Little Fish: It's Not Shaped Like A Hobnob

0:12Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where we do away with our facts, the ones that we've spent time looking for. and we look at your facts, your brilliant, excellent, amazing facts that you send to us every week at podcast.qi.com. We will read through them, we'll chat about them, we'll give you a little bit of extra information that we found ourselves, and then we will go into our custodianship section where we hand out some facts to people who are in our friend of the podcast tier on Patreon. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into the facts. Dan, give us a fact.

0:50Okay, this has been sent in by Fiona McDonald And she says, I found out that cheese meltability Is measured using a scale called the Schreiber scale Lovely Fantastic I'll be honest, I haven't read the article in depth But thought it sounded interesting So thank you, Fiona Yeah, so this is There was a company that was founded in 1945 Which came to be known as Schreiber Foods and it was founded by a man called L.D. Schreiber in partnership with his friend Merlin. Can I just first think, German, are they? No, no, they're North American, I believe. I guess interesting to give your company a German name in 1945.

1:38Yeah, well, they're massive, by the way. Are they? Yeah. Big cheeses. Big cheeses. they provide the cheese slices that are used on 17 of the top 20 hamburger chains in the in america wow so it's like they're they are massive seven billion dollar in sales every year they developed the shriber meltability test to monitor how cheese handles heats didn't we have a live stage cheese eating competition with each other we did record for the most cheese slices eaten in something like a minute i set up uh while we were on tour a chance for us to get a guinness world record and craig glenday editor-in-chief came onto stage pre-printed a certificate to in case we managed it and the four of us tried to eat as many slices now it was an impossible task i would argue i don't think even the greatest cheese eater could manage it no no no like the greatest cheese eater can manage it that's the thing about the records this isn't a record no one has ever set it i were gonna be we were so shit that we didn't even get the record that has never been set before yeah because what a lot of people might not realize about the gimme's world records is that you can't just like be i'm the first person to do this and this is where i got up to yeah they set a bar of where the entry point for the record is and i think it was 10 slices wait a minute i was the record holder on stage out of us right i got like yeah three or four slices so that means i am a world record holder i'm just not a guinness world record holder yes we need to make you a digital certificate who on earth would want a digital certificate that's all i want to know we might come to that later um is it true that craig then had to destroy the certificate In theory that's what he should have done He ate it And he ate it in record time May I say But he unfortunately didn't take off the plastic And so that caused huge issues No I old sneaky Schreiber here I've got it in my house Have you really?

3:45An illegal Guinness World Record As you say this an alarm's gone off in Guinness HQ And a SWAT team has been dispatched To tear the house down if you have to And the worst thing is they're the world's best SWAT team

3:59um dan yeah when he printed that certificate off there was no name written on it because he didn't know which of us was going to break the record yeah have you written your own name in there no i think it said no such thing as a fish what i did do in pen was add where it said they broke the record i added in did not very honest um okay let's do another fact It's handy. What have you got for us? I've got a fact from Alex Rogers. Okay. Which is that Ben Nevis is the highest point in the British Isles, but it's only the third highest, Ben Nevis. Oh, that's great. That's lovely. There are lots of other places around the world, at least two, that have been named after Ben Nevis, and they're higher.

4:44Where are they? Australia? Oh, you're so close. I want to say so close to Australia. New Zealand. You're a several-hour flight away. Yes, New Zealand. Right There's one that's 16, 19 metres There's one that's over 2 ,000 metres And Ben Nevis' original edition Is only 1, 3, 4, 5 Wow, I've climbed Ben Nevis Have you guys climbed Ben Nevis? No It was on my honeymoon And me and my wife climbed it And we got a guide who took us up there Even though there's only one path And you can't really get lost Still follow me Is he holding the umbrella all the way up? I don't really, I remember going online and some people saying, should we get a guide or not?

5:29And then some people replying, yes, you should get a guide. But now I think back at it, maybe it was the guides who were writing those replies. But no, he was very good, this person, and gave us some energy bars to eat on the way up and stuff like that, and then took our photo when we got to the top. I've got to say, James, you could have taken a selfie stick and an energy bar yourself. But I'm glad there are guides. And actually, people do get into difficulties. There are stories every single year of people going up basically in flip-flops. And then it turns out, oh, the weather's turned really bad on this actually quite high mountain.

6:02Yes. Yeah. Well, James, did you see the piano? No, I didn't see a piano. But people have brought them up, have they? People have brought them up. Basically, in 2006, there were some litter pickers on Ben Nevis. And they found a grand piano going through a pile of litter. Quite a big pile of litter. They had one of those long plastic sticks with a claw on the end going, I can't get a good grip on it. Yeah, basically, they found a massive grand piano 200 metres from the summit. No one knows how it got there. There was someone who carried a piano up for charity in 1980, but he took his down again.

6:40So it's really baffling. And there was a biscuit wrapper tucked inside, which said best before 1986. But that doesn't really tell you very much. it's a lovely idea by the way of having an achievable mountain that has the name of a very hard like you know if there was a lesser mount everest that was really achievable that you could go yeah i've climbed that everest that was like just in passing it was like the time when i entered the boston marathon to remember and i was going to run the boston marathon but it was just before covid and then it got cancelled but i did the one in boston in lincolnshire because that is the easiest marathon in the UK because Lincolnshire's so flat.

7:18Oh, very nice. Okay, here is a fact from Lindsay Whelan and Lindsay says that the length of the inch is based on the millimetre. What? But surely metric units are much newer than imperial units. Yeah, an inch is 25.4 millimetres or something. Correct. Are you saying that they took the millimetre and they said, well, let's have 25.4 of these? That's exactly what I'm saying. No. It was the 1959 International Yard and Pound Agreement. And basically, all the different countries had different versions of the inch. And they all got together in 1959 and said, look, guys, we're going to have to standardise this.

8:04The US inch was 25.400508 millimeters, while the UK inch was 25.39977 millimeters. So if you measured something that was two and a bit miles long, the difference would be about a centimeter. So that could be very important. It's hard to imagine when. But let's say you're building a tunnel from New York to London. Yeah. And then the difference can be quite... And you stop and you think, well, we've measured it. We've dug the distance. We've said we should. We're not... It sounds like there might be something on one centimeter away through that soil, but we're going to go home now. We're not going to...

8:49You wouldn't go home. You just keep digging and eventually you get there and you'd end up with two tunnels. Yeah. Okay, Dan, let's have another fact from you. Yes. Well, actually, I'm taking us back into the mountains. this is from Hayden Freeman who says as most people know New Zealanders Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to knock the bugger off and climb Mount Everest but what few people will know is that fellow Kiwi Mark Inglis was the first person to climb Mount Everest as a double amputee yeah this is uh this is someone who's quite a notable mountaineer has written books and has been the subject of documentaries and so on it's quite crazy when he was climbing Everest he actually broke one of the carbon fiber prosthetic legs in half.

9:36And so they had to temporarily fix it with duct tape while a spare was brought up from base camp to meet him so that he could swap it in. Gosh. Pretty wild. So New Zealanders have made quite an impact on Everest. Well, they've had so much practice on the high Ben Nevis. I was going to say, when Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest, Has anyone checked that he didn't actually climb a mountain called Mount Everest in New Zealand? I don't think that's been checked. That's a really good point. Oh, dear. Andy, let's have another. Yes. This is a fact from Alistair Bowden. And we're staying in the mountains.

10:22I don't think we've ever covered this. It's a fact set on Mount Athos. Oh, yeah. Which is in Greece. Yeah. And it's that there's an 82-year-old Greek monk, Mihailo Tolotos, who reportedly never saw a woman in his entire life because he was born to a woman. And very sadly, his mother died when he was just a few hours old and he didn't have any family. So he was taken to Mount Athos, this monastery, which is in Greece. It's quite remote and there are no women allowed. and he lived 82 years uh he died in 1938 i think and uh the details are quite scant but it appears that he lived there his whole life and he just never saw a woman yeah also he allegedly he never saw a car a plane or a film right well how did he not see a plane they literally Thessaloniki airport is no more than 20 miles away from mount athos but maybe he died in 1938 so maybe the last few years of his life he was indoors and you know in fairness he didn't he didn't see an ipad either like he was born in 1856 so the first 40 odd years of his life not seeing a plane was an absolute cinch or a car yeah or a film i wouldn't include that on the list the plane one given that it hadn't existed for that long women had existed for centuries before that yeah yeah um okay here's a really good one so this is from ewan hopper ewan wrote to us about the 1952 texas gubernatorial election which sounds unpromising but um the person who won that election was called alan shivers and alan ran for both the democratic and the republican parties in the same election and the reason was that the republicans knew that he was going to win so there's no point putting anyone up against him.

12:12But they wanted to encourage people to vote for their candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, as the president. And they thought that people might not go for a Democrat and a Republican. They might want to stay on party lines. So if they made Shivers a Republican as well, then they might just tick Republican Shivers, Republican Eisenhower. Are they allowed to do that? Well, they did it. So I guess so. And Shivers got 1.8 million votes in total. 1.3 million of them came to him as a Democrat and just under 500 ,000 came to him as a Republican. And he also got 664 votes as a no party candidate. And that's where people wrote in about who they wanted to win, but didn't put the party in there.

13:04Right. popular guy yeah he um so yeah 1.8 million votes no preference got 36 672 votes so 1.95 percent got not bad it is but the thing is with no preference if you've got two options and they're exactly the same to me no preference means i like them both equally it doesn't mean i dislike them both equally that's a good point if it's alan shivers against alan shivers and you're saying I don't have a preference. No one's got a preference, mate. They're all Alan Shivers. In fairness, that should have been 100 % no preference, shouldn't it? But Texas law later removed that option. So now you don't have a chance to do no preference anymore.

13:47I think that's sensible. That's very funny. Alan Shivers, very popular, massive racist. Oh. He said that segregation of black and white people was God's will and no law could supersede it. and he also said that being a communist should be punishable by death and that being a communist was worse than murder right I always enjoy it on Fish where we have a really funny light-hearted chat about someone and then the person who's got the information says anyway, massive racist and

14:22can I move us north of the border to Canada for another fact? yes please this is from Julie Pithers Julie writes Canadian scientists are currently collecting people's toenails thousands of them as well, thousands and thousands of sets of toenails the Canadian scientists want for for science they're going to be melting them down apparently that's really cool basically 20 % of Canadians live in homes which have slightly unsafe levels of radon which is a gas, it can cause cancer and it occurs naturally as well it's basically if you live in places which have uranium in the soil or the rocks and it can break down, normally it's fine if you live out in the open but most people don't live out in the open, most people live in homes and if it's in an enclosed space in a house it can cause some damage It's the same reason as why radiation levels are higher in Cornwall than anywhere else Exactly, exactly and there's a doctor called Aaron Goudazi who's looking into this, trying to find the causes of lung cancer in high radon environments because it can cause lung cancer, which is obviously very harmful.

15:33And you need toenails because they're an archive of past exposure to radon. Your body takes in radon. It turns it into a kind of lead and then it just sort of shoves it into the slowly shedding tissues. So we're talking skin and hair and fingernails and toenails. And about 10 ,000 Canadians, I believe, are being recruited to test their homes for radon and then send in their clippings. Wow. Which is good. I read this the other day Do you know what percentage of rocks contain uranium On Earth Is it going to be all of them Or none of them Do you mean percentage per rock Or how many rocks globally Okay well interestingly The percentage per rock is almost zero And the percentage of rocks globally Is almost 100 % So Andy was basically right On both of his two guesses But yeah because uranium is basically inside the earth, almost every single rock.

16:27If you pick up a stone on the side of the road, it's probably got a tiny, tiny, tiny trace of uranium in it. Good Lord. Isn't that amazing? I didn't know that. That is really amazing. Yeah, yeah. If you live in Devon or Cornwall, you can put a detector in your home, which is about the size of a biscuit, and test it. That's fun. Yeah. I would make it a size and shape of something that you don't eat. It's not shaped like a hobnob, I believe. I believe. It's got chocolate on one side. Okay, well, that is enough of your facts. Absolutely brilliant, as every week. Thank you so much to everyone who sent those in.

17:03And if you have a fact yourself, then do send it to podcast.qi.com. But we have not come to the end of this week's show because before we do that, we have to give out some facts. If you become a member of our Patreon at the Friend of the Podcast tier, then you will immediately be assigned a fact you will slightly less immediately be sent a certificate and you might be even less immediately than that mentioned on the show but we will get around to you all and who is the first person we're getting around to today andy this one goes out to kate armstrong congratulations kate welcome to friend of the podcast here it's that alexander the great banned beards in battle to combat beard pulling which is apparently the scourge of the macedonian i wouldn't have thought it was a major problem no because you think once someone gets close enough to pull your beard if you have a sword you might have a way to stop them just cut off your beard yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah but that was uh that was his innovation and look the guy was the terror of three continents or whatever.

18:13So I'm not going to gainsay him. Well done, Alexander. Yeah, at the age of 30, he had no more worlds to conquer. Exactly, exactly. So he probably knew what he was doing with the beard stuff. Dan, what have you got for us? This is a fact for Bo. Congratulations, Bo. This is a fact of mine, which is that psychopaths don't experience contagious yawning like the rest of us. See, I'm now yawning Well, James just yawned I think it was a fake yawn No, you know what? It started off, I thought I'll do a fake one For comedic purposes Not realising that this is a podcast medium And people won't be able to see that But actually halfway through it turned into a real one Oh, well there we go Fake it till you make it Very nice Yeah, I experience a lot of contagious yawn In fact, I experience yawning contagiously so much that I think I'm especially unusually empathetic.

19:09Yeah, or just very tired. It has happened a lot more since you had children, I have to say. Yeah, that's true. Contagious napping, it turns out, is also a real thing in meetings. And contagious meltdowns, apparently. Shut up, Dan, shut up! I can't quite remember where we got that fact from. It was either John Ronson, who had written the psychopath test, or it was Kevin, a professor called Kevin. Sounds legit. Yes. And he wrote a book on psychopaths. And I once had dinner with Kevin, along with Terry Jones of Monty Python. What a table. And yeah. And he told me that he was working with Andy McNabb to train the England football squad to not change their decision on where they were kicking a penalty goal right at the last second.

20:05They were brought in as psychologists to say, make your decision and stick to it because apparently that was a problem within the squad. I'm sorry, Dan. Professor Kevin is working with Andy McNabb of the SAS to help the England football squad not change a decision on a penalty. Yes. And it's worked. When was the last time we lost a penalty shootout? It's a long time ago. You know when people say to you, like what's your ideal dinner party yeah i always say dan schreiber terry jones from monty python and professor kevin that's they're my three but not mcnab oh dear james he's not going to be happy he's going to be bursting in through the windows halfway through the starters well he's got so many annoying things he needs to happen he needs the room to be lit black where he's sitting so you can't see his face he needs that vocoder thing so that he talks a lot different he's a nightmare to have over at dinner interestingly they didn't get to find out that world cup whether or not it worked because it never went to penalty shootouts england lost didn't they uh bravo 2-0 thank you thank you that's the name of andy mcnave's book very good nice and it's kevin dutton's just come back to me kevin dutton kevin dutton okay here is a fact that is now in the possession of keith baxter keith your fact is that the big bang was quieter than a motorhead concert interestingly andy you spelt motorhead without the umlaut that's not intentional and i'm very sorry we will have to get that certificate corrected kevin or keith or keith for that matter we'll have to get keith i know your name just i just spelt motorhead wrong oh no this is because it's all it's all based off my ancient um record keeping and sometimes fairness andy like your record keeping like we use this spreadsheet in order to check that we haven't done facts before and it would be correct to spell that without the umlaut i think because i'm never going to search motorhead with an umlaut oh yes good point so wait the big bang was quieter than a motorhead yeah motorhead 126 decibels and the big bang apparently 120 decibels according to people who have studied the background radiation of the universe.

22:24It's insane that we know that or think we know that. Yeah. Let's go on to our next fact. So whose turn is it? It's mine. This one goes out to George Wade. And it's a great one. It's that Pixar accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 halfway through making it. Fantastic. This was an Alex Bell fact. Yes. Basically, they deleted it. The only thing that remained was one person who'd gone on maternity leave. and she had a computer at home that was kind of separated from the rest of the system. And so I think they basically drove the computer in under extreme caution. Like just strapped it in the back of a car or whatever and coddled it until it got in because that had almost everything on it.

23:08So yeah, so she had an early saved version. Yeah. You won't be able to do that these days, obviously. Getting in touch with people on maternity leave is very much a no-no. Toy Story 5 has ground to a halt For the next nine months Dan let's go on to the next one Yeah well we're moving on to episode 24 So that was episode 23 To all the custodians of the last four facts And this one is for Ronnie You are now the custodian of the fact that When he was bored President Calvin Coolidge would ring a bell To summon bodyguards And then hide under the Oval Office desk Was Coolidge the person who also Oh god there were so many eccentric Presidents that did very odd Things in the White House like the The shower head Was that Coolidge or was that someone else LBJ was it?

23:59He had a shower head directed At his genital area Yes Coolidge is the one who never said anything He was very much the opposite of the Current incumbent He just barely said Three words you know there was there's that story that someone went to dinner with him so flirtatious young woman he said oh president coolidge i've i've made a bet with my friends that i could get you to say just three words tonight and he just said to her you lose and then said nothing for the rest of the evening very good okay the next fact comes from someone whose name could be made up of two u.s presidents andrew jackson and jimmy carter because it's andrew carter and your fact is that until Until 2011, the sun was only, in theory, a sphere.

24:47Dan, this is yours. Yeah. I love this about science. Whereas they knew it was a sphere because that, by all indications, is what it was. However, until two probes were sent around to either side of it, twin probes, they couldn't officially confirm that it was a sphere. And that's what this did. They said, it's confirmed. We've seen it. We've actually seen it from the other side with two different probes. So I just love that about science. I'll do one. This goes out to Erin Eldridge. Congratulations, Erin. Your fact is that some birds' nests contain over 100 rooms and weigh up to 1 ,000 kilos and cause trees to collapse.

25:28Rubbish. It's true. 100 rooms. This is a bird called the sociable weaver. And it basically has these ginormous nests. Well, it needs them. It's so sociable. Yeah, exactly. It needs them for parties. It's like Dan's house The description of this How many kids does it have in there?

25:51Yeah, but it's very cool I think I've seen pictures of them Where they're absolutely ginormous And they're just a permanent sort of palace Amazing And Dan, last one for the day? The last one goes to Rohan Singh And this is a James Harkin fact It is the worst baseball team in South Korea Has replaced its supporters with robots Brilliant yeah the hanwa eagles they lost 400 games in the last five years and that's as of recording from 2015 i believe and they are nicknamed the hanwa chickens so they've put up screens and you can put up your photo on the screen and you can do things like mexican waves and chants uh along with it as you're watching the match but yeah hark do you remember more on this no i don't remember anything about them and i thought since we're doing this on zoom i can quickly check and see if they've won any games recently yes uh and in 2025 they had a record of played 144 183 so actually yeah they've improved quite a lot i would say oh well there we go um so good old hanwa eagles anyway so that is the end of the show thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in thank you especially to Rohan, Erin, Andrew, Ronnie, George, Keith, Bo and Kate who are new custodians of facts in our friend of the podcast here and if you would like to do that yourself go to patreon.com slash no such things a fish and you will find details of how to join our many tiers we have more tears than a cinema at the end of toy story 2 lovely does that work i haven't seen it but you can find everything on there and more and if you'd like to hear more from us then come back on friday when we will have a regular episode of no such thing as a fish in the meantime it's goodbye from me it's goodbye from andy bye and it's goodbye from dan so long just trying to do my audition for university challenge bye

28:02Thank you.