No Such Thing As A Fish - 473: No Such Thing As Rice Babies

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Philippa Perry discuss clumsy kings, disciplining elders and Manley Hopkins. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before this week's episode, we wanted to announce our special guest. It is the psychotherapist, author, columnist, presenter, you name it, it's Philippa Perry. We are so thrilled to have had Philippa on the show. She was on our comic relief special a few years ago and she was just so great and entertaining and interesting. We had to have her back. If you're interested in finding out a little bit more of Philippa's work, she has written a magnificent book called The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did. So do check that one out. Her next book available to be ordered now, it's out in a few months, is called The Book You Want Everyone You Love

To Read and maybe a few you don't. So we hope you enjoy the episode. We certainly enjoyed recording it. The other thing to say is that our British Library live show is coming up soon. It's on Friday the 21st of April. It's about animals. Just wanted to throw a bit of mystery in there. It's about animals. It's an animal special to go with the British Library's new Animals Exhibition. Anna of course is still away but we have a special guest for this show and that is going to be none other than Sally Phillips of Alan Partridge, Smack the Pony, Green Wing, Miranda, you name it. She's going to be there and she's going to be our special guest. We are very excited. Live tickets in the room are completely

sold out but there are streaming tickets available so wherever you are listening to this you can attend a glorious fish gig in the comfort of your own home. Why not pop over to knowsuchthingasafish.com slash live or live. No one's ever really worked it out. You will be able to get yourself a streaming ticket for the show there. We hope you do so. We hope you enjoyed this episode. See you soon. Bye. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Philippa Perry 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 fact number one that is Philippa. Hi. Child rearing advice in the 17th century included tossing your baby up in a blanket to strengthen its nerves or firing pistols near it to boost its endurance. Okay. I'm just going to start by saying in case you suddenly want to run away and think that's a brilliant idea that if you toss a newborn into the air it might break its neck because it's got no neck muscles and a very big head. So not a great idea. Is there a minimum age at which tossing can commence? When did you start tossing? Well we got quite personal quite quickly didn't we? I knew this

would happen bringing Philippa on. Okay. If you're going to do something fun like toss somebody in the air it's a great idea if you've got a bond and a relationship with them first. So don't go up to a random baby and think oh babies love this and toss them into the air. A they might break their neck if they haven't got neck muscles in it yet. And B you do that as part of an ongoing relationship and you have give and take with a baby. Okay so you can't exchange words but you exchange looks and laughs. One of the first games a baby likes playing let's start gentle folks is peek-a-boo. Now that is really scary for a baby. Especially when you fire a pistol. Can we just drop the firing of pistols? Yeah

don't do that okay. Peek-a-boo right. It's really scary for a baby because they haven't got what we call object permanence. So if mummy leaves the room that's why baby goes because mummy doesn't exist anymore. Oh so mummy's gone forever in the baby's eye. Possibly we haven't really got a concept of forever but mummy is not there and we haven't got a sense of mummy ongoing in the other room yet. Yes. So it's pretty scary. And so peek-a-boo the baby thinks you've disappeared for a second and that is oh the jeopardy and then when you arrive again the relief is hilarious and then again they want to play that again and again and again. That is the 17th century firing a pistol that we do in the what we

in now 22nd century or something 21st century. I really had to think. People might be listening to this in the 22nd century. Let's hope they are. Can I ask with the blanket tossing though is this a case of are we thinking of a laid out blanket where we're flinging a kid into the air like fox tossing the old sport. Yeah. So because I wondered if it was wrapping in a blanket and tossing them up and down while they're raps. While they're squaddled. While they're squaddled. Exactly. I think it's that. I think it's the old hold the blanket by the corners and then. I think so. If you're trying to spread it from the nerves then you must have some jeopardy I think. I think chucking a baby in the air at all is jeopardy. This

thing about treating babies and children cruelly to make them stronger is a utter complete nasty myth that people still cling on to. My dear father for example when my daughter was about two years old and she'd just grown too large to stand up underneath the piano. She hit her head on the piano thing and I of course went to comfort her baby here dear dear a cuddle cuddle kiss kiss. My dad said don't do that. She'll hurt herself all the time so that she can get that sort of comfort. You are rewarding her hurting herself. He said and I went oh my god suddenly I realized why I needed 25 years of therapy. I know. But is there a thing where if a small child let's say falls over right now they will sometimes if you're in

the room with a small child and they fall over and they will sometimes give you a look as if they're kind of sizing up whether or not they're going to cry. And if you react in a big way they might say all right that is my cue to cry. They're sort of engaging in it with you. Whereas if you say oh there we go and then you sort of you know. It depends how frightened you are of the fall. I mean sometimes you see a fall and you think that doesn't hurt that much. That's what I mean. And so you go whoops a daisy and we all go whoops a daisy. But you know when they're covered in blood and there's a size of an egg on the head I think they're there darling that must hurt. Yeah. Isn't isn't too bad.

Okay. Good call. Yeah. That's a good level of distinction. Yeah. I say to my son Wilf and Ted my sons when they're scootering if they fall over I say oh that was an amazing blooper because we sometimes film. And then so. You're after those 250 quids for a year to be trained don't you. Do it again in slow motion. My camera's not working in slow motion. But Wilf came home one day scratched up and he said dad had an amazing blooper today. So it kind of helps in a way. There's something else here as well is that children won't cry with people they don't feel particularly safe with. Like one day my daughter had a quite a nasty fall in the playground and the teachers were all saying to me when I went to pick

her up like oh she was so brave. She didn't cry. She didn't make a fuss. I looked at her and think that's not like her weird. And so I went okay goodbye. Okay good. We walked around the corner away from the school. Soon as we got around the corner. I really hurt myself really badly. And it was just delayed comfort. She didn't want comfort with teachers. She wanted comfort from me. And I'm not saying you're putting it on because you didn't do that at the time. Bollocks you just felt pretty sad about having fallen over. And that was incompleted that sort of like I feel sad I need comfort. And so whenever a child wants comfort give it. Never mind this thing about what they're doing it for attention. Yes they

are. And that means you need to give attention. Because once they've had enough attention that's then and only then that you learn to internalize the comfort you get from your loving ones so that you can tell yourself things like it hurts now but it won't hurt in a minute. You know you learn those things you learn to comfort yourself. You know if something awful happens to me like I don't know I get my credit card pocket picked that's the blooper of today or something like that. I want to ring up either my husband or my daughter and go wow wow wow I spent all morning on the phone and getting things cancelled it's been really horrible. And I just want them to go there there. So even when we're

quite old I'm 65 we still need some external comfort for big bloopers. And I'm expecting when I have my hip hop in a few weeks I'm expecting a lot of sympathy from you lot please. So from the sound of it Philippa you don't agree with I've been looking up kind of historical you know childcare advice and parenting manuals and things like that. Yeah there was a manual in the 15th century by Giovanni Dominicchi who said that ideally you I mean he did subscribe to Tuffening Children Up when small. Dress them in rough clothing get them to sleep in the cold the worst of all with old food and wine. Not wine no that's the last straw. Get child services out there right now. I mean if you're sort of left out in the cold with

no comfort I think the least you could have would be a bit of wine to numb the pain. Nice wouldn't it. I'd be interested in the history of childcare whether it kind of goes in cycles of kind of hard love and soft love or whether we think we've kind of got to a point now and hopefully it'll kind of stay like this. Well it is still going in a cycle really because we tend to do things in extremes so we go from we must be authoritarian at all times and don't let them get away with anything to hey free easy and then we think oh my god those kids have got no boundaries they don't know where they are who they're allowed to be or anything they're all over the place they've gone mad we better toughen up again

so he does tend to swing like that but of course after everybody's read my book they'll find the middle way where you have love plus boundaries can't go wrong with that. Nice hugs and guns it's cool. It's not cold. So when you had children that was some years ago as then when they were tiny how old are your children now they've sort of grown up. 30. So were you by any chance I don't know if he was still big then a Spock reader Dr. Benjamin Spock. No. He was a bit before that wasn't he. Yeah. Because I was reading about him and there was like this whole debate about you know tough love versus soft love and all of this because he his books were still being published you know new editions in the late

90s which is the only reason I asked but he published his first in 1946 and it sold 50 million copies by the time he died. Damn I've only sold 2 million I've got a way to gamble. Wow that is embarrassing. Yeah I know I bet he lived long and prospered after that. Oh my god yeah. Yes. But he this is the crazy thing he was blamed for the eventual children who grew up where their parents had bought the book in the mid 40s you know the first edition. Yeah yeah because then in the late 60s he became a very prominent protester against the Vietnam War and he was very famously you know he was leading protests and he was told that his parenting style had led to permissiveness and the permissive society and that all these

long-haired hippies protesting against the Vietnam War were basically his children you know and the parents brought them up in that style. This is like the rider of Jaws then spending the rest of his life doing short protection stuff you know like going the opposite way for what he created. Yeah let's just stick to the middle way shall we. But he was a victim of tough love too as a child he wasn't allowed to have a banana until he was 12. Interesting really. What's what's what's the goss there. I have no more details than that I'm really sorry I did try to find that. Well the mind boggles. This is a cool thing um parenthood during the pandemic was obviously an interesting thing if you had a baby during the pandemic

which I did um you. It wasn't anything else to do wasn't it. There was nothing else to make a baby. Yeah exactly but we we had a thing. We made sourdough. I had babies um you obviously couldn't visit families and so on so in Japan someone had this idea which worked really well which was a pandemic rice baby so what you would do is you would send a picture of the baby the face to this company and you would send the weight of the baby they would make a rice bag the exact weight of your baby with the face on it and send it to the parents or the auntie or uncle or whatever and so while you were doing calls or whatever they could hold the rice baby and sort of feel like they had no the rice baby's fallen into

a pound of boiling water. Oh it doesn't matter. I've been tossing the rice baby up into the air in a blanket with terrible results. So the company did this and it worked really well and then this is now a sort of growing trend in Japan at weddings now there's an opposite baby that gets handed to the parents of the bride and the groom which is as in sorry very old man. No sorry what I mean is what you do is you would get a picture of say like James and his wife would get pictures of themselves as kids and then they would have them printed onto a rice baby and you would give yourself as a child back to your parents to say where I am now this is where I came from and you made me this is a present

to remind you of the journey that we've been on. Well it's a beautiful ritual I think we should all integrate that into our lives. Put in your new book. You write another book Dad. You keep your ideas for your books and I'll keep mine for mine. The rice baby's just going to be a best seller I'm telling you. No it's got to be a more British kind of food. It's got to be a classic British food it's got to be a suet chippy baby. Don't keep so well do they? I was reading about when childcare manuals started when they first took off because there were a few in the middle ages but not very many and there wasn't mass literacy in the same way and it was partly and this is particularly in America I'm talking

about it was partly because people were moving around more so you might be living 200 miles from your parents and your immediate family so you don't have the immediate experience of a baby you know you haven't grown up in loads of babies people were moving around for work. A bit like nowadays really. So a manual is a very old time NCT group. Exactly it really is and that's when the manuals kicked off in a big way and now of course there are so many you know thousands of manuals. There's only one you really need to buy. Rice babies by dance drivers. Okay it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact this week is that France has lost at least two of its kings due to death by walking into

the frame of a very low door. This is two that we know of there may be more. To lose one king by walking into the frame of a very low door. You know what at first I thought that was a to lose joke. Yeah to lose. That's in La Trek. Oh I was thinking the southern French town. Both would have been better than what I was doing. That's cool. Yeah so which ones are we talking? We're talking Louis the third who passed away in 882 the year 882 and then Charles the eighth. I'm presuming not the same door. No it's not no there's no incriminating door here. The killer door. It waits. Was there a bit of inbreeding the old French royal family because you know they had another one didn't they who thought he

was made out of glass. Yes was that a French one? No it was a French I think it was one of the Charles's who suffered. No no Charles the mad for some reason. But inbreeding couldn't make you walk into a door frame. Well maybe you were brought up not to look where you were going. Oh almost I guess if you're the king. Maybe the French royals had a person who would always tell you whenever you're about to hit a door frame. Yeah and it was his day off. What a day. So funny. So two days off in over 500 years. So Charles the eighth his reason for running into the door was he was very excited to see a game of tennis so he was rushing out the door didn't notice the height you know when you're rushing out

the door and you don't notice the height of a door you can you can crack your head. No tennis has killed quite a lot of royals has it over the years. Yeah so Louis the tenth of France died of a chill after paying tennis on a cold day. James the first of Scotland drowned in a storm drain that he was using to escape assassins. Yeah but the drain was blocked by tennis balls and so he couldn't get out and he drowned. It's hard to blame that on the tennis balls really isn't it. No but they'd be called to the stand definitely. It would be especially ironic for him if he had been the one playing tennis and saying shall we go and get those balls. No I can't be bothered they're in the storm drain. That's

a good ironic. And Anne Boleyn was watching a tennis match at Hanson Court when she was arrested and beheaded. Again. Wow. Not fair to blame tennis. So even if she'd be watching a squash game they might have still arrested the bed. You're right. That is a great connection and they're courts, courts and courts. Oh I see. Yeah that's clever. The other guy by the way Louis the the other guy, King Louis the third was chasing a girl into a house and she obviously bent and he didn't. She might have been shorter than him. Yeah she could have been shorter than him. Is it true that the reason doors did use to be short is not because people obviously were smaller but because materials cost so much that it

made more sense to have less material for a wooden door. I believe it might have been because of the heating so if you have a smaller door it keeps the heating more. Okay right. I don't know about that but. Also makes you think before you enter. Yeah. It would be a good idea. I really want to bend down to go and yeah. So I mean yeah that's okay three lost at a tennis court. Yeah. One Venn diagram overlap of two lost to low doors. The lintels of a door. That's it. Do you think it's because Kings wouldn't die of normal things that normal people would die of? Of like. What like sisterless. Well as simple as maybe they would but yeah as in they're more likely to die of weird things. It was obviously a much more dangerous

time in terms of overall mortality and I don't know if Kings lived longer or shorter than the average person. They must have lived longer because they were better fed. Better fed. Yeah. It might have been washed occasionally at least twice a year. Yeah. But you have more kind of aristocratic accidents and things like that. Yeah because you've got more horsing and and and. Yes. Yeah. France they did have a lot of aristocratic accidents at the end of the 18th century. Yeah loads. They really racked up. Horses were a big one. Prince Philip of France he died when supposedly he was going through the streets and his horse tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap. That's that's bad luck. Yeah. There

was another one who rode a horse off a cliff. If you remember. That's just callous. Yeah. That is. It's easy to do. I almost ran off a cliff on a horse. Not on a horse. You almost run off a cliff. Sorry. Yeah in Australia I was going to the beach and I was I saw the beach in the distance and I didn't have my glasses on me and I just ran and ran and ran and as I got to the edge of the cliff I dove to the ground and managed to stop myself just. I don't know why you've been let out at all. That's incredible. Have you that's easy to do. Have you heard of Carlo man the second of West France here. Actually no. Can you tell me all about him please. I only know about his death sadly but it's

an unusual death. He he and he he died after being stabbed in the leg by his servant but all this while they were being attacked by a wild boar. So that at this point we've got two low hanging door deaths. Yeah. We've got three horse deaths. We've got three tennis court deaths and we have now two pig based deaths as well. That's interesting. There's a lot of grouping going on here. Do you know any other pillow fight deaths than the one I'm about to tell you. Oh well. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King had a pillow fight the day before he died but it wasn't it wasn't what killed him. Yeah I think it might even been the day of. It might have been like one of the last things he did. Can you start from

the beginning please. I think you'll hear this show would implode on itself. So Charles the second of a while who was the son of Francis the first. He and his friends came across a load of buildings that had been closed off due to the plague and he said to his friends no son of a king of France has ever died of plague and so they went into these houses that have been closed off and they sort of rolled around on the beds and had a pillow fight. Full of sleaze those beds. Well full of yeah full of not nice stuff and sure enough a couple of days later he contracted the plague and he died. That's bad. That's hubris. That's really hubristic. Yeah that's bad. Louis the ninth of also France buried in Notre Dame

so you're getting quite eminent now you know. Buried and now cremated due to the recent fire. Oh yeah. Too soon Philip. Too soon. He's about five years. There's a theory that he died because he refused to eat the local food when he was travelling. Okay. Starved. No it's worse than that. He was leading the eighth crusade in 1270 AD and he supposedly refused to have any vegetables because it was you know some foreign muck and he only wanted. He only wanted old sausage then back two years old from home. And he had terrible scurvy we think and didn't take any vegetables from the surrounding countryside. That's a slightly simplified verb. Well he wouldn't have known of course that that was what caused scurvy.

Absolutely. Yeah. The arrogance you get from being royal is really dangerous isn't it. You think you won't get plague. You think you don't need vegetables. Do you think it's a therapist that you would ever accept a case of a royal. Would it be very fascinating or too. I couldn't possibly say. What. Don't be stupid. Harry. No. Don't be dumb. Okay. Keep going. Charles the mother of the bar. That's the one. He was called Charles the sign until he went to see a royal. It's not fun. Therapising very famous people. Yes. Because the point of knowing very famous people is to gossip about them and you know on pain of death. So it's no fun at all. I've always wondered if I I'd like to have a therapist

but I want to I almost feel like this needs therapy in itself. I would want a therapist who I found who is a famous therapist. Wow. Yeah. Anyway. I mean we can analyse why you want to see a famous therapist but I'm not going to do that in public. Okay. I can give you a clue. He's just obsessed with famous people. That's. But it's no it's not that I want I want there's something interesting about them being famous and then becoming a therapist. I don't know. There's something interesting to me. I'll shorten it. There's something interesting about your projection. Yes. There's nothing interesting about the therapist themselves. Yeah. That's right. There you go. There we go. Okay. That's done.

So that saved you a lot of trouble. Whoa. What's this immediate invoice? 5,000. Jesus. We're going to have to do a last squarespace advert. Anyway back to Kings back to Kings. Here's the thing. So this is James you mentioned the the French Revolution. Yes. As it as it happened and so after the deaths of Louis the 16th wasn't it a marionette. There was a there was a son. They had they had a son who would have been Louis the 17th who had had very sadly died. But this wasn't really widely known in France at the time. And there was this spell where dozens of imposters came out of the woodwork claiming to be the missing dofa and this this word spread and it's this is a really rare word. It's called the photo

minafomanie. I don't know why that stayed rare. Photo. Photo. Photo. Photo. And fo meaning foals. Yeah. I think you needn't bother with the other stuff. But photo. I just love that and they had and they had varying degrees of success. You know, some of them were very clearly one of them was Native American and just and still managed to succeed actually. He was called Reverend Eliezer Williams who did persuade some people. But yeah. Charles the second of Navarre. He was known as Charles the bad. He was sick and he was wrapped from head to toe in bandages soaked in brandy. And then you might absorb some of that. That would be nice. That'd be a good way of getting getting your kicks wouldn't it. But unfortunately

he was placed next to an open flame. Oh no. No. They're not bright. Are they they're not bright? This French royal family at all. Because I think it's fair to not know that vegetables cause scurvy. But I think at that stage everyone knew that brandy is flammable. Yes. Yeah. But what I like about him, his mother was Joan the second who was the Queen of Navarre. And in 1328 she lost the areas of Champagne and Brie. Careless. Of all the areas of France you want to lose. You don't want to lose. No, you really don't. The brandy one. There's so the brother of King Richard the third, his death was he was to be executed. And so he asked that as part of his execution, could he be drowned? But could he be drowned

in a barrel of Malmsey wine? So that was his choice. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't drunk it myself or drowned in it, but he that's yeah, that was his way out. Alleged, obviously. Speaking of Kings being dipped in unusual liquids. I believe we found our way there. Louis the 18th of France, his death is not interesting, but his afterlife is fascinating. So he was the first King to be disinfected his body after death. So he was washed with chlorides of lime, which slows down decomposition. Okay. And it was so he could be presented to the public without odor. And this doesn't smell limey, if anything, should be nice. I don't think it's that sort of lime. It's not that kind of lime, sadly. Careful when you go to

a bar. If you say can I have some lime with my gin and tonic? Yeah. Yeah. Don't get the one that is not. Oh, no. Okay. All right. Oh boy. Anyway, another tragic death. It's not even a French royal. Okay, it is time for fact number three. And that is Andy. My fact is that the Natural History Museum's collection of whale bones is so significant. They won't tell anyone where it is. So this is this bizarre installation that the Natural History Museum's got. And it's and where is it? I don't know. It's secret. It's really secret. And they have so valuable about whale bones. Well, it's it's an amazing archive of all sorts of species. So it's it's not only

whales, it's dolphins, porpoises. And it's it's one of the most complete collections in the world. And they get a lot of bodies postmortem, if there have been whales or dolphins stranded, you know, they get the skeleton in the end. And what it means is if you have the skeleton, you can study all kinds of things about it. You can study diet, you can study the habitat. I know where they live. They live in the sea. I mean, you're not selling it to me this place. Well, but also which is where this guy who set up this place should go back to release some real estate wherever it is. Well, the things we do know about it, the secret location, supposedly it's behind a 10 foot tall

door. So we can assume it's not in old France. Oh, great for the French family. But 10 foot tall because some of the bones are just so huge, they need to oh, I guess so. I mean, no, actually, they might be tall and long. But if you put them the other way up, you can get through the door. You know, but it's a good point that the article, which this came from, which is a Guardian article in the Journal somewhere around looking to it does not answer the question, why is it secret? As in, okay, great. It's it's the biggest complete collection. And so on. Just security. But from who? No one's going around trying to steal maybe the Smithsonian, right? Who have the other collection? Did you see their collection? No, no, it's that

secret as well. It's actually they're a bit more confident. I think they publicly list the location. They have more animals. They have more individual animals. So 10,000. And they also this is incredible. They have the largest blue whale jawbone ever found, which means that that is the largest bone of any animal ever found on the planet in its entire history. Wow, bigger than a oh, yeah, because bigger than dinosaurs. The biggest ever to have lived. And that's the biggest bone in the biggest animal. And they have it. Wow. Interesting that the biggest bone in a whale is its jawbone. Actually, I don't know why. Oh, yeah. That is good point. Not in humans. Yeah. No, well, it wouldn't be the pelvis on a whale. On the femur. They've got big purposes,

though. Have they? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they have. Oh, their pelvises are so interesting. I thought they sort of tapered off towards the end. Because there's this whole thing that they have vestigial pelvises, right? These these legs that have that have when they were walking on land, and then they didn't need them all. So you can see they went back. They went back. They went back. They got out of the sea. And then someone said, get in the sea. Yeah, I think it was back in the sea. I think it was Philippa Perry. But yeah, so the story that I read, and this is from 2014, what they've noticed is a correlation between the size of the pelvis and the testes and penis. And they think that with the muscles in between, the pelvis is basically used as a maneuvering object

for when they're having sex in the sea. It's a thruster. Yeah, it's a thruster. It's a gripper. It's a it's a controller. It's a controller. So the more the more convoluted the pelvis is, the better control the whale will have over its penis. And that means that if it's a but you can tell how promiscuous the species of whale is by the shape of the pelvis. That is fascinating. Because a more convoluted one means more control, which is the animal kingdom. Do you think like or in the mammal kingdom? Are you just thinking about your own pelvis right now? I can't think of anything else. I don't know what that says about me. Um, yeah, but this ought to be for sigil, wasn't it? And this is the thing that we talk about, but they still use it. And also for the

female whales, they think that it's possibly used for controlling the clitoris. But we can't see that because we don't have any of the bones or anything that remain. And we don't have scanners in the ocean. So how can we see whales having sex? They're trying to do things where they can, you know, mock up CGI, but that hasn't been done yet. Do we know how whales have sex? Very, very carefully. No, that's hedgehogs. Like most mammals would do it doggie style, right? I think it's like that. Yeah. I'm not sure. I mean, one of your facts in the first ever episode of fish was about gray whales having sex in threesomes. That is true. And there's always, which means there's always a spare penis just flopping. I wish mine, that's handy. I was just

on this. I was reading the other day. One thing with the whales is quite often some, a lot of the ones that we have in the museum kind of washed up, right? They washed up on the beach and then we collected them and put them in museums. And this is the thing that humans do, which is when a whale kind of goes on a beach, we decide that we need to clean it up. There's a few, lots of different reasons. One, they smell terrible. But two, they attract sharks. So if you've got a dead whale, sharks love it and you get more sharks in the area. But I was reading an article in, what's that magazine that we all like online? It's about the sea. Okay. And they were saying that basically a beached whale was a really important ecosystem. Before humans used to

take them all away. In 2020, there was a whale that washed up in on a Dutch island and they left it there. And they found it was visited by 57 species of beetle. And 21 of them had never been seen in that area before. So they just kind of came out of the woodwork and like got on this. And in Russia, they found a whale on the, in the north coast. And they found that 180 polar bears were eating on this single carcass. But of course now, as soon as a whale gets washed up, we get rid of it. And it means that all these animals don't have the massive bounty that they would have otherwise had. Because it, yeah, it is amazing, even not on land, but in the ocean, when a whale dies and it falls to the bottom, that's the beginning of a new city, basically. It's an

extraordinary thing. You get every kind of life coming and living there. It's like dropping a skyscraper down. How long do blue whales live? The biggest creatures? Is it 200 or 300 years? It's a long time, isn't it? I think it's well over 100. Yeah. Yeah. Why? I'm just interested. Usually the larger an animal is, the longer it lives, right? Generally speaking. Yeah. And there are, we've, we, I think we've said before, there are some whales alive today that were alive before Moby Dick was written. Right. Yeah. That was a really interesting thing about whales, which is that they have more cells. So you think they would get more cancer. And you would think that the bigger an animal is, the more cancer it should get,

because it has more cells that could go wrong, but that doesn't happen and we're not sure why. Maybe we need to study the bones and find out. If only we could find these. If only we had a depository of a massive about a whale bone somewhere. Can I tell you a, this is, this is pretty on topic for me. I found an article, headlined Whale Bones, the world's most endangered bryophyte habitat. Bryophytes is another word for mosses. And it is an article in the British bryological society journal. I love this. This is by a guy called Jeff Duckett, right? He's written a while ago now. And he says, however many times you've seen them, there is always a certain enchantment at finding members of the splacknaceae on dung pellets and rotting

cadavers. This is a particular family of mosses. The stimulus for my present study was the chance discovery of tetrapodon minoyides growing on a decades old whale skeleton, the centerpiece in an Icelandic garden. What was, what was initially supposedly a bryophyte free holiday on Iceland then turned into a systematic search for mosses of whale bones. Imagine his wife. She's like, we're going to go to Iceland. There can't be any moss in Iceland. He's like Poirot, where Poirot always goes on holiday. Can I get down my favorite book? Yes, please. Wales bones. Wow. We've mentioned this very briefly on the podcast before, but it's called Wales bones of the British Isles. And like we only mentioned it a couple of hundred episodes ago. So I think it's right for

a retread. Oh, it was episode 28. So please can I mention this a second time? It's by Nicholas Redmond and his son and they are father and son team. They spent 30 years traveling the UK just finding whale bone arches. This was a huge thing in the 19th century. You'd make an arch out of a whale's jawbone and they used to be a very famous one in Edinburgh. It's sort of solo standing that was sort of like out, out in the field or a pub sign. Look at that. The signboard of this public house in Downham is supported by a whale's jawbone. They were, they are big. Those jawbones they're massive. They were used for fencing. Just on that picture that you showed that was the jawbone went to the just above the height of the actual pub itself. Yeah. So that's how tall it is

for someone who's imagining it. Yeah. And the fence posts and crane hoist supports. I'm just reading a list of different users now. Footstools, milking stools, benches, stepping stones, amazing material. Yeah. So and yeah, this is just this book is such a labour of love. This is why the bit of the museum that houses the whale bilanes has to be top secret because it's such useful material. We'll start building houses out of them if we find where it is. This secret room, so the person who runs the secret room or at least as the head curator who seems to be asked about a lot is Richard Saban. And I actually met Richard years ago. I went for a tour of the natural history. An industrial state off the M1 that he just by chance wanted to meet you at.

Where? Where? Next to a 10 foot door. Don't go through that door. Okay. It is time for our final fact of the show. And that is James. Okay. My fact this week is that Jared Manley Hopkins once had nothing to drink for a week for a bet. He only stopped when his tongue went black. Good. He did that at school, I think. He did. And he went to school high gay. Yeah. He argued that everyone had more liquids than the body needed. Everyone was drinking too much. That's why he decided. And people said, no, no, what do you mean by that? And he really stuck by his guns. And he said, no, I reckon I can go without any liquids for at least a week. Okay. So he did this bet with one of the other boys. And not only his tongue went black, but he also collapsed. And,

you know, in the middle of a, you know, PE. Yeah. PE would be the time you would collapse. Yeah, absolutely. But the headmaster who was called John Bradley Dine, he sort of really punished him. And he was forced to return the money. You know, because he got those guys said, well, you know, you've done pretty well, so I'm going to give you the money. But he was forced to give it back. And he complained that he was being punished more than the other boy, because not the other boy, they both got punished, but he also had to give the money back. And just made the headmaster hate him even more. And he got, you know, he had a bit of a bad time at Highgate. He was a very original thinker. And authority, like many teachers don't like that. They just want obedient children that

don't ask too many questions. And I expect he really irritated all his teachers because he was probably cleverer than they were. Yeah. But the thing with the liquids, yeah, isn't there a theory that if you ever have a pee, or that shows you've been drinking too much? I said, no, no, no, Andy, no. Every time you have a pee, you're like, oh, you know what? I should have cut down on the drinking earlier. Your pee should look like champagne, not stewed tea. Yeah. Whereas if you're not drinking very much, it will look like stewed tea. Mine is in cubes. Is that a problem? It's probably a problem when you're squeezing it out. I should think. Yeah. Okay. So he didn't think that. He just thought, it's a weird thing to decide that people are drinking too much,

as it is a weirdly. Well, it would have been just a school argument that got out of hand. Right. That's all that. He did the same thing with salt, didn't he? He had stayed from salt for a week for the same reason he wanted to show. Yeah. But what I think this shows is that he could steer his mind rather than just go with the flow and not be thoughtful and not be influenced. He could decide where he wanted to go in life rather than just be blown about in the wind. And these experiments who are doing, I think they're wonderful experiments to sort of, what can I do? What can my body do? What am I capable of? Yeah. Should we say who he is? It's just quickly. Yeah. Because Philip, you're a fan, aren't you? Yeah, I did him for A level.

I got a crush. And I bet he was gay, actually. I was just thinking about this now and I'm feeling slightly disappointed that I wouldn't have stood a chance. I'm afraid from the research he absolutely was. Yeah. Oh, damn. Just quickly. It's like really, really famous Victorian poet. Oh, yeah, that. He was a friend of Robert Bridges. Another poet. Yeah. That's right. And he was sort of like late 19th century, wasn't he? Yeah. And he invented something called sprung rhythm, which is I caught this morning's morning's minion dappled dawn drawn high there on a wimpling whim. Do you see what I mean? You sort of, you dance. The words dance. It's sort of. And where did you go there in terms of if I was reading that on the page? Am I on a third line

or was that one line? I can't remember. Right. But but it's not a big pentameter where you've got five feet. But bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. It can go on forever and seems to fly like the birds he's talking about. It's very jazzy. Yeah. And I was very taken with it as a keen A level student and he made me cry. I loved him so much. It was just so beautiful. And he never got to see any of it because he wasn't published until post his death 30 years after his death. He never got fangirled by me, which is probably quite glad. He was very slightly Hawaiian. Really? Tell me more. Well, he had a strong Hawaiian connection in his life, basically. He wasn't personally Hawaiian himself. His uncle used to live there,

right? Can you let me tell the story again? Right. He just had a lot of pineapple. He had a favorite pizza. His dad was the Hawaiian Consul General in London. And you're right, Dan. Yes, his uncle Charles had moved to Hawaii, but had fully learned the language and had established an Anglican bishopric in Honolulu. So I think he had lived there. And then I think his father, who was called Manny Hopkins, that was his dad's name. The son was Gerald Manny Hopkins, must have visited and been and sort of become the representative. I just think that's cool. You don't think of that with Manny Hopkins. Well, because his family were Protestant, like you say, but then he just decided he was going

to become Roman Catholic, didn't he? And he was already writing some amazing poetry at that time. But when he became Roman Catholic, he decided to burn it all. I'm just like, I'm just going to get rid of everything. I'm just going to stop becoming a poet. I'm just going to never do any poetry. I'm going to get rid of all my poetry. I just don't understand that split with his parents, because his parents sound really cool, because they encouraged his original thinking. And his mother was unusually highly educated for the time and also encouraged him. And do you think he went Roman Catholic because that's easier to be gay, so you don't have to get married like you might if you're an angry... We do know that he went so like when he converted, he was trying to come home to

see his family and so on for Christmases and stuff like that. And there are letters that sort of show that he would write to his dad saying, is it okay that I come back to the house? Because the worry was that, and this was the condition, yes, you can come home, but absolutely by under no means, can you convert your brothers and sisters to your religion? So he had to promise he would not do that when he came back home. So it wasn't a complete rift as I'd been led to believe. It might have turned into that, but certainly for the first two Christmases after this letter, he was allowed to go back home and do that. You have to wear a lei like everyone else at Christmas. You have to say hello her like all the rest of us. Can I just say about when he burned everything? So he burned

everything at the age of 24, as in everything he wrote before the age of 24 he burned. And it was, as you say, James, because he got faith. And he gave up creativity because he couldn't reconcile his faith with his creativity. So he gave up writing for seven years and became a Jesuit. But what's the one thing you would do before becoming a Jesuit? So one thing is not allowed. Do you want to have one last crazy blowout? Yeah. Have a wank? Well, yeah. He did like orgasm. You can see a lot of metaphor for sort of orgasm things in the poem. When he used to note it, we'll get back to yours in a second. He used to note that in his diary, there was a secret code. He used to say OH, which was old habits. And the old habits was...

Having a wank. Having a wank. Well, it might have just been saying, oh, okay. So what did he do before surfing? He ate a bit of fruit. No, he visited Switzerland, which banned Jesuits from entering the country. So he took his opportunity to visit Switzerland, which might be code as well. So actually saying it now, it sounds like code. Visited Switzerland again this morning. His big first poem, really sort of the one that he's largely known for these days. I know. I know. Wreck of the Deutschland. That's it. Correct. Yeah. So he wrote that and it was based on a shipwreck from the 1800s, 1875. And he was inspired by a group of nuns who were on the shipwreck who sort of prayed to God as they were

going down and that gave him the inspiration. And he, as part of writing it, created this amazing new technique in poetry, which it was called... Sprung rhythm. Sprung rhythm. And so he sent it. He sent it into a Jesuit magazine called The Month to have it published and they rejected it. And the article I was reading just had this really nice little sort of nugget of fact, which is that something that did make it into the Jesuit magazine as a poem was written by someone, a student, who identified himself as O-F-O, apostrophe F-W-W. Any idea who that could be? Oh, gosh. O-O-F-O. F-W-W sounds like something to do with W-W-F. No, it's not. So it's, uh, it's Oscar-Fingle-O-Flattery-Wills-Wild. It was Oscar Wilde's first ever

published poem that made it into the Jesuit. Yeah. That's very nice. Yeah, exactly. Lovely. Dan, I think you said flattery instead of flaherty. Oh, did I? Sorry, flaherty. Yeah, flaherty will get you nowhere. I really hope someone gave Oscar Wilde a fun little sign for his house, saying flaherty will get you nowhere for the loo or something. It's just so cute. That's amazing. So that was the Jesuit. Sorry, no, that was the hinge moment at which Oscar Wilde got his break and Hopkins didn't, because you said nothing he wrote was published until 30 years after he died. That's sort of true. It's sort of slightly untrue, because Robert Bridges. So who's that? Robert Bridges. He was an established poet. I think they met as fellows at Oxford or

something. Yeah, and he was someone who Manly Hopkins would go to in order to impress and say, can you help me out? And he read this amazing poem that we were just talking about, The Wreck, and he was like, I don't want to read that again. That was painful. That was really hard. But he sort of, post-death, became a champion of him. And so he thought the writing style was so difficult that Hopkins was doing, that he would publish six poems as a sort of teaser taster, just to get you used to the rhythms of this guy before publishing his collected works 30 years after his death. So there was a sort of like, you know, like putting out like a trailer episode of podcasts. Yeah, you know, it was kind of like that. He was also friends with Christina Rossetti,

wasn't he? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She was also very religious. She wrote in the Bleak Midwinter, for instance. And I read one interesting book. You made it sound like that was when she liked to write. She wrote the Da Vinci Code, but I read this about her, which is really interesting, that she had a habit of stooping up to pick up stray pieces of paper in the streets in case they had the Lord's name on them. Nice. So there's a bit of paper and she's like, well, I don't want it blowing away if it says Jesus on it. So I'm just going to pick it up just in case. She was the first person to collect those shopping lists that people make blogs out of. And she didn't like that. So she goes, oh no, I'm just looking for Jesus. Do you want to hear a few words that Hopkins

invented? Please. Yeah, that's good. Inescape, which is the essential quality of something, of anything really. Yeah, when kittenfishes catch fire, meaning when you see that sort of flash of their colour, that was like deep in the core of them. And then it rippled out into the world, but it sort of came from their essence. Inescape is sort of like the essence of a thing. Nice. He also coined the word stressy. Stressy? Yeah, but he used it to mean poetry that is characterised by stress and rhythm on the words. Brilliant. And no one, he wrote it in private correspondence. So he wrote it well before anyone else said, I'm feeling really stressy today. Has anyone ever said that? I don't think I've ever said stressy, actually.

Don't be so stressy. Don't be so stressy. I think I have. People say it to me all the time. The effect you have. Yeah. Shivlight, that's another word by him. Shivlight. Shivlight, so S-H-I-V-E light. So it might be shivlight or shivlight in pronunciation. Does that mean shimmery or something? It's really beautiful. You know when you're walking through a wood and the sunlight passes through a tree and it breaks the beams. That's a shivlight. The shivlight you see and what breaks through the beams. And sillion is another word that he came up with. It's the act of plowing a field and it's the sort of rich soil, the shiny soil that you get on a newly plowed field. If he had something that he felt so deeply about that language could not describe,

he just made his own language up for it. So cool. Very cool. With his poems, I've had to have like a little glossary to tell you what it means or would it be clear? Only in the A-level notes, which I deeply relied on. Right, that is what, yeah. His love life is very sad and thwarted, basically, because he seems to have been gay in love with one man who died very tragically young and then never really recovered from that. He was in love with a young man called Digby Mackworth Dolbin, who I just, I like this fact about him, so I like it so much. He was expelled from Eaton. Can you guess what for? Wanking? No, it's not always the answer. But it will be. How were you on Mastermind? Disorce.

Clean that chair. It started, I need to finish. What was it? Digby Mackworth Dolbin was, he was expelled from Eaton. You're never going to get it in a million years for, for wandering the countryside dressed as a medieval monk. That's right. Shoeless. That's so sweet. I know, isn't it? I can see why you fancied him. Yeah, it was sort of like imaginary world living in, a little bit poetic, flowing robes. I know, and Hopkins confessed his love to his confessor, because I think he was a fair bit older than Dolbin, and then the confessor said, well, you can't have any contact with him

except by letter. Oh, that's practically the same text as him now, is it? Oh, oh, oh. And then Dolbin tragically drowned just two years later, was aged 19. So young. It's really sad. Oh, that was a bit of a creepy age gap, actually, but you know. Yeah, I was sort of glossing over that. I think it sounded more doomed and romantic. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah. Can somebody read this just one poem? Come on. Sounds like you can. Well, I do have one. Spring and fall to a young child. Margaret, are you grieving over golden grove? Unleaving leaves like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts careful, can you? As the heart grows older, it will come to such sites colder, by and by nor spare a sigh, though worlds of one would leaf meal lie, and yet you will weep and

know why. Now no matter child the name, sorrow springs are the same, nor mouth had nor mind expressed what heart heard of ghost guest. It is the blight man was born for. It is Margaret, you mourn for. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that have been said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. Andrew Hunter M. And Philippa. Philippa underscore Perry, I think. I'm not sure. It might just be Philippa Perry. No, it's Philippa underscore Perry. Okay. Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing or a website. No such thing as a fish.com. All of our

previous episodes are up there and do make sure more important than anything else to look out for the future book of Philippa Perry. Let's see if she can remember what it's called. The book you wish everyone you love would read and some of those you don't. That won't be published for months. No, not until October the 20th. Yeah. In the meantime, you could buy the book you wish you'll... Oh, fuck, I can't remember. The book you wish your parents had read. And your children will be glad that they did. That you did. That you did. Fuck. It's a long time since I've done any publicity for that one. That's fine. Rice Babies will also be available this coming fall by me, Dan Schreiber. Otherwise, come back next week. We're going to have another episode, another guest. We'll see

you then. Goodbye.