Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: Shall we put a podcast on? What a stupid idea! About this episode Dan, Andy and Anna discuss YOUR facts including pasta, Proust and pencils. Anna shares her secret 'Wheel of Life' game. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians.
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Edited by James Harkin
Produced by Leying Lee
Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia
Transcript 0:13 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome to Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode where we put down our facts from the last seven days and we get to chill out, sit back and really enjoy the facts that you've been sending us in. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter-Murray and Anna Tashinsky. And Andy, you've been going through the inbox, collecting the best gems sent in to us this week. So let's begin.
0:37 Speaker 01 Let's have a gem. This one goes out to, I want to say goes out to, I mean comes in from, oh dear. It's from Leah McKay.
0:46 Speaker 00 Okay.
0:47 Speaker 01 So Leah's fact, well she's sent a couple of facts actually, and they're slightly themed. Fact number one, women who pay for their coffee or meal on a first date tend to display more interest in matrimony. And then she adds a secondary fact to that, which is that leap day is no longer the only day that a woman can ask a man to marry her. And by the way, Ryan, Leah has something to ask you right now.
1:14 Speaker 00 This is huge.
1:15 Speaker 01 I think this is the first Fish proposal.
1:16 Speaker 00 Are we meant to leave a blank space now for her to...
1:19 Speaker 01 I hope Leah's paused the podcast at that moment.
1:21 Speaker 02 Oh wait, are we not asking?
1:23 Speaker 01 I think Leah should be the one to ask. I mean, they'll have turned it back on by now and we'll know. Well, we don't know now what's happened as a result of this. But that's from Leah McKay.
1:31 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
1:32 Speaker 00 Wow.
1:33 Speaker 02 Wow, congratulations or commiserations.
1:36 Speaker 00 Oh wow, yes.
1:37 Speaker 01 This is exciting, isn't it?
1:38 Speaker 00 I really hope that they've listened to this in like a good moment of their day.
1:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44 Speaker 00 You can have bad moments, can't you, as couples, where you sit down and...
1:46 Speaker 01 Oh, so we put a podcast on? What a stupid idea.
1:48 Speaker 02 I don't think you'd choose to put this podcast on in the middle of a huge argument, knowing what was going to be on it. Or do they not know when we're going to sneak it in?
1:55 Speaker 01 I don't know if Leah knows when we're going to put this out.
1:58 Speaker 00 Absolutely have to tell her.
1:59 Speaker 01 I should probably warn her.
2:00 Speaker 00 That is insane.
2:01 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, I'll warn her. Oh my god, god.
2:04 Speaker 02 She's been waiting 10 years. She just missed one episode. She forgot about it. I can't suppose any other way.
2:09 Speaker 01 Well, look, I hope that we can say congratulations to you, Leah and Ryan.
2:13 Speaker 00 Yes.
2:13 Speaker 01 Please do email in, podcast at qi.com. And actually, any other big life moments? Maybe conception. We're happy to.
2:21 Speaker 00 The moment of, or?
2:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:23 Speaker 01 We're happy to soundtrack that with a fact.
2:25 Speaker 02 A bit like when Tudor kings and queens first had sex, they had like a group of people around them monitoring it. We could be like that.
2:31 Speaker 01 Oh, you're suggesting we record an episode while they're doing it?
2:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:35 Speaker 01 In the same room.
2:36 Speaker 00 Okay.
2:36 Speaker 02 Do you reckon?
2:37 Speaker 01 That's interesting. It certainly is interesting, Andy. All right, well, let's get another fact. Anna, you go on.
2:43 Speaker 02 Well, this is going to be a bit of a damp squib, isn't it?
2:46 Speaker 01 I know, you've really, you've really saved the best for first.
2:49 Speaker 02 And yet, is this the best for second? It's from Izzy Turner. Here's a fact for you. In 1703, the High Sheriff of County Cork in Ireland was split between two men, the High Sheriff hood, I guess, split between two men named Dick Cox and Willie Supple. That's just to get us back into down the line fish facts. It's absolutely beautiful.
3:07 Speaker 01 Potential names for any newborn children coming your way, Leah. Willie Supple.
3:13 Speaker 02 Hmm. Is that what you want in a willy?
3:15 Speaker 01 Uh, it can't hurt.
3:19 Speaker 00 That's very good.
3:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, something to put on the Tinder profile.
3:21 Speaker 01 That's really good.
3:21 Speaker 00 Very nice. I've got a fact here that's been sent in by PJ Neal. And the fact is, Barilla, the pasta company, Barilla,
3:29 Speaker 01 Okay.
3:30 Speaker 00 has a Spotify account with 10 different playlists. Each of their playlists is named after a specific type of pasta, spaghetti, you know, linguine. And the length of the playlist is the exact length of the time you need to cook that pasta.
3:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
3:44 Speaker 02 Oh.
3:44 Speaker 00 So if you're doing penne, you would fire up the 11-minute, pleasant, melancholy penne playlist. And I've got them all here. There's absolute carbonara, mixtape spaghetti, boom bap facility, you know, it's all, it's all good.
4:01 Speaker 01 Brilliant. That's really good. Shall I give you another one?
4:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, give it to us.
4:04 Speaker 01 This one comes in from Dick Berg from the Netherlands. No relation, we presume to, what was it, Hugh Penis and?
4:13 Speaker 02 Willie Boobies, Willie Supple. Dick Cox and Willie Supple.
4:17 Speaker 01 Dick Berg from the Netherlands writes, this is about the name of the Lidl supermarket. Okay, it's not one of my name things, it's just a great fact. The name of Lidl comes from a guy called Ludwig Lidl,
4:29 Speaker 01 who was a retired schoolteacher and painter, who I think was friends with a parent of the founder of Lidl, right? So Dieter Schwarz was the founder of Lidl. And in 1973, he was setting up this supermarket, but he didn't want to call it Schwarzmarkt, which he should have done if he was calling it, you know, his shop.
4:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:47 Speaker 01 Because that means black market. Schwarzmarkt. So instead, he just thought, Lidl is a good, short, powerful word, and I'm gonna buy for a thousand marks the name from Ludwig Lidl.
4:59 Speaker 00 Wow.
5:00 Speaker 01 So that's the guy who, uh, yeah.
5:02 Speaker 02 Wow.
5:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
5:03 Speaker 02 And what's Ludwig's surname now?
5:05 Speaker 01 I think he got to keep it, I believe.
5:08 Speaker 02 He doesn't have to give it up.
5:09 Speaker 01 No, no, no. And the company, in fact, was founded in the 1930s, before they renamed it as the supermarket.
5:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:16 Speaker 01 But the original company was called Schwarz Lebensmittel-Sortiment-Großhandlung.
5:22 Speaker 00 I think that is his new surname, isn't it? It was a swap.
5:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:27 Speaker 00 That's very good. Anna, let's get one from you.
5:30 Speaker 02 Yes, this, I think, is one of my favourite facts I've ever had. It is bang up my street. This is from Tom Ween, or Tom Wayne, W E I N. And he says, if you're ever in an argument with Senegalese footballer El Hadji Douf, you can defuse the tension immediately by calling him brainless. Now, this is part of a West African tradition, which I'm definitely looking into. Keep an eye on further podcasts for facts about this. Because it's part of a West African tradition of joking kinship, in which particular ethnic groups have standard gags they make about other groups. So it's a socially approved thing, and you're not allowed to get annoyed. So there'll be one group of people in Senegal who are allowed to say, you're a wanker. And you're not allowed to get pissed off, because it just shows how close you are. And it's used to get people to calm down.
6:13 Speaker 02 So if you're having a fight, weirdly, the way you can defuse the tension is to say, you tosser. And they have to say, oh, the joking kinship thing. You win.
6:22 Speaker 01 That's really good.
6:23 Speaker 02 It's so amazing. Yeah.
6:25 Speaker 01 Did I get it right?
6:26 Speaker 02 I'm just gonna take it, you know, is it? Yeah, that's our joking condition.
6:29 Speaker 01 Moron twat.
6:30 Speaker 02 No, no, you don't have moron, I'm offended now.
6:32 Speaker 01 Selfish, greedy.
6:35 Speaker 02 No, no, it's not just, it's not just your feelings.
6:37 Speaker 00 It's not every word you wanna... My dad calls me dickhead, and that's with affection.
6:42 Speaker 01 Is it?
6:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:42 Speaker 00 Well, I need to double check, but it...
6:45 Speaker 01 Does he call anyone else that, or is it just for you?
6:47 Speaker 00 Oh, all the assholes in our local area call dickhead by him as well. So I don't know why he's grouped me with them, but yeah, it's, it's a...
6:54 Speaker 01 Wow.
6:54 Speaker 00 Oh, you dickhead.
6:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, we do some dickheading in our family.
6:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:59 Speaker 02 But it's so cool that this is like written into lore, L O R E. And he does say that in at least one recorded case, they persuaded a rebel group to release hostages just because people told the right jokes. And as he says, Deufus from the Surrair group, which means the pale people are allowed to call him brainless.
7:14 Speaker 00 Wow, lovely.
7:16 Speaker 02 Amazing.
7:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:17 Speaker 01 Love it.
7:18 Speaker 00 Very cool.
7:19 Speaker 01 Really good.
7:19 Speaker 00 We seem to be on a little name theme going on here, so I'll read this one here, which is, Sophie Williams writes in, hi Fish, NHL player, so National Hockey League, player Steve Hines, plays with the sweater number 57.
7:34 Speaker 01 Very good.
7:34 Speaker 02 Because there are 57 varieties.
7:36 Speaker 00 Exactly.
7:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. Is that known in the NHL? Is that America or Canada?
7:40 Speaker 00 It's Canada, right? It's probably in America as well, but I know it more as a Canadian thing. Yeah, so that's a, that's a thing. He was 57, and I don't think he was granted the number to begin with, 57. He asked for it, and the first team he played for said no, and then he eventually got it.
7:53 Speaker 02 Oh, wait, Holden, so he was asking specifically because of the Hines connection?
7:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:57 Speaker 02 That's, that's actually even funnier. I thought it was just coincidence.
8:01 Speaker 00 No, no, he asked for it specifically.
8:02 Speaker 01 But he's not connected to the family?
8:04 Speaker 00 No, he's not.
8:05 Speaker 01 I mean, they were, they were millionaires. I think they may have been billionaires, actually, the Hines.
8:09 Speaker 02 That makes sense. Billions of beans have been sold.
8:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
8:13 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:13 Speaker 02 It does make sense.
8:14 Speaker 01 Does make sense.
8:14 Speaker 02 And they do other things, too.
8:16 Speaker 00 There's another player who plays for the NHL, who wears the number 22, and that's Jordan Tutu.
8:23 Speaker 01 Really good.
8:24 Speaker 00 And again, I feel like he's had other numbers and that's the one that he's chased. I like it when teams-
8:28 Speaker 02 That's great.
8:29 Speaker 00 Let their players do that. Do you remember we did a fact years ago about how Ray Kroc bought a baseball team, the Padres? And one of his first signings, even though the person was sort of past their peak as a player, was a guy whose nickname was Big Mac.
8:41 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
8:42 Speaker 00 And he brought him into the team.
8:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:44 Speaker 00 Stuff like that.
8:44 Speaker 02 Yeah. Lost a whole lot of money for the investors.
8:46 Speaker 00 He really did.
8:47 Speaker 02 Nice to have the in-joke.
8:49 Speaker 00 Yeah. In-jokes, they're worth more than actual wins, I would say. Yeah.
8:54 Speaker 01 Uh, good one, dickhead.
8:56 Speaker 00 Okay. Okay. That's- my dad can call me dickhead.
8:59 Speaker 01 Sorry. Sorry. Um, here's one from Shan Valvis from Sao Paulo. The first personality quiz was devised by Marcel Proust.
9:11 Speaker 00 Interesting.
9:11 Speaker 02 Hmm.
9:12 Speaker 01 So I looked into this one. He actually didn't come up with it. He did answer it. He's the most famous early recipient of this quiz, or partaker in it. Because the Victorians, they had this hobby of writing a confession album.
9:26 Speaker 00 Okay.
9:26 Speaker 02 What's that? A diary?
9:28 Speaker 01 No, it sounds a lot more fun than it is. Um, basically, you have to, um, answer a list of questions, uh, which is your chief characteristic, your main fault, your favorite occupation, your idea of happiness. You know, all of these, and it gets quite philosophical, you know, the more you get. It starts off with, what's your favorite color?
9:46 Speaker 02 Hmm.
9:47 Speaker 01 Um.
9:48 Speaker 02 You wouldn't even answer that one, would you? Let alone, you're just tearing it up.
9:50 Speaker 01 None of your business. I prefer not to say. Um, so this album that he answered, it belonged to his friend who was called Antoine Atforay. And basically, he lists a whole load of his, you know, most intimate and deep secrets in this questionnaire. So that was the first kind of popular parlour game version of a personality quiz.
10:09 Speaker 00 That's interesting. Cause there's a thing that's done, I think it's in Vanity Fair at the back, which is the Proust questionnaire.
10:15 Speaker 01 Oh, I mean, that'll be this.
10:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:17 Speaker 01 That is this.
10:18 Speaker 00 I think it's largely asking about books, or at least that's my memory. Maybe it's not, though. Maybe it's all about your favorite everything. Yeah, so that must be connected.
10:24 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It will absolutely be that. It's known as the Proust questionnaire these days.
10:28 Speaker 02 And this is, and it's basically kind of, instead of a board game, you play a game where you answer these questions- And then you talk about them. Interesting.
10:34 Speaker 01 All your friends have written, I think, in your confession album, all of their answers to the quiz.
10:39 Speaker 02 Oh, fun.
10:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, which is quite cool.
10:41 Speaker 00 You, not to throw too much of personal life in here, Anna, but you play a similar game to that that you got me to do.
10:46 Speaker 02 Oh, Wheel of Life?
10:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:48 Speaker 02 Gosh, shall I share the Wheel of Life?
10:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, tell people.
10:50 Speaker 02 Oh, this is, me and my friend compiled this about 20 years ago, and it's basically to work out how well your life is going. There are seven categories. And they are relationship, friends, house, job, self-improvement, health. So that covers your diet and your exercise and another one. But you can make that one up yourself. And you go through them and you grade them out of seven. And then you look at your total score and you think, well, here's where I'm in trouble. I don't have a house. I hadn't realised before that that was why I was unhappy.
11:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:20 Speaker 02 Or something like that.
11:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's great.
11:23 Speaker 01 And you and I have played it, Anna.
11:24 Speaker 02 We have.
11:24 Speaker 01 I don't think I gave you anything.
11:25 Speaker 02 No, it lasted about half a minute.
11:29 Speaker 02 Okay, I've got another one here. This is from Anders Nissen, and this is that sharks can bite you in their sleep. And this does seem to be one particular case in 2005 in New Mexico, which recorded its only so far shark attack incident, because it's landlocked. But it took place at the Biopark Aquarium, and there's a diver called Ken Pitt who needed six stitches. The email says sustained minor injuries that required six stitches, which I actually would say that's moderate injuries, when a captive sand tiger shark bumped into him. And sand tiger sharks, if you've picked them, they've got teeth that's sticking out. So the sand tiger shark was sleeping, wandered over, bumped into him and bit him with his, or scraped along him with his teeth.
12:08 Speaker 00 Oh, okay, yeah. So it didn't, because sometimes it's like, say, like you pet a sleeping dog and it suddenly it has a reaction and it bites you. And yeah, I thought you meant like that.
12:19 Speaker 02 No, it didn't even have a reaction. You don't need to let sleeping sharks lie. They're fine with it. Stroke away. But this one did inadvertently bite him. But weirdly, this event was considered a provoked attack, which seems kind of unfair.
12:31 Speaker 01 Maybe you've just got to fill something in on the form. I don't know.
12:33 Speaker 02 Hmm, yeah, yeah.
12:35 Speaker 01 What's an unprovoked attack?
12:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't know.
12:37 Speaker 01 If that is provoked.
12:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:39 Speaker 01 How much gentler do you possibly have to be than just being there?
12:43 Speaker 00 You guys been bit by many things?
12:45 Speaker 02 No.
12:46 Speaker 00 I don't think I've.
12:47 Speaker 02 Children?
12:48 Speaker 00 Uh, yes, I have been bit by a child, not like, not my own child.
12:51 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
12:52 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
12:52 Speaker 02 What did you do?
12:53 Speaker 00 Well, you've got to put them down afterwards. They're too dangerous to roam the streets.
12:57 Speaker 01 At least with a, with any other animal, you're allowed to really shake it.
13:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:01 Speaker 01 Kick it. You can't do that when it's.
13:04 Speaker 00 And of course, they go lockjaw on you and you've got to really get a.
13:07 Speaker 01 Pencil up the bum.
13:13 Speaker 01 Dogs do that if you stroke them while they're asleep.
13:15 Speaker 00 I think you can freak a dog out and it, and it turns and bites. Yeah.
13:18 Speaker 01 Never had that.
13:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:19 Speaker 01 I've never touched a sleeping dog.
13:20 Speaker 00 Oh.
13:21 Speaker 01 Cause I listen to the sayings.
13:22 Speaker 00 Okay, uh, here's another one. I got a email from someone called Ed Robinson, who says, you mentioned recently that we can't say for certain that Charles Darwin didn't ride the tube. So we spoke about this. There's an overlap between the beginning of the tube and the end of days of Charles Darwin. So to my knowledge, we also can't say for certain that Karl Marx didn't have a fruit pastel, as they were invented in 1881 and he died in 1883. Actually, I think he died in 8082, but still.
13:53 Speaker 01 Still, it's still.
13:54 Speaker 00 It's a year.
13:55 Speaker 01 It doesn't take that long to be a fruit pastel.
13:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:57 Speaker 01 Do we know what killed him? I mean.
13:59 Speaker 00 Apologies. Sorry. No, that's my fault. We're talking about Karl Marx there. Um, uh, Darwin died 1882. Sorry.
14:07 Speaker 01 So Darwin and Marx could have both had a fruit pastel.
14:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:10 Speaker 01 They could have died having a fruit pastel eating competition, in fact.
14:14 Speaker 02 Did that kill you?
14:15 Speaker 01 Karl Marx won. Depends how well the competition goes, doesn't it?
14:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:18 Speaker 01 If you, if you, I mean, if you win the fruit pastel eating competition, you may die.
14:22 Speaker 02 Of diabetes or something?
14:24 Speaker 01 Of just fruit pastels.
14:26 Speaker 02 Death by fruit pastel. Of course, it's a very common one, isn't it?
14:28 Speaker 00 I looked into other things that Darwin might have been able to experience. 1882, Darwin could have had Heinz ketchup on his chips.
14:36 Speaker 02 Cool.
14:37 Speaker 00 When he was eating. He could have had a sip of absolute vodka while he was eating those chips with Heinz ketchup.
14:46 Speaker 01 Of course, back in those days, Heinz ketchup just came with the big number one on the bottle because they'd only invented one variety, yeah.
14:52 Speaker 00 He also could have been walking around in denim Levi jeans.
14:56 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
14:57 Speaker 00 Darwin could have had a pair of Levi jeans.
15:00 Speaker 02 You don't picture it, do you? Sort of cut offs or with a hole ripped in the knee, do you think he'd go for?
15:05 Speaker 00 And do you know what's weird? He would have known about jeans in his lifetime, Levi's, but he wouldn't have known about jeans in genetics in his lifetime.
15:12 Speaker 02 Oh, dear. What kind of jeans did Darwin know about that?
15:16 Speaker 00 Yes.
15:16 Speaker 02 That was a question.
15:17 Speaker 01 That's so good.
15:18 Speaker 00 That came years later. Someone had found the foundations of jeans, so genetics is dated while he was still alive, but no word was put to it, nothing was properly published.
15:27 Speaker 01 Charles Darwin goes out for a night on the vodka, on his way home, in his jeans, has some chips with Heinz ketchup on.
15:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:35 Speaker 01 And then gets a, gets a toupee eating his fruit pastels.
15:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:39 Speaker 01 But it's interesting, isn't it? Because if, what's the, what's the equivalent now of, of doing that? Like, so Dame Vera Lynn, I think, has only very recently died. Dame Vera Lynn could have got a Lime bike to the, to the vape shop and paid for it with some Bitcoin.
15:52 Speaker 00 Yes.
15:57 Speaker 00 I've got one more. Last one from me. This is from Dominique Touraine, who writes, "I'm a long time listener, first time emailing from Montreal."
16:06 Speaker 02 Montreal.
16:09 Speaker 00 For those listening at home, you have to understand, there's always a pause afterwards because Andy's mouth drops to the floor when he hears these exotic locations that have been sent to us.
16:18 Speaker 02 He's from Darwin's area. He can't believe the technology exists.
16:21 Speaker 01 What other podcast? What other podcast gets emails from Montreal, Sao Paulo?
16:27 Speaker 02 Just loads of them.
16:28 Speaker 01 I've got one from St Albans, but like, just stunning. Okay, all right. Dominique Touraine writes, "Montreal, by the way, home of the world record for most tickets sold for a podcast recording, 20,986." And she adds, "Slightly snippily, when will you do a live show here?" Well, as soon as we clear that 20,000 seater venue, as soon as we get it booked. Yeah, yeah. We'd love to do that. Anyway, Dominique wanted to write about the fact that Canada has icebreaker hovercraft.
16:57 Speaker 02 Mmm.
16:58 Speaker 01 How cool is that?
16:59 Speaker 00 Wow.
17:00 Speaker 01 Basically, when the ice melts, big chunks of ice can sometimes jam up the mouths of streams or rivers or whatever, you know, it's a problem because that leads to flooding of towns and farmland or whatever. So they deploy the ice hovercraft. And they just hovercraft over and blast down and the vibrations break up the ice into smaller chunks.
17:19 Speaker 02 Very clever.
17:20 Speaker 01 I think they've got two of them and yeah, just wicked.
17:22 Speaker 00 So good.
17:23 Speaker 01 Just a cool invention.
17:24 Speaker 02 At what height do you stop being a hovercraft and start being a helicopter? Because I feel like helicopters could do, they could get low enough, couldn't they?
17:30 Speaker 01 Like, I suppose it's whenever the rotor blade has moved from the bottom to the top. That's when you're a helicopter.
17:38 Speaker 00 Anna's horrible budget helicopter experience that you've signed up to. Are you sure this is, it's like a boat.
17:47 Speaker 02 It does occasionally leave the water though, there's a big wave, so.
17:51 Speaker 00 Have you been on a hovercraft?
17:53 Speaker 02 Sorry?
17:53 Speaker 00 Have you been on a hovercraft?
17:54 Speaker 02 I don't know, there used to be ones crossing the channel, didn't there? And I used to go across the channel when I was a kid. Maybe I went in one, maybe I didn't. If I did, I didn't give a shit.
18:00 Speaker 01 Have you?
18:01 Speaker 00 Have you? Yeah, Hong Kong had, yeah, had hovercrafts to get us between islands.
18:05 Speaker 01 I recently went on a bike ride past the, um, the first ever, first ever international hovercraft port.
18:13 Speaker 02 Amazing.
18:13 Speaker 01 The first ever international hovercraft port. I cycled past it.
18:16 Speaker 00 Does anything interesting happen?
18:18 Speaker 01 It's very near you, Dan.
18:19 Speaker 00 Is it?
18:20 Speaker 01 It's Pegwell Bay.
18:21 Speaker 00 No way.
18:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:22 Speaker 02 Now he's interested.
18:23 Speaker 01 Now it's relevant to Dan.
18:25 Speaker 00 Because actually it's really interesting, yeah.
18:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, Anna, yeah.
18:30 Speaker 02 I'll move to Margate, maybe I'll see the light.
18:33 Speaker 00 Okay, well, that's it for your facts. Thank you, everyone, for sending them in. But before we wrap up today's episode, we have one more thing to do, which is hand out our latest batch of facts to the custodians of the Club Fish tier, known as friend of the podcast. Who wants to start?
18:49 Speaker 02 I will kick off and I will donate a fact to Laura Grace. And that is that the Natural History Museum is stopping moths from destroying the exhibits by turning them gay.
19:00 Speaker 00 Mmm.
19:00 Speaker 02 Mmm, very clever. I think was this, actually, I remember this is one of yours, but it's one of mine.
19:05 Speaker 00 It's yours.
19:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:07 Speaker 02 Everything. Good I do, I attribute to you, Dan. Um, yeah, this is cool, isn't it? Moths eating them up, so you turn them gay, they don't have kids. So the kids can't eat them up.
19:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, how do you turn?
19:17 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, no, that's the hard bit, isn't it?
19:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:19 Speaker 02 I think they give them some hormones, like get sprayed some pheromones on them or something, don't they?
19:23 Speaker 01 I think you're right. They spray, what, male moths with female hormones?
19:26 Speaker 02 Exactly.
19:27 Speaker 01 Spend all their time trying to mate with each other. It's that turning them gay. It's more like, um, dragging up male moths as females.
19:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're right. It's tricking heterosexual moths, um, into
19:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:37 Speaker 02 performing a homosexual act.
19:39 Speaker 01 Hmm.
19:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:40 Speaker 00 I wonder if that's still the method, because this is obviously an old fact. There must be
19:44 Speaker 01 What times have changed, are you saying, culturally?
19:46 Speaker 00 Someone might have come into the Natural History Museum the next year and said, actually, we've got a different method. We're gonna have to stop this whole idea now.
19:54 Speaker 02 This mad idea, and we can just actually spray this moth killer around.
19:59 Speaker 01 You can't do, you can't do anything anymore.
20:03 Speaker 01 Shall I do one?
20:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:04 Speaker 01 Okay, this fact goes out to Jane, Jane with a Y, right in the middle. And the fact is this: the word marvelous has fallen in use from 155 times per million in the 1990s to only two times per million today. That is a catastrophic decline.
20:22 Speaker 02 It's sad, isn't it?
20:23 Speaker 01 That's down, what, that's, that's, yeah, almost down to 1% of its former range and habitat. I think that's tragic. I use the word marvelous all the time.
20:31 Speaker 02 I do as well.
20:31 Speaker 01 Astonished to know.
20:33 Speaker 02 I do as well, and I've got a theory about these, all these facts about, like, use of word as decline. I think we don't write them, but we still use them. So these are always taken from, like, Google Ngrams, aren't they, or things like that, which, see how many times we've mentioned them? So maybe it's fallen out of fashion in our high literature. But Andy and I, half of our conversations are the word marvelous. No one's recording that, are they?
20:52 Speaker 00 I wonder who that, I, I can in my head hear Stephen Fry saying it a lot.
20:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
20:56 Speaker 00 Marvelous.
20:57 Speaker 02 Oh, marvelous.
20:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:58 Speaker 02 Me too.
20:59 Speaker 00 Okay, here's another one. This is going out to Ryan Gilgalen. Your fact is to prepare for China's National Day, 100,000 pigeons receive anal security checks to make sure they're not carrying anything suspicious.
21:15 Speaker 00 That, Ryan, can now be framed on your wall.
21:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. Ryan will have had his certificate months ago. In fact, 100,000 pigeons receiving anal security check.
21:27 Speaker 02 And is it just the one person, do we remember, with a very small finger?
21:32 Speaker 01 Oh, actually, we have more detail in the archive. I think they get, gosh, they get cavity searches twice. Just when they think they've got through the first test, there's another one.
21:39 Speaker 02 Is that in case they've hidden it up a different hole?
21:41 Speaker 01 I don't know. But it's, they're all pigeons that are released for the National Day. And again, this was a few years ago. Maybe they, maybe things have changed, but I hope they haven't.
21:51 Speaker 00 Do you think the anal security is as necessary?
21:54 Speaker 01 I don't, I don't see what's changed to make it less necessary.
21:58 Speaker 02 And what the deal is that they're, I mean, why are the pigeons, they're used a lot in National Day, aren't they? So they're, they're released and they do amazing performances.
22:05 Speaker 01 Exactly.
22:05 Speaker 02 Or they fly into the air and they look really cool.
22:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:08 Speaker 02 Otherwise, why, why are they trying to get in to, it's not like they're going to a gig because they love Taylor Swift or whatever.
22:13 Speaker 01 But they shouldn't be, but what if they're smuggling something?
22:15 Speaker 02 Don't, no, you've got to check them.
22:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, you've got to check. You've got to. You've got to check. Let's do another one.
22:21 Speaker 02 This is for Cam B. Cam B, enjoy this little nugget. Only 28% of people know when they're being flirted with.
22:30 Speaker 01 Cam B, what a great fact that is on you.
22:32 Speaker 02 Yes, Cam.
22:33 Speaker 01 Looks really nice. Have you been exercising your fact?
22:40 Speaker 01 Cam, I don't know if I'm flirting with you. Sorry.
22:44 Speaker 02 I remember, we actually did this on Q I last year, I think, as well. And it's interesting because who do you think is less aware that they're being flirted with?
22:53 Speaker 01 Women.
22:53 Speaker 02 Women are less aware that they're being flirted with. And that is because.
22:58 Speaker 01 Men are bad at flirting?
22:59 Speaker 02 Men are too subtle.
23:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:01 Speaker 00 Yes.
23:02 Speaker 01 That's what's always said about us, isn't it?
23:04 Speaker 02 I know, it seems weird. The study looked at it and it found that men, actually, when it comes to the crux of it, you're too scared of rejection to actually make it clear enough. So most women have no idea. So all these missed opportunities, lads, just get out there, you know, pull your trousers down, whatever it takes.
23:19 Speaker 01 Pull your trousers down? I think, I think it's pretty clear. If I say to a woman, would you like to come with me to the site of the world's first international hoverport? How much more blatant do you want me to get?
23:30 Speaker 02 No, no, you're absolutely right.
23:32 Speaker 01 I practically got my tongue hanging out by saying that. It's outrageous.
23:34 Speaker 02 Totally would. Turns out he just didn't fancy me. No, he just liked hoverports and...
23:39 Speaker 00 And it's just me and Andy again, hanging out by the hoverport. I think I have no idea if I'm being flirted with in my single days, and I was terrible at flirting. I sucked on both sides.
23:50 Speaker 02 Really?
23:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:53 Speaker 01 Well, it sounds like it still led to a pretty good result.
24:01 Speaker 00 All right, next fact.
24:02 Speaker 01 Let's have another fact. This one goes out to Robbie Brennan. Robbie, your fact is that ancient Sumerian beer was as thick as porridge and was drunk through a straw. And we talked, I think, I can't remember if this is the one where we talked about the porridge straw. Do you remember that?
24:19 Speaker 00 Yes, I do.
24:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:20 Speaker 01 You would pour your porridge into a drawer.
24:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:22 Speaker 01 If you were a Scottish crofter for whatever, and then you could just cut off a slice. And I tried to do this recently.
24:28 Speaker 00 Did you?
24:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:29 Speaker 02 And was it your underwear drawer, one of, one of your wife's drawers?
24:34 Speaker 01 No, I didn't try and do the drawer thing, but I had some porridge which had gone like, I just, it hadn't worked out properly. And I thought, I know, I'll just make a porridge. I'll just turn this into porridge drawer porridge, like flapjack.
24:45 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, nice.
24:46 Speaker 01 And it doesn't work. I just thought it happened naturally that porridge turns into flapjacks.
24:49 Speaker 02 If you put it in a drawer, leave it for three years.
24:52 Speaker 01 I'm so stupid.
24:53 Speaker 02 I'll just say that Anne Miller, friend of the podcasters, who's been on the podcast, her grandparents had a porridge drawer.
25:00 Speaker 00 Did they?
25:01 Speaker 02 Pretty certain that's the case, yeah, in her house.
25:02 Speaker 01 Nice.
25:03 Speaker 00 That's cool. All right, another fact to give out. This one is going out to Nessie.
25:08 Speaker 01 Surely not.
25:08 Speaker 02 Come on, Dan.
25:09 Speaker 01 After all these years.
25:10 Speaker 00 Imagine this is how we prove Nessie exists. They're part of Club Fish. Nessie, your fact is baby turtles coordinate when they're going to hatch from within their eggshells.
25:23 Speaker 01 Wonderful.
25:24 Speaker 00 An amazing, because as far as you know, as a baby turtle, you're the only life in the universe.
25:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:30 Speaker 00 Because you're inside a shell.
25:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:32 Speaker 00 It's almost like if you went to a campsite, you put your tent up, it turned night, and then everyone arrived and put their tents up, and you just started going, hello? And someone's like, hello? You're like, what? There's other people in the campsite, but I'm in my tent. I don't know how many. I don't know who's there. We now have to invent a language to talk to each other.
25:51 Speaker 01 And we all have to get to the, the riverbank together for safety in numbers to avoid the predators.
25:56 Speaker 00 What?
25:57 Speaker 01 Which is what the turtles are doing.
25:58 Speaker 00 What campsite are you going to?
25:59 Speaker 01 Sorry, I get, I get a really horrible campsite.
26:02 Speaker 00 The Hunger Games campsite.
26:04 Speaker 01 Sorry, I was trying to drag it back towards the fact. I shouldn't have done it.
26:06 Speaker 02 Don't be stupid. You need to say when you're exiting a metaphor, it needs to be an alarm.
26:10 Speaker 00 When I'm on a roll, join.
26:12 Speaker 02 Here's a fact for Tessa Rask. It's written as all one word, but I assume it's two, or it could be Tessa Rask. Anyway, the fact is that Henrik Ibsen's last words were to his nurse. She said he seemed to be looking better. He replied, on the contrary, and then he died.
26:31 Speaker 00 The next day.
26:33 Speaker 01 That's one of those facts that's perfect until you get to the final three words.
26:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. He held on. All the family coming in, trying to chat to him. No, I've done my last word. They were good. Yeah. I wonder if this is a true one. Haven't actually checked it because a lot of last words, um, not true. And this is Dan's fact, so.
26:50 Speaker 00 How dare you?
26:51 Speaker 01 So probably true.
26:53 Speaker 02 Don't frame it, Tessa, just in case.
26:57 Speaker 00 That was, that's, last words are always really fun.
27:00 Speaker 01 Wonderful.
27:01 Speaker 00 My favorite of all time. We did it on the show is the Roald Dahl one. He had a nurse by his side. He had his family there. And he said something really poignant, like the thing I'm going to miss most is all of you. Beautiful last words, closed his eyes. And as he appeared to be going, the nurse gave him a, an injection of some drug to sort of help him slip seamlessly into death. And as she put the needle in, he went, ow, fuck! And then died. The last words are all dull. And I, I found a big biography on the, of him the other day. And there's more detail to it in that book. So that's definitely real.
27:36 Speaker 02 So good.
27:37 Speaker 00 As is the Ibsen. Don't worry.
27:40 Speaker 02 Frame away.
27:41 Speaker 00 Let's get one more.
27:42 Speaker 01 All right. This last one goes out to Kim Dachter. And the fact is, I love this so much. In Peru, depictions of the Last Supper show Jesus and his disciples eating a guinea pig.
27:57 Speaker 01 It must be very big as a guinea pig. It must be a big guinea pig.
28:01 Speaker 02 Oh, it must mean one each.
28:03 Speaker 01 Or, well, he could, we know he could do his thing, obviously.
28:06 Speaker 02 Multiplying the guinea pigs.
28:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
28:09 Speaker 00 Do your thing with the guinea pig.
28:10 Speaker 01 Loads of the fishes and the guinea pigs. They've just edited down a little bit. It's not... Yeah, and this is because eating guinea pig is a big thing. James has eaten guinea pig in Peru. Not a euphemism. Um, I don't even know what it would be a euphemism for.
28:24 Speaker 00 Didn't, didn't when we had Michael Palin on the show, he say, God, I don't know if it was guinea pigs, but they were the size of cars back in the day.
28:31 Speaker 01 I think they were. No, back in the day. And when we say back in the day, a while ago.
28:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, but maybe, maybe there's an in-between between then, Jesus and now.
28:38 Speaker 02 Two thousand years ago, it was actually the size of a Mini.
28:43 Speaker 01 Oh dear. Yeah, yeah. Apparently you can cut them into five at the table.
28:47 Speaker 02 Can you? Okay. So only would have had to have been two and then...
28:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, two and a bit. We'll have three guinea pigs for the table and then... I actually only have one piece of the guinea pig. So is it all right if I don't pay the full one and thirty? Is that okay? Yeah.
29:02 Speaker 00 Okay. Well, there you go. Congratulations to Kim, Tesarak, Nessie, Robbie, Cam, Ryan, Jane, Laura. You are now the custodians of these eight facts. Frame them on your wall. Don't double check if they're right or wrong. And enjoy. If you want to get your own fact to put on your wall, and we do send out a digital certificate, it looks really cool. All you need to do is join the highest tier of Club Fish and Club Fish is at patreon.com/clubfish. Alternatively, in the first half of this show, we were reading out your facts and you can send those into us at [email protected] . Andy goes through every single email and he will pick out the best of them to bring to this show. So do that and hear your fact here on our show.
29:47 Speaker 00 One more congratulations to Leah and Ryan. We think, we think, hopefully. And um, thank you for allowing us to be part of that big moment in your life.
29:57 Speaker 01 And we want to perform at the wedding.
29:59 Speaker 00 Well, do we? Songs or a podcast? What do you want?
30:03 Speaker 01 Uh, I don't mind really. I just want to be involved.
30:06 Speaker 02 I didn't sign up to that. Well done anyway.
30:08 Speaker 00 Yeah. All right. Well, hey, everyone, we're going to be back again next week with more of your facts. Tune in on Friday to Big Fish and we'll see you then. Goodbye.
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