Little Fish: Get To The Bus!

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1:26at qi.com and he has whittled them down to the very very best we're going to choose the ones to read out and then we're going to chat about them then we'll do some more stuff at the end then we'll all go home you guys are probably already at home never mind let's go who's got a fact i've got one go for it all right this one comes in from fergal finley and uh fergal says my fact is that sliced bread was invented on the 7th of July 1928, whereas national treasure David Attenborough was born on the 8th of May 1926. Therefore, sliced bread is in fact the best thing since David Attenborough. And we're off the blocks.

2:09James Harkin:So that's a very small window of David Attenborough being the best thing. Yeah, and he was only a baby at the time actually. Hadn't really achieved too much at that point. Very little. Yeah. He probably crawled around sort of pointing at his pet tortoise going, here we are. Just a nice fact about sliced bread and David Ashenborough being about the same age. Yeah. I think it's always surprising how new sliced bread is. Yeah. And the famous fact is that it was advertised as the best thing since wrapped bread. Yes. That's so good. And the idea being that you would slice your own bread, obviously, but wrapped bread was good because it would keep it fresh.

2:45And it stayed softer. And it stayed softer. you wouldn't want to have sliced bread before that because it would just go stale really quickly. So once rat bread came in, then you could start slicing it. There was no point having it before then. And thankfully, no one has ever sliced David Attenborough. At time of recording. At time of recording.

3:01James Harkin:Very nice. I've got one here from David Byrne. Now, I'm hoping this is David Byrne, lead singer of The Talking Heads. Maybe. I mean, he would listen to something like this. Do you think? Yeah, he's a real nerd. Is he? Oh, he's wonderful. wow yeah but other david who this might be i'm sure you're awesome too so um david's had been talking it's been saying he says my fact is for the original predator film the studio had to hire a bodyguard to follow sunny landon around to protect other people from sunny as he'd been getting into too many fights on the set oh who does he play is he like one of the he's one of Yeah, he's one of the main guys.

3:45James Harkin:So you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger, you've got Jesse Jackson. But he didn't play the Predator. No, he didn't. Jesse Jackson? Sorry, yeah, I said the wrong name. The civil rights hero. Yeah, he had Jesse Jackson. Wow. MLK has a cameo, doesn't he? He does. And playing the role of Predator in the suit, Mother Teresa. So it's a real hell of a cast. No, Jesse Ventura is who I meant to say. okay um what's interesting is um that this guy sunny he actually ran for governor in kentucky and had he got that he would have been the third cast member who made it into politics as a governor in america oh because schwarzenegger schwarzenegger did and jesse ventura did as well yeah so he didn't he didn't make it unfortunately and he was just very fighty and aggressive he was very aggressive and he was a big guy and he was totally fine on the set it turned out it wasn't needed but the studio for insurance purposes thought we better protect uh this guy from killing everyone else on set um what's interesting as well is um someone famous was meant to be the predator so if you don't know this movie it was like an 80s action film arnold schwarzenegger and there was this monster it looks a bit like alien but he's kind of mostly invisible yeah yes it was always a bit of a problem for the film that the baddie is mostly not visible then he kind of comes visible sometimes yeah right yes yeah yeah he can turn it on and off and they use i think infrared to see him the body or is that how he saw no he sees them because they get in the mud and they get really cold and he can't see them anymore right spoiler alert spoiler alert right at the ending that's when arnie's the only one left yeah yeah right so the original person though who was inside the predator suit that you do get to see at some point was jean-claude van damme no yeah was it yeah and he got fired from the set and there's a lot of uh reasons that that might have happened we had an argument on set with rosa parks i believe who was one of the other marines yeah get to the bus that's from that film yeah yeah wonderful but yeah one of the reasons was is that he kept doing kickboxing in the suit and they were like it's just too much right it's like tinky winky getting fired from teletubbies okay very good here is a fact from michael bartmeier and i'm gonna actually take his facts and then give you a different wording of it okay or maybe a question actually so how old do you think is the oldest ever immortal jellyfish oh uh i'll say 121 years okay big bang right from the go right from the origin came out of the explosion of the universe part of it wow what is this right um i'm glad you didn't go the other way of trying to spoil the game because you would have won it so michael writes that the problem with immortal jellyfish is they won't stop dying uh and he read this in um from maria pierre miglietta who's an associate professor of marine biology at texas a &m and the thing is that theoretically immortal jellyfish can live forever they become adults and then when they get in a bit of danger they become children again and then they go adult child adult child and they can theoretically do it forever but in laboratory conditions it's almost impossible to keep them alive and the reason is you've got to have exactly the right amount of flow of water they're really small and delicate if you put too much water in they just fall apart and if you don't put enough in they kind of sink down to the bottom and fall apart and the longest ever that anyone's maintained a colony of them was a a guy called shin kubota at kyoto university and they managed to keep the colony alive for about two years but that was lots of different ones and i don't think that anyone's ever been able to keep an immortal jellyfish alive for more than about a month isn't that amazing that's very funny because i think we wondered when we covered them on qi all those years ago why are we not wading through them if they are genuinely immortal why the oceans are not just teeming with yes yeah well it turns out that just you just look at them they explode that's brilliant are we gonna do anything to alter the name do you think what they are immortal in theory okay in theory call them theoretically immortal jellyfish yeah that's cool isn't it yeah yeah that's brilliant just one more thing about them there's a candidate in the singaporean elections uh called turriptopsis dorniae t-o-n-mink and the first two words of that name is the latin for a immortal jellyfish and basically he's always in every election but he loses in every election you know a bit like count bin face and so he's changed his first name to the immortal jellyfish latin name because he's a perennial candidate very nice but always completely falls apart that's lovely that's brilliant um i have a nautical oceanic sea life based one as well actually.

9:00Yes please. This comes in from Trevor Lambert and it's that. Great Yarmouth in Norfolk for international listeners. Lovely. Those are both places in the UK. It's by the sea. It's by the sea and. It's a place where you might go and retire once the city life is a bit too much for you. Absolutely. Yeah. Charming coastal place and they have three river crossings right. That's not the fact. The river Yahr goes through there. The river Yahr. Great Yarmouth is at the mouth of the Yahr. right? Oh, Yar Mouth. Great. Yeah, my mouth is telling you that

9:36they have a bridge which, they have a third one. It just opened up in 2024. So this is pretty new, exciting stuff because it's avoided a lot of trouble. It used to have to go right around the houses and now it's made life a lot easier for a lot of people, this new bridge. And Norfolk County Council ran a vote for the name and it was either going to be the Queen's Gate or the Britannia Bridge or the Yar Bridge or the Herring Bridge, right? Herring Bridge One. Now, that's because Great Yarmouth was a great town for the herring industry. Really important. You know, the women who worked in the fishing industry, they were vital to it.

10:07Herring Girls. Herring Girls, it was one of the most important fishing ports in the whole UK. It was a really important town for that. Anyway, unfortunately, most of the votes saying this should be called the Herring Bridge arrived after comedian Richard Herring told all his followers, name a bridge after me. And then most of the votes came in after that point. So even though they set up the vote saying this bridge is named after the herring industry we know that the reason this bridge is called the herring bridge did it win in the end? Yeah it won. Then the reason it's called that is because of Richard Herring.

10:40James Harkin:So are you going to get him to write the forward to your book? Yes! That's amazing. He's an example of the thing. You know an example. Yeah that's pretty spooky. So anyway there you go and it cost 120 million quid and it's named after Richard Herring probably. That's quite something. That is cool. Yeah. I like that. Okay, still on nautical. Should we stay in the ocean? Yeah. Kay Stone writes, knowing how fond you all are about the weird animal organ called the cloaca, thought you might enjoy this article published in the New York Times. And she's given a small excerpt here, which says, when danger calls, some animals bare their teeth.

11:18James Harkin:Others take to the sky or curl into protective balls. But the remora, a fish that often hitches a ride on a larger marine animal like a sea turtle or whale, sometimes follows a less dignified strategy. It disappears inside a manta ray's rear end. And this is a new discovery. The remora does what is known as cloacal diving. And according to a scientist who looked into this called Catherine MacDonald, it does not look like the manta ray likes it. When you climb up a manta, but you say it's just banter, that's remora. Yeah, nice. It's very good. It's not bad. It's not bad. No. It's not bad. I didn't say it was.

11:59James Harkin:My face just said that. You looked bad. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, this is a new discovery. But the remora, pretty fascinating animal. It's used for fishing as well, the remora. Is it? Yeah. It's a really interesting process because you would attach the remora to your fishing line. You lower it down. It sucks onto the animal below and then you bring it back up. Wow. So it's a sort of reusable bit of bait because you can then take it off and put it back in. That's incredible. The bait sort of eats the fish in a way. Yeah, or just holds on to enough of it. So like a turtle, for example, if you're looking to get turtles, you might put a couple of remoras.

12:36James Harkin:You might put a few of them. No. That's what it says. It can support the weight of a turtle. Yeah. Give over. That's what it says. Give over. I've never heard such cobblers. Well, it's cited in a book from 1787. Oh, wow, that case. Yeah, yeah.

12:53If it's 300-year-old knowledge, then it can't be wrong, can it? Okay, speaking of fishing, I have a fact here from Mark Fisher. Beautiful segue. And Mark Fisher has given me a fact. I say given me because I think this is one especially for me. Mark says that it takes six containers to get 100 ,000 hundreds and thousands. And Mark attaches the calculations, which I won't subject you all to, But for Americans, these are sprinkles that you put on, like fairy cakes and stuff. And Mark has taken a load of them, put them on some scales, weighed how much they each weigh, and then worked out how many you get in each container, and then worked out how many you would need in order to get 100 ,000.

13:41And the answer is six. And looking at the working out, I absolutely believe him. Oh, it's so nice when the fact is not harkened. It's surprising. No, I feel very happy with this. I think the maths is all good, but fancy a game? Yeah. Realizing that Americans call hundreds of thousands sprinkles, we call them hundreds of thousands. I've looked at what they're called in lots of other languages. And I want you to tell me whether the following is the translation of a word for hundreds of thousands in another language or an item you can buy on Gwyneth Paltrow's website, goop.com. Okay. Smile makers Someone's banging away next door Sounds like someone's been on goop.com already I'm going to say Hundreds and thousands of smile makers Well I'll go for goop then Dan is correct Goop.com Next one Star bullets Hundreds and thousands It's goop Yes Mouse droppings These are all going to be from goop.com You're going to go on a sex toy website and buy some mouse droppings.

14:53Goop.com. Final answer.

15:00James Harkin:Hundreds of thousands then. It is. They're called misenstrontjes in Belgian Dutch. That's brilliant. And I messaged Lievon to ask if that was true. And he said 100%. They're called mouse shit, really. That's what they call them. Love pearls. Oh. Goop. Well, yeah, I've got those. it is the german word um for hundreds and thousands wow and finally viva la vulva that was on my son's fifth birthday cake can you believe she's got a sex toy called viva la vulva well her husband yes chris martin former husband yeah he had an album that was called Viva la vida. Yeah. Oh, that's very clever. That is good.

15:47That's fun. I think that's fun. I wasn't keeping scars. I don't think anyone cares. I would just say they're not called hundreds of thousands. Hundreds and thousands. That's what I'm saying. They're not called hundreds of thousands. They're not claiming there are hundreds of thousands in every one. I mean, if they were being really accurate, they'd call it 16 ,000 roughly. I know what you mean. But I suppose If you call them hundreds and thousands Then the word hundreds becomes a little bit obsolete Because having a thousand Implies that there's at least a hundred It's true, it's a bad name Love pearls is much better

16:30Here's one From Sarah Logan This is about something that uses water So it's very interesting, they sort of group themselves the facts like we had a load of naval fish based ones in the same week and they just sort of bunch together do you think it's that or do you think you're just shoehorning them into that category can't be that can't be that let's go to Sarah's fact Sarah Logan writes she listened to a very old episode recently where we were excited to learn about the song played at the end of a Samsung wash cycle Die Forella by Schubert

17:03James Harkin:yeah okay and that does it's about some kind of fish isn't it I think it is It's the Trout Oh is it? I think it might be You definitely did one called the Trout I don't know if it's the same one Well the bizarre thing is There are many models of Fisher and Paykel Top loading washing machines That with the right prompting Will play you the New Zealand National Anthem What? Isn't that good? Yeah It's just an easter egg They've got a couple of National Anthems loaded in Really? But if you get the right buttons On your right washing machine It'll play you Go on New Zealand Or whatever the National Anthem's called Go on New Zealand?

17:35I don't know it I don't know the name do they have them all do you know no I think it's just go on New Zealand that's the one that's the one you've got of course have we established that you're quite into Hitler at the moment in previous episodes I don't think I'm into Hitler I wouldn't say but I'm a second world war history buff I'll go that far Dan's got all the stuff in his shed

18:04James Harkin:nice try buddy nice try one more fact before we go on to custodianship yeah um i've got one here from sebastian bro who says my favorite fact is that the heat released in the manikugan impact crater was so intense that it took between 1 600 and 5 000 years before the melted rocks cooled yeah it's insane the dinosaur one in mexico it was i thought that was called chick chula that's That's the big one, but this was during the time of the dinosaurs. Oh, okay. It was near the end of the Triassic period. It was an asteroid that was five kilometers wide, and it hit what is now Canada today. And you can see it from outer space, and it's kind of one of those shots that a lot of astronauts on the ISS like to get a shot of because there's a visible ring of water.

18:54It's the Annula Lake. Yes. I do know this one. Yeah, yeah.

18:57James Harkin:The Eye of Quebec. And it's an island because the land raised as well. And then I think the humans diverted some water there or something. But what happened is you've got an island with a lake around it. And the area of the island is larger than the area of the lake that it's in. Don't like it. What do you mean? No, what do you mean? If you take your cup that's on that round coaster, the area of the bottom of the cup is bigger than the area that you can see of the coaster. yeah yeah yeah nice isn't that cool i think i'm almost certain it's that one eye of quebec is so metal yeah so cool and yeah really amazing that that distance of time for something it was cooling down for 5 000 years up to 5 000 years yeah and um and this this was a fact that sebastian sent i'd give it 5 000 years if i were you by the way i think it was because the it wasn't the asteroid itself the rocks from that that was hot i think it's what it exposed underneath and it sort of melted that okay and created that um but yeah this this fact sebastian found it from this guy's website he's called crater explorer and it's a fascinating website i highly recommend if you're interested in this kind of stuff to go because it's quite old school so it's one of those sites where this guy's just put everything on there he's a crater creator curator creator curator of creators content crater doesn't quite work does it no greater curator works like a charm yeah we'll go with that what does he go with creator explorer yeah probably why he probably tried all these other ones and they didn't quite work yeah wow okay well thank you very much for that fact dan thank you for all your facts andy but actually thank you most of all to the people at home who sent the facts in and we are going to thank you back by giving you some of our old facts in the form of our curatorship if you would like one of these facts then all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash clubfish join at the top level which is friend of the podcast and we will give you your own fact okay which of you guys is going to give us the first curatorship today i'll dish one out to randall cleaver and it's that every second a star in the universe explodes i think it'd be tired by now very good no it's a different star each time.

21:18It's a different star every time. Do you know Beetlejuice is going to explode soon? I didn't know that. What does that mean for us? Might be a good light show in the sky. Wow. But when we say it's going to explode soon, does that mean that the light will reach us in kind of 400 years? Well, we don't know if it's exploded 500 years ago because the light hasn't reached us yet. But certainly it's well overdue and it's doing some funky stuff, like sending off different colours and stuff that we think that it might go soon. And when it does, it'll be worldwide news because it's one of the most obvious stars in the sky yeah it'll be a super nova but it might have happened 400 years ago but we don't know absolutely that's exciting do they

21:57James Harkin:think possibly within our lifetime it could happen tomorrow oh my goodness it could happen before this show goes out it could have happened or probably after we've all long gone wow will it be a bright sky it'll be very noticeable you might be able to see it in daytime oh that's cool that That is very cool. That is cool. Yeah. Wow. That's a great fact. That is an amazing fact. Here, let's give another one out. James, why don't you do this one? Okay. This next one is under the curatorship of Fiona Maguire Jennings. Now, that isn't hard at all. I don't know why you didn't want to read that out. The fact is that the Tlatel Camila cannibals of ancient Mexico ate the human flesh with chili sauce.

22:43Really nice. Great. Really nice It's supposed to taste like pork Isn't it? Human flesh Long pig James you must have tried it at some point Human flesh You've tried all so much creative stuff Can I just say I edited The Jamie Martin podcast Earlier this week And just for the record I have not eaten a dog's penis Have you ever been to a Greg's? no i've never been to a gregs oh then you may have avoided it altogether they do vegan dogs penises in fact um i cut it from the main show so if you're watching this you might not remember it it's in the excel version which you'll only get if you're a member of the middle tier of clubfish yeah yeah yeah um i have eaten bull's testicles which is what you were half remembering was it candy uh i think it was anna who said that i need to maybe the penis of a labrador wow she worked

23:47James Harkin:for a specific breed what a false memory to have of james that you're just happy to put out on a podcast james is eating labrador dick labradoodle dick labradoodle was it labradoodle a labradoodle i think that's how she introduces me to her friends yeah she's like oh my friend james is coming around oh yeah oh you'll remember him he's the one who i oh dear oh my god all right let's do another one there's nothing wrong with gregs all right let's do another one dan do you want to yeah this is emma wood you are now the custodian of dogs aren't allowed

24:27James Harkin:dogs aren't allowed at selwyn college cambridge so the master's basset hound has been reclassified as a very large cat. Lovely. That's really good. Lovely. And was this the one also with Byron's bear, maybe? Oh, the same college. Cambridge was the same. Yeah, I don't know what college he went to, but... He was at Cambridge, yeah. I don't think he was at Selwyn. But similarly, he wasn't allowed some animal, but he was allowed a bear. Is that right? That's something like it. That's the story. I've never known how true it is, and I've never wanted to check. It's one of those too-good-to-check ones, if you know what I mean.

25:03James Harkin:Well, what point can you keep a bear in theory until it turns on you? Have you ever watched Gentle Ben? No. What's that? It's a TV show, maybe? Or a movie? No, it's a TV show, I think, from America about a family that has a bear. But he's very gentle, hence the name. It doesn't turn on them. Well, season seven is called Ficious Ben. At that stage, things do go a bit awry. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't turn on them. Should we have another one? Yes. Yes, please. This one goes out to Janus Vermack Janus, your fact is According to the diary of the first chief of MI6 This is how the first day went Quotes Went to the office, saw no one Nor was there anything to do there Wow, they're good those spies, aren't they?

25:52As soon as he left They all were hiding behind the plant pots Going, ha ha

25:56James Harkin:That should be it He should walk into an empty office every day and if he spots anyone, they're fired. Yeah, brilliant. You know, good at your job, buddy. This was, I love this fact. Mansfield Cummings, was it? It was called Mansfield Cumming. And this was a book that when I first started QI, I bought this book just called Sea, which was all about him. And it was the most enjoyable thing of just finding all these incredible facts about this one human. It's something we love doing on fish all the time. He used to have a wooden leg and go around on a scooter. and I think he was busted when he went into Germany once trying to pretend to be a soldier but didn't speak a word of German and was busted immediately when they said hello to him You'd think you'd at least learn hello You'd think you'd have that I mean it's hello No it's not He went to it and went bonjour Oh shit Okay here is one more This one is going out to Connie Ball and connor your fact is that there is a distillery in kentucky that claims playing bruce springsteen to the whiskey improves the aging process very nice very nice that happens a lot now you hear a lot of these studies where rock and roll is used or i remember they played metal to sperms for the ibf process wow yeah there was also in japan i think it was called rising beethoven bread something like that where you would play beethoven to the bread and yeah wait why don't they call it beethovis why do i have to do all the work around here hovis is not the name of a bread company in japan well god do i but just do you know what i mean what about beethoven beethoven that's better beethoven there's a lot to do here who thought this name would give so much to the world of branded ovens it's just ridiculous isn't it you know we're out here every day creating value that's not being picked up if these people were still trading because i'm sure they're not and they heard this do you think they think i we should we need to change our name guys biggest forehead slap of all time yeah do you think they're probably saying maybe if you had the brains of these guys we would still be operating honey Rising Beethoven bread What a dumb name Beethoven, perfect Let's have another This one goes out to Rupert Davis Rupert doesn't actually have Patreon But he's 10 But it has been arranged on his behalf Hope you enjoyed all the dog penis talk Sorry Rupert Sorry Rupert's parents Sorry everyone who's listening Absolutely But Rupert, your fact Now and forever Is that there is a statue of Nikola Tesla In Silicon Valley Which radiates free wifi I'm sure it's still there And this is just a great fact about Nikola Tesla The mad scientist The original mad scientist almost Yeah Lover of pigeons Inventor of death rays And purveyor of wifi The man who invented the 20th century He's sometimes known Congratulations Rupert We got another one here This is going out to Jason Kidd I wonder if that's Jason Kidd the basketball player Probably A third of people in Britain Have written almost nothing by hand In the last six months Wow This fact went out in 2017 Do we reckon there's been a great renaissance in handwriting since then?

29:37I suppose not I think it might be more people who have written very little by hand in the last six months since then. Okay, one more, I think, for today. And that fact is now under the custodianship of Tom Vyart. And Tom, your fact is that the first man to swim the English Channel later had a show where he floated in a tank for two hours. Wonderful. Matthew Webb? Yeah, Captain Webb. Captain Webb. Or was it David Blaine? I can't remember. Did he drown? Captain Webb I feel like Captain Webb eventually drowned doing something Did he? Yeah I'm not really sure about that The first thing that came into my head was the first person who went over the Niagara Falls Or first man maybe who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel died after slipping on an orange peel Yes Archibald Leach But Captain Webb, I don't know whether he died or not I know that he basically just went on doing swimming tricks for quite a while and obviously you can't sell tickets to people to see you swimming long distances because they need to be all about to follow you right so um you have to do like lots of acrobatics and stuff i think i've just checked i'm afraid he did drown did he over niagara falls what did he that's probably why the niagara falls thing came into my head yes and i'm just going to say it's bobby leach not archibald leach archibald leach was cary grant that was his real name you know what all these facts are in my head but they just all mix up in different ways i love that as a show

31:06James Harkin:you can't bring the english channel to the stage but you can bring a little tank of water and show what you look like in the water it's amazing yeah yeah amazing innovation and i can confirm the audiences like to see someone struggling and treading water for an extended period of time because i sometimes do the intros and outros for this show and it might be time for another one of those now so thank you so much to tom jason rupert connie janus emma fiona and randall uh thank you so much for becoming custodians of facts and for supporting no such thing as a fish on patreon if you would like to do so too go to patreon.com slash club fish and you can become a friend of the podcast there or if you would like us to read out some of your facts send them to podcast.qui.com and Andy will save all the best ones for himself and send all the other ones to the rest of us.

32:00Busted. And then we will greet them out on Little Fish. Thank you again for listening. Thank you, Andy and Dan, for being here.

32:07James Harkin:Thank you, James. Thank you. About time someone liked me. Goodbye.