Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: It's Nice To Say Titicaca About this episode Anna, Dan and James discuss YOUR facts including Hot Springs and Fat Controllers. Anna astonishes us all by failing to fall for a 2000s pop music hoax. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast fact custodians.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Stop the podcast.
0:01 Speaker 01 Stop the podcast.
0:02 Speaker 00 Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.
0:05 Speaker 01 That's right. So, everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids, but what about protecting them? I'm talking outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates. Where do you even start?
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0:22 Speaker 01 Progressive offers customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones.
0:27 Speaker 00 They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, and baby gates of insurance.
0:32 Speaker 01 Don't wait. Get your quote today at progressive.com.
0:35 Speaker 00 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. On with the show.
0:41 Speaker 02 ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.
1:22 Speaker 01 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode, where we put down our favorite facts from the last seven days, and we go through your favorite facts. So, we have gone through the inbox. Andy has picked out some of the best, and I am now going to sit here with Anna Toshinsky and James Harkin, and go through them. So who wants to start?
1:43 Speaker 02 Go on, Anna.
1:44 Speaker 00 Well, thank you. I'm going to start with this one from John Cornell. Sorry, I said that with an American accent. I don't know if he's American. That's just because of the university. From John Cornell.
1:53 Speaker 01 Yes, yeah, of course that was better.
1:55 Speaker 03 He might be a cockney Barrow boy, we don't know.
1:58 Speaker 00 Exactly, equally likely. And he said, I love this fact, actually. Just came across this fact about the Huli people of the Hella province in Papua New Guinea. And it is that the young boys of the Huli tribe aren't considered real men until they've attended wig school. And this is, and he says, and made either an ordinary or a ceremonial wig. And then he specifies, I'm not a real man sadly. And that's okay. No judgment about not making a wig. Are you guys real men?
2:28 Speaker 03 I've never made a wig.
2:30 Speaker 00 Well, there you go.
2:31 Speaker 01 I don't think I've made a wig, no.
2:32 Speaker 03 You would remember, I think.
2:34 Speaker 01 I don't know. My parents are hairdressers. I feel like I helped them in a lot of stuff as a kid.
2:38 Speaker 03 I can imagine baby Dan sort of crawling around, picking up all the discarded bits of hair from all the customers.
2:44 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:45 Speaker 03 Weaving them into a little toupee in the corner.
2:47 Speaker 01 Presenting them to the customers when my parents are looking away and they never come back. And yeah, it's, it's, I'm sure that was a childhood thing.
2:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm sure it was too. Funny how childhood you have. Actually, in the source that I read, I think you guys might be men. Because it actually said that the oldest known tradition is where the boys learn the fundamentals of the Huli tradition, which is how to grow their hair to make into wigs. And actually, I think it's more about how to grow your hair in a wig-like manner.
3:13 Speaker 03 I see.
3:14 Speaker 01 That's interesting because what would turn your hair into a wig-like shape is constant haircuts so that it grew as part of a shape. You can't, you can't make one bit grow longer than the other just by thinking it.
3:24 Speaker 00 Well, you can, I think, according to maybe the Huli people. That's the thing, Dan, you're making a judgment based on your own beliefs. And I think these people would say they believe that if you do think it, and if you have the wig master who runs the school, really think it, he's got the powers to make your hair grow.
3:38 Speaker 03 I would argue actually that Dan was making a judgment based on physiology of human beings rather than his own beliefs.
3:44 Speaker 00 Well, that's just your opinion, Jane, that physiology of human beings is an existing factual thing. Anyway.
3:51 Speaker 03 Have you actually been away at debate club for the last nine months?
3:56 Speaker 00 I've been at wig school and I hoped you'd notice I'd been thinking my hair into being longer.
4:00 Speaker 03 There is a group of people in Peru, I think it's the guys on the, on the lake, on Lake Titicaca, but it might not be those guys. But anyway, to become a man, you need to knit a bubble hat that is solid enough that you can carry water in it. And once you've done that, you go through, because these are all rites of passage, aren't they?
4:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Wow. Why do bubble hats have to be so solid around Lake Titicaca?
4:25 Speaker 03 Well, they're, I don't know why they're.
4:27 Speaker 00 Bump their heads a lot?
4:27 Speaker 03 Yeah. No, really. I've worn one of those bubble hats, the Lake Titicaca ones, when I went to Lake Titicaca. Yeah. It's nice to say Titicaca.
4:35 Speaker 00 I know. It's the only reason you raise this fact, I think, is that you get to say it.
4:38 Speaker 03 But yeah, I got one of these hats and they're like just woolen hats with bubbles on the sides. But yeah, it's just part of the culture that you just have to learn how to do this. And until you do it, you can't grow up. And that, there's quite a lot of places that do things like that.
4:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. That's funny, because bubbles, I think, when you say bubble hat, where would you say the bubble has to be?
4:59 Speaker 03 On the top, of course. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that.
5:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they believe it's on the side. Don't mess with their beliefs.
5:04 Speaker 00 Very insulting.
5:06 Speaker 03 Okay, here is a fact from Charles Ekman. Sorry, Charles Ekman. And it's a bit of a complicated one. So we'll see if I can explain it, where I might not be able to. But Charles says, there is no such thing as a random number generator, because there is no such thing as a random number.
5:26 Speaker 00 I see. Okay.
5:29 Speaker 03 Okay. So basically, he's saying that randomness is not a property that a number can have. If you roll a dice and you get a number four, you have managed to generate that in a random manner, but the number itself is not random. The number is just the number four.
5:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:43 Speaker 03 Okay, so what he's saying then is that you can have a random number generator, but not a random number generator.
5:52 Speaker 00 Hold on, what would a random generator be though? Surely anything?
5:55 Speaker 03 The generator is the dice which generates
5:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:58 Speaker 01 Ah, yes.
5:59 Speaker 03 Random number. So you can have a random number generator. So the number generator is the dice, which gives you the randomness, but you can't have a random number generator because randomness is not an adjective that you could put next to number in mathematics.
6:14 Speaker 00 No, no, absolutely. I can see how you can have a random generator as well. And actually, you can only use it as an adverb. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to use random as an adjective at all. You just generate numbers randomly.
6:25 Speaker 01 Well, if you're a magician, you say, pick a random card. That is a generator, the card system of which you're picking, right?
6:31 Speaker 00 It's a random generator.
6:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:33 Speaker 00 Something that's doing it randomly.
6:34 Speaker 01 But the numbers will never be the random thing. I'm just trying to work out when you would ever use this email in real life context. And it does feel like it's been used by this person.
6:43 Speaker 03 I don't think so, really. I think it's just a bit of pedantic, mathematical stuff.
6:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:49 Speaker 00 I think if the bar is when are you going to use stuff in a real life context, I think our podcast is completely dead. So it's not going down that avenue.
6:57 Speaker 03 The word random used to mean to run somewhere very fast and very ferociously. And then it made, there had lots of different meanings, but in the 16th century, if you're on a ship and you're firing like a cannonball, a random firing would be the way that you would fire it to go the furthest. So that would be 45 degrees, basically. So if it said, ever said, fire in a random direction and you're on a 16th century vessel, you mustn't fire it in any direction. You must have fired it exactly 45 degrees.
7:31 Speaker 00 That's why time travelers get in such trouble, don't they? They make very bad naval officers.
7:37 Speaker 01 All right, let's get on to another one. This one comes from Moit Gray, from radium hot springs in British Columbia, Canada. Accent does not work. Anyway, Mike Gray says, I am the mayor of radium hot springs in British Columbia. Yeah. And I thought our town might have a little fact for little fish. The village is named after the nearby hot springs, which were renamed in 1915 after scientists discovered trace amounts of radon, a radioactive gas in the water. The levels are completely safe, but it does mean our town is now named after what is technically a mildly radioactive spa.
8:17 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't know why they chucked the radium in because Hot Springs is a town that I'd go to. Radium Hot Springs, I'm not taking my clothes off.
8:23 Speaker 01 This is very cool because we've had Lords writing. I don't think we've ever had any mayors from Canada write in before. This might be our first one.
8:29 Speaker 03 I think it's our first. I think that's really cool. And I think also it's really cool. It's cool enough to be the mayor of somewhere, but to be the mayor of somewhere that has such a cool name.
8:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, well done.
8:38 Speaker 03 That's a hell of a badge.
8:39 Speaker 01 It is really cool. And I went to their Wikipedia page and they have 1,339 residents there as of the 2021 census.
8:49 Speaker 03 We wrote a book called 1339 Facts.
8:51 Speaker 01 Exactly. So if you lived, if you're listening and you're from Radium Hot Springs, you could assign a fact from that book to every single one of the members of your
9:00 Speaker 03 That's very cool.
9:01 Speaker 01 Wouldn't that be cool?
9:02 Speaker 00 And every time a baby's born, you have to kill an old person.
9:04 Speaker 01 Yes, it has to be a swap.
9:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. Pass the fact on.
9:09 Speaker 00 I have a, this is, Andy sends around the facts that he's curated from the inbox, isn't he? He sends them to us and he sent this one. This is from Gary Randall.
9:17 Speaker 03 So he thinks that this is specifically good for you, just before you read it out.
9:21 Speaker 00 Um, not necessarily for me. You'll see why I've dragged Andy into this though. Um, so this fact is that Avril is a French name that means April. Actually, no. Um, and Levine is a French surname, which actually means the fool, because it comes from a name that means someone living near a playhouse or an occupational name for a jester. So that's Levine. So Avril Levine is actually April Fool.
9:49 Speaker 01 Oh, that's very good.
9:52 Speaker 00 But wait, Andy, I looked into it.
9:56 Speaker 03 Oh.
9:56 Speaker 00 It's not true. He's having you on, Andy. He's having, it's an April, because it's an April Fool in a fact about April Fool. What? And Andy has, yeah, Levine doesn't mean the fool. Levine just means the veen.
10:08 Speaker 03 The fool be la fu.
10:11 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, but I mean, it could have been a ye olde thing, but it's not. Someone's made up a clever trick.
10:15 Speaker 03 So who was it who sent that in?
10:17 Speaker 00 Someone called Gary Randall, who I believe is either Gary Randall's been tricked or Andrew Hunter Murray's been tricked, but let the record show that I haven't been tricked.
10:26 Speaker 01 Good to have you back. I wonder when it was sent, if it was sent at the beginning of April, as in, I wonder what day it hit the inbox.
10:33 Speaker 00 I had a look in the inbox and it's not there. So I think Andy might have a secret channel because this isn't in our main inbox.
10:38 Speaker 03 Right. Do you think Andy's done this to trick us? He could be the tricker.
10:42 Speaker 00 Oh my God, Andy is Gary Randall.
10:45 Speaker 03 Is that an anagram?
10:45 Speaker 01 Wow, Andy.
10:46 Speaker 03 It's got and in it.
10:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's got Rand.
10:48 Speaker 03 It's got Andy in it.
10:49 Speaker 01 It does.
10:50 Speaker 03 Andy girl.
10:52 Speaker 00 Girl, Andy girl. It's Andy girl.
10:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. Because we know he loves Avril Lavigne.
10:58 Speaker 00 Do we?
10:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was a boy. She was an Andy girl. Can I make it any more obvious?
11:06 Speaker 00 Jesus, okay.
11:08 Speaker 03 That is very interesting, actually.
11:10 Speaker 00 Great stuff.
11:11 Speaker 03 Um, do you remember Andy fell for a April Fool's trick on this very show? Not on this show, on our main show.
11:17 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
11:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:17 Speaker 03 Uh, which was the elephants inventing the road system in the south of England.
11:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 00 That was good, wasn't it? What, what was the claim that they trampled the grass down or something into?
11:27 Speaker 03 All of the roads in the south of England are based on old animal tracks made by elephants.
11:35 Speaker 00 Oh, can we lay into Andy some more? All this shit we got about him.
11:37 Speaker 01 If he was planning to fool us, this is very much bad fired, hasn't it?
11:41 Speaker 03 Okay, well, that was a bad prediction by him if, um, he did that. And here is another fact about a bad prediction, uh, from Matt Birch. And he has found the worst prediction ever made by scientists. And that is that the calculation for the energy density of a vacuum, uh, because their prediction exceeded the observed value by about 120 orders of magnitude.
12:06 Speaker 03 An order of magnitude would be 10 times more, two orders of magnitude, 100 times more. This was 120 orders of magnitude. They got it wrong. Uh, and the difference is so big, according to Matt, that if you, um, said the universe contains one atom, you would be about 40 orders of magnitude out with that because there's one to the power of 40.
12:28 Speaker 00 And this was 120, did you say?
12:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. So that's three times worse than you saying there's only one atom in the universe.
12:37 Speaker 00 We've all made mistakes.
12:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've got another mistake here. This is from 1992 from the president of Sri Lanka, who was called Ranasinga Pramadasa. And he spoke to soothsayers who said that by changing the country's name to Sri Lanka instead of Sri Lanka, he would improve the country's fortune. So he did that and he was assassinated the following year and the former spelling was restored.
13:05 Speaker 00 But did the country's fortune improve? I mean, that's his fortune. It didn't say anything about improving his fortune.
13:10 Speaker 03 That's true. That's the thing with these soothsayers. They always tell you the truth, but you think that they're not telling you the truth.
13:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, you've got to read the small print.
13:18 Speaker 03 Always.
13:20 Speaker 01 Well, while we're on names of places, here's an email that we got from David Croy, who says, "Today I learned that North, South Carolina, is in the centre of the state. Why? Because it's named after John North. Put it in the book."
13:37 Speaker 03 The bit where it says, "Put it in the book," was that Andy adding a little comment?
13:41 Speaker 01 It's different font. Yeah, so that's weird. Yeah, this was named after a guy called John North, who in 1891 was part of the southbound railroad that came through the area. He was an assistant on that. And then he donated 100 acres to the area and then it got named after him and he also became the very first elected mayor of North, South Carolina.
14:06 Speaker 00 Very cool. A very mayor-centric episode we've got today. And actually, I've got a related fact that I got sent from Lucy Frey.
14:14 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
14:15 Speaker 00 And this is that in my town, she says, in my town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, there's a pond downtown named Ashley Pond, and it is named after Ashley Pond.
14:28 Speaker 03 As in the surname is Pond?
14:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, her surname is Pond, yeah. But the pond is called Pond.
14:34 Speaker 03 What is Andy doing? Why is he not even here?
14:36 Speaker 01 He's not here. What are we doing? Why did I read my one out that led into your one?
14:41 Speaker 03 Samuel Donaldson of Christchurch, New Zealand, writes, "One of the few tall buildings still in Christchurch after the earthquake is the Height Building, named after James Height."
14:55 Speaker 03 Officially the Pwaka James Height Building. Uh, Pwaka be Maori for the Rigel Star Cluster.
15:01 Speaker 00 Really good.
15:02 Speaker 01 Okay.
15:03 Speaker 03 What is he doing?
15:04 Speaker 01 This guy is, is taking us on a ride. This is, this is bullshit. Check this one out. This is from Gem Condlyff. "This is etymology rather than a fact, but I think it's also a brand new fact," says Gem.
15:17 Speaker 03 Oh, that's nice. We always like those.
15:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. "You know, when you have an amorous moment, people might say, Andy got off with Dan's sister."
15:24 Speaker 03 Wha- what?
15:27 Speaker 01 That's what it says.
15:29 Speaker 00 This is Andy's weird way of telling you this, under the pseudonym. So go on, what, what's the rest of the fact?
15:35 Speaker 03 Why is he saying that?
15:36 Speaker 01 Why is Andy seeing an email like that and sending that to me? Okay, he says, "Why do we say get off with? I believe I can explain." So Gem says, "I work for a local newspaper and in our archives from 100 years ago, we had paternity cases where a man would have to pay for his illegitimate child's upkeep. The court would possibly hear that nine months before the baby's arrival, the couple went to a dance in a nearby town, riding on a cart chartered for this purpose. On the way home, beer and lust would take over and said couple would prevail upon the carter to let them off at a secluded spot." So the idea to get off with is get off the cart.
16:08 Speaker 00 I see.
16:09 Speaker 01 Yeah. And that literally is-
16:11 Speaker 00 I mean, it's definitely true.
16:12 Speaker 01 That's the connection that Gem is making. I agree. It's not very strong and I think Andy only included it so that he could put the image of him making out with my sister into my mind.
16:22 Speaker 03 Andy, you've been seen, mate.
16:29 Speaker 00 Stop the podcast.
16:30 Speaker 01 Stop the podcast.
16:31 Speaker 00 Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.
16:34 Speaker 01 That's right. So, everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids, but what about protecting them? I'm talking outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates. Where do you even start?
16:44 Speaker 00 Yes, it is a nightmare. Well, protecting your home and your auto is a great place to start.
16:51 Speaker 01 Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones.
16:56 Speaker 00 They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance.
17:01 Speaker 01 Don't wait. Get your quote today at progressive.com.
17:04 Speaker 00 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. On with the show.
17:11 Speaker 02 ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.
17:40 Speaker 03 We've got time for one more, Anna?
17:42 Speaker 00 Uh, one from Martha King. She says, this is the funniest fact she's found out recently. Get ready. Hold on to your britches. In the first two original Thomas the Tank Engine books, the fat controller was called the fat director. It's not the end of the fact.
17:58 Speaker 00 The reason was that after the first two episodes, or the first two editions, the railways were nationalized and the bureaucracy was rejigged, and director became controller. So that's why his name was changed from director to controller.
18:12 Speaker 03 It's called Mr. Topham Hat now, because you're not allowed to say fat controller anymore.
18:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:15 Speaker 00 I will say that I preemptively looked this up because I read a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine, which by the way, is so full of weird old railway jargon that it's very hard to read to a young toddler. But I knew my mum was gonna come along and say, isn't it ridiculous you're not allowed to call him that anymore? So I Googled it to check, and it's not true.
18:33 Speaker 03 What?
18:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, you're totally allowed to call him that. He just happens to have been called Mr. Topham Hat in some American editions, I think, but like, modern editions happily call him the fat controller.
18:42 Speaker 03 Is that right?
18:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
18:43 Speaker 03 Really?
18:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, there was never a thing.
18:44 Speaker 03 They did a whole bit of that on SNL last week.
18:46 Speaker 00 Well, they're incorrect, I'm afraid. Who knew that SNL was not a very rigorously researched academic fact-based show?
18:55 Speaker 01 Do you guys remember that we happen to know one of the Sir Topham Hats out there? One of the fat controllers?
19:01 Speaker 03 Oh, something's ringing a bell, but I can't remember what it is.
19:04 Speaker 01 So you know when if a kid writes in to somewhere that has a fictional character, sometimes someone is assigned to be the official person, and they'll write back or they'll do certain things for them? Yeah, we know a former one, which was Craig Glenday, the current editor in chief of the Guinness World Records. Yeah.
19:20 Speaker 00 Wait, so what did he do? He wrote in as a kid to Thomas the Tank Engine and said, can I be the fat controller?
19:23 Speaker 03 No, no.
19:25 Speaker 00 I misunderstood this.
19:26 Speaker 03 Quite the opposite, in fact. Think about the exact opposite of what you've just said, and that's true.
19:32 Speaker 00 Thomas the Tank Engine wrote to Craig Glenday saying,
19:35 Speaker 01 warmer.
19:36 Speaker 00 Can I be the Guinness World Records book?
19:41 Speaker 00 Sorry. Look, feel free to explain our, I'm sure the listeners got it.
19:45 Speaker 03 So, kids would write to the fat controller and Craig would reply.
19:49 Speaker 00 I see.
19:50 Speaker 01 As, as.
19:51 Speaker 00 As, I see. That's really cool. That's really cool.
19:57 Speaker 01 Makes more sense that way, doesn't it?
19:58 Speaker 00 It does make more sense, yeah.
20:02 Speaker 01 Okay, well, that's it for your facts for today. But before we wrap up the show, we have to dish out some headline facts to our latest custodians. So if you join Club Fish, our secret members' club, and you join the highest tier friend of the podcast, you will become the custodian of one of the headline facts from our 12 years of doing fish. And so here are eight more custodians to hand out now. James, do you want to start?
20:24 Speaker 03 Yes, this one is now under the custodianship of Krista Hill. And Krista, your fact is that Finland's parliament sometimes makes decisions in the sauna. Sauna.
20:36 Speaker 01 Sauna.
20:37 Speaker 03 Sauna. Um, yeah, that's, I mean, playing up to national stereotypes, as usual.
20:44 Speaker 01 How big's the sauna? Like, how many, how big is their parliament? Isn't it hundreds?
20:48 Speaker 03 Oh, a hundred, as in like 650 like we have in our parliament.
20:52 Speaker 00 We have a very bloated government. We'd need a massive sauna in the UK, wouldn't we? I bet, they're very slimmed down, the Finnish people. I bet they've only got sort of four people in their parliament.
21:01 Speaker 03 I don't know how many they have, but what would be the British equivalent? Like, do it making all your decisions in Weatherspoons?
21:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
21:10 Speaker 00 They might be better ones.
21:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:12 Speaker 00 Why not try, kid?
21:13 Speaker 01 In a caf, yeah, with a full English.
21:14 Speaker 03 In a caf?
21:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:19 Speaker 01 Very cool. And saunas are, they're, I mean, when we did this fact, I think we found out that during war times, you know, generals would bring their own portable sauna as well. Like, it's just, it's, it's huge in the culture.
21:30 Speaker 03 It is. It's absolutely massive. You can't go anywhere in Finland without seeing a sauna.
21:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:35 Speaker 03 That's for sure.
21:36 Speaker 01 You've been, haven't you, James?
21:37 Speaker 03 To Finland, yeah, for sure.
21:38 Speaker 01 Did you have a sauna?
21:40 Speaker 03 Did I have a sauna when I was in Finland? I feel like I must have done. I reckon when we did this fact, however many years ago it was, I'd never had a sauna in my life, but certainly now I have had saunas.
21:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:51 Speaker 00 You've changed, man.
21:51 Speaker 03 I know, I know.
21:55 Speaker 03 Just slightly warmer than I was all those years ago. Okay, let's do another one.
21:59 Speaker 00 Okay, well, this is for Mike Smith. Here you are, Mike Smith. You have to guard this fact with your life. In British electoral history, eight candidates have won no votes at all in a general election. There you go. Eight candidates, Mike Smith. I want you to guard that, memorize their names.
22:21 Speaker 03 Wasn't one of them someone who, in fact, maybe more than one of them were people who lived in that constituency and didn't even vote for themselves.
22:29 Speaker 00 Yes, you're right.
22:33 Speaker 00 That's politeness, isn't it? It's like, you know, because on the off chance someone recognizes your handwriting or how you do a cross, and they're like, oh, my God, they've voted for themselves. How embarrassing.
22:42 Speaker 03 I think like if I was playing like games at Christmas time or something and you had to vote for someone, I would naturally not vote for myself. Like in some kind of voting game, you wouldn't vote for yourself. You'd always vote for someone else because it's a bit, feels a bit icky to vote for yourself.
22:55 Speaker 00 What kind of games are you playing at Christmas time? Weird democracy games.
23:00 Speaker 03 We play like a parliamentary game where we each take one of the members of World War II and then we make our arguments about why or why not the war should occur.
23:08 Speaker 01 Right.
23:09 Speaker 03 You don't do that?
23:10 Speaker 01 Consequently, James is Prime Minister in the Harkin household.
23:13 Speaker 03 Are you kidding me? You've met all of my family. How far up the pecking order do you think I have in that family?
23:18 Speaker 01 That's true. Yeah. Okay, let's get another one here. This fact is going out to Gergo de Brexzenny.
23:27 Speaker 00 Okay.
23:28 Speaker 01 And the fact is the final McDonald's burger ever sold in Iceland can be watched decomposing on a webcam.
23:34 Speaker 03 Very cool. Now, I have seen that, I must say.
23:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:38 Speaker 00 And it's Iceland, the country.
23:40 Speaker 03 Iceland, the country, yeah. Yeah, it was, I don't know if it's still there actually, but it was in a hotel. It was like, even if you weren't staying in the hotel, you could just go because I think it was in the lobby and you could just sort of see this Big Mac.
23:52 Speaker 01 Wow.
23:53 Speaker 03 It was under like a glass thing.
23:55 Speaker 01 Yes.
23:56 Speaker 00 They should just leave it in one of the bedrooms and then everyone who gets that room goes in and goes, um, sorry, the cleaner hasn't been in.
24:02 Speaker 03 There seems to be a perfectly good Big Mac here. I mean, half of a perfectly good Big Mac. Yeah, I mean, how desperate would you have to be after a night out to look at that and go, it's probably still okay?
24:15 Speaker 00 I'd have to have had at least two drinks.
24:18 Speaker 01 It would be you, though, a busboy who smashed into it. Do you remember when we did our live tour? I had, as a Hall of Famer, come onto the stage, the man who decided to livestream a random puddle that had appeared in the road.
24:31 Speaker 00 Mr. Puddle.
24:32 Speaker 01 And I remember on the day, watching it myself, you know, we were just watching a random person, not realise how big the puddle was and either get into it, or this was wild.
24:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:40 Speaker 01 A wild of livestreaming.
24:41 Speaker 00 That was the level of celebrity we had on our live shows, so bad luck if you missed it.
24:47 Speaker 03 Okay, this next fact is under the custodianship of Callan, C A L I N. Callan, your fact is that in 1851, Prince Albert commissioned a ballroom for Balmoral Castle, made entirely of corrugated iron. And I remember this episode so well because John Lyde was on the show.
25:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:09 Speaker 03 And he got so into corrugated iron.
25:12 Speaker 00 He hasn't stopped talking about it since.
25:13 Speaker 03 Oh my, good god. It was like, he just like managed to get almost everything in the universe and then pulled it rounds to corrugated iron. He's like, did you know the shape of the universe must be a bit like corrugated iron?
25:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
25:25 Speaker 03 Because of the stiffness of it, and it's like, oh my god.
25:27 Speaker 01 I feel like I remember the thunk of his research notes hitting the table. It was such a thick wad. Was that John's first ever show?
25:35 Speaker 00 I think it was, actually.
25:35 Speaker 01 I think that might have been.
25:36 Speaker 03 No, it wasn't. He was in the one, he was in a football special.
25:39 Speaker 01 You're right. You're right, yes.
25:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it was like miraculous theorem or something, that if you get something flat, like a piece of paper, if you hold it at the end, it kind of flops down. But if you bend it into a U shape, it stays stiff. And it's basically why if you fold pizza, it won't flop over before it goes in your mouth. And I literally tell my daughter that fact every single Sunday when we buy her a pizza at the farmer's market. And I say, did you know that if you fold it here, it'll make it stiffer than the...
26:13 Speaker 00 Again, you've changed, man, buying pizza at the farmer's market. What's wrong with pizza?
26:18 Speaker 03 I have changed in that sense, but I haven't changed in the sense I'm extremely tedious about my facts to people.
26:26 Speaker 01 Anna?
26:26 Speaker 00 Yep, this one's for Brian Hess. No relation to other Hesses you might know.
26:31 Speaker 01 As far as we know.
26:32 Speaker 00 As far as we know, uh, no. And here's a fact for you, Brian. During the 19th century, Sadler's Wells Theatre in London was routinely flooded to stage fake naval battles.
26:45 Speaker 01 So good.
26:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, these were incredible. Theatre used to be more fun. You went and you were told you had to wear your swimming stuff when you bought the ticket and you came in.
26:53 Speaker 01 Really? I forget that detail.
26:56 Speaker 01 You could be immersive.
26:57 Speaker 00 It could be. I know, it could be literally immersive. They also had horses as well on stage, didn't they? That's another thing I remember.
27:02 Speaker 01 Running on treadmills.
27:04 Speaker 00 Yes.
27:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. Out Towards You, which is what an illusion of scariness that you would have. It's like a 3D movie.
27:10 Speaker 03 I would argue it's not really an illusion of scariness. It's just scary.
27:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is scary. Uh, here's another one now for Adrian Carter. Adrian Carter, your fact is that the practice of dog owners pretending they haven't seen their dog having a poo is technically known as strategic non-knowledge.
27:29 Speaker 03 That's fantastic.
27:30 Speaker 00 Whose fact was that?
27:31 Speaker 01 That's Andy's.
27:33 Speaker 00 I like the technically. Well, I'd forgotten that fact, but in what official dictionary?
27:40 Speaker 00 Which experts?
27:41 Speaker 03 There must be a paper about it, right?
27:43 Speaker 00 There must be.
27:44 Speaker 03 There must be. Andy's not made that up.
27:46 Speaker 00 No.
27:46 Speaker 01 No, exactly.
27:47 Speaker 00 Andy wouldn't do something like that.
27:48 Speaker 01 Oh, I don't know. Technically is doing a lot of work there, I think, in an Andy fact.
27:52 Speaker 00 Yeah.
27:53 Speaker 03 That's true.
27:53 Speaker 01 There's technically a giant kettle called Jenny.
27:58 Speaker 01 It's just a big building that heats water. That's not a kettle, mate.
28:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, it plays it fast and loose.
28:03 Speaker 03 Hey, you know, when I wasn't on the show last week?
28:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:06 Speaker 03 Were you slagging me off in the same way that you're slagging Andy off here? Is that what's going on here?
28:10 Speaker 01 No, but you weren't trying to get off with my sister in emails.
28:14 Speaker 03 Okay, is it my turn?
28:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
28:16 Speaker 03 Then this fact now goes out to Amanda. And Amanda, your fact is that instead of being one of the founders of the USA, Benjamin Franklin almost stayed in Britain to found a swimming school on the Thames.
28:31 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is a cracker. He spent some time wandering London. Got really into swimming.
28:36 Speaker 03 He did.
28:37 Speaker 00 It was, I think I remember the location where it was, not from the time, from reading about it, yeah.
28:44 Speaker 03 Was it near his house? Cause his house is quite near the old QI office, wasn't it?
28:47 Speaker 00 It was near embankment, so yeah.
28:49 Speaker 01 It's still a, it's a museum now. So you can go, you can find it with a blue plaque on the outside, but you can actually go inside and it's.
28:56 Speaker 03 That's cool. You wouldn't want to swim in the Thames there now because it's too fast flowing. Um, whereas like it's probably cleaner than it was then, I reckon, because the Thames has improved quite a lot in cleanliness over the years.
29:07 Speaker 01 Right.
29:07 Speaker 03 Uh, but they put in extra bridges, which makes the water flow quicker.
29:11 Speaker 00 Oh.
29:12 Speaker 03 Cause there's like the arches that the water has to kind of squeeze through.
29:15 Speaker 00 So now it's like doing wild water rapids.
29:17 Speaker 03 Well, compared to in those days, yeah.
29:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:19 Speaker 03 Like if Benjamin Franklin jumped in the Thames now, you'd have to fish him out in Fulham or something. Is that the way it goes?
29:27 Speaker 00 Yep. You've done that right. God. It's, it's actually, I'm actually spending so long working this out, but yeah.
29:32 Speaker 03 Remember when you and I, um, rowed on the Thames, Anna, and they were teaching us how to do it and you would have to go, you'd be at next to this factory or something and you'd have to like row for half a mile or something, whatever it was. And you rode to the other end and then they were explaining to you like, okay, this is what you did. This is what you have to improve. Okay. And then when you turn around, you're exactly back where you started.
29:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's tough.
29:56 Speaker 03 Taken you all the way back there. You're like, the amount of effort I put in to get to that point and now I'm back where I started.
30:02 Speaker 00 And that's, that's why in the Olympics, they never stop to have chats, do they? Halfway through, they never go on. Let's have a team talk, team talk, heads together.
30:08 Speaker 03 Although, do you remember there was one rower in the early days, I'm not sure if it was Olympics, but there was a race where he was winning by so much. There was some ducks went past and he could stop and let the ducks cross the river and then carried on going and still won the race.
30:23 Speaker 01 That's right. I, having mentioned John Lloyd earlier, I once was having a coffee with John and we were sitting and the view was the Thames. And we're mid chat and he suddenly just went, oh, look, it's Bill Bailey. And I looked out and on a paddleboard, standing in the Thames, was Bill just waving at us, you know, hi John, hi Dan.
30:43 Speaker 03 That's odd.
30:46 Speaker 00 But feels in keeping with who he is.
30:49 Speaker 03 That's amazing. He must have been there every day for like six years hoping that John Lyde would turn up.
30:56 Speaker 01 Let's have one.
30:56 Speaker 00 I think Fulham is the wrong way, isn't it?
30:58 Speaker 03 Is it?
30:59 Speaker 00 Because Fulham, Fulham, you'd have to be going west, wouldn't you?
31:01 Speaker 03 Don't write in.
31:02 Speaker 00 Don't please don't write in.
31:05 Speaker 01 All right, let's have one more. This is a fact for Edelith. Edelith, your fact is sumo wrestling referees carry a knife so that if they make a bad decision during a match, they can kill themselves.
31:17 Speaker 03 Dear.
31:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:17 Speaker 01 Do you remember that? I think that was, that was one of my facts and I.
31:22 Speaker 03 I think they don't do it anymore.
31:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, right.
31:24 Speaker 03 I think.
31:24 Speaker 01 I don't think there have been any modern fatalities anyway. It's probably more ceremonial as a concept, right? Yeah. Sumo wrestlers and Benjamin Franklin, I feel like those were two quite heavy friends of the podcast that we've not visited much.
31:38 Speaker 00 Literally heavy because yeah, that's.
31:40 Speaker 03 Very funny.
31:41 Speaker 01 Yes, yeah. But yeah, we used to do, we used to do sumo's affair chunk, I think, back in the day. And Franklin.
31:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:48 Speaker 01 We need to bring him back.
31:49 Speaker 00 Oh, he's a rich vein, Franklin. It's weird that we raise sumo wrestlers so much. That feels like your influence.
31:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:54 Speaker 00 Thrusting them in.
31:55 Speaker 03 We, we of course only record one of these every week, which we do about 10 minutes before it goes out. So not to break the illusion, but I have a feeling looking at my notes, there might be a sumo wrestler fact in next week's show when we record next week, of course.
32:09 Speaker 00 Wow, really?
32:10 Speaker 01 Isn't that Benjamin Franklin was once a sumo wrestler?
32:14 Speaker 03 You might also find, I have a feeling that Andy might be away next week as well.
32:19 Speaker 00 Long old holiday, isn't it?
32:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, okay. What a, what a great tease to end the show on. Tune into next week's Little Fish to hear about sumo wrestlers. Well done to everyone who is now custodian of one of our facts. That is Edelith, Amanda, Adrian, Brian, Kalen, Gergo, Mike and Krista. And if you want to have your fact featured on the show, podcast at qi.com, send them in. Andy goes through the emails. He picks out the ones most relevant to him and his life and his interests and he hands them to us to read out. And so yeah, do, do send them. We love reading them out. And if you do want your own fact to be a custodian of, you just have to go to patreon.com slash clubfish and join the highest here, friend of the podcast. There's a lot of great other things that we do in Club Fish. So do check it out generally. Otherwise come back on Friday for Big Fish. We'll see you then. Until
33:06 Speaker 01 then, from me, Anna and James, it's goodbye.
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34:20 Speaker 02 ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.
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