Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: Accordion To Whom? About this episode Anna, Dan and James discuss YOUR facts including salt, swine and CPR. We hear what Rufus Hound yelled to Dan in the street. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast fact custodians.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.
0:40 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to Little Fish, the new show from No Such Thing as a Fish, The Maker's Off, and this is my first time hosting it, and what do I say aside from that?
0:52 Speaker 02 You sound like we've got a gun to your head.
0:54 Speaker 01 That's how I feel every time I come in here.
0:58 Speaker 02 First of all, tell everyone the date and the headline on the piece of newspaper that you're holding. And then you just have to say who we are, what the show is, and then we'll get into some facts.
1:08 Speaker 01 This is when we can't be bothered to do any more research for ourselves, so instead we dip into our inbox and we have a look at all the great facts you've found for us. And we're hoping this eventually becomes a self-making show and we don't need to do any more work ourselves. So thank you for providing some amazing facts this week in our inbox. And who's got a good one to kick us off?
1:28 Speaker 02 I've got a good one. Nice to see you all after a long week that we've had since the last one of these that we did.
1:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I barely remember what you guys look like.
1:36 Speaker 02 Well, actually, it's cast your minds back all that time. We were talking about sumo wrestlers, and I have a fact here about sumo from Matthew Bright. And Matthew says that each year professional sumo tournaments in Japan consume about 4,000 kilograms of salt.
1:54 Speaker 03 Ah.
1:55 Speaker 01 Is that because they throw, don't they throw salt?
1:57 Speaker 02 They throw salt, yeah. So this is what Matthew's worked out. So each tournament lasts 15 days and they're held six times a year and each tournament consumes about 650 kilograms of salt, according to a journalist, which Matthew found. And then if you work that all out, it's 4,000 kilograms. And the salt is like to purify the ring.
2:19 Speaker 03 Interesting.
2:20 Speaker 02 And for, like you say, ceremonial reasons. And yeah.
2:24 Speaker 03 Does it grit it as well? Does it give you good, because a lot of it is about holding your stance.
2:28 Speaker 02 You're absolutely right, but the ring itself is like made, it's got sand in it anyway, I think, which means it's quite well gritted, but it can't hurt. Yeah, especially on a cold day.
2:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:41 Speaker 03 When it's on ice, sumo on ice.
2:44 Speaker 02 Sumo on ice.
2:45 Speaker 03 Why has that not been done?
2:46 Speaker 02 I mean, that has to be a thing, doesn't it?
2:49 Speaker 03 We're getting a lot of sumo action in London at the moment.
2:52 Speaker 02 We are.
2:52 Speaker 03 There's a lot of exhibition matches that have been happening at places like the Royal Albert Hall.
2:56 Speaker 02 Have you ever been walking around London and just seen the sumo wrestlers?
3:00 Speaker 03 I saw a guy go past on a bike. Yeah.
3:02 Speaker 02 On a bike?
3:03 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. That's cool. That's a cartoon. Are you sure that wasn't a cartoon you saw?
3:06 Speaker 03 I'm pretty sure I saw him on a bike. It was just down the road. And yeah, they're all over. Well, certainly when they were in town, you would see them everywhere.
3:12 Speaker 01 Was he on a ti- like a child's bike? Tiny, tiny.
3:15 Speaker 02 It looked like that, probably.
3:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:17 Speaker 02 I've seen the, I went to the final of the year of sumo in Tokyo when I was there, which was very cool, but it was the day we arrived and we were so jet lagged, we both fell asleep in the middle of the tournament. I felt like people should have been throwing salt on us to keep us away.
3:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, smelling salts. Chuck those out.
3:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:36 Speaker 01 Do you mind throwing salt over your shoulder for good luck when you use it?
3:38 Speaker 02 Actually, yeah. Even though I know it's stupid and I'm not very superstitious generally, I just like, I think it's cool.
3:46 Speaker 03 I have found myself in restaurants going, who's that cool guy? The salt thing.
3:51 Speaker 02 I wouldn't do it in a restaurant. It's when I'm cooking and I spill some.
3:54 Speaker 03 Okay, right.
3:55 Speaker 02 It's when you spill it, not when you put it on your food, right?
3:57 Speaker 03 Yes.
3:58 Speaker 01 What do you mean when you spill it?
3:59 Speaker 02 Like, that's the idea with the, so you spill salt and that's very bad luck. And so you throw some over your shoulder into the devil's face.
4:06 Speaker 01 Oh, we just did it whenever, whenever we salt anything, salt it and then toss it over your shoulder.
4:10 Speaker 02 I'm not that cool.
4:11 Speaker 01 Well, I've always been a few rungs above you, haven't I?
4:16 Speaker 01 But since being the person who cleans the house, rather than my mother when I was a kid, when we all did it, I've realised it's incredibly annoying. I wouldn't let anyone do that in my house. There's just salt on the floor the whole time.
4:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true. But at least you're not slipping over and it's also purified spiritually.
4:29 Speaker 03 There you go. That's why there's no ghost in your house.
4:31 Speaker 02 Do you know that sumo wrestlers, if you're a sumo wrestler, you are associated with a 9.8 year negative lifespan compared to a non-sumo wrestler?
4:41 Speaker 01 It does make a bit of sense, doesn't it?
4:43 Speaker 02 It does, but actually, like, most, obviously, most sports, if you do them, you have a longer lifespan.
4:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:49 Speaker 02 Because you, you know, if you're a gymnast, you have a 8.2 years higher life expectancy. And there is one sport.
4:59 Speaker 01 Sorry, that's unbelievable. 8.2 year higher life expectancy. Is it too late?
5:04 Speaker 02 Not a gymnast. For you to be a gymnast, I'm afraid so, Anna. They're usually about 14, aren't they?
5:10 Speaker 01 Max.
5:12 Speaker 03 What an amazing sudden entry into the British.
5:16 Speaker 01 Former podcaster, Alan Jaginski, quit last year to become the roly poly specialist.
5:25 Speaker 02 Um, there is one sport, according to this study that I read this in, that has a higher improvement of life expectancy. And I can't find out why, and it doesn't make any sense. But do you want to guess what it is?
5:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay.
5:40 Speaker 01 Curling.
5:41 Speaker 02 Curling, no.
5:41 Speaker 03 Skateboarding.
5:43 Speaker 02 Skateboarding, no. It is pole vaulting.
5:46 Speaker 01 What?
5:47 Speaker 02 Pole vaulters live, on average, 8.4 years longer than the rest of us.
5:52 Speaker 03 Must be something to do with the clean air they're getting access to at the top bit.
5:57 Speaker 01 Definitely that, yeah.
5:58 Speaker 02 Do you think, or maybe, you know, like, there's something about special relativity if you're in space, like, time slows down or something?
6:04 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. You don't age, of course.
6:07 Speaker 03 Time travelling. Wow.
6:09 Speaker 01 They must have got better since I last watched the pole vault for getting that high.
6:12 Speaker 03 It's really fun these days. They go up and they come down three years younger.
6:18 Speaker 02 But yeah, I don't know why that is. I, my guess is that probably compared to these other sports, there's quite a small sample size.
6:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, right. Great mystery to solve. Shall I do one? All right. This is from Duncan Pierce. There are 10,000 accordions under a parking lot in a Swedish town called Alvдилän.
6:38 Speaker 01 Dude, I feel like Andy gives you the hard ones to pronounce.
6:41 Speaker 02 I think so as well. And also often when we're doing the names of the custodians, every difficult one seems to land on you somehow.
6:48 Speaker 03 It's so weird.
6:49 Speaker 02 Um, when you walk through this parking lot, does it go?
6:54 Speaker 01 Wait, is that your accordion impression?
6:56 Speaker 02 Well, my accordion's very old.
6:58 Speaker 01 Nice.
7:00 Speaker 02 It's got a few holes in it.
7:01 Speaker 01 Clearly.
7:03 Speaker 02 I can play the accordion.
7:04 Speaker 01 Can you?
7:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, I have an accordion. I think, have I ever, I didn't bring it on any shows or anything.
7:10 Speaker 03 I feel like we did something where I've heard you play it in context of a potential live show piece.
7:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe when we did like a pre-show or something. I can't remember.
7:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:21 Speaker 02 I do have an accordion and it doesn't sound anything like that. Even when I play it, who's not that good at it?
7:26 Speaker 03 Why did we not let you play it?
7:30 Speaker 03 I should give you a bit more on this.
7:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, why?
7:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is Duncan sends in saying he watched a documentary called The Accordion Graveyard in Alvdillan and the hosts tried to uncover the prominent myth in the Swedish accordion community that 10,000 accordions are buried there.
7:47 Speaker 03 And they're trying to get to the bottom of this major myth about.
7:49 Speaker 01 Why, what's behind the myth? Why would they be buried there?
7:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:53 Speaker 01 Who's come up with, accordion to whom?
7:55 Speaker 03 Brilliant, lovely.
7:56 Speaker 01 Thank you.
7:57 Speaker 03 So there's, there's a leading theory.
7:59 Speaker 01 Okay.
7:59 Speaker 03 That the society has. It's that they are old Eastern European accordions which were bought by Hagstrom in the 1930s. They were planning on renovating, but by the 1960s, the accordion market took a big dip.
8:13 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
8:14 Speaker 03 They weren't selling as well and they had outsourced a lot of the industry to Asia. So they buried their inventory. The exact number of accordions isn't known, but the myth says that there is 10,000. And so they did this documentary and they found, yeah, there's a
8:27 Speaker 02 What did they do? They dug it up like Time Team and they found them?
8:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, they found, they found remnants of a lot of them. I don't think they found 10,000.
8:36 Speaker 01 There were, some of them would have decomposed, wouldn't they? The less well-made ones. That's, hold on. So there were actually, I thought this was a bullshit myth made up by this mad community of accordion aficionados. And it's actually true. There are 10,000 accordions buried under a parking lot.
8:50 Speaker 03 I feel like you would need that ending for the documentary to work.
8:54 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Do you reckon the doco makers went in the middle of the night and dug some holes and put some accordions in there?
8:59 Speaker 03 Very true. Very true. You'd hear them though, in the night, putting them in, wouldn't you?
9:06 Speaker 01 Where's the mute button on this bastard?
9:09 Speaker 02 If you ever, in 10,000 years, if someone digs up that parking lot, they'll probably think like the king of tedious, annoying instruments was buried there.
9:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, yes.
9:19 Speaker 01 You're so right. Do you think all kind of Egyptian pyramids were actually like people had too many? So what do you get?
9:24 Speaker 02 Timmy bricks?
9:27 Speaker 02 Just put them in a pile. No, not that pile. It's a slightly neater pile.
9:31 Speaker 01 Stuff inside them. Yeah. All right, moving on. Let's have a fact. Let's have a fact from Hayley Wilson. And she's titled this, Aussie bystanders spooked by boobs means women less likely to receive CPR than men. And basically, it's, yes. When you sort of think it back in your head, it does make sense. And her fact is that CPR training dummies with boobs on them are now being used at surf lifesaving clubs in New South Wales. Because women are less likely to receive CPR. They're 10% less likely to receive it. And 50% less likely to receive defibrillation from bystanders in an emergency. Because reasons cited were people a bit scared of the boobs.
10:14 Speaker 02 I think ironically, these have been made for like slightly prudish people. But probably going to be utilized by perverts.
10:23 Speaker 03 Yeah. That's why I brought mine.
10:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, they've all mysteriously disappeared, it does say, so yeah.
10:31 Speaker 02 You don't use tongues for the kiss of life, Dan.
10:36 Speaker 01 There's a good punchline. The initiative is called CP her. CP her, her. CPR or CP her.
10:43 Speaker 02 H E R.
10:44 Speaker 01 H E R.
10:45 Speaker 03 It should be called CP bra.
10:47 Speaker 02 That's a better one.
10:48 Speaker 01 Good. You should have been on the PR team.
10:50 Speaker 03 Then they don't let me near the dolls anymore.
10:55 Speaker 02 Okay, here is another one about body parts questionable. It's by Ori Folga and Ori says that eye drops made from pig semen deliver cancer treatment to mice.
11:08 Speaker 01 So many things in that fact.
11:10 Speaker 02 Bit of a headline, really.
11:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:12 Speaker 02 This is an interesting thing, I think, because I read this article a week or two ago and immediately put it in my file of possible headlines for fish.
11:22 Speaker 03 Okay.
11:23 Speaker 02 But now it's come in from an audience member. I think that could be a problem in future. If our audience gets better and better at finding facts, we're going to have none left for ourselves.
11:32 Speaker 03 We might become what Anna said at the top of the show, just entirely an audience fact show, yeah.
11:37 Speaker 01 Lovely.
11:37 Speaker 02 Maybe. So what this is, is that there's a type of cancer called a retinoblastoma. It's very hard to get the medicine to it. And what they've managed to do is take advantage of the fact that sperm can penetrate eggs. But instead of penetrating the eggs, they penetrate the eye.
11:56 Speaker 01 Amazing.
11:56 Speaker 02 And it's basically a part of the sperm called exosomes, which are tiny little bubbles of fat which can send the proteins into the egg. They've not tried this in humans yet, but they think that it seems to work in mice. And so why not try it in humans? I don't think it's you actually get a pig sperm. I think it's like you extract these proteins from it and then you attach those onto some agar jelly or something. I don't know. And then send it through that way.
12:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:23 Speaker 01 And whose job is it to masturbate the pig?
12:27 Speaker 01 In this.
12:28 Speaker 02 Call Rebecca loose.
12:32 Speaker 02 That's an old callback.
12:33 Speaker 03 Wow, that's a deep cut to pop culture from about 10 years ago, yeah.
12:38 Speaker 02 When we first did this podcast 12 years ago, that would have been on the cutting edge of satire.
12:43 Speaker 01 I feel like that's so recent still. Maybe it's because it's the only pop culture news I've known about for the last 20 years.
12:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, anytime he has a big moment, like a documentary came out about his life, she's back in the news.
12:54 Speaker 02 Who, David Beckham?
12:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
12:56 Speaker 02 So it's David Beckham's ex mistress who was on a reality show and excited a poor sign fellow contestant.
13:05 Speaker 03 Yes, alleged ex mistress.
13:08 Speaker 02 Yes.
13:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:09 Speaker 02 She's not allowed in any showings of Peppa Pig.
13:15 Speaker 01 Claire and David Cameron go to the same help group, don't they?
13:20 Speaker 01 Right, next up?
13:20 Speaker 02 Yes, please.
13:21 Speaker 03 I got a little etymology one here, so.
13:24 Speaker 02 Oh, thank God.
13:25 Speaker 03 As you know, this will be butchered by me. But Chris Perry writes in, here's a submission for Little Fish. If a Welsh rugby team was made up of Joneses, Jenkinses, Davises and Evanses, they would be the least Welsh rugby team ever.
13:40 Speaker 02 What?
13:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:41 Speaker 02 They're the most common Welsh names, aren't they?
13:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, but not in the Old Welsh alphabet because the letters V, J and K do not appear in the Old Welsh alphabet. And I've got a little chart here that you guys can see of how the Welsh language works. So you've got A, B, C and then cha, D, double D, E, F, double F, G, N, G, H, I, L. Go straight to L, so we've got no J then.
14:05 Speaker 01 Sounds like bra sizes, doesn't it?
14:06 Speaker 02 It does a little. Double D, I think, is pronounced like an F, isn't it?
14:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:12 Speaker 02 Like Cardiff ends in double D in Welsh.
14:15 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:15 Speaker 02 I think. Not very good on Welsh. But yeah, the thing is with Welsh surnames is that they were, they didn't traditionally have surnames in Wales, but the British forced the surnames onto them. And so they all just chose like Evans, son of Evan, or Jones, son of John. Like, that's why they've got so few surnames and they're all quite similar. Williams, son of William, they were just.
14:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they could still say those, as in they still had the sounds in their language of those things, they just looked like different letters.
14:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. I think, I think Chris was just enjoying the quirk of the letters that we'd recognise them today are so prominent in modern Welsh names.
14:54 Speaker 01 All right, Chris, just want to clarify that they could still say those sounds.
14:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, we don't want the Welsh writing then.
14:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, he has, I should, for his defence, say naturally, this is an interesting insight into Welsh language and I would never suggest a Welsh rugby player called Jones is not truly Welsh, at least not to his or her face.
15:10 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
15:15 Speaker 04 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.
15:30 Speaker 05 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.
15:41 Speaker 04 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
15:46 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
15:52 Speaker 04 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.
16:14 Speaker 01 I've got another one here. It's from Alistair Patterson, who opens with, "My stupid little fact is..."
16:20 Speaker 02 Oh.
16:20 Speaker 01 Which I'm gonna say, don't do yourself down, Alistair.
16:23 Speaker 02 Let us be the judge of that.
16:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, so we're about to judge it. "My stupid little fact is that the Australian island state of Tasmania technically shares an 85-meter land border with Victoria."
16:33 Speaker 02 Oh.
16:34 Speaker 01 I actually love stuff. I love cartography cock-ups.
16:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, you've been to Tassie quite a lot of times, right?
16:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, kept trying to find the land border, got very wet. Yeah.
16:44 Speaker 02 Is that on, is there a, it's like Kangaroo Island belongs to both of them or something?
16:48 Speaker 01 There is an island which wasn't supposed to be on the land border. It's called Boundary Islet, so they should have known based on the name. No, it didn't, it didn't used to be on the boundary. So in 1801, a guy called Captain John Black made a mapping error, and he determined that this place, which is now called Boundary Islet, was slightly further north than it actually was. And so if it was further north enough, it would just be Victorian. And then they remeasured everything and they realized the islet was actually a bit further south, and it's bisected by the border, so they share it.
17:17 Speaker 02 Do they have like really hilarious things that happen to the people who live near the border, or you know, you can buy fireworks? Works on one side and pornography on the other side.
17:25 Speaker 01 Shouldn't they?
17:26 Speaker 02 Or is it just an island where no one lives apart from a few sheep?
17:29 Speaker 01 I'm afraid it's really an island where literally nothing whatsoever happens. It's of no consequence whatsoever. But maybe they'll find a huge oil well beneath it at some point.
17:37 Speaker 02 Does it have any like natural lie of the land that might be good for a podcast to play in? Like a little raised area where a podcast can do their show and then a little area where some audience can sit.
17:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, he didn't specify, but I'm sure we could have something erected.
17:53 Speaker 02 Um, and this could be where we play.
17:55 Speaker 01 This is our next gig.
17:56 Speaker 02 I think now we probably can't sell out the Sydney Opera House anymore that we've been insulting Australians quite a lot over the last few months.
18:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:03 Speaker 02 So we might have to play this island where no one lives.
18:05 Speaker 01 Is that so? You can say we've sold out venues in Victoria and Tasmania.
18:10 Speaker 03 Two shows in one. Yeah, that's great. We did go to New Zealand and the three of us did an episode in a toilet.
18:18 Speaker 01 Oh, we did. Yeah.
18:19 Speaker 03 Or just next to the toilet. So we are.
18:21 Speaker 02 Was that us three? Andy wasn't there, was he?
18:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, Andy wasn't there. Yeah. So currently we are playing in Mean Doses is the, uh, is the bar it's called. We're in their toilet with an exclusive episode.
18:30 Speaker 02 Because Buttons was there like this week, right?
18:33 Speaker 03 That's right.
18:34 Speaker 02 He sent us a message.
18:34 Speaker 03 Yeah. So Leon, who was on an episode of one of our live tour shows in New Zealand when Andy was away. He randomly was there and he sent us a video and it's still playing in the, in the toilet.
18:44 Speaker 01 Cause this is, this is one that we found, a listener sent us a thing in years ago saying that it constantly played No Such Thing As A Fish in the toilets. And so we recorded an episode there, but they don't play that episode in the toilets, do they? They still play our old episodes.
18:55 Speaker 03 No, they played that toilet.
18:56 Speaker 01 Wait, do they just literally play that one over and over again now?
18:58 Speaker 02 If you're listening to this show and you think you've listened to every single episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, unless you've been in that toilet, you are wrong.
19:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's true.
19:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, they were playing it exclusively, but now they've put it on rotation with a few other episodes. I think maybe they got some complaints about the repetition, you know?
19:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:16 Speaker 03 This is the ninth poo I've had in here where I'm listening to the same episode.
19:19 Speaker 02 They're like, no, no, that's a different episode. It's just Andy is still talking about his book.
19:25 Speaker 01 Can I say something, this is so tangential but about toilets that I wonder every single day, and I just wanted to know if a listener has an answer. So I often work in a cafe, local cafe, and lots of people work in cafes. And I always think, do they have special drainage sewage systems? Because obviously what people do in cafes, they drink coffee. There's no way that every single person in that cafe isn't going to the toilet at some point and doing a huge turd, right? And then I always think, if this many people are doing that, they must have amazing toilets to not be blocked. And I just wanted to know if cafes, if that's a thing, if you run a cafe, or if you own a cafe, if you have to invest in really heavy duty sewage systems.
20:03 Speaker 02 Interesting. No seasings of fish, asking all the big questions. You don't hear this on the rest of politics, do you?
20:12 Speaker 01 I would love to have Rory Stewart's take on shitting in cafes. Anyway, any more for any more?
20:22 Speaker 02 I think that's enough.
20:24 Speaker 01 Well, we'll finish on that. Good. Let us know. That was lovely, lovely spending time with all of you here today. And it is now time to give you a little gift, some of you a little gift. So at the end of our Little Fish episodes, we hand over a fact to very special members of our top tier of the secret club fish. And so we're going to give some facts to people to be custodians of for the rest of eternity, aren't we? And James, who are you going to give a fact to?
20:52 Speaker 02 Okay, I can offer custodianship of this fact to Timothy Sit.
20:59 Speaker 01 Timothy Sit!
21:01 Speaker 02 Well, it's quite appropriate to your name, because your fact is that the trailer for the longest movie ever made is 72 minutes long.
21:10 Speaker 03 Wow.
21:12 Speaker 02 And I imagine you would have to sit through it, Timothy.
21:15 Speaker 01 You wouldn't want to be standing.
21:16 Speaker 02 No.
21:17 Speaker 03 All right, here's another one. This goes out to Eric Olafson. And your fact is, in the Middle Ages, lots of churches had statues of Jesus, which had moving arms so he could be taken down from the cross and carried around.
21:29 Speaker 01 What's really cool about that is Eric Olafson, sounds like he's from the Middle Ages. Doesn't he?
21:37 Speaker 02 We're already very much on the line, taking the piss out of Welsh surnames. I don't think we should go up to Scandinavia now. I'm sure Olafsson is a perfectly noble name.
21:47 Speaker 01 It just sounds pre Norman.
21:49 Speaker 03 Yes, yes.
21:51 Speaker 01 I do remember this one. This is, this was one of my favourite facts we've ever done, actually. This was your fact, I think, Dan, wasn't it?
21:56 Speaker 03 That's right, it was Andy's.
21:59 Speaker 01 I've never been able to tell the difference between the two. I will take the next fact, shall I? So here's a fact for Holly Miller.
22:07 Speaker 02 Okay.
22:08 Speaker 01 Holly Miller, guard this fact. Twice in its history, America has been run by a shepherd.
22:14 Speaker 02 Oh, that's nice.
22:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, with their flock of sheep.
22:20 Speaker 03 Who would that have been?
22:20 Speaker 01 Oh, there was, which, which was the president who kept a sheep on his lawn? That was maybe Teddy Roosevelt, someone around the turn of the 20th century, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was a shepherd.
22:29 Speaker 02 Feels like it would be one of the early ones who was a shepherd.
22:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:32 Speaker 02 Yeah. But it wasn't Madison, because we've done him on the main show recently, and we would remember that.
22:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, it wasn't Madison, not a shepherd.
22:39 Speaker 03 But his wife was called Dolly, who was a sheep.
22:43 Speaker 01 That's a good point.
22:44 Speaker 02 Very good.
22:45 Speaker 01 This is blowing wide open.
22:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
22:48 Speaker 01 I think Ty, Henry, is it Tyler? Is it Henry Tyler?
22:51 Speaker 02 No, John Tyler.
22:52 Speaker 01 John Tyler. Well, I think it was Henry Tyler.
22:56 Speaker 03 Um, this was a very fun episode because we had Rufus Hound on.
22:59 Speaker 02 We did.
22:59 Speaker 03 And this was Rufus's fact. And do you remember in the old QI office where we recorded, just below us was a barber shop? And it just so happened that is where Rufus used to get his moustache and beard and hair done. And he said, oh, I've booked a haircut and I need to go halfway through the recording of the episode.
23:19 Speaker 02 It was so weird.
23:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:20 Speaker 01 Wild.
23:20 Speaker 03 And so we paused it and he went away and he took a very long time. And we think, and I want to ask Rufus this.
23:26 Speaker 02 We think he went for an enormous poo. There was a problem with the sewage system because I'm like, we're not a cafe.
23:34 Speaker 01 Go do your poo's in near Rufus. Jesus.
23:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, we've got a theory.
23:41 Speaker 03 We've got a theory that he, um, he didn't do as much research as he hoped he could have done. And he was feeling it during the episode. And so when he went down, he just did a lot more research. Because when he came back, he was packed with facts, as Rufus is about everything, but.
23:54 Speaker 01 And his hair still looks shit, so.
23:58 Speaker 02 He's a very presentable man, Rufus Ham.
24:00 Speaker 03 Yeah. Do you know how he came on the show as well?
24:04 Speaker 02 What do you mean?
24:04 Speaker 03 So the reason he came on is I bumped into him on the streets a couple of weeks before, while I was walking down Maiden Lane, which is the road we used to record on. And I was walking and I heard a man yell from very far down the road, "Yellow shoe wanker."
24:23 Speaker 03 And at that point, I was wearing these yellow sports shoes that were like luminous. They were, and he'd spotted me from like 100 yards away, the whole street turned.
24:33 Speaker 02 But did you know him at that stage?
24:34 Speaker 03 I did, yeah.
24:35 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Cause we, like, he was on Museum of Curiosity relatively early, so.
24:39 Speaker 03 And he used to do all the warmups at QI.
24:41 Speaker 02 QI, yeah.
24:42 Speaker 03 Back in the day, before the recordings. Yeah.
24:44 Speaker 02 He did, yeah, yeah.
24:45 Speaker 03 And there were a couple of pilots that QI tried to do back in the day, and Rufus was either a host or the panelist on it.
24:51 Speaker 02 I mean, of course, he knew you. Like, he wouldn't have known necessarily you always wear yellow shoes, but he knows you're a wanker, so.
24:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's the bit that wasn't contested, Ben.
25:02 Speaker 01 Right, time for another fact?
25:04 Speaker 02 Yes, this one goes out to Vanessa Sterling. Vanessa, your fact is that there is a village in Russia where every single person knows how to tightrope walk.
25:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. I feel like some facts really stick out as a classic fish fact. And for me, that was one that I've remembered and thought about many times since.
25:26 Speaker 02 Do you know why? I think when we wrote our book, The Book of the Year, we considered writing another book. Do you remember? We discussed it and we were gonna call it The Book of Now.
25:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:35 Speaker 02 And the idea is that right now, somewhere in the world, this thing is happening. And there are loads of things happening. And one of them was, in this village in Russia, right now, everyone knows how to tightrope walk.
25:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:46 Speaker 03 I still love the idea of that book. It's that image, you wake up in the morning, right now, when you wake up, someone is tightrope walking here. There's a yellow shoe wanker going down Maiden Lane. Yeah, great idea.
25:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, really nice idea. Well, we better not put it in the edit then, because someone will steal it if it's that good.
26:01 Speaker 02 Well, that's okay, because we have evidence that we thought of it first.
26:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:04 Speaker 01 Oh, let someone else do the work again. I see.
26:06 Speaker 03 Publishers might be listening as well. We could, we could sell our books here.
26:09 Speaker 02 I think all publishers have turned off this podcast since Andy started working on his books. I think literally everyone in the publishing industry in London has just gone, ah, you know what, we're gonna list top menu now.
26:19 Speaker 03 Yeah. We really haven't considered the actual career damage that man has done to us with his buddy cop TV shows.
26:27 Speaker 01 Okay, next fact.
26:28 Speaker 03 All right, this one's going out to Max. Max, you know who you are. Your fact is, when making model railways, people make coal out of larger bits of coal.
26:42 Speaker 03 Who's fact could that have been?
26:47 Speaker 02 Okay, hear me out, guys. Small coal cop.
26:55 Speaker 02 But actually, I think this fact, people have written into us on Dropper's Line referencing this fact, haven't they? And I think, wasn't it true that someone had a wedding? And the favors that they gave to all the guests was fake bits of coal, like actually made out of chocolate cake or whatever.
27:11 Speaker 03 Chocolate coal.
27:11 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
27:12 Speaker 02 The reason was because they partly themed the wedding on fish. And this was like a...
27:18 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
27:19 Speaker 02 ...these facts. And they sent us some of the coal, didn't they?
27:22 Speaker 03 There'll be some here for you, Anna.
27:23 Speaker 01 Some of the chocolate coal?
27:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah, we all got our own little pouch.
27:27 Speaker 01 Wow, I can't believe you waited this long to tell me. See, this is the kind of thing I came back for. Here is a fact. I'm gonna say the fact first this time, and then the person who's gonna cust- custard it. And this fact is that in Britain, pedestrians step to the right to avoid each other. And in Japan, they step to the left. And nobody knows why. And I'm gonna hand that fact over to Max Scuperson to be the custodian of that.
27:52 Speaker 02 Very nice.
27:52 Speaker 01 It's a weird one. Which way do you step?
27:55 Speaker 02 I think I step in the same direction as the person walking towards me. And then we both change our minds and step in the other direction. And then both step in the other direction. And they go, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. And then kind of slightly barge into each other.
28:08 Speaker 03 And then you barge, and then you're making out, and then it's...
28:11 Speaker 02 Like, dad's sister, leave me alone.
28:16 Speaker 02 Is that a callback to so long ago, wasn't it? Last week's show.
28:19 Speaker 03 But good she's a character now on the show.
28:24 Speaker 03 She'll enjoy that.
28:25 Speaker 01 James, you got another fact?
28:26 Speaker 02 Yes, I have. My last one for the day. This fact is under the custody of Keno. K E N O. Could be Kenno, Keno. But anyway, either way, your fact now, forever and forsaking all others, is that half of all California condors were raised by glove puppets.
28:45 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. This is great. This is, um... A reintroduction programme?
28:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think one of the early ones, and it's been like a lot of other birds, they do similar things now, right?
28:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:58 Speaker 02 Do you remember?
28:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:00 Speaker 01 This is the idea that they attach very strongly to whoever raises them. And so you can't have a person, otherwise they'll be attached to that person. So the person dresses up as a condor.
29:08 Speaker 03 Do they imprint? Is that what it's called? Or is that different?
29:10 Speaker 01 No, yeah, they imprint, yeah. All right, Dan, final fact to close with. Make it a good one.
29:16 Speaker 03 This goes to Gemma Harkin, and you are now the custodian of the fact that the first ever novel ended mid-sentence.
29:23 Speaker 01 Oh, yes, The Tale of Genji, written by that lady in ages ago.
29:28 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, in that country far away.
29:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, place, yeah, foreign place.
29:33 Speaker 03 Eric Olafson probably knows her. Probably friends are there.
29:37 Speaker 02 Or John Jones.
29:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, that's a cracking fact to end on. I would say that because it's one of mine. But all great facts, guard them wisely. And thank you so much to all of those new custodians. So that is thank you to Timothy.
29:51 Speaker 03 Sit.
29:54 Speaker 01 God, he must get annoyed with that. Thank you to Timothy, Eric, Holly, Vanessa, Max, other Max, Max Scuperson, Kino and Gemma. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Little Fish. If you want to listen to an episode of the Big Fish, the real podcast, No Such Thing As A Fish, we'll be back again on Friday. If you want to listen to another fake podcast, Little Fish, we'll be back again on Monday. And what else can you do?
30:20 Speaker 02 What if they have some facts to send? Where would they send those?
30:23 Speaker 01 Guys, if you've got some facts to send, you should send them to podcast at q i dot com. And if you join up to the highest tier of Club Fish, you might get custodianship of one of our facts. And that's it from us. That's from James.
30:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:36 Speaker 01 From Dan.
30:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:37 Speaker 01 From me, Anna.
30:38 Speaker 02 And what do you say at the end of things?
30:39 Speaker 01 And then thank you for listening to this podcast. We'll see you again sometime. Goodbye.
30:51 Speaker 01 It's harder than it looks, isn't it?
30:52 Speaker 03 It is. And not to be nitpicky, but it's not that you might get custodianship if you sign up. You definitely will. It's part of the deal.
30:59 Speaker 01 You will get custodianship of one of our facts if you sign up to our top tier. Do you want me to do it again? Normally?
31:05 Speaker 03 Did Andy write your outro?
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