No Such Thing As A Fish - 585: No Such Thing As The Paula Radcliffe Of F1 Racing

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Dan, Anna and Andy discuss 420 plants, 10 towns, 2 tongues and 0 licences. 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's Dan Schreiber, it is a three person podcast this week while James is away on holiday. I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, 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, that is Anna. My fact this week is that Essex Police has a team of six officers trained to grow cannabis. What? And that's, yeah, that's what you're funding with your taxpayer money.

My taxes funding the old wacky backy. Yeah. Being grown by the police. By the police. It's outrageous. It's ridiculous. They don't even send you any. What's the deal?

Well, this is an interesting bit of British law anyway, which means that when the police make a big drug seizure, then they can work out what the value of the drugs would have been and then claim that value back from the drug dealer's assets as like a disincentive. So it's like, hey, you've got a hundred grams worth of drugs. I'll take your hundred grand car or whatever. But they need to work out the value of the drugs. The problem is when they come to a cannabis farm and it's not fully grown yet, then they haven't matured yet. They don't have that concentrated THC. That's what gives cannabis its potency. Then the dealers can claim, you know, it was never going to be very

valuable or is actually all moldy. It wasn't going to work. So in court, the cheeky lawyers will jump in and say, this was never going to grow into anything so you can't take anything away. And it's actually discount November so you have to take half off of that. Yeah, you've got a voucher, you've got the cannabis club card. Just use the off code fish at checkout. So they grow it themselves basically, right, to prove how much it's going to be worth. Do they finish growing the whole crop? Yes, so at the moment, and this is just Essex Police, but I think other police forces are experimenting with it, they bust the farm and they take the plants and they put them in a special facility they have, and they nurture, grow and dry the plants properly.

And they've learned how to make it maximally profitable, just like the drug dealers would, assuming they're skilled cannabis growers. And then they work out how much it's worth, and then they burn it all. Yeah. Okay, okay, good. Not bit by bit, not joint by joint.

Hey, the series of small fires. You've got to think they siphon a tiny bit off right into podcast.qi.com and we won't tell anyone. Oh, I'll cross you off. If you're a bent copper, just look out. Don't tell Andy. Fine. So they've recovered over 300 million pounds worth of what would be the trade for the cannabis

over the last six years. And so they'll like grow it and they'll be like, okay, that on the street is worth 53,000 pounds. That's what you own now. Wow. Yeah. Because street value is a tricky thing, isn't it? Because obviously there's no price list you can look up. Yeah. Which is why I don't partake. Yeah. Because it's just too messy. I want to know, you know, that you don't have any consumer rights.

You'll get a text message with a picture of the price list. Oh, okay. Your dealers are gonna have laminated menus. You're gonna have what? And which wines would you recommend with this skunk? I love, what I love about this fact is that it's this sort of like lateral thinking way of policing, which I find so interesting. There's so many methods that are going on now that we just don't even necessarily know about. Like for example, the police have been collaborating over the last 10 years with the National Grid. So the frequency of the

electricity that is being sent out to every home in England, Scotland, Wales, it's typically about 50 Hertz. And that's the frequency that is being picked up in the background of every audio recording. If you're near a power source, that's going to be there as a low buzz. So in this room right now, we have electrical sockets. Every recording like this recording is picking up the Hertz noise very softly in the background. Now it's not always 50 Hertz. There's fluctuations and that is because of the nature of supply and demand. Like when people are watching TV and it gets to the

ad breaks and lots of kettles go on, there are small fluctuations that go on on the national grid. And when that happens, it happens everywhere. Which means if you're recording all of the national grid, you're going to have timestamps on all of these fluctuations. So often now, police, if they're in court and there's a recording of criminals that is being used, audio recording, and they say that never happened at this place at this time, they listen to the frequency in the background and they can match it to the exact time at the national. Isn't that insane? Isn't that nuts? And that's been used in court and that has busted people who have claimed that the recordings were manufactured and it didn't happen when it was said to happen.

Oh my God. So cover up your plug sockets is what you're saying. Do all your mugging by the trees. Just be away from it and don't record it. Don't, why are you recording it? Just don't record it. Oh yeah, good point. We've got to stop doing that. Isn't that stunning? So that's called electric network frequency and they've been doing it for 10 years now. This makes my clever cop work around thing look much less impressive. But this is what I quite like recently. Did you see the two undercover policemen who dressed up as Batman

and Robin? Okay, no. It's not as high tech, but it works. It was Inspector Darren Watson and Police Constable Abdi Osman and they were patrolling around London and they're looking for scammers who were playing illegal rigged gambling games with tourists and getting loads of money off them. But people knew their faces by then. And so one of them said, I just remembered I had Batman and Robin costumes in my house, which would come in useful and they dressed up and they're so bad. So there's pictures

of them arresting these guys that they've come up to. And like the guy dressed as Robin is wearing a beige bucket hat with his Robin. And the bucket hat is the only thing that's seen in his face actually. So I don't know why he's wearing the full Robin gear. He's wearing Robin gear. Because I think if he was wearing a police officer's outfit but a beige bucket hat, the wrong ones might still spot that. I suppose. But that's effective, isn't it? It hat. The wrong ones might still spot that. But

that's effective, isn't it? It works. I think that's really good. I mean, you don't know how many people are undercover officers. Look around you. Like all those living statues. Come on. You're trying to tell me that not one of them is a fed. Or who is a fake police officer the other way around. Someone pretending to be a police officer. So there was a thing, remember the TV show The Bill? 2010 that ended. The police force basically had to buy all of the costumes off of The Bill because they were real

police costumes. Really? Yeah, yeah. And burn them? Nope. Weirdly, they handed them out and they were being worn by actual policemen. So they reused the clothing of The Bill, the TV show. That's so exciting for those clothes because that's like a promotion, isn't it? Yeah. They also have this. Now I've seen it in my head is quite nice relationship and I think no one else sees that. But basically, that very famous over the last few years drill music has become associated with gang crime and the lyrics of drill songs will reference people who've been murdered

on the streets and like say, I'm going to get you to a rival gang. I wouldn't say that kind of even that kind of foul language is yes. I don't know if they go that far. Which one of us is gonna just buckle and actually ask what drill is? Not me. Okay me either. Continue. Hang on you guys don't listen to drill music in your spare time.

Is that like heavy rap right in terms of like lyrically? Yeah yeah. Yeah. I listen to roadworks but that's because I'm really interested in in infrastructure. So yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You go on believing that that's what I'm referencing. Oh yeah. Silvertown tunnel classes. Yeah. Great. Thames Tideway tunnel. Yeah. I'm digging it. Well, I really like the idea that you would join the police and misunderstand this because in Manchester, basically the police have been recruited to, and it's called the Excalibur Task Force, which is trying to stop knife crime, recruited to get lots of intelligence

from Drill Music. So if you were employed by them, I guess you would go and eavesdrop on building sites. But what you're meant to do is watch loads of YouTube videos and then pick up the names that are being dropped and figure out who's pissed off about what, because it's referencing real things. Oh, right. Okay. It's like pre-crime, but the pre-crimes have maybe been turned into songs. Exactly. Wow. And then just, yeah, so you know where to keep a watch out, but then the drill artists

know the police are watching them, so then they'll reference the police in return. So sometimes they'll be like, oh, you Excalibur naughty boys spying on us. Do they put out fake news as well? Do they? Well, they should, shouldn't they? Yeah, we're going to get like Mr. Banana tonight down by the old co-op. And actually there is no Mr. Banana. So good. I mean, that kind of...

If you said that just a bit faster, you would have been a mighty drill artist. Can I tell you an example of maybe the coolest detective ever? Oh, okay. Have you ever heard of the Roman Emperor Tiberius? Yes. He once solved a crime by like he turned detective in ancient Rome. Okay. I just love this so much. There was this woman called a Pronia who was murdered. Well, she fell from a high window and died. And she was the wife of a praetor, a very senior official called Sylvanus. She was the daughter of a really senior general in ancient Rome called Apronius. She was Apronia. So she was a very, you know, significant young woman and like very powerfully connected. And her father

thought, I don't believe she fell out of this window and died. I think she might have been pushed or thrown out of the window. And he took the matter to the Emperor Tiberius and Tiberius said I'm on the case and then Investigated really correct went to the crime scene questioned people. This is a TV series Begging to be made. Yeah He's a cop but he's also the Emperor of Rome Yeah, I mean did he put He's a cop, but he's also the Emperor of Rome. Yeah, I mean. Did he put on a Batman costume to conceal the fact that he was in fact the Emperor?

I just think this has hit written all over it. Like, he's halfway through fingerprinting somewhere and someone comes up like, someone's invaded Gaul. What do we do? And he's got, oh, he's got trouble at home as well. I just feel like this is a good series. How did he solve it? Well, I think he just decreed that the guy was guilty.

You're always going to get your end in every episode. How's he going to solve this one? He hasn't. Okay, no worries. If anyone else is waiting for the ingenious reveal there. What's one more guy? Supposedly he did things like this, like he crops up in plenty a lot. Supposedly he investigated things like searches for sea monsters and things like this.

He was interested in evidence and you know, but he decided that on the balance of problems he's Sylvanus was guilty. The husband that is and Sylvanus then had someone cut his wrists and he died. Nice. Well done, Tiberius. Credits. Can I just quickly, I know we're talking about the police now, can I tell you one more of these cannabis related tricks? Because the scams are developing that cannabis growers are using and I just find some of them unbelievable.

So last year, this happened, a guy from North London, he was called Charles Reeves, he'd been working abroad for a bit. And he'd let his flat out his family home because he was going to be working overseas for some months, I think. He got back, he found in his flat, can you guess? A cannabis farm. 10 tons of soil. They literally moved in 10 tons of soil to grow cannabis in three feet deep on the floors. Wow. Imagine getting back to your home and it's three feet deep in soil, a flat. You'd be so confused. Is this a weird earthquake or something? Yeah.

And like, yeah. And like there was obviously there was cannabis growing everywhere and it had been, it had been abandoned yeah He'd be coming back to it But they'd hacked into the electricity system to bypass the meter because that's one of the other ways you catch Cannabis farmers as they use a huge amount of electricity And so you spot unusual uses of electricity basically right that's so funny What does he do with it? Did he did he siphon a bit off the top? I don't believe To start What did he do with it? Did he siphon a bit off the top? I don't believe so. People have got to start siphoning. I hate waste. What do you want to do after you've smoked a joint? You want to...

Report yourself immediately to the police is what I would do. But what? Is there something else you want to do? People want to eat a lot of food. You want to binge on some cakes. Cake, okay. And this is just my way of segueing because have you guys heard of cake fines? No, this is a thing in the police force and they're huge. So these are, if you do something wrong in the police and it's big, like massive corruption or whatever you get in real trouble, if you do something

wrong and it's small, you get a cake fine. So examples of something that elicits a cake fine is spraying a colleague in the face with incapacitant spray. Oh wow. Filing a deceased report and putting your own name on it by accident. Someone did that. Cake fine. Falling through a roof while searching a suspect's house. These are all things that have caused cake fines to be issued. I think you should be fined for that. No, because that, you could die, right? That one. That feels... Yeah, how soon is the fine levied on the person? Okay, fine for that. No, cuz that that you could die right?

Yeah, how soon is the fine levied on the person is it what like while you're waiting for the ambulance to pick him up It's once they're out of the coma. I think you come up and just say Is there a gradation of cake finds? Is it like we want something with three tiers like we want icing in between all the tears and we want some ruffles on the Top maybe it's but it's all decided on by the cake legislator Who's consulted on social media by any police force. If you go to the cake legislator on Twitter, then they'll have policemen saying look my colleague dropped the police car keys in the drain. What does he get? And the cake legislator will say that's a Krispy Kreme tray. Sorry, this is an account on Twitter, which is... is it a real police officer behind this?

Yeah, no one knows who it is, but I think it was the Telegraph who interviewed them by email. But we believe they're a real police officer. God, is it just a kid pissing about and the whole police force is just asking for it? But I like that. I like the mystery. Can I say one more thing? Just one last thing before we move on? This definitely would have resulted in a lot of cake being brought to the police station. This happened last year. The UK's police and crime minister, Dame Diana Johnson, had her purse stolen. Her purse was stolen at an annual conference for senior police officers,

where she was giving a speech on the current epidemic of theft and shoplifting in the UK. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in France there are some cars that are so tiny that you don't even need a driver's license to drive them. Is this because we all know you've had trouble getting a driving license? I think that's the answer. I honestly was trying to look at shortcuts of how do you get a license quicker and... Is that how you found this?

This is how this came up. It was in France. You can get it as quick as seven hours. Now this is not technically a real driving license because it's not a license at all. What this is, is if you don't mind not being in a real car going at a real speed, but instead are happy to sit in a two-seater tiny car going at a really slow pace, then this is what you can do. They're called Voiture sans permis, aren't they? Literally a car without a license.

Exactly. And they're amazing to look at. They're not tiny, tiny. They're not like clown cars. But yeah, they are slow, slow, 28 miles an hour max. It's like a run faster than that. Yeah. They're also known as Voiturettes, literally little cars. But they're everywhere in France anditurettes, literally little cars. Yeah. But they're everywhere in France and people have them and drive them around and they change hands as well. So if someone loses their license, they will get a VSP as they call, voiturettes sans pas mi. And then as soon as they get their license back, maybe they'll pass that car on to someone

else. Well, I mean, this is the amazing thing. You could lose your license because you've been drink driving or whatever reason, and you can literally get out of that car, go down to a dealership, buy a smaller car and be back on the road instantly. You're meant to do a few extra layers, aren't you? But I think in practice, often unofficially, they're just bought and sold. Exactly. Like in the back roads of rural France, no one's really checking that.

That's true. Do you know you don't need a driving license to be an F1 driver? Get out. Yeah, they changed the rules last year, actually. They liberalized that. That's very against the grain of modern life, isn't it? Normally they're tightening things up saying, well, we've got to stop all this. They thought we've gone too far demanding people have a normal driving license to drive

an F1 car. Wasn't there a kid in Belgium? He was an F1 driver? So Kimi Antonelli was the person for whom I think they might have changed the rules, that's last year. And he was 17 at the time, didn't have a driving license, but they wanted him to replace Lewis Hamilton, which he now has done, because Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes to go to Ferrari. So this guy, this 17 year old guy didn't have a license. And yeah, you now don't need one. You need to do other things like prove you're amazing at winning driving races and be very good at karting or motor sports and things like that. But he,

I mean, he did in fact end up passing his driving test at the start of this year, six weeks before competing in his first F1 race. But it's not amazing. That is amazing. I suppose they're kind of different skills as in you're not as worried about traffic when you're doing Formula One. Like there's no indicating. Yeah. You do a three point turn. Rarely roundabouts. That's you can really off course.

Did they have a thing where they can just wee anytime they like? I think you can do that in your own car anyway. That's a good point. What am I thinking? I do that all the time. Is that part of the test? Is that why I failed my last test? No.

Only if it's a number two. Is it? Surely there's no rule. Like no one's thought of making that a rule in a driving test. I don't know why you've said it. Yeah, I think I assumed that Formula One drivers have to have a bottle to wee in or something. I can't remember what they do. Do you think a Formula One driver going at the speeds they're going at are going to pull out a Coke bottle and try and piss into it mid-drive?

That's what they have to do when they piss off, don't they? That's why sometimes they take away the lollipop and the guy doesn't immediately drive off it's because he's just shaking. I never knew how actually skilled these guys were that they could manage to drive that while pissing into a lot of the crashes are because they put their hand on the wrong thing. But surely drivers mid-race don't think it's a good question because they are quite a long race really long and they have to drink they have to take influence. But we don't know the answer.

I think the truth is we don't know the answer here. Yeah, I think you don't think it'd be illegal. I can't believe that if you're very few races are lost because someone's having a shit in the footwell. I think that's fair. There's no Paul and Ryan Clifford Formula One racing. Is the person you were talking about, was his name Max Verstappen? No, that's no. So no, I was talking about Kimi Antonelli. Max Verstappen is the greatest driver ever of the last 10 years.

Belgian? Yeah, he's won everything. Okay. Sorry, I've never heard of him before. He's a bunch of years ago. He was a 17 year old kid. Years ago he was 17, yes. Racing for the F1, didn't have an actual driver's license back in Belgium.

So he could race the F1, but when he got back home, he needed an adult with a license sitting with him in the car while he was on his learners. That's silly. Yeah, so that was his two worlds. That's so funny. But when he got back home, he needed an adult with a license sitting with him in the car while he was on his learners in order to drive. So that was his two worlds. That's so funny. I can imagine it would be very hard to transfer between the two. Yeah. You do get in trouble if you drive like you're a Formula One driver on it through a town.

Exactly. And rally driving, you can be banned. There was a rally driver called Colin McCray who was banned in the 90s, but he actually could get a license. If you lose your license here, you can get a license to compete in competitive sports racing in another country. So he got unlicensed in Monaco,

even though he was banned for drink driving or speeding here. And then he came back, competed in rally driving races in Wales in 2002, without a license. But rally driving is half public roads and half private roads. And even though they shut them all, on the public roads, he had to swap with his co-driver

because he didn't have a license to drive on public roads in the UK. Wow. Do they have to stop and get out? I can't find this out. If anyone watched, I can't find out if they stop and they... Because that would slow you down enough to lose the race. I'm sure every time. There's got to be a Batman style chair swap that can happen internally in the car.

Or one of those driving instructor cars which have dual controls. There's got to be a Batman style chair swap that can happen internally in the car that you build in. Or one of those driving instructor cars which have dual controls. Yeah, but then you're driving on the wrong side of the car. You're suddenly in a English car in Europe. Oh, that doesn't matter. Like left and right hand drive. That's not going to make a big difference. If you're a good driver, you thought you could handle that.

You'll find all this out when you have your first lesson down. Don't worry about it. You know Norway, it is very, very, very electric in its cars, right? 99% of new car sales are electric. The reason this has happened is in part, thanks to the band, uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, uh-huh. We could, we could dance this dance all day. Um, I find this absolutely mad. This is an amazing story, right? They bought, I think, the first electric car in Norway back in the 80s, when electric cars were really not a thing.

They bought it at a conference in Switzerland. It was a converted Fiat Panda, which had been converted to run on batteries. And like two of the guys from AHA, they just thought it was very cool. They drove it from the conference back to Norway. And when they got it back, they found there was no way of legally registering it because Norway's traffic ministry or whatever couldn't compute an electric car. And Norway has loads of toll roads, right? So they would drive it through the tolls.

They would be fined because they hadn't registered their car, but they couldn't register their car. So they'd get the fine. They wouldn't pay the fine. They kept driving through the toll roads. Eventually the car was confiscated It went to a police auction where they bought the car back because no one else wanted to converted electric Fiat Panda Right, they did this for like several goes round on the car being confiscated fine

Rebought all of that and eventually the authorities just said oh fine We'll just abolish road tolls for electric cars and that was a big incentive to lots of people to go electric No, hey the road tolls. Yeah, great. That's unbelievable for electric cars and that was a big incentive to lots of people to go electric. No way. Because you then don't pay the road tolls. Yeah. Great. That's unbelievable. Aha. Clever.

Isn't that stunning? Clever band. And was that their plan all along? That was their plan all along. To solve the climate crisis. How many points do you need on your license to lose your license? 12. 12. Exactly. Okay. That's the case. If you get 12 points, you lose your license to lose your license. 12. 12. Exactly. Okay. That's the case. If you get 12 points, you lose your license. Except there are some people who have more points than

that and still haven't lost their license because you can get exemptions. If for example, you really need to drive to look after someone, you know, if you're a carer, you know, all that kind of thing, or there's another urgent reason why you definitely need and you can persuade the authorities that you need to keep driving. And I find this stunning. There are 10,000 people in the UK who have more than 12 points on their license and still have their license. There is one 26 year old from North Wales who has on his license, 229 points. No, there's not. Yes.

And can still get it. How? And still has a license. I can't work it out fully, but for example, if you speed, let's say a speed limit's been changed from 30 to 20, which happened in Wales and some bits of Wales recently, and you drive through several cameras in one day, you're technically speeding through all of them. And let's say, because the postal system is a bit slow, you're doing that for two weeks before the first thing catches up with you.

What a terrible thing to do on your doorstep. So like two weeks later after commuting, let's say 20 miles each way and going 30 when you know the limits suddenly 20, you're doing 150% of the speed limit. Yeah. So that's a slow post though. If he's cracked up 220 points before he got the first letter. Yeah, but if every camera that you speed through is three points, I can see it working out. It could just about rack up. My mum drove with 14 points on her licence for a couple of years.

Oh yeah. Yep, the way she got away with it was when she should have lost her licence, and I'm not saying this wasn't justified. Her lawyer argued that the school run was a very important time to bond with her children. Oh my god. And she was out on very important parent-child relationships. Are you serious? Yes, she was then banned properly two years later when she was caught again.

But yeah, we got that extra two years of parent-child bonding and I thought that was very important. She gets your names mixed up all the time. That's not true Judith. I'm a huge fan of yours. Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Andy. My fact is that under their main tongue, lemurs have another tongue. Sexy. Lemurs have two tongues. Yeah, sexy. Yeah, that's cool. And this second tongue is just for kissing. No, it's sadly not. It's a cleaning structure, but it's still a second tongue.

It's called a sublingua. So they have the thing called a tooth comb, which is this structure. I mean, it's exactly as it sounds. It's a group of teeth that look like a comb. Fine. And they use that for grooming. So they run that tooth comb across their fur. And it helps to pick out all the... And this is in the mouth.

This is in the mouth. In the mouth, yeah. But this tooth comb, like a normal comb, gets full of hair. Yeah. So how do you clean the comb? You do it with your second tongue. The sublingua, which is an undertongue, and it's specifically for cleaning out the tooth comb.

I don't know what they use to clean the tongue. Oh yeah. Hang on, does this mean that do they have to get the under tongue up and over the first tongue to clean it? No. Do they swivel around the top tongue? No, they just sort of stick out their tongue and it's just, it doesn't, it doesn't look as much like a tongue as you and I are hoping. Yeah. It's a small and slightly harder, like more pointy structure. Okay. But it is a sublingua. Are there many sublinguas in the natural world? I couldn't really find many animals that have more than one tongue. I'd be surprised just because lemurs are so weird because they're on Madagascar and Madagascar

is evolutionarily really quite separate because it's split off from Africa and then from the Asian subcontinent 90 million years ago. 180 million years it split from Africa. Then 90 million years later, India left and it's just Madagascar is just left there hanging out for weird stuff to evolve. So that's amazing. Cause there's something like 80% of the animals that live there are just there nowhere else in the world, right? Yeah. So lemurs, they all live in Madagascar. Well, they're all from Madagascar anyway. From, yeah. Yeah. I was recently on a visit to an animal park in Kent, which was not in Madagascar, but they did have lemurs and it was amazing. They're so cool. There are more than a hundred

species and they're all native to Madagascar. And, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it. They're really endangered because of mostly habitat loss with a bit of climate change and also human hunting thrown in. So many of them are really threatened, but they're absolutely unbelievable creatures. They're so cool. They are. And every single one of them seems to have their own unique thing that's interesting about them. We've spoken about this before on the podcast, but a few of them are quite solitary animals. So even within their family, they will barely see each other. And the only way they have any kind of communication with each other is by having a pissing tree. So they will go down at different times.

It's like if you live in a big house with a lot of siblings and there's one toilet, you know, you know, it's like, all right, 815 in the morning. That's my slot. So they go at different times and they will pee and they have a unique fingerprint, as it were, with their urine, which means that if I was going, I'd be like, Andy's been okay. And what does that tell you about what you're going to do next? Is that like, oh, he must be nearby, I'll go and see him or? It means they're okay. It's like a checking in. It's just like sending a WhatsApp to say, hey, hope you're well. It's like, oh, I know they're doing okay. But they just never want to pee at the same time together. No, they don't want to see each other. That's fair enough. Yeah. I personally like to have the bathroom to myself

as well. I'm funny and old fashioned like that. I invite the family. Lemurs. Yeah, lemurs very weird. Ring-tailed lemurs, the sort of big ones, the famous ones. And they make their own perfume. So it's not just about secreting one scent, they secrete apparently a strong but short-lived scent in their wrists. So you know, eau de toilette doesn't last very long. So there's like an eau de toilette in their wrists and then they secrete a very long lasting different scent from their shoulder glands, like an eau de parfum. And then they get their tails and they dab their shoulders and they dab their wrists

to mix the scents together in what's known as a wrist to pit move in zoology. And then they've got a perfume and then they waft it in the air. The tail? They waft their tail in the air. Now they've mixed up the perfume. And that's their mating ritual or is that just general day to day? It's mating and it's so clever because it's telling, I mean, I can't believe that sometimes I wonder if I'm making this up, but it's telling females their genetic makeup and the females smell it and they know if the male is too similar to them. Cause

obviously you want maximum genetic diversity for your kids. So you sniff their perfume and if it's like, I also use Chanel, get out, then you're going to shag someone else. Um, I don't suppose at any point you read about the Northern giant mouse Lima. No. Okay. This is another standout in the Lima tribe. Yeah. They've got testicles, which are the largest, I believe of any primate relative to body size as a percentage.

Then what would you say your testicles are of your body weight? That's a very personal question, isn't it? He's just had mops. Of my weight? Yeah, yeah. What percentage? I'm not asking you to give away your weight. I'm saying what proportion of your body weight is testicles?

We're talking 15%. Yeah, you do need to say that. Dream on on mate. For them. What were yours to put into context? Sorry? What are yours? I don't, uh, I think for humans, it's kind of not 0.2%. No, it's less than, it's less than, it's much less than 1%. But for these guys, it's 5% of their body weight is testicles. Wow. It's the equivalent of me and here's a fun home maths challenge. You can work out how much I weigh. Uh, it's equivalent of me having testicles that are 3.8 kilos between

them. Right. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. And they, they, they were only discovered in 2005, these things. And often as they swing through the trees, they will bump and bruise their testicles. I've seen my friend used to have a sausage dog called Dave and Dave lived upstairs in a flat and he had the longest dangling balls and this poor dog we used to walk behind him on the stairs they would wallop the top of each step as they were going on you just see these dangling bells. Does he mind it? Is it like every time he's going ah? So Blue who owned Dave would show people because he would say it's okay and he would flip Dave upside down and say look how how hardened and leathery they've become. They're okay. He doesn't feel it anymore. It's like a real hard boxing bag now. That's what you want.

But that's like, so I can empathize. Maybe they've got very leathery hardened. Maybe, maybe. Let's hope. But it's because they have a system where everyone has multiple partners male and female and there's no mating season. Well, so they just need as much sperm as possible. Have to produce a lot of sperm and frequently mate and that's the way they pass their genes on, you know, it's a very competitive field. See, this is, I guess a few of the lemurs have this kind of problem where there's just one feature of them that is just oddly grown so that it suits the environment.

The Ai-Ai, which is probably the most famous of the lemurs. That Norwegian band. Yeah, they're a tribute band to A-ha. I see. They're a nautically themed A-ha tribute band. So the A-ha has a tremendously long finger. It uses the finger to get into trees and pick out grubs. So like how hummingbirds will have a long nose to suck like a straw, the I.I. uses its finger. Its finger though is so long, it has the same thing, as it's walking along,

it has to raise it up, otherwise it basically trips on its own finger as it's going along. And it's very delicate, so you know, it could sprain the finger or it could do major damage to it. I hadn't thought about that because it is it looks like E.T. the II with that ridiculously long middle finger it's um so it's about the size of a house cat but its middle finger is eight centimeters long so imagine a house cat but with an eight centimeter long middle finger and um yeah because you see when you see people have got really good manicures I always think how enough to get anything done but they the whole time must struggle. But what's amazing about them is that they're the only primates that echolocate. And the way they do it is by tapping on trees.

I kind of think this is cheating. Basically they tap on trees like woodpeckers until they find a hollow bit. And then the hollow bit tells them that that's the place where bugs are probably living. Oh, is thought you meant cheating? Yeah. Well, it's easier to tap on a wall than to find a hollow bit. Rather than just to frown and to go, you know, that kind of thing. I thought you meant like just like, anyone, anyone in?

Knock, knock, knock. Like the wolf at the little pig store. Yeah, exactly. Let me in, little bugs. I just think it's not as impressive as bats who can navigate all around the world and they're just tapping on a tree to find a bug. To learn that though is pretty, if they're the only ones that do that as well. I think that's the thing about lemurs is that they're all very well adapted to the areas they find themselves in and they have also filled all the ecological niches that might be filled by other animals. So you were saying the AI fills a role that might be taken by a hummingbird.

Or, you know, so like on Madagascar, every biological function that might, you know, fit into a food web, a lot of them are filled by different species of lemur who are really, really well adapted to do that. But obviously when the environment changes or when the habitat is lost, they really struggle because they're adapted for one specific environment.

Yeah, yeah, it is wild. Lemurs? What does that mean? Lemur? Lemur. Lemur. I think I know the answer. It's Latin. Oh. For ghost.

Okay, hear me out. Emperor Tiberius has his toughest case yet. It's a ghost. Something's been tapping my trees. So he just hangs a bunch of lemurs. We move on. Next episode. Yeah's been tapping my trees. So he just hangs a bunch of lemurs. We move on. Next episode. Yeah, they're called ghosts.

And then Linnaeus is the one who applied it to the lemurs because he thought their faces look so ghostly. And so, so they are, they are the ghosts of Madagascar. Do you know what else means ghosts in the animal world? Weirdly is larvae, which I didn't know. Larvae. So lemuris and larvae are basically the same cluster of things in Latin. In ancient Rome, they were the two types of evil ghosts you'd get. Isn't that weird?

Yeah. We do a bit of vilifying humans for hunting them, or I find in some of the naturalist writing there's some vilifying humans for hunting them, which I think is completely insane because 40 to 50% of people in Madagascar are malnourished, which is pretty extraordinary. And also the early humans did not know they were doing this. They didn't know that, but yeah, but today, like they're still hunted and eaten a lot today. And that's one of the things that's putting them in danger.

And it's because over half of households in Madagascar have understandably eaten Lima meat in the last year, because that's the meat that's available and half of them are malnourished. But there is this cool project, which is the bacon bug project, which is to farm circondri, which are these still very cute little bugs that have long pink trunk things on their noses and like little furry backsides, but they are delicious, tastes like bacon when fried and they've started farming them and in the pilot community where they've started farming them over the last three years, they've reduced Lima hunting by 50%. Wow. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. Can I give you one last Lima? Yeah. This is the red fronted Lima and it does something pretty relatable. It chews up poisonous millipedes. That's not the relatable bit. It actually, none of this is relatable. It rubs the resulting goo on its genitals. I said it wasn't relatable.

No, no, keep going. This is my weekend. But it's so cool. It's because they have lots of parasites and these millipedes have toxic goo in them if you chew them right. So they chew the millipedes up just enough that they release this really toxic orange slime and then they slather it all over their genitals, their perianal region and their tail. And that kills off the parasites that have been preying on the lemur. And then they swallow the millipede whole. So it's a tasty snack as well as a interesting, peri-anil cream. They need to work on the marketing for that snack, don't they? It sounds like something from Nando's.

Well, this is not lemon and herb. This is spicy hot. And it also seems to create a little bit of a euphoria or a narcotic sensation among them. They've been seen chilling out after they've partaken. Does it? Well, you put peri-peri up your ass then you will sometimes get a bit of a hit. Oh, it's hard when you have that flag sticking out, isn't it? Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and despite him being on holiday, James has still sent in one for us to discuss So here it is James

My fact this week is if you built a house in a certain point of Italy You can live in ten different towns at the same time Unfortunately, that point is in the middle of a volcano And I am currently at that volcano Thanks, James of a volcano and I am currently at that volcano. Thanks James. Amazing stuff. We've never had an on location fact. No. James recorded this at the place that the fact is about. Yeah. As I think he just mentioned. Just wanted to hammer it home. James is on a mountain now. He's not on a mountain, he's on an active volcano. Not right now because this isn't live. Sorry to ruin the illusion. Anna, where is your tradecraft? Where is your stage ship?

Sorry. This is very cool though, isn't it? So this is that the Italian province of Catania, which is where Etna is, is divided into municipalities. And there are 10 municipalities and they all meet at the top of Etna. And in fact, I think it's actually split at that peak into 11 sections because one of the municipalities Bronte scoops around and nicks two portions of it. Yeah, but basically it's 10. Basically it's 10. Bronte gets two bites of the cherry and I think it's worth saying. Yeah, Mount Etna. I had never really read anything about Mount Etna before. I assumed

it was a standard common or garden small volcano. It's a big volcano. It's a big, two miles high from sea level. Yeah. Yeah. That's tall. It's the original is the OG volcano. What do you mean? Well, Etna is where Vulcan lived. So the god of the forge and iron smelting and all that stuff. Vulcan lived in Etna and that's why volcanoes are called volcanoes. It is the volcano. My goodness. And just quickly, we should say about these 10 points that meet. I mean, I got to say, James, I don't understand this fact. I don't know why you'd want to live in 10 different towns at the same time. Who are you paying your council tax to? And so on. I mean, I get that these

10 provinces or principalities or towns, they all meet at the same point. But Etna is a really confusing place because it sounds like it's, you know, it sounds like your child's drawing of a volcano, which is two slopes on either side and a crater in the middle. And Etna isn't really like that. There are dozens of craters, you know, and like new ones open up all the time because it keeps on exploding and erupting. So I find that really interesting. There are more than 200 craters on Etna. I know it's, it's many, many miles around, but these places are so cool. So Randazzo was trilingual until the 16th century, which was Greek in one area, Latin in another and Lombard in a third. Is that one of the areas, one of the 10 areas?

That's one of the 10 areas. There is Bronte, as you mentioned Anna, which is, as we've said before, is where Nelson was created Duke of, Admiral Horatio Nelson was made Duke of Bronte. And we think it's where the Bronte sisters, their dad, he used to be called Bronte and he renamed himself Bronte, maybe after Nelson or maybe after this area. Which in itself is named after a Cyclops, isn't it? Who lived there. So the Bronte's dad is named after the Cyclops. And Charlotte, yeah, like Charlotte Bronte being named after a Cyclops is just so weird.

It's very cool. Yeah. But what's amazing is it is an active volcano So like James, you know just very happily took his family up there on an active volcano And but it's not like it's just people going up at their own risk the whole area is a tourist destination You've got vineyards at the bottom of it where if there was an eruption absolutely would be taken out by it You gotta pick those grapes fast Just pick the big ones. Just pick the big ones. It's between November and March, I think those are the months. There's two ski resorts that open up.

You can go skiing on an active volcano. It's wild. Yeah. Sometimes people ski alongside the lava when it's erupted. Cool. Really? Like racing it down. Kind of, yeah. And people do, people are quite annoying and I think they've introduced legislation now

because they do go much too close. You're supposed to only be a certain distance from the lava flow and you do have people who kind of cook their sausages on it and stuff. Look, this is Italy. It's the land of romance. People will cook their sausages on lava, you know? And it doesn't kill. It's incredible. Given how famous it is, and it's the OG, it's only killed 77 people confirmed in its entire history. Confirmed kills. It's not James Bond. It's got a tally inside its craters. Are you sure about that?

Yeah, I think so. There's this insane account from the big 1669 eruption where reports of it that came out much later said that 10 to 20,000 people had been killed. And still you see it on places like history.com, Sky History Channel, get your facts right, saying 20,000 people were killed. We're turning into a name and shame podcast now. I'm afraid so. Because zero people died. You can't accuse someone of killing 20,000 people. Tiberius could. Tiberius could and would. And in fact, he would probably be on the scene of this. You're absolutely right.

Yep, have them all killed. Blame the volcano. Can I check on it? Did you say why it didn't actually kill 20,000 people in 1669? I think it's, I actually don't know, but I think it's mostly slow moving and people just go, people just leave. It absolutely destroyed the area. It ruined economically for hundreds of years and still it's much, much less fertile because of that eruption. So they didn't get off scot-free. I, cause I assumed that it always made the land more fertile because it sometimes does with things like, you know, the reason there are vineyards there is because the soil is so rich and volcanic, but I guess sometimes also it's just a dead end wasteland

that it leaves behind. So a lot of the time it is good for the. It's a fine balance, isn't it? You know, you don't want to overdo the lava. Exactly. That one, that explosion, by the way, is also as far as we can tell, the first historical recorded attempt to divert the lava stream as it's coming down. So there was a town, Catania,

one of the 10, and they dug trenches above the village in order to divert the stream of lava as it was coming down. Cover? Yeah, I mean, but as far back as then. Well, I think, I believe that their neighbouring town was quite pissed off, wasn't it? Because it went into them. Well, they re-diverted it. They put a blockage up and it went back to Catania. That's amazing.

Like, fuck that, guys. Classic, classic neighbour behavior. It does sound amazing because to deal with a flow of lava is pretty challenging even with modern technology. And when you're dealing with it with shovels and pickaxes, dealing like making a trench like that, it's just incredibly impressive. They were wrapped in wet sheep skins to protect themselves from the heat. It's just it's really impressive It's crazy. We give the past a hard time sometimes but sometimes people are impressive, you know, they were hardcore Yeah, also if you were if you were gonna say how tall is Mount Etna the answer changes over the years

I find that wild with volcanoes, but basically off the back of certain eruptions. So if you ask that question in 1865 It was 170 feet higher than it is now because with the eruptions comes collapses internally and it sort of goes up and down in size. Yeah. But sometimes the act of erupting means that it leaves lava around the rim, which hardens and then makes it taller. Exactly. Right. But sometimes it just blows the whole top off and get shorter again. Yeah. That would be cool to solve a crime like with your national grid thing, Dan of like, but what

height was Etna at the time of the offense? As we say, Etna has erupted loads of times, 200 times in the last three and a half thousand years. Once every 17 years. It's a really good score. I think the most recent was 2021 when it threw up 12,000 tons of ash onto a local town. And so what happens in that moment? You're in a surrounding town.

Do you evacuate immediately? You get help. It's not like Vesuvius back in the day where you had to guess. These days, officials are there, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big government has taken over the previously charming, small government libertarian pastime of surviving volcanoes.

But the big thing they're scared of, or the most terrifying prospect prospect is a flank eruption, apparently. So if there's a lava fountain that just goes up from the top, again, classic volcano, that is sometimes really bad, obviously. But the worst thing is where the side just blows off. And that's when you get a big river of lava flowing down the side towards your town. Possibly.

Right. Okay. I found what I think is probably the greatest photo of Mount Etna erupting, taken by a local. Okay. Okay. It was taken in 2013, November 8th, and it was taken by a man called Luca Parmitana. Luca Parmitana took it while he was in space on board the International Space Station.

Yes. Heading over it, it was erupting and he managed to get a photo and he's from Sicily. So it's a perfect local to the area, manages to get a space photo of it. Luca Parmitana, he was the astronaut who was almost the first person ever to drown in space. If you remember, he was out on a spacewalk and within his helmet, the water supply got loose and the water started going into his helmet and droplets went up his nostrils. That's Luca Parmitano.

A little bit less time adjusting your lens and a little bit more time making sure your hood's done up. There's always a critic, isn't there? That's an episode of Tiberius International. An astronaut drowns in space. Tricky. But did anyone here, doesn't matter, hang these six people for the crime. See you next week.

Of course we're referring to it as a volcano and it's not definitely a volcano. What? Are you kidding? This is according to a geologist and he's called Carmelo Ferlito. Sounds legit. Exactly. So he lives near it. And he bet, so there's this confusion about it because it's always burping, very, very gassy. It belches out more than seven million tons of steam and CO2 and sulphur every year. And everyone says that's because of gas bubbles that are released from the magma.

But Ferlito says that you'd need about 10 times more lava to be coming out of it to justify all those gas bubbles. So where are they coming from? So some people say, oh, no, what's happening is a lot of the lava's coming out and then going back into Etna. And he says if it was doing that, Etna would be inflating like a child's balloon every time it erupted, the lava sinking back. Which it's not, I presume. It is not inflating like a balloon. So it's not a volcano?

It's a hot spring. And he says that- I would be so pissed off with my real estate agent if I was sold a house next to a hot spring, only to find out it was an active volcano. You've already drawn up your star plan. They photographed it from the other side so you didn't see Etna in the background. It was very clever. And on the viewing, they kept on cunningly misdirecting you.

I say, just go and have a look around here at the garage. I would say on that occasion, Dan, caveat emptor, you know? This guy says that it can only be justified by it being mostly water and CO2 and sulphur, which makes up 70% of the volume that it's spewing out. I'm sorry, I'm sure he's really well qualified, but it is a volcano, isn't it? Because I've literally seen photos of it vomiting lava over a wide area. You know, take it up with Carmelo. Carmelo, please. You've got to make an amazement of somehow in this life. The town was completely demolished by a local hot spring, was it?

But everyone's skin was very smooth at the end of it. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram at Tribaland. Andy? I'm on BluSky at Andrew Hunter M. James? It's all about Anna. If you want to get to us as a group, Anna?

You can email podcast at qi.com or go to at no such thing as a fish on Instagram or at no such thing on Twitter. That's right. And if you want to check out more of our stuff, go to nosuchthingasafish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. There's bits of merchandise. There is a portal, the gateway to our special secret club, Club Fish. And you can get tickets to our live show. So we're playing Sheffield in July, but in June we're going to be in Belgium.

We are playing the Nerdland Festival. We've done it twice now. It's very exciting. We're going to be back again. Lievenskeira, who runs the whole festival, has invited us back. And so if you live near the area, check out our site for tickets. We're going to be there June 7th. It's going to be great. Come along. Otherwise, just come back here. We will have another episode for you and we will see you then. Goodbye. you