Little Fish: It's Nice To Say Titicaca

Anna, Dan and James discuss YOUR facts including Hot Springs and Fat Controllers. Anna astonishes us all by failing to fall for a 2000s pop music hoax. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast fact custodians. 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.

• 0:05Speaker 01

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  Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. On with the show.

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  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.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Hello, and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode, where we put down our favorite facts from the last seven days, and we go through your favorite facts. So, we have gone through the inbox. Andy has picked out some of the best, and I am now going to sit here with Anna Toshinsky and James Harkin, and go through them. So who wants to start?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Go on, Anna.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Well, thank you. I'm going to start with this one from John Cornell. Sorry, I said that with an American accent. I don't know if he's American. That's just because of the university. From John Cornell.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, of course that was better.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  He might be a cockney Barrow boy, we don't know.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  Exactly, equally likely. And he said, I love this fact, actually. Just came across this fact about the Huli people of the Hella province in Papua New Guinea. And it is that the young boys of the Huli tribe aren't considered real men until they've attended wig school. And this is, and he says, and made either an ordinary or a ceremonial wig. And then he specifies, I'm not a real man sadly. And that's okay. No judgment about not making a wig. Are you guys real men?

• 2:28Speaker 03

  I've never made a wig.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Well, there you go.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I don't think I've made a wig, no.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  You would remember, I think.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I don't know. My parents are hairdressers. I feel like I helped them in a lot of stuff as a kid.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  I can imagine baby Dan sort of crawling around, picking up all the discarded bits of hair from all the customers.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Weaving them into a little toupee in the corner.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Presenting them to the customers when my parents are looking away and they never come back. And yeah, it's, it's, I'm sure that was a childhood thing.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sure it was too. Funny how childhood you have. Actually, in the source that I read, I think you guys might be men. Because it actually said that the oldest known tradition is where the boys learn the fundamentals of the Huli tradition, which is how to grow their hair to make into wigs. And actually, I think it's more about how to grow your hair in a wig-like manner.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  I see.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  That's interesting because what would turn your hair into a wig-like shape is constant haircuts so that it grew as part of a shape. You can't, you can't make one bit grow longer than the other just by thinking it.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Well, you can, I think, according to maybe the Huli people. That's the thing, Dan, you're making a judgment based on your own beliefs. And I think these people would say they believe that if you do think it, and if you have the wig master who runs the school, really think it, he's got the powers to make your hair grow.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  I would argue actually that Dan was making a judgment based on physiology of human beings rather than his own beliefs.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Well, that's just your opinion, Jane, that physiology of human beings is an existing factual thing. Anyway.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Have you actually been away at debate club for the last nine months?

• 3:56Speaker 00

  I've been at wig school and I hoped you'd notice I'd been thinking my hair into being longer.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  There is a group of people in Peru, I think it's the guys on the, on the lake, on Lake Titicaca, but it might not be those guys. But anyway, to become a man, you need to knit a bubble hat that is solid enough that you can carry water in it. And once you've done that, you go through, because these are all rites of passage, aren't they?

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Wow. Why do bubble hats have to be so solid around Lake Titicaca?

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Well, they're, I don't know why they're.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Bump their heads a lot?

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, really. I've worn one of those bubble hats, the Lake Titicaca ones, when I went to Lake Titicaca. Yeah. It's nice to say Titicaca.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  I know. It's the only reason you raise this fact, I think, is that you get to say it.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  But yeah, I got one of these hats and they're like just woolen hats with bubbles on the sides. But yeah, it's just part of the culture that you just have to learn how to do this. And until you do it, you can't grow up. And that, there's quite a lot of places that do things like that.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. That's funny, because bubbles, I think, when you say bubble hat, where would you say the bubble has to be?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  On the top, of course. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they believe it's on the side. Don't mess with their beliefs.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Very insulting.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Okay, here is a fact from Charles Ekman. Sorry, Charles Ekman. And it's a bit of a complicated one. So we'll see if I can explain it, where I might not be able to. But Charles says, there is no such thing as a random number generator, because there is no such thing as a random number.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  I see. Okay.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Okay. So basically, he's saying that randomness is not a property that a number can have. If you roll a dice and you get a number four, you have managed to generate that in a random manner, but the number itself is not random. The number is just the number four.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so what he's saying then is that you can have a random number generator, but not a random number generator.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Hold on, what would a random generator be though? Surely anything?

• 5:55Speaker 03

  The generator is the dice which generates

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Random number. So you can have a random number generator. So the number generator is the dice, which gives you the randomness, but you can't have a random number generator because randomness is not an adjective that you could put next to number in mathematics.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  No, no, absolutely. I can see how you can have a random generator as well. And actually, you can only use it as an adverb. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to use random as an adjective at all. You just generate numbers randomly.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Well, if you're a magician, you say, pick a random card. That is a generator, the card system of which you're picking, right?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  It's a random generator.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Something that's doing it randomly.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  But the numbers will never be the random thing. I'm just trying to work out when you would ever use this email in real life context. And it does feel like it's been used by this person.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  I don't think so, really. I think it's just a bit of pedantic, mathematical stuff.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  I think if the bar is when are you going to use stuff in a real life context, I think our podcast is completely dead. So it's not going down that avenue.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  The word random used to mean to run somewhere very fast and very ferociously. And then it made, there had lots of different meanings, but in the 16th century, if you're on a ship and you're firing like a cannonball, a random firing would be the way that you would fire it to go the furthest. So that would be 45 degrees, basically. So if it said, ever said, fire in a random direction and you're on a 16th century vessel, you mustn't fire it in any direction. You must have fired it exactly 45 degrees.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  That's why time travelers get in such trouble, don't they? They make very bad naval officers.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  All right, let's get on to another one. This one comes from Moit Gray, from radium hot springs in British Columbia, Canada. Accent does not work. Anyway, Mike Gray says, I am the mayor of radium hot springs in British Columbia. Yeah. And I thought our town might have a little fact for little fish. The village is named after the nearby hot springs, which were renamed in 1915 after scientists discovered trace amounts of radon, a radioactive gas in the water. The levels are completely safe, but it does mean our town is now named after what is technically a mildly radioactive spa.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know why they chucked the radium in because Hot Springs is a town that I'd go to. Radium Hot Springs, I'm not taking my clothes off.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  This is very cool because we've had Lords writing. I don't think we've ever had any mayors from Canada write in before. This might be our first one.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  I think it's our first. I think that's really cool. And I think also it's really cool. It's cool enough to be the mayor of somewhere, but to be the mayor of somewhere that has such a cool name.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, well done.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  That's a hell of a badge.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  It is really cool. And I went to their Wikipedia page and they have 1,339 residents there as of the 2021 census.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  We wrote a book called 1339 Facts.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. So if you lived, if you're listening and you're from Radium Hot Springs, you could assign a fact from that book to every single one of the members of your

• 9:00Speaker 03

  That's very cool.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Wouldn't that be cool?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  And every time a baby's born, you have to kill an old person.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yes, it has to be a swap.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Pass the fact on.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  I have a, this is, Andy sends around the facts that he's curated from the inbox, isn't he? He sends them to us and he sent this one. This is from Gary Randall.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  So he thinks that this is specifically good for you, just before you read it out.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Um, not necessarily for me. You'll see why I've dragged Andy into this though. Um, so this fact is that Avril is a French name that means April. Actually, no. Um, and Levine is a French surname, which actually means the fool, because it comes from a name that means someone living near a playhouse or an occupational name for a jester. So that's Levine. So Avril Levine is actually April Fool.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's very good.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  But wait, Andy, I looked into it.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  It's not true. He's having you on, Andy. He's having, it's an April, because it's an April Fool in a fact about April Fool. What? And Andy has, yeah, Levine doesn't mean the fool. Levine just means the veen.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  The fool be la fu.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, but I mean, it could have been a ye olde thing, but it's not. Someone's made up a clever trick.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  So who was it who sent that in?

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Someone called Gary Randall, who I believe is either Gary Randall's been tricked or Andrew Hunter Murray's been tricked, but let the record show that I haven't been tricked.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Good to have you back. I wonder when it was sent, if it was sent at the beginning of April, as in, I wonder what day it hit the inbox.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  I had a look in the inbox and it's not there. So I think Andy might have a secret channel because this isn't in our main inbox.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Right. Do you think Andy's done this to trick us? He could be the tricker.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Oh my God, Andy is Gary Randall.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Is that an anagram?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Wow, Andy.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  It's got and in it.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got Rand.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  It's got Andy in it.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  It does.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Andy girl.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Girl, Andy girl. It's Andy girl.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because we know he loves Avril Lavigne.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Do we?

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was a boy. She was an Andy girl. Can I make it any more obvious?

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Jesus, okay.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  That is very interesting, actually.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Great stuff.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Um, do you remember Andy fell for a April Fool's trick on this very show? Not on this show, on our main show.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Uh, which was the elephants inventing the road system in the south of England.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  That was good, wasn't it? What, what was the claim that they trampled the grass down or something into?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  All of the roads in the south of England are based on old animal tracks made by elephants.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Oh, can we lay into Andy some more? All this shit we got about him.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  If he was planning to fool us, this is very much bad fired, hasn't it?

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Okay, well, that was a bad prediction by him if, um, he did that. And here is another fact about a bad prediction, uh, from Matt Birch. And he has found the worst prediction ever made by scientists. And that is that the calculation for the energy density of a vacuum, uh, because their prediction exceeded the observed value by about 120 orders of magnitude.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  An order of magnitude would be 10 times more, two orders of magnitude, 100 times more. This was 120 orders of magnitude. They got it wrong. Uh, and the difference is so big, according to Matt, that if you, um, said the universe contains one atom, you would be about 40 orders of magnitude out with that because there's one to the power of 40.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  And this was 120, did you say?

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So that's three times worse than you saying there's only one atom in the universe.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  We've all made mistakes.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've got another mistake here. This is from 1992 from the president of Sri Lanka, who was called Ranasinga Pramadasa. And he spoke to soothsayers who said that by changing the country's name to Sri Lanka instead of Sri Lanka, he would improve the country's fortune. So he did that and he was assassinated the following year and the former spelling was restored.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  But did the country's fortune improve? I mean, that's his fortune. It didn't say anything about improving his fortune.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  That's true. That's the thing with these soothsayers. They always tell you the truth, but you think that they're not telling you the truth.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've got to read the small print.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Always.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Well, while we're on names of places, here's an email that we got from David Croy, who says, "Today I learned that North, South Carolina, is in the centre of the state. Why? Because it's named after John North. Put it in the book."

• 13:37Speaker 03

  The bit where it says, "Put it in the book," was that Andy adding a little comment?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  It's different font. Yeah, so that's weird. Yeah, this was named after a guy called John North, who in 1891 was part of the southbound railroad that came through the area. He was an assistant on that. And then he donated 100 acres to the area and then it got named after him and he also became the very first elected mayor of North, South Carolina.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Very cool. A very mayor-centric episode we've got today. And actually, I've got a related fact that I got sent from Lucy Frey.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And this is that in my town, she says, in my town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, there's a pond downtown named Ashley Pond, and it is named after Ashley Pond.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  As in the surname is Pond?

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, her surname is Pond, yeah. But the pond is called Pond.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  What is Andy doing? Why is he not even here?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  He's not here. What are we doing? Why did I read my one out that led into your one?

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Samuel Donaldson of Christchurch, New Zealand, writes, "One of the few tall buildings still in Christchurch after the earthquake is the Height Building, named after James Height."

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Officially the Pwaka James Height Building. Uh, Pwaka be Maori for the Rigel Star Cluster.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Really good.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  What is he doing?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  This guy is, is taking us on a ride. This is, this is bullshit. Check this one out. This is from Gem Condlyff. "This is etymology rather than a fact, but I think it's also a brand new fact," says Gem.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's nice. We always like those.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. "You know, when you have an amorous moment, people might say, Andy got off with Dan's sister."

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Wha- what?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  That's what it says.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  This is Andy's weird way of telling you this, under the pseudonym. So go on, what, what's the rest of the fact?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Why is he saying that?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Why is Andy seeing an email like that and sending that to me? Okay, he says, "Why do we say get off with? I believe I can explain." So Gem says, "I work for a local newspaper and in our archives from 100 years ago, we had paternity cases where a man would have to pay for his illegitimate child's upkeep. The court would possibly hear that nine months before the baby's arrival, the couple went to a dance in a nearby town, riding on a cart chartered for this purpose. On the way home, beer and lust would take over and said couple would prevail upon the carter to let them off at a secluded spot." So the idea to get off with is get off the cart.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  I see.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that literally is-

• 16:11Speaker 00

  I mean, it's definitely true.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  That's the connection that Gem is making. I agree. It's not very strong and I think Andy only included it so that he could put the image of him making out with my sister into my mind.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Andy, you've been seen, mate.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  That's right. So, everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids, but what about protecting them? I'm talking outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates. Where do you even start?

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Yes, it is a nightmare. Well, protecting your home and your auto is a great place to start.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Don't wait. Get your quote today at progressive.com.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. On with the show.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  We've got time for one more, Anna?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Uh, one from Martha King. She says, this is the funniest fact she's found out recently. Get ready. Hold on to your britches. In the first two original Thomas the Tank Engine books, the fat controller was called the fat director. It's not the end of the fact.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  The reason was that after the first two episodes, or the first two editions, the railways were nationalized and the bureaucracy was rejigged, and director became controller. So that's why his name was changed from director to controller.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  It's called Mr. Topham Hat now, because you're not allowed to say fat controller anymore.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  I will say that I preemptively looked this up because I read a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine, which by the way, is so full of weird old railway jargon that it's very hard to read to a young toddler. But I knew my mum was gonna come along and say, isn't it ridiculous you're not allowed to call him that anymore? So I Googled it to check, and it's not true.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  What?

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you're totally allowed to call him that. He just happens to have been called Mr. Topham Hat in some American editions, I think, but like, modern editions happily call him the fat controller.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Is that right?

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Really?

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was never a thing.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  They did a whole bit of that on SNL last week.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Well, they're incorrect, I'm afraid. Who knew that SNL was not a very rigorously researched academic fact-based show?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Do you guys remember that we happen to know one of the Sir Topham Hats out there? One of the fat controllers?

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Oh, something's ringing a bell, but I can't remember what it is.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  So you know when if a kid writes in to somewhere that has a fictional character, sometimes someone is assigned to be the official person, and they'll write back or they'll do certain things for them? Yeah, we know a former one, which was Craig Glenday, the current editor in chief of the Guinness World Records. Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Wait, so what did he do? He wrote in as a kid to Thomas the Tank Engine and said, can I be the fat controller?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  I misunderstood this.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Quite the opposite, in fact. Think about the exact opposite of what you've just said, and that's true.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Thomas the Tank Engine wrote to Craig Glenday saying,

• 19:35Speaker 01

  warmer.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Can I be the Guinness World Records book?

• 19:41Speaker 00

  Sorry. Look, feel free to explain our, I'm sure the listeners got it.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  So, kids would write to the fat controller and Craig would reply.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  I see.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  As, as.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  As, I see. That's really cool. That's really cool.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Makes more sense that way, doesn't it?

• 19:58Speaker 00

  It does make more sense, yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's it for your facts for today. But before we wrap up the show, we have to dish out some headline facts to our latest custodians. So if you join Club Fish, our secret members' club, and you join the highest tier friend of the podcast, you will become the custodian of one of the headline facts from our 12 years of doing fish. And so here are eight more custodians to hand out now. James, do you want to start?

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Yes, this one is now under the custodianship of Krista Hill. And Krista, your fact is that Finland's parliament sometimes makes decisions in the sauna. Sauna.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Sauna.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Sauna. Um, yeah, that's, I mean, playing up to national stereotypes, as usual.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  How big's the sauna? Like, how many, how big is their parliament? Isn't it hundreds?

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Oh, a hundred, as in like 650 like we have in our parliament.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  We have a very bloated government. We'd need a massive sauna in the UK, wouldn't we? I bet, they're very slimmed down, the Finnish people. I bet they've only got sort of four people in their parliament.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  I don't know how many they have, but what would be the British equivalent? Like, do it making all your decisions in Weatherspoons?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  They might be better ones.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Why not try, kid?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  In a caf, yeah, with a full English.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  In a caf?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Very cool. And saunas are, they're, I mean, when we did this fact, I think we found out that during war times, you know, generals would bring their own portable sauna as well. Like, it's just, it's, it's huge in the culture.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  It is. It's absolutely massive. You can't go anywhere in Finland without seeing a sauna.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  That's for sure.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  You've been, haven't you, James?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  To Finland, yeah, for sure.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Did you have a sauna?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Did I have a sauna when I was in Finland? I feel like I must have done. I reckon when we did this fact, however many years ago it was, I'd never had a sauna in my life, but certainly now I have had saunas.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  You've changed, man.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Just slightly warmer than I was all those years ago. Okay, let's do another one.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Okay, well, this is for Mike Smith. Here you are, Mike Smith. You have to guard this fact with your life. In British electoral history, eight candidates have won no votes at all in a general election. There you go. Eight candidates, Mike Smith. I want you to guard that, memorize their names.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Wasn't one of them someone who, in fact, maybe more than one of them were people who lived in that constituency and didn't even vote for themselves.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yes, you're right.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  That's politeness, isn't it? It's like, you know, because on the off chance someone recognizes your handwriting or how you do a cross, and they're like, oh, my God, they've voted for themselves. How embarrassing.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  I think like if I was playing like games at Christmas time or something and you had to vote for someone, I would naturally not vote for myself. Like in some kind of voting game, you wouldn't vote for yourself. You'd always vote for someone else because it's a bit, feels a bit icky to vote for yourself.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  What kind of games are you playing at Christmas time? Weird democracy games.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  We play like a parliamentary game where we each take one of the members of World War II and then we make our arguments about why or why not the war should occur.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  You don't do that?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Consequently, James is Prime Minister in the Harkin household.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Are you kidding me? You've met all of my family. How far up the pecking order do you think I have in that family?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah. Okay, let's get another one here. This fact is going out to Gergo de Brexzenny.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  And the fact is the final McDonald's burger ever sold in Iceland can be watched decomposing on a webcam.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Very cool. Now, I have seen that, I must say.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  And it's Iceland, the country.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Iceland, the country, yeah. Yeah, it was, I don't know if it's still there actually, but it was in a hotel. It was like, even if you weren't staying in the hotel, you could just go because I think it was in the lobby and you could just sort of see this Big Mac.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  It was under like a glass thing.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  They should just leave it in one of the bedrooms and then everyone who gets that room goes in and goes, um, sorry, the cleaner hasn't been in.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  There seems to be a perfectly good Big Mac here. I mean, half of a perfectly good Big Mac. Yeah, I mean, how desperate would you have to be after a night out to look at that and go, it's probably still okay?

• 24:15Speaker 00

  I'd have to have had at least two drinks.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  It would be you, though, a busboy who smashed into it. Do you remember when we did our live tour? I had, as a Hall of Famer, come onto the stage, the man who decided to livestream a random puddle that had appeared in the road.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Mr. Puddle.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And I remember on the day, watching it myself, you know, we were just watching a random person, not realise how big the puddle was and either get into it, or this was wild.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  A wild of livestreaming.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  That was the level of celebrity we had on our live shows, so bad luck if you missed it.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Okay, this next fact is under the custodianship of Callan, C A L I N. Callan, your fact is that in 1851, Prince Albert commissioned a ballroom for Balmoral Castle, made entirely of corrugated iron. And I remember this episode so well because John Lyde was on the show.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  And he got so into corrugated iron.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  He hasn't stopped talking about it since.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Oh my, good god. It was like, he just like managed to get almost everything in the universe and then pulled it rounds to corrugated iron. He's like, did you know the shape of the universe must be a bit like corrugated iron?

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Because of the stiffness of it, and it's like, oh my god.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I feel like I remember the thunk of his research notes hitting the table. It was such a thick wad. Was that John's first ever show?

• 25:35Speaker 00

  I think it was, actually.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  I think that might have been.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't. He was in the one, he was in a football special.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  You're right. You're right, yes.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it was like miraculous theorem or something, that if you get something flat, like a piece of paper, if you hold it at the end, it kind of flops down. But if you bend it into a U shape, it stays stiff. And it's basically why if you fold pizza, it won't flop over before it goes in your mouth. And I literally tell my daughter that fact every single Sunday when we buy her a pizza at the farmer's market. And I say, did you know that if you fold it here, it'll make it stiffer than the...

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Again, you've changed, man, buying pizza at the farmer's market. What's wrong with pizza?

• 26:18Speaker 03

  I have changed in that sense, but I haven't changed in the sense I'm extremely tedious about my facts to people.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Anna?

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Yep, this one's for Brian Hess. No relation to other Hesses you might know.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  As far as we know.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  As far as we know, uh, no. And here's a fact for you, Brian. During the 19th century, Sadler's Wells Theatre in London was routinely flooded to stage fake naval battles.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  So good.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, these were incredible. Theatre used to be more fun. You went and you were told you had to wear your swimming stuff when you bought the ticket and you came in.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Really? I forget that detail.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  You could be immersive.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  It could be. I know, it could be literally immersive. They also had horses as well on stage, didn't they? That's another thing I remember.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Running on treadmills.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Out Towards You, which is what an illusion of scariness that you would have. It's like a 3D movie.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  I would argue it's not really an illusion of scariness. It's just scary.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is scary. Uh, here's another one now for Adrian Carter. Adrian Carter, your fact is that the practice of dog owners pretending they haven't seen their dog having a poo is technically known as strategic non-knowledge.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  That's fantastic.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  Whose fact was that?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  That's Andy's.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  I like the technically. Well, I'd forgotten that fact, but in what official dictionary?

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Which experts?

• 27:41Speaker 03

  There must be a paper about it, right?

• 27:43Speaker 00

  There must be.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  There must be. Andy's not made that up.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  No.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Andy wouldn't do something like that.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. Technically is doing a lot of work there, I think, in an Andy fact.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  There's technically a giant kettle called Jenny.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  It's just a big building that heats water. That's not a kettle, mate.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it plays it fast and loose.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Hey, you know, when I wasn't on the show last week?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Were you slagging me off in the same way that you're slagging Andy off here? Is that what's going on here?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  No, but you weren't trying to get off with my sister in emails.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Okay, is it my turn?

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Then this fact now goes out to Amanda. And Amanda, your fact is that instead of being one of the founders of the USA, Benjamin Franklin almost stayed in Britain to found a swimming school on the Thames.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is a cracker. He spent some time wandering London. Got really into swimming.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  He did.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  It was, I think I remember the location where it was, not from the time, from reading about it, yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Was it near his house? Cause his house is quite near the old QI office, wasn't it?

• 28:47Speaker 00

  It was near embankment, so yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  It's still a, it's a museum now. So you can go, you can find it with a blue plaque on the outside, but you can actually go inside and it's.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  That's cool. You wouldn't want to swim in the Thames there now because it's too fast flowing. Um, whereas like it's probably cleaner than it was then, I reckon, because the Thames has improved quite a lot in cleanliness over the years.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Uh, but they put in extra bridges, which makes the water flow quicker.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Cause there's like the arches that the water has to kind of squeeze through.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  So now it's like doing wild water rapids.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Well, compared to in those days, yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Like if Benjamin Franklin jumped in the Thames now, you'd have to fish him out in Fulham or something. Is that the way it goes?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Yep. You've done that right. God. It's, it's actually, I'm actually spending so long working this out, but yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Remember when you and I, um, rowed on the Thames, Anna, and they were teaching us how to do it and you would have to go, you'd be at next to this factory or something and you'd have to like row for half a mile or something, whatever it was. And you rode to the other end and then they were explaining to you like, okay, this is what you did. This is what you have to improve. Okay. And then when you turn around, you're exactly back where you started.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  Taken you all the way back there. You're like, the amount of effort I put in to get to that point and now I'm back where I started.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  And that's, that's why in the Olympics, they never stop to have chats, do they? Halfway through, they never go on. Let's have a team talk, team talk, heads together.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Although, do you remember there was one rower in the early days, I'm not sure if it was Olympics, but there was a race where he was winning by so much. There was some ducks went past and he could stop and let the ducks cross the river and then carried on going and still won the race.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  That's right. I, having mentioned John Lloyd earlier, I once was having a coffee with John and we were sitting and the view was the Thames. And we're mid chat and he suddenly just went, oh, look, it's Bill Bailey. And I looked out and on a paddleboard, standing in the Thames, was Bill just waving at us, you know, hi John, hi Dan.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  That's odd.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  But feels in keeping with who he is.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  That's amazing. He must have been there every day for like six years hoping that John Lyde would turn up.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Let's have one.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  I think Fulham is the wrong way, isn't it?

• 30:58Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Because Fulham, Fulham, you'd have to be going west, wouldn't you?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Don't write in.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Don't please don't write in.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  All right, let's have one more. This is a fact for Edelith. Edelith, your fact is sumo wrestling referees carry a knife so that if they make a bad decision during a match, they can kill themselves.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Dear.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Do you remember that? I think that was, that was one of my facts and I.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  I think they don't do it anymore.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I think.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I don't think there have been any modern fatalities anyway. It's probably more ceremonial as a concept, right? Yeah. Sumo wrestlers and Benjamin Franklin, I feel like those were two quite heavy friends of the podcast that we've not visited much.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  Literally heavy because yeah, that's.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Very funny.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. But yeah, we used to do, we used to do sumo's affair chunk, I think, back in the day. And Franklin.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  We need to bring him back.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a rich vein, Franklin. It's weird that we raise sumo wrestlers so much. That feels like your influence.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Thrusting them in.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  We, we of course only record one of these every week, which we do about 10 minutes before it goes out. So not to break the illusion, but I have a feeling looking at my notes, there might be a sumo wrestler fact in next week's show when we record next week, of course.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Wow, really?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Isn't that Benjamin Franklin was once a sumo wrestler?

• 32:14Speaker 03

  You might also find, I have a feeling that Andy might be away next week as well.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Long old holiday, isn't it?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, okay. What a, what a great tease to end the show on. Tune into next week's Little Fish to hear about sumo wrestlers. Well done to everyone who is now custodian of one of our facts. That is Edelith, Amanda, Adrian, Brian, Kalen, Gergo, Mike and Krista. And if you want to have your fact featured on the show, podcast at qi.com, send them in. Andy goes through the emails. He picks out the ones most relevant to him and his life and his interests and he hands them to us to read out. And so yeah, do, do send them. We love reading them out. And if you do want your own fact to be a custodian of, you just have to go to patreon.com slash clubfish and join the highest here, friend of the podcast. There's a lot of great other things that we do in Club Fish. So do check it out generally. Otherwise come back on Friday for Big Fish. We'll see you then. Until

• 33:06Speaker 01

  then, from me, Anna and James, it's goodbye.

• 33:20Speaker 04

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

• 33:33Speaker 05

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• 34:18Speaker 05

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• 34:20Speaker 02

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