No Such Thing As A Fish - 590: No Such Thing As Workshopping The Alphabet

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Dan, James, Anna, and Andy discuss lit trees, unreal squirrels, banging drums and sick bags. 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

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24-7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Anna Tyshinsky and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that the comoroo is the only species that gets better at reproducing when it has been struck by lightning.

It's quite cartoonish the way you've made it sound. Yeah. Like the lightning goes in, it goes, Yeeow! And then it's better reproducing. Get your minds out of the gutter, people at home, because the kumaru is a type of tree. It is a, well, specifically the Tonka bean tree. And a load of scientists have been looking at lightning strikes in Panama,

and they've looked at all the different trees that have been struck. And actually, it's over a 40 year period that they've done this. And they found that if you're a tree, you're substantially more likely to die if you live next to a Tonka bean tree. Yeah. Okay. And it's because they get struck by lightning a lot. And when they get struck by lightning, the lightning sort of bounces off them and goes to these other trees and kills these trees. It's crazy. They also have parasites, sort of vines and stuff on them.

And the lightning kills those vines as well. And as a result, when they've been struck by lightning a number of times, they have a 14-fold increase in lifetime seed production. So they create more seeds when they've been struck by lightning because they get rid of all the competition and stuff. And that makes it better for them to reproduce. It's amazing as well, because there must be a lot of these trees. It's not like it's just a single tree out there, right? There's tons, but within its own lifetime, after maturity

will be struck by at least five different bolts of lightning. I mean, that's insane. Yeah, five times. Also, imagine having one child and then then you're struck by lightning, and then you have 14 children. Yeah. That's very stressful. You mean that that's what's going on? Well, James was just saying they're 14 times more romantically successful. It's bad enough being struck by lightning, but then if you have to look after a lot of kids afterwards. I see, even worse. Salt in the wound.

Exactly. Fortunately, trees are very, very, very bad parents in general. They just hat their hands off, aren't they? worth. Salt in the wound. Exactly. Fortunately, trees are very, very, very bad parents in general. They just hat their hands off, aren't they? They're big old trees as well. 130 feet they can get up to. I mean, these are, these are gigantic. Which makes them more likely to be struck by lightning, of course, because they're often the tallest tree in the canopy. Yeah. It's strange, isn't it? Because lots of trees, when they're hit by lightning, I think we might have said this in the past, they will explode. Oh yeah. And that's because the temperature just gets so hot inside and they explode. Because they have water in there and the water expands because it's heated up so much.

Exactly. And there's this theory that the... is it Kumaru? Is it Kumaru? Well I'm gonna call it a Kumaru because I find that a funny word. That's your right. It's your right. It's Kumaru. Kumaru, okay. There's this theory that these trees have really high internal conductivity, so they're like a wire already almost, so that means that the lightning can flow through them without building up that massive blasting heat inside, which will kill it. Which is very, I mean, presumably that's evolved. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But hasn't everything? That's a solid point. Yeah. Do you know who's most likely to get struck by lightning? What outdoor activity?

Oh. So I would say golfers. Andy, you always talk about golf, honestly. The ladder carrying championships of Estonia. Very risky at all. The Tonka bean climbing championships in Panama. There is a common misconception that golfers are the most likely to be struck by lightning because they are outside metal rods, big metal golf clubs that they're holding with them. But there has been a study and they found that the most common

is football actually. Ah really? And the reason being that people will carry on playing football, that soccer I'm talking about, and they'll carry on playing in bad weather. Whereas golfers are just looking for an excuse to go inside and drink a beer aren't they? Yeah but honestly if you play golf and you hear any thunder you have to come in, that's the rule. Oh really? You weren't meant to come in, I thought you were meant to lie down on the ground with your bottom in the air. That's not a specific golf rule.

What is that? Are you thinking of an ostrich? As we're doing this, the US Open Golf has just started in Oakbunt and I think if there's any lightning there you won't see Rory McIlroy and Scotty Scheffler taking down their trousers. Safe trousers. You definitely added that. Ryan, Scotty Scheffler, take it down the trousers. I'm going to say trousers. You definitely added that. But it is easier if the trousers are off so you can pop the flag in the top.

No, that is, there is a theory, and this is more generally if you're stuck outside in the lightning, that if you're lower down, obviously, then you're less likely to be struck. So you should kind of go on your haunches. And if you put your bum in the air, then the electricity will hit your bum and travel down to the earth without going into your brain. Thank you. Really? Hold them in one? Saved your life.

But we've said in the past that it's really dangerous for humans. Well, lighting. Yeah. With one of those controversial podcasts. But we've also pointed out that between 85 and 90 percent of people who are struck by lightning survive. They do have long-term life damages, but they do manage to survive. And do you guys read about Ray Caldwell? Okay, he was a baseball player. He was playing for the Cleveland Indians versus the Philadelphia Athletics. This is 1919. He's just joined this team and it is his first match.

He needs it to go well. And he pitches the whole match. There's nine innings, he's pitched eight. On the ninth inning, that suddenly a thunderstorm hits, lightning cracks down, strikes him, everyone sees him get struck by it. They run to him. He gets back up and says, I've got to make a good impression. And he pitches the final few pitches and gets a guy out.

Like was the ball like super electric and such? Gosh. There's one thing that you can do that will help you survive in a lightning strike and that is having a wet head. This is due to the fact that the lightning will hit your head but then the water will conduct it down away from your brain and it might go over your whole body rather than just going straight into your brain. And also because you have got water on your head, it's not as hot. So

your brain doesn't get boiled. So it'll likely will turn the water to steam. Yeah, I mean, it's still very likely to do you a lot of damage, but it can help slightly. If it's between standing outside in the rain saying, I need to get my head wet, so I'm okay, and going inside. Go inside. Right, that's first thing go inside, but failing that.

So I think in all circumstances, if there's a lightning storm, you're safer indoors. Well, well. Uh-oh. There was a terrific piece. This was two years ago, I think it was in the Guardian. That was a terrific piece. This was two years ago, I think. It was in the Guardian. There was a guy called Aidan Rowan.

And the headline was, I was struck by lightning while sitting on my sofa. Okay. And this was a guy, he was at home, lived in Abingdon, which is a small town. Oldest town in the UK. Lovely. Well, he was at home, he was playing on his PlayStation.

The window was open. The weather was a bit bad, but you know, it's nice to have a bit of fresh air sometimes when the weather's bad. Sometimes when it's thundering and lightning, it's quite, you know, electrical air is really nice. Wonderful. Yeah, it's electrifying.

Well, there was a huge crack. Get your mind out of it. Stop. Get off the golf course. Stop. Get your mind out of it. Stop. Get off the ghost floor. Stop. He heard a huge noise of thunder. Then it felt like someone had dropped something very heavy on him. He smelt singed flesh and like basically his arm his arm was burning and sort of like scaly and boiled and all of this and like he and his husband went to hospital and it turned out lightning

had bounced off water droplets on his windowsill and into the room. Oh, clever! It was final destination stuff, isn't it? It is! I got mocked on this very show for having mentioned that I shouldn't be taking baths during lightning storms. Because remember, it can travel through the pipes. Remember the lady who was blown out the bath? There was a huge crack then as well.

He said it's lucky. So this is a tip if you're playing on your PlayStation and the weather's bad. He said one doctor said it was lucky that I had my foot on the floor while I was playing the game, otherwise I wouldn't have been grounded. And he could have been completely killed by that. But he's a blacksmith, which is interesting. Yeah, no, nice detail, thanks. It was like Thor, Thor and Hammer and-

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also that he's a god of thunder. How do we know that it bounced off that water droplet? That just feels like something that no one could possibly have documented. You're right. Oh, I saw it. Well, maybe there was an initial contact burn on the windowsill, perhaps, I don't know. I see, I see.

But he then, I find this interesting, he bought a lottery ticket just to check if he'd become psychic, and he won six quid! Oh wow! Did he deliberately like think, well I am psychic now, I don't want to go over the main numbers because then everyone's gonna, you know... You don't want to have press attention, like man hit by lightning then wins lottery, you got the press around you for months. You just go for the six quid, because if you won six quid hundred times every week... The dream amount to win on the lottery is enough to buy you another ticket plus a bit. Yes.

That's the way to fly low under the radar and steadily build up a million pounds. Very true. Yeah. Why psychic? I would have thought he bought it because he thought maybe I'm really lucky. I survived being hit by lightning. Because his brain might have, you know, I mean, I don't need to go into the details. Yeah.

A lot of people think, and there are stories all over history of things being cured by lightning. It's worth a try if nothing else has worked. There was quite a lot of people say that they have blindness and deafness cured. Just another case where it just seems so improbable that you could survive. I found a guy called Casey Wagner, who was out attending a fun day of an event called Rednecks with Paychex, and he was sitting under a tree when of an event called Rednecks with Paychex and he was sitting under a tree when he got hit by lightning, okay? It shot his body upwards. I bet he did it with a redneck after that.

People could see this happening. He got hit by a second bolt of lightning. He got hit twice. And what it hit, this is so unfortunate because you wonder if he was wearing normal shoes, it might not have happened, but he happened to be a rodeo clown, and he was wearing his clown shoes, which are obviously longer than your regular shoes. Is a rodeo clown a real clown? I guess so, yeah. I'm sorry for the ignorance.

I just thought it was an insult. It's like somebody's badly prepared for a rodeo. Oh. But you're saying it's an actual clown at the rodeo. It's the reverse of someone saying, this isn't my first rodeo. Yeah. Yes. Hang on, is rodeo clown even a phrase?

You said you know it as a phrase. I know that phrase. I read it as I took it. It says his job as a rodeo clown. You don't have a job as someone who's an idiot rocking up. Think after these 12 years, you can call that a job. You're saying that. Can I just say around this table only one of us has heard the phrase rodeo clown. Yeah.

Oh, two, right? Andy and Dan. No, Dan thought it was a job. You know what? The fishing box, I know, because I do the emails, it's going to be absolutely stuffed with how dare you disrespect the ancient profession of rodeo clown. I've been a rodeo clown nine years, man and boy. So what happened

with his shoes? Sorry? Well, it struck his shoe. I've extrapolated the idea to think that maybe his shoe was longer because it was a clown shoe. And all that water in his squirty buttonhole will have boiled immediately. Can I quickly mention something about Tonka trees? Yeah, go for it. So Tonka beans are delicious, but lethal. So if you eat too many of them, like in sheep,

five grams, about two teaspoons is fatal. In humans, we don't really know what's fatal because we can't really do that experiment, but it is illegal to use Tonka beans in your food in America. And for a long time, they used it because it tastes really delicious like a vanilla licorice caramel cloves they used it in ice cream and stuff for a long time in America now still if you go to a really

really really really posh restaurant then they will still serve you Tonka stuff even though it's illegal I love this like the secret illegal bean yeah and it's but this is on menus openly yeah. And it's- But it's just on menus openly. Yeah. It's cause of this chemical inside the bean called kumarin. Yeah. And also the amount of kumarin you'd have to consume

equates to so many beans, which equates to so many puddings at the restaurant. I read that as a human, you'd have to eat one gram of kumarin, not of Tonka beans of the chemical that's extracted to experience any ill effects whatsoever. That equates to about 30 beans worth of kumarin, not of Tonka beans of the chemical that's extracted, to experience any ill effects whatsoever. That equates to about 30 beans worth of kumarin and that would be about 250 puddings at this restaurant. That's true, although the actual limit, as in if the FDA did have a limit or if the EU had a limit it would be a quarter of a Tonka bean. And the reason is because we can't

test it on humans about what's good for you or bad for you so what they do is they test it on an animal and then they say okay well that's what that is for a baboon or for a dog or whatever we're gonna multiply it by a hundred for the human safety factor and that's how they work out the human safety factors they have like a massive window. That is so cautious. I know but that's how they do it. It's too much isn't it? Delicious puddings we're missing out on there There are secret puddings all over the world that we're not allowed to have because the man... We're allowed to have it. We're not American.

It's just the Americans. We don't have Tonka beans, upper arses. Hold on. No, that's not... While you're on the golf course, I'll just pop this in here, madam, and I hope you enjoy those rich flavors. I don't even know what I was trying to say. Yeah.

Do you know what it's also in? I really didn't know this. So the chymarin, this thing that's poisonous, very slightly poisonous, or in very small amounts in these things, it's also in cinnamon. But that's only because cinnamon isn't really cinnamon. I did not know this.

Check the cinnamon in your cupboard. Most of it is not true cinnamon, which comes from the bark of the cinnamomum verum, and that's native to Sri Lanka. It's actually from a plant called the cassia, cassia cinnamon, which is not true cinnamon at all, even though it's claiming to be. And one teaspoon of it, in fact, sends you over Kumaran safety limits set by the EU. Again, very cautious. I do overload with cinnamon sometimes on the old porridge. You're probably breaking EU law every time you have a nice cinnamony porridge. 20

cinnamon buns. If they're those really delicious cinnamony ones, you know where the middle is really cinnamony. If you have 20 of those then that's... really? And sometimes after a night out when you go to one of those late-night pastry places in London, it's not impossible that happened. Yeah, oh yes. You know what? Everyone else going to the kebab shop and is like, no. Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24-7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day

Our vets can even prescribe medication for many elements and shipping is always free With Dutch you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care Stop the book Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. We just wanted to let you know that we're sponsored this week by Indeed. Yes. Now I don't know about you, Anna.

I think it's important to hire the right people for the job. That sounds like I'm making a coded attack on you. I'm not. This is actually a coded attack on Dan. No, hiring the right people quickly is an incredibly important thing. If you need a job done, if you need a new person to join your team, it's actually quite important to get on with it soon. The sooner you get them in, the more they can help. Yeah. I mean, it's all got very tense here between me and Andy quite early on. So I'll be on the

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If you want to speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, when you're hiring, Indeed is what you need. That's a mnemonic for you. It really works. Just go to indeed.com slash fish and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions do apply. On with the show. On with the podcast. OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in the 1400s, the King of Korea put a big drum outside his palace

and anyone in the kingdom who wanted to complain about something was encouraged to come and bang it. I bet they were not encouraged. I bet they were strongly deterred, except under the diarist extremity. No way. He said, come one, come all. Anything pissing you off? Your wife nagging you too much?

She might say, come one, come all, because it was the concept of one in Korea, which is if someone causes you a slight, or let's say someone steals something off you and they're not properly punished, then your level of one, your kind of negative emotions are out of balance. And this person who was sort of starting these new laws

and trying to keep everyone happy, this was one of the things he was like, if your one is out of level due to someone else, then that person will get punished. That was a beautiful segue from the word one to the concept of one. Can I tell you one other thing about one? Who was this king? What was he called? King Dae-jung. Do you know what his birth name was? It was something different, I can tell you that.

His birth name, considering he put a big drum outside his palace, was Lee Bang-won. Lovely stuff. But he really did. He was king from 1400 to 1418. It was in the Chosun dynasty, which is sort of the massive deal. Korean dynasty went on for a thousand years. And it was called the Sin Mungo Drum. And it really was part of a system. And there were three layers of appeal before you got to the drum. You could go to your county level courts, regional level, national level, if they all reject your, you know, my kettle's broken complaint or whatever it is, then you go to the drum. It's like, I want to talk to your manager and if you don't get the manager, I'm going straight to the drum.

Exactly. You bang on the drum, the king deals with it. I do imagine that, because the idea was that anyone could bang the drum, but I feel like they would have made it quite clear that this is a, are you really sure you want to bang the drum? Yeah. Because if you hadn't gone through these three layers of lower courts, I'm sure you'd probably have been immediately executed for even touching the drum.

Yes. You know? The king is a busy guy. He's a busy guy. He is. You're clearly an annoying customer if you've made it this far. Yeah. It's vexatious litigation in action. He's a busy guy. You're clearly an annoying customer if you make it this far. Yeah. It's vexatious litigation in action.

And he was a killer. He was a killer, Daizong. Friend of the podcast, by the way. We have mentioned him before. We've got some questionable friends and we've never tried it. Yeah, we've mentioned him before. He was the guy who, so this Joseon period dynasty that we're talking about, they used to have people writing every single thing down about the royalty and he once fell off a horse and he didn't want that recorded but what has then been recorded is him falling off the horse and saying to the historians don't record this happening. I forgot about that.

It's the Barbra Streisand effect. Yes. It's the earliest known example of Barbra Streisand in the world. Exactly. But no, he did like to kill. So you would be pretty brave to bang that drum. Who did he kill? So he executed the four brothers of his wife, he executed his father-in-law, his younger brother. That's a tough Christmas.

Yeah, he was... But to be fair, he executed people who were quite high up the social strata. He was a progressive. Is that what we're saying? I think he was progressive. Well, in a weird way, he did... like he really wanted to kind of democratise stuff in a way. That's the whole idea of this drum is like he believes the common people are the ones to be trusted. He's like, women and men are exactly the same. Enslaved people are exactly the same as the nobles. But basically what he wanted to do was crush noble power. So yeah, he, I mean, any brother or brother-in-law or stepbrother who seemed like might overthrow him He really upset his dad who sounds like he was quite nice

What excuse me? I'm gonna i'm gonna throw in one relevant. This was the guy who started the chosen dynasty, right? Yeah, yeah, you don't start by overthrowing the other dynasty. You don't start a dynasty without breaking a few eggs Who has an overthrowing a dynasty? But Tai, Tai Zhong was the king we're talking about with the big drum. His father was known as Tai Zhou, and I think he sort of ousted his father from power. There was a lot of strife, a lot of people were killed off along the way, a lot of rival claimants all bumped off. So after Tai Zhong became king, his father, Tai Zhou, was still alive and no longer king. And Tejong started sending him messengers to try and heal that breach, who his father then had beheaded as an indirect

message that he would never forgive Tejong. I think executing the messengers is a really shabby move. It's not good, but... You can just send the messenger back to the thing saying, no, I do not forgive you. Also I think when you do that, you're supposed to like cut the hand off the messenger so that he can go back and say look What happened to me if you cut the head off? You just stuck with the body of a messenger exactly Hence he kept sending messengers what a horrible system

Yeah, I guess what I saw is this touching angle is why he was angry though. Why was he angry then? He was angry though. Why was he angry then? He was angry because so Tejo had been king and then he'd abdicated. People constantly abdicating, not dying. And then he made another one of his sons king who Tejong overthrew. And then Tejong killed a bunch of his brothers, as we've said, and his dad was just really upset with him for killing his other kids. So his dad was like, I'm so pissed off that you killed my kids. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a few messengers heads are going to roll to punish your son. We've ascertained where in terms of aristocracy versus messenger

court, Anna's loyalties lie with. I like the way that all these things where people's heads are rolling left, right and centre are known as the first and second strife of princes. Yeah. It feels like they're underplaying it a bit. Yeah. We've got a euphemism such things. I don't like any of the people involved I should say. Yeah they're all quite bad aren't they. He was smart, Tae Jong. He was the only king in the history of Korea who passed the civil service exam. Really? Remember we've said in the past they they have these really, really tough civil service exams to see who gets the jobs. Well, he passed it and none of his brothers passed it,

but they also got into the civil service due to the system that if your parents are really rich, you get it anyway, which they had at the time. But yeah, he got through this and he decided he wanted to be a tattooist. Really? Yeah, because it was a tattooist. Really? Yeah. Because it was a big deal job in the time.

If there was a criminal and they did something wrong, you would tattoo the criminal with whatever they'd done wrong so that people would know. It was a really important job and that's what he wanted to be, but then in the end he became king. Was there, because some tattoos are quite subtle and you can hide them. I presume if you're the criminal you can't say, can you do it really small and on my inner thigh? Presumably it has to be like back of the hand or something. Yeah, like I'm a purse snatcher. Oh, yeah I think it was in specific they had rules

Could you get extra tattoos after that one to kind of you know how people these days if they've got like an embarrassing tattoo They'll try and add to it. Yeah, like what was it? Oh, it's slightly the other way But Johnny Depp had Winona forever and then got rid of it And it said why no forever. Oh, yeah, exactly. Could you add extra things? I think of how you'd adapt the phrase purse snatcher to be benign, but I am not a Very strict rules about tattooing in general. But so this is the king who wanted to be the tattoo Yeah, well, he wasn't a king at the time. Yeah, it's like a prince king who wanted to be the tattooist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, he wasn't a king at the time. He was just like a prince. Okay. I got a little detail about his death the day he died, Taichung, which is that, so he abdicated, right? Four years later he dies. And there's a thing which is drought is often connected to your relationship with the gods. And in the 1400s, it was believed that royalty were connected to it.

So sometimes the king would go to an area and if it rained, that would be seen as a miracle brought on by the king. So when he was in his dying day, the king himself, he said, I'm going to make it rain. And on the day he died, it torrential rained. And for so long, it was like 10 days to the point where it actually destroyed crops because it was so much. But this has been a legend, but people have gone back and they found through all the records that it did rain on the day that he died. So it's seen as a miracle day. Is it a miracle if it rains? I mean, I know Korea's not as bad as Britain. Yeah, yeah, I can see that they really wanted it. I think that's often what happens in those circumstances is it's been a drought for so long

and so the ground gets really hard. And then you get a big rain storm like you would naturally get after a lot of hot weather But there's nowhere for the water to go so it all kind of bloody floods and then God goes Well, what the hell did you want? Everyone gets really upset about that. What do you want from me? Yeah, he he abdicated because I think he wanted to train up his son basically who was Sejong and he basically is known as Korea's greatest ever leader for lots and lots of reasons. But partly because I think he's the only king ever to have invented a completely new alphabet from scratch. And it's still the alphabet that they use today.

Yeah, that's amazing. I think what a pain in the ass to invent an entirely new alphabet. Because if you're the king, everyone has to go along with your alphabet as well. There's no way you can soft launch an alphabet and say well We'll see if it takes off and see if anyone starts using this new alphabet like yeah Do we know why he invented a new alphabet? Well, I think they were using the Chinese alphabet which didn't match Korean noises at the time And so they were like we need one that fits and he was fairly smart. He was an academic So actually his alphabet was so good that they've kept on using it.

Well that's very impressive. I didn't know that. I love the idea of workshopping an alphabet though. Like just get some guys in, have some beers, just see where it takes us. Make some of the noises you make every day. Yeah, that one. I'm going to draw a symbol for that one. I reckon with the beers thing that's why the end of the alphabet is so fucked up with like X, Y's and Z's. Everyone's just pissed by that point. It's a late night. Let's go for an X. What?

Is that why sleeping is Zed's? That's right. Have you never gone to the end? The alphabet goes W, X, Y, Z, vomit. Okay, time for fact number three and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the artist George Braque once spent 10 days trying to get rid of a squirrel that kept reappearing in his painting. This guy sounds like an idiot. He just keeps drawing the squirrel, rubbing it out, drawing

the squirrel, rubbing it out. Yes, and it's a job, James. You can be an idiot and make money. So, this obviously very famous artist. I read this in a book. We recently did a show with John Lloyd and we talked about Picasso in it and off the back of it, I went on holiday and I took Francois Gilot's autobiography, which is her life with Picasso. She talks about the fact that Barack and Picasso had this moment where in their cubism period,

they were both staring at a painting that Barack was painting and Picasso just said to him, what's that squirrel doing there? And he said, oh my God, what is that squirrel doing there? Now obviously there was no squirrel there, but they could see the squirrel. Because was it like, what would you call it? Impressionistic? Yeah, like an impressionistic painting where it wasn't a picture of a bowl of fruit and there's a squirrel in there, right?

Well, no, exactly. But he was painting a package of tobacco and a pipe. Oh, so it was still life. Yeah, it was still life. But it was just like in the corner, it was like the shadows made it look like that. Yeah, exactly. And they could see the squirrel.

So he paints it away. But as he's constantly transforming the painting over the next eight-10 days, the squirrel keeps popping up in a new different place. The squirrel returns. And so he spends close to 10 days until he invites Picasso back and Picasso and him both agree, yes, the squirrel is now gone, and now they know that the painting is as it should be. Do you think there's a chance Picasso never saw the squirrel and just thought, I'm going to psych out my mate here, this is gonna really piss him off. Slow him down.

Yeah exactly. No, to deal with the competition. I had never heard of Braque before this. Is he really, is he made for it? Well the founders of Cubism was Picasso and Braque. Oh okay. He's biggie. In that world, yeah.

He's bigger in the art world than in the cricket world. Is it, so, and this is Cubism that was sorry, not impressionism, cubism. So lots of different shapes. Yeah, cubes. Yeah, please. And what are we all except a selection of cubes arranged in a pile? Think of a Picasso painting, like a really wonky one. Yeah.

You're kind of on the cubism vibe. Is this a perennial hazard for cubist painters? Like were people constantly saying, I love that castle you've done. You can say, yes, thank you very much. I spent ages on the castle, I've been very sweated over that. No, and this was actually a really good point. This is the main point about it, is that Picasso was saying, you were painting something to be seen.

You were not painting an illusion. So if we're seeing a squirrel in your painting, you've painted an illusion. You've allowed for it to be interpreted in this way. And this is all a foam of something called pareidolia, which is where you see like faces or images in something that don't really exist. When you look in the sky and you see a cloud and you think, oh, that looks like Mother Teresa or something, then that is because you're seeing things that aren't really there.

Well, why does she bless me then? Why does she reach down and the cloud touches my nose and I feel electricity? What's going on there? Well, it is pareidolia can be associated with schizophrenia. It can be associated with extreme creativity. Well, that can't be why I've got it. But is it? I read that it was also neurosis and even conspiracy theorists are more likely

because they're seeing, they're forming patterns everywhere. They're thinking that's an interesting coincidence, that's interesting, that's interesting. Maybe think of you Dan, you know, you're very good at coincidence generation. Yeah, well, okay, but so the- Do you see faces more than the rest of us? Maybe. No, I don't think so because I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but- Yeah, I didn't do that, sorry.

But the face on Mars is the most famous one, I would say, in the conspiracy world. There was a photo that was taken by the Viking space probe, and you can see what looks like a giant face on the surface of Mars. That was found decades ago, and that has built a whole industry of ideas that ancient aliens landed there and built stuff and so on. What proof is it of life? Is it like someone died and they were a giant and then they turned into a rock? Just their face? Because actually if you look at civilisation today, there aren't loads of faces. There's

loads of buildings. Yeah. And tools. Yeah. And some bones. Yeah. It's so rare you just see a human face left over from 4,000 years ago. As a representative of the conspiracy theorists, I'd like to say there are people that believe it.

If you next time you're at my house, I've got about six books I can lend you, which very much put forward that idea. Thank you. No, it's who knows. They just thought it looked manmade is rather what it is, is the main thing. Nazca lines are shapes when viewed from above. And the Cernapis giant, he's a big face on the ground and a whole lot else besides. Good point so people with faces also make faces. Yeah. Do you know what just on that word pareidolia this idea of seeing faces and things Picasso had a theory that that is how art began to begin with he thinks that early man was looking around and seeing faces and rocks and seeing face

and thinking oh why don't I trace over that or why don't I try and mimic that. Well there's evidence of that. This is really cool. So it's believed that maybe Neanderthals also experienced pareidolia and early man. There was a stone found, a pebble, and it has a human fingerprint on it and one red dot of ochre and that helps it look a little bit like a face it helps to make a little bit of a nose in between a bit of pebble that looks like eyes and a little bit that could look like a mouth and I read a study about it which was titled more than a fingerprint on a pebble which is defensive to so many question mark and

they ended it it was no it was more than a fingerprint on a pebble, surely. That's better because you made it sound quite desperate initially. Well, it dates back 43,000 years and they think it is evidence that early humans were saying, oh that looks a bit like a face, I'll add a bit of art and a little one dot and that'll make it look even more like a face. So this is a long historical tendency we all have. Would make sense. I think Jesus's face, that's a very common one to appear. We all know what that looks like. First time it appeared is in a 1977 flowered tortilla. So it was a woman called Maria Rubio and she was making burritos for her husband in New Mexico and she saw Jesus's face and it really is the famous face of Jesus in a

tot here. She snipped out his face, she took it to a priest at the local church, she said, what the hell's going on here? And the priest was like, well, you've been visited by Jesus. And it actually sort of ruined their lives. So thousands and thousands of people visited from all across like Central and South America and North America came to the house. They displayed it in this glass case, but people expected her to do amazing things. They thought she could heal and they thought she had these incredible powers, so they'd come and they'd bring their sick children and say, heal me. And she agonized over it. She didn't want a prophet out of the Tortilla and she wanted to help people, but she couldn't heal them.

And she just said in the end, it was a complete nightmare, but she couldn't heal them. And she just said in the end it was a complete nightmare, but she was too religious to destroy it, because you can't destroy the face of Jesus once it's entered your home. Right. But once you smear guacamole on it, you're not going to be able to see it anyway. It's what he would have wanted. What did she do with it? She kept it for years and years, and it broke of its own accord in 2005.

Of its own accord. That's a miracle. Like the tortilla that magically fractures. It'd be like a Jesus jigsaw. Oh yeah, nice. Maybe that's how the grandkids use it today. Yeah. There might be a reason why Jesus is seen so much. Although I know you get, there's a famous Virgin Mary tortilla. A lot of Mexican foods that the Trinity are appearing on, which is interesting. Yes, maybe it lends itself to faces

because it's got those little bubbles in it that look like eyes and a nose. We once saw the devil in a chicken pakora. Okay. Lucky you. So, back up a second. I'm just saying like, it's not always Mexican food. No, you're right.

Well, that's really food for thought. Yeah. What are you still doing on this podcast? Tour in the world with your millions. Anyway, we called our pakora Derek pakora. Oh, very nice. What did you do with him? Is he in a glass cabinet somewhere?

And I eventually went in the bin. We didn't eat it. Wow. Didn't you know too scared? The devil's pakora. No way. Was it a spicy pakora? I don't know, I didn't eat it. No. So the reason that Jesus might appear more is a thing to do with pareidolia in general, and that is that people think when they see a face in anything that is male, 80% of the faces that people perceive, whether, you know, it's just a collection of lines or whatever,

80% are male. Is that patriarchy stuff? I think it probably is, unless they clearly have long hair, lustrous eyelashes, a big sign saying I am female, or whatever it is. People just think that's a bloke. Is it that, because the two biggies really are the Virgin Mary and Jesus, right? But do you mean there'll be a lot of men's names in the mix and just the Virgin Mary? No, I guess we just see random faces most of the time, right? We don't see usually Mary

or Jesus. We just go, ah, looks like a face. Yeah, I see. Is it like if you were to draw a circle with two dots where eyes might be and a dot where the nose is in line where the mouth is, a lot of people would just say, oh, look at that man. Yes. Yeah, that's it. I'm afraid I think it probably there isn't a better explanation than patriarchy. There never is, Andy. Wow. Or a worse explanation. Even in shapes.

A lot of ways. Oratory pareidolia. If you're walking through the woods, might be some wind rustling through the leaves. Might be a water going by and people often hear their names. It does happen quite a lot, it seems, it turns out, and it can happen with electric fans, with airplane engines, with washing machines, anywhere where there's kind of white noise, sort of uncertain what the noise is. The reason is that your brain kind of just fills in the gaps,

and so if this white noise, this washing machine, is making lots of weird noises, and a couple of those noises sound a bit like an ah and a n, then you would think, oh, someone said Anna. But even though it's just like a few like frequencies that sound a little bit like those. Yeah. It's not just people who are cool with things like... The name takes an hour to pronounce, but only half an hour if you put them on a quick cycle. I really like the thing of why this happens in general, like the evolutionary theory as to why it happens, which is that it is useful to us evolutionarily to perceive a pattern

where there may or may not be one. So that particularly applies to, let's say, if you're in an environment with predators, it is more useful to see a bear that is not there than not to see a bear that is there. Yeah. Right? And so there's a terrific book actually called The Tiger That Isn't, which is mostly a book about stats, but it's really good about finding signals and pattern and all that. It's a great book about maths. But yeah, that seems to be the reason why it happens. And maybe that it's useful to see faces because you might be.

Yeah, just to keep us prepared. And just you're lonely and you want to, you know, hang out with someone and. We're social creatures. The only reason we've been successful as a species is that we're team players. Unlike anyone else. What does that require? It requires us to spot faces. Does it matter that nine out of ten faces we spot are actually dots on a pakora or? You've got so many friends until it's pointed out to you that actually...

Eating alone in the Indian restaurant at a 10 person table again. And then to go right to the modern day, if you are sitting there and you think your phone is vibrating in your pocket and it isn't vibrating in your pocket, that's another kind of pareidolia. I've got that. And that's because you've got it right now. Not right now, but I have it almost daily.

Oh, it's extremely common. I've been calling you for weeks, Dan. Just be quiet. It's so funny. I thought I'd been chatting to you. Was that just a wall with a dot on it? And again, it's just the brain sort of like feels some kind of vibration and remembers all the other times that have vibrated there and then just fills in the gaps.

I get that a fair bit. But Dan, do you think it's anyone in particular ringing? As we know now it is Anna, but do you think, oh my agent, you know, like, is there someone you hope is? No, no. Hello, I'm free. I'm ready. Half my usual rate. I'll do it. Idiot fire. rodeo clowns are time is precious. And so are our pets. So time with our pets is

extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24-7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy. My fact is, across the world there are over a hundred serious collectors of airline sick bags.

Serious. How serious? I'm not talking amateur hour, oh I have a draw but I don't do it much, you know, these are players. These are traders, they are curators. Absolutely. There is a community and it's thriving, it's hopping. How many qualifiers are serious then for you? Well, I wouldn't talk to anyone who had less than 150. I think that's fair. How many do you have? I don't have any. I'm just a reporter in this world.

The figures vary. One article I read said 100 collectors, another said 250. They could fit into a medium-sized theatre, definitely. There are some record holders. There's a guy called Nick Vermerlen, who I believe has most, certainly in the mid- 6,290 as per a CNN article. Yeah, as of 2012. He may have collected more since,

his wife may have persuaded him to throw them out since. We don't know, but he had that many then. Yeah, so he's got maybe most that have ever been had. That's pretty cool. Why do they do it? Oh, you know, you've got to pass the time, haven't you? I read one person called Steve Sildeberg, who told CNN that he'd collected them

because nobody else collects them. He'll be gutted to hear this episode of Fish Morning. He's great. So he has 3,000 more than, and he runs airsicknessbags.com which is a really good website for those wanting to get into it. It's amazing what it throws up. Oh god!

He writes, while this website and hobby is an enormous waste of time, I like to think it's a higher quality waste of time than many other places on the web. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. And he's just really good. Some of his examples on his website. Go on. The Duke makes us puke from 1988, which was given out

the Republican National Convention, referring to Mike Dukakis. Nice. Good. There was the Hen Knight party bag from 2005, which is a British sick bag. And each bag displays a vomit stain and exhorts you to place gop here and heave and comes with the caveats. Please dispose of properly. Do not reheat. Not suitable for home freezing.

Jesus. So good. His sight is great. So yeah, Steve or upheave Steve as he's known. He is one of the major baggists as they're known and it is, as James is saying, it's sort of like, it's not just airline bags. You've got horror movies used to do novelty bags that you would give out as well for people that might barf in the cinema.

He collects those. NASA, he's managed to track down a few of the air sickness bags that went up with astronauts and so on. Are they mostly used? No, no, no, no, no. These are pristine, myth-and-dish. Never used. No, of course, they wouldn't fit flat in the arch files if you...

I did look for some though on eBay. I did think there must be an air sick bag that was vomited into by Taylor Swift or something going for thousands, but couldn't find anything. Thank God, so does your wife. You said about the horror movies, they still do that today. Terrifier 3 that came out earlier this year. If you went to the first screening of that, they gave you some sick bags. Saw 10, which came out last year. They gave it you as well.

Saw 10! Yeah, it was a pretty good one, Saw 10. The Human Centipede, The Passion of the Christ, The Mark of the Devil. All different movies where they gave sick bags out to the audience, especially in the screenings. The Passion of the Christ? Yeah, in Belfast, when it was shown in Belfast. Wow. Because of blasphemy, presumably.

Actually, no, because there is some violent bits in it. Oh, yeah, I think it gets pretty, I don't know if you know how the story ends, Anna, but it's not, it's not a PG. But it's just that the sick bags are a gimmick for what I assume were B horror movies saying, ha ha, look how scary we are. I thought The Passion of Christ took itself a bit more seriously. Yeah, I think it was like the theatres did it, and I think they were trying to make a point a little bit. bit But ironically because I went to watch that in Belfast and got a sick bag and vomited in it You're kidding when I looked in it. It looked just like Jesus Christ himself He got hit by lightning who no Gibson no the actor who played Jesus and the Passion of the Christ That's one of the famous on set stories. Well, you got struck by light

It's very hard to get down from that cross quickly when the storm starts. Unfortunately, the cross was made out of Tonka bean tree. The two thieves who were on either side of it, they got it much worse. Sorry, he got hit by lightning. That's a story that's online and I'm only just saying it out loud because it's the connection between lightning and that, so it might be wrong. Weirdly, one thing that always gets hit by lightning, sorry this is a telescope back to earlier in the show, is statues of Jesus. It's always happening. Christ the Redeemer gets hit several times a year because it's

on the top of a mountain in a very humid part of the world. I know but it seems like a sort of avengeful god is zapping statues of Christ. It seems like he's saying all the time, no, look, I want you to try something else. Anyway, Steve Silberberg, yeah, he has a loving partner, we should say, of whom he says, she's amused by it, but has no interest in getting involved. And he's had some bad experiences in the past before he met his lovely partner of women who just didn't like it. It's not something to raise on the first date, I would say, would be my advice to a sick

bag collector. It's more of a third date kind of revelation. That's exactly it. So he, at one point, at his work, he was introduced to a new colleague and the person introducing them said, this is Steve, he works in IT and he collects sick bags and we never got on from then onwards. I think that's a tough introduction to recover from. He's great though, I think he's really cool. The sick bag was invented by Gilmore Tilman Shendhal in 1949 who later made the world's first communications satellite. It was a way that you could have live television that was going from one side of America to the other by bouncing it off this satellite that he invented.

That's cool. And it's the same technology really because he made plastics. And he invented the idea of being able to put plastic on the inside of a bag so that when you throw up in it, it doesn't all leak out. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? You've got plastic bags, you've got paper bags, he just put them together. Someone needed to do it. I could have done that. Someone needed to. And he did it.

Someone could have done that. I could have done that. I couldn't have made the first satellite, but I could have done the bag thing. But the satellite thing was, again, it was plastics, and it was what he invented was the thing that allowed everything to be stuck to the satellite without all falling off. Okay. Basically, all the reflective stuff. And he's kind of more known for the bag, isn he than the satellites and that really annoyed him in his day? No, it is All the quotes from his wife and so on just said this is what dogged him his whole life

Everyone always brought up the sick bags because most people can't collect communication satellites I still think a little bit of a sense of human failure mate. I think you've got to own it, right? Yeah, I agree I totally agree Interestingly, there's a big complaint going on around the world right now amongst the baggists because it's a dying art. Sick bags aren't as prominent as they used to be. And if they are there now,

they kind of plane largely in a lot of cases. There used to be great designs, like there's a deer vomiting on one, which is apparently really loved, beautiful design. There's funny jokes on a bunch of them. Now, because plane flights are getting less turbulent because we're flying so much higher, it's getting a bit more safer, people aren't using them as much. So air sickness is going down, hence they're investing less and less.

Well, do you know, actually, I looked into this and people have never been sick on planes. Even the 1930s, they did a study and 0.2% of people were sick on planes, they found. I don't know why we've been using them for so long. They, and I have always thought... Well, I mean, if you're on an aeroplane and there's 600 people, someone's going to get sick, right? If it's 0.2%. When it's that rare, and I don't want to put the responsibility always on the individual, but just bring your own sick bag.

Are you sure that... Do you think that's harsh? I don't think that, if I'm working on that aeroplane and someone's getting sick, I don't want to be, well, I don't mind if you vomit everywhere because you should have brought your own bag. Fair enough, fair enough. It's your seat, you know, you pay for it,

you do what you like on it. And also I think if someone gets off the plane that they haven't used their sick bag, you don't have to replace it. So it's a relatively low cost. Once every seat has one sick bag, you only need to replace one sick bag every 500 flights. That's a really good point.

The Hermes Birkin bag. Anna, I know you're deep in the world of high fashion. I am, yes, yes. Jane Birkin. One of my favourite bags. Yeah, Jane Birkin. I've been reading non-stop about that bag. Well, it started as a drawing on an airline sick bag. Cool. Sorry, what is it? It's a bag. It's a very famous fashionable bag. Oh. It's got a picture of a vomiting deer on it. And it's not a sick bag? No, it's not. It's not a fashionable sick bag. It's just a picture of a vomiting deer on it. And it's not a sick bag? No, it's not. It's not a fashionable sick bag?

It's just a fashionable bag. You can be sick in it. If you bought it, no one's stopping you. Absolutely. It'll be the most expensive chuck up of your life. She was a very famous actor and singer, both in England and France during the 70s. And yeah, she was sort of an it girl as well as being a super talented singer. Well, she was also of an it girl as well as being a super talented singer.

Well, she was also good at drawing bags. She ended up on a flight next to the head of Hermes and she told him I need a big bag to carry all my stuff around. I think she might have been a recent mom at the time. You know, you need a lot of paraphernalia. I feel like he saw her bag fall down and all the bits fell out and they wanted to design something that meant everything. So they just workshopped. I mean, I think this story has given a lot more credence. They designed a slightly bigger bag basically. Like the story of how she drew this bag on the airline seat, she drew a bag. This is as impressive as putting a plastic bag inside a paper bag. You know, you made a bit of a bigger bag. Well done.

Some other stuff on collectors. Oh yeah. Some other stuff on collectors. Oh, yeah The largest collection of silver coins in the world exists thanks to cost 11 crisis That was a crisis that was had by Jose Manuel cost 11 Mexican man 11 cost 11 crisis Jose Manuel cost 11 got cancer and decided to distract himself from the cancer by travelling the world looking for silver coins. Now he's clear of cancer and has the world's largest collection.

Okay, I've just got a few questions about the process of how you got to this fact. Did you start with the pun and find the fact? Did the fact appear in you? I went through the Guinness World Records website and looked for all the collectors, which I think is about 120 pages, and looked for any funny names. So the largest collection of ions is 30,071 by a guy called Ion Churescu from Romania. The largest collection of Pikachu memorabilia is by someone called Lisa Courtney. Courtney Pokemon. Oh nice.

And the largest collection of Superman memorabilia is by a guy called Perfecto P. Ball Hag. Okay, so that's just an outright funny about your name. Just a funny name. Perfecto P. Ball Hag. Mr and Mrs. Ball Hag, he's's gonna have a tough time in the playground We got a you gotta give me no no it's worse actually sorry. I miss read it. It's perfecto P ball hag, jr It's toughen me up it'll toughen him up 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've said over the course

of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram. James? I've got a few TikToks on my TikTok account now, which is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy. I'm on Instagram at perfecto pballhag the third. Andrew Hunter M. And Anna, if they want to get to us as a group.

You can go to Instagram at no such thing as a fish or at no such thing on Twitter, or you can email podcast at qi.com. Yep. Or you can go to our website, NoSuchThingAsAFish.com. Check everything out that is up there. There's all our previous episodes. There is a link to Club Fish, our secret place where we put up bonus episodes, ad free content and so on. It's really good. Or you can just come back here next week because we will be back with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye. with another episode, we will see you then, goodbye.