No Such Thing As A Glazed Lizard Donut

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Disney Princesses, brave tailors and tangled lizards. Head to nosuchthingasafish.com/Risummer http://nosuchthingasafish.com/Risummer for tickets to our July shows at the Royal Institution! Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish http://apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon http://nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon Edited by James Harkin Produced by Leying Lee Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. Just before we start the show, we've got a couple of exciting things to announce for July to fill up your July calendar. One is that we're doing a whole bunch of live shows. Yeah, time to get back on the stage. And they're going to be at the Royal Institution, which is such an exciting venue.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've played there once before, but we were missing an essential ingredient. And this time, we're getting that ingredient four times over. It's Anna Tashinsky. It's going to be the four of us on stage for the first time in a very long time. And if you want to come, tickets are available. They are going quick. I think a few of them are nearly sold out. So if you head to nosuchthingasafish.com/live, you can get tickets there. This is obviously in London, the Royal Institution. But if you live overseas, good news, we're live streaming the first show on the 21st of July. So you can sit in the comforts of your home and tune in to a room that is one of the headquarters of science knowledge. It's an amazing place.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  It really is. So do that now. Book for all four shows. Why not? They'll all be different. And also, earlier on in July, to fill up your time, we are doing a quiz, a live quiz that you can participate in on the 8th of July at 7:00 PM.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  That's right. And we've done these quizzes before, but they were missing an essential ingredient. And this time, we have it. It's Anna Tashinsky. She's going to be joining us. If you have not joined one of the Fish quizzes before, it is an absolute couple of hours of chaos that you will love if you love our show. And in order to get to be a part of it, all you need to do is join Club Fish at the highest tier. So if you go to patreon.com/clubfish, you will find Friend of the Podcast as a tier option. Join that, and you can join us, 8th of July at 7:00 PM. And it goes on for an hour and a half or so, and it is absolute chaos.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Okay, that's all from us, me, the essential ingredient, and Dan, just Dan.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Okay, enjoy this week's episode. On with the podcast.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  On with the show.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing Is A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that if you want to make your work of art more profound, give it a pretentious name.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  This is scientifically the case.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Do you mean just art as in painted, or does the podcast count? Oh. It's an art form?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  It's an art form.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 3:23Speaker 02

  It is.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  In this, in this particular case, it's art paintings as opposed to art podcasts. This was a scientific paper that was released in November 2019, and it was called Bullshit Makes The Art Grow Profounder. And what they did was...

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Fart.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  We know fart jokes. Coming from me, that is a lot.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  They did a study where they showed different bits of art, and they gave them different names. So one piece had a very mundane name, but then the next person might see the same piece, and it had an interesting name that might make them go, ooh, something like "The Death Echo", right?

• 4:06Speaker 03

  I think this completely makes sense. So they found it more meaningful, right?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  This is, I guess they were just testing this idea that if you give something a pretentious name, does it add to it?

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Another question. Sorry to interrupt. Does it work with human names? Like if you give yourself a pretentious middle name? Like, oh, you don't, you, oh, Andrew Hunter Murray, for instance.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yes. No, hang on.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  You are more profound. What do we think? Write in.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  What's a pretentious? It's a perfectly good name.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Wow, got a definition there, didn't I?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Hmm. Offensive.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  How do you determine pretentious? Who's deciding whether Death Echo is pretentious?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Good call. What is pretentious? I think that's a really good question. I found myself asking that the whole time as I was reading this.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Did the study answer it?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Oh, well.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  I think pretentious means it's completely unrelated to the content of the work, right? So if it's a painting of a lemon and I call it Sicilian dreams, you know, Sicily grows a lot of lemons, right? That's a normal-ish title.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Whereas if I call it grandfather, then is that?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  I see.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Is that a pretentious name?

• 5:10Speaker 03

  It is the way he said it.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  All right, the well, the well of sorrows, then that is.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  It's much less related to the content of the picture.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  But if you called it shit sandwich, that's not pretentious, even though it's not related.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  I think it can be. I think it can be pretentious.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, fair enough.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  It's a bit, this is all mentioned in my new podcast, what is pretentious?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Hmm. Is it the cat that drinks Evian or is it the owner who feeds the cat Evian?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Wow. I'm gonna get defensive now.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  It hurts, doesn't it, James? Yeah. I think this is completely reasonable though, because what is art apart from, you know, an artist creates a work of art of whatever kind? And then the viewer engages with it in whatever way. And if you're thinking about it and if it's more conceptual, it's harder to get your head around.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And there is always the question of, does this painting mean something or does it mean nothing? And I, I didn't know about disumbration, the art movement, disumbration.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Which is the epitome of this. It's so cool. So this is an art movement that was started in 1924 by an artist called Pavel Jordanovich. And he created this painting called Exaltation, which is of a woman holding a sort of floppy, banana-y, starfishy type thing and a tilting hut in the background.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  And it became very popular. It was reviewed.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  And it looks a bit like kind of naive art, right?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, what it looks exactly like is, do you remember that mural that was defaced by a woman trying to fix it a few years ago?

• 6:39Speaker 04

  The picture of Christ, Echeaomo.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  And yeah.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  I thought it looked a lot like that, do you not think?

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Um.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  I think so. I thought it looked like God.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Well, I would say a lot of his others are like Gauguin, but anyway, this guy was not an artist. He was a guy called Paul Jordan Smith, who was pissed off at people like Picasso, who he thought were impenetrable. And his wife happened to have done some still lifes, which were very realistic, that hadn't been very well received. And so he said something like, you know, I've made up my mind that critics will praise anything unintelligible. So he painted this exaltation, and it is, I suppose, bad. But there were art journals, like posh art journals, who, one of the best quote I thought was from the French journal, of course, the review of the True and the Beautiful, that said, Pavel Jordanovich is not satisfied to follow ordinary paths. His spirit delights in intoxication, and he

• 7:27Speaker 01

  is prey to the aesthetic agonies which are not experienced without suffering. And then in 1927, he went, I was taking the piss, guys. I thought some of his were actually okay.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Even knowing he was meaning to be silly.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Actually, did you, did you like it more because you knew the story, maybe? Because that is a thing. So there was a study where people were shown a painting by Van Gogh, and they said, what do you think of it? And half of them were told, it's just by Van Gogh. And the other half were told, oh, this is by Van Gogh, who cut his ear off. And the people who were told that he cut his ear off liked it more, because the artist is slightly wacky and...

• 8:05Speaker 04

  I think that's, again, absolutely makes sense. Like, for example, when I make jokes, if I have a story behind them as to why the joke is there.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  When have you ever had a compelling story behind any of your jokes?

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Well, that's what I need, clearly. People would laugh a lot more if I said, I'm cutting my ear off right now.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Wait, so do you think we would actually think one of your cop dramas is good if you came in with a missing earlobe?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Oh, there's no question. A guy in an alley cut off my ear, but it gave me this amazing idea.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Death Echo Cup.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  You only said yes once there, but it bounced off the wall.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  But this is the thing, isn't it? Tortured artist is a thing that we get drawn to. The story behind the artist and they have done a few studies where they've shown portraits and general artwork from the artist from different periods of their life. And weirdly, when they voted on them, they voted for the ones that were not done in a point of mental anguish from the artist's point.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  And they voted that the better one. So it's interesting that it sort of doesn't correlate with their tortured artedness.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  So you're saying when someone is calm and happy and productive, that's actually when they're doing the best work?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  According to this.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  That's really interesting.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  And one encouraging thing, I think, about this whole tortured artist thing is AI can probably already do art better than any human on earth, right? But people really care about the stories behind the people doing the work. And so even if my painting of a unicorn with three legs is not quite as good as one that ChatGPT can do, if people know that I did it because my daughter loves unicorns and I love my daughter, then they're gonna think that it's a better work of art than the thing that the computer does.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  That's a question.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Well, I'm gonna think it's incredibly naff.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's why your art journal folded, Adam. It's like, this is all shit. But this is the really interesting thing about how technically good, quote unquote, a work of art is, right? Because it's not about whether it's an accurate or a realistic drawing of a unicorn. And this all relates to the early 20th century, when photography was coming in in a big way, right? A century before that, if you could paint an incredibly good picture of a lemon, you were set for life, right? They'd be like, this guy paints bloody good lemons. I mean, it looks like a lemon, you know?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Have you seen Sicilian Dream? It's extraordinary.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Right. And then when photography comes along, there's this question of, oh, right, photography's kind of eaten our lunch here. So art becomes more conceptual, partly as a response to the fact that you can now just get photos of things.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Okay.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  And then that is when you get more titles coming in, because the art has become more conceptual and you're getting more like theoretical work underpinning the art.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  So that's when these.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  It's like, what's the point of me painting a perfect picture of your face when I could just take a photo on my phone? But if I put the nose on the side and the eyes on the top of your head and it tells us something about your mental state, then suddenly that's much more interesting.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Bingo.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I think it tells you about your mental state.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Here's a question for you guys.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Jackson Pollock, we all know and love Jackson Pollock.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Okay. Sure.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Do you think a child could do it?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  So it's just basically, it's dripping lines on a canvas, right? They're kind of squiggles on a canvas, lots of different colours. Do you think a child could do it or not?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Could they get away with a Pollock imitation that we would say that's a Pollock? Is that what you mean? Wait, are they forging a Pollock? That's what I'm asking, yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Let's say, for instance, Andy forges a Pollock.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  That sounds like a euphemism. And a 10-year-old forges a Pollock.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Don't, don't come in mum. Hi mum. I'm forging a Pollock.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  What's that dripping?

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Um, like a 10-year-old forges a Pollock, or Andy forges a Pollock, which one is gonna be the best forgery?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  I think a child will be more naive about it and therefore better.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  You are absolutely right. When computers have analysed ones that children have done, ones that adults have done, and ones that Pollock have done, the Pollock ones are more like children's ones than like adult ones. Because they're more simple, people like them a bit more because it's almost like your shapes are easier to see and like, but when adults try and do it, they always try and do it a little bit too complicated.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Right. That is the skill of the artist in a way, is to reclaim that innocent childlike state. The innocent state, exactly. Um, here's an interesting thing, relevant to the fact that this is about names of art. A lot of artists don't like naming their art pieces. That's why you often see something just called untitled. And a lot of people, like Ringo Starr of the Beatles, when he is giving names to his artwork, he has to pick a name because when you're saving a file on MS Paint, you have to write a name, right? So. Well, he just calls them 12, 1234, doesn't he?

• 12:49Speaker 03

  He calls them Ringo's artwork 1, Ringo's artwork this one, Ringo's artwork finished, finished this one.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Real final. But yeah, so they have to give it a name. They're often asked if it's going on exhibitions, touring and so on. What's this called? And they have to give it the name so it can be catalogued and not lost. And this is a thing that only started happening sort of as the 18th century came around. Before then, you just didn't give names to any pieces of art because they didn't travel around. They were staying in people's houses. So you didn't need a name for them.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  They were either massive or they were on the wall of a monastery or whatever. As in they were locationally specific.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if it was on the monastery, you would know it was St. Clair devouring an angel.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Because you're a monk, so you know that stuff.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Or if it was in your house, you know it's Uncle George.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  Like you don't need a title for it.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  What's a lemon? Is everyone knows a lemon? A picture of a lemon, that's a bloody good lemon. And also, nobody can read.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  So no one's coming by going, what's this?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Is that a melon?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  So then also the names that we do have for certain paintings are not names given by the artist. The Mona Lisa, that was, that was someone many, many, many years later who just needed to give it a name. And that stuck.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think that modern paintings do benefit from titles. So you know what was in the artist's head because that's got to be the point of all this Pollock bollocks. And, and yet it doesn't seem to matter. I mean, there's this case of Pacifici, which is one of his most famous paintings, which I actually think is quite nice to look at. Painted it in 1943 and it was originally called Moby Dick. Now, Pacifici is the queen who gave birth to the Minotaur when she shagged a bull. Moby Dick, obviously, is Moby Dick, a whale in a story.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And so it's very weird.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Does it look like either of them?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Obviously not. It looks like a load of things that a child could paint. But I find that bizarre that Pollock called it Moby Dick, thinking it was that. And then he just showed it to Peggy Guggenheim and another art critic. And they said, like the painting, don't like the title. Have you thought about calling it Pacifici? Because one art critic had read the story that morning and Pollock was like, yeah, we could switch to that. So what then am I supposed to be seeing in that painting?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  But does it matter?

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Well, he can't call them all squiggles. Kind of like, just kind of give them some names.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Some people do. Some people say, you just, like, squiggle number three or whatever. So, Whistler, famous for?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  His mother.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  His mum.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Whistler's mother. He called that painting, Arrangement in Gray and Black, Number One. And what that point of that was, is he was trying to draw attention to how it's composed, rather than, "Look at my mum." You know, so that's why he calls it that.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Well, you shouldn't have such a fit mum, Whistler.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, yeah. It didn't work because everyone just called it Whistler's mother, obviously. And they're more interested in the son painting his mother.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Also, if you say the grey and black painting, there are just loads of those around.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Whereas if you say the one of Whistler's mother.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  The, even if people started giving it the right name, you know, the black and white and grey one, people were like, "Which one? You know, the one of Whistler's mother."

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And they realised, eventually.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  It's a title that sounds like you're trying to be woke in some kind of way. You're like, you know, the, the black and white one. The black and white one. You've seen it.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  I don't see colour. It seems to me quite obvious that he didn't name that because if he did, it would be called My Mother.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Have you seen his Your Mum series of paintings? They're wonderful. Wonderful.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to, "I'm deathly allergic," in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorise all my food allergies.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Okay, my fact this week is that most Disney princesses are ambidextrous. I just thought we'd done too much pretentiousness.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  So we're going lowbrow.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Is that because they've reversed the film for the projector? So obviously it's backwards.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  So they're all left-handed, but then they thought they had to compensate, so they re- You made them right-handed and they ended up with both.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, see my colleague Anna.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  It's because it's not enough to have a 16 inch waist and huge boobs and long blonde hair and just be perfect. You have to be good with both hands as well.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  But enough about you.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  So this is a study from Montclair University and they looked at how Disney princesses have evolved over the years. And really they wanted to see whether attitudes towards handedness has changed. And they did it by looking at the princesses. And they found that before 1992, most princesses were right-handed and most villains were left-handed. Or more villains were left-handed than princesses. But in general, things have kind of changed over the last like 20, 30 years. And now the characters are much less strongly handed than they ever have been before. And they have quite a few left-handed princesses and quite a lot of right-handed villains now. And they don't really know why it is.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  They put it down to perhaps that there was a group of animators called the Nine Old Men. Who had these kind of ideas that villains should be left-handed and that good people should be right-handed. Someone else said that it could be the handedness of the animators. Maybe they've just employed a lot of left-handed animators and that's why they're doing it. I personally think probably it's because the animators keep forgetting what they're supposed to do.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Make them write with whatever hand is closest to the camera.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  It's like we put the pot on this side, so she can get it with that hand.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  But this is what they say. They think that it might be due to the left-handedness being less of a bad thing than it has been in the past.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Because people were, left-handed people in the 50s and 60s in schools were forcibly made to write with their right hand.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Well, a good example of that is Ringo Starr. And we've mentioned this many, many years ago, but he, he was left-handed and he got made to become a right-handed person in his childhood. But then he slowly, after he left school and left home, went back to being left-handed. So he drums as a left-handed drummer, but he writes with his right hand. He'll sign with his right hand.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  What about his artworks? What does he produce those with?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  I think he draws them with his right hand, but he saves the file with his left.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, it must just be that it's less of a social stigma. There's much less.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Well, you do think. I think it's just because it's random, right? No, the animators aren't thinking through it.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  No, but in the old days, there was more social stigma.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Even though this is my fact, I will kind of agree with Anna. Also, it's a very small sample size.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  True. Yeah, how many Disney princesses are there?

• 19:54Speaker 03

  There's been like a dozen.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Because they are, they're always like an indication of the society that they're produced in, right? The Disney princesses, because the very early ones are homemakers, you know, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, who I didn't know was in Sleeping Beauty, and then the modern ones are all CEOs and stuff.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Are they?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Are they?

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Moana?

• 20:14Speaker 03

  They're girl bosses. What's Ariel running under the sea? Is it maybe like some wave power that she's getting?

• 20:20Speaker 04

  What's Mulan doing? She's running like, under the sea, Tidal Solutions Incorporated, you know? But as in, do you know, they've got more, they've got more agency, is what I'm trying to say.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've changed enormously. Although I can't believe Ariel's the most modern Disney princess you can think of. Change, come on.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  It was more of which one is least likely to be a CEO.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  CEO.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  No, you're absolutely right. Disney princesses now are just, they're sort of like painfully, um, strong, confident women. I want one who's just like as lazy and crap as me. Where's the lazy crap on, I ask you? One thing that hasn't changed that much is hand size. I was actually reading this ages ago and now I can't not see it. If you compare hand size of women to hand size of men in Disney films, it is insane. They are on average three to four times bigger. And I was looking at the difference in hand size between women and men on average, and men's hands are 12% bigger, um, eight to 12%.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Four times bigger.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, it's mad, isn't it?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Are you just watching Beauty and the Beast?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, what was it that was looked at? How to Train Your Dragon 2, weirdly? Nomeo and Juliet, Frozen, four times bigger.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Frozen is the only one of those that has a Disney princess in it.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  This is just women and men.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  I once did a, um, I once did a table read through for Sherlock Gnomes 2.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry, Nomeo and Juliet 2, Sherlock Gnomes, where they get a load of improvised comedians in to read the script.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Who did you read as?

• 21:44Speaker 04

  I'm very proud to say I played Sherlock Gnomes.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  And then they went with someone called James McAvoy for the real thing, but that's kind of what was going on there. I thought I was auditioning. I was not.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Your hands are too small. Maybe if I read this really well, they won't give their alter to James McAvoy.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Disney princesses, I did not know that this is a canonical thing. There are only 13 of them. And they have to be very specific kinds of person. So they have to be human, they can't start off in a sequel.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, what about the mermaid?

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're right, that's controversial. I guess she's only half human.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  But she's a princess for sure.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  She is a princess.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  How does it end? Does she stay in human form?

• 22:25Speaker 03

  No, she has her legs at the end, doesn't she?

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  So she does stay in human form, she doesn't go back to fish. So maybe that counts as human.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  So right at the end, she qualifies. She's the daughter of Fishman in the sea, isn't she?

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Fishman there, yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  But they can be born royal, or they can marry royal, or they can be Mulan, who apparently just gets around it. Anyway, I found this wonderful argument on the website Polygon that there is a Disney-owned franchise which does have a queen, who should be included in the Disney Princess canon, which is the queen from Alien.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  And bigger hands.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Well, but you know, she's bipedal, so she's human-like in some respects. You know, she's a wonderful mother, she's explored multiple planets, defends her children, she's a strong woman, inspirational figure from a magical far-off land. I just love the argument.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Does she have blonde hair and big boobs?

• 23:13Speaker 04

  It's not clear.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  She's got big eggs, I'll say that right.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  I think we eggs on her.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, two of the princesses that were part of the canonical 13 got demoted. So I don't know what the number was when they were there.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Petrus and Yuzhini.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  No, that's, I'm sorry.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was Tinker Bell was one. Tinker Bell from Peter Pan.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Non-human.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Not a human, a fairy, so she got put in her own new category. And she was a sidekick, she didn't have her own sidekick. There's quite a few interesting things that qualify for it. And in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Esmeralda got taken away because she's not a princess.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  But neither is Mulan, the whole thing's right.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  The whole thing falls apart on those examinations.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Basically, whoever they're gonna put in the big show in Disneyland, isn't it? Basically, that's who it is.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  If the film does really, really, really well, you're likely to be made a princess. As in, some films just bombed and they, you know.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  Mulan, so Mulan is a Chinese girl who is not a princess or anything, right? This is in the original Chinese story. So she's like a peasant girl, and then she joins the army, pretends to be a boy, and then they find out that she's not a boy, and then she saves the country or something.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  I can confirm that's also true. So in the Disney film.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  That's in the Disney film. What isn't in the Disney film is in the original stories. She served under the Emperor Yang of Sui, who wanted to take her as a concubine, but she took her own life before he could.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  That's in the, if you've not seen Mulan Two.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  I haven't seen it.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Very short film, Mulan Two. Yeah, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  Gosh.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Well, she could be a concubine in Mulan Rouge.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  Brilliant.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  I haven't seen the Hunchback of Notre Dame one, but I do know that the character Esmeralda in the book certainly does seductive dances for nearby men. And I don't know if that made it into the film.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Well, you know who, you know who did it?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh my gosh. There's the most dark song in the film about how much the villain fancies and wants to shag Esmeralda, even though he also hates her. It's very inappropriate.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Well, you know who voiced Esmeralda? I believe I'm right in saying this. Demi Moore, who was in Striptease.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Well, as well as many other.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Prosecution rests, Your Honour.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  That was, you presented, that was such a flourish. And it's really good knowledge. But it's, I don't think it means what you think it means.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  It's just like you said, Demi Moore. It was like everyone was automatically supposed to go, oh, he was famously in Striptease.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Can't believe I had to say the extra bit of that sentence, in fact.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  And go, oh, it's come full circle. Okay. There's a topless woman in The Rescuers.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Pardon?

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Sorry, what's The Rescuers?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  The two mice.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Mice.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Chip and Dale, are they?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  It's so much like Chip and Dale, but they're Bernard and Bianca, mice who ride atop a large bird.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Is this the topless woman you're talking about?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  No, it's not the topless woman.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Chip and Dale are such better names for kids' animation characters than Bernard and Bianca.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  It was the seventies.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Wait a minute. What other name of the strippers? Chip and Dale's.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Oh, this is coming full circle.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  I rest my case.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Here we go.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  And you know who played Chip? Demi Moore.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Andy did the run through.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  There's a topless woman. She's not meant to be there, but this is amazing. I'd never, I'd never. Heard this, because you know there are all those, like, in The Lion King, he plumps in the sand and it spells out sex, and there's always rumours like that. This is for real. In 1977, the first rescuers was released. It wasn't until 1999 that it was noticed that in a few of the shots, Bernard and Bianca on the back of the big bird, the albatross, and in the background, in the window, there's, it's actually a real, it's not a cartoon, it's a real image of a topless woman. I couldn't make out her head, it's just her boobs and sort of slim torso. And it stayed in between 1977 and 1999, when someone pointed it out, and Disney suddenly had to say, we don't know who put that in there.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  No animators are putting their hands up and saying it was me. And they removed it, and now we recalled all the videos. Imagine if you're the woman and you know your boobs were in the rescuers.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  You're not gonna watch it, like, in the cinema and go, wait a minute, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Darling, how dare you.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  I really like the way, all these studies are done on Disney princesses and the social attitudes that they reveal, or how they change and all of this, because they get a lot of stuff pinned on them. And I'm sure, I know it does have an influence on the children watching, right? I do know that. But I think sometimes academics might go a bit far. So, there was a study by a Durham University expert about the cultural perceptions of work, who says that these princesses in these films may have contributed to reluctance among the younger workforce to join traditional workplaces. So you're always hearing, right, that the kids these days, they don't want to come into the office, all of this. Maybe that's because Cinderella has to slave away for her stepsisters, and that's why millennials want flexibility in the workplace.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Millennials aren't watching Cinderella, lads. Who are these Durham University academics?

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Maybe they all want to grow their hair really, really, really long and throw it out the tower?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Surely you do want to do the work, because if you work hard enough, eventually you'll get swept away by a prince or something. Is that what happens?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's, and exactly, this same expert said, if you think about that situation in a modern workplace, that's a dangerous view to have. You just carry on being exploited because you think everything is going to turn out to be okay. I just don't think that's a reasonable, like, there's plenty of stuff to pin on those films, but I don't think people wanting to work from home two days a week is because of Cinderella.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I also think it's a stretch to call people who do these studies academics, to be fair. So, I'm very happy for them to confront me about that.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Here comes Anna's big crunching fist again.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  I've just got ambidextrous stuff. So, there was the Ambidextrous Culture Society in the early 1900s, which I hadn't heard of, but it is the cause of Boy Scouts handshakes. I also didn't know this.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  I don't know that either.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Boy Scout handshakes, always left-handed, apparently.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Are they?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  And it's because, there was this guy called John Jackson, he was a head teacher at a Belfast school, and he decided that we all should become ambidextrous, because we're wasting half of our brain by being either right-handed or left-handed. He wrote that each hand eventually should be absolutely independent of the other, one hand should be writing a letter while the other can play the piano with no diminution of concentration. He said-

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Why are you playing on the piano with one hand? Chopstick.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  You're right, piano was a terrible example, maybe this guy was an idiot. I mean, his theory's pretty wacky. But he said he imagined a brave new world of two-handed, two-brained citizens, and it was a very pervasive view that training yourself to use your other hand would make you smarter. It really pervaded until the 50s and 60s when they disproved it. And Baden Powell was one of the adopters, who was vice president of the society, and who believed that, you know, make yourself right with the other hand and your brain will get better. Actually, it doesn't at all, and there's some evidence that maybe it would make it worse, because the reason that we have lateralised brains is so that we can specialise in certain things, right?

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Was anyone else here in the Scouts?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  You in the Scouts?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Did you ever do this left-handed handshake?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  I've never heard of it.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Not me either.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  I don't think of Scouts as having a handshake, I think of Masons as having one.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Freemasons.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  I'm sure it does exist, but we didn't do it in Bolton.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  No, no, I think maybe it might have died out. You know, we're all getting more ambidextrous.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Are we?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, as we get older. One thing that we do gain as we get older is more ambidexterity. There was a 2007 study that looked at a bunch of different age groups. Youngest group, aged 25, on three writing tasks, much better with their right hand or their left hand in everything, depending on, you know, if they're right or left-handed. At 50, they were better with their dominant hand at some things, but like an aiming task, they were about equal. And then by 70 and 80, people were equally good with both hands. Hands at most of the tests and it's because you're just quite shit at that point with both hands. It is literally just because your right hand gets worse and worse and worse until it's as bad as your left hand or vice versa.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  So you're kind of that ambidextrous, you're ambysinistrus.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  I'm afraid that's the case, yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Andy.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  My fact is Saddam Hussein and Nelson Mandela had the same tailor.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Where there are always awkward waits in the

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  In the room.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  So this was a guy called Recep Caesar. The really strange thing about him is he was a Kurd, right? In fact, I think he might still be alive. But Saddam Hussein visited enormous evil on the Kurdish people. But as Recep Caesar said, he was a good customer to me. So Saddam went there for, I think, 80 suits. He was a very loyal customer. And this guy Caesar has served all sorts of people, lots and lots of world leaders. So Pakistan's president, Afghanistan's. Nelson Mandela was only a one-time customer, so.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, he bought a jacket and trousers from Recep Caesar's label.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  I'm not sure he even went to the shop or anything.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Well, he was probably on Robben Island at the time, so.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Perhaps, yeah. It was in 2000, so I think he's off by then.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Do we know why he didn't do repeat custom?

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  You know, did he not like the fit?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  The clientele, yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, sort of shots of Hussein being sent to him.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Nelson Mandela had very specific suits that he wore, didn't he? He had like African patterns on his suits and stuff, so he wouldn't have worn these ones.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  So maybe this was for a rare occasion.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  What do you think Mandela would make your headline, Andy?

• 32:45Speaker 04

  I think he'd forgive me for it.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  This guy, I saw an interview with him, who said that he watched Saddam's trial with great interest because he wanted to see how he looked in his suit.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably the only guy watching for that reason.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  He said that sales in Iraq tripled during the trial.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Because people were watching saying, hmm, love the fit.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Ever 80 suits. How sweaty a man was Saddam Hussein?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I mean, I suppose that's kind of the Zuckerberg thing, isn't it? You know, you have like, you open the wardrobe and it's just all the same clothes. So you don't have to think about what you wear, just taking on a suit off the thing.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  But that means that he only does a wash once every two months.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. So it's a very busy day when you see Saddam at the laundrette.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  I don't know, Anna, why did, why did dictators get dozens of cars when you can only drive one at a time? I don't know.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  You're saying it's not all about practicality?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  I'm saying it's not exclusively that.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Why have the royal family got such a big house?

• 33:42Speaker 03

  They could live in a two up two now.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  You can only have one living room. You've only got one arse to sit on one sofa.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I've been wearing the same pants for 10 years and I'm absolutely fine.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  I love, when he was in court, I love this little detail in an interview that he gave, uh, where they said, do you know what you provided for him? And he brought out a list from his files and he said, it shows two complete outfits with a total cost of 1,540 and we included two pairs of socks as a gift.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Oh, giving him gifts as well, are you?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  That little extra detail of the socks is wonderful. Gosh. Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Speaking of socks, um, did you know you can buy socks made by the Pope's official tailor?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've bought some, but they've not arrived yet.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've got some coming in the post. We might, we might bring it up in a duel sometime.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Um, but yeah, the, the tailor of the Pope is called Gamarelli. And basically in the late 20th century, um, the rules on like vestments for priests kind of changed. And there were not as many priests anymore. And when the iron curtain came down, the priests in Eastern Europe were not getting these clothes anymore. So basically they lost, started losing a load of money.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  And so they decided to diversify and started making normal suits for normal people. So they were making stuff for priests and popes and stuff, but now you can just buy one of the suits and you can buy socks.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  And are they sort of novelty socks with like lots of brightly colored boxes on them?

• 35:08Speaker 03

  They're the ones that the Pope wears and they're the same color.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  No, because I, so James, I was reading about this too, Gamarelli, because they do, how do you say, holy socks.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Well, not holy socks, as in they don't have holes in.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  But they're in individual pairs and they're knee-length silk, apparently. Have you ordered knee-length silk socks?

• 35:28Speaker 03

  And if you're a different level in the church, you get to wear a different colour.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  They do. It's like karate belts. You get black, scarlet and violet socks and only the Pope. So hang on, are you saying you've managed to get?

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, they just sell them.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Have you put your addresses like the Vatican, you're having it redirected through a P O box? Supposedly they only sell the white knee-length ones to the Pope, but I may be wrong.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  On their website, they sell them. I don't know, maybe I've ordered something different.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Might be a different shade or something.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Maybe there's going to be a Swiss guard arriving with them to arrest you and take you into custody.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Well, maybe I become Pope as soon as I put them on.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  The easy way in, the loophole.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  This is a movie.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  This is a movie.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  The Pope socks, basically, there's a mix-up at the sorting office.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  The Pope gets my sort of like wacky golf socks and I get his. And then when I put them on, I turn into the Pope.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Beautiful. And he wins the P G A.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  He has to do a podcast and he, I've got to say it, he's out of his depth. And the kind of stuff we do?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  Right. I'm sorry, I'm not, I'm like, he delivers amazing speeches.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  He knows fuck all about Disney princesses.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  This is a good film.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Wow. You know, your question earlier about why would you need so many suits? James Bond, on average, will have 60 suits of the same kind.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  He's not real.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Good in per film.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  So this is when they're filming. If they're doing a scene where he's in a particular suit, 60 versions of that suit will be tailor-made to Savile Row standards. And they use Tom Ford for the last Daniel Craig ones. 30 of those will go to the stunt doubles who will be acting in the scene.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Now, this is for an action scene.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  But he basically has an impossible suit because when he's on a motorbike, the coat that he's wearing has longer arms specifically made, so it doesn't come up.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  I think he'll be Inspector Gadget by any chance?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's so odd, but when his trousers are tailor-made to be longer, if you see him on a motorbike in that suit, so that his ankles don't show.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  He doesn't look like Rishi Sunak on a motorbike.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  So Bond is wearing technically an impossible suit.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Why doesn't everyone do that? Why don't all men, when they want to cross their legs, immediately put on a different pair of trousers?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Another famous tailor is a guy called Jonathan Mayer, who was Bo Brummel's tailor. And he and Bo Brummel, the reason I bring it up now, is that they invented a new kind of trousers, which had a loop underneath, and you would put the loop underneath your feet. And so whenever you moved your legs, it wouldn't ride up or down.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  I don't want to reveal my social status here, but just like jodhpurs.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, I don't know if you know, but I do a bit of horse riding myself. I would say it's exactly like that.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  James has been on a horse once in your absence, and he's not let us forget about it.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Did they squeeze you into a pair of jodhpurs with those elastic bits around the foot?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  No, they didn't.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Not a pro yet.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Several row tailors are having a good time at the moment.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Are they?

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Can you guess why?

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Because you've just mentioned them on the podcast.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, you know, if you guys do want to send a few over to us, we'll read out our inside legs at the end of the show.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  I actually, I like a Disney princess, I dress to both sides.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Is it, is it to do with pop culture at all? It's to do with something that's happening a lot now. Ah, okay.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  What's happening a lot now, people are wearing suits.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  People having to go back into the office.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  No, people on Zoom wearing suits because they want to seem professional.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  It's got an O and a Z in it, this thing that people are having a lot of.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  A Zenpic.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  They're going to Australia, nope, not Australia.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  I was on Wizard of Oz, so.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a big Judy Garland core trend in the city at the moment. A lot of business were wearing gingham suits.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  So many pairs of red shoes there.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  It's a Zenpic. So basically, people are having a Zenpic, finding their shape is changing quite a bit. And they're then getting clothes altered, you know, maybe clothes that have fit them perfectly a year ago, but now really don't. Or clients are saying things to one tailor like, "I'm going to wear a thick velvet dinner jacket for the first time."

• 39:30Speaker 01

  That's what you're not. You do when you've lost a couple of stone.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Getting more experimental.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Circling back to Saddam Hussein and having so many different, having so many different suits while in jail.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  He was on the pen, wasn't he?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  No, but he was losing his weight going up and down. And so they, they did do it to different sizes. Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Well, one of my favourite conversations with a tailor, and I've got a lot in my bank, is about that, is about how size changes and the tailor needs to adjust to that. And this is the conversation that Lyndon Johnson had with this tailor, which if you haven't heard it, is absolutely fantastic. You have to look up on YouTube. He's ordering six new pairs of trousers and Lyndon Johnson, like, I think we've probably talked about him. He's a quite an unpleasant man. He's doing a power play a lot of the time and he's really obsessed with his penis. And he said, but I want a half an inch left in the waist. I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month. Is that a good Lyndon Johnson? No, he's more.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Has anyone heard him?

• 40:19Speaker 04

  I think just doing it in English. I don't think the voice is so well known that. Yeah. I think just tell us what he said.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  He says, look, I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month, so you need to leave half an inch in, in the waist so I can let it out if I want, which I thought quite impressive. He can let out his own trousers when he wants to. And then he said, the crutch down where your nuts hang is always a little too.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Gone back into it.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can't say down where your nuts hang in an English accent, can you? The crutch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight. So when you make them, give me an inch so that I can let it out there because they cut me. It's like riding a wire fence. And when I gain a little weight, they cut me under there. Leave me an inch from where the zipper. That's a big burp he does. From where the zipper ends, round under the back and back to my bum hole. And it just goes on and on. This incredibly in-depth conversation with his tailor, talking about how much more space he needs for his balls and his bum hole. And then at the end.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Who is recording this, by the way?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  I don't know why it's recorded. I guess it's just a matter of public record. Why else conversations?

• 41:21Speaker 04

  But probably because it's America, they'll have said, right, this needs to go in the presidential library now. We need to preserve this artefact for all time.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  And it's just a bizarre touch at the end when the guy says, where would you like it sent? And he says, the White House. Look, I have to go. I've got to go to a funeral. Now, so let me hand you over to my boy who will take it from here.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It's just amazing.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  That's very interesting.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm sure Taylors, any tailor who doesn't know to conceal the bumhole isn't doing their job. Do you know what I mean?

• 41:47Speaker 03

  It feels like as soon as you get your cloth, that's the first bit of cloth that goes there. And then you work out from there, don't you?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  It's amazing. I wonder if you search the Library of Congress with the word bumhole. How many times has that come up? Might that be the unique moment?

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Well, we've got President Garfield, of course. He's been through his bumhole, so maybe there's, um, maybe there's a buck in it.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Powerful bumholes, yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  White ass bumholes.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  The first bumhole.

• 42:17Speaker 04

  There's something in this. I think we should focus on the body swap with you and the Pope first.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  I do think that's good. Not paying your tailor is a big thing, isn't it?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Sorry?

• 42:27Speaker 04

  What do you mean? Not paying your tailor. You know, in the old days, if you, like, that was the mark of a true aristocrat, was that your tailor was constantly saying, my children are hungry, I need to eat. And you're saying, yeah, I think I'll pay you in a year.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Really?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Not paying your tailor was a huge, you know, thing for the upper classes.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  I, my friend is a tailor, a Savile Row tailor, and weirdly, she was saying this just the other day. She says, no one ever pays. Yeah, she's like, it's nuts. We have to invoice for months and months and months.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  At the till now, I just don't understand. So basically, I only bring this up because of, speaking of world leaders, Taylors, there was a 19th century one called E. Tortz, a great name. And Churchill never paid. Spent six years, I think, owing for some gold lace trousers. And then another tailor he had later on, 1937, he owed them 197 quid, quite a lot of money in today's money, over 10 grand. They were so insistent on saying, look, can you just pay us for the clothes, please? That he said, right, I'm not coming anymore. I'm dumping you as my tailor. Outrageous.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Did they fight him for the breeches?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation. To I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  My fact this week is that desert grassland whitetail lizards get pregnant by pretending to mate with each other.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  This is crazy.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is pretty amazing.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's basically by grinding.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Sorry, I wish I hadn't used that word. I feel sick. These are amazing, though. So many species of whitetail lizards are all female. Desert grassland whitetail lizards are an all-female species. They're across North America. And basically, this fact was discovered in 1979. There was a biologist called David Cruz, who had collected a bunch of them because he'd heard these are all female and this is amazing. We'll have a look at how this works. And he noticed one lizard in the cage biting its cage mate's legs and tail, which he knew was a sign that they were mating because that's what they do. They bite their legs and tail and then climbed on top of her and started riding her, adopting, as I think he described it, the donut pose, which is kind of where I imagine you're riding someone, but also you're bending your head around and biting their tummy.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And there's a little hole in the middle that you could sort of fit your hand through. They look like a bracelet or a donut, in fact.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  But these were female lizards, both females?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Females. And the thing is, this actually helps them to get pregnant because by simulating this act of mating at the right time, it triggers these hormonal changes in the receivers, as in the person underneath's body, that mean that the egg can start developing into a new lizard.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really interesting.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Different times of the month, there'll be either like the male, as it were, um, version or the female version, as in different times of the month. If they're higher in progesterone, then they'll know that they're to go on top.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And they do it as a couple. Is it the same two lizards or might they find another lizard to act the male role?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  I think they go to find another. I think maybe they pass it on. So, once you've got pregnant as a female, then you can play the male role and go and pass it forward to someone else.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, pay it forward.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  It's nuts.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  It's, well, there are no nuts. That's the thing, isn't it?

• 46:28Speaker 04

  It's. Nutless. Nutless.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  One thing I found interesting is there's a guy who studies this called Professor Alexander Mikhailov. Uh, and he says that it's almost, I mean, he slightly anthropomorphizes it, but he says it's nature and evolution placing certain checks on eliminating sex completely. Even though they're not having sex, they're still going through some of the motions and that means that sex is not going away. Because actually having sex is a good thing for animals because it usually means that they can.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Diversity.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, you get diversity in your genome and stuff like that.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  But this is the really bizarre thing because they are doing the activity of sex, but they're not having sex. And as a result, the one who gets pregnant, her genome is completely replicated in the next generation, right? So they're not getting the advantage of sex, which is mixing up your genes and, you know, more resilience and diversity across the species.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  They're just having to do the sex. And it's like a little clone.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  They're getting to do the sex, Andy. Okay? Let's not say having to do the sex.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Okay. All right. I wasn't aware we were suddenly a sex positive podcast.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  But actually, I think in some of these lizards, I don't know if it's this exact same species, but they have twice as many chromosomes as other lizards.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And so actually it's not an exact clone because let's say you have a hundred different genes or whatever. You might get half of them from one of your sets of chromosomes and half of them from the other set of chromosomes. So actually there is some shuffling going on.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  And probably what happened is this species is a hybrid of two other species. But when they mated one time, they somehow got both sets of chromosomes inside them.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in fact, they've got, because we have like two sets and they've got a third set, which makes it so they've got three sets. So they're doing all this shuffling, um, like recombination, we call it when we, we do it via sex. Um, so yeah, it's not what I thought at all. Like pathogenesis doesn't lead to clones. So it actually seems that if we could perfect it, men become.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Okay, Anna. Look, I just want to read a quote that I really enjoyed, because I thought this was good. This was in, it was in a Nautilus article, I think, the website Nautilus, which is very good. It said, "Sex is far from the perfect way to reproduce. It imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called males. If half a species is made up of males, obviously, who can't make babies, like, what's the point in that half? They're just a massive waste." So there was a big push for this in the 1970s, especially among radical feminist lesbians, who basically said, "This is happening in the animal kingdom, let's do it in humans as well, and let's get rid of all the men." And when you look into it, basically, they're all radical feminist lesbians, but they're also quite eugenicistic, and also quite into

• 49:13Speaker 03

  racial superiority. There's one amazing paper about these people, written by Greta Reznorbrink, but it's almost impossible to, like, find anyone who was into this idea who wasn't also a eugenicist. No, I wasn't necessarily saying, "I'm definitely married to it." For evolutionary purposes, you can see the, it's basically, you can see the advantage of not having any males.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Everyone can have a baby at one point or another, which means you can spread the species further.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  And there was, it all came from some work by a friend of the podcast, actually, Dr. Helen Spurway, and she was the one who was, I think, in a relationship, yeah, in a relationship with J.B.S. Haldane, and those two did loads of experiments about not having oxygen in their bodies. Do you remember? Yeah, I remember. So as well as doing that, she did a lot of work on guppies who reproduce through pathogenesis, and she was the one who said, "I don't see any reason why humans can't do it. In fact, there's, there are reasons why humans can't do it." But she was the one who said it, and it was her work that all of these people started jumping on the back of, saying, "Well, let's do this." How did they propose to do it? There's quite a big jump, isn't there, from "let's do this" to "let's start reproducing, um, pathogenetically"?

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the idea, well, for instance, when this started, there was one tabloid who kind of got on the back of it as well, and started sending out messages saying, "Have you ever given birth to someone without having sex?" And loads of people replied, going, "Yes, I did! It was me! It was me!"

• 50:35Speaker 02

  That's so funny. This is really cool. 1% of American mothers, nearly, claim their births are virgin births.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Come on, why do you say "mm" like that, Dan?

• 50:44Speaker 02

  I read it.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  That's completely insane.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  No, I read it. I find it fascinating. Because there's qualifications behind that 1%.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So this comes from 2013, and it was 0.8% of respondents who said that they gave birth despite being virgins. And the good news is there are things you could do to make it likelier that you can have a virgin birth. So 31% of the virgin mothers had signed a chastity pledge. That really helps.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  If it's during Advent, that's even more helpful. I think something like 60%, some mad number, found out they were pregnant during Advent, run up to Christmas, you're likely to be younger and also to have parents who did not tell you about sex or contraception. Those are the things you could do to really game the system and ensure you have a virgin birth.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Very cool. Very nice. Hey, by the way, this whole thing that these two lizards go through, the act that you were describing, if you would like to experience that yourself, there's actually a workshop you can do to simulate it.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Where you're kind of getting a donut with someone.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I assume the donut must be part of it. There's a play that gets put on in various places around the world by two performance artists. It is called The Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards. It's a dance drama. They dress up as the lizards. They come out on stage. And there's sort of scientific captions explaining what's going on. They just sort of put their tongues out and so on. And then they start mating on stage. And then you see a post-coital moment at the end of the play. And it was so successful.

• 52:12Speaker 04

  Spoilers, spoilers.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  It was so successful. It's literally called Desert Grassland Whiptails Lizards.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  They needed to give it a more pretentious name. At the moment, I'm not really into it.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  The Donut of Erotica would be good.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Donut of Love.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Donut of Love.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Double glazed.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Because like donuts have glazing.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  They have glazing. Yeah, I don't think anyone's getting glazed in this scenario, are they? But clearly it was so popular, they got asked, how do I get involved? And so they do workshops now where you come and you lay down as the lizard and you understand the movements and it's this specific one. And I've seen photos, it looks fantastic.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  That's got to be 100% pervert audience for the workshop, isn't it?

• 52:57Speaker 02

  I don't, it doesn't look like that's how it's been presented, but um.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  We have actually touched on these guys before.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Just to quickly say, people who listened to the Mary Roach episode might remember, we talked about the state lizard of New Mexico, which is the leaping lesbian lizard. And that is a subspecies of the ones that we're talking about.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Well, not another whiptail.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Another whiptail, yeah. And again, it's because the reason they're called the leaping lesbian lizard is because they mate without need for males.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Does anyone else start to feel a bit, sorry for all whiptail lizards, that they are known for just one single thing? When you're actually trying to research anything else about them.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  You can get to page 20,000 on Google and you're still, oh, they have lesbian sex. They probably have really interesting hobbies.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  I read that they stress eat in response to noise.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  So there's a load of them who are living near an airbase in America. And whenever the aircraft go over, they have a higher level of cortisol, so they're more stressed and they're also eating way more.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  So that's one thing.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  They also don't like eating very colourful grasshoppers. They found that the more brightly coloured a grasshopper is, the less likely it is that these whiptails will eat it.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  May I be honest? I can see why this is left to page 20,001 on Google.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Is sex worthwhile? This is the debate.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 54:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Between who?

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You and your wife?

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Yes, it is because you get genetic diversity.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  That's it, right? All animals, right, have genetic mutations that crop up every now and again. In humans, it is possible to deal with negative mutations through this recombination thing that Anna, you mentioned. But with other animals, like pure pathogenesis animals, which never have to have sex, they only clone themselves, the bad mutations just escalate and their mutations are normally negative. So they just slowly affect your fitness over time until that genetic line, that particular lizard or whatever, is just absolutely screwed. You know, it just can't function very well in the world. You can't say, "I'd like to go back to only having two balls, please," or whatever.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Well, learn to have sex.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Well, actually, that does, that does sometimes happen. So there's some species of stick and sex that have arguably the best or the worst of both worlds, whichever way you look at it, in that they reproduce pathogenetically, but every now and then they have sex.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, they've just, they've looked at the, like, the genetic line of all these guys and seen that it's very similar, very similar, very similar, very similar. And then suddenly there's like quite a big difference. And it looks like they're having sex at that moment and then they'll go back to pathogenesis for a few more generations.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  That's crazy.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  That generation must be so disapproved of when it comes along.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Every generation thinks they invented sex, right? In this case, it's actually true.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  But it's like fashion, it comes around in 70-year cycles or something, doesn't it? Sex is back.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  There seem to be other species that have sex sometimes and then pathogenetically procreate sometimes. And one of them is boa, boa snakes, boa snakes. So in 2024, there was a Brazilian rainbow boa called Ronaldo. I don't know why, doesn't have any feet, been kept in a cage in Portsmouth and hadn't been in contact with another snake for nine years, so they claimed. And there was a student monitoring his cage and a student came and reported to their superiors, her superiors, that 14 babies had appeared in Ronaldo's cage. And I feel, how bad would this intern have been that the animal care technician who this was reported to said, "We just didn't believe him at first. They thought they'd made a mistake." Which is quite weird to come and report that you've seen 14 new snakes in the cage and for the boss to go,

• 56:45Speaker 01

  "I don't think you have. No, you must have. Can you go and recount? It's just one."

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we are all online on social media. I'm on Instagram under Schreiberland. Andy?

• 57:11Speaker 04

  At Andrew Hunter M.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  James?

• 57:13Speaker 03

  No Such Thing is James Harkin.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Yep. Or you can get to us as a group by going, where Anna?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  You can email podcast at qi.com or on Instagram at No Such Thing.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  That's right. And if you would like to contribute to the Monday show, which is known as Little Fish, do send in your best facts to that email address as well, [email protected], or the feedback that you've got about the show generally, because we gather all that stuff up and we bring it to our secret club, Club Fish, which exists on Patreon. If you want to join, patreon.com/clubfish and you'll find multiple tiers of exciting stuff that you can get involved with, one of which is drop us a line. This is the audience feedback show. We love reading out your mail, so do check that out. Otherwise, just come back next week because we're going to have another episode. Thank you as ever to our team here, Liang Li, Ethan Ruparelia, as well as the other Fishbusters, and we will see you again next week with another episode. Goodbye.

• 58:18Speaker 05

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribes Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an al-

• 59:13Speaker 00

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