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No Such Thing As Gutter Ice

January 29, 2026·52 min·5 clips

Sally Phillips explains why newborn baby urine was prized for dyeing queen's clothes in the 18th century.

This episode of No Such Thing As A Fish features hosts Dan Schreiber, James Harkin, and Andy Hunter, joined by guest Sally Phillips, a comedian and actor known for her love of obscure research. The group shares four unusual facts they've discovered over the past week, leading to wide-ranging and humorous discussions. Sally's fact reveals that Greenlanders start their New Year countdown 14,410 seconds before midnight due to their time zone alignment with Denmark. The conversation explores Greenland's size on Mercator projections, its history with Erik the Red, and traditions like face tattooing and washing hair with urine. James presents the fact that Merriam-Webster maintains a physical collection of 315,000 cards with every English word spelled backwards, originally used to answer linguistic queries. Dan's fact details the reported British Airways practice of placing sunglasses and a vodka tonic next to a deceased mid-flight passenger to avoid alarming others. Andy's final fact cites a study showing Australians prefer foreigners using Australian slang only if spoken in an Australian accent. A surprising claim is that Greenland exports "black ice" from icebergs to Dubai for cocktails, marketed as melting slower. The group debates the plausibility of explorer Peter Freuchen's story of using a frozen feces "poo knife" to escape a snow cave. Lexicographer Emily Brewster identified a new, nuanced meaning for the article "a," as in "a furious Schreiber," to indicate an unusual condition. An anecdote reveals the Beastie Boys' early career was funded by a $40,000 settlement from British Airways for using their song "Cookie Puss" without permission. The hosts recall a 1982 flight where Captain Eric Moody announced "all four engines have stopped" after flying into a volcanic ash cloud, a story later featured on QI. They note that cadavers can groan on planes due to air escaping their lungs at altitude. The Swedish Academy Dictionary, begun in 1786, was only completed in 2023. The Oxford English Dictionary maintains a "vault" of not-yet-accepted words like "riz" (charisma) and "dringle" (a glass's watermark). The tone is conversational, educational, and filled with rapid-fire banter between friends who delight in odd trivia. The style is informal and comedy-driven, with each fact serving as a springboard for tangents and personal anecdotes. Listeners who enjoy learning bizarre historical tidbits and scientific curiosities through lively discussion will love this episode. Those seeking a focused, single-topic narrative or who are unsettled by macabre humor might prefer to skip it.

As heard by us

A nimble dictionary-nerd comic detour with Sally Phillips and generous wordplay.

The episode has Sally Phillips in play with nothing to plug, which leaves Dan and James free to linger over dictionaries, joke definitions, and the sharp little insults tucked inside lexicography.

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Why you'd press play

Sally Phillips drops in for a dictionary crawl with jokes hiding in the margins.

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