Little Fish: Crufsts

Andy and James explain why they can't do a high five without it being awkward, while they and Dan discuss YOUR facts. This week's subjects include chess, curling and curators. And the gang announce eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians. 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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray. I'm here with Dan Schreiber and James Harkin, and we're here with your facts. You've been sending them in to [email protected]. We've been receiving them. Let's tell you what we got. Who's got a fact?

• 0:57Speaker 03

  I've got one. This is from Felix Weir, and Felix's fact is that in 1995, the German Democratic Republic, that is East Germany, won a bronze medal 4.5 years after it ceased to exist. Oh, riddle me this.

• 1:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Consolation prize. Second prize in the Cold War.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Bronze is third place.

• 1:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Okay. Oh, so bronze, okay.

• 1:21Speaker 04

  I remember we did a fact years ago about correspondent chess, where it took so long for you to receive the next move from someone, or for a game to end that countries dissolved in the meantime. You know, you might have been in Yugoslavia, now you are no longer.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  You are so close.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Because this is a fact about correspondence chess, where the games lasted so long that sometimes countries dissolved in the middle of them.

• 1:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Absolutely is.

• 1:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I did it as a headline many, many years ago.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Well, it's come back.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  But think of all the countries that didn't exist when we first did this fact.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, this person actually wrote this in years before I said it on the show. It's just taken so long to get to us.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  So yeah, the 10th Postal Chess Olympiad started in 1987, and it didn't finish until 1995. And one thing I don't think we said on the day is that the last game was won by an East German against a West German, and those two players were already competing alongside each other in a unified German team in the 11th Chess Olympiad, which had begun in 1992.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  That's incredible.

• 2:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's so good.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  I wonder, is there any other version where that can happen, where you are part of an old thing while you're in the new? Is there like a touring group of old Sugababes, but you're also in the new Sugababes lineup?

• 2:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's a good idea.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  And so you're, yeah, you're doing two sets of shows.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  No, is the answer to that specific Sugababes thing.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  But that's not to say it hasn't existed anywhere else.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, very exciting there.

• 2:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really good.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  I got one, it's on sport.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  While we're on that theme, this is from Mark Linsman, who says, hi, my name is Mark. I'm from Canada, a place where the sport of curling is very popular. My fact is, one of the all-time best Canadian curlers was named Sandra Schmerler, and it rhymes with curler. Her nickname was the extremely apt Schmerler the Curler.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Not Schmella, because there's Fanny Schmella, who is a famous skier. Again, another winter spot.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Fanny Schmella.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Fanny Schmella, yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And she's most famous in the UK because on the TV show The Chase, Bradley Walsh struggled to say her name without bursting into laughter, and it goes viral every now and then.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. Beautiful. Oh, yes, I've seen that clip. Yes, that's brilliant. Well, it's claimed, and it was actually claimed by her, that she was the only sports person who had a name that rhymed with the sport she played.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  No, no chance.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  It's really hard to Google this and try and work out, so I just stuck with curling.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  There is a darts player called John Part, who used to play dart.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Only used one.

• 4:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Sold.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  He was rubbish. You could only get a third of the scar of everyone else.

• 4:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, that's incredibly good for off the cuff.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  That's very good, because I, yeah, I thought, okay, I'll try and see if, is there anyone who rhymes with curling? And I found a Scottish curler called Jane Sterling. So Jane Sterling does curling.

• 4:25Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, that's really good.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Really good.

• 4:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Jane Sterling does curling.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  But Jane Sterling only arrived, you know, she won a championship in 2017, so this is 17 years after Schmerler the Curler had passed away.

• 4:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  So yeah, but I sort of thought, it is really hard to think of that. This is a possible challenge that we could bring to Jewel. Anyone listening, can you think of someone whose name rhymes with the sport they play?

• 4:47Andrew Hunter Murray?

  R.I.P. the inbox. Okay, okay, I'm going to set some ground rules. I want them to be exact rhymes, please. I don't want any art, art fudges.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  It's a great question.

• 4:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. That's incredible, yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  I am going to be silent for the rest of the show if I think of some more.

• 5:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Trying to think of Dominic Tugby or whatever, Tugby League. Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  I think there's also a darts player called Kevin Dutz, who's like, I think he's Dutch or something.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's really good.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  It's almost there, isn't it?

• 5:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Should we knock out as well if their name is the exact word? You know, like, Barry Football shouldn't be allowed.

• 5:25Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's allowed.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  That's allowed?

• 5:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's a rhyme. It was a rhyme.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  No, it's not. It's not really.

• 5:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I've got one. This one comes in from Conrad Beruba. What a great name.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Does he do scuba?

• 5:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  There we go.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Wonderful.

• 5:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  There we go.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  People won't believe that we haven't cut out in no one this gap in the home.

• 5:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  We can confirm that was genuinely very quick. Outstanding. So this is about a scientist who works in an underground physics laboratory.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:02Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Shielded from cosmic ray interference, okay?

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And amazingly, the director of this ray bunker is named Dr. Ray Bunker.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes. Dr. Ray Bunker works in a lab, it's beneath Sudbury, Ontario, and it's called Snow Lab. And I just want to say, this lab is absolutely nuts.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Is it to look for gravity waves and stuff?

• 6:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They're looking for wimps, weakly inter-

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Well, they should have come to help then.

• 6:30Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hey!

• 6:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They're looking for weakly interacting massive particles, which is evidence of dark matter, isn't it? It's sort of-

• 6:37Speaker 03

  It is possible, yeah.

• 6:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They're looking for dark matter, I think.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And they have to shield the bunker from all radiation, which is why it's two kilometres underground, so it's in an old mine, basically, that they've had to excavate out.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  They also have gimps as well, I think, which is gravitationally interacting massive particles.

• 6:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Not in Canada, though. Surely not. There are no gimps in Canada.

• 7:01Andrew Hunter Murray?

  [email protected].

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Is it true that the word gimp was invented for that, what's that movie where there's Bring Out the Gimp?

• 7:08Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Tarantino, isn't it?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, Pulp Fiction.

• 7:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  I think, I think, and I might be wrong, the word didn't exist until that movie.

• 7:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Interesting.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  What was the gimp? Someone in bondage gear?

• 7:19Speaker 03

  He was like in bondage gear, yeah. Like what we would now call a gimp mask, which is like a zip in the mouth.

• 7:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hmm. Yeah. Anyway.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 7:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, no, no.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  It's slightly off topic.

• 7:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's all good stuff. But basically, to go in there, you are so radioactive that you have to change your clothes twice and have a shower before you go in, because you need to wash all the surface radiation off and out of your hair and all of this.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 7:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's so crazy how clean they have to get the lab, and it's to stop muons particles getting through that they put it so far underground. But just the scale of it, they're five Empire State Buildings down, underground.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 7:59Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's just so far.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  How'd they get down? Because I would think like lifts.

• 8:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They did, they got a lift.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Did they?

• 8:05Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yep.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  I would have thought a lift wouldn't be able to go all that far down, but they might have to get a couple of lifts.

• 8:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Some old mines, some mines are so deep that you do need to get out of one lift to get into another, because the cable becomes so heavy that you can't, yeah, yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Well, you've got to stop and have your first shower and then get back in, presumably. The shower's not going to be just on the bottom floor, presumably.

• 8:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I didn't check exactly where the shower is, I'm really sorry.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  It would make sense to have a shower half, if you're going to have to take two showers, you might as well have one halfway, so the first shower's had its effect while you're travelling.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 8:36Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think you have to only have one shower, but you have to change into mining clothes and then into lab clothes.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  So I think that's the purpose. But again, we've, we've tested them all quite hard on this one.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Speaking of showers and radioactive particles.

• 8:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  I think there is a thing where, whenever, if there was like a dirty bomb went off, and there was radiation in the area, you're not supposed to use conditioner, because that can make the radiation stick to your hair, I think.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  That's so funny, if the person who's had two showers has just actually doubled the chances of them getting radiation when they're down there.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  I've got this, this head and shoulders, is that okay? Or, because it's like half conditioner.

• 9:16Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just use half as much as you normally would, and that'll be fine.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. There you go. So thank you very much, Conrad.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Very interesting. Here's one from Dick Berg, and Dick's fact is that the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother was nicknamed Charlie the Crook Chaser, and they invented the American Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• 9:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, pretty cool. Napoleon Bonaparte.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Did you do this fact before, Dan, as well?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  I do remember reading about it, but I don't think we have ever done it.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  I must admit, I did half know it as well.

• 9:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Napoleon had a brother?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Yes, so Napoleon's brother was called Jerome, and Jerome, I think, had children with an American woman, and eventually came along this person called Charles. And Charles served in the cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt, and he was the US Secretary of the Navy at one stage, at Bonaparte. But then he established the Bureau of Investigation in 1908, and that later became the FBI, which the FBI was actually started by, what's his name? The guy who had the big damn Hoover.

• 10:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hoover, yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  So Hoover really did the FBI, but it was based on this old BOI, which was started by Charles Bonaparte.

• 10:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow, that's crazy. But I guess America and France have been allies for a long time.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Well, mostly because they both hate the English.

• 10:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's right.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  But yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Quite notable, I mean, I know it's not Napoleon himself, but that's a very close connection, and the Secret Service was set up by Lincoln just before his assassination. There was a meet, there was like one of the last meetings that he ever had was to set up the Secret Service. Who did the CIA, you know? Stalin's granddaughter?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Maybe. They wouldn't tell us if it was.

• 11:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Be the first order of business.

• 11:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's very good.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Very nice. Shall I do another one?

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  I'm bringing us back to sport here because Sam Bailey has said the first person ever to flip the bird in a photograph was a baseball player called Old Hoss Radborne. And it was in 1886. He was a baseball player who, there's this extraordinary black and white team photo where he's sat there stone faced and he's just got his middle finger up. It's the best. He looks like Droopy the dog. It's just a total serious face.

• 11:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And that's flipping the bird?

• 11:34Speaker 04

  Flipping the bird is giving a middle finger. In America, they say flipping the bird.

• 11:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Got it, got it, got it.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Not familiar with that one.

• 11:39Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I'm less familiar with it. I wouldn't use it with total confidence in a sentence.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Flipped me the bird.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  What would you call it?

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Giving you the finger.

• 11:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Gave me the finger, I'd say.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:50Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Fingered me in extremis. If I'm short of time, that's what I'll say.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  I actually think that might end up taking up more of your time when you explain the difference between the two fingerings.

• 12:02Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, I'm gonna drive up alongside him and finger him right back, actually. Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  That's really cool.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Do we know for sure that that's what he meant?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Well, it seems to be implied that that's the first example of it being caught. So I think the intention sounds as if it, if it was. Interestingly, it was used in a Harold Lloyd movie as well called Speedy.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Really?

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Which was in 1928. Harold Lloyd's character gives himself the finger.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Your fingers himself, is what you're saying.

• 12:30Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Thank you.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  In a distorting mirror at Luna Park.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Sorry, and does that pre, that, that postdate?

• 12:38Speaker 04

  No, postdates it, yeah. But just surprising. I would never have thought that like a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton movie would have a swear word with a middle finger. You know, you don't see Stan Laurel giving it to Hardy.

• 12:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I'm sure he wanted to. But I wonder if it was a thing that was not quite well known enough that everyone would have known, oh, that's very rude. That should not be in the film. I wonder if it was like a little thing that some people would know.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Sneaky, yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  On the other hand, it's just to represent a penis, right?

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  So you would think it had happened for time immemorial that people have been doing that.

• 13:08Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think we might have mentioned before that it's a, it's an ancient historical thing which shows the, and the, the, the bits of your fingers on either side represent the testicles.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Maybe?

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Because there's all the stuff about the V sign being supposedly archers, English archers, which I think is not true.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. Right.

• 13:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  I think it was the, um, people at the Battle of Hastings who were doing the yo-yo.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  To show that they hadn't had the yo-yo finger cut off, they would show it to the French.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  There's one interesting modern example of it being used in a place you might not expect it. And that is on a postage stamp. And this is-

• 13:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The Queen.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  No.

• 13:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The true Queen.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  No, this is, um-

• 13:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  If you look really carefully, you can just see.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  This is, it's a Ukrainian stamp and it's commemorating a moment from the first day of the war with Russia where Snake Island was attacked by Russian missile cruiser. And there was a guard who was standing along the island and the last communication with the warship that he had was Russian warship, go fuck yourself. And they've done a postage stamp of him standing, looking at the cruiser, just putting his middle finger up. And that's, that's an official stamp now in Ukraine.

• 14:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Here's one from Orla Shortall. My fact is that the Sean O'Casey Bridge in Dublin couldn't work for four years because the remote control that opened it so ships could pass got lost.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Did they check down the back of the sofa?

• 14:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They checked everywhere. Um, it took four years to get a new remote control.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I can't imagine that this is a key bridge for global shipping though. Do you know what I mean? As in surely they'd have fixed it faster.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  I have a feeling it got you quite far down the liffy. It meant that quite a lot of ships couldn't get all the way to where they needed to go.

• 14:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really?

• 14:54Speaker 03

  If memory serves about this, because I do half remember the story.

• 14:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. That they, there was an office move and the remote control just got lost in the course of a move. You know what it's like? Everything's in boxes.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, nightmare.

• 15:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And they just couldn't find it. It was about the size of a normal remote control. Because it was a remote control. I'd imagine a remote control.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's what this one was like.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  They should have made it much bigger because then they wouldn't have lost it.

• 15:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They should have made it much bigger. You're right.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  That's great. So there's probably still some family over there who's sitting in front of the TV.

• 15:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Whose TV hasn't been working for 10 years.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  And they won't give up. Bloody-

• 15:25Speaker 03

  We've changed the batteries.

• 15:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Just walk over, it's fine. You know, good exercise.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Every time the chase finishes, they open the bridge by accident.

• 15:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  People are being pinged into the air.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Okay, here is one more from me today. And this is from Mark Vent. And Mark says that William Grant and Sons use dogs to make their whiskey. Any idea how?

• 15:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Are we riddling you this?

• 15:55Speaker 03

  If you like.

• 15:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  How could a dog make whiskey?

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Good. Is it something to do with like those dogs that used to turn meat by running around in a-

• 16:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, that's good.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  A turn spit dog?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  A turn spit dog. Is it like that?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  It's not that.

• 16:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Is it?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Whiskey.

• 16:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Is it like that, as I said, the, you know, the civet coffee?

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Where it's all been partially digested by a civet cat of the beans?

• 16:22Speaker 03

  So someone has to go through some dog shit to find what the hops that they make the whiskey out of?

• 16:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, it's, it's grain, isn't it? So it's, yeah, I guess.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  On malt, yeah.

• 16:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. What I'm saying is-

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Do you think that would improve the taste of the whiskey? I'm not a big whiskey fan.

• 16:39Andrew Hunter Murray?

  All the malt has been shat out by a dog.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Has it?

• 16:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. So it's small batch, obviously.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  They don't keep the dogs there. They have to collect the dog shit from those little plastic bags that are hung on trees in parks. So someone goes out collecting the malt.

• 16:55Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:56Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  It's not that.

• 16:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's not that, is it?

• 16:58Speaker 03

  No, it's not that. Weirdly, it's not that. It's a great guess, Andy.

• 17:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Did we name the whiskey company? I just wondered they might-

• 17:05Speaker 03

  William Grant and Sons.

• 17:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I'd just like to apologize to William Grant for suggest, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  I don't drink whiskey, but I know Andy does. So if William Grant and Sons would like to send us some whiskey, then Andy would very happily try it out.

• 17:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  It must be horrific at the Johnny Walker factory when the word Walker's said and all the dogs jump up.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  So excited.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 17:28Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Lovely.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  And there's the joke. Um, no, it is, they are sniffer dogs, basically. They sniff the wood of the casks for mustiness and other tiny faults. Basically, for anyone who doesn't know, to make whiskey, you put your alcohol in big barrels and then the tannins or something of the wood go into the alcohol and that's what gives whiskey its taste. But if your wood has gone off slightly or if there's some other problems, then you wouldn't know for like 20 years until it's matured, whether it'll be bad or not.

• 18:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  And so you get these dogs who can tell the difference quite early. And exactly what they're trained to smell is a secret. We don't know.

• 18:08Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  It's one of those trade secrets.

• 18:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  But we do know that they're sniffing the casks.

• 18:14Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's really cool.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, great fact.

• 18:16Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Great fact.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Should I do one more?

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's do one more.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, this is, uh, this is quite fun, this one. This is just kind of a shout out to a kid who's doing amazing stuff out there. Sent in by Megan Walker. Down boy.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  I was talking to a, a dog there.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. You might be listening right now.

• 18:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  But you were looking dead into my eyes.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  An 11 year old boy has opened a natural history museum in Cambridge, Illinois. And he might be the fishiest kid I've seen. Get him on the pod. And she sent a link. And this is a kid, he's 11, Anderson Taylor, who was recently awarded the Guinness World Record for being the youngest male curator of a museum. And he opened the Cambridge Natural History Museum on the 10th of August, 2024. He was just nine days old and three, sorry.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  Wow. I've heard of some prodigies in my life. Well, Jesus. I can imagine his parents. What were you doing for the first eight days, lazy bastard?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  He was nine years and 340 days old. The 340, because this is Guinness giving you the exact day to beat. But it started when he was three years old. He was watching a show on dinosaurs and he decided he wanted to go and find some fossils. So he went out to his driveway and remarkably, there was a fossil in his yard.

• 19:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Which to me smells of parents, uh, laying down.

• 19:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  You think it was a plant?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  No, I think it was a fossil.

• 19:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And there's the joke.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  So he finds it in his yard, jumpstarts his passion for paleontology. And then when he's seven, he applies to his local councils, I think, to the city.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  And they go, no, you're seven.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. It took a few rounds for them to be convinced of it. He did a GoFundMe, which allowed them to buy the building that it's in.

• 20:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Come back when you're eight, all right?

• 20:11Speaker 04

  But now he's running it and they've got a bunch of fossils in there, a bunch of minerals, artefacts, Native American artefacts, taxidermy animals and yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  A few Paw Patrol ties.

• 20:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, that's wonderful. Congratulations, young man.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, well done, buddy.

• 20:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  You go far.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:27Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, look, we've got to move on now. It's time for section two, which is always huge fun. It's where we give out our own headline facts from years ago to anyone who has joined Clubfish at the friend of the podcast tier. Go to patreon.com/clubfish. Have a look at all the things you can get on Clubfish. There are bonus episodes, there are extra long episodes, there's all sorts of stuff. And if you join at the top tier, you get one of our headline facts to be your pet in perpetuity. So let's give out a few now.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  We put the pet in perpetuity.

• 20:59Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really good.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Shall I read one? This is for Lucas. Lucas, you now have the fact that archers at the Battle of Agincourt had three arrows in the air at any given moment.

• 21:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I love this fact. This is one of mine.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 21:12Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And it's that you'd have one, you'd just fire it, one that was halfway in the air and one that was about to hit a Frenchman because they could fire so quickly.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's a point about archers.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  It wasn't three at once, it was.

• 21:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, they weren't doing sort of lazy Robin Hood stuff.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Didn't they? I thought they also had like a couple of layers of archers, like when one of them's reloading, the other one's firing.

• 21:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think they probably would. Yeah, yeah. But an individual archer would have ideally had.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  And also it's very, because these were longbows and they were really, really hard to pull, right?

• 21:44Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  You had to be unbelievably strong. And then when they found the fossils or the bones of these people, and they had like one massive arm like Rafa Nadal and one tiny arm like a T-Rex.

• 21:56Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's basically it. That's it. Yeah. And when their fossils were found, there was a nearby seven-year-old boy who said, I'll have that.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  But yeah, amazing. Okay, the next one. This is now under the custodianship of Charlotte Blackwell Gates. And Charlotte, your fact is that right-handed marmosets are braver than left-handed marmosets.

• 22:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hmm. Really good.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 22:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Why?

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Would it be that so much of life is built for people who are right-handed and more so? And I know we're not talking about humans here.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  I think those marmosets find it so hard to use scissors.

• 22:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The thing that Anna said is that they freeze for longer when faced with a predator. They're more cautious about new food and they have a more negative outlook. I think I'm the only lefty around this table.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:44Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And I think ding, ding, ding.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:47Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's me.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Negative outlook, cautious about new food. That's me.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  What was the third one?

• 22:52Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I freeze when faced with a predator.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  I'd say that.

• 22:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Maybe if you're, if being lefty is rare among marmosets, then you're a bit, just you feel a bit less confident to deal with the world because all the other marmosets are using their right hand to high-five each other. I don't know.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  It's the tiny things, isn't it?

• 23:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I don't know why it would be.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you find it harder to high-five people being a left-handed person?

• 23:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, it's a nightmare.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Do you really? I would have thought, actually, if you were to, if me and Dan high-five each other, right, we're gonna do it now. Okay. Our bodies are quite far away from each other, but if I was to high-five you, your left hand with my right hand, we would be quite close to kissing. Because our heads will be directly next to each other. So that must be really awkward.

• 23:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, I'm still thinking I'm face to face with a predator.

• 23:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Um, I don't know. I don't have a good explanation for this.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Very interesting, though.

• 23:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. All right. Here's one that goes out to Kate, Georgia, and it's a great one. It's that the French saying avoir le top au guichet means to have a mole at the counter, meaning you really need a poo.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Oh, dear.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:59Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. There's a mole at the counter. Yeah, yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:02Andrew Hunter Murray?

  This, I think, was not a headline fact.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 24:05Andrew Hunter Murray?

  We went through a vanishingly brief phrase where people could say, look, I'd really like that particular fact.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  What an odd one to choose.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  So someone selected that. Wow.

• 24:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Kate's already got the, the phrase tattooed on her, so it makes sense for her to pick the phrase.

• 24:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I don't know why she wanted this one. I think maybe it had just become a, a thing in her house to say that it has sort of entered the household lexicon.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Yes, they heard it on the show. They've started saying it, that kind of thing. Yeah.

• 24:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Absolutely.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Very rare situation.

• 24:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I'd just like to point out that that became unmanageably complicated, the request system. So we have now shut it down and you get a wonderful random fact from our archive, such as?

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Well, this one goes out to Kate Knox. Tchaikovsky used to hold his head when conducting because he was afraid it would fall off.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Had he done a lot of long-distance cycling?

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Did he have Sherm's neck?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Sherm's neck. It's a thing that we mentioned in the show, or Dan mentioned, whereby if you cycle for a long time, your neck muscles stop working and you have to hold your head up. The reason I bring it up is because someone messaged me on Instagram yesterday saying, my friend who does a lot of cycling thinks you made that up and thinks it came from AI. So can you prove that it's not, please?

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Uh, and it took about two seconds of Googling to show that it wasn't made up. And I sent them a link and we're all good. But yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Because I did use AI and that's very lucky. That was a lucky escape.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  I think perhaps AI has now gone into the internet and created a load of sources.

• 25:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Probably read my Instagram private messages and thought, oh, guys, we need to get the gang together and sort this out.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  No, I did. I read it in quite a few places. I mean, because it is true, but it's, yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  There's like proper medical journals that describe it, so.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. And there's been quite a few comments on places where people who can comment on that specific episode have said, my friend had that and things like that.

• 25:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really?

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Which is very interesting.

• 26:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Ironically, you had to look up whether it was real or not. Whereas if you have got this condition, you can't look up because your neck's gone.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Very good indeed.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Very good. The next one here is now under the custodianship of Dennis Botel. And Dennis, your fact is that asthmatic otters can be taught to use inhalers.

• 26:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Adorable. Adorable.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Wonderful.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  That is so good.

• 26:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  An asthmatic otter is cute enough, but one using a little inhaler? Maybe a little furry inhaler?

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, it has to be furry.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Don't otters have pockets as well? Do they keep it in their pocket?

• 26:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Of course they do. You've got to have it on you at all times.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 26:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I thought it was their armpits that were their pockets.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Okay. They've got a body pocket somewhere, is what I meant.

• 26:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  I think you're thinking of a phrase as wet as an otter's pocket.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  I've not heard that.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  I've heard that. Okay.

• 26:47Andrew Hunter Murray?

  What does it mean?

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Very wet.

• 26:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, I understand.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  It's not one of those that you need to get a couple of different levels.

• 26:55Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Difficult phrases that James keeps chucking out. There's no mole at the counter.

• 27:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right, come on, let's drag it out of the gutter now. And let's give a fact out to Reaper Fox. Pretty cool. We've had moles, otters and now a fox. That's nice. Your appendix can be turned into a sphincter.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  And that's yours, Reaper Fox.

• 27:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes. But your fact today is completely separate. It's that, no, it's that your appendix can be turned into a sphincter, which is very useful stuff. Um, it's in surgery, they, they can repurpose your appendix, which you don't need.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And, but if you are having sort of gastric surgery, you might need a new sphincter.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  A sphincter's any muscular opening, right? Basically.

• 27:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  But this is, this is one of the key sphincters for, for weeing out of, as it were. So, you know, to control, to control things down there. And isn't that good about the appendix?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  That's amazing. Is it, is it just yours for your own sphincter? Or is it, if you're getting your appendix taken out, do they put it in a fridge until it's needed for someone else's?

• 28:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Fantastic question. Don't know. I don't know if it has to be yours or if your body will reject it if it was the wrong kind or whatever. But no, good point.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  I think the appendix has been shown to have some uses these days. Like it's useful in the immune system and all that kind of stuff, right?

• 28:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  It's not quite as useless as people thought.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  Okay, here's another one. This is for Brandon Tan. Your fact is the founder of Crufsts designed, the founder of Crufsts designed special train carriages for celebrity dogs.

• 28:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Crufsts?

• 28:29Speaker 04

  What did I say? Did I say Crufsts?

• 28:30Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It was unclear what you said. It certainly weren't Crufsts.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  It felt weird coming out. The founder of Crufsts. Oh, I can't say it.

• 28:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  I actually can't say that. Crufsts.

• 28:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  I can't say it.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Do you want me to do this one?

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Sure. But that's amazing in its own.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Why don't you just say the founder of the world's most famous dog show?

• 28:49Speaker 04

  The founder of the world's most famous dog show, Crufsts, designed special train carriages for celebrity dogs.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Here's a question. When you are in the army and you don't have to wear your uniform, you call it mufti. Do you say that?

• 29:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Mufti. Mufti Day.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Huh. So it's not the FT?

• 29:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  It's the extra S at the end.

• 29:08Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The FTS.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Mufti's. No, I can do that. FTS. Yeah.

• 29:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Mufts. Try that.

• 29:12Speaker 04

  Mufts.

• 29:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Then you're there. You're rhyming.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Crufsts. I can't.

• 29:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  What's going on?

• 29:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  You're staggering.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Strange, isn't it?

• 29:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, the founder of Crufsts.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Oh, look at you.

• 29:25Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Was called Charles Cruft.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Uh, here's a question. So like an old word for a farm is called a croft.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Can you say Crufsts?

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Crufsts.

• 29:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No. So right, we've, it's the FTS. Okay.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  FTS.

• 29:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, good thing you weren't mates with Charles Cruft, the founder of Crufsts, because you'd have had a very awkward time.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Should we invite Charles to the wedding? Oh, no, no. I've been avoiding him for years. It's terrible.

• 29:53Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I wouldn't be able to take attendance at the wedding.

• 29:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Or thank him in the speeches as well. He's been so generous over the years, but I just can't mention his name.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  How, how big is the, the FTS community?

• 30:05Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I don't think it is huge, which is why you've been able to sneak through for so many years without getting away.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  You know the, um, you know, the room at the very top of your house that some people call an attic? I would call it a loft. So if there's more than one of those.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  I would have two lofts.

• 30:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Ooh.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Closer.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 30:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  If you were feeling the Christmas Radio Times and saying, feel the heft of that. But of course you were carrying two copies of the Christmas Radio Times.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  I love that what you're doing with your hands now. It's like six, seven.

• 30:36Andrew Hunter Murray?

  What would you be feeling, Dan? Feel the...

• 30:39Speaker 04

  What would I be feeling?

• 30:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The hefts.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  The hefts? I sound like a drummer.

• 30:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  There we go.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  That's the only way to get into it. The hefts.

• 30:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, so close. We do need to wrap up at some point, I'm afraid.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  It's quite fun though, isn't it?

• 30:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It is fun, yeah. Brandon Tan, I hope that you're happy that you've absolutely demolished Dan's formerly spotless reputation for pronouncing words right.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Okay, this is the final one, I think, for today, and it is now under the custodianship of Amanda. And Amanda, your fact is a bit of a classic, I think. When something thought to be a meteorite actually turns out to be an ordinary rock, it's called a meteorong.

• 31:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Lovely.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Lovely fact. That is a classic, isn't it?

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I think so. I feel like you and I, Dan, might have recently been to the Natural History Museum and someone had shown us a meteorong?

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Remember who?

• 31:34Speaker 04

  I don't think we knew this beforehand, Andy. As in, I don't think it was one sitting in the wings.

• 31:39Andrew Hunter Murray?

  What do you mean, one sitting in the wings?

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Like, as you say, like, we all know the fact and then maybe I couldn't find the fact that week and I said, "Oh, can I use the old meteorong?"

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Everything that Andy has ever found is something that he's literally found within the last seven days.

• 31:52Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Often within the last seven seconds before the meeting. Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  That's a great fact.

• 31:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, that's terrific. All right, well, those are our custodians for the day. Congratulations and thank you so much for your support to all our new custodians. That's Amanda, Brandon, Reaper Fox, Dennis, Kate Knox, Kate Georgia, Charlotte and Lucas. We'll be back again in a week's time with another episode of Little Fish. We'll be back in four days' time with another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish. And if you're a member of Club Fish, you'll be getting extra droppers of lines here and there as well, plus bonus episodes. Once again, patreon.com/clubfish. Thanks so much to Dan and Andy.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Interesting. Okay. I can't say Crufts, but I can't say James's name.

• 32:39Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, Dan, Andy, you've been terrific today. You've been the core of the show. And that's it, that's all the thanks dished out.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Can I just say one thing, Andy?

• 32:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  The world snooker champion from a couple of years ago was called Luca Brussel.

• 32:56Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Fantastic.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Luca from the snooker.

• 32:59Andrew Hunter Murray?

  In at the kill.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 33:01Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And thank you, James.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  You're very welcome.

• 33:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  There we go. We'll see you next time. Bye.