No Such Thing As A Fish - 547: No Such Thing As A Mystic Beluga

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Live from the Edinburgh Festival, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss raiders, radars, Wales and whales. 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

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast. This week coming to you live from the Edinburgh Fringe. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tshiski, Andrew Hunter Murray and Jane Tarkin. 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 my fact.

My fact is earlier this year the town of Midgeham was invaded by midges. Superb. So Midgeham is a... Midgeham maybe? Midgeham? Maybe. Absolutely maybe. So yeah, Mitchum is located in West Berkshire and it is a tiny town. It's got 350 people who live there and very recently they were invaded by huge swarms

of midges. Obviously hilarious, but I should point out, as the article accentuates, the population are not laughing because it's been- The midges will fly into their mouths. It's a nightmare, they can't walk out. If they open their mouth, they're swallowing big mouth loads of midges. That's what they're saying in the news report. It's not biblical.

It is- That's what they said. It's as many midges as pretty much every single Scottish person has dealt with in any place. No. Yeah No, the people of Berkshire are not used to midges. They're not hardy like you. They're sensitive souls. They said you can't even walk without swallowing a few. Okay, a few. Okay, yeah. Also I just realized it's the Edinburgh Fringe so there'll be more people from Berkshire here than there are from Edinburgh. Yeah, it does sound bad. It also did really affect the nearby village of Woolhampton, but that doesn't have a funny name, so it's got no airtime.

The invasion of sheep there two years ago was hysterical. Midgham, I think, having Googled it, is not interesting in any other way. Wow. El Contrario, James. Oh my god. Here we go. Strap in. Midroom is Berkshire's least used railway station. Interesting. Yeah.

And that's from 2020 to 1, although so you might think it was due to like lockdowns and stuff, actually it was also Berkshire's least popular station in 2019 to 20. And also it's not in Midrum. Midrum station is just outside Midrum. Woolhampton? It used to be called Woolhampton, but then people kept sending it stuff for Wolverhampton, which is much bigger and a long way away. Oh, right.

So they changed it. Okay. And, okay, so that, yeah, I've got one more thing that has happened in Midrum ever. Yep, please. Peter Gray, a 72 year old farmer, saw a giant ice block of frozen human urine smash into his lawn. Oh, from an airplane?

Yes, from a plane. I mean, no, from the mole people. Where do you think? Pissing aliens. So in Midrump, I did have a look at if it's been invaded by midges before because I thought this is the kind of thing that tabloid journalists just desperately hope happens and make happen. And there were two other incidents in the last 12 years where it's reported as being invaded by midges.

And I have to say we haven't seen any invasion plans or, you know, got any stats. So maybe the people of Midgeham are just very wimpy. Out of curiosity the first time it happened did they find it funny? Is that just jaded midgem now going yeah yeah yeah first few times. I think it is yeah it's hysterical yeah and it was reported on both times as ironic which is very upsetting. Oh you've got a big thing about this. Everyone has a big thing about this ever since Alanis Morissette invented having a big thing about it then. Because it's app, not ironic. Well indeed. Right Has anyone... so who here has experienced midges? Who here has been to midgem?

Get out! What is their train station like? Were you there when Berkshire Life sent a reporter to see just how quiet it really is? I arrived before 8am on Wednesday and what you presume would be the height of rush hour. However, there was no one at the station at all. There you go, you weren't there. Does anyone here use the midge forecast? Oh, so this is a thing. There is a real, there's a midge forecast which some of the people here use. In Scotland or UK? It is in Scotland, yeah, yeah.

And the serious level is one to five. One is the least serious, which is called No Flies on Me. And number four is great. That's no mist. That's midges. It was really good. I think it's entirely sponsored by smidge which is the UK's number one of as far as I could tell to mid repellents yeah and they it's a great

that's cool did you check out today's Mitch forecast I didn't oh did you cocky I didn't know it existed until 20 seconds ago I actually checked it out is looking pretty good yeah for all this talk of how you know midges are so bad throughout the summer and sometimes they have two phases I think, but this year they reckon they have a third and in September there might be like a third hatching. It's fine. It's mostly at twos. And then I think one spot was at four.

So stay away from, I think it might have been Sterling. Oh no, it's Glencoe. Glencoe. There you go. Right, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered a midge. Oh, you know about it. No, you weren't. Yeah, right.

It's really bad. Okay, right, because supposedly, according to Scottish midge studies, 40,000 of them can land on a single unprotected arm in one hour. There are 37 different species in Scotland. It has caused major problems here. So there's an estimated 20% of working forestry days in Scotland are lost because of the clouds

of biting midges. You have to stop. And it can cost up to £268 million a year in lost tourism visits as a result of the reports of them being here. Really? However, what's very exciting is you do make up that money a bit by the 41 million pounds that is brought in annually By visits to the Loch Ness monster. So what that's what Nessie's bring into the table That's nothing to do with what we're talking about. Completely non relevant. The Edinburgh festival brings in lots of money That would be a more apt thing to say ironically Yeah, but we're talking about animals.

Yeah, some which exist. And some which are yet to... They're symbiotic, Nessie and Mitch's, I think is what you're saying, isn't it? They have a symbiotic relationship, so one can't exist without the other? I'm pretty sure that must be down the point, otherwise it would be completely... It would be an insane thing to bring up. You did say there's lots of species of Mitch. They are often named after their penises because they all have very distinct

penis. Well, they all have distinct penises, but many of them do. Other people that are named after their penises are Vikings. So there are quite a lot. We've done a fact here before where there was a Viking called Small Penis. And I just wondered if you guys wanted to have a game of Mitch or Viking. Yeah, okay. Sure. Sure. Lovely. Yes, please.

That's what we're all here for. So I'm going to give you the name of a name. And it's either the scientific name of a midge or it's the name of a Viking. Spiny penis. A lot of the audience is saying Viking. I'm going to go midge. Yeah, I think midge because they do have spiky penises, don't they?

I'm gonna say Viking. Some of them do have spiny penises and indeed this one does because it's a Midge. Yes! Butter penis. Please, I'm Viking. Always dropping things with his penis. Just use your hands mate. Or is it just butter penis? Like is it used in that? Lovely. We need the spelling.

The answer is it was a Viking butter penis. Butter penis. What do we know about butter penis' story? No we don't know it. It was just in a list of viking names. He was friends with Butterballsises' story. No, we don't know it. It was just in a list of viking names. He was friends with Butter Balls, the viking. What about Curvo Penis? Curvo? Yeah. Curvo.

Curvo? Is that just a name, or does it describe the curviness, perhaps? I'll say Midge. Viking. I'm going Viking. This side of the table is going Viking. No, it was a Midge. It was discovered in 2011 by a guy called wang

brilliant super nice and you could have had barry penis denta penis oxy penis convexity penis and debilit penis they're all midges oh barry penis well here he comes, Barry penis. That's a good nickname. It's really good. You were saying James earlier, because we've got another James H on the tour, and you're like, I need a nickname for this tour. We're not making Barry penis. Barry penis.

Brilliant. Hey, here's the thing that the people of Midgem are missing, right? Oh yes. Because they've got food flying into their mouth. Free. A lot of... You can eat midge. Midgeham.

Exactly. So, there's a thing which is... Have you guys all heard of conger cake? Yeah, it's an African thing, right? Exactly. Fly cake. Fly cake, and midges are used in that. And so what you need to do is you need to turn your issue into a tissue.

What's the phrase? That's good. Turn your issue into a tissue. Turn your issue into a tissue by you go out, and this is what they do when they're making konga cake. You just bring a frying pan outside and you coat it in oil or in butter, and you just wave it through the swamp, and they stick into it, and then you just go home and cook it

and make that into a cake. I think they squash it. They get loads and squash it down, right? Yeah. But I think the ones that happen in Africa is way, I know they have problems in midge ham, but I think the ones in Africa are absolutely insane. Like, as in you can hardly walk through them.

There's just so many midges. Right. I think so. Yeah, I think you're right, because it's sort of, they get more hatchings and you get like in places like Cameron you get a hatching every three weeks. It's bad if you get what three in a year. It's actually the warmer the places the more hatchings they get. Okay. The baby midges are these tiny little lavas they look like little caterpillars and And in the Goldenrod Golemidge, they have this amazing way of jumping where they get all

their internal fluids, push them down to the tail, turn themselves into a little sort of circle and then hold on, hold on, release, and then they jump into the air. Okay, it's an absolutely amazing way to get about. They can move 28 times more efficiently than a caterpillar can crawl. Than one of the trams? Are they still a joke? No? Okay, good. If a sausage could jump that quickly, then it could get to the top of the Great Pyramid at Giza in three seconds. Oh my god.

Wow. That is context. That three seconds. Oh my god. Wow. That is context. That's incredible. Imagine that sausage. Their eggs are actually sausage shaped. Well, their eggs, biting midge eggs, are either cigar, banana or sausage shaped. Which is a cool range of shapes for an egg. They're all quite similar shapes.

Cigars and sausages. Cigars and sausages is a... I was wondering about the difference. I think it must be the ends, right? It's the tapering. Yeah, yeah. It's the tapering. Very few sausages which sort of tail off at the end. I think it must be the ends right tapering. Yeah, the tapering very few sausages Which sort of tape to tail off at the end? Yeah Yes, but cigars lights. Hey, we're gonna have to move on a second. I tell you an audience fact. Yeah

Yeah, this is from a Scottish listener. So it's for Bev Clark. I don't suppose you're in anyway. She's an in a fantastic fact, right? This is this is actually about bats But she submitted it as a pimpestrel bat has to eat about one sixth of its own body weight in midges every night to survive. That is the equivalent to an average Scottish nine-year-old child having to eat 23 tins of baked beans, one bean at a time, whilst flying every night. That's such a good fact. Yeah, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. Stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. We wanted to let you know that this week we're sponsored by Express VPN. That's right. Express VPN is the place to go to if you are a lover of TV shows, of movies, but you find that in your country, you can't get access to some of the ones that are playing on overseas Netflix, for example.

Because you know, there's about 7,000 titles that are available to watch in the UK on Netflix. If you were able to break through that invisible wall that held off all the other titles, you could get access to 17,000 of them. And the key to that door, to get through that invisible wall, because walls have keys, is ExpressVPN.

Yes, get that key. Very good for your relationship, by the way. There was a survey of about 2,000 adults that found that 66% of couples believe binge watching TV together enhances their relationship. It could be the saving of yours. I personally love to use ExpressVPN because it encrypts all of your internet traffic so you can feel completely safe

like you're doing everything privately online. It really, really means a lot to me. And ExpressVPN is giving an extra three months with a special link, which is expressvpn.com slash phish. Yep, that's right. Go to expressvpn.com slash ph fish. You'll get an extra three months using that special link. And bear in mind that this isn't just for one device, your laptop. You can get this on eight devices simultaneously. So head there now, ExpressVPN.com slash fish.

Get your extra three months and have a better relationship with your partner. On with the show. On with the podcast. We do need to move on to our next fact. So it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that there are radar detectors, and there are radar detector detectors, and there are radar detector detector detectors. But as far as we know there are not yet any radar detectors detectors detectors. But that's only because we don't

have a radar plus one to find it. How would we know? There's always going to be one more detectors than we know about. I don't think so, right, because your radar is used by the cops. So the policeman with the traffic gun, that's a radar. So then the police need to know if you're breaking the law by getting the detector, so they have a detector, detector, detector, but if you get the next level up, you're already breaking the law with your other detector, so they don't need the second one. They don't need to know, that's a good point. And that is basically what it is. So this is from radar that's sent out by speed cameras, bounces off your car a couple of times, and then it sees

how fast you're traveling by working out what distance you've traveled in that time. That's a radar detector. No, that is just a speed camera. And then you in your car, because you're a criminal in lots of places, where these things are banned, you might have a criminal in lots of places where these things are banned, you might have a device that's a radar detector. Dan, have you done your driving theory test yet? The theory test? No.

Well, I hope you're listening to this because this all will come up. I did slightly blank out. What are we talking about? So if I'm driving and I put a radar detector in my car, that's to tell me when there's a speed camera. A speed camera. Exactly. Okay, so then the police officer has a radar detector to see if you have a radar detector to see if he has a speeding camera. So the police officer, well, not the police officer, the speed camera in it has a detector

that will detect if the driver has a detector. So that's a detector detector. Exactly, because it sends off little vibrations. But the way of detecting in the camera is to vibrate a little bit itself so some of the radar detectors also have within them detector detector detectors and that's the complicated world of radar detectors basically. And the thing is like even in your car you might have a thing where in your satnav it tells you where there are speed cameras yeah and that's perfectly legal

in most places but not in all places. So if you're driving in America, for instance, and you go into Virginia, Mississippi, or Washington, DC, technically you have to turn that off in your car. Now, who the fuck knows how you do that? But in theory, you would have to do that in order to... Or you have to prove that you're ignoring it by speeding through every speed camera. Right. That's very cool. Do you know what the fastest ever speeding ticket was? As in, like, like you were giving it two seconds after... Sorry. Oh my god, you peddled. I'm used to this

stuff from James. When it comes to Dan, I've got've got no defenses Is it um are we talking in the UK? It is in the USA? Okay? So in the US word is would you want to have a guess well? No cars would go more than 200 miles an hour Well, there's lots of stuff online saying the fastest ticket ever was a sports car. It was a special sports car It was in Texas. It was in a 75 mile an hour zone and it was going at 242 miles an hour. There's a lot of stuff on the internet saying that, I didn't find the exact initial story behind it. I have a theory that the fastest ever speeding ticket was someone who was caught going at

8 miles an hour because the speed limit was 2 miles an hour at the time. And that just makes them faster. Well, relative to the limit, it's the fastest, I think, ever. Four times the speed limit. That's crazy. You wouldn't drive 120 in a 30, would you? No. So technically.

Ah, OK. Right. Technically it is. But that was the first one ever issued. That's amazing. It was 1896. Whoa. That is the exact same year

as the first ever speeding ticket that was given over here in the UK. This was in the UK. Yeah. How ironic. Wait. He started out talking about the US, but we did then. It's in Petswood, very near where you used to go.

Oh, yeah. God, I've got to start listening, man. We're talking about the same thing here. OK. It was in 1896. And it was... We're talking about the same thing here. Yeah, okay. It was in 1896. And it was eight miles an hour? Eight miles an hour. Yeah. Wow.

It was supposedly he was followed by a police officer on a bike for five miles. There was a guy a couple of years ago called Nigel Mills who was clocked speeding 88 miles an hour in his car, which was a... DeLorean. Oh, brilliant. A DeLorean! Oh brilliant! A DeLorean as the audience got.

He had to go to court, he paid his fine, but in court he did deny that he was attempting to break the space-time continuum. I learned something that I think probably I should have known, this definitely would be in the theory in fact, the thing that always accompanies speed cameras, which I didn't know about, or the main speed cameras that you get, which as I'm sure you know are the Gatso cameras, which are the big yellow boxes, although I think in Scotland they're yellow and red, diagonal stripes, is that right? Yeah. But they always are accompanied by lines on the road, which I just never noticed. But...

You're just going so fast. It's just a blur. And also you're pissed out of your brain. You can't be expected to concentrate on this sort of thing when you're lying down. So one way you could fool them is you could cover up the lines on the road before you got to the speed camera. Wait, hang on, do I have to park my car a mile back

walk up to it with a black cloth or something? With a sheet or something that can cover the lines up. Because basically what the lines are doing, speed cameras do two things to make sure that you're speeding or not. They send out some radar, and so it's like two pulses of radar, and they work out how far away you are

with each pulse of radar, and then they work out how far you've traveled in the time it sent out the two pulses. But also they need a backup way of telling how far you've traveled. So they also take two photos as you're traveling and they need to see where you were in the first photo and where you were in the second photo and then see how long it took you to get from one to the other. I always wonder when I'm going past one of those, if I swerve into another lane, will they not be able to take the second photo? They're on every lane sadly. Are they? The white lines.

They'll think it's a different car with the same license plate. That's a good point, yeah. I think. They can't put a glove on me legally. I think you might have to go on the verge, and that's a whole nother contravention. But yeah, they can only tell where you are because the line's on a ruler, so they can tell how far up the ruler you've gone. So Gatso is named after Maurice G. Mm-hmm who was a racing driver

We've very briefly mentioned him about nine and a half years ago Okay, okay His first speed gun that he invented was two rubber tires on the road and you still see those You know when you're driving just around the around and about there's just two little rubber lines They tell you how many cars are going along so that people can make rules and stuff like that and check out what the speed limit is but they also tell you the speed. What do you mean rubber lines? It's like two little rubber like wires that go across the road. Tiny cords I always assumed that they were testing whether they should put a

speed camera in there well and they would and I would slow down for them because I don't want people to know how fast I normally drive over that bit. That's sensible. They are doing that, but they're also checking how many cars go across there. I've never noticed that. Do I never look at the road? Oh my gosh. He was a racing driver and he invented the speed camera to speed himself up because he

wanted to know how fast he was going and he would keep going around the corner loads and loads of times and his speed camera would say going around the corner loads and loads of times, and his speed camera would say, you're going at 60 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour, 80 miles an hour, and he would try and get as fast as possible. But he was also, he invented a charcoal burning petrol generator

during the German occupation of Holland, which kept the country going. He was part of the resistance during World War II. And he took up engineering after he was turned down as a pilot for KLM due to a mangled finger Which he got after a bicycle accident as a child a mangled finger. Yes. I don't think that should discount you They were more picky in those days I don't know you couldn't even do it if you I think they're very picky you can't even do it if you're short sighted

No, you certainly couldn't back then. I'm sure sighted. Well, I'm sorry to you know rain on your parade Andy, but you're gonna have to stick with the podcast And he also invented his own car Which had a glass dome over the top of it to make you think you were driving an airplane? Oh cool, you know like that one that Homer Simpson makes It's quite like that. I've got another inventor just to bring up. This is taking it to radar very quickly. Have you guys heard of Dr. Robert Rines? Incredible radar designer, so he sort of innovated the resolution of what radar and sonar images

could achieve, and the stuff that he did allowed for the Titanic to be found. It was using his advanced technology to find the wreck of the Titanic, to find the Bismarck. Absolutely incredible. But what he applied using that sonar to most of all was his big passion, multiple expeditions, to find the Loch Ness Monster. He went on like six, seven expeditions. He found a perfumer to create a scent that would lure Nessie up from the lock. What? Easiest day's work for that perfumer.

I mean. He trained dolphins to carry cameras that they could send through the lock and try and search for it. No. Yeah, I don't know if he ever actually did that, but that was the attempt. And he was amazing.

Outside of Sonar, he patented a hinge that you could use for chopsticks. And he tried to invent something that would stop tornadoes from materializing, but it never happened. But yeah, one of the great Nessie hunters, local hero. I was reading about radar and I came across a really fun kind of paper that was written in 1946. This was a really short time after radar was basically invented, so we only worked out

how to use it usefully in the Second World War and it was for use in aircraft and aircraft detection and on boats and on submarines they kept picking up ghosts or phantoms or sometimes they called them echoes and there's all these sources of people writing speculating about what it might be. So in Germany there was speculation that it was probably a matter of sharply bounded areas of discontinuity in the atmosphere. Now it turns out what that's another word for is birds. But they just couldn't put two and two together. It's bizarre that in 1946 it's always written like actually we've worked out that it was birds all along. Is it not true that radar was invented

because they were trying to make a death ray? I think that's true, isn't it? Interesting. I think so. So there was rumours that Germany would be making a death ray by firing radio waves at people and it would just make them disappear. And it was taken seriously by the British and they thought, well, we're going to need one of our own.

And they found this guy called Robert Watson Watt and they asked him can you make us a death ray please. And they offered him if he could zap a sheep from a hundred paces away they'd give him a thousand pounds. He did his experiments and realized that it was impossible but then he realized also that he could use this radio waves to bounce off things and work out how far things work away. Wow, that's incredible. He must have considered trying to blag it by getting his friends to dig a hole near the sheep. Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Andy.

My fact is that in 16th century Wales, there was a financial crisis, which meant that lots of families could no longer afford to keep a household bard. Wow. Huge wow. And they, you know, it's a penny. Every house would have its own bard.

And now? Or very few. Yeah. Very few. You gotta be pretty loaded in modern Wales would have his own bar and now or very few. Yeah, very few You got to be pretty loaded in one whale to have your own bar Bonds were bonds were big big noise back in the day. I was with multi. They were multitaskers weren't they? Oh, they did it all. I mean they mostly mostly read poems and played the harp, but they probably held the washing up if required Actually, there was a medieval document

called the Triads of Britain. And they say that the three principal tasks of a bard is, one, to learn and collect sciences, the second is to teach, and the third is to make peace and put an end to all injury. Huh. Yeah. It's a big remit, isn't it, in the job ad?

Who's CB? If there is heavy washing up, you will be really appreciated. It was just an interesting... And it was a time where, around this period, the Welsh language was kind of being demoted and English was being promoted. And the aristocracy were anglicising. And there were a lot of popular poets at the time who, proper classical barons, thought were trash. So they were nicknamed

the modern poets were called poets who sing at fairs. Gross. And some of them didn't even play the harp. Hang on, sorry. Were these like the English imported poets? Kind of, yeah. I think that was like a newer like... I always associate poets with a lute rather than a harp. I associate harps with like angels and stuff. I don't know what a lute is. You see this big screen? Yes I do.

Yes. That is a huge lute. I would say like a harp is more like at a wedding, you see someone playing a big harp. Yeah. It was the thing for bards though, wasn't it? The triple harp in fact, tended to be what they played. Little handheld jobbies or...? Well, bigger than what...

Do you know what jobbie means in Scotland? Oh yeah, definitely. Goodbye. Yeah. Sorry. No offence, bards. Triple harp, that sounds cool. Yeah, yeah, three layers of twang. What are they called strings?

But is it like is it like when when guitarist has two, you know Those awesome guitars with two necks on it or they layered on top of the layer on top of each other And in fact, I was interested to learn that deck the hall with boughs of holly was written by a bard a Welsh bard Yes, the most famous Welsh bard John Parry who was a blind bard many were because they were thought to have sort of extra sight which gave him this wisdom to write. But basically we say that the job of the bard, they were pretending to cure all ills or something, but basically it was to massively kiss the arse of the posh people, wasn't it? Yeah. It was. It was quite fascinating, and particularly in Ireland in fact which had a huge barding history You essentially went around touting your wares to posh nobility

praising them and writing verse about how amazing they were and how big their houses were and how beautiful their wives were and how great their penises looked and Whatever it was and that's how you got your gigs. Lovely penis Barry, plus one as well. They could be quite dangerous bards, couldn't they? Like there was an idea that their songs could bring up insurrection and stuff. I think the English thought that a lot of the Welsh bards, they were a bit worried about the Welsh bards. Same with the Irish in fact, they thought they'd inspire the nobles to revolt.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same with the Scottish, I must say, knowing those English. The Scottish ones just loved the English actually throughout history, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but let's try and get out of here alive. Everyone's from Berkshire, it's fine. In 1282, apparently King Edward of England decided to get rid of all the bards in Wales because he was worried that they might cause Insurrection among the Welsh And apparently he had a massacre of 500 bards How did he lure them all to the same place? Did he have a big like loot sale and then? Advertised in loot and loot brilliant. That was a good joke about 30 years ago

Remember loot the magazine Then why didn't the four of you laugh? It's so weird though, this thing, right? So apparently he supposedly massacred these 500 bards. No one really knows about it in England. No one really knows about it in Wales, but everyone knows about it in Hungary. Ah! What? Because there is a song that Hungarian schoolchildren memorize, and it's almost like a nursery rhyme kind of thing, which is about the massacre of the 500 Welsh Bards. No. And so all Hungarian children know it. No.

Yeah. You know, they're dangerous for other reasons as well, as well as possible insurrections. They also were able to kill a rat by talking to it. And this was a thing that has been written in multiple plays. Shakespeare references it, lots of plays reference it. And it was the idea that there was a very famous bard from Ireland who came home one day and some mice had eaten the meal that his wife had prepared for him. And so he sort of went, you fucking assholes.

And they died. And that became a thing that you would bring a bard over to your house because you had a mice problem. Yeah, and they would use their words purely to kill it. That can't have lasted long because the proof's really in the pudding when you get the rodent guy around. I don't believe it. I just.

I just. Do you know one of the most famous ever Bards was called Yolo Yeah, I His real name was Edward Williams, but he was He was he deeply loved Welsh he was became a Welsh bardic scholar basically and a lot of what we know or what people thought they knew about Bards in the And a lot of what we know or what people thought they knew about bards in the 18th and 19th centuries is because of him And he also made up a lot of stuff and pretended it was by a 14th century bard He did a lot of forging works, but he held the first ever Welch Gorseth, which is the gathering of the bards in Wales. Primrose Hill in North London

He wanted to kind of show England and London that this was wealth, bardic culture and how amazing it was. And he was responsible for a lot of England being kind of druid mad for a long time. But he made a lot, yeah, as you say, he made a lot of it up. And no one knew that at the time. It was sort of like in the 20s, he was what, the 18th century, they found it in the 20th century through some academics reading into it and finding out. And he had all these details about his life that sounded so badass

Like he said that he learned to read by watching his dad carve names into gravestones Like that was where he learned the alphabet Yeah, is it Mary Shelley on Mary Wollstonecraft who is very Wilson crafters now I'm a Shelley who learned to write her name by tracing her mother's name on a gravestone Oh, yeah, and she also lost her virginity on it as well. Yes, she did. Yeah, I touched it the other day. It was amazing.

Perfect. Very creepy. Yeah, it was actually creepy, isn't it? Well, what did you touch it with? Every country has their own bards, don't they? Or every country has their own storytellers. And I think the reason they exist everywhere is because they're a repository of knowledge for people who can't write or read, which is sort of everyone until here and today.

And so I didn't realize that hula dancers are bards. So a hula is not a dance. It's a way of acting out a story which is being told at the same time traditionally That's cool. This is in Hawaii in Sicily you have an ancient storytelling method passed down from one person to the next which is called Canto It's it's just improvised sung verse and spoken prose the Canto and there's improvised sung verse and spoken prose. The Canto and there's the bottom. I see it.

That's that's nailed on. Andy, Andy, weren't you looking for a tour nickname as well? Wow. So sorry to tell you, I absolutely doesn't say that word. Highly respected, the cuntisti, of course, who tell the stories of the cunto. Good luck, Sister Margaret. And there are lots of others as well. Can't just put an O on the end and keep saying it.

You have to stop doing that. I've never had the courage to say it before. I didn't realize this would be what it took. The Six Marks brother who is not allowed on screen. In 16th century France they had an anagrammateur royale whose job was they were with the royal family and whenever a dignitary would come they would make an anagram of their names. Oh cool. That's quite cool isn't it? Yeah. So Anna Tyshinsky could be zany pain skank But a million miles off

Andrew Hunter Murray untrue Rwanda Rymer Untrue Rwanda Rymer. Yeah, that is me is me then Daniel Schreiber Incredible ass Wait wait, did you say incredible? You do have to put the H at the start, otherwise he doesn't work Wow, what's James Harkin? Oh, there were no anagrams of that. So yeah, overseas storytellers, I was reading about the Benshi of Japan. Oh yeah. I'd never heard of the Benshi before.

During the 20th century, theatres, movie theatres in Japan, when all the movies were silent, would hire these storytellers to come and talk over the movies and explain what was going on or give their own narratives about what was going on. So yeah. Don't invite a banshee. Just have... Aaaaaaah! ...all the way through your film.

What's a banshee? That's like a mythical... Yeah, it screams a lot. I would assume that you would be all over that then. Oh, don't give him away into another fucking Loch Ness Monster Fact. We should talk about Scotland's national bard, Robbie Byrne, shouldn't we? Yeah. I guess. And he's in tonight.

Some words from Byrne's poems and see if you can guess what they mean. Swankies? Trousers. Not a million miles away, but no. Socks. No, it's swaggering, strapping fellows who are in their prime. Oh, great. Okay. We're looking at four of them tonight on stage.

Bickering brattle. Oh, it's hubbub. Oh, yes, that's good. No, it's the way that a mouse runs along the floor. So like this way, that way, this way, that way. I'm trying to get away from the floor. So like this way, that way, this way, that way. Kind of thing. Trying to get away from the bard. Yes, it's facing it.

Canti. It's an Italian, it's a Sicilian form of traditional storytelling. It's the excess of good spirits at the point of bursting into song and lunt. Okay, right. Lunt. When you get l lint in your crotch area? Very annoying. Oh my god. Yeah that's a thing. That's a thing. That's a thing. Yeah

Lynn gathers on your clothes. Can I tell you the answer? If you've got new pants, you'll experience lunch. Yeah, no matter what you've got going on down there. Yeah, yeah. It's to walk away while smoking. Oh, okay. That's not nearly as good as Anna's one. Yeah. Much better than Anna's one. That's great.'ve got to move on in a second. Before we do, this whole fact was about basically families not being able to afford things anymore, people not being able to afford things anymore. And you know, a group of people who've really experienced that hard in recent times, and thank you James, I almost forgot to mention, are Nessie hunters because things have got

so expensive now in Scotland that any of the local areas that rent out the holiday homes, the Airbnbs, the hotels, you can't afford to go and sit by the lock anymore. That's terrible. As a result, yeah. How terrible. But the good news is you have as good a chance of finding it if you just stay at home. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that some whales communicate by wobbling their melons. Oi oi.

It's fine. A skill exclusive to them and definitely does not occur with Loch Ness monsters. So these are belugas and there's a picture on the screen. Beluga. The funnest whale to say, I think. Is it? Oh, come on, what's funnier than Beluga? Sperm.

Okay. That is a good one. That's a fun one to say. Surely we shouldn't spend the rest of this listing whales. No, we shouldn't. What are the loogers? So they're white whales. They get the name from the Russian for white.

They have this kind of muscly bit of fat on the top of their head. And they can contract it and move it around. And we didn't really know why they were doing this. But a recent study from the University of Rhode Island has found that they do it 34 times more often during social interactions than they do otherwise So we think that they're communicating with each other right I think that makes it like an interior hat They've got that they can kind of tip to a lady

Yeah And they can they've got all these moves they can they can squish it up and they can flatten it down and they can move It round to the side and it's crazy. They've got five moves, haven't they? Which is good. They can ripple it They can ripple it back and forth really it's insane. Have you seen a video? I've seen a video Wow, so it's literally like a wave pool. Yeah Wow, it's brilliant. What are they saying? I don't know Nobody knows nobody nobody I think how many they had a look at when they use them most often and the shake As in the wobble I guess, seems to be mostly males towards females during courtship.

And I think then two of them, so there's flat, lift, press, push and shake. I think a couple of them are more playful and then push is maybe a bit more aggro. So it's like having a language with only five words. Okay. Why haven't we worked out what those five words are, then? We only just figured out they do it. Give them a chance. OK.

Apologies to the marine biologists. They're the only whales that can nod. I really like that. Really? Yeah, yeah. All the other whales have got, like, fused necks, but they can go, uh-huh, to the hat of the lady. Yeah.

I couldn't work out if that fused neck thing meant because we have we have unfused necks Yes, I've heard spray and mostly they've got bits in between that mean we can wiggle around I was trying to work out if that meant a beluga could look to one side While you were swimming along next to it, and I don't know how far they can move the heads It's a great question, but I think not okay, okay? They are the most they're the cats of the ocean basically they're the most flexible whales there are yeah They're nicknamed sea canaries which I love oh yes because they can make all sorts of noise They can whistle and sing and moo and click and squeal and speak

Speak human words What no yeah? so there was a blue whale called no see and no see had been part of like There was a Beluga whale called Nosy, and Nosy had been part of like, the army was kind of training him and stuff like that, because there was a bit of that that goes on with the US and with Russia, or the Soviets. And one time there was a Navy diver and he was underwater and someone said, get out! And he got out and he said, who said that? And it turned out none of the humans had said it, but this Beluga whale had said it.

Really? What are you talking about? It's true, honestly. You want Dan's notes? In 2012, there was a paper called Spontaneous Human Speech Mimicry in a Cetacean, which was about this particular beluga whale, and we have actual evidence of it making sounds that are a bit like human voices. So it's a bit like a parrot might copy you, that kind of thing. Did you know where a lot of this studying is going on of these belugas?

In the water. Yes, in the water. But obviously you need them contained and you need to be studying them, right? So there is... I'm so suspicious of what you're going to say, Dan. It's called the Mystic Aquarium. And where is it? In a village called Mystic. OK. In Connecticut, yeah. That's brilliant. So annoying, because I thought that that whole thing that maybe they were looking into telepathy or something

like that. But actually, it's just the town called Mystic. Well, who named the town? Oh, it's some. The whales. Oh, no. OK. Don't encourage it, Andy. They're amazing, they're amazing things. Yeah. They're

really beautiful and they live, so they live in the Arctic and then they come down during the summer months and they feed and breed and then they go back up I think during the winter months and the whole thing about a beluga is that they don't have a dorsal fin on their back, right, they don't have a poppy-uppy fin that, say, a killer whale does. And killer whales prey on belugas. They love to eat them. And part of the reason that the beluga is able to avoid the killer whale is that they live under the sea ice in the Arctic.

So the sea ice is a really important environment for them. Even if it's 96% sea ice and there are these tiny cracks in the ice where there's sort of air above it, they can approach that crack and they can stick their back up so their blowhole finds that crack perfectly, they can breathe. Oh wow. Because they're mammals and they have to breathe air. Exactly. And so that's how they avoid orcas because the orcas can't follow, because the orcas can't risk getting their fin stuck in sea ice and they can't be under sea ice that long.

It's kind of like hiding... I'm trying to work out... It's like hiding from a really tall person in a short... in a small... in a low-roofed room, isn't it? And every time the tall person tries to get in, they hit their head. I mean, it is like that. Yeah, but you need to very occasionally pop out of the room for something. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You have a snorkel leading out to the attic. I don't think it needed a terribly complicated Just for anyone who didn't understand The lack of dorsal fin means that it's quite hard for them to steady themselves in the water But to help that they have love handles So they have bits of fat on their sides and again

They're attached to muscles and they can move them along their sides and it helps them to be steady in the water. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And their skin as well, they go slowly off every year. They just, their skin goes a bit off yellow and they just look a bit manky. And so they have to swim to a bunch of rocks

and sort of like grating cheese, just grate themselves away. You mean like getting one of those files for your feet skin? Yeah. Oh, the body one. Yeah, yeah. Pretty cool idea.

Exactly, because they go through seasonal malt, but it doesn't just come off. So they have to go down and literally just rub themselves against rocks until. It is quite gross actually. It's like you rubbing yourself against a gravestone. Yes. Oh God.

How do you know that my thing malts? Oh god. God, that's a fucking odd sentence. And you call me Barry Penis. No, you're Kanto. I'm Barry Penis. No, I'm Barry Penis. No, I'm Barry Penis. Fun fact about the film Spartacus.

I think we should say that all toothed whales have a melon. It's not. Belugas have the big one that sticks out that they're famous for, but all toothed whales have one. And I think they must be used in communication because I think it's for, they obviously echolocate and it's almost for transmitting their clicks. But sperm whales have one as well, but theirs often gets called the junk. Actually, they have, it's sort of split into two bits, so they've got their junk and then underneath they've got their spermaceti organ. And I

never knew why they were called sperm whales and why, you know this PermaCeti organ is the organ That's kind of in their head. Oh, well, it's an organ in their head filled with white liquid. Okay, and It's we believe for yeah, and they keep that next to the junk. They keep an extra their junk. What is it for? It is like the melon it is the melon So we think it's for basically transmitting echolocation signals and helping to control them as they leave. And it would come back into like a chamber where it echoes around and they can... Wow! So cool. That's so cool.

But the reason they're called sperm whales and the reason it's called spermaceti is just because when they first found it, everyone thought it was their semen. Really? So whalers in the 19th century cracked open sperm whale heads when there's white stuff in here. That must be where they keep their sperm. I was reading a thing, an exciting new idea about belugas, and it's a research paper that's been released recently. It is the idea that belugas could very well be the Loch Ness Monster. And it's called, could the Loch Ness Monster also be the result of lake river sightings of belugas? And so someone has put forward-

That's a very sharp paper when the answer is just no. Well, they're saying there's a lot of stuff that would be very similar. The body length is kind of in a similar length, the two meter length, the dorsal fin is absent, that is a big thing, the teeth are present, clearly visible, recognisable. The paper has a bit that says problems. One, geographical location. That's an issue. But you do get belugas off the fjords that are out to the right of Inverness.

They go up rivers. Exactly. And they've been found in the Thames and so on. They're slightly salt slash freshwater agnostic go up rivers. Exactly. And they've been found in the Thames and so on. They're slightly salt-slash-freshwater agnostic in that sense. Exactly. So could the Beluga Well actually be the lobsterm? What do you think? Do you think?

Yeah, totally possible. Who peer reviews the papers that you find not live? This was published on mysticaquarium.com. That's such a rare four out of four for you. We normally don't get that. Yeah, it's very impressive. Guys, that's impressive. I heard the boos and I appreciate that.

We are going to have to wrap up fairly soon, guys. Any more beluga? Well, just what does a beluga have in common with a blonde in a joke that's offensive to blonde people? Melons? Okay, do you remember that joke that's like, there's a blonde with headphones on, headphones on all the time? I don't approve of this by the way, if you're blonde. With headphones on all the time, and everyone's like, why is she wearing headphones? Why is she wearing headphones?

Eventually someone takes her headphones off and she dies. What was the, what were the headphones saying? It's saying, remember to breathe in and out. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. But beluga whales need the headphones. In fact all whales, they need, breathing is not an unconscious thing. They actually need to remember to breathe, not just to go to the top to breathe, which they do need to do, but if they don't actually tell themselves to breathe every time they do it,

they just stop breathing and die. What? Yeah. But is it genuinely a problem? No, sometimes it happens in aquariums where they think they just decide that they've had it and you can just stop breathing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good to end on a fun one, isn't it? It's so good to end on a... I think whale suicide is going to be a good punch line.

I think like, whales' populations getting a bit better, right? Isn't it? Like, the whale in Scotland has gotten less and less as the years have gone on. We have more Wales now than we've had in recent years. And the thing is when they're more sort of spread out, they find each other for mating by singing. And now that there's more of them, they actually do less singing and they kind of fight each other a lot more. So that means that whales are wailing less due to less wailing. Very nice. Very nice.

Guys, I'm going to have to wrap this up. That is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast we can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram on at Shriverland. James? At Barry Penas. Andy? I'm not saying mine. my... You've actually been banned recently haven't you? I've been let back on. And Adam, where can they get to us as a group? You can go to Twitter at NoSuchThing or NoSuchThingasAFish on Instagram or you can email podcast at qi.com. Or you can go to our website, nosuchthingasafish.com. All of our previous episodes are there.

We have a club called Club Fish. If you haven't joined it yet, please do. And also check out all of our upcoming tour dates. Thank you so much, Edinburgh. This was the start of our Thunder Nerds Tour, and that was fucking awesome. So thank you for being here. We'll see you again soon.

Goodbye!