No Such Thing As Magical Fox Phishing

Ray O'Leary joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss Rousseau, rays, receptionists and remarkable royalties. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. 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 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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

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• 1:43Speaker 04

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, where we were joined by our good friend, the New Zealand comedian, Ray O'Leary. Now, we've known Ray for a long time now. He is such a good friend. It's so good to get him on the main podcast. You might remember he did the Edinburgh showcase that we did towards the end of last year. But he is on the full show today, and I'm absolutely certain you're gonna love it, because, oh, my gosh, we had such a good time doing this show. Once you've finished listening to it, then I reckon you're gonna want to go and buy tickets to see his show. His stand-up is really where he absolutely thrives. He's got a brilliant delivery and his jokes are so funny. Of all the people I went to see last year, definitely he's my favourite. And so if you are listening to this when

• 2:27Speaker 04

  the show goes out and you are in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Glasgow, Norwich, Southampton, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, Bristol or Sheffield, then go to the internet and search for Ray O'Leary. If you go to his Instagram, then you will find details for tickets in his bio, or you could just search Google for Ray O'Leary tickets and you'll find them there and I highly recommend it. If you'd like to listen to the XL version of this show, where we find out what Dan has in common with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and believe me, you didn't want to hear the normal version, but big fans of Dan are gonna want to hear it, go to patreon.com/nosuchthingasafish and there is all sorts

• 3:07Speaker 04

  of stuff there, not just XL shows, but merch and all sorts of bonus material, or just a place to sign up and learn more about fish. Anyway, let's get on with it. This week's show with Ray O'Leary. On with the podcast.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin and Ray O'Leary. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Ray.

• 4:01Speaker 06

  My fact this week is that a 30-second lullaby written in 1963 has made more than $70 million in royalties. And that lullaby is killing in the name of by raging against the shit.

• 4:17Speaker 06

  Something I always go to bed.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Okay, that's a lot of royalties.

• 4:25Speaker 06

  It is, yes. The reason it's made so much money is because it's become a theme song for a TV show. It's become a theme song for the American quiz show Jeopardy, because the song was written by the creator of the show, who I guess needed a theme song. He got himself to do it and now paid himself seventy million dollars.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  So he got paid every time it was on?

• 4:47Speaker 06

  Yes, every time it was on. And the show is like two hundred and thirty episodes a year or something. He gets paid every time.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Oh, and syndicated globally as well. And there's all the different UK and other country formats.

• 4:59Speaker 06

  Stephen Fry hosts the UK and Australian ones.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. The thing is about this lullaby is as far as I'm concerned, it's exactly the same as another lullaby.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Which is I'm a little teapot, right?

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 5:10Speaker 04

  It's the one that goes.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Tip me over, pour me out.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  To me, I've always heard that. And I honestly always thought, oh, they must have just used I'm a little teapot because it was out of copyright.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  But actually, he claimed to have written it.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Well, I would say that I'm a little teapot is not a lullaby. I certainly wouldn't sing that to a child that was trying to get to sleep. I think that's more of a hype up fight song, that kind of thing. Right.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  What is it?

• 5:39Speaker 05

  It was the eight mile of its day.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  But actually, I mean, there are movements involved. When you want a child to sleep, you don't want them doing movements.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  But that was written by a couple of schoolteachers.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Really?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  In the, I think it was in like the thirties or forties. So in theory, it would have been in copyright when he, when this guy who was called, what was he called?

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Merv Griffin.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Merv Griffin. When Merv Griffin wrote his, in theory, they could have sued him. But I think because they were just schoolteachers, they weren't like, you know.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Was it Merv Griffin? He not only created Jeopardy, he created Wheel of Fortune. He was also the host of a lot of TV shows. He was in movies. He was a sort of business empire onto himself. And.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  He was like the Richard Osman of America.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was. But I do have a bone to pick with old Merv.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Which is, yeah, he says creator of Jeopardy. He absolutely was not. It was his wife. His wife, Jewel Anne Wright, she was sitting on an airplane, and this is in interviews with Merv Griffin, where he says, and this will explain the format of Jeopardy, in case anyone's not really seen it. His wife was mulling over game show ideas and said, there's not enough successful question and answer shows. Those used to be big, they weren't really on TV. And then she said, what happens if you swap the answer and question in the format? So what if you were given the answer and you had to come up with the question?

• 6:57Speaker 04

  So the question is, how does it work, Ray? You're a fan, right?

• 7:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, so, and what you get given is, I think it's called sometimes the clue, but it's meant to be in the phrase of an answer. So it'll be, um, this city is, um, the biggest in the UK and home to nine million people, or something like that. And then you'd say,

• 7:16Speaker 04

  what is Western Superman?

• 7:20Speaker 06

  I do not know enough about British geography to understand that joke.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  What is London?

• 7:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, what is London? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  The examples she gave on the plane was she said, 5,280. The question was, how many feet are in a mile? She also said, 79 Wistful Vista. The answer was, is that where Fibber and Molly McGee live? And that was just friends of theirs.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  That's a tricky one.

• 7:42Speaker 06

  That is a tough one.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  I think the thing is, though, with Jeopardy is, like, those kind of things wouldn't quite work. Because if you say the number of feet in a mile, there's a number of different questions that could result in that answer. Whereas if it's a clue rather than a answer.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  So it has to, it has to be, you can't say, these are weird sea things. And I say, what are oysters? Because there are loads of weird little sea things.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  It could be a cohog.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. Okay, okay. Because I've always found it incredibly confusing. I've never seen an episode. I've always found the idea quite baffling.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  And also, if you don't say what is or who is or whatever, you don't get the point.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Give me a break. Give me a break.

• 8:18Speaker 06

  There's got to be rules.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  What is, what is the slogan for Kit Kat?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Break.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Close enough.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, I say, okay, yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Do they have this show in New Zealand?

• 8:31Speaker 06

  No, I illegally watch it on YouTube every day. Don't tell anyone. But yeah, I find it fascinating. And also, you're right about what Moe Griffin said about how he came up with the show. Well, I was just sitting there and my wife had an idea. The shame of being single, I'm half as efficient, you know?

• 8:49Speaker 04

  But he was like a big deal and he, um, he was an actor. And I think he was friends with Doris Day, who might have discovered him. I think he was working in a nightclub and Doris Day walked past and said, well, you should do a screen test for Warner Brothers for whom I'm working. And he did that and he got, um, put in a couple of movies. And I think he probably thought he was going to be Doris Day's leading man. Cause they were such good friends, but he was very short. He could have been like her love interest who eventually loses the girl. But he was never going to be a leading man, really.

• 9:24Speaker 06

  So he, like, he thought he was going in to be the hot man, but he was assigned what? Like hunchback number two. Doris Day signed him.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  He was a pallbearer at Ronald Reagan's funeral. Maybe through acting connections, I don't know. Or maybe after he became a very big deal.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  He can't have been that short then.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  No, you're right. Unless they, unless they all were, yeah, I don't know.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And he's the man behind the song, I've got a lovely bunch of coconut.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  No.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  He was, he was the original singer of, well, the one who made it the big song that it became.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Isn't that good?

• 9:56Speaker 06

  That's crazy.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So not behind it, sorry. The, one of the, the singers who made it big. And the other thing about him, just last thing on him personally, that I found fascinating was he also created, as you said, I think, James, Wheel of Fortune. Which is another incredibly big game show. And of course we know that the theme tune for that show was written by Alan Thicke, father of Robin Thicke.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  A friend of the podcast.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  A friend of the podcast.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  Forgot that, yes.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Do you know Robin Thicke?

• 10:23Speaker 06

  I, um, I know Robin Thicke.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  No, common misconception.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  On this podcast, he will always be Robin Thicky.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  He gets furious, people mispronouncing his name.

• 10:34Speaker 06

  Robin Thicke.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  Because it makes him sound thick if you call him Robin Thicke. That's not how it's said. He's a very clever man.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  He also had a chat show, very famously, Merv. He interviewed an estimated 25,000 people. And he said that his best interview was with Orson Welles. Because Orson Welles was a very guarded individual. He didn't really say anything about his personal life. But just before the show, Orson Welles said, you know, these wonderful gossipy things that you've always wanted to ask about my past? And Merv says, yeah, yeah, but I'm not allowed to ask those, am I? And Orson Welles says, well, tonight you are. I'm feeling very expansive. And he did the interview and he asked him all these questions that he wouldn't answer in the past. And Orson Welles went home and died two hours later.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  So he was like, this is my last chance to get it out.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  Holy moly.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  Well, but he did, yeah, he died of natural causes, as it says.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, as in you.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  Merv Griffin murdered her for it.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  We mentioned Wheel of Fortune earlier.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  There is a person on that show called Vanna White, who has a Guinness World Record.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Can you guess what it is?

• 11:43Speaker 05

  Vanna White.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Vanna White.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  Vanna White was a, she was quite a glamorous.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  Lady.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Glamorous assistant.

• 11:52Speaker 06

  I was gonna guess, is it something like most hours on TV?

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Okay, so she is the person who turns the answers around. Because Wheel of Fortune is like Hangman, right? So you've got a word there and you say, can I have an X? Yes, you can. And they'll turn the X around.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  Oh, but there might not be that letter there. If it's not in the phrase, I understand, I can.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  So it's this person's job, but she now has a world record. And she's done something 3,721,446 times as of the 9th of February, 2015.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  Is it touching letters?

• 12:25Speaker 04

  A world record, touching letters.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Because, hey, Santa's got that record. Absolutely down pat.

• 12:34Speaker 05

  Has she clapped?

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 12:37Speaker 05

  No.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, so whenever they get one of the letters right, she turns it around and she claps. Someone's counted the class.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Wow, which poor Guinness worker had to sit watching every episode.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  And she appeared in all but 10 of the 6,151 episodes up until Guinness made this record. And she clapped in all of them and she had a world record. And the reason that they had a hostess on there at all is because they did, they were going to motorise the board, which is what you would do. It's like, can I have an L? And the L just turns round. But they couldn't finish making the motor and so they had to hire someone to actually turn the pictures.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Just on computers doing this kind of stuff. So Jeopardy famously faced Watson in 2011, Supercomputer.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Watson won, beat two humans who were playing alongside it. It's a three player game, isn't it?

• 13:31Speaker 04

  And one of them was like the best.

• 13:33Speaker 06

  They were both, they were top champions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, who I think both hold records in the Jeopardy universe.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Really? I didn't know there was a Jeopardy universe.

• 13:45Speaker 06

  The JCU.

• 13:48Speaker 06

  You haven't checked it out? There's a website called J Archive and it's a fan made website and it's a record of every question ever asked, how much dollar values were wagered and whatnot, who won, pictures of the people who played, every like word that was said on an episode, all categorised there. And Alex Trebek, one of the long time hosts of the show, found out about it and he said, come on people, get a life.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  What is biting the hand that feeds you?

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Hi everybody, we are sponsored this week by Progressive.

• 14:27Speaker 01

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

• 14:37Speaker 00

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

• 14:44Speaker 01

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

• 14:49Speaker 00

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

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Don't wait, get your quote today at progressive.com.

• 14:57Speaker 00

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

• 15:03Speaker 07

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• 15:33Speaker 05

  Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that every year in Japan, thousands of receptionists apply to compete against each other in the All Japan Phone Answering Championship.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  This is amazing. This is a competition exclusively for office workers, mostly receptionists, and every year, literally thousands and thousands apply so that they could go to a competition where they sit on stage and they are judged on how well they receive a phone call and deal with questions, and it lasts three minutes long for each of them, and then they hang up, and then a decision is made on how great they performed. And they're given things like a problem, it's called, each year. A new problem is created, and

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Is it the same problem for all competitors?

• 16:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  But you would not be able to, you must be kept away from, otherwise you see what the problem is.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  I think they tell you before you go on, because there's like, so the 2025 one was for a theoretical beef tongue restaurant in Sendai City, which has the slogan, "Bringing smiles to customers' faces through beef tongue."

• 16:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  And basically, there's, you get all the menus and all the different places it could deliver beef tongues to, and then someone will ring up going, "Excuse me, do you have any pork tongue?" And you have to like answer there.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  I'm a vegetarian. What do you have for me? And you're told what's going to be asked as well. You're told the problem. So there's no, there's no plot twists or anything like that. You're even given a role in that 2025 one. You are Yun Katakura. You are an employee responsible for operating the online shop and handling inquiries about beef tongue. And

• 17:20Speaker 04

  But you have to do it with a straight face.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  But I think it's like, a lot of it's like how polite you are, it's how clear you are. It's.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  It sounds like there's a lot of quite formal etiquette as well. And in terms of how you answer the phone, you're meant to answer on the first or the second ring. If you only get to it on the third ring, that's an apology straight away.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  And if you pick it up straight away and you're too keen on the beef tongue.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  I think it's very precise.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  If you're in a phone answering competition and you're waiting for the third ring, I mean, that's crazy.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  That's the bad boy.

• 17:54Speaker 06

  I think you're talking general Japanese etiquette.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, um, apparently it's judged out of a hundred points. I got this from a translation of a site that talks about the, um, the 2025 competition. So yeah, it's judged on six different criteria. First impression, um, so your first line that you say, hello, did you deal with that? Criteria number two, basic call handling skills, which is 20 points. Voice volume, speaking speed, natural intonation, clear voice production and pronunciation. That's what that one is.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Oh, well, it's important.

• 18:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, then there's communication skills. There's, um, provision of information and service. Final impression.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  All right, Andy, let's just, let's just try, let's just try with you, okay?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Sorry, that was a bit quick. And also in Japan, they don't say hello.

• 18:46Speaker 06

  We need you to do the full voice.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  In Japan, you answer the phone, moshi moshi.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Uh, and do you know why that is?

• 18:57Speaker 06

  It's because they speak Japanese.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Well, that is undoubtedly true, but it doesn't mean hello. It means, uh, it's short for a maoshi agemasu, which means I am going to talk. Uh, and it's because in polite Japanese society, especially if you're speaking to someone who is more important than you, you wouldn't say hello, you had to announce the fact that you want to talk before you do.

• 19:22Speaker 06

  Which is tough because then you are talking. So you surely need to say moshi moshi before you say moshi moshi.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Can I ask a question? Is the can I ask a question in Japanese?

• 19:33Speaker 04

  You are asking a question.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Nightmare.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  But there's another theory, according to a folklorist called Yu A Kasal. Apparently moshi moshi is impossible to say if you are a magic fox.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  So.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  The life of the magic fox just gets harder and harder.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Apparently, there was, there's a thing called the bakemono fox. And this fox is like a trickster in folklore. And one thing that it does is it can learn to speak like an imitator human. Um, but it can say lots of the words, but it can't say mushy mushy. And so according to this folklorist, one of the reasons people say mushy mushy is because then if they say that, they know that you're not a magic fox.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Shibboleth, right?

• 20:18Speaker 04

  A shibboleth, yeah, exactly.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And as a result, magic fox crime stats are down, way down.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Especially when it comes to like phishing, um, like trying to get your bank details off the phone. They just don't do it.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  A lot of, uh, younger Japanese people, and I think this is a global thing as well, are becoming more nervous about answering the phone. This is a thing. Um, there's a study in the UK that found that a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone. If it's an unknown number.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  I would never answer to an unknown number.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Really? I don't either. I do, I like it. I spin the wheel. You know, who's this?

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's always some spam, isn't it?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  It's often someone with a really good offer for me, actually.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  And that's why Andy's living in the basement of this building.

• 21:08Speaker 06

  Another magic fox got me again.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  But there's this other thing that, that is happening now, especially with younger people answering the phone is they answer the phone, they'll answer it, but they won't say anything. Because they're waiting for if it's a scam call.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Do you? Cause you can kind of hear the click. And also what happens often is they won't say anything. And then as soon as you talk, then the automatic voice comes in.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And it says, hello, I've got a great deal for you.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  50,000 kilos of beef tongue.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 21:42Speaker 06

  You had me at hello.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  But have you guys experienced this other thing? And this has only been recently launched. Yelp, the sort of phone people, the company.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Launched this thing recently. You can have a proper conversation with an AI voice that answers your phone. So I'm in the process of I'm getting my hob removed and.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Excuse me. I'm, I'm trying to have my hob ripped out at the moment.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  Filth.

• 22:11Speaker 06

  I can't believe you showed up to work today. I was wondering why you're limping up the stairs.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  And I phoned up this company trying to get a quote. And I had a whole conversation with a robot that was doing a quote for me.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Like saying, what's the size of it and what shape is it? But as in, I had a proper.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Chat. I found it very upsetting and horrible.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  Sometimes that's how I feel when we're doing this podcast.

• 22:38Speaker 06

  You know that you're not talking to a proper intelligence.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 06

  Could you tell it was an AI or was it?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  No, I could.

• 22:45Speaker 06

  Did it have good intonations, good production of speech, good, whatever the?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Well, it did, but weirdly I could tell.

• 22:50Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  As in, it sounded like a person, but there was just a slight sort of filter over the whole call that made me realise it was a, it was a machine talking.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  It's really weird because the, the final criteria, the sixth criteria of this whole thing is actually sort of an overall evaluation. So it's sort of almost doesn't matter what happened between one and five. They could have given you high marks, but then they're like, now that I think about it, I wasn't so much impressed with these certain moments. And you can get points for, even if you didn't get anything resolved in the call, but it sounded like a nice chat. You get points for that. You can also get points for excellent silence. Just for like, wow.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  No way.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  You was, you were brilliant with the silence there. Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  Points for everyone.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  I was wondering who would be the first to crack that.

• 23:36Speaker 06

  I looked it up and I think it was the 2015 winner was a was a she practiced to win this competition. She practiced for three minute conversations for two hours a day over a period of four months.

• 23:50Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  That's a very patient partner. Crazy.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  That's amazing. Well, it's it is thousands who apply, but it's only about 60 to 80 that make it to the actual stage.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I guess, is there an audience? Is there a big audience apart from the judges?

• 24:05Speaker 05

  I've seen a video, but I've only seen it of the stage. I couldn't quite tell.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Because if the show is 60 to 80 people doing the same three minute conversation, I can imagine that wouldn't be very varied, basically.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I did read that one of the recent winners answered the phone and conducted the conversation in a very traditional and formal style, which is what got to the points with the judges, although you wouldn't maybe naturally have a conversation like that if you were answering the phone and in a normal Japanese business, basically. There are all sorts of, apparently there are at least 60 books in Japan available exclusively on phone etiquette.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  It's a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's a country with a huge amount of etiquette in all sorts of areas. But yeah, it's fascinating. General reception? I was trying to find out some more things about general receptionists and receptionism.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  Okay, go on.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Most successful receptionist of all time?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Okay, good question. Is it the receptionist from the Apprentice TV show in the UK? Who literally, well, they they have this whole pretense of them being in the boardroom and you're fired and stuff. And then they go out and then supposedly Alan Sugar decides what's going to happen. And then they cut to someone who doesn't even seem to be in the same building, picking up a phone and going, yes, Lord Sugar, I'll send them in now.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  And then put it and then they cut to the boardroom and they're all in. So that just feels like quite a good job.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, great gig. Yeah, that's really good. No, the Queen.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  She was a receptionist.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, the current Queen consort, Camilla.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Camilla.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Camilla started out as a receptionist.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  It's a natural career progression, isn't it?

• 25:42Speaker 06

  He'll be promoted.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  You're made queen.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Did she?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, she works at a, obviously a very posh company in their reception. And I think she was sacked for turning up late. But I found out, interesting fact, Charles and Camilla.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Had the same gynecologist when they were born.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  What? Excuse me, Charles had a gynecologist?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I suppose Charles and Camilla's mothers were both assisted by the same. Yeah. Charles has no gynecologist. He had his hob removed.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Oh my gosh. Um, here is an accidental receptionist. Uh, in Reykjavik in 2015, there was a security guard in the prime minister's office who went away from the office for the day. But normally what you do is you put your mobile phone number into the system. And then if anyone phones the prime minister, uh, then it would come through to you and you can sort of take messages and whatever. Uh, anyway, someone put the wrong number in and a woman who lived in Reykjavik just started getting phone calls that were meant for the prime minister of Iceland.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  That's such a good prank. If you can arrange that for someone, that is amazing. What happened? What, what did you do?

• 27:01Speaker 04

  Nothing, it was just for like one day or so until they all came back in the office. And she said, it's been no bother. This is, uh, Ingibjorg Sigurvins dot here. Said, it's been no bother. I am a citizen of this country and I'm ready to help.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  We'll just imagine if it had been evasion that day.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Patching through calls like from like world leaders and things.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. I really like this, which is, uh, ELO, Electric Light Orchestra. It's one of my favorite bands. Um, so their debut album came out in 1971. It's called Electric Light Orchestra out here in the UK, released in America in March of 1972 with the title, No Answer. And that's because the record exec in America said to someone in the office, can you call England and find out what the debut album is called? They called, no one picked up. They wrote in the notes, no answer. The exec saw that and thought, oh, great title. And that became the title of the album.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  What was the title in the UK?

• 27:53Speaker 05

  It was just self titled.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  ELO. Is that because someone rang up the office and they went, hello?

• 28:06Speaker 05

  Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  Okay, my fact this week is that philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment, father of European political thought, and one of the inspirations behind the French Revolution, would run around Paris with his bum out, hoping someone would spank him.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Did that start the French Revolution? We have to stop this guy.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Off with his bum.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  So yeah, Jean Jacques Rousseau, unbelievably famous in his time, one of the most important thinkers of the age. And it turned out that he had a pretty difficult childhood, and it stuck him with some fetishes. And one of them was that he loved being spanked. And just before he died, he had a book called Confessions, which was very autobiographical, but it was like, it was warts and all. And he said that he would go around Paris, Winnie the Pooh style, hoping that someone would spank him. And then what happened was, sometimes he got the shit beat out of him.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a group of people who didn't think much of that kind of thing would grab hold of him and start kicking him, and he'd have to escape.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  I think that's fair.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  To the French. Yeah, I agree.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  He was hanging around in alleys, hoping for, I presume, what would be quite a rare result, was someone to administer a spanking. I mean, it's sort of- I'd be in a punishment right here and now.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  It feels like a behaviour that would be looked down upon these days.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you probably couldn't even do that anymore. Yeah, yeah, because of woke.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  It does feel like famous philosopher pervert, which is a smaller headline, you know? And then it's like- Yeah, but it is, it's striking that he confessed it.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, his confessions were really sort of like, I'm going to admit everything now.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  But this, yeah, so his confessions, he wrote what is largely seen as the first autobiography. It's often, it's often said to be the first autobiography. And he would go around to parties and he would read extracts of his confessions. So he titled it Confessions, I believe.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Confessions of a smack addict. I think that was the-

• 30:18Speaker 06

  It's so funny that he was mooning people in alleyway. Do you think, like, do you think they looked down an alleyway and goes, inside that alleyway, is there a smaller, narrower alleyway?

• 30:31Speaker 06

  Oh, damn.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 30:34Speaker 06

  But yes, the, um, he did publish the first, what is considered the first autobiography, The Confessions, and, um, he discussed some of his least glamorous moments, uh, which included that he abandoned, uh, five of his children, uh, and that he once stole a ribbon. So those two were sort of unequal to, to him. Yeah, yeah. But the ribbon thing, he did, I think, accuse, uh, uh, he said that a maiden, another servant, had stolen it and given it to him, and that's how he came across, and they...

• 31:01Speaker 04

  He was, he's an interesting cookie, isn't he? He kind of, because a lot of...

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Right, just for context, this is what Dan says about some of the worst people you've ever heard of.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  He was a character. He was a character. Cause he...

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Jack the Ripper, real, real strong cookie.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  He's Marmite. He's Marmite.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  So, um, he, he was from Geneva, uh, and his father was also from Geneva, um, but he had this sort of idea that he was from some incredible patrician family, very important, he felt he was. He was a watchmaker, um, but he married above his station, and he thought he was so upper class that he always brandished a sword wherever he went. Uh, that was not allowed in Geneva at the time.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  So he got kicked out of Geneva, and the whole family got kicked out.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Uh, and eventually, uh, Rousseau was sent to live with a Calvinist minister and his daughter, and it was the daughter, Mademoiselle Lambertier, who used to treat him like he was her child, and she would spank him when he'd done something naughty. And then in the end, he would just do things naughty deliberately so that he got spanked.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Uh, and that's how he ended up with this.

• 32:16Speaker 06

  It's, it's so, because his most famous quote is, um, "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." And I assumed the chains were meant to be bad, but now I'm now thinking, like, maybe he was quite a good, like, man, but everywhere he's in chains and, you know, hopefully a whip or maybe a...

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Man has been a very, very naughty boy. But he also believed that there was this idea of the natural man and that civilization was actually a complete con job that made everyone miserable.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  I mean, it was a very.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  And we would all be really happy if we were just left to live our own lives and we didn't have to go to work every day and get on the tube and.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. But basically, he just thought anything that was an invention of modern society was bad. And that's why he thought, and so it's, it's really weird that he was a great writer about childhood, considering that he abandoned all of his children to an orphanage. But he kind of overturned a previous very prevailing view that children are naturally evil and naturally fallen, you know, born with original sin. He was saying, no, children are naturally wonderful and should just be left alone, which is not a recipe for good adults. So you, right, you read a lot, you read a lot, you know a lot about philosophers. Was he a particular interest of yours?

• 33:24Speaker 06

  Yes, a little bit, a little bit. We didn't get him as much. And so this was interesting, reading up on him.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  Did you, do you rate him as a philosopher?

• 33:31Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, no, yes, definitely. He's, the influence he's had is, is crazy and like his development on the social contract theory and his, um, his ideas about democracy. I mean, it's almost seems quaint now, looking back at a guy who's writing, um, oh, I think democracy would be a good idea. But, you know, at the time, you know, it was like Divine Rider Kings, you know, this idea that, you know, the government didn't have to be responsible to its people. So it is, yeah, he was groundbreaking, I think, for the time.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 06

  For sure. But yeah, but I didn't realize just how crazy his life was. Like I, I learned that his, um, mother Suzanne, she had to go to a church hearing. I think they had sort of like a religious, I don't know, um, police or system in Geneva at the time. And she had to go to a church hearing for going to the street theatre, um, disguised as a peasant woman so she could gaze upon M Vincent Saracen, whom she fancied despite him being married.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  What?

• 34:25Speaker 06

  And apparently theatre was illegal at the time. So, um, so the Geneva Calvinists, she had to account for herself.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Gosh, I didn't know that.

• 34:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  He didn't like theatre either, Jean Jacques. So Voltaire introduced a theatre to Geneva, at which point Rousseau wrote to him, you have ruined Geneva. I hate you.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  He once pissed in his neighbour's kettle.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Did he?

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's in his confessions. I don't know if he read that out at the party.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Imagine his neighbour picks up the bug, goes to the next in the back, looks, oh, I've been mentioned, that's nice. Drinking his cup of tea, spits it out.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  He didn't like the, he didn't like gender equality. He was very much of the idea that men are in charge and women are not. And there was another philosopher called Olympe de Gouges, who was a French activist and playwright, and she really liked Rousseau's philosophy in general, but she really critiqued his idea that women shouldn't have as much role in society. And she said, if a woman has a right to mount the scaffold, she must equally have the right to mount the speaker's platform. And then two years later, she was executed.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  No, French Revolution.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  In the Reign of Terror.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  For, just for political writings, which was a little bit frowned upon at the time.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Mary Wollstonecraft as well, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She and Rousseau, Mary Shelley's mum, she and he had big beef. Because again, all part of his, I think his theory that the natural is perfect. He then wrote, oh, well, actually, you know, it's women's nature to give care. And that's therefore all they should be taught to do. It was a very regressive theory, even at the time, and Wollstonecraft argued back pretty stiffly. But Rousseau inspired the journey that produced Frankenstein. Really? Yeah. So you know, Mary Shelley and Byron and Percy Shelley went to Lake Geneva.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  They went to Lake Geneva in 1816. They were following in the footsteps of one of his novels, which was called Julie. And it's set at the eastern end of Lake Geneva and they were going on a bit of a, I don't know what the term is, where you sort of recreate. Yeah, kind of. They were, they were following that. And so that's, that's why they ended up there.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Amazing. I didn't know that.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 36:42Speaker 06

  Rousseau's dad, back to being a watchmaker, he said, just a random burn from his father. Mr. Rousseau said, a Genevaan watchmaker is a man who can be introduced anywhere. A Parisian watchmaker is only fit to talk about watches. So there's a, there's a slayer, a hardcore burn amongst the watchmaking community. 1700s Geneva.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  I've never, I wouldn't associate France with watchmaking, probably for that reason, right?

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Swiss watchmaking, of course.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yes. A French cuckoo clockmaker is only fit to talk about cuckoo clocks. A Swiss cuckoo clockmaker.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  A French Toblerone maker.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 37:32Speaker 00

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• 38:40Speaker 01

  Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is, rays flirt by belly flopping. I told you that in confidence.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Like a manta ray?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Like a manta ray.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Or stingray or?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  There are all sorts of ray. I think there are 11 different species of mobula ray, which are the great big diamond-shaped rays that you get with a mouth at one end and a tail at the other and two enormous lovely wings in between. And some of the species, specifically monk's devil ray, but I think a few of them do it, they do these incredible ballet displays out of the water. They gather in big groups and then they just launch themselves out and they go about two metres into the air. And these are huge animals as well, like they're big. And they land with this great big splash and they do it for hours at a time. And when I say flirt, scientists are reasonably confident it's communication.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And it might be a way of luring more rays to your ray mating event.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Sorry, Ray.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Is that what you call it, Ray?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  It's often quite a solo with you. I don't know how these guys are. What do they have that I don't?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  There are hundreds of them, sorry.

• 39:56Speaker 06

  All belly flopping around without me.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  So it might be flirting, basically. It might be hunting, but it seems to be communicating something.

• 40:03Speaker 06

  They're not sure.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  The mating habits of rays.

• 40:07Speaker 06

  Come on.

• 40:09Speaker 05

  Have you heard of the manta train?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  This is, uh, this is manta rays.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  There's a rail replacement manta bus, I'm afraid, today.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  Um, this is a, this is a way of courting that happens amongst manta rays where a female will swim up front and she'll be followed by a train of male mantas swimming behind her.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Like a conga.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly like a conga and.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  They should have called it the conga reel. That would have been a clever.

• 40:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  It would have been confusing.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  It would have been very confusing, yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Um, and the idea is, is that they just follow and it can, it can last a very long time, sometimes several weeks, where they're just following and then they'll sleep and then follow and so on.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  You know what? This weekend I saw a conga of caterpillars.

• 40:52Speaker 05

  Did you?

• 40:53Speaker 04

  There must have been 30, if there was two, and there was two.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Uh, it was in a car park in Spain and they were just walking like ass to nose, ass to nose, ass to nose. And they were all just wandering along and I Googled it and apparently they're looking for mating grounds or food or something, but they always go in this sort of conga line.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Were they heading, were they near the edge of the car park?

• 41:17Speaker 04

  No, they were.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  Oh no.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 06

  I just love the thought of, you're on holiday in Spain and everyone's going, oh, where's James? Oh, he's in the car park watching some caterpillars.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Just behind all the caterpillars going.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  But it was cool though.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  That is cool.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  You just see this line on the road.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  You know what it is and the closer you get, the more you realise that it's these caterpillars.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 05

  Well, this, I mean, this sounds like a pretty amazing thing to witness and scientists do watch it. Um, the story I read, yeah, the manta rays where, um, 20 rays were following the, the main lady who's called Big Bertha. Um, they named, I think they name all the rays. Cause there's Miles Ray. Um, they said she was being closely followed by Miles Ray. We thought that he was the one for her. Later on, when we checked out the footage, we found out Lightning Ray had pursued her on his own. Um.

• 42:08Speaker 06

  I'm thinking of a few new nicknames for myself. If you guys could start calling me Lightning Ray.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, so yeah, that's what they do and they just they battle it out or whoever lasts till the end.

• 42:20Speaker 06

  I'd also recommend to anyone listening to this, it is not a smart flirting strategy to follow a woman for weeks at a time. The group of your friends.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  There was, in 2024, there was a ray who managed to successfully mate on their own. And there was a female stingray living with a load of male sharks. And she became pregnant. And what a lot of people thought is maybe she'd been impregnated by the sharks.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  What?

• 42:49Speaker 04

  Because she had like bite marks on the side of her and that's quite often sharks will bite when they're mating to kind of get a grip. But I think generally speaking, what we think has happened now is that she got pregnant through parthenogenesis.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  So females have, they have their egg cells, but they also have another thing in their body called polar bodies. And these contain genes as well. And if there are no males around, then the polar bodies can get into the eggs and they can then turn into.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  With virgin birth.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  It's virgin.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  And it's even crazier in a way.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  There are some rays, but it sounds like it's not this one because otherwise it might have been mentioned that can sort of hold and incubate the sperm that they collect and that can be held for quite some time.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Cryptic female choice.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I would have thought it was, but clearly.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I don't know, like the scientists are still not certain, but they think it's this kind of polar body thing.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Rays in general, I said there are, what did I say? I said 11 species of mobula ray. And they're known as the mobulids, which is a great name. So three of those species are manta rays and the other eight are devil rays, right? Sorry, Ray.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  But they've been re-categorized a lot lately and I think the last time we talked about them was about eight years ago. They had just been all shaken up and redistributed and rearranged scientifically into new.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Because was it your fact there's no such thing as a ray or something?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the newest manta ray was discovered in 2025, last year.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  We're still discovering, these things are massive as well.

• 44:25Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  And it was by a scientist called Andrea Marshall. The Atlantic manta ray is the third species of manta ray that we now know about. And back in 2009, she had observed it and thought it was a bit fishy.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Anyway, and it's taken until now to prove it, right? And to sort of demonstrate it and sort of do the analysis to show that it's a separate species. The amazing thing was in 2009, she and her colleagues had also first described the second species of manta ray.

• 44:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  I just think it's amazing. And the reason it's so hard to scientifically describe them is that what do you need to describe a new species?

• 45:04Speaker 04

  You need to know that it's not the same as an old species.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yep, but what's the way of proving it is what I mean.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Oh, genetic testing?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yes, but what do you need to do genetic testing?

• 45:14Speaker 04

  Some genetic material.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  You need a body.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Right, and these things, they're really hard to study. A, because when they die, they sink. Nightmare. And secondly, they're made of cartilage, not bone, which decomposes faster. So it's bloody hard to get hold of a sample. And they're still quite mysterious. They're still quite strange, alien things. And it just takes a very long time to find one that's washed up and get it to a scientist in time, that kind of thing. So, yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Can I quickly point out, you did do a fact, no such thing as a ray on the show ages ago. And I think that applies right here, right now.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  What?

• 45:53Speaker 05

  Aren't I right? Matthew. Uh-oh.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  I'll be called out. Oh, no.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  You're not a real ray.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  No, that is true.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  You're a fake ray. Ray Charlton.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  It's true, it's a nickname.

• 46:08Speaker 05

  Do you know why he's called Ray? His real name's Matthew, he's called Ray because he sounds like Ray Romano. That's what one of his friends thought at school.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  From Everybody Loves Raymond, and they all just started calling me Ray, and that's how it's caught on. And no one's genetically tested me yet. No one's noticed that I'm not a genetically different species to Ray Romano.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  You know that Ray Romano really hated the name of that show?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  Everybody Loves Raymond. And he hated it so much that he kept saying to the producers, "We need to change this title." And they made a deal with him, apparently, that if they made it into a top 10 show, they will change the name. And then they did it for a few years, became more and more successful. Eventually, they cracked the top 10. He went into the producers and said, "Right, we've got a deal. It's time to change the name." And they said, "Well, we can't change it now. It's a top 10 show."

• 46:57Speaker 05

  Oh, man. That's so funny. That's great. Everyone Loves Raymond. Ray hated that name. Here's another one. Ray Parker Jr. You heard of him?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Ghostbusters.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Wrote the song Ghostbusters?

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 47:09Speaker 05

  Turns out, revealed in an interview recently, he is afraid of ghosts.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  You're busting myth after myth.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  I trusted him.

• 47:21Speaker 05

  And he used to be a solo artist called Radio. That's a cool nickname.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  That is a cool name.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  They can be huge rays. They can be 17 feet long. A giant devil ray. I mean, that's really, really big.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  Is that, because is their wingspan bigger than their length?

• 47:40Speaker 04

  They're usually about the same, aren't they? They're like squares.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Pretty, yeah, they're diamonds.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  But a manta ray 10 feet long needs to eat about, well, I suppose any manta ray, needs to eat about 12% of its body weight every week, right?

• 47:55Speaker 05

  Every week.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  That's not much.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  I don't fully know. Like, what do we have to eat?

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Well, let's say you weigh 100 kilos. It'll be less than that. But so that'd be 12 kilos worth of food a week.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  Which is less than two kilos per day.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Two kilos feels like a lot. I'm thinking of my chocolate cereal in the morning. I'm thinking of my muffins.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  If you buy a steak, it would be like 250 grams, right?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. So that is a fair bit.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  You would have to eat like eight, eight and a bit of steaks every day.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so that is a fair bit. I'm thinking of 10 kg of potatoes plus a little bit more. Right.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  We all have our ways of visualising.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Well, I was on mantarayadvocates.com.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Which is a cracking website. You may have found it in the course of your research.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  I'm on the devil rays advocate.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  The devil's advocate, right?

• 48:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  But they can only eat plankton. They can't eat a 250 gram steak. They zoo plankton, you know, tiny, tiny things in the water. And mantarayadvocates.com calculated that a 10 foot ray would need to eat how many pieces of plankton a week?

• 49:00Speaker 04

  Is this a gassy game?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  10 million.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Tea pot, short. Oh, great. Okay. 10 million.

• 49:06Speaker 06

  1.2 feet of plankton?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Uh, okay. You've done it in a different unit and that's fine. Oh, I see. Yeah. No, very clever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  So you can just explain that for the rest of the sending?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Dan?

• 49:24Speaker 05

  Uh, pass.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, James is closest because he answered in the unit that I was expecting people to answer in. You say 10 million?

• 49:33Speaker 04

  10 million.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  19.2 million. 19 million 20,000.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  It's in an order of magnitude.

• 49:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I could be right, depending on how, anyway.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  We do need to check the math on rays first before we award that to James.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  But they have to keep swimming forward as they eat because they're a thing called obligate ram ventilators.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  The water goes through them and they take the air out of it. Is that right?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 05

  They're like dolphins?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Uh, some ancient sharks will do this. Like you just have to keep moving forwards, otherwise you die.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Which is quite cool. I think that's quite a good, like, it's quite a...

• 50:05Speaker 04

  It's a good metaphor for life, isn't it?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  If you stand still.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  The reason I thought dolphins is they sleep half brain at a time so that they can still swim.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  I don't think that's to do with the breathing, though.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  I think that might be more to hide from predators and stuff.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Because dolphins have to surface, obviously.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  But so how do rays sleep?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Don't know.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  Comfortably, but after going through every social faux pas I made.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  One quick thing on belly flopping.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Have you ever heard the idea that if you belly flop from a very high position and then land on water, it's just as bad as landing on concrete?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Do you think it's true?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  I, yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  I keep seeing videos now of people diving from very high heights in a belly flop position and landing in the kind of in that.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  So. So you think no?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  I think no.

• 51:02Speaker 06

  And there's that, I know there's that, I guess, rumor, I suppose I should say that if you throw something before you land, it breaks the tension of the water and then you can hit it.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 51:11Speaker 06

  But my feeling is the answer is no, but it still hurts a lot.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  I think that's fair. I think that's probably right. Mythbusters, our friends at Mythbusters, they did some tests and threw two big pig carcasses out of a helicopter. And they x-rayed it and they found that the pavement drop resulted in 17 fractures, a shattered pelvis and a decapitation. While the water drop yielded seven fractures and a broken neck.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yikes.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  So neither of them is good for you, but definitely hitting the pavement is more of an impact.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And that's, I suppose, I suppose that's why Olympic swimming is the way it is with water at the bottom instead of.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  As opposed to.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Concrete, yeah. You very rarely see an Olympic diver just smash on the water, do you?

• 51:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, so that's why they fill the pool with water.

• 51:59Speaker 06

  The industry's solved.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  One last thing from me, January 15th, 1990, Lottie Stevens was out on a boat in New Caledonia when his boat capsized. And according to the story, as reported by Radio Vanuatu, he was drifting for four days before a giant stingray came and gave him a ride back to land.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, they.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Guys living some avatar shit right there.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Ray, you not the face of Vanuatu at the moment?

• 52:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm the face of Vanuatu.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 52:31Speaker 06

  Because I found this guy floating at sea.

• 52:39Speaker 05

  Are you really connected to Vanuatu?

• 52:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, I did a tourism campaign for Vanuatu last year.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  You could meet Lottie Stephens, because I'd love to know more. Um, the stingray, um, carried him for 450 miles back to shore. It took 13 days of being carried on the back of, uh, the stingray, um, before they got home. This is so wonderful.

• 53:01Speaker 06

  We didn't emphasize that part in the tourism campaign. You swim out as far as you like, don't you worry.

• 53:09Speaker 06

  There's stuff out there, it'll bring you back.

• 53:11Speaker 05

  He'll be back.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on Instagram on at Shreiberland. James? My Instagram is No Such Thing As James Harkin. Andy? Mine is at Andrew Hunter M. And Ray?

• 53:38Speaker 06

  At Ray O'Leary Comedy.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  Oh, nice. And Ray, so you're on tour in the UK right now?

• 53:43Speaker 06

  Yes, heading all over the beautiful British Isles and Ireland and even maybe Barcelona. But yes, we're gonna, if there's a city nearby, I'll probably be there.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  And that's, that's in February of this year?

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, February, March this year, yes.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  In the UK?

• 53:55Speaker 06

  Yes, and then Australia the rest of the year.

• 53:56Speaker 05

  Okay, cool. Check it out online, everyone. Go find the dates, see if Ray's coming to a town near you. Or should I say Matthew? And, uh,

• 54:06Speaker 05

  and, uh, definitely go see his show. Um, and, uh, yeah. And if you want to get in contact with us generally as a group, podcast at qi.com. Send us your emails there. We will be reading the best of those out on our special show. Drop us a line, uh, which is part of Club Fish. That's our secret members' club. It's a place where we do extra stuff. It's on Patreon. So if you want to check it out, patreon.com slash No Such Thing As A Fish. You can also send in your favorite facts because we have our Monday show, Little Fish, where we put down our facts and we read the best of your facts. So do send them there and, uh, otherwise just come back next week because we're going to be back here with another episode. And quickly, huge thanks once again to our team here, Liang Li and Ethan Ruparelia,

• 54:48Speaker 05

  as well as all the bigger Fishbuster gang, and we'll see you again next week. Goodbye.

• 55:03Speaker 08

  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.

• 55:16Speaker 09

  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,

• 56:01Speaker 09

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 56:03Speaker 07

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