Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish No Such Thing As Poddyversity Challenge About this episode Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss shamans, humans, theme parks and theme tunes.
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Edited by James Harkin
Produced by Leying Lee
Team includes Jack Chambers, Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia
Transcript 11,349 words · 5 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 This is Cheekies from Soul Searching with Cheekies. Have you ever ordered an ice cold Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and told yourself, "I'm just going to take one sip while I wait for my food", but somehow the first sip turns into a second? And then before you know it, your meal arrives and you're looking at an empty glass? Well, we've all been there. That's the thing about Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. It has a delicious Coca-Cola taste you love with zero sugar. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. Real Coke taste, zero sugar. It's too good to wait.
0:27 Speaker 01 Hi, everybody. Just before we start this week's show, we have a little announcement.
0:31 Speaker 02 Yes, we do. I'm announcing that Andy, you need to just close your ears for a quick moment. I just need to mention something privately to the listeners.
0:37 Speaker 01 Okay.
0:38 Speaker 02 Obviously, I don't want Andy to hear this, but I'm reading a new book at the moment called Bad Deeds by one Andrew Hunter Murray, and it is so annoying because it's kept me up extremely late every night for the last seven days. It's so gripping. It's his new novel. It's a sequel to the last one that many of you might have read, Breaking and Entering. Doesn't matter if you haven't read it, it is also a brilliant standalone book. And it's an absolute page turner. Thrilling stuff, obviously with a lot of the trademark Andrew Hunter Murray wit. I feel like I was watching an action film for parts of it. It's amazing. Get it now. And now, pretend I never said anything. Andy, you can open your ears again.
1:14 Speaker 01 Hello.
1:14 Speaker 02 Hi, I was just having a private chat, but you've got a book out.
1:17 Speaker 01 Yes, it's called Bad Deeds. It's out today. We're recording this on the day of publication. It's a thriller set between London's dodgy property market and the wilds of rural Scotland. There's all sorts of skullduggery and mayhem and bad deeds. And the only other thing I'll say is, if you're an audiobook sort of person, you might like to know that the person who reads the audiobook is friend of the parish and former guest on this show. It's Phil Dunster, and he does an absolutely terrific job. So if you like audiobooks, maybe give that a go.
1:42 Speaker 02 And where can people buy it? Grocery stores or?
1:45 Speaker 01 Well, I would say your local independent bookshop, but I will accept any sale is terrific. Thank you very much. So whether you're buying it offline or on, but no, do pop down to your local bookshop and ask them for 10 to 12 copies is a good start.
1:59 Speaker 02 There you go. 10 to 12 copies of Bad Deeds. Seriously, do it now. You will not regret it. Okay, on with the show.
2:05 Speaker 01 On with the podcast.
2:21 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to another 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'm sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is James.
2:44 Speaker 03 Okay, my fact this week is that in 17th century Sweden, Sammy shamans had to work in secret. Unfortunately, most of their work involved constant drumming.
2:55 Speaker 01 Sammy shamans sounds like an end of the peer kind of magician.
3:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:01 Speaker 01 Psychic.
3:01 Speaker 03 That's true. Hi, it's Sammy shamans. And here is my magical drum. Because they did have magical drums, the Sammy. They are a group of people who live in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and northern Russia. And they still live there today. But they started off as hunter gatherers, went into reindeer herding, and they move around with the reindeer. But one of the most important people in the community was the shaman, who is known as a noi di. And the noi di would communicate between the worlds by using this drum. And he would kind of bang, bang, bang, and get into such a rhythm that he would get into some kind of weird sort of trance. And I say he because it was always a he. And they felt like they could
3:43 Speaker 03 transform into other creatures, transform into the wind, all this kind of stuff. And they were persecuted by Christian missionaries. And the Christian missionaries just basically said, we're having that drum. And they took the drums off them.
3:56 Speaker 01 Confiscated them.
3:57 Speaker 03 Confiscated them, destroyed most of them. There's not many of them left. But there is one in the British Museum, which is where I read about this whole story.
4:03 Speaker 01 They are engraved or painted with pictures. And I think there's a way you can do divination, as in the Sammy shaman would strike the drum with a hammer that is made of an engraved reindeer antler. Because reindeer is a very big deal. And then that makes a little brass ring that you've got dance across the surface of the drum. And how far it goes, or what it lands on, tells you, or tells him, because it is always a him.
4:30 Speaker 01 Woke hasn't yet.
4:30 Speaker 02 I need to rub it in.
4:31 Speaker 01 Woke hasn't yet come for the Sammy Shamen world, basically. And that tells you the future, you know.
4:35 Speaker 02 Or I did read an account from 1674, which I think is the earliest account we have of more southern people, by a guy called John Schaeffer, who said they also sometimes use the drums to decide what animal to sacrifice to their gods. So he said each drum would be covered in lots of pictures of animals and birds and fish and stuff. And then there was a kind of a pole attached to the drums and at the top of it, a little brass frog. And you bang the drum. And when the brass frog fell off, whatever animal it landed on, whatever animal the frog chose was the one that you had to kill.
5:07 Speaker 03 It's like a Wheel of Fortune kind of thing, isn't it?
5:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:09 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:10 Speaker 01 You're not, you're not proposing taking this ancient sacred ritual and putting it on ITV at prime time.
5:15 Speaker 03 I'm afraid I am. Which of these celebrities will we sacrifice?
5:21 Speaker 03 These images that you said, and the Sammy sort of would, once they started getting persecuted by the missionaries, they would like say, oh, this isn't a reindeer, this is a cross. And they would slightly sort of change all the drawings to make them more Christian in the hope that they wouldn't get taken. But they did all, pretty much all get taken. There's not that many of them left.
5:41 Speaker 04 I mean, I heard much of the Sammy, but I realize a kind of classic fact is to do with the Sammy, which is the word poron kusema, which is the distance a reindeer can travel before it needs to stop and urinate. That's kind of a classic thing that you see online. Susie Dent tweets about that word quite often. It's a.
5:57 Speaker 01 But as a reindeer ages, that distance will shrink, you know?
6:00 Speaker 04 Yes.
6:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
6:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:01 Speaker 01 Many of your middle aged male reindeer will, will stop just in case. Just, it's nice to have stop when you can.
6:07 Speaker 03 Also, like, your reindeer will walk for a long time. And then once they break the seal, then that's going to be a munch. And when I say breaking the seal, I don't mean like with a club or anything.
6:18 Speaker 03 The missionaries really didn't like the way the Siberians used their own urine to guide the reindeer. Because what they would do is they would urinate into a seal's skin, carry it around with them. And then if the reindeer wandered off, you would pour a bit of your urine on the floor. And then the reindeer would come back because they like the salt and the minerals and stuff like that. And so, yeah, the fact that they were doing this urine-y stuff, the missionaries were like, yeah, that's not really in our book.
6:44 Speaker 02 What, I mean, where does the Bible say, don't piss into a bag and then spill it on the floor when your reindeer runs away? I don't think it says it anywhere.
6:52 Speaker 03 It's in Leviticus.
6:53 Speaker 02 The one I have red.
6:56 Speaker 01 So the reindeer do eat the yellows, no?
6:58 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, they do. They like to lick the... That's do a lot of animals.
7:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:03 Speaker 04 It'd be a good way to attract the old man in the coat. Have you heard of him?
7:07 Speaker 02 No. Is it you?
7:09 Speaker 04 It sounds like Dan with his creepy coat, pushing my new business.
7:16 Speaker 04 Do you need a kid's birthday party? Absolutely ruined. Well, you need the old man in the coat. All you need to do is piss out the front of your house and I will come and lick it.
7:25 Speaker 03 What's they know you as in hamster teeth?
7:27 Speaker 04 Yes. Old man in the coat. It's what they call polar bears, the Sami. Or God's dog is the other name.
7:34 Speaker 03 Taboo.
7:35 Speaker 04 It's a taboo. They don't want to give it its real name, so it's got a code name.
7:38 Speaker 03 God's dog is very good.
7:39 Speaker 04 God's dog is wonderful, yeah.
7:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's definitely a belief that they, that polar bears can speak English, but not very well, kind of as well as a toddler. So the belief is that they don't understand metaphors. So when you're talking about how you're going to hunt a bear, that's why you have to use metaphors like the fur clad one.
7:54 Speaker 03 Do you also say, oh, it looks like over there they're selling ICECIA hats?
8:03 Speaker 02 Um, I was reading just another thing on how the Christian missionaries dealt with them. In this early account from 1674, John Schiffer, he was Christian, so he had lots of comments about the Sami and how they weren't very good at being Christians. And he said, "They stick at several points of Christianity, namely the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul." And I just liked that immediately afterwards, he said, "And they worship the sun chiefly for its light and its heat, believing all things are made by its means."
8:30 Speaker 03 Oh, idiots.
8:31 Speaker 02 Such a brilliant tone of patronizing disdain. I don't know why they can't get the whole resurrection of the dead thing. Also, they think the sun's really important.
8:40 Speaker 03 That's really funny. So Linnaeus was a big fan of the Sami. Linnaeus, the guy who named all the animals, basically. He used to say, "God creates and Linnaeus puts into categories."
8:54 Speaker 03 But he went to visit them and they had a big effect on him. So after that, he decided to just walk around in Sami clothing all the time.
9:03 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
9:04 Speaker 04 Even when he was back home.
9:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
9:05 Speaker 02 He loved it, didn't he?
9:07 Speaker 03 Like, it obviously was a different time. But if I have just been to China and then I come back dressed like a Chinese person.
9:14 Speaker 04 Yes.
9:15 Speaker 03 It's not gonna work, is it?
9:17 Speaker 02 I think, to be fair, he basically wore, he basically thought this whole reindeer coats for coats works. And wore a lot of reindeer head to toe, didn't he? And he did carry the drum, which, to be fair, would seem a bit appropriatory.
9:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:28 Speaker 01 I think we all know somebody who's had a gap year and got a bit too into it.
9:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:33 Speaker 03 Why are you looking at me like that?
9:35 Speaker 04 Oh, my God.
9:35 Speaker 03 I never had a gap year. I just have a gap two weeks every year.
9:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the guy dressed in a kimono today, Andrew.
9:42 Speaker 03 And Dan, by the way, that Papua New Guinea gourd that you're wearing.
9:46 Speaker 04 Thank you.
9:47 Speaker 03 I know it's hidden by that big coat.
9:51 Speaker 03 But yeah, Linnaeus, one thing that he really liked about them is that the men would carry around a sweet smelling fungus to attract women. Just in the same way that I might spray Lynx Africa on myself. And they would do this with a fungus. And he said, in other parts of the world, you must be wooed with coffee and chocolate, preserves and sweets, wines and dainties, jewels and pearls. Here, you are satisfied with a little withered fungus.
10:20 Speaker 01 Well, it's, it is very cold.
10:26 Speaker 01 Just a thing about drumming and drums, as we were on the Sami and their drums. I found this absolutely wild. Drums are many thousands of years old, right?
10:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:36 Speaker 01 I mean, seven, like, we found ancient, ancient drums from civilizations all over the world. But the drum kit wasn't invented until the 20th century.
10:44 Speaker 02 Hang on, are you telling me no one had ever thought of, like, I can use my other hand for this as well?
10:49 Speaker 01 When is the, when are the first drum solos that you can think of? They're all quite recent.
10:54 Speaker 02 I just think maybe people did them and didn't manage to record them onto cassette tape back in the day.
10:59 Speaker 01 Maybe, maybe.
11:00 Speaker 03 It's interesting.
11:01 Speaker 01 It's wild, isn't it?
11:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, maybe.
11:05 Speaker 02 I think the jury's out on that one, I would say.
11:07 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
11:09 Speaker 02 You can speak in drum if you're a certain type of person.
11:13 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
11:13 Speaker 02 From a certain type of place with a certain type of language. In West Africa, drum languages were quite common, probably less so now. But this is in languages specifically which they're very tonal. So you can make a drum that can play lots of different tones. And so I think the Ibuulu dialect of the Bantu language is a very good example of this, where they'd have a drum where if you bang it at a different place along it, it makes a different tone. And therefore you can transmit messages up to 20 miles, apparently. And everyone would have a drum name. So you'd give someone their drum name, you'd bang on the drum their drum name. So you know they're talking to you.
11:48 Speaker 03 But it's like having a special knock on the door. Like, I always knock on the door the same, like.
11:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:54 Speaker 03 I mean, it's not like a lot of people would do a similar thing. But if you heard that knock, there's a good chance it's gonna be.
12:00 Speaker 01 That's really interesting. And if you don't hear a knock at all, that's Dan in a big coat outside the front.
12:08 Speaker 02 But you're then knocking to yourself, if I were a Bantu person, I'd use that knock for you then. That would be my way of saying, "Oi, James."
12:14 Speaker 03 If we were on University Challenge, I would buzz in and they'd go. And they'd know it was me to answer then.
12:20 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly.
12:21 Speaker 01 Harkin fish.
12:24 Speaker 03 Why have we never done University Challenge as a team? We've just never been asked, Andy. And also, they don't do podcast teams.
12:30 Speaker 01 We're not a university.
12:31 Speaker 03 University teams.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, but what the hell?
12:33 Speaker 02 And we'd be very bad.
12:34 Speaker 01 There's a broader truth that I think we're missing, which is that it would be so much fun.
12:37 Speaker 04 And our insistence on being addressed by our drum names, I think, is also.
12:41 Speaker 03 Podcast challenge, on the other hand, seems like a good idea.
12:44 Speaker 01 Edit this out of the podcast. We're gonna do Poddyversity Challenge, University Pod Challenge. We're gonna do it.
12:49 Speaker 03 We'll think of a name.
12:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:51 Speaker 02 Don't edit this out. I don't want to do that. Keep it in so someone else feels the idea.
12:56 Speaker 03 One thing I read about these drumming languages in Africa is you drum a phrase or a song or something that everyone knows what it means and everyone knows the context of it, rather than just doing individual words.
13:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, I remember as well. And it's very weird because it already seems difficult to convey stuff via drum rather than words. And the fact that they've overcomplicated it by then saying you can use these metaphorical phrases. But it does seem to work.
13:20 Speaker 03 For instance, like, let's say I wanted a cake. I could go.
13:25 Speaker 03 And you would know, like.
13:26 Speaker 02 Maybe it is simpler, okay.
13:28 Speaker 04 Or you'd be like. Oh, the local comics here. Like, that would be a good drum name for a local comedian. Here comes Sammy Shamen.
13:38 Speaker 01 One of my close friends is a drummer professionally. And one of the big things about drummers is that they have a bad reputation.
13:44 Speaker 03 Yep.
13:46 Speaker 01 Not a bad reputation, but just a reputation, maybe for being not the
13:48 Speaker 03 Stupid.
13:49 Speaker 01 Not the brightest member of the band.
13:51 Speaker 03 I'm not saying they are, I'm saying that's what their reputation is.
13:54 Speaker 01 Right.
13:54 Speaker 03 And besides, they won't be listening to this podcast, it's way too highbrow.
14:02 Speaker 01 So I asked him for some drummer jokes.
14:04 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
14:04 Speaker 01 I just thought you might like some of them.
14:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, go on then.
14:06 Speaker 01 What do you call someone who hangs around musicians?
14:08 Speaker 03 A drummer.
14:09 Speaker 01 A drummer.
14:11 Speaker 01 How can you tell if the stage is level?
14:15 Speaker 01 The drummer is dribbling out of both sides of his mouth.
14:20 Speaker 01 How do you know when there's a drummer at the door?
14:22 Speaker 03 I don't know.
14:23 Speaker 01 The knock gets faster and they don't know when to come in.
14:26 Speaker 01 What's the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?
14:29 Speaker 03 I don't know.
14:29 Speaker 01 One of them will mature and make money.
14:33 Speaker 03 I think what this needs is a pedumtish.
14:41 Speaker 01 Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is, from 1990 to 2018, there was an award given out every year for the most human human.
14:53 Speaker 01 You sounded so robotic.
14:56 Speaker 01 This was a prize that was given out, it was a subsection of a bigger prize, right? And it's all to do with the Turing test. So for anyone who hasn't heard of that before, that's the idea that Alan Turing, brilliant computer scientist, proposed in the 50s, that the way you would be able to tell when we had artificial intelligence is if a human is conversing with someone who's unseen, and they are unable to tell whether they're talking to a person or a computer, that's when we'll have true artificial intelligence.
15:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, which I would say is now, right?
15:26 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, people are falling in love with AIs left, right and centre. Like, we've way past the Turing test, so by that metric.
15:33 Speaker 03 Certainly, when we started this podcast, it wasn't true.
15:35 Speaker 01 Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so that's the idea of the Turing test, and there was an annual prize during those years, starting in 1990, called the Leibner Prize, where people would bring Along their own chatbots and they would be training them and improving them every year. And if your chatbot managed to fool a human judge, you would win a prize. There would be several thousand dollars for the most human computer. But as part of that, you obviously had to have some humans being on behind the screen chatting back for the judges to have any sense of like, are you talking to a computer or a human? Sometimes you'd be talking to one, sometimes the other. And as a separate prize, the judges would pick the the human chatter who was most convincingly human and give them a hundred dollars or some small prize.
16:19 Speaker 03 I think this is a problem with the experiment because if the human is then changing their attitude and the way that they respond because they're trying to get a prize.
16:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:30 Speaker 03 Then that changes the experiment, right?
16:32 Speaker 04 And that is what happened, right? Brian Christian, who won the most human human prize, he wrote a whole book about it. And part of the book was telling how he prepared to be human as part of the test. And so he did study to be human to win it.
16:44 Speaker 02 That feels like it's kind of cheating, isn't the whole point that you've got to be yourself?
16:48 Speaker 01 Revising for an exam is not cheating. And if the exam is, are you a human? It's completely reasonable to prep.
16:53 Speaker 03 We're testing the computers, right?
16:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:56 Speaker 03 If the whole point of the exam is to test the marking system and you change your answers to make them completely wrong or completely right, then that's not a very good way of testing the marking system.
17:06 Speaker 01 I think he was just practicing being himself and being authentic in conversation and being truly human.
17:12 Speaker 03 How would you do it?
17:13 Speaker 01 I prep several hours a day for all of my conversations.
17:16 Speaker 02 You use the same person as Kirstama, don't you, for this?
17:19 Speaker 03 If you wanted to pretend to be human, what would you do? Because I feel like you would just do something really dumb, right?
17:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a great question, James. I'm so glad you asked me, but what do you think?
17:30 Speaker 04 Here's the issue, though. If you've got very specific loves and so on as your as a person and you bring them to the exam, you might lose. So one person was outed as a robot when they were a human because they knew far too much about Shakespeare. They said, no human could possibly know this much about Shakespeare. It just so happens it was a Shakespeare expert on the other side who was a human.
17:49 Speaker 02 Really the way to do it now. And this is my optimistic theory about where the world's going. The only way to convince people you're human is to. Actually see them because the only place that robots haven't managed to achieve anything like human resemblance is in the physical world, right? They still can barely move. I mean, I know there's all sorts of claims every year where they play football and they fold laundry and whatever. But if you watch them trying to even run marathons, they still don't look very human.
18:12 Speaker 03 But they just won the marathon.
18:14 Speaker 02 I know, but they didn't look like humans when they did. So I would say.
18:17 Speaker 01 Pop a big coat on that guy who ran the marathon. People will think Dan's achieved a record.
18:21 Speaker 03 I would say if you put that robot, because it was all over the news when I was in China, it was the top story in the news that day. If you put that robot next to Phoebe from Friends running, you would not be able to distinguish the two of them.
18:34 Speaker 02 It's a real slam on Phoebe. But this is a thing about robot technology, right? Is that they've managed to mimic our brains unbelievably well. But physically, actually, it turns out that it's very, very difficult still. And so I think people are going to be driven off their computers back into the real world.
18:50 Speaker 01 It's a nice optimistic idea.
18:52 Speaker 03 Hopefully not by driverless cars. Because there's a situation in Atlanta earlier this year where 50 Waymo driverless taxis drove through the same area between six and seven o'clock because someone had put a children at play sign in the road, which wasn't supposed to be there. And they would drive into the road and then they'd try and get out and then they'd see that sign and they'd go back in the other direction again. And they'd just be driving in circles and circles and circles.
19:20 Speaker 01 So it kind of worked, as in they can see a children at play sign and know that that's something they shouldn't.
19:23 Speaker 03 But it's like you can kind of hack it to kind of make them drive around in circles and get lost because they're not thinking.
19:29 Speaker 01 Can I tell you just a quick thing about this guy Lurpner who set up the prize? Because he was, I don't know if you read into him, he was very eccentric.
19:38 Speaker 01 So it was treated like serious AI people said this is just a stunt, you know, he gave out a medal with Alan Turing on one side and him on the other, you know, he was, there was this amazing, he sadly died about 10 years ago now, but he was a very interesting cookie. So there was this piece about him in 2011. He had made his living in portable crowd control fencing and roll up disco dance floors. That was his main line of work. I know, cool, right? Um.
20:02 Speaker 03 That is, yeah.
20:03 Speaker 01 And he wanted to sponsor the prize because his idea was a true artificial intelligence will free the world from work, you know, very optimistic that there won't be any work anymore. But his other speech after the competition was all about his plans to revolutionize public transport using roller coasters. He says a roller coaster is the ideal transport system. It would, it could work and it would solve many of society's problems. Whether it can be implemented is another matter.
20:27 Speaker 03 I agree.
20:27 Speaker 01 What's a driverless car except a kind of slightly shit roller coaster?
20:30 Speaker 03 What's a tube apart, what's the underground apart from a roller coaster, really?
20:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, the key difference with a roller coaster is that you always end up where you started. Because that feels like the tube is a bit better than a roller coaster.
20:40 Speaker 01 Or circle line, uh, functions.
20:43 Speaker 03 Imagine if like every time you came into work, you could buy a photo of yourself on the way to work. That would be great.
20:49 Speaker 02 Worth it, yeah.
20:51 Speaker 04 I interviewed Lerdner, I met him.
20:53 Speaker 02 Did you?
20:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was online, I met him, we, I, I interviewed.
20:55 Speaker 03 Sure it was him?
20:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, that, it could have very well have been a chatbot, but I interviewed, it was him who I interviewed alongside Mitsuku, who was the chatbot that had won the Lerdner Prize or got first place in the Lerdner Prize five times. And is the final champion because it stopped in 2019, I think. Um, but yeah, very eccentric character even to, to look at, um, you know, like a Dali-esque mustache. And he, he had two big passions, it was roller coasters and it was making prostitution seen as something, as a normal day to day thing that you would just go within your marriage and go, I'm just gonna go to the brothel.
21:30 Speaker 03 You must be this tall to go on this ride.
21:36 Speaker 01 Don't take a photo of me halfway through.
21:39 Speaker 02 I know we're focusing on the prostitution.
21:41 Speaker 01 Scream if you want to go faster.
21:45 Speaker 03 I know you want to carry on, Anna, but we've got a few more of these.
21:50 Speaker 01 Oh, not good, I was sick twice and my hat fell off.
21:54 Speaker 03 You must keep your arms inside at all times.
21:59 Speaker 01 Just let them get it out of their systems.
22:04 Speaker 04 Here's, here's an interesting thing.
22:06 Speaker 01 I've had that hot dog just before.
22:12 Speaker 04 Here's an interesting thing, we're talking about love and talking about AI. There was a guy called Robert Epstein. In 2006, he was looking online for love and he found and fell in love with a Russian woman. They exchanged love letters and so on. And for about four months, it was going back and forth until he finally realised, hang on, is this a real person? And it wasn't. It was an AI bot.
22:33 Speaker 01 And he was an expert in the field of...
22:35 Speaker 04 He is the co-founder of the Lorgner Prize, Robert Epstein. This is a good 16 years after this prize had been set up. He fell in love with an AI bot online.
22:46 Speaker 02 Oh my god.
22:47 Speaker 01 Basically, almost anyone's susceptible to it, I think.
22:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. On to the difference between humans and robots. How good are you at proving you're a human online with the recaptures?
22:57 Speaker 03 Oh, you mean like, which of these is a boat, kind of thing?
23:00 Speaker 02 Exactly. How many traffic lights in this?
23:02 Speaker 04 Click the traffic lights.
23:03 Speaker 03 You know what I think? I reckon I've got it wrong before and it's let me pass.
23:07 Speaker 02 That's because robots are better at it.
23:10 Speaker 03 Really?
23:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. The constant problem they have is trying to get ahead of the AI because AI works out how to hack it over and over again. And basically, by 2014, 99% of bots could solve the distorted letter ones where they said, you know, type the letters you see. And in 2023, there was a study that found that bots are better than people at the picture ones by some degree. So when you're showing the image, 78% of the time, people got it right. 100% of the time, the bots got it right.
23:35 Speaker 03 But I thought the point was that they'd get you to do this, but while you're doing it, they're checking your browser history to make sure you've not been going on the same website 500,000 times.
23:44 Speaker 02 Usually the reason...
23:45 Speaker 03 That's what I thought it was.
23:46 Speaker 02 Sometimes, usually the reason you get a capture is because your browser history isn't human enough. So the only way to get around it now, really, is to allow cookies, browse the internet for five minutes and then go on to the website that you want to go on. Because then they see that you've browsed the internet like someone. Because it used to be that they could tell if you were too slow clicking the mouse, you were a human.
24:06 Speaker 03 I'd like deliberately wobble my mouse a little bit so it looks more human.
24:09 Speaker 02 None of that works anymore. The robots have learned to act like an idiot, like a human.
24:12 Speaker 04 I thought we were just training it. I mean, I know that that was the idea. The idea was we were teaching the AI what traffic lights look like in every single...
24:20 Speaker 02 We are as well.
24:20 Speaker 04 So that's still happening? We're still training them? Right, okay.
24:24 Speaker 01 Is this sometimes why when I get to the end of page 18 on a Google search for moth, let's say, it says, come on, are you a human? Do you ever get that? You get to the end of
24:34 Speaker 04 Oh, really?
24:34 Speaker 01 Because nobody clicks through 18 pages of moth results.
24:36 Speaker 02 I think that will be why, yes.
24:38 Speaker 04 Remember there was the big thing where Watson, the IBM AI computer, went on Jeopardy? And there was a whole thing about Jeopardy. There was a big complaint from the makers of Watson who said they rewrote the questions so that it didn't allow for it to do it. So, for example, an example given is in 2002, Eminem signed this rapper to a seven-figure deal, obviously worth a lot more than his name implies.
25:03 Speaker 03 Fifty Cent.
25:03 Speaker 04 Fifty Cent.
25:04 Speaker 03 What's his Fifty Cent? Damn it!
25:06 Speaker 04 And Watson would be able to figure that out, but they rewrote it to lose 2002 and Eminem in there. So it relied on you to make a connection of a pun
25:14 Speaker 03 I see.
25:15 Speaker 04 From the second half of the
25:16 Speaker 03 Surely the quiz question is basically, do you know that Fifty Cent is one of Eminem's stable of rappers, isn't it?
25:23 Speaker 01 No, I think any, name any musician with money in their name, a low denomination in their name. Because I didn't, I didn't know that about the stable of rappers, but I did know that Fifty Cent is a thing.
25:32 Speaker 03 I suppose, yeah. The thing is with those questions is they give you two different ways of getting to the answer, right?
25:36 Speaker 04 Yes.
25:37 Speaker 03 Either with the pun or with the knowledge.
25:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, and that's why they complained. But it's, it's interesting. I put it into ChatGPT this morning just to see what it would give if I gave the question without 2002 and Eminem. And it, you know, of course, immediately came up, probably Fifty Cent, a seven-figure deal is worth far more than 50 cents, was its logical answer.
25:55 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, so it can do that now.
25:56 Speaker 01 So it overexplains the jokes?
25:57 Speaker 04 Yes.
25:58 Speaker 01 Oh, dear.
26:00 Speaker 01 Maybe I too have an AI.
26:04 Speaker 02 I gave AI a lateral thinking puzzle and it couldn't crack it. So that was satisfying. This was triggered by the fact that I was wondering if Roald Dahl was a vegetarian, because I just read a book of his that was very anti-hunting. So I said, is Roald Dahl a vegetarian? And Google AI said, there are many clues in his books that suggest he's a vegetarian. For instance, Fantastic Mr. Fox is vegetarian. And obviously, I thought, well, the whole plot of Fantastic Mr. Fox is about him eating meat, so I don't know if he is.
26:28 Speaker 01 That's a bet where he breaks into a barn and just kills two chickens instantly.
26:31 Speaker 03 I'm a flexitard. Chicken, basically, it's not real meat, is it? Like, obviously, the carbon footprint of chicken is a lot better than beef.
26:40 Speaker 02 So I thought that's faulty. So I tried Claude, the anthropropic AI, on this riddle, which I always just love. So it's, and you have to write it down, but imagine you have one, three and five in a row, and then directly beneath it, write two, four.
26:56 Speaker 01 The words.
26:57 Speaker 02 No, the new numbers has to be numerical, two and four, and then a question mark directly beneath the five.
27:03 Speaker 03 Okay.
27:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:04 Speaker 02 And it's like, what's the question mark?
27:06 Speaker 03 Six.
27:07 Speaker 02 So you'd think it's six. So obviously that's what AI says to me first. But you can see Claude tells you it's working. So it's like, it says sussing out lateral thinking options. No, is it six? And you say, no, it's not six.
27:17 Speaker 01 I think it's five again.
27:18 Speaker 02 I gave it so many clues. Still didn't get it. I'll give you guys a clue.
27:22 Speaker 03 Yep.
27:23 Speaker 02 It's not a number and it's related to cars. And this is kind of an example of what AI can't do.
27:30 Speaker 03 It's an R for reverse.
27:31 Speaker 02 It's an R.
27:32 Speaker 01 Oh, come on.
27:33 Speaker 02 And that's because robots don't drive cars.
27:36 Speaker 01 But they don't drive manuals.
27:39 Speaker 03 In fairness, I think six is a legitimate answer to that question.
27:42 Speaker 02 Completely, but it's when you tell it it's not six, it couldn't, and it kept, and the thing about AI is it's overconfident. So at one point it said, I've got it. It's F.
27:50 Speaker 03 Right.
27:50 Speaker 02 You know, when AI is really, I've done it now.
27:52 Speaker 03 Sorry, AI's overconfident. Maybe I too am an AI.
27:57 Speaker 04 Isn't Dahl a vegetarian curry?
27:59 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
28:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, so roll Dahl, if not a vegetarian, at least, is a vegetarian curry.
28:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, very good.
28:05 Speaker 01 And, and AI can't make proper jokes. Maybe you two, Dan, are an AI.
28:17 Speaker 04 Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna.
28:21 Speaker 02 My fact this week is that the only ride at France's second most popular theme park is a two euro carousel.
28:27 Speaker 03 Hmm.
28:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:30 Speaker 03 I have just taken my daughter to Disneyland in Shanghai. 10 hour flight, however much money it costs, trains, all that stuff. And all she wanted to do was go on the carousel.
28:41 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
28:42 Speaker 03 We've been on the carousel four times.
28:45 Speaker 01 Right, now back on the plane.
28:47 Speaker 03 So, um, this sounds perfect.
28:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:49 Speaker 02 There you go, would have been a slightly cheaper carousel than the one you went to. Well done. And that's all it is.
28:54 Speaker 03 So why is this, why is this such a shit theme park?
28:59 Speaker 02 It's Proudeffu and it's the second best after Disneyland Paris, obviously, which trumps everything. But this is a theme park that was set up in the 1970s. It gets over three million visitors a year. It's the eighth most popular in Europe and it's basically a place where they do historical reenactments. And it began in the seventies when this guy Philippe de Villiers, who I'm sure we'll come on to talk about, found a ruined castle, as you do stumble upon a lot in France. And he thought, I'm gonna stage a reenactment of this thing called the Vendée Rebellion, which was a counter-revolutionary rebellion around about the French, well, at the time of the French Revolution.
29:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:39 Speaker 02 So he staged a reenactment, it got bigger and bigger. And now it's 60 shows that act out historical events from all across history and all across geography. It's got these four period villages, so when you stay there, you stay in a period village.
29:52 Speaker 01 It does sound, it sounds amazing.
29:54 Speaker 02 It sounds absolutely incredible. I'm desperate to go.
29:57 Speaker 01 I went to stay somewhere recently that didn't have any of this, but it was faintly medieval-y themed. And the restaurants were things like the Knights of Harkin.
30:04 Speaker 02 And that whet your appetite, did it?
30:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, what are you saying? Yeah, I'm saying I could, I could see myself.
30:08 Speaker 04 This sounds better, is what you're saying.
30:09 Speaker 01 I'm saying this sounds better, yeah, yeah.
30:11 Speaker 02 Even than Tavaran.
30:12 Speaker 03 There is plenty available for people like you in the UK right now, if you want to get involved in the medieval scene.
30:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:19 Speaker 03 There's all sorts of reenactments going on.
30:21 Speaker 01 Really?
30:21 Speaker 03 I'll put you in touch with some people.
30:22 Speaker 01 Thank you.
30:23 Speaker 02 But none, none of them are this level though. And this, I suppose, is less like you reenact it as you watch other people. So there's shows that are.
30:29 Speaker 04 You're just watching. Did anyone else watch an hour long YouTube video of someone going from each of the reenactments?
30:34 Speaker 03 No.
30:34 Speaker 04 Okay, I did. And, um, to begin with, it's.
30:38 Speaker 03 I like the way you're reenacting the reenactments by watching them on YouTube.
30:43 Speaker 04 I, I thought you would get a bit fatigued with the amount of reenactment that you're watching. If you decided.
30:49 Speaker 01 Come on.
30:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think it loses, about 35 minutes in, I sort of regretted my decision to watch the full hour.
30:56 Speaker 02 Carousel is for.
30:58 Speaker 04 Yes.
30:59 Speaker 03 It's like a palate cleanser.
31:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:01 Speaker 01 Surely live it's more exciting and you know, you're caught up in the sweep of French history.
31:05 Speaker 03 Kind of.
31:06 Speaker 01 Kind of, okay.
31:07 Speaker 02 I think so.
31:07 Speaker 04 You're quite far away, so it's sort of like watching a very like well-produced panto at a distance. I mean, it's epic.
31:14 Speaker 01 Three million, three million people a year can't be wrong, Dan.
31:17 Speaker 04 Oh, have you read the TripAdvisor reviews?
31:19 Speaker 03 They're very strong.
31:20 Speaker 04 Are they?
31:20 Speaker 02 They're very strong, yeah.
31:22 Speaker 03 They're gonna build one in the UK.
31:23 Speaker 02 They are.
31:24 Speaker 03 Aren't they?
31:25 Speaker 02 Bister.
31:26 Speaker 03 In bister. And we're gonna have hotels, three hotels, each themed around different periods in British history. Just wondering if you had any favourites?
31:35 Speaker 04 Ooh.
31:36 Speaker 03 I was thinking Covid era.
31:39 Speaker 03 No toilet paper.
31:41 Speaker 04 I'll say general strike.
31:42 Speaker 03 General strike.
31:43 Speaker 04 That'll be one of my favourites.
31:44 Speaker 03 Just three days for the price of five.
31:45 Speaker 04 Lovely.
31:47 Speaker 01 I mean, there'll be a Tudor one, won't there? Because it's British, it's English history.
31:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:50 Speaker 01 British history.
31:51 Speaker 02 So weird that people are obsessed with the Tudors when the revolution happened the next century. And it's Argo Revolution.
31:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, everyone shaved their heads.
31:58 Speaker 01 Which revolution, you mean the?
31:59 Speaker 02 The round-headed one.
32:00 Speaker 03 Civil War.
32:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:01 Speaker 03 So half of the people shaved their heads.
32:03 Speaker 02 Sorry, yeah, if it's everyone, there's no war, is there? Everyone just agreeing all the time.
32:08 Speaker 04 Swinging 60s, I think.
32:10 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
32:10 Speaker 04 I think that'd be a cool one.
32:12 Speaker 03 I bet they would do that, wouldn't they?
32:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:14 Speaker 03 Like have a little Soho vibe.
32:16 Speaker 01 I would say outrageously, the French one, Puy de Fou, has the King Arthur stuff. I have no idea how they've managed to swing getting the rights to King Arthur.
32:26 Speaker 02 He's not very litigious.
32:29 Speaker 01 The estate must be trading, surely.
32:31 Speaker 04 I just think, what, like, is there an estate for King Arthur?
32:34 Speaker 03 No, I'm joking.
32:36 Speaker 04 I do, it feels like there could be.
32:37 Speaker 01 Who's an AI now?
32:39 Speaker 04 I can't tell.
32:40 Speaker 03 I think like, there was quite a bit of Frenchy stuff going on in those Arthurian tales, aren't there?
32:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the Mort Arthur is written half in French and all of this. Yeah, yeah, the nob, okay, yeah, yeah.
32:51 Speaker 02 And it's famously ahistorical, this place, to be fair. The makers tend to say, we're just trying to entertain.
32:57 Speaker 03 But are they trying to entertain?
32:58 Speaker 02 Well, there's the big question, it's quite controversial.
33:01 Speaker 03 Are they trying to sneak in right-wing propaganda to families? Because that's what some people say.
33:08 Speaker 02 It's what some people claim, and the fact that it was founded by quite an extreme right-wing politician is neither here nor there, I don't think.
33:14 Speaker 03 Well, he's not there anymore, because it's run by another guy, his son, I think, called Nikola, who described Vladimir Putin as having sweet eyes and sweet words.
33:24 Speaker 04 Oh.
33:24 Speaker 01 Cool, cool, cool, cool.
33:26 Speaker 03 I saw, by coincidence, because we've been planning to do this for a week or two, there was an article in Harper's Magazine this week where author Nat Segnit went to this place. And he said it was a bit like hanging out with an exceptionally charismatic and entertaining friend whose opinions only strike you as objectionable in retrospect.
33:47 Speaker 01 Oh. So what is the idea? Is it that it's presenting a particular slant on history?
33:52 Speaker 03 It's very pro-Catholic, it's very pro-French monarchy, it's very sort of like looking back at the past and wasn't France great in the past and shouldn't we go back to France being great again?
34:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's very into old school France.
34:06 Speaker 01 Right.
34:06 Speaker 02 But fun. And that's how the right wing get you, they make it fun.
34:10 Speaker 04 The craziest thing about this theme park, in my opinion, is when you get there, you get a little booklet, you know, the free booklet that tells you the map of everywhere that you're going to go. And it's in multiple languages. And at the top of each one of them has the date of the day that you're going on, which means they print them every single day for the day that you're visiting the theme park.
34:28 Speaker 01 To you, that's the craziest thing about this insane place, which has deep weird, like, political.
34:34 Speaker 04 How much ink are we wasting here? How much, how many trees have been chopped down so that we can go?
34:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they probably are quite good at knowing how many people have booked in for that day. So they just now know how many to press on the printer. That for you is the weirdest thing. That's the weirdest thing.
34:47 Speaker 03 Also, they could, surely they can print all of them and then just print the date separately.
34:52 Speaker 04 I think it's like an additional stamp as well.
34:54 Speaker 01 There could be a little, little man in a booth who just stamps on the date.
34:56 Speaker 04 It doesn't look, it looks very printed on, right?
34:58 Speaker 02 I don't think it's that. I think, Dan, this implies you think whenever you've squashed up a brochure and throw it away, you think someone's going around all the bins, taking them all out, ironing them and reusing them the next day.
35:07 Speaker 04 No, I'm thinking they've got a big batch in the warehouse. They don't have to go, where's the, where's the guy with the printing for today?
35:13 Speaker 01 We've got 10,000 people in today.
35:14 Speaker 04 How many guys should we print, do you think? Should we do about 10,000?
35:17 Speaker 01 Yes.
35:18 Speaker 04 Well, oh yeah, let's print 10,000 every day.
35:20 Speaker 02 Because, Dan, this is the amazing thing about time. They know which date is coming. So if today is the ninth, someone's there to go.
35:28 Speaker 04 What if there's huge cancellations because it's raining too much or something? What if Covid happened and they've got suddenly 365 days worth?
35:35 Speaker 03 For 2026, do they put 2026 or just 26? Because if it's just 26, they can reuse it in 100 years?
35:42 Speaker 04 See? Okay, now we're talking. Okay, maybe it's not so weird.
35:45 Speaker 03 By which time, the great French government will have risen and taken over the world again.
35:51 Speaker 01 The Bourbon monarchy will be restored again. I mean, yeah, it's very interesting and strange. And I think the reason that it's not very well known about, certainly in the UK, is that 85% of the visitors are French. You know, loads of French people holiday within France. And it's, and obviously, it's so about France that it's naturally appealing to the French people.
36:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think so. And I think there is one in Spain as well, isn't there?
36:14 Speaker 04 Yes, there is.
36:15 Speaker 03 So they've done one in Spain, they've done one in France, they're gonna do one in the UK.
36:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
36:18 Speaker 03 I think it's.
36:19 Speaker 01 Apparently, the Spanish one is quite politically conservative on just how good a thing the colonization of the Americas was.
36:26 Speaker 03 Oh, is it?
36:27 Speaker 01 And it depicts, it depicts the Europeans saying, "Well, we'll only go ahead and colonize if you guys really want us to, and as long as we're gonna treat you really, really nicely." That's sort of written into the show, yeah.
36:38 Speaker 04 It's like the Weatherspoons of theme parks. They're all, you know, you get your cheap riddles, but you've got a political agenda you gotta sift through when you're in there.
36:45 Speaker 01 I can't believe we're talking about Weatherspoons again. I can't believe it. But the Weatherspoons, often, they dish out magazines that have the proprietor's views in them, which is quite rare for a pub. You know, you don't normally get, like, a strongly angled magazine.
36:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, wait, wasn't that your point?
36:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm over explaining. I just think people won't know that there's a Weatherspoons newspaper.
37:03 Speaker 02 Sorry, got it, yes.
37:04 Speaker 01 International listeners.
37:05 Speaker 02 No, international listeners may not.
37:07 Speaker 01 By now, everyone internationally knows about Weatherspoons. We're sorry to keep talking about it, but...
37:13 Speaker 04 You know what they don't do? They don't stamp the date on every single newspaper, because they're not nutcases.
37:17 Speaker 01 Do you know who does? Newspaper stamp.
37:19 Speaker 04 It's a weekly newspaper. It's not a, it's not a daily newspaper.
37:28 Speaker 02 I'm just quickly on the one in the UK, which should be fine, because we don't have an awkward colonial history. So I doubt there'll be anything controversial in that. But it's planned for, yeah, Bucknell, which is near Bista. And there are obviously residents who are very against it and residents who are very pro it. And I just like the fact that it is in Oxfordshire and the residents are led on the pro side by a woman called Caroline Chipperfield Twitty and on the anti side by Flo Van Deemon Van Thor. Which shows how really Oxfordshire.
37:58 Speaker 01 Speak for England to flow.
37:59 Speaker 02 Oxfordshire gets.
38:00 Speaker 01 I know, that's, yeah, that's very interesting.
38:02 Speaker 03 Very funny. On reenactments, in 2014, there was a World War II reenactment that we were going to do in Barnsley in Yorkshire, but it had to get cancelled because people would be wearing Nazi insignia. And so the council stopped it, but said that they would be able to reschedule if they did a World War II reenactment with no Nazi elements whatsoever.
38:22 Speaker 02 Hmm.
38:23 Speaker 01 Right. That's very funny.
38:25 Speaker 03 That's very good.
38:28 Speaker 04 I think reenactment's really interesting, like for example, civil war reenactments, quite often that as they're sort of digging holes in the ground, they'll actually find the bones of a fallen soldier from the civil war. This is in America.
38:40 Speaker 03 Okay.
38:40 Speaker 04 And they'll, and that will then be brought back to a museum and so on. And so they're digging up artefacts as they are doing reenactments of the civil war.
38:47 Speaker 02 Why are they digging holes as part of civil war reenactments? Was there a lot of tunneling in the civil war?
38:52 Speaker 04 I'm not sure. Some of them maybe just dig a hole, maybe to poo in. I don't know, you know. I don't know what the outdoor latrine situation is.
38:58 Speaker 03 I am not using that portaloo. They did not have that in the civil war.
39:03 Speaker 01 Oh my God, I have a fact about portaloo's in war reenactments.
39:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, go on then.
39:07 Speaker 01 You know how, in the American civil war, and in fact in loads of wars, some women have donned men's clothes and they've gone into war. You know, that's, that's a thing that happens. And some women in the American civil war dressed as men and fought in battles, right? In 1989, there was an American woman called Lauren Cook Burdres, and she had to fight a discrimination lawsuit because she had been banned from taking part in a US civil war reenactment. She had dressed as a male soldier to try and sneak into the reenactment of the war. And then she was caught coming out of a women's loo and was told off and told to go and put a dress on because there were no female soldiers in the war. She said, yes, there were female soldiers dressed as men in the war. I'm doing that.
39:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
39:47 Speaker 01 And she had to fight a four-year court battle and won the case. She eventually won and, and was allowed officially to be on the pitch.
39:54 Speaker 03 It is a bit mad that they're saying you can only do it if it's really true to what happened in the past, but she is coming out of a portaloo.
40:05 Speaker 01 Exactly, yeah, I know.
40:06 Speaker 02 Civil War reenactments are obviously a big deal, but there's one particularly moving one I read about, which was in 1913, an early one, this is in a Ken Burns documentary, and two armies restaged the picket charge, which was when Confederates tried to break through Union ranks, the Unionists descended on them and defeated them. Anyway, it was reenacted by veterans from the Civil War.
40:32 Speaker 01 What year?
40:33 Speaker 02 1913.
40:34 Speaker 01 So that's 50 years?
40:36 Speaker 02 50th anniversary. And they came, and it was an amazing moment. So they all knew how to do it. There was no arguments about accuracy.
40:43 Speaker 01 So it was veterans from both sides?
40:44 Speaker 02 Veterans from both sides, and the ones who were on the Union side were there waiting behind trees and stuff, ready to ambush, and the ones on the Confederate side charged through the fields and were descended upon. But as they descended, when they met, rather than killing each other, they all hugged each other and burst into tears.
41:00 Speaker 03 Oh. Was it much of a charge? How old were these men?
41:04 Speaker 02 It was a limping, a limping charge.
41:06 Speaker 01 50 years later, yeah.
41:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, it wasn't as fast as they had once been.
41:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:12 Speaker 03 That's cool, though.
41:13 Speaker 02 Amazing, though.
41:13 Speaker 01 That's really cool.
41:14 Speaker 02 Amazing moment.
41:14 Speaker 04 Unless you were there on the sidelines to watch the reenactment, that would have sucked.
41:19 Speaker 02 What, just...
41:20 Speaker 04 What was this? Mushy shit.
41:23 Speaker 03 You're not watching an hour of that, are you, on YouTube?
41:27 Speaker 03 Imagine 57 minutes into your YouTube video, you're like, finally, they're gonna kill each other. What is this? This is woke up mad.
41:35 Speaker 01 The first 57 minutes is the charge.
41:39 Speaker 03 Here we go.
41:48 Speaker 04 Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that John Williams, the composer of soundtracks like Jaws, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, doesn't actually like film music.
42:01 Speaker 03 Oh.
42:01 Speaker 04 Doesn't like it? This is probably the finest, certainly the most decorated person in the world of Hollywood soundtracking, and he says, "I never liked film music very much." He said, "It can be good, but it usually isn't, other than maybe an eight-minute stretch here and there. I think that the music just isn't there, that what we think of as this precious gift film music is, we're remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way."
42:27 Speaker 03 Well, he's like a proper composer of non-film music as well as film music, right?
42:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:33 Speaker 03 Is that right?
42:34 Speaker 01 His main, his main, well, his main hobby from the day job of the film music is composing concertos and symphonies.
42:39 Speaker 03 And I think he sees the film music as just a job, but the concertos is the main thing that he likes to do there.
42:45 Speaker 04 He does see it as just a job, yeah. But he's very good at his job. He's had 54 Oscar nominations. That's more than any other living person.
42:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:52 Speaker 04 I think he's only won five, though, so that's a lot of losses, isn't it?
42:56 Speaker 02 Not that good.
42:58 Speaker 03 He's, so the only other person who's had more is Walt Disney, who had 59.
43:03 Speaker 04 Right.
43:04 Speaker 03 But like Walt Disney's, a lot of them were for cartoons. And they were all like, for instance, in 1938, he was nominated four times in the same best cartoon category. So like, he boosted up his numbers, basically, by just being the only person who is making good cartoons.
43:20 Speaker 01 Did they cut to like a shot, four different shots on the screen of Walt Disney from different angles? And when it's announced, three of them look really pissed off and one of them like thrilled.
43:27 Speaker 03 In the, in that 1938, there were only five nominations for best cartoon, and he got four of them. And the only one he didn't make was Paramount's Hunky and Spunky.
43:37 Speaker 04 Right.
43:38 Speaker 02 That's my favourite. Um, he is right, John Williams, isn't he? Like, it's always so annoying when Classic FM, if anyone who works there is listening, does Classic FM at the movies. Because the point is, film music is only good when you're watching the film, because it's meant to be background to the thing that's happening.
43:54 Speaker 03 I'm not sure everyone, I'm not sure everyone agrees with you, Anna.
43:57 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
43:58 Speaker 04 I disagree, yeah.
43:59 Speaker 01 Well, sometimes, I will sometimes pop on the score of Mission Impossible 6.
44:03 Speaker 03 I agree with you, but I think a lot of our listeners might not. And listener, if you're hearing this and you don't agree with Anna, a lot of people are like you. You don't need to write in.
44:14 Speaker 02 Write to Andy, feel free.
44:15 Speaker 01 It's a growing thing. Lots of concerts are put on of exclusively film music. And I mean, the ones John Williams has come up with, when you think of the theme tune of Jaws or Jurassic Park, they're so memorable and they're so easily called to mind.
44:26 Speaker 03 And people like music that they've heard lots of times. A lot of people do.
44:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:31 Speaker 03 It's some kind of effect, isn't it? Like, the exposure effect. The more you hear something, the more you like it. And so if people hear a lot of film themes a lot of times, they're gonna like them.
44:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. He doesn't even like films very much, John Williams. He says, "I was never a movie buff or movie fan then as now."
44:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, he says he's never sat through any of the Star Wars films.
44:51 Speaker 01 Sat through?
44:53 Speaker 03 In fairness to him, he says, in the interview I read, he said he'd not watched them. But I'm not particularly proud of that, I have to say. So he's not like one of these people's like, oh, I'm just too smart to watch Star Wars.
45:04 Speaker 01 I've never seen Star Wars.
45:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, but like, because there are a lot of people like that, right? But he's like, well, you know, I feel a bit embarrassed that I haven't watched it, which I think is quite a nice stance.
45:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think it's more common as well than we realise that directors and people who have to watch the footage so much, because he does compose to the footage. He's watched it probably more than anyone else, just not in the final package, right?
45:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
45:25 Speaker 04 He was a session musician, by the way, before he properly got into composing his own stuff. And there's one iconic song that I just didn't know he played a part in. He was the piano on the song Peter Gunn by Henry Mancini.
45:37 Speaker 04 That's him on the piano.
45:38 Speaker 03 I don't know what that is, sorry.
45:38 Speaker 02 No, neither do I, I'm afraid.
45:40 Speaker 03 And even with your amazing rendition.
45:42 Speaker 01 It's used as the theme tune or the kind of motif in the film The Blues Brothers. It crops up again and again and again in that. So that's, it's a...
45:49 Speaker 04 Oh, that's interesting. Well, maybe it's my singing of it, but it's, yeah, it's used in a lot of adverts.
45:53 Speaker 03 To be honest, it sounded like one of those drum names.
45:58 Speaker 04 Yes.
46:00 Speaker 04 Yes, somewhere out there, a Sammy person just went, yes?
46:05 Speaker 04 Who said that?
46:07 Speaker 03 His son, Joseph, is the lead singer in the band Toto.
46:11 Speaker 01 Oh, cool.
46:12 Speaker 02 Although not when they did the only song that Toto is known for.
46:16 Speaker 03 That's true.
46:16 Speaker 04 Oh, really?
46:17 Speaker 03 He wasn't there when they released Africa. But he was the singing voice of Simba in The Lion King.
46:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:24 Speaker 03 And he has also scored some films, like his father. So he scored Embrace the Vampire,
46:33 Speaker 03 The Legend of Gator Force, Soccer Dog, Real Estate Superman, and Fat Beach, which is considered one of the best hip hop beach movies of all time, according to Wikipedia.
46:46 Speaker 01 Dan's nodding.
46:49 Speaker 02 Dan's thinking, why aren't we talking about this guy? He's the real legend.
46:52 Speaker 04 Finally, Real Estate Superman is getting some air on our podcast.
46:56 Speaker 03 Real Estate Superman sounds just like one of Andy's ideas for a cup show.
47:02 Speaker 04 No, hear me out, guys.
47:04 Speaker 01 He goes into a modest Two Better With Potential and he comes out as Superman. Spins around.
47:12 Speaker 03 The first person to produce a record from a film score was someone called Anne Ronnell, with a film called Ladies in Retirement. And we have slightly come across her before almost because she wrote additional lyrics to the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
47:30 Speaker 03 But arguably the first female person who did a score of a movie was friend of the podcast.
47:37 Speaker 01 Oh, Alice Guy.
47:39 Speaker 04 A Guy?
47:39 Speaker 03 A Guy, yeah.
47:41 Speaker 04 No way.
47:41 Speaker 03 So A Guy, she made some sound films and hers were more like soundscapes than the music, but she would like, there's one that she did called Candharmony where a guy comes in and tries to persuade the father of a girl that he wants to marry that he should be allowed to marry her and he pretends to play the violin while someone underneath the table is actually playing the violin.
48:07 Speaker 03 And that was A Guy who came up with that.
48:09 Speaker 01 Was that really early days? Was that really early days?
48:12 Speaker 03 Well, she was the first female director.
48:15 Speaker 02 Yes, because I think you talked about her last time I was away, but I remember, yeah, she was like almost the first director, wasn't she?
48:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:21 Speaker 03 She's come up on the podcast a few times.
48:23 Speaker 04 Yeah. So if we're talking early film, there is a theory that goes that the reason soundtracks happened at all was to distract the audience from getting annoyed by the amazing amount of ruckus being caused by the projector. So it gave you something to focus your attention away and cover up that noise. It's a theory that other people say that, no.
48:43 Speaker 01 It's also, you're trying to reflect what the world is like in a film.
48:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:47 Speaker 01 So that's the other theory.
48:49 Speaker 04 It's quite cool that original soundtracks were sheet music that was handed to the local, the in-house musician who would just play the tune.
48:55 Speaker 03 Would they have the data?
48:59 Speaker 04 Nope, not.
49:00 Speaker 02 They tended not to play it, right? So it was always women. This is in the old Nickelodeons. And they'd be given sheet music and generally they ignored it and they would improvise. So you got to see the film and improvise along. So you didn't know what kind of a film you were getting. One day you might get a horror, the next day it might be a comedy. Because basically the genre of a film is almost dictated by the music, isn't it? If you put funny music over a horror film, it's no longer a horror film. And the lady at the piano in the Nickelodeon could just determine that. She's got the power. That's really cool. She's got all the power.
49:30 Speaker 04 Yeah. I've got a fact about another very big soundtrack film guy. Vangelis, big name within the world. He did Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire, stuff like that. His music's very sought out. Like, he's just loved as a musician, did a lot of stuff separate to a soundtracking. But there's one piece that he did, which was roughly 12 hours long, that fans have been trying to find because it's quite scarce. And it was when he did a straight to VHS thing. It was three VHSs that the music was spread over, called Microneurosurgery with Videotapes: Spinal Space Occupying Lesions by Dr. Sturgios Tegos, Medical Publications. And it was a friend of his, who was a spinal surgeon, who wanted to show all of his techniques.
50:15 Speaker 04 And so he got Vangelis to make a soundtrack.
50:17 Speaker 03 Score it?
50:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, because it's incredibly boring watching him just do it. That's what he figured. And so this has only ever been released on these VHSs, but obviously it wasn't a big print run of the videos.
50:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, but have you managed to buy one?
50:31 Speaker 04 Ebay is... I'm gonna have to finish soon because the auction's about to end and...
50:37 Speaker 03 That, like, that Chariots of Fire theme tune, even as a skeptic of movie soundtracks, Anna, that is pretty... It's a top one, isn't it?
50:47 Speaker 02 Hold on, give it to me.
50:48 Speaker 03 Do, do, do, do.
50:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. It starts with the... So I think the problem, just to cut, just to circle back around to the start, the problem with this is that everyone knows the little hook, right? So everyone knows the bit they like. And I agree, that bit's fun to hit, but the rest of the tune is often a bit crap background. And you have to listen to all of it when they do Classic FM at the music.
51:08 Speaker 01 But all the, all the great composers have probably has one bit of the hour long symphony, where they think, I've really nailed that bit.
51:15 Speaker 03 If you've ever been to the opera, everyone sits there through four hours of the fucking thing. And then they get to the bit that goes.
51:25 Speaker 03 And then everyone in the crowd just sits up because they've got to a bit that they recognise and then.
51:29 Speaker 02 Just leave after.
51:32 Speaker 01 But this podcast is like that, Hannah. It's an hour long. There'll be one bit where Dan's explaining something.
51:41 Speaker 02 And you're saying that was the highlight?
51:42 Speaker 01 I'm saying that that's what people are tuning in for. That's what they set up, you know? Can I tell you one of my favourite scoring stories of all time? So we all know The Snowman.
51:51 Speaker 03 Of course.
51:51 Speaker 02 Walking in the air.
51:53 Speaker 01 Beautiful.
51:54 Speaker 03 Thank you.
51:55 Speaker 01 Totally.
51:57 Speaker 01 Totally beloved in the UK. I don't know if it's famous around the whole world, but it's, it's a really iconic, beautiful story about a boy who makes a snowman, the snowman comes to life and they, they go walking in the air, they fly through the air. It was scored by a guy called Howard Blake and he came up with the idea because he had been seriously overworked, right? He was, he was composing so much and working so hard. He went down to Cornwall and he lived for three months in a single hut with just a bed and a one bar fire. Living a really rustic, much slower pace of life.
52:33 Speaker 01 And one of the last jobs he was offered before it, before he decided to do this, was a comedy called Percy, about a man with a 14 inch penis. And he just thought, maybe I need a break from work.
52:47 Speaker 03 Was Alec Jones also in that one? I don't know.
52:52 Speaker 04 I think that was written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones.
52:55 Speaker 01 Stunning.
52:55 Speaker 04 I think.
52:56 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
52:57 Speaker 04 Pulling from knowledge.
52:58 Speaker 01 Python knowledge.
52:59 Speaker 03 That'd be amazing knowledge. I mean, who knows that much about Python? You must be AI.
53:06 Speaker 01 Ironically, massive Python.
53:10 Speaker 01 And he wrote it, he literally, he was walking along the beach when he thought of walking in the air and he jotted it down on an envelope.
53:15 Speaker 03 Really? Because not many snowmen in, even in winter in Cornwall.
53:19 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no. But I was thinking, you know, we talked a little while ago about the Bailey Bridge? The, the, that kind of bridge called the Bailey Bridge. It might have been on a little fish.
53:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
53:28 Speaker 01 Because the guy who came up with that, it was an amazing prefab bridge that was incredible in the Second World War. He jotted his design down on the back of an envelope.
53:35 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
53:35 Speaker 01 So my pitch is, uh, is maybe a museum of all the envelopes? Oh, no, it's a book of the envelopes.
53:41 Speaker 04 Right.
53:42 Speaker 01 Right? Like all the things that have been drawn on an envelope. You get those envelopes together.
53:46 Speaker 04 Specifically envelopes?
53:47 Speaker 03 What about napkins? Like people have drawn on napkins, loads of things.
53:50 Speaker 04 That's, that's a rival museum.
53:51 Speaker 02 Bag packets?
53:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it's got to be, I think back of an envelope is the.
53:56 Speaker 04 Because remember the Welcome Institute, we saw the paper of which the first DNA sequence, the drawing of how that would look, the DNA strands? That was just on the back of a discarded bit of paper.
54:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:06 Speaker 04 But not an envelope. So you're.
54:08 Speaker 01 I'm sorry, I think, that's not allowed.
54:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, fair enough.
54:11 Speaker 03 Why do you do this to yourself? Make it a little bit broader and it'll make it so much easier to write.
54:17 Speaker 01 It just won't be the same book. Because the title is back of an envelope, you know?
54:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:22 Speaker 01 And the guy, the gag is like.
54:23 Speaker 03 Call it back of a dot, dot, dot. And then that kind of encapsulates them all.
54:27 Speaker 01 I don't think it works.
54:29 Speaker 04 Ah.
54:29 Speaker 01 Because I came up with the idea for the book and then wrote it down on the back of an envelope, right?
54:33 Speaker 03 So. I know, you wrote it on your notes here. We saw you do it.
54:37 Speaker 01 So anyway, that's, yeah.
54:38 Speaker 04 What was the fact? I forgot now how we got here.
54:41 Speaker 01 The guy, Howard Blake, who came up with from the snowman, wrote it down on the back of an envelope.
54:48 Speaker 03 Was he walking down to the post office to post the envelope? Why is he walking with an envelope?
54:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:54 Speaker 03 Like, that's weird.
54:55 Speaker 01 Good question.
54:56 Speaker 04 So many questions.
54:58 Speaker 01 No one carries, even in the 80s, no one's just walking around with envelopes.
55:02 Speaker 03 No, you might have a receipt in your pocket or like a bit of paper or something.
55:06 Speaker 01 I think that's what's gonna make my book so special.
55:09 Speaker 04 Yes. The mystery of it all.
55:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, why, who's got these envelopes? Why is it always envelopes? What's going on?
55:16 Speaker 03 But it never is. That's why you can't fill the book. That's a problem.
55:19 Speaker 01 Well, that's, that's a second order problem, I think. First order is meeting publishers.
55:26 Speaker 03 I think there's a photo of you in every publishing house in London saying, do not let this man in.
55:39 Speaker 04 Okay, that's 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've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on Shriverland on Instagram. James?
55:50 Speaker 03 No such thing as James Harkin on Instagram.
55:52 Speaker 04 Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. And you can get to us as a group. Anna, how?
55:57 Speaker 02 You can email [email protected] or we're an at nosuchthingasafish on Instagram.
56:02 Speaker 04 Yep, that's right. So yeah, if you want to take part in one of our other shows, for example, Little Fish, [email protected] , as Anna says, is the place to send your best facts that you found out. Or perhaps you have feedback about things that we've said, experiences related to the podcast, do write in to us because we will bring those emails to drop us a line, which is our special bonus episode that sits within Club Fish, our private members' club. And you can find out all about Club Fish by going to patreon.com/clubfish. Check it out now. Otherwise, just come back next week because we will be back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.
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