No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: Not Sponsored By Reba McEntire

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, including Batman, Tim Horton and Saint-Saëns.  We chat about cinema classics like Cruel Intentions 2 and Indiana Jones 4, 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 hucked 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. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode where we put down our facts and we focus exclusively on your favorite facts from the last seven days. We have been going through the inbox.

We've got a bunch of amazing things to read out to you today. So why don't we get into it? Who's going to start? I've got one. Put my hand up there. Because we're recording on Zoom, you should say. I put my hand up because we're recording on Zoom. But I feel like I might have done it even in the room with you guys.

Well, yeah, that's true. I do every other week. Right. Here's a fact from Owen Bergstein. In 2023, how many full-sized corn mazes were there in the United States that were shaped like Reber McIntyre's face? Okay, well, first question, what is a corn, no, who is Reba McIntyre? She's an unbelievably famous person who I'd never heard of. She's a country singer.

Yeah, I know Reba. She's a big deal. She is. Fair enough. Household name in America, I would say. The Queen of Country. She's sold 75 million records. I've never heard of her until this email from Owen dropped into the inbox.

I mean, what level of fame are you in America that there are more than one corn mazes? You're assuming there's more than one? I'm going straight in. I'm going straight in. Because imagine if the answer is zero. What a quiz that would be. The riddler has checked it again. Okay.

Corn mazes. And obviously if she's a country singer, it feels like she's going to be popular in con country. Good point. I'm going to say three. Okay. Nice. I'm a high ball in it, I feel. Okay.

That's, yeah. 10? 36. 36. Yeah. Well, Owen goes on, did you say six? 10? Did one of you ruin the game and say something like a hundred?

Probably. Well, he's a listener at least. Well, the real answer is 20. plus another 15 that say her name. So there are 40 full-size Reba McIntyre Corn Mases in the USA. And what's the reason? That is astonishing. Well, she has a face, which is very good for corn mazes.

She has these wrinkles on her forehead that are in the exact shape of a spiral. She's getting on a bit, but I should say she's an incredibly beautiful and distinguished lady with no wrinkles on her forehead. What's the next? Can I just say, you can be beautiful and have wrinkles. Oh, okay. Oh, we've got into body positivity, cornet. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.

She looks exactly like an area of corn. You know what? I've been to the world's biggest maze. It's in Hawaii and it's in the dole plantation where they make pineapples. And I went in it and someone has basically made a hole in all the hedges. So when you can just get to the middle by walking through the holes. A whole plantation. Did you say the doll plantation?

I see what you do there. Yeah, very good. Very nice. I had to break out of the maze a few years ago. There's one in Crystal Palace and I was with Fonella and she suddenly got terrified that a murderer might be in there and sort of got like weird claustrophobia. She was like, this is exactly where you would get murdered. So we had to break out of this maze, but it happened to be on the edge of the maze and we went into this weird random forest and we were lost for like half an hour where it is so much more likely. I've done that maze, Dan. It's about four feet high. It's not. Please, this is not me saying

that I picked out. I'm just reporting on what happened. Listen, I just got to tell you one or two other things Owen says, because the email is so good. Yeah. So he adds that there are about 500 corn mazes in the USA. So 8% of US corn mazes roughly were Reba McIntyre themed. He also adds the mazes appear in 23 states. The 23rd state joined the union in 1820. So in 1819, somebody could have remarked to someone else. In just over two centuries, more American states will have Reba McIntyre-themed corn mazes

than currently exist. How times change? He says, P.S., I am not sponsored by Reba McIntyre. I find her music annoying. Oh. There you go. That's amazing. Shall I do another fan?

Yeah, you jump in. This one is from Andrew Lulwasa, and Andrew says that the 2000 movie, Cruel Intentions 2, which sounds like Dan would love it, is a cutdown of a TV adaptation-turned-sequel to Cruel Intentions, which was adapted from Dangerous Liaisons, a film adapted from a Broadway play that was itself an adaptation from an 18th century French novel,

and it was produced by a company, called original film. Brilliant. Brilliant. There you go. Would you like another one? Yeah, go on. This is from Dennis Grump,

who says, I would love to hear Andy try to pronounce my last name. Hint, it's German. So I think it's Dennis Rump. Bad luck, Dennis, because Andy actually speaks a bit of German, don't you, Andy? Just a little, yes.

This is a, this is a cool. Yeah. This is a cool fact about planes. It's brilliant. So, you know, you have those turbines on an airline's jet engine. You know, an airline jet engine has all these blades, right? On going round and round around.

Well, Dennis says, the centripetal force, which is the swirling round force, on each turbine blade of an airliner's jet engine, is roughly equal to the weight of two double-decker buses. Wow. I know, it's crazy. And to overcome this stress, which is obviously enormous, each blade on those turbines is made of a single crystal of an alloy. Isn't that?

Mystical. It is the way you said it. Crystal is a word that's very easy to say in a mystical fashion, isn't it? Yeah, single crystal of an alloy. I don't really quite understand what that means. Is it like if you were someone who robbed banks or jewelry shops, is there like a fine crystal just sitting at the center? It's not a, it's not a crystal.

crystal in the sense that you are describing it, Dan. It's, it's, it's metal. It's not a crystal in the sense of Indiana Jones of the crystal skull. Exactly. I'm so glad. It's a real, it's a real sinniast's dream this episode, isn't it? Cruel intentions two, Indiana Jones four. But basically, the blades, they have to cope with these huge stresses and forces.

And if you have one crystal, it's one part, is the point. So there are no, what they call grain boundaries in the blade, which makes it a lot stronger. One of the best quibbles that we ever had on QI was when we did a question about these turbines. And we said that Rolls-Royce engines are tested by throwing frozen chickens or frozen turkeys into the blades to make sure that they don't break. Which I think is true, or at least it was true. And we put a picture of one of these turbines up on the screen. Actually, it was a video, some VT. And someone wrote in saying, that couldn't possibly be.

a Rolls-Royce engine because Rolls-Royce engines go in a clockwise direction and that was going in an anti-clockwise direction or vice versa. I can't know what it was. And what it actually happened was we had used it but we just flipped the footage. Oh, wow. Brilliant spot. What a spot. Yeah, it was an amazing spot.

It's a brilliant quibble. Lovely. All right, James. Okay, here is a fact from Peter Bloom. And Peter says, while in prison, Clyde Barrow of Byro of and Clyde fame amputated two of his toes to get out of hard labour. Six days later, he was unexpectedly pardoned. Lovely.

So slightly, well, he got out of six days of hard labour. Yeah, I've never looked into those guys. What do you know about them, down? I just know it as the movie. I know it's the Bonnie and Clyde movie. I know it as a Serge Gainsberg's song. Bonnie. It's a beautiful French moment in that song.

Do you know what they did? I know they rob banks and then they were shot up. Interestingly, they very rarely rob banks. And in fact, whether they ever did or not, I'm not sure, because banks are quite hard to rob, right? Because they have a lot of security. Definitely Clyde did rob a few banks, but usually when he did it,

he did it with another associate called Raymond Hamilton, and Bonnie often drove the getaway car. And I think, like, Raymond and Clyde doesn't have the same ring. not as sexy. So they might have done one or two banks, but mostly they would rob like convenience stores and gas stations and stuff like that where there's not as much security and you can just get the money out of the town. That's less sexy as well.

That's extremely unsexy. Now that we know it's Clyde and his friend Raymond basically sticking up an Aldi at the side of a road. It doesn't work. The Serge Gainsberg song would have been less sexy as well. Raymond. That's very funny. That's great.

Oh, that's great extra intel. Well, I got a little sort of crime-adjacent fact here that's been sent in by Alex Hartley. People are more likely to give their seat to a pregnant woman when Batman is present. No. I buy it. So this was reported in nature, and the idea was a female experimenter came on, appearing pregnant. She boarded the train with an observer. And then they watched if anyone stood up to give her a seat.

Now, an additional person dressed as Batman would then enter from another door. And as soon as Batman was in the room, they noticed that 67% stood up versus 37% when Batman wasn't there. Interestingly, 44% of the people who offered their seat claimed that they did not see Batman before offering the scenes. So can I ask something, Dan? Is this to do with seeing a pregnant woman and thinking, oh, I won't bother? and then Batman gets on who reminds me of values of justice or is it just that the presence of a Batman costume

on a train is weird enough that you look around and then you notice, oh, there's a pregnant woman here. Great. Oh, that's a good question. Because everyone's looking at their phones and people are not paying attention. I'm not sure the answer to that, but I think that's something that absolutely are listening. Has they tried different superheroes?

Not in this one. This is a very specific Batman. Okay. Spider-Man might have a different result. Yeah. But they didn't have access to the Marvel universe's copyright. If it was Captain Marvel or Wonder Woman or someone, you might see that superhero and think, well, women are much stronger than me. So I deserve the seat.

Yes. I think Batman's been used quite often in studies, hasn't it? Do you remember that study that if you dress children like Batman, they do better at school or something? Yeah. Do you remember that? Well, they can afford the private education. can't they? Because they're absolutely loaded billionaires. What is it a monthly day every day

at this school? What's going on? I think it was something like that. It just made the kids more confident or something. Well, there was also that thing which I think was done on QI, which is how I know it, of the Superman pose. I don't know if that was debunked. Right. Andy, do you have

another fact? I've got a fact, which relates to something we said recently on the show actually. This is from Catherine Radma. I'll just read you the fact. noted French composer Camille Saint-Saint-Saint-Saint, I want to say

Yeah, who wrote the Who Are Cantana theme in a previous episode Exactly, is credited with composing the first documented film score No Way. This was in 1908 And he seems to be the first Famous person to have written a score for a film

And it was a specific score for a specific new film So I think that's what qualifies it as the first It was called the Assassination of the Duke of Gies and it was 15 minutes long, which was epic at the time. That was like Lord of the Rings, Avatar, that was a biggie. Do you think you need an intermission halfway through? Oh, definitely. Sorry too much.

Bursting for a piss. Seven minutes in. James, you got another? Yeah, okay, I've got one more. We mentioned Tim Hortons, the donut chain. A few weeks, well, actually quite a few weeks ago now. this coffee shop in Canada, because we were saying that in Canada,

they eat more donuts than in America. But Callum Smith wrote to us and said, did you be noticed that it has no apostrophe? And this is because the apostrophe is illegal in Quebec. Oh, no. Yeah. And it's because the apostrophe S is English grammar, and they're trying to keep the French language alive.

Oh. And so they say that, you know, you're not allowed to do it. And apparently Canadians in that area are very upset about it, half of them. And half them are very happy with it. Does it have to be called Le Horton de Tim or something? No, it's just Tim Hortons just with NS, yeah. How far would the authorities push this if the rules were being breached? Like, are we talking police activity?

Honestly, I think it would depend on the political climate at the time, as so many of these things do you. Very wise. You know, if you want to stop people selling liters instead of pints or vice versa, those things the police tend to get involved just before a local election. So, James, are you saying Tim Hortons is a Canadian company, therefore, it has to do those rules? Or is that for all companies? Like McDonald's.

I wonder if McDonald's. I don't think McDonald's has to change all of its paperwork just when it's in Canada. So German doesn't use apostrophes. We were talking earlier about how Andy speaks a bit of German, but people in German do sometimes use apostrophe S, and it's known in German as the Idiots Apostrophe. That's unkind. Why? Because it's like someone is not using the German language correctly

and is sort of appropriating the English language instead. I see. And a bit like how we take the piss out of people if they put the apostrophe in the wrong place, if you're like a, you know, grosses or something, we call it the grosses apostrophe. That's true, you're right. They call incorrect apostrophe use,

or correct in English, but they call it Idiot's Apostrophe. Very strong. Very strong. Harsh but fair. Yeah, well, that's the Germans. For some of history. Well, those are brilliant facts. Thank you so much, everyone, for sending them in.

If you want your fact read out on the show, podcast at QI.com, send them there, and he goes through them all, and he sends them out to us. We love chatting them through. So, yeah, more, please. But we got one more thing to do before we wrap up, which is we have some new custodians who need some facts dishing out.

So if you are a member of the club fish highest tier, which is friend of the podcast, you immediately get assigned one of the facts, the headline facts from the archive of no such thing as a fish. So we're going to read out some now. So, Andy, why don't we start with you? Yes, here's one. This goes out to Missy Brown. congratulations Missy.

Your fact in perpetuity to look after and care for is that the first ever made in Germany labels were intended to put people off buying products made in Germany. It's because it's this old law. I think it was the 19th century and I think maybe Germany didn't have quite the reputation for really high quality precision manufacturing or all this that it did now. people were worried about Sheffield, huge metalworking city, Sheffield cutlery industry, all of that. There were worries about cheap German knockoffs.

And so this was a law that said, if you're a foreign company in the UK, you have to put a label on saying made in Germany and therefore worse. I'd like to see some more fun in the labels. Like, made at sea. Oh, yeah. Made in space.

Is that on your fish? Yeah. Made with love. That's lovely. Do you remember that was, what was it? Was it? What are those smoothies called? Innocent?

Innocent. Was it true that they said once, I might be getting this mixed up with another company, but they said made with love in one of their items, and they weren't allowed to put it because it's very, you know, the rules of what you put on labels are very strict. And if you say it's made with love, there has to be actual. Actual what. The only one I remember is the Welsh dragon sausages,

which had to put a little disclaimer on saying, does not contain dragon. They should have just farmed some Komodo dragon and just put a tiny little bit in each one. Where was your business brain at the time, James? I had contact the other day with, you know, I've been taking lion's mane mushroom little juicy injections.

Yeah, all right, Joe Rogan. Well, they made locally in Marigate where I live and a friend of mine had a bottle and she bought it last summer and she said, I don't know when the used by date is. And so I was like, oh, I'll just ask the person online. And they said, basically, if we were allowed to, we would put used by end of universe because it's fine forever.

Because it doesn't work. No, better when you take it. Who says it works? It's all about placebo. Absolutely. Fair enough. Okay, here is a fact for Leah M. Leah, your fact is that in 1991, a professor,

at Iowa State University suggested we could solve almost every problem by blowing up the moon. Wow. I do not recall this fact, Dan, is one of yours. Can you remember what problems it was solved? Global warming. The production problems on Cruel Intentions 3. There was a lot. I think this was one of those comments, and the professor has passed away since where I think the family was sort of like,

oh, it was a, it was a common in passing, and, you know, it's been amplified as, like, his main things. You've got to be so careful with your words, for scientists. Let's do another one. This one is for Lily Kemp. This is a James Harkin fact, and it's from episode 21, by the way, if anyone wants to go back and listen to all of these facts in their full glory. The fact is, in New York City until 1925, drivers going east-west, stopped on amber and drove on

green, and drivers going north-south stopped on green and drove on amber. Great. Amazing. But it's easy to tell if you're going east, west or north-south, especially in New York, right? Because it's such a grid system. But I think, like, probably for people who aren't native New Yorkers, you might not always know which direction you're going in.

That's very true. That's very true. Well, my secondary proposal is to paint N or E or S or W on every single road. every two meters. So I think that'll help. Okay. All right, I'll do one. Go for it.

This one goes out to Molly McInerney. Hello, Molly. This is one of my facts, actually, and it's that. There are companies which lassoe icebergs to stop them hitting oil rigs. It's like an old time. I remember when you came up with this. Yeah, you loved this fact. I'm so happy.

And I found, because they're quite secretive, the firms that do it, because it's quite a, I don't know, a specialist job, or they have their own techniques for, it's mostly predicting where they're going to end up, the icebergs. You know, that's the secret bit. The actual lassoing is just driving around it with a rope and then hauling it for a bit. But I found someone who worked for one of these companies.

I had a chat with him. That's right. Yeah. It feels like for the greater good, we shouldn't be making secret where icebergs are going to end up. That should be public knowledge. For the really greater good, I think we should let them hit the oil rigs.

Well, just that get all that oil into the. ocean. No. Interesting take, I'm doing. Let's end this shit show. Let's accelerate it. Well, that's very good. But that's one of my all-time faves.

I love that one. Yeah, that was an early classic. And I remember, I think it was one of the very first ones where we had contact with someone with a very obscure job. It was always exciting research moments where we could get in contact with people actually in the field doing it. James, do you want to read out this? This is your one.

Yeah, I can do. In 1903, a man called W. Reginald Bray posted himself. And that fact has now been delivered to someone called, and I don't think this is their real name, but apologies if it is, Mr. Retro Graveyard. Yes. That's a name. Sorry, Mr. Graveyard. Or can I call you Retro, perhaps, if that is your real name?

But yeah, that's your fact. W. Reginaldray, Post. himself. He was always doing that, wasn't he? The only memory I have, and it might not be connected to this specific guy, but someone posted themselves, I think, to Australia in a box that was put in an airplane, and it was successful. And so someone else tried to replicate it, and they were tightly packed in. And unfortunately, as they were packed in, the box went over, and he spent the entire trip upside down in the box. Oh, no. And that's when the This Way Up Sticker was I've just looked up W. Reginald Bray.

He was also known as the Autograph King and collected 15,000. Oh, yes. My hero. Dan, very excitingly, was born in Forest Hill, London, which is about a five-minute walk from where you used to live. He was born there in 1879. Just listen to this sentence. He lived there until 1938 when he moved to Croydon. He died on the 6th of June 1939.

A great advert for the Croydon way of life. I was hoping you would say he died when he was murdered in the local Crystal Palace maze. Very cool. All right, let's get another fact. And this goes out to Tristan Street. And your fact is that the world's oldest edible ham just celebrated its 112th birthday. Gorgeous. Now it will be much older now, the ham, because we did this years ago.

Fear, it might have been decommissioned. Was this the one that was hanging up in the covered market in Oxford? Yeah, which Anna had seen. I had seen as well, because I used to live in Oxford. In fact, the first time I ever joined QI was part of there was a QI building in Oxford. You were trying to open your cannon and ball gelataria, weren't you? I don't know why that didn't work. We had a QI building there and there was the covered market and there's a shop in there, a butcher's.

and hanging in the window is supposedly the world's oldest ham. Yeah, and do you think it's no longer there, do you? No, I think now the title has passed to Sir Ian McKellen. Yeah, but no, I fear it might not be there anymore. Right. I hope it is. Do you think someone might have eaten it? I don't think.

It was one of those hams, which just, if it was at a buffet, you'd definitely eat around it. Can you imagine seeing that at a buffet? Because it looks like a long buried limb that's been dug up. It really does. Yeah. But I think like ham is, ham doesn't really go off. It's like lions male mushrooms in that respect.

Oh, it looks like someone's posted saying it was on display a couple of years ago in the cover market. So maybe it lives. Okay. Maybe it lives. Feels like a school trip for us. Yeah. Oh, definitely. We should start doing that.

All right. Well, congratulations Tristan. Next fact. Andy, do you want to read this one now? Yes, this goes out to Sarah. You know who you are. And it's that orangutans like playing on iPads, but gorillas don't. This is an experiment that was done in 2013, and they gave orangutan's iPads, and they bloody loved it. And I think they started calling each other.

And there was this rash of experiments when the iPad was quite new. It was more of an experiment on scientists with access to iPads than it was on these animals. basically. But I think they would chat and they would put up on the screen, you know, a banana. They say, would you like a banana? Then it would tap the banana and then they'd give them a banana. So this is quite a good racket, actually, because the iPad would have been fairly fresh around 2015 when we were doing this. If you were a scientist and you wanted all the latest tech for free, you would request it and say it's part of a guerrilla experiment and you would let the gorilla play on it for five minutes and then bring it home. I rather feel like after guerrillas played

with your iPad for five minutes. It might not be quite as usable as you hope. Yeah, you're right, James. All right, James, you want to read this one? Okay, this one is for Susie. And your fact, it's an absolutely classic. I really love this fact. The 1888 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Wales reads,

Sea England. And in that moment, Welsh nationalism was born afresh. I really hope. I really hope it's not Susie from Canavan. But yeah, the reason was that the article, England, was actually England and Wales. Yes. I think it's because at the time, legally, legally, not culturally, they might have been one territory. There was all this chat about the principality, that kind of thing.

Whereas I think Scotland was differently established as a different nation, basically. Yeah, absolutely. is why you have the England and Wales cricket team. Do you? They always call it England cricket team, but it's the England and Wales. I had never heard that. Yeah. And that's why they're so good.

Well, most of them come from South Africa or New Zealand or whatever. But yeah, like they are officially known as that. Well, you're not allowed South Africans on the England cricket team, are you? Well, Kevin Peterson was born in South Africa, one of our best ever player. Interesting. The England cricket team over the last couple of years has been two Yorkshire, one Lancastrian and then people from assorted places around the world. Have they become citizens of the UK in order to do that?

Yeah, you would have to be legally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But is that why we've been winning so hard all around the world as I understand it? Well, unfortunately, this is going out after the ashes is just finished. But before that, yeah. Oh, good, good. All right, well, look, congrats everyone. We really hope you enjoy your facts.

If you want one yourself, do join Clubfish. go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. There are lots of tears there. There are lots of really fun things going on as part of the club. So join up today. And if you also want to have your facts read out on this episode, as I said before, podcast at QI.com. Send them in there.

We love, love, love getting them. Anyway, we're going to be back on Friday with the proper main episode. And then back again on Monday with another little fish. So we'll see you then. Goodbye.