No Such Thing As A Fish - 494: No Such Thing As A Human Wind Turbine

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Sophie Duker discuss Barbie dolls, ladybirds, William Blake and a useful snake.  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 everybody, Andy here. Just before we start this week's show, we wanted to introduce our special guest. She has been on the show once before, and she was so great that we thought we had to have her back. It is the brilliant Sophie Duker. If you don't know Sophie already, if you didn't listen to the episode she was already on, if you haven't seen her on Taskmaster, she is a fantastic stand up. She's really brilliant and you're about to hear that on the show. So there's no need for further evidence of it really, but if once you've heard this show, you would like to see or hear a little bit more of Sophie's comedy, as you will, there are a couple of ways to do that. So firstly, she had a tour earlier this year, which

was called Hague. That tour sold out, and also is is in the past so it's impossible to see it. But there are new dates added to that tour. They're all on her website which is SophieDucard.com, a very ronsial website there but it does contain those dates so that's why you want to visit there. The other thing she's doing soon is that on the 26th of October this year she is hosting a one-off edition mega show at Hackney Empire in London. It's a show she's done loads of times before, it's called Wacky Racists, but this one is going to be a bigger and better edition than ever. There are going to be all star guests, there are going to be stand-ups, there are going to be songs, there are going to be stupid games, you name it, it will be

there, it's going to be great fun. That's it for this introduction, I hope you've enjoyed it, but not as much as I hope you enjoy the show itself. Oh, with the show Hello and welcome to another episode of no such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Soho Theatre in London! My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Sophie Juker, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Sophie.

What, not a? Oh, you're welcome. My fact is, Barbie, the lady of the moment, was based on a high-end German cool girl. Oh, that's right. There's a sex worker in your child's bedroom. That little free song, that was 150 people just being slightly titillated by the family. Like it, yes, sure. She's based on a different doll, is Barbie.

Picture the seed. It's 1956. Cool. Your Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie. My mum was born 1956, and now I've got my mum in my head, which it might make this next bit difficult. It will. You're there with your mum. It's pretty sexy, and even the window. That's why I was just being born.

That's what I was talking about. LAUGHTER What? Back to the future getting some brilliant stuff. This is way... OK. Way beyond. Yeah, mum's been born.

She's had a crib somewhere. She's not involved. Cool. You are the... I just about hear you. You are? It's 1956. It's a doll in a window.

The doll is Billed Lily. Billed is a German tabloid and Lily is the doll that is sold in association with that tabloid and she was sort of a sexy, flusy. And that is what Barbie is based on. When Ruth habbler saw Lily in the window, she said, and I quote, I didn't know then who Lily was. I saw only an adult-shaped body

that I had been trying to describe for years, which I love. Presumably, all around her were adults. But I would say no adults in the same shape as Barbie, though. No, true. She's got weird proportions. And dolls were for children, and they were off children, weren't they, at the time?

Yeah, that was the revolutionary thing. At the time, if anyone seen the Barbie movie, which we are not promoting, because their budget is big enough. But if you see the Barbie movie, you'll see that a lot of dolls for kids were just of kids. But Barbie was this like sexy, well not sexy, Barbie's not sexy, but she was kind of like older mature. Yeah, I read them. There was a journalist from the New Yorker magazine called Ariel Levy who later referred to this as a sex doll, Lily. Now she was still only six inches high. Right. Oh, really? So I don't know, I take some imagination to use that as a sex doll, I imagine. But they used to give it to people like if, if you went on a stag do,

you might get this sexy doll, right? Or some men would hang it on their windscreen of their car and stuff like that. It's just like a sex doll. Is that what you do with your sex toys? You put them in. No, it gets a lot of stick for being regressive. But I think Ruth Handler was very progressive,

and she was a very... She was an ambitious business woman. It was her and her husband, Elliot. They founded the company together, they made all the decisions about it. And I think the idea was that Barbie would never get married. Barbie was able to expand girls' imaginations about what they could do,

and that their imaginations should extend beyond marriage and motherhood. Is the basic idea. Okay, right. Yeah, so in that sense. She did start as a fashion model and then became a fashion editor the next year and then a fashion designer. But, Okay, Barbie, Barbie did do a lot of stuff other than that.

She went to space before bad even went to the mood. Yeah. There was astronaut Barbie. Four years before bad went to the mood, there was astronaut Barbie. Okay, but we did go to space before we went to the moon. Just not a... Yeah, OK, so... LAUGHTER Before!

Right, yeah. Not to shit on that. She was, yeah, OK. Has Barbie been to the moon, Sophie? Before we could even have bagcacouts. Oh, yeah. Barbie bought her first dream house. Oh, OK. Yeah, in 1962 she bought the dream house.

Wow. With whose money? Ken's. Yes, Ken's money. That's amazing. I like as well, just speaking of astronauts, so the fact that Barbie was designed by a guy called Jack Ryan, at least the physical making of Barbie was. And he was a guy who was an engineer for the Pentagon.

He made missiles. So he was, yeah, he was someone who had a whole different career, and then Mattel hired him. And he worked out amazing things, like the fact that she had a twistable waist that was a new innovation to toys and I don't know if you remember this and I very much remember this the clickable knees of Barbie. How do you remember this? Because I used to bring to school every day a disembodied leg of Barbie with me. Mr. Shriver, Mrs. Shriver, come in.

Yeah, it's not a problem. There's nothing bad. So I used to when I was younger, and I still kind of do, and I should have a Barbie leg on me again, actually. And this is advice for everyone listening. I click my fingers a lot, obsessively click my fingers, and I needed something to stop me, and the clickable leg of a Barbie gives you the same sensation as clicking your own finger.

So I used to sit in the body of Lake. Yeah, I just used to sit there clicking Barbie's leg over and over. And your sister had to bring in a Barbie with at least one of its legs missing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she wasn't too happy about that. But genuinely, try it out.

If you've got a problem with clicking your fingers. OK. Pretty. But I also think it's really interesting. I didn't know that the guy that designed Barbie was a missiles designer because he actually made some quite big, well, Mattel made some quite big changes to Barbie when they changed her from the original prototype of Bill D'Lillie

at the model, which Mattel then bought up. They soften her eyebrows, relax her lips, upgraded her plastic, and whited her skin. OK. Ooh. But we don't know what she could have been greed. And at one point, the nipples and breasts of an early prototype were daintily filed off.

Oh, can you daintily file nipples? It's a more difficult process than that. But related to that, of course, is Ken's bulge, which I haven't seen in the movie, but I believe they reference in the movie by, I believe, they reference in the movie. And Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, she wanted Ken to have a proper bulge in his groin. And the people at Mattel were having none of it. They thought that no mother would buy a doll which had a bulge in its groin. And this became a really big argument.

They brought in a Freudian psychologist. Who asked them what to do? And he said, oh, yeah, well, all the girls are just going to want to one dress, Ken. So you're going to have to think about it. You're going to have to do something. What were they thinking when they brought in a Freudian psychologist? You're going to say, yeah, completely fine and normal.

Yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah, bringing a leg of a Barbie in school completely normal. It's normal to fancy your mom when she's just born. That's absolutely. Oh, God. But they came up with a solution, which was they were going to mold the swimsuit directly onto Ken. So you won't be able to get the swimsuit off.

Yeah, I do that. And they were going to put a very slight bump in the groin. So just enough that would keep Ruth happy, but not enough that would scare people off. OK, yeah, sure. But the problem was that it all came down to finance in the end. So putting the shorts up, molding the shorts on cost a couple of cents.

Putting the extra lump on was about half a cent worth of plastic. And they decided over the millions that they were going to make. It wasn't worth it to do it. And so that's why he ended up with the bulge. Yeah. Wow. That's very cool. Wow. We were talking about Barbies in space earlier.

Yeah. Something about sex dolls in space. Oh. The Russian cosmonaut, Valerie Polyakov, he's spent the record about of time on the mere space station. And according to him, the Russian government offered him a sex doll for his time on the media. No, wow. Yeah. Wait, what was the record? Do you know the record time?

40 months, he was there. Long time. It's a long time without a sex doll. Long time. Yep. But Pollockov decided that he wouldn't take the sex doll onto Mia. Can you guess why he decided not to? Because it's so embarrassing. There's not let me aliens are going to turn up and go, what's this? Cos we're not polygoth, we're getting your broadcast loud. Wait, is there an extra astronaut flying past you? No, that wasn't it. Because he was married.

Oh, he was married, actually. But that wasn't, I guess it was kind of the reason. He decided that if he started using the sex doll in space, he might get so used to it that he wouldn't be able to give it up when he got back down to earth. Right. Whereas on earth, you do, is it different in space to sleep with... I suppose you're lonely.

You might want to attach to me like Tom Hanks and Wilson. Exactly. It goes the way. Yeah, did he have sex with that? It's implied. It's... It's pretty heavily Yeah, yeah. Did he have sex with that? It's implied. It's it. It's pretty heavily applied. I guess.

I don't know the Russian history with sex stalls. But I did find out a fact when I was researching sex stalls, not for this. That in 2018, the mummified remains of a Russian man were found in his home and he was embracing a sex doll on the sofa like in Pompeii. Oh, that is nice. When I said so like in Pompeii, I meant nothing like Pompeii.

We don't know that the sex dolls weren't in Pompeii because they would never have survived the volcano with that. That's a good point. They did it in the first things to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got another bar, oh, got another Barbie thing. Okay. Can we talk about the, the Teen Talk Barbie?

Okay. This was a later varietal. So it was 1992, this was released, and each of the dolls sold said four of 270 possible phrases, right? So, the, like, okay, so my doll might say four different things to your doll, is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they worked out, they would have to sell 200 million of these things for there to be the odds that two of them would say exactly the same for phrases.

That's a big selling point, obviously. But this was a controversial one because it's the one that said, math class is tough as one of the phrases. And that's been slightly misremembered as her saying, math is hard, which you didn't say, but she did say many words. It's pretty much the same thing as that. It is, it's pretty similar. Yeah, yeah. And so this is prompted a bit of a, you know, pushback from people saying this isn't a great message

to say to girls. And in 1993, the next year, there was this group of performance artists in Manhattan. They called themselves the Barbie Liberation Front, right? And this is what they did. This is so good. They took a load of, they bought a load of team talk Barbies off the shelf.

They also bought a load of GI Joe talking duke dolls, right? They swapped the voice boxes, and then they put them back on the shelves. So you ended up with people who bought GI Joe dolls, which said, will we ever have enough clothes? Or... LAUGHTER Let's plan our dream wedding. LAUGHTER

And meanwhile, the matching Barbie was saying things like, eat lead. LAUGHTER That's so good. It's so good. MUSIC It is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that Eastern Screech Owls have live-in snakes as housekeepers,

which their children sometimes eat. LAUGHTER It's quite a bit going on here. LAUGHTER There's a new book out, a new owl book out, by Jennifer Ackerman, and it's called What an Owl Knows, as a great book. And she quotes this amazing study. There was a scientist called Frederick Gelbach

who studied the Eastern screech hell, right? This is an Al, it lives in a nest, lives in Texas and thereabouts. She'll be called the Western screech hell. They probably know what they're doing. I forgot it. Imagine listening to the guy and fuck, we're finally rumbled. Yeah, like 100 years of no one noticing. Oh, yeah.

Mori? Basically, it turns out one in five nests of this eastern screech owl contains a live snake, because the parents go and get food for the chicks and they bring back these snakes alive to the nest. Yeah.

And they bring them back, and some of them get eaten if you do, but a lot burrowed down into the nest, which is full of stuff that snakes love. You know, it's half-eat-and-bits-of-food and pellets and all sorts of fecal matter. Fecal matter. Yeah. Yum, yum, yum.

And so a lot of insects turn up to eat those horrible things, and the snakes, actually, they like to eat the insects. So they tidy up the nest for the owls. And it's good because the owl chicks in snakes which contain alive housekeeping snake grow up bigger and stronger and healthier than the chicks in the nest which don't contain a live snake. So it's actually a kind of...

It's a major... It's a mutual thing. It's not. Here's the thing though, just for people's image at home of what's happening here. When we say snake, it's probably like a cobra, right?

Exactly. We're talking like, you know, they're twirling up and stuff. These things are like smaller than worms, right? Like they're super tiny, exactly, because there's a cool image in your head of like a giant snake sort of.

Yeah, yeah, these are like little tiny little, oh yeah. But they're snakes, they're small snakes. Oh no, absolutely. Yeah, just, just. If you saw one, you would genuinely think it was a worm. The only difference is they have scales, but the scales are almost impossible to see. It literally just looks like a worm. Yeah. But they're, they're one-couth, they eat a lot of other insects like they eat ants and stuff like that. But they like to eat baby ants and they go into their ants nests, but obviously all the

ants are going to attack them. And so what they do is they secrete a noxious chemical and they shit at the same time and they mix these two things up and they roll around in it so they're covered in noxious shit and then the ants will not go near them and then they can nom nom nom nom. Brilliant. Yeah. I didn't look up any facts about the tiny snakes but I did think how do these albabies get here? It's going to be through Al sex.

Oh yeah. Very true. Yeah. Al's have sex in a really interesting way so like they don't have sex how we would imagine. Yeah. So like they don't have sex how we would imagine yeah How are you imagining just for the 1956 Do you imagine like a sort of I'm I'm finding it. I'm thinking it's really trying to imagine I don't think in like doggie style because they can move their heads 360 degrees

Just like pack me, but I think yeah,'s going to be a scary moment. What, when the head of your... Doggy style and suddenly the person's face is staring at it. It's basically like an artist, isn't it? I'd call Anubra at that point. It was so nice meeting you. Blue eyes, I never properly noticed. I think you can... you have some respect.

Call it hourly style. The hourly style. Yeah, yeah. Like, hours. hourly style sets. They already have sets in one position, so you don't have to learn a whole bunch of different things. OK. They've got a Kaloakka, which is an internal chamber

with an opening, and what it opens. An eternal chamber. Is that an internal? It's an internal. LAUGHTER Why, quite a, what a nice way of putting it, It's an internal. It's an internal. It's an internal. Quite a nice way of putting it. The eternal chamber. The eternal chamber.

Is it temporary chamber? Opens up. Temporarily. Inside the chamber is either, depending on the sex of the owl, testes or ovaries. Wow. It's like a river requirement for the owl's job. And... When the owl's want to get jiggy with it, or ovaries. Wow. It's like a river requirement for the owls jump. At... Yes. When the owls want to get jiggy with it, gowly with it, they...the cloaca protrudes slightly and they rub them against each other.

And that is owls sex. Like the sperm goes into the female cloaca, fertilizes the egg, just one position. Okay. No kissing. Nice, no kissing. But it is called a clouacol kiss. So it's a kiss in a way. Oh, that is sweet. Do you know how eastern screech house persuade their children to move away?

Do they explain to them how they had sex really? The eternal chamber is opening. Fly my children. No, they, it's, they withhold food. And then they remove any food they've stored in the nest. They basically empty the fridge and the cupboards. Oh, wow. They say, sorry, you're going to have to change these up.

And they also have a particular call, which equates to go away. And it's all, obviously, it's, it's good. It's to persuade them to, you know, move on to the next stage of their life. So it is a good thing. Right. That's right. But, all, all, all, I'll good. It's to persuade them to move on to the next stage of their life. So it is a good thing. Right, that's right. But all owls have different tactics for getting their children to babies to fledge. Yeah, yeah.

So in sort of Western culture, we might have the boogie man as a terrifying thing for children. Do you know in Hungary what they have? What a Hungarian boogie owl by any chance? It's the copper penis owl. Oh! Gosh. If you're not careful, copper penis owl is going to come for you. So what it is is, if you picture boogie man,

this is the same thing, but it's an owl. With a copper penis. With a copper penis. Is it copper coloured or is it just metal? No, it's a metal, it's a copper penis. Is it oxidized? Is it? Yeah, that's the... But what's the threat if it's just a bit...

Oh, he'll steal you. He'll steal you. The detail of the Copa penis is not relevant, in fact. It's like, he just happens. It's noticeable. Like, if you describe the owl that took your child, you could do the head thing, and then there was this metal penis... It was a weird... Not to mention it, in a way. Yeah.

And it is, like, owls are associated with death around the world, I think. Quite often, there'll be a superstition where, if you see an owl, someone's going to die really soon. And there's quite a few theories as to why that happens. So there was one guy who's an owl expert from South Africa who reckons that, because people quite often have heart attacks

in the middle of the night, and that's when owls are around. Perhaps people have died, and they've heard an owl, and they associate them together. There's another theory from Italy that you would put a body outside when someone's died and you would put candles around it and the moths are attracted to the candles and then the owls are attracted to the moths. So that's one possible version. Another version from India is that possibly like in cemeteries you might leave food offerings

for people and then you might get like mice and rats coming for the food offerings and then the owls come for the mice or the rats. So that's probably why all around the world people have this association. It does. And they get a really bad rap in lots of places. As in they're not beloved universally around the world and there are some places where they're still really ill-oamity. not beloved universally around the world. And there are some places where they're still really ill-omany. Yeah. And in Ghana, in the forest, a lot of people, so say they would witchcraft, but it's actually

really important to the Al's stay, because otherwise, the forest is for the rats. Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There was a prediction in 2015 that wind turbines

might all be made like Al's. To look like Al's? To be given feathers. Oh, because Alls fly so quietly. Carcid, yeah. It has to do with particular feathers they've got at the leading edge of their wings. Right.

And there was a suggestion, why don't we just put feathers on all our winterbinds so that they can turn faster and be quieter? I don't want to live in a world where we don't have feathery winterbinds. Yeah, that's cool. I just love it. I was part of research for this,

while I was reading today that we might be turning humans into wind turbines soon. And go on. So it's a technology. I didn't fully read, so I wasn't prepared to talk about it. But what it is is you'd have a contraption on you, and what they've worked out is that when we're walking, we're moving our arms all the time, right? So we're generating movement, we're generating energy in the same way that a turbine might,

so why not bottle our arm swing and then we can power ourselves at night? I know they can't see you on the podcast, but you're literally walking like a Lego man. Yeah, I'm also done. Sorry. I can power myself at night already. LAUGHTER I don't need the hardest energy of my arm swing from the day.

What do you mean we compare ourselves at night? Like, match your phone when you're asleep. Exactly. Well, that arm movement. No, but you're generating, so that's okay. Look, we're different. I need a shot. But you do get... I've read about... There's been some gyms where they attach the treadmills to the lights

and they get the lights going by people going on the treadmills on me. That is cool. That is very cool. I like that. It's possible. Okay, he likes that. That's fine. Cool. So if you were one forum one against at the moment, could you make the final call? I don't like it. Yeah.

OK. What if you've not got very strong arms? Long arms? What if you got no arms? Oh, dear. Is this the hell I was going to die on? OK. OK, this is not dragon's den. I didn't invent this.

This is a thing that is happening... Can I ask, can you attach it to other parts of your body that swing? While you're walking. What a confident way of putting it here. You think, oh, I'm actually parrying a small turbine down here. I actually parrying the whole of Milton Key's just walking to the shops. Can I tell you about the International Owl Centre in Minnesota? Please do. This is an amazing place.

They do lots of brilliant work with Owl's International Owl Centre, and staff have to be able to do owl noises to get a job. That's brilliant. It's so cool. Is that just what they claim with the interview? What are you? Put on, like, you put on your CV, you know, barn grey, all of that. No, because people come into the office saying, I heard a particular owl, can you help me identify it?

And the staff obviously have to be able to say, oh, did it go, woo, or did it go, ah, or whatever. I think so. I think so. Good. That helps you identify it. So, you know, they may as well, apparently,

there's the hardest owl on the planet to replicate is the brownfish owl, which is so low that most people can't even reproduce the sound. OK. It's almost impossible to do. I'm the thumb, brown owl. Brownfish owl. Brownfish owl. Brownfish owl.

You've got, you've got an ear. You misnamed yourself, so you have to have an idea. Yeah. Yeah, you have, like everyone obviously thinks that I was just hootin' all over. Oh, tell whatever. But they shriek, yap, chitter, squeal, squawk, wobble. This is all from the book that you read. The Suttie Owl makes a noise.

It only speaks to Matthew Colbert. Really? What's that Suttie Owl? Is it named after... Is it named after us? No, it's because it's Sutty as in the colour of Sut. They make a sound like a dropping bomb. What? Woo! Wow.

That's amazing. I'm not sure if they have the bomb better at the end. I think it's just the thing. That's very cool. And the Northern Soar Wet Owl, if he wants to find a, if it's a male and wants to find a female, then he does exactly 112 tutes per minute

to try and attract her. And he'll do that from half an hour after sunset until half an hour before sunrise. So all night he's doing 112 tutes per minute. Wow. Isn't that incredible? If a female comes into his territory and he notices her, he raches it up to 262tpm. And then if she boggles off, then he'll follow her doing 162tpm.

Wow. But two, two, two, come back, come back, come back. Do they have secular breathing? Is it like beatboxing? Can they do? It's a great question. You probably need that, wouldn't you, Sarah? I would say so.

I don't know how the Syriks of our works, but yeah, you would think they would have to breathe as well. Here's another question. It's so odd that this is a part of the show because of the last fact, but we used to leave my sister's Barbie dolls outside on a little verandab bit in Australia where we lived. And we didn't play with them for a long time because none of them could stand.

So she lost interest. And we went out one day and we got the toys out. And Barbie was basically hairless, the bold-headed, right? Yeah. And what we realized was a bird had been stealing strands of hair and making a nest in a tree up. And I looked online all day to see whether or not that is a real thing because that's my memory of his that we went out and we made that connection.

And I saw there was one image of the Barbie doll in its hole as part of a bird's nest. So the bird had grabbed the hair and incorporated it into the nest. But do you think that's? Yeah, 100%. Wow. And it does happen in owls as well. So the burrowing owl We'll try and put loads of really impressive stuff in his burrow one to impress the females But another one to say I'm so great. I managed to get all this stuff

And so they'll get like Con stalks Con cobs moss and the lovely. Yep lovely And the vertebrae of deer sometimes they'll put on the outside. This is like decorating the nest. But they will take lots of things that humans have put, like bits of cloth and stuff like that. Bits of concrete.

And the idea, and always the idea is that the more difficult it is for an owl to get it, the more impressive it is to the female, and also to the other male's he doesn't want in his area. It's like, if I got all these bits of concrete, you do not want to fuck with me. I need to move us on, guys, to our next fact. I have a fight, but it's a bit sad. Oh, OK. Can I say it anyway?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm really sorry about this. Famous owl owners. Uh-huh. Are you asking for them? Yeah, why not? Well, that's not a good girl. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Well owners. Uh-huh. Are you asking for them? Yeah, why not? Floor is not a thing, girl. Yeah. Oh. Well, that was the one.

Where is Nice and Girl? I was... You said it to Sam, but I feel pretty happy. I was wondering if anyone might go anywhere else, but no, yeah. Floor is nice and real pottery. Yeah, everyone in Harry Potter's got it out. Sting.

Sting about it. It's a string about it. I'm taking a punt. Floor is nice and girl. She had an owl called Athena, which she took from some little boys were kind of playing with this owl and maybe mistreating it. She looked after it. She looked after it her whole or its whole life.

Because when Warbroke out in Crimea, she had to go to the wall. She couldn't take the owl with her. And so she put her owl in the attic, and she thought that we'll be able to just kill all the mice that lived there, and stuff like that would be fine, but it was domesticated so much, it didn't know how to catch. I know, it's a sad fact. I should never have ended on this, and unfortunately, yeah. It's a medical owl fat.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. As a top of that. So, lots of medieval recipes last year were digitised by Cambridge University. And a cure for gout is a salty gout, baking it until it be ground into a powder, mixing it with balls greased to make a salve and rubbing it on the sufferers body to cure the gout.

That's another sad fact. Oh, right, I've got... Oh, here've got... Oh, he's the... Every... Every three seconds, another al dyes. OK, stop. Can I...

In 2005, an al who lived at Warwick Castle was given L-plates because he was so bad at flying. LAUGHTER That's a bit more joyful. Unfortunately, they were so heavy he crashed into the ground. Alright, we need to move on. It's time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that the poet William Blake's boss, once visited him and his wife, only to find them completely naked. It turns out they like to cosplay as Adam and Eve. Oh, it's a great sport. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant, isn't it? He was a big fan of Milton. Wasn't he Blake? Milton, yes. So actually what they were doing, so just to say Milton, Paradise Lost, they were reading St John Milton and they possibly william bike as well as being a poet, he was known artist and he might have wanted to illustrate Milton and they thought that maybe he persuaded his wife that they would both read it and pretend to be Adam and Eve so that maybe he'd be able to see the postures that they got into and he'd be able to do some good accurate drawings in his illustration of Milton. Very convoluted, isn't it? A way to get your wife pregnant.

Naked. Yes. Same thing. But yeah, this is Blake's patron who was called Thomas Butts. Thomas Seymour Butts. One day he went to visit Blake because he was his patron. I was going to give him some money maybe and he turned up knocked on the door. Someone let him in and it turned out that Blake and his wife were in the garden and Blake said, come on in, it's only Adam and Eve, you know. And they were trying out naked postures.

And this story comes from the first biography of William Blake by a guy called Alexander Gilchrist is what made Blake famous because he is a very famous poet now. He did what did he do Tiger Tiger, burning dry and all that kind of stuff. But before this, he wasn't famous at all. This very, very well researched biography has this story. Some of Blake's friends or, you know, relatives of their friends said that it might not have been true. But most modern biographers, I think, pretty much believe it.

The OMDB says that it does not seem out of character that this happened. That they would be naked. Yeah. He was a very visionary, imaginative, unusual guy. So, in fact, he was constantly seeing angels and having visions, and he just had a full on in a life, basically. And, in fact, there's a thing about him that's connected to something one of us has.

Oh, yeah. What play? Yeah. Daddy issues. Daddy issues. It's mummy issues and like that. Yeah, what Blake? Yeah, daddy issues No, it's so James has a Fantasia I do and that's where you can't visualise things in your mind. Yeah, so if I close my eyes I can't imagine what things look like yeah Yeah, so Blake we reckon or historians reckon might have had hyperfantasia

Which is where you see lots and lots and lots of things that often aren't there. So it's sort of an opposite-y thing there. But yeah, a lot of people think... It is really interesting that because, like, if I close my eyes, I can just see nothing. It's just dark, I can't imagine things. I can't imagine what square looks like,

I can't imagine what white wife looks like. Just can't imagine anything. Can't imagine what Dan's mum looks like. Well, obviously, I can imagine that. Yeah. But it goes through different sort of phases. So there are some people who can just kind of make out slight images. There are some people who can almost see an entire movie that goes on in their head.

Like, they can imagine their first day at school and they'll see it happening in their head. And then there are some people like Blake, who is a hyper-fantastic, who can just imagine almost anything, and things almost come into him and he's not sure if they're real or not real. Yeah, it sounds like a mad life, he heard. Yeah, well, I mean, there's lots of people like he was just quite mentally ill, but thought he was seeing visions.

But it started with what he was really, really young. So when he was four years old, he first saw God's head in a window. And they described it as the first of many visions he would recount in the ordinary, unambithetic tone in which we speak of trivial matters. So he was just kind of completely on his side, God's heads in the window. LAUGHTER

Well, that's yeah, because they came so much to him. It wasn't just angels in God's. It was the past people of the world, so kings and famous artists and stuff like that, to the point where he would be sitting there say, have a conversation with William Wallace, you know, he's just having a chat in his head. And then he'd get pissed off,

because King Edward I would suddenly just blunder in. And he'd be like, Edward, we're trying to have a chat here. What are you doing? He'd like, he would get pissed off with the visions as well, because there were too many going on in trade. Yeah, interrupting. Incredible. Oh, that's weird, because he painted the body of Edward I,

the embalmed body of Edward I, who died what? 400, 500 years before. They opened up the tomb and he got to have a good one. That is so weird, isn't it? What? The idea that they were just stoping up the tomb of a dead monarch and just say,

oh, you can paint them for an hour and then we'll close it again. It was one hour. It was like a supermarket sweep thing. And you had one hour to paint Edward I. And it was literally the kid. It was the kid. It was one hour, it was like a supermarket sweep thing, and you had one hour to paint Edward I. And it was literally the kid. It was the kid. It was the Edward I.

It was so... Has that ever been done since? 1774, though, David. How old he was when he did that? He would have been quite young. No, he was young. He was young, so it was like... Is he still around?

As in like, is he in bomb, both? Oh, all these people are dead. Wait, wait, wait. No. If he was in bomb, he'd still be there. Yes, I mean, they sealed up the tomb again. We could, you know, bring, no. If he was in bombs, he'd still be there. Yes, I mean, they sealed up the tomb again. We could bring Edward the first up.

Damien Hurst has him this year, kind of the... Oh, don't give him the hurst. If you were going to open up the tomb of Edward, you should just slip into his arms, a little mummified sex dog. Speaking of the sex dolls, no, speaking of Catherine, Eve in this cosplay scenario, this roleplay, sexy roleplay they were having, apparently Catherine was great crack.

She was like joke, she was like a great cook. And one of the things that she used to do, despite being a great, great cook, was to serve up empty plates as a reminder that he needed to start bringing somebody home. Oh, oh. Pointless when you're serving it as someone who has constant visions.

He's like, wow. Hamburgers again. You know, man. Apparently, apparently Blake really loved to eat cold mutton and drink pints of porter from the local pub, but he didn't like wine glasses which he considered an absurd affectation, said from someone who cosplays his Adam and Eve. And once he ascended a gift from an admirer, which was a whole bottle of walnut oil,

he didn't know what to do with it, so he drank it all and won't go. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh her ever, and there was a bit of gossip, but they loved talking, they loved walking, they ran their whole business together because he was a printer, basically, and she and he together worked out the printing process. And they designed, they engraved, they printed, they made their own ink. Like they had this idea that if we can control every element of the production process,

everything except printing their own paper, then we'll control all of it, we'll make a load of money. And they did not do that. It's tragic because he was obviously seen as one of the greatest geniuses ever produced. And yet his poems sold, I think songs of innocence and experience sold something like 20 copies in 30 years. Yeah. It was really bad.

Jerusalem sold nothing, did no business. Yeah. Just absolutely nothing at all. So why was he allowed to paint a king? Like what was the lead? I don't know. I think he was really quite young at that time, so I think he might have been studying or whatever.

But he also, I'm very envious of his death because he is someone who did not think death was scary. I'm someone who does get scared of death and the idea of no more consciousness, and I know a lot of people aren't. But he particularly believed in the afterlife so much that on his deathbed, he was literally singing with excitement. On the day he died, going, you know, I'm going to the next place, yeah, yeah,

whatever the song was, I was like, that's kind of sound like the words he would use for it as an amazing poet. And so his wife was upset, but also at the same time, she was like, call a catch you soon, and on her death day, she was calling to him as if he was in the next room, going, I'll be with you in a minute, William, I'm on my way.

What a great way out. Yeah. He was a good husband, I think. He once wrote that the female vulva is a little model of a chapel of God that husbands must daily worship. OK. Wow. Yeah, it's nice. It is nice, isn't it? I think it's like an eternal chamber, you might say. And he's a pop feel culture wise.

You can see his footprint everywhere in ways you might not recognize. I'd like you, Sister Barbie. So, OK, the band The Doors. The Doors of Perception, that was a Blake poem, that's where Jim Morrison and the band got that line from. So that's down to Blake. Alan Ginsberg, one of the great American beat poets, read a poem of his, and he felt the presence of God.

And he said, he said immediately afterwards, oh my God, I've just experienced something I've never, something I've never experienced before, this poem and the LSD I took. I don't know if there was LSD, but yeah. So, presence of God's stuff. Do people sort of know what Jerusalem is about? Because it's a series of weird interlinked questions. I thought it was like that Jerusalem comes to England or something like that. Like Joseph H Joseph of Arimathea is going to come to England or something. That's it. And did those feet in ancient times walk up on England's mountains green? It's about the myth that Jesus went to Glastonbury.

That's it. Literally what real was a myth that Jesus attended. That's a very big, old man. No, it's this idea that... So Jesus had a great uncle who was Joseph of a varimathea, like James says, and he was a sailor, and maybe he came to Cornwall to buy some tin, and then maybe they walked around Glastonbury for a bit, and this is when Jesus was tiny. And that was the idea behind...

That was the idea that Blake was writing about. In fact, it turns out Jesus didn't go to Glastonbury, obviously. The story was made up by monks in the 12th century to boost the tourism industry of the area. It's such a good scam. Okay, right, like, 1184, you're a monk. Your abbeys burn down, nightmare, you need to rebuild it, you need to raise some cash. So all you do is you just say,

King Arthur came from here, you know, and no one can prove you wrong, because it's the 12th century, they don't have fact checkers. And then King Arthur, you just add Jesus into that, say, oh, Jesus came here too, actually. And the monks, this was the great bit of the con. They built a wooden church in a style that would have been built centuries before

to make it look like their monastery was way older and might have hosted King Arthur and Jesus. At the same time. I don't know if that was a kind of supergroup element to it, but it was kind of, it was just like, oh, this is a very, very old place. That was their claim. And it was nonsense from start to finish,

but it worked because Glastonbury became the second richest Abbey in the entire country. Wow. Partly because of this myth of, oh yeah, Jesus, he was here. I've always said that you can't trust bugs. No. Well, they got there, come up and see what we're glad to hear. So if he just 400 years later.

Well, what was the come upance? They had to say 12 Hail Mary, so... That was the dissolution of the monasteries. The dissolution of the monasteries. Oh, I met... ..as a dissolution of the Mother's Tree. Oh, the Mother's Tree! I admit, that's a pretty decent difference to make. Sorry. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show,

and that is my fact. My fact this week is that Lady Bird orgasms last for 30 minutes. Pretty astonishing, 30 minutes. Yeah. So their sex can last up to nine hours, so hence that's proportional orgasm, possibly, to the amount of sex time that they're having. Well, yeah, what's that? Half an hour.

Oh, what is that? Half an hour. There's one 18th of the total time having sex, so that's a four second orgasm, two minutes. Yep. LAUGHTER Check, sir. Carry out. Wait, did you say two minutes? No, my numbers are all off there. LAUGHTER

So, yeah, so they... Yeah, nine hours. Nine hours, and actually, during that time, the female might often get a bit bored and go around looking for food while the male is attached to the back of her. Well, that's a weird thing. There's been... They've seen sometimes.

This is how clueless the male ladybird is during the sex. At some times, they'll get four hours into the sex, and they'll be like, oh, she's dead. They don't... Oh! Even know that for four hours, they were sleeping with a dead ladybird. Well, it's not incredible. Males are very...

What's the word I'm looking for? The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... The... this universe. No, so if a male ladybird meets another ladybird, he will climb on top of it no matter what. Oh, regardless. Regardless, and it might not be a female, you know. So Warwick University wrote an amazing study about the love lives of ladybirds and they reported that if a male meets another, he will immediately make a full-hearted attempt to climb on top of the other one. If he discovers that he has mounted another male, he will retreat immediately, but if he was lucky to have met a female,

he will try to sleep with her. So they don't notice anything really. They just bump into another ladybird and start climbing up it. Yeah. Because they can only see two centimeters ahead of them. So if there's something that looks a little bit like a ladybird there, you might as well have a go.

Gosh. Really? And sometimes female ladybirds get mounted by male ladybirds, which are not even the same species of ladybird. They say, what are you doing? We're not even the same thing. LAUGHTER I think it's hard to tell the gender of a ladybird from two centimeters a site. But it's your ladybird.

Although you're all ladybirds, it's not ladybirds and ladybirds, it's all ladybirds. Yeah. Yeah, it's all... They're all ladybirds. You're not ladybirds and ladybirds. It's all ladybirds. Yeah. Yeah, it's all, like, they're all ladybirds. You all look basically the same even though you can have different colors of ladybird. Yeah. You can have red ladybirds, orange ladybirds, black ladybirds, blue ladybirds. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that one up.

Orange, black, brown, and red. Those are the main types. There have been reports of purple ladybirds, but those are unreliable. One thing that I really liked in my Ladybird research is that there are not a lot of Ladybirds in popular culture, but there is one ladybird who is possibly Pixar's first transgender character,

which is Francis from a Bugs Life. Oh. Francis from a Bugs Life is constantly being misgendered as a lady, which he gets very upset about, but if the picks are four of us, people have a suppose that baby Francis is a delusion to trans-gratitude. You all take that very seriously, Pixar did not do that. I don't know.

But it is a constantly misjended lady bird in a box of life. It's hard to tell the species of lady bird, because in the UK we have a seven spot Lady Bird, which is the most common, but you might get a 22 spot Lady Bird, a 13 spot Lady Bird, 10 spot Lady Bird, 2 spot Lady Bird, 18 spot Lady Bird, these are all different species. And you know how you can tell which is which? Oh, number of spots. No.

This is the amazing thing. Some seven spot Ladybirds can have anywhere between about five and nine spots. Oh. And 11 spot ladybirds can have something like nine to maybe 15, something like that. What was the point of anything then? What's the point of science? It's most of them do have the number of spots that their name says. But the problem is that some of them don't,

and like some of the spots sort of merge into each other, so you can have a seven spot, but actually five of the spots of old molded into one spot. I'm coming around to the point of you, the male lady, but here. If you don't even have the decency to have the number of spots that your literal name is, that's crazy. You know what's another crazy thing? Is that if they're mating, because obviously, as I said,

it can go up to nine hours. If they're mating and it gets to sundown and the temperature drops, they become immobilized and they're just kind of stuck there. Oh my God. So if you're going to do nine hours, you pretty much have to start quite early in the morning. Yeah. Don't you? But also, the store point's starting at midday because it's going to be... Yeah, you've got to time it right. but, you know, another argument in my favour

for the solar-powered arms to give you... Night time... Energy. Six arms. Six arms. Six arms. I've got quite a cute ladybird fat. Do you know who the ladybirds named after? A German cool girl, no, she's named...

She's the sheave, they, the ladybirds are named after people think in lots of languages, are Lady the Virgin Mary. It was often depended wearing a red cloak, like lots of things, but the word Lady Bird and other languages and Irish, it's, I can't say it, it's boy day. OK. It means God's Little Cow. God's Little Cow.

God's Little Cow. I feel like the Virgin Mary and her, it is like Oh, little cow. So, in Russian, I think, I'm so sorry. I feel like the Virgin Mary in heaven is like, yeah, yeah. So the German word for Lady Bird is Mary and Caffer, which is Mary Beatles. It's using the surname of Virgin Mary in that instance. And her last name was Virgin. LAUGHTER

Mum, dad, why did you name me that? LAUGHTER Can we talk a bit about the lady about explosion of 1976? Yes, please. OK. So Dan's mum was just... It was not just teenager. LAUGHTER

This is a thing that happened in 1976. The weather conditions for some reason were right. So 1975 was quite a good summer. Then the winter was mild, then the spring was warm, right? So what you had, you had this, you had all the preconditions for this amazing number of ladybirds. Apparently, during the summer of 1976, 400 miles of tide line on the south and east coast of England were nothing but ladybirds. They were just solid ladybirds. They think there might have been something like 23 billion ladybirds in the tide line at

any one time, which is more than double the number of humans was, is more than double the number of humans there ever been. This is 1976. This is 1976. This is for one particular day in 1976, that 23 billion number. Does anyone here must have been of age in 1976? Does anyone remember that? There were a lot of ladybirds. There were a lot of ladybirds. Well, it's getting better. Well, per-ration, corroboration.

There were a lot of ladybirds. You weren't wrong. There were a lot of ladybirds. That's the best, that's the happiest moment of the year. That's how we do our fact, Jack. Yeah. The author, who was writing about this, who was, Senna was Majeris, said, in, I was walking in Brighton in late July, I tried a little experiment,

walking along the almost deserted beach with a cone of yellowish vanilla ice cream held inside my jacket, I then held it out, and timed how long it took to become completely submerged in ladybirds. Oh, my God, like hundreds and thousands. Yeah.

Well, probably only 40 or 50, but the point is... 28 seconds. 28 seconds after he got the ice cream out of his coat, it was covered in ladybirds. That's how many of the words just aroused. Wow. Oh my god. Yeah, they fly so fast as well. They fly as fast as like a fast horse runs. That's how fast. That's fast.

That's fast. That's fast. Yeah. That's what I like. Yeah. And yet the plans for the Lady Bird Grand National seem never ever to get going. So, was that 40 miles an hour?

They can't go 40 miles an hour. They go really fast. It's windy. It's time. Yeah. It's timing a ladybird. There is a door sledge in that a ladybird, the ladybird came to earth on a bolt of lightning. So it's probably just someone watching her. Well, yeah.

Oh, the sad school. You're like, that's like a fast horse. That's amazing. They get pubic lice as well, ladybirds. They're very, yeah. It's the equivalent, so it's pubic lice. I'm doing air quotes here. Ectoparasiting mites is what they get.

But they, so they, ladybirds are just absolutely riddled with STDs, because they just jagged so much, and they spread it. So the mites hide underneath the shell, so you would never see you in the mites. Although, I've seen photos of STD-riddled ladybirds, and it's... Those spots are natural, Dan.

LAUGHTER LAUGHTER Well, I started off as a seven spot, but I don't know what's going on here. LAUGHTER But it's hard to hide when you see a really riddled... Yeah. ..because they get like fungi and stuff.

So they come in and they look like they're wearing greenery on them. Oh, cool. The fungi one's interesting because that has become a real problem over the last few years. Yeah. Pretty much most of the ladybirds you get in this country and around the world are starting to get this fungi. But we don't know for sure that it's harmful. So we know that they're all getting it and they all seem to get it from sex or actually

in a nice way. Sometimes they like to cuddle together, and they can catch the fungus that way. So it's not always an STD, but we don't know for sure that's how it's full. It could be just like getting athletes' foot. So it could be just like, we all have a big cuddle, we all get athletes' foot. And we're kind of fine.

Maybe a little bit uncomfortable, but... No, it's fine. We were cuddling, and then I came home and that was it. Yeah. They're just pubic lies in air quotes. It's fine. I feel like we've got quite personal with the ladybirds. Well, can I say something about orgasms then very quickly?

Yeah. Yes, clean it up. So psychologists at Madrid University collected a lot of images of the faces of people when they orgasmed. And they noted that 92% had their eyes closed, 79% had a dropping of the jaw, and 64% were frowning.

So if you're having sex on your partner is I shut slack jawed and with a frown on the face, then it means you're doing it right. Well, I've known me more conscious of the muscles of my face. Oh, not wanting to do anything with them. LAUGHTER Oh, that's so interesting, James. Thank you. LAUGHTER

It's just science, then. No, I know. I love science. I've got a thousand of that. Oh, yeah, go for it. Er, so if we imagine, if we've got the fantasy of the two ladybirds, having sex, they reach climax. The sun goes down and they're frozen like that forever. You think, what an amazing way to go. Yes. And so I was like, have there any people

who were famously or allegedly die during sex? Yeah, that's good. And there is a list of people who have allegedly died at the point of climax. Oh, wow. And it's got one president and four popes. Four popes. Four popes.

Wow. Poppokes. Wow. Pope Leo, the other seven. Pope John, the 12th, Pope John the 13th, Pope Paul II. They all apparently died while Shagged. Oh my god. Funny fact, they all died on the same day. LAUGHTER

So dark. There was a lot of white smoke. No, it was... I don't know. MUSIC white smoke. Well, that's it. That's 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 we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter account, so I'm on at Shriveland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. Andrew Hunterham.

And Sophie. At Sophie Duke Box. Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing or our website, NoSuchThingAsAFish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. You can check them out. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here.

This is very late hour here in Soho Theatre. Thank you so much, Sophie, for being with us on stage. We'll see you all again next time. Thank you so much Sophie for being with us on stage. We'll see you all again next time. Thank you so much. Good night. Yeah! you