Little Fish: Really Siding With The Baddies

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1:13Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of Little Fish, the podcast from the makers of big gnosis thing as a fish where we throw away our facts and we look at the fantastic facts that you guys have been sending to podcast at qi.com andy has gone through the inbox and he's picked the very choicest of plums and thrown them in our faces and we will now regurgitate them for you so this is horrible that's the problem with starting a sentence where you don't know where it's gonna go i hear you who's gonna chuck a plum my way can i vomit up a little something yes please Because it's related to actually last week's episode of Little Fish.

1:57It's about Shaggy. Oh, I remember all that time ago we talked about the similarities between Shaggy and Poirot. So much has happened in those seven days. I know. It seems like a year ago. Yeah. You're wearing the same clothes, though. Yes. I've actually changed my baseball cap so the people looking at video will think it's a different day. Oh, right. Sorry, I know. I've just exploded the fiction. Well, this is from Don Wilson. and Don Wilson says, last night I was re-watching Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, in fact, and I was reminded of a strange coincidence. Shaggy from Scooby-Doo's real name is Norville.

2:33Norville Shaggy Rogers. So Norville's the character's real name. Shaggy, the music artist, his real name is Orville. Is that right? Whoa. Norville and Orville. Norville and Orville. The only two Shaggies we know, Norville and Orville. That is amazing. I didn't know what Shaggy the artist's real name was. No, I actually didn't know either, but everyone else seems very well versed in Norville being Scooby-Doo. They come up in quizzes all the time. Do they? They do. There we go, Norville and Norville. And what is Scooby-Doo but a crime-solving bunch of people, as is Poirot, who, as previously discussed, is very similar to Shaggy in ways we mentioned last week.

3:11So it's all come full circle. I can't get back where I started, I suppose. Does anyone else, can anyone else join this group? Torville, I suppose. Torville and Dean, yeah. Christopher Torville or Jane Torville? Jane Torville and Christopher Dean. Jane Torville, for international listeners, you'll know who they are. Also, Orville the Duck from I wish I could fly right up to the sky, but I can't. Are we saying the duck before Orville Wright? I think Orville the Duck was named after Orville Wright. Right. Okay. Okay. But it's good that the duck is the first one now that comes to the people's heads.

3:45It's certainly my head. Sorry, guys. Very good. Here's one. This is from Cameron Smith, who recently went to Train World Brussels, which looks stunning, by the way. I've looked it up. But there was an exhibit in Train World Brussels on Belgian inventors who contributed to the World of Steam locomotives. And one such example of an invention was flame tubes. And those are the ducts that guide the steam close to the fire, right, to superheat the steam inside an engine. You know, you need to heat it up and up and up. So you have a tube that goes near, a flame tube that goes near it. And what are they called?

4:23Flame tubes. Oh, okay. Well, really, they're more flam tubes because they're invented by an engineer called Jean-Baptiste Flam. Yeah, but they're not named after him. That's just a coincidence, right? Or are they? Cameron doesn't relate. What? It's close enough, I thought. Is it? Well, Cameron thinks so, and I'm backing Cameron. So Cameron thinks they're named after Flam, even though they're called Flame. yeah well they might be flam tubes the thing is it's all translated like there's very little information on these tubes in English which is annoying but in Belgium Cameron also I believe went to see a big hole in the ground the Hooge crater which is named after the nearby village of Hooge isn't that good?

5:08Cameron says this eponym isn't nearly as good as flam tubes but if we're ever going to get enough for a book some are going to be better than others and I think these guys would disagree with you there Cameron I hard disagree Cameron And that's why you're not up here with us, I'm afraid. The huge holes, you've got to leave with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I just ask, Andy? Yeah. These things, which are taking over our lives, can we just keep them in one box? Like either little fish or jewel. Because at the moment, they're in two thirds of our output is largely these things. And I'm sure the only reason they haven't been in the big show is because you haven't thought of any.

5:47do you know that's really fair which would you rather they were in little fish or drop us a line or which do i listen to least often you know you should be like me and only listen to the rest is politics because they never mention these they've got no juice at all on this game no no okay thank you cameron i loved it uh here is a fact from sarah nordmark and they say i hope you haven't heard this one before i have not heard this Sarah or Sarah actually but it's S-A-R-A. The American mathematician R.H. Bing did not have actual names for his initials and was just called R.H. When Bing applied for a visa he was told that initials would not be accepted.

6:28He explained that his name was R.H. only Bing and received a visa made out to Honly Ronly Bing.

6:41That's very good How can he not have Did his parents name him R.H.? They did His father was called Rupert Henry Bing So he's basically been named after his father it appears But they've not taken the actual names That's really interesting I've never heard that as a name custom before It's cool I was reading about Professor Bing And one cool thing I read about him He sounds like a bit of a fun character And he was driving a car With a bunch of students in his car And he was driving 200 miles away So it's a long old drive But there was a load of Teenagers in his car So the car gets really really steamy And all the windows start to steam And while he's driving He uses the windows and the steam To write out equations And does a lecture for the students in his car What?

7:31While he's driving? While he's driving That's crazy That's got to be banned somewhere in the highway code There's got to be, you're not allowed to write equations It's not in there, they haven't thought of everything His last lecture But maybe, I suppose, on these roads Across bits of America where they're very long And very straight, and you just drive This way for 10 hours He's from Texas, so it is just straight roads everywhere Isn't it? Wow, that's very cool I wonder if he's right-handed Because they have their wheel on the left, don't they? They do So he's doing it with his right hand So that's better yeah yeah maybe yeah that's that's what he said to the officer so cool is it my turn yeah it's my turn this is from steven hi everyone steven here from melbourne australia we know where melbourne is steven um no there is a melbourne just near london actually so um there's probably one in canada probably loads in america yeah the first shots fired by the British Empire in World War I were in the southern tip of eastern Australia.

8:32I didn't know about this. As far away as you can get from Europe, he said. So it was a warning shot from, and he specifies the gun, a six inch Mark 7 gun at Fort Neppie in Victoria. And August 5th, 1914. And it was because Britain had just declared war on Germany. And at the time, I think there was a ship, the SS Fouts, a German merchant steamer that was just hanging out nearby. And as soon as Britain declared war, they called the Australians, like, we've declared war. Have you got any Germans nearby that you need to shoot out? And they were like, actually, yeah, there's this steamer here. Shall we shoot at him?

9:05And they did. And he surrendered straight away. And there we go. Australia won the war. That was the end of the war. Yeah. They could have called an end to it there, couldn't they? Just like... Yeah. Like, who calls an end to it, though? Yeah. Like, that's the thing with wars. You can't just shoot one thing and go, okay, that's it. I'm retiring undefeated from this war I've got a fact this is another military one in fact it's from Jason Spiromilio and it's that the USA didn't have an air force during the second world war which I find extremely funny as a fact the US air force was established in 1947 what planes were they using before that then?

9:42was it just a different name? the army had a great deal of planes I will say that that is interesting though It's the US Army Air Force is what it was. So it's basically at the start of the First World War as well, the American military had eight planes. Yeah, I do know that. I love that. Basically, I think, was it that France had like almost all the planes in the world at the start of the war? And then by the end of the war, everyone else had taken over. That's true. France had something like 30 or 40 planes at the start of the war. And that was more than America and Britain and Germany and loads of other countries combined.

10:14It was amazing. No, but in the Second World War, they did have 63 ,000 planes by the end of the war, but they were just the US Army Air Force. So it's a bit of a technicality, Jason. I loved it. Here's one. Speaking of World War II, the most flammable substance ever made is so evil, even the Nazis gave up on it. This was sent in by Bay. And basically, it is a material called chlorine trifluoride. fluoride which is incredibly incredibly flammable in fact if you just get water on it it's just gonna explode uh and they tried to use it the nazis tried to use it as a flamethrower but unfortunately what happened was the whoever was carrying it around would end up being set on fire as well um so wait how was that fact framed by the person that was too evil even for the nazis so evil even the nazis gave up on it okay because it sounded like it was going to be well they They weren't as bad as you think, but it was just that they kept blowing up their own people.

11:14Oh, yeah, I don't think that's what we should take away from them. I don't think that's what Bay was saying. No. This stuff is incredibly flammable. Yeah. Now, they still don't use it in much things at all, even in industry or anything, but apparently it works well at clearing uranium residue off the walls of nuclear power plants. What a fun place to be when that's happening. well i may be in this old nuclear power plant but at least i've got the most dangerous substance in the world on me um okay here's one from masha levine who says uh she does a book plug she says i've just read zoe schlanger's incredible book the light eaters um and she recommends it so highly that i thought i'd share that she said i should have copied and pasted the whole thing because it's so full of amazing facts and then she says i'm gonna give you two facts i loved but there's only one here which i imagine is a copy paste error from andy rather than from masher okay maybe i just thought there are reasons of time and space and we can't get into all the facts i'm sorry to both of you okay um probably should have cut off that clause from the sentence as well then yeah i feel like i should have cut the whole email given how much trouble it's got me into with that as digressions but okay she says the bocchila trifolia lata which is a chilian jungle vine can alter the shape, colour and size of its leaves to mimic nearby plants.

12:32And a single plant can mimic multiple nearby hosts. That's crazy. And it is incredible. So I've looked at pictures and it's kind of like someone in a bit of a shit disguise. As in you'll see the leaf. As a human being, I think you see the leaf that's the real thing and then you see the mimic and it's trying to be like that. But even so, well done for trying. It's amazing. So it doesn't look that much like it. It does look enough. I mean, leaves all kind of look quite similar, don't they? Oh, James. Leaf community, if you're listening, write in to podcast.qi.com. Write to James personally, please.

13:05I'm not sifting through 53 ,000 angry emails from leaf peepers. No way. I think I'll find the leaves are very varied. Okay. Variegated, you mean.

13:18We don't know how they do it. But did you say different bits of the plant can look like different nearby other plants? Yes. How that is cool. Amazing. If I could disguise my left arm as an elephant's trunk And my right arm as a tiger's nose Or whatever You'd be in an old place But you'd be blending in with everything around you I disagree I think the tigers are going to say Who's that weird guy with an elephant trunk And the elephants are going to say Who's that weird guy with a tiger's nose Yeah you're right I'm being eaten or trampled either way Here's a fact about leaves which I often think everyone's going to know it but then you tell people and they don't really know it.

13:57You know holly? So it's spiky, right? If you go to the top of the holly plant it's not spiky anymore. Yes. It's not spiky. It's amazing. They're only spiky at the bottom. Isn't that cool? Because that's where they need to defend themselves. Yeah. Like now when you're walking home if you see a holly plant and they are around you'll see it's spiky look up at the top not spiky. And if you want to avoid being jabbed just walk on stilts.

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15:25here's one from lindsey lee from nashville pretty cool um lindsey has written in about a paper that she's heard about um which is headlined the cultural social and ideological role of the hat in early modern england from the historical journal and it's apparently a brilliant paper a because it's authored by someone called bernard cap very good and a bit of non-determined but secondly, because it just tells stories about the insanely important roles that hats used to play. So do you remember we talked about President Madison? James Madison. Smallest president. And he couldn't leave the house for two days once because someone had taken his hat.

16:06Took his hat, yeah. He left it at the window. So this is part of the paper is that appearing hatless was just unbelievably slovenly. I just can't believe we came here today and you two aren't wearing hats. It was literally the first thing I thought of When the mics came on today I was like, those two Slovenly people So there was a bloke called Thomas Elwood He was a teenager in 1659 And like all rebellious teenagers He wanted to go and join the Quakers But his father wanted to stop him And couldn't think of any way to stop him Kept trying, kept banning him, kept forbidding it And eventually had a brainwave And thought, I'll just confiscate all of his hats That's amazing And Thomas Elwood, the young man, wrote He couldn't go out Unless I would have run about the country Bareheaded Like a madman People would think you went seriously ill If you didn't have a hat on It's like stealing someone's trousers It pretty much is It pretty much is Incredible Yeah And Lindsay just includes one more story Because it's full of Ribbled anecdotes about hats This paper Ribbled ones Yeah ribbled I'll say Well judge for yourself In 1747 A Wiltra man admitted Snatching a rival's hat Pissing in it and clapping it back on the victim's head.

17:20That's good. These days, that guy would be a TikToker. He would just go around doing that to everyone and would have 10 billion followers. He'd have done it once and he'd have got so many followers that he now has to rename himself the Hat Piss account. And now his whole life is wrecked basically forever. He's made a lot of money, but he's only Mr. Hat Piss from then on. I can't believe he's the victim in this entirely fictional thing that we've just come up with. You think that the person and he's pissing in hats and pulling it on people's head is the victim. I think he's the victim of the internet as in he could have been so much more, right?

17:51He's got a thriving, you know, he wants to make like proper short films and stuff, I guess, but instead, he's so pop hat pissed. I think he's a pervert. I think he likes pissing in hats and the fact that the internet's here is just a coincidence. I think the internet is enabling the worst elements of this young man. Yeah. It would have been a silly teenage prank. He got a detention for it. You know, he's now dealing with a huge Chinese brand to do merch, hat piss merch, which is going to sell out across the hat piss stadium tour where he'll piss in all of your hats. And then probably like a new fashion for hats that look a bit like civs that people can't piss in.

18:27Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I think that is a bit of a mantra. I know this guy doesn't exist, but I do think that's a tragedy. Yeah, well, we disagree, I'm sorry to say. I think I probably wouldn't have joined the historical British Earthworm Society were it not for this show. Do you know? Or the wallpaper history society And you're saying that's a tragedy for you Well in a sense I am Tony Hat Piss You know what I mean? I just so disagree If we didn't have this show We wouldn't know that you'd join them That's the only thing It's a tragedy for us actually Honestly if you went around pissing in people's hats Rather than joining these stupid societies I think that would be a better use of your time Well look out James Because there's only one hat in this room And we've been recording for a while oh dear okay i think we should move on to the second part of today's show and that is where we bestow custodianship of some of our best facts to some of our best listeners we like all of you you're all great listeners uh but some of them have managed to financially boost themselves towards the top of our ranking some of you are ponied up and we're very we love all of you thank Thank you, Andy.

19:37I didn't know where that sentence was going either. So who has got a fact that we can give custodianship of? Michelle Handgraaf has joined Clubfish at Friend of the Podcast here, which I think is what you meant, James. Did I not say that? I think. You may have done. Michelle Handgraaf, you are now the custodian of the fact that Al-Qaeda's job application form, quite a spicy fact this one, includes a question asking who should be contacted in the event that the applicant becomes a martyr. well i do you know what i screen all of the headline facts to make sure and some of them i've removed because they're a bit too strong or a bit inappropriate i think that one was probably a borderline case for me um yeah it feels like it this was the fact where um we were all quite worried i think that our search histories would be problematic if ever mi5 got our computers because we all had to search for al-qaeda stuff and i i just remembered this is the one where i googled apply to join isis because i was looking for the application form but in the eyes of the law that's well i know you can't say oh guys guys all i was doing was looking for the application that's worse trouble a terrorist has been found running around london pissing in people's hats their budgets have been cut out of the outsiders since the early 2000s here's one for you guys swore brick this is the fact that the single biggest expense in the computer game lego universe was hiring human moderators to make sure people weren't building lego penises brilliant very much a fact of its time because i bet ai could do that now no that's going to be the last one to fall for ai the only thing humans are doing it'll be the resistance against the machines suddenly they'll just be little lego penises popping up all over the country oh that's a film that's a film to be made it's very funny that's very funny yeah yeah yeah okay here is a fact that is now under the custodianship of tom adelo and tom your fact is that the man who inspired the main character in jurassic park is now building a chickenosaurus.

21:54Surely not still. They are still working on all sorts of nonsense like that, aren't they? Like getting a woolly mammoth and getting a woolly rhino. Yeah, very much from the back of my head. But I think like in the last two weeks, they've invented artificial eggs where they've managed to hatch chickens out of them. Yes. And they do think that this could be the first step to getting a dodo or whatever. Yes, a great orc. Great orc, yeah. Oh, which would you go for? I'd go for a great orc. Would you? Yeah. Because it's got great in it. It's just a cool bird. It's the first thing I ever researched when I got a job at QI.

22:27Is it? The thing about penguins, doesn't their name mean great orc or something? That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or they were the original penguins. But they're just a beautiful bird that went extinct in the 19th century. Passenger pigeon I'd go for. Nice. So you could get easy transport from your house to here. Oh, no, they don't take people passengers, do they? Just carry a pigeon you're thinking of. Yes, of course. And you need a lot. here's one that goes out to katrina lewry and it's that in the 1840s london buses had straps attached to the driver's arms that you would yank if you wanted to stop really good bring it back that was the bell i guess you press the bell except it just yanks that it feels dangerous doesn't it feels like it would yank the driver's arms because presumably he's dealing with the horses it does but he's riding one-handed like any cool driver knows you should do okay my turn uh this is a fact for someone whose name is just killing time nice uh just killing time kill time with this baby in 2015 margaret atwood finished a novel which will not be published until the year 2114 brilliant wow and this is there's a few of them they've written their future novels.

23:41There are a few famous authors who put it in this box. We imagine they're all crap, aren't they? Did they not put them in a forest somewhere or something, or am I thinking of something else? I think maybe the forest had been planted and the paper from that forest will be used for the books in 100 years. So it's a nice way of having a forest. Again, I'm going off memory. 2114 felt a long way away in 2015. Now I'm thinking, yeah, I'll get there. It's 90 years as opposed to 100 years. And you know you have aged. 10 years since then. 79 years away. What am I now? 38. Yeah, I'll get there. Right, yeah.

24:14The Jeanne Calmont of the podcasting world. Okay, here is a fact now under the custodianship of Zan. Z-A-N. Zan, your fact is that Japan is considering installing toilets in its lifts. Long drop. What an unusual fact. Yeah, that was one of mine. It's not the whole country I think maybe they were having a problem With earthquakes hitting And people getting stuck in a lift for a long time And so it's better It's obviously better if there's a loo in the lift Best of all if you don't need to use it You know the best lift loo is one you never have to use That's true Do you think you know when you're in the lift With a bunch of other people and someone farts And everyone's like who farted Like someone's having a shit I think that's harder to hide But where does it go Does it go into a storage box because they have incredibly complicated plumbing, do we remember, that sort of stretches and contracts with the lift?

25:14I think it must be... Look, this is an emergency thing. This is not designed to be plumbed into the buildings thing. There'll be a small poo box. Had you just been to Japan when we did this fact, do you think? I think I must have been, yeah. I think you would use it because they'd be a novelty. That's the danger is that everyone who got in a lift would immediately want to use the toilet. There's got to be a system where the toilet only pops out of the wall if the lift gets stuck. Yeah, good point. Because then otherwise you're right. You're asking for trouble. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that I don't know if they ever ended up doing this.

25:45Considering is very weasel word to put into a headline fact. I'm sorry about that. Yeah. I've completely blanked this out. Japan is considering doing this. Yeah. I think I blanked it out because I have a phobia of lifts. And the only thing that sounds worse than a stuck lift is a stuck lift where now people are just shitting in a box in the corner. I still put my when I'm going around with my. What is this going to be? This is not. It's not. There's no poo involved. but I always when I need to get a lift like a station sometimes I'll have a pram because I'll have a baby in it and the baby needs to go in the pram because I don't want to get them out so I put the baby in the pram and I usually ask a nice looking person I think I've said this before a nice looking person to go up in the lift with the baby and then I'll meet them at the top of the stairs and I have to do it whenever I go get home because my station I need to get over to the other side so so can I just say the thing you're worried about with the lift is that it might break down but if it breaks down with your baby and you're on the outside that's fine no it makes me sounding like a selfish mother but i think my argument would be that logically i know it won't break down it's just a phobia and i don't have the phobia on behalf of my child i think it's nice that you trust strangers so much exactly yeah right because you're also scared of flying would you put your child on an airplane and then just maybe get a boat across the atlantic i get the ferry i say i'll be there in 52 weeks um could you look after the kid until then the The thing about lifts is they can't go anywhere except to the one place they're going, unless someone presses another floor button.

27:08But you hope that won't happen. Yeah. Do you occasionally look at the person who's in the lift with your baby and think, I'll wait for the next one. I do, yeah. I usually make sure it's... When they're in the car, they're having a shit. This fact goes out to Keith Berry, and it's that Spotify's random function is not random. I love this one. Spotify had a thing where they would play random stuff But it formed what people thought were patterns It might play you Because if it's a properly random system It might play you three songs by the same singer in a row And that makes people complain to Spotify Saying hey I thought this was random And what Spotify should have done is stuck to their guns and said It is random, sometimes randomness will throw up Three songs by the same singer in a row That's randomness And instead they caved and they made it so that It's structured but it feels more random to us I honestly I think I'm on Spotify's side Are you?

28:04Okay Because I think if you press random on a playlist What you want is different things all the time Yeah So actually I think they've done something good there Maybe there should be two buttons One which is true random and one which is fake random Yeah I think there should be Mathematically random and I think there should be Spotify random And which do you think would get the most presses? Oh probably Spotify random random dweebs who don't want they want true randomness do people i can't remember the purpose of random anyway why would you ever press random for song well you have a big long playlist yeah and you don't want to get the same order all the time or the playlist is like six hours long and you don't want to just listen to the first 10 songs again of course that makes a lot of i should start doing that actually i'm getting very bored of building up buttercup okay uh okay final one for the day that's me i'm the final one for the day and this is for rachel johnson Rachel Johnson take very good care of this fact because it's that scientists have grown an ear using Van Gogh's DNA.

29:04Nice. Real slap in the face. Do you think that's Rachel Johnson, the sister of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson? Yeah, who else would it be? Must be, right? It's an unusual name. Very unusual pair of names. Interesting. Yeah, very cool. Quite funny. But it won't be an actual working ear, will it? It'll be one of those, like, the shape of an ear and skin, will it be? Yes, it's just the outside of the ear. And I think they were growing it on some kind of tissue scaffold. I don't think it was one of those weird ears on a mouse. No. Which I think is always a bit odd. I'm going to come out and say it.

29:35I think it's weird growing ears on the back of a mouse. Ooh, controversial. Van Gogh's DNA. But it's not really Van Gogh's ear. What were they doing here? What are they doing here? I think it's a little bit of a joke, isn't it, at Van Gogh? It's like, in your face, Van Gogh. You didn't have an ear in your life, but 100 years later. I think basically you're starting up this new science where you can build ears on scaffolds and you want people to get a bit interested in it. And so to do that, you think, who do I know who would have wanted an ear? Yes. In history, Van Gogh. In fact, there aren't many other people who spring to mind, for me anyway.