No Such Thing As A Fish - 507: No Such Thing As Fangtooth Boxing

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Dan, James, Anna and Anne Miller discuss big eyes, big teeth, bean juice, and James Joyce. 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 Thing as a Fish Andrew Hunter Murray is off on his hollybobbs sailing the Seven Seas, looking for new unbeknownst species of moss. And while he's away, we have got a guest for you and that guest is none other than Anne Miller. Of course you know Anne, she's one of the QIL, she's a really good friend of ours and it's great to have her back One thing you really need to know about Anne especially in these weeks upcoming to Christmas is that she is also a published author

She has written a series of children's books. They are known as Mickey and the animal spies They're known as that because that is their name and they're absolutely brilliant My daughter absolutely loves looking at the pictures and I'm sure when she gets to the right age, she will enjoy reading them as well. While we're on the subject of books, of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention our book, mine and Anna's new book, Everything's a Play For, the QI Book of Sport.

Definitely buy that for your loved ones for Christmas. Anyone who likes sport, definitely buy it for them. If you don't like sport, but you like what we do, I promise you'll love this book because it's full of loads of interesting human stories, drama. It's the ultimate sports book for people who don't really like sports and also people who do like sports will like it as well. It's for everyone. That's the great thing about our bug but then that also has to be true of Andy and Dan's books. You definitely should go and get those as well. Dan's book is called The Theory of Everything Else. It's a brilliant look into his brain.

His unique brain, let's say, but he's looked at the history of people who had done otherwise great things, but deep down they had a dark secret of believing some weird shit. And speaking of weird shit, you should also have a look at Andy's books. Andrew Hunter Murray, he has two books they're called The Sanctuary and The Last Day. They're both brilliant, a servant dystopian books that tell you something about the modern day while thrilling you with an incredible story about the future. They're absolutely amazing you've got to get those as well. Basically what I'm saying is who doesn't

love a book for Christmas and there's a ton of them made by your favorite QI elves that are all available online and mine and as Dan's and Andy's you can find at nosythingsafish.com forward slash books. One more very very important thing I need to say before I leave you in peace to listen to the podcast is that we do have a couple of live shows coming up just before Christmas. They will take place in London on Thursday the 7th of Friday, the 8th of December at the Soho Theatre. Now we've already mentioned this to the clubfish members and I think it's been on social media, so the truth is there are not many tickets left. If you do want to come and see this show literally pause now and go to nosysynxafish.com forward slash live, click on the link and check if there are any tickets left. You never know, sometimes extra tickets do come up closer to the date, so do go and check there anyway and hopefully see some of you there for our

Christmas shows. Anyway, thank you so much for getting to the end of this without fast forwarding, if you have fast forwarded and got to hear without hearing the last bit, shame on you. But anyway, it's time for our podcast with Annelas, so there is nothing more to say apart from on with the podcast! Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, James Harkin and Ann Miller, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one and that is Anna. My fact this week is that a list of adorable things written over a thousand years ago includes chicks who look like their clothes are too big for them and faces drawn on melons. Okay, can I ask for definitions of chicks and melons? Because I live in the 1990s. Right. Both chicks and melons mean what they've meant in every decade outside of the 1990s. I'm afraid baby chickens and fruit. Team just discredibly historical as notes. Wow, people are right about adorable things a thousand years ago.

Yeah, this was, I actually heard this reference on Radio 4 this week, so I'm sure there are people who also heard it mentioned, it's the pillow book, which is this extraordinary book written by a woman in Japan in the 10th century under the Haiyan period. And Haiyan. Hai. That's why we chose this. God, it took me a long time to find a Haiyan period.

Anyway, this woman basically wrote a diary of just random stuff that popped into her head of lists and observations and things she thought should happen and shouldn't happen and things people should wear and shouldn't wear. And one of them was his list of really cute things. And one of them was faces drawn on melons. One of them was chicks who look like they're closer too big, which I think is like if you see a chick but its feathers look like they're bit swollen. You know they look like they might like you dress them up in human clothes. That's cute. And that would be even cuter. From what I could tell from interpretations of it, I think they're just talking about chicks who look like they don't fit into their clothes yet.

Right. They're too small, but I would argue that's slightly less cute than like a hat and dungarees. Well, take it up with, say, Shonagon, the author of this book. And maybe she hadn't the thought of that. The good thing about this book is, and I'm sure you all found this reading it, it's just like someone is writing today, isn't it? Yeah. It's just like this of cute things. So one is a young palace page, obviously, that's not the thing anymore,

but a young palace page who is still quite small and walks by in ceremonial costume. And that's just like, you know, if you go to a wedding and you see a little, you know, toddler, a page boy in a suit. Yeah, it's true. But it's not all happy stuff, is it? Like, there's so many great pissed off lists, things like things that are unpleasant to hear. Someone who has an ugly voice yet speaks and laughs without restraint. So she's just a list for that. She has a list for things that give a pathetic impression. The voice of someone who blows his nose while he is speaking. The impression of a woman plucking her eyebrows. It's all so odd.

My favourite random one in there is the list of extremely frightening things. Yes, yes. No, I just see that. Sunder, yeah, fair enough. No, no. I just enjoy this one. Extremely frightening thing, when a thief has entered the house next door, one is extremely frightened. If he breaks into the house, one is actually living. I can see it. If he breaks into the house, one is actually living, one

loses consciousness and knows nothing more. Which is true. That's true. It's a, I think, some of these, they sound like stand-up routines. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I've found one which is things that are infuriating, which sounds like it's like a Josh Whitacom routine. It says, this is what's infuriating. Someone suddenly falls ill and an exorcist is sent for. They don't find him in the usual place, and a tedious amount of time is spent waiting

while they go around in search of him. Finally, they manage to locate him, and with great relief, you see him to performing the exorcism rights. However, the recent exertions of exercising some other possessive spirit seems to have worn him out. For no sooner does he sit down and start in on the chanting and his spirit seems to have worn him out, his voice goes drowsy

and that is utterly infuriating. I think it's so relatable, isn't it? Yeah, I'm quite known for Josh, maybe broadening it. I like the idea this is the hey, what about airplane footage of like... It really is, like there's a list, rare things, a silver tweezer that is good at plucking out the hair. And this is today, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, is just to put it into the period. I know everyone probably knows the years of the high-end period, but we're... You refresh my memory, man.

We're talking the year 1,000 is what's going on here. And at the time that she was writing this book, Beowulf was being written also, just to put in context, the other great pieces of literature. Not really as relatable, Beowulf. No, no, that's true. I haven't actually read it so I the first word in it we still don't know what it means I really did you say the words you know it or it's like

quatt or yeah there's arguments about what it means yeah and she was so she was working in the court of the Empress at the time she was like a lady in waiting who was always there and she basically wrote this book because she just had a lot of spare time with nothing to do. So she never intended it for publication. It was just a personal book that she was writing. We don't even properly know her name. So she's called Saye-Shonagon, but that's, that's, Shonagon is the title that you're given. It's a minor counselor and Saye is the name that was added later, which refers to her father's name so you can distinguish her from the other shonegans who were in part of the court.

So do we think it could be Josh Whitaker who had come back in time to the Haiyan period? It's possible. Say shonegans that sound like a Japanese version of Josh Whitaker. The word Haiyan means peace in Japanese because it it was a particularly, it was quite long period and it was a time where there wasn't much war going on so people had time to write these stand-up routines. That's why she was so bored. I reckon she craved a war. Do we think she was a bit of a bit of a bit?

Was she? Well, I mean just from what she was, it was a adorable thing. Give us some examples. I mean, that's very much litter-reading. Yeah, you're right. I think she had mean qualities. In fact, there was a story about her where one of her neighbours houses burned down

and they lost everything they owned. Like, the fire in the house next door is the worst thing. Yeah. That got it wasn't in her house. Well, I don't know how scary she was finding it because basically she wrote a kind of little note mocking this person. He's lost everything. He's standing outside his house, you know, naked and gives it to her mum and says,

hey, go give this note taking the piss out of this guy to him. Okay. She had what was effectively a lot of people claim was a rival. I don't think we fully know that, but it is someone who is friend of the podcast, Murasaki Shiki-Bool, who wrote and we mentioned in episode 63 of Fish, The Tale of Genji, the first ever novel, which finished mid-sentence, right? Like it just cuts off. What happened was, is that, say, Shonagon was working for this Empress, and at the time it was one Emperor, one Empress, that's how it worked, but they buff the trend with this one, and suddenly, she was no longer the exclusive Empress, so he got married again and the lady in waiting

who became the lady in waiting for the next lady was this person, the tale of Genji. No way. Yeah, so that's why there were kind of like in rival land according to certain historians. So that book, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki, has a word kawayoshi, which is the word which turns into the modern-day word kawaii, which means cute in Japanese. And this idea of, you know, lots of cute animals and, you know, hello kitty and all that kind of stuff, this is kind of a 20th century thing that we're not sure exactly. There's lots of reasons why it might have come about But possibly a reaction to the water the bum stuff like that people wanted to go from the horrors of water cuteness But definitely seems to have become popular when mechanical pencils came out

So you know those pencils that kind of you know you twist them and the blood comes out Twist them do not click them? There's two options. Well the one where you take the little one out and put it in the top. Do you remember them from part of my skull? There's so many different ways. Hang on, you've had to, there's a little pocket containing this. Inside the, where you're like the leg would go, they were like tiny little things and you pop one at the bottom and pop it in the top.

To save you job in your pants. Yeah. I hated them all because they write so horribly. Well, they were very popular in 1970s, Japan. Well, you would not have fit in. No. Because they could write very, very thin lines. And it inspired a kind of writing among teenage girls

where they would put lots of little hearts and little characters and stuff in their writing. And it was so popular. And it made the writing so difficult to read that it was banned in loads of schools. Really? You weren't allowed to write in this co-yeast style, but by then the trend had already taken a whole... I guess once you've started doing it and sort of becomes your hand. There were some people who would do proper circles over their eye or little heart.

Yes, and I was like, why? It's a lot of longer! If I was just going to ask Anne am I, you are hearts amない? I'm not going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be not going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be not going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm version of cute, like it's got a bit of an edge, so the kawaii cute. The kawaii cute,

yeah, the Japanese cute, which you can kind of see, there's sometimes a bit of a dark edgingness to it, there's a character called gloomy the naughty grizzly, who I hadn't come across, but apparently it's a big cultural phenomenon, and he's a two meter tall, like cuddly bear, but he's very violent, he's covered in blood quite a lot of the time. He attacks his owner quite a lot. And that's Kauai in Japan, but not necessarily something we would say was cute. I think that's like Kimo Kauai, so it's like Grotesque and Qut at the same time.

I think that's what they call it. And yeah, obviously they have loads of mascots, don't they, in Japan? Yeah. In 2015, the governor of Osaka complained that he couldn't recognize most of his prefecture's mascots. They had 92 of them. Wow.

In Asuka alone. And he ordered a call and 20 of his captors were oh wow. Murdered by the grizzly bear. Public executions I hope. He made a list like 20 mascots that really annoy me and then I said, Yeah, that's the thing. It's amazing how successful it was though.

You know how when governments try to be cool, you know, like David Cameron saying he sports asterimilar or whatever and it's just massive cringe. But the Japanese government, basically in the 90s, did like Cool Japan, which was a bit like we had Cool Britannia here. Yeah. And Cool Japan was the idea of exporting all this Japanese cultural stuff.

And I don't know how they did it, but they nailed it because it's so popular now, isn't it? You get people who are really into manga, really into those styles. Hello Kitty is a global phenomenon. Hello Kitty. But like in the cool Britannia was like, blev versus oasis. And do you think in Japan now kids are listening to what's a Starry Marling glory? Yeah, it's still Blair and Oasis.

Is that it? Yeah, it's not resolved. Hang on, but are Blair and Oasis popular? I think it's not now. Not by saying that. And not anymore. Damn, it would be great if they were, because that would be my cultural homeland. That's when I stopped learning about pop music, was it about 1998?

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if there was like a little museum somewhere where you could go and they're still listening to all your kind of, it's called, smooth effects? Blah, oh god. Cuteness is a funny thing, isn't it? And we are the cutest of the primates. So that's nice. A frisky. We self-proclaimed cuteness.

I guess it is self-proclaimed. It's where the only ones that can write about it. We're not even the binobos, a lot of them. It's screw you, gorillas. You can't read. You can't define what's cute. So what's kind of defined as cute is the traits that are common in infants.

And that is, it was actually defined by this guy called Conrad Lorenz, who won a Nobel Prize. It's called the Kinderskema, and it's a large brain capsule, as he puts it, but thick forehead, I think we'll call it. Large and low-lying eyes, bulging cheeks, short and thick extremities, a springy elastic consistency and clumsy movements,

which is like the ugliest way to describe what is actually really adorable. Yeah. Oh, wasn't there, there was a thing I read a while ago about that animals who found those cute, like an elephant like caressing people and they think like, oh, you're just so cute and small. I don't know if it was really lovely.

I don't know if I'm one of the caress by an elephant, you know. Before the animals that could caress me, it may not, I think it was an elephant. I feel like I have the trunk involved. That sounds likely, they're quite empathetic elephants, aren't they? One of the scariest things is an elephant caressing next door's baby. Absolutely terrifying. There was a study done in 2009 and this was they gave people a load of cute images

and then they asked them to play the game Operation. So you know where you have like a plastic body and you have to pull out the funny bone and stuff so that it doesn't buzz. Well, it turned out that anyone who'd been exposed to high cuteness stimuli was better at operation. So first of all, a tip for Christmas, if you go home and someone's got operation, have a quick look at some co-yeast stuff before you're going to die in it will help. But secondly, it's due to extreme carefulness and the idea is you've seen lots of cute things, you want to look after them almost and you want to be more careful. Right, but don't look at the bloodied bear because that might give you the impression that

blood all over your operation here then is going to be adorable. You heard like 4D operation as a kid down the real blind. You guys in use for a blind? Oh my god. Stop the podcast. Stop the booker. Everyone, we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by ExpressVPN. That's right.

So, this Christmas season, are you planning on going online and looking up all the Christmas presents that you want to buy for your friends and family Whilst maybe using one of your friends and families wi-fi if you are you've got a problem because a really nosy family member Who's in charge of the wi-fi would be able to see your browsing history know the websites you've been to and know what you're getting them for Christmas and Plenty more and plenty more. They'll see plenty more. No, not me. I only use my internet exclusively for buying Christmas presents. But luckily, no one can see what I buy

and what websites I've been on, because of course I always use ExpressVPN on my phone, on my computer. It allows me to encrypt my online traffic, butch better, for instance, than, let's say, incognito mode, which doesn't really do that. No, indeed, incognito mode essentially just hides your history

from yourself. So if you don't trust yourself, it's fine. This issue happens wherever you are. So if you're on holiday, if you're at work, if you're in a cafe, there's someone who's in charge of the Wi-Fi who would be able to have access to your browsing history. I mean, the reason I use VPN is basically because you don't

know what's gonna happen to all that data that's been collected about your browsing if you don't. So, if you go to expressvpn.com slash fish right now, you can get three extra months for free when you sign up. That's right, so go to expressvpn. That's expr, ewsvpn.com slash fish, and as a special holiday offer, you will get three extra months for free. Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is N. My fact is that the Viper fish has teeth that are so long it can't close its mouth properly or it would impale its own brain. Hmm. I bet there are two that have though. Yeah, do you think?

Yeah, the idiot kids, the Darwin Award Viperfish. Exactly. So have they sort of evolved like the equivalent of a door stopper? They have. So basically they're very like very long and silver and they've got these lighty up spots along the bottom of their top stomach and then they have these huge teeth that kind of pierce upwards from their jaw and luckily it doesn't impede their hunting because to hunt it basically just swims around with its mouth open until it finds prey. It can unhind its jaw and rotate its skulls when it finds prey just basically swims straight at it and then it clamps its teeth shut like a cage and holds them in its mouth and then

eats them. It can close its mouth so that the teeth are coming out so it's not shut like a cage and holds them in its mouth and then eats them. It can close its mouth, so it's... But the teeth are coming out, so it's not making a seal. So they're kind of like having a very extreme overbite, but... Yeah, because I know there's another fish called the common fang tooth, which as its name might suggest has fangy teeth. And what they have is they have special sockets on either side of their brain, so that when they close their mouth, their teeth go into those sockets. Well, that is amazing.

It's so precise with the pockets. I think like if you got punched in the jaw and that was slightly dislocated, the first time you tried to shut your mouth, it would then miss the holes and close you in the brain. That would be, that's why there's no boxing in the fang tooth community. I think that's correct. Yeah. But thype of this is really cool. So as well as being able to get its prey in this cage, it can expand its stomach so it can swallow prey at 50% bigger than itself.

Oh wow! Which is so cool. That's amazing. So I just think every say, oh I can eat my own body size of this. Yeah. He can. Very unsuttle though if you're invited to a dinner party and you know sometimes you have a meal before you go and you just fake it. I'm just saying, no no no, I'm, yeah, yeah starving.

Storving, you're actually really full. Can't hide that. You've got 50% more body weight. Come through the door. Hello. Um, goldfish. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, starving. It's not really, you actually really feel can't hide that. You've got 50% more body fat. Come through the door. Goldfish. Oh yeah. Have teeth.

Can't believe it. How do you think they eat? I just thought they swallowed things that didn't need chewing. Well, they eat like little fishy flakes. Yeah, I thought it was like, kind of like, yeah, if you open them out, you can't see it. But the teeth are at the back of the throat. They just have a set of teeth that do all the old crunching.

Yeah, right at the back. Yeah, that'll often happen. And I always think, how does that do, sort of contract your throat as a fish? Because lots of fish have it, I don't know, this teeth and the throat thing. Yeah, it seems like it'd be very uncomfortable. But what's really cool is if you have goldfish at home right now,

go and have a look in your little aquarium that you have. Look at the bottom, because what they'll do is they often lose teeth and they grow new ones. So either you can catch your goldfish and the act of literally spitting its tooth out, or look at the bottom, they'll be little teeth. We should say how often they do because I worry that someone's going to sit in front of their goldfish tank staring at the days on end, wasting. Every seven minutes. their goldfish tank staring at the days on end waiting. Every seven minutes. If you have a pet Pacific link card, then you might be able to do that because they gain and lose on average 20 teeth every day.

So every day 20 of the teeth fall out and 20 new ones grow in the place. Amazing. They are also probably too big for your fish tank, aren't they? I think they're about five feet long. Oh, they are. Obviously, on the size of your fish tank. They could fit in my pond. Yeah. If they kind of sped up some stuff.

Sorry, I'm too far. If you've seen the really horrible sheep's headfish, if you haven't seen it, Google it, but it is pretty gross. It's basically got just a human teeth. It's like a big gummy smile. It's very unpleasant. And it's not nice human teeth. It's sort of like someone who hasn't cleaned their teeth for 20 years. It's really disconcerting when you see a fish that doesn't have the face of a fish.

Yeah. If anyone, I don't know if it's still there. I don't know the lifespan, but about seven years ago, I was in a restaurant in Bow Road in a Chinese restaurant. They had an aquarium. And there was a fish there with a face of a dog. It just had a dog's head. It was the weirdest thing.

Is this one of those restaurants where you go in and you choose the fish, you want them to cook? Because I reckon if it is, it probably is still there. You're not here, you're not here. You're not here, you're not here. I'll have the dog face, please. To be fair, it is possible that maybe a dog was looking through the other side of the tank.

Was it a fellow dinosaur's pet? Yeah. You can see fish that have human-looking teeth as well. Oh, it's called the Paku. Paku. What you mean as well as the one that arms mentioned? Oh, is that the Paku one? He's a sheep mind's-a-sheet head, she said.

But that might be the official name. Right. There were more fish that you would think with like human-looking teeth. Yeah. But the one that scared me the most, I didn't know ducks could have teeth on their beaks. You think you're really at the goose-ander duck? Not only that, he lives in the UK, they're everywhere, and I'm terrified

of this doc. The Goose Sandor, that would be great animated cartoon for Loose Sandors to do. You got Goose Sandors, which say, Seanigan, Joshua Wittacom, and Goose Sandors. Looking up this line up really well. I was thinking, oh, what did you see in the park? Goose Sandor Doc? Oh, really, two things. No. Just the one Gustav the duck. Oh, really? Too thick. No.

Just the one with all the teeth. The pack who we mentioned a few seconds ago, they supposedly can bite human testicles off. Lovely. They're invasive. They were, I think you get them in like Papua New Guinea or somewhere, and they have come into the Northern hemisphere more recently.

And whenever they catch one, it's always in the news. It's like testicle biting fish in the tents, or whatever. Really? And I think it's not true. They're vegetarian, so they eat nuts. And the story goes. That doesn't make sense.

The story goes that someone with particularly nut-like testicles was standing by the water in Papua New Guinea. That's the swollen bulls, that person has got, if they've got the consistency of a nut. It depends what kind of nut. Are there any nuts that are as soft as testicles out there? No, this does sound like one incident, and it's similar to a man going to a hospital saying,

I don't know how my penis got inside this vacuum cleaner. It's an invasive species of Henry Hovers. It's supposedly eat peduses. I think there's a little bit of that. I think there was one story of some people in Papu New Guinea and one person possibly had their genitals bitten by this fish. And it has since kind of... But what was he doing with that fish?

He was urinating by the side of the lake. What was that? There was a story, a scary story, but fish that would swim up your urine stream the lake. Was that there was a story a scary story, but fish that would sum up your urine stream? Yeah, no, no, no. I feel like they're not. Can we just establish it? There's a big difference.

And I feel like taboos often do this as well in headlines, then you read the text. And J.D. may have just done it between bitten and bitten off. And I think it's much less scary to have something bite your arm than to have a bite off your arm for instance. I only testicles how it's argued as well. Yeah, probably the same. I think what I'm saying is that there was a very small little nibble on this man's genitals.

It made a national news. It's snowball. It's since. Whenever the pack who comes to town, everyone's like, that's the ball eating the fish. The other option is that he was bid on the balls by a human and had to quickly come up with an excuse for his wife and went, no, it was the fish that has human teeth. It's called the, the ship's head.

Because someone's human is bitten his balls. He's gone, no, no, it's a fish. And she's like, well, you can see the teeth marks. Yeah, human, the clearly human teeth. No, no, yeah, the pack-o, it's the pack-o. No, I know you're having a fail. I'm having a failure with someone who gives very bad blood to us. I was reading about a different type of mouth that fish can have.

Oh, yeah. You can have a superior mouth or an inferior mouth. Okay, what's your criteria? That is. Can you guess what it is? A superior and an inferior. One's on top of your head, I suppose. On top of your head.

Well, because if it's superior, I suppose. On top of your head. Well because if it's superior I feel like it's on the top. How many fish have you seen where the mouth is above the eyes? Oh look we've said that I bet there was some fish where the mouth is above the eyes. That was an upside down fish. Look at that. Turn it around.

It was my dead goldfish. Is it? Yeah, more or less there in fairness. A superior mouth is basically imagine a smiling fish Yeah, and imagine a frowning fish for an inferior mouth Oh, so it's like whether it turns up. Yeah, precisely And if you have a superior mouth and you're a smiling fish, then you usually would feed on the surface So you might get insects from the surface of the water You're like turning your spoon around like you'll put it down And if you're an inferior mouth, you're probably a bottom feeder

As in you're getting stuff off the floor. Yeah. And they have terminal mouth like goldfish, which is just at the front. So it's neither, smile nor a frown, and they're usually omnibus, they'll eat all sorts of stuff. It's quite interesting that if you look at a fish and you see whether it's smiling or frowning, you can tell how it eats. Maybe you can't tell their mood. No, you can't. Because might as you're a really grumpy, pessimistic fish, but you've got the superior mouth and you can tell how it eats. Maybe you can't tell their mood. No, you can't. Because if you were a really grumpy, pessimistic fish, but you've got the superior mouse and you're like, everyone thinks I'm so jolly.

I don't know how you'd be the worst day. We've never had anybody talk about gnawls before. Oh, yeah. And there are two-th-tweil. Count as a two-th-tweil. That's one big tooth, that's on the wall. Yeah. That's where they think unicorns. Yeah, they have a unicorn.

Right. They found these gnawl tasks and they're like wow this must be for more horse Okay, right, but not only is it one big tooth is there any tooth yeah, and it's actually their left tooth Left it's the left canine so they all have a right canine that doesn't erupt in their mouth In fact occasionally you'll see a normal where it's right one is erupted and it's got a double horn thing going on. That's cool. Is it mostly the males have really long ones? Yeah, females tend not to have them actually, at all.

And what's the, do we know what sort of like the evolutionary reason for them retaining just? Like if males have them, it feels like sexual selection. It does, but again, bizarrely, given they're quite prominent. We really don't know. And they've looked at lots of things. They thought maybe they use it as an ice pick, as a tool for echolocation. And I...

Well, sort of like a cocktail steak for, you know, how you put sausages and pineapples on and cheese and so on. But then, yeah, only for catering, because if it was on your tooth, you couldn't get it in your mouth. That's true. But you might bring it to your,

to the mate that you're trying to... Oh yeah, look what I've got for you. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that sexy Danifam, your partner, that's a really log-toot. You're going to text a pineapple and cheese on a faded, directly into your mouth. Is that what, what does it for you?

That is white. It's just got off. You not signed up to my only friend. So I thought you, is that the biggest tooth in nature? Oh, it is big. How long can they get to? I feel like they can get a couple of meters. I reckon it must be. It's about half a body length.

Tussks are not teeth. Tussks are catarind. No, um, catarind. Carrot and men. Oh, that's a word with my drug dealer. It's doing nothing for me. My hair looks amazing. And I'm being accused of poaching. What's going on there? The only thing other thing could be possibly like other large whales that have got teeth

by a reckonable bit the biggest. Yeah, it's got to be up there. Just on the subject of fish teeth, I came across, actually a while ago, and I've been looking for a chance to mention it, an old Russian folk tale of a beautiful young woman who's married to a really disgusting man that she hates. And she... That's not my marriage.

That's not my marriage. Tell me how long that continues to be true in this story. So to put him off having sex with her, she puts a fish head into her vagina so that every time he's up for it, he's like, oh, more or all these teeth, I guess it's one of these goldfish with the teeth. It's a pack-o-head. It's a pack-o-head, it's a pack-o-head, it's best of eyes. And then she says, what, you idiot, all women have this.

You don't want to do it, you don't want to do it, but that's what everyone's doing. And so he never gets to have sex with her. Oh, wow. That's shame. It's really sad to start with him. It is true. And for her, he's got a fish.

No! It's like, you didn't have fish. She's got a bit worse off, yeah. If she'd have put a soccerum mouth catfish up her valley, might have been better because they have bendity. Okay, first fish that we found that have got bendity. Really? Because they scraped stuff off rocks and if they had hard non-bendity, then they might fall off or they might break or whatever. And they reckon they're probably more fish have them as well, but we've never found them before. So that might be quite nice. Some bendy teeth. She'd be so annoyed if she got

that one fish. She's like, oh I'm into this. That's vagina dentata is common in folklorism and who's the god in Moana? It's mountainana. He gets eaten by some vagina. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a mention that. Not featuring the live action Moana remake that didn't work out. They're working on it. OK, it is time for fact number three.

And that is my fact. My fact this week is that a book club in America has finally finished reading Finnegan's wake after 28 years of monthly meetups. 28 years. 28 years. So impressive. It's incredible.

They started in 1995. There was between 10 and 30 people who would show up to these monthly book clubs. And Finnegan's wake is a very complicated, unreadable book. They decided rather than getting through the whole thing and doing it in one book club, they would take it two pages at a time. That proved to be, I think, a bit too much. So they then brought it down to one page per book club and they've been doing this. They did it through the pandemic.

They've been doing it over Zoom. They keep meeting up. And yeah, they finally just got to the end. But it's being reported as the end, but as the man who runs the book club, Guy called Jerry pointed out, it ends on a sentence that is a continuous loop sentence, which means you come right back to the beginning of the book.

Oh, that's what he said. So they've just starting from page one again now. What a horrible realization. I must have been in the last session. The last day, but champagne. Thank God, I never have to see these awful people again. That's amazing. But it's amazing, like the people who've been in and out

of this group, one guy dropped out of the group for 20 years and came back. They were still arriving. It was quite lost, but then I suppose everyone is still. I think they got through 15 chapters in that time. Yeah, that's the whole point of it, isn't it? It's a completely impenetrable book. Even people that you would consider to be

those who love literature and would like be snooty and say, no, it's actually a masterpiece. All just say, it's just lots of words. No one can agree like who the main characters are. What the plot is. Yeah, have you dipped into it? No, Finnega's white, no, of all choices stuff. I don't know if that one has, but.

No, yeah, I think it's amazing that even after all this time, they've read it for 28 years, they won't be able to say what happened, because no one knows what happened. It's just that's so amazing, isn't it? It's mad, and- But it's almost like an endurance sport, rather than a hobby now, isn't it? Like, 28 years. But this is the thing,

they're not like alone in being a book club that has done this. They just happen to have possibly gone the longest. There's a guy called Sam Sloat, who's a historian. He's an expert at Trinity College Dublin on Joyce. He's a guy called Sam Slote who's a historian. He's an expert at Trinity College Dublin on Joyce, that's what he looks into. And yeah, he was reading the book for 15 years. You know, there was other groups that they all go into like just over 10 years, but this is the longest one so far. Think of all the books you've missed out on in that time that actually make sense.

Yeah, that's true. You can't read all the books you've missed out on in that time that actually make sense. Yeah, that's true. You can't read all the books in your lifetime. You might as well stick with one's the Hungry Catapilla. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And many times in one meeting. I think this is what Joyce wanted. I think he wanted people to dedicate their lives to reading just him, to analysing him.

That's quite a big move, isn't it? Like, no, you'll be my book. Not only my book. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's a statement about what you think of yourself. He's kind of done it with certain people. Yeah. Yeah. You know your fact, sorry, I meant to say, down is wrong. Yeah, I know that spelling mistake. A spelling bit of a spelling mistake. Oh, yeah. Well, technically... Oh, I see. Yeah, the punctuation error, wasn't it? Yeah. I put it in a postrophias., wasn't it? Yeah. Oh, look.

I put in a postrophias. Yes. No postrophias. I actually never noticed this until I was in the Wikipedia page. There's no postrophinic. So it's not the wake of Finnegan. It's Finnegan's plural. Wake.

It's like Finnegan's comma. Wake exclamation mark. And there's a character called Finnegan in it. And I believe he's being resurrected. So it's like, he's waking up. So shouldn't he be the main character? I haven't read it either, but I would assume if it's called Finnegan's wake, and you've got a Finnegan. Well, there are quite a few Finnegan's. I don't know. Oh, really? I thought that Finnegan's was just referring to, was like pluralised to be confusing

and referred to like Irish people generally, but are there multiple Finnegan's? Well, there are multiple Finnegans. I think the collective Irish group, being called Finneguns, is the most common explanation for the lack of apostrophe. Right. Some people think it's so that the word wake can mean the awakening and also the wake has enough to someone die, so it gives you a nice little bit of uncertainty. Some people think it was a fuck up by Samuel Beckett who did it. Wait, sorry? Samuel Beckett? so what's his pre-freeder? no well Joyce kind of um but what do you call it with someone speaks it's you

in dictated it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah certainly some of it are you mixing transcribing and dictating? oh perhaps what's the difference you would dictate to someone and then they transcribe what you're saying? Oh, I see, yes. I think Joyce was dictating. I think Joyce was dictating. And Betty was transcribing excellent points. Just maybe five minutes in the edit. Maybe they won't, no, maybe it was always the other way around and Beckett wrote it.

I'm like, don't put my name on that. I don't want to be cursed. I'm a story where Beckett is dictating and there's a knock on the door and James Joyce says, come in and Beckett just racked come in in the middle of the story. Oh really? So that was from a biography of Joyce which where he interviewed Beckett and Beckett said this happened but if you look in the text and just control if you don't have to read the whole thing but if you look in the

text and look for the phrase come in there is no place where it's just like an interjection where it doesn't belong. So either Beckett made it up or maybe it actually happened and then later on he thought, you know what, that was stupid, I'm going to take that out. Right. Not sure what happened. Or an editor was like, I don't think there was much of an editor because there was loads of typos in all of Joyce's work, wasn't that. And that's something that's really interesting because I was reading an article where they're saying

that basically the way you can read Joyce now, people have been trying to make sense of this book so much that they've employed different ways of cleaning it up in order to make sense of it. So there's a version out there where people have taken all the typos out, so it kind of reads a bit more smoother and you're not going what the hell is this word. There's a digital version now

where basically everything is hyperlinked. Oh. Therefore, you can get an understanding of everything and you find yourself using it as a repository of all knowledge. It's basically a weird encyclopedia where you just go, oh, cool. I'm now learning about this random thing by clicking on it. So they keep trying to turn it into something useful. But it's not.

But it's not. Ultimately, it's just not in its own thing. And the words that he made up in it, there's a 100-letter long word on the first page, which is the sound of a thunder clap that was heard at the fall of the Garden of Eden. Are you going to give us a word? Yeah, I would give it boom does the same job.

That would have been your first thing as an editor. Right, a boon, opening word. Life would be more difficult for the vengabys if no one had invented the word boon when they had to do this for title. It was reused by Sylvia Plath in the Bell jar, that word. That word, right? Yeah, yeah. Can I see it written down? Yeah, it's there. You're thinking about using that in your next children's book, aren't you? I'm trying the title. It depends if you're on a word count for being paid, number of words, or whether you're paid, number of letters. Yeah. Useful words as well that he made up, which we've already mentioned before, but quark, quark is from

Fiddigan's Wake. Yeah. The scientific word. It's from, there's a line in it that goes three quarks for muster mark, and then quarks can cluster together in threes to form other. So that's where. I think Murray Galman works, it's called them quarks. And he always had this idea of their called quarks. And then he saw the word quark in Finnegan's wake where it clearly rhymes with mark, but even though he spelt it in the same way that he joisted, he always pronounced it quark. Do you think he really tediously corrected people whenever they refer to it? It's really interesting because I always call them quarks, having studied physics,

and I think 75% of physicists say quark rather than quark. I can't believe as many as 25% are doing the pretentious. This is what he wanted quark for. I thought we were. Come on physicists. This is very like the laser loser. So laser is an acronym. Uh-huh. Like, I forgot what they is. Right, I'm the fight.

Yeah, and then some of the actually lights oscillating. So they should be called losers. But I've never heard that. I've never heard that. Nice. Oh, that's great. Joyce was particularly upset about World War II, wasn't he? I know none of us liked it, but it was a real bug for him

because it interrupted the publication of his book or he was worried it would get in the way. So as discussed, he spent 17 years writing it, which is not that long when you consider how long it takes to read, but he was realizing he was sold to getting close to the end in about 1936 and he was getting really stressed out about global conditions at one point. And he complained to a friend, look, the fact that the world is in such a bad state at the moment

is really stressful for me because I find it so hard to write, Bingo, anxious about it. And then when he handed in the manuscript in 1939, he said, please hurry, publishing it, because war's going to break out, and then no one will read my book anymore. That's not why. The thing is, if you're going to spend how long, 17, 18 years writing it, the chance of you, it would have to be in the high-end period of peace, wouldn't it? Like, there's no other time when you're not going to go into some war or other.

You're right. So, looking at what the longest book to read by pages rather than complexity. Oh yeah. So the longest novel in the Penguin classics and modern classics is In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. It is six volumes, 3616 pages. So in the time I would take you to read it, you could fly from London to Auckland and back again and then to Barbados. But only if you have to not take any breaks to read one page a minute for

that entire time. And page a minute. Yeah, I bought a copy of that thinking I would read it and it was absolutely massive. And I started and then I realised that I only had the first volume. If this is the first volume, there is no way in the world I'm going to read this. Years ago, I thought I'd read all of a twist and I said someone I've just finished all of a twist. And they said, oh, did you like the bit about Dodger's trial? And I said, what trial? And I'd have the bridge version and I didn't realise that. I missed out loads.

You read the transcript of the musical theatre version. Yeah, yeah. All of that exclamation mark. A lot of songs. Yeah. You read as part of fish research, or you started reading, curious if you finished, lay a miss. I started reading so many things as a part of this research.

In fact, I started reading the woman in white a few weeks ago, still haven't got to be under that. But yeah, Lamez, I got most of the way for it, but I didn't finish it. Well, Lamez is 365 chapters, so you can read one a day. It's quite neat, but not an elite year. Or you can have a day off. Interesting. James, if you ever saw about reading fiction for pleasure rather than for the podcast,

I think you might get to the end of more books. I really struggle. I can't say. I really struggle to read fiction for pleasure these days. Really? Because I read so much nonfiction for my job. I need like a year off. What you need is a book club because I started doing a book club and it does force you

to read. Yeah, and it forces you to read, you know, things that you might not have new books that have come out that people have been so that's the idea of fiction that you're forced to read stuff or that's why you do it. Just it calves out the time for you to know which is interesting. Accountability. Yeah. Aren't you in the same book club as Andy though?

I think I've heard about some of the books. Is it just Andy's book every week? It is. Yeah, it does feel like a post-apocalyptic world that I'm living in every time we share. That was your best book you'd discovered through a book club. Sylvie Plast the Bell jar, which I love her poetry and I've never read the book. I have never read it. Did you remember this?

I haven't read that book and so I was going off Wikipedia that this word was in it. I think it is true. Weirdly, I don't remember the word, but you know, you don't remember every detail. Well you might remember a hundred letters of word. It was a suit to the typo? You know, also when you're on a deadline for book club, it's like fantastic. What a great one.

It's like the fast lane. Zoom me forward. It's like the fast lane. It's like a travel later. It's like a travel later. Are they all good? Aren't you in a book club? No, I'm not.

But I think what I would like to be in one four is that discovering books that you might not know about. So I've got some friends who are just so, so good at book recommendations and really good at like personalizing it to what you like to read So I read an article years ago saying that actually there's an argument that you shouldn't read books that win prizes And the argument being that if you say you're not into Russian high society and agriculture Why would you suddenly be so just because it won't surprise so actually it can put you off books? Would actually if you go in and say You're just vibing war on piece there. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. But what if you aren't into agriculture, aren't into Russian high society, but are into people being hit by trains? What do you? Then I reckon there's somewhere at a bookshop with that's the category. Here and these podcast.ky.com email-pinging. If you were a sound day, you spoil it in. Well, that's good that we're bucking a trend a bit, you being in a book club, Dan,

and I, in fact, am in a book club, and not because it's extraordinary. I know we know that it's mostly women, but it's 88% of book clubs in America at least are all women. And women generally read quite a lot more fiction than men. And book clubs are so popular these days as well. I think since Oprah Winfrey's book club, they've shops up. I think there was a survey of women who read at least one book a month that found over half of them were in book clubs,

which makes sense because when you're reading that often. Well, here's a really interesting thing. I went to a publishing party, not too long ago, and there was an author there who I'd met whose book came out the same time as mine. She had an American release. It was a fiction novel called Wayward Brilliant and she was a New York Times bestseller. And she's an Australian who moved over here. She's it's her first debut book. I said, how? How? You weren't even in America. How did that happen? Book clubs. She said publishers desperately try and put their books

in positions to get them into book clubs, because if you do, you're a New York type. I mean, I see so you sell it 30 a time, rather than like massive. And how do you, what you go around, like, asking people, are you in a book club? So you give away a lot of free books and stuff online as ebooks and then it gets a reputation

and then book clubs pick it up and reach with a spoon as the other massive book club in America. They also do mean big famous book clubs. Sorry, you reach with a spoon is the other massive book club in the in America Also do you mean big famous book club? Yeah, yeah, sorry You don't mean just like my book club. No, people will not be like Probably them as well. Yeah, probably them as well. Yeah, just books that are like heavily marketed or promoted Do you know where the biggest book club in the world is the biggest in the world? Okay? Contender contender. I'm gonna say Iceland because they're famously they they all write books and read novels

So I should have checked all the book club accounts but I'm going with volume. I'm going with the digital world. Book talk. So this is the book club version of TikTok. Oh, okay. So they believe that book talk has sold 20 million books in 2021. It's huge. There's this huge huge book. Yeah, and they'll say like TikTok, they may be, TikTok made me buy it and it's like these books are just really drive through TikTok. So much so that they've launched the TikTok book awards this year. And what I love about this is because TikTok, I guess, is so many people,

they're not just books that came out this year that were popular in one job by one sort of person. And if they gave them a word to Jane Austen, she got revival. Really? So it's like really new stuff, really old stuff. Can I ask you, sorry, for like older listeners, not myself, obviously, but for other people who might not really know what TikTok is, can you explain how that works?

It's not just one book club where everyone reads the same thing. So TikTok is video sharing and I'm guessing everybody who uses the hashtag book talk and can see what they're talking about, the things sort of trend and build. And I guess what's nice about it is if you read a book that you love it and no one else has, you can find someone who's made a video and see what they say about it Where's a five red one book and no one else I know is read it and that to be fair So there's I finish a book and I'll go on to goodreads just to see what people have said and see if I agree with them Oh, yeah, we see yeah definitely

She was a good like twisty end and I'm like to understand that What actually happened? I'm going check I have a mental reasoning question for you Really? I love these Going back to Oprah's book club. Yeah.

So it's founded in 1996. And her, the idea was that it would be high brow, quite high brow literary options that she chose. So she said great books in there, like William Fulton, Tony Morrison, Cormac McCarthy. So really good books over the years. And every time she makes a choice,

it pretty much becomes a bestseller. Yeah. It's like rockets at the top of the charts. It doesn't exist anymore, I think it stopped in about 2010 or something. But whenever she chose a book, book sales actually after that decreased. Do you mean book sales more generally? General book sales decreased. Okay, this is why. Everyone wanted to buy this one particular book. It went out of print really quickly, and no one bought anything else, because they were waiting for that one to come back into print.

Interesting. Interesting, not correct. Oh, good guess, though. Paper shortage. It used up so many trees that... Half of the Amazon opened responsible for destroying, actually. No, it's specifically about the fact that she chose quite high-brow options but appealed to an audience that wouldn't necessarily be

reading things like that all the time. Okay, so you're... It's been more time reading. She got it. So let's run them by two bucks, you buy one and we debt for two weeks. Exactly. These people who are buying three books a week and pacing through them. They're suddenly

reading the sound and the fury and spending three weeks in it. That's really good. So really everyone should be buying much shorter books and getting through more of them. How long is your book there? 345 pages, but it's a very big font. My mind is a children's book, so it's a bit short. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Okay, good to know, incredible. Useful knowledge. Yeah. Is it?

Are you gonna start with Rint single? I'm not gonna start chugging beans, because I just wanna be more farting. So this comes from an article on the website, Serious Eats, and they partnered with Harvard Science of Cucking Programme and looked at the farting of various beans and stuff like that, and to see if there were any ways to decrease the effect.

And they looked at various old wives' tales of how you do this, like you soak your beans for ages. This would not be a can of beans, for instance. You might soak your beans for ages and then cook them in a certain way and see that made it. I like that I do someone soaking their high and spate beans. I've always soaked beans, so yeah, I'm left with my overnight. They might be cooking them with bay leaves or something like this. Nothing really made any difference, but they looked at tend beans,

and they did find actually that rinsed beans from a 10, 20% less farty than un-rinsed, and that the liquid you throw away is 30% fartier than the beans are themselves. Wow. And why? So it seems like it kind of seeps into the juice. Right.

And also, the beans say kind of disintegrate, the longer they're in there. And the more fatie ones are the ones that disintegrate. The hard ones that you just kind of go straight through you, they don't disintegrate. Right. And so yeah, it's the fartiness seems to just get into the juice somehow. That's so interesting.

I think some things probably work, right? Like there are some things that could counteract the fartiness. There's kombu, the Japanese seaweed that you get in like kombudashi. It's an ingredient of that. And that has these enzymes that break down the sugars in beans when you eat them. So the reason that beans make you fart is because you can't digest the stuff in them

but the bacteria in your stomach can, right? And then the bacteria as it digests it releases these gases and I believe that kombu manages to break down those sugars so the bacteria doesn't have as much to eat and fart out. Correct. And so if you add this seaweed to everything, that might work. Might do. Give it a go.

I actually, you mentioned my book before, I wrote about a guy who tried to stop farts from being produced off the back of beans. Yeah, he did. Yeah, wonderfully, man called Colin Leaky. And Colin Leaky is the son of Mary and Lewis Leaky who were the great anthropologists who discovered all these hominid skeletons throughout history. So he had seen a report of NASA trying to make beans that could be sent into space

and not produce flatulence, so lose the fart stuff from beans. And he thought, yes, that would be amazing to do because if you could invent a bean that gave you less farts, you could have that in developing countries where they sometimes, you know, Crohn's disease, for example, beans are meant to be avoided. So there's a lot of health implications if you have a lot of wind in you.

So you thought, if I could invent a bean, that could be like a meat replacement. And then we could have safe eating that's going on for all these poorer countries. Okay. So he spent a lifetime doing that. And he did invent two beans, which are on sale and have been sent over, which are meat replacements and less flatulence. So he was a scientist who did great things, but my favorite thing is he patented an invention called the phlatometer, which was a device that slots into your rectum and there's a tube

coming out that connects to a balloon on the other end and you tuck the balloon into your shirt pocket and you just collect these. These are real inventions. It's bigger, bigger, bigger. Yeah, it's awesome. Kind of like the Viprofish. At the end of the day, you're like, well, I don real inventions. It's bigger, bigger, bigger. It's awesome. Kind of like the, uh, viper fish. At the end of the day, you're like, well, that's what children's party ever.

Yeah, the balloon dog you get given. Ah, so I was reading that they have measured how much volume a fart has. And they did it by feeding everyone beans, then using a rectal catheter to catch the fart. Would you like to guess the mills? How many mills are average fart? Oh, that's hard, isn't it?

Because it's a gas, so it spreads out quite a lot. So you would think it would be quite a high mills. Yeah, interesting. 572. What? I was going to say more like 20. You kind of, in the middle, 90. So we're putting your airport hand luggage. Not really, I'm going to do it.

I suppose it doesn't count as a liquid, does it, unless you've done a little bit of follow-through? Ah! Ah! Well, another useful thing, so I think it doesn't count as a liquid, does it, unless you've done a little bit of follow-through? Ah! Ah! Well, another useful thing, so I think it's invented, speaking of following through. A useful thing, so I think it's invented, is a machine that listens to your bottom and distinguishes a fart from a shot.

Ah! And I would argue you would know without a machine, whether that's happened. You do usually know, don't you? But often, often... But did they tell you before or after? It actually tells you when it's happened. Um...

Wait, is it more for when someone's done it, but you're with them and you say, was that a fart or a shard? They say no, it's just a fart, and then you go, let me get my machine out. Get to the bathroom, you filthy pig. It's meant to also detect more than that as well. So the idea is that you have this device. It's called the, and listen carefully,

the synthetic human acoustic reproduction testing, the shot. Oh, yeah. And basically, it's to give early warning of like coloractal cancers, things like that, bowel cancers, because it's thought that you might have changes in your flatulent sounds or in your poo sounds. And if it listens, it might then say, oh, your poo sound a bit different these days or your fart sound a bit weird, have you thought about getting checked out?

And so researchers listened to many hundreds of hours of audio of various pooing and farting noises and then tag them correctly to train the machine. Wow. And it can now identify whether something's urination, flatulence, solid defecation, or diarrhea, 98% of the time. So it's not at the super advanced level yet, I suppose, it's still at the stage of distinguishing a wee from a poo. But it's not that advanced.

If you play them, George Osborne's new podcast, it does suppose it's still at the stage of distinguishing a Wii from a Poo. But it's not that advanced if you play them George Osborne's new podcast it does say it's there. I was just thinking who I could slam if the podcast community wouldn't attack us or yeah. Good luck when he's on next week. How much do you think the cheapest can of beans you could buy in the UK was in 1996? Oh, 1996. Yeah. Like 4p? Yeah, a couple of p. A couple of p?

Yeah. The answer is negative 2p. If a you take them, why? I'll have 2 million. Did you get money back for returning the tin or something? No, this was just a crazy moment in retail where it was called the bean wars and basically they were just competing and competing to make the price lower to win the competition that it got to a point where there's one place which was called...

Supermarkets. Yeah, supermarkets and this place called Sanders Supermarket basically had a deal whereby... It's rising enough, just an existing anymore. So too many beans were left on the bus. But it went so low that they went into the negative. So if the beans were part of a shopping pile that you had, they took the 2p off. So if you're a final bill, if you were just buying the can of beans, they gave you 2p, but you could only do it for 1 tin. That was their thing. But there was a point where you were paid to leave a supermarket with a

canopy. This is when you want a sandwich and it's better to get the meal deal than so you're having to buy a drink as well and then your sandwich is cute. It is, but it's very rare that you can just take the drink from the meal deal and they'll pay you for it. The difference that you would have saved. That's incredible. That's incredible. That's something that's 7p. Do you think people went round lots of different supermarkets? Collecting as many pieces as they could. But if it's 2p and 1 tin something that's 7p. Do you think people went around lots of different supermarkets collecting as many pieces they could? If it's 2p and 1 10 it's quite limited.

So they probably lose less money than they would from like halfing the price of like catch up or 12 or all. Totally. Yeah. The price of petrol or bus fare to get to the shop is going to be more than 2p. So it's false economy to go around the country to all of these shops. I'm making 2p. But it would feel nice to get your two feet off

and get your three beans. Yeah, would God, I'm the kind of person who would just always do that for no particular reason. Don't you need that many beans? Just going to give a different hat so I'm to get more beans. Yes, I'm back again. Hines, I was on the Hines Factory website,

because they made beans. Yeah. And do you know the average number of beans in a Hines tin? Ooh, well what size? The normal size. Very three sizes. Okay, you class, wow, three. Oh yeah, you've got this mini one. Got the mini one, the full one, just think two hundred, four hundred, and then you've got a snack pot.

Oh, you're so right, yeah, sorry, I mean the... You know the one. Show you too much white, relax. And Anne mixes it up every day with a different one. Yeah, I'm going to mix it up and day with a different one. Yeah, I'm going to mix it up and have two small parts instead of one big part. 572. That's a good guess.

Which size did the re-establish? The 400s. The one everyone does. The mainstream one. Not your edgy lefty one. It's so hips to the knees there. Dream one. Not your edgy left feet on the right. 21. So hips to these days. Okay, in a standard size of beans.

I can't wait. You now don't know the answer. You've given your knowledge. You bought so much time. James, have I, did you say? I've hundred and seventy two. Okay, I'm going to go. You're so invested in this now.

I'm going to go four hundred and twenty four. Nice now. I'm going to go 424. Nice. Okay, then 365. And you have one, so I get one thing. I like Dan's idea of 365. It's like every day I'll have one meal and read one chapter of Laymas or other. It's 465 on average, but the reason I say that is because in 2019, a counsellor Steve Smith, in a break from cheating and cricket, got back. I thought I'd do think it's a different guy, probably. He got back from a residence meeting, and later at night, so I'll crack into a can of fine spake beans, and it was full of sauce and contained one bean.

I remember that. How crazy that I remember that. Do you remember that story coming out? Yeah, that's how farty he would be. I know. I can't agree and farty, it's the worst combo. I was very randomly, I was in an office the other day and in through the door came Greg Wallace who's in Master Chef, that guy.

That's weird. Yeah, he was like, there was no connection between us two being there. He came and walked up to me, just walked up to me and said, want to hear a bean fact? And I went, and I was like, okay, yeah, sure. I went, I must listen to fish. And he went, so at the bean factories, they have a laser which tests out good beans. And if they don't like it, they flick the bean off. And he was like, so they have a bean flicker at the thing.

And I was like, oh, great, that's so cool. We could use that on fish or ki, and he went, are you connected to that? So... I would have assumed this guy is really into food facts, you know? And he just tells anyone. He literally opened it all, looked me in the face, walked up to me and said, do you want to hear a bean fact? Of course, I can go with Steve. He goes, I was telling you, and he just tells anyone he literally opened it all looked me in the face walked up to me and said do you want to hear a bean Facts of course like I was here. Yeah, I'm genuinely would never have assumed that

People just come up to you randomly if it's great. I thought he knows he's famous He's like yeah, we're doing this to a randomer. I just thought I come across as the weird one Very self involved self-involved, that's all about my podcast. Craig Wallace is a bean guy. That's so weird. It just sound like a dream. It does happen. It does that though.

It happens. Would you like to hear a horrifying fart fact? Now we're approaching the winter months. So you know when on a cold day if you breathe out you can see your breath. Yeah. Well if you fart loudly enough you can see your fart on a full day, but not if you're wearing trousers. Yes, okay. But only a problem with like winning the poop.

Yeah, is that can win it? And I think I've read that story. Winning the poop on a windy day. That's what that was about. Yeah. Yes, another reason not to go out in public naked, eh? I never realized that. There must be footage on YouTube of people doing that, right? I haven't searched it but feel free to.

I will. I will. I rather think it might be on more specialist channels than YouTube. That's a damn lonely fan. Yeah, that's a new whole threat for me. Yeah, and wiki shots. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. We have now reached the by-and period of the podcast today. Thanks for joining us, Ad. Well, see you again soon. 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, you can find us on our social media accounts. I'm on Instagram at attriberland. James. Ah, still on Twitter at Jamesharkin. And? My Instagram is at and millerbooks. And if you want to get us as a group, Anna, where they go? You can email podcasts like qi.com. And you can also go to our website. No such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there.

Do check them out. There's also bits of merch. You can find club fish. All sorts of fun to be had there. Or just come back here next week. We'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then, goodbye. you