Little Fish: Chromosomes are coming home

0:13Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray and joining me at the fact table to dish out some of your brilliant facts that you've been sending in are James Harkin and Dan Schreiber. Hi Andy. Hello Andy. Andy, you've come for, I'm just painting a picture for those who are listening and not watching. You've come sort of dressed as each other today. We've got black t-shirt. Oh, I've got a black shirt on. You've got a black polo. Yep. And have you got shorts on?

0:39James Harkin:I've got blue trousers on and James has beige shorts. But in fairness, Andy is just imagining what's happening on the table. I certainly am. Good lord. Stop it at once. We've got a show to record. Right. Has anyone got a fact? This comes in from Eric Nosborne. Eric Nosborne says, Hi, since you're going to my hometown of Lund I thought I'd send in one of my favourite Lund facts We are going to Lund very soon Sweden It's in Sweden We are playing the festival there And we're going to be doing a live podcast recording So come along if you're in the area This is the fact that Eric has sent I think it's sold out Well, come stand outside the doors Kind of cool viral marketing But with no purpose Now it's sold out Cleverly done, but no point To no point They might move us into a bigger room That'd be good That'd be great.

1:27James Harkin:So write in for a bigger room. Here we go. Can I get to the email? This is from Eric. He says, the discovery that humans have 46 chromosomes was made at Lund University. Before that, for over three decades, we thought humans had 48 chromosomes. And I guess no one bothered to double check. They add in brackets, it's a bit more complicated than no one bothered to double check. But that sounds funnier. So we knew that chromosomes existed. they counted them and then it turned out the two of them didn't count exactly and the point of the email from Eric is that additionally Lund has the area phone code of 46 and Sweden has a national phone code of 46 so if humans had actually had 48 chromosomes after all the discovery would have been made in Poland instead is that how that works?

2:17yeah that's brilliant and if we lose two more it'll be in the UK

2:23James Harkin:yes oh yeah yeah lose two more it's coming home

2:33James Harkin:yeah i love those area code facts and i did try to find a few i was reminded of one that we actually did as a headline many years ago which is that the telephone code for cape canaveral where they launch all the rocket ships is three two one beautiful um i've got facts here yeah This is from Rachel Cunning. And Rachel Cunning has fact number one, and she entitles it two liqueurs and a cocktail. And this is about the current World Cup, which I think is still ongoing when this goes out. Certainly England probably still out there. We've just beaten the Democratic Republic of Congo the day before we recorded this.

3:15But this is about someone who's already gone out, Curacao. Curacao who are the smallest country to ever qualify for the World Cup They are currently managed by Dick Advocat And they have a player called Jell Margarita One team, three drinks Lovely Curacao, Advocat and Margarita And all very much from the fun end of the cocktail spectrum I'd say Do you think Avocat is really fun? What's the flavour of Avocat? Is it? It's not avocado It's not avocado It's lawyers I'm going to Google it It's made from egg yolks Sugar, brandy and vanilla That's quite fun I suppose so You make snowballs out of it, don't you?

4:00Yeah It's not like boring old sherry No They don't have a player called Newcastle Brown Ale Or anything I think that's a brilliant fact Lovely Yeah, Rachel says I'm sure James already knew them I did know about the Curacao and Avocat thing but I didn't know about Jel Margarita. I'd never heard of them until the World Cup started. So that's really good. Brilliant. Have you ever had Curacao? It's like blue. I've had blue Curacao. Yeah, yeah. Blue Balls. Blue Balls, named after a guy called Balls. Really? Yeah, you probably wouldn't think it was named after the medical condition of having very big testicles.

4:36I don't know what... Is this a drink, a Blue Ball? Blue Balls is the brand name of Curacao. Oh, I don't know that. I've not had it. Yeah. Or Balls Blue, maybe. You call it Balls Blue. But yeah, Curacao, do you know what it was invented?

4:54The Netherlands. Yeah, in Flanders. Close enough. Maybe in Belgium, just about. But yeah, because... So in Belgium, as opposed to the Netherlands, but because Curacao is a Dutch colony, they could get the oranges from Curacao. They're really bitter, and you don't really want to eat them, But the orange skin is really nice if you boil it down with alcohol. Nice. And that's what they make it out of. That's great. That is good. That's really good. Oh, that's a lovely fact. I have a World Cup fact. Oh, cool. This comes in from Adam Rodriguez. His fact is, the soccer balls currently in use for the World Cup must be charged before each match.

5:38Yeah. Charged. They've got to charge them. They have a chip in them. so you can tell if the ball's gone over the line. To help with the various technical mumbo-jumbo that you have to do these days.

5:49James Harkin:It's very interesting. Can I just quickly add to that point? Because there was a match on that just went with England, DR Congo, and the commentators on the BBC kept sort of bringing up this thing that almost sounded like a conspiracy theory. They were saying, they keep swapping the balls. Why do they keep swapping the balls? And they were reminded of Deflategate in America, in the NFL. So deflate gate was where Tom Brady was using balls that were slightly flatter because it made them easier to throw and catch. Why did they call that deflate gate and not the Brady crunch? Yeah. Because they didn't have you.

6:27Yeah. But there is a thing about these balls which is controversial. Yeah, they fly in a weird way. They've used a new design. I think it's four panels on the ball. basically at a certain speed it undergoes drag crisis and it moves faster it speeds up and it's because the air around it goes into a turbulent state and that disrupts the drag on the ball so suddenly if you kick it fast enough it then speeds up a lot of the goalies are saying that was a lot faster than i thought it was going to be how mad is that that's wild and you know what uh time of recording we're about to play mexico next and because of the altitude difference there and the air's a lot thinner, apparently it's even worse when you go and play in altitude.

7:10Really? Yeah. I think that's a good conspiracy theory, that, you know, the ball because it's got a chip in it, people are going to say, oh, well, it's actually a drone. Yes. And the whole thing's been controlled by big football too. It's a spy. It's a spy. I like it. I do like it. The outcome's been fixed. I feel like it would be obvious if someone kicked the ball and suddenly it started flying and then turned left and then turned right. and then got shot down by a Ukrainian soldier. I feel like, yeah, yeah. But there's, well, it's not that thing.

7:41James Harkin:I had, can I, because it will just never become a fact unless I say it, a fact that was not picked for an upcoming Fish episode. But I just really like it, which is that Cristiano Ronaldo is one of three players ever to score a goal in every minute of a football game. That was a good game, wasn't it?

8:03Wow. What about during halftime? You ever scored a goal during halftime? No.

8:08James Harkin:He's not that good, is he? Great. Well, that's a really good fact. Let's have another. Yeah, let's have another. Here is one from Waleed Malik, who says, I'm writing to share a couple of Canadian lake names I discovered recently. I know you discussed Canadian lakes on the podcast before, but I don't think these came up. There is a lake in British Columbia called Another Lake. Oh, yeah. Which is called Another Lake. Brilliant. What was really nice is right next to another lake, there is a second lake that is called And Another Lake. I can say that was in my notes for that episode. I never got around to saying it.

8:44And I checked on Google Maps to make sure they definitely existed and they do. Fantastic. Yeah.

8:48James Harkin:It was originally proposed, but the notes on it, this is in 1968, say, this is not a satisfactory name and it won't be used on BC Topo Maps. So it's the official maps. however because a long-standing usage just happened it just buckled but it did get a rejection and it overrided it it's confusing though if you're ringing the emergency services and you're saying help i've fallen into another lake that is confusing yeah another lake

9:23oh that's good that's very good very nice very nice here is a fact from lynn juliana Sovic Nis, you tell us about jigsaws and that it is impossible to make a square puzzle with exactly 1 ,000 pieces. So all of them have more than 1 ,000 pieces. Now, first of all, we're talking rectangles, not squares. Sure. Okay. So the idea is your jigsaw, the image of it has to be on the box. Yeah. Okay. And so that has to be roughly the same shape as an A4 piece of paper. Yes. because that's how big they make the boxes. You can make different size boxes. You have to go to a specialist box making place to do that.

10:05If you want a run of the mill games box from off the shelf, you're going to get an A4 size. So the problem is actually with big box as opposed to with big jigsaw, right? Yeah, and big maths. Because if you want an exact A4 sized jigsaw, the side of a a4 piece of paper divided by the width is the square root of two so you need to come up with two numbers that approximately when you get one of them and you divide it by the square root of two you get the other one that's impossible because it's an irrational number but the closest they can get usually is 38 by 27 which is 1026 pieces okay so most 1000 piece jigsaws have 1026 pieces that's so annoying now we were going to do this on qi last year because i read this facts as well and i was going to give alan davis a big box with a 1000 piece jigsaw and say how many pieces are in that jigsaw and hilarity was going to ensue but then mike turner who's one of the researchers who does puzzles had a look at the jigsaw he was making at the time and found out that it did have a thousand pieces so i do believe that what lynn said is true for many jigsaws if you look at the internet they definitely agree like people have checked but there are definitely some the one that mike was doing was made by a company called gibson's who are a proper jigsaw company and so there are some that have exactly a thousand pieces now well 20 by 50 is a thousand so if you just had a slightly longer yeah they need have to buy a slightly longer box.

11:43No, I know. I know. I'm going to talk to the box people later. I'm just going to do the maths. No, like, it is possible to multiply two numbers together to get a thousand, but then the standard box sizes means that the image on the box wouldn't look like the thing you were making. That's why my innovation of a fold-out poster of the thing, you don't get a picture on the box. Well, you do get those in kids' ones, don't you? Also, here's a great idea. I'm sure it will be. A 1 ,000 by 1 jigsaw. yeah that sounds hard that's a real challenge it depends if they each have a number on them it's quite easy but if it's just an image of a snake it might be quite tricky it's a snake well i've got the anus piece so i know where that goes and i've got the head so i know where that goes that's how you start with great news this one has two edges that'll be useful

12:36James Harkin:so are we saying that no matter how lucrative and the amount of money a jigsaw company is making they're held back from innovation by the box companies seems like it it does seem like big boxes got them by the nuts wow i used to know someone who ran a cobalt box factory he doesn't invite you around anymore because you're a bit boring

13:02James Harkin:what um what what can you tell us it doesn't go any further than that that's it my friend's dad used to make the boxes for stanley kubrick you see this is an anecdote he was upset with box sizes and so kubrick designed his own boxes john ronson did a whole thing about this yeah he went and saw the archive john ronson was looking through all the boxes of Stanley Kubrick's archives, but then was going these boxes look very different and it's because he designed these boxes and my friend's dad Your mate doesn't have any stories like that? None of these told me It really throws into relief how bad my one was when Dan comes up with a Stanley Kubrick cardboard box personal anecdote like oh my god I can imagine you Andy, we're about to go, I'm going to tell this story.

13:59No one's going to top this.

14:06Can I do another fact? Yeah, you go. Okay. This is a fact from Shane Carroll, and it's about a chess move called The Greek Gift. Okay. And that's where you lay a trap for your opponent. You sacrifice a bishop. It feels like you should sacrifice the horse. What a good point What a good point But basically you sacrifice a bishop And you lure your opponent's king into a dangerous position And then you can clobber the king And you checkmate that way So Greek gift Horse That's why it's named that right? Maybe Oh no But according To the Oxford Companion to Chess This is named after Giochino Greco A 17th century player who frequently used it Now where did he get his name Because El Greco the painter Yeah Had Greek heritage I'm sure Interesting Well Greco was from Italy that's correct So It could be this It could also be that it's a Greek gift named after When you get that far back the etymology is a bit hairy But Shane I just want to say thank you for keeping it alive Very nice

15:20James Harkin:do you think there might be more squares on a chessboard if the boxes were allowed to be a bit bigger very nice so here's something from lynn limb who has a phd in immunology and is writing from switzerland and this is about a way of administering vaccines intranasally where the mucus inside your nose then is able to attack the pathogens okay whatever you've got but the amazing thing is that the mucus in the rest of your body then can also attack the pathogens and what that means is that you can give someone a vaccine up the nose and protect them from infections in their vagina brilliant wow and vice versa well they're currently working on that okay this is called common mucosal immunity it's quite i've looked at a couple of papers it's quite trendy at the moment in immunology but yeah they're working out whether you'll be able to do it the other way do a pessary up there and then it will stop you from getting a cold wow wow isn't that amazing that is incredible that's really one reason it's quite good is because using the suppository or the pessary sometimes can help the medicine get a bit slower into your body if you're doing nose spray it just go straight up there.

16:38Whereas the other ones kind of dissolve a little bit. So if you need to release the active ingredient a bit slower, then putting it up your nanny might help. They're both going straight up there, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose.

16:51James Harkin:Your nanny? Your nanny! Your nanny! Your nanny! It's a Sarah Millican thing. Yeah, it is. I mean, all women have them. She's not copyrighted. sorry sarah oh dear wow and that correspondent was lin lin brilliant name as well yeah right that's enough of your facts now it's time for some of our facts because if you join club fish our private members club uh by going to patreon.com slash club fish if you join at the friend of the podcast tier then you will get a certificate and custodianship of one of our headline facts from the last 12 glorious years of podcasting so let's dish out a few of those now who would like to dish one out i'll go first okay this one now goes out to owain wilson and owain your fact is that every time alfred hitchcock had a cup of tea he always smashed the teacup he was so focused on his stuff he probably didn't even notice that he was smashing the teacup you know oh i thought he was doing it to make a point i just feel like that feels more hitchcockian to me that he would he would just be like get that out of here i'm ready to go for my next bit psycho uh he was a bitter one yeah lovely lovely well at the time i think we said it was to remind himself of the fragility of human life which feels like a an actual psycho thing sorry i pushed you in the face to remind myself of the fragility of human life also how many cups of tea because i have six or seven cups of tea a day right so i would i would before long have a room full of shards yeah as in there must be a hitchcock pyramid somewhere which is just full of all of his old brockery yeah it's surprising that they weren't collected and sold off as little bits of because remember right i mean who wouldn't want to buy that i absolutely would buy that i know you uh The dentist who was associated with Winston Churchill, remember he used to throw his teeth at the wall.

18:56James Harkin:I believe it was him who used to collect all the cigar butts that were dropped on the floor, and he would give them his presents and sell them off and so on. These little things are great. Absolutely. Mylene Klass used to give away the Pope's toilet paper. Do you remember that? Yeah. I'm just saying there's an industry. Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock. Very good. I mean it doesn't have anything to do with what Dan's just been saying His really nice monologue I think you just cut from the fact to that Can't you I was just padding so you could think of a joke I was just helping Sweating away over here Right let's have another one Dan Okay this goes to John Riley And the fact is Lord Byron's nickname For William Wordsworth Was William Turdsworth Great fact I love that fact You're a big fan of Byron I am He's funny Yeah, he's a funny writer.

19:47Naughty boy, but a funny poet. And there aren't many of those around. God knows. I like to think that you are the Lord Byron of the Fish Podcast, and I'm the William Wordsworth because I, you know, lived in the Lake District. Because I have an insulting nickname for you.

20:06James Harkin:You're a shag machine, Andy. Yeah. You're going to die young. I spend a little bit too much time with my sister. Oh dear So there we go That's a great fact I'll dish one out Yeah To Douglas Ingram And your fact Lucky you Douglas Is that Replacement eyelids Can be made From foreskins So if you've You know Had an accident And you need a You know An eyelid substitution That sounds very Very fragile skin there You can make it out of a foreskin Yeah Probably get a few eyelids Out of one foreskin I would have thought Or it would be One very floppy eyelid A huge eyelid Yeah yeah yeah Can you do it the other way around if you regret your circumcision?

20:47James Harkin:Can you get your eyelids put on your foreskin? You'd look very surprised all the time. Well, you'd be feeling it. Yeah, yeah, I imagine. Oh, dear. So, yeah, but there you go. Thin skin. Very useful. Okay, here is a fax now. Under the custodianship of Caroy Laurenti and Caroy, your fact is that the first item to be sent by a New York's pneumatic tube postal system was an artificial peach and the second was a live cat. I didn't think at the time, what use is there for an artificial peach? I suppose it's not going to bruise. Good point. But then it's not a good test, is it? I mean, the cat will bruise.

21:30You need to know. The person who managed to persuade, let's say, the cat to go into that tube. Cats like going into small spaces sometimes, though, don't they? Yes, but they will do it under their own rules Yeah, sure If you try and put them into a small space They will have absolutely none of it Like if we want to put our cat into her little box To take her to the vets or something Yeah, I love a pneumatic tube I knew you weren't Your favourite pneumatic tube? Oh, don't Because we'll be here hours

22:05James Harkin:Alright, shall I Another one in here? This is for Georgina Pereira And your fact is scientists have invented algae that tastes like bacon. Brilliant. Facon. Facon. I mean, it exists, right? Yeah. What do they make that stuff out of? I have had quite a bit of artificial bacon in my time. Yeah, sure. Sorry, Dan probably knows now about how Charlie Chaplin's grandson, who he knows, is made of fake bacon. Whatever, I don't care. But I would say one of the problems with a lot of the fake bacon is that fake bacon is quite hard to do really well. and some of the stuff I've had has tasted like fish. Really?

22:42Yeah, you get it. And it's just got that little tang of fishiness. So maybe I've had algae-based stuff. I don't know. Oh, I see. It's possible. That's very cool. Corn.

22:52James Harkin:Can you get corn bacon? Corn. Corn. We're in New Jersey, so yeah, why not? You can add bacon taste to corn, just like you can add any taste to corn. Corn is named after a hunt. Is it? Yeah, the Korn is a famous hunt in the countryside. And then there was like a big mansion or something, I'm going to say, that has the same name as this Korn. And then they named it after that area, I think. Because you'd think it would be because it's related to Korn. It's absolutely not. It's bizarre. It won't be on the front page of your new book. What? Things that are named for a slightly different reason. No, because it's not named after Mr.

23:31Tony Korn.

23:32James Harkin:That's the problem. It'll be in an appendix. Let's have another one This one is going out to Brian Wood Brian, your fact is that Telescopes have a new telescope smell That can break them Wow That's very cool And this is about off-gassing It's like when you have a new car There's a new car smell And it's because all the chemicals are kind of settling down And it turns out telescopes are exactly the same And then didn't cars like add it artificially Once they stopped having these sort of weird chemicals That came off things people kind of liked it so they started putting sprays of fake car smell i mean i love the smell do you that's why you get a new car every week so there you go that's uh that's your fact brian i hope you like it very nice have we got time for one or two more go on let's have one okay this one now is under the custodianship of zrax Z-R-A-A-X You don't need me to tell you how to spell your name, Zrax I'm sure you've had to do it to people who run hotels almost every year of your life But your fact is, now that there is a museum in North Korea that has a scaled-down replica of the world's largest table I would have bet all my money that that was an Andy fact and I could see it was mine Ah, how interesting I think the world's largest table was used in some kind of diplomatic thing.

25:02Oh, really? I believe. And the replica was because it's a replica of that incident. But still, it just looks like a normal sized table. That's such a good thing. It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful. Yes, James, you're so right. It was a present given to North Korea by another country for their national friendship exhibition.