No Such Thing As A Fish - 489: No Such Thing As A Quiet Whitsuntide

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Sally Phillips discuss Satan, Jason, hobbies and johnnies. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things A Fish, where we were joined in the Soho Theatre London by the incredible Sally Phillips. Now a lot of you will be excited by that, I'm sure because Sally has been on the podcast a couple of times now and she is so funny, she is just one of us really, she loves doing the research, she loves facts. Just for anyone who doesn't know who Sally is, she's basically the doyer and of British comedy over the last however many years. She's, she was in Smack the Pony, she was in Alumpair Tridge, she played the Prime Minister of Finland in Vipe. I mean, she's been in everything, you know who Sally Phillips is. You're really going to enjoy this show. I don't really have much more to say,

so I might as well quickly say, don't forget to join Club Fish. If you want to go to noseslingsafish.com slash Patreon or noseslingsafish.com slash Apple. If you want to do that, loads of bonus material, add free episodes,

all sorts of stuff on there. A few weeks ago, we gave away a cabbage patch doll, and actually that reminds me, once you've listened to this show, do go onto our various social medias because you will be able to see a couple of props that were used in this show. I'm sure we'll post them up so definitely go and check those out because they're

absolutely brilliant. Look I don't want to use up any more of your time I'm just going to say on with the podcast! Oh nice! Hello and welcome to another episode and no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from SoHo Theatre! My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Sally Phillips and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in a particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Sally. So I was entranced by the Finnish Hobby Horse Championships that was doing the round on Twitter,

and also I was in Finland when they were being held. Unfortunately, you didn't make it. But my fact is that the world's best hobby-hawse jumper can jump high enough to theoretically clear the first two jumps in the Grand National. LAUGHTER It's amazing. How many of you saw it? Did it? It was really... It's the hobby-hawse championships. It's mainly girls between 11 and 18. Okay. And is it what?

It's called The Fjord of Real Hall. Is it on BBC One? Like where are they? The girls are horribly bullied. Okay. Yeah, by their compatriots for being into it. Yeah, there was a film called Hobby Horses Revolution. 2019. It's a big thing. It's like once you look into it, it's like, and it's some boys with many girls and some adult women, but I think that's a bit strange. They often go

into woodland and do it in secret. So they don't give away their moods or? No, so they don't get attacked. And they sort off, most people make their own hobby horses because a pro hobby horse costs about 300 euros. Right. Yeah. And the bridal is... We're talking about the stick with the head of the horse. Yeah.

So it's the realism that's the expansiveness, is it? Yes. Or are they like arrow-dine? Is it like nimbus 2000? Well, I don't know. I don't know. But my partner and I, because we knew this was live and we love the show very much. This afternoon spent a full 15 minutes each, making everyone a hobby horse. What? No way.

What? Oh my god. Oh my god. What? Oh my god What so Andy for the people who can't see this For the people who can't see this bad luck Is incredible this is amazing yours does like a tiny bit like her like bad date night girls Minus it's a very colorful sock which is, and it has a mop hair and some eyes. And yeah, I love it.

Thank you so much. Mine is ultra realistic, I would say. This is a horse. Yeah, mine slightly looks like you ran out of materials and gave up. Yours is very cool, it's very kind of like space horse. Mine's very space like a glam rock sort of, this hair is like very, that's Zeppelin for the year three thousand.

I'd say I did that when I'm quite pleased with that one. And this one's made out of bandages, a planter, and it's got radishes for eyes. Oh, wow. This is incredible. So great about you. Well, I thought, I mean, I kind of thought we could maybe have a go, but that would be,

without a beat to embarrass you, wouldn't it? Well, maybe we should thought we could maybe have a go, but that would be, without a big embarrassing, wouldn't it? Or maybe we should get the audience to have a go, do a bit of dressage? Because what would happen is that it would be, there was loads of different discipline. Everyone's putting it down. Don't make me, don't, don't make me, I mean, geek, I don't like physical action. Yeah, they do show jumping, they do puissants, which is the only time you're allowed to run a jump with... You're allowed to run it it rather than canter. Right. And yeah, that's the one where they've jumped a whole Peter Dinklage. Four. Oh, is that how tall Peter is? Four for seven inches.

Four for seven, no. Four for seven inches. But there's also show jumping. The international is 80 centimetres, the jumps. But the fins so dominate that their jumps are 1 metre, 10 centimetres. Wow. So, 10,000 hobby horses in Finland, in Finland alone. Wow, that's incredible. But it's a reason I don't know, but...

It's a reason it hasn't got further, all that it's so... It's got quite far. Because it has actually got quite, it's got so much further than you'd think. Sometimes the Nordic Nations Canada, Ukraine? Yeah, yeah, it's in so many places. But sometimes it's North and isn't it? It's quite a Northern Europe and Canada.

Like places where you have long dark nights with not much else to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you say that, you say that, but I mean, at least the nice to the horses in the Nordic nations, whereas our pretend horses have a dark, dark history. Right. I'm talking about the, none of you came across it, the Padstow or the Orbihorst. Oh, the Orbihorst. Yeah, but the scariest one is in Wales. In Wales they use real horse skulls. Up for their honours.

Honours stick. Really? Yeah, with... This isn't... This isn't teenage girls doing it, that was it. Well, the video I saw, so I can... Like ghost horse. elderly man, go with some friends. Goes. Goes to the door of someone's house

and then sings quite a scary song. Yeah. In Welsh. And if you cannot finish the song inside the house, they force their way in. OK. And there's a lot of chasing girls with horses and... It's quite... It's all sort of strange.

Very strange, pokey riches. There are loads of these rituals all over the place. Yes, all over the place. You said Padstow, which is another one. There's the Hodenhorc in Cain. Did you see the Padstow? Did you look at that online? It doesn't look... I mean, it's really one. There's the Hodenhorst in town. Did you see the Padstow? Did you look at that online? It doesn't look... I mean, it's really bizarre.

It's like a grand piano. I really? But with a tail and a thing sticking out the front, then they sort of rock it. You have that kind of a bit richer... Very strange. Is this where the pantomime horse comes from? No. It's really weird, sort of, ritual fertility things.

No, no. Nothing to do with pantomime horse. Not a... Not a... No, it's really to do with that. No, nothing to do with pantomime rules. Not at all. Not at all. It's really strange. It's the Lord of Miss Rules, so it's the spirit of, well, that's what Google told me to do. What is it? I'm being, I'm talking like I've got.

That is a pantomime rules, but a kind of, you know, that's a sort of Miss Rule thing, isn't it? You know, it's unaccural. It's weird, it's so. Who's in the front? Who's in the back? No, no one knows. You would get on really well with Kate Beckinsale.

Do you see this? She travels with a pantomime horse everywhere. She does. And she reckons it's like really good. Well, it kind of calms her down. Is she stressed? Wait, sorry, with people in it. Well, like an emotional support animal. She brings the costume around,

and then if she's got a bit of downtime, then she'll get in it, and she'll find someone else to get in it with her, and it's just a nice way of calming down, relaxing. Yes, very normal. I think the biggest problem on the sort of a PR level is that no matter how you try and spin it, it always sounds nuts when you say

the thing you're actually doing with hobby-horcing. Like, I found a quote from someone who said, people assume that it's a game or that we are more or less crazy, said chairwoman of the Finnish stick horse enthusiast association. You're never gonna make it past the description, are you? It's a hard thing, but it sounds like an amazing... I genuinely think, you know, people always talk about at the Olympics, like, why not have someone in the

hundred meters who's just a citizen who's just running alongside, and you can really see how far they're going, having a 12-year-old girl at the Grand National. Make the first two, and just stack it head-fast until the third. That would be amazing. Actually, imagine you had a pantomime horse, the fastest Pan-Smime horse in the world. Yeah. And they are in the 100 metres. You know it's the first time. Well, two people, and they're in the 100 metres in the first ever Olympics. Yeah. Where do you think they would finish? So, sorry, how in the first ever...

So, first ever Olympics, 100 metres race, you've got the two fastest current, Pantamime Horse people, when they finish in the race. Because people did run a bit slower, didn't they? In the first Olympics. Yeah, but they didn't have the Pantamime Horse costume, why, I just... Well, the first Olympics, that was Greece.

Just like, ancient Greece. Oh, no, sorry, in 1996, the first modern... The modern race. Just shoes were less good, then. And they hadn't... Maybe someone died in the right age. Oh, OK. No, it's just... Oh, honestly, it's just a straight-up.

I'm going to say bronze. I'm going to say bronze, but... No, no. I'm going to say silver and bronze, because they count as two big, very clever. Very clever. Yeah. I'm going to say gold. No, well, that is right. They would have got silver.

The fastest is 12.045 seconds for 100 metres. And that wouldn't quite have gotten gold in the first Olympics, but it would have been the second place. Does the nose of the person in the back of the pantomem horse have to get over the line? No, no, OK. OK. That's amazing.

Can I go back to Hobby Horsing just because it's one fact I'm just so desperate to share? Yeah. One of the rules of the Hobby Hors competition is that only stallions and mayors can take part and gildings are banned. LAUGHTER Gilding? Gilding being a... Where are the muted young horse?

Where are the testicles on this thing? Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Yeah, well, exactly. That's bizarre, isn't it? But that's in the rules. That's amazing. Incredible. Pantomime horses, I mean, that is the worst ever job. I mean, I... Have you done that? No, I've never done that. I've never done that.

I've never done that. There were some pantomimes that sometimes use real horses. Right. Because John Barrowman was thrown 20 foot off by one. They supposedly trained horses, they threw him off. In Glasgow in 2013. And there was a Paulo Grady, who was used to tell a story about being in a panthe with a trained horse that he had to get into bed with him.

He used to follow him around. He was playing the fairy godmother in Cinderella. He used to follow him around the stage with a massive erection. And he couldn't say anything, because there's loads of notes of kids. And there are going, it's behind you. LAUGHTER Oh, good grief. That's pretty good.

Here's the thing about real horses now. Yeah. If you, I don't think we've said this before, if you frown at a horse and then go away and then come back, it will remember and be a bit more... James is doing some stunt work for the people listening at home. It'll remember that you frown that head.

It'll remember that you frown, he'll remember that you found it. Oh, but also if you smile at a horse and then go away, it will think, oh, there he is. You know, the horse remembers you frowned. How is it then showing that data on, yeah? Exactly. So it's bizarre. It's which eye it looks at you with. Oh.

So horses look at negative or threatening sites with their left eye and positive ones with their right eye. Really? So if you come back, you know what the horse thinks of you, depending on which eye it looks at you. That's really interesting. So horses understand human facial expressions. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

Because a lot of animals, if you smile at them, they'll see the teeth and they think you're being aggressive, for instance. Right. So interesting. It's like most comedians. Yeah. LAUGHTER

Do you know that it was illegal to dress up So interesting. It's like most comedians. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know that it was illegal to dress up as a horse in Scotland in the seventh century? Really? Yeah, OK. In fact, it was forbidden for any man to dress as a horse or a wild beast and dance anti-clockwise during January.

Yeah, it was demonic. For that's the thing about dressing up as an animal was to let your demonic side out. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was seen as very anti-café, and stuff. St. Augustine wrote that anyone carrying on that most filthy practice of dressing like a horse

should be punished most severely. Oh, wow. But as soon as the 1st of February hits knock yourself out, we're doing no horse January this year again. That's fine. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Everyone, we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by a LinkedIn in Jobs. That's right, you all know LinkedIn. It is the number one destination to go on to talk

about your business world, your working life, and make new connections with people out there. But also, with LinkedIn Jobs, it is now the perfect place to find people for your business. Yeah, all of the best people who might work for your business, I'm going to be on LinkedIn. So, we're better to go. There's no point going to a town hall square and just shouting out, who wants to come and work for my business? You're probably not going to find the right people. You need to go where the talent is. That's right, and it makes it super easy for you to find the person that you're looking for. So, if I was trying to hire, let's say, a fourth member of Fish, I would have many simple tools enable to make my decision better and easier, like screening questions like James.

Hello, tell me, do you have a great fact that might be relevant to our show? Actually, yeah, I do have a fact. The fact is more of a question. Who are we replacing? You look for the candidates with the right skills. That's an example of a bad answer. James would not have been hired as a result in this situation. And that means that you can screen them properly and work out if they've got the right skills and experience and quickly prioritize who you want to get into your business. That's right. And if you would like to post your job right now, you can do so for free. By going to LinkedIn, that's l-i-n-k-e-d-i-n.com slash fish. That's right. So go to LinkedIn.com slash fish, and you are going to be able to post that job ad for free.

Terms and conditions apply. Okay, I'm going to the town hall square to see if anyone needs to imply a new researcher up with the podcast. Un with the show. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that this June of 2023, the 6,666,666 English language Wikipedia article was created, and that page was an entry for a Satan Con. Ooh, yeah. You've got to imagine, obviously, that they were aiming to land that, but that's really hard, right? So, Satan Con being...

Is that like Comic Con, but with Devils? Pretty much it. Yeah, it's set up by the Satanic Temple who were a non-theistic organisation, and they have this annual convention. It was in Boston this year, it was on April 28th, which is my birthday, so that's very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you very much. It's quite new, Satan Con.

Isn't it only been held twice, I think? And this year, like, so this year was in Boston, at the Boston Marriott Hotel. So good on the Marriott, because you would think, oh, maybe there'll be a reputational concern if we host Satan Con, but they said, no, you can't have the conference here. And I think that's really good.

Because the first one got lots of placards, and I think that's really good. Because nobody, the first one, got lots of placards, and it got lots of protests outside Satan Con 1, which, you know, in 2022 denouncing Satan and this sort of thing. Even though the satanic temple don't, they don't believe in Satan, they don't. They say they lie. That's the point. Wow. That is the point. That's a really good point. Oh, that's a really good point. Because they do run Satan after school clubs,

and I was thinking, for my kids. And even if they... Even if they don't believe in Satan, they're not helping themselves by Collins themselves as Satanic Temple, are they? No, but they're really... They're sort of more of a free speech organisation. That's what they say, Andy.

You're right, it's all. You're being sucked in. Oh God, I fall in a raffle. Satan principally. That's his name. Why do I get this pentagram tattooed on my back? LAUGHTER Ah. They use the proper Latin greeting

for instead of saying Hail Satan, who they don't believe in. I'm really on the... Temple site. They say, Aves Satana. What's that mean? Hail Satan. Hail Satan. I don't believe in. I'm really on the... Temple site. They say, Avesa Tana. What's that mean? Hellsweak.

Aesha. LAUGHTER Yeah. But it scans the sabers have a banana, which I really like. Avesa Tana. That's how you can remember it. Yeah, yeah. I like it. I think they go.

Yeah, they're kind of racking. Well, this is few of them around, aren't they, who claim to not be interested in Satan, but are called the Church of Satan or whatever. Yeah. And they're old. A lot of them are like, just trying to take the piss out of the government, out of the church, out of all that kind of stuff.

In lockdown, I started presenting a religious program on Sunday mornings called Sunday Morning Live. And we, under the BBC, had to interview every religion that's recognised a religion. So I didn't actually do it, but they interview the Satanists. Really? After... Is that like a proper religion than in the UK?

Yeah. So it's all right. Yeah, Wicken. Wicken. And the lady who came, I didn't talk to her, actually, but she came, she'd been up all night. LAUGHTER To being lost in the woods with her balls. Happy satanic sex in the woods?

No. Basically, yeah. And the big issue for Sunday Morning Live was that she wasn't wearing a bra, and you could see really, see her nipples really, really, clearly. Oh, wait, was it a radio or TV? TV or TV? TV or TV? TV or TV? So it's like, how are we going to...

Why would that story be relevant if it was radio? LAUGHTER How are we going to gaffer tape the witch's nips? LAUGHTER Wow, so the wicked thing is a bit different, yeah. Was she satanic? Like, did you feel that she was pushing the season? I didn't particularly talk to her. No, I think they do. No, I don't think so. The second thing is a bit different, yeah. Was she satanic? Like, did you feel that she was pushing the season?

I didn't particularly talk to her. No, I don't think so. I don't know. I didn't talk to her. Whatever spell she put on you, it's just something kicked in. Honestly, I'm a bit scared of witches and Satan. Yes, I am. So is David Bowie, so it's fine.

Hmm. He was once exercised. He got someone to do spells of protection. Right. Well, he used to collect his urine in little bottles, kind of like how Hugh Hefner did, because he was worried that witches were going to steal them and do black magic for them.

Oh, no. Well, he collected all of it. What do you mean? He can't have collected all of his urine in bottles to prevent theft. Because that's such an unsustainable... I mean, I know he was rich, I know he was like a wealthy guy. Someone had enough money for jars to sustain every passing urine in his bag. Imagine how much you would fetch now.

And I absolutely would buy some. But I also think, like, if you just piss it down the toilet, that's probably safer than keeping it in bottles in your eyes. It's so much safer. Yeah, it must be, right? Because you've keeping it in bottles. It's so much safer. Yeah, it must be, right? Because what you've got it in bottles, people, maybe you'll forget about filming trailers. Because...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, in filming, because there was... I think I might have made this up. LAUGHTER But I feel like there was an issue of people going to Justin Timberlake's filming trailer and trying to steal his tickets. Oh, because it's held in a tank. Yeah, yeah, of course. Did I dream? No, I would be so worrying if I did. I feel that was a thing then.

And what were they going to do with it? Were they going to clone it? eBay. All right. No, no, just use it and use it for spells, I guess. We got to remember that this is a guy who was so coked off his head that he was collecting in his own piss and bottles. I don't think there was logic to his reasoning. I think he just was scared of a... There is a whole thing of collecting, you know,

hair stuff, isn't that a lot of it? Yeah, I mean, so that's a thing. The Yoko Ono used to be seen as someone that potentially... You know, she had an album called Yes I Am A Witch because she was presented as someone who might be a witch. And she bought a single mustache hair off of Salvador Dali. She paid him for it and he sent it over in a box. And years later, it was revealed by the partner of Salvador Dali

that he was so scared that she was going to use it for witchcraft that he ended up sending a painted bit of blade of grass he picked from his lawn. But she never noticed, according to the story. But he was petrified the Yoko-O-No-No-No-No. Well, there was the whole satanic panic, wasn't there? Oh, right. Was it 70s and 80s? Yeah, it was. But they thought McDonald's were haunted?

Possessed. No, the whole satanic panic where... McDonald's got a letter from a woman in Ohio asking why the owner, Ray Crock, was a financial supporter of the Church of Satan. And it was a rumor that just spread. She said she'd seen him on the filled honor issue saying he supported the Church of Satan. And he hadn't said that.

But she told her pastor and her pastor put it in the Church's newsletter, which was called Moments of Sunshine. And very quickly, that spread across America via church newsletters. Wow. So McDonald's had to send executives out to these churches with sworn statements insisting that Kroc never said those things. It was a real panic, wasn't it?

Yeah. The expert on it these days is a guy called Dr. David Frank Furter. And what he thinks is it was basically like a sort of a loop where you would have these evangelical Christians saying, this is happening, and then people using hypnotic regression techniques to try and remember things that they supposedly suppressed in their lives. And then really what they would do is kind of say what the hypnotists wanted them to say. You just had this kind of feedback loop that eventually there was, you know,

in theory in some of the newspapers, they were saying there were thousands of these satanists around America doing this. Yeah. I got a fact for you. OK. In 2021, in the UK, more babies were named Lucifer than Nigel. You have the numbers? Do we know how many... 15 Lucifer's? Yeah. No more than two Nigel's. No! Oh, my word. It doesn't appear on the list.

You know that thing where, if they're under three, they don't say no. Yeah, I agree. And do we think that it's because Nigel is associated with evil these days? LAUGHTER Did you come across a thing of 666, though? Yeah. So I always thought that 666, the number of the beast, was about the number of perfection being seven,

and so six being imperfection. Oh, God. That's what I thought it was. But then today, I discovered that there's a thing called ISO SEFY, which is letters equivalent to numbers. And apparently this was very, very common in first and second century CE. called ISO SEFY, which is letters equivalent to numbers. And apparently this was very, very common in first and second century CE. So you would quite often refer to people with a number.

So a joke was, by Sutonius, a calculation new, Nero his mother slew. And in this case, the emperor Nero, Nero, equals 1,05, which is the same value as the phrase, his mother, slew. And apparently, most people think, if you say 666, it stands for Caesar Nero. So in some early versions of the Bible, in revelations from Revelation 13,

the Latin version has the number as being 616. Right. And that's because in Latin, Nero is 616, not 666. And the reason we think that is because revelation was written by very early Christians, it's one of the earliest of the New Testament books, and really they were just being persecuted by Nero, so they saw him as the devil.

Oh, my God. But he was actually a good guy. Right? Well, I wouldn't go quite that far. I mean, it depends what side you're on. If you're on narrow side, he's a great guy. He used to drink an energy drink that was made by soaking roasted dung in vinegar. Mirror, but that's still how they... That's red bull, that is.

No, that's Stephen Cigar's energy drink. Have you seen those adverts? Oh, yeah. They're unbelievable. I've not seen the ads, but I know. You've got to see the ads. What do I call them? What do I call them? I remember.

I used to drink steven. What? Yeah, I don't know why I like to appear it. Well, my local corner shop just stocked things like Marley's Mellow Mood, which was a Bob Marley energy drink. But it was sort of an opposite. A Bob Marley energy drink. Yeah.

It was a sort of Bob Marley anti-energy drink, and it said on the side, whatever you do, don't drive a truck after two of these. And the store, it had all like the collection of every celebrities weird, you know, it had a... What's amazing, Dan, is that this was at the end of your street. You would be the only person in the world who would buy this stuff. Yeah, exactly. They probably only, they were like,

oh, we accidentally ordered this one time. Oh, it's selling every week, there's one guy. Let's keep getting it. It was really powerful, his drink, yeah. Yeah, the students he got one. It's the most misogynistic actor I've ever seen. Oh, really? He's not even bothered to turn up.

You just have to watch it. OK, that wasn't on the can. It's awful, it's really heavy. I can't believe I was the sole funder of that ad. LAUGHTER MUSIC It is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that roughly 3% of our entire planet

is called Jason. LAUGHTER How much is called Nigel? I'm shrinking amounts. Okay, this is amazing, right? No, this is not 3% of all people on the planet are called Jason, right? This is 3% of the Earth itself is named Jason. By whom?

By... By... By geologists and seismologists. So there... Okay, this is a bit technical, but there are these two mysterious, I sound like Dan when I read this out. There are these mysterious structures inside the earth, right? There are two of them, okay?

And they are, these massive blobs, they're called LLSVPs, large, low-shier velocity provinces, right? Now, there's one beneath Africa and there's one under the Pacific, and that's obviously a very, you know, technical name for them. And they're not very well-known about. They're not very well-researched because they are where the mantle of the Earth meets the core of the Earth. Okay, so the Earth goes crust, not very much, mantle, quite a bit, core, quite a bit more.

And they're at the junction point between the mantle and the core. So they're really hard to research. And the researchers have named them Tuzzo and Jason. They're billions of years old, and between them they are sick. They're splikes. Yeah. It's true. They're named after two geological scientists, so they are.

Yeah. And we don't know what they are. They might be offcuts from another planet, which is exciting. There's a theoretical planet called Thayer from four and a half billion years ago, which might have crashed into Earth and might have been subsumed. That's possible. Yeah, we don't know exactly what they are, but they are incredible. And they're there. And this... I don't know why I'm happy to justify their existence. This is proper. Just about 15 minutes talk about satan.

Like, these are real geological structures in the planet. They're awesome. No, yeah, it was wonderful. Um... Well, you're more excited. Well, in all honesty, it's because an eBay auction came up on my phone, saying, you've got three minutes to bid, so I suddenly was focused on that. Are you joking? Wow.

I didn't bid in the end. How much was it for that swimming pool of David Bowie's bottle of urine? Are we saying that there's... Because the description, I read, is that it's... There's mountains there that are taller than Mount Everest. Yes. Yes. But what does that mean? There's no space.

It's not the hollow earth we're talking about, right? There's no space around the mountains. Oh, it's just different. It's different rock that might have been this other mystery planet. Yeah, in fact, near Jason and Tuzo, there are these enormous mega mountains, and they're at that junction point as well. They're called ultra low velocity zones.

And it's this weird boundary zone. I did read something, I can't get my hat around this. Scientists claim that the gap between the core and the mantle is bigger than the change between rock and air. No, I can't understand that. But okay. It's because of the high pressure, right? Right, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is amazing. And they're only found because scientists contract earthquakes through the Earth and use spot where the reverberations, how long they take to get through the Earth, and you can build up a profile very slowly and carefully of what the different structures are based on how fast waves travel. This is just news to me that, because last time I did geography,

I was a child, and I thought it was, then there was magma. The mantle is much more fluid, and then there's an outer liquid coroner in a solid core. So, yeah. There's space around Jason. No, that was me. That was me. No space at all. That was down single. That was Jason Amounton.

It's a different type of rock. Like, you've got the sort of quite liquid mantle, but you've got much more solid rock, which is this chase and stuff. Is that right? That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's really interesting these are named after blocs, because actually quite a lot of this science was done by women. Right, so... So did you say you were surprised?

LAUGHTER Yes, so with. So it gets... Everything else has happened in history. It's bizarre. One person, for instance, ingolayment. She was the first to work out that the earth had a solid core. Oh, it is so against everything else has happened in history. It's bizarre. One person, for instance, ingolayment. She was the first to work out that the Earth had a solid core. And what it was, again, it's like the vibrations going through the Earth.

And they realized there must have been a core there because the vibrations will come after an earthquake. And then if you were exactly opposite the earthquake, you wouldn't see them. And so there must have been something liquid there. But actually, she noticed that if you looked at seismographs, there were really, really tiny amounts of vibrations. So it wasn't completely dark.

And what she realized was that this was because there was also a solid core inside the liquid core. But they all thought that, no, she must be wrong, and it must have been like a discrepancy in the seismographs. The seismographs must be wrong, because this woman can't possibly be right, though there's an extra car in there. But it turned out like in 1970.

I think she was still alive, but found out, yeah, we found out that it was true. Wow. Amazing. So I've got a couple of things on Jason Statham. I mean, me too. I don't know. Is it like a sandwich you got from your local shop?

I was just looking into Notable Jason's, because I thought that's the territory of my book. Are you joking? You, I've got eight pages of dense geological data. Jason's data is in Meg too. He's massive. Yeah, he is, he's incredible. So he was filming Expendables 3, I think it was. I've got this too. Have you got this amazing story?

Amazing story. We're literally going from the structure of the entire... All life, all of everything we've ever known, these amazing scientists. Yeah, sorry, the Expendables 3. He's an echoer, yeah. You listen to this and tell me you're not amazed. He's in a car and he's doing a scene. And suddenly, he needs the... He likes to do his own stunts.

He loves to do his own stunts, Jason, doesn't he? Yeah. And he needs to hit the brakes because he needs to stop before there's a cliff, which drops 60 feet into the black sea. Gosh, 60 feet. That's nearly as much as the 2,000 miles of mantle between the crust and the core.

So the breaks fail, Statham's in the car, and it goes off the cliff. This is a Hollywood film. He's plunging 60 feet into a like just... Like a three-ton stunt truck. A three-ton stunt truck, like, yeah. He's driving the truck. Right, he's driving the truck. He's driving the truck.

Right, he's driving the truck. Hello, listening. LAUGHTER And so then he should crash at anyone else, any other of the expandables. You put Stallone in there, you put Schwarzenegger. You know, they would die in that moment, right? Stathom manages to leap out of the car

and successfully dive into the ocean and then comes up and he's all okay. And why is he okay, Sally? He's okay because before he became an actor, he was a competitive diver genuinely. And he's done a lot of free diving and has got a lot of scuba experience. Exactly. But he was very, very good at diving but not quite good enough to make the Olympic teams who he decided to branch out. Exactly. But he did represent Britain in the Commonwealth Games in 1990. Oh, so it's not like scuba diving, it's high-bored diving. High-bored diving, which he used to practice in Crystal Palace

as a high-bored there, and they have a pool there where Tom Daly would practice as well. And before Tom Daly, Jason Statham, you would be there. Yeah, that's really interesting. So Jason Statham, that's really interesting, because Jason Statham, that means, might have been helpful in the first attempt to dig down into the Earth's mantle in 1961.

So this was a thing called Project Mojole, okay? It was an attempt to find the lower limit of the Earth's crust, which is very, very thick on land and much thinner over the ocean. The USA was losing the space race in 1961, the Soviets were way ahead. And so the USA said, why, we'll just dig instead and we'll do better at digging. And that'll be our new thing.

Right. And so they tried to get down beyond this thin layer of crust where it meets the mantle, which is the point called the mojorovich discontinuity. It didn't work. They went into the ocean. The weirdest thing was, there was a ship which was sent to do the drilling operation. And to keep it stable in the same bit of the ocean, their solution was they fitted propellers all the way around the outside and they just fired

them all at the same time. Wow. Wow. It's pretty cool. They probably needed marine biologists on the boat, right? I'm not falling for it. Because they didn't need to do you know. No, no, stop. Jason Mahmoha. Absolutely not. Who became Aquaman later in his career? First studied marine biology when he was at university before transferring to wildlife biology.

That is so interesting, Dad. It's interesting, yeah. Well, they did have a kind of hero of beginning with Jay, and Jay named hero there, because John Steinbeck was present of Myson Man, John Steinbeck. Oh, yeah, yeah. He was there kind of writing about it, but it didn't, sadly, it didn't work. Yeah. Gosh, you weren't kidding.

In the dressing room, he said, I've got, I've got 15 minutes brilliant material on Jason. Yeah. Justingham, he said, I've got 15 minutes brilliant material on Jason. LAUGHTER There is a bit of advance this year. So this is quite geeky now, but scientists have just extracted a chunk of the mantle for the first time. I'm very smart. They were trying to work out Earth's mantle. Wow. They were trying to work out how to do it, right?

And they realized they don't go to the mantle, go to where rock from the mantle has been pushed above its normal resting place. So, they drilled into an underwater mountain, but like a normal underwater mountain is in at the bottom of the mid-Atlantic ridge. They drilled in slightly sideways and they have a core of mantle rock, which is a kilometer at long. Right. And they've extracted that core and that will allow them to study all sorts of things about

the deep earth. So cool. Yeah, amazing. That's incredible. Wow, all I've got going on here is you could keep it on your mantelpiece. I just can't join in with the science stuff, really. Well, Jason Statham, I do have a fact about Jason Statham. Oh, look who goes crawling back to the other side.

He fits very well as in he would be a great action hero, even with his, you know, his, perhaps his human name, as in his name, is a good name for an action hero. Right. So is it not his real name, Jason Statham? No, it is his real name. As far as I know. But my point is that action heroes tend to have names

beginning with Jay Oh, yeah James Bond Jason born John Wick Jack Reacher John McLean John James Rambo Um, and there was a study a brilliant study by writer at slate called a Demetriya Glace or glass and she studied 2000 action movies pretty much every modern Western action movie with a male sort of single every man protagonist. Third of them had names beginning with Jay. Really? Which is very unusual. Do you know that the earth is younger on the inside than it is?

On the outside. So when you get to the mantle level, I'll be there. But you did, Judas. That would be a good name to actually play that. Judas is a great action star. This is like Freaky Friday. Yeah. So as we saw in the movie in Tostello, where when Matthew McConaughey's travelling out into space,

gravity distorts time, doesn't it? And there's a reason that we say that when astronauts are in space, they're almost time travelers because they age differently, because time travels differently. If you were at the core of our planet, and that means then, the core of our planet itself, is traveling at a different time. So it's two and a half years younger than the rest of our planet,

because gravity is so intense down there that it slowed down time. That's pretty cool. Whatever. That's not true. LAUGHTER OK, let me tell you one thing about geology, which will this will totally blow your mind. Right, so there's a place called the Heart Mountain in Northwest America.

And I'm talking quite a lot of millions of years ago, but at one stage, that mountain moved 62 miles in half an hour. Really? The entire mountain. What? Isn't that amazing? So there's a load of basically magma. There's a big sort of river of magma there.

A load of water got into it. There was a massive explosion. And the entire mountain moved at 100 miles an hour. Oh my god. No. About an hour. We're talking millions and millions and millions of years. Oh, this was last year.

That's not. So you're just going skiing and you're like, oh my god! I just don't even know. Oh, yeah, it's right here, fuck. No, sorry, kids. Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by a Babble.

Babble is the greatest place to go if you want to learn a new language. So I'm going to take my wife to France in a couple of weeks, which she doesn't actually know yet. So hopefully she doesn't list to this show. It's fine. But I might want to brush up on my French before I get there. And you know what, Babel is the perfect place to do it.

That's right. Babel is your in-pocket ability to be able to do this. There are so many different ways that you can learn a language so quickly, so comfortably. There are 15-minute lessons that you can listen to. There are different things like videos or if you like learning through games. There's even podcasts that you can listen to

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Okay, up with the podcast. On with the show. MUSIC OK, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. OK, my fact this week is that you could tell the social status of an ancient Egyptian man by the colour of his condom. LAUGHTER I mean, surely you would have an inkling before you got to see you. Or it's a shock, isn't it? You told me you were a pharaoh. It's bizarre, isn't it? Yeah, I mean,

this, I've read this in a couple of places. One is an article in the Indian Journal of Eurology called The Story of the Condom. One is from an article from the Egypt Museum who have one of these very, very old condoms. And basically, they didn't use them for contraception. They use them to stop diseases, but they also, and insect bites, really. But they also use them as an insignia of rank-or-status. And it was just, when I say condom, I think some of it might have been more, like, almost

like cod peace. Oh, look at that. Right. But they were used against diseases as well. So, you know, we can technically call them condoms. And they were made of linen, soaked in olive oil. Okay. And with different colours.

The problem is, of all the sauces, maybe you guys found this, but if all the sauces that I found, really good academic sauces, none of them told you what colour you're aiming for. Oh, right. So I don't know if Red was a good one or a blue was a good one. They've got Teton Carmine's condom, haven't they? Do they? They do. No. Yes, they do.

Linnon soaked in olive oil, impregnated with his DNA. Oh. And it would tie around in the waist. That would be a tie round his waist with string. Oh, yeah. It did mention what color it was. They didn't mention the color. Why are we not getting the color system? Sometimes the color's done.

It loves. Yeah, right. Okay, gosh. That's very interesting. In the course of researching this, I read probably the weirdest thing I think I've ever read, which is in ancient Rome condoms, and by the way, I haven't found a legit source, but it appears in so many places. They used to apparently a ancient Roman who was victorious in a battle

and had slain his opponent with then make a condom out of the muscle of the opponent. Don't be dav. LAUGHTER Source. LAUGHTER Well, they did use to make condoms out of animal intestines and bladders in Rome. Yeah.

So, it's not impossible. It's not impossible. It's not impossible. It feels a bit grisly. It's sort of one of those facts I'd prefer... I'm just going to prefer not to believe. Yeah. I know. The ancient Egyptians used to use crocodile dung as spermicide, did you? Yeah. How would you use that? You would use... I don't want to think about it.

Why is no one sleeping with me? Uncovered in crocodile shit. You know the... William Buckland, you know the natural way of everything. Yeah, everything, yeah. His kids had a hobby horse made out of a dead crocodile just to get done a wide eye came into my head. Yeah, right. My friend Cindy used to have the crocodile that was used in crocodile Dundee as a,

like they had prop crocodiles and as you went into her house, she had the prop crocodile from cropped D. There's no more iconic prop. No, no, no. Was it a real crocodile? No, no, no. It's a pretend crocodile. No, I think it's a pretend crocodile. Condoms, just quickly.

Condoms in the 18th century were quite interesting, because that was sort of getting towards modern condoms, but they're still very primitive. So they were made of sheep kai-kum, which is the power that connects the small and the large intestine to each other of the sheep And they had to be treated and there was a whole like nine-step process to make a proper condom out of a sheep's thing Kikam and they were really scarce. They were very hard to come back partly because

Butchers could not be bothered to collect you know each sheep has one kikam. So that's one Potential condom per sheep and it was just not worth collecting basically So people would just use the sheep instead. LAUGHTER Oh, God. Oh, man. Do you know what the first condom in literature was used by the wife of King Minus of Crete, who's called Pacify,

and she used it to stop herself being harmed by King Minus's semen because it contains scorpions and serpents. Oh! Yeah. Maybe we could just watch something tonight, actually. Maybe... LAUGHTER Let's watch another episode, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I discovered that there's a condom making in China called Jizzbon, which is called jizzbon, which is called jizzbon because it's after James Bond. No, the name's Bond. Just Bond. Yeah. And 2006, a German entrepreneur launched a spray on condom. Did you come across that? Yes. Yeah. But it was so bad.

Yeah. The phrasing was unfortunate there. Did you come across that? Yeah. And it was stopped. It was stopped short by EU regulations. Oh, I read something slightly different about what stopped it.

So he was called Jan Klaus. Klauser. And he got the idea for it in a car wash. Because he was, I don't know, he must have been in the car and it was just being spray. And he thought, oh, maybe, if you, you know, your penis is the car, as it were, and you spray it from every angle with the latex, then you have a perfectly fitted condom. Perfectly fitted at every time. And he got 30 men to test it, and apparently it had exclusively positive reviews.

It went really well, but the drawbacks were that it was quite cold, very cold to be just sprayed with the latex liquid, and it takes two full minutes to dry. To dry. Yeah. But I wish Simon's probably not the right size anymore. Yeah.

It still ships internationally, though. So you're still not approved by the FDA. Oh, no, that's the Galactic Cap. Sorry. What's that? The Galactic Cap. Sorry, that's just titchy-titchy, like a beanie for your penis. Oh, OK. What, like a hamster?

Yeah. Kind of like a hamster. Oh, and leaving the shaft, so it's not been approved by the FDA, but it does ship internationally. I don't know how it stays on. I've... Right, okay. It's very exciting.

LAUGHTER You mentioned China earlier with the James Bond thing. I was reading about ancient Chinese contraception, and because in the early days, there was, you know, there was a story that taught us shell in the same way that the beanie was used, was kind of used for... I know, it doesn't quite make sense,

and you can't get any further with it. And like full disclosure, the article I got this from used the word dood a lot, so I don't know how reliable this is. Were you on the scientific journal rad monthly? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, this was, because it's weirdly, it has sources, but it's saying that there used to be thing where you would, you would told to reserve a ejaculation.

So that basically is with, you know, coitus and taruptus, right? But the other thing that they said was to move the semen back into you basically. So that was a method that was taught. So the method was, as point of ejaculation was happening, to press a thumb against in between the scrotum and the anus, and what it would do was, as point of ejaculation was happening, to press a thumb against in between the scrotum and the anus, and what it would do was,

what my parents are in tonight. Okay. Oh. You're kidding, this happens every time. Oh no, okay, right. It's because you mentioned it in every show we do. So where do you stick your thumb? So you put your thumb between your scrotum and your anus

and your push, and your push. And then the idea is that it re-derrified. No, but the hokey-cokey with you. It redirects the semen to go up the spine through the chakras and into the brain is the idea. Because sex, I'm sorry, is there a tangible benefit of this procedure? What's that you have to say, why? Because there's an idea that you're expelling something from your body, which is energy,

and unless you were receiving the other energy from the human that you're having sex with, that was a wasted energy. So why not losing your essence? You're losing your essence, that's what I'm talking about. Exactly. Again, from somewhere that says, awesome a lot in the article, and I don't know if it's legit but it seemed it seemed legit at the time.

I found that really scary, they're the penis can suck things in. I mean they've got problem. People are stopping using them. So we've got the highest syphilis and gonorrhea rates in the UK for years and years. And there was a study down about people, men who believe they're attractive, who rate their attractiveness high are much less likely to use a condom. Really? Yeah. Well, that explains why I've got three on right now. How'd you enjoy that one, Mr. and Mrs. Murray? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE

You can also use condoms as a bungee rope. And you? Yeah, what? That's a huge amount. How much weight can they take? Short bungee. They can take the weight of Carlo Musca-Donioso, who did a 30-metre bungee jump using a string of 18,500 condoms.

No, no. And they did... Which brand? Yeah. Yeah. They didn't snap. It took him four months to tie them together. Slippery. Well, that's what he said. The condoms are slippery. Whenever they tied and not it would just slip out. And the testing you'd have to do on that rope to be confident of it. Yeah, well, you know what?

They used mathematical formulas to work out how strong it would have to be. So they worked out how many they would need using maths rather than using applied stuff. Right. But he did say he was 99% sure it would work, but his stomach was in the not for a month before the jump, but it worked and he did manage to do it.

That's incredible. That is really cool. You know Trojan condoms in the States, it's a brand in America, they have, it's part, because they've got a guy though who's like the great, you know, the Steve Jobs of condoms basically. Like he came into the company, he's innovated,

he's made them thinner than ever before, he's one of those guys who's just constantly. And so when they have an invention that's gone through the science side of it, kind of like this bungee, then they have people who they have on their list, 20 to 30 couples who were known as the bedroom panel, and the condoms get given to them. So once or twice a month, they'll get given a sort of new condom test design. Twice a month, the deviants. Well... It's a whole other world, isn't it?

One for Whitson Tide, one for Mickelness, and you're fine. There's slightly smaller trojans, aren't they, apparently? Oh, are they? Apparently, yes. Well, I read that on the internet today, dude. I also read that the flavours were just blew my mind. OK, what?

Is a penis flavoured cotton? Are you sure you're wearing a cotton? Yeah, it's penis-flavored. LAUGHTER MUSIC OK, that is it. That is all of our facts. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on that Shriverland, James. Hi, James Harkin. Andy. Andry Hunterham. At Sally. Don't contact me. LAUGHTER We can also be found on our group account at No Such Thing. Or our website No Such Thing is a fish.com. You can find all the previous episodes there.

I'm going to get to the fucking list's end that if we get out of here. Goodbye! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!

Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!

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