No Such Thing As No Such Thing As A Crab

17:22That's right. Saley.com slash fish or go to the place wherever you get your apps, download Saley and use that offer code fish for 15 % off. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. Happy sailing.

17:39James Harkin:Okay, it is time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that soft shell crabs aren't actually a species. They're just a crab in between houses. This is to me mind blowing. I thought soft shell crab was just a type of crab that existed. And that's what I was eating in restaurants but yeah it's basically because they're continuing to grow and the shell's too small for them so they'll molt they'll they'll get rid of this hard shell and it's quite a fun process because they shed it by taking water in and breaking it up and they shoot it out basically

18:12Dan Schreiber:as it's crumbling yeah like um the whole is it the hulk who like goes uh and like gets bigger and bigger and bursts out of his skin no out of his clothes out of his clothes maybe i think it's not too far off of that because it's swelling up and then breaking and then find and then they sort find the cracks in their shell and sort of pull themselves out like sort of backwards out the back

18:30James Harkin:of their shells yes but i think hulk expands he doesn't shatter his outer layer of human bruce banner doesn't go flying everywhere on the walls um yeah no so it basically uh before the hard shell has disappeared there's a sort of very soft shell that's ready to harden and fishermen go for the exact moment they capture them and then that is so and then they sell it as meat right so if you go to a restaurant in america say you could get hard shell crab or soft shell crab and the hard shell one you have to dig out the meat and the soft one you don't is that right yeah yes exactly that's basically the difference but potentially you're eating these same species you're just eating their brother who was malting faster than the other one it could be both at the same time yeah because the female will always mate with a male immediately after her own shedding so she sheds her shell and then a male comes over and has sex with her and that if you are a fisherman is the perfect time because you can get a soft shell and a hard shell at the same time and then you can sell them both to the restaurant and they get two for one

19:36Dan Schreiber:and then you can make ethical eaters feel better because you can say they died doing what they loved and the window you've got is so brief hadn't realised because when the gal's molting and she wants to grow her new exoskeleton as fast as possible. Apparently it's got to be three hours after they've melted is the right time because you need the shell to have hardened just enough that it's not so soft that it's going to die in transit but it can't have hardened enough that you can't chew down on it and get that nice soft texture and so yeah so they like spy on these crabs just waiting for the moment and then they have to dive in at exactly the right time.

20:13But also when they're soft-shelled they like kind of hide in little nooks and crannies because obviously for predators that's a really good time to eat them as well yeah not just us being predators i mean like animal kingdom predators um so in actual fact it's really hard to catch them so what they tend to do is the soft shell crabs these days they will farm them because then you don't have to go digging through nooks and crannies right yeah get your hard shell take it to your farm wait for it to shed and then get

20:40Dan Schreiber:But it's kind of why we farm all animals, isn't it? It's what we said thousands of years ago. We're like, you know what? These cows, really hard to catch. Yes. If we kept them in a field with a fence, easier.

20:52James Harkin:These hard shell crabs that we're talking about, there's a few different species. One of them is the blue crab. And do you know where you find the blue crab, where they're often fished from? Yep, you get them in America, but you also get them right by James Bond Island, which is in Thailand. which is the other thing that's been named after James Bond as a result of the man with the golden gun because that was the island where the villain lived and it's full of blue crabs that are useless soft-shelled crabs. You also get some blue crabs in the Mediterranean which is a problem because they're not meant to be there because they're invasive.

21:25They're super aggressive, blue crabs are. Are they? What are they taking on? Are they taking on other crabs? Yeah, and I think also on the north side of the Mediterranean or the Italians and so on they don't have a culture of eating them so they don't really eat them. and on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, many Muslims consider them to be haram as well. So humans aren't really eating them at all in the Mediterranean. Yeah, we get them in Montenegro where my parents-in-law live. There's a big sort of bay there and all of the local crabs have gone and it's just the spleen crabs left. Really?

21:55No one eats them.

21:56Dan Schreiber:No one wants to eat them. We should say this is probably insensitive for you, Bertie, because you actually run the Crab Museum, which is all about devoting itself to crabs. And we're just talking about how delicious they are.

22:07James Harkin:What's the museum position on eating? I mean, that's the thing. I think eating invasive species is morally different to eating like an endangered species. I agree. I think, yeah, if you're in Montenegro, fill up on blue crabs, I think. Personally, I don't like crabs. I mean, I don't really, I don't try not to eat meat wherever possible. But I mean, I think there is a bit of a moral difference. And there's a lot, like our green shore crabs from the UK are invasive on both coasts of the US as well and they're a big problem there. And then the Americans are also like, what do we do with these things?

22:37We've never eaten them before. Oh, really? Yeah, so you have to teach a human to eat stuff. Humans just want to eat stuff. I say humans, people just want to eat stuff that their grandmother cooked them or whatever. There's an emotional attachment to it. It's like if in our shops suddenly a load of invasive pinto beans came over and took over all of our Heinz baked beans, no one would want to eat them. Such a good point. It's exactly like that. That's exactly like that. Is it a good point? Maybe because the way everyone looks at me suggested it might not have been a good point.

23:04Dan Schreiber:I think the way to make someone stop talking is sometimes just to say good points and then move on.

23:10James Harkin:It's what I do with my kids. Wow. So. But going back to crabs molting, you're right that many crabs hide when they're molting. Other crabs, like spider crabs, molt in huge piles. So you'll get like 100 ,000 individuals, say, or more. and they'll all molt in gigantic sort of heaps under underwater and the softest ones are right in the middle and then as they harden up they get pushed out to the edge and then the ones on the edge are sort of almost hardened again. That's very clever. So they all kind of sort of look after each other. It's a bit like, you know, the sort of penguins that take it in turns to go on the cold edge of the ball.

23:45Yeah. And yeah, the spider crows do that. And it's also basically a giant orgy because when they've all molted, they're all shagging in the middle of the pile. You see, when you said at the start, it's like, oh, everyone's so nice. They're looking after the ones in the middle. and now it sounds like a big old pile yeah it is

24:00James Harkin:because the shells would be on top of them so if you looked at it you'd be like oh it's just a bunch of crabs hanging out but underneath they're shagging away yeah and there's that sort of undercurrent so there's sort of like really soft shagging crabs in the centre and then they sort of harden up and get pushed further out and presumably at some point they stop shagging it's ironic though you think that the harder you get the less likely you are to have sex yeah well crabs often have two vaginas good point and then when they're hiding that's true James so yeah birdie what what happens to the exoskeletons then because that's a huge mound yeah animals will eat them or they'll just kind of break down into sand and sort of just general stuff at the bottom of the sea yeah we haven't worked out how to use that for some kind of handbag or something

24:47Dan Schreiber:building material replacing concrete well there is chitin so it's crab shells are made out of chitin and there's a new treatment for bullet holes because chitin's got a thing where it's extremely absorbent. It swells up loads and is antibacterial and stuff. Do you mean bullet holes in people? Bullet holes in people. Or bullet holes in... Really? So you can make these plugs and it's like a new thing that they're using in hospitals for gunshot wounds and stab wounds and stuff. But it's derived from crab shells and it swells up inside the wound and blocks off all of the capillaries and prevents further bleeding.

25:20Dan Schreiber:That's amazing. They should have got a hospital next to you guys.

25:26Dan Schreiber:There's this theory that everything's going to become a crab, isn't there? Carsonisation. People are really into it, I think, because evolutionary theorists are really into it. I think because crabs have evolved five times, at least five times. I also read an article that said, let me just read this, experts at Crab Museum in Margate say they now have people coming in every day questioning if humans really will end up sprouting claws. First of all, is that true? Yeah, it's a pretty common thing. People come up to us and be like, oh, yeah, so I heard we're all turning into crabs. When's it happening?

26:00Dan Schreiber:Go on, give me your Thai prediction. Then come in going, I might as well be here because I'm going to turn into a crab. This is the Crab Museum. I'll just wait here until it happens. You've got to be ahead of the curve, right? You've got to beat the Joneses. Do they all come in sideways? Yeah, so this is crustaceans all seem to turn into crabs. So humans are quite far from crustaceans. And also, even though that's happened five times, decarcinisation has happened at least seven times in evolution, as in things turning away from crabs. So it seems like even if things visit crabdom as an existence, they then decide against it and move on.

26:31So you're saying no is your prediction. I'm going to say no to that. Crustaceans do turn into crabs, but yeah, crabs also turn into shrimp and prawns turn into lobsters and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's all sort of pretty fluid. All of this takes a really long time, millions of years. And the word crab obviously doesn't predate humans being a thing. We've only been around for, you know, 300 ,000 years or whatever. So what we define to be a crab, this is sort of the slightly wafty answer, but we define crabs basically off of vibes. Crab isn't really a thing. No such thing as a crab. There's no such thing as a crab.

27:04That's my new rival podcast. I'm going to take you all down. But yeah, no, there is no such thing as crab. And you can say a crab is turning into a lobster. You can say a lobster is turning into a prawn or a shrimp or whatever. It depends how you define these animals. And it seems to be that generally people are defining this as

27:22Dan Schreiber:you've got a big hard shell on top that covers everything up and your eyes retreat into yourself right yes but then there's also in the crab world it's hotly debated whether or not things like hermit crabs are crabs there's true crabs which are brachioran crabs which are kind of the kind of classic crab that you'd imagine then there's like coconut crabs um squat lobsters snow crabs or king crabs i can't remember one of them missing a set of legs and then sort of anamurans like hermit crabs that are strictly speaking not crabs depending on who you ask i think i say we're i'm pretty inclusive though i think i would include all of them as weirdly on qi i don't know if we ever did it but i definitely wrote this question which was name a type of crab because pretty much all the ones that people will be able to bring to mind like hermit crabs or horseshoe crabs or whatever are not true genital genital crabs are they not crabs no they're insects They're a type of mite thing

28:16James Harkin:Alright, I was hoping to turn into one of those I found a few different Crab inspired things And I want to quiz and see if Any of you guys know what they are So here we go Does anyone know what a crab landing is? Crab landing It's a crab landing So something is landing An aircraft, maybe a helicopter Because they look a bit like crabs Don't they? and they do it all of these things going to be just they do things sideways because it kind of feels like there you go it is it's not helicopters it's airplanes so when an airplane is landing you know sometimes you'll see videos online of heavy storms and planes landing in them but the plane is positioned on a diagonal angle as they're coming and then what they do right at the last second is they turn it back so that the wheels are landing straight as they're coming in i suppose because you always have to land into a headwind.

29:09So you would have to do it that way if there's a crosswind on the strip, I suppose.

29:14James Harkin:Yeah, there is crab scratching. Okay, we might be down to genitals again. No, this is a DJ method. So it's when you are doing, you're combining rapid hand movements on the vinyl itself as well as the crossfader. So a really quick scratch movement. Yeah, that was James, just so the audience at home's know, We didn't have a Mix Master Mike with us in the studio today. Cheers, Mike. Thank you. That'll be all. And then the last one is ejector crab. Sideways ejection. Yeah, no, it's in rowing. It's when someone's oar. Oh, a crab. You catch a crab. Yeah. Anna and I.

29:51Dan Schreiber:We have done this.

29:51James Harkin:We've caught crabs, haven't we? Yes.

29:54Dan Schreiber:Is it when you put in the oar when it's going the wrong way and it gets kind of flipped out of the water again? Yeah.

29:58James Harkin:Extreme ejector crab is when you get flipped out of the boat because the hold is so great. in the water.

30:05Dan Schreiber:But then you can enter the pole vault with that move.

30:08James Harkin:That would be a great combo Olympic sport.

30:11Dan Schreiber:Yes, it should happen. Crabs, testes and ovaries swell and shrink with the moon, I believe. That's a good one. It worries me if you, Bertie, are saying I wouldn't put it past them. No, I don't think I will put it past them. I think they do do it. Could you use them as a calendar? It's not super precise. If it's like I need to be there at 9.30 in the morning, then probably not. But if you need to remember what day like let's say you get paid on the 27th of every month you could have a little crab ovaries i think if you always get paid on the new moon which is how our office works yes

30:50James Harkin:okay it is time for fact number three and that is james okay my fact this week is that in late 19th century america butt plugs were advertised as a cure for bad breath yes you stick them in your mouth and then you can't breathe um yeah how does this how does this work is it a theory well it doesn't work okay i'm getting a refund they were a thing called young's dilators and they were patented in 1892 by frank e young and he sold them as a radical cure for piles and constipation. And the idea was that you would use these butt plugs, you put them up your bum and help you to train your muscles up there.

31:37And that would help you for various rectal issues that you might have. But then they kept pushing them for more and more different things. And in 1949, the USDA banned their advertisements because they claimed to cure foul breath bad taste in the mouth acne arrhythmia uticaria anemia insomnia anorexia headaches and nervousness but if you see these things they come in lots of different sizes i would say they would enhance my nervousness yes is that getting rid of insomnia i don't think having a giant butt plug of you yeah you just see these um these images online of you might do james yeah But my Google searches are slightly different.

32:20James Harkin:Well, actually, I did find one because there's one going on eBay at the moment. And it's an original. Oh, God, is it Spike Milligan's butt plug or something? It doesn't say if it's been used or not. But, yeah, it's going for£71. And then you've got about£30 postage and handling. And I'm looking at the buy it now button. But I just feel like that's going a bit too far. That sounds like a bargain. It does, doesn't it? Because someone on the article that you sent around, James, in the comments said, I found one in my grandfather's old belongings. Do you think they're worth a lot? And he said, oh, they're not too much.

32:51James Harkin:And this is the only one I could find on eBay that's going. I think maybe we've been a little bit too hard on Dr. Young here. Oh, yeah. And so hear me out. I think curing bad breath by sticking something up your bum is not a completely insane idea. The theory being that lots of kind of gut issues are caused by sort of imbalance of different bacteria. And so some bacteria that are meant to be in your large intestine can end up in your small intestine and they produce different chemicals, some of which are hydrogen sulfide, which smells really bad and is the sort of farty smell in stink bombs. And these stinky compounds get into your bloodstream and then they end up coming out in your bad breath.

33:30But one of the ways of solving gut issues is using a fecal transplant, if you know anything about fecal transplants. So they're to inoculate an ill person with healthy bacteria bacteria from a from somebody else's poo so sticking a dildo up your bum clean wouldn't do anything but if it was covered in a healthy person's shit interesting then you could cure your what does it say on the ebay listing then it's been cleaned damn it so a used rectal dilator might help interesting in an indirect way because then that would solve your gut issues, which would then stop your bad breath issues.

34:11Dan Schreiber:You know what? Listerine first and then the poo up the back, I think. Yeah. For me. I mean, so dilating that area is good for certain things. So I feel like originally they probably intended them for things like fissures, anal fissures, which can be worse if you're like a bit too tightened. So you'll have something to dilate and relax the muscles, which can alleviate the fissure. Not an anal fissure as in, oh, this crab is not nearly hard enough. I'm going to put it back for two more minutes. Are they all talk, those people? If they're anal, they are. Sorry, of course, yes. Good point, James. Good point, James.

34:48Oh, yeah. Thanks for coming. Totally missed that. Is it your bedtime yet?

34:53Dan Schreiber:Anyway, I got into some pretty dodgy territory. I'm looking at 19th century treatments for anal fissures and putting things up your bum, which does work. And there was a method which was to introduce fingers, as, you know, men will have a prostate check, obviously, doing the same thing. fingers would work to relax the muscle a little bit but there was a doctor called Jules Maisonneuve who was operating in the mid 19th century and he said using the fingers to relax that muscle was too slow, often had to be redone in order to alleviate these problems and so he suggested a more complete and quick way by gradually insinuating the fingers one by one into the rectum until the whole hand was inside then firmly clenching it and forcibly withdrawing and apparently according to the 1884 book which I was reading said this repulsive procedure met with no favor whatsoever and thus ventriloquism was born oh my gosh i found another one called atkinson's registered rectum supporter which uh it looks a like a weightlifting belt if you can imagine that but then it has some sort of bulbous bits that you appear to go up your bum and um they again it was like for fishes and for piles and all that kind of stuff but what's kind of interesting is that this went on display in the great exhibition of 1851 so that this big exhibition at crystal palace yeah and they had like all these incredible things from all around the world but if you went right in the corner you'd be able to find this queen victoria went to that imagine what does this one do the sweet mom You're a bum expert Right?

36:33Dan Schreiber:You've written a book on them? I have written a book on bums I mean it's a children's book on bums

36:37James Harkin:It's a great book though Natural History of Bums I read it to my kids And there was great ones Like Rabbit Poo How they have a poo That basically isn't digested properly The first time around So they eat the poo again The pellets And then poo it out as poo proper The second time Yes because they have to get B12 out of it But grass is really really difficult to eat so rabbits eat it twice whereas things like hippos and cows and stuff have multiple stomachs but yeah most animals have a bum um and i think it's only things that sort of jellyfish and sort of like brittle stars and basket stars and stuff like that that don't and sea sponges things like that but generally 99 of animals have bums because it's just such a good system it is i'm not complaining it's such a good moment in in our history the moment we decided to separate the

37:22Dan Schreiber:mouth from the anus well there's a new theory that actually it was separating the anus from the sperm duct i think they've they've looked at there's a study that's looked at what genes are responsible for what things and i mean i think this is one of those theories that might be supplanted in 10 years but currently there's researchers from the university of bergen in norway they were looking at the genetics of xenocelomorphs which are like they look a bit like flat worms they're like weird lumpy things and anyway they've got a genital opening which is called a like gonadopore which is where the sperm comes out.

37:53Dan Schreiber:And they use the same genes to make that genital opening as human embryos use to make their digestive tube. And so all of these facts, they've pieced together to say, at some point, we had this sperm opening. And then we started to think or evolution decided that we should merge it with a digestive tract and have poo come out of it. Now, I don't know how they're explaining the fact that then another sperm opening had to be created, which it was. I did read an article in New Scientist by the people who did this study. And they said, once a hole is there, you can use it for other things. Ah, yes.

38:29It feels like a bumper sticker. Humans are really good at lots of things. But what one thing have we got that no other animal has got? Podcasts. Maybe culture, I guess you could say. But then those bonobos that put little grass in their ear. and then all the others copied it.

38:50Dan Schreiber:I think like planning, like long-term planning and stuff, people always say, you know, we're able to have episodic memory and then we can turn it to long-term planning. But you're going to say it's bums. It's bums. I think it's bums. Yeah, so there are some transverse folds in our rectum called Houston's valves. And these seem to support the weight of fecal matter, which means that you can kind of hold your poo in a little bit. You don't always, as soon as you need to go, you just need to go. Obviously doesn't always work out, but they're named after a guy called John Houston, and they appear to be only in humans.

39:24There was a study back in the 19th century which looked for Houston valves in as many different mammals as they could find. So in wolves, bears, rhinoceroses, primates, couldn't find it in any of them, only in humans. Wow. So it could be that this specific fold in your bum is the one thing that makes us special.

39:42James Harkin:That's so good, because if I ever shit myself in public from now on, I'm going to say, Houston, we've had a problem. So that's the thing that we've got that's so different from everyone else. Well, I'm sure there are many other things. I'm just being a bit facetious. But, you know, I think we've got the muscliest bums of any animal as well. I think we've got the largest bum in relation to our body size. So like hippos and elephants, whatever, obviously have way bigger bums. But the body size, our bums are the biggest. And that's good because our glutes are used for long distance running and walking.

40:16Yeah, standing up.

40:17Dan Schreiber:And because the Kardashians wouldn't have had a show, would they? Yeah. I felt like that was a good reference. Yeah, we're back to culture again. Yes, here we go. High culture. Weirdly, I did read a study about how the fact that we can hold it in might have caused us to outcompete all other animals because basically it means that you're not pooing everywhere and leaving your scent everywhere so you can't be followed. That's true. This was in 2013. and these authors said it may have contributed to the successful march of hominids along the road of evolution. So there we go. Maybe you're right. It's all about the anal fold.

40:46Very cool.

40:47Dan Schreiber:We've blown this wide open and it's been painful. Back to putting things up our bums. Oh, yeah. There was quite a recent thing in the medical literature about a man who went to hospital because he had some heart palpitations. They didn't really know what was wrong with him, but they decided that it was bad enough that they were going to have to give him a cardio version, which is a thing where you restore the heartbeat properly. Anyway, before they did that, they had to check that he didn't have any gastrointestinal bleeding. And so the physician did a digital rectal exam to check there was no bleeding up there.

41:25Finger up the bum, pulled it back out. No blood on there. Good. But then the man's heart palpitations completely disappeared. His heart slowed right down to 80 beats per minute. and they decided, well, we don't need to do anything more. He came back a few months later and had no problems again. And they think that maybe the finger up the bum is what cured him. According to the paper, it could have been due to stimulation of the vagus nerve, which is a very trendy thing at the moment, which is the nerve that goes right the way up your body. And supposedly, if you stimulate it in some way, it can help all sorts of different things.

41:58Dan Schreiber:Is that trendy, like on the front page of Cosmo? It is kind of like, you know, if you see headlines about, All you need to do is stimulate your vagus nerve and it will, you know, save all these different things. If you have headaches, it's probably your vagus nerve. If you have this, it's probably your vagus nerve. And if you've ever wondered if all of those cases about people sticking things up their bottoms, you know, those comedy cases you get in the news about whoopsie daisy tripped on my Hoover. If they are just a 21st century phenomenon, they are not. I was reading a list from 1757 by the French anatomist Solveur-Francois Morand, who decided to publish a list of all the cases he'd come across of people putting things up their bums.

42:39Dan Schreiber:It was published in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Surgery.

42:42James Harkin:Oh, no. Well, because imagine you've got away with it. You know, you're back home. You're like, no one's ever going to find out about this. And then there's an announcement. We've collated all the people.

42:51Dan Schreiber:Don't you worry. When was this? 1757. Are all the things very 18th century things that they've put up their bums? A candle. So that's quite 18th century. Yes. doesn't mention if it was lit or not um so he um catalogues it very nicely so he first of all puts in a column what it was up with the rectum the bladder or the um willy bladder uh yeah i know some people that was the candor one actually and then he'll put what it was that went up and then he'll put who it was in the explanation so it was like rectum bottle priest this is the worst game of Cluedo ever.

43:29Dan Schreiber:That was because the priest suffered from a stubborn flow and was told to put a whole candle in his urethra. Now, I was saying lots of the other ones, which are just man or woman as opposed to priest, he said apparently or allegedly or they claimed. But with the priest, he just took his word as read, which I'm going to say I don't know about that priest. I don't know if I believe him. Bladder three beans. Man. Had trouble urinating. so try to enlarge his urethra. Bladder, one bean, man. Still would not acknowledge he'd put the bean in there himself. Rectum bottle priest, suffered from constipation, used the long bottle to irrigate his rectum and lost it.

44:09Dan Schreiber:Lost it. That's a good excuse, that one. I would almost believe that one. The rectum irrigation or you mean the excuse for when the wife says, what's happened to my bottle? I lost it. Where did you lose it? I don't know, I've lost it. Where did you last see it? Let's not go into that.

44:27James Harkin:Why are you not sitting down with me? I'm just going to stand for a bit, actually.

44:33Dan Schreiber:Anyway, and then there are lots and lots and lots of rings stuck around penises. And for all of those ones, it just says no reason given. No reason given. Okay. No reason given.

44:41James Harkin:That's fair enough. YOLO.

44:44Dan Schreiber:If they'd had that phrase, I'm sure he would have written that.

44:47James Harkin:So much of history would have been passable without YOLO as an explanation back then.

44:56stop the podcast stop the podcast everyone we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored

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46:17James Harkin:Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna.

46:21Dan Schreiber:My fact this week is that there is no customer toilet in the Icelandic Punk Museum, even though the whole thing is within a toilet. That's great. I imagine really needing a piss, being denied a piss, and then being angry about it is quite a punk thing. Lovely, maybe that's why they don't provide the customer toilet. This is the Icelandic Pump Museum Open 2016. Seems like a very cool place. And all the exhibits are in a toilet. Is it like one of those underground toilets? It is, yes. I walked past this place. It was closed when I went. I saw it when I was in Reykjavik. Yeah, in Reykjavik. Yeah, exactly.

47:01Dan Schreiber:And I think it was one of the only public toilets in downtown Reykjavik. And so they've just erected lots of exhibits in the toilet bowls, in the sinks. And I did try to call to confirm this is definitely true. and I called the number that, it's quite hard to find a number for them. I think they might just not have a phone. And the number that AI thought that they might have, I rung up and they said it was a rock bar. And when I said, is it definitely not the toilet? They didn't know what I was talking about. I can say it definitely exists from the outside. It definitely exists. I'm 100 % that it exists.

47:33Dan Schreiber:I just wanted to check that there's no toilet.

47:34James Harkin:I can imagine a punk museum would answer their phone like that. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, we don't, but it's something else. Yeah, you're right. Yes. sticking it to the man. They were, when it opened, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols opened it. Yeah, he went over and he was part of the opening. So it's a sort of very legit thing because there's a lot of great punk history in Iceland. Bjork used to be in a punk band.

47:57Dan Schreiber:Yeah, the purists complain about the amount of Bjork in there. Do they? They do. And I should say, on the fact that it was opened by Johnny Rotten, something funny about my research was I just couldn't work out the truth because there were these different histories. I knew it was opened by someone in the Sex Pistols, but some of the sources said it was opened by John Lydon. And then some of the sources said opened by Johnny Rotten.

48:18James Harkin:How long did you spend wasting your time on that one?

48:21Dan Schreiber:It was a good 15 minutes of like, where's the original, was a photo or something? And which one is that?

48:25James Harkin:And then you're like, oh, great. They look the same.

48:27Dan Schreiber:How the hell am I meant to work this out?

48:31James Harkin:That's very funny. It's a shame, James, that you didn't go down the stairs to see the reason for if it was closed. Because apparently a few people that have gone, it will say things like close today because i don't know someone's died or someone's ill whatever pick one it just it just has random reasons i have a feeling it was just a monday and it doesn't open on monday so i just went to the penis museum in the end anyway yeah one of the mainstream ones

48:52Dan Schreiber:in the end you've got to do the obvious tourist traps they've got great museums there though

48:55James Harkin:iceland iceland yeah have you but you must have been to a bunch right yeah did you go to the bobby fisher one no i didn't where's that that's in reykjavik it's the bobby fisher center and it's a basically the 1972 world chess championship was there and this one is i guess you know chess really well but it's that was a seminal championship yeah because the soviet union had a stranglehold and bobby fisher comes in as an american being like told by the major party heads in america you've got to do this we've got we're in a big battle right now this is a huge symbolic thing for us and what they have in the museum is a replica of the chess board that they played on but they've also got all chess bars like this that's what i was confused about so yeah but they've got a printout for the radiation measurements that were demanded by boris spaski's delegation and that was because bobby fisher was winning these matches and they thought he was using all these tricks to do it one was that his seat that he was sitting on was electrically charged and was sending electromagnetic stuff towards boris and it was freaking him out uh they thought that the lights were doing something they wanted to check absolutely yeah and whereas fisher on the other hand he sort of he was quite mercurial and he just played his own game he was not an anal fisher is where that went i see well there was a nice james okay so um i think burt's got something to say now there were allegations that the the current chess champion was cheating using a vibrator up his eyes yeah it wasn't the current champion but it was someone who was playing against it was magnus who claimed that this guy was doing it right when in fact he was just trying to get his breath smelling a bit better i guess that's sort of the modern uh radiation i suppose yeah yeah it's a paranoid game they took the lights off and they found two dead flies in it and they almost performed autopsies on the flies to see if they were somewhere involved and that got cut short in the end but anyway that's there

50:54Dan Schreiber:that's there the bobby fisher center that's cool very cool i mean it must be hard starting a weird niche museum and expecting anyone to turn up to it is it is it what kind of loser uh yeah i mean it is and we didn't we had no idea what we were doing and when we opened i remember thinking oh my god we've spent all of our life savings on this i have a child what have we done this is terrible but yeah we do have a toilet though so we've got one thing huge that's why Yeah, we're going to get five stars, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just because of the toilet. On the day we opened, actually, we'd had an idea and we weren't sure whether or not to do it.

51:27And we had like an hour spare. So we ran to Morrison's and bought a load of like pasta and flour and some croissants and stuff. And then we put that in our toilet. So we've got a smaller museum in our toilet, which is the CARB Museum, which is completely unrelated to the Crab Museum. So it was Chase's idea. He's got kind of weapons-grade dyslexia and ADHD. He wouldn't mind me saying that. and he really struggles to read things and it was really useful having him he sort of went through all of the material that me and Ned have ever written and sort of going this is too boring change the font you need to change the spacing like if I can't read it then like a child won't be able to nobody else can be able to

52:07Dan Schreiber:but of course you didn't put any spaces between any of the words no no of course yeah yeah yeah and I just put all these little weird squiggly vowel markings over the top of everything but yeah he came up with this idea for the Card Museum which is all of his sort of bad spelling mistakes. And were you a crab lover beforehand or were you just in Margate and you thought, well, they have a lot of them here? No, I think a crab lover of sorts. Okay. Yeah, if that's a term. Yeah, because if you just named after things that happen in Margate, it'd just be like tiresome hipsters. I mean, the tiresome hipster museum.

52:39There's definitely room for a tiresome hipster museum. It will be me opening it, that's for sure.

52:44James Harkin:But would you believe it? It is the only museum dedicated to decapods in all of Europe.

52:50Dan Schreiber:That is surprising. In fact, it's the only place in the world outside of China and Taiwan. Really? Yeah, so there's a Taiwan Crab Museum. And then there's another one just on the other side of the strait in mainland China. Because the Chinese were like, well, if the Taiwanese have got a Crab Museum, we're going to get an even bigger one. And their one's like twice the size. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are four anchovy museums in Europe. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's one in Sicily, one on mainland Italy, and two in the Spanish town of La Scala. This town has a population of 10 ,374, but it has two anchovy museums.

53:28That's great. And there's a Pilchard Works in Cornwall, which is a museum for pilchards. I was just looking for other seafood museums.

53:38Dan Schreiber:Why do they need two? Is it one was so oversubscribed that it's for the overflow? It's basically the entire town is anchovies. It's where most of the anchovies come from this area in Spain. Yum. That's very cool.

53:52James Harkin:We've got just back down in Margateway, there's a neighboring town of Ramsgate, and there's a small museum there that's called, this museum is not, in brackets, obsolete, and it is a museum that is dedicated entirely to what are seemingly obsolete bits of technology and music equipment and so on. oh yeah like beta max and stuff yeah exactly and that's run by a guy who is called look mum no computer who some of you might recognize that name because he was this year's entrant for britain yeah in the eurovision contest um yeah so he's got an amazing little museum down in ramsgate

54:31Dan Schreiber:is it as amazing as his eurovision entry i heard and i haven't actually seen or heard it so So I'm just going by popular opinion. Is it in Ramsgate because all these old bits of computers have got lots of RAM?

54:48Oh, dear. Gosh.

54:50Dan Schreiber:Dear Lord. So another weird museum is born of real passion. There's the Museum of Clean in Idaho, which I think is my favourite, just because it's made by someone who it's his life's devotion, a guy called Don Aslut. and so when he was 16 I think it was in 1953 he'd never even made his bed before but he decided I'm going to make a living through cleaning he put an ad in the local paper saying Don Aslett professional cleaner and he built himself up and up became the king of clean has a whole janitorial empire and you know written 40 books on how to be clean he's like the the original Susanna he's the original Trinian Susanna for people our age or the original what's what's that clean influencer

55:34James Harkin:Mrs Hinch

55:35Dan Schreiber:Mrs Hinch yes anyway I can't believe that I'm so old that my cleaning influencer is no longer current that is so upsetting sad times anyway this museum sounds amazing so what I did quite like about it was that most of the negative reviews of it I read all of them and in fact the only thing that said about it negatively is that it is too cluttered or too dusty and dirty there was one person who said it's like grandma's attic the overall impression is a muddle for a clean museum there's lots of dust um but yeah he's obsessed with decluttering um and i found a few more ironic museum things oh yeah in 2024 the museum of neoliberalism in lewisham um which is against capitalism um it was reported they had to be closed down because they were being turned into luxury flats although i went on the website and they do seem to still exist so i don't know if they moved or whether they changed this plan but if you go in there for instance they have the bottle of amazon employee urine um that someone who was like driving amazon parcels around and wasn't allowed to go for a wee would urinate into a bottle that's in the museum nice uh and sorry it's against neoliberalism i get it yes okay yeah and um in 2019 um the american kennel club opened the museum of the dog uh which said no dogs allowed unless you're a support animal you

57:06James Harkin:weren't allowed to bring dogs in there i went when we were in uh dc doing fish live over there i went to the ford theater where lincoln was shot and as you walk in it has a no guns sign it's like it's They're still feeling it. Still tense. Yeah. Just in case. There was an interesting thing that museums were faced with a few years ago. This is around 2021. Social media started banning them from posting up lots of their art if nudity was involved. So a group of museums in Vienna created an OnlyFans account where they posted all of these nudes up there. And they were trying to just get their point about the craziness of censorship that was going on.

57:46James Harkin:And there you go. And there's your excuse.

57:48Dan Schreiber:million men listening for the reason you have the only fans account i was going for the vienna art thing and my finger just slipped onto big boobs mcgee or whatever it is i follow big boob lggy too oh she's good love her work um that might yeah i mean that's a huge issue isn't it because almost every statue of museums are naked they've got they've got to rethought that um just another like inadvertent thing that happened when museums were clamped down on do you remember last year when the Trump administration was doing its big clampdown on DEI. I mean, it still is. So there's this massive long list of words that they weren't allowed to use in any of their websites, any of their materials.

58:26Dan Schreiber:Words included stuff that you'd imagine, like the word inclusion you're not allowed to use, the word gender you're not allowed to use, the word pronoun you're not allowed to use. And I guess they just got an AI or an idiot to just comb through all their websites. I love that. This has clearly been written by AI or an idiot. It's the only two people working for the administration. but the word diversity was on that list now what do museums say all the time they say we've got an incredibly diverse collection so suddenly all these museums had to remove all mentions of their collections being diverse and all these website pages were shut down just real sledgehammer

59:02James Harkin:that's like that's like the london one the horniman museum remember all of its emails were getting clogged up and people spam because it was being registered as a rude word horny man is not coming into your inbox. I found a great one, which is in Hastings, they've got a true crime museum, which is pretty brutal, the exhibits that they have, because it is real life crimes in and around the UK, but they were broken into. And the person didn't steal anything because the main bit of the museum was behind steel doors and they couldn't break through. So they just went around bashing up cutouts of the Cray Brothers and stuff like that.

59:37Dan Schreiber:That would be satisfying.

59:38James Harkin:getting to punch a grey brother yeah lovely nice but they managed to catch the guy on cctv standing in front of the museum's height chart for police mug shots so the quote from the lady at the museum says he's literally standing right in front of our police mug shot photo opportunity it's designed for people to stand and write their name and their crime and stand in front of it and that's the shot we have of him that's brilliant you have a like a sack in a striped chair Exactly. And so there was talk about, and I couldn't find if it's been done, but there was talk about turning that moment itself into an exhibit in the museum.

1:00:13James Harkin:So that might actually be something you can see in the museum now.

1:00:16Dan Schreiber:Well, you can guarantee it will be turned into a very tedious 52 episode American podcast, but hopefully that too.

1:00:28James Harkin:Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast we can all be found online i'm on at shriberland on instagram james coming at me on linkedin james harkin bertie where are you um on instagram at crab museum yes that's right and just a reminder we said at the top of the show but bertie's new book is out it's written by the crab museum uh but really it's by bertie and it's called the no-brainer brain explainer this is your second book after a natural history of bums and it's just absolutely rammed with facts about the brain it's the perfect thing to be reading your kids tell us a bit more about it before we wrap up uh yeah it's like it's the natural sequel to the bum book because you need a bum in order to ingest enough energy to keep your brain going um and there's a diverse we'll scrub that word a diverse amount of uh animal brains like an octopus brain they've got one in their head where you'd expect there to be and then eight smaller brains in all of their legs so is an octopus one animal is it nine animals wow yeah there's all sorts of all sorts of brains in there yeah it's it's absolutely awesome it's beautifully illustrated and it's out now so get it wherever you get your books and why not come to the seaside and visit the crab museum and the carb museum they are open now it's the perfect time of the year to come and see it and uh if you want to get to us as a group by the way we are where anna we're on instagram at no such thing or email podcast at qi.com yeah podcast at qi.com that's the important one because we want you to send all your feedback there.

1:01:58James Harkin:If it's stuff that you've experienced yourself related to the things we've spoken about, maybe you've been to the crime museum, maybe you've been to the Bobby Fisher one. Maybe something's got up your bum. Let us know and send pictures because we want to talk about it. And all of that will go towards our bonus show, which is part of Clubfish, which is on Patreon. So patreon.com slash clubfish. And that's called Drop Us A Line. We read out the best of your emails there. It's really fun. So check that out. or if you have a good fact of your own that you want us to read out, we have a Monday bonus show called Little Fish where we read out the best of your stuff and we are doing that weekly.

1:02:35James Harkin:So send it in there and we'll cherry pick the best to bring to the show. But otherwise you can just come back here next week because we will be back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.