Little Fish: I am Dorkus, Queen of the Dorks

9:54Dan Schreiber:main you've got to take the roots the roots are stunning yeah the roots are much bigger than

9:59Andy Dawson:anyone else's roots how long is your penis six foot one if you include all of it

10:12Andy Dawson:um so yeah great great fact uh hyperion could be a bit taller i don't know if we said this on if we discussed this on the show is that the tallest individual redwood tree there was a family of woodpeckers who lived at the top and they kept pecking at the top of it so it couldn't get any taller right otherwise it might have been a few inches taller as well that's very funny what's the what's the tallest tree you guys have been up been up yeah um well i've been to like some tree houses yeah is that the kind because i remember you said that you went to a lookout tree

10:42James Harkin:once in australia yeah there's a there's a whole bit of oz and i can't remember what it's called now i feel like it was called like valley of the kings or something like that um but that might have

10:51Andy Dawson:Was it the Valley of the Dorks?

10:55Dan Schreiber:I am Dorcas, Queen of the Dorks.

10:59James Harkin:Yeah. Yeah, it was a... We had to climb pegs around, so it sort of went around like a spiral staircase. And you get to the totes.

11:07Andy Dawson:I remember you told us because we did this when... Who was the guy? William Burroughs, was it? Who works as a lookout? Or one of those beat generation works as a lookout? Jack Kerouac. No, it was Kerouac. it was kerouac but yeah we we discussed it and you said that when you went up someone was coming down or something there was a little hut at the top and there was a woman sort of crouched and

11:27James Harkin:too afraid to move and i get it i think if i was an adult as a kid you have less fear i feel with that kind of stuff um she could still be there i have no idea because we just went back down

11:36Andy Dawson:because what am i going to do last time i properly did some tree climbing was andy's wedding yeah climbing up the trees that's right it was in a beautiful building with lots of grounds it

11:47James Harkin:It was a bit distracting as they were doing their vows that in the distance there was this man. Yeah, it was okay. I don't mind. Swinging through the tree.

11:54Dan Schreiber:Someone had to look out for wildfires. I do wish you hadn't been shouting, Oh!

12:06Andy Dawson:Have you seen the roots on this one?

12:11Dan Schreiber:You're absolutely right, James. It was Kerouac. I forgot that.

12:13Andy Dawson:Yeah, in fairness, it was Dan who said that and I just agreed with him. I just headed in a beautiful assist.

12:19Dan Schreiber:Well done, James, for agreeing with that.

12:20James Harkin:Yeah. All right, here's another one. Let's get another. This is from Dennis Walker, who says, I always like facts about things being in unexpected time frames. So the classic thing of the Incas were around while Oxford University was around. The idea that woolly mammoths would have been walking while the pharaohs were still at the same time. The Australian pharaohs. The Australian pharaohs? What are they?

12:42Dan Schreiber:You were in the Valley of the Kings in Australia. It doesn't matter. Those ones, absolutely.

12:50Andy Dawson:It's so funny, listener. We literally just had a little break for maybe 20 seconds where we just sorted something out. In that time, I'd completely forgotten about that conversation.

13:01Dan Schreiber:Me too. I pressed the button on both of the backs of your necks for three seconds

13:04James Harkin:and that just did a hard reset. Well, anyway, what Dennis Walker is trying to tell us is that he says, my favourite one of these, is that Jack the Ripper could have taken the London Tube to Whitechapel because they cross over in time. So the London Underground Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863. Whitechapel became part of the East London Railway in 1876. This was then joined to the original Metropolitan Line in 1884 and the murders happened in 1888. So it's quite possible that... And it is the London Underground and the people who would have crossed over with it is pretty fascinating. We know Mark Twain, enemy of the podcast, took the London Underground.

13:44James Harkin:Of course he did. In theory...

13:48Dan Schreiber:That's so him. Oh, look at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe he was Jack the Ripper. Yeah. That's my new theory.

13:56James Harkin:Yes, if he was a time traveler, because he was here in 1900 and the murders happened 12 years before. But it's really interesting if you look at who was alive, who could have potentially gone on the London Underground at that point. Okay, if you have games like this. Hit us with some. Well, Charles Darwin. Oh, yeah. And Charles Darwin was coming in and out of London in the period where there was a line. I don't think it was as

14:15Dan Schreiber:You know, tell you what, survival of the fittest I know that feeling Going on the escalators at Hoban Carry on

14:24Andy Dawson:More like Climbing up the steps at Covent Garden That's good too

14:28Dan Schreiber:You don't need to be fit to go on the escalators Do you know what, the joke's evolved It's undergone a slow process of improvement You set him up We'll knock him down between us

14:38James Harkin:Bram Stoker would have been alive, Oscar Wilde would have been alive brilliant um arthur conan doyle was alive and arthur conan doyle was one of the people who actively had a theory of who jack the ripper was and actually baker street was one of the first to be open wasn't it i think brilliant so that that is that is handy if you were going to be doing that um he had a theory that it was a woman and it led to the jill the ripper theory oh yeah And quite a few famous names of the day who are not so famous now, like Madame Blavatsky, who was an occultist, was suggested as a possibility.

15:15Dan Schreiber:Tell you what, you need to be as clever as Sherlock Holmes understanding some of that crazy tube map, don't you? Oh, it's complicated.

15:22James Harkin:Back then it would have been really simple because it was basically one line.

15:25Dan Schreiber:Yep. James. James, pull my nuts out of the fire quick. No, no, no. I want to hear more. I think that's quite a good idea For some kind of show or something It's an underground carriage in 1890 And it's Bram Stoker Charles Darwin Who else did you say? Conan Doyle Oscar Wilde I guess Queen Victoria? She's on there? She wouldn't have been on there I guess not

15:50Andy Dawson:How many of these Tufts would have actually used it? I know the first few times They brought really important people To go on the underground and I remember there was one MP who refused because he said he was like in his 70s and at that age he wanted to spend as much time over ground as possible. Very nice.

16:07James Harkin:That's nice. I tried to see whether Darwin had actually gone on it and no one knows, but the suggestion is you can't say he definitely didn't because it was such a novelty and such a new thing that curiosity might have got the better of anyone to just at least experience it once.

16:21Andy Dawson:Did they have first class in those days? They did, yeah.

16:24Dan Schreiber:They had third as well, actually. So that's a good pitch If anyone wants to write that sitcom with me

16:29Andy Dawson:Has anyone ever gotten back in touch with you For any of your other 200 ,000 sitcoms That you've mentioned on this show?

16:36Dan Schreiber:I think the important thing is to look forward What matters is getting one commission Not having 200 ,000 failed ideas The good thing is

16:43Andy Dawson:When you get this one commission eventually You have a lot of ideas for your second series

16:47Dan Schreiber:Oh yeah, we're going to have to move a few things around

16:51Andy Dawson:Okay, it's not an underground carriage We're in space

16:53Dan Schreiber:but it's probably fine.

16:54James Harkin:And everyone's got a Guinness World Record.

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17:35James Harkin:We do together better. Learn more at emory.edu. All right, well, listen, why don't I move us on to the final section of our Little Fish show, which is every week we like to award custodianship to one of the facts from our long 12 year history of fish to someone who is part of the highest tier friend of the podcast as part of Clubfish on Patreon. If you want to join that, by the way, patreon.com slash clubfish, you get a bunch of fun things. And one of those things is one of our facts. And we'll send you a digital certificate to commemorate it as well as a shout out here. And we're going to do some now.

18:14James Harkin:So, why don't we start with you, James?

18:16Andy Dawson:Okay, this fact is now under the custodianship of Chiara. Chiara, your fact is that William Morton, the father of anesthesia, first experimented on himself, but kept falling asleep before he could describe the results.

18:33James Harkin:I wonder what tiny little alterations he made going, this time I won't fall asleep. Because it sounds like he did it more than one. This time I'll make it not work. What can you do?

18:44Andy Dawson:Yeah, the success is a failure

18:47James Harkin:Yeah, it's almost the opposite of your sitcom situation Okay Well that's very cool, William Morton

18:58Dan Schreiber:Let's do another one, Andy Yes, this one goes out to Gitwang It's the fact that, I love this one It's the Chessington World of Adventures Which is one of Britain's great, great entertainment sites Banned animal onesies To stop the animals there From getting confused Interesting Because it's a huge theme park They've got a zoo as well Attached and lots of animals there And this was a time When we did this fact it was 2014 Onesies were a very big deal Do you know the Chessington World of Adventures

19:33Andy Dawson:Is so old that Mary Somerville Could have lived there Beautiful Beautiful I've never been to it Me neither We have to do a group trip Where is it? It's in South Is it in the South of London though? Yeah, like Southwest It's a few stops further out from Kingston I would never really go in that direction No Oh my goodness

19:59James Harkin:Is it a zoo and other stuff?

20:01Dan Schreiber:Yeah, the zoo is a relatively minor bit of it I mean, the most important thing is the amazing rides And the entertainment And just the all-round good family day out It's just a great place I went there a lot I went there a lot as a child Have you ever been to Alton Towers?

20:13Andy Dawson:I've been once Yeah I loved it It's built on an old ground Where there was a massive bloodbath of a battle In like the 8th century or something Really? Wow

20:22Dan Schreiber:And still you can hear the screams to this day Exactly yeah I went to Alton Towers And I went to the restaurant where your food gets a rollercoaster to you Have you done that one? Yo sushi It's more of a lazy river No, there's an amazing restaurant there Have you been there? I haven't, no Oh my god Right, you go there And you order your It's a burger and chips normally And you look up And there's this The kitchens are up there Right up in the ceiling And it comes out Your food comes out And then there's this crazy array of rails And your food tray goes on a rollercoaster And it loops the loop And it swells around the room And it eventually lands down at the thing And then you go and pick it up Do you get to buy a picture of your food at the end?

21:07Dan Schreiber:When you're walking out? And it says, don't get that one. I don't look good. I don't look nice. It's amazing. Like, it's genuinely so exciting. Okay. Yeah. Wow, cool. As someone who likes transport, infrastructure and lunch, it's the perfect place to go. You take all your business lunches there.

21:24James Harkin:Wait, so this sitcom. Okay. All right. Let's move on to another one. This is now a fact for Jared Raitt. And that is, if you got into an argument in 18th century Abyssinia, You could resolve it by blaming everything On the camel

21:41Andy Dawson:Scapegoating And it was a way that everyone could get out With their integrity intact Because like both sides No one wants to back down but you blame the camel Unfortunately I don't think it ever Ended well for the camel I feel like it might have been Offed But it was just a way that making sure That no one had the hump with you Very nice I assume we made that

22:07James Harkin:joke at the time it'd be quite fun to go back and see if we did um what episode was it that is episode 36 wow yeah i think we'd already evolved past those kind of jokes by that stage what um it's the sort of modern day the dog farted right um only if you and andy got into a huge argument

22:29Andy Dawson:where there might be death because you're arguing over who farted yeah you're like no no it was the dog and then he goes okay yeah fine it was the dog then yeah and then you kind of go your separate ways and no one gets injured but we have to kill the dog yeah oh boy okay here is another one this is now under the custodianship of laura lufu and laura your fact is very simple the ancient greeks

22:54James Harkin:played with yo-yos beautiful fact this was one of those facts where i saw it in the picture so it was on pottery this old ancient greek pottery crazy with kids laying out a yo-yo and i remember going that can't be a yo-yo surely and then it is and they they had yo-yos it just as we're talking about with facts sort of jack the ripper in the london underground the ancient geek the ancient greeks played with yo-yos come on with geeks did you say i did accidentally say that in the valley

23:24Andy Dawson:of the dorks that's good i think um we don't know for sure that they were yo-yos in the modern sense that you could come up and down and walk the dog and do tricks. It could have been just a stone on the end of a piece of string, right? Oh, I see. Do you wheel it around?

23:42Dan Schreiber:Because the technology to spit it down and make it stay down there for a bit, that feels like advanced tech. Yeah. Yeah, to me. No, it is. I agree.

23:51Andy Dawson:I think you need to know how to make a little loop on the end of your string, which feels tough.

23:57Dan Schreiber:As I say, advanced tech.

23:59Andy Dawson:Yep.

24:01Dan Schreiber:No, that's a beautiful fact I really like that one Here's another one This goes out to Luisa Primo It's that most honeybee hives in the USA Live on flatbed trucks Oh yeah Great fact Transport and infrastructure

24:14James Harkin:And Bees Food And food All three No wonder this is an Andy Murray fact

24:20Andy Dawson:And also, do you know why they do it? It's so that they can pollinate almonds Yes Which I believe in the last episode of Little Fish had quite a prominent position.

24:31Dan Schreiber:We busted a myth about almond extract being made of almonds. It was mostly made of peaches. Yes, and this is about all the bees that are driven around. And I think, do we work out the cost? It costs one cent to hire one bee for one day or something. I think we did a bit of maths about it at the time. Yeah. No, it's a crazy fact.

24:49Andy Dawson:Okay, here's another one. This one is now under the custodianship of Monty. Loved your work in North Africa, Monty. and your fact this week is that the sacramento police department's got at least one call a week from people stuck in the world's largest corn maze amazing that's so funny i wonder if they

25:10James Harkin:eventually installed phones in their emergency phones um because it was happening at such a rate

25:16Andy Dawson:i feel lost in the corn maze though you might not yeah what are you gonna say what could you see well i can see corn on my left corn on my right corn in front of me we'll go backwards then

25:26Dan Schreiber:This also assumes you can find your way to the phone I mean the problem is that you're lost in the middle of the maze Yeah, yeah, but that's Unless you've got a phone every 10 meters in this maze There is a great thing though, of course Now we all have phones all the time I prefer Dan's method of installing static infrastructure Throughout the corn maze You guys don't leave your phones at the entrance of a corn maze

25:45James Harkin:Before going in for the real experience?

25:47Dan Schreiber:It makes it, yeah, yeah, you're doing it properly

25:49James Harkin:I didn't know you were doing it on hard mode Raw dog in it right here is another one and this one is going out to natalia o 'keefe and that is in 1874 there was a plan to transport dead bodies from all over europe to mount vesuvius and dump them in so the like nature's crematorium right it's a was that it it was basically i think that was it and i think

26:15Andy Dawson:they were gonna make um like a rail track that went all the way to the top or something wow i

26:21Dan Schreiber:I think it never happened.

26:22Andy Dawson:No. No. They all went to Etna, didn't they?

26:25Dan Schreiber:That's right. Yeah, yeah. 18 cell replacement service.

26:29James Harkin:It was a diversion, yeah. In theory, Jack the Ripper could have got on that train as well. If he needed.

26:36Dan Schreiber:All right, all right. Let's get one more. Andy. The last one of today goes out to Charlie. And it's the fact that in 2010, an abandoned water treatment plant in Baltimore was found to be home to 107 million spiders. oh my god i know because the water treatment plant sounds quite big doesn't it you can probably fit a lot of spiders in there it was 35 ,176 per cubic meter and that really is a lot

27:02Andy Dawson:of spiders i feel like they've recently found the most spiders in one place i might have even mentioned it on here really it's on a cave between maybe greece and macedonia or somewhere somewhere in europe wow uh and in order to go through the whole cave you go through this area spiders that is just webs and they're everywhere. You would think if you've got that many spiders they must be eating something. Yes. So there must be even more flies.

27:30James Harkin:Yes. What a good point. Yes, food source must, unless they're cannibalistic. They can do.

27:37Dan Schreiber:Have you guys heard of the book Web? Charlotte's? No. It's by John Wyndham, it's one of his last books. Day of the Trippids. Day of the Trippids author. And basically they go, they're trying to set up this new civilization on a very, very remote island in the Pacific. And they get there and it's really weird. There's nothing living there. And it turns out that basically, due to something, spiders have learned how to communicate with each other and they've teamed up together, rather than just being selfish and eating each other. And basically it turns out that when spiders work together, they can defeat humans.

28:06Dan Schreiber:And it's such a great book.

28:07Andy Dawson:I love John Wendell's stuff. It's like, due to something, all of the plants can kill you. Or due to something, now people in the future can see what's happening here. Yeah. And he does explain it, but the explanation is never that important.

28:21Dan Schreiber:No, absolutely. It's much more, let's see how this plays out. He sounds great. I need to read him. Day of the Triffids. Everyone goes blind and plants can suddenly kill you and walk.

28:31Andy Dawson:Except one guy who had bandages over his eyes when everyone else went blind. So he wakes up and then...

28:39Dan Schreiber:It's very much like 28 Days Later, where he wakes up in hospital.

28:42Andy Dawson:Yeah, sounds great. Do you want to hear a 28 Days Later fact that I thought of today? So if you have a zombie and every day that zombie can bite one of the person and they become a zombie. Yeah. And then that zombie every day can bite another one. 28 days later, you wouldn't even notice. It'd be like less than 3 % of people would be zombies. Five days after that, everyone in the world would be zombies. Wow. Because it just ramps right up. Yeah. Like the final five days goes from 3 % to 100%.

29:17James Harkin:Yeah. Right. I once interviewed Erica McAllister, who's been a guest multiple times on our show, works at the NHM on flies. And I interviewed her for my book about zombies because she has a theory that zombies couldn't exist because of flies. So let's say they do exist. We would not have noticed because the rate that they would have been eaten, their rotten flesh, and make them collapse because there's nothing to hold them together would be so quick and flies would meet the demand of all the rotting flesh that we just wouldn't know if zombies were around so flies are saving

29:52Andy Dawson:us from zombies do you reckon when john windham used to write his novels and he would be like and then the plants take over and that and then he suddenly thinks wait a minute there's no one to water them they'll probably and then he just goes oh no forget about it no book readings at

30:09James Harkin:the Royal Botanical Society.

30:13Andy Dawson:But I reckon when you do those, you must constantly come up with like, what about this? Oh, I better ignore it. You've got to push past it.

30:20James Harkin:I think a lot of sci-fi, the Martian relied on there being a storm on Mars that would take out. That's the only thing that's not factually accurate. Oh, right. To do with the book.

30:29Dan Schreiber:Yeah, but sometimes you just got to let it go. Because like, what do you plant? Cows. So you'll end up with just build a world with a lot of cows. But that's a different kind of horrifying sci-fi. Because they are scary cows.

30:38Andy Dawson:You bet. Can you imagine that? Oh my god, monster cows. Millions of cows everywhere. Sorry, I've just got to go. I've got an idea for a sitcom.

30:47Dan Schreiber:I'm off to Walton Towers later, James, if you want to come.

30:52James Harkin:All right, listen, we need to wrap up. Congratulations to the latest custodians of our fish facts. That is Charlie, Natalia, Monty, Louisa, Laura Lufu, Jared, Gitwang, Kiara. You are all now custodians of these facts. And if you're listening and you want one yourself, All you need to do is go to patreon.com slash clubfish. Join the highest tier of clubfish, which is friend of the podcast. And that's what you'll be getting one day. A shout out on the show. But before that, a digital certificate acknowledging your fact. All right. We are going to be back again later this week with a proper episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

31:26James Harkin:And then back again next week with more Little Fish on another Monday. We'll see you then. That's all from us for now. Goodbye.

31:57James Harkin:We'll see you next time.

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