Little Fish: Reindeer Animal Animal

0:13This is an It incluous video for guests to see you. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot. And turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. Now the reason I'm talking to you before the actual show starts is because we had a little audio flub this week and the microphones unfortunately failed.

1:11But luckily for us, the microphones on the cameras that we were using to record the episode, they did work. But unfortunately they are not quite the same quality as the ones we usually use. And so we sound a little bit like we're at the bottom of the well for this episode. But I've listened back to it. Wonderful tech elves have done lots of lovely magic to make it as good as possible. So hopefully it will not impede your enjoyment of this episode too much. Really hope you enjoy it. We really wanted to put it out because the facts were so good. We had a great time recording it. We think it's a really great episode.

1:45So I hope you can get past the bad audio. Apart from that, there's not really much else to say, I suppose. Thank you very much for listening. We really appreciate every single one of you who listens to the episodes. and really we wouldn't be able to do this without you so thank you very much. We don't get to say that very often so yeah thanks. Okay anyway enough from me. Hope you enjoy this week's episode of Little Fish. On with the podcast.

2:23Anna Ptaszynski:Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish, our weekly regular audience fact show. My name is Andrew Hunter-Marie. I'm here with James Harkin and Anna Tujitsky. And we've gathered with your best facts from the last seven days. So let's kick off. Let's have a fact Doug Steen is who this fact is from Doug D-U-G. No, oh cool. Very interesting Then that's not even the most interesting heart of this email Doug Steen says that reindeer the etymology is a combination of the Old Norse hrein and Deer where deer means animal and hrein means reindeer. So when we say reindeer, we're actually saying reindeer time wasting it's time wasting it's like ATM machine and pin number so we should just call it a rain we should just be calling it a rain feels like a little more confusion yeah does that mean all animals are deers yeah I believe so oh that must be confusing for the vikings another deer yeah oh you got killed by a deer that's a good point today yes deer hold on a second you've blown this over yeah a deer a standard deer yeah so we get that from old north as well and it just means animal i guess maybe it's the only animals they had don't quote me on that that's true yeah don't write it vikings bloody runes filling up the inbox oh yeah gonna come to your town and chop your head off yeah yeah yeah steal all your gold yeah yeah yeah well that's a great fact only dear really good yeah although it did get quite confusing in the email which i should repeat from Doug who says reindeer means reindeer animal and thus

4:06which I'm not sure quite makes sense I think he's saying if you say reindeer animal you're actually saying reindeer animal animal yeah I've never heard anyone say that people very rarely say reindeer animal because there's not another meaning of the word reindeer that isn't the animal I don't think there is no no so that wouldn't come up but aside from that a great email I thought. Very good. Here's one from Christian Berlin and it's also a bit Scandi, I find it's very Scandi. Christian says that the only national anthem that mentions Sweden in any way is the Polish national anthem and the Polish national anthem basically mentions loads of different countries according to the website Brilliant Maps which actually is a really good website I know it doesn't sound like it but it a really good website they do loads of amazing stuff and but I have I've checked this on other websites and it's definitely true is it like we will beat Sweden into the ground there is a bit

5:04Anna Ptaszynski:of that in there yeah you're Polish and then you should know this you should sing it every morning yes what can the advances family do to the British national island lately yeah I only know the original Polish and I wasn't sure about the translation oh yeah of course because of course the Polish word for Sweden is very different actually. The Swedish national anthem mentions the north as a sort of euphemism for Sweden. I see. Countries but it doesn't say Sweden by name. You know the British national anthem doesn't say Britain does it? No it doesn't it doesn't have anything does it? I guess that's because it's so old.

5:43I just think you don't say your own name as often as you say other people's do you? I never say the name of course you do you speak about is over in the third person. Most of us. Well what about O Canada or Advanced Australia Fair? Good point.

5:55Anna Ptaszynski:Or go on New Zealand. Call back. But we do mention one country in the British national anthem. Scots. In some versions. Well the old, the later verses have some rather decidedly unwoke stuff about rebellious Scots to crush. Yeah you're right there is a verse about to someone called Marshall Wade who's going to crush the rebellious Scots but that is very much non-canon I would say it was kind of a verse that was invented in the 19th century because in those days we were a little bit anti-Scots of course now we're all mates. Now that it was put in later there are a few like verses which were sung for a little while but they weren't sung afterwards Interesting.

6:44And that's one of those.

6:44Anna Ptaszynski:It's non-canon. Although ironically if you were going to crush Rebellious Scots you would probably need quite a few canon. Yeah, multiple canon. Good use of the plural canon. Always something to enjoy isn't it? The plural canon. Yeah absolutely. Singular plurals are terrific you know or unexpected plurals. Courts martial. Courts martial are beauty. I mean a bit of a hackneyed example. Ex-munt muffin. Well, ex-munt muffin. I believe that's in the German national anthem. Oh, can I do one? Yes. Here's a fact from Tony. Tony says, I have a fact for you. The continents of America and Europe are moving apart at the same speed as a fingernail grows.

7:27Anna Ptaszynski:This means if you stand at Land's End, which is the southwesterly most point of the UK, and point west, your fingernail is stationary and you are moving backwards. No notes. I think that's terrific. Yeah, it really is. But both sides are moving away from each other, right? I guess. That's what the way I thought you were going to go is that the end of your fingernail is always the same distance from America no matter what happens. Oh, that's a real mind exploder. You know, I always, I've heard that fact before and I always think of it whenever I cut my fingernails. Do you? I do, I think, because my fingernails grow relatively fast.

8:05Yep. Like you do. How do you know relative, do you ask other people how fast they're squirt? relative to what I imagine they should be

8:13Anna Ptaszynski:I didn't say what it was relative to oh gosh has it been that long since I cut my fingernails they've grown so fast that's why I do think a lot I find it's incredibly variable so I am sometimes extremely surprised in fact right now to be honest it is variable okay this is the great thing your fingernails grow more in the summer than the hot country which we've become well yes so due to global warming we're all going to be like RuPaul does RuPaul have long fingernails who was the first person I could think of I don't know. No, I don't. I'll be honest. It was a great reach. But that's probably due to more blood flow in your fingertips basically.

8:49Anna Ptaszynski:Is it? Yeah, when it's a bit hotter. There was a doctor called William Bennett Bean, who spent 35 years from 1941 studying his own fingernail growth. He concluded that nothing has any effect on fingernail growth. I think he was wrong. Just a bit of a kick in the teeth there. I know someone who cuts one fingernail a day because they think it's more efficient Loopy it's not Than doing all at once It's so rough The extra work that's being done is finding the clippers, getting them out of the cabinet and pulling them away again If you're doing that 10 times instead of once I'm sorry there's just no way that's not I completely agree Also he cuts their fingernails every 10 days, he's a psycho I agree I do interrogate further out of it He'll be toes as well 20 days And 20 days is about right 20 days is about right Yeah but you'll have a constantly shifting border I used to say that to my mum, she used to say, if we clean up a little bit all the time, then it will save us time overall.

9:42And I was like, no, the best thing to do is to make a load of mess. And then all at once clean it all up. That's the most efficient way of doing it. It is, which is why you can't use that argument as a mother. You've just got to say, I like it being tidy more than one cent of the time. I don't like living in a shit pile because once a month you want to clean it.

10:01Anna Ptaszynski:No, I think that is sort of sensible thing, that was the thing. I think I'm gonna start doing that with my hair. I'm just gonna go in every day. Yes, just another five postcards I did please. I'm just gonna brush one tooth every 20 minutes. Stop the podcast! Sorry, that's a James tooth. Anyway, this is a fact from James Ralph. Something I came across which I thought was a bit fishy and hadn't heard us mention is that the Soviet Typhoon class submarines were so big and they were meant to be under, I was going to say ground, but under water for such long periods, they had a swimming pool, gym, sauna and aviary.

10:41Anna Ptaszynski:No. That's what it is. That's extraordinary. Those poor birds. I know, it's not that fun is it? But maybe if birds in a cage, do they care if it's above water or below water? Why do they have an aviary though? To keep morale up. Yeah, and to sing. It doesn't keep morale up as much as one dog, does it? Unlimited cuttlefish for them to have in the cage.

11:03They're lucky, if anything.

11:05Anna Ptaszynski:Is it like canaries in a coal mine maybe? Yeah, because they notice when there's been a pressure change, all the canaries are dead. They all drop dead, yeah. What do you do? What do you do? You're in a submarine? Yeah, I think it must be morale, so you can sing the seed ditties and have them accompany you. That's a good, that's a really good point. Yeah, thank you. That's nice to have a point. You wouldn't have a dog on a submarine for a start. I think a dog would be more unhappy than the poos. The poos! Because it's already a flushing poos on the submarine isn't it? Because it's really annoying to flush the poos especially when you do want 10 foot poo.

11:42Oh the dog that James trained.

11:47Anna Ptaszynski:That's amazing. It is very amazing. Oh something else very cool that he added is that he mentions they're absolutely massive things and they were meant for missiles. missiles they were carrying and they had a double hull layout so there was an outer wall that was like water filled it was kind of like a tent in the anauti and then the in-between bit was water filled encasing an inner wall so as he points out if you took a toy submarine and put it in the indoor pool there you'd have a sub in water in a sub in water in a sub in water Amazing. Really nice. Like the Russian doll of Anasovia. There we go.

12:24Very good. Yeah. Nice fact. So good. Another war-y one. Oh, yeah. After leaving the Marx Brothers, Zeppel Marx invented the clamp which held the little boy atomic bomb in place on his flight to Hiroshima. No way. What? Yeah, Zeppel Marx. He was an inventor, it turned out. So he invented, sorry, he invented what? He invented the clamp which held the little bio-atomic bomb. So what it is, it's a clamp which holds cylindrical things together. Do you know if you have a hose pipe and you need to attach the end of the hose pipe onto your sprinkler thing? It's the big of my life. Oh those things that never work?

13:03Yeah, those little metal things that never work and you have to tighten them and they kind of make a seal. It's not that.

13:13But it's very similar to that because when I saw an image of it I thought oh it's one of those things so I could just say that thing and everyone will know what I mean and they'll know what the clamp is but then I looked more carefully and it's very slightly different.

13:24Anna Ptaszynski:Because I think it is good that they didn't go with that clamp device or the first atomic bomb because those things never ever work and I don't want a loose atomic bomb rolling around in the plastic. No because whenever you use those you get the sprinkler and it's not working you turn it on to your face and it sprays off into your face. Imagine if that happened with an atomic bomb. So that's only because Jerry the mouse has been standing on the hose and there's a huge bulb of water that's built up behind it. Yeah but yeah Zepo he was like a proper inventor. He invented a wristwatch that checks your heartbeat and can tell you if something was going wrong with your heartbeat.

13:58The other watch? Like a Fitbit right? Wow. When we're talking like 1969 he invented that. Oh my lord. That was a Marx brother. But was these a lesser... there were three of them right? There was four, yeah.

14:11Anna Ptaszynski:And there was a fifth who was I think a non-combatant... I mean, I don't think in the second world war. I just mean like he was not in the Marx Brothers. You know the Marx Brothers was Chico, Harpo, Gratw, etc. Yeah. And I think there was... George. George. Ringo. Like the Kardashians. I feel like there's one Kardashian that's not there. Susan. I think what you're thinking of actually is that he was a guy from Black Sabbath. Ozzy Osbourne? The Osbourne. So there was one Osbourne who was never in the Osbourne. Oh really? She did not want to be in the TV series. Ah okay yeah yeah. Anyway so yeah he also one other thing he invented this is really cool.

14:47He invented a thing where you could put two beehives together without all the bees fighting each other.

14:53Anna Ptaszynski:How on earth do you invent that? Was it a pheromone thing? It has like a reverse bend which has a queen excluder in it because it's the queens that cause all of the fighting so So they're basically, all the bees can go in and out, but the queens can't go from one to the other. So it stops the drones and stuff from fighting each other. Is that? That's really funny. Which of those inventions, the clip for the Hiroshima bomb, the Fitbit, or the anti-bee fight exploder, do you think was the biggest invention? Which one did you want to talk about in chat shows? I mean, I think they're all completely inconsequential.

15:30Anna Ptaszynski:What, the Hiroshima? The clamp? Who cares? It's like, oh, the Marx Brothers here with his idea for the clamp. Okay, well, that's great, but it's not. Yeah, but isn't that like, otherwise they couldn't have picked it up. They would have just had a big bomb sitting in America and not knowing what to do. I think it was quite important, I guess. You think someone else might have made a clamp if he hadn't. I just think if you're in charge of the Manhattan Project, and you're in charge of this hugely significant doomsday device, there's just a risk that if you get one of the Marx Brothers involved, like, it's just, it's about PR as much as everything else.

15:59Anna Ptaszynski:It's like, when the Three Stooges is not available. Imagine if we invented the ultimate weapon and the guy responsible for delivering it to the battlefield was Michael McIntyre We just think, hang on! Is he gonna do a bit?

16:14I reckon McIntyre is a secret agent working for the government. 100 % The light entertainment stuff is just a cover. Why do you think that? Because no one could possibly devote their life to that? No, because he's so good at it, obviously. He must be getting a lot of help. I see. To the government, you see how I turned that around? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The government, if it's good at anything, it's drafting comedy routines.

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17:50Anna Ptaszynski:I got another from George who says, I thought this was fascinating when I overheard it mentioned by a geography teacher. It's quite interesting. Always promising. Overheard it mentioned by a geography teacher so it's unclear if George was in the lesson and not really listening and just sort of overheard it or if George is in the pub next to someone who's clearly a geography teacher you know because he's wearing corduroy or whatever. Sorry geography teachers. Anyway I love this fact. The Romford to Upminster branch of The London Overground, okay, it's the branch of the area in North London, marks the furthest line of ice penetration during an ice age.

18:29Wow, interesting.

18:31Anna Ptaszynski:Now listen, I've been fooled before by ice age related facts. Yes, you have. Elephants in Cornwall made the road network there. But the ice definitely didn't get as far as Cornwall. No, but it did get as far as the Hornchurch Till. Now, if anyone's looking for a metal band name, I think Hornchurch Till is actually quite good. It's a glacial deposit and it contains all these rocks and fossils which were basically carried down from the Midlands further north of London 450 ,000 years ago the most extreme ice age of the last two and a half million years this one got as far south as North London Yeah, and then it stopped Well, we'll want to go south of the river Not this time of night And basically there are all these rocks and fossils in there that we've you know You can tell because of where they belong in the land that they've been carried out.

19:14Anna Ptaszynski:It is so cool, I think it's quite metal. It was discovered in 1892 by a geologist called T.V. Holmes. Holmes is in Sherlock Holmes. Quite hard to google him because you search T.V. Holmes and you just find the latest Sherlock series. Exactly yeah and this Ice Age, it's so cool, is the reason that the Thames go through London because the Thames used to go through East Anglia north of London, came out of the sea in Clacton in Essex and it now it was pushed south into another valley by the advance of the ice sheet. You know what I used to think and I thought I was a genius thinking this that the rocks at Stonehenge were brought down by that ice age because that line where Stonehenge is is pretty much as far as it got as well and I was sure like I absolutely nailed the origin of Stonehenge and said that it's just definitely not true.

20:03I have plenty of evidence that people carried them over from Wales. BBC publishing articles about the origin of Stonehenge every two weeks That's definitely not true, so I think you should give them a call.

20:13Anna Ptaszynski:But there's all this stuff of like Ice Age Essex, there's the Clacton Elephant Bed and the West Thurrock Lion Pit, there's all this like rock stuff. I just love it. So anyway, yeah, the Thames, just think if like if the Thames hadn't been pushed south, London wouldn't have a river going through it now. Just London wouldn't be there. Yeah. Well no, it'd be there but without the river going through it. We'd have all the brinches and stuff. So there you go, a super thought. Yeah, it really is. yeah anyway thank you George I love that fact yeah really cool that's amazing what about this one from Kate Haynes this is that in world war two one of the plans put forward to stop Hitler which was a very important aim at the time was to feed him carrots laced with estrogen in the hopes that this would feminize him and make him meek and mild like his sister apparently I didn't know he had a meek and mild sister did he have a meek and mild sister some Gertrude Hitler I think there was sister called Paula Paula she said it's bad isn't it say yeah I think his sister was called Paula I know perfectly well she was called Paula did she also have the little mustache that was that Hamley trait Hamley trait oh dear I don't know how meek and mild she was but they're also probably Mika and milder though which it wouldn't be difficult that's true there were also his in-laws if you remember the Scouse part of the family but that's because he had a different sister's husband maybe or Alwa no Alwa maybe his brother married someone who only worked in Liverpool and then one of them moved to America didn't they and went on the sort of chat show scene a little bit forgotten that not a chat show so much as like going to theatres and talking about my terrible cousin Hitler yeah so you got the terrible in at the start make clear this idea wrong but yeah so this is one of those mad plans Yeah, and also apparently it was also hoped that his smoother skin and large breasts would make him a laughingstock Among the military men and world leaders.