Little Fish: Gary Scrabble

0:13Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish, the show when we look at your amazing facts that you've been sending to podcast at qi.com. Andy has whittled them away to the very, very cream of the crop. And then we pick out the plums, mix all our metaphors, and just chat about facts. So who's got a fact? I've got one to kick off. Yeah. This is a fun one. This comes from Daniel Hamer, and it's about the island of Kiribati. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Island or islands? It's islands. The islands. Apologies. It's starting with an apology now. I'm sorry to the people on the other islands of Kiribati Apart from the big one Which is the one I was thinking of Daniel's fact is The word for dog in Kiribati Is kamea And that is because It's a bastardisation of English Derived from the time dogs were introduced to the English And locals heard the English calling to the dogs Kamea Really?

1:11Is that true? That's a different breed Well, I just, I looked up the language a little bit and it's called Gilbertese as well. Yeah, because it's the Gilbert Islands, but it's Kiribati is how you write it, Gilbert's. It's so strange. Yeah, they were called Les Îles Gilbert and Kiribati kind of derived from Gilbert, Kiribati. So you can sort of see how it happens. But previously they were known to Western visitors as the Kingsmill Islands. After the bread. After the bread. Oh, wow. Yeah, there you go. Very nice. I got one here. Go on, Dan. This was sent in by Arthwallapot, who has added in brackets an internet name.

1:51Thank you for the clarification, Arthwallapot, who says that there is a species of Chinese ground spider whose technical name is Hot Wheels Sisyphus. Okay, so Hot Wheels as in the little toy cars? Yeah. Is it? Yeah, and Sisyphus as in the... The Greek guy who pushed the boulder up the hill. Exactly, yeah. And yeah, it was discovered in China. and just the nature of how the spider moved reminded them of Hot Wheels, basically. And so they gave them this name. I wonder which will stand the test of time for longer. The story of Sisyphus, the ancient 2 ,000-year-old tale of the guy being punished for all eternity, or the Hot Wheels brand.

2:31Are Hot Wheels the ones where you pull them backwards 10 times and then let go and they go really fast? Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. They probably are within the Hot Wheels world. They are also just small cars and you get those big plastic loops that you can send them around. Loop the loops. Yeah, exactly. Imagine if Sisyphus had to push his boulder around the loop the loop. Nightmare. That was probably level two if he ever got to it, which he never did. Because I think that's worse in a way, because when you get to the top of the loop the loop, you have this amazingly satisfying moment where you can roll all the way back down the other side.

3:02Yeah. But if he never quite reached there, it's even worse. And I've been to the hill where he allegedly pushed the boulder. Have you? Yeah, it's in Greece. And what do you think? Could you have done it? No, I couldn't. It's not that high. It's just outside of a city whose name I can't remember, near the Peloponnese. Okay. And as you're in the town, you can see this big hill and the locals say that's where he pushed it. Did you say allegedly because Sisyphus is famously litigious? He'll sue you and then tomorrow he'll sue you again. I suppose I didn't mean allegedly, I meant according to legend.

3:41According to legendarily Hey this is interesting Hot Wheels, do you know who invented Hot Wheels? Someone who's famous for making Maxi size cars No, someone who's famous for toys Oh okay We can get this, a famous toy person Erno Rubik Lovely I'm excited to know that you know Who the inventor of Rubik's Cubes are As your first go to How many other toy makers do you know? I don't know, I don't know edward yo-yo i don't what's that uh gary scrabble what's her name melissa who did barbie there we go oh yeah there we go she was called ruth handler hot wheels was invented by her husband isadore elliott handler he created hot wheels he created creepy crawlers he created chatty kathy these were all massive in their day yeah they were absolutely and uh i'm sure someone is right now strip mining the intellectual property to try and desperately turn out another Barbie-level movie.

4:41Yes. On Chatty Cathy. It's happening. Chatty Cathy was one of the pioneers of pulling back a string and having a voice come out. Yeah. No, sorry, just like the doll being a pirate. It's just a funny idea, that's all. Yeah, very cool history. Okay, I've got a fact here from Mira Brown. Mira wrote in from Canada, and they said that Jack Daniels has become a bellwether of Canada-US relations. Okay, so there have been, if you've been following the news, Donald Trump has been calling Canada the 51st state and been putting lots of tariffs on. And so there's been a lot of boycotts in Canada of American goods, and especially of alcohol and especially of Jack Daniels.

5:23And I want you to guess what the percentage drop in sales in Canada of Jack Daniels has been in the last month or so. And because I know you two are going to mess up this quiz like you always do and bet like a billion percent or something right i'm going to put a prize on the line so i've been to the shop and bought some whiskey oh oh wow so the winner proper whiskey or jack daniels proper good whiskey i'm really excited so i'm so annoyed because i do the emails and i did not pay any attention to this one um so what percentage of sales down since okay trump and canada got into this by the Wait, James, this is an amazing incentive structure you've put on the table here.

6:05It's fantastic. I should know this because I have been to the Jack Daniels distillery, as I've probably mentioned before. Have you? Have you? I've been to Tennessee. In the last month? No, during geopolitically calmer times. But they call you up when there's been a change in sales numbers? In 2008. I'm probably on the mailing list still. All right. Who's going to go first? Okay. I will say 72%. Drop. Drop. Okay. I'm going to say... It's whiskey on the line. 0.5 percent not even one percent 0.5 percent wow oh well you don't like whiskey then i suppose well i still could be closer to andy's yeah yeah yeah if you're anything under what 36 percent yeah i'm afraid dan the answer is 62 percent oh so andy's there you are you get your whiskey are you serious there you go very nice um now god this is lovely it's really nice isn't it open it What is it?

7:00It is to do with my facts that I'm about to tell you. This is like Inception. This is amazing. It's called Uncle Nearest. Uncle Nearest. Oh, and it's from Tennessee. Lovely. Yeah, so it is named after Nearest Green. And Nearest Green was born into slavery and emancipated after the Civil War. And he was the guy who taught distilling to Jack Daniel of Jack Daniel's fame. and the company Uncle Nearest Incorporated created this whiskey. We're not advertised by these guys. I just went to the shop and got it. They created this whiskey in his honor and Uncle Nearest Whiskey, their master blender is Victoria Edie Butler, a descendant of Nearest Green and the first known African-American female whiskey master blender.

7:49Cool. That's terrific. There you go. Thank you very much, James. Beautiful. I'm actually getting to the end of a bottle of American whiskey right now. Yeah. Yeah I currently don't drink so this is oh, that's perfect. Yeah James you've just given me a prize and I'm afraid I'm about to not return the favor This is a fact you won't like basically But it's that and this fact comes from Jay Bagley the majority of the world's citric acid Which is added to so much of our food is derived from industrial vats of black mold in China I know James you're not a fungus person. I'm allergic to black mold. Oh As in I did an allergy test and there was like two or three things and that was one of the main ones I think everyone's I don't think it's good for anyone I thrive on it Okay well this stuff is safe So I'm sure you guys have heard of citric acid Yeah It's in lemons It's in lemons It's often 8 % of the dry weight of a citrus fruit Just to give you an idea of what's going on inside your lemons But the citric acid is incredibly useful for all sorts of purposes and all sorts of foods and it's in so much stuff.

8:53It's in ketchup, it's in fizzy drinks, it's in chewable vitamins. It cleans your kettle sometimes. You know, there's limescale things you drop in your kettle. They can be citric acid. It's used to improve the solubility of brown heroin. I knew I knew it from somewhere. You are off the drink at the moment, but unfortunately... If you can guess the percentage of citric acid... And basically, so you can get it in fruit, but it's a real pain to extract it from fruit. And the world makes 2 million tons of it. Does that mean heroin contains vitamin C? Yes, I think it probably does. As I keep telling my doctor.

9:32How much would you have to take to get your recommended daily allowance? Well, the good thing is it's Moorish. So, you know, even if you only have a little bit, you know, you'll be at your level soon enough. But basically, there's this fungus called Aspergillus niger, which causes black mould on grapes and apricots. And that is the mould that you can synthesise and use to grow and create citric acid. And it's really safe. It's approved and everything. But genuinely, 2 million tonnes a year, if we were sharing it equally between us, that's 250 grams, give or take, per person per year that we're getting through.

10:06Is that a lot? It will probably be a lot all in one go. That's probably a reason we don't do that. What percentage is it in a citrus fruit, did you say? About eight. Okay. and it was 250 grams. So multiplied by 12 and a half times that would be about three kilograms, just over three kilograms each of dried citrus fruits. Of dried citrus fruits. That's very important. You've got to leave those lemons in the sun. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Nice. I got one here from John McComb who writes that Disney has a now closed airport where the runway plays when you wish upon a star when a plane lands and goes over it at 45 miles an hour.

10:47That's incredible. Which Disney? We're talking Florida here. Florida. Yeah. So this was built in 1970 or 1971. No one's actually too sure. And the idea would be... Probably. They just did it in December and January. That's probably a spillover month to the new year. That's true. So yeah, so this was built and it was largely used for the official Disney plane called Mickey Mouse One. When Walt Disney was alive He had Mickey Mouse 1, the original plane Like Air Force 1 Like Air Force 1 And it was so that he could go scouting for locations For possible future Disneyland properties It was so that he could continue his meetings Okay, just a quick pitch Quick pitch The president is visiting Disneyland, right?

11:33Yeah But then there's some kind of attack, some baddies attack And the president has to flee on Mickey Mouse 1 Yes And what then like a load of Walt Disney characters in all of their outfits accidentally get into Air Force One. That's it. That's it. That's it. And they've got the nuclear football and all of that. Yes. And Goofy's trying to work it out. Yeah. And you have some foreign president going, who's running this country? Mickey Mouse? Which is a famous thing you would say. That's a good... Yeah, we'll have a script edit, of course. Of course. You've done all the main work, I feel. So anyway, yeah.

12:08So it's not used. It's not used largely because Because they've built stuff too near to it. There's a monorail that means that if a plane did come in, it would possibly crash into it. So it's largely used as a parking area now. So it's still there. And the strip with the music is still there. So if cars go over it, you can still get When You Wish Upon a Star. Because I thought from the email that it was in a whole abandoned Disney park that just wasn't in use anymore and had kind of been overgrown. I was getting a bit sort of excited about that concept. Cool fact, though. Here is a fact. This one is from Maxine Iglich.

12:40and Maxine says that Slovenia harnesses the power of ASMR to attract tourists. So Maxine was on the Slovenia official website for visa information and they stumbled upon this page called The Sounds of Slovenia and it's amazing. It's just a load of embedded audio clips of The Sounds of Slovenia. Right. They have bobbin lace making, Bigfoot, Dan. I love it. Trains, Andy. great yeah no golf unfortunately uh but yeah it's just a place where you can hear what slovenia is like that's great i've actually been to slovenia i've not heard i didn't hear a single bobbin lace being made no i have two have been there and i didn't see a single bigfoot no and as far as i can see bigfoot isn't a thing that's associated with slovenia no i'm not trying to think of what my sound of slovenia was and i think it was the crunch as the hire car we had rented scraped along the side of an underground parking garage and what would turn out to be an incredibly expensive moment for me.

13:43They do have that. It just says crunch, crunch. Oh, for sake! This is going to be 600 euros. So I was looking at Bigfoot in Slovenia to see what they're talking about, and it doesn't seem to exist, but there is a thing... As in so many places. Imagine James solved Bigfoot. There he is. No, actually, that's the one place you'd hide if you were Bigfoot. You'd go to a country which didn't have a Bigfoot myth. That's perfect. Yeah. They have a thing called Ljessi, which is like Slavic in general, but they have it in Slovenia. And I was reading the Wikipedia of this sort of Bigfoot-like thing that lives in Slovenia.

14:21And apparently it has green eyes or white eyes or blue eyes. It has no eyebrows, although sometimes in some stories it has eyebrows. In some stories it's described like a giant, but some stories it's described as a small person and sometimes he's of average height and he wears a wide-brimmed hat or a pointed cap or has no headwear. Dad is nodding along like, it's as I thought. Well, there's more. I mean, they're a species. It's not just one of them. So they're going to have different fashions. Some will suit a hat, some won't. You know, when I went to Slovenia last, one thing that was quite interesting is we stayed in a hotel in a village.

15:01I was with my wife and the bed had a bundling board in it. incredible oh Dan you won't know these not with your number of children but it's a board you put down the middle of a bed to prevent any hanky panky between a man and a woman sharing a bed so the idea is in rural America they would allow a couple to sleep together before they were married but to make sure that they didn't do anything naughty they would put this board in between and I went to this hotel and it had a board in the bed did you ring down to reception could we borrow a drill please No, a small bit is fine This is a great one It's from Nathan Shear And it's that the Duke of Wellington was two hours late To his own funeral Okay That's the thing you say about people sometimes, isn't it?

15:54He'd be late to his own funeral We did a fact, Elizabeth Taylor actively organised To be late to her own funeral And she wore two or three different outfits Did she? was on the day yeah so really i've forgotten that anyway basically 1852 this was the last i'd say mega funeral for many years until probably i don't know queen victoria 1901 or maybe winston churchill 1965 it was a big deal because he was obviously a big deal and basically they made this mad steampunk carriage to transport him through the city it was modeled after ancient descriptions of alexander the great's funeral carriage right i know it's it was eight meters long five meters high it weighed 12 tons it took six iron foundries to make this thing like weeks and weeks a dozen horses to pull unfortunately what this all meant was that when it got stuck it was a complete bastard to free it took 60 policemen when one wheel got stuck to lift this thing up and get it back on the road and uh like the horses were absolutely exhausted a group of sailors had to help give it a push at one point what were they doing there i suppose what were they doing there they're just watching there were reps of all the armed forces there and so i suppose you'd have a team of sailors following the thing but there were 1.5 million people on the route the funeral route wow it was just one and think of the year 1852 like the population was way lower at the time do you know what the biggest funeral of all time was um gandhi Very close Jesus Nehru Probably closer than Gandhi, I think Mal?

17:33Unfortunately, it's someone you've never heard of So that's a problem It's Anna Anna Dijinsky Not Anna Dijinsky I'm just wondering where she's going I mean, she never texts back So I thought it was normal You've been on three dots for six months It's Anna I've forgotten her name Basically, it's an Indian politician I think he might have been Deputy Prime Minister Or something like that I met someone recently She's Indian And she had at her wedding 50 ,000 people What? Catered? It was catered And you were only invited to the evening Oh sorry 50 ,001 Can I have a Oh no plus one? That's no problem I'll come along It's fine Yes I think she had political connections or her family were in politics and when you have a big politician's, even their children get married, it's traditional that basically you invite everyone from the province or whatever it is.

18:33Yes, right. I just Googled the biggest funeral and it was C.N. Anadurai in 1969 and 15 million people attended. Oh my goodness. Oh wow. He was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Blimey. There you go. Did you know him well? No, me neither.

18:54okay that is enough of your facts as great as they are and they were great they were brilliant really enjoyed them it is time to give custodianship over to some of our facts so anyone who is a member of our patreon at the top level which is friend of the podcast becomes a custodian of a fact and so damn why don't you kick us off with a new custodian yeah okay this is for paul kingham paul we're on episode 29 of the podcast and you are now the custodian of the fact that in the 19th century you could be committed to an asylum for novel reading very good so this was uh this was records from west virginia asylum in pennsylvania state lunatic hospital and other reasons we were told about in that episode for admission included being kicked in the head by a horse, bad whiskey, and imaginary female trouble was another one.

19:52Imaginary female trouble. I can't remember what that was. Is it imaginary trouble from females or is it imaginary females causing the trouble? Very good. Probably both, I would imagine. Either of them is going to get you locked up. Yeah, absolutely. I can't hear the phrase kicked in the head by a horse without thinking of Brian Blessed. Do you know this, Andy? It was the first time that I met Brian First time I met him as well Yeah, and James met him as well He arrived to do Museum of Curiosity And we went to pick him up in the main reception And he was sitting there with a giant blue head Like the whole front of his face Nose It was his own head He didn't have a giant blue head by his side No, it was his own blue head And he could see us clearly looking a bit worried He said, don't be alarmed, old boy Got kicked in the face by a horse And it had happened that morning Wow Yeah, he was in his field, got kicked in the face by a horse and then thought, better go do Museum of Curiosity and came along.

20:44And was he impaired? I think. It was hard to tell. The horse's fault never recovered.

20:55Oh, fantastic. So good. Okay, go on Andy, give us another one. This one goes out to Hannah Wilson. Congratulations Hannah, because your fact, this is, I'd say, a hall of famer, is that the Greenland shark lives in cold water and can only swim at one mile an hour. Its main prey Seals swim at two miles an hour That was one of mine I remember reading that And trying to calculate the speed At which the prey could escape Does it sneak up? Yeah, it has to wait till they're sleeping Basically Okay, here's another one This one goes out to Ian Wolfe An old friend of the podcast himself And his fact is now That the head of the International Chess Federation Believes that chess was brought to Earth By aliens That's right.

21:40This sounds like a damn fact, but it's not. It was no it was mine like obviously I'm a big chess Not a big aliens fan, but I love I love my chess He said that the aliens gave us two things chess and sweet corn With a gun to my head. I don't know which I would give up Mmm, neither has played neither plays a massive role in my life. I'm teaching my daughter how to play chess at the moment I'm trying Basically she takes the horses And plays Rapunzel With them You've got a tower for her To be up with the rook Yeah that's true You just need to work a bishop into the Rapunzel story Yeah because we have the king and queen King Frederick and Queen Ariana Perfect I'm not sure where the pawns come in Okay Dan another one Yep this is a fact going out to Monique Julia To attract new members, the Japanese Yakuza Crime Syndicate has its own website and theme tune.

22:40I want to say I'm a big fan of the Yakuza. Well, we've talked about them a lot, haven't we, over the years. Friends of the podcast? No. Okay. They featured a fair bit. We've done their tattoos and their pinky thing as well, where you have to lose half a little finger. And Halloween. They're very active during Halloween with kids and giving out sweets and so on. But they can't do the Addams Family theme tune Because they can't click their fingers Well they've got a theme tune chain So they don't need to Very strong I don't even know what that means Here's another one, this goes out to Kate Matthews Congratulations Kate, your fact For now and forever is that The first BBC radio presenter with a northern accent Was given the job to make it more difficult For the Nazis to impersonate newsreaders Brilliant I remember exactly where we were when you said that fact We were doing a Soho gig I think it was one of our first Soho gigs Oh, I think it was Was it not Aces?

23:34Aces and Aces? You're right It was Aces and Aces That's right It was a live show Regardless I think it was our first live show Our first live show, really? I think it must be Episode 30 Wow, yes He was called Wilfred Pickles, wasn't he? That's right And the British authorities knew The crossover between Nazis and Northerners Is zero The Venn diagrams are completely The circles are completely separate Well, let's see how that Norton by-election goes next week um but um interesting yeah that's why no nazis have ever been able to replicate this podcast that's right they managed to get you three to a tee but okay here is one that is now under the custodianship of kerry harvey and kerry your fact is in china if you want to empty a building of people you just have to play the song going home by Kenny G.

24:28Yeah. It's because it's just the song they play when it's home time. People know it and so if you're in a shopping centre or something they start playing it you hear it you're like oh there must be time to close. Yeah. They play it if a train has reached its terminating point in the underground so you know to get off at schools they play it at the end of the day. I hope they still do it because this was 10 years ago obviously. It was 10 years ago but I hope Kenny G still has the cultural cachet that he did then. I met Kenny G as a kid in Hong Kong. Whoa. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. That's big. He was hitting on someone, so I wasn't a welcome presence in the moment.

25:02How old were you? It was in a health club. I was about nine. Did you get an autograph or anything? I did, yeah. Please fuck off. I'm trying to hit on this lady. Go home. He just whipped out his sacks and played a few bars to you. Scram, kid. That's so funny, Dan. Dan, give us one more. Okay, this one goes out to Lindy Stevens. The two leading paleontologists of the 19th century used to destroy their fossil sites after excavating them so that their rivals couldn't excavate them. This was the Bone Wars. Basically, they hated each other so much that they just wanted to stop any other finds being discovered on turf they'd been over.

25:48And there was a big scandal when one of them got a stegosaurus the wrong way round, wasn't it? What, put the plates on the inside? It's incredible this thing could live at all I might be getting that wrong Maybe it's the Diplodocus that got the wrong way I think there was a famous incident at one point I think it was associated with one of these guys Yes Anyway That's a great start Episode number 30 if you want to go back and listen to it You can find out more Andy give us one last one Alright this one goes out to Henry Smith And it's the fact that in the Fula language A computer crash is a hooky which means a cow falling over but not dying.

26:28Wow. Okay. And this was about Mozilla Firefox and translating into lots of languages. So there are small languages where you need to come up with new metaphors for what's just happened to your computer. Because they're going to translate it into all these languages, you know, so they need to say what has happened. Where is the fuller language? Do you know? I think it stretches across lots of different countries in West and Central Africa. So it's a bit of everywhere. So, yeah, yeah. Cool. And there are a couple of other ones which are a timeout, which is your fish has gone away. It's a timeout.

27:03Like when your request is timed out, you haven't collected it for whatever reason. Your fish has gone away. And an aspect ratio is a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. Things we can all relate to. Okay, well, Henry, hope you enjoy that fact and hope you enjoy them too. Lindy, Kerry, Kate, Monique, Ian, Hannah and Paul. you have gotten your facts and if you too are a member of the top tier of patreon friend of the podcast then listen out in the next few weeks because your name might be mentioned as well if you would like to become a friend of the podcast then go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and you can find information about all of our different tiers up there in fact you can even sign up for free and you'll get some stuff some little bonusy bits that we're that we're working on.

27:50Yeah. So go there and sign up no matter what, even if you don't want to pay. That's absolutely fine. But we hope you come back here next week. We will be having a big fish on Friday. We'll be back here for a little fish next Monday. So goodbye from me. Goodbye from Andy. Bye. Goodbye from Dan.

28:09Goodbye.

28:19making.