Little Fish: Still Rockin' The Cloaca

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1:13James Harkin:hello and welcome to another episode of little fish this is your bonus monday episode where we put down our four favorite facts from the last seven days and we go through your favorite facts that you've submitted to podcast at qi.com and he trawls through the email inbox he picks out the best choice selections and we bring them here so why don't we get into it who wants to start off i'll start off i'm james by the way nice to meet you um i have a fact from someone called thomas thomas martin that's a nice name my name's andy he mentioned you in the intro did he yeah well i feel like we're off the blocks well thomas thomas martin writes that the richest person in the world lives in Nottingham.

1:56Oh. Interesting. Shoe trillionaire. Nottingham was a big shoe country, wasn't it? That's Northampton, I think. Sorry. Nottingham has a goose fair. It has caves? Oh, yeah. Lots of caves in there. I'll say somebody's monetized caves.

2:15James Harkin:Dan, any thoughts? Well, I'm just thinking Robin Hood's from the area. Oh, yeah. I mean, imagine bumping into the richest man on Earth on the road. That's a good payday. Give it to the poorest man of the world. Here's the thing, though. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk is the richest person alive, so he must be from Nottingham. Is this a clever riddle that Thomas has posed us? His money is just on paper, really. And in a way, you could say that this person's money is just on paper as well, because this person has got£63 quadrillion, but they can only spend it in one particular coffee shop in Nottingham because someone gave them a gift card and there was a little typo on the gift card and the£10 balance to this place called 200 Degrees Coffee actually came through as 63 quadrillion.

3:05That's really funny. That's really funny. And if you can spend it all in the coffee shop within a month, you get to keep everything. It's like Brewster's 63 quadrillions. Yeah, amazing. Oh, that's so charming. I love it. I love those stories. I love them Do you remember the 6th of October 2016? Of course The night of that No, I just remember the daytime Yeah, well probably when you were asleep Because I'm talking midnight Everyone in the UK lost 10 % of their worth Oh Literally everyone Is this like a gravity thing? No, what happened was Around that time Francoise Hollande did a speech about britain and a lot of the transactions in the stock markets and in the financial markets are done by computers and he did this and it triggered off a mini sell-off of sterling right and then the computers sort of saw that and then sold more and then sold more and these programs all started selling loads of sterling then there was a second sell-off limit that was hit and then even more started being sold and then it all got fixed before we woke up in the morning so within two minutes of this happening eight percent of the value of sterling was wiped off and then when the human traders caught up they sort of fixed it all so only if you've gone to a bureau de change at midnight on that day and tried to change your pounds into euros you could have had a problem but for everyone else it didn't make any difference at all so funny That's like a financial version of that film Night at the Museum Is it?

4:48Yeah What happens in that? Well, everything goes crazy in the museum every night And Ben Stiller has to fix it all before the morning Oh, and then does it get fixed? Yeah, yeah It's like a financial version of The Simpsons, isn't it? Because whatever happens in The Simpsons By the end of the episode, they're always back to normal Right, okay Can I just say, I'm staggered that one of us has not seen Night at the Museum, Dan What?

5:10James Harkin:I'm staggered you haven't seen Night at the Museum No, I just didn't accept your premise that it was similar to this situation. It becomes a museum that is sentient. Everything is sentient all of a sudden. The money didn't become sentient. But then the markets traded by themselves. So there is a little bit of sentience there. Okay. Well, that's still kind of more space odyssey. You know, it's like it's a sentient AI as opposed to a waxwork of Roosevelt. This is why our film podcast didn't work. Okay. I just want to say that. I'll do a fact. Yep. This is a fact about Canada And it comes in from Martin Williams Good Canadian name This is about Wood Buffalo National Park It's the largest park in Canada Right?

5:53Do at night the wooden Buffalo become sentient and run amok? Very funny It's just about the size of this park Some parks are big right? Hyde Park Pretty big This park is 44 ,000 square kilometres It is bigger than Denmark and if it became an independent nation, it would be the 130th largest country in the world. Right. Which I love. And Martin has done some more maths, which I respect. Sorry, point of order? Yep. Denmark owns Greenland. Yeah, Martin. So actually, Denmark is the largest country in Europe if you don't count Russia. Really good point. Does it own Greenland or was it one of those funny things where Greenland owns itself but it's governed from...

6:39it's the other way around so Denmark owns it but Greenland governs itself. I understand, I understand Okay, time of recording of course, time of recording Alright, well I'll do the rest of Martin's email anyway because it's brilliant. Collectively the 39 national parks and reserves of Canada have an area of 343 ,000 square kilometres, larger than the Republic of the Congo and over 40 % larger than the entire UK. This was why my picnic failed in Canada because I'd like to my mates, I'll see you in the park Just middle of the park here, yeah So that's how big they are. Despite this, not one of them boasts a Waitrose or Wetherspoons location.

7:13I am aware of these chain institutions almost exclusively due to your podcast, which mentions them curiously often. This has piqued my own curiosity, and should I ever travel to the UK, I will most assuredly visit a Wetherspoons. It is interesting that you can learn quite a bit from our character, probably, by the various institutions that we mention on this show. Exactly, and Martin says He's already picked the Wetherspoons he'll go to He says, I'll go to the mechanical elephant In Margate In the hope of bumping into Dan Hopefully it looks better in person Than the photos online That's a bit unfair I mean, sure, he hasn't combed his hair today But

7:53James Harkin:Go on Dan, what are you saying? I won't be in that one, obviously I'm in Ramsgate at the far superior Wetherspoons I don't want to give the impression, by the way, that I go to Wetherspoons. I've been to that one in Ramsgate. There's nothing wrong with going to Wetherspoons. I don't want to be the Wetherspoons guy, though. You're not the Wetherspoons guy. You're the wife guy. You can't be both. All right, let's move on to another one. This one has been sent in by Pete Sorrell Cameron. He says, I don't know if you have covered this before. I don't think it's an outrageous fact, but it's always tickled me that Oscar-nominated actor Michael B.

8:26James Harkin:Jordan's father is called Michael A. Jordan. that's really good i've never heard that before that's really good i try to look in more to see if there are any other uh initials uh that were in sequence um well there's michael double a jordan and then there's michael triple a jordan who's half the size yes yeah well michael so his dad michael b jordan is not an actor he works as a supervisor at john f kennedy airport jfk of course son of j ek um no no no not true not true you had me no he was he was jpk uh his dad and then weirdly jpk's dad was pjk so that's a whole new game there what does the p stand for um well who knows patrick i believe who knows who knows but i'm gonna say patrick okay i believe okay um yeah just quite fun i i love that little bit of sequencing yeah really good the only one that i would thought of which was another confusing version of that is same first names so you guys remember evelyn war or evelyn war had a wife who was also called evelyn yes so the way that the friends distinguished them was he was hevelin and she was shevelin okay and they had a child called Ethelin.

9:44Yeah, lovely fact. Really good. Great fact. Here's one from Tony Elmquist. And Tony said, around the year 1000, French peasant Lutard of Virtus was commanded by God to preach against certain practices of the church, including tithes, oaths, sacraments, and the veneration of the cross. Eventually, he was branded a heretic and killed himself by throwing himself in a well. The way God chose to communicate with him was via a swarm of bees A swarm of bees that flew into his anus Well done if anyone saw where that sentence was going I'm starting to see why he threw himself into a well I think the constant bees flying into your anus would be his Actually, quite interestingly, the bees flew into his A Yes, they did!

10:38so sorry he was did you say he was a saint uh he was no he was a peasant okay he can be both absolutely many of the best ones yeah were both uh but no he was a heretic oh sorry he was a heretic so i'm sure some people venerate him because that's the thing with heretics like usually the majority of people don't like you but there's usually a few like jd vents Are we saying he's a saint or a heretic? Heretic, I think At that time of recording he's beefing with the Pope About matters of Catholic theology That is honestly bringing a knife to a gunfight Not that the Pope would approve of either fight But still No, sorry, God communicated with this heretic By flying a swarm of bees up his bottom That's according to Tony Amazing

11:25James Harkin:What are the bees communicating? Bzzzzz It's like an alarm Hi honey, I'm home In your anus It could have been worse, they could have communicated with him through his nostril Which we know is the most painful place to be stung by a bee According to Schmidt The Schmidt Pain Index Do you know what scaphism is? Scaphism Is it a kind of heresy? No, but it's something that could happen if you were heretical Oh, okay It was a method of execution and it was done by the persians according to plutarch and he described that the person who was to be killed was trapped between two boats one on top of the other so like you're inside an easter egg kind of thing and your head and your limbs are sticking out but they're covered in milk and honey and you're basically eaten by insects that's your punishment oh it's death by insects basically between two boats yeah yeah i didn't fully understand that so like imagine imagine two like rowboats oh rowboats yeah like it's not two ferries yeah yeah okay so it's like one robot on top of the other so you have like an egg yeah like an egg yeah i see yes yeah um so yeah but it was basically just a place to hold your body down while you had to stick your bits out and then the insects would eat your bits crikey that is fun no fun being a heretic back in the day no no it's you would say this has got to be the heretics era really absolutely doesn't it isn't there's never been a nicer time it'd be quite funny to see an animation of say like richard dawkins being subjected to all the different ways that heretics were murdered back in the day wow well just to give us an idea of like what like he's living in a good time he's able to go on stage and say these things yeah a different time he would have had i didn't know that like we didn't we didn't know that as an option of death has he been cancelled richard dawkins not as far as i'm aware no no no because that's the modern punishment of a heretic isn't it food for thought i'll take the cancellation please over i'll have the bees you get the bees at the bum you have to go between two boats while insects eat your arms and you get a netflix special

13:49James Harkin:102 miles ago, the oil light came on. 100 miles ago, you noticed. Now, it's time to head to Take 5. This oil change, fall in love with your car all over again. In just 10 minutes, your dream technician will check your tire pressure, top off fluids, change your oil, and verify with Carfax exactly what your car really needs, all while keeping you in the driver's seat. Take 5, the Stay in Your Car 10-minute oil change. Find your nearest shop at Take5.com. Let's talk about the new team in town, Dobbs Tire and Auto Centers. They may be new to us, but they've been the trusted name in auto care in St.

14:26James Harkin:Louis since 1976. Save all month long with their low-priced oil changes, starting at just$25, and save even more with a free tire rotation. Check out their May Tire rebates on Goodyear, General, Michelin, Pirelli, and more. They have 10 new locations to serve you, and they're open six days a week for your convenience. So go to gotodobbs.com for addresses, phone number, and book your appointment online today. Here's a great one from Annalisa, with two I's. Probably knows his mouth. Very strong. In the west coast of Estonia, we used to have about 10 ,000 Estonia Swedes living. They moved to what is now Estonia about 1 ,000 years ago.

15:11Wow. and stayed rather insulated until the second one was isolated, I suppose. But in the olden days, this is just a cool fact which Anna wants to let us know about a thing called ham fish, as she calls it. In the olden days, it was a tradition that every year after a girl was born, a smoked ham would be put away and stored for her wedding. So a few days before the big day, 20 or so well-aged hams would be available and you'd then boil them to make them edible and you'd have all your wedding hams. It's a really nice idea. Yeah. I think that's a really good idea. It's just putting a little bit aside.

15:49It's like a bottom drawer, we would call it. It's like a junior riser. A little bit like that, yeah. It would have been the equivalent, yeah. It's slightly more similar to my thing where you literally put things away for the wedding. Yes, I see that. I do see that, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I like the analogy. Yeah. And there'll be government campaigns saying you really should put hams away you really should salt hams and store them for your daughter's eventual wedding nothing no word about what the son's got i suppose if there's one wedding it's you know at this time you got half a ham you got half a ham yeah yeah that's very good that is very

16:23James Harkin:cool um i've got andy we i'm sure we've said this before many times but you pick all these facts for us don't you sort of curate what james and i get um i just don't know why you pick these particular the themes for me sometimes um i'm really sorry well there's rob walter who's sent in saying you can absorb aspirin through your skin which is why you shouldn't masturbate for too long with liniment um thank you andy yeah what's liniment liniment is um well dan is it made from the willow tree or something it must be a medical medical goo okay i think so I think it's a, yeah, it's heated as well. It's one of those heat lubricants.

17:05James Harkin:Oh, dear. Or like deep heat. Yeah. Oh, crumbs. I believe so. Okay, well, we've got a second reason. I mean, I haven't used it in quite a while. But not after that first time, but I think that was liniment. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and then this other one sent in by John Turbot. Here's the headline from Scientific American. This may be the oldest butthole imprint on Earth. Yeah. I'm just getting a lot of butthole and masturbation stuff from you in my James had the bees up his bottom That's fair enough What I would say is If I see a fact that's really good But I don't want to read it out myself I think I know a patsy Can you tell us about the oldest bun?

17:48Yeah, this is actually very interesting

17:49James Harkin:Thank you You're welcome So they discovered an animal squatting in the mud And it was preserved and it's the first time that they've seen this. Now, it's a cloaca, right? So it's the exit point of multiple different things. So they didn't find the animal. It's the oldest fossilized imprint of the bottom. Yeah, exactly. And it's around 299 million years ago that there was a volcanic eruption and this was buried in a patch of mud in what is today central Germany. Yeah, so it's fossilized, a fossilized butthole imprint, as scientific American puts it. Yeah. I do love that idea that we've got a more organized filing system for what we let out of our bodies.

18:33What do you mean? Like, as in birds, everything goes in and out of one hole, but we have a few different options.

18:39James Harkin:Exactly. We have a few different holes in which we allow the urine out or the poo out. Thank you, professor. I'm still reading the Scientific American article here. What feels like progress is what you're saying. Yeah, I feel like I'm more organized Than you guys say I am Just by the nature of that And I assumed From how you are in your day-to-day working life That you were still rocking the cloaca I just sort of thought Dan would have got around to sorting this out yet What a sort of like Really posh schoolboy bird That would be at school I actually think you haven't even reached cloaca status You're like a shipworm that only has one opening So you're Everything goes in and out, including the food goes in, and the poo comes out, and the wee goes out, and the breathing happens all in one hole.

19:30James Harkin:Well it's good to work out what you think of me. Bet you're wishing you'd been a bit nicer about my night at the museum analogy now. Now that I think about it's really cool. Oh dear. Here's one from C.C. Lam. This is about a really interesting sounding place in southern Utah, USA. My husband and I were visiting St. George, Utah And I drove a rental car from Las Vegas up to meet him And as I drove I could see the gorgeous Virgin River As it's called, as I crossed it on my way to Zion country I learned shortly afterwards that the Virgin River I crossed That's its name, was named after a Mr. Virgin Who was an early settler of the region It was named after Thomas Virgin, 19th century settler That's very good And that was one where you tried to trick us Yeah, how'd it go?

20:23You tried to slip it in Yes Unlike anyone did to Mr. Virgin Brilliant Superb While in St. George we went to visit a fascinating dormant volcano in Snow Canyon State Park Named of course after Lorenzo and Erastus Snow No Who were the early Mormon pioneers in the area? Oh, that's very good Snow Canyon Yeah That's funny That's fantastic

20:45James Harkin:That's very good Lovely double tap there Lovely double top. Well, hey, listen, thank you everyone for sending in your facts. Please do keep them coming in podcast at QI.com. We love going through these and reading them out here. But before we wrap up the episode, one more thing to do, which is if you are part of the highest tier of Clubfish, which is our private members club on Patreon, it's called Friend of the Podcast, that tier, you will be eligible to become custodian of one of the facts from the 12-year history of fish. And so we've been going through the big long list, dishing them out, and we've got eight new custodians to give away today who wants to go first i'll go first this one goes out to stuart earl and stuart your fact is that the statue of liberty originally wore a headscarf yes i think this was one of my facts and yeah and i remember because i was i was looking at the statue of liberty's face before it was erected on top of the body and i thought it looked exactly like Elvis Presley.

21:45James Harkin:So I started digging into it. How interesting. Was it based on the mother of Bertoldi or something? Yes, I think it was. How interesting that she looked like Elvis Presley. Yeah, so that's interesting in its own right, isn't it? Anyway, I started looking into it, and then there was this whole thing about Egyptology at the time. Someone had written a book about the sort of obsession with Egypt at the time, and it was just a fact within that. Interesting fact, Elvis Presley Wore size 479 Blue suede shoes Brilliant fact We've got to explain that's the shoes size The sandal size Of the Statue of Liberty I think I might have got the number wrong I think it was 800 and something I think it was 879 Shall I do one?

22:32This one goes out to A llama A polo mint takes 42 and a half minutes to dissolve if you stick it up your nose. Very good. We did this at a live show. Yeah, we did it. When I say we did this at a live show, Dan, you, I believe, did it at a live show. You stuck a polo up your nose.

22:50James Harkin:Yes, because we record over an hour, so I thought, okay, this is interesting. It might be gone by the time we finish. Did it not sting like liniments on the penis? Or a flock of bees up the bottom? Sorry. flock herd swarm I was like herding bees as the old saying goes what happened? I can't remember it didn't work it didn't work no no but this it came from a study because you need to know if things get stuck up children's noses how long they have been up there yeah they use polos because it's like you know boiled sugar basically right so it will dissolve eventually Maybe the pH in your nose is unusual in some way Oh interesting You've got an unusually mild nose Well right into scientists Let's do another one This is for Georgie I Georgie your fact is now When you have a tattoo lasered off You end up pooping it out Do you think it's Georgie L?

23:55James Harkin:Yeah probably I quite like Georgie I Congratulations your majesty This was one of yours Andy These are quite a few famous facts Hall of Famers, yeah, I would say. It's good to know where all my tattoos have gone since I had the procedure. Yeah, it's that the ink goes into your poo. It's not that the poo has a picture of Greg Wallace on it or whatever. Whatever, you might have tattooed on your body. I showed you that in confidence, Ben. And it was a different type. What was on the other bum cheek? I can't remember. It was... It was Hugh Edwards, but the point...

24:41I bet you regretted getting Scott Mills on your penis.

24:47Yeah, no, I was thrilled by that fact. It was a very funny fact. Yeah, very good. Very nice indeed. Okay, here is a fact that is now under the custodianship of Martin Nutterboom. and apologies, Martin, if I've mispronounced your name, but your fact is that the man who invented the airship, Alberto Santos Dumont, had dinner parties with 10 foot high chairs so his guests could experience the joy of flight. Yes. Fantastic. That was another all time. Santos Dumont was such an amazing character. Yeah. He is brilliant. I saw, I went recently to the Science Museum and they've got one of the top floors is the flight thing and his name is all over it.

25:29They've got loads of his early designs and things. And yeah, it's really cool.

25:33James Harkin:Original items? Yeah. Wow. Is he the one, or it was definitely in that era in Paris, where they were like the only person who had a dirigible, like a balloon. And they used to float from house to house and just sort of sit outside your window going, Hi, it's me. It sounds really familiar. I think you're right. I think you're right. He did that. That's lovely. I remember years ago at the QI building, we organized a book event with Philippe Petit. He's the man who did the tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. And so I was there helping him set up and so on. And he sort of went, do you have a ladder?

26:08James Harkin:And we're like, you want a ladder? And he likes to start all of his talks while perching at the top of a ladder to give you the sense of him maybe falling off. Wonderful. Just before the beginning of his talk. Wonderful. I don't know if he does it for all, but certainly that day. I have to go find a ladder. What a guy. Anyway, let's get another fact. Here's another one. This one goes out to Rachel Robertson Rachel your fact is A new scientific study has concluded That there are too many scientific studies Vintage Dan phrasing there And this would have been about 2017 And I guess They stopped didn't they They stopped They said we've had enough of scientists We've had enough of experts

26:52Yeah Sort of time wasting science studies I suppose is what they were concerned about. Yes, yeah. But is any study really a waste of time? No, you never know where the new breakthrough is going to come from. It might be something about, you know, how long does it take a tortoise to go around the lake or something, but you don't know. Like, that could be the next meta-sunglasses comes from that study. To pick one brilliant, brilliant invention.

27:20James Harkin:Let's do another fact. This is going out to Kathleen Frederick, speaking of tortoise studies. You should never pick up a desert tortoise In case it pees itself to death Oh, yep, good advice I learned that when I went to Death Valley In America Because that's the rule And it says it It might even say it on signs Or something, like don't pick them up Really? Are they around the place? Did you see one there? I don't think I saw one, no I think they like to hide away Oh yeah, I'm sure they're pretty secretive Death Valley, of course, named after Sir Reginald Death. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frankie Valli.