No Such Thing As Tibetan Traitors

9:12James Harkin:in the same ambulance and he got in big trouble. But he did have a sign saying no shoes in-house and he took it seriously.

9:19Dan Schreiber:So maybe that's why they do it.

9:23Anna Ptaszynski:Japan is quite particular in lots of ways. It's obviously a very mannered society with lots of different layers of politeness and shoes are a big thing. I wonder if you guys remember there was a thing that might have got into a book of the year. We used to write the books of the year about all the interesting stuff. And in 2018, there was a huge cultural ding-dong when the then and current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu served the Japanese Prime Minister, who was then Shinzo Abe. Do you remember this? Dessert in a shoe. Oh, yes. I do remember this. And this was a huge faux pas. Not the worst thing Netanyahu's done, but it is a deeply insulting thing to do, basically.

10:03Was it a pastry mistranslation?

10:05Anna Ptaszynski:I don't follow. Oh, no. Very good Sorry that joke was actually It was too good for me to laugh It was a chocolate praline pudding And he served it in two pairs of men's brogues And there's a picture of Shinzo Abe Sitting there looking at this pudding In a shoe and thinking In my culture this is the most insulting thing You can take

10:28Dan Schreiber:Sorry can I just say that if I were served a pudding in a shoe I would find it slightly odd I don't think It's not the kind of thing where you'd say to Shinzo Abe Oh, in the rest of the world, we always do this.

10:40Anna Ptaszynski:That's such a good point. I think it was a very posh chef. He'd been hired for the occasion. And run out of plates. We spent all the money on the chef. We didn't have any crockery budget. What are we going to do? Don't worry, I've got it. One thing that I associate Japan etiquette with is cleaning football stadiums. Have you seen this? It happened in the most recent World Cup, but it's happened for a while now. Yeah, so whenever Japan plays any football match, after the game, the fans always clean up the stadium after themselves and they get a lot of plaudits from everyone else around the world saying, isn't that polite?

11:18But in the Japanese press, they're not so happy about it because apparently Japanese men have one of the worst rankings in the world for doing household chores. So a lot of the newspapers, when they show these pictures of these guys cleaning up the stadiums, they're like, well, why aren't you cleaning your house?

11:33Dan Schreiber:I'm already burning with rage on behalf of the Japanese women opening that newspaper.

11:38Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, you'll do it in the football, will you? When you're trying to impress the Belarusian fans, you do apparently know where a letter picker is. Yeah, that is crazy. That is so annoying. Yeah, wow.

11:49Dan Schreiber:I was reading a book of etiquette from Japan, but from 1911. And it was really interesting because it was actually very similar to what our etiquette might dictate, with a few quite revealing things that just shows plus a change. Like one rule was that it is extremely rude to send a caller away when you're at home, as in someone who knocks on the door, that kind of caller. But some people decide whether they shall be at home or not only after they've heard the caller's name. That's good. Wink. So did they have to, when they ring the doorbell, did they have to say, Andy, calling? I think you must have to, because, yeah, you have given the game away, haven't you, when you say, who is it?

12:26Anna Ptaszynski:Well, obviously, the answer is I put on a fake voice and I say, it's Dan calling.

12:30Dan Schreiber:Oh, come in, come in. Their jokes go, knock, knock. Who's there? Dan, I'm not home. There is a thing at the moment called nuikatsu, which is you get a cuddly toy and you take it with you to restaurants and you sit on a chair next to you in the restaurant. And it's common in Japan or relatively common in Japan, I think. And the idea is you dress them up and then you take a photo of them and what it means is you can have a photo of your food and your cuddly toy in the restaurant which shows you were there but you don't have to be in the photo um so like let's say you worried about online security or whatever you can't it's like almost like your alter ego like an

13:15Anna Ptaszynski:avatar like an avatar witness protection you're worried about the yakuza it could be yeah you never know uh but it's been banned in quite a lot of restaurants for etiquette reasons can you guess any reason? Might get gravy on it Might get gravy Well not really though Okay okay okay But almost Takes up a seat Annoying Yeah So it takes up space because if you're in a restaurant which is not like private tables most of them in Japan are but sometimes you might have like counter service it would be taken up one of the seats but also if you make a little dish for the toy then you have to clean the dishes and all that kind of stuff so it's a bit of extra work for the people

13:51Dan Schreiber:Where do people order crockery? Do they order like doll sized crockery for their toys? Well they'll put a little bit of food for the teddy so that they can have a photo with it and stuff yeah i guess the main

14:00Anna Ptaszynski:reason not to would be that it's incredibly annoying for everyone else it's not doing any

14:04James Harkin:harm it's quite nice if if you are going into these spaces where it's you know one seat and someone sits next to you it's slightly nice way of just going i'd like a bit of space because

14:13Dan Schreiber:dad normally puts his bag there you draw a face on it don't you yeah and the other reason is hygiene because you're carrying the plushies outdoors you might be taking a photo of it next to the Tokyo Tower or something so it's been somewhere dirty and then you're putting it on tables. But you've been outdoors.

14:29James Harkin:You've been next to the Tokyo Tower, isn't it? I actually leave my plushie outside the toilet and then I take out my piss plushie. And that goes in with me. That's a very unusual nickname for your penis. It's small and soft and squishy. It's got a face on it.

14:56James Harkin:Stop the podcast.

14:58Dan Schreiber:Stop the podcast.

14:59James Harkin:Hey everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by Babbel. Anna, how many languages do you speak?

15:06Dan Schreiber:Half a language, I would say.

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15:14Dan Schreiber:That sounds like a bit much. How on earth can I go about it?

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15:39Dan Schreiber:Yes, that's right. It doesn't go for like cheap, gimmicky stuff like a lot of other language apps that really try to gamify it, but you don't learn anything. But it does make it really fun. And I lied before. I do speak half of English, but I am also loving learning Polish on Babbel. It's great. It simulates proper conversations. It gives you real world examples of what you might want to say, not the old dusty examples you might have had in your textbooks.

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16:23Dan Schreiber:That is right. Get 60 % off at Babbel dot com slash fish. That's your ticket to being cultured and cool. Rules and restrictions may apply. On with the show. On with the podcast.

16:40OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that according to one theory, Christopher Columbus only existed for six years before he discovered the Americas. Yes. It's my kind of fact. Yes.

16:59So, obviously, people were living in America for a long time, but this is the first European contact, or was it? Maybe the Norwegians got there. Let's not get into all that kind of stuff. We're talking about Christopher Columbus, 1492. And there is a theory that he was not really Christopher Columbus. He was a guy called Pedro Alvarez de Sotomayor, who was a very kind of important Spanish noble who disappeared around 1486. and at the same time Columbus came into the historical record for the first time. We don't really have any history for him before then and there's a lot of circumstantial evidence about it because like Columbus's text, anything that he wrote has this kind of Galician sort of, there's like a lot of words and phrases in there that are more associated with the Spanish areas and he was given a coat of arms by the king of Spain which incorporates some sort of golden bands that are part of the heraldry of this guy who disappeared.

18:04And there has been some recent studies where they dug up some relatives of this guy Sotomayor and did some genetic analysis and found that they were maybe direct ancestor of Christopher Columbus's family. That work has not been peer reviewed and I would say that the majority of people in the historical community do not agree with any of this stuff but it is a relatively out there theory. I think it sounds sound. Case closed.

18:30Dan Schreiber:To be honest, you persuaded me.

18:33Anna Ptaszynski:I guess the counter argument is, I suppose, historical records are quite slim. So someone disappearing and someone else appearing around the same time is not the open and shut thing. Actually, weirdly, a bit like Shakespeare, we know more about Columbus than almost anyone else who was alive at that time. Yeah, right. The other side of the argument is Columbus said he was from Genoa. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? In his will, he said he was from Genoa. But then that document was shown in court a bit after he died. And some people say that maybe they fabricated it. Lots of people called him Genoese in his lifetime.

19:08A biography of his son said that he came from Genoese aristocracy. Now, we don't think he's from the aristocracy, but we think he's from Genoa. But I'm not buying any of that. No.

19:18Dan Schreiber:No, because obviously he's got a reason to have abandoned who he formerly was. So he's lied about all of that stuff, hasn't he?

19:24Anna Ptaszynski:He's on the paper trail It's weird that I'm the one who gave this fact But I'm the one arguing against it But I think it is a bit on the dodgy side But who knows There's a similarity you mentioned Shakespeare Where his name also just changes all the time

19:39James Harkin:Columbus's name He'd be Christophorus de Colombo As one of the versions of his name So he's muddying it himself All people just liked having different names Depending on their mood I think it's just those different spellings and stuff

19:52Anna Ptaszynski:Fun fact about Columbus Because there might be some less fun facts later on I think it's important to have the case for the defence first His father owned a cheese stand Apparently Did he? Yeah And young Christopher worked at the cheese stand Every now and again as a nipper

20:10Dan Schreiber:Good on him Having a little Saturday job in your teens You do good work ethic And that paid off didn't it?

20:16Anna Ptaszynski:Paid off in the end But the weird thing was His brother Bartholomew Ran a cartography workshop Which I find very interesting given that Columbus is associated with one of the most famous screw-ups of a measurement on a map in recorded history.

20:30Dan Schreiber:He got very lucky, didn't he, Columbus? Because basically everything that he thought was wrong about the world, he miscalculated the size of the Earth by about fourfold, if you're talking about circumference. So he estimated a distance of 2 ,400 nautical miles to get to the Far East, which is where he thought he was going, famously. the actual distance is 10 ,600 nautical miles if there was no Americas in the way. So that would have been an issue. There was no ship that could have carried enough supplies. No one could have got there. But it worked out, didn't it? Because he bumped into America.

21:03Dan Schreiber:No one knew the size of the Earth from the time of Ptolemy. That's what's so weird, yeah.

21:07Anna Ptaszynski:The third century BC, oh sorry, Eratosthenes calculated the size of the Earth and pretty much nailed it. And then nearly 2 ,000 years later, Columbus says, I think I can improve on this and just gets it wrong.

21:19James Harkin:Were they sure he nailed it? I think everyone accepted. Because the way that he did it, if memory serves, is it was like shadows in different places.

21:28Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, and the distance between the two and the sun. I think so. Yeah, and the sun of heaven. So that's an incredible piece of math to do in the 3rd century BC. Columbus is the equivalent of a tinfoil hat person these days who says, actually, he's like a flat earther these days.

21:43James Harkin:But he kind of was, Andy, because he wrote a book of prophecies. and he was largely guided by God. He thought we were living in apocalyptic times. He thought there was only about 150 years left after his mission. In fairness to the people who were living in America at the time, they were living in apocalyptic times. Yeah, absolutely. But he thought he was driven by God. So it almost didn't matter whether he got calculations or whatever wrong because he had this belief that he was on a mission directly given to him by God. He thought this will lead me to the right spot. Yeah.

22:12Dan Schreiber:And to be fair, I think a lot of people did think he was a loon. And actually, at the time he suggested it, he approached various people saying, look, I'm going to sail to China or Japan or what would become China or Japan. And he went to the King of Portugal, said, can I do it? The King of Portugal said, I think the earth's way bigger than you've calculated. He said, no, no, no, honestly. And he went to Queen Isabella. She said, no, mate, it's way bigger than you've calculated. And then I think just an advisor went to, it was Queen Isabella in Ferdinand, wasn't it, of Spain, and said, you know what?

22:39Dan Schreiber:I think you should try out this Columbus crazy theory. and so it was just random that they went back and said okay some guy says it's not way bigger when he came back and they would be like oh shit are we all wrong yeah he did when he arrived in hispaniola he thought he was in japan but that's because there was a lot of shoes outside no um and then when they um landed a bit later in south america around the orinoco river in venezuela i think they might have thought maybe this is a different continent at that stage but But he also thought that he might have been in the Garden of Eden. Because there was an idea that the earth had a bulge that was shaped like a woman's breast.

23:20And it contained the Garden of Eden exactly where the nipple would be. Because it was closer to heaven.

23:27Anna Ptaszynski:Horndog cartographers. Absolutely. The four map. But he never made it to current North America. he got to central and the caribbean and a little bit of south america a little bit of south america yeah yeah but he never he never got no north america got to cuba and made people because i

23:47Dan Schreiber:think maybe rumor was starting to spread about the whole new continent thing and they got to cuba and he again thought this was part of the continent and he made his crew swear that it wasn't an island because i think they were saying this looks a bit like an island to me and you know determined about his ideas and he said they'd have their tongues cut out if they said that it might be an island.

24:08Anna Ptaszynski:You can see the other side from here. I'll guard your eyes out

24:12Dan Schreiber:if you say that kind of thing. You know, you've got to be careful around Christopher. He was a twat. There is no doubt about that. At one stage they were arrested, him and his brothers weren't they, for abusing the new colonists. Basically taken in chains back to Spain and then given to the king and queen saying what do you want to do with this reprobate and they said well he's bringing us quite a lot of gold really or maybe it wasn't gold but he's bringing a lot of stuff back and they were like all right fine yeah i'll let you

24:41Anna Ptaszynski:off because i suspect you have to be doing some pretty bad stuff to attract the attention of the authorities in the new world back then yeah exactly quite far so and there's obviously his record has been reassessed in recent years statue of him was torn down in baltimore several years ago which i think has just been re-erected in the white house grounds johnny good yeah donald trump So, Donald Trump has put it back up saying Columbus was the original American hero and one of the most, I mean, it wasn't American, and one of the most gallant and visionary men ever to walk the face of the earth. I've got a statue of Edward Colston I can sell him.

25:16Dan Schreiber:Do you know, so many people died as a result of him arriving that the earth's temperature changed. And I want to say now I'm not suggesting this as a strategy to cope with climate change. but I don't think anyone

25:30Anna Ptaszynski:thought you were saying that

25:31Dan Schreiber:so 56 million indigenous people were killed across the Americas by 1600 generally by disease well the thing is so it's the Columbian Exchange which I always think is such an unaggressive term for it but generally by disease but that's a bit of a misconception because a shed load were murdered as well at the start so Columbus did go and he murdered thousands of people but yes and then lots of course by disease so 56 million people 10 % of the global population so many that it meant a lot of rewilding of the amazon okay um so that meant you know people have been farming the amazon a lot taking a lot of trees down suddenly loads of trees grew lots of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere cooled the earth created the little ice age we think it's a very popular scientific theory it's a bit controversial some people don't know but created the little ice age which then made spruce trees grow more densely which then gave us Stradivarius violins.

26:26And there's your upside. Right. There we go. Which actually sounds exactly the same as other violins. Oh, yeah.

26:35Dan Schreiber:We got hammocks from the Americas. I thought they might have come from like the Pacific islands. I believe the idea of hammocks came to Europe from this landing, got to South America, Central America, and realized lots of people are using hammocks. And it was actually really revolutionary on ships. And it was quite a common cause of death. Before that, because you'd be stacked three bunks high and people used to fall off in the waves. Oh, of course. And you'd die falling out of bed, which is an embarrassing way to go. So you'd fall off the actual boat. Off the bunk. And die? It does seem unlikely.

27:09Dan Schreiber:Now I see it.

27:09Anna Ptaszynski:Like everybody's rocking around in the high seas. You're two metres up and you hit a wave and you come off. I still think.

27:15James Harkin:You've left the window open.

27:18Anna Ptaszynski:Can we just get a breeze in? It's so warm with all of us in here. No but if you thought Also it's not luxurious Thick shag power carpet It's onto bare planks I imagine And your bones are weakened

27:29Dan Schreiber:By scurvy of course It just seems very unlikely And it seems if people Were dying From falling off the top bunk You might just have two bunks I think guys What we shouldn't have done Is that all thousand people On this ship Are sleeping in one bunk bed With a thousand stories I think that was a mistake Look now I say it It does seem weird That so many people died from falling off top bunks. But hammocks solve this problem because, of course, you don't fall out of a hammock. It swings with you and you've got those sides of material that naturally come up around you. So very hard to tip someone out.

28:01Dan Schreiber:I don't know if you've ever tried. But it's harder to tip someone out of a hammock than to push them out of a bed. But yeah, they definitely were introduced after he sailed to the Americans. And it does seem like a weird idea to have three-story bunk beds on a boat. Maybe people more broke their wrists. I can send you, I'll send you the source so you can put it in and have people taking the piss because it does feel weird.

28:23Anna Ptaszynski:It feels like sailors have been murdering each other, putting them in the top bunk, chucking them out and saying, oh no, another bunk bed dead. Oh, it's such a shame that guy who owed me five shillings has died. Captain, should we make him war with the plank? No, let's put him in the top bunk.

28:43Dan Schreiber:Something else that Columbus did on Jamaica, which was ingenious and twatish. So true to his form, This was in 1504. It was his fourth transatlantic voyage and he was stranded with his men in Jamaica. At first, the Jamaican natives who had lived there at the time had helped them out with food and stuff in exchange for various trinkets, but they ended up getting a bit bored of the little bits of decoration that Columbus's people were giving them. So they stopped giving them food. They were running out. Fortunately, Columbus had astronomical tables and these were things that showed you what the stars were going to do.

29:17Dan Schreiber:And so he knew that a lunar eclipse was coming up on February the 29th. Yeah. You can see why he thought God was on his side, right? God's been like, you know what? I'll give you that lunar eclipse, Columbus. You'll know it's coming. So he checked his table and then he went out to the locals and he said, look, I'm sorry you've stopped giving us food. God's really angry about that. My God, the real one. And he said he's going to darken the moon. I'm so annoyed with myself because we just had a solar eclipse, right? Yeah. And what I did was I told my daughter it was going to happen and we made some eclipse stuff and you got her really excited about it and we watched it.

29:51What I could have done is not told her it was going to happen and then pretended that some magical unicorn did it or something.

29:58Anna Ptaszynski:She pretended you were God to cajole good behaviour out of her. That's what we're saying.

30:04Dan Schreiber:She could be eating her peas now. If you don't eat your peas, I'm going to make the sun disappear.

30:12Dan Schreiber:Seems disproportionate, Dad. I've saved my power for this moment.

30:21Anna Ptaszynski:Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is, when Churchill met Stalin and complimented him on his goldfish, Stalin offered to have them killed for Churchill's breakfast. It's just a fun story. Yeah, awkward. Very awkward, yeah. This is a lovely little detail from a book called Allies at War by Tim Bovery, which is about diplomatic relations in the war, and all the summits that happened. There were so many conferences between Churchill and Stalin and the US presidents, Roosevelt and then Truman, after Roosevelt died. And they were deciding what the deal was and how the world was going to look and the shape of Europe and the idea of the United Nations, all of this stuff.

31:04Anna Ptaszynski:So there was Tehran and there was Yalta and Potsdam. And goldfish were a bit of a feature of the Yalta conference, certainly. So there was a huge amount of buggery, bugging taking place. I definitely have different research People were bugging each other How do you guys describe that? No, no, you're right, sorry They did do a lot of that to Eastern Europe, I would say So, everyone was being bugged all the time Because this was, Yalta was taking place on the Black Sea And Potsdam in Germany But the Black Sea one, which was, you know, the Stalin-hosted one, as it were Yalta At one point, a British official called Charles Portal He says, oh, what a lovely nice fish tank Shame he doesn't have any fish in it He's making this remark offhand To a colleague of his in English The next day It's full of goldfish Really?

31:52Anna Ptaszynski:So it's clearly There was a lot of Funny business going on Behind the scenes Like quite often I would say that They would do that To show you That you are being bugged Yeah that's what I would have thought A lot of that happened In the Soviet Union I think that's how

32:07Dan Schreiber:They interpreted it isn't it Like I read I read one exchange Or one letter Of the cameraman saying You know they clearly wanted us To feel a little bit Watched And this was Right

32:15Anna Ptaszynski:Because if you want to gain secret information Then it's a bad thing to do As in if you're genuinely trying to listen to The English as they're talking They might not look for the other bugs Oh that's good It's like the second rotten fish in the car radiator Yes but that's also Sorry?

32:34Dan Schreiber:I've never let you be a passenger in my car You put two rotten fish In someone's radiator And the car smells a fish and they find the fish And they go ah got it But then there's still another one there rotting away We've all done it, Adam.

32:46Anna Ptaszynski:And crucially, you've labeled the fish one and three.

32:51James Harkin:But no, so one of the points of that is, is that the idea would be you debug it, you have your security detail go in, debug the entire room, but they would always say, but we won't have got everything. So they still did know that they were bugged. It was a kind of weird game of chess where do they know, are they aware? And the Americans in English said, yes, we were aware even after debugging that we were being bugged. So they would then put out false information out loud in their rooms. No one knows what was going on. Yeah, no one knows. This is why it basically achieved nothing.

33:21Dan Schreiber:There was another excellent instance of a similar thing. The official American cameraman who was there to take photos of it, he remembered that when FDR first arrived at Yalta, he stepped in and he said, as was his habit, because it was late afternoon, he made a pitcher of dry martinis. And as he passed a glass to Stalin, he apologetically said that a good martini really should have a twist of lemon. And then the cameraman said, At 6 a.m. the following morning, when I came into the entrance hall, I was astonished to find a huge lemon tree. I counted some 200 pieces of fruit on it, which is a weird thing for him to have done.

33:56James Harkin:In a pot or in the ground? Was it just suddenly in the ground?

33:59Dan Schreiber:I think it was in a pot.

34:00James Harkin:Okay, yeah, that makes more sense.

34:01Dan Schreiber:Yeah, because he'd had it flown in from Georgia, apparently. That's very cool.

34:05James Harkin:Efficient. So Stalin and Churchill, this is one of their later meetings, but they first met in 1942. So America sent over a representative called Harriman. Churchill went his self and weirdly we know the exact things that were being said because when they were on the plane on the way over together the plane was so noisy they couldn't hear each other and so they had to write everything on notes and we still have those notes in the Library of Congress yeah not only for their trip there but their trip back as well

34:34Dan Schreiber:did they not sit them next to each other? it was so noisy

34:36James Harkin:it was just so noisy on this old school bomber plane that they were on that they just couldn't hear each other so we do have the handwriting

34:42Dan Schreiber:oh god I honestly thought you meant like the other passengers were having such a lot of conversations. Pass this over to the guy with the moustache. Right, yes, no, the engines, that does make more sense.

34:56Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, because if you're Churchill and the American representative, you could probably have some sway, even on like a Ryanair flight or whatever. Should have booked first class. That's the thing with Ryanair, you have to pay extra to sit next to your friends. There was a war on.

35:09James Harkin:yeah but so they they got there um and churchill when he went to the first function where he first met stalin on that trip he came in in one of his onesies as opposed to looking a bit more you know

35:21Dan Schreiber:as we've discussed before right one of our earliest facts churchill often wore onesies

35:24James Harkin:it was exactly like a onesie but it was his kind of well it looked like it's like a boiler suit exactly yeah it didn't have a teddy bear on it i was like when you say a onesie it's like Well, he had a plushie with him. But yeah, and he confused a lot of the public as well, because they were hoping that what the Americans and the English were going to do was a second front to help them out. And Churchill did his classic V sign for peace. But everyone interpreted that as second front. They thought, oh, yes, that's what's going to happen. Oh, really? And that's not why they were there. And Churchill hated that meeting where he was wearing his onesie, went home, yelled in his room that this was terrible.

36:00James Harkin:They heard it over the microphones that were bugging the room. And so he got invited then to go visit Stalin in his personal house. And they got drunk until three in the morning. And that's where things got better. They got absolutely wankered, didn't they, that day? Him and Stalin and Molotov got really, really drunk.

36:17Dan Schreiber:With his cocktail? We know that Churchill was drinking red wine and not as much as Stalin wanted him to drink because Stalin wanted him to get absolutely shit-faced. but Churchill started feeling it a little bit and thought okay I'm going to go on to the red wine now

36:32Anna Ptaszynski:That's so interesting because Stalin was having his glass refilled with water I think when everyone else was being refilled with vodka because Stalin wanted to stay in a bit more control of the situation Clever.

36:40Dan Schreiber:I think if we said before that Churchill did the Stalin trick as well right where he'd weaken his drinks as well so it seemed like he was drinking more so they were both secretly probably just drinking tap water all night They're all sober Then in 1943 so this one was in Moscow you were talking about Dan And so then the next year they met in Tehran and Churchill presented Stalin with a special sword, the sword of Stalingrad, because Stalingrad had just happened and he got this sword commissioned. It was made in Sheffield and it was supposed to be a gift from the king to say congratulations or well done the citizens of Stalingrad for managing to get through that.

37:18Stalin picked up the sword, held it from the sheath the wrong way around. The sword then just fell to the ground. And so that was a big faux pas. But it wasn't the worst thing that happened in the war No

37:30Anna Ptaszynski:Or indeed the worst thing associated with

37:32James Harkin:Stalingrad But does it make it to the top 100 list of bad things It's number 100 It's the one that gets You know in the Channel 5 show 100 worst things to happen It's the one at the start that gets people sucked in

37:46Anna Ptaszynski:Is it like those I Remember the 80s shows? I Remember Stalingrad It's just got like Rufus Hallin talking over some VT Yalta was the Yalta conference was was not a Yalta was not doing well at the time it was apparently pretty grim the surroundings so when they flew in, this is February 1945 the route was to fly to the airfield in Yalta and then to drive for 8 hours past bombed buildings and rotted animal carcasses, it was really tough there but when they got there things were much more pleasant caviar constantly so one American officer estimated that during the week of the altar conference he ate 12 pounds of caviar they all hated it though

38:31Dan Schreiber:it's too much I read multiple accounts of people being like it's a nightmare, it's literally a bowl of caviar before every single meal, you don't want it that much

38:40Anna Ptaszynski:before every meal, no not a whole bowl either, it is easy to get hold of in Russia in fairness or in the USSR like in the supermarkets they'll have a caviar aisle really?

38:51Dan Schreiber:and they didn't even mix up the menu They served them the same breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day for eight days, I think it was. I know it's not. Again, it's not the worst thing that happened in the war. No, but you would get to Dayan and go, fuck it, yeah. Oh, we're down to 97 now in the top 100.

39:07Dan Schreiber:Lamb roast again. And there were mixed opinions about the venue. Churchill did say if we had spent 10 years on research, we could not have found a worse place to stay. Yeah. Apparently there was a shortage of toilets in Yalta. Big shortage of toilets. Yeah. And you didn't even have to take your shoes off. so they were filthy. So I read this, one of our researchers, Gabriel, posted this on our talk boards because we're doing the Y series of QI at the moment. But apparently at one stage, Stalin was trying to find a toilet, couldn't find one. There was one right near him, but Churchill was in it.

39:38It was too busy. So he went down the corridor, found another toilet finally. But because his security had lost sight of him at that moment, they thought that the US had tried to kidnap him.

39:48Dan Schreiber:And so there was a big sort of like farce moment where everyone's running around going, where's Stalin? And everyone at Yeltsin is looking for him. Oh, wow. It was just in the book.

39:57Anna Ptaszynski:So good.

39:58Dan Schreiber:And do you think that was a power play by Churchill trying to get Stalin to shit himself? Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. You know, the old, how long are you going to be? Just a couple more minutes. Could have been. Because there were multiple people forced to share rooms, which you don't expect. Apparently eight US generals had to share a room, 16 colonels had to share another room, and 40 middle-ranking officers. Please don't tell me it was bunk beds. Not all of them came back.

40:30Anna Ptaszynski:There's a separate, it's very sad in the war cemetery, there's a bit where the gravestones are on top of each other.

40:40James Harkin:Andy, you said Churchill loved his goldfish. He really loved his fish. At Chartwell, he used to keep thousands of fish. Which is his home. Apologies, yeah He has a home that you can go and visit I have visited I assume a few of you have as well Have you not? Oh, Andy, I know you have I've been four times I genuinely have But did they have a love Hitler memorabilia there? Why do you think I'm going?

41:06Anna Ptaszynski:It's great, it's really nice Where is it?

41:08James Harkin:It's in Kent South East of London If you're interested in Churchill It's a very interesting place to go Because it was his former home And all of his furniture is still there His paintings are on the wall If you want to see that side Because he painted a lot Yeah, he was an artist himself And he had this big pond full of fish And this is how important they were to him He used to import superior maggots Over by rail from Yorkshire To feed them Excuse me, is anyone sitting there? Yes, my pet maggots sitting there That's how he referred to them He said they were aristocratic maggots So if the train was delayed

41:43Dan Schreiber:Did it arrive and there's just a load of flies?

41:49Anna Ptaszynski:did you guys read about operation unthinkable no this is a very interesting plan at the end of the war so churchill um had a bit of form he had sent troops to fight the bolsheviks as they were in 1919 so that's probably why the first meeting with stalin was a bit awkward because churchill had literally sent a force to say you know i would rather you were not in charge of russia but in 1945 the idea was come up with an operation unthinkable which is the war is about to end it's been six years of total war chunks of the world are completely devastated everyone's life has been touched let's invade russia and the plan was within eight weeks of the war ending we're going to invade russia okay problem of course we're quite short of numbers compared with the russian army which is absolutely enormous now and also no one in history has ever been able to invade russia since we've literally gone we've got a case in point right now of a guy with the biggest army ever a nutter who's just failed to do it so um but don't worry our plan is we'll rearm the german army and the ss and they'll be bang up for it and that's not with the numbers what this was the brainchild of a brigadier called jeffrey thompson because there was a fear that the soviets would just keep going until they got to western europe basically literally anyone at any senior military level who read this plan said i'm not sure about this i'm not sure you even need to have been in the military to know that that's a shit idea no but he was commissioned to do it like he was a

43:05Dan Schreiber:a serious person was commissioned he wasn't just a loopy he wasn't just a loopy person the line is

43:09Anna Ptaszynski:that he had 10 ideas a day. Only one of them was any good and he didn't know which one. It was the pitch that was made about Churchill, which in many ways is mine. I feel like Churchill's on this show.

43:20Dan Schreiber:Still waiting, aren't we?

43:24No, no, guys, hear me out, hear me out. Invading Russia, cop.

43:33Dan Schreiber:On Churchill, something I didn't know about Potsdam, Potsdam, a bit confusing for Stalin because Roosevelt has died two months after Yalta. So he's been replaced by Truman. Fine. But also, I hadn't realised that the British election happened in the middle of Potsdam. So Churchill had to fly home and be replaced by Attlee halfway through. Really?

43:52James Harkin:During the summit?

43:53Dan Schreiber:Good. Yeah. And Stalin was there saying, and Stalin said to Churchill, A, he said to Churchill, of course you're going to win. You're the war leader. And also, he understandably said to some of Churchill's advisers, well, presumably your leader will rig this anyway, so it's not a thing. and they were like, no, honestly, this election thing, we do it. And he was astonished when a different prime minister came.

44:13James Harkin:It's like when a movie recasts a main character, but everyone else is the same and you just have to just accept it and keep watching the movie.

44:21Anna Ptaszynski:Muppet Pottham. Thank God. Okay. Keep going. Okay. I guess who's the only real person in it? Because you've got to have one. Stalin's the one who's like, Churchill gets kicked out by Attlee and Truman comes in instead of Roosevelt. So Stalin's the one person who's always the same So it's got to be human Joseph Stalin So it's human Joseph Stalin And then it's like Miss Piggy For Churchill But she'll have to be replaced by Atlee Kermit And then Truman Sam the Eagle I guess

44:52Dan Schreiber:I'm sure this does work because I haven't seen the Muppets I'm just not getting the genius

45:03James Harkin:okay it is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact my fact this week is that most circus clowns are part yak which part that's a good question oh is it the plushie okay so um when you see the wig of a clown quite often that is entirely made of yak hair and i read about this by the way in a book that i was reading recently called dame edna average by John Lahr. And they were talking about how when Dame Edna Everidge is getting onto stage, Barry Humphreys is changing into the costume that the wigs would come on. And the person who makes the wig saying this is entirely made of yak hair because it is the best kind of hair for if you are doing any kind of stage performance, particularly if you were a clown and you get pied and you get all sorts of the...

45:47Because in the natural environment, yaks get pied quite a lot. Exactly.

45:52Dan Schreiber:A lot of meringues grow in Mongolia.

45:57James Harkin:that surprised me that uh the wigs were made from yaks i just the extent to which you managed to

46:01Dan Schreiber:plunder your 20th century comedians biographies for facts for this show is so impressive it is

46:07James Harkin:i'm really annoyed that i didn't get to my bob hope book in the last fact when khrushchev came to america uh and caused a scandal um yeah really cool really cool and i was reading about one guy in particular called joe rapisarda who lived in new york and he had a wig shop in times square and basically he was Mr. Clown Wig Man. He would make all the wigs and they used to import all of the yak hair from Tibet. They would have someone who was dedicated to treating it, washing it, the dyeing of it to the right clown hair color. And it's not even just clowns. Major production still to this day in the West End, in movies, they all use yak hair.

46:43James Harkin:Yeah, so Cats, the original Broadway show of Cats, that was all yak hair. What? They weren't cat hairs? Oh my God.

46:50Anna Ptaszynski:I know. So I presume this guy, Joe Rapisade, who was there in the 1990s on Times Square, I presume that that business has been pushed out these days. By a vape shop or something. Yeah, it feels like that's quite a hard premises to keep. Like no one's going to Times Square for a wig these days.

47:04Dan Schreiber:If it's a showbiz thing, it feels like the kind of actually kind of hipster showbiz thing you might have in New York.

47:10James Harkin:But they did the wigs for all Hollywood movies. Oh, I just assumed that like... Yeah, but like in central London, in one of the best spots in central London, there's a big umbrella shop that no one buys umbrellas from. That's a good point.

47:21Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, but that is the spies have somewhere to meet. I think like some of these places, they might have like thousand year leases that they can. Oh, okay. I was thinking it would all be Eminem world by now.

47:33James Harkin:I think it's in a building in Times Square. I don't think it's a shop front. I don't think it's that, but it is again. Yeah. So it's used in Broadway. It's used in many places. I found one account of The Rock, Dwayne Johnson, talking about his role as Hercules in a 2014 movie. and the chin hair, that was yak testicle hair specifically. Come on. Yeah, that they had as his hair.

47:54Anna Ptaszynski:This is what he says in the interview. Why? It's just better. Better hair. But the testicle hair in particular. Was it a goatee? No, it was yakky. Yeah, thank you.

48:04Dan Schreiber:Testicle hair feels like it's usually not very good quality in humans. So maybe they have different... Dare you. Dare you. I'm so sorry.

48:13Anna Ptaszynski:There's no such thing as bad quality testicle hair. Only testicle hair that hasn't been treated right. No, good point. That's a really good point. If you get split ends down there.

48:20Dan Schreiber:Well, you've got to stop straightening it, Andy. It feels like something you might have just said in an interview.

48:27James Harkin:Do you not think? Yeah, yeah. Maybe he was elaborating. But they use the belly hair of yaks a lot as well. Yeah, so they use the belly hair because yaks have the longest hair in nature, I think. Okay. And it's really useful because especially the Tianzhu white yak has got very long white belly hair. So once you shave that off, you can dye it in any color you want. and they've been using it for many, many years. They used it for barrister wigs. Gosh. And like you say, been used in loads of movies. The Lord of the Rings, they used it.

48:56Dan Schreiber:Yeah, there's actually, in The Hobbit, they used it for the dwarves, except one. So quite a fun thing you're doing if you don't love The Hobbit itself is try and spot the dwarf who has real human hair for hair rather than yak hair. Because Peter King, who was doing the costume, said that he mostly needed them to have really thick, dense hair It's got that really thick density where you don't need to have too much of it. And human hair is too silky and doesn't have that texture. But one of the dwarfs, who is I think the lead dwarf, has human hair. I see. The reason it needs to be like that apparently is like a perspective thing.

49:28Because you've got normal heighted humans who have to be like small people. It looks better if their hair is really, really bulky and really sort of big and fluffy.

49:38Dan Schreiber:Oh, it makes them look shorter because their hair is wider. Yeah, that makes sense.

49:41Anna Ptaszynski:Interesting. And they said this guy, Peter King, he got his yak hair from England, even though I guess they were filming in New Zealand. But he said that they bought all the yak hair that was in England at the time. So there was no yak hair for anyone else.

49:53James Harkin:That's why the rock had to sit with bull hair on his face while he was making Hercules. 60 to 80 kilograms of the stuff they used for a lot of the rings.

50:02Anna Ptaszynski:They've got so many yaks worth of hair. So I'm presuming that they're sourcing it from domesticated yaks. Yeah. Because there are two species of yak, aren't there? There's the wild, which there aren't terribly many of them, maybe not even 10 ,000 of those left. And then there are the domesticated, which are actually doing a lot better because there are some millions of those, I believe. It'll be the domesticated ones for sure. You trim it and then it grows back. I'm guessing you don't have to kill the egg. No, you don't.

50:28Dan Schreiber:Every time you go to the hairdresser, you're quivering in terror. You still don't have to kill me for this one, do you? Andy, it's just a cut and blow dry.

50:40Dan Schreiber:Why do you think Communism Coming to China Was bad For Santa Clauses In America Okay Is it something to do With yak hair It's actually Completely unrelated It's just something I've wanted to say It is to do With yak hair Okay so like Santa Clauses need hair Yeah Very good Need fake beards And stuff like that You're there Yeah I'm not sure What the communism Part of it Is going to be though So 1940s, you're absolutely right. The export of, it's actually yaktails they used for Santa Claus's beards in American shopping malls. They were just becoming a huge thing, very easy to curl. Then 1951 China annexed Tibet and it was also going communist and so America put a big old trade embargo on, said it wasn't going to import Chinese goods anymore, so Santa beards suddenly rocketed in price because you couldn't get them anymore and India exported some to America and claimed that they'd come from Bhutan or whatever.

51:35Dan Schreiber:But in the end, I think Santa beers became about 100 times more expensive. Well, luckily, the US have never put trade sanctions on other countries that made everything miles more expensive for no real reason. They learned their lesson from Father Christmas Gate. In Tibet, you might put a lot of yak hair in your bra. This is very common. The black yak hair tent that they use is called a bra in some Tibetan dialects. Oh my god. that's the scabbiest fact i've ever heard but it's apparently a really good tent it's a really cool tent in the summer and a really hot tent in the winter oh perfect um because the yak hair blocks the wind and the snow but in the summer the fabric expands makes it waterproof when it's wet and allows ventilation when it's dry it's like the perfect thing to make your house out of if you haven't decided that you want to live in a wattle and daub house or a cave or whatever we decided in that recent show then you can get yourself a yak hair tent do you know that when you're walking in tibet there is a thing called the mountain side rule and that means that if a yak comes past you in the other direction you always stand next to the mountain as opposed to next to the massive vertical drop okay yeah in case it pushes you off in case it pushes you off now you might say well that makes just common sense that you would do that um but the reason that you're supposed to do it is because the guides will tell you at least that yaks are vindictive bastards and that they'll deliberately knock you off the cliff if they ever get the chance wow right god and here we were thinking they worship these creatures i think probably they just say that to get the tourists to be safe yeah yeah it does make sense it makes so much more sense than saying stand on the very edge of the

53:27Anna Ptaszynski:cliff while the yak passes and if they fall off they'll probably survive because the amount of

53:31James Harkin:amazing wool on the side like push push a yak off a bunk bed it's fine that dude's doing fine

53:38Dan Schreiber:i was reading a bit about the laws of tibetan hunting because hunting yak is a big thing you know and eating yak obviously and these are sort of historic laws but they're really interesting and they're very strict. So the share of yak that you get when you kill it was really dictated. So you'd have the stranger's share, for instance, in a lot of Tibetan groups. And that meant that if you kill the yak and you were entitled to some of it and then your tribe was entitled to some of it, if some strangers came over the hill at that moment, not involved in the hunt at all, the rules were that you had to allot a stranger's share and that had to be the most generous.

54:13Dan Schreiber:Wow. You've got to give the good bits away.

54:16Anna Ptaszynski:That's exactly how I would live my life. if I was there.

54:19James Harkin:Hiding, sneaking around, waiting till one was done. Hopping over. Hey, Brian, what? No, no, that's not the best one. No, no, no. Gave me that testicle. I can see it.

54:34Dan Schreiber:You dig head. You're really the Columbus of Tibet in your fictional life. Oh, that's so funny. They also had a randomized sharing thing where if you're in a group, so let's say you're in a hunted group of eight, you kill a yak, You have to divide it into eight piles and then everyone has a pile that they guard. One person walks away from the circle. It's kind of like wink murder or something. You know, when you select the person who's going to be the murderer. Like the traitors. Oh, yes, it's like the traitors. For something that's on TV right now. This is Tibetan traitors. There you go for people who watch TV.

55:07Dan Schreiber:So what happens? So you stand in a circle. You are each in front of one big pile of meat. And then to make it fair, who gets which pile? One person walks away from the circle, closes their eyes. All the other people number themselves one to eight, one to seven. But then the person who closes their eyes comes back and they say which pile of meat is number one.

55:29James Harkin:Brilliant. And they don't know what number they are either.

55:31Dan Schreiber:They don't know what number they are. And so then the number one has to go around to that pile and everyone rotates accordingly. So you end up in front of a pile of meat that you could never have guessed. I'll be honest, that's not really like traitors.

55:44Anna Ptaszynski:Claudia Winkleman has just killed the yak.

55:54James Harkin:okay that's it that is all of our facts thank you very much for listening if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this show we're all online i'm on at schreiberland on instagram james uh no such thing is james harkin on instagram andy at andrew hunter m yep but if you want to get to us as a group where do they go anna

56:12Dan Schreiber:You can go to Instagram to at no such thing or email podcast at qi.com.

56:17James Harkin:Yeah, that's right. And if you do email podcast at qi.com, you can send us two things that will actually be used on future episodes. So if you send in any bonus information, if you want to correct anything that we've said, if you've had an experience you think we should know about to do with the things we've spoken about, send it in and Andy will pick them out and bring them to Drop Us a Line, which is our bonus secret show. secret as in you can only get access to it if you're a member of club fish and that's on patreon so go to patreon.com slash club fish and you can get access to that as well as excel episodes and there's a bunch of other stuff there or if you send us an interesting fact andy will pick that out and bring it to our bonus monday show which is called little fish and little fish is where we put down our facts and we just read out the best of yours we love doing that so uh do send your stuff in or check out no such thing as a fish.com because we do have live gigs occasionally that pop up on there we've got all our previous episodes that's the hub to go to okay that's it thank you very much for listening thank you as ever to liang lee and ethan ruparelia as well as the larger fish buster team and we're going to be back again next week we'll see you then goodbye

57:36Thank you.