Little Fish: Short Back and Left

Anna, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts including beards, barrels, scissors and Shostakovich. Andy explains why he is the true man of the people. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Edited by James Harkin Produced by Leying Lee Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

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

• 0:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, I'm here with James Harkin and Anna Tadzinski and we are here to read out the best of your facts that you've been sending into the Fish inbox over the last seven days. Hi guys.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Hi Andy. Hello.

• 0:27Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I have a bit of parish business before we start.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 0:30Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes, there is an exciting new fan site created by a fish listener? Fish listener? Fish listener. He's called Luke Delaney, he has built a website. It's about fish, it's called place2know.com, place like the fish.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  That's very clever.

• 0:46Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's very clever.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  We should get him on section naming.

• 0:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, I will not have anyone. That's mine. Place to Know is amazing, it's basically a huge map of the world and it contains all the places that we've mentioned on Fish over the last 12 years.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And if you zoom in on anywhere, it shows you the place and then you click on it and it shows you what we've said about that place. It's amazing.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 1:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  There are all sorts of little bells and whistles, yeah, yeah, and I've shown you guys.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  So if you zoom onto Loch Ness, there's like 500 different mentions.

• 1:14Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, exactly that. Anyway, it's so good, so anyone listening to this, if you want to check it out, Luke Delaney has built it, thank you so much to you Luke and it is place2know.com, that's place with an I like the fish.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Very good, clever.

• 1:27Andrew Hunter Murray?

  All right, let's have some facts.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Got one coming from North Carolina, from someone called Hunter.

• 1:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Weird name.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Oh, because it's also yours, of course. Well, he's found an interesting story, he said, have we come across Joseph Palmer, a Massachusetts man, who in 1830, his beard was hated so much by local townsfolk that they attempted to shave it off. So there's a difference because of course you still can't grow a beard, can you?

• 1:50Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's very funny.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  And also it's an interesting story.

• 1:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow. One, two.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  It's a rich start, isn't it, for Andrew Hunter Murray? Anyway, so these locals hated his beard, they attacked this guy, they tried to shave it off and he refused to have it shaved off. And this is at a time when I think beards were banned, so he refused to bow to social convention. Apparently he was part of the transcendentalist movement of New England, I don't know if that's related to his beard keeping. I've vaguely been interested in transcendentalism in my past and I didn't know that you had to grow a beard for it.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Oh, so why did you grow yours?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  It was a mistake.

• 2:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Listeners won't know, the only person here who's got a beard is James.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  I have like a goatee beard because that's literally all I can grow.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Would you keep the beard even if they banned them on pain of prison?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't and in actual fact, I feel like even if just the two of you were strong willed enough to want to shave it off, I would be hard pressed to stop you.

• 2:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Okay, challenge accepted.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Great.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  I just think that like one or two people can overpower one person and an entire village can almost certainly overpower one person, even a bearded person.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right.

• 3:03Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think it's easier to chop someone's beard off than it is to give them a good close shave though. Because your beard is close enough to your face that I would, I would not want to be wrestling with the razor.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:12Andrew Hunter Murray?

  For fear of doing you any injury, which I wouldn't want that, I don't want that, I just want the beard off in the scenario.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  And actually almost all beards are close to faces, so it is sometimes.

• 3:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Eventually they are.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  It's gonna be difficult, yeah.

• 3:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Eventually they are, but you could do a good chop of the main thing.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  You could do a trim, yeah, hack at it with a pair of garden shears from a distance if it's a Santa Claus gig.

• 3:28Andrew Hunter Murray?

  But this guy sounds like he had one of those amazing 15 foot long beards.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  He did and in fact, he's got a tombstone that shows his head and it is a massive beard, bigger than Santa Claus, as I had a look. And his tombstone just reads persecuted for wearing a beard.

• 3:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's really attached to it. Anyway, great fact Hunter.

• 3:44Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Great fact.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  That's really good.

• 3:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Here is one from Dre Falzarano and they talk about a place in America as well, in Vermont. And they say that in Vermont, in order to stock trout in the highest stocked pond in the state, they transport them via ski lifts.

• 4:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Brilliant.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Isn't that amazing?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  What a weird sight that would be if you were just going up to do the red run at the top and you run a lift with a bunch of trout.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  That's what I thought, right? In your head, when I tell you that fact, what kind of ski lift is it?

• 4:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  An old school ski lift where you sit in it and you pull down the bar and then it takes you clackety clacketing up, is that it?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  I think you're trying to be funny here Andy, no, I think you are being funny.

• 4:27Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, no, I'm not.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you were trying to be funny.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Because obviously the most logical thing is to put the barrel inside one of those big enclosed glass.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Bubble thing.

• 4:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  This is where we come into a problem, which is that I am a man of the people and I've never been skiing, whereas you two hoity toity types, you know all about the different kinds of ski lift because you're always on the slopes.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, it's just the thing is like normally I'd go horse riding, but the horses are too cold in the winter, so I have to go skiing.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  So what's the truth, the trout got a Palmer lift?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  No, in actual fact, the trout go in a chairlift it seems.

• 4:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  What?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Because I read a newspaper article about this and it said, you may have seen snakes on a plane, but have you ever seen fish on a chairlift?

• 5:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Brilliant.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  No, in a box?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  They put buckets and each bucket's got about 400 tiny trouts in it and they put it next to someone presumably in a chairlift because it would be mad to send it up on its own.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Oh, they dismount, put skis on the bottom.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Exactly, well, it's always hard to dismount from a.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  It is.

• 5:25Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Is it?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Ski lift, yeah.

• 5:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, I don't know, can I tell you a ski lift story? I've got a second hand ski lift story.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  My friend Joe, I won't say his surname, but you've both met him.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Has been skiing and it was his first time skiing and after he got to the top for his first run down, his girlfriend asked him, you alright, how did you find the lift? And he said, yeah, it was okay, bit scary that lift though, wasn't it? And he had forgotten to put the bar down, which is too safe in the lift and he had just been like hovering over the abyss for the whole journey up.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  That's really horrifying.

• 5:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  He also got to the bottom of his first run and he forgot to put his goggles on, so his eyes were incredibly red.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  That's all right. This article that I read about snakes on a plane slash fish on a chairlift gives an extra bit of information and it is that brook trout, which is this species of trout, are notorious for having a fear of heights. So the more we can do to keep them happy, the better chance they'll have of having a new home at the top.

• 6:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I'm sorry, I'm calling it bullshit. Notorious is doing a lot of very heavy lifting and that's notori- how can you tell if a fish has a fear of heights?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard. Is it high if you're closer to the surface?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I don't know, I just think that's such a funny line.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Because it appears to be said quite seriously, so.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  You do get flying trout, don't you? Isn't that kind of fish or is it just a different kind of fish?

• 6:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Do they have a fear of flying though?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Maybe some flying trout are notorious for having a fear of flying.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I just imagine one of them being sort of pulled out of the water in a net and going.

• 6:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's wonderful.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely crazy, brilliant fact Dre.

• 7:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Great fact. Just keeping the theme, I have a fact about a thing in America and involving ice. So this comes in from Mark Saltvite. Here's the question, before the invention of planes, what was the fastest vehicle on earth?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Well, you have given a bit of a hint, haven't you?

• 7:16Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I have, I have, I shouldn't have done that, but I have now.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  You can't take it back.

• 7:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  It's something to do with ice, I reckon.

• 7:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Might be.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  You know what I would have said before I somehow got the idea that it might be something to do with ice? Like, do you remember they used to have those sort of log flumes, but they were literal log flumes, as in you're a logger and you cut down a tree and you put it in a flume? And people used to sit on those to get home and they used to go really fast.

• 7:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I thought they were slow log flumes, but I guess they're a fast pace.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  These ones, yeah.

• 7:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, that's a good contender, so Mark says that the answer is the ice yacht. And I have never even heard of these things before. Basically, it's a boat on ice skates with a sail.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 7:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  So the lake or whatever is frozen over or the bay and you go whizzing over it on your boat on skates.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  That's clever.

• 8:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president, was an avid ice yoter, as was his cousin Ellen Roosevelt. And sadly, this century of course, a lot less ice than there used to be, that there are no ice yachts left.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Ice yachting are tragically dying sport.

• 8:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 8:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I know, but it's so cool.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  There are plenty of places that have ice though.

• 8:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Plenty of places that have ice, that's true.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  There's no reason why they couldn't do it in Finland for instance.

• 8:26Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, that'd be good, yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  It's a faff to get to Finland for most people, isn't it?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Not for Finns.

• 8:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Not for Fin- yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  They could keep doing it, sure, maybe they are.

• 8:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And Mark has let me know that there is a Hudson River Ice Yacht Preservation Society and I think membership is $16 for a year.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's a bargain.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Go on Andy, have you got your badge?

• 8:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I will, I will get it.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I think listeners to this podcast must think that we're all absolutely rolling in money, the amount of money that Dan spends on eBay and you spend on these kind of societies.

• 8:56Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, I save all the money on skiing holidays and it's gotta go somewhere.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  That's amazing, it reminds me of those ice truckers that you get in the Baltics, don't you?

• 9:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Love that.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  It's illegal, I think, for them to wear seat belts or something.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  What?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Like because they're driving over ice roads, but at any stage, the road might just disappear and they go underwater, so you can't wear the seat belts. You have to be able to get away straight away.

• 9:22Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's very cool.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 9:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's very cool.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  It reminds me of the beginning to Frankenstein, which I only recently read and it's so confusing, have you guys read Frankenstein?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I have, yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Don't you find the beginning incredibly weird because you know it's about, you know, Frankenstein and his monster? And then it starts in the Arctic Circle, watching someone gallop along on an ice carriage, a carriage on ice skates. And you think for the first 30 pages, am I reading the wrong book?

• 9:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Anyway, yeah, so maybe that must have been a thing.

• 9:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Ice carriages, what fun. Okay, I've got another fact here from Renee Westerhausen and this is about left-handedness. I love this because Renee's done such a deep dive into the British newspaper archive and has found out that left-handers were barred from all these professions. And specifically opens by saying you weren't allowed to be a hairdresser. So they found out that the Ministry of Labour barred left-handed people from training as hairdressers until the end of the 1960s. There's an article, it's mad.

• 10:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  All the social change.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  It makes perfect sense.

• 10:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Why?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Because your hairdresser is standing behind you on your left hand side because they're cutting and there's another person sat to your left as well. And their left-handed hairdresser will be stood on their right and the two hairdressers will be banging arms all the time.

• 10:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  But your hairdresser doesn't stay on one side of you for the whole haircut.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  The days they do, yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  That explains a lot.

• 10:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Just another short back and left please, yeah, yeah, great, yeah, yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  We didn't mention the beard is actually only on one side.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  So I could look in the mirror and keep telling my head and pretend that I'm talking to someone else.

• 10:57Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And you've dressed half of you like a lady as well, haven't you, for your Waterville show? Yeah.

• 11:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's nice, it just gets you a bit of company, doesn't it? It just guarantees it, yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Bit of intelligent conversation for a change.

• 11:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think that they would be bumping into each other, you're right. But is it that they couldn't make the scissors for them? The left-handed scissors? Are there any right-handed barber scissors?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  It was just that people were generally suspicious. And I did look into the archive as well, and I don't think it was outright banned. And there was a lot of complaints about prejudice in other industries against left-handed people. But sometimes, you know, plasterers, carpenters, tile fixers.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Agree, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Sheet metal workers.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Definitely, oh my god. Can you imagine having sheet metal in your house made by a left-hander?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  God, it wouldn't.

• 11:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  The wrong way around.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  You wouldn't be able to put it on the bed or tool, would you?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  So they go, oh my god. And then I found this amazing thing when I was diving into the British newspaper archive, looking for this. And I just found the headline from 1930. Husband who in 20 years had never seen his wife's left hand. Which was an incredible story.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  George Eliot's husband.

• 12:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's too big, you can't see it when you're too close to it, can you?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  It was a story about this guy who'd married someone who always wore her hand bandaged. And he'd been too polite to ask her, so what's up with your hand? And then eventually she died of sepsis in her late 40s. And so the doctors came around and said, golly, why is your wife's hand bandaged? And he said, I just, I don't know, I never really asked.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And he took the bandage off and all her fingers had fallen off.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Oh, that had such a sad ending.

• 12:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  You sold it as such a funnier story than it ended up being.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Do you know, my husband says, I have a problem with this. I always start really sad stories with a really perky tone.

• 12:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes, that's true.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  It was bad, wasn't it?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Certainly in this case, that's what happened, yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Oh, well.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Anyway, James, anything? Cheer us up?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Can I tell you about the raspberry crazy ant?

• 12:47Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Because Brian has told me about it. It's a serious pest along the Gulf Coast of America. But it's drawn to electronic devices and electrical systems. Brian had an infestation on his personal laptop. And it's called the raspberry crazy ant. Crazy, obviously, because it runs around in a crazy manner. Raspberry, because they were named after the exterminator who reported them, Tom Raspberry.

• 13:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Beautiful.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 13:18Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Having read the original email and thought that's good for you, James, I had misremembered it and thought you were going to say they only go for raspberry pi. Those little computers, you know, the little homemade laptop ones, but it's named after Tom Raspberry.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Named after Tom Raspberry. And I just looked into them and found that actually NASA has big problems with these ants.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Really?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Because the ants keep going into the control station.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  And Tom Raspberry actually was hired by NASA to sort out the raspberry crazy ant.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 13:46Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Maybe they're trying to take over the space programme.

• 13:50Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Maybe they're just trying to get to the moon. That's so obviously what they're trying to do. They're organised, they don't need much air, I'm guessing.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  They should go to the rocket rather than the control centre if they want to get to the moon, shouldn't they?

• 14:01Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's a good point, actually.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Unless another lot of ants went into the rocket and these guys are directing them.

• 14:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No doubt, they've got colleagues in the rocket, yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I don't know if they need a rocket, because I've got a children's book at home about how, what animal can put a star back in the sky? And it turns out to be ants, because they all are so good at teamwork that they climb on top of each other. And the top one can get to the moon.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  It's just, that stats enough with quite a nice children's story, whether they all get boiled to death or someone pouring boiling water on them or something.

• 14:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Here's one from Rodrigo Pimentel. What a great name. I'm just going to read the thing to you, right? As you probably well know, the oldest works of what we call ancient Greek literature were Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed around 650 B.C. The earliest literary prose in ancient Greece is widely accepted as being Herodotus's Histories from about 430 B.C.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:52Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Now, in episode 55, Anna says that the fire hose was invented in ancient Greece and made out of an ox's intestine, okay? The few sources I could find date this to around 400 B.C. It seems like, for the ancient Greeks, it really was narrowly prose before hose.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  I see, I get it.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 15:14Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And Rodrigo does say, I'm sorry, at the end of it.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Don't apologise for those.

• 15:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Definitely.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  No way.

• 15:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think that's wonderful.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  An incredibly laboured route to a below par pun is what we live for.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  What about a fact here, Joe Handley? Here's one from you. This was brilliant, actually. So, Dmitri Shostakovich, maybe one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Russian, heavy duty.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Heavy duty, yes.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Second World War-inspired.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. Bear that in mind.

• 15:50Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Not a laugh a minute. Could soundtrack your anecdotes, actually.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  All right, let's be careful about anecdote digs, okay?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Who soundtracks yours?

• 16:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Joe Caine.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Shostakovich went to see Jesus Christ Superstar, the premiere in 1972.

• 16:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Brilliant.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  He absolutely loved it. He said it was so good, he wished he'd composed it himself.

• 16:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, god, I hope Andrew Lloyd Webber is listening to this, because that's got to be the best moment of his life. Oh, actually, maybe it wouldn't surprise him. Isn't that amazing? Shostakovich wishes he'd written Jesus Christ Superstar.

• 16:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Well, maybe you come out of it with your feet tapping in a way that you don't out of, I can't name any Shostakovich, I'm afraid.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Go on, piano concert on number three.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Prelude indeed.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Well, that's, I mean, gosh, I wouldn't even put it in Andrew Lloyd Webber's top five.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Do you know, neither would I.

• 16:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's so funny.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  But maybe Shostakovich never heard Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Okay, here is another one from Lucas S.H. Or Lucas Sh. And Lucas says, hi, everyone. My fact is that Karl Marx was first cousins with Gerard Phillips, the founder of the Phillips Company of toothbrush fame.

• 17:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's good.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Is Phillips a famous toothbrush company? Is it?

• 17:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Anna.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  I think of them as making Walkmans.

• 17:20Andrew Hunter Murray?

  If you ever brushed your teeth, you would know.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  I've got to start.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I do believe the only company that makes Walkmans is Sony.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  By definition.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Sorry, you're right. You're absolutely right, they're going to sue me now.

• 17:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  James, you have just avoided a crisis-level email event in the inbox. That was stunning. I've never been more grateful.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  So, this guy Gerard Phillips, his paternal grandmother was Sophie Pressburg, and she was the sister of Henriette Pressburg, who was Karl Marx's mother.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  So actually, it might be once removed, perhaps.

• 17:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, sure.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  But yeah, Marx didn't really get on with his mum, because he was going off spending loads of money in his student days.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I think I remember this, didn't she, she was really pissed off with him about it? She thought he was a useless.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also she was worried about him. And she said, you must avoid everything that can make things worse. You must not get overheated, you must not drink a lot of wine or coffee, or eat anything pungent, or eat pepper or other spices. You must not smoke any tobacco, must not stay up late in the evening, and you must always rise early.

• 18:25Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Wow.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  And basically, he just kept asking for money, asking for money, and then they fell out. And then, in fact, no one in his family went to his wedding.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Ouch.

• 18:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Really?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know whether he would have been hanging out with the head of the Phillips Company, because the families kind of didn't hang out together that much.

• 18:42Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It feels unlikely that he would have been hanging out with big business.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Or they wouldn't have agreed on much.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:47Andrew Hunter Murray?

  But maybe on dental hygiene? I mean, that should be for everyone.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Do you think that's one of those things?

• 18:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  They can, they can agree.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  At family Christmas, stick to teeth.

• 18:55Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Everyone agrees, we all want nice teeth. And we all deserve nice teeth.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Flossing for the people.

• 19:00Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yes. And if you don't have a tooth, someone else should give their tooth to you.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  No, stop, Karl. Karl.

• 19:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Everyone should have the same number of teeth.

• 19:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I got one last one. From Doug Steen from Fort Collins. Very American, the correspondence today. I don't plan it. You'll be staggered to here. But this is about a place called King County in Washington State. Who do you think it's named after?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Martin Luther?

• 19:27Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Martin Luther.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Oh, how interesting.

• 19:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's named for Martin Luther King Jr., but Martin Luther King Jr. was born 77 years after it was named King County.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So they were previously named after a guy called George King, who was a gold prospector or something. But then later on, they retconned it.

• 19:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Bingo. Yeah, it was originally named after William Rufus Devon King, who was the vice president briefly, and not very well. And then he died after about 45 days in the job. And he was a slave owner.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  That was a real rollercoaster.

• 20:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I really took you on the tragic path, all saying, you know what, he wasn't a great guy. So, yeah, he was apparently one of the worst vice presidents of all time. He never did anything vice presidential, you know, all those important jobs that the vice president has to do. And also, another thing, the only other detail I've found about him is that he wore powdered wigs long after they'd gone out of fashion. So if you didn't already hate him for owning 500 slaves, the powdered wigs thing really put the tinfoil in it. So he was king, it was named King County after him, and then it was renamed after Martin Luther.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  How brilliant, what a slap in the face for Rufus.

• 20:35Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Absolutely.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  They could always just name it after another king in the future, like King Prince Charles.

• 20:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yep.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Or like Stephen King.

• 20:43Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, that's a good idea.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  It'd be great if you were called like Smith County and you just changed it every few months.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  To the most fashionable Smith at the time.

• 20:52Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And what you're saying is that Martin Luther King's reputation is apparently going to take a massive nosedive. And it'll be necessary to say, what about Stephen King? He's must.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  You'd never know if he's going to get cancelled, do you?

• 21:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Okay, on that note, I think I have a clue who's gonna get cancelled next, James.

• 21:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  We should have some, we should dish out some facts to our new friends of the podcast.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:15Andrew Hunter Murray?

  If you go to patreon.com/clubfish and you sign up to Clubfish at the highest tier, the friend of the podcast tier, you can get a fact from our archive, one of our headline facts dedicated to you forever. You can become its custodian and keeper. And we're gonna dish out a load of those now. So let's get cracking. Who has a fact that they would like to give out?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Okay, I think I've got one. The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. It was bought by a man who collected broken laser pointers. And that is now under the custodianship of Robert Fink.

• 21:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  This guy must have thought all of his Christmases had come at once. Like, he just goes on eBay thinking, I wonder what's on here. And he finds the one thing that he collects.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  He did. It was the best day of Dan tribe's life, he says to this day.

• 22:05Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, that's wonderful. Great fact.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  What about a fact here for Thomas Welch? I bestow this one upon you, and that is that when Alexander Fleming's neighbours foiled a burglary at his house, as a thank you gift, he gave them some mould.

• 22:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Brilliant.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  But it's Alexander Fleming, so it's not.

• 22:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's a penicillin mould?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  It was indeed penicillin mould, because it's Alexander Fleming. So it's not just like anyone giving you mould.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's celebrity mould.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  It was celebrity mould, yeah. And I think.

• 22:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's a format. Sorry. We've cultured moulds from a random body sample taken from these celebrities, and you've got to match them up.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  And then you turn it into sourdough bread, and you taste the bread and see if you can guess which celebrity it is.

• 22:46Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Exactly. Is this Bradley Walsh? Is it?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Bradley Walsh.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Bread pit.

• 22:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Okay, now we're cooking. Now we cook. Yeah. It's about to be the centenary of that. It was 1928 that he discovered penicillin.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Wow, great.

• 23:05Andrew Hunter Murray?

  So be prepared for a lot of.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Are we gonna have like, big sort of street parties in London where everyone gets a load of mould?

• 23:13Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think we should.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  You only get invited if you're a fun guy. Completely different.

• 23:19Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Let's have another fact. This one goes out.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Pooey.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 23:24Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Let's go on to a fact. Let's go on to a fact for grey crinac or cranac. Your fact is, the earliest known ice cream recipe suggests flavouring with poo.

• 23:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I don't remember.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  It's a cheeky, isn't it? We do cheeky things about facts. It's whale poo.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Oh, is it amber grease?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Amber grease.

• 23:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's not cheeky at all.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  No, it's not. It's still poo.

• 23:48Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It's still poo?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Is it not normally vomit?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  That's a good point. Does it come out of their mouths, not their butts?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I think it comes out of both, but I think vomit is more common. Might be wrong.

• 23:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's true. It is also poo. Amber grease is also poo.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 24:01Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And is it? Because I always want to pronounce it amber grease, but I feel like.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I call it amber grease.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  You call it amber grease. Hmm, who knows? It's not common enough to have too many emails.

• 24:10Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Not to have an argument about, no. Fine, either way. I'm a hotspot.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Okay, very cool.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Delicious.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I've got another one here. Another one from the, from the lower regions. And it goes now to Jake McCann. Jake, your fact is, the dog pee makes streetlights collapse.

• 24:32Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Ah, I remember this one.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is basically dogs wheeing on, on streetlights and them getting more and more weak because of the urea.

• 24:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah. And the only way to solve it is to wee on the other side?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  No, I think the way to do it is to not allow dogs to wee on lamp posts. But I mean, it's hard to stop, isn't it?

• 24:51Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's hard to stop, yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  And it does feel like you're gonna know if it's on the brink of collapse, aren't you? It's not like one, it would have to be a very acidic dog wee, I reckon, for it to be just a new, brand new street lamp, and it just keels over.

• 25:02Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  So here's another fact. And this is the fact that after the button was invented, it took more than a thousand years for someone to invent the button hole. And I am going to give this fact to Sean Tobin Murphy. A fantastic fact.

• 25:17Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's a classic, I'd say. It's a classic fish fact.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  It's really, it's in, there are certain formats that various facts fit into, and that's of the format it took loads of years for someone to invent the hole in the basketball net.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Like the tin was invented 200 years before the tin opener.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And everyone just had full tins of sweet corn and didn't know what to do with the morsel fish.

• 25:37Andrew Hunter Murray?

  So many completely avoidable famines. Terrible. Stop it, I get a tens.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  But yeah, like with the buttons, it's like they had a loop of cotton or something that you put the button in.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Like a duffel coat.

• 25:49Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right, like a cool, like a cool design feature.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  And also, a button hole is a specific, you know, it has to be strengthened around the hole, right? It's not just a hole, it's not just a slit.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  You can't just cut it. Yeah, a little known fact.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:04Andrew Hunter Murray?

  That's where I've been going wrong. So my clothes are rags. Insert a button hole everywhere here, yeah. Shall we have another?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:11Andrew Hunter Murray?

  This one goes out to Tom Dix, and the fact is, as a baby, St Nicholas refused to drink his mother's breast milk on fast days. His Holiness.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  So good.

• 26:23Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Love this fact.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  He'd be, I mean, it's really dangerous for a newborn baby to go a whole day without breast milk.

• 26:30Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yep.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  It's really silly.

• 26:31Andrew Hunter Murray?

  It was on Wednesdays and Fridays.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Twice, or two days a week?

• 26:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I think he did it in the, in the evening. He allowed himself to break his fast.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Did he?

• 26:38Andrew Hunter Murray?

  And I presume that was absolutely ravenous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Also, her breasts by the end of the day will be very turgid, very uncomfortable for the mother.

• 26:45Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right. It doesn't sound like it's good for, for anyone, really. But that's fasting, you know, you've got to show.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Do you reckon he cheats like a lot of people who fast do?

• 26:53Andrew Hunter Murray?

  What, have a, like a?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Just a little suck on the boob.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  When his mum's not looking.

• 27:01Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Definitely.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Is that Father Christmas St Nicholas?

• 27:06Andrew Hunter Murray?

  How many, how many St Nicolas's are there? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  I'm just imagining Father Christmas sucking on his mother's cheeks.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I don't think he had a beard in those days.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  That would be very uncomfortable.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  When was he around?

• 27:21Andrew Hunter Murray?

  What, St Nicholas? I, I don't know, third-ish century or fourth or something?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so what I'm asking is, did the ho, ho, hoes come before pros or before hoes?

• 27:33Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Right. St Nicholas was born in 270 AD.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so we go pros, hoes, ho, ho, hoes.

• 27:40Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Now we're cooking.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 27:41Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Lovely, lovely.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  How we established that?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Okay, here's my last one for the day, and this now goes under the custodianship of Zarco Naritz. And Zarco, your headline fact is, when Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels, warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  So sweet. It makes you warm to him.

• 28:07Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Presidential handovers were nicer back in the day, weren't they? Then, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have you locked up. No, I'm gonna have you locked up. Well, I've pardoned myself. Eat it.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Okay, one more.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  One more, and here is one for Beth. Just Beth. And this Beth is that Las Vegas hosts an award ceremony for people who make awards.

• 28:29Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Love it.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  So good.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Of course, because there's an award ceremony for everything, isn't there?

• 28:34Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Yeah, yeah. And we said at the time, there are different categories. There's best trophy and best plaque.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, really good. What, what list of celebrity do you think you'd have to be, to be asked to make the after dinner speech at that award ceremony?

• 28:44Andrew Hunter Murray?

  I don't think you're gonna get it, Anna. Sorry. I'm really sorry. I think maybe a bit of profile raising and you could get there, but I think.

• 28:54Andrew Hunter Murray?

  Oh, right. Well, look, that's it. That's another episode of Little Fish.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  So soon.

• 28:58Andrew Hunter Murray?

  So soon. If you have a fact for us that you'd like us to read out on the show, just email it to podcast at qi.com. We read every single one. They're all brilliant. They're so much fun to read. I've made my point.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Are they all brilliant?

• 29:12Andrew Hunter Murray?

  No, they're not all brilliant. But your fact will be, so send it to podcast at qi.com. No, they are, it's so wonderful hearing from everyone. If you've got something for Drop is a Line or Audience Feedback Show, it's the same email address, podcast at qi.com. So we'll see you there, and we'll see you again in a few days for another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Bye for now.