Little Fish: Not Sponsored By Reba McEntire

0:00Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. We've been so happy to get messages from you guys to say that you've been enjoying this show. And we certainly enjoy making it. It's a little bit more loose, a little bit more silly than the normal shows. But we really, really love getting your facts. So please do keep sending those in. The reason I've disturbed the start of your show today is because I want to tell you about a quiz that we're doing. It is for Patreon subscribers on the top tier. And it will take place on the 23rd of January at 7pm UK time. So that'll be sometime in the afternoon if you're in North America.

0:35And it'll be very early in the morning if you're in Australia or New Zealand. But hopefully you will still be able to join us. It's going to be a whole load of fun. We've got loads of amazing stuff planned for you. And if you are not a member of Patreon right now, then you have to go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and join our top tier. You could probably just do it for a month and then quit if you just want to do the quiz. but honestly there's so much good stuff on our patreon that i really think once you join you will be hooked because we have extra content we have merch we have video content there's all sorts of stuff on there we hope we've made it value for money because people going on there help to support the podcast so it is a real good mutual benefit thing anyway enough of that really hope you enjoyed this episode of Little Fish.

1:36Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode where we put down our facts and we focus exclusively on your favorite facts from the last seven days we have been going through the inbox we've got a bunch of amazing things to read out to you today so why don't we get into it who's going to start i've got one put my hand up there um because we're recording on zoom you should say i put my hand up because we're recording on zoom but i feel like i might have done it even in the room with you guys um well yeah that's true i do every other week right here's a fact from owen bergstein In 2023 How many full-sized Corn mazes were there In the United States That were shaped like Reba McIntyre's face Okay, well, first question What is a corn ma - No, who is Reba McIntyre?

2:26She's an unbelievably famous person Who I'd never heard of She's a country singer Yeah, I know Reba She's a big deal She is Household name in America, I would say The queen of country She's sold 75 million records I've never heard of her Until this email from Owen Dropped into the inbox I mean what level of fame are you in America That there are more than one corn mazes You're assuming there's more than one I'm going straight in Imagine if the answer's zero What a quiz that would be The Riddler has checked in again

3:06Okay Corn mazes And obviously if she's a country singer It feels like she's going to be popular in con country Good point I'm going to say three Okay, nice I'm highballing it, I feel Okay That's, yeah Dan? 36 36 Yeah Well, Owen goes on Did you say six? Ten? Did one of you ruin the game and say something like a hundred? Probably Well, he's a listener at least Well, the real answer is 25 Plus another 15 that say her name So there are 40 full-size Reba McIntyre corn mazes in the USA And what's the reason? That is astonishing Well, she has a face which is very good for corn mazes She has these wrinkles on her forehead That are in the exact shape of a spiral she's getting on a bit but i should say she's an incredibly beautiful and distinguished lady with no wrinkles on her forehead what's the next can i just say you can be beautiful and have wrinkles oh okay oh we've got into body positivity corner you're absolutely right you're absolutely right she looks exactly like an ear of corn you know what i've been to the world's biggest maze it's in hawaii and it's in the dole plantation where they make pineapples and i went in it and someone has basically made a hole in all the hedges so when you can just get to the middle by walking through the holes hole plantation than a did you say the dole plantation i see what you do there yeah very good very nice i had to break out of the maze a few years ago um there's one in crystal palace and i was with fenella and she suddenly got terrified that a murderer might be in there and sort of got like weird claustrophobia she was like this is exactly where you would get murdered so we had to break out of this maze but it happened to be on the edge of the maze and we went into this weird random forest and we were lost for like half an hour where it is so much more likely i've done that maze dan it's about four feet high it's not please this is not me saying that i freaked out i'm just reporting on okay on what happened listen i just got to tell you one or two other things Owen says because the email is so good.

5:23So he adds that there are about 500 corn mazes in the USA so 8 % of US corn mazes roughly were Reba McIntyre themed. He also adds the mazes appear in 23 states. The 23rd state joined the union in 1820 so in 1819 somebody could have remarked to someone else in just over two centuries more American states will have Reba McIntyre themed corn mazes than currently exist. how times change he says p.s i am not sponsored by reba mcintyre i find her music annoying oh there you go ouch that's amazing i shall i do another fact yeah you jump in this one is from andrew lawl vasser and andrew says that the 2000 movie cruel intentions 2 which sounds like dan would love it is a cut down of a tv adaptation turned sequel to Cruel Intentions, which was adapted from Dangerous Liaisons, a film adapted from a Broadway play that was itself an adaptation from an 18th century French novel.

6:31And it was produced by a company called Original Film. Brilliant. Brilliant. There you go. Would you like another one? Yeah, go on. This is from Dennis Rump who says I would love to hear Andy try to pronounce my last name. Hint, it's German. So I think it's Dennis Rump. Bad luck, Dennis, because Andy actually speaks a bit of German, don't you, Andy? Nur ein bisschen. Yes. This is a cool fact about planes. It's brilliant. So, you know, you have those turbines on an airline's jet engine. You know, an airline jet engine has all these blades, right? Going round and round and round. Well, Dennis says, the centripetal force, which is the swirling round force, on each turbine blade of an airliner's jet engine is roughly equal to the weight of two double-decker buses.

7:28Wow. I know, it's crazy. And to overcome this stress, which is obviously enormous, each blade on those turbines is made of a single crystal of an alloy. Isn't that mystical? Mystical. It is the way you said it. Crystal is a word that's very easy to say in a mystical fashion, isn't it? Yeah, single crystal of an alloy. I don't really quite understand what that means. Is it like if you were someone who robbed banks or jewellery shops, is there like a fine crystal just sitting at the centre? It's not a crystal in the sense that you are describing it, Dan. It's metal. It's not a crystal in the sense of Indiana Jones and the crystal skull.

8:11Exactly. I'm so glad it's a real cineast's dream this episode isn't it? Cruel Intentions 2, Indiana Jones 4. But basically the blades they have to cope with these huge stresses and forces and if you have one crystal it's one part is the point so there are no what they call grain boundaries in the blade which makes it a lot stronger. One of the best quibbles that we ever had on qi was when we did a question about these turbines and we said that rolls-royce engines are tested by throwing frozen chickens or frozen turkeys into the blades to make sure that they don't break right which i think is true or at least it was true and we put a picture of one of these turbines up on the screen actually it was a video some vt and someone wrote in saying that couldn't possibly be a rolls-royce engine because rolls-royce engines go in a clockwise direction and that was going in an anti-clockwise direction or vice versa i can't remember what it was and what had actually happened was we had used it but we just flipped the footage brilliant spot what a spot yeah it was an amazing spot it's a brilliant quibble lovely all right james okay here is a fact from peter bloom uh and peter says while in prison Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame Amputated two of his toes To get out of hard labour Six days later he was unexpectedly Pardoned Lovely So slightly, well he got out of six days Of hard labour I've never looked into those guys What do you know about them Dan?

9:48I just know it as the movie, I know it as the Bonnie and Clyde movie I know it as a Serge Gainsbourg song Boni It was a beautiful French moment in that song do you know what they um what they did like banks and then they were shot shot shot up interestingly they very rarely rob banks and in fact whether they ever did or not i'm not sure because banks are quite hard to rob right because they have a lot of security i definitely clyde did rob a few banks but usually when he did it he did it with another associate called Raymond Hamilton and Bonnie often drove the getaway car and I think like Raymond and Clyde doesn't have the same ring it's not as sexy um so they might have done one or two banks but mostly they would rob like convenience stores and gas stations and stuff like that where there's not as much security and you can just get the money out again that's that's less sexy as well that's extremely unsexy now that we know it I would say Clyde and his friend Raymond basically sticking up an Aldi at the side of a road.

10:52Doesn't work. The Serge Gainsbourg song would have been less sexy as well. Raymond. That's very funny. Oh, that's great extra intel. Well, I got a little sort of crime-adjacent fact here that's been sent in by Alex Hartley. People are more likely to give their seat to a pregnant woman when Batman is present. Now, I buy it. So this was reported in Nature and the idea was a female experimenter came on appearing pregnant. She boarded the train with an observer and then they watched if anyone stood up to give her a seat. Now, an additional person dressed as Batman would then enter from another door.

11:33And as soon as Batman was in the room, they noticed that 67 % stood up versus 37 % when Batman wasn't there. Interestingly, 44 % of the people who offered their seat claimed that they did not see Batman before offering the seat right so what can I can I also let me down is this to do with seeing a pregnant woman and thinking oh I won't bother and then Batman gets on who reminds me of values of justice or is it just that the presence of a Batman costume on a train is weird enough that you look around and then you notice oh there's a pregnant woman here because everyone's looking at their phones and yeah people are people are not paying attention i'm not sure the answer to that but i think that's something that absolutely have they tried different superheroes uh not in this one this is a very specific batman okay experiment spider-man might have a different result yeah but they didn't have access to the marvel universe's copyright so if it was captain marvel or wonder woman or someone you might see that superhero and think well women are much stronger than me uh so i deserve the seat yes i think batman's been used quite often in studies hasn't it do you remember that study that if you dress children like batman they do better at school or something yeah remember that well they can afford the private education can't they because they're absolutely loaded yeah every day at the school what's going on i think it was something like that it just made the kids more confident or something.

13:07Well, there was also that thing which I think was done on QI, which is how I know it, of the Superman pose. I don't know if that was debunked. Right. Andy, do you have another fact? I've got a fact, which relates to something we said recently on the show, actually. This is from Catherine Radmer. I'll just read you the fact. Noted French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, I want to say. Yeah, who wrote the UR Cantona theme in a previous episode. Exactly. Is credited with composing the first documented film score. No. This was in 1908 and he seems to be the first famous person to have written a score for a film and it was a specific score for a specific new film.

13:51So I think that's what qualifies it as the first. It was called The Assassination of the Duke of Gis and it was 15 minutes long which was epic at the time. That was like Lord of the Rings, Avatar, That was a biggie. Do you think you need an intermission halfway through? Oh, definitely. Yeah. Sorry, too much. Bursting for a piss. Seven minutes in.

14:19James, you got another? Yeah, okay. I've got one more. We mentioned Tim Horton's, the donut chain, a few weeks. Well, actually quite a few weeks ago now, this coffee shop in Canada, because we're saying that in Canada they eat more donuts than in America. But Callum Smith wrote to us and said, did you notice that it has no apostrophe? And this is because the apostrophe is illegal in Quebec. No. No. Yeah. And it's because the apostrophe S is English grammar and they're trying to keep the French language alive. Oh. And so they say that, you know, you're not allowed to do it. And apparently Canadians in that area are very upset about it, half of them.

15:08And half of them are very happy with it. Does it have to be called Le Horton de Tim or something? No, it's just Tim Hortons, just with N-S, yeah. How far would the authorities push this if the rules were being breached? Like, are we talking police activity? Honestly, I think it would depend on the political climate at the time, as so many of these things do. Very wise. You know, if you want to stop people selling liters instead of pints or vice versa, those things the police tend to get involved just before a local election. So, James, are you saying Tim Hortons is a Canadian company, therefore it has to do those rules?

15:46Or is that for all companies? Like McDonald's. I wonder if McDonald's. I don't think McDonald's has to change all of its paperwork just when it's in Canada. so German doesn't use apostrophes we were talking earlier about how Andy speaks a bit of German but people in German do sometimes use apostrophe s and it's known in German as the idiot's apostrophe that's unkind why because it's like someone is not using the German language correctly and is sort of appropriating the English language instead I see and a bit like how we take the piss out of people if they put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

16:24If you're like a grocer's or something, we call it the grocer's apostrophe. That's true, you're right. They call incorrect apostrophe use or correct in English, but they call it idiot's apostrophe. Very strong. Harsh but fair. Yeah? Well, that's the Germans. For some of history. Well, those are brilliant facts. Thank you so much, everyone, for sending them in. If you want your fact read out on the show, podcast at qi.com send them there and he goes through them all and he sends them out to us and uh we love chatting them through so yeah more please um but we got one more thing to do before we wrap up which is we have some new custodians who need some facts dishing out so if you are a member of the club fish highest tier which is friend of the podcast you immediately get assigned one of the facts the headline facts from the archive of no such thing as a fish so we're going to read out some now so uh andy why don't we start with you yes here's one this goes out to missy brown congratulations missy your fact in perpetuity to look after uh and care for is that the first ever made in germany labels were intended to put people off buying products made in germany it's because it's this old law i think it was the 19th century and um i think maybe germany didn't have quite the reputation for really high quality precision manufacturing or all this that it did now people were worried about sheffield huge metal working city sheffield cutlery industry all of that there were worries about cheap german knockoffs and so this was a law that said if you're a foreign company in the uk you have to put a label on saying made in germany and therefore worse i'd like to see some more fun in the labels like made at sea oh yeah made in space is that on your fish yeah what's that on made with love that's lovely do you remember that was what was it was it um what are those smoothies called innocent innocent was it did it was it true that they said once i might be getting this mixed up with another company but they said made with love in one of their um items and they weren't allowed to put it because it wasn't it's very you know the rules of what you put on labels are very strict and if you say it's made with love there has to be actual actual what actual what the only one i remember is the welsh dragon sausages which had to put a little disclaimer on saying not does not contain dragon they should have just farmed some komodo dragon just put a tiny little bit in each one where was your business brain at the time james brilliant i had contact the other day with you know i've been taking lion's mane mushroom little juicy injections.

19:10Yeah, all right, Joe Rogan. Well, they're made locally in Margate, where I live. And a friend of mine had a bottle and she bought it last summer. And she said, I don't know when the use by date is. And so I was like, oh, I'll just ask the person online. And they said, basically, if we were allowed to, we would put use by end of universe because it's fine forever. Because it doesn't work no matter when you take it. Who says it works? Who says it works? it's all about placebo absolutely fair enough okay here is a fact for leah m uh leah your fact is that in 1991 a professor at iowa state university suggested we could solve almost every problem by blowing up the moon wow i do not recall this fact that is one of yours can you remember what problems it would solve um global warming um the production problems on cruel intentions three um the there's a there was a lot i think this was one of those comments and the professor has passed away uh since where i think the family was sort of like oh it was a it was a comment in passing and you know it's been amplified as like his main things you gotta be so careful with your words, you're a scientist.

20:28Let's do another one. This one is for Lily Kemp. This is a James Harkin fact, and it's from episode 21, by the way, if anyone wants to go back and listen to all of these facts in their full glory. The fact is, in New York City, until 1925, drivers going east-west stopped on amber and drove on green, and drivers going north-south stopped on green and drove on amber. Great. amazing but it's easy to tell if you're going east west or north south especially in new york right because it's such a grid system but i think like probably for people who aren't native new yorkers you might not always know which direction you're going in that's very true that's very true well my secondary proposal is to paint uh n or e or s or w on every single road every two meters.

21:20So I think that'll help. Okay. All right, I'll do one. Go for it. This one goes out to Molly McAderny. Hello, Molly. This is one of my facts, actually, and it's that there are companies which lasso icebergs to stop them hitting oil rigs. It's like an oil type. I remember when you came up with this. Yeah, you loved this fact. I'm so happy, and I found, because they're quite secretive, the firms that do it, because it's quite a, I don't know, a specialist job or they have their own techniques for it's mostly predicting where they're going to end up the icebergs you know that's the secret bit uh the actual lassoing is just driving around it with a rope and and then hauling it for a bit but i found someone who worked for one of these companies i had a chat with him and that's right yeah it feels like for the greater good we shouldn't be making secret where icebergs are going to end up that should be public knowledge for the really greater good i think we should let them hit the oil rigs and get all that oil into the ocean no yes interesting take happening let's end this shit show let's accelerate it well that's very good but that's one of my all-time faves i love that one yeah that was an early classic and i remember i think it was one of the very first ones where we had uh contact with someone with a very obscure job it was always exciting research moments where we could get in contact with people actually in the field doing it uh james do you want to read out this this is your one uh yeah i can do uh in 1903 a man called w reginald bray posted himself and that fact has now been delivered to someone called and i don't think this is their real name but apologies if it is mr retro graveyard yes that's a name sorry miss sorry mr graveyard can i call you retro perhaps if that is your real name um but yeah that's your fact w reginald bray posting himself he was always was he he was always doing that wasn't he the only memory i have and it might not be connected to this specific guy but someone posted themselves i think to australia in a box that was put in an airplane and it was successful and so someone else tried to replicate it and they were tightly packed in and unfortunately as they were packed in the box went over and he spent the entire trip upside down in the box.

23:42And that's when the This Way Up sticker was invented. I've just looked up W. Reginald Bray who was also known as the Autograph King and collected 15 ,000. Oh yes! Dan, very excitingly, was born in Forest Hill, London, which is about a five minute walk from where you used to live. He was born there in 1879. Just listen to this sentence. He lived there until 1938 when he moved to Croydon. He died on the 6th of June 1939. A great advert for the Croydon way of life. I was hoping you would say he died when he was murdered in the local Crystal Palace maze.

24:22That was him. Very cool. All right, let's get another fact. And this goes out to Tristan Street. And your fact is that the world's oldest edible Ham just celebrated its 112th birthday. Gorgeous. Now it'll be much older now, the ham, because we did this years ago. I fear it might have been decommissioned. Was this the one that was hanging up in the covered market in Oxford? Yeah. Which Anna had seen. I had seen as well, because I used to live in Oxford. In fact, the first time I ever joined QI was part of, there was a QI building in Oxford, and James... You were trying to open your cannon and ball gelateria, weren't you?

25:05I don't know why that didn't work. We had a QI building there, and there was the covered market, and there's a shop in there, a butcher's, and hanging in the window is supposedly the world's oldest ham. Yeah, and you think it's no longer there, do you? No, I think now the title has passed to Sir Ian McKellen. Very good. Yeah, but no, I fear it might not be there anymore. Right. I hope it is. Do you think someone might have eaten it? I don't think. It was one of those hams which just, if it was at a buffet, you'd definitely eat around it. Can you imagine seeing that at a buffet? Because it looks like a sort of long buried limb that's been dug up.

25:48It really does, yeah. But I think ham doesn't really go off. It's like lion's mane mushrooms in that respect.

25:58Oh, it looks like someone's posted saying it was on display a couple of years. go in the cover market so maybe it lives okay maybe it feels like a school trip for us yeah i'll definitely we should start doing that all right uh well congratulations tristan uh next fact andy do you want to read this one out yes this goes out to sarah you know who you are uh and it's that orangutans like playing on ipads but gorillas don't this was an experiment that was done in 2013 and they gave orangutans iPads and they they bloody loved it and i think they started calling each other and there was this rash of experiments when the iPad was quite new it was more of an experiment on scientists with access to iPads than it was on these animals basically uh but i think they would they would chat and they would put up on the screen you know a banana they say would you like a banana then it would tap the banana and then they give them a banana so this is quite a good racket actually because the iPad would have been fairly fresh around 2015 when we were doing this if you were a scientist and you wanted all the latest tech for free you would request it and say it's part of a gorilla experiment and you would let the gorilla play on it for five minutes and then bring it home I rather feel like after gorillas played with your iPad for five minutes it might not be quite as usable as you hope yeah you're right James alright let's get one more, James do you want to read this one?

27:20okay this one is for Susie And your fact, it's an absolute classic. I really love this fact. The 1888 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Wales reads, See England. And in that moment, Welsh nationalism was born afresh. I really hope it's not Susie from Carnarvon. But yeah, the reason was that the article England was actually England and Wales. I think it's because at the time, legally, I'm saying legally, not culturally, they might have been one territory. There was all this chat about the principality, that kind of thing. Whereas I think Scotland was differently established as a different nation, basically.

28:08Yeah, absolutely. Which is why you have the England and Wales cricket team. Do you? They always call it England cricket team, but it's the England and Wales cricket team. I had never heard that. Yeah. And that's why they're so good. Well, most of them come from South Africa or New Zealand or whatever. But yeah, they are officially known as that. Well, you're not allowed South Africans on the England cricket team, are you? Well, Kevin Peterson was born in South Africa, one of our best ever players. The England cricket team over the last couple of years has been two Yorkshiremen, one Lancastrian, and then people from assorted places around the world.

28:42Have they become citizens of the UK in order to do that? Yeah, you would have to be a British citizen. Is that why we've been winning so hard all around the world, as I understand it? Well, unfortunately, this is going out after the ashes has just finished. But before that, yeah. Oh, good. All right, well, look, congrats, everyone. We really hope you enjoy your facts. If you want one yourself, do join Club Fish. Just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. There are lots of tiers there. There are lots of really fun things going on as part of the club. So join up today. And if you also want to have your facts read out on this episode.

29:20As I said before, podcast at qi.com. Send them in there. We love, love, love getting them. Anyway, we're going to be back on Friday with a proper main episode and then back again on Monday with another little fish. So we'll see you then. Goodbye.