No Such Thing As A Fish - 582: No Such Thing As Siegfried Bassoon

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss particles, poems, plums, and Antonio da Ponte. 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 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

Hi everybody, Anna and Andy here. We have a little bit of exciting news for you before this week's show starts. Yes we do! We are actually doing two live shows in the very near future, very excited about both of them. So one of them is on the 7th of June and that's in Belgium! Yeah, it's lovely Belgium. And it'll be even lovelier if you're at the Nerdland Festival. This is run by long time friend of the podcast, Lieven Schaider. It's such a good festival. There's all sorts of amazing sciency, nerdy, comedy, brilliant stuff there, including a show from us. We're going to be doing a show there on the 7th of June, which is a Saturday. And the whole

festival is amazing. It's just an amazing weekend of wonderful things going on. It's so much fun. We highly recommend it if you haven't been already. We really do. So book yourself a trip there now and then book yourself a trip to Sheffield for the Crossed Wires Festival. That's on the 6th of July and again we'll be performing there on the Sunday. And to get tickets for either of these events you can go to no such thing as a fish dot com.

That's right. So do that now right so do that now do just do that now yeah do it do it now no such thing as a fish dot com and has already said it you know the address it's the same as the show name it's always the same for god's sake why do we keep saying it yeah all right see you at those shows on with the podcast on with the show Let's go! 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 Anna Tyshinsky, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray.

And once again, we have gathered around 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 that Venice's most famous bridge was built by a man named Antonio the bridge What's it is it realto it's the realto bridge which is the biggie Yeah, it's not the biggest but it is the it's the famous one most venerable and the builder was Antonio da Ponte which

Certain members of this podcast have pointed out might mean Antonio Orville from the Bridge. It just doesn't mean Antonio the Bridge. Lame, lame. Can't a fella have a little flair on this podcast? We don't want to alienate the Italian listeners. Well, this was sent in by Marco Batuzzo as he originally wanted, so I think he will be pretty alienated by you now. So thanks to Marco for sending us in. This is about Venice. City of canals. That doesn't sound very sexy, does it? Queen of the Adriatic. That sounds

sexy. Yeah. The floating city. Yes. Gondolas. Smells quite like shit. Does it? For a lot of the year. Yeah. Have you guys been to Venice? Yeah. lot of the year. Really? Yeah. Have you guys been to Venice? Yeah. Lots of pigeons, I seem to remember. There was in St. Mark's Square, is it? Pigeon St. Mark's Square. But yeah, for a lot of the year, the effluence sort of backs up and it does smell pretty

whiffy. You and Dad should take charge of their tourist industry. You could really stole a lot of their problems. They're trying to put people off, aren't they? Yeah. Anyway, Antonio de Ponte designed the Rialto and this actually gets another fact I've been trying to smuggle into this podcast for some months now, which is that Canaletto, the man most famous for painting all the canals in Venice, was born Giovanni Canal. John Canal

was his name and then he painted canals for a living. And these guys didn't think that was a good fact. I think it's a good fact. I just thought it was more well-known than Antonio off the bridge. Yeah, true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird that we don't seem to know much about Mr. Bridge. We know his nephew had nepotism on his side because he built a bridge himself.

This was the Bridge of Sighs. Oh, awesome. That's the second most famous one in Venice. We'll get back to your bridge, Andy, but that bridge was called that because it was the last site that prisoners would see before they were then put into a building. So the idea was the side would be, ah, this is it. Supposedly, supposedly Byron gave it the name, the bridge aside. We don't know his nepotism. He might've just been a naturally

good bridge builder like his uncle. Can you tell us any more about Antonio or not? I've got one thing about Antonio de Ponte. So it was 1591, he's designing it. And there is a legend that he made a deal with the devil. Oh, it's one of those. It's one of those. Wow. And the bridge would be a success, but in exchange, the devil would claim the soul of the first person who crossed the bridge. Actually, I would say that's quite a good deal for him. Because usually it's the person who designs it bridge. Actually, I would say that's quite a good deal for him because usually it's the person who designs it who has to give their soul away. Exactly, exactly that.

And he tried to trick the devil by making a rooster walk over the bridge first. That never works. The devil sees through that kind of shit. Devil saw through it and then ensured that the first human to cross was De Ponti's own wife. Uh oh. Who then died. She was running after the rooster.

Do we know anything about her? No. Did she die? She died. Yeah, she's not still alive. I mean, I don't think the story is... I don't think we need to dig into that story. There's quite a few legends about it, isn't there?

So this was the fourth bridge that was built in this spot. It's not the fourth bridge. Is that an actual bridge? That's in Scotland. That's in Scotland, of course. So there were previous bridges and it was going to cost a lot of money and there's a story that goes that a couple who were talking to the government who were financing it, they said this is an impossible feat.

It's going to collapse. It's not going to work. If it happens, to God, let a nail grow out between my thighs, said the man, and the lady said, yes, and let a fire burn my vagina. And she said a fire should burn my nature, but that's what she was talking about. Now, if you look on the bridge, there were two facades where there was a lady with a fire in between her legs, and there's a man with a sort of third leg that's coming out, and supposedly it's in connection to that legend. I think it is, isn't it?

Yeah. Even though that probably didn't happen, but you know, it was a like screw you middle finger to the people who said it would never happen. Because it took almost a hundred years to be built from when it was promised. So the whole of Venice it was a joke that no one was ever gonna build it. Really? So they did do that sculpture as a middle finger. But I feel like the man got off lightly because A, he said let a nail grow between my thighs and it's not a nail, it's a leg. It's a leg. He got a third leg. He just got a third leg. That's almost an asset. Well, I'm not sure. You wouldn't say no to a third leg, would you? I think I would,

actually, because I think it's associated with certain entertainers from the 1970s that I wouldn't want to be associated with. Wow, okay. Yeah. Well, let's not go down that, over that bridge. So can I ask the previous bridges? So this is the fourth one, the Rialto, right? Yeah. Were they all wooden and burned down or something or what? A wolf came and huffed and huffed. They were kind of a mix.

They were often replaced for reasons like we need to get ships along this bit of the lagoon or the lake or the canal or whatever and actually it's too tall. So one of the previous ones was the drawbridge. Oh really? Great fun. But I think they wanted something a bit more permanent. So previous times that this bridge went down, one was it was burnt down as part of a revolt and then the next time the rebuilt one, which was in 1444, collapsed because a crowd of people were running to the marriage of the Maquis of Ferrara and the weight couldn't take it. And so it just collapsed. Wow. What was he the Marquis of? It sounded like you were just clearing your throat.

Ferrara. Ferrara. F-E-R-A-R-A. Ah. What famous thing about the bridges in Venice is they used to fight over them a lot, didn't they? And when I say fight over them, I mean, they were walking over them. It's mine, it's mine, it's mine. It was like families and they used to just have big old scraps over the bridges. Yeah, it sounds like such a fun era. Yeah.

It sort of, was there a particular day? It's a spectator's ball. You'd go to a bridge on a day and there would be the day of fighting. You know what, I think it happened quite regularly, but yeah, like it would be an Easter thing or a, you know, a special day of the year.. It's just fist fights? Just fist fights and they weren't really fighting over anything in particular it wasn't like we want this

bridge like Anna says it was just like we want honor so it'll make everyone in our family like us if we win this fight. Yeah I think it was originally started with the two massive factions which kind of split Venice the Castellani who were the shipbuilders and the sailors and the Niccolotti who were the fishermen and you know, they just hated each other so they came and they had some stick fights for a while and then I think they decided to convert to fists and it only ended in 1705. So it started in 14th century, happened all the time, always a bridge you can find somewhere with a fight on it and in 1705 when one fight

got so big and so popular that the San Gioro Llamo church somewhere else in the city caught fire and was gonna burn down and they relied on firemen volunteers to come and fix it but all the firemen volunteers were watching this fight and refused and so this amazing church burned down because these lazy firemen were too busy at the fight. You do wonder what happened in the past with it being fights between the shipbuilders and the fishermen because they must get together quite often for business right? Oh yeah you're right you want someone to build you a ship because the fishermen. The fishermen depend on the shipbuilders and the shipbuilders depend on

the fishermen to buy their boats. Why are they alienating each other? It's not good business. That's just rivalry isn't it? It's like us and the Big Bang Theory, you know? We're all part of this great comedy world but we're daggers drawn. Oh yeah, they really care about us. With hindsight, I should have said off menu. At least say people who we've actually met. And are still going. We won, we defeated the Big Bang Theory. So obvious. I was looking up other notable people from Venice. And specifically people whose names sounded like the thing that they did.

Found an archaeologist called Iacomo Boni. Brilliant. Oh, can we guess? Brilliant. Unfortunately, he was an archaeologist of Roman architecture as opposed to finding bones, but he must have come across some bones when he was digging that stuff up. He would have cleared some bones out the way. And that's the only one I found. That was really good.

How long was that? A couple of days' work? I actually lost a lot of time because Leonardo da Vinci is of Vinci and I thought, okay, where's Antonio the bridge from? So I looked up bridge and there's a few places around the world called bridge, but none in Italy and I thought, oh my God, so where is he from? Now after about half hour, I realized you didn't, you searched the word bridge, not Ponte. So I've got a lot of facts about little villages called bridge. Some of them. That's great. Well there's one in Canterbury, near Canterbury, called Bridge, population 1500. It's only cultural milestone for it is that it was once featured in a show called Robbie the Car, in which Bridges traffic congested roads were shown. That's the only popular cultural reference that it has ever had.

And do we mean Robbie the Car or Robbie of the Car? Dan, don't fall for it. But Ponte, there are lots of Pontes, it turns out, when I re-googled it, in Italy, but we also have a Ponte in the UK. Or Pontipred? We've got Pontefract? Pontefract, which literally means broken bridge. Broken bridge, yes, why does it mean that?

I stopped researching it, but it was... You'd gone off course at this point. Someone quite famous, there was a bridge that was broken and they rebuilt it and so we got its name off the back of it a very long time ago. Nice, thanks. There's the detail you needed. I didn't know this, maybe it's very well known if you've been to Venice, but it's obviously in the middle of this lagoon. Do you know the average depth of the lagoon? It's going to be either 90 centimetres or it's going to be too wide.

I think it's really shallow. It's one metre. Average depth, one metre. And it varies quite a lot. But if you are in a boat, you really need to know the right route, otherwise you are going to get beached. But basically you could paddle across. Do people swim across? No, they don't. They really don't. And people say, you know, even foreigners are not recommended to boat across because you won't be able to navigate. Because like, unlike the channel swim that people do, if you get tired, you drown. But this one, you could literally stand and just fake that you're still with the front crawl. That's how I swam

to I was about 11 years old. When you were there, you've been there. I've been there a few times. Yeah, when I was very young. Did you go in the gondolas? Yeah. And did you have a maestro on board singing? Oh no. Cause they don't sing, I believe, the gondolas. Ours didn't. No. Yeah.

I think you have to pay attention. Actually, ours was quite taciturn thinking about it. Right. Well, I think they are because they're really busy punting you along. It's really high effort. Like you'd have to be Taylor Swift to make Taylor sing. I was going, sing, damn it. They get a bit snippy when you ask them to sing. And I read an interview with a gondolier who said, yes, we know if anyone sings just one cornetto that they're British.

But there are only about 430 proper gondoliers in the city. Like the gondolas are a very specific kind of boat. And there are also the traghetti, which are like bus gondolas, which go there and more like ferries across waterways. I just remembered I have been in a gondola where they were singing. Oh, really? Yeah. And they were singing Oh, So Let Me Or Not. Just one cornetto. Just one cornetto. Yeah, yeah. But the effect is the same. That was in Las Vegas. Okay. Because there is like the is it called the Venetian maybe it is one of the hotels they have like gondoliers on the outside. Yeah, yeah.

They all lean a little bit to the right, don't they? The gondolas. The gondolas, yes. Politically, you mean? Yes, they're all very, very Republican. That's that. No, I don't know their political leanings, but their physical leanings to the right.

Every gondola is exactly 24 centimeters longer on its left-hand side, so that the keel bends round to the right and it tilts a bit to the right. Why? It's because it's kind of like if you imagine you're punting, but the gondoliers punt on one side, they row from the right side, and so if they row from the right side and it was straight, then it would keep veering to the left. Yeah, that is clever.

It's all wonky. We haven't even talked about the doge. Oh. That's need to bend to the right. That is clever. Is it all wonky? We haven't even talked about the Doge. That's the guy who ran it. Who's in charge? Yeah, or she, but mostly guys. Was there ever a female Doge? I believe not.

But the Doge is, they lasted for, the Republic lasted a thousand years until Napoleon came along and just ended it like that. Yeah. Do you know who was instrumental in the restoration of the Doge Palace? Iokomo Bouni. That's it. Archaeologist, yeah. He was very much involved in that.

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There's 24 hour 7 support, you stay connected wherever you were, it's really easy to use, it's fantastic. So get 15% off your Salie by going to salie.com forward slash bish and you get 15% off. That's right, on with the show. On with the podcast! Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that, for the last seven years, a science lab in Italy has continuously been looking for something that supposedly happens less than once every trillion, trillion years. That's very cool. Is it you making the tea?

What? I just, I thought one of us had to have come up with a joke in advance for that and none of us had and I could see it hadn't happened. So that was a prepped joke as well. No, that was on the fly. I suddenly realised we should have prepped something. Got it. Guys, why didn't you prep anything?

Yeah, what is this, dad? This is the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, also known as Cura, which is heart in the Italian language. It's a particle physics experiment. It's underground and it is trying to basically work out why it is that the universe isn't the way it is. We are missing a lot of mass in the universe. Dark matter is not there.

Scientists, it's one of the biggest problems. How can we not find it? I know this study it's done by a guy called Giovanni Neutrino. I have a question, Dan. Yeah, yeah. If this only happens once every trillion, trillion years, and they've been going for seven years, are they just hoping to get incredibly lucky? It's got to happen sometime, right? Even though we're living in a 14 billion year old universe. So what's the deal there? Are they trying

to make it happen? Effectively, yes. What is the actual thing that they're looking for? What they're looking for is they're trying to work out whether or not neutrinos, which they're incredibly, incredibly tiny, there's a comparative which says that if an atom is the size of the solar system, the neutrino at the center is the size Of a golf ball. So this is an extraordinary When radiation happens, isn't it right that neutrinos are created when radioactive Molecules decay. Yes. So I think basically what they're really excited about finding here is Decay that doesn't spit out neutrinos, right? Neutrino-less decay.

So the idea is that when atoms decay, they spit out two electrons, sometimes they spit out two electrons, two neutrinos, and scientists have gone for ages. We reckon that sometimes atoms decay and the two neutrinos that would be spat out will actually erase each other, because one will be a neutrino, one will become an anti-neutrino, and nothing will be spat out. And this will answer all our questions about why there's so little anti-matter in the universe. But I don't know if they found it yet. I think we would have heard if they had no, they haven't found it yet. And the way that they can do it in seven years, or not do it yet, seven years, but they're hoping to do it sometime is just they have a lot of stuff, right? So it

would happen to an individual molecule once every trillion, trillion years. But if you've got a trillion, trillion molecules, then it'll happen every year. I understand. Do you know what I mean? Oh, so it only happens less than once every trillion, trillion years to each molecule kind of thing.

Right, not ever in the universe. And so they're observing it in this incredible refrigerator that they've built. It's called the Cryostat. And it basically- Would they keep milk in this refrigerator? You probably would know where milk is kept. Basically the idea... Let's get back to the physics guys. So the refrigerator takes the temperature down to what is called 10 millikelvin, which is just barely above absolute zero, and the conditions are

basically that colder than the coldest spot of space. It went out to the coldest bit of the void of space. This is colder. So it's pretty amazing thing going on. It's amazing we can create the coldest spot in the universe. Yeah, it really is. And the other amazing thing about is about where this thing is, because if you're trying to study neutrinos, you want to avoid cosmic bombardment. Oh, yeah. So because there's no true nose going around all the time, right? They're everywhere everywhere. So if you're looking for them, that's gonna be tough because they're everywhere. Yeah, they're in you. They're in your your cup of tea that Dan didn't make.

They're everywhere. So you need to create an environment where they aren't exactly. And so what they what they do, they go beneath a mountain range, which helps. But another layer of protection they've got is, and this is something we've mentioned a few years ago, ancient Roman ingots of lead, which were found in a 2000 year old shipwreck. And they gained the permission to use these for science rather than, I don't know, putting them in a museum, I guess because they're 2000 year old lumps of lead, who cares. But they've been at the bottom of the ocean all this time, so they haven't absorbed any cosmic bombardment. So they're relatively clean. And that has been they've been melted down and formed into a

shield to protect these towers of fridge units, basically, crystals, which are making the place so cold. So it's surrounded by 2000 year old Roman lead sheet. It's just under a mountain in Italy. It's mad. It's James Bond stuff. It is. And it's the coldest cubic meter in the universe. Like that's just that is the final cherry on the top. And the Romans helped to build it as if they didn't take credit for everything else. I mean neutrinos have been causing problems for scientists for a while haven't they? Since we imagine they might exist, people try to look for them for ages and because they're so tiny and charge-less and they don't interact

with anything at all, they're almost totally undetectable. So I think Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 when he said I think neutrinos must exist, immediately said, I've done a terrible thing. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected. I felt really bad about it. But they did find it 26 years later. And this was two scientists called Rains and Cowan in 1956. Do you know what their original plan was for how to find a neutrino? Here neutrino, here neutrino. It's a whistle. Yeah. What was happening in the 1950s, so there were some big experiments going on in America.

Like nuclear bombs. Yeah. They were like, let's set off a nuclear bomb since it's happening anyway. And they went to the US government and they said, do you mind if we set off a nuclear bomb about the same size as the one in Hiroshima? And then we'll plant a neutrino detector near it

and it'll detect stuff. And that was what they were going to do. And it was only at the last minute they thought actually a nuclear reactor would be easier. They used that. Yeah. Pauli, by the way, was in Friend of the Podcast, the smartest ever photograph taken in 1997. He was one of those guys and he won a Nobel Prize a bit later for bombarding uranium with neutrons and creating two new elements called ocenium and hasperium. I mean, you guys know those elements? Yeah.

Oh yeah? Oh yeah. Well, they don't exist. It turns out that he'd made a huge mistake. And even though he won the Nobel Prize for it, those two elements don't exist. Really? Did they then take the Nobel Prize back? No, they didn't.

Because all the work was very important, what he was doing, what he'd actually done, and they only found out this way later, is that he'd actually split the atom. Oh wow. And what he'd made was not ocenium and hasperium, but it was a mixture of barium, krypton and a lot of other elements that he got from splitting the atom. Really? Yeah, it turned out he'd done something even more important. I love it.

I love these stories. It turns out the atom was split by mistake. Someone was walking across the lab with a tray. They'd cut some carrots in the kitchen. You know, so neutrinos are everywhere, as we've said, and they don't change course. So they're good at being traced back. If you can trace the direction of a neutrino, which is obviously very hard to do, you can just say, oh, look, it comes from that supernova over there. Yeah. Because they're not affected by like gravity

or anything like that. Like anything, anything at all. They pass, because they're so tiny, they pass through, if they, like if they pass, a hundred million, no, sorry, hang on one second. I can tell you how many. Oh, okay, great. If you listen to the song,

Bound for the Reload by Oxide and Neutrino, the Garret Jack. Brilliant Yeah, I love it number one with a casualty theme tune in the background. Exactly Yeah in the time it takes you to listen to that song 2.27 quadrillion neutrinos will have passed through your body Have you listened to that song? I've listened to half of it Oh, so how many neutrinos passed through your body before you gave up only about a quadrillion? It's not for me. What's weird apparently is that they're so tiny that as they're passing through you, they don't make contact with the neutrinos that are in the atoms of your body.

It only happens like once or twice in your lifetime. But if you threw a golf ball through the solar system, it wouldn't hit another. So is that astonishing? A neutrino could go through lead for a light year of distance and not hit a single atom on the way. Solid lead. Crazy. It's just mad. Lonely life.

And there's an argument to say, what's the point in studying them? Because they don't interact with anything. They don't bother anyone. But they were really, really essential in one specific period, and that was the Lepton epoch. So they're a type of Lepton, just type of particle. Do you guys know how long the Lepton epoch lasted? Again, it's either going to be an eighteenth of a millisecond or it's going to be five. I have a feeling it might have been less than an eighteenth of a millisecond. Was it at

the very start of the universe? It was the start of the universe. It wasn't quite less than that. It lasted between one to 10 seconds after the Big Bang. That was their moment of glory. That's longer than you've managed to get through that UK garage, son. Yeah, that was when they were important. It was just them hanging out, establishing the structure of the universe. That's nuts, this stuff. It is crazy. So these guys are looking for neutrino-less double beta decay, as very well explained earlier on. But do you know who discovered double beta decay?

OG. Oh. As in with all the neutrinos involved. Is it a friend of the podcast? No, it's not. It's someone called Maria Gerpert Meyer. Maria Gerpert Meyer was, she basically took 30 years to become a professor because she was at school and then her school closed down because she was at school for girls and they

just closed it. She was in Germany just before she was due to graduate. When was this? This was in the middle of the 20th century. She was born in 19-oh something. And she basically, yeah, it took her ages and ages to get a professorship because basically women couldn't really do it back then. And then three years after she got a professorship, she won a Nobel Prize. And of all the people who were linked with the Manhattan

project, there were 30 men who got Nobel prizes and she was the only woman to get a Nobel prize for the Manhattan project. And she kind of came up with loads of ideas. One of them was something called spin orbit coupling. And it's the way that particles go around like orbit in atoms and stuff. And the way that she did it is she knew Enrico Fermi. She was like one of these people who when she had an idea, she would just talk and talk and talk and talk. And like, it was almost like an avalanche coming over you and telling you what was happening. And then Rico's like, look, it's too much. I don't understand. It's too complicated. It's too many words. Just go away and think about it. And she came back and basically then started dancing the waltz

with him. And then her whole theory from then on was that these little things move around the atom exactly the way that couples move when they're waltzing. And it means that some of the ones on the outside move a bit slower, the ones on the inside move a bit faster, and they all kind of interact with each other in that way. Do you think it was that or did you just spend ages and ages studying it and then think I've got to come up with some sort of romantic revelatory moment for maybe get on the dance floor for the inevitable biopic? Yeah, it kind of more felt like Fermi didn't really understand it. Because like, this is like the most advanced physics at the time and still is pretty advanced now.

So it was her actually dumbing it down for him. Come on Fermi. It's good that people were doing the waltz at the time, as in, you know, modern dances don't really rely on that kind of- If you're advancing to Oxide and Neutrino's- For the real, it'd be just chaos. Yeah. We'd never know. We'd never have discovered. Actually, on particle spin, this is something I don't think we've mentioned before,

but it is amazing if people don't know it. The whole universe is left-handed. Okay. We're all on a massive gondola. So what does that mean? Which basically means that there are certain interactions, weak interactions involving this weak force, which is what radioactive decay involves, where all the neutrinos involved spin clockwise, which means they're left-handed and it's in lots of stuff. So all proteins that create life, the amino acids are lefty. So that amino acids that spin clockwise. Is there an advantage to it, like with tennis players?

Oh, you think we're like the Nadal universe. Yeah, exactly. We don't know. About two thirds of galaxies spin clockwise. We don't really know why. It's very, very weird. That principle of weak interactions is actually what the Big Bang Theory sitcom was based on. Suck it, Big Bang! Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Anna. My fact is that Siegfried Sassoon's great-grandfather once owned half the opium in India and China. It's a lot of opium.

It's so much opium! It feels like a lot. All personal use. Yeah, definitely intent to supply, isn't it, when he's pulled over. He didn't bring it all over in his bum, though, did he? He didn't, it wasn't stuffed up his anus, no. No, they were classier than that. I don't think it was that

classy the opium was. Oh, don't twist my words, James, to make it sound like one of our lowest colonial moments. I think it was a low point of the British Empire, personally speaking. So what was it? Britain was owning and trading opium, like growing it in India and then selling it to China and basically getting China hooked on opium. Yes, exactly. Because for trade, for money. And then China said, please don't do that. And Britain said, all right, well, we're going to go to war then. Right. Because we're going to make this happen.

And then they had a big old war. Then Britain said, well, we're going to keep Hong Kong. And so then we kept Hong Kong. And then Dan was born. That's the story. If you read my bio online, that's my origin story. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel partially responsible for the subjugation of China? Absolutely, it's why I don't make tea for anyone. I don't want to be part of any British tradition. That is a very good joke for anyone unfamiliar with the opium wars, because the whole point was China was exporting so much tea to us, and we needed to export something back to sort the trade deficit and we found opium. Anyway, the Sassoons, were they responsible? Weren't they? Well, so...

Complicit. Complicit, yes. So they were a massive Jewish Iraqi family originally in the 18th century and much earlier. And there was this guy, Sheikh Sassoon Ben Salah, who was basically the treasurer to all the highest ranking politicians in Baghdad. He was like the treasurer of Baghdad. And then Jews started being persecuted very badly in Iraq in the early 1800s. And so the family fled and this guy called David Sassoon, his son, fled to Bombay with, I think he had something like 18 children. 14. 14 children. Still quite a lot.

So they got to Bombay, they were very successful, they traded lots of things, they allied with the British Empire who were doing quite well in India back then obviously. And it was around this time when the opium wars were happening and Britain was realising how valuable opium was and how much money they could make trading it with China and the Sassoons caught onto that and they got so big they literally owned half of the opium. I actually don't know who owned the other half. But yeah. Some other company, I guess.

Yeah. So that means Siegfried basically is a NEPO baby. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Should we tell who Siegfried Sassoon is? Oh, we should. Yeah.

Because not everyone will have had the same British education. Yeah. So Siegfried Sassoon, one of Britain's great war poets, first World War, Because not everyone will have had the same British education. So Seacroft is soon one of Britain's great war poets. He was in the First World War and he lived from 1886 to 1967. So he survived the war. Spoiler! But he wrote some cracking poems along the way and yeah, he's a pretty famous name in the UK.

Definitely. We all have to study him at school. Yeah, exactly. And all the other war poets like Wilfred Owen. Exactly. If you think of a famous war poem and you wonder who it's by, it's always by Wilfred Owen. It is because Andy and I were talking before this about which Siegfried Sassoon poems we know and everyone I listed, Andy was like, no, that's Wilfred Owen. He did the biggies. Well, he was his mentor, wasn't he? They both met in a hospital that was looking after them after they suffered some major shock from the war and Wilfred Owen came up and said,

I write poetry as well. Would you have a look? And he saw potential and he was a mentor to him and then now he's eclipsed him. And then a bit later they met Robert Graves, who was the other really, really big war poet. We only recently found out where they met. We knew it was somewhere in Scotland but we didn't know where and a University of the Aberdeen lecturer called Neil MacLennan found out that it was actually in a place called Baberton Golf Club. Oh God! The old James Google search. Insert word, insert golf. And Siegfried Sassoon loved golf it turned out. One of his poems called David Clique goes till saints and angels him forevermore, the miracle of your astounding score.

Not one of his best. Was this before or after his war poetry? Do we know? He probably had shell shock at this stage. Well, he was writing poetry from before the war. He grew up very affluent, obviously, but he was already a poet. He sent a lot of his early poems to Cricket magazine. Oh yeah. Cricket as magazine. And in the war, so the first three years of the war, when he got a commission as a lieutenant, he was extremely brave. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross at one point. He won, I think, the military cross. He did nearly suicidal things to rescue wounded men who were left out in no man's land and

things like that. Apparently, he single-handedly acquired a German trench. It's crazy. And then he just sat there apparently reading poems and then he came back. Mad Jack was his name, right? Yeah, he was labelled that. I couldn't see the point in the German trench thing and I probably should have looked for it, but basically he acquired this trench as you say. Acquired, captured. Drove away like 60 German soldiers. When you were so soon you were acquired.

Anyway, my question is when he got there, what was the point? Because then he went back to the trench and I think all the Germans just came back into the trench that he scared them out of. His commanding officers were very annoyed because a bit of an attack had had to be delayed or called off because they said oh there's this weird bulge in the line because Sassoon has done something extremely brave. And I think that's why he didn't win the Victoria Cross because like you say he was nominated and it was for this thing that he was nominated but he didn't win it. Actually he did a quite pointless thing and jeopardized another operation. Incredibly brave but he became very disillusioned with the war as lots of soldiers did. And

he wrote a letter saying that the war was being deliberately prolonged and really blaming the generals and politicians, the English generals and politicians, and that it was being conducted really badly. And I think some people suggested that he should be court marshalled. He certainly was meant to be court-marshalled. He was meant to be court-marshalled, He was meant to be court-martialed. But every time, yeah, he was so, so like gung-ho that he took a bullet to the neck, but it missed the main artery.

So he survived. He almost had his head blown off. Yeah. Why? I think it's nihilism. When I was reading about it, I was thinking that he's so pissed off, isn't he? He's just gone, sod this. This is all meaningless now.

Because a lot of his poems are like, this is all meaningless. Yeah. Yeah. But he was basically, like we said, a NEPO baby. He got all this money from his aunt called Rachel Beer, who had married, well, I mean, it was a very rich family anyway, but she'd married this guy who was in charge of the Observer, Frederick Beer.

And she'd taken over as editor, becoming the first female editor of a national newspaper when she did that. But she was a NEPO editor. She was a NEPO editor. How deep does this NEPO thing go? Well, it goes all the way back to David Sassoon, we've established. But yeah, and then she later purchased the Sunday Times and became editor of that as well. Which is mad! She edited those at the same time!

Really? Opposite ends of the spectrum! And now they are. Like, in those days, the Sunday Times is just like a pamphlet, really. But yeah, and then she and her husband, well, basically her husband started getting these headaches. I read one quote in the ODMB saying that it suddenly made this mild man irritable or at times feverishly gay.

And he basically went mad. He insisted that he would have the family crest clipped out of his black poodle's back and walk around with it all the time. And it seems that he probably had syphilis. And then he died and as soon as he died, Rachel got really distraught, but also started to succumb from syphilis. And she started writing articles in The Observer and the Sunday Times about how great cannibalism is and stuff like that. What? Oh, really?

And then she wrote one article in The Observer, which rambled on, rambled on, and then it just said, continued in the next. And then we never heard from her again. She was committed to asylum. And that was her. But she had a shit ton of money and she left it all to Siegfried. Siegfried then could become a gentleman of pleasure, which meant he loved fox hunting. But he also loved golf.

So yeah, pros and cons. His grandfather, so David Sassoon was his great grandfather. His grandfather was called Sassoon Sassoon. No. To be fair, he had 14 children. You're running out of ideas by then. It's so odd. It just feels like you put the word in the wrong box, doesn't it? Yeah.

Can I get another form? No. Okay. Well, can I put the first name in the surname? No. Well, I found a thing that was made a few years ago, which is slightly relevant to this. There's an instrument maker called Steve Burnett, who a few years ago made the Sassoon violin. I think I'm going to say the Sassoon bassoon. I know! What a waste! In the missed opportunity of the century, he made the Sassoon violin.

It's so annoying. And it's because they'd made the Wilfred Owen violin a few years before. Oh yeah. So it's a sort of well-known violin, it's beautifully made and it's because they've made the Wilfred Owen violin a few years before so it's a sort of well-known violin, it's beautifully made and it's played all over the world in famous orchestras and all this kind of stuff and rather nicely the Sassoon violin was made from the same branch of the same tree as the Owen violin so that's kind of cool they're united by these violins but I agree, Sassoon Bassoon, it's a no-brainer. Owen works you can say you're Bowen with an Owen.

Oh, very good. Does this make any sense? Did you guys see that David Sassoon invented a pickle? Did he? Which Sassoon is this now? Sorry. This is the original Sassoon who fled to Bombay. The Opium guy. Captain Opium. Yeah, 1830. Just to give a little bit of, you know, also he founded a lot of hospitals, libraries, museums, orphanages and schools.

When you've got that sweet, sweet drug money rolling in, you're going to need to do some reputation laundry, aren't you? So he invented a pickle. Was this before or after the Opium? Was it like his passion project was to make a pickle, but you know, you had to wait while he made loads of money off Opium? He had to earn the money. He had to earn the money to make a pickle, but you know, you have to wait while he made loads of money off opium. He had to earn the money. He had to earn the money to make the pickle.

In meetings he was like, so what I'm really interested in pitching is my pickle. And they were like, we'd just like loads more opium, please. What if we got the entirety of China addicted to pickles? It's a great idea, David. We're going to continue with our order for another million kilos of opium. OK, what if I say for your million kilos of opium, you get 10 free pickles? Yeah, that's fine. We're not going to be very hungry after all that opium, but we will try to get around to them. No, this was just a thing he had on the side, and it was, in fact, a condiment.

And it's amber, which is a huge deal in Iraqi cuisine and in Jewish Israeli cuisine it appears everywhere it's like the one of the national foods of Iraq and basically he went to India and he thought I love these Indian mangoes it was either him or a member of his family and by the way this is the story of the amber pickle we don't know that this actually happened but the story of the amber pickle is the Sassoon's invented it. Went to India, loved the mangoes, was like gotta send some of these back to my mates in Iraq so I'm gonna pickle them and found a great way of pickling them that people love to this very day. And any Iraqi listeners we have I'm sure will be showing down on amber right now. Yeah very nice. Can I very quickly just

mention the greatest Sassoon of them all, which we've not mentioned, which is Siegfried. So most of his life he was gay, he had multiple relationships with men, and then out of nowhere he gets married to a lady. They have a child, George Sassoon. So George Sassoon was a guy who also became an author. He wrote three books, and he was quite well known because two of those books were pushing his belief that we were once visited by aliens in the ancient world and that they had created a machine that invented food that allowed for the Israelites to walk across their 40-year journey in the Sinai desert. Now it's called the Manamachine, his book. Yes, exactly. So according to George Sassoon, there's a nuclear reactor that used to power the Manamachine and that was stored

where else? The Ark of the Covenant. I'm afraid we had to fade that out there because he carried on talking for another 20 minutes and you really didn't need to hear that. Available in bookshops now, the matter machine. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that no living person has ever seen Murray's plums. Okay. Let me carry on.

One man thought he saw them in 1997, but they were much hairier than expected, so he probably saw something else. I'm not sure how hairy my plums were in 1997, but I was 10. That's why it was surprising. Plums. What are you on about? Plums is a fruit. Yes. Andrew. That's why it was surprising. Plums. What are you on about? Plums is a fruit.

Yes. So we shouldn't have researched Andy's testimony. I wondered what all those anonymous phone calls were about. Stop answering your wife's phone. Prunus muriana, called the Murray's plum, is's a critically endangered shrub, native to Texas. The fruits are supposedly red with white dots, hairless and with a waxy coating. But they're so rare that apparently no one's ever seen the fruit. No one living, I guess. No one living. So I've read some reports saying that maybe when they were first scientifically described, they were

mentioned. But I looked for the first scientific description, which was by Edward Palmer in 1929. And he said, although I've not seen the fruit, this species is so distinct in character of its inforescence and in their pubescence from any of the plums with which I'm acquainted that I ventured to describe it as new. So even the guy who found it hadn't seen one. So maybe it might be that they don't exist, but I've seen some places saying that they might exist, but definitely no one's seen one for a long old time. It could be that they reproduce with fruit suckers, like underneath the roots, as in the clonal. Right. Could be that. And they're in Texas, you say? They're in Texas. Do we have a region of Texas? If we've got any listeners in Texas, should we ask them to look out? Because they must, you know, if we have a mess, this could be... Is that

going to solve it? I just think this could be how we get ourselves on the map. No one's looking, yeah, yeah. We've rediscovered a plum. Yeah, you know what? It is a certain place, but I never wrote down where it was. There was a guy called Marshall Inquist a bit later who wrote a paper about them, and he said that he'd found this type of plum, and he thought it was Prunus mariana, but

really what he wrote didn't sound to me like everywhere else like most articles and textbooks today They say mariana is its own species and no one's seen the wow. It's like the Bigfoot of the fruit world Yeah, it's sort of people have claimed to have seen it, but we've got no solid evidence If you're in Texas, how big can Texas be as a probably small? Have a look there is a place called plum in Texas How big can Texas be? Is it like probably small? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have a look. There is a place called Plum in Texas. Is there?

Yeah. But it's a very tiny unincorporated town and as far as I could tell no plums come from there. Is there anywhere called Bridge? Yes, actually there is. I think instead of burying a very cold freezer under a mountain range and bombarding it with atomic energy. Well, the plums unfortunately will shrink under those circumstances, which makes it even harder to find.

An absolute zero. I think your plums go to the size of a dot. It's definitely improved at the very least, isn't it? Plums are constant. Plums are good. Yeah, they're good. It used to mean any kind of dried fruit, actually, plum. They're pretty odd. Yeah, raisins would be plums. Like plum pudding, which has got raisins and sultanas in the plum part of that is referring to the old word for raisins.

I always assumed that plum pudding used to contain plums and then just gradually stopped making them because all Christmas cake, Christmas puddings used to be called plum puddings in the UK. And there's a food writer called Francesca Greenoak who was writing about this. And she reckons that when Little Jack Horner was first written, which is in the 16th century, plums still meant raisin then. So when he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, apparently he pulled out a raisin, according to this writer. Harder to get on your thumb. Well, you could pull out a raisin, but you're more like dragging

it out as opposed to shoving your thumb inside it. I actually read that the plum wasn't a plum at all, it was the deeds to a mansion. In a fun... They're all made up. I know, but I really like this, because there was a Jack Horner. Sorry, but the fact that James just said about a nursery rhyme, oh, they're all made up. James as a boy was constantly saying a citation needed. Well the not real Jack Corner story, which has been around for over 200 years, is that

there was a Jack Corner, which there really was, who was the steward to the abbot of Glastonbury called Richard Whiting and basically Henry VIII at the time was dissolving all the monasteries, famously, and Richard Whiting didn't want Henry VIII to dissolve his monastery and so he sent his steward, Jack Horner, to Henry VIII with a pie in which he'd hidden the deeds to 12 manor houses. I think it was sort of a bribe and on the way little Jack Horner put his thumb into this pie and nicked one of those deeds for himself, which I believe the family did get Mel's manor. So that and that's little Jack Horner popped his thumb in, pulled out a plum of Mel's manor and the family have it to this day. And he said, what a good boy am I?

And he said, what a good boy am I? Yeah, no further questions. There we go. That's the story. A plum used to mean something desirable, like you've got a plum drop. Oh, that still means that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. But sorry, what it used to mean was a hundred thousand pounds.

Oh. There's a specific value in Victorian times. Really? Oh, yeah. Because that's a lot of money in Victorian times. A mega amount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did it get that name?

Do we know? I don't know. I think it's all connected to the plum thing being something desirable. Yeah. But I don't know why I think it's all connected to the plum thing being something desirable. Yeah, um, but I don't know why it was exactly that value. Yeah, it's nice that we've made because we're always getting in trouble for bastardizing the english language Uh, the we modern people but we've made the word plum more pure because it comes from the latin prunus For a plum tree. They screwed it up by the 1600s, it meant raisins and whatever you have,

and now we've made it plum again. So kind of well done us, we've reclaimed the word plum. Well done everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Put yourself on the back if you're listening to this at home and you use the word plum correctly. Plums in Japan used to be a very big thing, they still are, they like the bento boxes

and so on, but in wartime as part of rations for soldiers, we're talking 1467 to 1615. This is what was known as the Sengoku period, roughly. Just roughly those numbers. And so they got given these kind of bento boxes and they would go out into war and it had things like chili pepper, but they wouldn't eat the chili peppers. What they would do is because it'd get really cold out there, they would just chew on the chili peppers. What they would do is because it'd get really cold out there, they would just chew on the chili peppers and then they would wipe it all over their butt and all down their legs. Why? So it would keep them hot. Maybe it makes you move around. But hey, take it up with

the Japanese from roughly 1467 to 1615. I just thought that like there are other parts of your... Don't go first for the bun. No. No. Chili peppers around the bun does not feel like a good idea. It doesn't feel like a good idea. I've touched my eyes after cutting chilies and it's awful and I can only imagine. Supposedly they would take these dried plums with them and supposedly they'd get one each in their ration and if they were out in the field and they were sort of short of breath and they were having

a pretty hard time they would take it out of their lunchbox and they wouldn't eat it. They wouldn't taste it. They would look at it for inspiration because it was seen as something that would give you hope to go on. That's nice. It's really interesting. There's a lot of stuff about plums in this period where it's kind of like, is this true? Like for example, samurai swords, supposedly when they were being heated up to get the metal to the right heating, you would take out a dry plum and to match the coloring of that would show you that you've heated it to the right level.

This is all put out by big plum. It doesn't feel real, that's true. Big plum is very powerful globally. So in the first world war, the Daily Telegraph ran a campaign to get every single soldier fighting on the front. That was three million soldiers on the Western Front, a portion of plum pudding. Yeah. For Christmas, I guess. For Christmas. Well, it was definitely for Christmas. But I do think Siegfried Sassoon at some point would have received his daily telegraph back. Plum pudding. I wonder if that's

where Rachel hid the deeds to the inheritance that he got. Yeah. But they were a big, just plum pudding was so big. The plum pudding riots of 1647 happened in Canterbury. That was a Christmassy thing because the Puritans were in charge at the time, Oliver Cromwell and his gang. And their main thing was keeping shops open on Christmas Day. They said... What, the Puritans had that? Yeah, because we're not celebrating it as a special day, it's not religious. Exactly. And the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, whose name was William Bridge.

William D'Aponte, as he would have been known. Hang on, we had a Canterbury Bridge fact earlier as well. There's a place near Canterbury called Bridge. So maybe William Bridge was from Bridge. Oh my God. That's likely almost your fight say. Well, he was walking along the streets trying to encourage shopkeepers to stay open and stay serving. This is a Christmas day. They all wanted to close and go and, you know, party and all of that. And he was thrown to the ground and muddied.

Oh no. Riots were sometimes a bit gentler back in the day, you know. You never hear about the lighter riots. You've shared that. Does that mean just made muddy? It doesn't mean he shat himself. I don't believe so. I'm sure it was a scary time and no one would blame him if he did. to riots. So nice you've shared that. Does that mean just made money? It doesn't mean he shat himself. I don't believe so. I'm sure it was a scary time and no one would blame him if he did. No, no, I'm certainly not.

In 2001, Big Plum stepped up again and forced the US Food and Drug Administration to allow them legally to call prunes dried plums. Prunes are dried plums, aren't they? They are, yes. But until then, you could get sent to prison for saying that. Honestly, as soon as you say that, they'd be banging down the door. The plum police. They've got very fetching outfits though, which is lovely.

Yes, no, they are. So it was the truth, which is why they were allowed to do it. But also because, so they were marketed as prunes, obviously, but prunes have a bad rep. Well, I think it's a good rep. They're a great relief to many of us. Sticky situation. Yeah. But their argument, what big plums argument, big prunes argument was now everyone just thinks if you're buying prunes that it means you're constipated. So they're reluctant to buy prunes, we're going to rename them dried plums. And did that masterful piece of disguise work? Yeah, but the entire country was constipated because they couldn't get hold of any prunes. I don't need these dried plums.

Do you guys remember that story of Ash, who is the, for listeners, he is the writer of our theme tune Fish which one which one of them any he was going out to a party in London And he was really hungry and he was nothing in the house to eat and so he opened up the cupboard I was a bag of dried place bag of dried prunes He ate the entire bag Got on the London Underground, was midway between stops when he felt a little rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ever heard. Oh dear, what happened? Oh he had to get off. Did he go to the party still? I'm not sure. No, he went into an alleyway that was just outside of the station, called his dad,

said dad have shot myself. How old was he? He was 22, 23, called his brother Jazz and Jazz came with a bucket and a cloth and some extra trousers. A bucket? Yeah, because he just said it was everywhere. Because Ash had to take off his shirt. I think he was wearing shorts on the tube as well. Oh no. He took off his shirt. Ash does wear shorts. And he didn't used to wear underpants either.

Yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh. They probably had to close down that line for a day, I would say. Yeah. Anyway. Hey, Ash, if you're listening. Yeah, did you authorize that story to go out? So yeah, California Prune Board did all this, didn't they?

And they also came up with the idea of adding prunes to all burgers in US schools. Really? What? Weird. Yeah, so the idea was... Sorry, as part of the mince mixture or a layer on top like the tomato? Oh no, part of the mixture. So the kids wouldn't know it was in there.

And the idea is it's a way to sort of get vegetables into kids' diets without them knowing. Sounds like you're trying to prank all the kids and make them more shit themselves in the lunchroom, isn't it? Well, you know, they did it. They did it. Yeah, it was a big thing. It was called prune the fat, they called it. Nice. And the USDA bought 10 million pounds worth of prunes in 2003 to put into school lunches and the whole project finished in about 2006 due to a sudden drop in plum production.

Right. Wow. So there was just some problem, there might have been a drought or there might have been some disease or something and they just couldn't make enough plums and so they start putting them in burgers. Does anyone know why they have this laxative effect? Because plums, de plums in particular, is it just dried fruit in general? Is it just fibre? No, it's partly fibre. I did happen to look into this because I'm particularly grateful to prunes personally and I don't think it should be a source of shame.

Okay. So they are high in fibre because they're dried fruit, which is very useful, but they also contain this thing called sorbitol, which has a laxative effect and sorbitol, you may recognize the name. I do. It's not in chewing gum. It's in chewing gum. It's a sweetener in sugar-free chewing gum, which means that if you look at sugar-free chewing gum, there's often a warning on it apparently saying if you have too much. Don't eat two packs of this if you're on the tube. It's along those lines and there's a picture of Ash. You know what I stopped eating chewing gum?

I used to eat a lot of chewing gum and I stopped because I read the article about them putting microplastics in your body. Oh yeah, right. Isn't that weird? Does it? Yeah, it does. And I don't think it does you any harm, but just something about that gave me the Ick and I just stopped using it. You're meant to spit the chewing gum out, right? Have you been swallowing it?

You're allowed. Well, you are allowed. No, it's not that. It's the crunchy bit on the outside. Okay, the shell kind of makes its way in. That makes sense. Oh, do you not cut yours open and knife and fork out the meat? You're not meant to eat the shell. It's like a lobster. You get your special chewing gum fork. You were a bit, don't you Andy, when you were eating chewing gum. Okay, 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 have said, you can find us on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram with at Tribaland as the handle. Andy. I'm on Blue Sky at Andrew Hunter M. James. I'm on TikTok. Nurse's thing is James Harkin. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna. You can email podcast.qi.com or go to Instagram at no such thing as a fish or Twitter at no such thing as the handle as Dan just said, in case you're wondering. I did hear you snigger when I said that. Or head to our website, no such thing as a fish dot com. Plenty of stuff up there for you to check out.

All of our previous episodes, we have a link to an upcoming live show that we're doing in Sheffield in July at the Crosswires Festival. There's the portal, the gateway to Club Fish, the very exciting land where bonus episodes exist, there are compilations of the mailbag episodes, Andy goes through all the emails that you send in and we pick out the best ones to talk about the facts you've sent in and so on. So do check that out if you're not already a member. There's also bits of merchandise you can find there or just come back here next week because we will have another episode waiting for you. We will see you then. Goodbye.