldn't just say T because
T might mean dinner, as well. So yeah, yeah. So especially in the
north of England. So you have your different meals, you have
your breakfast lunch, some people call dinner, tea, or you
might have afternoon tea, which usually does involve a cup of
tea, but it's sandwiches and cakes. So if you were to go into
a restaurant or a pub or a cafe, you'd say can I have a cup of
tea or Tea for Two? And you would get a hot drink? Yes,
you'd get you'd get the property before you all waited for it to
cool down. But also people drink it with milk in which I don't do
I drink it black, but it would usually be a black tea, maybe a
Yorkshire tea or a nice strong builder's tea as we call them
with some milk in it.
David: So so to make tea over there you would just take take
your mug, fill it with cold water put it in the microwave,
you'd
Claire: say that oh purpose
Unknown: like right there.
David: I've got a cattle and property we have a cattle nice
bags and nice. I've got the whole Senate we know how to we
know we know what we're doing. Daily. I like the I like a what
do I like? I like Earl Grey.
Unknown: I like chai tea. I like to
David: try. I like green tea. Also
Leila: green tea is really good. I like Maggie and I like
Sleepytime tea. Now
Claire: I don't like those ones. Yeah, some companies are really
good too. It
David: depends. And if my throat hurt and I want a lemon
something lemony, and then I'll put some honey and some whiskey
in it. And that's normally it's
Claire: got nothing to do with the tea
David: hot water and tea and but it helps the throat if you've
got a sore throat
Claire: but you have to you see obviously also I get very
particular especially when you haven't black tea it's not so
much when you have an infusions or even green tea. But in order
for the tea to actually ship into the water and flavor the
water water has to be bought boiling when you pour it on the
tea bag or in the tea pot. And the problem is is that a lot of
our chain cafes over here now Starbucks whatever, they don't
know how to make tea and and the English people are just going
with it and following along and they'll put the tea bag next to
the cup and I'm like how on earth is the flavor of the tea
meant to get in the water? If the tea bag is next to the cup?
David: Leila gets mad at me if I squeezed the tea bag.
Unknown: I do.
Claire: Thank you. Unless David breaks as he squeezes
David: when I go on it's what makes me when I pull the teabag
out. I I give it Just a little squeeze. So when I'm
transferring it from
Unknown: the tea, the tea bags that
David: I'm not gonna drip. Yeah, I don't want to.
Claire: I think there's an art to that how much you squeezed
the tea bag, depending on the person and how they like their
tea. You're just not very thoughtful. David, are you? I'm,
David: I am so thoughtful. I think about everything too much.
So while driving the wrong side of the road?
Claire: I don't know, I'm assuming we did it first. You
see, the thing is, so I was. I was thinking about this. And the
main. So for me as an editor of books, right, one of the main
differences is obviously language and spelling, which I
don't mind, I edit my books in American English because they
usually get sold to American markets. So I'm well into all of
that. But I did remember here and lots of people will be a bit
snobby about, you know, like, losing the you in color and
having an A for gray instead of stuff like that. And I remember
hearing a radio show where they were talking about Mr. Webster,
of dictionary fame. And a, like, when the nation was being built,
obviously, you know, they wanted to be their own thing. So
they're like teenagers rebelling against. So they want to do
things differently. So part of that with changing the language
was having their own language being, you know, being their own
nation. But also Mr. Webb Webster actually quite rightly
believed in just simplifying things a bit, because a lot of
the English language was based on French and Latin languages.
So there are some I mean, the English language can be it's
David: a mess, because we've talked about it before we've had
all episodes.
Claire: Yeah, I mean, I will say that simplifying the language
was not necessarily a bad thing. Like I say, some people are
snobbish about it, but I don't mind. You can just spell
something how it sounds in some cases,
David: right? Like a color was one that like the first time I
saw to you, I was like, what is that? They put you in it? That
is I
Leila: was using the you until I figured out you're not supposed
to do it over here. Like I was spelling color with a you and
armor with you. And then my like kindergarten teacher was like,
you just go like that. Well,
David: you go with the first time you saw it, you know, you
go with the first time you see it printed.
Claire: Now I think that's a deep set past life memory. I
David: was maybe Leila had a British teacher this year. She
was amazing. And she would give her so much grief about British
stuff. Yeah,
Leila: she had a kettle on the back of her. She had a whole tea
station in the back of her room. And it was so sweet. And she had
like a huge thermos that she would carry around there. She
wouldn't share and I'm mad about it. I think it would be a good
idea if you brought in like cups on the last day of school and
let us all try your tea. And she was not like no, she had tried
it before. And she like blew up the circuit.
David: Oh, she tried to. She might try to make it up hot
water. Yeah.
Leila: Yeah. She make like a catalog tea. Twice a day.
Claire: Did she? Well, she might have not have said this to you
in the class. But did she moan about the tea that she could buy
there? Does she have to get a t shirt?
Leila: Right? A bunch? Like a whole big box and left in the
back of our classroom?
David: What? Yeah, I think she means like, does she she never
played about how much? Oh, no. Okay, so, like the types of tea
you can get versus what
Unknown: you can get over the type of tea she got. I could
probably look it up real quick.
David: No, go for it. Have fun. What was the other thing I
wanted to I wanted to ask, do you have 1000?
Leila: Pack? 1000 Yeah. Cool. Dogs have it in her.
David: Which I don't know how often, you know, she went back.
Or she had relatives come in. Maybe they smuggled tea. You
know? Yeah. Because like, that's, that's something that's
done. I used to have a buddy that would come over from Oh,
wow. I can't even remember the country. Who was Romania?
Claire: Was it PG? 10? Yeah. It's not my favorite one. To do.
What should I do?
David: We had we had it on T It's just T T the T episode.
Unknown: It was a tea party. It's a
David: tea party. Tea Party. We're going to with oh, there's
a lady downtown. We live in a fairly fairly small city. I
think 100,000 in the whole county 100,000 people. Yeah. And
we have this one shop downtown that had a tea room and It was
all like, jars, you know, so you would just scoop out scoop tank,
and oh my gosh, I went back and I would just open it up and
smell it. And I'd be like, smells good. You know, gets I
don't I don't know anything about different leaves and
different whatever. And I go, I'm scooping it out. And as I
get to the register to pay, there's nobody else in there and
she sat there for 25 minutes, writing with Sharpie on each bag
of tea. The exact temperature the water needed to be when we
when we put it in exactly how long we need to steep it down to
like 15 Second marks. So she's like, You need to save this for
four minutes and 15 seconds, and then immediately removed the bag
from the tea and make sure that your water temperature is
exactly this before you start. And I was like if she knew at
all like she wasn't looking at a book she had like got like six
different kinds of tea and she knew all of it for a mix and I'm
like, wow. Wow, I was oh,
Claire: she was making it all up or she
David: was making it all up to look to look pretentious. Yeah.
You know what I did? I went home turn the kettle on, waited till
it finished, you know, until it automatically turned off poured
the water and put the thing in Until when did something came
back? Yeah, it looks good. Yeah. And then through some some
Splenda in
Claire: and, and then you let it cool down and drinking cold.
David: No, I didn't drink it at all. He drank that. I don't
drink at all. I was writing a novel at the time. And I would
go and my my ritual was go make a cup of tea. Take a sip, Oh,
that's too hot, I need to wait for it to cool down, set it down
next to my laptop where I was typing, and writing and then
look down and it was cold, completely cold. I hadn't taken
I hadn't drunk anymore because I was working. I tend to do that I
get into I get in the zone.
Claire: Good. You're in the flow. That's
David: the other night I came out here to fix a computer out
to the studio. And I had to do some soldering and some a bunch
of little stuff. I told my wife I'll be out here maybe 1520
minutes. Four hours later, I had no idea for hours at past
because I finished that. And I found something else that needed
to be done. And I found something else. Anyway. I get I
get in the zone sometimes. Yeah. So what else? What else is
different? Is there anything that you have questions out
about about America that may be or the South in particular that,
you know,
Claire: don't think it really no. South isn't North isms, in
middle isms? I mean, there's definitely a whole bit in the
middle of America that I know absolutely nothing about. And
that's another massive part as well. I mean, the whole country
is massive. I know. Yeah. But that's really massive. Now, it
all seems to come back with to food quite a lot. But there must
be other thing. Food
David: foods, always a safe topic to talk about, you know,
we can talk about that without offending anybody. Well, you'll
offend somebody like microwaving the water content. Why does it
make it taste weird? It's just all citation. Maybe it's
something in the cup itself. But anyway, it's not radiation. It's
yeah, it's radiation. And how am I
Claire: gonna tell you about an experiment? I did. So I was on a
TV show. And it was an experiment. They were just
filming in Oxford. And I said, Yeah, okay, I'll go. And what
they did was they gave us these paper cups with tea. So you had
one from this table? And then after that, you had one from
another table. And then you meant to say like, what, you
know what, you scored the T from the first table. And then what
you scored the T from second table. Now everybody, apart from
me, scored the T on the second table as nicer. And the reason
they all thought it was nicer was because the cup was
weighted. And it made a difference to how people felt
the tea tasted. I
David: believe that. Yeah. They did experiments with water. So
you This made me think of this, where they put water in
different kinds of vessels for you to drink out of, and is the
same exact water they told people is different water. But
it was the same water in a bunch of different glasses. And the
wine glass, the very thin wine glass. Everybody agree that that
had to be the top dollar like cleanest water. So what you
drink out of the lip feel has something to do with how
something and yeah, I think about that sometimes and how
dumb our brains are. Yeah. And then there was another one that
this reminded me of I don't know why. They had the same
chocolates wrapped in different wrappers. And they had a pile of
chocolate that was one penny. And then they had a pile of
chocolate that was 25 cents. The wrappers didn't one didn't
necessarily look nicer than the other one was like a red, red,
basic thing and a blue basic thing, right? It was the same
chocolate. But everybody, literally everybody said that
the 25 cent chocolate tasted better. And yeah, just a
psychological thing. So I just, I just told you all this stuff
that we get her was the expensive version. And she's
always like I'm buying, I'm buying artificial, you know, pig
meat. Telling her the finest pork salutely
Claire: What we're doing well speaking of speaking of
chocolate, though, I have to blame the Americans for the
decline in chocolate. And also for the sugar in our fizzy
drinks as well. So we're getting more and more drinks that are
more to what the American market is. And when Kraft bought some
of our chocolate it was
David: like American chocolate. There's I can't remember what
country it is. Some countries have determined as might be
might be England, have determined that Hershey's
chocolate can't call itself chocolate. Yeah, legally. Kind
of like Pringles can't call itself chips. Because
technically, it's ground up powderized potato and that's
reformed into it. So they can't some
Leila: for this show. I have some like Harvest blend ones
where it's like blended with cheap Cheetos. It tastes the
exact same. Yeah, sweet,
David: sweet potato.
Unknown: I don't know, the differences. It's just because
we've traded on it. But we
David: have how often have you been? I know you were in
Orlando. But how often have you been to America?
Claire: Um, I've Yeah, quite a few times.
David: Okay. Have you ever had like Southern cuisine, like
pulled pork barbecue, or anything like that? Yeah.
Claire: Well, I don't eat meat. Oh, no, no. I mean, we went to
this really lovely place. So very, very many years ago, when
I was in between year two and three of university, I went to
Tampa. And we got taken to one of these places where you just
open the nuts from the barrel. So it was a bar, the nuts are
all in the barrel and you open the monkey nuts and you just put
the casings on the floor. And probably chicken. I don't I
can't remember. Don't hold me to that. That sounds very American
to me. And the raccoon comes up. It's not trying to he's he's a
normal natural raccoon. I've seen quite a few raccoon since
in the bins and things when I've been. But it was very lovely to
see this raccoon come up on the water. So I took my husband the
next year. He wasn't my husband then back to that. And he loved
that whole vibe of it. That felt really American just breaking
out in the nuts thrown it on the floor. That was like American
Bar. Yeah,
David: we used to have that here. But they stopped it during
COVID. Yeah, the place Yeah. Place Called Logan's. Yeah, that
has a big when you walk
Leila: in the whole thing of peanuts. Yeah. Just pay a
David: bucket of peanuts on every table. Yeah. And the floor
was just covered in peanut shells.
Unknown: Yeah. And it had kind of like, is,
Claire: may have you been to one in Clearwater or somesuch.
Right? We were just along that from there. And we went to
another place in it's not exactly clear water called
Crabby Bills. And that was lovely. It's very American.
David: We've got where we are. We had, we took a friend of ours
from California, wanted to go to
Unknown: a real southern place deep south
David: place, like something very the South because he's
never really been right, because he's never really been to the
south, you know? And we picked him up. And he's like, I'm
buying y'all dinner where, you know, it's gotta be southern
food. I got you, buddy. And we went to a pulled pork barbecue.
I don't remember what the places called. But they're all the
same. There's a bunch of scattered all around. And it's
pulled pork. Which means they just take the whole pig and put
it on the grill and cook it for a couple days. And then pull it
out. You know, pull the meat out. Yeah. And it's very tender.
Very and then they cover it in this vinegar based barbecue
sauce. And it's about the most southern meal. Yeah, and then
had fried chicken and hush puppies. And if you're not sure
what hush puppies are, you might be but our audience might know
it. It's basically a little cornbread balls with onions.
Which
Unknown: I'm not a big fan. I
David: love them. Right I like but yeah, very, very southern
southern meal. What would you say if we were to come visit
you? And we said take us to the Oxford of food. Like what is the
food of Oxford? Okay,
Claire: so well what I think what I would do very easily I
would take you to a quintessentially country hob so
it would have beans and a fireplace and leather so furs
and warm Vidya you know how you like your warm beer bloggers as
well but you know, ales on tap and stuff and different
different ones for the different season. And then what we'd like
the menu to be would be slightly up market, for example fish and
chips or a pie, a pie and mash, but we'd have good, proper
ingredients in it. And a pie has to be a proper pie. This was
this wasn't the case for a few years, where it's cooked
completely encased in the pastry. Because for a while
though, people were set pubs were serving kind of like meat
stews, with a pastry top and it hasn't been cooked in the
pastry, their pastries not all nice and soggy. So I would
definitely go for something like that proper kind of stuff. You
will have heard of like big sausages and mash and onion
gravy. Or like I said fish and chips. Yes, a big hearty and
then of course, the sponge puddings with custard so a Jam
Roller polling on an apple crumble or they have big hearty
warming, puddings. So and then you wouldn't be able to move
from the, from the chair by the fire for a while.
David: That's that's typical. Anytime I go to a buffet I hate
myself after and I don't feel like I got my money's worth
unless I hate myself after I after I leave. So one of the
things you said to the things you said there's two things,
that means something very different there than they mean
here. If you say pudding here, it's like a cup of sweet
gelatin. Like a pudding like a snack pack. That when somebody
says pudding in America, that's what we think. Yeah. tapioca
pudding, chocolate pudding. And when you say pie, you think
dessert. Like there's there's less, you'd have to put the word
pot in front of it. Before pie so a pot pie.
Claire: So that must mean that must be what it is then because
to me a pot pies down sounds like a kind of stew in a pie
form. That's
David: pretty much it apart pie we get them for? Well, they used
to be 75 cents. Now they're a buck 30. But using the same pie
Leila: here you're thinking of like a sweet like apple pie. Or
David: pecan pie if you're in the South for like fruit
Leila: of some sort. Yeah, some sweet.
Claire: Yeah, obviously we would have we would have both savory
and sweet apple pie. Lemon Marang pie. Yep. But we also do
have a pudding that can be savory. And it's a Sumit dough.
And it's cooked in the same way as a pie. So it's got a meaty
filling in it. But the pastry isn't as crunchy. The pastry is
quite soft. So there is like a kind of meat pudding as well as
a meat pie. And there is an apple pie as well. And there is
a chocolate pudding.
David: Right? So it's more complicated too. So if I go
there, I'm like, I'll just have some putting. There's like
questions after that. If I get put in here, the only question
would be you know, chocolate, vanilla or tapioca? Yeah. Or
banana that do banana pudding. Yeah, with
Unknown: vanilla wafers. Yeah, vanilla wafers, which,
David: I guess would be biscuits. I would I could
consider vanilla biscuits. Yes. Yeah, that's a I'd say I'm
learning. I'm a thoughtful person, but
Leila: also the connection between chips crisps and fries.
Claire: Yeah,
Leila: we call them fries. Y'all call them chips. And then you
call chips for us. Crisps.
Claire: Yes. Yeah. So when you said about Pringles couldn't be
called. Chips. Yeah. They're not called chips anyway Leila.
David: Work longtime listeners will know I used to work at
Outback and we called the fries chips. Because they do in
Australia and that got so hammered into us. Like as
servers we could not call them fries. We had to call them
chips. It was like a branding thing. So in my brain fries are
as much chips as they are fries.
Claire: But I would and it does come up on menus in pubs. Fries
are like the skinny chips, french fries, and they might
then call chip they might make that differentiation so they do
have chips as well which are thicker potato fried, not
wedges, but in between fries and wedges. But they might also call
fries fries, because because they because they do fries as
well. So they do skinny chips and fatter chips. I
David: wish that there was a differentiation here about that
because you'll say I'll have an order of fries and sometimes
you'll get like Keep the McDonald's real small square,
you know, rectangle square tubes, right this square tubes,
but then you'll go some places and they'll be these big fat
ones that are all soggy in the middle. Yeah, I like the real
small thin ones. It gets super crunchy. I like that's what I
like both and then you'll get seasoned to win sometimes a non
season one sometimes and like Bojangles
Claire: I love it. Well, the other place the other place.
We'll have to go when you come here after we've been to the
country Pub is on another night we'll get fish and chips from
the fish. In my case, I live in a village so I have a fish and
chip van that comes around once a week. That's awesome. Wow.
Yeah, I know. All the fish and chip shop because those chips
are completely different. Yeah, they still potato
Leila: because we used to have someone in the neighborhood sell
barbecue sandwiches. Yeah,
David: walk over. He has a food truck. And on Wednesday nights
he would just fire up the food truck for the neighborhood. Yes,
so people would walk Yeah, walk down the block and get some some
food truck we live out and we love we live way out our our
neighborhoods probably five miles from the closest town give
or take two miles and 15 miles from the real like this small
city. So are we have fields just empty fast. So our neighborhood
100 houses or so. But then around our neighborhood is
nothing. Just yeah, soybean fields, corn fields, deer.
Leila: A lot of deer are so many great for my dear fear. I have a
fear of deer.
David: She's afraid. Have you heard that story? Have you
listened to the episode? I'll give you the real quick version.
Unknown: Yeah, please.
David: It's been a while we were in Sam's Club.
Claire: Oh, no, it was what you told me actually David yourself
when it came into
David: the Yeah, it was in the Sam's Club. And it came running
straight out, which is really fun.
Leila: We were in Sam's Club recently, like two days ago. And
we heard like the alarm go off the same as the alarm that
happened when the deer came in. grabbed my mom's arm. It was
scary.
David: But one of the things that gets me I'm sitting here
looking at your at your, your island. You're on. It's so
small. I know. Like and I think about I think about like we take
road trips regularly that are eight hours driving. Yeah,
that's that's a regular thing for me. Anywhere not a big deal.
But eight hour I'm looking from like I just picked two places. I
knew the names of the warrant. London, a Kent and Oxford. And
that's like, a quarter of the country wide. It's only two
hours. Yeah. So if you do eight hours, you're going from one
side of the country to the other like the whole Yeah, I'm like
wow. No,
Claire: one of the other people I met at pod fest actually,
Shona we were talking about and and she was talking about like
grep traveling 15 hours to get like from one side of something
to the other. Yeah, it's it's completely different. Like I
went up to Newcastle, which to me is a long way that I didn't
want to drive it. So I went on the train for three hours.
David: My brother lives in Hawaii. And any anything more
than a 20 minute drive for him. He's like, Oh, or is it not even
do it? Unless it's unless it's for like nothing is further away
than 35 minutes. And that's if there's traffic. So I find it
It's funny how like you get used to having everything nearby that
you need
Unknown: will regularly take like 20 minute trips to go so
yeah, it's 20
David: minutes to get anywhere useful. Yeah, from our house
other than the post office or the little grocery store. So 20
minutes, shot us for the car and then like we just took a trip
over to Tennessee and that was an eight hour drive. When I went
down to Orlando that was eight and a half hours give or take
and yeah, so it I find it interesting when you when you've
got a smaller landmass you get so used to things being close
that like, Yeah, four hours for you driving is just ridiculous.
That's what Yeah, yeah, I
Claire: think I'd do. I'd do three if I had to, but I still
prefer to go on the train anyway. But yeah, you can you
know, you can get places in four hours. So
David: the trains, they're gonna be wrapping up here pretty soon.
The trains there. Is it how expensive is it to go on the
train from like, yeah,
Claire: it's quite expensive.
David: Because we don't have a lot of trains most of the trains
in America or freight trains. We have one train company, which is
actually run by the government now is Amtrak? Yeah. They are so
expensive and so inefficient. It's like to get a place that's
should be eight hours driving takes like 36 hours. Yeah. But I
also understand you're again, you're all much law smaller
landmass. And tracks are probably expensive to put down.
So I mean from here to California, it's 50 hours in the
car or something so yeah,
Claire: yeah, you can fly you can fly can you?
David: Oh, well not me personally, but I can use a
plane and I can get on the plane and fly.
Claire: I'm not so impressed anymore
David: but anyway, I think we'll wrap this up. We've been going
for almost an hour now so yeah, won't take any more your time
you got your you got your you got your Asian food to go get
tonight? Do
you know, you're rolling the dice. You know, just
Unknown: maybe it's gonna be the best Asian food you've ever
made. But
David: we did not have any boosts come in this is actually
we're recording a couple days after the last episode. So
that's, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. But yeah, didn't have
any boosts come in. But if you are listening on a podcast,
podcasting 2.0 enabled app right now and you want to boost Claire
will be getting a portion of that because her podcast
creativity found is podcasting. 2.0 value for value enabled. So
she'll be getting a automatic split of that. And she'll get to
see any notes she send. So y'all can, you know, tell her what you
think of her. And and, if you wanted to make a donation any
other way, you can go to Fun Fact friday.com. Click the
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different ways you can help us out or you can help us out with
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Unknown: send us a piece of paper.
David: In the mail, we even have a Pio box. So you can send us
physical items and make sure that it's legal to send to the
United States Postal Service. Appreciate that. Thank you need
that kind of heat on us. Yep. So it's just creativity.
found.co.uk. That's me. Yes, please. Awesome. And check it
out. And you're on all podcasting 2.0 enabled apps as
well as probably all the other normal. Oh, the old fashioned
ones, the boring ones, and it's a fun podcast. Claire has some
delightful guests. And thank you. Did you have anything else
you wanted to say to our audience?
Claire: No, but it's been such a delight to chat with you both
because obviously I've been listening to Leila having not met
Leila until this time. So that's how bomb because it is when you
meet people in the queues for the bar. It is. So thank you
very much. I
David: was wearing my fake hair that night. Yeah,
Claire: which I didn't. We were both 809 T scare and I knew the
hat but I didn't realize where the hotkey well.
David: For those who don't know, I have a visor that has fake
hair sticking out the top. I know you all know I'm bald. But
um, it looks like my hair looks. It looks like my hair looked in
the 90s. So a 90s night I had to wear it. And it was funny
because I hadn't met a lot of the people at the convention, or
the conference or even call it and a lot of these people didn't
know that it was fake. So when I took it off to like, wipe the
sweat off of my head. It was a everybody who saw it just busted
out laughing. It was fantastic. It was a great gag. 12 bucks.
Totally worth it. It was a delight to talk to you a while
to do this again sometime. And if you ever need anything from
us, you just let us know. All right.
Unknown: Oh, thank you. So episode,
David: so the episode a little hot and running a little out
there. Claire's here, Kyle here.
Kyle Hebert: Fun Fact Friday with Leila and David is a Medus
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