No Such Thing As A Fish - 573: No Such Thing As Captain Birdseye's Caribou Sausage

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss restricted diets, extraneous organs, Raging Bull and Istanbul.  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 coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Anna Tyshinsky, and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy. My fact is, after the first bridge from Europe to Asia was built, it took 33 years to build the second,

and 2453 years to build the third. Let's set the scene. Istanbul. Yeah. Yeah. Famously, a city between two continents. Europe and Asia. Those are the two.

Amazing. And it is amazing. It is amazing. It's a city in two continents. It's the only one in the world, I think, right? Yes. Is it? There's like a bit of trivia that says that.

That's what the Istanbul tourist board want you to know. Yeah, certainly. That's why I've really got all the visit Istanbul sites. Yeah. And the in between is a body of water, the Bosphorus Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Well, it's got the Sea of Marmara and then bang in the middle of Turkey and then the Black Sea above it and the GNC.

And then eventually, eventually the Med. Eventually the Med. Eventually the Atlantic, you know, and then eventually the Pacific if you want to go all the way around. Yeah, that's Istanbul. And the Bosphorus Strait across it, supposedly, says Herodotus, was first crossed in 513 BC, because Darius, who we talked about a while ago on this podcast. Darius the Great. Yeah, we did. Darius the Great. He was apparently pursuing the Scythians and it was all a bit...

Anyway, the bridge that was built then was a pontoon bridge, which is basically where you tie a load of boats together and you walk across the top of the boats. And you say a load of boats. It's a load of load of boats, right? Like that's a thousand boats or something attached because that's a very big distance yeah to cover yeah it is seven hunch seven hunch we want to be specific switch your orders probably wasn't what's seven hunch mean 700 is that not a standard abbreviation 700 oh oh my god get with it kids yeah and then the second one was built 33 years later they presumably thought oh this is a really good idea and that was slightly lower that was the helis bond apparently which is oh that's the Dardanelles, so that's a different

part of Istanbul, right? It is indeed. It's just southwest of the Bosphorus. And then 1973 AD was when the first permanent bridge was built across the Bosphorus. And what did they do in the meantime? Boats. Yeah, lots of boats. Can I ask, jumping back to the first bridge, they're all boats tied together. How long did that last until someone needed their boat back? Yeah, it's a temporary thing. I think it's to make an individual journey. So if you've got an army you want to get from one to the other. Right. It had one mission basically. Exactly.

And you might just rip it up after that because you don't want the enemy to follow you. Yeah. But then 1973, Turkey got its first. Yeah. Across Istanbul bridge and it made a massive difference. Nice bridge. Have you been across it? Yeah. Very cool.

Did you go on foot? No, in a taxi. You're only allowed one day a year on foot. Oh, is it? Really? It's the marathon. It's when they have their annual marathon. Oh.

You're allowed to run from Europe to Asia, which is very cool. That is cool. That's awesome. Do you guys know what Bosphorus means? No. Bosphorus means like cow. Mm-hmm. That's awesome. Do you guys know what Bosphorus means? No. Bosphorus means like cow. Mm-hmm. It's actually almost guessable, sort of. Oh, okay, so like phosphorus was something... Oh, yeah. It's like lightbringer, so is it cowbringer? Okay,

no, it's not. It's similar to origin to porous, a channel, or a ford, a cow ford, or in fact an oxford. It's Oxford. Whoa. Bosphorus is Oxford. Really? Question though, a ford is a very, very, very small river that you could just walk across. Yes. And having been across this part of Istanbul, there's no way that has ever been a ford.

It was a ford. It was a ford in the myth which caused this because it was a myth of a woman called Io who was transformed into a bull and then she walked across the Bosphorus. She forded it. Because you know in myth shit like that can happen. Just cow because otherwise we'll get letters. Cow, sorry cow. Yes, she wasn't turned into a bull. One cool thing about the Bosphorus is that the water flows in both directions. So on the top of the water, it flows in one way, and then if you go really low down, it flows the other way.

And so that means that if you're someone on a boat, you can just float on top and you'll nicely float across in the direction of the water. But if you want to go in the other direction, what you have to do is you get a big rock, drop it down really, really deep, and then the current underneath the water will drag your rock in the other direction and that'll drag your boat in that direction. Wait, that's not a way anyone's travelled back and forth. That sounds completely plausible to me. Does that work? Genuinely works. I mean, it wouldn't work with a cruise ship.

Oh, as good as it happens. What size is this thing? And if you're a fisherman, it would work. Is it done? Well, in history it has been done. These days I don't think you get those kind of boats around there. That's very cool. But it is an actual river, isn't it? And it was the world's first ever discovered underwater river.

And it's so cool. So the bit underneath, it's to do with the salinity going from a salty bit to a less salty bit of water, the river underneath the sea. The river's got like banks and meanders and all the features that you have in a normal river. And a lot of boat lakes. Opt-boat lakes all over the shop. Pedal-o's?

Loads of pedal-o's, yeah, yeah, a lot of banana boats. And there are shopping trolleys at the surface. Nice. The bridge is one way to get across now, but they also have now the underground rail, and that started being built in 2004. They wanted to build it quite quickly because one bridge, having that one bridge, was just crazy amount of traffic.

The problem was, is they tried to pick a spot that just wouldn't have any archaeology around it. It's hard in Turkey, isn't it? So hard. The center of the ancient world. Particularly when you've had bridges that were made of boats, you know, thousands of them. 700, sorry, Anna. And so that's exactly what happened. They started going down and they started finding all of these shipwrecks that had been buried into the ground and they had to pause. And

so between 2005 and 2013, they were just digging up something like 36 ships that they found. They found all this pottery. And so after they found everything, they thought it was all done. They then said, okay, we just want one more quick look, just one little tiny look. And then discovered a 6000 BC unknown Neolithic dwelling that they had no idea existed with everything down there. And then it just took even more time. I feel a bit conflicted about that.

Just don't we don't owe the past this much. I'm sorry to irritate all archaeologists listening. We wouldn't know about these things if it wasn't for the fact some brilliant person had the idea of building an underground railway, which is much cooler than an old boat. I'm sorry. Do you know whose side you're on here? And I think this is going to make you happy because I know you're a big fan. Erdogan felt exactly the same as you, Andy. He said this is a bunch of rubbish pots and pans. And the more important thing is infrastructure. And I know you guys see Eytelwil a lot. I think of myself as the strong man of this podcast.

Even threw himself a pissed off birthday party in the unopened tunnel underneath saying, this has to be open. This is enough. This is too much. And it eventually was on the date that he suggested. A lot of traffic goes through those straights, the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles, doesn't it? I think it's, is it 4% of the world's oil goes through there. Wow. Shut it down. Sorry.

There's a rule that says that everyone has to pay, but it's a very small amount. They did some sort of deal 50 years ago and said that. Well like one of those there's a toll bridge near me where you pay two p to go across it. It's a bit like that yeah it's just one old boy who's collecting two p each time. Sorry Emma. What century are you living in? What is that? It's in Oxfordshire. They exist in Lancashire a fair bit.

Do you have to pay two p every time you cross? It's like five p the one in Lancashire. It's two p and the property makes quite a lot of money out of it in a year. It's enough to sustain the property. Wow. So do you have a roll of 2p's in your car? I actually think if you don't have the 2p's they now let you go anyway, but you really should. It's round upon not to.

Well what are they going to do? If you're sitting there blocking the 2p toll, eventually it'll cost them more not to let you through. You won't be popular. Wow. Yeah. I have been to one where it's 20p. Actually they hiked it to 50 and I was really annoyed. Is that what you're about to say James? They hiked it. No them more not to let you through. You won't be popular. Wow. Yeah. I have been to one where it's 20p. Actually, they hiked it to 50 and I was really annoyed. Is that what you're about to say, James? No, I'm not. This is about turn of what is this ridiculous

thing you're talking about, Anna, to yeah, I'm very familiar with those. I'm sorry for comic conceit. I wanted to tease Anna. I wanted to have my cake and eat it. But anyway, so Turkey are now building a canal or they want to build a big old canal that goes right the way through Turkey so that you can either go on this route that goes through the Dardanelles and through the Bosphorus and pay your 2p or you can pay more and go through the canal but you know you get through quicker and you don't have to queue up. It's an amazing idea. It's like double boss for us. It's like the it's like imagine if you had a road where you had to pay 2p to go across it or then you had the m6 toll road that went the other way.

I think the first person who suggested that canal was Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1500s. And it's been suggested by almost every Turkish leaders, Ottoman leaders since then. But yeah, the ones caught on. Just a quick thing on the Ottoman Empire. I don't think we've said before much about the Ottomans. So if you became Sultan, the traditional thing to do was immediately off all your brothers, plus any uncles, cousins, like anyone would just murdered immediately. Anyone who could possibly take over from you apart from your son. Exactly.

But you've got 19 sons. And when your son becomes Sultan, he'll kill the other 18. But also your main son is cool, but all the other sons are like put in cages. They're all put in cages. Oh, I thought it was cages. Basically it's a suite of rooms,

but they're called the cages. Yeah, yeah. Then they changed their policy in about 1600. And they said, right, we can't keep on murdering everyone. So we'll just keep everyone in the cages and you would be kept there with some, apparently some concubines, but concubines who can't, who won't have any children so that, you know, you don't present a threat because you're not producing more airs. How do you make sure so it's all sort of post-monopols or concubines?

I think that's the drill. And you only allowed a few very specific hobbies, apparently mainly McCrame. Oh, like making knots. Basically elaborate knot work. And then you can tie yourself a rope ladder. Yeah, that's terrible. Like they were. Another one's escaped, Sultan.

What, by a rope bridge? Yeah, rope bridge. That's why the multiple attempts at bridges across the Bosphorus are all rope-based. None of them survived. But every so often, the Sultan would die and they'd all were based, none of them survived. But every so often the Sultan would die and they'd have to get someone out of the cages and basically you'd have this blithering idiot who only knew how to do macrame and was not experienced in ruling the largest empire on the planet. Did that happen? Did you have the cage

ruler? Yeah. Wow. So imagine you're in the 17th century. You're visiting the Sultan. You're like a big wig, but from another part of Turkey or the Ottoman Empire, you turn up at the Topkapi Palace in the middle of Istanbul. That's where he lives. And he gives you some sorbet. Okay. Normally you get some nice white sorbet, but this time it's red. It's strawberry flavor. What does that mean? Am I about to be executed? I'm afraid so. No! Yeah, yeah. That's what would happen.

That's how you find out. You see your sorbet. I just need to say, I need to say it was sherbet, not sorbet. Sherbet. Oh! Which is a similar design. Just as nice. Just as nice, yeah. But I misread it on my file. So yeah, so you would give this sherbet normally it'd be white with your little lolly that you would dip in it. But now it was the red flavor. And so you're going to get executed, right? Yeah. But there was a loophole. You could escape

execution if you could outrun the executioner in a 300 yard foot race. Wow. Okay. So the executioner, who's also a gardener, by the way. Yeah. Oh, so he might be a bit limber. He is going to be limber. Yeah. He's going to be strong. He's going to work outside a lot. So how do you do it? Well, you just have to race him. And if you beat him, you're fine. And if you don't beat him, you're executed and your body's held into the sea. See, I was thinking pretend to eat the sherbet. Keep it in your hand as you run, drop it down as a trap, let him slip, easy peasy.

No, he's a gardener Dan, what you want to do is you want to leave an unusual flower in his path, so he can't help but stop and take a cutting for later. Yes, no, what you want to do is you want to take him on a path where you come to a 2p toll and you go through, but he, having left his change, back at the castle. Do you get to eat the sherbet beforehand just in case you don't live to be able to eat it afterwards? I think you do, yeah. Oh, that's nice.

It's a sort of last meal, isn't it? It's going to put you off a little bit though, because you know it's your last meal. I don't think you're going to enjoy that sherbet quite as much. Are there stats on how many people won or lost against the Gardener? If there are, they didn't come up in the course of my research. Yeah, right. Fair enough. This was 17th century, did you say?

That's correct. Okay, so I was trying to look into anything else that has survived Istanbul from the 17th century onwards that we still have today. And I found if you look at a drums kit on most of the biggest bands out there in the world, you'll see on the cymbals, a lot of them will say Zildjian. There's like four major cymb symbol brands out there, right? This one was created in 1623 by Evadis Zildjian and it was a family that were trying to bring metals together to create gold, but instead created these amazing symbols and they would make little symbols that go on each finger

so you could you could make it so as to create noise in war and so on. That's not going to be a big noise of fingers. 10,000 Ottomans. So this became a product that they started making and it slowly over the years morphed into becoming symbols that were being used by drummers. And then when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, which was seen, probably the most viewed show, I think, at its time, Zildjian was on there and every drummer started taking it up. So it has become the

biggest brand. And this is in the Ottoman, this is a Turkish Ottoman family in the 1600s. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In the 1600s. So that survived into pop culture. You'll see it at the Grammys, you'll see it everywhere in modern day. I just like it when Dan starts a fact, watching the excitement on your face and in your voice as you get closer and closer to the Beatles climax. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact this week is that because he talks so fast, when Martin Scorsese spoke at an international film festival, they had to provide an additional translator to first translate his fast words into slower words.

They're still the same words. They're same words. You wouldn't know. They sound completely different. Does this mean that the event went on way after Scorsese finished talking? Because what matters to the audience is hearing the words from the second interpreter, right? So you've got Scorsese, who's going to be translated into, let's say it's French, right? The French translator is listening to Scorsese going, I have no idea what you're saying because you're so

speedy. So they brought another English speaker in to listen to Scorsese speak really fast and then go, so what he's saying is in English... Yeah, so that will take twice as long, won't it? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could trim it down a bit along the way. You could. Unfortunately, Scorsese in his films are known for being very concise and brief. So I'm sure his speech is the same. This is a very little known nugget that I got from Michael Palin's diaries. So I'm reading his second volume of diaries, Halfway to Hollywood. This happened on the 24th of September 1980.

He was out to dinner in Los Angeles with Scorsese and he told them this over a dinner party. So I haven't seen that referenced anywhere else. But I have since asked a bunch of filmmakers and watched a few interviews and yeah, he's powerhouse when he's speaking. It's funny because I wouldn't imagine it because of all his films they have these languorous long pauses and people who speak very slowly before murdering people. It's weird to think of him as just like a chipmunk. I've never heard him speak.

I don't think. No, me neither. He's slower these days, I would say, but he's 80. But you've seen him speak, I suppose, James, through cinema. You know, you've heard what he wants to say. Yeah, I suppose I have. For four hours at a time. I thought I'd never seen one of his films.

I had to look through the whole, I thought I managed it because it doesn't, it's not my kind of thing, you know, like gangsters and mafia stuff. I was not writing my thing. No big worms. It turns out I've seen two of his films. You cannot get away from Scorsese. I've seen Cape Fear. A bit of a stinker and Shutter Island, which is amazing. Yes. Love Shutter Island. Oh, what a film. So good. Interesting. Cape Fear isn't a stinker, is it?

It's a classic. It's a classic, yeah. A bit silly, isn't it? I guess so. Yeah. We're all out of our own opinions. Yeah, exactly. Sorry. I don't think it's like,

it's not like a classic Razzie kind of movie. Sorry. What I mean is it's a highly garlanded, commercially successful and critically acclaimed stinker in my eyes. Yeah, but amazing filmmaker. So the movies, if you don't know, Taxi Driver he made, he made, what else did he make? Mean Streets, The King of New York, The Irishman in recent

times. Raging Bull? Raging Bull, Wolf of Wall Street. Oh yeah, that's a big one. Raging Bull does seem to have saved his life because, well, he was a huge coke addict, wasn't he, in the 70s. Is that why he was speaking so fast addict, was he in the seventies? And so why you speak yourself fast? I think it will have contributed. Yeah. Something

to do with that. Yeah. Um, and he just made a film, which actually was a bit of a flop with, um, what she called Dorothy from the wizard of Oz's daughter, Liza Manali. Thank you. He nearly died. Um, he was ended up in hospital and he was really bleeding internally everywhere. They thought he was going to brain hemorrhage. He said, I was bleeding internally everywhere and I didn't know it. My eyes were bleeding, my hands, everything, my mouth, my nose, coughing up blood. Anyway, he sort of was surviving, but he was very depressed and he didn't really want to make Raging Bull, I don't think, but Robert De Niro, who'd made a few films with him,

was really keen on it. And De Niro rocked up beside his hospital bed with a script for Raging Bull that I think had been sort of rewritten, redrafted and said, look, you've got to do this, mate. What are you going to do? Are you going to sit here and die or are you going to do Raging Bull? And he did it and it's one of the best films ever made. Another thing he made was a film called New York, New York. Yes.

In fact, this is the one we're talking about with Liza Minnelli in it maybe. I think it was. Yes. Yeah. fact this is the one we're talking about with Liza Minnelli in it maybe. I think it was yes yeah and so she sang the song themed from New York New York which is the one that everyone knows. New York New York. No. New York. New York. Oh that one yeah there are two songs called New York New York. Is there which who sings that one? That one's from an old sort of Bing Crosby film isn't it? New York New York, New York. Is there, which, who sings that one? That one's from- From an old sort of Bing Crosby film, isn't it? New York, New York. It's a hell of a town. Yeah, that one. Something's up, something is down.

Thank you, good point. Yeah, exactly. But no, not that one. So I was teased for something, it was real. This is my 2P Tolbridge moment. You all right? I feel like a fool. Thank you.

Have your money back. Well, so the interesting thing about that is that film came out in 1977, and Liza Mnelli sang the theme from New York, New York. And then later in 1980, Frank Sinatra sang New York, New York, which everyone thinks like associates Frank Sinatra with New York, New York. But he never sang until 1980 because it wasn't written until 1977.

That's insane. I didn't know he was still singing in that time. I know. So all of those times when he was in the rap pack and, you know, doing, being absolutely mega famous, he never sang New York, New York, because it hadn't been written yet. How interesting. Isn't that interesting?

That's really odd. Yeah. I feel like I've got a false memory of being alive in the fifties and sixties and hearing him sing. Exactly. I think that like a lot of people who are older would know that. But for me, it was really incongruous. Yeah. Yeah. It was real time tunnel stuff. Annie, you say that he was massive in Coke. He loved his Coke.

Massive in Coke in the Coke world. Well, he did it a lot, right? I mean, he did it to the point that there was a film festival he went to in Cannes in 78. He was unable to score Coke there, so he dispatched a private jet to go on a Coke run to pick it up for him and bring it back. So it was a massive thing. And also, he made a movie called The Last Waltz. So he's quite an amazing director. He doesn't just do films. He does documentaries and quite seminal documentaries as well. And so he's done a Beatles documentary. There we go. Wow. And let's move on. Now we've now we've loved that foil for this fact. Let's plow on, shall we?

There was one which was called The Last Waltz, and one of the musicians, Neil Young, had a bit of coke under his nose, and this made it to the film. And so they were sitting in the editing room going, what do we do about this? And he had VFX literally invent a whole new method that's still used in film today.

They called it the traveling bogey, where they were able to knock out the coke from his nose by having a thing follow and track the coke all along the shot. So when you see it, the coke's not in the shot, but it was in the print. And so cinema was advanced as a result of it. That's basically a Snapchat filter, isn't it? Really? Yeah. Where they find one bit, like they know this is your nose or your ears or your eyes and they can Scan and put make you look like a potato or whatever. Yeah, that's a really good call They should have done that just put a potato over his head. I think it was Neil Young. Yeah, Neil Young None of this stuff I have to say is in the IMDB on Martin Scorsese

Which reads let me just read you a couple of things from it, right? Okay, because I think Scorsese might have written this Despite being known for directing extremely dark and often very violent movies Let me just read you a couple of things from it, right? Okay. Because I think Scorsese might have written this. Despite being known for directing extremely dark and often very violent movies, he is known in real life to be a very friendly, polite and mild-mannered person who gets along very well with his cast and crew. Because so many of his actors win or are nominated for awards, actors are dying to work with him. Scorsese rarely uses R-rated language in real life.

I mean, it's just pure hagiography. Yeah. There's a film he made recently called The Irishman. Yep. James mentioned it. Saisy rarely uses R rated language in real life. I mean, it's just pure hagiography. Yeah. There's a film he made recently called The Irishman. Yep. Which I missed. I watched it on the flight to Lanzarote and it was almost the exact length of the flight. Nice.

Which is about four hours. Oof. It seems long. I mean, it is long, clearly. But the one thing they did there, because James, am I right in thinking people age? Oh, I don't fucking remember it. It was just four hours of tedious gangster stuff. Well, OK, basically people get older and then younger. It's the same characters and you're going back in life and then forward in life.

Oh, yeah, that does happen. You know, they're 30 and then they're 80 and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Anyway, they had to have a posture coach telling people, no, stop it. You're getting up from the chair like an 80 year old. You're 30 in this scene. And vice versa. Just saying no, for this scene you are a healthy fit young man. So can you jump out of it? So confused.

That's very funny. Another one he did was Hugo. Oh yeah. Probably my favorite Scorsese film, embarrassingly. The Victor Hugo biopic. No, no. It's like a family film about the early days of cinema and stuff. Lumiere? Lumiere Brothers.

It's a gorgeous, gorgeous film. It's a really good film. And it was in 3D. It was one of the early 3D films. And one interesting thing about it is there was a guy called Bruce Bridgman. Okay, he was a neuroscientist, but he had this weird thing where he couldn't perceive depth. So whenever he went to, um, like, let's say he went to a big church in Europe and he wanted to admire it, he couldn't really tell what was here and what was there, it was all flat to him.

So he used to walk up and down the church so that the things closer to him would move quicker than things further away from him. You know, like when you're on a train and like anything that's really close to the train flies past and then the mountains in the background go really slowly. He would use that parallax effect to understand depth. Anyway, he went to watch Hugo and he put on these 3D glasses and suddenly he could see the 3D and when he left the movie, he could see 3D. It had fixed his problem.

Isn't that amazing? That's incredible. That is good. So he didn't have to keep the glasses on? No, it just fixed his 3D. It kind of triggered something in his brain that said, oh, this is how it works. How weird. Was that in the IMDB? No.

What is going on? Just on interpreters, as this fact was about, it does sound insanely stressful. They do have the European Parliament, they have to switch every half an hour because otherwise they just can't, they get very, very stressed. And they can't have mistakes as well, right? Exactly. And you're in a booth with one other interpreter, so you seamlessly switch over every half an hour. And if you're not on shift, you should not eat an apple.

You can eat a banana. Why? Because it's too noisy. It will distract your fellow interpreter who's trying desperately to listen to. OK, James is doing some Foley now and the audience is just listening to this disgusting sound. Yeah, that's cruel. And if James, you'd had a nana there, it would have been fine. I've actually been eating a banana this whole time.

Exactly, exactly. It was some of the gestures Dan's been doing have been actually more distracting. No, but half an hour, half an hour is about the, apparently the safe limit. And in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi spoke at the UN and his interpreter allegedly collapsed after 75 minutes of mental stuff from Gaddafi. He just interpreted his brain just went into spasm and he had to be helped away. He cried out something like,

I can't do this anymore. Yeah. I think that is a problem, isn't it? So some interpreters talk about this with translating Donald Trump, which is you have certain phrases that he uses that just kind of doesn't make sense, but in English we all kind of let it slip.

But as a translator, you've got to do it. You don't translate the words, do you? Translate the meaning of the words. I think they just suffer from what he actually means. It's the issue. What is he actually trying to say there? The sentence lasts 20 minutes and it just goes... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I can see how it's a pressurizing thing. Like a different kind of interpretation is to do, um, sign language, right? And we have seen meltdowns publicly where they are often accused of not knowing sign language, right? And we have seen meltdowns publicly where they are often accused of not knowing sign language. And I wonder if that's the case. So do you remember there was the Obama speech after Mandela had died? And the guy

just clearly didn't know. He still maintains that he does know it, but he was hallucinating. And in America, Hurricane Irma, there was a moment where on TV they were saying, you've got to be safe. There's flood zones. You got to get to, you got to consider staying in shelters. And the guy who apparently knew sign language was just making words like bear monster and pizza. And he says, well, my brother's deaf and I do know sign language, but I just, it was too much. I think this is the stress of it.

My cousin is actually a professional translator, Russian translator, and he was saying the stress of it, like you're fluent. You've been fluent for years. And then suddenly you'll have a blank. He said he was translating Russian. And at one point someone was talking about baking and said the word keksv. And he knew that's a loan word from British. So that's fine.

So keksv means cake in Russian. That's the loan word they were using. He was like, I know it's a loan word from British. What do I associate with keks? Keks, as in get your keks on. There's trousers and there's trousers and there's trousers and you panic in the moment. One thing interpreters all do apparently is they interrupt people. Okay.

They're nearer to the nose. I shouldn't have mentioned this fact. I knew it would be you James. If listen, you notice I haven't spoken for a while, it's because I've literally been eating the apple the whole time. Unfortunately, swallowed it just in time to interrupt Andy there. Go back to it. Um, no, that basically they, the whole thing of being an interpreter is you learn what people around you are going to say and you slightly are anticipating the end of a sentence.

So when they go clock off after a long day of interpreting, they go home and their partner says to them, I'm making and they say chicken nuggets. I know, I know. And their spouses and their spouses and children are furious with them all the time because they just will not let them finish. Semi relatedly, I saw a head of a interpreting service who hires people out for like UN and stuff talking about how you do it. And he was saying in his video, you have to be really careful about what distance you keep from the person who you're interpreting.

And at first I thought, well, sure you just keep the distance where you can hear them, right? But he meant in terms of the time you leave between when they speak and when you start interpreting. So you can't get too close to them as if Andy starts speaking and I'm interpreting him. If I literally interpret after every single word he says, I'll mess up the grammar,

I won't be able to predict the end of the sentence, I won't get the syntax right. Because Andy might be starting a sentence and then go on one of his whimsical endings of a sentence. Exactly. Whereas if you're converting Dan, you just mention the Beatles at some point, and you trust that train will come in. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that indigenous Arctic peoples were absolutely banned from eating surf and turf.

Now we said before we went on air, before the mics came on, that neither one's going to know what surf and turf is. Yes, I thought this was universally accepted cuisine, but Dan, maybe because of his unique upbringing and others don't. So surf and turf is basically where you get dumped like a massive lobster next to a massive steak or, you know, meat and fish. Land and sea. Land and sea. Can it be, I was wondering, can it be like oysters and ham?

Is that technically surf and turf? Where I come from, it's usually scampi and very, very cheap steak. Oh, okay. Fish fingers and a Scottish egg would technically count as surf and turf, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, there you go. There are lots of things that count. You can all think of meat from land and meats from the sea. Do it yourself at home. It's hours of endless

fun. God, it's a fun game. It was fun. I don't know. I just think that's debatable. Anyway, I don't know if this is still true. Obviously, there are a lot of Inuits left across Alaska and Canada, Greenland, and the Yupik people and the Aleut people, all from that kind of region of the world, all used to do it, but they've obviously integrated more into the outside world in the last hundred years, so I don't know if they still do. But anyway, it was the idea that land and sea absolutely could not be mixed, mostly because you'd really upset the mistress of the sea. And they went to such lengths, so essentially the only foods they had 90% of the time were seal and caribou. And fish. And fish. And fish. Yes. And they could never be eaten together. They could

never be cooked or stored together. In the dark months of the year, so like half the year, they'd go and live out on the sea ice, and because they're on sea there, the women who did all the sewing were absolutely forbidden from sewing clothes because they're made of caribou skins. So they'd have to do all their sewing in summer because you can't take the caribou skins out onto the sea because that's mixing land and sea. That's surf and turf. Surf and turf. You're allowed to wear the caribou skin. Weirdly, you're allowed to wear it. Yeah, you don't have to go naked out to the sea. You're allowed to wear them weirdly, but just not make them. you're allowed to wear it. Yeah, you don't have to go naked out to the sea. You're allowed to wear them weirdly, but just not make them.

This taboo was so strict. So there was as well as the thread thing, and you had to process all your caribou in the autumn before you then started hunting seal. But there was another taboo. So fish that were caught in rivers and lakes, so trout and salmon, must not be cooked over a driftwood fire,

because driftwood comes from the sea. Oh wow. So that is a land sea taboo where it's kind of fish from the land, if you like, and wood from the sea. What if you caught your fish in some brackish water? I think it's a strong no. Is it a freshwater fish? Well a salmon would go in between wouldn't it? Yeah. Oh yeah. But as soon as they'd entered, it was like even if the salmon were just 20 yards upstream having come from the sea, it's like, no, the sea's out now. They're now river fish. It's bizarre.

It wasn't easy, was it? Living the life of an Arctic person a hundred years ago. You wouldn't have thought you'd be introduced. Imagine you were practically starving to death and all you've got is a bit of driftwood to cook your caribou on. Well, fuck, I guess we're going to die. That's So interesting. It's amazing. Is it one of those things where there's a great reason behind it? And actually the religious thing or the mistress of the sea thing is just a-

Tacked on. Justification. I don't know. You know, like there's a thing where people who don't eat pig products perhaps is because if you didn't cook them properly, you'd get terrible parasites and stuff. Right. And the meat spoils faster in the middle to the sides, so that's why there's a pork taboo. That kind of thing. I don't know. Could have been. Could have been like if you take the caribou meat out to sea, it might spoil by the time you're out at sea or something, but it's lost in the midst of time and now it's all about

pissing off the sea goddess. I was reading a bit about their diets and the stuff they ate, and this is about the turn of the 20th century. Quite a few explorers, memoirs who went and lived with Inuits for long periods of time. And one guy who was living with the copper Inuits who went off the island off the north of Canada, said that the only non meat he ever saw them eat is the half digested moss from the first stomach of a caribou. Sounds good to me.

unnecessarily picky. There's a thing called rock tripe is what they eat, which is this, it's kind of, I think it's more lichen than moss Andy, just to say, but they would, it would grow on the rocks and then you would scrape it off and you would eat it. But you had to soak it for long periods and change the water a lot because if you didn't, it would basically give you the constant shits. Oh no. So you had to, yeah. So has it been, if it's in an animal stomach, has it kind of been pre-soaked?

That would help it I guess. Maybe it ferments a little bit in there. Yeah maybe that's why they did it. It's like having your oats pre-milked. And you could, it came in like, I'm sort of imagining like a meat loaf because often it would be in the caribou's stomach and they'd take the stomach out wholesale and it would freeze obviously because it's freezing and then you just hack off bits so what you get is a nice mixture of you know like

if you have a sort of sausage meat loaf with like herbs through it it's like you get a mixture of caribou stomach and moss frozen. Very nice. Another explorery type who witnessed the way that they ate their food and then transposed it to what we do now is Captain Bird's Eye. I had no idea about this. What's this? Captain Bird's Eye basically was out in Labrador for quite a while and he noticed all the indigenous Inuit freezing their food and then being able to heat it later and it tastes really good.

Frozen food was happening already around the world, but the thawing process was really bad. If you unfroze your food, it suddenly lost its taste. It was really oddly and the texture of it and so on. And he applied the method that he saw the Inuit do to his frozen food company. And that's what sparked frozen food as a massive industry. And of course, Birdside today never sell sausages because surf and turf. Surf and turf.

Surf and turf. The early caribou intestine and moss was not popular with kids at tea time. Oh, you battered that. Anyone's eating it. Yeah, he noticed that when they caught some fish and froze it in the middle of winter, it tastes way better than when they caught it in like the spring and froze it because it was so much quicker that the freezing process happened. It just made things taste better. And then that made him, you know, do his own version. So basically his trick is free stuff really quickly. Free stuff really quickly. Flash freezing. Yeah.

Kind of like flash frying. Huh. But the opposite. Wise words. Yeah. Yeah. Another taboo, even if you're allowed to make reindeer based clothing, right? Some groups of people, you would match your clothes to the sex of the caribou that the skin came from. Cool. So men, human men would wear male caribou based skin clothing. Okay. Do you think you'd be able to tell the difference? I think if I was an Inuit I would.

Yeah, yeah. Because apparently the skin is a bit tougher and therefore supposedly better for hunting in and the women would use the thinner skin from the female caribou for their own clothes. Really? Because presumably they're, you know, doing the macramé. Again, if you've only got the male caribou and you're freezing to death. I know. How rigidly did they adhere to these rules? I don't know. I don't know. One thing is Franklin, you know, Franklin went on an expedition of the North and he got trapped and they had no food and stuff. He had some Inuit people with him there and he said that when they go really desperate, they would eat their clothes.

Oh, okay. That's not- So that's quite useful. Yeah. Yes. And sleds, right, as well? Yeah, the sleds were sort of very frozen. They weren't frozen fish. I think I remember they weren't frozen fish. Yeah. Some of them. And sleds, right, as well? Yeah, the sleds were sort of very frozen.

They weren't frozen fish. I think I remember they weren't frozen fish. Some of them. Wow, cool. Really, really frozen, consistently frozen fish. And some of the Aleu people, speaking of edible clothes, they had gut parkers. So any large sea mammal, their guts are very good

for making a weatherproof, waterproof, windproof parka out of. And some Aleut people made robes from sea otter intestine. Wow. You know that, did your parents ever say to you, if you did something bad, they say, I'll have your guts for garters. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They were probably Aleuts. That's where it comes from.

Because they really sort of had like three ingredients, they used all of it. So they ate caribou poo. A real delicacy was caribou head and fermented contents of caribou stomach and lots of caribou droppings made into a soup. Could we eat it with our... I guess so. If it was on a plate right now, would I get sick if I ate it? You might not be used to it. Might well do. It's poo. Like we're talking poo.

I think you'd struggle to keep it down in the first instance. Yeah. But it's not poo because it's a herbiv well do. It's poo, like we're talking poo. I think you'd struggle to keep it down in the first instance. Yeah. But it's not poo, because it's a herbivore poo, it's quite different to us eating our own poo, which is really, really bad for you. It's like eating a cow pat. Yeah.

I don't think we're recommending eating any poo. Sorry, Emma. It's a good job Captain Birdseye saw the fish freezing thing and not the poo eating thing. Seriously. Wow. Caribou head poo-sync has not taken off. How different would the world be right now? Waitrose freezer section would be an exciting place. Um, they, they do, there are damn things about whether Inuit

people would especially adapted and were, cause they were, you know, the stuff about the Mediterranean diet, you know, lots of vegetables, lots of olive oil and so on. People wondered for a long time why Inuit people were able to live on a diet that's basically just fat and protein. There's no carbohydrates. Where's the vitamins coming from? Where's the vitamins? It's confusing. Almost no vegetation apart from a little bit in summer. And they do have a few genetic adaptations, it's believed now, which make it easier for them to eat a lot more fat than everyone else and survive. They have slightly bigger livers because they need to make more glucose from protein. They wee a lot more to get rid of all the extra urea that they're taking in in their

diet. But also- God, so annoying to be weeing so much when you're in such a cold place. I know, I know. It's bad. Yeah. They must have a system where you don't need to take things out. There's an otter gut tuning system that's...

You've got to be like astronauts at that point, right? But also there were genuinely less healthy in other ways, as in, you know, they had lots of hardening of the arteries dating back hundreds of years, just because you're eating mostly fat and protein. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Sometimes they'd find a tiny bird, an Arctic bird, and they'd swallow it whole, skin it and swallow it whole, which I'm impressed you can swallow a bird whole. This is just what the- How big is this bird? Wait a minute. Was there a spider that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside them?

Yeah. Eventually they swallow the whole reindeer. Kiviak is one thing that they do. So they get a seal skin and then they fill it with loads of tiny little orcs, little birds. A UK. No, yeah. Not a W K orcs. You mean it's a bit orcs. So you have about 300 little orc birds and you put them in a seal skin and then you like

bury it under some rocks and ferment it and then eventually you eat it. But you have to use orcs. In 2013, there was a load of people from the town of Siara Paluk and they made kiviak out of idoducks and idoducks don't ferment as well as orcs and a few people died because they need to ferment in the proper way that makes them edible. Silly billies. Because they need to ferment in the proper way that makes them edible. Silly billies. That's why there are these taboos is because it's actually really sound food guidance that people have learned through trial and error over centuries.

I mean that would make sense for there to be a taboo against eating idoducts fermented inside the seal, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Do you know what the Scandinavian Samy used reindeer spleen for? I love that. It's like a question for the news quiz. So this week, one of the Sammy people of the Arctic been doing with reindeer spleen. Santa Sax? Oh, very nice. It is to eat, but it's for a particular group of people in your civilization.

Well, babies. Got it in one. Oh, nice. They're easy to suck on. They're slightly, they're sort of people in your civilization. Well babies. Got it in one. Nice. They're easy to suck on. They're slightly, they're sort of training food. Okay. Spleen. That makes sense because a lot of the food that people were eating was just solid frozen,

even though you were saying they sometimes thawed it. Very often they just didn't have the equipment to make a fire big enough to thaw it. And it's so hard for a newborn baby to chow down on a massive frozen chunk of raw meat. So frozen jerky. Not the reason why very little baby food is frozen jerky. Yeah. But yeah, reindeer spleen is apparently good for your tot. Well, there you go.

If you run out of those little Ella pouches, that's something to consider. OK, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that men can have three penises without knowing it. So I checked. Surprise! You only have the normal four. The normal five. Yeah, this is very interesting, isn't it? Because they're not obvious. No, they're not. They're hidden inside your body. This was a thing called trifalium. And it was only seen in a human for the first time in 2020 in a newborn baby. But then in 2024, I think or 2023, there was a recent study from the University of Birmingham Medical School, where they dissected a 78 year old man who donated

his body to science and found that he had an extra two penises hidden up there. Yeah, it's hidden inside. They were inside his scrotum. Yeah. So they were small. They were really, really small. Well, let's not judge. Yeah, they were really small and they kind of they attached to his normal penis like the urethra kind of went through. They said that there was no dead end. So if you imagine like if the urine had not had a real just a straight place to go, then he might have got a lot of urine infections and stuff like that. But actually, it seemed like mostly everything was kind of fine

that he might have experienced some pain during sex if he got some internal erections and wonder what that was. Ironic, isn't it? Well, the free penises might make sex less pleasant. That's, you know, that's ironic. I think it would have the opposite effect. It's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife, isn't it? Three penises when all you need is a good chag. They were called two small supernumerary penises stacked in a sagittal orientation, posterior inferiorly to the primary penis. Lovely style. Sexy.

Yeah. And the one was more of a main one, wasn't it? He had one main penis. Oh, sorry. Sorry. He had the a main one, wasn't it? He had one main penis. Oh, sorry. Sorry. He had the main main one, the big guy. And then he had two... The big guy.

The big guy. As we all call it. The good enough guy. I didn't actually really know the layout, the structure of the penis very well until this. So you've got these two bodies of tissue, one on top and one underneath. The corpus cavernosa and the corpus spongiosum, the urethra runs through the middle.

And so in his mini penises, he had those spongy bits as well. And in the secondary penis, the second main one, the stand in, the urethra actually did still run through the middle of that. In the third one, the urethra didn't even bother. But it was so small that it didn't really matter. But the corpora cavenoistra is the bit that fills up with the blood. That's the, I think we might have mentioned it before. That's the bit that fills the blood, which allows you to have an erection.

This guy, this is quite recent news. He's lived a long life, 78 years. He's probably had chats with his family as he's going, what do you think I'll be remembered for? What do you think they'll be remembered for? What do you think they'll talk about? One of his kids is sat there and his two tiny kids. I just think what a great tragedy he never knew. Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. Right.

You want to know. And it's, yeah. I mean, who knows what everyone listening to this podcast will have. People might have extra fingers or extra also you can get extra nipples, can't you? But really subtle ones that you can barely tell that they're there. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's all sorts you can have.

Well, these things are quite rare. And I was thinking about it would be good if we were more likely to have some of these interesting extra body parts. So I was looking at the more likely ones. And did you know that 20% of people, maybe up to 30%, estimates vary, have an extra spleen. Oh, that'd be useful when we're feeding our kids. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the splenunculi, an extra spleen. Yeah, and it's a little accessory spleen. They tend to be very small and quite near your main spleen. And yeah, I think we

don't really know why. I think they think it's often you'll get a little injured or bumped when you're younger and it'll split off from the main spleen. So this isn't done in the womb. It's not the fetus that grows in it. I don't think so. No, it's not. So there was a guy who was playing ultimate Frisbee

one day, he was slightly injured. He ruptured his spleen, so not good. And the doctors who operated on him later said, by the way, do you know about all your other spleens? And he didn't. And so the spleen, it sort of filters out damaged red blood cells and it's very, very useful. Although it's not crucial. A lot of people have a spleen off and it's fine.

Yes, that's true. But it has a role in the immune system and things like that. But as you say, it's not essential. But if it's hurt, bits of it splinter off through the body and it depends where they land. So if they land somewhere with a good blood supply, they will grow into another micro spleen. And sometimes if you're having your spleen out, the doctors will just chop it up and hope a new one grows somewhere in you. Like chopping up a worm basically. Oh, does that actually, I thought they didn't know if that works yet. I said they hope. I didn't say they'd guarantee it.

Something else that I also read weirdly conversely is if you're having a splenectomy, which is like if you've got blood disorder or something, you have to have your spleen out. The doctors have to know if you've got an extra spleen because if your main spleen is malfunctioning, your tiny extra one will also be malfunctioning somewhere. So you have the main one out, but you know, the malfunction will stay. So you've got to search the whole body. You've got to open up someone's entire body and search.

Yeah. There's another thing which is called the LRP5 gene, which when it has a mutation, bones have a higher density about them. So they've noticed that there are people who just can't break their bones. Probably if you really, really went for it, ultimately it could break. But in a situation where most people would break their bones, they would just not have a crack. And it seems to happen a lot in America, in Connecticut,

who people have been identified. So something's going on, the mutation is passing through genetically. But one of the symptoms where you could know that you have this is difficulty staying afloat while swimming. Anna? Anna! Dun dun dun! The only person we know to sink in the Dead Sea. Oh my god. And my mum was so weirdly close to that guy from Connecticut who used to visit all the time when I was a kid. That's amazing. Have you ever broken a bone? No. Oh no, I've broken loads of bones. Only small ones though. Like wrist bones and my jaw.

I think it would count. Does it still count? Good job. Only the minor ones. You were with me when I broke my jaw in facts, weren't you? Yes, and don't get any more facts wrong on QI. Wow. Yeah, it's a top shipping runs, guys. There was an interesting thing in 2020, which is the first medical case, I think,

of someone who was shot in the chest, but survived because his heart was on the opposite side of his body to most people. Brilliant. Cool. Isn't that cool? It actually happened. So this is a thing called Cytosin Versus where all of your organs are on the wrong side. There's about one in 6,000 to 12,000 people have it, but most people would never know they had it.

But what's kind of interesting is Dr. No had it in the novel, in the James Bond novel. And he was shot in the wrong side of his body. Just like this guy in the medical literature a few years ago, he survived and he got a God complex because he thought this makes me special. And that's why he became such a bad guy. Oh, sorry. Dr. No did not the other. This guy. Did Dr. No think his heart was in the right place then? And that's where the saying comes from. No, he knew that like the doctors told him and he was like, that makes me special. So I see. I should take over the world. That has been used in a few plot points. I remember

my, my dad, I watching a movie and him explaining to me cause a lady shoots a man in the chest and leaves him to die. but she shot him. She knows and it's love. Your heart is quite near the middle, isn't it? As in it's nearer the middle than we all think, which is just under the left nipple. Yeah. It's got to be a very good shot, hasn't it? And you're still going to scrape probably a bit of it. Because what does it really affect? This Cetus inversus thing where you're the other way

around because your lungs unaffected. Yeah. Oh, liver. Cause you only got one liver, one spleen gallbladder. Also your spleen, as we've heard, could be literally anywhere in your body. But your liver is a big one, I think. Yes, yeah, because that's massive, isn't it? I mean, you probably will die if you've been shot in the chest anyway, right? We should say, don't hope. Don't eat poo and don't get shot in the chest.

You're going to take any message from this podcast. All these things about unusual body parts that we're talking about. I think it might interest a guy called Etienne de Beaumont, who was someone living in Paris in the early 20th century. He was a big old pochot and he liked to do lots of parties and stuff. He was a friend of Coco Chanel. And one of his parties in 1919, the theme of it was that every guest had to arrive with the most interesting body parts exposed. So whatever you think your most interesting body part is, if it's your head, lucky you. If it's your spleen, tough. What would you go

for Andy? Sorry to put you on the spot. No, it's fine. Well that weird growth down there is, I would go with that. That'll be it. I've got a weird shaped finger. This finger which got shut in the door when I was tiny and it's permanently disfigured as a result.

Yeah? Do you think that would break the ice at this party? I think I'm not getting invited to this party if that's, if I filled in the form and put that on my RFP, this is not going to come with with exposed. I think it's going to be a dull night for a lot of people. That's weird because I was going to pick my finger as well because I've got a little freckle on it, which makes it, I can make my finger look like an elephant. I've got a trunk and an ear. I think we'd be put on the same table.

I don't think, I think you'll be put on the table with other people who could do elephant impressions. Oh no. Do we know if anyone beat Dan and Andy's suggestions of this party? Like I really tried to find out and really every source just tells you that this existed. I got it from a biography of Coco Chanel initially. Cause we were either going for, oh my genitals are the most interesting part, here they are, or what is it?

I mean, can you, what can you expose? Your knee, yeah, ankle, elbow, it's joints and genitals. It's going to be this party. You don't want interesting genitals, do you? I think you want standard genitals. But they might be the most interesting thing about you. Okay, yeah. If you had three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God, if you had three. On things you don't know are inside your body.

I mean, this is silly. I was just reading, a doctor talking on Reddit about experiences of patients with weird stuff inside the body and saying, a young man came in complaining of a headache. And sorry, this was someone who worked in radiology and said, and so they wanted to find out the cause of the headache. And so said, we asked for a history, anything that could be relevant to this headache. The man said nothing to report. We scan his head, CT shows a bullet rattling loose between his nasal cavity and his

brain. So I asked the guy, have you ever been shot in the face? And he said, oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that. You've got to run back through your full history sometimes. Yeah, that's amazing. I read something about a guy in 1911 called Alexander Grail, who fought two duels near New Orleans. And the first one, someone sort of stabbed him with a sword and it went right through his lungs. And then he went to hospital, managed to come out but he's really sick. He warts. They said in the newspapers, he was bowed like an octogenarian. He had a bit of surgery, but the doctors are like, ah, this is not gonna work, mate, you've got a huge abscess there, you're gonna die. And he thought, well, I'm gonna die now so I might as well do more duels.

I might as well say fuck you to the people who upset me in the past. So he got into another duel and the person shot him in the exact place where the sword had gone in and it drained the abscess and he got cured. Yes! I was hoping you'd say that! That is where we get the comic bonk on the head twice, restores your memory. The 3D glasses get you a 3D version.

And sorry, is this one of the things we are recommending? Yes, absolutely. Okay. If you've been in a duel and got an abscess on your lungs? Get in another duel immediately. Okay, that's 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 Shriberland. Andy? I'm at Andrew Hunter M on Blue Sky. Yep. James? I'm on threads. No Such Thing as a Fish is James Harkin. Well it changes every week. And Anna, where can they

find us as a group? You can get in touch with us as a group by going to at No Such Thing on Twitter or at No Such Thing as a Fish on Instagram or you can email podcast.qi.com Yep, or you can go to our website no such thing as a fish.com do check it out We've got a gig coming up in july if you want to get tickets to that at the crossed wires festival We've also got all of our previous episodes There's also a link the gateway into our secret club club fish where if you join you're going to get access to lots of bonus Episodes so do check that out. Otherwise just come back next week, we will be back with another episode and we'll see

you then. Goodbye. Outro Music