Bonus: Drop Us A Line - Will We Pass the Inspection?

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1:04Hi everyone, welcome to a super duper bit of bonus material courtesy of your friends at No Such Thing As A Fish. This is an episode of Drop Us A Line, which is our audience feedback show. If you listen to it and you have no idea what's going on, then don't worry, you are in good company because this was Anna's first episode back after maternity leave and honestly, she had no idea what was going on either. this episode was released on clubfish quite a few months ago clubfish is our patreon place if you go to patreon.com slash clubfish you can find out all of the stuff that's on there but we're also releasing it because if you like what you hear and if you are in london then you can come and see our first ever live droppers line recording at the london podcast festival on the 12th of September streaming and in-person tickets are available now at nosuchthingsofish.com slash live but in the meantime all we want you to do really is to listen to it and enjoy it so please listen to our audience feedback show drop us a line on with the podcast

2:26Hi! Hello. Oh yeah, you got it. I was going to tell you what you have to do in this situation. I remember how it works.

2:33Anna Ptaszynski:Welcome everybody to Drop Is A Line. Look who it is! Look who it is! Special edition. It's me. It's Anna's first episode back on Drop Is A Line, which is now, by the way, the main thing we do, Anna. Everything else is a front for Drop Is A Line. Okay? This is the heroine behind the scenes of the grocery shop. Yep. Cool. So welcome. Thank you. Back. Right. Cut. Welcome to Drop Us A Line, our audience feedback show. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray and I'm here with Anna Tazzynski and James Harkin. Hi, Andy. Hi, guys. Hello. We've had some fantastic emails. Have we? I'm not even exaggerating. So we're going to start off with just a section, a one-off section, The Return of Anna, because lots of people have been writing in.

3:18That's nice because when you first came on the podcast, when you came back after your break, the first thing you said is, is there not going to be like a special intro for me? Starting with fact number one, it's Anna Tyshynski. Just strip my facts straight or a little welcome back to me intro? No.

3:35Anna Ptaszynski:You haven't been gone that long. Do the fact right. She wants her own welcome back at her intro. Like a little speech or something. Welcome back. It's been awful without you. I know. I've heard the episodes. Liar. I'd rather pull my own teeth out than doing the intro three weeks late. I've been saving it up because there have been so many nice comments. So let's have a few. Great. See if you can spot the theme of these comments. Okay. Sarah writes, love the podcast and looking forward to Anna's return so that she can whip you boys back into shape. Frank Cardinale writes, just wondering if you three are fearful of Anna's reaction to what has become of the podcast in her absence.

4:20Anna Ptaszynski:Fortunately, I've never listened. I love it. But it does have a feeling of the kids running rampant while mum's been away. Theo Warren, welcome back, Anna. Please get these guys back in line. Anthony, can't wait to hear Anna back on the show. Brackets, you guys are great. But after a while, the class needs a teacher. Wow. Okay. Wait a second. Look, I thought this was going to be a big Anna's So Great fest, but I've been called a mum and a teacher. It's very Anna is the disciplinarian. is what the listener's been getting over the last 12 years. Don't know how you've got that. I thought of myself as the chilled out, fun loving clown.

4:53Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, no. But a correction from Deirdre Cooper. The podcast blurb in the Apple podcast player referred to Anna as a prodigal podcaster. Oh, yeah. Prodigal means spending money or resources freely and recklessly, which is what the prodigal son did in the story in the Bible. He spent all his money and he had to come back. I saw the blurb. It angered me as well, Deirdre. Don't get me wrong. I felt like it wasn't a good start for me to open my return by sending a furious WhatsApp message on our production group. But yes, Prodigal refers to the habits of the son who returns, not the returning. Sure. But I was merely using it as a metaphor for you so people would know that you did something similar to what the son did, which was return.

5:41Yes. No, I get that. I get that.

5:43Anna Ptaszynski:But I think also you are wasteful and extravagant. Yeah, that's actually what James meant, secretly. That's why I've had to come back to the show. I didn't want to. Right. Thanks, but no thanks. Which I think you might have coined, Anna. I'll take it. It sounds like me. It sounds a bit polite for you, really. Well, congratulations, Rafael Alvarez. Had an idea for a new tier of club fish. Okay, that's nice. So we've got a dual citizenship, plenty more fish, and then friend of the podcast. Raphael is pitching foe of the podcast for an exorbitant amount of money members can claim one of a limited number of foes of the podcast to curate or fight haven't worked out the details a few examples to get it going Mark Twain Adolf Hitler Zoe Williams the Guardian writer do we have beef with Zoe Williams?

6:35Anna Ptaszynski:she wrote a piece asking why we're such bros on this podcast and it was I think even if you disagree with that piece I think Hitler and Mark Twain that's not hit them Mark Twain and Zoe what a weird dinner party and the Treaty of Versailles yeah okay Greg Wallace of course the foe of the podcast is he he was for a small amount of time we mentioned him a few times as a foe of the podcast did we call it before or after he became a foe of everyone else oh it was after yeah that counts for nothing yeah for bonus invective people in this tier can hear the uncensored clip in which Anna says which country has the ugliest men and or the one in which Dan says which celebrity rejected a chance to meet Buzz Aldrin because they weren't a fan of space.

7:20Yeah, there's been a few of those reductions over the years. Yeah. But the thing to know is that I delete the original. Yeah. So you can never go onto my hard drive and find out who those celebrities are because I delete them. That's good. Just in case someone steals my laptop solely so they can find out which celebrity is not into space. which country has the ugliest men. It's so weird. I really want to have access to that file so I know who I think has the ugliest men.

7:49Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. It must have been. I wouldn't have redacted it if it was a country that we would never play in. Right? Right. Oh, well, that limits it. I see. I feel like I would only do it if it was like Wales or something somewhere where we might play. Is that even a country, though? Moving on. That's a joke, people of Wales. Let's go on to... let's move on it's just a joke to a bonus bream but it's also a get yourself off the hook oh I'm not familiar with these bonus bream is where we get extra information about something that we said in the podcast getting yourself off the hook is where we've made a mistake and Andy tells us about it but you may be able to get yourself off the hook it's worth saying that all of these names have lots of sub names that mean the same thing or sometimes the same name means two different things.

8:43I'm sad that I missed all the brainstorming sessions. There was no brainstorming. There was one brain involved.

8:49Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. I feel weirdly, James, I don't know how you feel about it. I feel weirdly like I'm presenting Drop Us Alive 2, Anna, and I feel a bit nervous. I'm not surprised you do. With good reason. Yeah. Yeah, you're just in the, you're Ofsted, I think, and I'm a teacher who's like been horsing around for a long time. We haven't read Measure for Measure. I'm just saying. if you thought it wasn't fun being called a teacher you've now gone too off the one who fires the teachers right and we've been dealing with a manageable class size of two but i've still screwed it all up i would say okay jamie writes uh i write in the confidence that you're a podcast who appreciates extremely pedantic corrections fair enough in your most recent episode it was stated that neither Oliver nor Richard Cromwell could have observed the Chinese steam car.

9:44Anna Ptaszynski:I believe it was you who said that Andy. It was me who said that. While this is true because it was in the 1680s while this is true of Oliver, Richard Cromwell could in fact have observed it. He reigned as Lord Protector for less than a year but then resigned and lived in exile until the age of 85 dying in 1712 and we've mentioned this before, he was the longest lived head of state until queen elizabeth ii and did he go and live in china that's right hey here's a fun thing i read this is bonus bream from me um who's the first european that you can think of who went to china marco polo do you know he wasn't kind of obviously there was other people who went even as far back as ancient greek some people went to China.

10:32But Marco Polo's dad and his uncle both went to China. No way. He wasn't even the first Polo to go to China. That's really good. Isn't that amazing? They must have been so pissed off with him when he wrote the book Claiming. He was a Nepo explorer. I should have known because in his memoirs he calls his dad drunk from a beach saying please fly me out of here.

10:56Anna Ptaszynski:Here's a bonus from Peter Blum. In a recent episode you noted Earth is the only place with plate tectonics and that they thus may be necessary for life right interesting did you know there is another hypothesis which suggests that life is actually required for plate tectonics because little life is so abundant you know small like microorganisms that it creates things like mud and limestone and that sort of lubricates the plates and that might kick start the kind of tectonics we now have what a theory it sounded silly but when you explain it you You explain that you're not just saying that a human one day said, earthquakes, and it happened.

11:35Then it makes sense, actually. It does. I love that all modern earth and rock are all made of animals. I've always loved that chalk, like the reason chalk is white, is just because it's skeletons. The White Cliffs of Dover is all just dead things. Well, as a boring old teacher, you would like chalk. We actually have an interactive whiteboard now.

11:55Anna Ptaszynski:That you've drawn on with permanent marker by mistake. Oh, Rodeo Clown number one Okay, Rodeo Clown Anna is Well, what do you think it is? I was actually here for this Rodeo Clown Gate I really hoped it might have blown over in the nine months I've been gone Nothing has blown over If anything more shit has blown into where we are Right I didn't know it had turned into a segment I remember Rodeo Clown Gate What segment would it be, do you think? What does it mean? It's something where we say whoa what's this thing and a million people write in and say i'm so insulted i'm this thing brilliant kind of yeah just getting a lot of emails about something so what's the rodeo clam well um i'm gonna start with laura falconer i'm writing in off the back of the latest little fish to let you know that rag and bone men brackets people are still going strong rag and bone people they're not going strong i don't know the context but where are they going strong so what happened was I mentioned that when I was growing up, we had rag and bone men.

12:58But in fairness, they're not always men, but they're always known as rag and bone men where I came from. But anyway, we had them growing up and even into my 20s, we had them. And I was very surprised by that.

13:10Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. And well, I've been schooled thoroughly. Sheffield 2020 to 2022. Laura Falcon has seen evidence of them calling for any old iron. She says, James isn't old. He's just northern.

13:25That sounds like someone saying something when they look at my face.

13:29Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, you look old. No, I'm not old, I'm just northern. Rob Hardesty says, I remember them on horse-drawn carts in the late 70s and early 80s in Rochdale. So maybe it was a northern thing. Annie Self lives in the small rural town of Bungay. Oh, yeah. Oh, and it's Bungie, not Bungay. Sorry. Famous for having lots of Satanists. Not that I've ever met one. Not that you know, Annie. Really? Are they like the Masons or something? You wouldn't mention it Well probably some people mention it as soon as they meet you Oh I'm a satanist But some people probably keep it How do you know someone's a satanist They'll tell you as they pull out your twitching heart And rub it on a wall To open a portal To nether realms But Annie says We have some guys come round again in a flatbed truck Shouting any old iron Which is the proper Any old iron, any old iron See, that's a Cockney song, isn't it?

14:25Yeah.

14:26Anna Ptaszynski:Then Lisa Surtees has a slightly related thing because she remembers them from Hartlepool. It is going strong, that sounds like. I take it back. But Lisa moved to Hartlepool and says, we have some of the last sea coalers. Twice a day, they drive a truck out to the beach when the tide is out. Gather the coal that has settled on the beach with shovels and load it into their truck every day. So that's it. I think they're turds, aren't they? They burn the same. They burn sweet and bright. And then Lisa says, there aren't many places in the world where coal deposits wash up on the beach. Yeah, I think not.

15:06Anna Ptaszynski:But Hartlepool is one of them. No way. It sloughs off and washes onto the beach. Sloughs off from nearby coal mines. From the nearby seam of coal, which is exposed at the seabed. Wow. So it just... That's fantastic. Daniel Painter says, In Little Fish, you had a quick think of who is the most hatted modern day leader. Oh, yeah, that's good. Does the Pope count? Oh, he has to. Yeah, he's winning, isn't he? What constitutes a hat? Are you thinking skullcaps for a chief rabbi or something? I'm thinking skullcaps. I'm thinking like Yasser Arafat. You know what? That's what I said. And they mocked me of not being up to date with my world leaders.

15:44He's not old. He's just Palestinian. I can't hear that someone else has similar cultural markers as I do. Do you think Keir Simon would do better if he always wore a top hat? Yeah. Oh, without doubt. He definitely would, wouldn't he?

15:57Anna Ptaszynski:Anyway, look, we've got 50 pages of emails to get to. Jesus Christ, Andy, because I have to leave today. He doesn't listen. You go when I say you go, not when the bell says you go. Right, let's come on to Boffins. Oh I'm so glad this is still in Yeah Experts on stuff Who've ridden in to school us Mendel Skulski What a name It'd be good if he ran a ski school It says I run a small skiing school Just thought I'd offer a slight correction On the Kelp Highway hypothesis Okay so this was the theory That humans moved down the American coast To follow the seaweed The West Coast where there was lots of...

16:44Anna Ptaszynski:I think it was James who mentioned in passing that people were surviving in transit by eating kelp. I think it was you. I think it was me. It's quite likely that some kelp was being consumed, but more likely it was all manner of seafood. Fair point. Because kelp houses lots of animal species, basically. Oh, yeah, I see that. There's kelp, there's other stuff. But he says, in case you're interested, we, Future Ecologies, spent three whole episodes talking about kelp and it's ecological and social entanglements. Is this an advert for this guy's podcast? Well, I... Redact that. I suppose so, yeah.

17:20Unless they pay us.

17:21Anna Ptaszynski:Okay. But Mendel then adds a great fact, which is the reason I wanted to come to this. It's the fact that sea otters were restored to the west coast of North America after having been driven nearly to extinction, right? Sea otters are almost wiped out. And they were restored not for ecological restoration, but to evacuate them from impending US nuclear testing in Alaska. That's just a cool fact about that. Yeah, nice. Right. I don't know what section this is. Oh, it says MISC at the top here. Does everything need to be a section? Yeah, surely we should just have... It does. Fishelaneous. No, it's muscellaneous.

17:58Oh, that's brilliant. Did you just think of it or has it been... No, but when I said it the first time, I had just thought of it.

18:05Anna Ptaszynski:And then I wrote it down And then I've never remembered it since then But I'm writing it down again now There's a lot of writing stuff down in this podcast now Okay, cool How's the inspection going, Anna? I'm writing a lot of stuff down in here as well, Andy Okay, here's a question for you Hayley Thompson, long-time listener here I'm planning my first trip to the UK Specifically to London Okay I often listen to older episodes of Fish while I'm working and I've been jotting down places to go that you've all mentioned as possible destinations in anticipation. Anywhere else apart from Weatherspoons that she's planning to go?

18:43Anna Ptaszynski:It's not all Weatherspoons, she says. I'm planning to go to Dishoom. Oh yeah, nice. The Weatherspoons of the East. That got me thinking.

18:57Anna Ptaszynski:I love that marketing idea. That got me thinking. If you could all pick a spot that you'd put on a fish tour of London or the UK, what would it be and why? So I thought I'd put you on the spot. I like those next to Cleopatra's Needles. Those, is it the two lions? Sphinxes. Sphinxes, yeah. Where Dan said you can put your finger in the bomb holes. Yeah. That was quite a good moment of fish. That was great. And actually, once you finish there, because that's on the embankment of the river, and you should go to spend a lot of time near the river, go to the Baseljet Memorial, which is by Embankment Tube and it's just it's a sort of it's just quite roady just in a wall isn't it it's just in a wall and it's Joseph Basildrett who built the sewers and it's on land that he reclaimed from the river what's your pick Anna?

19:42oh I would say go to the do you know we did that episode on Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy's grave so Thomas Hardy designed the graveyard in King's Cross was it at the time but then it all got moved and now there's kind of a monument to it just behind King's Cross and it's this amazing kind of tree with all these old gravestones sticking out of it. Spiralling around it. In a spiral. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

20:04Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, that's really good. Powys Corner and Westminster Abbey. Why? Westminster Abbey. All that. Tower of London. I mean, they're just places. St. Paul's Cathedral, yeah. Literally, they will be on your first page of Google. Buckingham Palace. London High. St. James, it's London High. If you can get out of the city, Stonehenge is a good day. Shrek's Adventure, if you can't. I tell you what, if you're coming from North America and you've got a bit of time to spare France is nice. London Zoo has a lot of animals from all over the world. You don't need to go anywhere once you've been there. Yeah. So there's our big friend.

20:40Anna Ptaszynski:I mean, genuinely, these are... We live in a city of jewels. Sure. Wondon, that's what I call it because it's wonderful, you know? Bloody hell.