No Such Thing As A Fish - 89: No Such Thing As Utah Fried Chicken

Episode Date: November 27, 2015

Live from The Junction in Cambridge, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss one-tree forests, car-henge, and death-defying ticket inspectors.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you from Cambridge. My name is Dan Schreiber, and please welcome to the stage is the regular elves, Andy Murray, Janet Chazinsky, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Andy Murray. My fact this week is that before trains had corridors, guards had to climb along the outside

of the carriage to check your ticket. That is so amazing. They did it while the train was moving, and this was a thing, this happened. Carriages used to not be, you couldn't go through a carriage. You would get in at one end, they'd close the door, they'd lock it, you were locked in for the whole journey, and at the other end, they'd unlock it, now you'd get. And it was just across the train instead of front to back through the train. Were you locked in for health and safety reasons?

No, for quiet. I think partly you were locked in so you wouldn't try and sneak into first class. Wow. I don't think they were that bothered about health and safety if you had a guy climbing on the outside of the carriage. Well, indeed, that's where it seems to fall down. How did it get, was there a ledge? There was a little, they call it a running board, so just on the outside of the carriage

at the bottom, there's a little plate that you could climb on, but it wasn't even a continuous running board, it was intermittent, so you had to climb on between the bits. And people did suggest, why don't we give people a continuous running board, and the train company said, no, no, passengers will use them to sneak into first class. How good was first class? It was awful, because it was 1840. Well, yeah, what are these people so desperate? I bet in those days, you just had to always know where your ticket was, because if you

were stuck there going, oh, where is it in the skies outside going, find the ticket! There is a tunnel coming. How fast did the trains used to go? Well, these were really early ones, so maybe, I mean, about 40 miles an hour, comfortably. People thought that if they went over a certain speed, then your body wouldn't be able to deal with it, didn't they? Yeah, I thought... They said that the human body would not be able to endure speeds of 25 miles per hour.

Someone said that to start off with. And then someone else in America wrote that if a woman's body accelerated past 50 miles an hour, then her uterus would go shooting out of her body. And that's the plot of speed three. You'll never look at Sandra Bullock the same way again. When trains first got to the Isle of Wight, well, they were taken to the Isle of Wight, obviously. It wasn't like a rogue train, which...

Went off the rails. So the first ever journey, it was a four-mile track, and it went along its route in less than 10 minutes. And I think that's... I've worked about 30 miles an hour, give or take, we're not sure exactly the time. That was apparently faster than anyone had ever traveled on the Isle of Wight until that point in history. It's pretty cool.

I was reading about in the 1800s, 1827, there was a race between a train and a horse. But and check it out, this is a bit unfair on the horse's side, the horse was towing a train. It was back in the day when horses used to pull trains prior to the engine. And so this was an example of showing that potentially an engine could beat a horse. And it probably would have, but one of the wheels or a little band around the wheels burst, and so they had to stop the train. So it wasn't the lead and then the horse took over.

But there was an actual, let's have this as a big race, horse versus train. So things were always going wrong. So at the 1829 display of which train is the best train, 10 different types of train entered this competition. Five of them didn't even show up on the day. So I think broke down before they made it to the venue. So five trains entered, Stevenson's rocket being one of them, and only one of them completed the trial.

So Stevenson's rocket didn't win because it was the best. It won because it was the only train that managed to not break or so the cycloped, you remember the cycloped train, which is one of them. I don't remember it personally. I mean, I know I'm old, but I didn't look at you directly there for a reason. The cycloped train sounds like quite a cool design, which is a, it's led by a horse, but it's a horse on a treadmill and the horse, the treadmill that the horse is walking on powers the train.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So really cool. But the horse at the demonstrations, the horse fell through the floor of the train. And so that failed, obviously. I once fell on a treadmill. Anyone want to hear that? No.

Really? Oh, okay. I was a kid. It was my first time on a treadmill. It was one of the ones that you put the actual is electric and it was, and it was going like crazy. I was a 10 and I thought this is going to be incredible. And I tested with my hands on the side, whether I could run on it.

And I thought, yeah, that's easy. So with one jump, I just jumped onto it and immediately my two legs went, and I fell on my face on it. I got shot off the back, but it was on a carpet. And so everything went right off it, except for my face. And for about half a minute, I was going, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. That explains an awful lot. It does also explain why you didn't get into, okay, go.

Do you guys know about the city of Crush in Texas? No. It was for an extremely brief period, the second largest city in Texas. This was in 1896. And that was because 40,000 people came to it. And that was because someone had decided to stage a train crash. So this was, 40,000 people went to, it was organized by this guy called William Crush. And he said, he said he was going to just fire two trains towards each other.

So he had like four miles of track created for the purpose. And 40,000 people came and there was such demand that people did have to sit on top of trains in order to get there because they couldn't squeeze into the carriages. And then at 5pm, these two trains started going towards each other, picking up speed, and Crush stood right in the middle of the railway on a white horse. And then he waved a big flag saying they're coming. It's all right, he survived. Oh, thank God.

He stepped out of the way, he stood up at the last minute. The two trains crash into each other. Both of their boilers exploded and a bunch of people died. So when you said it's all right, it wasn't completely all right. Well, here's the thing, Crush got fired that evening. And then the company that he worked for relented and hired him again the next day, the rail company, and he worked at the same rail company for the rest of his life. What?

We're going to need to move on to the next fact soonish, anything else? There's a guy called Andrew Dowd. He's from Wigan up in my neck of the woods. And he visited all two thousand five hundred and forty eight railway stations in Britain between 2010 and 2014 in his car. Need we ask why? Well, people asked him that in the newspaper articles, but he didn't really kind of have a very good reason that he said,

I started doing it round near where I lived and I kind of enjoyed it. So I thought I'd do the whole country and they said to him, asked him what he did. And he said, I take a little look around if it's interesting, but most aren't very interesting. Wow. Why not? You know, I like to think there's an equivalent train driver who's planning to visit all the petrol stations in Britain on the train. Wouldn't it be visiting all the car parking spaces?

You're right, it was a bad analogy. Yeah, that's better. No, it was harder to visit all the car parking spaces because there are so many these days. Anyway. OK, time for fact number two. And that is James Harkin. OK, my fact this week is that Ernest Shackleton's dogs names included slippery slobbers, Satan, painful, swanker, bummer and Bob.

It's swankers or he's a wanker. Do we know the history? Well, they were they all had different names for different reasons. I got this fact actually from a guy on Twitter called at Dave Payne 164. And it made me laugh. And so I thought I'd use it on the podcast and it it kind of fits in with one thing that I like, which is just going through lists of ridiculous data and trying to find funny bits or whatever.

But they they got the names for lots of different reasons. Some of them were nicknames to people on the ship. So it could have been short for he's a wanker, I guess it's possible. The dogs all came from Canada and they had names already. So some of them like Bob was already a name and they just kept that. But some of them were changed like Bismarck, Napoleon and three dogs all named Carlos. They had to change all of those.

What a great name for a dog. What's the in just like a basic two sentences or a few more? Shackleton, just the background of Shackleton, Polar Explorer went down to try and get to the South Pole, didn't quite make it, became the furthest south of that anyone had ever got. Abundson beat him to the South Pole. And so he went on another expedition to go across the whole of the South Pole from one side to the other.

And then that ended in disaster again. And he became famous for a big sort of escape from the ice filled islands of Elephant Island. OK. And now you don't need to watch the 12 part documentary. I like this. So there were a bunch of quite interesting people on board the expedition. So they had like official photographer Frank Hurley, who used to like risk his life trying to get good photos, because his only priority on this

life-endaging expedition was to make sure he could make money when he saw the pictures when he got back. So he'd climb right to the top of the mast or go out, you know, onto the yard arm and hang from it to take good photos. And they also had an on ship artist. And I just like this quote. I can't remember where I read this in an account of when they were stranded on Elephant Island.

So they were sort of like, we're definitely going to die now. No one's going to find us here. How on earth are we going to survive? And at one point it was said, the ship's artist, George Marston, allowed his remaining oil paints to be used as glue to make the canvases cover the shelter properly. And I like the idea that there was a little bit of a debate there. I have more facts about the dogs.

So they were trapped on the ice for months and months and months. I think 15 months, maybe an amazing amount of time. So Frank Hurley wrote loads of notes about all the dogs. And there was Shakespeare, Steamer, Wallaby, Satan, who was a treacherous brute. Sue is a flirt. They've been on the ice for a long time. Bummer.

And then there was Snapper, does not snap at all. And they built, they built the dogs a town. They built a little town. They called Dogtown. They built a lot of dog igloos out of ice and wood. And they built a pup loo for the puppies that have been born. And they built a pig loo because they had some pigs with them as well. A pig loo? Yeah. That's great, isn't it?

It's really cool. But they ate a lot of these animals. And they had a ship's cat as well. They did. The ship's cat was called Mr. Chippy. Mrs. Chippy? Yes, Mrs. Chippy. It was always Mrs. Yeah, that's right.

And it belonged to the cruise captain to Harry Mcness. And they decided to kill it because it was using up a lot of the meat. But Harry Mcness was not very happy about that at all and got into a massive fight with Shackleton, didn't he? Yeah, he was Scottish, wasn't he? Yeah, that's right. Harry Mcness. And someone who met him said the only thing I ever heard him talk about

was the fact that Shackleton killed his cat, which, you know, they were in a difficult spot, I think. But he then really got furious. And he and Shackleton, as you say, had a huge drought. And he was the only one of the expedition. I think all 28 men survived. There was a separate supply mission where a few of the men died. But all of the men with Shackleton survived.

It was this huge survival story. He was the only one later denied this polar medal that all the others got for insubordination. Wow. You know that Shackleton's medals went up for sale in auction not too long ago. And they got a ridiculous amount of money. It was about £800,000. And I started looking into the kind of stuff

that gets auctioned off from those trips. Discovered that this is quite recent. One of the biscuits that they didn't eat went up for auction recently and was bought for €1,250. I definitely would have bought that. That's so cheap. A biscuit from a Shackleton adventure? They ate the dogs before eating that biscuit.

No, because probably someone went, when we bring this back, this biscuit will be worth a fortune. No, but so apparently Shackleton was giving one of his fellow explorers, Frank Wild, a biscuit from one of the rations and Wild recorded in the diary. And this is how spare food was back then. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that biscuit.

So that's how great it was. And so it's quite nice that now it has gone for over £1,000. I love, so like, because I read also as well recently in an auction, the head of the Scouts, Robert Baden Powell, a letter that he wrote to an autograph hunter saying you should not become an autograph hunter.

Recently sold at an auction to an autograph hunter. It's great when auctions have that little twist on them. There was another biscuit. Do you want to hear about the world's most expensive biscuit? Yeah. Do you just happen to have a biscuit fact? Well, I also saw the thing about the Shackleton biscuit. Oh, right, okay.

And then I thought, what's the most a biscuit's ever gone for? So a few weeks ago, it happened in October this year, a biscuit from the Titanic was auctioned. What? Yeah. It's sold for £15,000. Wait, how? How did a biscuit survive?

It had made its way into a lifeboat. Sorry, I mean, someone, it was it. It was in a box and someone took the box and when they escaped the ship on a lot. And it was in a sealed iron box or something. And that was one of the lifeboats which was picked up. So yeah. Wow.

So that's the most expensive biscuit ever. So far, yeah. I don't want to rule out any future biscuits. Let's go for more. I had a look for some unusual dog names. There was a website called petinsurance.com that collected a load of unusual dog names. But at the same time, by coincidence,

I also found a list of the most unusual nicknames that men have for their genitals. Are we going to play dog or genital? Okay. I'll just read them in the order I have them. Baron von Furry pants. Dog. Correct.

Lord chubby prune face. Genital. No, that's a dog as well. Simon Wiggles potato. What? Simon what? Simon Wiggles potato. Genital.

No, dog. Come on. You got a dirty mind. Okay. Prince Patches O'Hooleyham, the third of Will's show. Dog. Dog? Yeah, they were all dogs.

I wouldn't give you any genitals. In the 15th century, the Duke of York, this is what he spent his time doing in those days, he wrote a list of 1,100 names that he considered appropriate for hunting dogs to advise people on what to call their dogs. So they were things like Troy. Genitals.

Genital, yeah. Nose wise, nameless, perony, clench. Bragg, ringwood and holdfast. So there you go, that's what you're allowed to call your dogs according to the Duke of York in the 15th century. If you ever find yourselves there. Can I bring up a famous dog name? Yes, please.

So Lassie. Oh yeah. Lassie was originally called Pal and that was the dog's name, Pal. Pal did all of the movies. It was the single dog that did it. So when Pal died, they then took the litter and when they grew up, they replaced Lassie.

They became the next Lassies. So every single Lassie that you'd see in the early days was a descendant of the original Lassie. Yeah, and then there was a huge controversy, I think it was in 1997, where suddenly the first non-blood-related Lassie was used and they were, yeah. And there were genuine protests

and people said this is not on and they were like, well, no, but we don't. And so they buckled and then they did bring in another descendant of one of the descendants of Lassie. And then again, when another revival happened, they brought in another unrelated non-bloodline dog. Again, people freaked out and it's been like that for ages up until very recently.

And now one of the bloodline has come back into the fold and is the current Lassie. That's like saying that James Bond should be played by Sean Connery's grandson. I just, I just, I love that somewhere in the world, someone is protesting strongly against something and we have no idea for years and years. Do we know how many, was it like Iraq war style level?

It was me, my mum, my sister, and at least six of us. Yeah, I don't know, to be honest. So Charlotte had a stowaway on board, didn't he? Did he? Yeah, he did. He regretted that decision. Should be landing in a nice warm country by now. What happened?

He was a guy called, he was a sailor called Purse Blackborough and he was actually helped to sneak on, but he just really wanted to be part of the expedition and he was discovered after three days, as I assume he expected to be, what was he gonna do? Like hide on the ship for a year. And so he was discovered after three days and Shackleton, you know, threatened him a little bit

and said, I can't believe you've done this, you bastard. And eventually said, okay, you can stay, but only if you sign this agreement saying, if you stay, you'll be the first person to be eaten if we need to start eating each other. And so he signed that agreement and if they had had to eat each other, he would have been the first person to go.

The nibbly got him, he's going, but there's biscuits still. Yeah. Okay, time for our next fact, fact number three, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that according to a recent theory, Stonehenge was built as part of a team building exercise. I love that. I love that big, big away day.

So this is, there are a lot of theories, by the way, about how Stonehenge came about, but the idea is that rather than it being a place that people return to and so on, they seem to have found evidence that it was occupied for about a decade and that so it must have been built in that period of years and then they left it once it was done

because apparently there weren't a lot of people back then and the idea was to create something where people could come together, get to know each other, but do something that was a team building exercise and the guy described it as Glastonbury Festival and a motorway building scheme at the same time. That's what it was. Yeah.

Someone said, we're having a team building exercise, you need to book the next 10 years off work. Yeah, that's true. So when I read that sentence, I thought, oh, I bet that's a really mad idea, which obviously it probably is, but I did think it was Druids that had built it and that it was part of this whole,

this religion thing, this cult thing that they were doing and it turns out that just we have no idea how it got there. There was so many theories and they're all amazing theories. Another recent theory, it's a prehistoric Glockenspiel because apparently if you hit it, it rings in a really nice way. Acoustically, it's very amazing.

So the hitting the stones thing does seem like a bridge too far for me, but it does have exactly the same acoustics as like a concert hall or a theater or something or a theater where you'd have musicals on. And so they do think that it was designed specifically so that the music, like, you know, any sounds inside it would rebound well.

The thing that Dan said about the Druids having built it is quite interesting that there is evidence that people were doing something at Stonehenge for every period from when it was built to now, apart from the late Iron Age, which is the very time when the Druids were supposed to have been around. No.

And that's the only time in history we don't really have any evidence of anything having happened there. They did have a load of Druids there. They had a ceremony there in 1905 where 259 Druids were inducted into Druidism, but they were really mercilessly teased by the press on account of the fact that a lot of them had fake beards.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well, here's a very interesting fact about Stonehenge. Someone actually bought it at one point. Oh yeah. So it was sold at auction in a lot and this husband called Cecile Shubb was sent by his wife to go to this auction and he saw it was up for sale

and he thought, oh, that'll be a nice present for my wife. But when he got home, she was furious at him because she'd sent him to the auction to buy curtains that she liked and he came back with a henge. He said that he bought it on a whim in the auction room. Yes. He said, I just thought a local guy should own it

because he lived really nearby. So it's sort of a nice story that he bought it for his wife and the thing about curtains is kind of too good to check but it's, yeah. Right, okay. Another recent theory, it was a barbecue site. Ha ha ha ha. This is, so they found a bunch of bones of animals

and when they were looking at their bones, they could see burn marks on it that suggested that quite like an Aussie barbecue, they were just sort of turning them over and cooking them nicely, so. It's amazing what they can do with the archeology. They find bones and they assume that it must be a barbecue or whatever.

I read one thing that in the Iron Age in Wales, they had an annual party where the guests only ever at the right foreleg of pigs and they found that because they just found a big pile of the specific one leg of pigs all the time and they lasted for years and years and years and it seemed like they came from one year after another after another

and they assumed that they just must have had this big party where you just got one leg off a pig and everyone ate it. And we're sure that in those days, it wasn't just that pigs only had one right foreleg. Ha ha ha ha. They were like a pogo stick. Ha ha ha ha. That's an excellent point.

Definitely possible. I was having a look through the British newspaper archive to see which, so that goes back about 300 years and gives you newspaper records from that time to see kind of what people thought of Stonehenge in the past and so a lot of the articles in the early 1800s, so around 1840, everyone thought that it had been brought over

by the Egyptians, so people thought the stones from Stonehenge have been brought over from Africa to Egypt and then the Egyptians because they were considered such a civilized race and such a civilized people and they had much better mechanics and engineering than we did. We were all still, you know, stuck in. They also thought for a time that it was only built

about a thousand years ago, which I can't be sure. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I have a theory on this. When was Stonehenge built? Like, 2,800 B.C. Okay, what would you say if I told you it was 1958? Ha ha ha ha. I'd say, damn, be quiet. Ha ha ha ha.

Almost every single stone at Stonehenge has been moved between 1901 and 1964. No. Yeah, almost every single one. So they were either moved or they were straightened. Some of them were set in concrete. This was just very early 20th century guys saying, ah, it's not quite right, is it? Why don't we just bodge it up

and put some concrete under it? And it was very early cack-handed preservation. So I say that Stonehenge was built in the late 50s. Yeah, that's a great theory. You said that people thought that these stones came from Egypt, but they actually came from Wales, didn't they? They came from the Presley Hills in Wales.

We know that now because of x-rays and stuff like that. But for 90 years, they were trying to dig on this particular hill. And then they found out that they were digging on the wrong hill. And it was another one, one mile away, that they should have been digging at. And Dr Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales, he was the guy who found this out. And he said, I don't expect to be getting any Christmas cards

from the archaeologists who have been excavating at the wrong place for the last 90 years. Well, most of them will be dead by now. Ha ha ha ha ha. We're going to need to move on soon, by the way. OK, I have one quick thing. There's a company called Jacomo who make clothes, especially for men.

And they did a catalogue called The Architecture of Men to identify modern kind of builds. And they said that Simon Cowell and Ricky Gervais are built like Stonehenge. What? Apparently they have short, stocky build, broad shoulders and chunky legs, according to Jacomo. Russell Crowe and Jay-Z look like the Tine Bridge,

according to these guys. What? And James Corden looks like the Gherkin. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Hard. Very hard. The Tasmanian town of Buckland built a replica of Stonehenge. There are loads of replicas all over the world.

So there's a place called Phonehenge in South Carolina. And there's a place called Carhenge in Kansas, made of old cars. And there's a live webcam that you can watch. I watched it for hours the other day. There's not much going on. It's just a camera pointing at a Carhenge. But yeah, you can watch that.

But there was a Tasmanian town called Buckland, which built one. And it was demolished by the authorities. And on the Wikipedia page where it says, in keeping with the original Stonehenge, it did not have the necessary planning approval from the local council. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. OK, time for our final fact of the evening.

And that is Chazinski. Oh yeah, my fact is that Utah has a 106 acre forest that's made out of one tree. And this tree is so cool. It's called Pando. And it, or some people call it the trembling giant. And it's a quaking aspen tree. And it's a clonal colony, which means that basically it's

got the same root system. All the branches that stick up out of the ground are clones of the original tree. So it's all completely interconnected. Every single bit of it is genetically identical to every single other bit of it. And yeah, it takes up 106 acres. And it's this one tree.

That's astonishing. It's incredible. It's so good. Pando means in Latin, I spread, which is why it's called that. And it's also the heaviest known organism. It's really old as well. So the average age of each individual,

if you went into this forest and you saw one of the trees, it would be 130 years old. But the age of the roots is thought to be about 80,000 years old. But could be 200,000 years old. 400,000. 200,000. To be ridiculous.

Isn't that amazing? This tree, though, has been growing for 200,000 years. Was it one tree, though, or is it loads and loads of trees? It's definitely one tree. It's the same organism. It's one organism. It's all completely interconnected. It's just like a tree whose branches go underground

and then come back up again. Wow. It is. Very cool. It's so great. So Utah, where it is, this forest, Utah is really amazing. I didn't realize how cool Utah is. So Utah is where Kentucky Fried Chicken's from.

Absolutely true. Are you sure? Yeah, absolutely true. Colonel Sanders was visiting Utah. And there was an existing restaurant. And he went inside the restaurant. And he went there specifically because he liked the owners. And he said, I have this interesting chicken.

And so he did the recipe. And they advertised outside. He was away when they started selling it in the shop. And they said, what should we call it? And it could have been Utah Fried Chicken. It's from Kentucky. If you call it UFC, people would just be fighting it all the time. So Kentucky Fried Chicken, they said,

let's call it Kentucky Fried Chicken because he's from Kentucky. And then when he came back, he realized how big it was. And they opened up the first ever KFC there. And then it spread around America. So Kentucky Fried Chicken is from Utah. Wow. I did not know that. That's very cool.

And also, NASA planned for our trips to Mars there. So in the Utah desert, they have these stations where they put astronauts in for a bunch of days, weeks, months. And while I was reading this, I discovered something. I never heard of this. NASA has actually created, or at least someone from NASA, a Mars flag. Do you know we have a Mars flag?

What? No. What does that mean? What's that for when we go to Mars? For when we go to Mars, we have a flag now. And if you look at it, it's like the French flag. It's sort of vertical stripes, three. And it starts red.

And then it goes red. Red. Red. So it goes red, and then green, and then blue. And the idea is that's gradually how we would be making the planet. And I'd never known this. So Mars has a flag.

What about when we get there and the Martians say, we have our own flag, thanks? Have you guys seen the, this is not your topic, but New Zealand is trying to redesign its flag at the moment. Or actually, the final design may have gone through now. Have you seen the suggestions for the newly designed flag? And I've always thought I don't understand why flags in the world are so boring.

And they've really nailed it this time. So a lot of the entries that have been submitted are, I think the best one was of a kiwi, which was not the same color as a kiwi, or what color it is, and it's shooting red lasers out of its eyes into the corner of the flag. And that's been reported as, yes, we'll give it a good think.

Yeah. Oh, back to trees. So there is a tree of the year in Europe every year. And this year's tree of the year is an Estonian oak tree that's in the middle of a football field. It's in the Arisare stadium. And if you Google it, you can see pictures of it. It's right in the middle of a pitch,

like usually in the middle of a stadium. And according to Visit Estonia, when the stadium was being built, the Soviet technology could not beat the oak. And therefore, it was never uprooted. And so it's kind of a sign of what you know. Oh, I see, sort of independence and pride. Yeah, exactly.

And then it also says on the website, today everyone is so used to their extra player on the field that the tree is hardly noticed during the games. And I promise you, it is massive. There is no way that the bull does not hit this tree every single time, because anywhere. Well, so that was Tree of the Year 2015. And they're gearing up to announce Tree of the Year 2016.

Nominations have begun. And I read the British nominations this year. So a tree featured in the Game of Thrones series has been nominated, which is very exciting. It's a bit of a celeb pick, isn't it? They're all celebby picks from Britain. It's going to be like Eurovision all over again. Because there's classic trees in it.

There's the tree that the Magna Cardo was supposedly signed under. There's the tree where Charles II hit. There's the tree where apparently Robin Hood hit under as well. There must be the four-tingle U, then. This is the tree that apparently is the oldest tree in Britain and possibly in Europe.

And it's the tree under which legend says Pontius Pilate hid. Pontius Pilate? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He left the Middle East after. Yeah, to hang out in Scotland under a tree. Yeah, it's thought that that's where he went. And this has hit the news recently, because so it's about 5,000 years old, it's thought.

So possibly the oldest tree in Europe. And it is just having a sex change. So it's mid-op right now. So what does that mean? It's been a male for, well, almost 5,000 years. And it's just so it doesn't produce fruit. So a lot of plants, I think most plants actually don't have genders, but a lot of plants

are either male or female, have male parts or female parts. And it's been a male for almost 5,000 years. And someone noticed recently it was growing fruit, which the men don't do. And one of its arms is having a sex change and becoming a female. Wow. So that's good for the 14-year-old you.

That's astonishing. The England's tallest tree is the Douglas Fair, which is on Exmo, near Dunster. I visited it a few years ago. But they don't tell you exactly where it is. They just tell you it's kind of in this forest somewhere. Because people like you were going, chop it down. There was a whole thing where, James,

have you heard of the Chillingham Cattle? There's a herd of wild cattle up in, is it Yorkshire? Very, very northumberland. Northumberland, really, really, way up north. No one has touched these cows for 300 years, right? The field is completely sealed. They live, they breed, they die, all on their own. Occasionally they throw over a bale of hay or some extra food

in harsh winters. And as soon as James heard about this, he said, I'm going to go there and touch them. And now they're all in therapy. I did say that, but I didn't go in the end. But you did visit the tree, though. Yeah, well, I went to see the tree. And I just thought that it's the tallest tree.

You're going to know which one it is, right? But they planted, well, they haven't planted it around loads of big trees. But basically it is around the load of big trees. And so you just go there and you just kind of have to take the word for it that it's there, really. But the US has a national register of big trees. But again, they don't tell you where any of the trees are.

They just tell you the general area where they are and say it's called this and it's this height. And there was a spokesman from American Forests who does this register. And he says, we don't want to send flocks of tree spotters and paparazzi to harass the trees and ruin their lives. Which sounds like he's talking about me, doesn't he? Have you heard of the world's rarest tree?

No. This is so cool. It's a tree called Penantia Bellisiana. Where is it? I'm not telling you. From 1945, for about 70 years, there was only one in the world. And it was on a tiny island off New Zealand. And it became the last in the world

when humans introduced goats to the island and they ate all the other trees. Oh my god. I think I found out just in time that this was the last one. But scientists have found a way of growing a load of new seedlings so they've planted a load. We're going to have to wrap up really soon. Can I just give a recommendation to everyone here

if they haven't already seen this? Since you mentioned goats, have you ever seen the Argania trees, which are the trees that goats climb up? They're so great. So there's a kind of tree called the Argania tree and goats climb it. And yeah, you just see them in its branches. And just look it up.

A-R-G-A-N-I-A. And what do goats do you get in one tree? There are pictures of at least a dozen, I would say. Wow. And that's just some of these trees. Don't tell them, Anna. OK, I think we should wrap up. That's it. That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things we've said over the course of this podcast, you can get us on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James. At Egg Shaped. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Anna.

You can email podcastatqi.com. And yeah, you can also go to knowsuchthingasafish.com. That's our website. Thank you so much for being here, guys. Thank you for listening at home. We'll see you again next week. Goodbye! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE