Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: It's Mostly Machines These Days About this episode Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including Lincolns, lollipops and Lamas. We also hear a very questionable story about bumblebees, and meet eight new Custodians of Fish Facts.
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Transcript 6,035 words · 10 speakers
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0:30 Speaker 01 Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. We've been so happy to get messages from you guys to say that you've been enjoying this show and we certainly enjoy making it. It's a little bit more loose, a little bit more silly than the normal shows, but we really, really love getting your facts, so please do keep sending those in. The reason I've disturbed the start of your show today is because I want to tell you about a quiz that we're doing. It is for Patreon subscribers on the top tier and it will take place on the 23rd of January at 7pm UK time. So that'll be sometime in the afternoon if you're in North America and it'll be very early in the morning if you're in Australia or New Zealand, but hopefully you will still be able to join us.
1:12 Speaker 01 It's gonna be a whole load of fun, we've got loads of amazing stuff planned for you. And if you are not a member of Patreon right now, then you have to go to patreon.com/no such thing as a fish and join our top tier. You could probably just do it for a month and then quit if you just want to do the quiz, but honestly, there's so much good stuff on our Patreon that I really think once you join, you will be hooked because we have extra content, we have merch, we have video content, there's all sorts of stuff on there. We hope we've made it value for money because people going on there help to support the podcast, so it is a real good mutual benefit thing. Anyway, enough of that, really hope you enjoyed this episode of Little Fish.
2:08 Speaker 02 Hi everybody.
2:10 Speaker 01 Oh, listener, Andy's got a cold and it's actually a really bad one.
2:15 Speaker 02 I've had a super sniffle. Hi everybody, welcome to Little Fish. This is our audience fact show, so never mind our boring old facts, it's time for your boring old facts instead. You've been sending them into podcast at qi.com and we've been reading them, collating them, winnowing them, doing extra research on them, and here are your best facts from the last seven days. So let's go.
2:40 Speaker 03 What you can't see, listener, is the most British thing is happening in the background. As Andy is introducing the show, he's pouring himself a thermos of tea.
2:48 Speaker 02 Yes, we're recording this on apparently my Duke of Edinburgh.
2:53 Speaker 01 I thought it was incredible how you multitasked there.
2:56 Speaker 02 Thank you very much.
2:56 Speaker 01 Because actually I think the listener wouldn't have been able to tell he was pouring that tea until you mentioned it.
3:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:02 Speaker 01 There you go.
3:02 Speaker 02 Well, thank you very much. Yeah. But look, enough of this, enough of this banter. Let's have some factor. Let's have some facts. Who would like to start?
3:11 Speaker 03 We got sent in a fact by Alex Hors and Alex says Nazi propaganda in the 1930s relied heavily on an Englishman called Dick Seaman.
3:22 Speaker 01 Come on, bitch. No.
3:24 Speaker 02 Who had such a bad time in the English public school system that he just turned.
3:28 Speaker 01 I wouldn't blame him.
3:29 Speaker 02 Yep.
3:29 Speaker 03 Why would you give someone a name like that? You'd think his dad would have learnt, given the fact he was called William Seaman, Willie Seaman. Come on.
3:37 Speaker 02 Good lord.
3:38 Speaker 01 Come on, indeed.
3:40 Speaker 03 So this is Richard Dick Seaman. He was a British racing driver and he was signed by the state-backed Mercedes team in the mid 1930s to race in the precursor to what is modern F1. And he was appointed as a non-German to be part of the teams. He was signed off by Goebbels, who showed him to Hitler. Hitler loved him. Hitler thought he was amazing. In fact, when he died, and sadly Dick Seaman did die in a crash during a race, Hitler sent the biggest bouquet of flowers to the funeral. So.
4:12 Speaker 02 So Hitler.
4:13 Speaker 01 It is really.
4:14 Speaker 02 Oh, I've got to send the biggest bouquet of flowers. Do you know what I mean? Just showing off.
4:17 Speaker 01 He's the kind of person that, you know, like if someone does a sponsored swim and everyone sponsors you for £5, he would do £6.
4:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, he is.
4:26 Speaker 03 I knew I didn't like him, but that's really taking it to a new territory.
4:31 Speaker 01 Interesting fact about semen.
4:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:33 Speaker 01 I mentioned in an earlier, I think it was a little fish, about a football team in Indonesia or the Philippines called semen Pandang.
4:43 Speaker 03 Yes.
4:43 Speaker 01 And I said that the name semen came from a cement company.
4:48 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
4:49 Speaker 01 And someone messaged me on Instagram. It was Lars Van Toof and Lars said that they lived in Bali most of their life. And they, they can tell me that the word semen means cement in Indonesia. So it's not a brand name.
5:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:07 Speaker 01 It's just a generic word for cement. So whenever this person ever had to buy cement, because they were an English speaker, they thought it was very amusing.
5:14 Speaker 03 As you would.
5:15 Speaker 02 Just while we're on sports and fascism and the 1930s.
5:19 Speaker 01 Brilliant. Who knew it was going to go in this direction?
5:23 Speaker 03 Who knew our listeners had such a niche knowledge base?
5:26 Speaker 02 Well, Stephen Barrett and Mark Norman have both sent in a brilliant fact. So Steph, I'll start with Stefan. Stefan says infamous right wing dictator Benito Mussolini's great grandson, Romano Floriani Mussolini is a professional footballer who plays on, any guesses?
5:44 Speaker 01 Sorry, on?
5:45 Speaker 02 The right wing.
5:46 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. Okay.
5:49 Speaker 02 And at a good level too, apparently, in the, the top Italian league.
5:53 Speaker 01 Really?
5:54 Speaker 02 Serie.
5:55 Speaker 01 Serie A.
5:56 Speaker 02 Ah, that's right. And Mark adds, Mark sends that fact as well and says, just a trivial thing I found amusing when I was told it. I'm sure he's a lovely person and it does state on his Wikipedia that he has no interest in politics. Cool.
6:08 Speaker 01 Interesting. I have a feeling that Gaddafi's son might have played professional football.
6:13 Speaker 02 Really?
6:14 Speaker 01 At a relatively high level, maybe Serie A or something.
6:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:18 Speaker 01 Think I might be wrong about that. Here's a fact from Scott Parsons, who writes that they work in clinical trials and thought we would like to know some of the papers that Scott has come across over the years. So he found that the half-life of communal teaspoons is 42. So if you have a load of teaspoons in the office, then after 42 days, half of them will have disappeared.
6:42 Speaker 03 Interesting.
6:43 Speaker 01 That is interesting.
6:44 Speaker 02 And it rakes over an old wound for us, which we don't need to get into now.
6:48 Speaker 03 Like, I still don't understand how I got involved in that controversy.
6:51 Speaker 01 Well, because you kept putting the spoons in the bin.
6:53 Speaker 03 Wasn't me doing that.
6:55 Speaker 02 I think it was the forks. I think there were no forks.
6:57 Speaker 03 Or knives. It was one of them. All I did was jump in saying, hey, it could have been any one of us. So that whoever did it would feel, ah, okay, it's not a problem to admit to it.
7:06 Speaker 01 You know, Knives Out?
7:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:08 Speaker 01 The first ever mystery that Benoit Blanc solved was what happened to the knives in the QI office. And that's how that series got its name.
7:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, there we go. And was I, was I fingered by that?
7:22 Speaker 02 It was cut from the final film, that scene, but.
7:27 Speaker 01 Um, they also, so Scott also found that if you need a problem to be solved quickly, brain surgeons are better than rocket scientists.
7:36 Speaker 03 Really?
7:37 Speaker 01 According to a study, because there's that whole, um, speaking of popular culture as we were, there's that Mitchell and Webb sketch, isn't there, where the brain surgeon meets the rocket scientist?
7:47 Speaker 03 Yes.
7:47 Speaker 01 Which is very good. But what do you reckon's hardest, brain surgery or rocket science?
7:51 Speaker 02 I feel like brain surgery.
7:54 Speaker 01 Is harder.
7:55 Speaker 02 Because it's more fiddly.
7:59 Speaker 03 I think it's largely machines these days. So I think rocket science.
8:03 Speaker 02 Well, you think rocket science is one of the last sort of craftsmen. What, you think they're hewing those from timber, do you?
8:09 Speaker 01 It's an old nunner in Italy.
8:13 Speaker 01 Makes it from willow.
8:15 Speaker 03 It's mostly machines these days. I think brain surgery is largely, you're, you're not necessarily going in with your hands anymore.
8:21 Speaker 02 You program it, don't you? And then you, you just press button one.
8:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a bit, it's no harder than playing Street Fighter these days.
8:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. And when in doubt, just mash all the buttons and that'll probably do something. It'll definitely do something.
8:32 Speaker 01 If it shouts, finish him, you know you've done something wrong.
8:36 Speaker 01 Um, so brain surgery in the UK, you need to do a five-year medical degree, then two years of foundation training, then at least eight more years of neurosurgical training. Uh, whereas to be a rocket scientist, you'd need to do your degree, but then you could do an apprenticeship after that and go straight into the industry. So you need to do a lot more studying to be a brain surgeon.
8:54 Speaker 02 Interesting.
8:56 Speaker 03 There's got to be levels of rocket scientist. You start off making tea and just chatting with rocket scientists.
9:02 Speaker 01 T minus five, T minus four.
9:04 Speaker 02 Come on.
9:06 Speaker 03 He's wonderful.
9:08 Speaker 01 I'm gonna take the rest of the day off.
9:10 Speaker 03 That's it.
9:11 Speaker 02 I've got a good one here.
9:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:13 Speaker 02 From Alex Hartley.
9:16 Speaker 01 Okay. Oh.
9:17 Speaker 02 Who says, "The guy from Milli Vanilli..."
9:22 Speaker 01 Which guy? There were two of them.
9:23 Speaker 02 Well, there were two of them. One sadly passed away now, but the other one...
9:26 Speaker 01 Who were they, by the way? Just for more context.
9:28 Speaker 02 So, Milli Vanilli with this double act, two incredibly handsome guys.
9:33 Speaker 01 Singers.
9:34 Speaker 02 Singers.
9:35 Speaker 01 Uh, ostensibly.
9:36 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:37 Speaker 01 But it turned out that they'd been miming On Top of the Pops.
9:39 Speaker 02 That's right. Well, not just miming On Top of the Pops. So, they had this unbelievably successful debut album that sold eight million copies. They were absolutely everywhere. They were huge. We're talking 1989 here. They were superstars. They won the Grammy for Best New Artist. And then they were revealed not to have sung any of their live gigs, where they were all lip syncing, or any of their recordings.
10:01 Speaker 01 Right. Yeah.
10:02 Speaker 02 So, it just wasn't their voices at any point.
10:05 Speaker 01 It was such a big story that I will have been like, what, 10 years old at this time? And at school, we all knew this story. And we would make jokes about it and stuff like that. It was...
10:14 Speaker 02 It's kind of... And the backlash was huge. Fans destroyed their records, you know, and that's millions of records. Uh, it's the only...
10:21 Speaker 01 Millions of Vanillians.
10:23 Speaker 02 Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And...
10:26 Speaker 01 Why are you still here to even make that joke?
10:30 Speaker 01 I feel like it's going downhill, isn't it?
10:33 Speaker 02 Diminishing returns, yeah. Um, but it's the only time a Grammy has ever been rescinded.
10:38 Speaker 01 Wow. They took it off them, did they?
10:40 Speaker 02 And some real hounds have won Grammys, I suspect. I suspect some people have won Grammys who are rotters.
10:45 Speaker 01 But probably sang their songs.
10:46 Speaker 02 Probably sang their songs. So, anyway, it's the... That's the situation, right? And Alex's fact is, the guy from Milli Vanilli, who had to give back a Grammy, is nominated this year for a Grammy for narrating the audiobook of the story of Milli Vanilli.
11:02 Speaker 01 Really? So good.
11:03 Speaker 03 Absolutely stunning.
11:04 Speaker 02 And that, I think, is next year's Grammys. I think the 2026. The categories have been announced.
11:10 Speaker 01 Indeed, this year, by the time this goes out.
11:11 Speaker 02 Absolutely. This year. Hello, everybody. And Happy New Year.
11:17 Speaker 03 The Golden Globes have added a podcast category this year. Have you seen that? Yeah. So the Grammys might eventually go on to that. We might, we might get a Grammy one day.
11:27 Speaker 01 We were not eligible for the Golden Globes one.
11:30 Speaker 03 Is that right?
11:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was like, I think only the top 10 podcasts in the world were up for, like, there was some rule that meant that...
11:37 Speaker 02 And we're number 11, aren't we?
11:40 Speaker 03 Typical.
11:41 Speaker 01 And there was definitely some rule that I saw it and thought, let's just throw a hat in the ring, why not?
11:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:46 Speaker 01 But we couldn't.
11:47 Speaker 03 Damn it.
11:48 Speaker 02 Gutted about that.
11:49 Speaker 01 Also, we don't do our own podcast, do we? We have voice actors who come in and do this.
11:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. I got a weirdest sounding guy to do mine.
11:58 Speaker 02 The guy who's nominated, Fabrice Morven, is up against a friend of yours, Dan, for the, in the Grammy category. Audio book this year.
12:04 Speaker 03 Are you taking the piss out of me? Is this a real friend or?
12:07 Speaker 02 It's someone you I think admire and someone I associate with you.
12:10 Speaker 01 Is it the guy who runs the crab museum in Margate?
12:13 Speaker 02 The guy who runs the crab museum in Margate.
12:15 Speaker 03 He's nominated. Yeah, that's very good.
12:18 Speaker 01 Brian Blessed?
12:20 Speaker 02 Oh, they've both spent time in Tibet, I'd say.
12:24 Speaker 03 Is it Shisuke Pink? Is it a yeti?
12:27 Speaker 02 It's the Dalai Lama.
12:29 Speaker 03 Dalai Lama. Wow.
12:31 Speaker 02 He's up for a Grammy, which I think at this stage would be a real fillip for his career. I think he needs that boost.
12:37 Speaker 03 Yeah. How wonderful. Yeah. He's got a lovely voice.
12:40 Speaker 02 Well, is it nicer than Fabrice Morven's voice?
12:42 Speaker 03 I wouldn't know. I don't think anyone's heard it. Alice Hill has sent in two facts to us. One is from personal experience. She said, you can flip a breach baby while it's still inside the mum. She's like, it's pretty common.
12:55 Speaker 02 Breach baby being?
12:57 Speaker 03 A breach baby is when the baby's facing the wrong way when birth is about to happen. Yeah, you want it the other way around. So you can, she says, literally massage the baby. Two doctors can do it and they can massage it 180 degrees into the right position for birth, which is amazing. So this is obviously someone who loves a bit of science, curious about the world. Here's the actual fact she sent in. Years ago, I worked at a Christmas tree farm on a particularly hot summer's day, and I saw a bumblebee performing oral sex on another bumblebee. Come on. The receiving bee was laxed out, front arms up, holding some pine needles, front facing, bum forward. Other bee, face deep. I'll never forget that sight.
13:39 Speaker 03 It was before the time of phone cameras, so alas, no photographic proof. How convenient.
13:46 Speaker 02 I've since tried to research it online, a bit tricky though, for obvious reasons. Maybe you guys could find out if it's a thing. Alice, I looked into it. It is absolutely not a thing.
13:57 Speaker 01 I don't know what you saw, Alice. I assume it was two humans in bubble bee costumes.
14:08 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.
14:23 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.
14:34 Speaker 04 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
14:39 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
14:45 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.
15:07 Speaker 02 Quiz corner.
15:08 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
15:09 Speaker 02 Frey van der Vlert writes, why in most car commercials do you only see the following letters and numbers on the number plates? A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, zero, eight.
15:28 Speaker 01 I think I worked it out.
15:30 Speaker 03 Is it kind of like a lot of TV shows will use the same phone number? Because you don't want to use a license plate that's out there.
15:37 Speaker 01 That's a good idea. And those letters are not on any other license plate in the world, are they?
15:42 Speaker 03 Exactly. There you go.
15:45 Speaker 01 It can only be because they're all um symmetrical.
15:49 Speaker 02 Yes.
15:50 Speaker 01 And so they must flip the footage or something.
15:53 Speaker 02 It's because the image can then be mirrored to make the car drive on the correct side of the road. Depending on what country the commercial is airing in.
16:02 Speaker 01 Very cool. Of course.
16:04 Speaker 02 This seems to be, I've looked into it a bit more, it seems to be true. And often you will see a car driving along in what is quite clearly southern Europe.
16:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, quite often in Iceland or something.
16:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:15 Speaker 01 And they're driving on the left hand side of the road and you're like, what?
16:18 Speaker 02 Sun drenched canyon or you know, majestic, but and it's just like, it's clearly not the UK. So I don't know how much good it does.
16:24 Speaker 01 It's a really good fact and a good question as well.
16:27 Speaker 02 So thank you for it.
16:28 Speaker 01 Here's another one that is based on um roads.
16:32 Speaker 02 Yep.
16:33 Speaker 01 This is from Alan Mitchell and Alan says he used to be a motorcycle instructor. And one fun question we used to ask is if anyone knew what the black horizontal line was on a crossing patrol sign like a lollipop person would use. On the round bit at the top, it says stop, children, but then there's like a black lozenge in the middle of it.
16:54 Speaker 02 Okay.
16:55 Speaker 01 Uh, and Alan wonders what that was for. Oh, in fact, he knows what it's for. He's told us.
17:00 Speaker 02 It's gonna be for the drivers. Yeah, I read the email in the first place when I came into the inbox, so.
17:05 Speaker 01 So actually this quiz is for one person in this room, not me.
17:08 Speaker 02 Why would there be a black dot in the middle? Lozenge. Not a dot, a lozenge. That's, I'd say essential, James. I don't know if you'd agree.
17:14 Speaker 01 The blackness is important.
17:16 Speaker 02 A lozenge, like the sweetie. Yeah, like a long, a long.
17:19 Speaker 01 Like a sausage.
17:20 Speaker 02 Like a sausage.
17:21 Speaker 01 Right.
17:22 Speaker 02 Why would there be a sausage on a lollipop though?
17:26 Speaker 01 I'm just gonna tell you.
17:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't think I can get this.
17:28 Speaker 01 According to Alan, it's a blackboard and you would write down the number plates of vehicles who fail to stop.
17:37 Speaker 02 If you're a lollipop.
17:39 Speaker 01 If you're a lollipop person.
17:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
17:40 Speaker 01 And one of the cars doesn't stop, they've committed an offence, so you would write down their number plate.
17:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
17:45 Speaker 01 Now, the main problem is it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
17:50 Speaker 02 No.
17:51 Speaker 01 But I've looked online and it's definitely often said that this is true. And usually it's the lollipop people who say it.
18:00 Speaker 02 Right.
18:00 Speaker 01 I haven't found any sort of official source, like the Department of Transport or the Highway Code or anything like that, that says that this is true. It's hard to see how it would be useful.
18:11 Speaker 02 Well, I frequently try when I'm out and about to remember a licence plate that passes by.
18:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:17 Speaker 02 Do you? Yeah, just because I think I might be called on at some point to remember a licence plate. You know, at short notice.
18:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
18:24 Speaker 02 What if that car does commit an offence?
18:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:27 Speaker 02 I'll need to, I'll need to say, yes, officer, I remember it very clearly.
18:31 Speaker 01 How many do you retain?
18:33 Speaker 02 I've got them all.
18:34 Speaker 01 Cool.
18:34 Speaker 02 Got to be four or 5,000 that I've memorised over the course of my life.
18:39 Speaker 01 Might, one day that might come in useful.
18:41 Speaker 02 Absolutely, yeah. Please test me now.
18:43 Speaker 01 Um, November the 4th, 2022.
18:47 Speaker 02 Didn't spot any that day.
18:50 Speaker 02 I, I was at home.
18:51 Speaker 01 You were sick.
18:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Try, please, another, another.
18:56 Speaker 01 November 3rd, 2022.
18:57 Speaker 02 I was on holiday.
18:58 Speaker 01 Were you?
18:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:59 Speaker 01 No cars?
19:00 Speaker 02 Where you went? I was on the Isle of Sark.
19:05 Speaker 02 Beautiful place. Lovely, yeah, yeah.
19:06 Speaker 01 No cars, no cars on Sark, famously.
19:10 Speaker 02 All right, well, story checks out.
19:13 Speaker 01 The thing is, like, why not just have a notepad?
19:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:16 Speaker 01 Why write it on something where it might get washed off or whatever? Like, if you need to, if you need to keep hold of the licence plate numbers.
19:23 Speaker 02 Yes.
19:23 Speaker 01 That is not the best place to put it. You might want to write it on there so that people can see it and it shames people, but who remembers anyone's number plate enough to be like, oh, that's.
19:34 Speaker 02 Well, I do, yeah.
19:40 Speaker 01 Obviously for you it would work, but for most people it wouldn't. So it's really interesting whether this is true or not. Certainly people who are involved in the community do think it's true. But there is no real evidence and it's hard to see how it would make sense.
19:54 Speaker 03 Very interesting.
19:55 Speaker 01 So if you know the absolute certainty that this is true or not true, then do write into podcast at qi.com.
20:01 Speaker 03 Very cool. I like it. I've got a, I've got one that I can fashion into a question as well. This is from Sean Slater. He says, for every American president assassination, a Lincoln has been present.
20:13 Speaker 01 Certainly in the one where Abraham Lincoln was shot.
20:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was there for that.
20:18 Speaker 01 Mary Lincoln was there, his wife.
20:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, and Abraham was there too. So you got two Lincolns there.
20:24 Speaker 01 Garfield was shot by that guy with a weird name like a.
20:28 Speaker 03 Gito?
20:29 Speaker 01 Yes.
20:30 Speaker 03 Charles Gito?
20:31 Speaker 01 Charles Lincoln Gito.
20:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's correct. And Robert Todd Lincoln, who was Abraham Lincoln's son, was there.
20:38 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
20:39 Speaker 03 Yes. McKinley? Was McKinley shot? McKinley, correct.
20:44 Speaker 01 McKinley was shot.
20:45 Speaker 03 Was there a Lincoln, a member of the Lincoln family was there? The same Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln was there.
20:51 Speaker 01 Really?
20:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was even quoted later as saying, I'm not going to any more events. Because it's got a certain fatality about it when I go.
20:58 Speaker 01 And don't tell me JFK was driving in a Lincoln.
21:01 Speaker 03 He was in a Ford Lincoln Continental car. You got it.
21:06 Speaker 01 Wow.
21:07 Speaker 03 Very nice. Great quiz.
21:09 Speaker 01 Very fun quiz. I think we must be getting towards the end of this now.
21:13 Speaker 03 I think so. I think let's switch over into friend of the podcast mode and dedicate some facts to people who've joined on Patreon at the top tier. If you've joined at friend of the podcast, we would like to dedicate one of our facts to you. So let's, let's dish out a few of those now. I'll kick off with one. Vicky, congratulations to you. You are now the custodian of the fact that kangaroos have five legs.
21:39 Speaker 01 Bad luck, Vicky.
21:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:41 Speaker 01 This was one of those rare ones where we just made stuff up.
21:44 Speaker 02 That's right. No, it's that their tail is a fifth leg. According to all sorts of tests, they've put kangaroos on treadmills and they've, they've done all sorts of science on it.
21:51 Speaker 01 Because they use it for walking.
21:53 Speaker 02 Yes, they use it to propel themselves. Yeah.
21:55 Speaker 03 That's very good. That was a James Harkin fact, Vicky, episode 19.
22:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:00 Speaker 03 Congratulations. Shall I do one?
22:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:03 Speaker 03 We've got an Anna Tashinsky fact to give out and that's going to Ewan Taylor. And that fact is that during the financial crisis of 1720, Parliament called for stockbrokers to be stitched into sacks and thrown into the Thames.
22:16 Speaker 01 Wow.
22:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:17 Speaker 01 Gosh.
22:19 Speaker 03 It's pretty wild, this fact. There's a bracket here, an extra bit of info for your fact, Ewan, which is that this was a speech by Lord Mollsworth. People who committed parasite were stitched into the sack with a rooster, a monkey and a dog.
22:33 Speaker 02 I think that was in ancient Rome, wasn't it?
22:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:35 Speaker 02 I don't think it was in 1720s London.
22:38 Speaker 03 Feels like that wouldn't be the case, would it? Yeah.
22:40 Speaker 02 I mean, that is 300 years ago, but that's, that feels like a god of a fashion.
22:44 Speaker 01 That was definitely an ancient thing. Okay, well, congratulations to you, Ewan. And the next one is now under the custodianship of Jen Sykes. And Jen, this is your fact. It is that there are three times as many estate agents in the UK as members of the armed forces.
23:02 Speaker 02 Yes. Who could have brought that fact to the table?
23:05 Speaker 01 Who likes warfare?
23:06 Speaker 02 It's mine. It's my fact. Congratulations, Jen. This is a great fact. And excitingly, I imagine it'll have only, the ratio will have only improved if you're an estate agent or got worse if you remember the armed forces since then, because this was about 10 years ago. So.
23:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:20 Speaker 02 Yeah. I don't think the army's doubled in size in the last 10 years.
23:23 Speaker 01 Was this the, the fact where Dan told us about how his wife made him hide his Cocoa Pops in the washing machine?
23:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:32 Speaker 01 I feel like it was. Because maybe you were selling your house and people would come around and your wife didn't want people to know that there was an adult in there who was eating Cocoa Pops.
23:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, it possibly, possibly is, is then. That was the wildest guess where a game I've ever had to play in my house. Everything was not where it should have been.
23:52 Speaker 02 Because it's, it is a risk. It's a risk that if you have a viewing of your flat and someone opens the washing machine, which they wouldn't do normally, but you never know, people like looking inside cupboards and things, and they look in and see cocoa pops, and they think, well, this person's very unstable, I'm not going to buy them.
24:04 Speaker 01 All you really do when you're buying a house is bang on the worktops a few times, and then hit the wall and go, oh, that's the supporting wall.
24:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, ask if there's any ghosts, you need to know that. Get out of there. Okay, here's another fact, and this one is one of my ones. It's going out to Brian Kelly. It's a fact that in medieval manuscripts, there are hundreds of drawings of snails and knights fighting each other, and nobody knows why.
24:30 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, I remember this one.
24:31 Speaker 03 It's really cool. In the margins of all these old books, there's these drawings of these battles going on.
24:37 Speaker 02 But it's just like a cultural meme, isn't it? It's just sort of, that's the thing everyone's drawn in the last, in the books for the last hundred, hundred and two hundred years.
24:44 Speaker 03 Oh, it's the six, seven of its day, basically.
24:46 Speaker 02 Six, seven of its day. Here's a fact that is now under the custodianship of Lea Smolokom. It's that the most painful place to be stung by a bee is inside your nostril.
24:56 Speaker 01 Oh, yes, what a great fact.
24:59 Speaker 02 Yes.
24:59 Speaker 01 And that's because someone actually tried it out, right?
25:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. There was a student called Michael Smith who let bees sting him all over his body and rated which was the most painful.
25:09 Speaker 03 Things we do for science. What heroes?
25:12 Speaker 02 Well, how, how precise do you want to get with it, though? Because I don't know if this student said, right, so test, I've done testicle, but I've only done top of testicle.
25:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:21 Speaker 02 I'd better do mid-testicle, base of testicle, being stung by a bee. How scientific are we getting here?
25:27 Speaker 01 Probably there is work to be done from another scientist now and building on Michael's work.
25:32 Speaker 03 That could be you.
25:33 Speaker 01 If you're, if you're at university and you're looking for something for your PhD, find yourself a bee.
25:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, if it's not mid blowjob, you could get it to, uh...
25:43 Speaker 02 Oh, my goodness, I've just looked up Michael's study. He said he was carrying the work done by the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which is all about different kinds of insect. Michael's study said the pain was rated on a one to 10 scale relative to an internal standard, the forearm. So the forearm is your baseline.
25:57 Speaker 01 Okay.
25:58 Speaker 02 The three least painful locations were the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm. The three most painful locations were the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft.
26:10 Speaker 03 Hmm.
26:11 Speaker 01 I mean, when you say penis shaft, it does imply that other parts had been tried. Do you know what I mean?
26:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:18 Speaker 01 Otherwise, he would just say penis.
26:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
26:20 Speaker 01 Okay, well, here's another fact. This one is now under the custodianship of Stephen Winfield. Stephen, your new fact that you have to look after forsaking all others is this one. Walt Disney's favorite breakfast was fresh doughnuts dunked in Scotch whiskey.
26:38 Speaker 03 Lovely.
26:39 Speaker 01 Yes. Wowzers.
26:41 Speaker 03 That was one of mine. Uh, we had a great chat about Disney in that one. It was a fact, I think, James, that you found, which is the story that he went into Cryogenics to look after his body. Oh, yeah. So that he could be woken up one day, but you found that's not true. I think we all know that's not true. But what James found is that actually the one bit of his body that he did use to put on ice was his testicles.
27:01 Speaker 01 I don't remember this at all.
27:03 Speaker 03 I think it was you, James.
27:04 Speaker 01 Was it after he deliberately had a bee sting then?
27:08 Speaker 03 The idea was, I think it was a fertility idea that when him and his wife were trying to conceive, they said, put your balls on ice. And so he used to do that a lot. Yeah.
27:18 Speaker 01 There is the theory, which I don't think is true, which is that Disney's Frozen was given that name. So that when people Google Frozen Disney, they don't get stories of his cryogenesis.
27:29 Speaker 03 I think it's a beautiful theory if it's not true. Like, it's just a wonderful connection that someone's made.
27:33 Speaker 01 And that's why the song Let It Go, he's talking to the people who keep spreading this rumor. He's like, let it go, Dice, let it go.
27:39 Speaker 03 You see? I don't, I think that's a, you've built on the theory.
27:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, the cold never bothered my testicles anyway.
27:48 Speaker 01 Okay, we got time for a couple more?
27:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's do a couple more. This is going to Beth. It's an Andrew Hunter Murray fact. Shouting at drivers improves their driving.
27:56 Speaker 01 I'll stand by it.
27:57 Speaker 03 Watch the road!
27:58 Speaker 01 That kind of stuff. Shouting at drivers improves, was this presumably some kind of study?
28:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a study in Kenya. They have lots of buses which crash quite frequently, or they certainly did at the time. And I think they put up stickers inside the buses saying, if your driver is driving erratically, please shout at them and go at them. Right.
28:20 Speaker 01 That's what they're shouting.
28:21 Speaker 02 What's they shout, what are they shouting? Yeah, yeah.
28:23 Speaker 03 There's a tradition that has to be adhered by Japanese train drivers that I read about where they have to point at things while they're driving as a way of maintaining their concentration.
28:34 Speaker 02 Really?
28:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, so you would point at a sign.
28:37 Speaker 01 And read it out as well, I think.
28:38 Speaker 03 Right.
28:38 Speaker 01 And the idea is that you just don't get monotonously kind of half asleep because you're just doing the same thing over and over again. You have to go, ossaka.
28:48 Speaker 02 But surely, driving a high, high-tech Japanese train these days is much like brain surgery in that you just, you know, program in the destination and then you just sit back and fall asleep.
28:57 Speaker 01 You would think so.
28:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, you'd think. Yeah, there's more to it.
29:00 Speaker 02 Well, cool. Congratulations to Beth. I'll do one. This one goes out to Ally ML. Ally, your fact is that the French used to call arsenic succession powder because it was used in so many murders.
29:16 Speaker 01 Yes.
29:17 Speaker 02 Le poudre du succession. I'm not just clumsily assuming that that's what it is. I'm pretty sure that's what the French phrase is.
29:23 Speaker 03 Very cool.
29:23 Speaker 01 Right.
29:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:24 Speaker 01 This was, it was Ann Miller's fact, wasn't it? Because it was an area that she was particularly interested in at the time.
29:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
29:31 Speaker 03 And as we know, it's always wonderful to hear a Scottish person say, mardad.
29:35 Speaker 01 Mardad. And when I say what she, she wasn't interested in murdering her husband, it was that she was into her crime novels.
29:43 Speaker 02 Well, not her first husband, who sadly passed away in an accident, and the second through fifth husbands as well.
29:51 Speaker 02 But now she's happy with Javier and there's no need to refer to any of those remarkably strange accidents.
29:59 Speaker 02 Anyway, so congratulations, Ali. That's a fact for you. And congratulations to all our fact custodians today. Beth, Ali, Stephen, Leah, Brian, Jen, Ewan and Vicky. Those of you who have signed up but haven't had your shout out yet, it is coming. As I say, we've had a bit of a rush on. Sorry about that. We're going to try and do them as speedily as is decent, but also in a way that remains fun for you, the listener. If you would like to join as a friend of the podcast, just go to patreon.com/nosuchthingasafish and you can have a look there and for all sorts of things like ad free episodes and bonus content and all of that. It's all there and it's a great club to be part of. But that's it for this episode of Little Fish. We'll be back again in a week's time
30:40 Speaker 02 with another one and we'll be back in three days' time with the main show, unless of course you're doing Club Fish already, in which case there'll be a drop of the line at some point in the next. So we'll see you soon is the point we're trying to make. Thanks very much for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye now.
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