Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: No Harm, No Foul About this episode Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including antifreeze, leaning trees and FURBs. Andy reveals why he's not on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast fact custodians.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Stop the podcast.
0:01 Speaker 01 Stop the podcast.
0:02 Speaker 00 Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.
0:05 Speaker 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?
0:15 Speaker 00 Yes, it is a nightmare. Well, protecting your home and your auto is a great place to start.
0:22 Speaker 01 Progressive offers customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones.
0:27 Speaker 00 They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, and baby gates of insurance.
0:32 Speaker 01 Don't wait. Get your quote today at progressive.com.
0:35 Speaker 00 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. On with the show.
0:41 Speaker 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.
1:22 Speaker 01 Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray. I'm here with Dan Schreiber and James Harkin, and we have gathered to give you your best facts. You've been sending them into podcast at QI.com, and we're here to tell you all about them. And then at the end, we're going to do some more fact custodian ships for people who've joined Club Fish at the friend of the podcast tier. So let's get into it. Who's got a, who's got a fact?
1:47 Speaker 03 That was depressingly good, Andy.
1:48 Speaker 01 Yes. James has been telling me that I make a holics of this intro every time and was grinning at me throughout that, just waiting for me to do so.
1:56 Speaker 03 I was trying to put you off, and it didn't work at all.
1:58 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no. I got a fact. Shall I jump into it?
2:01 Speaker 03 Sure.
2:01 Speaker 01 Dan Conley sends this. He says, a few months after co-starring as Papa in the video for Madonna's Papa Don't Preach.
2:10 Speaker 04 Danny Aiello, who is an actor that you will know from movies such as The Godfather Part Two, he's Leon the Professional, he's got a very, very familiar face in those movies. So he was Papa in Papa Don't Preach.
2:23 Speaker 03 Oh, was he?
2:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, so not long after that was released, he released an answer song to it. Papa Wants the Best For You, his own version to reply to Madonna for what she was saying.
2:37 Speaker 03 Is he preaching throughout it?
2:38 Speaker 04 He's, he's sort of, I watched the video and the song sounds very much like a 1990s or 1980s sitcom.
2:45 Speaker 03 Oh, sitcom.
2:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, like, you know, like the intro where it's like everyone's turning their heads and smiling at camera? Picture what song's underneath that, it's got that vibe about it.
2:54 Speaker 03 Okay.
2:55 Speaker 04 But he seems really distraught.
2:57 Speaker 03 He's like, incredibly specific reference.
2:59 Speaker 04 It's honestly the same tone.
3:01 Speaker 03 We understand it, though.
3:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:03 Speaker 03 Then it works.
3:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, so he, he did this reply song, you know, and he did occasional songs, he released a few albums, but he wasn't a big singer.
3:11 Speaker 03 So Papa Don't Preach is Madonna saying, don't tell me what to do, dad, right?
3:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:17 Speaker 04 I think, I think it had something to do with her having a baby and needing an abortion. I think, you know, coded underneath it.
3:24 Speaker 03 Okay.
3:24 Speaker 04 But largely that's what it was, yeah.
3:26 Speaker 03 Because I don't know the song, all I can think of is the Papa and Nicole adverts. That's what it's based on.
3:32 Speaker 04 Is it?
3:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:33 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:33 Speaker 03 Papa Don't Preach, I've got a Citron here.
3:36 Speaker 04 That's right.
3:37 Speaker 03 I'm just gonna say to full stall the emails, Renault, not Citroen. Oh, I knew it was that, but I thought no one's gonna write in for that, are they?
3:45 Speaker 04 James, you don't see the inbox like I see it. Yeah, so this comes in a long line of answer songs, as they're known.
3:54 Speaker 03 Can I say one? F U R B.
3:56 Speaker 04 Frankie.
3:57 Speaker 03 Frankie, that's the one I know.
3:58 Speaker 04 Well, that was the, that was massive in the 90s, I think it was, and it was basically a song, would you remember what his name was, the artist?
4:06 Speaker 03 Gosh, I can't remember, but his song was F U.
4:10 Speaker 04 Amen, he was called.
4:11 Speaker 03 Amen, that's right. And he just says F U all the way through to this girl, and then she says F U right back, but she was, she didn't know him in real life.
4:20 Speaker 04 Turns out she didn't, and that was the big thing, because at the time it was sold as if this was the genuine girlfriend and it was a sort of one-off. But this, this goes back so far back, so Walter Riley and Krista Marlowe traded answer pieces with each other.
4:34 Speaker 03 Who?
4:35 Speaker 04 Krista Marlowe?
4:36 Speaker 03 Krista Marlowe, and who was the first one?
4:37 Speaker 04 Walter Riley.
4:38 Speaker 03 Oh Walter Raleigh?
4:39 Speaker 04 Oh Raleigh, yeah, not Riley.
4:41 Speaker 01 Walter Riley is just some guy. Walter Raleigh is sailing to the new world and doing all of that.
4:46 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, no, I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about Walter Riley.
4:48 Speaker 03 Got it.
4:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
4:49 Speaker 03 I see.
4:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, wrote some amazing pieces back in the 1500s. No, Raleigh, sorry. Um, who wrote The Passionate Shepherd to his love. And there was a reply, which was the nymph's reply to the shepherd. So it goes all the way back then. It's not necessarily beef, it's just a reply. It's a different perspective.
5:05 Speaker 01 Lamb, innit?
5:07 Speaker 04 But yeah, Neil Sedaka wrote a O'Carroll in reply to.
5:10 Speaker 03 To O'Carolina by Shaggy?
5:14 Speaker 04 I don't even know a second Shaggy song, so that's amazing knowledge there. Neil Sedaka wrote O'Carroll and Carole King wrote O'Neil in reply to that.
5:24 Speaker 03 Oh, that's good. Um, David Bowie wrote a, um, wrote a song, oh no, had an album called Low, L O W.
5:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:33 Speaker 03 And then there was a musician called Something Low, L O W E, and he released an album called Bowie Without the E.
5:40 Speaker 01 Very nice.
5:41 Speaker 04 Very nice.
5:42 Speaker 03 I wish I could remember everything about it. It was the first record released by Stiff Label, Stiff Label? That had like Madness in and a load of other people.
5:51 Speaker 04 Right. There's a crazy one, which is that, um, John Lennon with the Beatles put out In My Life. And his dad, who was not a singer, his dad was like a sailor. He was, he was out on the seas and that's why John didn't grow up with him. Released a song that same year, within the same month called That's My Life. And it's been labelled as an answer song, uh, but I think it was just jumping off the, the, the sort of coincidence of title to make it so that he goes up in the charts with the name Lennon. But what's amazing is he recorded it with a 30-piece orchestra and two of the members of that orchestra were part of Jimi Hendrix's experience band. So it was Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, the two people who defined psychedelia along with Jimi Hendrix. Worked on a song with John Lennon's dad back in 1965.
6:36 Speaker 01 Should we have another fact?
6:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay, here's one. This one, I seem to have become the repository for facts about sporting teams with weird wordy coincidences.
6:48 Speaker 01 Look, a sport fact comes into the inbox, I think, I'm not going near that. I know who's the man.
6:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, Svein and Carlson wrote in and said that between 1975 and 1988, the football club West Bromwich Albion went through a run of managers whose first names went Johnny, Ronnie, John, Ron, Ronnie, Ron, Johnny, Nobby, Ron and Ron.
7:11 Speaker 04 Nobby sticks out a bit.
7:12 Speaker 01 Nobby sticks out a mile. Oh, that's so funny.
7:16 Speaker 03 So Sveining found this on Twitter from a Twitter account called Touchline X. But yeah, he checked it out and it was Johnny Giles, Ronnie Allen, John Wiley, Ron Atkinson, Ronnie Allen, Ron Wiley, Johnny Giles, Nobby Stiles, Ron Saunders and Ron Atkinson.
7:33 Speaker 01 Nobby Stiles?
7:33 Speaker 03 Johnny Giles.
7:35 Speaker 01 Giles then Stiles.
7:35 Speaker 03 Giles and Stiles.
7:37 Speaker 01 Amazing, absolutely amazing. Was that a fact from someone called Carlson?
7:40 Speaker 03 His surname is Carlson.
7:41 Speaker 01 That's probably the best fact about football managers I've ever heard.
7:45 Speaker 04 That's brilliant.
7:46 Speaker 03 From Carlsberg?
7:47 Speaker 01 That's a reference to Carlsberg.
7:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay, just for stalling the emails, I think.
7:51 Speaker 01 It's close enough.
7:54 Speaker 03 And at the same time, you sent me a fact from Ole Everback and it is about Bodde Glimt, who won against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League recently. And the goals were scored by Seelath from Madrid, Seuvald and Huh. And all of those names have got a circle with a line through it. You know, like.
8:21 Speaker 01 The O with a.
8:22 Speaker 03 An uh.
8:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:25 Speaker 01 What a wonderful fact.
8:27 Speaker 03 What a wonderful fact, yeah. Ola said that it was maybe the greatest win for the letter 'er' through all times.
8:35 Speaker 01 Here's a fact from Mike Abudullah. "Your fact bestowing at the end of Little Fish has probably had the intended effect here and prompted me to go and listen to some old episodes." Guys, it works. Ah, yes. It works. Nice. Brilliant. "A friend of mine has worked on maintaining some old software which uses something called the PIC operating system. This product was named after one of its developers, Mr. Dick PIC." Hmm. Now, I've looked this up and I tell you, I got it wrong the first time. I did not add PIC operating system in quotes. I just searched Dick PIC. Dick PIC? And, yeah. Did you? Yeah. How was it? It was alright. Yeah. Stuck out a mile. Lost an hour of time, but it was good.
9:16 Speaker 01 So, anyway, no, Dick PIC was the real guy who came up with the PIC operating system. That's so interesting. I suppose he predated the Dick PIC? That's wonderful. Yeah. Just the real thing.
9:26 Speaker 03 Predated the digital Dick PIC.
9:28 Speaker 01 Absolutely. This was the analogue. Anyway.
9:33 Speaker 04 Here's another one. This is from Daniel Atkinson. Says, "A little fact I discovered researching the 1985 Austrian wine poisonings."
9:42 Speaker 03 Oh.
9:43 Speaker 04 So, before I get to his fact, we should qualify what that is. 1985, in Austria, there was an incident where all the wineries were found to be illegally adulterating their wines by using an antifreeze to make sure that it was sweeter, that it had that full-bodied taste, like one that was like a late harvest wine.
10:02 Speaker 01 Why was that illegal?
10:03 Speaker 04 Well-
10:03 Speaker 03 Because it can make you blind.
10:04 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
10:05 Speaker 04 There you go. Just thought we'd better draw that out, you know, antifreeze sounds good, doesn't it?
10:10 Speaker 01 It sounds great.
10:10 Speaker 03 You don't want your wine freezing.
10:13 Speaker 04 So Austria, for a while, they were the third-largest wine producer in the world. And this absolutely decimated them because it was seen to be illegal and they had to get rid of all of these bottles of wine. So they ended up draining away 27 million litres of wine. So 36 million bottles. It was seven months' worth of Austria's total wine exports. And they did use it for useful things. They started-
10:37 Speaker 01 Pulled it into cars, I presume?
10:39 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, and that's the thing. They were using it for sewer treatment plants. They were using it on the roads as an antifreeze.
10:46 Speaker 01 That's incredible.
10:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, so it's amazing. But the fact that's been sent in by Daniel Atkinson is that apparently when the news eventually got out about the poisoned wine, many countries in Europe banned not just wine from Austria, but China and Japan accidentally banned all of Australia's wine as well because of the similar names.
11:05 Speaker 01 Can't be too careful.
11:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:06 Speaker 03 That's very funny.
11:07 Speaker 04 Incredible.
11:08 Speaker 03 Okay, here is one from Declan Curry. And Declan says, "My fact is if you walked around the whole earth on the equator, your head would travel roughly 37 feet further than your feet." She's the curvature of the earth.
11:25 Speaker 04 What?
11:26 Speaker 01 But yeah, so that's, that's, that's very dangerous, actually, isn't it? Ending up with your head that much farther away from your feet.
11:33 Speaker 03 There are, there are a few technical issues, such as the fact that most of the equator is underwater.
11:38 Speaker 01 Sure.
11:38 Speaker 04 Yes.
11:39 Speaker 03 But yeah, in theory, that's what would happen.
11:41 Speaker 04 So what goes further, your legs and your feet?
11:43 Speaker 03 Your head.
11:44 Speaker 04 Your head goes.
11:44 Speaker 03 Because it's further away from the centre of the earth.
11:47 Speaker 04 That's a very good fact.
11:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:48 Speaker 04 That's amazing.
11:50 Speaker 03 Can you think of any ways that you can tell how far away from the equator you are?
11:55 Speaker 01 Well, look around you. And if you can see a polar ice cap, you know you're, you've got a way to go.
12:01 Speaker 03 How do you know? Yeah, but how do you know you're not at the south pole?
12:03 Speaker 01 Well, I'd, I suppose I'd look around for any polar bears. And if I can't see any polar bears, then I'm definitely at the south pole.
12:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, or the zoo.
12:12 Speaker 01 Exactly.
12:13 Speaker 04 Are you shorter?
12:14 Speaker 03 You're shorter.
12:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, is gravity pulling on you a slight bit stronger? That'll be it. That you're just very slightly shorter.
12:20 Speaker 03 Be very difficult for you to measure, I should think.
12:23 Speaker 01 So what am I trying to tell here? If I'm at the equator or far away?
12:26 Speaker 03 How can you tell? How far away from the equator you are?
12:29 Speaker 01 Probably use Google Maps, wouldn't I? I mean, on a practical level.
12:31 Speaker 03 Okay, your phone's not working.
12:33 Speaker 01 Oh, well, I'm, I'm stuffed. I'll look around probably for any nearby trees with moss on them. And if I, and, and you know, if I find trees with ossetum, I'm happy wherever I am in the world.
12:44 Speaker 03 Okay, trees is a good one. So there is one way you could do this. This is the cuck pine tree. And the cuck pine tree bends a different amount depending on how close to the equator you are. Admittedly, it doesn't grow in all places on earth, but wherever you are, if you can find a species of this tree, the amount that it's leaning will tell you your latitude.
13:07 Speaker 01 That's incredible. That's amazing. That's great.
13:10 Speaker 03 Another way you can do it is you can speak to one of the locals. And if their language has more vowels than consonants, they're gonna live closer to the equator.
13:19 Speaker 01 Okay. Absolutely foolproof.
13:23 Speaker 01 And you're saying that's less hard than measuring yourself.
13:27 Speaker 03 To, to like an Agstrom of height, right? I mean, how much taller are you?
13:33 Speaker 01 Oh, I don't know. I was, I thought you had the answers.
13:37 Speaker 03 I have the answers to my actual answers.
13:39 Speaker 01 But not my ones. I get it now.
13:40 Speaker 03 But not your whimsical ones.
13:41 Speaker 01 All right, I get it. Can I give you another one?
13:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:43 Speaker 01 Yeah. This is from Jono Whitehead. I was listening to you and Dan brought up R A S syndrome, which stands for redundant acronym syndrome syndrome.
13:52 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
13:53 Speaker 01 Lovely. And I thought you'd appreciate this. We all know what a cuttlefish is, don't we?
13:57 Speaker 03 Cuttlefish?
13:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:59 Speaker 01 Little sort of squiddy things.
14:01 Speaker 03 Sure.
14:01 Speaker 01 They're oceanic and molluscoy, aren't they?
14:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. We all know what a cuttlefish is. Anyway, the cuttle in cuttlefish comes from the old English kudel, meaning cuttlefish. So a cuttlefish is a cuttlefish fish.
14:17 Speaker 03 That's good.
14:18 Speaker 01 That is good. Pleasing, isn't it? And I had a little extra look into what cuttlefish comes from. The kudel either comes from the middle low German kudel, meaning container.
14:30 Speaker 01 Or the Old Norse codi, which means cushion or testicle.
14:35 Speaker 03 Oh.
14:35 Speaker 01 Or the Old English cod.
14:37 Speaker 03 Oh, and cod actually comes from the same as testicle, actually, like a codpiece.
14:41 Speaker 01 I read that cod and codpiece were not.
14:44 Speaker 03 I guess there's.
14:45 Speaker 01 Oh, sorry, the testicle cod, not the fish cod. Yes, you're absolutely right. Kudel is where codpiece comes from. Exactly, exactly.
14:50 Speaker 03 Interesting. And why do we think that it's called that? Is it like the shell that you would use as a cup or something?
14:57 Speaker 01 Kudel. Uh, yeah, I think so. I think it's, I think that's either it, or it's like a cushion, or it's like a testicle, which would be the Old English.
15:05 Speaker 03 Is it a cuttlefish where you get sepia from? Like, that you have in old photographs?
15:09 Speaker 01 I don't know. I only know that you put, you put a cuttlefish, um, shell in the, in the base of a parrot's cage for it to have something to chew on.
15:16 Speaker 03 That's true.
15:17 Speaker 01 Hmm.
15:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:18 Speaker 03 That's what they all dream to be when they're older.
15:21 Speaker 01 There's a good RAS syndrome one that I remember now, which is, uh, DC Comics.
15:25 Speaker 03 Oh, is it?
15:26 Speaker 01 Detective. Yeah, well Detective Comics, Comics.
15:29 Speaker 03 Is that right?
15:30 Speaker 01 It's in there. And then, and then someone, someone picked me up for this because I got it wrong, uh, in my book, which was, I wrote the HIV virus. Of course, the V is virus.
15:40 Speaker 03 I think it's fine.
15:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think so too.
15:42 Speaker 03 I don't mind you putting virus in there just to make sure everyone knows what you're talking about.
15:46 Speaker 01 That's what I said to the brain surgeon and he was not buying it. He got his friend, the rocket scientist involved.
15:54 Speaker 03 Um, here is a fact from Andrew Joseph Perez, and they say that the man who was arrested for vandalizing Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016, offered to bail out the man who was arrested for vandalizing Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.
16:11 Speaker 01 Well, that's nice.
16:13 Speaker 03 Isn't it?
16:13 Speaker 01 That's a club. What a family. Yeah.
16:15 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's passing it on to the next person.
16:18 Speaker 01 Pay it forward.
16:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:19 Speaker 01 Did they do anything especially amusing to the star or did they just hit it with a hammer?
16:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, and it wasn't very interesting, I've got to say. I got facts about the Hollywood Walk of Fame, though.
16:28 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
16:29 Speaker 03 Um, so who of these people has the biggest star?
16:32 Speaker 01 Oh.
16:32 Speaker 03 Uh, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Stanley Kubrick, Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, or Al Pacino.
16:40 Speaker 01 Bloody hell. Who has the biggest star? Because they're all basically the same size.
16:45 Speaker 03 They're all the same size, but there are some differences in some of the stars. For instance, the Apollo 11 crew have stars on there, but they're in the shape of moons.
16:52 Speaker 01 Oh, that's clever. Okay. Because they went to the moon. Yeah, that's pretty good. Oh, I get it now. Yeah.
17:02 Speaker 01 So I've been to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and I've walked up and down.
17:05 Speaker 04 Same here.
17:06 Speaker 01 I was looking for, looking for you. I was very disappointed. I can't, is, is one of them got a comically big star?
17:13 Speaker 03 Jolie Clooney, DiCaprio Affleck, Kubrick, Pitt, Carrie Pacino.
17:18 Speaker 01 Kubrick, because Kubrick did 2001: A Space Odyssey.
17:20 Speaker 03 And the moon landings, of course.
17:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:26 Speaker 01 I'll say Kubrick.
17:27 Speaker 03 Dan?
17:27 Speaker 04 Uh, I'm gonna say Jim Carrey and I have no reasoning for it.
17:31 Speaker 03 Well, the answer is, none of them has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a trick.
17:37 Speaker 04 That is a good trick.
17:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, great prank.
17:40 Speaker 03 Isn't it? And isn't it weird? Cause they're all pretty big names.
17:43 Speaker 04 Yes.
17:44 Speaker 03 None of them has ever, as far as I can see, say, said why they don't have it. But you need to be nominated to start off with. I imagine all these people have been. But then you have to pay a sponsorship fee every year and you have to attend the unveiling.
17:59 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:59 Speaker 03 So it's a bit of a, bit of a scam.
18:01 Speaker 04 Exactly, and they've had a rough few years, all of those, Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey. They don't really have the dosh, I don't think, to do that. But it is wild, you have to pay. Yeah, you have to maintain.
18:10 Speaker 01 That's nuts.
18:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:12 Speaker 01 No, thank you.
18:13 Speaker 03 Is that why you don't have one?
18:14 Speaker 04 That's why Andy's not got it yet.
18:16 Speaker 01 On principle. God, I have to wade through a dozen emails a day from those guys. Please, sir.
18:27 Speaker 00 Stop the podcast.
18:28 Speaker 01 Stop the podcast.
18:29 Speaker 00 Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.
18:32 Speaker 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?
18:42 Speaker 00 Yes, it is a nightmare. Well, protecting your home and your auto is a great place to start.
18:49 Speaker 01 Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you and your loved ones.
18:54 Speaker 00 They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance.
18:59 Speaker 01 Don't wait, get your quote today at progressive.com.
19:02 Speaker 00 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. On with the show.
19:09 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation. To I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
19:40 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
19:45 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
20:07 Speaker 01 Here's one.
20:08 Speaker 03 Okay.
20:09 Speaker 01 From Chris Squires, great name. We talked about the Chicago River, do you remember?
20:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
20:15 Speaker 01 With John Lloyd?
20:16 Speaker 03 We did.
20:17 Speaker 01 And it's, you know, it used to be very, very filthy.
20:19 Speaker 03 There is someone follows me on Instagram called The Real Dave Matthews.
20:23 Speaker 01 Of Dave Matthews Band?
20:24 Speaker 03 I don't know if it's him or not.
20:25 Speaker 01 Has he got a little tick? Sounds like him.
20:27 Speaker 03 I can't, I didn't check.
20:28 Speaker 01 Hmm.
20:29 Speaker 03 But I just got a follow from someone called The Real Dave Matthews. I was very excited.
20:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:34 Speaker 03 Because regular listeners will know that we talked about the Dave Matthews Band, whose bus went over the bridge of the Chicago River and dumped excrement on a tourist boat below.
20:45 Speaker 01 Not on purpose, as far as we know.
20:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:48 Speaker 01 Well.
20:48 Speaker 03 So you two haven't interacted, you're just sort of stand off. He's a follower.
20:52 Speaker 01 Right.
20:52 Speaker 03 I don't follow him. I can't see his, or hers, I don't know. Could be a female Dave Matthews, but I can't see their Instagram stuff because I'm not following them.
21:02 Speaker 01 I see. Right. Sounds like Dave Matthews to me. It sounds like the real one. Well, yeah, I mean, on a cursory examination, it sounds like the real Dave Matthews.
21:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, but it's so easy. You'd like to just make a fake The Real Dave Matthews.
21:13 Speaker 01 On the internet, no one knows if you're Dave Matthews or not. Chris writes, you missed the most interesting fact about the Chicago River. What a challenge.
21:22 Speaker 03 Hmm.
21:23 Speaker 01 And I thought, we can't have done, I think we did.
21:26 Speaker 03 Really?
21:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. In 1900, it changed direction.
21:30 Speaker 03 Oh.
21:30 Speaker 01 Oh, this is so wild. I just didn't know it at all. It used to be really horrible, right? And it used to empty into Lake Michigan.
21:38 Speaker 03 Yep.
21:38 Speaker 01 Which is where the principal water source for the city of Chicago.
21:42 Speaker 03 Yep.
21:43 Speaker 01 So if you're taking water from the lake and it's taking water from the river and there's all sorts of horrible gunk in the river, you've got problems.
21:50 Speaker 03 I see.
21:50 Speaker 01 You've got cholera, which happened plenty. And in 1871, they were trying to stabilise a local canal. They pumped some water in. It temporarily reversed the flow of the Chicago River and they thought, hang on, this, this is an idea. And so they created a canal to imitate a downhill direction for the river. Moved millions and millions of cubic yards of earth. And these days it runs out of Lake Michigan. And down eventually into the Gulf of Mexico via another river.
22:18 Speaker 03 Is that right?
22:19 Speaker 01 Isn't that stunning? That's very cool. They just reversed it.
22:21 Speaker 03 They raised Chicago around that time, didn't they? If you remember, the entire city was razed.
22:26 Speaker 01 Did they?
22:27 Speaker 03 By like a metre or something.
22:28 Speaker 01 Really? What?
22:29 Speaker 03 I think that's right.
22:30 Speaker 01 I think, yeah, it's ringing a bell.
22:32 Speaker 03 I wonder if this was part of the same thing.
22:34 Speaker 01 What, why do they?
22:35 Speaker 03 Well, I think the problem is I can't really remember. But I'm sure they did it. Where's my phone? Let me just quickly check it. You two talk amongst yourselves for a minute.
22:43 Speaker 01 Dan, you watched anything good lately? Um, started watching White Lotus.
22:48 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
22:49 Speaker 01 It's good.
22:49 Speaker 03 It's okay, yeah. They're a little bit mean, aren't they?
22:53 Speaker 01 I'm only an episode in.
22:54 Speaker 03 Oh, well, okay, enough of this red hot banter. During the 1850s and 1860s, engineers carried out a piecemeal raising of central Chicago to lift the city off its low lying swampy ground.
23:06 Speaker 01 Good lord.
23:07 Speaker 03 And so they raised a load of buildings, um, just so that they would get out of the ashes. But it's not related to the thing that you said.
23:13 Speaker 01 That's very interesting and also confusing because, you know, if you raise a bit, raise a city to the ground. That's the, oh no, that's the opposite of what we wanted you to do.
23:24 Speaker 03 Very good.
23:25 Speaker 01 Right, that's for the moment, enough of your brilliant facts. If you'd like to send in more, just email what you've got to podcast at qo.com. We love receiving them. But now it's time to dish out some of our headline facts from over the years. If you go to patreon.com slash Club Fish, you can join Club Fish, where you can have ad-free episodes of this podcast, you can have bonus stuff, our fortnightly drop us a line, audience feedback show. And if you join at the top tier, we will bestow on you in perpetuity, one of our headline facts, you will become custodian of one of these facts. And we send you even a gorgeous certificate proving your ownership to any doubters. It's really fun. Check it out, patreon.com slash Club Fish.
24:10 Speaker 01 Let's dish out some of the facts now. Who should we start with?
24:12 Speaker 03 Okay, I'll do one. This fact is now under the custodianship of Mary Sanderlands. And Mary, your fact is that after returning from the moon landing, Buzz Aldrin worked at a car dealership where he failed to sell a single car.
24:28 Speaker 01 I love this. I also understand it. If you go, you're trying to buy a car and someone keeps saying, I was on the moon, you know, I'm not interested. I want to know about the...
24:37 Speaker 03 Do you reckon he would do that?
24:38 Speaker 01 Does it have air conditioning? Oh, I bet he would.
24:39 Speaker 03 Do you think?
24:40 Speaker 01 He strikes me as a very uncompromising guy. Also, I'd be terrified to buy a car from Buzz Aldrin.
24:44 Speaker 03 Okay.
24:44 Speaker 01 Well...
24:45 Speaker 03 He's scary.
24:46 Speaker 01 He's very scary. He is pretty scary, yeah. I can imagine just him being quite brisk in a sales situation.
24:51 Speaker 03 What I think is that he's about to close a sale and then Neil Armstrong gets in there first.
24:57 Speaker 01 Oh, if only he was at the dealership across the road, that would be amazing. Cash pills ringing. Yeah.
25:03 Speaker 03 Michael Collins just doing a test drive.
25:08 Speaker 01 Lovely. Yeah, I've got a, um, he's written a couple of autobiographies, Buzz Aldrin, because he really, he really struggled when he came back from the moon. There was a lot of alcohol, there was divorces, all that sort of stuff. Check out this, this is the blurb at the back of his autobiography. "On the 20th of July 1969, Apollo 11 made its historic first landing on the moon. Two years later, astronaut Buzz Aldrin was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment."
25:29 Speaker 03 Wow.
25:29 Speaker 01 Woo. Because of what he saw up there? Yes.
25:32 Speaker 03 Sent to the loony bin, like Luna.
25:34 Speaker 01 Luna bin. Absolutely, an old fashioned phrase, but one I think we're bringing back.
25:40 Speaker 04 If it works as a pun, it's not offensive.
25:42 Speaker 01 Got it.
25:43 Speaker 03 But it was like, I think it came from the moon, like because people thought that you went crazy when you saw the moon.
25:49 Speaker 01 As in lunatic, yeah.
25:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
25:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're right, perhaps. No harm, no foul.
25:54 Speaker 03 I'd just like to apologize.
25:56 Speaker 01 Next full moon, your, your place is gonna be full of complaints in person. Shall I do one now?
26:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:01 Speaker 01 This one goes out to Wayne. Wayne, your fact is now that in the Middle Ages, the Catholic sect, the Cathars, were said to get their name from the fact they liked to kiss a cat's ass. This is the Cathars? I think this was your fact, James.
26:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, it sounds like me.
26:19 Speaker 01 They were heretics and the traditional church.
26:21 Speaker 03 I do like a sect.
26:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:24 Speaker 04 Do you?
26:24 Speaker 01 Unnatural, unnatural sects.
26:26 Speaker 03 I, I have sects appeal.
26:29 Speaker 04 Nice.
26:30 Speaker 03 Yeah?
26:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:31 Speaker 01 No harm, no foul.
26:35 Speaker 04 Andy's lost an hour to dick pics and you've got sex.
26:40 Speaker 03 No, yeah, it was, it was, what, Middle Ages and they used to make up stories of what they did.
26:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:48 Speaker 03 And they said that they would kiss a cat's bum. And also Satan supposedly sometimes came as a cat.
26:54 Speaker 01 Hmm.
26:54 Speaker 03 Right. And so it was like kissing Satan's bum in a way interesting.
26:57 Speaker 04 Ah, yes.
26:58 Speaker 01 Rick Mail had a cat called Satan.
26:59 Speaker 03 Did he?
27:00 Speaker 04 Did he?
27:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:01 Speaker 04 That's good.
27:01 Speaker 03 The cat Satan the mat. Satan the mat.
27:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:05 Speaker 03 Sa- Sa- Sa-
27:07 Speaker 01 You've pushed it too far.
27:08 Speaker 04 No, I think it's all good. I think, I really like it. Off the back of Looney Bin as well, come on. This is, this is a man.
27:16 Speaker 01 Watching him out of work, I get it.
27:18 Speaker 04 Exactly. Uh, let's do another one. This goes out to Brad Downing. And your fact is the British pop charts have had three top 50 songs sung exclusively in Latin.
27:29 Speaker 03 Wow.
27:30 Speaker 04 I can't remember.
27:31 Speaker 01 Gaudaeamus.
27:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, three times over.
27:34 Speaker 03 I can't think of any Latin, like maybe like a Pia Yezu kind of thing, like.
27:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think there'll probably have been choral works. Maybe it was Big at Christmas, for example.
27:44 Speaker 03 I feel like there was, I feel like Lil Wayne did a song last year. Maybe it was, ah, as in it had it in the background that he rapped over it.
27:52 Speaker 01 Oh, that wouldn't count unless he's rapping in Latin. I don't know if it's good language to rap in, like French, because all the, you know, so many similar rhymes at the end of words. French is terrific for rap.
27:59 Speaker 03 I think Latin.
28:00 Speaker 01 Which is why all the great rappers are French.
28:03 Speaker 03 There are some good French rappers.
28:04 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
28:05 Speaker 03 But I think Latin does have endings, doesn't it?
28:08 Speaker 01 Your verb endings.
28:09 Speaker 03 Any verb, if you end each sentence in a verb.
28:12 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
28:12 Speaker 03 Then they might rhyme.
28:13 Speaker 04 Right.
28:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:14 Speaker 04 Well, there's clearly a thirst for it, so maybe that can be the fish single.
28:18 Speaker 03 My Latin's very weak and yours is not bad, is it?
28:22 Speaker 01 Um, yeah, I'm not conversational, I'd say, but I could get by. I could get by in ancient Rome, no problem.
28:29 Speaker 03 Um, okay, here is another one. Um, this fact is that the way to recognise the Buddha is to look out for webbed feet, a tongue which can reach his ears and withdrawn genitalia. And look at you, Ethan Walker, this is now your fact. You know what? There's some things that you remember from these shows. And I remember listening to the edit of this show.
28:57 Speaker 04 Okay.
28:58 Speaker 03 And I remember where I was, I was skiing and I was, for some reason, I had to listen to an edit that day. And I was on holiday and so I was on the ski slopes and I remember listening to this specific moment.
29:09 Speaker 01 Wow, lovely situational memory you've got there.
29:11 Speaker 03 I don't even remember which country it was.
29:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. But it would have been so cold, you probably also would have had withdrawn genitalia at the time.
29:21 Speaker 01 I've seen the Buddha's tooth in a temple.
29:23 Speaker 03 In Candy.
29:24 Speaker 01 Sri Lanka.
29:25 Speaker 04 It's in Candy, well, you would lose a tooth if you were.
29:27 Speaker 01 Very, very, very nice.
29:29 Speaker 04 So where's Candy?
29:30 Speaker 01 It's in Sri Lanka.
29:31 Speaker 04 I was thinking of the joke, so I'd missed the second bit of that.
29:33 Speaker 03 Doesn't matter.
29:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:34 Speaker 03 Yep.
29:34 Speaker 04 Um, cool. And it's presumably not his tooth, but claimed to be a relic.
29:41 Speaker 03 Well, I've seen his tooth in, I think, Singapore or somewhere else.
29:45 Speaker 01 Thirty-two of the things, I mean.
29:46 Speaker 03 And the baby teeth.
29:48 Speaker 01 Sixty-four.
29:49 Speaker 03 Come on.
29:50 Speaker 01 I'm amazed we haven't got one in this room with us now. Anyway, yes, Buddha. Good, good to know. Keep alert. Um, this one goes out to Holly Flanagan. Holly, this fact is that the whoopee cushion was invented by a Roman emperor called Basianus. Also known as Bassianus, also known as Elagabalus. Dan, this is one of, I'd say this is the fact I've heard most from you over the years.
30:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:15 Speaker 01 It's your go-to. You love it.
30:17 Speaker 04 But it's because it was one that I'm pretty sure I, I found my, you know, sometimes we find facts that are written by others. I was reading an entry on Elagabalus on Wikipedia and I saw that his birth name was Basianus, of course Bassianus. I just couldn't believe that this guy attributed it with that. And I remember running into you, James. We were in the Covent Garden offices and going, can I, can I say Basianus? What do you think? And you were like, yeah. And.
30:42 Speaker 03 But was this the first time we ever deliberately mispronounced something for comic effect?
30:46 Speaker 01 I think this is Patience Z O for that.
30:48 Speaker 04 It can't be.
30:48 Speaker 03 It could be.
30:50 Speaker 04 Really? All right. This one's from Michael Reeve, folks. And your fact is now the oldest known purse is decorated with dog's teeth.
30:59 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
31:00 Speaker 04 How many teeth do they have?
31:02 Speaker 01 Um, dogs?
31:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:04 Speaker 01 Buckets.
31:05 Speaker 04 Loads.
31:05 Speaker 01 Great.
31:06 Speaker 03 Canines, all of them are canines.
31:08 Speaker 01 All canines. And there's the, there's the joke. I do feel a very nice satisfaction. Sometimes I feel like we might just make the same joke again that we made last time, 10 years ago. But I feel like sometimes we'll find our way to a new joke. And I think, I think James will have just done that there.
31:21 Speaker 03 Oh, that's lovely to hear, isn't it?
31:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's really nice. It's like we're getting a second chance to live our entire life.
31:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:28 Speaker 03 Yeah. This is what Andy does if he goes to a comedy show. He sits on the front row and someone does a joke and he goes, it's actually really nice to hear a joke like that on a day like today. Um, probably the structure of the joke is not something I've really heard before.
31:40 Speaker 01 I'm sorry for being an enthusiast. I'm trying to boost you guys up here.
31:43 Speaker 03 You could have just lolled.
31:46 Speaker 01 I never lol. I won't do it.
31:48 Speaker 03 You go straight to ruffle.
31:49 Speaker 01 I do.
31:52 Speaker 03 Okay. That fact was for Michael Reeve, folks. This next fact now belongs to Amy Reeve, folks.
32:00 Speaker 04 Any relation?
32:00 Speaker 03 No relation.
32:03 Speaker 03 I assume some relation. We don't know. It could be a coincidence.
32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, we've had some joint correspondence from Michael and Amy.
32:11 Speaker 03 Well, I would like to know because who's got the best fact? So, Michael, your fact is about the oldest known purse being decorated with dog's teeth. And Amyree folks, your fact is that according to a 2011 study, 27% of Britons neither love nor hate marmite.
32:29 Speaker 01 Hmm. Great.
32:30 Speaker 04 That's good.
32:31 Speaker 01 Great fact.
32:32 Speaker 03 I don't know which is my favourite though, they're both classics.
32:34 Speaker 04 Oh, that is good. Yeah.
32:36 Speaker 01 I think marmite. I encounter marmite more often than I encounter dog's teeth. I very rarely have dog's teeth on toast of a morning.
32:42 Speaker 04 Hmm.
32:43 Speaker 01 Let's have one last fact. This one goes out to John Gallagher and it's that the Knights of the Round Table included Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain and Gareth.
32:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:55 Speaker 01 Sir Gareth.
32:55 Speaker 04 Gareth.
32:56 Speaker 01 Bold Sir Gareth.
32:57 Speaker 04 Again, I was reading, I was reading a book of the Knights of the Round Table and when I saw that name, I was like, what the hell? That was Gareth?
33:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:03 Speaker 04 Who's this guy that no one ever talks about?
33:05 Speaker 01 Do you remember anything he got up to?
33:07 Speaker 04 I don't actually, no.
33:08 Speaker 01 12 years go by and apparently Sir Gareth is nothing to you anymore.
33:12 Speaker 04 I'm a bit blank on this entire episode, I think.
33:14 Speaker 01 I've just found, I've looked on an archive, he was King Arthur's nephew and he was maybe on one of, oh no, he was on the main table, but there were lesser tables, much like at a wedding.
33:23 Speaker 04 That's, that's what I was gonna say. That's my only memory.
33:25 Speaker 01 Is that there were other round tables and they were, you gotta get, you gotta get to the one with Lancelot.
33:30 Speaker 04 That's really funny. What am I doing on the one with Gareth?
33:35 Speaker 01 Ah, all right. Well, look, that's enough of our facts. Thank you so much to all of our new custodians of facts. Just to remind you, that's John, Amy, Michael, brackets, no relation, Holly, Ethan, Brad, Wayne and Mary. Thank you so much to all of you. Thank you to all of you for listening. If you'd like to submit a fact to us, it's [email protected] . That's our email address. And if you'd like to join Clubfish to get ad-free episodes, bonus content and so much more, go to patreon.com forward slash clubfish. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back next week with another one of these and in a few days with the main episode of No Such Thing As A Fish and potentially in a couple of days with a Drop Us A Line. All right. Bye for now. Bye.
34:20 Speaker 03 You let yourself down there, I think.
34:21 Speaker 01 I really did.
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35:34 Speaker 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.com/parents to learn more.
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