Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: The Body Of A Young Paul Newman About this episode Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including dogs playing poker and peacocks destroying planets. Dan reveals the name of his pot plant. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast fact custodians.
Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish http://apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon http://nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 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.
0:41 Speaker 01 Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where you send us a load of amazing facts, and then we marvel at how great they are. We give a little bit of extra material, and then we do a little bit of extra stuff at the end where we give away custodianship of some of our old facts. There's so much to get through that I think we should just get going. Andrew Hunter-Murray, Dan Schreiber, which of you will go first?
1:05 Speaker 02 I'll go first. This is a fact that is sent in to us by James Udell, and it is the artist behind the famous dogs playing poker paintings, also once wrote a comic opera about an anthropomorphic giant mosquito.
1:21 Speaker 01 Wow. Okay. I wish I could remember his name.
1:25 Speaker 02 Cassius Marcellus Coolidge.
1:27 Speaker 01 It's Cassius Marcellus something. I can't remember the surname. I know it's the same as a president. It'll come to me. It'll come to me.
1:38 Speaker 02 He's a fascinating guy. I can't remember if we've spoken about him on the show before.
1:43 Speaker 03 No, I don't think we've ever discussed the dogs playing poker pictures.
1:46 Speaker 01 They're probably parodied more than you see the originals, would you reckon?
1:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
1:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:51 Speaker 01 Something tells me of this guy. Did he invent those sort of... Cardboard cutouts that you get at the fairground that you put your head through. I feel like
1:59 Speaker 02 This is what's amazing. Yes. He is, he is certainly the person that is credited with popularizing it to the point where it became a big thing. If you go to the seaside and it's missing its head and you stand behind it, that's the man behind the dog poker playing.
2:14 Speaker 01 I love those things.
2:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:16 Speaker 03 James, that is stunning knowledge, I've got to say. That's really, really impressive.
2:22 Speaker 02 Isn't that extraordinary? Two seminal things that we sort of don't know the names of, but we all know.
2:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:29 Speaker 03 I just think it's like, it's like there being someone who invented benches. You just think there's, there's no way that a, a technology like bits at the beach where you put your head through the hole and get someone to take a funny fit. There's no way that has a named inventor.
2:41 Speaker 01 I can imagine you would go to like the Lascaux caves in southern France and you would walk into the cave and there would be a little bit of a hole. And if you put your head through it, then it looks like you're spearing some buffaloes.
2:53 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:53 Speaker 01 You feel like it must be as old as that, right?
2:55 Speaker 03 Exactly, exactly. Can we get one of those for the office?
2:59 Speaker 01 Um, well, what do you think? Well, what do you mean? Like as in it will be our bodies that other people can put their heads in? Or are we going to get some bodies of other famous podcasters that we put our heads in or something?
3:11 Speaker 03 Okay, I was thinking it's our bodies and we put our heads through, but we put them through the, no, wait, wait. We put them through the wrong heads and that's a funny image for a tour poster or something.
3:22 Speaker 01 Okay. Yeah. Unfortunately, I would say that our bodies are not distinguishable enough. You know, it's not like
3:29 Speaker 03 One of us is a farmer and one of us is a motorbiker and one of us is a builder.
3:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, one of us is a woman. I mean,
3:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. So that one would work, but then the others, I see just three middle aged men with like bodies that are feasible.
3:43 Speaker 03 Yeah. And we can't have one where three of us have put our head through the Anna head hole and Anna's put her head through the three holes of the feasible middle aged men bodies.
3:53 Speaker 02 Wow. Middle aged. That's the first time anyone's caught me in middle age.
3:55 Speaker 01 Really? Come on.
3:57 Speaker 03 Really?
3:58 Speaker 01 You've had the brain of a middle aged man for at least 20 years.
4:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, my spirit, but that's different to my body. I've had the body of a, like a young, a young Paul Newman for a long time, I thought.
4:11 Speaker 01 And again, you're showing the mind.
4:17 Speaker 03 I thought, who's a beefcake? Who's a hunk? Bald human.
4:23 Speaker 01 Shall we do another fact?
4:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've got one here. This is from Veronica Alfano from Sydney, Australia. Pretty cool. And Veronica writes, I thought you might be interested in a little fish fact about an amazing 19th century figure. And Veronica presents it as a riddle. Okay.
4:40 Speaker 01 Great.
4:41 Speaker 03 There is a poet named Michael Field, who is neither a man nor a woman, nor a non-binary person. How can this be?
4:51 Speaker 01 Is it a field? An actual field?
4:53 Speaker 03 It's not a field.
4:56 Speaker 03 That's good. You're thinking the right way, though.
4:59 Speaker 01 Someone wandered over me like a cloud.
5:06 Speaker 01 Well, it must be an animal, I would say. Is it not?
5:09 Speaker 03 Not an animal.
5:10 Speaker 01 Oh, do you remember that we've actually done this on the show, so I doubt it's this, but do you remember the person who created a poetry machine or a haiku machine?
5:19 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
5:19 Speaker 01 Like, but it was a steampunky one that it was before computers.
5:23 Speaker 03 The Latin hexameter poem with the Mary Beard episode. That was so good. No, it's not like that. Okay, I'll, I'll say, I'll just give you one clue. It's two names. Michael Field, therefore.
5:35 Speaker 01 Two people.
5:36 Speaker 03 Very good. It's two people, but it's, Michael Field is a very interesting poet because
5:43 Speaker 03 he, quote unquote, was two women, Catherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, AKA Bradley Cooper. Interesting. And they lived in the second half of the 19th century. Okay, Veronica says they were lovers and life partners. They were also aunt and niece.
6:00 Speaker 01 Hmm. Wow.
6:02 Speaker 03 Quite striking.
6:04 Speaker 01 That is.
6:04 Speaker 03 I would say. They wrote a lot of extremely sexy poems about love and, and, you know, female, female romance and sexuality. They were very enthusiastically reviewed. And then when it came out that they were not Michael Field, but they were actually an aunt and a niece, everyone was a bit, a bit surprised. I think it was a bit of negative pushback against that.
6:25 Speaker 01 I can kind of understand that.
6:27 Speaker 03 It's, it's unorthodox.
6:30 Speaker 03 They were ploughing their own Michael Field, you could say. Um, they also wrote a book of poems to their dog, Wim Chow, who died in 1906. And they were so sad that their dog had died that they converted to Catholicism in the hope that they would meet him in heaven. Oh, wow. And they wrote a book of poems called Wim Chow Flame of Love, which I've been reading. Oh, it sounds great. It's not good. Oh, no.
6:52 Speaker 01 Really?
6:53 Speaker 03 What? It's not great. With that premise? Go on.
6:59 Speaker 01 Okay, um, here is another fact. This one comes from Yakop4kit. Uh, and actually Yakop gives us two facts. So the first one is that Roald Admanson's polar thrust was so well planned that all five in his group had gained weight upon returning to base camp.
7:14 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh.
7:15 Speaker 01 Wow.
7:16 Speaker 03 That is devastating for the Brits who starved and died of exposure and all of that.
7:21 Speaker 01 I'm afraid so. I think, um, Admanson's lot ate the dogs, didn't they?
7:26 Speaker 03 Well, it's very nutritious stuff, clearly.
7:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:29 Speaker 03 I can't believe that. Oh, I'm feeling a bit, oh, my, my, my polar clothes are feeling a bit tighter this morning. I'm so healthy and gaining weight.
7:35 Speaker 01 You know what? I've been going to the gym over the last couple of months a bit more than I did at the end of last year. And I feel like I'm not losing that much weight, so I can kind of empathize with these guys. Sometimes like muscle is heavier than fat. That's what they say, isn't it?
7:50 Speaker 03 Yes. And you're eating a lot of dog at the moment. And that's noticeable.
7:54 Speaker 01 You gotta stop. You gotta stop. Okay, uh, Yakop's second fact, uh, is that there is a Norwegian cross-country skier named Caroline Stavas Ski Stad. And her name translates into English as Caroline Pole Hill Ski Place.
8:12 Speaker 03 No.
8:16 Speaker 03 Isn't that amazing? Nominal determinism ever.
8:19 Speaker 01 Pole Hill Ski Place. It sounds like she just made it up, doesn't it? And like, wow, I need the name. I'm just gonna name it after the things I can see.
8:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:30 Speaker 01 Damn it, Michael Field has taken.
8:34 Speaker 01 Um, I've got a fact about Winter Olympic names. Oh, yeah. So the Winter Olympics has just been, uh, and there is a shop called the Corona Sierra Stress Plants Shop. And they decided to do a thing where they would give plants to the athletes and let them look after them while they were in the Olympic Village. And the athletes had to name their plants. So James Hernandez, the British figure skater, his plant was called Gary. Okay. Um, Marjorie Lajoie called hers Olympia, Lithuania's Solius Ambrelavisius called theirs Dude. And Canada's Madeleine Chisas named her plant Ilya Roznov. That's a good name.
9:19 Speaker 01 It's a good name for a plant, that, isn't it?
9:21 Speaker 02 It's a very good name.
9:22 Speaker 01 Does that name mean anything to you guys? Ilya Roznov? No. So you haven't been watching the TV show Heated Rivalry then? Oh my God, is this the hockey sex show? It's the hottie hockey guy. Um, and the Madeleine decided to name her plant Ilya Roznov in the hope that the actor Connor Story would see this and say, "Hey, I heard you got a plant named after the character that I play at this show. Maybe we could get together." Fancy a puck?
9:57 Speaker 02 Surely that's the tagline for the whole show, surely? Do you guys have a plant that you've given a name to? I do. I'm literally looking at it in my room.
10:06 Speaker 01 Really?
10:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's called Baxter.
10:08 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. What's the story behind that?
10:11 Speaker 02 So named after Cleve Baxter, who was the, the CIA polygraph expert who believed that he could communicate with plants, uh, by hooking it up. To a lie detector machine. Do you remember there was that story where he had six people come in randomly and stamp a plant dead in a room and pull it out? And only one of the six people had done it. He tested whether or not the other plant in the room could pick out the guilty person in a lineup. And according to everyone involved, the plant successfully picked out the killer.
10:44 Speaker 03 How did it identify the killer?
10:47 Speaker 02 By, because it was hooked up to a polygraph. So the readings when the killer walked in.
10:51 Speaker 03 Oh, right.
10:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:53 Speaker 01 Woo woo is exactly the phrase I would use at the end of this anecdote.
10:59 Speaker 03 Wow, Dan, what a fact. I mean, no, that's a very good reason to name a plant Dexter.
11:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:05 Speaker 03 I don't have any, I don't have any named plants.
11:07 Speaker 01 No.
11:08 Speaker 03 Well, mine are mostly mosses, which have a different, different structure, so.
11:12 Speaker 02 You don't give a moss a name, do you?
11:14 Speaker 01 I think the, I think the, is it the Latin or Greek for moss is Brian?
11:20 Speaker 03 Yes, which is why they're bryophytes now. Yeah, yeah.
11:23 Speaker 01 So you should just call them all Brian.
11:25 Speaker 03 That's a really nice idea.
11:26 Speaker 02 Uh, okay, let's, uh, let's do a fact here from Hazel Dixon. And Hazel writes that the first pre-execution last meal was in 1772 of Susan Brant, who died by decapitation by sword. Brant was offered a feast consisting of three pounds of bratwurst, 10 pounds of beef, six pounds of baked carp, 12 pounds of lamb roast, soup, cabbage, bread, and an unspecified dessert, and eight liters of wine. She rejected this all and just had a glass of water.
11:57 Speaker 01 Wow. Still unsparkling?
11:59 Speaker 02 Unspecified. What was the sparkling situation in 1772? I'm not sure when San Pellegrino was established. It's saying that this is the first pre-execution last meal, 1772. I think it existed a long time before that. There's examples in medieval Europe of there being this kind of thing.
12:17 Speaker 01 Really?
12:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's an interesting story that's attached to the last meal from medieval times, which may or may not be apocryphal, but the idea was that you would make sure that the criminal who was being put to death had a really good meal just before dying, so that they didn't come back to haunt the executioners, so that they left on good terms.
12:38 Speaker 01 What would be your final meal, Dan?
12:40 Speaker 02 Probably a bowl of fried rice as a kind of, you know, fried and then I'm fried. It's a sort of.
12:47 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
12:47 Speaker 03 Are you picking the, are you picking the method of execution?
12:51 Speaker 02 Oh, sorry. Do I only get to pick my meal, not the method of execution? Okay.
12:55 Speaker 01 I, I was gonna say I might have some pulled pork and then be pulled apart by horses.
13:00 Speaker 02 There we go.
13:02 Speaker 03 Um, I suppose I'll just, I'll just go for, um, a nice bacon sandwich where the pig has died by firing squad.
13:12 Speaker 03 I'm not, that feels mean, doesn't it? Saying I want a pig to be shot by firing squad. I mean, it's probably no worse than happens to normal, uh, in normal animal processing.
13:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, but in this hypothetical situation, you have done a crime, so you're not a nice guy.
13:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, I guess I'm finding it hard to get into the head of someone who's not a nice guy. It's just so alien to me.
13:33 Speaker 02 What if you did the crime with the pig? So you were both up for execution. Then kill your accomplice first.
13:41 Speaker 03 What are you saying we did together, Dan?
13:42 Speaker 01 You be the aunt, I'll be the niece.
13:48 Speaker 03 Um, no, I don't know. I'd probably just have something, um, something vegetarian. I'm trying to do my nice guy credentials, you see?
13:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
13:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:58 Speaker 01 And these last words, did I tell you I'm a pig?
14:07 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm John Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
14:21 Speaker 05 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
14:32 Speaker 04 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.
14:37 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
14:43 Speaker 04 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
15:06 Speaker 01 Okay, here is another fact. This one is from Lucas Chiang Smith. Lucas obviously knows the show well because they say, "A fact for you in the form of a little Quizlet for Andy, and because Dan loves mundane sci-fi, James loves numbers, and Anna loves to blow shit wide open." Here goes.
15:25 Speaker 03 Wow.
15:26 Speaker 01 "How many laser pens would it take to blow up the Earth?"
15:30 Speaker 03 Ooh. So we're firing laser pens at the Earth, let's say from space.
15:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, like imagine, it's like, imagine you have a Death Star.
15:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:42 Speaker 01 And you need to make a laser, but you're like, ah, like, that's gonna be tough to make from scratch, but we have this laser pen making factory, so let's just make a load of them and use that as a laser.
15:53 Speaker 02 Can I ask, I've never equated the laser of a laser pen as being just a very un-harmful, diluted version of a killer death ray. If you amplified the amount that you had, can that become harmful, or is it just really bright?
16:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. I think that's what Ian's saying.
16:09 Speaker 01 Really bright, yeah. So yeah, laser is amplified light, basically. So it's energy, and so if you fire enough energy at anything, it will, it will break it up.
16:21 Speaker 03 I love the idea that the Death Star was basically a presentation gone wrong, saying, "If you'll just observe the planet all around here." Oh my God! Oh no!
16:33 Speaker 03 We wanted to highlight their great exports. Oh no!
16:37 Speaker 02 That's what lightsabers are. They were just a slightly larger laser pointer as well. The whole thing is a stationary hub.
16:47 Speaker 03 It feels like it's gonna be a sort of, an impossibly big number of laser pens to blow up the Earth. I'm gonna say-
16:52 Speaker 01 Think of the biggest number you can think of, like, as in the biggest number you can name.
16:56 Speaker 03 A trillion.
16:57 Speaker 01 Bigger.
16:58 Speaker 03 Gazzillion.
16:58 Speaker 01 Than a trillion. Gazillion. Let's try real numbers.
17:03 Speaker 03 Um, two trillion. I can't go higher than two trillion. That's really big for me.
17:07 Speaker 01 Is it? Okay. No, it is. According to Lucas's calculations, it is 1.422 octillion.
17:16 Speaker 03 What?
17:17 Speaker 01 Uh, and an octillion is one with 27 zeros. So, um, like a, a million has got six zeros and a billion has got nine. And a trillion has got 12, but this one's got 27.
17:28 Speaker 03 What?
17:29 Speaker 01 Uh, and for context, according to Lucas, this is 10,000 times fewer than the number of bacteriophages on earth.
17:38 Speaker 03 Oh, thanks for that context. That's really helpful.
17:42 Speaker 01 Um, okay. So I read a fact recently, which was really cool. It's new science that peacocks have got lasers in their tails.
17:51 Speaker 03 Okay.
17:51 Speaker 01 So those little eyes in a peacock's tail, they amplify the light. Uh, and we don't really know why they do that, possibly to attract females or, or whatever. But we do know that they work like lasers. And so I have worked out how many peacocks you would need to blow up the earth.
18:11 Speaker 03 Incredible.
18:12 Speaker 01 Incredible. Would you like to guess?
18:17 Speaker 03 I feel like a peacock's less powerful than a laser.
18:19 Speaker 01 I'm afraid it is. So if you're, if the highest number you could think of before was a trillion, you're not going to get anywhere near this.
18:26 Speaker 03 I'm not going to three trillion. No, I'll say two. Are we saying octillion?
18:31 Speaker 01 Octillion was the other one. Yeah.
18:33 Speaker 03 Ah, it's just fantasy football at this stage, isn't it? Dan, do you want to advance on that?
18:37 Speaker 01 I think the best way to get close to this is to make up a number and hope that scientists have also made up that number.
18:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, bajillion.
18:46 Speaker 01 Bajillion is not a number.
18:48 Speaker 03 Squinillion?
18:50 Speaker 01 Squinillion, no, sorry.
18:51 Speaker 03 No, it's squinillion.
18:53 Speaker 01 Oh, sorry, squinillion. No, no, you got it. Absolutely.
18:59 Speaker 01 Uh, no, it is approximately 355.5 nonillion peacocks it would take to blow up the earth. So that would be about 35 peacocks for every virus that there is currently on earth.
19:12 Speaker 03 Right.
19:13 Speaker 01 Get them together, one big death star, fire lighter. You'd have to, you need a light source as well, but you know, we'll deal with that later. Let's get the peacocks first.
19:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're gonna need to start breeding peacocks quite sharpish if you're trying to get up to however many non-illian.
19:33 Speaker 03 Well, I feel really educated by that. Thank you, James.
19:37 Speaker 01 No, thank you, Lucas.
19:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Lucas. And then James for the peacock calculation. All I'm picturing is James at home and his little daughter coming up to him saying, Daddy, can we play? And he's saying, I'm working on something important here. Calculations of peacocks on the wall.
19:53 Speaker 01 You're joking? You think I do this by myself now that I have a helper?
20:00 Speaker 02 The teacher's going, her math is interesting, Mr. Harkett.
20:05 Speaker 01 She doesn't yet know how to do three times four, but she does seem to be able to do 355.5 non-illian divided by the number of viruses on Earth.
20:19 Speaker 02 Her non-illian timetable is fantastic. We're not knocking that. We're not knocking that. It's wonderful.
20:26 Speaker 01 Okay, well, that is enough of your facts. Absolutely brilliant facts. As ever this week, thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in to podcast at qi.com. But now it is time to go through our old archive of facts. Andy has spent many, many years typing these up and we have got them here to give away to friends of the podcast on Patreon. So if you join Patreon at the very top level, then not only will you get a shout out on the show, you will get a digital certificate and forever and a day, your fact will belong to you. So who is going to be the first person to give out one of our facts?
21:02 Speaker 03 I'll dish one out. This one goes out to Matt Ray. Congratulations, Matt. Your fact is that morgue refrigerators in Turkey are fitted with alarms, motion sensors and handles to open them from the inside in case people wake up.
21:18 Speaker 02 So good.
21:19 Speaker 03 Thoughtful, sensible. And do you remember we did this whole big thing about the 19th century where it was really unclear what dying meant? And it was actually really hard to work out what the biological signal for death was.
21:31 Speaker 02 Yes.
21:32 Speaker 03 You know, because there's, there's the heart, there's the- The brain, there's, I mean, there's all sorts and people had to come up with these mad methods. And there were these hospitals of doubtful life where people were put when maybe they would wake up.
21:43 Speaker 02 There's got to be a point, though, when you're walking into that room and your relative is half eaten by maggots and flies all around them going, I'll give it a few more days.
21:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:52 Speaker 02 I feel like there's a, there's a point.
21:54 Speaker 01 There is a point, but it's just, what is that point, right?
21:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:57 Speaker 02 I think maggots eating through your eye hole.
21:59 Speaker 01 Okay, that's what we'll do. That's what we'll say. Okay, from now on, we have an official international standard. It's the maggots eating through the eyeballs Schreiber standard.
22:12 Speaker 02 Not the thing I thought I'd be known for after my death. Not the legacy I thought I was leaving on this planet.
22:19 Speaker 02 That's very good. Well, congrats, Matt Ray. That's yours. Here's another one for Will Davidson. As a baby, Henry VIII had two official cradle rockers paid three pounds a year to rock him.
22:29 Speaker 01 Very good.
22:32 Speaker 03 I don't know what three pounds would have got you in late 15th century.
22:35 Speaker 02 Hmm. Not really a long-term job as well either.
22:40 Speaker 02 How, how long's the post? Not long.
22:43 Speaker 01 Well, maybe he continued into his, like, adulthood. He was still being rocked.
22:47 Speaker 02 Oh, yes. Yes.
22:49 Speaker 01 Wouldn't, wouldn't you love to like, just have someone, you've had a stressful day, you've just been doing podcasts and, like, you can just lie down in a crib and someone's gonna rock you for a half an hour? That's gonna calm you right down.
23:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:00 Speaker 01 No, you're, you're both looking at me like I've gone insane. Okay, this next fact is now under the custodianship of Josh Pearson. Josh, your fact is that from 800 AD to 1349, the Colosseum in Rome was used as an apartment block.
23:20 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
23:20 Speaker 01 Wowzers.
23:21 Speaker 03 And this, this was not, there were not active gladiatorial fights going on at the time, right? Like, it wasn't like, oh god, my bloody, my bloody neighbours again.
23:31 Speaker 02 You remember we stayed in that hotel while we're on tour, where if you got sort of in hotel room, your window looked into the stadium of a football ground.
23:38 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. I've been to a few of those. The one we went to was in Norwich.
23:42 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:43 Speaker 01 They also have one in Fylde, which I've been to, which overlooks football. I think Bolton has one as well. So there's a few hotels like that. But yeah, absolutely. That would be great, wouldn't it?
23:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:52 Speaker 01 Just open your curtains and there's some Christians being eaten by lions. No.
23:58 Speaker 03 Okay, this one goes out to Stacey Pugh. And Stacey, this might be relevant, I don't know where you live, but your fact for now and forever is that in Australia, you can be fined for swearing.
24:11 Speaker 01 Wow.
24:13 Speaker 03 This was quite a surprising one to us because we think of Australia as being quite sweary.
24:18 Speaker 03 But it's not allowed and you better watch your mouth.
24:22 Speaker 02 People do swear and not get fined.
24:25 Speaker 03 I know, but they're working on it.
24:27 Speaker 02 So the Northern Territory is...
24:29 Speaker 03 Northern Territory was a place, definitely, we covered in the show, that people had been fined a fair bit for swearing.
24:35 Speaker 01 So if I just stand in the street in Darwin or wherever and say, "I'm so hungry I could bite the arse off a pigeon", the Australians say, am I going to get arrested?
24:48 Speaker 03 I don't know if you'll serve any time. I think it might be an on-the-spot fine, maybe a march to a cash point.
24:54 Speaker 01 I guess you could be...
24:54 Speaker 03 I mean, this was 10 years ago.
24:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, you could be fined for swearing in the UK if you do it in the wrong place and time and with aggressive intent.
25:02 Speaker 03 That's absolutely right. Yeah, I think that probably is to cover events like this as opposed to people saying, "I'm so hungry I could eat the arse off a pigeon."
25:12 Speaker 01 Right, yeah.
25:13 Speaker 03 Which, that is a phrase I think should come with some kind of legal sanction, but I don't think, they just don't have the enforcement, I think.
25:21 Speaker 02 Okay, I got one here. This is now for Emma Banton. And your fact is that when the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, reception was so bad that it took 17 hours to send the first message across.
25:37 Speaker 03 I feel like it was to Queen Victoria. I'm sure everything was to Queen Victoria officially at the time.
25:43 Speaker 01 I thought it would be like, "The hot girls in your area..."
25:49 Speaker 03 "Want to rock you to sleep."
25:54 Speaker 01 Okay, here is another fact. This is also to another Emma. This is going out to Emma Cuthurst. And Emma, your fact is that to celebrate World Vegan Day in 2013, Peter asked a town called Fry-up in Yorkshire to change its name to Vegan Fry-up for the day. They refused.
26:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:17 Speaker 01 There you go. So Peter, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, or something like that, the people who like to get a lot of publicity by doing slightly weird things in order to further their cause. And this was one of those.
26:31 Speaker 03 And it's because Britain has so many amazing place names that are all, you know, like, big old dead horse village. That doesn't sound British. That sounds more American. But you know what I mean? There are lots of...
26:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, we have so many place names like Canyon Ranch.
26:46 Speaker 03 All right. All right. That was a bad example. Hobbit Hatter was a bad example. But this was the village, there's Fry-up, and then there's Great Fry-up, and then there's Little Fry-up, isn't there?
26:57 Speaker 01 Is there?
26:58 Speaker 03 I think so. And basically, there are a few places like this knocking around, and Peter thought they'd try and make some hay with it. I think they don't mind being refused, do they? Because they can say, oh, the village of Fry-up has refused to rename itself just for one day.
27:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, like for them, they get the publicity no matter what, don't they?
27:12 Speaker 03 Yes, you're right. Here is another one. And this goes out to Katie. Surname withheld. But you'll have had your certificate already. And your fact is that in 1960s America, on one 35-mile bus route, you passed through seven time zones.
27:31 Speaker 03 Nightmare, nightmare. And it's because American states just, they had, you know, there were borders, and there were all sorts of different time zones knocking around, and they took a long time to resolve it all. And in fact, they still haven't got their act together and got all in the same time zone, which is crazy.
27:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, they really should get like China, don't you think, Andy?
27:49 Speaker 03 Come on, guys.
27:51 Speaker 01 We had our own time zones in the UK as well. Like if you lived in Bristol, you would be on different times than if you lived in London, for instance. And then it was the transport that changed all that because once you had trains going from one town to another, you needed to, everyone needed to be on the same time. Otherwise you wouldn't know what time your train was going to arrive.
28:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
28:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:13 Speaker 02 That's right.
28:14 Speaker 01 Okay, Dan, give us the last fact for the day.
28:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is for John Harris, and that is if a predator gets too close to a limpet, the limpet lifts its shell and stamps on the predator's foot.
28:25 Speaker 03 Gorgeous.
28:27 Speaker 01 Interesting fact about this. I don't know if we said this on the day, but the word limpet comes from the fact that when they stamp on your toe, you limp away.
28:35 Speaker 03 No.
28:37 Speaker 01 Of course not.
28:39 Speaker 03 Oh.
28:40 Speaker 01 I was so excited.
28:41 Speaker 02 Proud that I didn't go for it this time. So proud.
28:43 Speaker 01 Well done, Dan. You're learning.
28:45 Speaker 03 I'm gutted. I was gonna suggest putting that in the book of things you think are named after one thing, but actually they're named after someone else.
28:54 Speaker 01 Okay, well, on that note, I think we should say thank you again to our new custodians. They are John, Katie, Emma, Emma, Stacey, Josh, Will and Matt. And thank you, everyone who sent in some facts for the first half of this show. And thank you indeed for listening. If you're listening to this and you're not yet a friend of the podcast on Patreon, then why not go to patreon.com and find out more there? There's all sorts of levels. You don't have to go on the top level. In fact, you don't have to pay at all. If you sign up on Patreon, there are little bits of extra stuff you can get there as well. So do go over to Patreon. And if you have any facts that you'd like to send to us for this show, or in fact, you've heard us say something wrong and you'd like to tell us about it,
29:36 Speaker 01 or you want to give us more information, then send all of your correspondence to [email protected] and it might well get into some of our outputs. We will see you again on Friday for a big fish. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from these guys.
29:51 Speaker 02 Bye.
29:52 Speaker 03 So long.
29:53 Speaker 01 Farewell. I'll be the same.
29:55 Speaker 02 Bye.
30:07 Speaker 07 She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.
30:20 Speaker 08 Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,
31:05 Speaker 08 paid for by Genentech and Novartis.
31:07 Speaker 00 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.
Previous No Such Thing As Elizabeth I's Burnt Umber Next No Such Thing As The God of Snooze Buttons Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated