No Such Thing As Workshopping The Alphabet

10:05Anna Ptaszynski:Oh, I saw it. Maybe there was an initial contact burn on the windowsill, perhaps. I don't know. I see. But he then, I find this interesting, he bought a lottery ticket just to check if he'd become psychic. Oh. And he won six quid. Oh, wow. Did he deliberately think, well, I am psychic now, but I don't want to go over the main numbers because then everyone's going to, you know. You don't want to have press attention. Like, man hit by lightning, then wins lottery. you've got the press around you just go for six quid because if you won six quid a hundred times every week the dream amount to win on the lottery is enough to buy you another ticket plus a bit yes that's the way to fly low under the radar and steadily build up a million pounds very true

10:42James Harkin:why psychic? I would have thought he bought it because he thought maybe I'm really lucky I survived being hit by lightning

10:49Anna Ptaszynski:because his brain might have you know I mean I don't need to go into the details they are

10:54Dan Schreiber:a lot of people think and there are stories all over history of things being cured by lightning. It's worth a try if nothing else has worked. There was quite a lot of people say that they have blindness and deafness cured.

11:06James Harkin:Just another case where it just seems so improbable that you could survive. I found a guy called Casey Wagner who was out attending a fun day of an event called Rednecks with Paychecks and he was sitting under a tree when he got hit by lightning, okay? It shot his body upwards. I bet he did have a redneck after that. People could see this happening. he got hit by a second bolt of lightning. He got hit twice. And what it hit, this is so unfortunate because you wonder if he was wearing normal shoes. It might not have happened. But he happened to be a rodeo clown and he was wearing his clown shoes, which are obviously longer than your regular shoe.

11:42James Harkin:Is a rodeo clown a real clown?

11:43Anna Ptaszynski:I guess so, yeah. I'm sorry for the ignorance. I just thought it was an insult. It's like somebody who's badly prepared for a rodeo. Oh. But you're saying it's an actual clown at the rodeo. It's the reverse of someone saying, this isn't my first rodeo. Yeah. Yes.

11:55Dan Schreiber:Hang on, is a rodeo clown even a freeze? You'll say you know it as a phrase

11:58James Harkin:I know that phrase I read it as I took it It says his job is a rodeo clown You don't have a job as someone who's an idiot We're rocking up So in a rodeo clown Don't throw stones Think after these 12 years you can call that a job

12:17You're saying that Can I just say around this table Only one of us has heard the phrase rodeo clown Yeah

12:22Dan Schreiber:No two right Andy and Dan No Dan thought it was a job

12:24Anna Ptaszynski:Do you know what the fishing box I know because I do the emails it's going to be absolutely stuffed with how dare you disrespect the ancient profession of rodeo clown I've been a rodeo clown nine years man and boy so what happened with his shoes sorry

12:37James Harkin:well it struck his shoe I've extrapolated the idea to think that maybe his shoe was longer because it was a clown shoe and all that water in a squirty buttonhole

12:46Anna Ptaszynski:will have boiled immediately can I quickly mention something about tonka trees yeah go for it so tonka beans are delicious but lethal so if you eat too many of them like in sheep five grams about two teaspoons is fatal in humans we don't really know what's fatal because we can't really do that experiment but it is illegal to use tonka beans in your food in america and for a long time they used it because it tastes really delicious like a vanilla licorice caramel cloves they used it in ice cream and stuff for a long time. In America now, still, if you go to a really, really, really, really posh restaurant, then they will still serve you Tonka stuff even though it's illegal.

13:31I love this.

13:31Anna Ptaszynski:It's like the secret illegal bean. Yeah. And it's... But it's just on menus openly. Yeah. It's because of this chemical inside the bean called kumarin. Yeah. And also, the amount of kumarin you'd have to consume equates to so many beans, which equates to so many puddings at the restaurant. I read that, as a human, you'd have to eat one gram of kumarin, not of tonka beans, of the chemical that's extracted, to experience any ill effects whatsoever. That equates to about 30 beans worth of kumarin. And that would be about 250 puddings at this restaurant. That's true, although the actual limit, as in if the FDA did have a limit, or if the EU had a limit, it would be a quarter of a tonka bean.

14:13And the reason is because we can't test it on humans about what's good for you or bad for you. So what they do is they test it on an animal, and then they say, okay, well, that's what that is for a baboon or for a dog or whatever. We're going to multiply it by 100 for the human safety factor and that's how they work out the human safety factors. They have like a massive window.

14:32Anna Ptaszynski:That is so cautious. I know, but that's how they do it.

14:34Dan Schreiber:That's too much, isn't it?

14:34Anna Ptaszynski:Delicious puddings we're missing out on. There are secret puddings all over the world that we're not allowed to have. We're allowed to have it.

14:39Dan Schreiber:We're not American.

14:40Anna Ptaszynski:It's just the Americans.

14:40Dan Schreiber:We're going to have tonka beans up our arses. Hold on.

14:45Anna Ptaszynski:While you're on the golf course, I'll just pop this in here, madam. and I hope you enjoy those rich flavours.

14:51Dan Schreiber:I don't even know what I was trying to say. Do you know what it's also in? I really didn't know this. So the kumarin, this thing that's poisonous, very slightly poisonous, or in very small amounts in these things, it's also in cinnamon. But that's only because cinnamon isn't really cinnamon. Okay. I did not know this. What? Check the cinnamon in your cupboard. It doesn't, most of it is not true cinnamon, which comes from the bark of the cinnamomum verum, and that's native to Sri Lanka. It's actually from a plant called the cassia, cassia cinnamon, which is not true cinnamon at all, even though it's claiming to be.

15:26Dan Schreiber:And one teaspoon of it, in fact, sends you over Kumara and safety limits set by the EU. Again, very cautious. But I do overload with cinnamon sometimes on the old porridge. You're probably breaking EU law every time you have a nice cinnamony porridge. 20 cinnamon buns. If they're those really delicious cinnamony ones, you know where the middle is really cinnamony. If you have 20 of those, then that's... Really? And sometimes after a night out, when you go to one of those late-night pastry places in London, it's not impossible that's happening. Oh, yes. You know what? Everyone else going to the kebab shop, Adam's like, no.

16:00Anna Ptaszynski:Boulangerie de nuit.

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17:07James Harkin:Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

17:10Dan Schreiber:My fact this week is that in the 1400s, the king of Korea put a big drum outside his palace and anyone in the kingdom who wanted to complain about something was encouraged to come and bang it.

17:22Anna Ptaszynski:I bet they were not encouraged. I bet they were strongly deterred, except under the direst extremity. No way.

17:29Dan Schreiber:He said, come one, come all. Anything pissing you off? Your wife nagging you too much? Your shoes too tight? come one come all because it was the concept of one in korea which is if someone causes you a slight or let's say someone steals something off you and they're not properly punished then your level of one your kind of negative emotions are out of balance and this person who was sort of starting these new laws and trying to keep everyone happy this was one of the things he was like if your one is out of level due to someone else then that person will get punished that was a beautiful segue from the word one to the concept of one can I tell you one other thing about one oh god who was this king what was he called King Tejong do you know what his birth name was it was something different I can tell you that his birth name considering he put a big drum outside his palace was Li Bangwon lovely stuff but he really did he was so this he was king from 1400 to 1418 it was in the Chosun dynasty which is sort of the big the massive deal Korean dynasty went on for a thousand years.

18:36Dan Schreiber:And it was called the Sinmungo drum. And it really was part of a system. And there were three layers of appeal before you got to the drum. You could go to your county level courts, regional level, national level. If they all reject your, you know, my kettle's broken complaint or whatever it is, then you go to the drum. It's like, I want to talk to your manager. And if you don't get the manager, I'm going straight to the drum. Exactly, exactly. You bang on the drum. The king deals with it.

19:05Anna Ptaszynski:I do imagine that, because the idea was that anyone could bang the drum. But I feel like they would have made it quite clear that this is a, are you really sure you want to bang the drum? Yeah. Because if you hadn't gone through these three layers of lower courts, I'm sure you'd probably have been immediately executed for even touching the drum. Yes. You know? Yeah. The king is a busy guy. He's a busy guy. He is. You're clearly an annoying customer if you've made it this far.

19:27James Harkin:Yeah. But he's vexatious litigation in action. And he was a killer. He was a killer, Dijong. friend of the podcast by the way we have mentioned him before

19:35Dan Schreiber:we've called some questionable friends and we've never denied it

19:37James Harkin:he was the guy who so this Joseon period dynasty that we're talking about they used to have people writing every single thing down about the royalty and he once fell off a horse and he didn't want that recorded but what has then been recorded is him falling off the horse and saying to the historians don't record this happening it's the Barbra Streisand effect

19:59Anna Ptaszynski:it's the earliest known example of

20:01James Harkin:barbara streisand yes exactly but no he he did like to kill um so you would be you'd be pretty brave to bang that drum who did he kill so he executed the four brothers of his wife he executed

20:14Dan Schreiber:his father-in-law his younger brother that's a tough christmas yeah he was but to be fair he executed people who are quite high up the social strata he was a progressive is that what we're saying i think he was progressive well in a weird way he did like he really wanted to kind of democratize stuff in a way. That's the whole idea of this drum is like he believes the common people are the ones to be trusted. He's like women and men are exactly the same. Enslaved people are exactly the same as the nobles. But basically what he wanted to do was crush noble power. So yeah, he, I mean, any brother or brother-in-law or stepbrother who it seemed like might overthrow him.

20:48Dan Schreiber:He really upset his dad who sounds like he was quite nice. What?

20:53Anna Ptaszynski:Excuse me. I'm going to throw in one relevant detail. This was the guy who started the Chosen Dynasty, right? Yeah. By overthrowing the other dynasty. You don't start a dynasty without breaking a few eggs. Who has overthrown a dynasty? But Taichung was the king we're talking about with the big drum. His father was known as Taichou. And I think he sort of ousted his father from power. There was a lot of strife. A lot of people were killed off along the way. A lot of rival claimants, all bumped off. So after Taichung became king, his father Taichou was still alive and no longer king. and Taejong started sending him messengers to try and heal that breach.

21:32Anna Ptaszynski:Okay. Who his father then had beheaded as an indirect message that he would never forgive Taejong. I think executing the messengers is a really shabby move.

21:41Dan Schreiber:It's not good, but...

21:43Anna Ptaszynski:You can just send the messenger back to the thing saying, no, I do not forgive you. Also, I think when you do that, you're supposed to cut the hand off the messenger so that he can go back and say, look what happened to me. If you cut the head off, you're just stuck with the body of a messenger. Exactly. You just think my messenger's mouth

21:56Dan Schreiber:have got lost

21:57James Harkin:hence he kept sending messengers what a horrible system

22:01Dan Schreiber:I guess what I saw as this touching angle is why he was angry though why was he angry then? he was angry because so Taejong had been king and then he'd abdicated people constantly abdicating not dying and then he made another one of his sons king who Taejong overthrew and then Taejong killed a bunch of his brothers as we've said and his dad was just really upset with him for killing his other kids so his dad was like I'm so pissed off that you killed my kids. And I think that's a few messengers heads are going to roll to punish your son.

22:35Anna Ptaszynski:We've ascertained where in terms of aristocracy versus messenger core, Anna's loyalties lie with. I like the way that all these things where people's heads are rolling left, right and centre are known as the first and second strife of princes. Yeah. It feels like they're underplaying it a bit. Yeah.

22:53Dan Schreiber:We've got a euphemism, such things.

22:54Anna Ptaszynski:I don't like any of the people involved, I should say.

22:57Dan Schreiber:Yeah, they're all quite bad, aren't they? He was smart, Taichung. He was the only king in the history of Korea who passed the civil service exam. Really? Remember we've said in the past they have these really, really tough civil service exams to see who gets the jobs? Well, he passed it and none of his brothers passed it. But they also got into the civil service due to the system that if your parents are really rich, you get it anyway. Right. Which they had at the time. but yeah he got through this and he decided he wanted to be a tattooist really? yeah because it was a big deal job in the time if there was a criminal and they did something wrong you would tattoo the criminal with whatever they'd done wrong so that people would know and it was a really important job and that's what he wanted to be but then in the end he became king

23:39Anna Ptaszynski:was there because some tattoos are quite subtle and you can hide them I presume if you're the criminal you can't say can you do it really small and on my inner thigh presumably it has to be like back of the hand or something like I'm a purse snatcher or whatever. I think it was in specific they had rules. Could you get extra tattoos after that one to kind of you know how people these days if they've got like an embarrassing tattoo they'll try and add to it. Yeah like what was it oh slightly the other way but Johnny Depp had Winona forever and then got rid of it and it said Wino forever. Oh yes.

24:10Anna Ptaszynski:Exactly. Could you add extra things I can't think of how you'd adapt the phrase purse snatcher to be benign. I am not a. Yeah exactly. No there were very strict rules

24:20James Harkin:about tattooing in general. But so this is the king who wanted to be the tattooist? Yeah, yeah. Well, he wasn't the king at the time. He was just like a prince. Okay. I got a little detail about his death the day he died, Taichung, which is that, so he abdicated, right? Four years later, he dies. And there's a thing which is drought is often connected to your relationship with the gods. And in the 1400s, it was believed that royalty were connected to it. So sometimes the king would go to an area And if it rained, that would be seen as a miracle brought on by the king. So when he was in his dying day, the king himself, he said, I'm going to make it rain.

24:57James Harkin:And on the day he died, it torrential rained. And for so long, it was like 10 days to the point where it actually destroyed crops because it was so much. But this has been a legend. But people have gone back and they found through all the records that it did rain on the day that he died. So it's seen as a miracle day.

25:13Dan Schreiber:Is it a miracle if it rains? I mean, I know Korea is not as bad as Britain. And yeah, yeah, I can see that they really wanted it. I think that's often what happens in those circumstances is it's been a drought for so long. And so the ground gets really hard and then you get a big rain storm like you would naturally get after a lot of hot weather. But there's nowhere for the water to go. So it all kind of floods. And then God goes, well, what the hell did you want? Everyone gets really upset about that. What do you want from me? Yeah, he abdicated because I think he wanted to train up his son, basically, who was Sejong.

25:45Dan Schreiber:and he basically is known as Korea's greatest ever leader for lots and lots of reasons, but partly because I think he's the only king ever to have invented a completely new alphabet from scratch and it's still the alphabet that they use today.

25:59Anna Ptaszynski:I think what a pain in the ass to invent an entirely new alphabet because if you're the king, everyone has to go along with your alphabet as well. There's no way you can soft launch an alphabet and say, well, we'll see if it takes off and see if anyone starts using this new alphabet. Do we know why he invented a new alphabet?

26:15Dan Schreiber:Well, I think they were using the Chinese alphabet, which didn't match Korean noises at the time. And so they were like, we need one that fits. And he was fairly smart. He was an academic. So actually his alphabet was so good that they've kept on using it.

26:28Anna Ptaszynski:Well, that's very impressive. I didn't know that. I love the idea of workshopping an alphabet though. Like just get some guys in, have some beers, just see where it takes us.

26:35Dan Schreiber:Make some of the noises you make every day.

26:37Anna Ptaszynski:That one. I'm going to draw a symbol for that one.

26:40James Harkin:Do you reckon with the beers thing That's why the end of the alphabet is so fucked up With like X, Y, Z Everyone's just pissed by that point Let's go for an X

26:49Dan Schreiber:What? Is that why sleeping is Z? That's right Have you now gone to the end of the alphabet It goes W, X, Y, Z, vomit

27:06James Harkin:Okay time for fact number three And that is my fact My fact this week is that the artist George Brack once spent 10 days trying to get rid of a squirrel that kept reappearing in his painting. This guy sounds like an idiot. Once you just keep drawing a squirrel, rubbing it out, drawing a squirrel, rubbing it out. Yes, and it's a job, James. You can be an idiot and make money. So this is obviously a very famous artist. I read this in a book. We recently did a show with John Lloyd and we talked about Picasso in it. and off the back of it, I went on holiday and I took Francois Gillot's autobiography, which is her life with Picasso.

27:43James Harkin:She talks about the fact that Barack and Picasso had this moment where in their Cubism period, they were both staring at a painting that Barack was painting. And he just said, Picasso just said to him, what's that squirrel doing there? And he said, oh my God, what is that squirrel doing there? Now, obviously there was no squirrel there, but they could see the squirrel. Because was it like, what would you call it? like um impressionistic yeah like an impressionistic painting where you know it wasn't a picture of a bowl of fruit and there's a squirrel in there right well no no exactly but he was he was painting um a package of tobacco and a pipe um so it was still like yeah it was still but it was just like in the corner it was like the shadows made it look like exactly and they could see the squirrel so he paints it away but as he's constantly transforming the painting over the next eight to ten days the squirrel keeps popping up in a new different place the squirrel returns and so he spends close to 10 days until he invites picasso back and picasso and him both agree yes the squirrel is now gone and now they know that the painting is as it should be do you think there's a chance picasso

28:45Dan Schreiber:never saw the squirrel and just thought i'm gonna psych out my mate here this is gonna really piss

28:49Anna Ptaszynski:him off slow him down yeah exactly let's get ahead with the competition i had never heard of Brack before this. Is he really Well, the founders of cubism was Picasso and Brack. Oh, okay. He's biggie. In that world, yeah. He's bigger in the art world than in the cricket world. Is it? And this is cubism that was, sorry, not impressionism, cubism, so lots of different shapes? Yeah. Cubes. Yeah, mostly. And what are we all except a selection of cubes arranged in a pile? Think of a Picasso painting, like a really wonky one. Yeah. You're kind of on the cubism vibe there. Is this a perennial hazard for cubist painters like were people constantly saying i love that castle you've done you can say yes thank you very much i spent ages on the castle very sweated over that no and this was the this this is actually

29:34James Harkin:a really good point this is the main point about it is that picasso was saying you were painting something to be seen you were not painting an illusion so if we're seeing a squirrel in your painting you've painted an illusion you've allowed for it to be interpreted in this way and this is all a form of something called pareidolia which is where you see like faces or images in a in something that don't really exist. When you look in the sky and you see a cloud and you think, oh, that looks like Mother Teresa or something, then that is because you're seeing things that aren't really there. Well, why does she bless me then?

30:08Anna Ptaszynski:Why does she reach down and the cloud touches my nose and I feel electricity? What's going on there? Well, it is. Pareidolia can be associated with schizophrenia. It can be associated with extreme creativity. Well, that can't be why I've got it. I read that it was also neurosis and even conspiracy theorists are more likely because they're seeing, they're forming patterns everywhere. They're thinking that's an interesting coincidence. That's interesting. That's interesting. Made me think of you, Dan. You know, you're very good at coincidence generation. Yeah. Well, OK, but so the faces more than the rest of us, maybe.

30:41James Harkin:No, I don't think so, because I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But the face on Mars is the most famous one, I would say, in the conspiracy world. There was a photo that was taken by the Viking space probe, and you can see what looks like a giant face on the surface of Mars. That was found decades ago, and that has built a whole industry of ideas that ancient aliens landed there and built stuff and so on.

31:05Dan Schreiber:What proof is it of life? Is it like someone died and they were a giant and then they turned into a rock? Just their face? Because actually, if you look at civilization today, there aren't loads of faces. It's loads of buildings. and tools and some bones. It's so rare you just see a human face left over from 4 ,000 years ago.

31:26James Harkin:As a representative of the conspiracy theorists, I'd like to say there are people that believe it. Next time you're at my house, I've got about six books I can lend you which very much put forward that idea. Thank you. No, it's who knows? They just thought it looked man-made is rather what it is, is the main thing.

31:41Anna Ptaszynski:Nazca lines are shapes when viewed from above and the Sir Naboth giant he's a big face on the ground and a whole lot else besides.

31:48Dan Schreiber:Good point. So people with faces also make faces.

31:51James Harkin:Yeah. Do you know what? Just on that word, pareidolia, this idea of seeing faces and things, Picasso had a theory that that is how art began to begin with. He thinks that early man was looking around and seeing faces and rocks and thinking, oh, why don't I trace over that or why don't I try and mimic that? Well, there's evidence of that.

32:11Anna Ptaszynski:This is really cool. So it's believed that maybe neanderthals also experienced pareidolia and early man um there was a stone found a pebble and it has a human fingerprint on it and one red dot of ochre and that helps it look a little bit like a face it helps to make a little bit of a nose in between a bit of pebble that looks like eyes and a little bit that could look like a mouth and i read a study about it which was titled More Than A Fingerprint On A Pebble which is defensive. Was there a question mark on that? It was, no, it was More Than A Fingerprint On A Pebble surely. That's better because you made it sound

32:51Dan Schreiber:quite desperate initially.

32:53Anna Ptaszynski:It dates back 43 ,000 years and they think it is evidence that early humans were saying oh that looks a bit like a face I'll add a bit of art and a little one dot and that'll make it look even more like a face. So this is a long historical tendency we all have.

33:09Dan Schreiber:Would make sense. sing jesus's face that's a very common one to appear um we all know what that looks like first time it appeared is in a 1977 flower tortilla so it was a woman called maria rubio and she was making burritos for her husband in new mexico and she saw jesus's face and it really is the famous face of jesus in a tortilla uh she snipped out his face she took it to a priest at the local church said what the hell's going on here and the priest was like well you've been visited by jesus and And it actually sort of ruined their lives. So thousands and thousands of people visited from all across Central and South America and North America, came to the house.

33:46Dan Schreiber:They displayed it in this glass case. But people expected her to do amazing things. They thought she could heal. And they thought she had these incredible powers. So they'd come and they'd bring their sick children and say, heal me. And she agonized over it. She didn't want to profit out of the tortilla. And she wanted to help people, but she couldn't heal them. And she just said in the end it was a complete nightmare, but she was too religious to destroy it because you can't destroy the face of Jesus once it's entered your home. Right. But once you smear guacamole on it, you're not going to be able to see it anyway.

34:19Dan Schreiber:It's what he would have wanted.

34:21James Harkin:What did she do with it?

34:23Dan Schreiber:She kept it for years and years and it broke of its own accord in 2005. Of its own accord.

34:30Anna Ptaszynski:That's a miracle. A little tear that magically fractures. It'd be like a Jesus jigsaw.

34:34Dan Schreiber:Oh, yeah, nice. Maybe that's how the grandkids use it today.

34:37Anna Ptaszynski:There might be a reason why Jesus is seen so much. Although I know you get, there's a famous Virgin Mary tortilla. A lot of Mexican food that the Trinity are appearing on, which is interesting.

34:49Dan Schreiber:Yes, maybe it lends itself to faces because it's got those little bubbles in it that look like eyes and a nose, doesn't it? We once saw the devil in a chicken pecora. Okay. Lucky you. Back up a second.

34:59Anna Ptaszynski:I was just saying, like, it's not always Mexican food. No, you're right. Well that's really food for thought

35:06James Harkin:What are you still doing on this podcast? Shouldn't you be touring the world With your millions? Anyway we called our Derek Pecora

35:15Dan Schreiber:What did you do with him? Was he in a glass cabinet somewhere? I eventually went in the bin But we didn't eat him

35:21Anna Ptaszynski:Didn't you? No Too scared The devil's Pecora? No way Was it a spicy Pecora? I don't know I didn't eat it No

35:33Anna Ptaszynski:So the reason that Jesus might appear more is a thing to do with pareidolia in general and that is that people think when they see a face in anything that it's male 80 % of the faces that people perceive whether it's just a collection of lines or whatever 80 % are male Is that patriarchy stuff? I think it probably is unless they clearly have long hair lustrous eyelashes a big sign saying I am female or whatever it is. People just think that's a bloke.

36:02James Harkin:Is it that, because the two biggies really are the Virgin Mary and Jesus, right? But do you mean there'll be a lot of men's names in the mix and just the Virgin Mary? No, I guess we just see random

36:11Dan Schreiber:faces most of the time, right? We don't see usually Mary or Jesus. We just go, that looks like a face. Yeah, I see. Is it like if you were to draw a circle with two dots where eyes might be and a dot where the nose isn't lying where the mouth is, a lot of people would just say oh, look at that man. kind of thing.

36:25Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, that's it. I'm afraid, I think it probably, there isn't a better explanation than patriarchy.

36:30Dan Schreiber:There never is, Andy. Wow. Or a worse explanation. Even in shapes. A lot of ways. Auditory pareidolia. If you're walking through the woods, there might be some wind rustling through the leaves. There might be a water going by and people often hear their names. Ah. It does happen quite a lot, it seems, it turns out. and it can happen with electric fans, with airplane engines, with washing machines, anywhere where there's kind of white noise, sort of uncertain what the noise is. The reason is that your brain kind of just fills in the gaps. And so if this white noise, this washing machine is making lots of weird noises and a couple of those noises sound a bit like an ah and a n, then you would think, oh, someone said Anna.

37:18But even though it's just like a few Frequences that sound a little bit like those letters It's not just people who are called

37:25Dan Schreiber:Things like

37:29Dan Schreiber:The name takes an hour to pronounce

37:31Anna Ptaszynski:But only half an hour if you put them on a quick cycle I really like the thing of why this Happens in general The evolutionary theory as to why it happens Which is that it is useful to us Evolutionarily to perceive a pattern Where there may or may not be one so that particularly applies to let's say if you're in an environment with predators it is more useful to see a bear that is not there than not to see a bear that is there and there's a terrific book actually called The Tiger That Isn't which is mostly a book about stats but it's really good about finding signals and patterns and all that, it's a great book about maths but yeah that seems to be the reason why it happens and maybe it's useful to see faces because you might be...

38:13Anna Ptaszynski:yeah just to keep us prepared and just you're lonely and you want to

38:16Dan Schreiber:you know hang out with someone and we're social creatures the only reason we've been successful as a species is that we're team players unlike anyone else what does that require it requires us to spot faces does it matter that nine out of ten faces we spot are actually dots on a pecora

38:28James Harkin:or you've got so many friends until it's pointed out to you that actually

38:35Dan Schreiber:eating alone in the indian restaurant at a 10 person table again

38:41and then like to go right to the modern day if you are sitting there and you think you're phone is vibrating in your pocket and it isn't vibrating in your pocket that's another kind of pareidolia i've got that and that's because you've got it right now not right now but i have it almost daily oh it's extremely common i've been calling you for weeks dan

39:01James Harkin:i thought i'd been chatting to you was that just a wall with a dot on it and again it's just the brain sort of like feels some kind of vibration and remembers all the other times it have vibrated there and then just fills in the gaps.

39:16Anna Ptaszynski:I get that a fair bit. But Dan, do you think it's anyone in particular ringing? As we know now it is Anna, but do you think, oh my agent? You know, like, is there someone you hope is? No, no, I'm... Hello, Dan Trevor speaking. I'm free, I'm ready. Half my usual rate, I'll do it. Idiot for hire. Rodeo clowns are us.

39:41Anna Ptaszynski:For a limited time at McDonald's, Get a Big Mac extra value meal for$8. That means two all beef, patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. And medium fries. And a drink.

39:53Dan Schreiber:We may need to change that jingle. Price and participation may vary. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love, from beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

40:28James Harkin:Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

40:32Anna Ptaszynski:My fact is, across the world, there are over 100 serious collectors of airline sick bags. Serious. How serious? I'm not talking amateur hour. Oh, I have a draw, but I don't do it much. You know, these are players. Yeah. These are traders. They are curators. Absolutely. There is a community. And it's thriving. It's hopping.

40:54Dan Schreiber:How many qualifies as serious, then, for you?

40:58Anna Ptaszynski:Well, I wouldn't talk to anyone who had less than 150.

41:01Dan Schreiber:I think that's fair

41:04Anna Ptaszynski:How many do you have? I don't have any I'm just a reporter in this world The figures vary One article I read said 100 collectors Another said 250 They could fit into a medium sized theatre Definitely There are some record holders There's a guy called Nick Vermeulen Who I believe has most

41:25James Harkin:Certainly in the mid 6 ,290 As per a CNN article

41:30Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, as of 2012. He may have collected more since. His wife may have persuaded him to throw them out since. We don't know. But he had that many then. Yeah, so he's got maybe most that have ever been had. That's pretty cool. It's a lot. Why do they do it? Oh, you know, you've got to pass the time, haven't you? I read one person called Steve Sildeberg who told CNN that he'd collected them because nobody else collects them. He'll be gutted to hear this episode of Fish. That's so sad. He's great. so he has 3 ,000 more than and he runs airsicknessbags.com which is a really good website for those wanting to get into it it's amazing what it throws up he writes while this website and hobby is an enormous waste of time I like to think it's a higher quality waste of time than many other places on the web did you look at some of his examples on his website the duke makes us puke from 1988 which was given out of the republican national convention referring to mike dukakis that's good there was the hen night party bag from 2005 which is a british sick bag and each bag displays a vomit stain and exhorts you to place gop here and heave and comes with the caveats please dispose of properly do not reheat not

42:45James Harkin:suitable for home freezing so good his sight is great so yeah steve or upheave steve as he's known He is one of the major baggists, as they're known. And it is, as James is saying, it's sort of like, it's not just airline bags. You've got horror movies used to do novelty bags that you would give out as well for people that might barf in the cinema. He collects those. NASA, he's managed to track down a few of the air sickness bags that went up with astronauts and so on.

43:14Dan Schreiber:Are they mostly used? No, no, no, no. These are pristine. Never used.

43:19Anna Ptaszynski:No, of course, they wouldn't fit flat in the arch files if you.

43:21James Harkin:I did look for some though on eBay I did think there must be an air sick bag That was vomited into by Taylor Swift Or something going for thousands But couldn't find anything Thank god, says your wife You said about the horror movies They still do that today Terrifier 3 that came out earlier this year If you went to the first screening of that They gave you some sick bags Saw 10, which came out last year They gave it you as well

43:43Anna Ptaszynski:Saw 10 Yeah, it was a pretty good one, Saw 10 The Human Centipede The Passion of the Christ The Mark of the Devil all different movies where they gave sick bags out to the audience especially in the screenings.

43:56Dan Schreiber:The Passion of Christ? Yeah, in Belfast when it was shown in Belfast. Wow. Because of blasphemy? Blasphemy, presumably. Actually no, because there is some violent bits in it.

44:05Anna Ptaszynski:Oh yeah, I think it gets pretty I don't know if you know how the story ends, Anna, but it's not a PG.

44:10Dan Schreiber:But it's just that the sick bags are a gimmick for what I assume were B-horror movies saying haha, look how scary we are. I thought The Passion of Christ took itself a bit more seriously. Yeah, I think it was like the theatres did it and I think they were trying to make a point a little bit. But ironically, because I went to watch that in Belfast and got a sick bag and vomited in it. You're kidding. But when I looked in it, it looked just like Jesus Christ himself.

44:34James Harkin:He got hit by lightning. Who? Mel Gibson? No, the actor who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. That's one of the famous on-set stories. He got struck by lightning.

44:42Anna Ptaszynski:It's very hard to get down from that cross quickly when the storm starts. Unfortunately, the cross was made out of Tonka bean tree.

44:51The two thieves who were on either side of it, they got it much more.

44:57James Harkin:Sorry, he got hit by lightning. That's a story that's online, and I'm only just saying it out loud because it's the connection between lightning and that, so it might be wrong.

45:05Anna Ptaszynski:Weirdly, one thing that always gets hit by lightning, sorry, this is a telescope back to earlier in the show, is the statues of Jesus. It's always happening. Christ the Redeemer gets hit several times a year because it's massive. On the top of a mountain in a very humid part of the world. I know, but it seems like a vengeful god is zapping statues of Christ. It seems like he's saying all the time, no, look, I want you to try something else. Anyway, Steve Silberberg. Yeah. He has a loving partner, we should say, of whom he says she's amused by it, but has no interest in getting involved. And he's had some bad experiences in the past before he met his lovely partner of women who just didn't like it.

45:44Dan Schreiber:It's not something to raise on the first date, I would say, would be my advice to a sick bag collector. It's more of a third date kind of revelation.

45:50Anna Ptaszynski:That's exactly it. So he, at one point, at his work, he was introduced to a new colleague, and the person introducing them said, this is Steve, he works in IT, and he collects sick bags, and we never got on from then onwards. I think that's a tough introduction to recover from. He's great, though. I think he's really cool. The sick bag was invented by Gilmore Tillman Shendhal in 1949, who later made the world's first communication satellite. It was a way that you could have live television that was going from one side of America to the other by bouncing it off this satellite that he invented. That's cool.

46:26Anna Ptaszynski:And it's the same technology, really, because he made plastics. And he invented the idea of being able to put plastic on the inside of a bag so that when you throw up in it, it doesn't all leak out.

46:38Dan Schreiber:It's pretty obvious, isn't it? You've got plastic bags, you've got paper bags. He just put them together. Someone needed to do it. I could have done that. Someone needed to. And he did it.

46:45James Harkin:I could have done that.

46:46Dan Schreiber:I couldn't have made the first satellite, but I could have done the bag thing. But the satellite thing was, again, it was plastics, and what he invented was the thing that allowed everything to be stuck to the satellite without all falling off. Okay. Basically, all the reflective stuff.

47:00James Harkin:And he's kind of more known for the bag, isn't he, than the satellite, and that really annoyed him in his day. No, it did. In his lifetime, all the quotes from his wife and so on just said this is what dogged him his whole life. Everyone always brought up the sick bags rather than him. It's because most people can't collect communication satellites.

47:14Dan Schreiber:I still think a little bit of a sense of human failure, mate. I think you've got to own it, right?

47:19James Harkin:Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Interestingly, there's a big complaint going on around the world right now amongst the baggists because it's a dying art. Sick bags aren't as prominent as they used to be. And if they are there now, they kind of plane largely in a lot of cases. There used to be great designs. Like there's a deer vomiting on one, which is apparently really loved, beautiful design. There's funny jokes on a bunch of them. And now, because plane flights are getting less turbulent, because we're flying so much higher, it's getting a bit more safer, people aren't using them as much. So air sickness is going down, hence they're investing less of it.

47:50Dan Schreiber:Well, do you know, actually, I looked into this, and people have never been sick on planes. Even in the 1930s, they did a study, and 0.2 % of people were sick on planes, they found. I don't know why we've been using them for so long. And I have always thought... Well, I mean, if you're on an aeroplane, and there's 600 people, someone's going to get sick, right? If it's 0.2%. When it's that rare, and I don't want to put the responsibility always on the individual, but just bring your own sick bag.

48:14Anna Ptaszynski:Are you sure? Do you think that's harsh? I don't think if I'm working on that aeroplane and someone's getting sick, I don't want to be, well, I don't mind if you vomit everywhere because you should have brought your own bag. Fair enough, fair enough. It's your seat, you know, you pay for it, you do what you like in it. And also I think if someone gets off the plane and they haven't used their sick bag, you don't have to replace it. So it's a relatively low cost. Once every seat has one sick bag, you only need to replace one sick bag every 500 flights. That's a really good point. The Hermes Birkin bag.

48:43Anna Ptaszynski:Anna, I know you're deep in the world of high fashion.

48:45Dan Schreiber:I am, yes, yes. Jane Birkin. It's one of my favourite bags.

48:48Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, Jane Birkin. I've been reading non-stop about that bag. Well, it started as a drawing on an airline sick bag. Sorry, what is it? It's a bag. It's a very famous fashionable bag.

48:57Dan Schreiber:Oh. It's got a picture of a vomiting deer on it.

49:01Anna Ptaszynski:And it's not a sick bag? No, it's not. It's not a fashionable sick bag? It's just a fashionable bag You can be sick in it If you bought it, no one's stopping it

49:10James Harkin:It'll be the most expensive chuck-up of your life She was a very famous actor and singer Both in England and France during the 70s And yeah, she was sort of an it girl As well as being a super talented singer Well, she was also good at drawing bags

49:24Anna Ptaszynski:Because she ended up on a flight next to the head of Hermes And she told him, I always need a big bag to carry all my stuff around I think she might have been a recent mum at the time I mean, you know, you need a lot of paraphernalia.

49:35James Harkin:I feel like he saw her bag fall down and all the bits fell out and they wanted to design something that meant everything. Something he just workshopped.

49:42Anna Ptaszynski:I mean, I think this story has given a lot more credence. They designed a slightly bigger bag, basically. Like the story of how she drew this bag on the airline sick bag. She drew a bag.

49:51Dan Schreiber:This is as impressive as putting a plastic bag inside a paper bag. You know, you made a bit of a bigger bag. Well done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some other stuff on collectors. Oh, yeah. The largest collection of silver coins in the world exists thanks to Costa Lavin crisis. That was a crisis that was had by Jose Manuel Costa Lavin, a Mexican man. Oh my God. Didn't you hear that Costa Lavin? Costa Lavin crisis. Oh, wow. Jose Manuel Costa Lavin got cancer and decided to distract himself from the cancer by traveling the world looking for silver coins. and now he's clear of cancer and has the world's largest collection.

50:31James Harkin:Okay, I've just got a few questions about the process of how you got to this fact. Did you start with the pun and find the fact? Did the fact appear in you? I went through the Guinness World Records website and looked for all the collectors, which I think is about 120 pages, and looked for any funny names. So the largest collection of irons is 30 ,071 by a guy called Ion Chirescu from Romania. And the largest collection of Pikachu memorabilia is by someone called Lisa Courtney, as in Courtney Pokemon. Courtney Pokemon.

51:08Dan Schreiber:Oh, nice. And the largest collection of Superman memorabilia is by a guy called Perfecto P. Ballhag.

51:16Anna Ptaszynski:Okay, so that's just an outright funny about your name. Just a funny name. Perfecto P. Ballhag. Mr. and Mrs. Ballhag, he's going to have a tough time in the playground. we gotta give him a name no no it's worse actually sorry I misread it it's perfecto p ball hug junior

51:34Anna Ptaszynski:it toughened me up it'll toughen him up

51:48James 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've said over the course of this podcast. We can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram. James? I've got a few TikToks on my TikTok account now, which is no such thing as James Harkin.

52:07Anna Ptaszynski:Andy? I'm on Instagram at PerfectoPBullHagThe3rd.

52:13James Harkin:Andrew Hunter M. And Anna, if they want to get to us as a group?

52:16Dan Schreiber:You can go to Instagram at NoSuchThingAsAFish or at NoSuchThingOnTwitter, or you can email podcast at qi.com.

52:23James Harkin:Yep. Or you can go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com. Check everything out that is up there. There's all our previous episodes. There is a link to Club Fish, our secret place where we put up bonus episodes, ad free content and so on. It's really good. Or you can just come back here next week because we will be back with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye.

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