Little Fish: The Body Of A Young Paul Newman

0:00Big refund, big project, big savings at Menards. Turn your tax refund into your next big project. That patio you've been dreaming of is more affordable than you think when you do it yourself. Get free estimates fast using our landscaping design program in-store or on Menards.com. Save big on the largest selection of concrete landscaping blocks at Menards. Plus, check out our weekly flyer on Menards.com for all the great deals happening now. Save big money at Menards. Keep your family safe with help from Menards. From smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to fire extinguishers and more, Kitta Home Safety Products keep your family protected in case of emergencies.

0:41Kitta detectors feature enhanced sensing technology that reduces false alarms and give fast alerts for more time to get out safely. Check out all our Kitta Safety Products and check out our weekly flyer on Menards.com for more great deals happening now. Save big money at Menards.

1:13Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where you send us a load of amazing facts and then we marvel at how great they are. We give a little bit of extra material and then we do a little bit of extra stuff at the end where we give away custodianship of some of our old facts. There's so much to get through that I think we should just get going. Andrew Hunter-Murray, Dan Schreiber, which of you will go first? I'll go first.

1:38James Harkin:This is a fact that is sent into us by James Udell, and it is the artist behind the famous dogs playing poker paintings, also once wrote a comic opera about an anthropomorphic giant mosquito wow okay oh i wish i could remember his name cassius marcellus coolidge it's cassius marcellus something i can't remember the surname i know it's the same as a president uh it'll come to me it'll come to me yeah he's a fascinating guy um i can't remember if we've spoken about him on the show before no i don't think we've ever discussed the dogs playing poker pictures they're probably parodied more than you see the originals would you reckon yeah that's true yeah yes something tells me of this guy did he invent those um sort of cardboard cutouts that you get at the fairground that you put your head through i feel like what's amazing yes he is he is certainly the person that is credited with popularizing it to the point where it became a big thing um if you go to the seaside and it's missing its head and you stand behind it that's the man behind the dog poker playing i love those things yeah james that is stunning knowledge i've got to say that's really really impressive isn't that extraordinary two seminal things that we sort of don't know the names of but we all know yeah i just think it's like it's like there being someone who invented benches you just think there's there's no way that a technology like bits at the beach where you put your head through the hole and get someone to take a funny thing there's no way that has a named inventor i can imagine you would go to like the lasco caves in southern france and you would walk into the cave and there would be a little bit of a hole and if you put your head through it then it looks like you're spearing some buffaloes you feel like it must be as old as that right exactly exactly can we get one of those for the office um well what do you think well what do you mean like as in it will be our bodies that other people can put their heads in or are we going to get some bodies of other famous podcasters that we put our heads in or something okay i was thinking it's our bodies and we put our heads through but we put them through the right no wait wait we put them through the wrong heads and that's a funny image for a tour poster or something okay yeah unfortunately i would say that our bodies are not distinguishable enough you know it's not like one of us is a farmer and one of us is a motorbiker and one of us is a builder.

4:06Well, one of us is a woman. Yeah, so that one would work. But then the others, I see just three middle-aged men with bodies that are feasible. Yeah, and we can't have one where three of us have put our head through the Anna head hole and Anna's put her head through the three holes of the feasible middle-aged men bodies. Wow, middle-aged. That's the first time anyone's caught me middle-aged. Really? Come on. Yes, really. You've had the brain of a middle-aged man For at least 20 years Yeah, my spirit But that's different to my body I've had the body of a young Paul Newman for a long time I thought And again, showing the mind I thought, who's a beefcake?

4:51Who's a hunk? Paul Newman Shall we do another fact? Yeah, I've got one here This is from Veronica Alfano from Sydney, Australia. Pretty cool. And Veronica writes, I thought you might be interested in a little fish fact about an amazing 19th century figure. And Veronica presents it as a riddle. Okay. So there is a poet named Michael Field who is neither a man nor a woman nor a non-binary person. How can this be? Is it a field? An actual field? It's not a field. that's good you're thinking the right way though someone wandered over me like a cloud

5:38uh well it must be an animal i would say is it not not an animal oh do you remember that um we've actually done this on the show so i doubt it's this but do you remember the person who created a poetry machine or a haiku machine oh yeah like it but it was a steampunky one that it was before Oh, computers. The Latin hexameter poem with the Mary Beard episode. That was so good. No, it's not like that. Okay, I'll say, I'll just give you one clue. It's two names, Michael Field, therefore... Two people. Very good. It's two people. But Michael Field is a very interesting poet because he, quote-unquote, was two women, Catherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, a.k.a.

6:21Bradley Cooper. Interesting. They lived in the second half of the 19th century Okay, Veronica says They were lovers and life partners They were also aunt and niece Wow Quite striking That is I would say They wrote a lot of extremely sexy poems about love And female romance and sexuality They were very enthusiastically reviewed And then when it came out that they were not Michael Field But they were actually an aunt and a niece Everyone was a bit surprised I think it was a bit of negative pushback against that I can kind of understand that It's unorthodox They were ploughing their own Michael Field You could say They also wrote a book of poems to their dog Wim Chow Who died in 1906 And they were so sad that their dog had died That they converted to Catholicism In the hope that they would meet him in heaven

7:16James Harkin:And they wrote a book of poems Called Wim Chow, Flame of Love Which I've been reading and it is sounds great it's not good oh no really what's not great with that premise

7:31okay um here is another fact this one comes from yakov forkin uh and actually yakov gives us two facts so the first one is that roald adminson's polar thrust was so well planned that all five in his group had gained weight upon returning to base camp oh my god wow that is devastating for The Brits who starved and died of exposure and all of that. I'm afraid so. I think Abundson's lot ate their dogs, didn't they? Well, it's very nutritious stuff, clearly. Yeah. I can't believe that. Oh, I'm feeling a bit... Oh, my polar clothes are feeling a bit tighter this morning. I'm so healthy and gaining weight.

8:08That's incredible. You know what? I've been going to the gym over the last couple of months a bit more than I did at the end of last year. And I feel like I'm not losing that much weight. So I can kind of empathize with these guys. sometimes like muscle is heavier than fat that's what they say isn't it yes and you're eating a lot of dog at the moment and that's noticeable you gotta stop you gotta stop okay uh yakup's second fact uh is that there is a norwegian cross-country skier named caroline starvis ski stad and her name translated into english as caroline pole hill ski place no isn't that amazing nominative determinism ever pole hill ski place it sounds like she just made it up doesn't it and like yeah well i need the name i'm just gonna name after things i can see

9:00James Harkin:yeah damn it michael field has taken i've got um a fact about winter olympic names oh yeah so the winter olympics has just been and there is a shop called the corona sera stress plants shop and they decided to do a thing where they would give plants to the athletes and let them look after them while they were in the olympic village and the athletes had to name their plants so james hernandez the uh british figure skater his plant was called gary okay um marjorie la joie called hers olympia lithuania's saulius ambrulevisius called theirs dude and canada's madeline shizas named her plant ilia rosanov that's a good name it's a good name for a plant that isn't it it's a very good name does Does that name mean anything to you guys?

9:57Ilya Rosinov? No. So you haven't been watching the TV show Heated Rivalry then? Oh my God, is this the hockey sex show? It's the hottie hockey guy. And Madeline decided to name her plant Ilya Rosinov in the hope that the actor Connor Story would see this and say, Hey, I heard you got a plant named after the character that I play at this show. maybe we could get together fancy a puck surely that's the tagline for the whole show surely

10:33James Harkin:do you guys have a plant that you've given a name to i do i'm literally looking at it in my room really yeah it's called baxter oh yeah what's the story behind that so named after cleave baxter who was the the cia polygraph expert who believed that he could communicate with plants by hooking it up to a lie detector machine. Do you remember there was that story where he had six people come in randomly and stamp a plant dead in a room and pull it out, and only one of the six people had done it? He tested whether or not the other plant in the room could pick out the guilty person in a lineup, and according to everyone involved, the plant successfully picked out the killer.

11:17James Harkin:How did it identify the killer? Because it was hooked up to a polygraph, so the readings when the killer walked in just oh right yeah woo woo is exactly the phrase i would use at the end of this anecdote wow dan what a fact i mean no that's a very good reason to name a plant baxter yeah i don't have any i don't have any named plants no no well mine are mostly mosses which have a different different structure so you don't give a moss a name do you i think the um i I think the, is it the Latin or Greek for moss is Brian? Yes. Which is why they're bryophytes now. Yeah, yeah. So you should just call them all Brian.

11:57That's a really nice idea.

11:59James Harkin:Okay, let's do a fact here from Hazel Dixon. And Hazel writes that the first pre-execution last meal was in 1772 of Susan Brandt, who died by decapitation by sword. Brant was offered a feast consisting of three pounds of bratwurst, ten pounds of beef, six pounds of baked carp Twelve pounds of lamb roast, soup, cabbage, bread, and an unspecified dessert and eight liters of wine She rejected this all and just had a glass of water Wow, still are sparkling? Unspecified What was the sparkling situation in 1772? I'm not sure when San Pilegrino was established it's saying that this is the first pre-execution last meal 1772 i think it existed a long time before that there's examples in medieval europe of there being this kind of thing really yeah there's an interesting story that's attached to the last meal from medieval times which may or may not be apocryphal but the idea was that you would make sure that the criminal who was being put to death had a really good meal just before dying so that they didn't come back to haunt the executioners so that they left on good terms what would be your final meal dan probably a um bowl of fried rice as a kind of you know fried and then i'm fried it's a sort of oh okay are you picking the are you picking the method of execution oh sorry do i only get to pick my meal not the method of execution okay i was gonna say i might have some pulled pork and then be pulled apart by horses there we go um and i suppose i'll just i'll just go for um a nice bacon sandwich where the pig has died by firing squad um i'm not that feels mean doesn't it saying i want a pig to be shot by firing squad i mean it's probably no worse than happens to normal uh in normal animal processing yeah but in this hypothetical situation you have done a crime so you're not a nice guy I guess I'm finding it hard to get into the head of someone Who's not a nice guy It's just so alien to me

14:06James Harkin:What if you did the crime with the pig So you were both Up for execution They kill your accomplice first What are you saying we did together Dan You be the aunt, I'll be the niece

14:21No I don't know I'd probably just have something Something vegetarian i'm trying to do my nice guy credentials you see yeah and these last words did i tell you i'm a vegan okay here is another fact this one is from lucas chiong smith uh lucas obviously knows the show well because they say a fact for you in the form of a little quizlet for andy And because Dan loves mundane sci-fi James loves numbers And Anna loves to blow shit wide open Here goes How many laser pens Would it take to blow up the earth? Ooh So we're firing Laser pens at the earth Let's say from space Imagine you have a death star And you need to make a laser But you're like That's going to be tough to make from scratch but we have this laser pen making factory so let's just make a load of them and use that as a laser

15:28James Harkin:can i ask i've never equated the laser of a laser pen as being just a very unharmful diluted version of a killer death ray if you amplified the amount that you had can that become harmful or is it just really bright yeah i think that's what he's saying like well that really bright yeah um so yeah laser is amplified light basically so it's energy and so if you fire enough energy at anything it will it will break it up i love the idea that the death star was basically a presentation gone wrong it's saying if you'll just observe the planet all around here oh my god oh no we wanted to highlight their grain exports oh no that's what lightsabers are they were just a slightly larger laser pointer as well the whole thing is a stationary hub

16:23it feels like it's going to be a sort of an impossibly big number of laser pens to blow up the earth i'm going to say think of the biggest number you can think of like as in the biggest number you can name a trillion bigger bigger than a trillion gazillion let's try real numbers um two trillion i can't go higher than two trillion that's really big for me is it okay no it is according to lucas's calculations it is 1.422 octillion what uh and an octillion is one with 27 zeros so um like a million has got six zeros and a billion has got nine and a trillion has got 12 but this one's got 27 what and for context According to Lucas, this is 10 ,000 times fewer than the number of bacteriophages on Earth.

17:13Oh, thanks for that context. That's really helpful. Okay, so I read a fact recently, which was really cool. It's new science that peacocks have got lasers in their tails. Okay. So those little eyes in a peacock's tail, they amplify the light. And we don't really know why they do that. possibly to attract females or or whatever but we do know that they work like lasers and so i have worked out how many peacocks you would need to blow up the earth incredible would you like to guess i feel like a peacock's less powerful than a laser i'm afraid it is so if you're if the highest number you could think of before was a trillion you're not going to get anywhere near this i'm not going to three trillion no i'll say two are we saying octillion octillion was the other one yeah it's just fantasy football at this stage isn't it dan do you want to advance on that i think the best way to get close to this is to make up a number and hope that scientists have also made up that number yeah bajillion bajillion is not a number squinillion squamillion though sorry no no squinillion oh sorry squinillion no no you got it absolutely uh no it is approximately 355.5 nonillion peacocks it would take to blow up the earth so that would be about 35 peacocks for every virus that there is currently on earth right get them together in one big death star firelighter you'd have to you need a light source as well but you know we'll deal with that later let's get the peacocks first yeah you're gonna start breeding peacocks quite sharpish if you're trying to get up to however many nonillion well i feel really educated by that thank you james

19:11James Harkin:no thank you lucas yeah thank you thank you lucas and then james for the the peacock calculation all i'm picturing is james at home and his little daughter coming up to him saying daddy can we play and he's saying i'm working on something important here calculations of peacocks on the wall are you joking you think i do this by myself now that i have a helper

19:36James Harkin:the teacher's going her math is um interesting she doesn't yet know how to do three times four but she does seem to be able to do 355.5 non-illion divided by the number of viruses on earth her non-illion timetable is fantastic we're not knocking that we're not knocking that it's wonderful okay well that is enough of your facts absolutely brilliant facts as ever this week thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in to podcast.qi.com but now it is time to go through our old archive of facts. Andy has spent many, many years typing these up, and we have got them here to give away to friends of the podcast on Patreon.

20:22So, if you join Patreon at the very top level, then not only will you get a shout-out on this show, you will get a digital certificate, and forever and a day, your facts will belong to you. So, who is going to be the first person to give out one of our facts? I'll dish one out. This one goes out to Matt Ray. Congratulations, Matt. Your fact is that morgue refrigerators in Turkey are fitted with alarms, motion sensors, and handles to open them from the inside in case people wake up. So good. It's thoughtful. It's sensible. And do you remember we did this whole big thing about the 19th century where it was really unclear what dying meant.

21:02And it was actually really hard to work out what the biological signal for death was. Yes. You know, because there's the heart, there's the brain. I mean, there's all sorts. and people had to come up with these mad methods and there were these hospitals of doubtful life where people were put when maybe they would wake up.

21:19James Harkin:There's got to be a point though when you're walking into that room and your relative is half eaten by maggots and flies all around them going, I'll give it a few more days. Yeah. I feel like there's a point. There is a point, but it's just what is that point, right? Yeah. I think maggots eating through your eye holes. Okay, that's what we'll do. That's what we'll say. Okay, from now on, We have an official international standard It's the maggots eating through the eyeballs Schreiber standard Not the thing I thought I'd be known for After my death Not the legacy I thought I was leaving on this planet That's very good Well congrats Matt Ray, that's yours Here's another one for Will Davidson As a baby, Henry VIII Had two official cradle rockers Paid£3 a year to rock him Very good I don't know what£3 would have got you in late 15th century.

22:11James Harkin:Not really a long-term job as well, either. How long's the post? Not long. Well, maybe he continued into his adulthood. He was still being rocked. Oh, yes. Wouldn't you love to just have someone, you've had a stressful day, you've just been doing podcasts, and you can just lie down in a crib and someone's going to rock you for a half an hour? That's going to calm you right down. Yeah? You're both looking at me like I've gone insane. okay this next fact is now under the custodianship of josh pearson josh your fact is that from 800 a.d to 1349 the coliseum in rome was used as an apartment block brilliant wow and this this was not there were not active gladiatorial fights going on at the time right like it wasn't like Oh, my bloody neighbours again.

23:06James Harkin:You remember we stayed in that hotel while we were on tour where if you got a certain hotel room, your window looked into the stadium of a football ground. Oh, yeah. I've been to a few of those. The one we went to was in Norwich. Yes. They also have one in Fylde, which I've been to, which overlooks the football. I think Bolton has one as well. So there's a few hotels like that. But yeah, absolutely. That would be great, wouldn't it? Yeah. Just open your curtains and there's some Christians being eaten by lions. No. okay this one goes out to stacy pew and uh stacy this might be relevant i don't know where you live but your facts for for now and forever is that in australia you can be fined for swearing this was quite a surprising one to us because we we think of australia as being quite sweary um but it's not allowed and you better watch what's your mouth people do swear and not get find um but they're working on it um i think it's northern territory northern territory was a place definitely we covered in the show that that people have been fined a fair bit for swearing so if i just stand in the street in darwin or whatever and say i'm so hungry i could bite the off a pigeon the australians say well am i gonna get arrested i don't know if you'll serve any time I think it might be an on-the-spot fine Maybe a Marshall Cashpoint I mean this was 10 years ago Yeah, you could be fine for swearing in the UK If you do it in the wrong place and time And with aggressive intent That's absolutely right Yeah, I think that probably is to cover events like this As opposed to people saying I'm so hungry I could eat the arse of a pigeon Right, yeah Which, that is a phrase I think should come with some kind of legal sanction But I don't think They just don't have the enforcement, I think Okay, I got one here.

24:58James Harkin:This is now for Emma Banton. And your fact is that when the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, reception was so bad that it took 17 hours to send the first message across. I feel like it was to Queen Victoria. I'm sure everything was to Queen Victoria officially at the time. I thought it would be like the hot girls in your area.

25:24Want to rock you to sleep. Okay, here is another fact. This is also to another Emma. This is going out to Emma Coldthirst. And Emma, your fact is that to celebrate World Vegan Day in 2013, Peter asked a town called Fry Up in Yorkshire to change its name to Vegan Fry Up for the day. They refused. Yeah. There you go. Oh, so Peter, the people for ethical treatment of animals or something like that. The people who like to get a lot of publicity by doing slightly weird things in order to further their cause. And this was one of those. And it's because Britain has so many amazing place names that are all, you know, like...

26:11Big old dead horse village. That doesn't sound British, that sounds more American. But you know what I mean, there are lots of... Yeah, we have so many place names like Canyon Wrench. all right all right that was a bad example that i hold my hat that was a bad example but this was the village there's fry up and then there's great fry up and then there's little fry up isn't there is there i think so and basically there are there are a few places like this knocking around and peter thought they'd try and make some hay with it i think they don't mind being refused do they because they can say oh the village of fry up has refused to rename itself just for one day like for them they get the publicity no matter what don't they yes you're Right.

26:48Here is another one. And this goes out to Katie. Surname withheld. But you'll have had your certificate already. And your fact is that in 1960s America, on one 35 mile bus route, you passed through seven time zones. Nightmare. Nightmare. And it's because American states just had, you know, there were borders and there were all sorts of different time zones knocking around. And they took a long time to resolve it all. And in fact, they still haven't got their act together and got all in the same time zone, which is crazy. Yeah, they really should get like China, don't you think, Andy? Come on, guys.

27:26We had our own time zones in the UK as well. Like if you lived in Bristol, you would be on different times than if you lived in London, for instance. And then it was the transport that changed all that. Because once you had trains going from one town to another, you needed to, everyone needed to be on the same time. otherwise you wouldn't know what time your train was going to arrive. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:49James Harkin:That's right. Okay, Dan, give us the last fact for the day. Yeah, this is for John Harris, and that is, if a predator gets too close to a limpet, the limpet lifts its shell and stamps on the predator's foot. Gorgeous. So good. Interesting facts about this. I don't know if we said this on the day, but the word limpet comes from the fact that when they stamp on your toe, you limp away. No. Of course not Oh I'm so proud that I didn't go for it this time I'm so proud Well done Dan, you're learning I'm gutted I was going to suggest putting that in the book of things you think are named After one thing But actually they're named after someone else Okay well On that note I think we should say Thank you again to our new custodians They are John, Katie, Emma Emma Stacey, Josh, Will And Matt and thank you everyone who sent in some facts for the first half of this show and thank you indeed for listening if you're listening to this and you're not yet a friend of the podcast on patreon then why not go to patreon.com and find out more there there's all sorts of levels you don't have to go on the top level in fact you don't have to pay at all if you sign up on patreon there are little bits of extra stuff you can get there as well so do go over to patreon and if you have any facts that you'd like to send to us for this show or in fact you've heard us say something wrong and you'd like to tell us about it or you want to give us more information then send all of your correspondence to podcast at qi.com and it might well get into some of our output we will see you again on friday for a big fish it's goodbye from me it's goodbye from these guys bye so long farewell i'll be the same bye

29:36Thank you.