No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: Chromosomes are coming home

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts including Curaçao, chips and chess. Dan and Andy compete to see who has the best cardboard box anecdote. And we name eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.Edited by James HarkinProduced by Leying LeeTeam includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter Murray and joining me at the fact table to dish out some of your brilliant facts that you've been sending in are James Harkin and Dan Shriver. Hi Andy. Hello, Andy. You've come for, I'm just painting a picture for those who are listening and not watching. You've come sort of dressed as each other today. We've got black t-shirt. Oh, I've got a black shirt on.

You've got a black polo. Yep. And have you got shorts on? I got blue trousers on and James has a beige shorts. But in fairness, Andy is just imagining what's happening on the table. I certainly am. Donald Duck under there. Stop it at once.

We've got a show to record. Right. Has anyone got a fact? This comes in from Eric Nosborn. Eric Nosbourne says, Hi, since you're going to my hometown of Lund. I thought I'd send in one of my favorite Lund facts. We are going to Lund very soon.

Sweden. It's in Sweden. We are playing the festival there. and we're going to be doing a live podcast recording. So come along if you're in the area. This is the fact that Eric has sent. I think it's sold out. Well, come stand outside the doors.

Kind of cool viral marketing, but with no purpose. Now it's sold out. Cleverly done, but no point. To no point. They might move us into a bigger room. That'd be good. That'd be great. So write in for a bigger room.

Here we go. Can I get to the email? This is from Eric. He says, The discovery that humans have 46 chromosomes was made at Lund University. Before that, for over three decades, we thought humans had 48 chromosomes,

and I guess no one bothered to double check. They add in brackets, it's a bit more complicated than no one bothered to double check, but that sounds funnier. So we knew that chromosomes existed. Yep. They counted them,

and then it turned out the two of them didn't count. Exactly. And the point of the email from Eric is that additionally, Lund has the area phone code of 46. and Sweden has a national phone code of 46. So if humans had actually had 48 chromosomes after all,

the discovery would have been made in Poland instead. Is that how that works? Yeah, that's brilliant. Okay, wonderful. If we lose two more, it'll be in the UK. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Lose two more. It's coming home. It's coming. Yeah, I love those area code facts, and I did try to find a few. I was reminded of one that we actually did as a headline many years ago, which is that the telephone code for Cape Canaveral, where they launch all the rocket ships, is three, two, one.

Beautiful. I've got a fact here. Yeah. This is from Rachel Cunning. And Rachel Cunning has fact number one, and she entitles it, two liqueurs and a cocktail. And this is about the current World Cup, which I think is still ongoing when this goes out.

Certainly England probably still had been in it. We've just beaten the Democratic Republic of Congo the day before we recorded this. But this is about someone who's already gone out, Curacao. Curacao, who are the smallest country to ever qualify for the World Cup. They are currently managed by Dick Advocate. And they have a player called Jill Margarita. One team, three drinks. Lovely.

Curisau, Advocate and Margarita. I know very much from the fun end of the cocktail spectrum, I'd say. Do you think apaca is really fun? What's the flavour of avocat? Is it? It's not avocado. It's not avocados. It's lawyers.

I'm going to Google it. It's made from egg yolks, sugar, brandy and vanilla. That's quite fun. I suppose so. These are big snowballs out of it, don't you? Yeah. It's not like boring old sherry. No.

They don't have a player called Newcastle Brat. brown ale or anything. I think that's a good, that's a brilliant fact. Lovely. Yeah, Rachel says, I'm sure James already knew them. I did know about the Curisaur and Advocate thing, but I didn't know about Jill Margarita. I'd never heard of them until the World Cup started. So that's really good.

Brilliant. Have you ever had Curisau? It's like blue. Blue balls. Blue balls named after a guy called balls. Really? Yeah, you probably wouldn't think it was named after the medical condition of having very big testicles.

I don't know what, is this a drink, a blue ball? Blue balls is, it's the, it's the brand name of Curisale. Oh, I didn't know that. I've not heard it. Yeah.

Okay. Or Bowls blue, maybe. Okay. But yeah, Curasad, do you know what it was invented? Um, uh, the Netherlands.

Uh, yeah, in Flanders. Ah, okay. On border, maybe on Belgium, just about. Um, but yeah, because,

um, so in Belgium, as opposed to the Netherlands. but because Curacao is a Dutch colony, they could get the oranges from Curacao. They're really bitter, and you don't really want to eat them, but the orange skin is really nice if you boil it down with alcohol. Nice.

And that's what they make it out of. That's great. That is good. That's really good. Oh, that's a lovely fact. I have a World Cup fact. Oh, cool. This comes in from Adam Rodriguez.

His fact is, the soccer balls currently in use for the World Cup must be charged. before each match. Yeah. Charged. They've got to charge them. They have a chip in them. So you can tell if the ball's gone over the lines.

To help with the various technical mumbo-jumbo that you have to do these days. It's very interesting. Can I just quickly add to that point? Because there was a match on that just went with England, D.R. Congo. And the commentators on the BBC kept sort of bringing up this thing that almost sounded like a conspiracy theory. They were saying, they keep swapping the balls. why do they keep swapping the balls? And they were reminded of deflategate in America in the NFL.

So deflategate was where Tom Brady was using bowls that were slightly flatter because it made them easier to throw and catch. Why did they call that deflate gate and not the Brady crunch? Yeah? Because they didn't have a you. Yeah. But there is a thing. There is a thing about these balls which is controversial.

Yeah, they've used to... They've used a new design. They've used a new design. I think it's four panels on the ball. Basically, at a certain speed, it undergoes drag crisis, and it moves faster. It speeds up. And it's because the air around it goes into a turbulent state, and that disrupts the drag on the ball. So suddenly, if you kick it fast enough, it then speeds up.

A lot of the goalies are saying, that was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be. How mad is that? That's wild. And you know what? time of recording, we're about to play Mexico next, and because of that altitude difference there, and the air's a lot thinner, apparently it's even worse when you go and play an altitude. Really?

Yeah. I think that's a good conspiracy theory that, you know, the ball, because it's got a chip in it, people are going to say, oh, well, it's actually a drone. Yes. And the whole thing's been controlled by big football to... It's a spy. I like it. I do like...

The outcome's been fixed. I feel like it would be obvious if someone kicked the ball and some... Suddenly it started flying and then turned left and then turned right. And then got shot down by a Ukrainian soldier. I feel like, yeah, yeah. But there's, well, it's not that thing. I had, can I, because it will just never become a fact unless I say it. A fact that was not picked for an upcoming fish episode.

But I just really like it, which is that Cristiano Ronaldo is one of three players ever to score a goal in every minute of a football game. That was a good game, wasn't it? Wow. What about during halftime? You ever scored a goal during half time? No. He's not that good, is he? Great, well, that's a really good fact.

Let's have another. Yeah, let's have another. Here is one from Walid Malik, who says, I'm writing to share a couple of Canadian lake names I discovered recently. I know you discussed Canadian lakes on the podcast before, but I don't think these came up. There is a lake in British Columbia called another lake.

Oh yeah. Which is called Another Lake. Brilliant. What was really nice is right next to another lake. There is a second lake that is called and another lake. I can say that was in my notes for that episode. Was it? Was it?

Yeah. And I checked on Google Maps to make sure they definitely existed and they do. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. It was originally proposed. But the notes on it, this is in 1968, say this is not a satisfactory name and it won't be used on BC TopoMap. so it's the official maps.

However, because a longstanding usage just happened, it just buckled, but it did get a rejection and it overrided it. It's confusing, though, if you're ringing the emergency services and you're saying, help, I've fallen into another lake. That is confusing. Yeah. Another lake! Oh, that's good.

That's very good. Very nice. Here is a fact from Lynn Giuliana Sovickness. you tell us about jigsaws and that it is impossible to make a square puzzle with exactly 1,000 pieces. So all of them have more than 1,000 pieces. Now, first of all, we're talking rectangles, not squares. Sure. Okay.

So the idea is your jigsaw, the image of it has to be on the box. Yeah. Okay. And so that has to be roughly the same shape as an A4 piece of paper. Yes. Because that's how big they make the box. You can make different sized boxes. You have to go to a specialist box making place to do that.

If you want a run-of-the-mill games box from off the shelf, you're going to get an A4 size. So the problem is actually with big box as opposed to with big jigsaw, right? Yeah, and big maths. Because if you want an exact A4-sized jigsaw, the side of a4 piece of paper divided by the width is the square root of two. So you need to come up with two numbers that approximately, when you get one of them and you divide it by the square root of two, you get the other one. That's impossible because it's an irrational number. But the closest they can get usually is 38 by 27, which is 1026 pieces. Okay.

So most 1,000 piece jigsaws have 1,026 pieces. That's so annoying. Now, we were going to do this on QI last year because I read this fact as well. and I was going to give Alan Davis a big box with a 1,000 piece chigsaw and say how many pieces are in that jigsaw? And hilarity was going to ensue. But then Mike Turner, who's one of the researchers, who does puzzles, had a look at the jigsaw he was making at the time

and found out that it did have a thousand pieces. So I do believe that what Lynn said is true for many jigsaws. If you look at the internet, they definitely agree. Like people have checked. But there are definitely some. The one that Mike was doing was made by a company called Gibson's, who are a proper jigsaw company. And so there are some that have exactly a thousand pieces now. Well, 20 by 50 is 1,000.

So if you just had a slightly longer thing. Yeah, but they need to have to buy a slightly longer box. No, I know. I know. I'm going to talk to the box people later. I'm just going to do the maths. No, like, it is possible to multiply two numbers together to get 1,000. But then the standard box sizes means that the image on the box wouldn't look like the thing you were making.

That's why my innovation. of a fold-out poster of the thing, you don't get a picture on the box. Well, you do get those in kids ones, do. Also, here's a great idea. I'm sure it will be. A 1,000 by one jigsaw. Yeah.

That sounds hard. That's a real challenge. It depends. If they each have a number on them, it's quite easy. But if it's just an image of a snake, it might be quite tricky. It's a snake.

Well, I've got the anus piece, so I know where that goes. And I've got the head. So I know where that goes. That's how you start. Great news. This one has two edges. That'll be useful.

So are we saying that no matter how lucrative and the money a jigsaw company is making, they're held back from innovation by the box companies. It seems like it. It does seem like big boxes got them by the nuts. I used to know someone who ran a cobal box factory. You do surprise me, Andy. He doesn't invite you around anymore because you're a bit boring. What can you tell us?

It doesn't go any further than that. That's it. My friend's dad used to make the boxes for Stanley Kubrick. You see, this is an anecdote, Andy. He was upset with box sizes, and so Kubrick designed his own boxes. John Ronson did a whole thing about this. Yeah, he went and saw the archive. John Ronson was looking through all the boxes of Stanley Kubrick's.

archives, but then was going, these boxes look very different. And it's because he designed these boxes and my friend's dad. Your mate doesn't have any stories like that? None of these told me. It really throws into relief how bad my one was when Dan

comes up with a Stanley Kubrick Cardboard box personal anecdote. Oh my God. I can imagine you, Andy. We're about to go, I'm going to tell this story. no one's going to top this. Can I do another fact?

Yeah, you go. Okay. This is a fact from Shane Carroll, and it's about a chess move called the Greek gift, okay? And that's where you lay a trap for your opponent. You sacrifice a bishop. It feels like you should sacrifice the horse. What a good point.

What a good point. But basically you sacrifice a bishop, and you lure your opponent's king into a dangerous position, And then you can clobber the king and you'll checkmate that way. So Greek gift, horse, that's why it's named that, right? Maybe. Maybe. Oh, no.

Oh, damn it. But according to the Oxford Companion to Chess, it's named after Joachino Greco, a 17th century player who frequently used it. Now, where did he get his name? Because El Greco, the painter, was, had Greek heritage. sure. Interesting, interesting. Well, Greco was from Italy. That's correct. So it could be this. It could also be that it's a Greek gift named after. When you get that far back, the etymology is a bit hairy. But Shane, I just want to say thank you for keeping it alive.

Very nice. Do you think there might be more squares on a chessboard if the boxes were allowed to be a bit bigger? Very nice. So here's something from Lynn Lem, who has a PhD in Immunology, and it's writing from Switzerland. And this is about a way of administering vaccines intranasally, where the mucus inside your nose then is able to attack the pathogens, whatever you've got. But the amazing thing is that the mucus in the rest of your body then can also attack the pathogens. And what that means is that you can give someone a vaccine up the nose and protect them

from infections in the vagina. Brilliant. Wow. And vice versa? Well, they're currently working on that. Okay. This is called common mucosal immunity. I've looked at a couple of papers.

It's quite trendy at the moment in immunology. But yeah, they're working out whether you'll be able to do it the other way, do a pesery up there, and then it will stop you from getting a cold. Wow. Wow. Isn't that amazing? That is incredible. That's really good.

And one reason it's quite good is because using the suppository or the pecery, sometimes can help the medicine get a bit slower into your body. If you do a nose spray, it just goes straight up there. Whereas the other ones kind of dissolve a little bit. So if you need to release the active ingredient a bit slower, then putting it up your nanny might help. They're both going straight up there, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose.

Yeah. Your nanny. Your nanny. Your nanny. Yeah. It's a seramilicum thing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, all women have them. She's not a copyrighted Sorry Sarah Oh dear Wow And that correspondence was Lynn Lynn Lynn Brilliant name as well

Yeah Right that's enough of your facts Now it's time for some of our facts Because if you join Clubfish Our Private Members Club By going to patreon.com slash Clubfish If you join at the friend of the podcast tier

then you will get a certificate and custodianship of one of our headline facts from the last 12 glorious years of podcasting. So let's dish out a few of those now. Who would like to dish one out? I'll go first. This one now goes out to O'Awayne Wilson. And O'ane, your fact is that every time Alfred Hitchcock had a cup of tea, he always smashed the tea cup. He was so focused on his stuff. He probably didn't even notice that he was smashing the tea.

cup, you know. Oh, I thought he was doing it to make a point. I just feel like that feels more Hitchcockian to me that he would just be like, get that out of here. I'm ready to go from an expert. Psycho? He was a bitter one, yeah. Lovely. Lovely. Well, at the time, I think we said it was to remind himself of the fragility of human life, which feels like a, an actual psycho thing. Sorry, I pushed you in the face to remind myself of the fragility of human life. Also, how many cups Because I have six or seven cups of tea a day, right? So I would before long have a room full of shards. Yeah.

As in there must be a Hitchcock pyramid somewhere, which is just full of all of his property. Yeah. It's surprising that they weren't collected and sold off as little bits of... You're right. I mean, who wouldn't want to buy that? I absolutely would buy that. I know you were.

The dentist who was associated with Winston Churchill. Remember he used to throw his teeth at the wall. I believe it was him who used to collect all the cigar butts that were dropped on the floor and he would give them his presents and sell them off and so on these little things are great

no absolutely yeah my lean class used to give away the Pope's toilet paper do you remember that yeah I'm just saying there's an industry hitch crock Alfred Hitch crock

yeah very good I mean it doesn't have anything to do with what dad's just been saying his really nice monologue I think you just cut from the fact to that can you I was just

padding so you could think of a joke. I was just helping. Well, it worked. Yeah, yeah. Right, let's have another one. Dan. Okay, this goes to John Riley. And the fact is, Lord Byron's nickname for William Wordsworth was William Tirdsworth. Great fact. I love that fact. You're a big fan of Byron. I am. He's funny. Yeah, he's a funny writer. Nauty boy, but a funny poet. Yeah. And there aren't many of those around. God knows.

I like to think that you are the Lord Byron of the Fish podcast And I'm the William Wordsworth because I you know Lived in the Lake District and Because I have an insulting nickname for you Yeah You're a shag machine, Andy Yeah You're gonna die young

I spend a little bit too much time with my sister Oh dear So there we go That's a great fact I'll dish one out Yeah To Douglas Ingram And your fact, lucky you, Douglas, is that replacement eyelids can be made from foreskins.

So if you've had an accident and you need an eyelid substitution, that sounds very fragile skin there, you can make it out of a foreskin. Yeah. Probably get a few eyelids out of one four skin, I would have thought. Or it would be one very floppy eyelid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you do it the other way around if you regret your circumcision? Can you get your eyelids put on your foreskin? You'd love very surprised all the time, wouldn't you?

Well, you'd be feeling it. Yeah, yeah, I imagine. Oh, dear. So, yeah, but there you go. Thin skin. Very useful. Okay, here is a fax now under the custodianship of Caroy Lorenté and Caroy. Your fact is that the first item to be sent by a New York's pneumatic tube postal system was an artificial peach.

And the second was a live cat. I didn't think at the time. What use is there for an artificial peach? I suppose it's not going to bruise. Good point. But then it's not a good test, is it? I mean, the cat will bruise. You need to know.

The person who managed to persuade, let's say, the cat's to go into that tube. Cats like going into small spaces sometimes, though, don't they? Yes, but they will do it under their own rules. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Like, if you try and put them into a small space, they will have absolutely none of it. Right, okay. Like, if we want to put it.

put our cat into her little box to take her to the vets or something. Yeah. Yeah, I love a pneumatic tube. I knew you were. Favorite pneumatic tube? Oh, don't. Don't, because we'll be here ours. All right, shall I put another one in here?

This is for Georgina Pereira. And your fact is, scientists have invented algae that tastes like bacon. Brilliant. Bacon. Bacon. I mean, it exists, right? Yeah. What do they make that stuff out of?

I have had quite a bit of artificial bacon in my time. Sorry, Dan probably knows now about how Charlie Chaplin's grandson of who he knows is made of fake bacon, whatever, I don't care. But I would say one of the problems with a lot of the fake bacon is that fake bacon is quite hard to do really well. And some of the stuff I've had has tasted like fish. Really? Yeah, you get it. And it's just got that little tang of fissionness. So maybe I've had algae-based stuff.

I don't know. Oh, I see. It's possible. Yeah. That's very cool. Corn. Can you get corn bacon? Corn? Corn.

We're in New Jersey, so yeah, why not? You can add bacon taste to quorn. Just like you can add any taste to quorn. Quon is named after a hunt. Is it? Yeah, the quorn is a famous hunt in the countryside. And then there was like a big mansion or something I'm going to say that has the same name as this corn. And then they named it after that area, I think.

Because you'd think it would be, because it's related to. Corn. It's absolutely not. It's bizarre. Very cool. It won't be on the front page of your new book. What? Oh. Things that are named for a slightly different reason. No. Well, because it's not named after a Mr. Tony Corn. That's the problem. It'll be in an appendix.

Let's have another one. This one is going out to Brian Wood. Brian, your fact is that telescopes have a new telescope smell that can break them. Wow. That's very cool. And this is about

off gassing. It's like when you have a new car, there's a new car smell, and it's because all the chemicals are kind of settling down, and it turns out telescopes are exactly the same. And then didn't cars, like, add it artificially? Once they stopped having these sort of weird chemicals that came off things, people kind of liked it, so they started putting sprays of fake car smell in there. I love the smell. Do you? That's why you get a new car every week, isn't it? So there you go. That's your fact. Ryan, I hope you like it. Very nice.

Have we got time for one or two more? Go on, let's have one. Okay, this one now is under the custodianship of Zrachsh, Z-R-A-A-X. You don't need me to tell you how to spell your name, Z-R-A-A-S-R-R-X. I'm sure you've had to do it to people who run hotels almost every year of your life. But your fact is, now that there is a museum in North Korea that has a scaled-down replica of the world's largest table. I would have got all my mum.

money that that was an andy fact and I can see it was mine. Ah, how interesting. I think the world's largest table was used in some kind of diplomatic thing. Oh, really? I believe. And the replica was because it's a replica of that incident. But still, it just looks like a normal size table. That's such a good thing. It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful.

Yes, James, you're so right. It was a present given to North Korea by another country for their national friendship exhibition. Oh, I hope they sell it in the gift shop as well. Just a little key ring size, world's biggest table. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great merch. It's very simple. I mean, when they sent it over, I wonder who made the box.

All right, why don't we give one more? One last fact, and this is for Keith Lovett. As part of the preparation for the D-Day landings, the Allies used condoms to collect soil and sand from the Normandy Beach. beaches. Very nice. Presumably so that you can know what constitutes the sand and it's not going to be too sandy or too hard or whatever, is it? Basically, yeah. I could have, again, with a gun on my head, I would have said this was one of my facts, but it was Anna's. And it was incredibly dangerous, wasn't it? As in they had to go

and get close up to an occupied enemy beach, get some sand and then go back and they were in midget submarines, I think. And do you think if they got caught, they were just showing the condom and say, no, I'm a pervert. Ah, yes, that's fine. Please, go back, come back. Almost certainly, yeah. Great. Well, there you go, Keith.

That's your fact. What a mission to be given. We'd like you to go and see how dangerous the place that we're going to go is. Yeah. You will go largely on your own. That's amazing. We're going to send you to Germany for a top secret mission. Oh, wow.

We're going to send you with 500 condoms. Oh, wow. Wow, this sounds amazing. I thought when you said I'd have protection, you meant guns. What's this? Oh, well, there you go, Keith. There's your fact. Congratulations to all of our new custodians.

That is, of course. Keith, Zrax, Brian, Georgina, Karoy, Douglas, John and Owen. Hope you love them. If you would like your own fact, please just go to patreon.com slash clubfish and join clubfish and we'll do the rest. But until then, we'll be back with another episode of Littlefish in a week. another episode of Big Fish in four days,

another episode of Drop Us Align, potentially in either two days or nine days, depending on your membership status. And your availability, you don't have to listen on the day of release. Keep going, Andy. You can do it. Just look.

Look, in the distance, you can see it. The word goodbye. You can see it there. Just walk towards it. Come on, Andy. Any final thoughts, Dan and James? Goodbye.