No Such Thing As A Fish - 285: No Such Thing As Giving Birth Up A Climbing Wall

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Dan, James, Andrew and Anna discuss special mud for baseball, why YouTube was invented, and Brazilian caesarian section parties. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hey everyone welcome to this week's episode of fish before we begin we have a very big announcement Andy that is right The news is this we are publishing the book of the year 2019 at the end of October It's going to be a brand new book full of the most insane Wonderful weird brilliant things that have happened across the world this year and even better. There is zero Brexit That's right. We've had any potential mention of Brexit redacted within the book itself We have a very special competition don't we so if you pre-order the book then you can win an amazing prize And that prize is another copy of the book However, it's a very special copy because we're going to keep it in the office

And we're going to scribble all over it and make silly jokes and just do lots of drawings and it'll be it's a unique prize That only you will have it is it's a window into our life in the office that you'll wish that you'd never Opened when once you see how sorted and corrupt the whole thing is But that's what you're gonna get you're gonna get those doodles around the book of the year And it really has been so much fun to write this year There's been lots of incredible news that you will have missed because we've been Overwhelmed with all this Brexit malarkey a man called bud wiser was arrested when he was trespassing a bud wiser factory incredible

Five guys were arrested at five guys this year Yeah, it's packed with just all the silliest stories from the news of the year So if you want to enter the competition You just need to go to the book of the year dot-co.uk and all the details are there one more thing We will be doing some live shows around this book So if you want to come and see us live and hear all about the whole world Except for Brexit then come and see us and details of that you can find at know such things of fish.com Okay on with the show

Oh Hello and welcome to another episode of know such thing as a fish a weekly podcast coming to you from the qi offices in Covert Garden My name is Dan Shriver I am sitting here with Anna Chazinski Andrew Hunter Murray and James Harkin and once again We have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here We go starting with you Andy. My fact is that major league baseball has an official mud What do they do with this mud they rub it on their balls Okay, and this is from a great article in sports illustrated, uh, which I you read for the article

I read for the I genuinely do Um, so it's all it's a profile of this man called Jim Bintliff and he spends his life basically Harvesting mud. He's one of the world's only paid professional mud farmers Do you think there are a lot of amateurs? I know you're right. He's one of the I think no because you're not allowed to enter the mud olympics if you are professional So a lot of people remain amateurs He's issued his chance at that

It's true, but he's doing very well, isn't he? Well kind of yeah, so the major league baseball They need 240,000 baseballs per season and every single one has to have the shine taken off it So that uh, the pitcher can grip it better Um, and he has this secret location where he harvests buckets of mud and he won't tell anyone He won't tell anyone at all So for example, he didn't even tell his wife until he'd been married for five years and they'd had two children together Not even after the first child. Did he think it's probably okay to tell my wife that Did she not wonder why he kept coming back with muddy shoes and and stuff?

It's covered in, covered in filth, yeah She knows that he does it, but she doesn't know the location. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, there's a particular bit of the Delaware River and he's the third generation of his family doing this job Yeah, it's been going since the 30s hasn't it? It's mad and he has these um, so he goes and collects it all at once, right? So he'll go to the source the secret source and then he'll come back with a thousand pounds in weight of mud And store it over the winter and then sell it to yeah, he cleans it as well He cleans the mud. You don't want dirty mud, do you? No way

So he lets it sit and then he dilutes it and he strains it for six weeks And he drains it and he has to be nice and smooth And he used to just sell it in sort of buckets But now he sells it in little plastic containers, but it is hand made mud as it were and he has alibis for if people Actually catch him in the act of doing it So he just makes stuff up like he needs it for his rose bushes or for bee stings Poison ivy and so on But how is no one following him to find out where this location is? Well, I think probably no one really cares

Because Charlie what it is is basically he has the monopoly over this mud And he could probably get it from somewhere else and no one's ever going to say anything Or someone else could put the same mud in a pot without the brand and they probably won't be able to sell it for as much Well, it's not a market that people are dying to get into Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I guess He doesn't earn a lot from it. It's very tragic considering. He's called it the market basically Um, he makes about 20 000 a year in total from it. Oh my god

Like basically baseball must be in the billions and billions of dollars they make every year So every team basically orders about four cans And sorry, do we know why the team need this specific mud? Why aren't they getting elsewhere? It's it's really good stuff The main reason this isn't going to answer your question But just to say the reason why you need it is because it's really hard to throw a brand new Leather ball because it'll just slip out of your hands and actually, um, what happened was um back at the start of the last century Someone actually died because a pitcher threw it and without the roughness

You can't control it and he threw it and it just hit someone in the head and they died And so from then on they decided they needed something to rough it up. Oh my god So jim bindliff is saving lives every baseball season. Yeah. Yeah, let's say that And as you say the generations that this has gone through it's amazing. So it was started by lina blackburn Um, and lina died in 1968 So he handed it to his friend then john has and this is where the family comes into it The three generations john has then gave it to his son-in-law who's got a fantastic name burns bindliff Um, and then burns bindliff gave it to one of his nine children who is now jim one of his nine children

And also he said I was the only one of the nine children who expressed any interest in the family Blood business everyone else left the state for some reason. They all moved They had eight children. They kept on saying come on surely. We don't need to have another Can you just take on the family business? I think he's got one of his daughters interested in the trade now So it might hit generation four. Oh no, has she hit adolescence yet? Because I I can imagine sort of a 10 year old finding that really cool. And by the time you're 18 you think actually dant. I'm going to be an actress There's there's another trick for helping um your grip

So, um, this is for holding baseball bats as well There's many tricks to help you have a firmer grip one of them is um, and this is done by quite a few players Is to piss on your own hands. No. Yeah, this is an actual thing So there was a news report recently from a Pittsburgh pirates picture called jamison tylon And um, he had to he had to go off I think during a match because of a cut in his middle finger It was really bad. It was an open cut. Right. So he was he was told why not pee on your hands because that toughens the skin It will sting but it might get you back on the pitch Um more like the pispurg pirates

More like that Now there's no definitive truth. Wait a minute. So can I just ask you're saying not to help you pitch You're doing it to stop the cut from is that right in this case? They thought that the pee might heal the finger, but generally, um, if you want to toughen your hands You should piss on them magic piss that just heals wounds instantly according to baseball players. We all do Yeah, right just we into an empty nivia pot and it's basically the same I think a few have done that because who because um, george passada who was a catcher. So george. What other? george piss harder

george passada And it's not normative determinism. It's perfectly normal So he's a catcher and moises aloo as a hitter and they both avoided calluses because you get calluses if you play baseball a lot Right by urinating on their hands. Sorry. I'm still a bit perplexed about the function of urinating on us Is it to help you hold the bat? It's a moisturize basically, right? Wow, and so they haven't heard of any moisturizers that are commercially available But if you did get commercial Moisturizer and you held on to the bat might slip out of your hand

So I suppose maybe it moisturizes without making it slippy Yeah, possibly we can only speculate. I noticed you're always dropping your microphone whenever we're doing stage shows So maybe this is something you could do sure sure sure. I just need a modesty screen at the side of the stage You are allowed to put pine tar on your bat as well So uh, it's tar from a pine tree So you're allowed to put it on the handle bit of your bat so that the bat doesn't fly out of your hands And that's another safety Thing because you don't want to just have people throwing their bats all over the

Yes Actually in american football You're not allowed to put sticky things on your gloves But people often do or often have and been caught so that you can kind of Someone throws a ball at you or to you sorry and then you jump up to catch it And then it almost just touches one of your fingers and somehow you manage to catch it And that's explicitly against the rules but people have done it over the years But what happens when you go to kick it and you try to drop the ball and you're just attached to your hands?

Or you go to shake hands for the opposition after the game or something Just something about baseball in the olden days. Yeah, uh, so in until 1887 So baseball started like the start of the 19th century But until 1887 when you came up to bat or whatever the baseball term is as a hitter to bat Then you could request a high or a low ball You could basically ask the pitcher to put it where you wanted it really you say can you put it sort of between my Upper thigh and my lower thigh, please or whatever and they had to do that. Wow. Yeah, it makes it easy, doesn't it? Yeah, it does actually quite a lot harder for the pitcher to aim it there

That's amazing. I mean they do still have to hit it in that little zone in your hitting zone, don't they? Yes It's I always think that's a bit weird. Yeah Well, you can't just throw it in the opposite direction to where they're just standing Or a hundred meters in the air above their head. That's why my game's never caught on Some stuff on mud. Oh, yeah. Yeah So in the 19th century mud in the uk was a really big problem Especially in the cities like london and it was always said that you could tell an englishman abroad Because he would be the one wearing turned up trousers

Or any and it wasn't a fashion it was because if you didn't turn up your trousers you get mud on them See God when people see hipsters now when foreigners see hipsters do they think it's just because we live knee deep in mud? They think oh, yes. I was thinking you might be a time traveler from 19th century london, but you're probably right Maybe the hipsters all are that a lot of their features do speak to that Oh, I've got one really cool mud thing. Do you guys know about the mud pot of california? Nope So this is this amazing thing. It's a geyser basically, but it's a bubbling mud geyser And it's called the nighland geyser

And it's just at the southern end of the san andreas fault and it remained totally still as you'd expect from a geyser until about 11 years ago when it started suddenly moving and then it got faster and faster and by 2015 this kind of geyser This mud volcano called the mud pot was moving at 10 meters a year And increasing in speed at one point it moved 18 meters in a single day So this mud volcano is just encroaching across america is getting closer and closer to the union pacific railway tracks And so they've had to build this massive wall They built a wall that was 23 meters high by 37 long to try and stop it and it didn't stop it at all It's just gone underneath the wall and it's gone out the other side and it's still encroaching on the railway track

No one knows how to stop it. They've tried everything. I have heard of that and they call it the slowest moving emergency in In america don't they? Yes, I think it's technically a national emergency. It is technically a national emergency. Yeah Sounds like a great b-movie. Well, it's like the blob the blob. Yeah. Yes Yeah, it's dying for a hollywood film producer to pick it up I like the way you said it's kind of encroaching across america when actually it's gone about 20 meters towards some train tracks It's gradual but it will happen. Yeah, you have to look out for those gradual things Exactly, you know, keep your eyes peeled for the encroaching mud. I have a fact about mud and sport actually But a different sport completely so mud has changed the shape of football players

and So so it's soccer players were talking. Yeah. Yes. So soccer players Uh, these days have much less mud to contend with right true because there used to be lots of pitches Which are called mud baths, you know, where it just gets churned up and it's just like that So since they've had fewer pitches like that, which are just basically swamps the shape of footballers has been changing And so they used to have to be just very muscular to deal with those conditions You know just to run in that but now they're getting taller and leaner Because they're just having to run a lot on this pristine grass that they've now got on the pitches. So that has literally changed their shapes

Interesting. Oh good. So Wayne Rooney is one of the last of his kind in many ways He is yes, he would have done well in those in those swamps with him. Yeah I mean, I'm not saying that he looks like shrek I'm just saying that he's a very strong man. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he does look like shrek. He does a bit. Yeah Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is chasinski My fact this week is that in brazil women throw c-section parties where guests are served champagne and canapes While watching the host have a caesarean section through a viewing window And wow, that's a party. It's insane from the home of parties as well brazil

I know they have the greatest parties in brazil Well, but I think if you're the originator of parties Then you always have to think outside of the box and do things that seem insane to the rest of us But these will be normal in 50 years. Exactly. They're just experimenting with the next great party craze Do you get served the canapes? But with a thick lid over them that you have to cut through and gradually extract like a sausage roll at a time from That's what I would do. I would theme it like that. Good. Cool. Yeah. Thank you You should be involved in caesarean party planning. Yeah, I think you'd be a welcome addition

So this is the thing that happens. It's quite a big deal caesareans in brazil It's a bit of a status symbol. It's slightly about wealth and or they're also very common So 56 percent of all births now are caesareans and 33 percent are elective caesareans So people have just chosen to do that and that's compared to in the uk I think only 10 percent are elective and even so that's like the highest in europe And so it's a big deal because you are welcoming a new human to the world So friends and family go to the hospital with the person who's going to give birth And there's a gallery that's specially built for the purpose very often

So in salpaolo, I think there are a few of these and they even have frosted windows And then the windows turn transparent at the moment of birth So cool So you don't have to watch all the boring stuff like they're being injected and having a panic attack But you do get to see the baby emerging I would think you would turn them translucent or opaque for the moment of birth itself And it feels a bit personal You don't see that, so I've been in the room for a caesarean section

My wife had one with our son But weirdly that wasn't the one you were there for No, it was me But what they do is so obviously you don't see everything that's going on They have a big sheet that hangs above the tummy And you're on the other side of it with the top half of your wife It's a bit like a magic trick because Do you pick the half of your wife that you are there with?

Yeah, you can, I pick the top half That's good, good on you I should have picked the left half And then the baby comes up and you see the baby Once it's been removed come up through the top and I imagine that's the same with With these viewing windows I think you can see the whole thing happen But it's not, I mean, I was reading a very funny entry in the Harvard Guide to Women's Health

Which is just a very detailed description of all the ways you can give birth And one of them says A screen is usually placed between the woman's upper and lower body So she does not have to view her internal organs I think I feel like we're missing the most amazing bit of this story I didn't realize we had windows that could go from frosted to translucent That is the most amazing bit of the story That's extraordinary

It's just it's just a beautiful wonderful thing, isn't it? You never really know until you see a window go from opaque to translucent Really what a wonderful wonderful thing it is In the very sadly in the poorer hospitals in Brazil They just have lots of nurses who breathe incessantly on the windows And then they wipe them clear You know in the really rich hospitals You can change the furniture in the hospital suite

If it clashes with the decorations that you've got planned There wasn't quite opulent ones Wow Fair enough They're actually designing a new one I think in Sao Paulo Which is going to be a 22 story high maternity ward And it's going to have a very tall woman giving birth Or who intend to sort of project their baby up to the air

No this is going to have a wine cellar and a ballroom Very cool There's one woman on the planet And I think only one woman who has given herself a caesarean Okay Wow I know she's a lady called Ines Ramirez Perez She's Mexican and this was in the year 2000

She had six children already So she had given birth before And her husband was at a restaurant Which didn't have a phone unfortunately So she decided right I'm just going to go for it And she literally cut into her abdomen to give birth to the baby Wow

She had experience butchering animals apparently So she sort of she knew what she was doing That was amazing She drank pure alcohol didn't she to numb the pain Surgical spirit What was wrong with the old Through the vagina Normal exit

Well sometimes that doesn't work out Okay so For various reasons Yeah okay so I don't know why she I think I don't know if this was her first choice Yes It probably wasn't her first choice

Give herself a caesarean at home She probably tried the vagina thing first You're right I should have Considered that maybe Or was it she It wasn't Maybe maybe she did this as area Then she looked down and thought

Oh what the heck is she saying I've already got an opening down there Oh I'm such a mug You were saying who Someone was saying That she had a history in agriculture Butchering Butchering yeah sorry

Well actually the first known woman to survive a C-section Was the wife of a pig castrator Yaku Nuta And that was in the 1500s This is the first documented account we have And apparently his job of castrating pigs Helps him to know a lot about anatomy And he managed to take the baby out

And then sew her up and she was fine So he did it Yeah and she had five more children Including a set of twins afterwards Wow Although the source I saw it in did say Some sources question the reliability of this story Because it was first written about nearly a century after it happened

But it's usually accepted as the first C-section Where the woman survived This whole sort of craze of having relatives and friends Watching giving birth So that isn't a new thing at all It was done, we know it was done in France In 1778 Marie Antoinette She had a whole crowd come bursting through the door

As soon as it was announced that she was giving birth And was almost crushed to death They were holding up bits of wool What? Yeah, so when she was giving birth 200 people ended up being in the bedchamber That's stressful To witness the event, yeah

So there was an obstetrician yelled out The Queen is going to give birth And that's when the hordes of people started coming in But this happened all the time So Queen Mary in England The wife of James II She was giving birth in 1688 And that was what the century before

And there were 67 people in the room Which she thought was far too many And she actually asked She was so embarrassed that she asked the King To put his wig over her face So she couldn't see Is that the bit she wanted to hide? Well, I guess it meant she didn't have to look

At the 67 people in the room Yeah And if you put it on the other part Then the baby's going to come out With a hilarious wig on its head Well, that would be amazing There was an interesting theory about The conspiracy theory was born off the back of this

Which is the And this was put out by the Protestants They thought that the baby was stillborn And that another baby had been snuck in Yeah, because And that's why you would have people who saw the birth Right? Because then you knew that it wasn't going to be

You knew that it was a proper birth Yeah But despite the 67 people in the room There were theories put around that The baby had died and then been replaced By the baby of a nursing maid So all of that kerfuffling All of the having a wig over your face

While you're giving birth Still didn't kill off the conspiracy theory There was a theory that had been smuggled in In a warming pan Which is like a hot water bottle Equivalent And as a result there was a tradition Where you would have to have someone sort of witness

That the actual royal baby was the royal baby So when Queen Elizabeth II was born Our current queen That was part of the thing There was someone standing outside Isn't it like the home secretary? It's the home secretary So it would now be said to Javid

Just sort of lingering in the room I thought that was for all royal babies Or is it not? Is it? I think it's for quite a lot So I thought that stopped though I thought it stopped with Well it did stop

But the home secretary was there Not said to Javid The then home secretary was there When Queen Elizabeth was born And then in 1948 She herself was pregnant And they were debating Should we invite the home secretary?

We've got a long guest list already Do we have the seating space? So she wasn't involved in She was then Princess Elizabeth And she was not involved in the discussion It was the king George VI Talking to his personal secretary Saying should we have the home secretary along?

And Elizabeth said I think we should have him along eventually She was piped up and said No, it's important So they invited him But then Awkwardness of organisms Though the king's secretary

His private secretary Bumped into the Canadian High Commissioner And the Canadian High Commissioner said Oh I hear there's going to be a baby I assume you're inviting Representatives of all the dominions What? And then

So that meant there would then have to be Seven ministers Who would probably be sitting in the corridor outside They wouldn't actually be in the room But they decided No, we can't have everybody So it just was a party that got out of hand basically So that's when they said

No, no more home secretary So you didn't get to go Do you know that there's no good reason Why we would give birth lying down? And I know a lot of people don't There are various different positions But the established position For thousands of years

Was in a chair So a birthing chair And you see birthing chairs Since 1450 BC So they've been around for like 3,500 years Makes sense They look, it does make sense They're gravity helping

Yeah Precisely And it's actually kind of more comfortable Is there a A hole in the chair? Yeah That's even clever I know

I think about it now Yeah They look like a toilet seat But quite an ornate nice toilet seat Because you don't want to sit on an actual toilet seat While you're giving birth And apparently it replaced the tradition of Sitting on your partner's lap

Or your birthing partner's lap While you were giving birth Which I think sometimes people find useful And lying down There's no particular reason That's any better at all The only reason lying down was introduced Was in the late 19th century

Which is this big change In childbirth practice When it went from being a female thing To a male thing So traditionally men just weren't in the room at all Oh sorry, right I thought it was still a female thing Okay

Oh, you've got a real shock coming with you Yep Right through that Eurethra mate But just to add a sort of modern birthing I don't want to make a sweeping statement about this But from what we were told And from people I know who give birth It's not really

It's kind of a Hollywood thing That you think people give birth on their back these days Most are sitting up Most of these beds are put into a sit-up position And that's how birth is happening Yeah, you tend to see that propped up I think in films even But it wasn't thought that you would do it

Without your legs on the ground Sitting on your wooden chair And the only reason then you would put on a bed And leaning back a bit is because Birthing changed from being a female thing To a male thing Where a male doctor was let in Because females weren't doctors

And then they had to see inside the vagina To see what was going on So it's just to make it easier for the doctor That they can see right up inside you It's actually quite fun when you go into rooms these days Because it looks a bit like an escape room They have like I love escape rooms

I mean you and James And there is an ultimate escape happening For the little guy inside It's like escape the womb Yeah, escape the womb Exactly And they have so They have bits on the wall

That if imagine you were climbing a wall A rock climbing wall They have that so that women can hold on to it They just need to move around and do They have bouncy balls everywhere Was that the NNHS? And they had a climbing wall They don't have a

Yeah, she gave birth 20 feet up Wow, you had actually a baseball backstop To catch the baby Have you heard of subfumigating? No, but let's guess what it is Fumigation is something to do with smoke Yep And sub means below

Yeah So do you blow smoke below yourself? Pretty close Is it blowing smoke up a woman's bottom To get the baby to come out the vagina? I think that perhaps Surely that's not how biology works It's not how biology works

You're absolutely right But it's kind of It's not so far off weirdly So this is an Anglo's accent thing Where you have a pregnant lady and you want her to give birth So you get a load of disgusting stuff Like cat poo and shavings of horses' hooves and fish eyes And you burn all of these on a big fire

And then you bring in the mother to be And the idea is that her womb is so disgusted by the smell That it contracts and it pushes the baby out Wow, do we think it maybe works in some way? Don't know I imagine at the time they did I imagine at the end of it they went And that, my friends, is how biology works

Wow I don't know if it worked I can't think of how it might, but I guess a strong physical reaction Like a smelling salt, but for a womb Like you would wretch to see your muscles Yeah, it might make your muscles contract Let's not try to justify sort of 2,000-year-old Bob Barrett practices

You never know who's going to start bringing them back in I'm a feminist, but I really love the old Plume up the vagina Okay, it is time for fact number three And that is James Okay, my fact this week is that when Samuel Johnson visited Paris He worried that his French wasn't good enough So he spent the whole time speaking in Latin

So this is Samuel Johnson of Dictionary fame And this is from an article in Oxford University Press Which is more about why elitist politicians Such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg Often drop Latin into their conversations And it's by a guy called Gordon Campbell Who is a fellow in Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester So we'll get onto Samuel Johnson later

But basically what he's saying is that during the Renaissance This became a really, really common thing all over Europe And it's what kind of brought rich Europeans together And quite ironically now it's the British politicians Who aren't particularly keen on Europe Who are often dropping Latin into conversation And it all comes from the fact that they old British universities Had this kind of pro-European stance

Well the Renaissance was all about a revival of classical everything Of classical everything That's why Renaissance it was the rebirth of that era It was kind of throwing out the middle ages And saying we want to go back to the classical times Yeah And so he actually spoke Latin or by his account Or was it by Boswell's account that he talked about it?

It was by Boswell's account And yeah of course we can't trust everything that he said But it's like his official biography So it's where we get most of our information about Johnson And he said that while he did go into France And spoke Latin with what he called wonderful fluency and elegance His English pronunciation meant that no one understood the word he was saying anyway I read a blog called Latin Language Blog

It's someone who just loves writing about modern day usage as well as old And he did a list of people who are alive today Who can speak Latin A sort of a list of people you wouldn't expect Who could You know pen and teller the magicians There's the silent one and there's the one who The silent one could speak every language on earth

But he just never says anything Exactly It is actually him who can do Latin He's not silent That's the thing he's just trying in his head to work out the right verb ending That he needs Tom Hiddleston who is Loki in the Thor series In the Avenger series

And Loki, Loki's a Latin word Exactly Yeah Isn't it Norse? No, as in Loki as in a place Like a Yeah Sorry

Yeah Come on, you actually studied Latin, didn't you? Yeah, I just didn't realise that you were speaking about him in the Nonditivoc, accusative And then two more Robocop The person who played Robocop Yeah, Peter Weller He teaches Roman and Renaissance art

And he supposedly can write or he studied Latin And lastly, 50,000 people in Finland Oh, he buried the lead there What do you mean? Well, Finland, there's a lot of people who do In fact, a thing that we're writing in our upcoming book Is about how a radio show there used to do news bulletins in Latin And it's because there are 50,000 people there

Who can understand what's being said Samuel Johnson Yeah Yeah, yeah So Samuel Johnson was a great character really And quite a lovable guy He had all sorts of habits that I didn't know about So most famous obviously for his dictionary

The maybe the most influential dictionary ever In the English language But as a person, he had these strange ticks So he had really ritualised movement So for instance, when he was walking through a door Before he did so, he had to do this weird whirling and twisting motion And then perform multiple ritualised gesticulations And then apparently, according to someone who knew him

As soon as he'd finished, he would give a sudden spring And make such an extensive stride over the threshold As if he were trying to wager how far he could stride And this was what he would do repeatedly He was very, very sort of superstitious Or some people expect they now he had OCD or something Some people think he might have had Tourette's I think

Some people think he had Tourette's He talked to himself a lot He used to collect orange peels Did he? Yeah, no one fully knew I They think probably medicinal purposes There might have been a craze Or an idea that it could have helped you in some sort

But yeah, we don't really know But we do know he collected orange peels It could just be this slightly obsessive tendency he had Touching every lamppost as he walked along Fleet Street Lots of things like that Did he? Yeah Yeah

I mean, it's hard to know if he just did that once or twice And then, you know, or if he collected an orange peel once Or if he was Europe's foremost orange peel collector I mean, we just don't know I was reading his dictionary Great I wasn't I was reading someone who's read his dictionary

It was an article by them But there's quite a few fun definitions in there That I never appreciated So, for example, sock was something put between the shoe and the foot Very sort of basic description But then he would say stuff like for lizard He would describe it The definition would be an animal resembling a serpent

With legs attached to it Like just sort of That does, that tells me what a lizard is It's that, exactly And my favorite one, urinator What do you think he defined a urinator as? A baseball player Very good grip

Yes No, it's, it was a diver Someone who searches underwater And a diver was a urinator back in the day Yeah, so in this context, this article says Urinator derives from urini A Latin word to mean to dive There are lots of words that didn't get into the dictionary

In his dictionary Yeah, so you know there's a whole Blackadder episode About him leaving out the word sausage Yes So there, he only, he has 42,000 words in his dictionary Which is obviously massive and a huge labor of love But at the time, the English language had between 250 and 300,000 words So he missed out loads, he missed out loads of biggies

Which were in big use, like nemesis, banknote, zinc, euphemism Yeah, I can see the look on your face as you go down this list And you're thinking, was big use the right phrase, was it? Where's the biggie here? Anus, Anus didn't get in Anus? That's a biggie That's a biggie

Yeah, zinc, he would think he would do Because you'd think he'd be struggling for zest Well, there were no X words in his dictionary We're there, he just completely missed the letter X Yeah, and that was actually something of an improvement Because previous English dictionaries Missed W, X and Y altogether Yeah, so he actually, he was improving by

Missed W Yeah, that's it That is a quite a big letter Yeah That's an enormous letter Yeah, well, I and J were combined in Johnson's dictionary They were all muddled up But that's true in the old English, isn't it?

It was more recent that J became a letter So maybe they spelt the W words with a U or with a V Yes, yeah You mentioned Blackadder as well So in the episode of Blackadder, there's a big joke So Samuel Johnson's in the episode, he's just finished his dictionary And Blackadder tries to pick out words that aren't in there And the thing he picks out famously in the episode is Ardvark

Ardvark's not in there And it wasn't in Johnson's dictionary But it's not a word he missed out Because it didn't enter the language until the year after he died Just a few more words that are in that book in the dictionary And that's Ifaris Which means producing ducks Nice

Okay Don't know what that means, what that's about He had a thing about ducks He wrote a poem about ducks Or a short, I think he did a very easy word to rhyme with, isn't it? It is And he had a filthy mind He also was the first, one of the reasons the dictionary was so famous

And such a trendsetter in the dictionary world Was because he was the first person to use citations, to use quotations As examples of where words could be used And he used these really imaginatively So for fart, the word fart It was written as fart, noun, wind from behind And then with the poem by a guy called John Suckling Who I hadn't heard of

Which goes, love is the fart of every heart It pains a man when tears kept close And others doth offend when tears let loose That's a great, it's a lovely poem It's a lovely poem That's good Suckling was great What's he?

Is he good? He was one of a group called the Cavalier Poets Who were active around the time of the Civil War And they were royalists obviously But they all had great names like Suckling and Lovelace and Carey And they had all these very romantic names Just one more thing on Samuel Johnson He was such a nice guy

So I had no idea that he lived in this kind of commune That he built up of people who were destitute And suffering in life So he had all these friends from various walks of life He lived with a blind woman called Mrs Williams Who actually he would take to various places And who he looked after and he funded her life He lived with someone called Robert LeVet

Who was basically his best friend in life Who was a guy who was a sort of a Claimed to be a doctor But worked as a waiter in Paris And eavesdropped on doctors conversations And become kind of an apothecary And didn't know what he was doing He had Francis Barber

Who was sort of like a son to him really But he was a black boy And this was in the mid 1700s And Johnson left all of his money and his property to him And that was quite controversial And the other people who lived with him thought You know, how come you're treating him like One of us like we're on an equal level

And Johnson would say If he ever needed anything Johnson would insist that he Johnson would go out and get it And would never let anyone tell Barber to go out and get it And yeah, he sort of collected these people Who were treated badly by society Lived with them all

Funded all of their lives Apparently very rude to people Of his own social standing But anyone who had suffered in life He took them in Very cool That's nice He had a patron who did not patronize him very well

His patron gave him £10 once And that was it Wow I would say that is quite patronizing It is Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show And that is my fact My fact this week is that

YouTube was created Because one of its founders Couldn't find an online video Of Janet Jackson's breast Being exposed at the Super Bowl halftime show That's amazing So what I find really interesting about YouTube Is it's not

That old No Right It's not Maybe that's just me being old But it's like There was quite a lot of internet Before YouTube came along

And it's amazing Because it just seems like It was ubiquitous your whole life Yeah 2005 That's when we got YouTube And so the Super Bowl was in 2004 There was this big moment

I don't know if you guys remember it But it was a big moment It lasted a very quick The timing of it is so tiny Of how much time her nipples spent on screen But it's nine sixteenths of a second Is it? I know that through looking it up

Not through creepily looking it up Not on your VHS pausing it Yeah But yeah so It was one of the co-founders Who was called Jawid Karim Who was looking for this video Couldn't find it

And thought there needs to be a better way of it Now there was a second reason YouTube was created There are three creators in total The other two are Chad Hurley and Steve Chen And they both were trying to upload a video When they were at a dinner party And found that impossible to do as well

So the three of them got together And said there has to be a better way about this And that is how YouTube came about It's not the only effect that Super Bowl moment had So I think lots of people were Surprised by what they'd seen And they wanted to find a way of watching it again So Tevo subscriptions

Where you could pause and rewind TV They jumped exponentially And you know the DVR Where you could record things from TV On a hard drive into your home That became a thing as well So yeah there were other consequences But YouTube is probably the biggest by a long way

You know Yeah The first video ever on YouTube Was by this guy Javid Karim And it was called Me at the Zoo It lasted 18 seconds And it's just him in front of some elephants Saying the cool thing about these guys

Is they have really, really, really long trunks Does he say it like that? Pretty much And then he goes He doesn't do it in a Bolton accent In his American accent And then he goes That's pretty much all there is to say

And if you think about the historical things Like the first things like Come here, Watson, I need you or whatever You know the first things that have ever been said In various media And that was the first thing that was ever said on YouTube Yeah And all it makes me think is

He's not a man after our hearts Because that is absolutely not all there is to say About elephants No No And every time I watch that They have big ears as well But it definitely is

He has no social media though Like a lot of them So Java Karim has no social media at all I don't think Except for his YouTube site Where what do you call it When you have a YouTube profile His page

His channel Channel Thank you YouTube channel Where I think he's only ever posted that one video And I think he dangled the prospect of another video In the last year or so And people are very excited about that

He's going to show them the giraffes They have really, really, really long Tongues Ah, you didn't think I was going to say that, did you? But yeah, actually he did return to the comments page of that video a while ago To make a big point as well Because he's one of the three owners that kind of stepped back from it No one really knew that he was part of the ownership of it until it was sold

And then it suddenly emerged that this guy was getting a huge cut of it People obviously knew it But they weren't the Zuckerberg names that were associated with it Chen and Hurley I don't actually know that well either But people did recognize them as the creators And it was the fact that they tried to change the comments on YouTube To be that you had to have a Google account in order to do it

A Google plus account You could only comment then And he didn't have one So he left a comment under his first video The first ever video published on YouTube to say What the fuck is this? I don't have He used the F word

Really? He used it, yeah I mean considering they bought you Google bought YouTube off them for $1.65 billion And he made something like $67 million off it It feels like it's the least he can do Let them do that It's amazing

That was about 20 months from the first video being uploaded To being sold for $1.5 billion It was huge And initially there was so little on there That you couldn't pick what videos you wanted to watch It just played them automatically to you How weird is that? So like because let's say there's a hundred videos

You just had to cycle through the hundreds Yeah basically And there was so few on there That he, Kareem, put up lots of videos Which he'd taken of 747s taking off and landing Because there was just nothing on the site There were so few videos there They posted adverts on Craigslist in LA and Las Vegas

Offering women $20 to put videos of themselves on the website Partly because they thought it would be a dating website They did So it was meant to be a sort of follow on from hotornot.com Which I can't believe is that Oh this was the follow on from that But do you remember that site? I don't remember that

No Oh wow I'm not Is the answer So hotornot.com was basically where you could upload photos of people And then other people could rate how hot or not they were It was not very woke And neither was the idea that conceived YouTube

So that was when they first came up with the idea of YouTube Was when they thought Well let's make a video version of this Because hot or not was revolutionary in a way We had no idea about at the time But I think it was basically the first instance that Anyone could upload their own content And share and rate each other's content

Isn't it amazing that we had Facebook initially started with Zuckerberg Doing the thing where it compared female university students Face mash it started out as And I think that was partly inspired by hot or not as well Right So hot or not sport helped us spawn these two huge things Yeah but then do you remember ages ago on the podcast We did the fact that IMDB was set up originally to log actresses with beautiful eyes

So all of these big things that we have are actually these Provey men Well when they put up the advert on craigslist asking women to put up videos of themselves for $20 each Not a single woman replied And it was it was not hugely successful at first Just because there was so little on there And it only got big they went to a Silicon Valley party And they met a former PayPal executive

Because the other two founders used to work for PayPal And he said this sounds interesting tell me more about it So they went to the bedroom of the host of this party They turned on his PC And they watched every single video on YouTube Which at the time took half an hour How long do you think that would take now It would probably be like the end of the solar system right

I think it's something like they upload 100 hours of footage People upload 100 hours footage every minute Yeah so I'm really so actually it would go on forever forever Yeah it's it's definitely yeah That would have been a very different party I was reading they did a list of which countries watch YouTube most per day Okay And I'm so annoyed at myself I didn't get a timestamp on this

So I can't tell you what year this was But I assume it must be recent at least since 2005 Sure What country do you think came at the top of the list Is it absolute ours or is it per person 90 million daily views is what the Okay so I would say like India or China or something Indonesia

I wouldn't say China Maybe big country lots of people Saudi Arabia Yeah came at the top of the list Because it's said there are so many restrictions on other websites there They don't get Facebook, Twitter This is their place for entertainment This is where they go

Well it is the third biggest channel in the UK As in you've got BBC one, ITV and then the next biggest one is YouTube And the next biggest one is Netflix And then you've got Channel 4 and Channel 5 And BBC 2 and all that kind of thing So the average British adult watches 34 minutes of YouTube a day Compared to 37 minutes of ITV and 48 minutes of BBC one And I reckon if you went to under 30s

Then it might be number one or number two Yeah After number three Have you guys heard of Petitube No Can you guess what it is Okay It's not a creepy thing

It's a small version of YouTube Because it's Petit Is it a YouTube just for Philip Petit The guy who climbs across Go back one You're closer with your privacy Is it only really really So it's videos of really small things

Like thimbles That's really like thimbles Thimbles are small That's a first small thing I can think of Let's get one of those giant thimbles there these days No it's okay Over a third of YouTube videos have fewer than 10 views in total Right

So there is a website called Petitube Which only links onto videos which have had no views at all And you can click and refresh and there are quite a few That's a really nice idea Most of them are just clips of like family birthday parties Or somebody filming their kid for 10 seconds But you know how to pronounce indelicate I clicked on

There's a clip of a pony eating grass for 10 seconds But these things will no longer be on that site right now Because you've watched it I think they get taken off Although a couple of them had two or three views So I thought I might have been played But they are I mean it's quite sweet and quite weird

But also they are very very boring Yeah Unsurprisingly You know how YouTube has a lot of meme stars You know internet meme stars So let's say one that died this year Grumpy cat for example Keyboard cat was a big YouTube star

We all know keyboard cat So it's quite a big thing The paws are going up and down on a keyboard As if they're playing it And then there's music in the background It looks like it's the one with the stiff limbs When the stiff limbs is playing a piano But it's not really playing a piano

Yeah But keyboard cat is dead What? Yes He died or she died in 1987 No 18 years before YouTube was invented What?

No Plotlessed Even I'm amazed by this And I only just heard of keyboard cat This is like the sixth sense of cat videos That's amazing Yeah So how has this cat appeared on YouTube?

The video was taken in 1984 The year I was born And it was uploaded in 2007 So it's like basically in 10 years time If they invent a new kind of medium Where there's holograms that appear on tables And entertain you And then Dan is the most famous hologram entertainer

Because they use some of the videos that you've done And you become massively famous But you're... Well actually When has Dan died? Yeah sorry Dan's got seven years to live in this scenario Oh god

I meant to say you don't look so well today I suddenly don't feel it I think... That is amazing I think you'll admit that similarly got out of control James From the start it was overambitious Okay that is it That is all of our facts

Thank you so much for listening If you would like to get in contact with any of us About the things that we have said You can get us on our Twitter accounts I'm on at Shriverland Andy At Andrew Hunter M James

At James Harkin And Shazinsky You can email podcast at qi.com That's right Or you can go to our group account At no such thing Or you can go to our website No such thing as a fish.com

Do go there It's a very exciting time to be there Lots of things going on New book Lots of tours Get tickets for that And you can find all of our previous episodes Okay that's it

We'll see you again next week Goodbye You