No Such Thing As A Fish - 530: No Such Thing As A Throbberthrob

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

James, Anna, Andy and Dan discuss YOUR facts, including donkey graffito, Zachary Quinto, Dvořák's tubas and baseball tubers. 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 and James here with an announcement. Yes, absolutely. It's a very exciting announcement for people who like coming to No Such Thing As A Fish tour shows live. Oh, I think I might have given it away. James, you fool. We were saving it for three minutes into the announcement. But James is right. We're going on tour! Ray so if you live in a large city in the UK or Ireland or some places on mainland Europe or excitingly in Australia or New Zealand then we may well be coming to a place near you quite soon. That's right it's a world tour if you have a very limited definition of what the world is

and it's basically like an earth sandwich tour. We're doing this antipode and we're doing the other antipode and it's going to be great. It's going to be between September and November. We should say that. There's months of touring. Yes and the reason that we're telling you today is that tickets are going to be on sale in one week's time. Yes. In seven days, you must go to no6thingsofish.com forward slash live, and all the details of our tour will be there, and you'll be able to snaffle up those best seats in the house.

The only way to get tickets faster is if you're a member of Club Fish, when you will receive bonus instructions in your forthcoming bit of extra material. What a great thing Club Fish sounds like. That's what I say. Anyway, we're going on tour around the world. It's going to be amazing. The other two will be there as well. It's not just me and James doing a world tour. It would be good.

Yeah, that would be great. And the great thing about going to Club Fish is not only do you get early access to tickets, but you get a much cleaner and more clear announcement than this. Oh yeah. Probably Anna and Dan will do it and it'll be so professional. Oh yeah, that's so slick. Yeah. So yes, that is our news. We are going on tour around the world to both antipodes. It's going to be a whole lot of fun and you guys can get tickets to come and see us by going to NotchItSingsOffish.com forward slash live any time

After Friday the 17th of May on Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm sitting here joined by Anna Tijenski, James Harkin and Dan Schreiber. But wait, Dan's normally the host. What's going on? It's all on Topsy Turvy. Don't worry everybody, it's an audience fact special.

Yay! Yay. Hooray. And it's because we have an inbox, podcastatqr.com and people send in all sorts of questions, comments, complaints, insults, praise sometimes, and also a lot of facts. And the facts are so good that we thought we'd just

take a show to go through some of the best ones, starting with audience facts section number one, and that is you, James. Yes, so thank you, Andrew. You have sent me a big pile of audience facts. So here's the first one that you sent me. Caro de Ken sent it. And she, he, they have an astrophysics PhD.

And they say that the more massive a white dwarf becomes, the smaller it gets. What? Riddle me this. We paid a sting for riddle me this. Really, I'll be honest, probably you're only gonna get this if you also have an astrophysics PhD. It's not really something you can guess. We're off the box with an unbelievably hard fact to understand.

Yeah, it's like you've sent me these on purpose, haven't you? I thought, who knows physics? And Dan's Out of Office was on. Is that why I've got all the Bigfoot facts in my world. That's right. They're Memphis names. Yeah, yeah. So in normal stars, you have fusion happening at the core. So you're getting elements turning into other elements and making energy.

But in white dwarfs, that doesn't happen. And so if you just put stuff into it, then there's nothing to stop gravity from just squishing them smaller and smaller and smaller. So it got more just... More massive. More massive, yeah. Because they've got more mass. Absolutely.

So it doesn't just... Did you say it looks smaller? Was that the way it's put in the fact? It's not only you look smaller, it is smaller. It is smaller. It's smaller physically. But it's heavier. But it's heavier.

It's more massive. You've got to be careful with words like heavy, haven't you? You never know. Yeah, you can't do that. There are physicists waiting around every corner ready to jump out and beat you up. It's actually not heavier, it's more massive. You can't do that. You never know if you're gonna apply that. There are physicists waiting around every corner ready to jump out and beat you up. It's actually not heavier, it's more massive. I get that a lot.

I just want 100 grams of Gobstoppers. You know how I spend my pocket money, that's great. Caro goes on. This one is bonkers in my opinion. After a certain distance, the further away something is from earth the bigger it looks Okay, so Dan you see that cow out of the window. Yeah, look small. That's actually far away Yeah, right, but it looks small because it's further away

But if you take it far enough away, it'll start to get bigger. Is that because it's coming around the back? Someone's left the gate open. Well I have this, I've not said this to you guys before, but I have this thing outside my house where when I turn to the left I can see the seafront and I can see ships and they're massive. But then when I walk down to the edge of the cliff, they are further away. But that's just because they've moved away from you. No, no, no. It's a genuine, it's a horizon effect it's called. Because you're seeing it from the top of a cliff versus the bottom. Yeah.

Oh, I see. Yeah, that makes sense. But they're huge. And then you go down and they're literally, sometimes they feel twice the distance and twice the size. And you're sure you're not looking at the dinghies that are on the seafront. That's not tiny. And someone's peddling them. I didn't know that was a thing. That was really interesting. I don't understand it. It's magic. I don't get it.

But I've been told by people like Leven Skara, it's a real thing. That's cool. That's very cool. He knows his shit. So the thing is with galaxies, if you go far enough away, you're looking at something that was sending out its light quite near the start of the universe. The whole of the universe was quite small in those days. So if you're looking at something in the sky,

if you're an astronomer, you're working out how much of the sky it's using up. But these things that are way, way further away are using up more of the sky because actually space itself was smaller. That's incredible. So confusing. That's incredible.

I was speaking to an astrophysics student recently who said, there are some things in the sky that appear in three different places. Depending on, I can't remember what it was depending on. It's depending on what time of day it is. And the sun is in the east now. And how much you've had to drink as well. That was the other factor. They're baffling these facts.

They're so baffling. The reason that they messed it up for us is when scientists decided about 100 years ago that space and time are sort of the same but sort of different. So the thing you're looking at is long- Are you talking about Einstein here? He screwed it up for everyone, didn't he? He made it a bit of a headfuck. Yeah, well things were certainly easier when it was just how long does it take this apple to fall out of the tree and land on my head?

Exactly. It certainly was. I feel like we started quite difficult. Yeah, can you give us an easy one? Andrew Lillier says, cicadas pee in jets, not droplets. That's nice. What does that mean? Well, imagine you're urinating. I pee in a jet, don't I?

I can't say for sure, but as a human, probably. It depends how much you've had to drink, that's the thing. Right. Old men pee in droplets, I've heard. So the thing is that most insects feed on sap, but cicadas drink so much sap that peeing in droplets doesn't work. And so they have to pee out in streams because they've just got so much of this stuff inside them. Oh my goodness. They just need to get rid of it. So it becomes more energy effective to pee in a stream than in drops and cicadas are actually the smallest animals that pee in streams. Are they? Yeah. Get on them. Okay. What a niche record for them to have. Think they're proud of that?

And has this been discovered by scientists who are looking into using it, I'm guessing for a big military application somehow. Yeah, that's absolutely right. This will be used in the next war. No, it's like in any science, you learn something and you find the applications later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true. Just thinking of cicadas' penises or other genitals, it's reminded me of a phrase I learned just the other day, which is a bee's dick.

Have you heard that? Is it like the bee's knees only a bit? No, it's a unit to describe a very small distance. So you would say it's an Australian term. I miss crashing into the truck by a bee's dick. Of course it's an Australian term. Of course it is so Aussie. Do we know? I'm sure we've mentioned on the show at some point, but do we know if that's a fair comparison? As in, do bees have proportionally small penises? I think regardless, they are small and so it's the size of a bee's dick that's an incredibly tiny distance. I can just see bees objecting to that on proportionate grounds. Fair do. Fair do. The most Australian thing you've ever said. It's the most Australian thing you've ever said. Carl Hepokoski writes about a guy called Dave Bresnahan, who was a minor league baseball

player and he used a peeled potato in the sport. And what he would do is he would grab the potato and throw it. And so the opponent thought that he was throwing the ball but actually he kept the ball concealed about his person and then in baseball one way to get someone out is if you tag them with the ball when they're between bases and the other person thought well he can't possibly do that because he's just thrown it he's like aha that was a potato that I threw. Classic move. So he wasn't allowed to do that? Well the interesting thing is I don't think it was against the rules but it was against the spirit of the rules. I think that's fair, I do think that's fair. I think there was

a thing in cricket once where W.G. Grace who's the most, maybe the most famous cricketer of maybe of all time, certainly the 19th century, he was a legend. I think he caught the ball in his jumper when he was batting and then just kept running around with the ball on him or about his person. It wasn't in his beard but he did have a great big beard. It's a beard, come on. I can't remember for sure. But basically he was just running back and forth, scoring lots of runs because he was the ball at that moment.

But then if someone grabbed him. Exactly, it hadn't touched the ground. Yeah, the ball hadn't touched the ground. Oh, that's a good point, he could be caught out. So maybe he just ended up running like just elsewhere. Yeah, he ran over the boundary line in the end and got six. Got six, yeah. It's a lot like in the sports book, in fact,

which you and I have recently written, James. Oh yeah, what was that? Just remind what it's called again. It's called A Load of Old Balls, actually. That's what the paperback's called, but it's not available yet. It's coming out soon, but it's not available, this is gonna go out before that.

So it's called Everything to Play For, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. Actually, it's not available yet. But it's not available. This is going to go out before that. So it's called everything to play for actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. Actually it's not part of the title. It's not a Richard Curtis S-clan. No, it's called everything to play for full stop. And we do mention that the Carlisle Indians were an American football team at the turn of the 20th century and they had pictures of football sewn into all of their jerseys

so that no one on the opposing team knew which one was the actual ball. And we portrayed that as quite an ingenious move. So yeah, that's amazing. I think I'm pro the potato. Okay. Yeah. Baseball, they do do this all the time.

What you need is for whoever's standing on base, let's say you're on second base while the pitcher is about to throw. Does that mean you're snogging the pitcher? Yeah. Yeah. It means you're touching him downstairs, but on the surface. Okay. So pitchers about to pitch towards the badder. In that time, the person who is on second base

can walk forward away from the pad on the ground, right? So the deal is if the ball touches you and you're not with a foot on a pad, then you can be out, right? So that's when they use the tricks. So they sometimes have weird beanbags in baseball, and I don't know the specific use, but that's often been used as a decoy baseball as well. So you would do a huddle and then you'd come out of the huddle and the person marking the base would have the ball in their hand, but the pitcher would look as if they had the ball, but it was this beanbag. I think it's all, this is all about unsportsmanlike. I have to say, I, I,

it's like playing football, but then if you had one giant toe on your foot and then you sort of drew, pentacons and hexagons all over it. Or if we were playing ice hockey and I secretly slice up a black pudding before the match. And then at some point I release all the slices. Yeah. You know, it's mayhem. Does it count if I score with a black pudding slice? Yeah, it does not. Yeah. That's pretty clear, isn't it? Yeah. I don't think anything's clear in this new world of shadow sport that we've been introduced to. Do you know why they use pucks in ice hockey? Because they didn't originally. Do they start with balls? Yeah, because it was based on an old sport that had balls. Is it because?

Oh, because they wouldn't snowball. They wouldn't, if they were rolling, they would gather. So many avalanches. I'll be honest, if you're playing ice hockey on the snow, that's probably the least of your problems. The ball's going nowhere. What happens to a ball when you hit it really hard on ice? It goes up, slides.

That's it, isn't it, James? It goes up. It's so they didn't go ice. It goes up, slides. That's it isn't it James? Goes up. So they didn't go up. Make it safer really, but it meant it stayed down on the ice the whole time. Puck slide. And the original way they made one was by taking a rubber ball

and cutting off the top and the bottom so that it was a flat disc. Really? Right. Just a heads up, I'm pretty sure my description scenario of that whole thing with the bean bag was from the movie Rookie of the Year,

which is a fantastic movie, regardless, but that was a tactic used in that when Henry's arm suddenly doesn't have the force anymore. Scream maybe check it out. I think I've seen that. It's awesome. It's about a kid who gets a magic arm to play baseball. I can't believe I've seen one of your weird awful films. He breaks his arm and they in the cast tightens it too much and has the greatest movie line where they take the cast off and they discover his big arm and it slaps the doctor's nose and he goes

funky butt loving Finest line. So he says what? Funky butt loving. Wow. Why have you never used that on the show? We use it at home now. We watched it the other day. He does say it but I always bleep it out because it's spilf. Doesn't he he throws a ball through someone else's hand? He gets such a powerful throwing arm that it just leaves a sort of comedy cut out hole. That's actually incredibly upsetting. And we don't stay with that character who just had a ball thrown through his body. Does that not happen? No it doesn't.

Maybe it's through his glove. It's through his glove I think. But if you go through the middle of the glove you're also going through the middle of the hand. It looks like he's going to lose at least a couple of fingers and it just is glossed over. No that might be from the movie Ed which stars Matt LeBlanc who brings a... There's two separate films about magic baseball for us.

Yeah well he brings a monkey and a chimp as a player of the team. How is that the height of friends. It's gone lowbrow since that physics chat hasn't it? Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Hi everyone, we'd like to let you know that this week we're sponsored by ExpressVPN. That's right, we're sponsored by ExpressVPN. So here's something mind-blowing. When you search for something on Netflix, what you get is only a fraction. The tip of the iceberg

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Let's say Anna, what have you got? I've got one from Gwen Wilkie. Oh, yeah. And this is incredible. I didn't know about this. She's written in about industrial musicals. We ever talked about these? I've not heard of that.

I think so. They are big budget musical theatre productions, massively expensive, that were put on entirely in private by big capitalist corporations in the middle of the 20th century. And she actually cited a podcast called 20,000 Hertz, which I might listen to, which looks like it's a podcast about really interesting sounds, lots of interesting sounds. Anyway, between I think, it was sort of the 1940s, the 1980s, companies like Ford and General Electric and Coca-Cola put on Broadway style productions, but just to their employees as a sort of team bonding experience. And they were, I was looking into this a bit more, there was one in 1957, which was the Chevrolet musical, and it cost six times

the amount it took to put My Fair Lady onto the stage that same year. What? And this is just a musical that's been shown to Chevrolet employees somewhere. What? In order to make them feel like they're part of a big old company. I can see that that's a good thing, but could you not just take them bowling? Take them to see My Fair Lady at a sixth of the price. Yeah, it would be less expensive but doesn't make you feel like you're part of such a big operation. Wow. There were shows like The Bathrooms Are Coming, which

was a 1969 show put on by American Standard Plumbers. There was Diesel Dazzle by General Motors in 1966. That one is quite good. It's alright isn't it? Worth making a big budget musical out of it. So it seemed to start when I look further into it in the early 20th century when companies would have these songs that were written and performed in house just individual songs for them. So like the Larkin Soap Company released its own songbook of songs they'd written. Oh as a basically team building exercises. Again team building and they get together and sing, they'd get a choir in, they'd get a little orchestra.

I like this. I think maybe we should write our own musical. Shall we? And then drain QI's budget. Only allow our colleagues to listen to it. Yes. Yes. Okay.

I think probably no one else would want to. In fact, I'd be surprised if our colleagues sat around until the end. Playing all the roles in this musical as well. I guess so. I think we'll have to. Yeah, but you can do the old like paint half of your face, you know, as Dr. Dolittle and not Dr. Dolittle. Hamlet.

Henry Dolittle. Henry Dolittle. Eliza Dolittle. Oh Eliza Dolittle. Sorry. And Henry, whatever he's called. Higgins. Higgins, yeah.

Unless it was Dr. Dolittle the musical. We could put that on. Based on the Eddie Murphy movie. I love, and that's crying out for a musical, I think. Okay. Yeah. I think what there was a Dr. Dolittle movie was, had songs in it. The Rex Harrison one. He talks to the animals. That was it. Absolutely. That might be one of my favorite facts we've ever done on the show was I think it was yours, Andy. Rick Harrison, the giraffe at the movie. Excellent. Filming was stopped because it accidentally stood on its penis.

That's right. The giraffe stood on its own penis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I wish I was a bee. Anyway, yeah. Amazing fact there from Gwen Wilkie.

I have another fact. This is from Michelle or Michaela Compery. And this is that the tuba part for Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony is very bad. That's not the end of the fact. Well, it's very bad in that it's extremely short. So it's a very long symphony. It's like 40 minutes symphony. The tuba part is just 14 notes. It's seven notes at the start of one of the movements, seven notes at the end. Okay. Oh my God.

So it, I don't know if you guys have been in orchestras and stuff, but you're basically for the entire rest of the piece just going one, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two, three, four, 765, two, three, four. Yeah. That's absolutely correct. Why might he have done this? This could be guessable.

The composer? Yeah, Dvorak. Because he was in love with the tuba player. And wanted exactly the opposite answer. He hated the tuba player. Sorry, the clue of the opposite. No, I understand that. But you guided Dan to the right answer. He hated the tuba player. Sorry, the clue of the opposite. No, I understand that. Yeah. But you guided Dan to the round. So he hated the tuba player specifically because he thought he was having an affair with his wife and they were about to go on tour. I think with this, you know, this new piece he'd written the tuba player or was the tuba player was getting quite close to his wife. And he thought I'm going to have to take this tuba player away with me. So he quickly shoved in 14 notes of tuba as a lovely punishment for this guy.

That's amazing. And dragging it away from his wife. I couldn't find much first-hand evidence of it online although it is repeated by conductors and the like a lot. It's a great idea. It is but it is a bizarre quirk. You get tuba players the world over talking about it saying why on earth has he forced us to sit through this 40 minutes for the sake of seven notes at one end and seven notes at the other.

And you can't be on your phone, can you, when you're in the orchestra and the audience is all there. You can't just go and play snake for 40 minutes. Can you? I don't know. Maybe it's all changing. I like to think your head there was like, you can't be on your phone. You're like, oh, Dvořák wouldn't have had iPhones.

Maybe he had a Nokia 3310. I'll say play snake. I genuinely couldn't think of anything more modern to be doing on my phone. That New World Symphony is from the Hovis adverts, isn't it? It's not from the Hovis adverts. That's where George R.R. got the idea. He was in love with a lady baker. That little boy who walks up the street with his bike, he was having an affair with his wife. Wow. That one. That's Coronation Street.

I think he goes... Sorry, and that's Puccini. Yes. I think it goes... Oh yeah! Sorry, I'm a little late. I know, I hope he's had... I got it, yeah. A lovely piece of music, that's right.

It is good, It's very nice. Tuber controversial. Sibelius refused to write for the tuba after his tuba player turned up drunk. He just completely mangled the part and Sibelius went sod this. Well, so no, he's punishing all tuba players with a loss of income. So is it more as well that you travel as a band? Is this like you would have your unit that would do all your tours, all your, you know, it's the same supporting band. So he was like, yeah, yeah. But as you know, Dan, why do orchestra players need music? I bet the cheaper player still has the sheet music out there to know when they've got to play. No memories. They're no Springsteen's,

are they? Oh dear. I don't think I got that reference. That's a very deep cut. When you're on that leave, I thought, Bassoon Gate. Dan claimed that, what was the claim you made? It was a joke, which then became serious as I got angrier about the response to it.

It was basically that if you're in U2, you can learn all the songs easily. You don't need sheet music, so why does a bassoon player in an orchestra need sheet music? We were talking about this amazing... No, you were on the show! You brought the fact in, you were about the first female conductor and she took all the sheet music away from her. Yeah, that was me. Yeah, and I was just saying, isn't that amazing that you just shut down as an orchestra,

as soon as the music's gone, the sheet music. Christ, I've blanked that out. Well, it was from Eric. You weren't here for the sheet music. Christ, I've blanked that out. Well, you weren't here for the fallout. You weren't here for every episode of Drop is Aligned for the subsequent year. Right. We had a lot of bassoon player cross-borders. I think we've heard from every bassoonist on the planet.

It was great. That's great. I'm so happy I missed that. Actually, there is a reference to a show that I did miss. This is from Teo Tamashiro Harris, who said that on the most recent episode, which is no longer the most recent, Olga Koch talked about French kissing in a Swedish tables. You guys remember talking about that? I think it'll be about the fact that French kissing

is called French kissing, Swedish tables called Swedish tables. And she was talking about an Irish goodbye or an English goodbye. It's when you don't say goodbye to anyone, you just walk off. There you go. And this person said, they reminded that in Spanish, the word for roller coaster is Russian mountain. I didn't know that was what it was in Spanish, but I think we probably mentioned

because Russian mountains were the original roller coasters, right? Big ice slides that used to go up. Yeah. Oh, so you would just push people down and that would be the ride. Yeah, it's like a roller coaster, but it's a big sort of like a ski jump. Yeah, right.

And this was like 17th century, I think. 17th, 18th century. And then this person said that in the course of researching this, which I like, cause they obviously just went quite deep, they found out that the Russian word for roller coaster is American Hill How tall these be do you know 21 meters is a height that's

It depends on the gradient of the slope that's true. Yeah, that could be terrifying or it could be incredibly dull. So boring. It's 200 meters long and who cares? Give us another one. Okay, here's another good one that I didn't know about and should have gone in our sports book. This is from Alan Dimmock. What's that cop? No. Everything to play for.

Alan Dimmock says that the England captain, he means the rugby England captain, is meant to write a letter every year asking rugby schools permission to wear white. Really? I didn't know this. I didn't know that. It's meant to, so is it still held up? Apparently the rule faded in early 2000s.

That's a long time to keep it going. I mean that's a 100 years of actually doing that every year. Yeah, quite irresponsible to let it lapse actually. Yeah, I think Martin Johnson didn't know how to write. Wow. That's such a specific slam that I don't know. I'm kind of guessing that that was his name. I'm not even sure because I don't really follow Ruby Union. I think it was. It is Martin Johnson. And actually you might be right because he, Martin Johnson, remember the days when you would call. So he made phone calls to rugby school.

I'm really sorry, Martin Johnson. It was like, it was just a natural joke and yours was the first name that came into my head. Cause you're a rugby player. You're a lot bigger than me. Yeah. I mean, at least Dan had the sense to pick on bassoon players. Oh no, we're going to get emails from gigantic bassoon players now. The England rugby team orchestra is going to get in contact. Okay. Well, that's great All right. It's one more amazing one This is from Robin who says that the earliest known picture of Jesus depicts him as a donkey Wait, but no, he got a donkey to Jerusalem That's a misconception. It was the donkey. That is a good that's a great thing. It's not quite true. Actually, I think it was like was it like

graffiti kind of thing? It absolutely was a Graffito, the Alexi Menos Graffito in Rome. And it was actually an insulting thing. But this is the earliest picture we have. And it was scratched onto a wall in Rome in the second century. Graffito. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

But like the council, I'm not going to send anyone if you complain about the Graffito. And rightly so. Well there's a Banksy Graffito quite near my house. But like, the council are not going to send anyone if you complain about the graffiti. And rightly so. Well, there's a Banksy graffiti quite near my house. There you go. Yeah. I 100% said to my wife, should we go and see the graffiti? Of course we did. And she refused.

Yeah, it was scratched into a wall and underneath it, it said something like, in Latin, obviously, you know, here is the person that Alexe Menos worships. And it shows someone worshiping a donkey being crucified. Oh, I've seen that. Yes. You've seen it. I've seen someone do a reproduction of it if it doesn't exist anymore. Can I give you a Jesus fact? Yeah. Which I learned this morning, you know, they have the apocrypha. So these are like in the gospels, there's Matthew, Matt, Luke and John, but actually loads of other gospels were written, and they didn't make it into the final Bible. They didn't make the edit. A publisher really hacked. In one of them the Virgin Mary's vagina makes your hand wither if you touch it.

Gosh. Who's touching it? The midwife. Oh. Yeah, Salome the midwife. But that's very unfair. Is it a punishment? Yeah, basically because she was a virgin, the Salome the midwife is like, well, I'm going to check if you're a virgin and did whatever gynecologists in the first century AD did in those situations. And it was such a bad thing that her arm withered away. And actually it grew back when she touched the baby Jesus. Oh, did it? Wow. But hang on. What? That's not fair. Isn't it, isn't it meant to protect the Virgin Mary from people with, with sort of bad intentions towards her or? Oh, you

think it was like, oh, I see. Defense mechanism basically. It's sort of like, no wonder she's a virgin. If that's what happens to you, if you start trying to upset me, you wouldn't, you'd have to really love her, wouldn't you? No, no, it's not withered darling How can we don't see that as part of the the birth depiction of Jesus where they're all happy there's all the three wise men And there's just a screaming midwife with a melting hand like she's in Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end Where's that scene? I think you've answered your own question because the primary schools are not going to go for it, are they?

Yeah, I guess so. Great news. Mom and Dad are big cast in the Nativity Play. Okay, it's time for our next facts and those come come from, or should I say via, Don Trevor. Yep. So the first fact, this was sent in by Sarah Gaffin and her son, Harry Gaffin. And the fact is, the great grandfather of the actor who plays Spock was literally a son of Vulcan. Oh, right. Sounds like we're in Riddle Corner now.

This is awesome. So Leonard Nimoy? Not Leonard Nimoy. Oh, I thought I was getting in with an easy point. Bust out your bit of Star Trek knowledge. So in the remake movies of Star Trek, Spock was played by Zachary Quinto. Zachary Quinto did in America, I think, I don't know how long it's been there. It feels like it's quite recent, but who do you think you are is now in America. And one

of the revelations that they found out is that his great grandfather, who's called PJ McGardee, and he was very active in a thing called the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, but they were originally known as the Sons of Vulcan. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Vulcan, the god of the forge and fires. Yeah, but this is, it gets even better. So this is 1899.

So we're talking a long, long time before Star Trek was ever a thing. He also was someone who used to write for the official organ of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. And one of the pieces that he published ends with the phrase, may it live long and prosper. No. Yeah. What? No, that's not possible. It is possible. Well, then there is a God. Well, there you go. Isn't that incredible? Is a dork.

Wow. Amazing. Do you think Zachary Quintel maybe went to the audition with all this information and said, you've got to give me the part. Yeah, you think so. You would hope so, but it turns out that this was a revelation in the show. He's, there's quotes of him going, that's crazy. That's insane. Now it was pointed out to him that that connection of may it live long and prosper. Yes, that's extraordinary.

However, that was a phrase that was in use at the time. So yeah. So there was a stage play of Rip Van Winkle Which it's possible that old PJ McArdle was able to see but you know, like that doesn't take anything away from it Exactly. Exactly. That's an extraordinary coincidence Yeah, so Sarah and Harry that's awesome. Thank you for sending that in. Yeah More more more facts. Let's go to another one. This is from Jonas Belfridge.

And he says, grasshoppers have existed almost 200 million years longer than grass. Lovely. Lovely. What were they called? Hoppers. Yeah. No, we, yeah. So grasshoppers date back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago But fossil findings have indicated that grass evolved around 55 million years ago So yeah, so they were there far longer before they

Absolutely classic qi slash fish Love the things which existed before the other things like the button hole. No the button existed But I'm home., a couple hundred years. It's a little bit, no, we did a few weeks ago. Yeah, basketball nets. You name it. They didn't exist before the basket. Yeah, basketball nets existed before basketball nets. The train tunnel existed before the train.

Oh, yes. Which I cut out of this week's show. What? That's fair enough. Send in more. I'd love a list of those. Was just weird when you find out when bits of earth arrived, right? I remember Ash who did our theme tune.

He used to have a petrified bit of wood that sat in his house. It's hundreds of million years old. And he would say, this was here before flowers. Like this is older than the concept of flowers. His wife going, I prefer that you had flowers in our house. Yeah, Valentine's Day. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, amazing fact. Should we get another? Yeah. All right. This is from Paul Baker who writes, the spinning circle slash pinwheel slash loading mouse cursor on computers is called a throbber. Come on.

Oh, that explains so much. That explains why that guy is shouting that in the library when I go in. Get rid of that throbber. Yeah, I didn't know that. Now we know. The spinning wheel of death. The spinning wheel of death is more commonly known. That's a good insult as well, because I like insults that are quite, they're not actually

saying any rude or swear words but it's very clear what you think of the person. So calling someone a roaster for example, he's an absolute roaster. I think throbber is a penis, right? I mean that's what he's calling you. You're right, it's less ambiguous calling someone an absolute throbber. I don't think of those wheels as throbbing. No, where's the name come from, Dan? Yeah, good question. Let's find out. I don't think it's gonna... Are you actually Googling that? Well, no, presumably it's someone has called it that.

Maybe they used a throb. Maybe. Maybe it was an insult to someone they hated, a co-worker. And maybe just Bill Gates, like the word, or or Steve Jobs or I don't know. So the link that was given to me by Paul Baker leads to a paper that's called how throbber components affect users perception of waiting time. So it's clearly a word that is so well known within its industry. How interesting because that to me sounds like another paper that I've read, which is, you know, like the loading bar

Yeah, it says this is how much of this is loaded that that usually is not true I remember you saying this they rig it so that it makes you think it's going faster than it is or something Yeah, it kind of just makes you less likely to be annoyed Yeah, basically those things they tend to go quite slowly quite slowly and then speed up Yeah They'll slow down a bit and then they'll speed up at the end. And the idea is, if they went the actual speed, then you'd be like, well, this is just going to take forever.

Oh, and it looks quite pedestrian. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good idea. That's kind of like the show. It actually takes longer than you think to listen to. But we, James, in the the edit speeds up and slows down bit selectively to make it seem like it's actually passing at an interesting rate.

So this bit that Andy's just said is one of those really pedestrian moments. It's a bit like they did a study of people standing at bus stops and they found that when they put lots of trees next to the bus stops, people thought they were waiting for less amount of time. Oh, that's good. I'm not sure why. Yeah because the trees are waiting even longer or by comparison I've been here less long than that tree. I guess because it's less dull and boring you're like... That's nice. I'll put a telly there. Well conversely if you put someone there and get them to play seven notes on a tuba then it feels like it's ages. Yeah. Yeah. You know, actually bus stops are good places to put a graffito. Are they? Yes they are. Interesting. That's because birds

fly into them and they did a study in Scandinavia somewhere I think where they looked at bus stops, class bus stops with no graffiti and then one with a graffito on it and they found that birds didn't crash into the graffitoized it and they found that birds didn't crash into the graffitoized one. Of course they wouldn't because they could see it, that's brilliant. But wait, don't do a graffito of a bird's nest. Or of a big worm. So yeah, I mean, Colin's dictionary says that it's a throwback.

I can't get into OED because you need to sign into it. I can sign you in. Okay, cool. I'm not getting the etymology of it. I don't know if it's worth it. I feel like, yeah. Your time is ticking down. You know, there are more facts. You gotta get in there. Okay. All right. Well, let's move on to our next fact. And this has been sent in by Andy Wenger. Or Wenger. All aboard the Wenger bus. And and Andy writes and this is pretty astonishing Every possible melody has been copyrighted Thanks, every possible melody has been copyrighted and

Stored on a single hard drive Yeah So Andy writes in a unique effort to combat the high volume of dubious lawsuits flying back and forth in the music industry today, a team of musicians has recorded every possible melody onto a single hard drive and then put each melody in the public domain. How have you recorded every possible melody? Well, okay, so music has a set number of notes, right? Yeah, but every possible melody would be like infinitely billions.

Yes, exactly right. However, Andy Vengas sent a link to The Atlantic, which is where he got this fact from. And within that article, it says, most pop melodies run fewer than 12 notes. If you generated every possible melody with just the eight notes of the C scale, that would be eight to the upside down V of 12. What's that?

To the power of 12. What's that? To the power of 12. Eight to the power of 12 melodies, which is 68 billion 719 million 476 thousand 736. Big number, but achievable. Uh, when you put it into a computer and you generate all of those melodies. So that's what they did. They wrote every melody at least within that popular phrase. So all I need to do is write my song in D sharp. Is that right? Cause that's just in the C. Exactly. So you just see that.

That's just in the C. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But melody, I guess it can apply to different keys. Yeah. Yeah. Is the argument that if one was accused of stealing someone's melody,

then you could go to that and say, no, it's not. It's been copyrighted and it's already in the public domain. Right. Is the idea. So they just wanted to stop Led Zeppelin calling in every band to, not that they do that. In fact, they're the ones who are called in. When you said it, I thought you were going to say that this hard drive contains not only the, like the score from Mission Impossible 7, but also the score from the as yet unreleased Mission Impossible 8. Cause it's just got all music for all time.

Yes. Like somewhere in there. Yeah. There is a perfect... Throbber. Oh. There's no need to be personal. First meaning chiefly colloquial, the heart, now rare.

That dates from 1828. And then there's only one more meaning a person or thing which throbs. Right. And the most recent citation is the DJ and producer has unleashed a hammer of Thor throbber that'll find favor with the tenaglias and super chumbos of the world. I'm always wondering how the super chumbos are gonna react to each week's episode. So the OED doesn't have anything about the- No, it's too new, I guess. They're still there updating it all the time.

It's nice to know that it used to be a heart though. Yes. You can say my throbber burns for you. Yes, I don't say it though. Don't make that your next chat online. But if there was a really sexy film star, they might be a throbber throb. Yes. Now we're cooking.

Lovely. Superb. So that's the crown meanings of the word throbber. I got one more here, which is this was sent in by Aidan from Nene, New Zealand. And he wrote about a Hawaiian guy who was called Duke Kahanamuku, who broke two world records and equaled a third in his first official swim race. He became the first successful Hollywood actor from Hawaii, taught presidents in royalty how to surf, and during his first 100 meter final at the Olympics, he was so far ahead, he was able to look back and survey the field. He also invented a new way to kick. No. Introduced surfing. As in swimming, I think. Like, there's a ball over there and he's like, watch this. What did he do to that ball? I don't know.

That's a heartwarming 90s Disney movie for all the family, isn't it? Yeah. The new way to kick. Kicked a ball through his chest. He introduced surfing to Australia, where it's become one of their favorite pastimes. That didn't need to be in that. That was not necessary, Aidan, but thank you for that. And saved eight people from a capsized boat in heavy surf while on location for a film. Oh, and after the first swim race, the authorities didn't believe his time. So they made him travel all the way to the US mainland to prove it

where he swam even faster. They should have made him swim there. Yeah. Yeah. Would have proved it. That's true. But yeah, so yeah. Great. Someone I've never heard of before. Juke Kahanamoku. What a guy. Inventor of a new kick.

What a guy. Inventor of a new kick. All right, it's time for the final batch of facts and those are my ones. I'm going to start with another mind blowing one. This is from Arjun Chauhan and Arjun says this. A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria, right? It's so tiny, 20 to 200 nanometers in height, but they are so abundant on Earth that if you stacked them all on top of each other, it would be 200 million light years of distance that they reached. For reference, the Milky Way is about 90 million light years in diameter.

So more than double the entire width of the Milky Way is just the bacteriophages on earth. And would they look bigger the further they got away? After a certain point? Yes. Unfortunately, not at the point we've got to. Oh, okay. I still think this is a good fact. No, it's a great fact. Um, I think I mentioned that thing about bacteriophages, the amount of bacteria as they eat every day? I think we might have done, actually. They eat something like a third of all the bacteria in the ocean every single day. I thought it was half actually.

Oh my goodness. That's right. Thank goodness. And then it replenishes at midnight on the dock every night. But yeah, bacteriophages are amazing. I wrote back saying, uh, hearing back saying, yeah, it's true. That is amazing. His wife learned it in the class. They should is amazing. His wife learned it. They should do it. They should do it. We should do it. Well no, but who's going to eat all the bacteria? If we do that

it'll be a disaster because then there'll be lots of bacteria in the oceans and probably spill over. All right, here's another one. This is from Daniel Nusdeo and it's a riddle. I wanted you all to know that in March 2003, Air Algérie Flight 6289 crashed during takeoff, killed 102 on board, leaving just one survivor who survived because he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Mm-hmm. How, how, how? What was the year? 2003, quite recent.

Oh. Okay, well the plane crashed. Did he fly out of the window or something? Yeah, he was flung out while everyone couldn't get out. Okay, so it's an easier riddle than I thought it was. He was in the back row and yeah, he was immediately ejected when it landed. From the seat. Clear of whatever then happened.

All right, fine. I've got another plane related riddle for you. Oh yeah. I just thought in case that one didn't work out as well. That's an extraordinary survival story. That's insane. Do you remember the lady we spoke about? I don't know if it made it into the show. Either her parachute failed or she didn't have a parachute. She landed softly around an ant's nest. And then the ants acted by biting her. They were kind of acted as a

defibrillator and brought her back. Do you remember that? I think like the adrenaline that caused. She landed in the Amazon and she survived. I remember the girl who landed in the Amazon and who like spent days kind of crawling through the Amazon really badly. I think this is a different one. No, I think this is a different one as well. There's also Vesna Vulović who fell further than anyone else in history. Oh yeah.

She was either Croatian or Serbian, I think. And she was, there was a big explosion on board. I think in fact she must be Ser serving because it was Croatian bomb. And she was kind of pinned to the fuselage with the drinks trolley and fell with the fuselage. And somehow, and I think she had very low blood pressure. So her heart didn't explode or something. And then she became like a hero of the.

That's incredible. Then this flight 401, that was an American flight. It was the first flight to have dual sides. so you could walk down the aisle in the middle So it had seats either side what my widebody? Yeah Okay first commercial flight that did that and a lot of people managed to survive because it crash landed into a swamp so the Swamp gave it a bit of a break and then they repurposed quite a lot of the stuff of the plane was actually in good shape

Like bits of it So they took bits and put it into other planes and then people started reporting Ghostly encounters because they believed that the pieces that were repurposed were now cursed I knew I had this out of familiar as you started saying it goes flight goes for a one. Is it a film? It was yeah, right? Yeah with a really big actor and I can't remember who the big actor is Sorry, is this not true? So how much no it's based on a based on a story that was written by a paranormal Expert who put that angle on it and then it was converted into a movie as it was such a big

I'm dragging us back to the realm of facts Here's another plane related riddle from Kester woof You may have come across this before but I learned it yesterday Did you know that Air Force one has taken off more times than it has landed? Oh, I did notice. It's currently in the air. That would be true. That would be true. That would be true. And is it because the president's changed while it's in the air? Yes. Bingo. That was it. And what happened? Which president was it? Was it Kennedy? It wasn't Kennedy. Nixon.

Was it? Was it Kennedy? It wasn't Kennedy. Nixon. Nixon was on board Air Force One at the time his resignation took effect, so the plane took off with the call sign, Air Force One, and landed with a normal call sign at the other end. Right. Isn't that great?

Yeah, that is. So it's always... Confusing though. Well, that's riddled for you. For the air... No, I mean for the air traffic control on that day. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like suddenly the plane just disappears and another one just appears on this place.

Yep, true. Here's a fact from Meredith McBride. Hi there, long time listener whose son shared a fact and wanted me to send it in. So here it is. This is great. You know the Burj Khalifa? Yeah. That's the very tall, is it the tallest building?

I've been there. Been up it. Well, James, if while there you had laid it on its side. I would have been arrested. It would be longer than Vatican City. Oh, and I went to Vatican City in the same year as I went to Burj Khalifa. That does surprise me actually, because I remember crossing the border into Vatican and walking all the way up to wherever the pope lives. His house.

And it's quite a walk. It's quite a walk. Well, it's still not as long as the Burj Khalifa will be tall. So a building in Asia, Meredith writes, is larger than a European country. That's cool. That's pretty cool. That's a great fact. And it probably seemed shorter because I'm guessing you didn't walk up the Burj Khalifa.

No, it's in the lift. Yeah. So that does seem a lot shorter. Did you do the sunset thing? No, God did in the lift. Yeah, so that does seem a lot shorter. Did you do the sunset thing? No, God did that. Okay, so you're not... I've seen why you thought I... And the Pope told you, didn't he?

He made that clear when you were there. There's apparently a thing where it's so tall that if you get into the lift at the right moment, you can see a sunset twice by going up it. The sun goes down, you go up and you get a second sunset. Yeah. You know what would be weird? by going up it. The sun goes down, you go up and you get a second sunset. You know what would be weird? If you were at the top of the Burj Khalifa, those ships would look enormous.

Yeah, yeah. Huge. They'd be in my face. Yeah. There's also a thing which is apparently it doesn't have any... And you lose. It's so weird. It has toilets.

And they didn't put them in. So they kicked themselves afterwards. What they did, I went to, sorry to say, I went to a building in, um, how is it in Copenhagen? It's like a round building and they just had like a drop where you poo. So it's like a chair and it's like it's a hollow building and you kind of sit with your bum facing the inside of the building and you poo and it just goes into the bottom of the tower. But sorry, like a modern building or an ancient castle? No, no, ancient old old old.

Sorry, because it sounded like you were describing a modern architect's dream, like, you know, beautiful glass everywhere, spiral stackers. It's built around a slowly growing core of poo. According to my memory of this fact, the Burj Khalifa is not 100% dissimilar to that in that there's no sewerage underneath it. And so the poo collects at the bottom of the building. And every day at the end of the day, trucks have to take the poo and the wee out away from the building and go to a dumping ground and put it there. So like living on a canal boat, you've got to collect it and then deposit it. Wait, are on a canal boat, you've got to collect it and

then deposit it. Wait, are you saying that the tallest building in the world doesn't have foundations? It does have foundations, but it's built on a raft, I think. I thought it was built on sand. Shifting sand. Yeah, but that's why they had to put it on a raft because you can't build foundations that deep in sand because it's right. But you wouldn't want to have your poo to be landing on the raft. No, no, I didn't know that thing about that. Because like I said, I did go there and I read all of the boards to see if there are

interesting facts. They didn't say anything about poo are we? Yeah. Wow. I don't think it's a big thing. I can imagine they wouldn't let John the Bird, Blee, Khalifa be like, we have a bunch of lackeys at the bottom who have to carry your shit away every day. But it's a great building. It's also the location and this brings two things we were talking about earlier of graffito That was put there by star of mission impossible during a mission impossible shoot. Oh, uh, did tom cruise leave a Supposedly, so you've seen all the movies. There's he he scales the building at some point doesn't he or he's mission impossible four And then is there a big sandstorm that comes in? That certainly is. Right. So, and he turns around and he's like, there's a massive ship in my face. It's a very scary moment. Um, but no, apparently he, this is the story.

He wrote Katie Holmes, his name. He was married to her at the time. And then they found out and they had to get to the top of the building and scrub it out. No more Graffito. Wow, that's good. Here's another one. It's Roland Pierce, right? It's just listening to your latest steps. Some good Titanic stuff there. Okay. A fact I heard a few years ago.

Don't quote me on this. Oh, no, sorry. Well, we're doing it now. But there were a couple of ways they could have rescued every single passenger. Right? Number one, engines in full reverse for as long as possible would have brought the ship closer to the Carpathia rescue ship. Number two, tie the Titanic to the iceberg, use the onboard cranes or planks or whatever to load all the passengers onto the berg, wait there for rescue. I think they were quite far past the iceberg about time.

I feel like that would have been hard as well. Yeah, I don't know if that's realistic. Are these facts or are these guys kind of sort of I've been to... Ascending to mind-wanderings. Just a claim, I think, yeah. I went to a lake in Iceland that has icebergs on it. They're carving from the glacier.

Okay. And then they come into the lake and it's kind of attached to the sea. And they flip a lot. Icebergs. Oh yeah. So I reckon if loads of people were on it, it might just flip over and then you're all buggered. And then you die. That's probably why they didn't do it.

Yeah. Also, I don't know if it's the Carpathia or however it's pronounced. It was one of the ships didn't go to rescue the Titanic because it looked bigger than it should have. What are you talking about? A lot of weird, because obviously of how cold it was, there was a lot of atmospheric allusions that were going on. And there was one ship that was told it's a thousand meters away and it's this long, but they saw a ship that was much closer

and a different size and they went, can't be that ship, that must be another ship, so we need to keep looking for the Titanic. I have heard that, yes. Yeah, this is a real thing Yeah, but there's another theory recently that they didn't see the iceberg because of again atmospheric mucking about and that actually it you know It wasn't just that it was far away and hard to see the iceberg. It was that literally it would have been impossible to see Yeah, every it was a fog. They call it a fog. This guy got any fights. No Well, let's have a suggestion from Tony Frost of an invention because we discuss inventions.

Have you heard James of the Euro club? Have I heard of it? Yeah. Well, is this James specific? It is. So it's golf. It's golf. Oh, right.

I see. Have you heard of the Euro club? I don't think so. Well, let me read out the little brief for you. On the golf course and need some urgent relief in 2010. Oh, yes, I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've done this, haven't we? On the show, I've mentioned this.

Yeah, unless it was cut. Just going to the golf club, but you stick your willy in and take your wick. Well, it is a golf club, but it is hollow and it does allow you to discreetly urinate into it. And then it says, a fabric privacy shield will have observers thinking you're just taking a practice swing.

I doubt that. Cause we were trying to work out when we spoke about it, whether or not you would gain an advantage from a heavier golf club. Oh yeah. Of the back of urine being inside it. Because it would change a lot. And if you're a top pro, you probably can't use this one. No, you wouldn't be able to.

And also my experience is that men in particular don't have much trouble finding somewhere to urinate on golf courses. And this sounds quite difficult for a woman to use. Yes. Well, the thing is men pee in jets. Well, that's what age golf is. And this sounds quite difficult for a woman to hear. Yes. Well, the thing is men pee in jets. Well, that's what age golf is. And women pee in droplets. That's the thing.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Here's one last one from David McLaren. The winner of the 1970 Australian National Sheepdog Trial was Bob Ross, while no relation to the painter. What? Oh, Bob Ross. The dog called Bob Ross.

What painter? the painter. He was a famous painter who was on American TV loads I think in America. While no relation to the painter Bob Ross, the dog was also known to have a soft gentle voice. That's our closer. PS, I went this year, and the winning dog gets their portrait painted. That's great. Thank you. What's your name? McLaren? David McLaren. Thanks McLaren. Yeah.

I think that's... I really like that one. Okay, that's it. That's all of your facts. Just a nice little twist on the formula. Thank you very much for listening everybody. If you'd like to get in contact with each other about the things that you've said over the course of this show. Violate GDPR rules. You can be found on your Twitter accounts. But if you'd like to contact us about the things we said, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. Dan?

I'm on Instagram at Shriverland. James? My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. I'm on Twitter at Andrew Hunter M. Anna? You can get in touch with the whole podcast by tweeting at no such thing or going to Instagram no such thing as a fish or emailing podcast at qi.com. That's right. And do please send us your facts for the next time we do this. podcastatqi.com is the email address we love hearing from you and we read all of them.

You can also go to no such thing as a fish.com where there's an array of different stuff, previous episodes, the sacred portals to Club Fish, which is where you get ad free episodes, you get bonus content every couple of weeks and a chance to be part of something greater than yourself. And I think that's the real thing about Clubfish. Yeah, nothing against you in person, because you might be great. You're probably having a wonderful and fulfilled life, but you could be leading a more fulfilled life, if you know what I'm saying. So, you know. So anyway, go there for that. NoSuchThingAsAFish.com.

That's it from us. We'll be back again next week with another normal episode of the podcast. We'll see you then. Goodbye!