No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: If You Believe What the Government Tells You

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including lice, dinosaurs and pin boys. We also learn what spies keep alongside their meat pies, and meet eight new Custodians of Fish Facts.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. We've been so happy to get messages from you guys to say that you've been enjoying this show and we certainly enjoy making it. It's a little bit more loose, a little bit more silly than the normal shows. But we really, really love getting your facts. So please do keep sending those in. The reason I've disturbed the start of your show today is because I want to tell you about a quiz that we're doing. It is for Patreon subscribers on the top tier and it will take place on the 23rd of January. at 7 p.m. UK time. So that'll be sometime in the afternoon if you're in North America and it'll be very early in the morning if you're in Australia or New Zealand but hopefully you will still be able to join us. It's going to be a whole load of fun.

We've got loads of amazing stuff planned for you and if you are not a member of Patreon right now then you have to go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and join our top tier. You could probably just do it for a month and then quit if you just want to do the quiz but honestly there's so much good stuff on our Patreon that I really think once you join you will be hooked because we have extra content, we have merch, we have video content, there's all sorts of stuff on there.

We hope we've made it value for money because people going on there help to support the podcast so it is a real good mutual benefit thing. Anyway, enough of that. Really hope you enjoy this episode of Little Fish. Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. This is your regular show where we talk about your facts. And then at the very end, we will be telling you some of our old facts and putting them under the custodianship of some friend of the podcast, Patreon. So let's not chat. longer? Not that we've been chatting so far. Enough of this banter. In my head it's banter. It's me talking to myself, but no. Let us talk about your facts. So who is going to give me the first fact of the day? Me, me, me, me. Dan? Oh, come on. Mike Boone Wright. Hey, okay,

Andy, go on. I've got such a good one. This is from Alex Hadley. I just love this, right? Alex writes, my fact that I've not seen written anywhere. Oh, I love those. Fresh fact. Lovely. Is that Kane Tanaka, the second oldest verified person, is the only human in existence who lived through the first powered flight on Earth and the first powered flight on Mars. Mars. Yes. Oosh.

This is so good. Right. She was born in January 1903. Mm-hmm. The first powered flight happened in December 1903. If you believe the government lies about it. That's a joke. They did it.

I mean, she would not have really been that aware of it. Alex does add she probably didn't care about that She probably didn't care about the Mars thing She was over 100 years old at the time Isn't that the sad thing really About whole of human existence really That two of these incredibly important things happen In this one person's life

And she did not give her shit about either of them We are speculating about the Mars one We are speculating she might have absolutely She might have been all over it Yeah yeah So she was born January 1903 Right brothers have their flying December 1903. She died in April

2022. So what's that? 119? Good Lord. And the ingenuity helicopter had a powered flight on Mars in April 2021. She was the only person alive during both those events. That's a very good fan. That is also very cool. We are assuming that her claim of being 119 is true, which as we've said on the podcast quite a few times that anyone over 110, you have to take with a slight pinch of soul. Yeah, yeah. I think there were quite good records for her in particular. I mean, she was born in 1903. She got married in 1922. And she lived until 2022. It's just got, imagine being able to say, I got married 100 years ago.

It's just so bad. Because is she the number, the number two oldest person after Jean Carmon? Yes, who I think there are quite good questions. So this person could be the oldest person ever. That's a good point, actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She might well be. What do you get for your 100th anniversary? incontinence pants yeah yeah there's a fact that I really like which is that Buzz Aldrin's dad

was a pilot and he knew and worked in the same barracks at an army place with one of the Wright brothers yes so he knew him they would have been friendly with each other so for him to witness flight in his own lifetime and then witness his son be the first person to land on the moon that's got to be a pretty wild second person

If you believe what the government tells you, yeah Why would the government spread a huge conspiracy That they did go to the moon But that Neil was first Whereas actually it was past Have you ever met Buzz Aldrin Briefly Yeah

So can you imagine why they would prefer Neil to be the first Because Buzz is terrifying Yeah He's an angry guy He is He was pretty terrifying He was brilliant

I liked him I met him Because he was doing the museum of curiosity Which you guys were producing At the time Yes Yes That is correct

Okay, great fact. Okay, Dan. Yeah, I go on here. This one is sent him by Mike Boone. Mike Boone says the greatest spy scandal in New Zealand history occurred in 1981 when a member of the Secret Intelligence Service lost his work briefcase somewhere in Wellington. It was eventually discovered by a 10-year-old boy and it contained three pies and a porn magazine. Now, this, it's enough that a 10-year-old boy has found it. And then someone's discovered this, right?

It must be the worst feeling in the world when you're the spy. And you find out the 10-year-old boy was the son of Fran O'Sullivan, who was a leading award-winning journalist in New Zealand. So he came to his mom and said, I found this briefcase. And she opened it and blew the story wide open. Yeah, it had, there's different descriptions of what was in it. Three cold oval meat pies were in the briefcase. Lovely.

Two slices of cake, copies of the latest listener, and Penthouse. There was also three identity cards, the man's letters of appointment to the SIS, the secret intelligence service. Well, I was going to say, if you just have three pies

in a porn magazine, that's untraceable to you. It's the perfect spy's briefcase, actually. Yes. In fact, it was a really good spy's briefcase because it doesn't make you seem like a spy. It makes you seem a bit weird,

but it doesn't like... It makes you seem like a very hungry pervert. So completely undone, unfortunately, by the facts. I've not read that children's book The Very Hungry Pervert. On Tuesday, he had three pies and you read a copy of hustle.

But yeah, I mean, you're right, and completely unfortunate that it was undone by the fact that he literally had the letter that said, congratulations, you are now a spy. Treat yourself to this voucher for any three pies of your choice. Wow. Yeah, that's extraordinary. I didn't know much about the Kiwi spying services, to be honest. No. I think Kiwi James Bond is a fun idea.

Yeah, we spoke about when Rees Starby was on the show on Nancy. I can't remember her name now. She karate-chopped a Nazi to death. She was a New Zealand spy. She was amazing. You weren't in that one, were you, and the... Yeah, you weren't in that one, that's right. And it was there.

Yeah, there was also that story in the news about the fact that a lot of countries were asked to identify the spies in their countries and kick them out, and New Zealand said, oh, we had a look, can't find any. And that was that. Very good. Okay, here is a fact. from Julianne Sean

and Julianne writes about the excessive mountaineering tourism on Mount Everest and the huge problem it has caused with human waste leading to

the so-called Mount Everest poop slide and apparently this is people pooing on Mount Everest and the poos don't just stay up there

a poo boulder will roll down the mountain when the ice melts and they will often end up in drinking sauces. Wow. So this is a huge problem. And now if you climb up there, they give you special bags with chemicals in that you have to poo into and then take them back down again where they came from. Do you poo into the bag or do you do a poo and then pick up after yourself as if you were the dog?

Dealers choice. Yeah, I guess so. As long as the poo ends up in the bag, that's fine. It doesn't really matter, yeah. I think I would probably do a poo and then wait a couple of hours for it. to freeze and then put it in the bag. That's a good idea. That's a good idea.

I would have a swap system going with one of the other mountaineers. Oh, I'm not going mountaineering with you. Well, I'm doing a poo. The other mountaineer stands around awkwardly, like pretending he can't see me there, like a dog owner would. We're only going for a walk in the Cheviets. Bring the bags. My favorite advice that Brian Blessed always gives about Mount Everest is he says,

and it's to do with pooing. it says never camp below the French because the bastards will shit on you from any height and supposedly that would be a worry is that in his experience he's not camped under every nationality in the world I don't think it's fair to blame the French I it's coming with no judgment from me

I'm just reporting on the man well I had a quick look at this problem on Mount Everest and I found that the 2019 amount of human feces was 7,200 kilograms in a single season, and that is the same weight as Vladimir Putin's armoured limousine. Putin. You took away from my brilliant comparison there with your lame Putin joke.

I think you both got something to be blamed for there, to be honest. Okay, fine. Well, why don't you give us something better than Andy? Oh, gosh, all right. Here's a fact from Michael West Have you guys heard of AMF bowling? You might, Dan, because in Australia it's a major chain of Tempen Bowling Centers.

Oh, no, I haven't heard of it, no. Michael is writing from Sydney. I hope it's not Michael from West Sydney. No, I think it's Michael West from Sydney. Anyway. Are you sure it's not Sydney West from Michael? That's it. So Michael says,

here in Australia, AMF is a major chain of Tempeen bowling centres. Imagine my surprise to learn that AMF built the first nuclear reactors in Iran, Pakistan and Israel. The same company. Same company. This is insane. There was this firm called American Machine and Foundry.

They haven't existed since the 90s now. But basically, they made everything. They made bowling equipment. They made pretzel bending machines. They made the silos for American nukes. And they made nuclear reactors for these countries around the world. It's insane. They were just really good at making weird machines.

Yeah. They made tennis rackets, bicycles, scuba gear, remote players. and ballistic missile launching systems. Wow. And they're responsible for something. I think this is something you're interested in, James. It's they put thousands of people out of work with one of these inventions. Oh, I love putting people out of work.

One of my main hobbies that, Andy. Yeah, I love it. Sorry. I meant this is an area you've done a fact of out in the past. Go on then. Well, what did bowling, what did these bowling machines? Who do they put out of work? Oh, the pin boys.

The pin boys. Yeah, oh that is interesting Thousands of boys used to just hang around At the other end of a bowling alley Putting the pins back up Yeah, they did And then if you were nice to them They put the pins close together

To make it easier to knock them down Is that so? Yeah, that's great Did you have to like just put a little note Some money in the hole? I think you'd tip them maybe And then like the next time you came Or basically, I think the other thing

Is if they just didn't like the look of you They would make things more difficult That's funny Probably put chewing gum underneath the pins or something. If you're on a date and you ought to impress, you have to say to them, you know, can you put these, can you put them closed? Can you just knock them over, please?

Look at that, an aeroplane, your date turns around and then, oh wow, I thought you went straight in the gutter, no. Is that a nuclear reactor being transported over to? No, I believe that's a pretzel turning machine. What a pivot from what they were doing to bowling. Very unclear which way they pivoted first. I think they might have done the bowling first. Right.

And then, and then, you know, we can. use this for? Either way. Who sort of started a chain reaction in with those bowls? I don't think so because if you're Iran and you need someone to build your nuclear reactor and someone comes over and goes, well, we're a pretzel bending and a bowling machine company, you're not going to trust them. Whereas if you want to make pretzels, if someone comes up to you and says, well, we also

make nuclear reactors, you're going to go, oh, you guys know yours. Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. You have to build down. You have to build down. I always say start with something incredibly complex. And then, you know, see if you can make a bit of pretzel money on the side. All right. Thank you, Michael.

Who's next, Dan? Yeah, I got one. This is from Tom Worth. This is a fact about CGI in movies and in Jurassic Park in particular. So he says, the T-Rex attack scene in Jurassic Park with the lawyer character runs out the car into a nearby hut and is eaten as he's sitting on the toilet. That's a CGI shot. So they needed a CGI human for it as well. They couldn't use an actual human.

Okay. But this was the early days of CGI, and it didn't make sense to build a whole new CGI human for literally one shot where you see him from behind and at a distance. So they decided we'll reuse the CGI human that we've already used in another movie. So just it was a recycled bit of human for CGI. So Jurassic Park, what, 94 or 54? A bit later, 94 or 5. So it's got to be a movie that came out in the early 90s.

Yeah. Is this something we can guess? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a blockbuster movie. From the early 90s. Indiana Jones. It's not, no. One of the alien movies? No, it's not.

No, the CGI human that you see being eat by the T-Rex in Jurassic Park is in fact T-1000, the Terminator. I was going to say that. From Terminator 2. Oh, my gosh. That's brilliant. Yeah, isn't that great? That's very pleasing. Can we say that they're in the same universe, maybe?

Oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, they are. Yeah, great idea. I think Terminator versus Dinosaur is the movie we're all waiting for. They send a dinosaur forward in time to kill John Connor. You know what I'm saying? And then they have to just like deal with a robot dinosaur.

Come on. Well, guys, come on. The opening scene is Jurassic Park and we see them going off. But then we cut back to the hut and the chewed up man stands up. And you can see half his face is cyborg. That's good. and we go from there. Where do we go? Well, this thing writes itself, guys. I think you'll find.

You just put that sentence into chat GPT and let it do the rest. Yeah. I think where we probably go is we turn back to Jurassic Park, which is an actual good movie. We just watch that. Here is an amazing one from Charles Hargrove. And Charles says that the Inuit of the North American Arctic used to treat snow blindness by tying a louse to a human hair and walking it across the affected eyeball. What?

Whoa! What indeed? It doesn't make any sense, but it is from the Avertak Cultural Institute in Nunabuk. So this is a very, very good source. What is, I don't really know what snow blindness does to you. I mean, I can sort of guess is that you can't differentiate things with your eyes anymore because it's all so white. Yeah, I think that's what it is. but I think there is some physical stuff that happens

because I went on to the website and read about it and apparently the idea is that you walk this louse across your eyeball and the film sticks to the louse's feet. No way. And according to this website, you need several lice because lice are small and get tired real fast and the procedure is no longer used

because we don't have hair lice anymore. Oh, that's such a shame. There must be some other reasons why we don't do that anymore. But flies with their wings tied down may be used in the same way. How are you tying down a fly's wings? Sorry. With more human hair, I guess. Do you mean that they don't have human lice out there?

Yeah, these guys. I know human lice do exist. Oh, head lice. I could send my kids over. In need. Imagine you make a killing. I would. Some of the things they use to treat snow blindness,

tarmigan breast laid on top of the eyelids. And apparently if you do that, the patient should not eat any tarmigan for a while, or some square flipper seal fat applied directly to the eye. Should you not eat the tarmigan because then you're out of tarmigan? Should you need to put them on your eyes again? Or has it, what an interesting connection that you shouldn't eat it if it's been on your eyes? I think a lot of this is cultural sort of folklore and stuff like that. I do wonder if some of it is just people from that area taking the piss when anthropologists come over and go, yeah, what we do is,

We tie a hair louse to an eyelash and let it walk across her eyes. I always think that when I see those dogs, particularly like the weird ancient alien ones where they're out in some jungle and some old 90-year-old woman is going, an alien landed down here. I can picture everyone else going, why they keep interviewing Mad Sally?

She's going on about aliens again. She's a nutcase. Yeah, but it is on the official website dedicated to preserving and promoting Inuit language. Wow. So the sauce is good. cool. That's just, that's fantastic. Yeah. Okay, we got time for one

more, maybe? Yeah, I go on here. This is from Jodocus Mordaunt. Apologies, Jodocus. I'm reading your name as I see it. Uh, zoologist. Um, and they say they're constantly learning about animals umvelten, which is their sensory world. Oh, umwelt. Yeah. Very good.

So he says, here's my favorite one from this week. Star-nosed moles can forage underwater. They can purposefully blow air bubbles and then re-inhale them to detect sense from potential prey. Amazing. Not to mention that their star is 13 times more sensitive than a human clitoris, which I think I learned from your show. You did. I looked it up.

That was in an episode called No Such Thing as the Mall Street Journal. And what was the other fact about the Star-Oes-Mull? They can blow a bubble. They can purposely blow air bubbles and then re-inhale them to detect sense from potential prey. Unveldt is really interesting because that's the idea that you just, you just, you can't don't know how any other animal is experiencing the world, right? So if an electric eel goes through the water and it can tell where things are because it has an electric force somehow detects things, or if a bat is somehow detecting things

using clicks and bouncing ultrasound off walls and stuff, we just have no idea of knowing what that's like. We can kind of come up with an analogy or whatever, but really you just don't know what it's like to be a horse or a lion or a gnat. And even really close animals to us, even like a chimpanzee. We don't know if they're looking at us as if where are the chimpanzees or whether we're this weird sort of different animal or what? I wonder what the closest animal is where we feel like we're getting closer to understanding their perception of the world. Whatever's been studied most, I guess. Dolphins and fruit flies. Dogs. Yeah, dogs. Guinea pigs. Because designing a

VR headset game where you were existing with their vision, with their, you know, dogs seen black and white. Is that right? Yeah, but they smell a lot. Yep. So you'll have to have a big VR nose. Yes. But then the nose would have to give you so many smells. You wouldn't know what to do with them. You wouldn't be able to differentiate between them. You'll be just like this smells a bit meaty. Yeah. But actually, it could be venison over there and dog shit over there. And, you know, like, you just can't experience what it's like to be able to tell all those different smells at once. Andy keeps smelling everyone's ass when they come and say hi to him. He took the helmet off weeks ago. Is someone going to pick up after me or not? Waiting for it to freeze. Okay. On that note, I think we should maybe go to our second section of this show, which is to look at some of our old facts and give them a new home.

So, Andy, do you have the first person who is a new custodian of a No such thing is a fish, fact. Yes. First friend of the podcast to be assigned their brief this week is Richard Martin. Congratulations, Richard. Your fact is an absolute classic. It's that the first known football chant was composed by Edward Elgar. Yeah.

I think a lot of things you hear shouted on the terrace have actually been composed by eminent composers. Is that right? Yeah, the referee's a wanker. That was by Schoenberg. Yeah, absolutely. Who's the bastard in the black? who was that? It was, uh... Was it Rimsky Korsikov, or...

I think it was Prokofia, but I'm not certain. I always get them mixed up. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. The Russian composers, aren't they? The one that goes, shh, when you're taking the piss out of the other fans for not making any noise. John Cage? John Cage? Lovely.

There you go, Richard. That's your fact now. Dan, let's have the next one. Uh, yeah, this fact is for Catherine. And this was my fact, and it's from episode six. 17, as was the last fact. And that is, Eric Cantona was raised in a cave. Oh. This must have been a football special. I think it was a World Cup final.

It absolutely was. I can see the next two facts. Was there a World Cup in 2014? There was. My favourite Eric Cantona fact from, I think we mentioned in that episode. I can't really remember. It was people used to sing, ooh, ah, Cantonar. And that was composed by Camille Sanson. Was it? God, you really got me.

You really got me. Eric Kanzano has the record for the most kicks to someone else's head in one minute. A callback for you there. Very good. Very nice. Okay, Tiffany Gregory. You've been waiting for your name and here it is. And will we find out what fact you are now the custodian over?

Yes, we will. It is, oh, it's a bit of a long, a bit of a mouthful. Apologies for this. In the first World Cup final in 1930, Uruguay and Argentina couldn't agree on the size of the ball. So used Argentina's small ball in the first half and Uruguay's big one in the second half. It's a lovely. It's a lovely idea. It also implies that people from Uruguay had sort of multiple times the size of people from Argentina. The size of the bowl was not that different. I don't think I've seen at least one of these bowls in the design museum in London

quite recently. And they are quite similar in size. But still, I mean, it'd freak you out a bit, wouldn't it? You'd probably play your best game with the ball that you were used to. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like they were used in the marble for the first half, for the beach bowl for the second half. Should we another fact? Yeah, go on, Andy. Right, this goes out to Rita Hofmeyer. Rita, thank you so much for becoming a friend of the podcast,

and here is your fact, is that FIFA has more members than the UN. A famously ineffective, sclerotic, and corrupt organization, the UN remains in business. Hey! This was a debut fact, by the way, Rita, from the creator of QI, John Lloyd. Yeah.

Very first appearance onto Fish. This is really exciting, though, because you guys don't know this, but I can say that Rita Hoffmeyer, as well as becoming custodian of this fact, you are also going to receive the No Such Thing as a Fish Peace Prize. Oh, that's huge news. It's huge. It's huge. Obviously, for all of the great stuff that you've done to stop. was in the world, we've decided that you should get it. Yeah, congratulations, Rita.

Dan, another one. Yeah, so we're jumping over to episode 18 now, and this is a fact that's going out to Cara Riley, and this is a fact that was from one of our guests on that show, Richard Turner. Richard Turner is the co-creator and producer of Museum of Curiosity, which is a show that me and James Harkin worked on for many, many years. He's a really, really good friend. And Rich's fact is that. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he was wearing ladies underwear.

Very good. I can't 100% remember. It wasn't. It was a slight stretch. I think it was that the... A stretch, but very comfortable and very forgiving. It was that the undergarments of the space suit were made by Playtacks, I think, that also made undergarments.

That's right. Separately, he was in a thong. Okay. I will do one more. This one is now under the custodianship of Ben Newman. Ben, this is your fact. It is that in 1963, Muhammad Ali released a stand-up comedy album called I Am the Greatest.

That's right. Brilliant. Dan Shriver special. I saw that album in an HMV, which is where I got the fact from. I was going through the stand-up comedy CDs, and it was just sitting there. And I was like, what hell is this?

And did some Googling and yeah, it turned out. Is it funny? He was an incredibly funny guy. I don't know if you've ever seen interviews with him. He just had a great way with words. He had a sort of, anytime he was trying to roast his opponent, he did very well with that. Yeah, it was funny. So what it was was, it wasn't him on stage explicitly coming out like he's Jerry Seinfeld.

He was, he was doing talks around the world and they were recording them. And so this was a compilation of all those talks. I think it had poetry as well that he'd written. I haven't listened to the CD in a while, so I can't remember, but yeah. This goes out to Nicky Kelly. Congratulations, Nikki. And it's the fact that in 1325 in Italy, war was declared and 2,000 people killed because a bucket was stolen. Oh, dear. I know.

This was the war of the oaken bucket between Bologna and Modena. And some Modinese troops had stolen a bucket from the Bolognaise. And it had some stuff in. It wasn't a completely empty bucket. And then Bologna responded proportionately by invading with 32,000 troops. Wow. And chaos ensued. So there you go.

Anyway, I know we're all just thinking about our favorite bits from that war. I was just thinking of my favorite polandais sauces that I've had over the years. I'm really sorry. Lovely. And they are? There was one in Soho, a nice Italian. I'm like individual meals. I thought you meant recipes.

Okay. Yeah. You don't get spaghetti modernets, do you? No, you don't. If you do, podcast at QI. I imagine that was what the outcome of this war was, wasn't it? Who's allowed to make? Who gets to do? The Getty with a ragu on it. Yeah.

Go on, Dan. Let's have one last one. One last one here. And this is a James Harkin fact, but it now is under the custodianship of Sean Wandersey. And that fact is there is a group of chimpanzees in Zambia who wear a blade of grass in their left ear as a fashion statement. Yeah, I bet not anymore, unless it's come back. Yeah, I wonder how quick fashion changes in the chimpanzee world. I'm not sure. I think this was back in the news this year. Was it?

Yeah, it was. But I've just Googled it. This is what it was. The headline now is chimpanzees have found a fresh spin on the old fashion, and they're sticking grass and sticks in their bottoms. Imagine being the first chimpanzee to do that and thinking, you know what, everyone's going to copy me. This is cool.

It's the same place, it's the same refuge, and it's 15 years later, and it's happened again, but they're also just doing it in a different, they're still doing it in their ears, but they're also doing it into their bottoms. Amazing. That's the way fashion goes eventually. Everything comes back around. Get those old, get those old blades of grass out of the wardrobe where they've been hanging for years. Teenage chimpanzee going to their parents. Hey, mom, dad, I don't suppose you have any blades of grass hanging around from your chair. Oh, yes, we do. that's, oh, I'm so glad it's getting Wait a minute, where are you what are you doing?

Okay, on that note, I think it is time to end today's show. Congratulations to Sean, Nicky, Ben, Kara, Rita, Tiffany, Catherine and Richard. You are friends of the podcast and you are also now custodians of those facts. If you two would like to become a custodian of the fact,

then go to patreon.com slash know such things of fish and you'll be able to find out details there of how to become a friend of the podcast or any of the other tiers that we do. If you don't want to do that and just want to listen to the show, then come back next week or come back on Friday when we will have our Big Fish episode. In the meantime, bye from me. Also me, I'm going to say bye.

Andy. And it's goodbye from me. Goodbye. Thank you.