Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: I believed it when Pythagoras said it About this episode Dan, Andy and Anna discuss YOUR facts including scaring cormorants, cleaning horses and recognising frogmen. Anna reveals what her first word was. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians.
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Edited by James Harkin
Produced by Leying Lee
Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia
Transcript 0:13 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm here with my two close colleagues, Dan Schreiber and Anna Sodzinski, and we're here to discuss the brilliant facts that you, the audience, have been sending in to podcast at qi.com. We've got loads of facts. Let's have some.
0:31 Speaker 01 Come on. Who's got a fact? I go on here from Tom Besoir. Tom Besoir says, "The American actor John Cazale only appeared in five feature films. All of them were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture."
0:47 Speaker 02 Wow.
0:48 Speaker 01 He did The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part Two, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter.
0:54 Speaker 02 Amazing.
0:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, he did five of these in a seven-year period. But tragically, he got very ill. He had lung cancer. And so he died, and that's the only reason that he didn't star in more.
1:04 Speaker 00 I've only seen two of them. I've seen The Conversation and what was the first one you mentioned?
1:07 Speaker 01 The Godfather.
1:07 Speaker 00 No, I haven't seen that.
1:08 Speaker 01 Deer Hunter.
1:09 Speaker 00 No, I haven't seen that.
1:10 Speaker 01 Godfather Part Two.
1:10 Speaker 00 Nope.
1:11 Speaker 02 Yep, very good.
1:12 Speaker 01 Dog Day Afternoon.
1:12 Speaker 00 Oh, I've only seen one of them. Is he, does he play the same, because sometimes people play a special role in all films, like they'll play a policeman who's just got a random one-liner. Was it like that, where he just plays?
1:24 Speaker 01 No, no, he had substantial roles and he was very much loved. There's been documentaries about him. People really miss him. Al Pacino held him as one of the great actors of his day. He said, "I just would have been in movies for the rest of my career with him." He was dating Meryl Streep when he passed away. He was part of a very big sort of unit of actors.
1:43 Speaker 02 I think I've heard of him. I think maybe he's a, he feels like a famous, like edges of gangster films kind of lad.
1:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49 Speaker 02 It does feel like he's got a type. He hasn't done Never Been Kissed, has he? You know, it's definitely down that hard to sing Pacino-esque film.
1:55 Speaker 01 And I've actually got a little bonus exciting element to this fact, because that's often the fact that is told. He was in five movies, all for Best Picture. He actually appeared in a sixth after his death, because they used archive footage of him in Godfather Part Three. That was nominated for an award as well, Best Picture. And he was in that technically.
2:14 Speaker 00 Brilliant.
2:16 Speaker 02 So good. You'd want to employ him, wouldn't you? If you'd made a crap film, you'd be like, should we get him in and we'll get the Oscar? If you'd made Piranhas Five or something.
2:22 Speaker 00 That's what people do with Sigourney Weaver in sci fi films these days.
2:25 Speaker 02 Does it work? Have they all won Oscars?
2:26 Speaker 00 No, but they are treated with more respect than maybe they would be if Sigourney Weaver wasn't in them, in my opinion. If you're making a sci fi film, let's say Avatar Three, you might want to just get, get the weave in. And, you know, she brings a touch of class.
2:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:42 Speaker 02 She sure does.
2:42 Speaker 00 That's what we do with podcasts though, isn't it? You know, if people want to make a great podcast, they get, they try and get us in. I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but.
2:47 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought you meant one of us was brought in for the class. Which one of us has been drafted in just for the touch of class?
2:52 Speaker 01 Do you think we'd get another Chortle Award if Sigourney Weaver came on as guest?
2:57 Speaker 00 I actually do.
2:59 Speaker 02 And do you think that would be the proudest moment of her life?
3:01 Speaker 00 I can't think of a higher one. Yeah.
3:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:03 Speaker 00 Let's do another fact.
3:04 Speaker 02 Let's do another fact. And this is from Oliver Frederick. And this is that in Sydney, if you speed 30 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, you'll be fined about 650 Australian dollars.
3:13 Speaker 00 Okay.
3:14 Speaker 02 And in India, the fine for the same crime is 2,000 rupees. And so Oliver Frederick has done a little bit of working out that James Harkin would love. He said, in order to pay the same amount of fines in India as you would have to in Australia, you'd need to either break the speed limit over 20 times, or you could, and he's looked at all the fines in India for all these things, you could speed under the influence of drugs or alcohol without a valid licence, or wearing a seatbelt, driving recklessly into oncoming traffic while texting, running a red light and not stopping at a stop sign, or whilst blocking an ambulance from reaching an emergency. That would just about get you to 670 Australian dollars. So there you go.
3:53 Speaker 00 That's so cool.
3:54 Speaker 02 It's top tip.
3:55 Speaker 00 And that's why they film all those chase scenes in India, because it's just a lot cheaper for the movies.
4:00 Speaker 02 Yes. Yeah.
4:01 Speaker 01 If you're the judge, you'd be like, but I'm going to waive the fee for the effort because that was absolutely stunning.
4:06 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's like shooting the moon when you're playing hearts, isn't it? You collect all the bad cards. Actually, you win.
4:11 Speaker 02 Perfect.
4:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah. Love it. All right. Here's a fact, and this one comes in from Simone Few. Phew. And it's a great fact. It's, um, it's that Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII, was named after Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. As in, Henry VIII had so many wives over such a long period of time that the youngest one was a baby who was named after his first wife, who was her godmother.
4:40 Speaker 01 That's incredible.
4:40 Speaker 00 Isn't that absolutely hideous?
4:43 Speaker 02 Well, hang on, that's not hideous.
4:45 Speaker 00 Can I not slut shame Henry VIII? Is that not even, is that not?
4:49 Speaker 02 You know what? He never gets to tell his side of the story.
4:53 Speaker 00 Oh my god. Oh my god. There's literally, there's literally a very successful West End musical, which finally has told their stories.
5:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's not his story, is it? We need the West End musical that tells his side of the story.
5:04 Speaker 00 I'd love to try and pitch that to producers. We need to hear Henry's side of the story.
5:09 Speaker 02 It's a musical called One. It's about the one man at the centre of these six, you know, winging women.
5:16 Speaker 00 Well, four by the end of it.
5:20 Speaker 00 Wow, that's very funny. That's very funny indeed. Yeah, yeah.
5:22 Speaker 01 Uh, I've got another fact. Should I do one? Okay, this is from Sam Tomlin. I'm a math teacher by trade and continually find fun and interesting ways to present material. Before going through Pythagoras's theorem again, I discovered this. Friend of the podcast, President James Garfield, created a proof of Pythagoras' theorem. And this makes him the first president to contribute something original to mathematics, as well as the first president to eat anally.
5:51 Speaker 02 Wow. I mean, just one of those things is, you know, a reason to be proud you were alive.
5:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:56 Speaker 02 Both. Yeah. Amazing.
5:58 Speaker 00 That's so cool. Cause I just, it's just so interesting coming up with a new proof of something that is already proven. As in, there are lots of different ways of getting to that truth of Pythagoras's theorem, but to come up with a new way mathematically of doing it, I just think is very impressive.
6:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:12 Speaker 02 Or pointless, you know, if we've proven it.
6:15 Speaker 00 I suppose.
6:16 Speaker 01 Okay, so there's a book that's called The Pythagoras Proposition, and in it, Garfield's, uh, proof is 231 in a list of 370.
6:27 Speaker 02 It's too many.
6:28 Speaker 01 That's too many.
6:28 Speaker 02 We don't need that many proofs. I, I believed it when Pythagoras said it.
6:33 Speaker 01 Good source, Pythagoras.
6:35 Speaker 00 In a way, by going around the houses and doing something in a non-traditional, like getting something demonstrated in a non-traditional method, isn't James Garfield sort of foreshadowing his own eating everything through his bottom later in life?
6:49 Speaker 02 Mmm.
6:49 Speaker 00 Do you know what I mean?
6:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, lovely.
6:50 Speaker 00 Because there he had to circumvent the normal route and go in another way.
6:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what they said to make him feel better about it, as they shoved the champagne up there.
6:58 Speaker 00 This is just like your Pythagoras work, actually, as the president. Yeah, yeah.
7:02 Speaker 02 That's great stuff. Okay, what about this one from Peter Campbell, long time listener, first time emailer. He specifies to the show he's sent emails before.
7:12 Speaker 00 Love it. Love it.
7:13 Speaker 02 He said, I think we were talking about sports teams with...
7:17 Speaker 00 You already know that's a hallmark of quality for a good email, you know?
7:20 Speaker 01 I bet you didn't even read the rest, Andy. That just made it in.
7:23 Speaker 00 I don't know what it... I'm excited to find out what it's about.
7:26 Speaker 02 It's actually very pro fascist, the rest of it. No, I think we were talking about sporting teams with weird, wordy, coincidental names. And he said, "In the 1970s, my team Albion Rovers had the spicy trio of Bill Curry, Sid Sage and Albert Rice. You could make a whole meal out of them." I will say, it's not a brilliant team, Albion Rovers. They are in the fifth tier of the Scottish Football League. But this chap does then go on to say, "It's just..." Okay, focus carefully on these couple of sentences. "It's just a pitter. The team doesn't have the same caliber of player now. I still support them, though. Whatever the result, vindaloo's..." Win or lose.
8:09 Speaker 02 "Rise or fall." I'll have to look that up. Fall is a very hot kind of curry, hot kind of vindaloo. "There's naan more supportive than gee." So he sort of just ends his nonsense by the end of it, to be honest.
8:23 Speaker 00 Well, thanks for writer-ing your email in.
8:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:27 Speaker 00 Yeah. Here is a fact from David Carey. "My fact is, down under is a lake named Lake Wombat." Right? Where do you think that might be?
8:38 Speaker 01 Sorry, down under is a lake?
8:40 Speaker 00 Just in down under. You know where down under is. Yeah, yeah.
8:43 Speaker 02 Is that a clue? It's not actually in Australia?
8:47 Speaker 00 It's in New Zealand.
8:48 Speaker 02 In New Zealand.
8:48 Speaker 00 And the reason is that it's named after...
8:53 Speaker 00 A 19th century gold prospector called Jake Wombat Irwin.
8:59 Speaker 00 But Lake Wombat is in New Zealand. They don't have wombats in New Zealand, right?
9:03 Speaker 02 No, they don't have wombats in New Zealand. No, no mammals, right?
9:05 Speaker 00 No mammals. I mean, there are loads of people in sheep and things, but some bats, right? No mammals. No mammals in New Zealand. They've got a lot of, they've got a problem with a lot of non, yeah, cats.
9:16 Speaker 02 You have to cut off your mammary glands.
9:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's a kettle lake. Just thought you might like to know that. This Lake Wombat.
9:23 Speaker 01 What does that mean?
9:24 Speaker 00 Uh, it's 9,000 years old.
9:30 Speaker 01 I did wanna know that.
9:31 Speaker 00 I've just realised, I couldn't with a gun to my head define a kettle lake for you.
9:36 Speaker 02 God, you really volunteered the information. You didn't need to.
9:38 Speaker 01 And you really felt we needed to know.
9:40 Speaker 00 Every geography teacher who listens is absolutely screaming.
9:45 Speaker 00 Okay, let's have another.
9:46 Speaker 01 Okay, uh, here's a little pop culture one. This comes from Alex Wilson. I have a bit of a fun fact for you. Jon Bon Jovi of the band Bon Jovi. His first professionally released recording was not an epic rock power ballad, like he does with his band, but a song called R2-D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, from the Star Wars Christmas album, Christmas in the Stars. And, uh, we covered this very slightly many, many years ago, probably a Christmas episode, or it might have popped up somewhere else. But yeah, he was, um, working in his uncle's recording studio, you know, mopping floors and stuff like that, doing basic janitorial real jobs and they needed a singer. And so he had a good voice and they brought him in and he sang on this song.
10:30 Speaker 00 How many times has the janitor stepped up and done a brilliant job? You know, this Jon Bon Jovi was the janitor, basically?
10:37 Speaker 01 Like Good Will Hunting.
10:38 Speaker 00 Like Good Will Hunting, that's it.
10:39 Speaker 01 Well, there's definitely two, one that's real and one that's not, so far.
10:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:45 Speaker 00 I'll be honest, I'm not pitching this to the publishers yet.
10:49 Speaker 02 And it's a very low bar to get an Andy pitch, so I would say Penguin, Faber, put your phones down.
10:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, stop that bidding war. Call it off. The book of genius, brackets, real and fake.
11:05 Speaker 02 Chapter one, chapter two.
11:07 Speaker 00 Oh dear.
11:08 Speaker 02 Index. Okay, here's one from Dane Stringfellow. Don't know.
11:12 Speaker 00 Any relation, yeah.
11:13 Speaker 02 Doesn't mention, but he did say, I recently learned from my friend's dad that in the UK, you must have a licence to scare cormorants. And then he says, and upon said scaring, you have to fill out a form listing the method of scaring and the number of cormorants leaving and/or returning.
11:29 Speaker 00 Beautiful.
11:30 Speaker 02 Which is nice, but Dane, I will say, I'm just gonna let this be a lesson to you. When you hear facts from your friend's dad, check them, check them out. I checked it out. You don't need a licence to scare cormorants. You need a licence to use lethal methods to scare cormorants, i.e. shooting at them, which does feel more like killing cormorants than scaring them, but I suppose they would be scared as well. So you do need a licence to take a gun out with you, which maybe is surprising if you're from America, Dane, but that's just how we do it here.
11:57 Speaker 01 This is so, like, this is just a warning to the listener. We get sent a lot of facts and it's our choice which facts we bring to this show.
12:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:05 Speaker 01 And Anna decides to shame the incorrect facts.
12:09 Speaker 00 I'm sure you have enough accurate ones, yeah.
12:11 Speaker 02 It just makes, it just makes the UK sound like a place with some ridiculous laws. And actually, you know, this one is just saying, you know what, give the cormorants a chance first.
12:20 Speaker 00 Did Dane say he was writing from America?
12:22 Speaker 02 No, he didn't, but he said.
12:23 Speaker 00 So you've just, you've just interpreted that as.
12:25 Speaker 02 Well, look, he said, in the UK, you have a licence to scare cormorants.
12:30 Speaker 00 He might have just meant you have to have a licence.
12:32 Speaker 02 No, you're right.
12:32 Speaker 00 And I might have mistyped it, you know.
12:34 Speaker 02 No, you're right.
12:34 Speaker 00 I don't type them out. I do copy and paste.
12:37 Speaker 02 You do know how to do that. You know, there's a shortcut for it as well.
12:40 Speaker 00 What?
12:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:41 Speaker 00 Oh, that's gonna save me time.
12:43 Speaker 02 I'll talk to you afterwards.
12:44 Speaker 00 All right.
12:44 Speaker 02 No, I was actually still fascinated to learn it because you always go down a rabbit hole, don't you? So then I ended up in lots of like fisheries based legal stuff, which was excellent. And I'll do a spin off podcast on that.
12:54 Speaker 00 Yes.
12:54 Speaker 02 So thank you, Dane. I did really enjoy that.
12:58 Speaker 00 Here's one that came in from Ian Clark, okay. I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying the podcast. It's become a regular companion on my drives. This is relevant. This morning, I was sitting in the car, listening as usual, just about to head into the stables to see the ponies. So that's, I guess Ian has ponies, when a van pulled up from a company called Southern Equine Sheath Cleaning. That immediately caught my attention. For context, as I'm sure you appreciate, I didn't know this. In the equine world, a sheath refers to a horse's penis. So there's this company which just only does horse penis cleaning.
13:38 Speaker 01 Wow.
13:38 Speaker 00 That's quite something, isn't it?
13:39 Speaker 01 That's so amazing.
13:41 Speaker 00 And like, it's stunning. And I was looking this up. I was on a train next to a child while I was doing this research. And I had to quite carefully tilt my screen because I didn't want, you know.
13:50 Speaker 01 So they could see that.
13:52 Speaker 00 I didn't want to sort of like blow, to blow any young minds or anything like this. But anyway, the owner of this company is a woman called Cat Seaman.
14:00 Speaker 02 But they're not cats?
14:01 Speaker 00 No, they're not cats. So it doesn't work at all. So it's completely irrelevant. But yeah, basically.
14:06 Speaker 02 That's incredible.
14:06 Speaker 00 And it's recommended, it's recommended you do it twice a year. Some horses never need it. Some horses, they say, I mean, obviously they're trying to sell you sheath cleaning services. So they, they will like, much like, oh, you really should launder your pillows every four days. Yeah, come on. Yeah, yeah. But there are some friendly bacteria under there that you don't want to disturb. So don't do it all the time. And some horses go their whole life without needing a sheath clean.
14:31 Speaker 02 I bet they're really cocky horses, as it were. I bet they're prancing around. Poor old Barry's been sent to the sheath cleaner for the ninth time this year.
14:40 Speaker 01 Absolutely would think it's a prank if Mrs. Seaman called up to say, I'm a horse penis cleaning company. Just like, thank you. No, goodbye.
14:49 Speaker 02 Don't hang up. Don't hang up. She must start every conversation. Don't hang up.
14:59 Speaker 01 Can I do one more before we?
15:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:01 Speaker 01 The custodians. Alright, here we go. This is from Olivia Byers, who says, "Howdy, y'all." She's actually requested, Andy, that you say that out loud. So if you wouldn't mind.
15:10 Speaker 00 Howdy, y'all.
15:11 Speaker 01 There we go. Uh, fact, the first. She's given us two facts. "A small mountain town in North Carolina called Marion, population under 8,000, has officially designated Bigfoot as their town animal."
15:26 Speaker 00 Lovely.
15:26 Speaker 01 "They celebrate this with a Bigfoot festival that draws over 40,000 people, which means the festival population is roughly five times the town's population itself. There are expert panels, Bigfoot-themed food, and my personal favorite, a Bigfoot calling contest. The festival slogan is 'Come a skeptic, leave a believer.'"
15:45 Speaker 00 Lovely.
15:45 Speaker 01 "I have not attended. I am not yet ready."
15:50 Speaker 01 But, fact the second is Ohio is in the process of legislating a state cryptid, specifically the Loveland Frogman. Now, we spoke about how every state has a state animal. It's looking like the Loveland Frogman is gonna be Ohio's, officially described by Ohio legislators as "a frog-like bipedal creature standing approximately four feet tall." So it was spotted twice in March of 1972. But, you'd think that's okay, that's too far away. But then again, in 2016, by two Pokemon Go players.
16:25 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, who were looking at their screen and seeing all sorts of mad, weird animals all day long.
16:30 Speaker 01 There is thought that it might be a large iguana that they spotted. Um, but no one has, uh, has said. So yeah, so this cryptid might become the official...
16:40 Speaker 02 Unbelievable. Unbelievable that Ohio legislators have to get involved in this. Like, just leave it to that mad bloke in the pub. Just say, "Sure, make it whatever you like, hon." Just gonna go back to housing, here?
16:52 Speaker 01 But this is that thing, like this town called Marion, that's a thing that is going to really help its economy every year, right? It's just such a, if you can land a weird animal or an idea in your town or a UFO, you really are just going to help the local economy. It just seems to be the case that it all-
17:10 Speaker 02 Don't encourage them, even more-
17:12 Speaker 01 Don't encourage fun? Is that what you're against?
17:15 Speaker 02 Yes, it is.
17:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:17 Speaker 00 John Maynard Keynes wrote a brilliant economics book about Nessie and how, yeah.
17:23 Speaker 02 What it's done for the economy in Scotland.
17:24 Speaker 00 The macroeconomic implications of Nessie is a really interesting one.
17:26 Speaker 01 Brings in a lot of money here to Scotland. Clutches everywhere, every shop you go, they're all wearing the Scottish hat.
17:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, right. That's enough of your facts, I think, especially yours, Dan.
17:37 Speaker 01 Facts to the air quotes around that one.
17:40 Speaker 00 Let's have some of our facts being dished out now to friends of the podcast, because if you join Clubfish, our secret members' club, publicly available at patreon.com/clubfish, if you join at the friend of the podcast layer, you can get a headline fact from the podcast dedicated to you in perpetuity. And we're going to dish out a few of those headline facts to brand new friends of the podcast now. So who wants to go first?
18:07 Speaker 01 I'll go. This one goes to Alyssa. Alyssa, your fact is that there is a skyscraper in New York which keeps itself stable with a 400-ton weight in the top.
18:17 Speaker 00 Magic.
18:18 Speaker 01 Oh.
18:18 Speaker 00 Magic.
18:19 Speaker 01 Try it again. Oh, my goodness.
18:21 Speaker 00 So cool.
18:22 Speaker 01 Oh.
18:22 Speaker 00 And it sort of hangs like a pendulum and if the building goes that way, it's just sort of central weight?
18:27 Speaker 01 It seems right.
18:28 Speaker 02 I can't remember, and the fact actually came from Alex Bell, so get in touch with him if you wanted explaining. But yes, I do remember that. Skyscrapers are surprisingly hard to build.
18:36 Speaker 01 That does, does that not give you a fear of buildings in a way you might not have had it before? That it's all reliant on, like in this case, a giant weight that's just swaying at the top?
18:48 Speaker 00 I think it's okay.
18:49 Speaker 01 Cool.
18:50 Speaker 00 But I choose not to think about it.
18:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:52 Speaker 02 I think that's key.
18:53 Speaker 00 If you start thinking about anything for too long, you'll go completely mad.
18:56 Speaker 01 Oh, I'd never think.
18:59 Speaker 02 Okay, how about another one? For Amy G. One of Canada's leading crime writers, Howard Engel, lost the ability to read without losing the ability to write. My gosh, I remember this guy so well. I found it one of the most amazing things I've ever learnt. He had a stroke, didn't he? And literally, his hand was still connected to the words. So whatever bit of his brain controlled his hand could still write. But when he's seeing it, he can't, he can't read it. His eyes don't know what to do.
19:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:27 Speaker 00 Crazy.
19:27 Speaker 02 Absolutely crazy.
19:29 Speaker 01 But was it, was it a condition that was a disease that led to his death? I'm just thinking Terry Pratchett had a very similar thing. He couldn't, got to the point where he couldn't read the words because they were all scrambled. But he still could obviously write what he was thinking.
19:43 Speaker 02 I guess the extraordinary thing is that the hand is connected to such a different part of the brain, to the eyes. So the eyes cannot understand something that the hand can. It's like when some people have certain types of epilepsy or have their brains cut in half to treat it. And, you know, they'll, you'll ask them a question and they'll know the answer. But if you write it down for them, they'll be able to read the question, but not know the answer. It's all that the brain is insane stuff.
20:05 Speaker 00 Wonderful fact. Here's one. This goes out to Blue Limpit. And I hope you, I hope you stick to this fact like glue, Blue Limpit. It's that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and inventor of the personal computer, met his wife on a dial a joke call. Dan, I'm going to hand over to you to explain dial a joke.
20:29 Speaker 01 Well, I think back in the day in America, there used to be people who would put out numbers and you would call and an answer machine would just play down to you. And so every day, Steve Wozniak would load up new jokes onto his answer phone. And people would call up and they would just learn a new joke to tell their friends. I believe from memory that that's what it was. And I'm trying to remember the connection of how his wife eventually.
20:53 Speaker 00 She called the dial joke. I've got, I've got it in the archive here. And he said, I bet I can hang up faster than you and hung up. It was quite a bold move.
21:02 Speaker 02 And that seduced her?
21:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, apparently so. She must have phoned back. Yeah, yeah.
21:07 Speaker 02 Playing hard to get, it works.
21:09 Speaker 01 I once saw him talk live in Edinburgh. He did a sort of just sitting on stage, being interviewed. And afterwards, everyone was lining up to meet him and get his signature. And he was just signing laptops and iPhones.
21:23 Speaker 00 Brilliant.
21:23 Speaker 01 The back of them, yeah, that's, that's his method of assigning.
21:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I suppose you would.
21:27 Speaker 01 Just hand your phone over and he signs it for you.
21:29 Speaker 02 The back of them makes sense. I was imagining the screen and thinking, how annoying would that be? And it was just come off after a day.
21:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. All right, let's do another. This one is for Farhan Abril and your fact, I love this one. Babies practise their first words before saying them out loud.
21:46 Speaker 00 That's good. How much practice do they put in though? Because often it's just kind of blah or mama.
21:53 Speaker 02 Why aren't they better?
21:53 Speaker 00 How much practice are they putting in?
21:54 Speaker 01 They need to put more in apparently. Because that's, yeah, it's not good enough.
21:59 Speaker 00 No, it's very sweet. It's like baby birds do this as well, don't they?
22:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:03 Speaker 00 They sub vocalise their songs. They'd say them very, they sort of murmur them to themselves before singing.
22:08 Speaker 01 That's so good.
22:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:09 Speaker 01 I would love to see if someone could film the practice. You know, I just would love to see the footage. If you can see their lips moving at all, if they give it even like a little whisper like.
22:18 Speaker 00 They're walking up and down in front of the mirror. Come on, what's my life? Line.
22:25 Speaker 00 Do you guys know what your first words were? I don't know what mine was.
22:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:29 Speaker 00 What was your first word?
22:30 Speaker 02 Apple.
22:31 Speaker 00 Apple. Really good.
22:33 Speaker 02 Which is weird because my mum hates fruit. Never has it in the house.
22:36 Speaker 00 But she loves Steve Wozniak, who's the co-founder of Apple.
22:39 Speaker 02 Huge fan, yeah. She got together with him actually by calling up her.
22:45 Speaker 01 I can't remember mine, do you know yours?
22:46 Speaker 00 Marvelous.
22:49 Speaker 00 That I said simply marvelous. No, I don't know mine. Let's have another.
22:53 Speaker 02 Yes, here's one for Lydia Grant. Lydia, take this, look after it. Guard it with your life. The first pair of Nike or Nike trainers was made in a waffle iron.
23:05 Speaker 00 Yes. I can't, yes, that was sort of jammed into a waffle iron. I can't remember as in, was it the base, the pattern on the base of the shoes or something?
23:13 Speaker 02 I mean, that seems like the obvious bit, doesn't it? That's the bit that's like got waffle like resemblance.
23:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:18 Speaker 02 Let's see. Well, I've checked the archive and then all we've got after that is Dan saying that Nike is pronounced Nike like Mikey.
23:26 Speaker 02 So.
23:27 Speaker 00 Okay, let's have another one. And this goes out to John Alexander Smith. And it's that rats dream of places that they want to visit.
23:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I saw a rat today.
23:39 Speaker 00 I saw a rat today.
23:41 Speaker 02 You're kidding. Was it the same? Was it? So was it? It had a quite a long tail and grey.
23:45 Speaker 00 Yes, yes, yes. It was a rat. Yes.
23:47 Speaker 01 Maybe let's.
23:49 Speaker 00 Where did you see it?
23:52 Speaker 01 Am I home?
23:53 Speaker 02 Um, where did you see yours?
23:55 Speaker 00 Near a cafe.
23:56 Speaker 02 Mine was outside of Costa.
23:58 Speaker 00 That's so interesting.
23:59 Speaker 01 London? Are we both talking? Let's go. Guys, honestly, we can narrow this down so quickly.
24:03 Speaker 02 Mine was not London.
24:04 Speaker 00 Uh, mine was London and it wasn't Costa.
24:06 Speaker 02 Ah, different rat.
24:09 Speaker 00 But Costa will be really appreciating this brand messaging we're getting out for them.
24:15 Speaker 02 Very much outside. And it was a cute one. You know, some rats look gross.
24:18 Speaker 00 It was, it was queuing. It was ordering a venti latte. Yeah, great.
24:23 Speaker 02 You know, whatever's good for business.
24:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, he had little gloves on. Great. Well, lovely.
24:27 Speaker 02 Anyway, what was the fact again?
24:29 Speaker 00 Rats dream of places they want to visit.
24:30 Speaker 02 So sweet.
24:34 Speaker 01 Okay, uh, this one now goes out to Georgia Badgerie. And her fact is that spiny anteaters only use half their penis during sex.
24:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, right. I'm not even trying, they're saying to their other halves. This could be twice as good for you, actually. Now, isn't it? They can use the left half or the right half.
24:55 Speaker 01 How do you do that?
24:56 Speaker 00 They've got very strangely shaped penises. From a human perspective.
25:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
25:01 Speaker 00 To them, we probably do.
25:03 Speaker 02 Very good. We don't want to have the anteater community writing in.
25:06 Speaker 01 The wokest thing I've heard Andy say ever.
25:08 Speaker 00 Sorry. Yes, it's they only use the left or right heads at any time.
25:12 Speaker 02 Oh, they've got double head.
25:14 Speaker 00 They've got four, actually, and they only use two at a time.
25:16 Speaker 01 Ah.
25:17 Speaker 00 I told you it was weird. From our Western point of view.
25:23 Speaker 02 Is it in the east?
25:24 Speaker 00 From our middle class, like London elite bubble.
25:30 Speaker 01 Marvelous existence.
25:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. So that's nice.
25:34 Speaker 01 Spiny anteaters.
25:35 Speaker 00 Spiny anteaters.
25:36 Speaker 02 But I don't think the penis is spiny. You see, you'd resent that name because you'd always have to explain it's not the penis that's spiny.
25:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, true.
25:42 Speaker 01 The only person you're explaining it to is the same species. So I think they'd probably know, right?
25:46 Speaker 02 Don't need to. They don't need to say, and my vagina isn't spiny either. It's a gay.
25:49 Speaker 01 Great. Okay. Why didn't they tell us that when we're younger? We should be taught that at anteater school.
25:55 Speaker 02 Okay.
25:56 Speaker 00 Let's have one last one.
25:57 Speaker 02 Here's one for Mike Spur. Mike Spur, take care of this one. The world record for horse long jump is shorter than the world record for human long jump. Something for humans to be proud of.
26:09 Speaker 01 This was one of mine. I remember discovering this.
26:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
26:12 Speaker 01 Oh, I love this one. Yeah.
26:14 Speaker 00 It's pretty cool.
26:15 Speaker 02 Because you'd think the horses would be better, wouldn't you?
26:17 Speaker 01 Yes. That's why we said yes to me using that.
26:21 Speaker 02 That's why we were okay with it as a fact. It was great. Whereas running, we're sort of neck and neck, aren't we, with horses? There's always that horse versus human running race in Wales somewhere, I think.
26:30 Speaker 00 It's terrain dependent. I think we can say that.
26:32 Speaker 01 I think distance as well.
26:34 Speaker 00 It's distance and stairs are the two complicating factors.
26:38 Speaker 02 Distance, humans are better.
26:39 Speaker 01 I know, but not at short distance. I don't think the Grand National would see the jockey going, do you know what? I'll actually get this done quicker if I just do it.
26:47 Speaker 02 I'll leave you behind, Nellie.
26:50 Speaker 01 This fact, by the way, from memory, correct me if I'm wrong, was a fact that we did at the Latitude Festival.
26:57 Speaker 02 It was.
26:58 Speaker 01 I think it might have been our first festival. Possibly we did something else, but it feels like that was our first.
27:03 Speaker 00 And that is cool because this is about horses' longitude and how long they're jumping. You know what I'm saying? I bet we made that joke on the day.
27:12 Speaker 02 Oh, we must have.
27:14 Speaker 00 You wouldn't leave gold like that unpicked up, would you?
27:18 Speaker 02 No.
27:18 Speaker 00 Yeah. All right. I think we're going to end on that note. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations everyone for getting through all those jokes. And congratulations to our eight new fact custodians, by whom I mean Mike Spur, Georgia Badgerie, John Alexander. Connor Smith, Lydia Grant, Farhan Abrol, Blue Limpit, Amy G and Alissa. Enjoy your facts, love them and we'll be back in another week for another little fish to dish out eight more. Please do send in your facts to [email protected] . They're such a treat to receive. We love getting them. So please do keep them flooding in and we'll be back again in a few days' time with another episode of No Such Thing As A Big Fish. Until then, it's just time to say-
27:59 Speaker 01 Not actually called that.
28:00 Speaker 00 Not actually called that. Until then, thanks to Dan, my apparently live in the moment editor, and to Anna for taking part. Thank you for playing both of you and congratulations.
28:11 Speaker 01 Thanks for taking part, Anna.
28:12 Speaker 02 It was a privilege.
28:13 Speaker 00 Bye.
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