No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: Pope Guilty the First

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Dan finally learns the truth about a playground rumour, while he, Anna and James discuss YOUR facts . This week's subjects include naughty Newfoundlanders, olive oil, and pointing at pumpkins. And the gang announce eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians.Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreonEdited by James HarkinProduced by Leying LeeTeam includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the podcast from The Makers of No Such Thing as a Fish where we put down our facts and we look at the incredible facts that you guys have been sending to podcast at QI.com. I am sat here in an undisclosed location known only to me and my family because it's my house and Dan Schreiber is in his house and Anna Tyshinsky is in her house and we will be talking facts. which of you would like to go first with an amazing audience fact? I've got a good one from a well-named chap called Benjamin Snitkoff. Oh, and I know.

Really strong. And he says I'm reading a terrific book called Gesture, which does look like a really good book actually by Lauren Gorn. And he came across this fact that the Kadang people of Indonesia have a prohibition on pointing at rainbows, Ursumager and small young pumpkins. I know they connected for the same reason. Did the three of them have like a night out, the pumpkins, the rainbows, Ursa Minor? And they're just banished. Yeah. God, I'd love to see what that night out would look like.

But I do not know. It does seem pretty arbitrary. Like you're getting to the end of the rulebook and you've got pages to fill. I've heard of people not pointing to rainbows before, actually. I think that one might be, I mean, none of these are particularly common. But I think that one's a little bit more common than the others. Okay. Okay, yeah, I can sort of see that

If you know, they've got a magical quality to them Are you allowed to acknowledge them? Are you allowed to be like, Hey, go up I think as long as you do whisper like that Yeah, right And then you hide behind a bush immediately. Guys, rainbow.

I looked them up and their main prohibition seems to be about weaving. That's the main thing that always comes up is that they're not allowed to make their own clothes Which sounds like it was just really inconvenient back in the day. So you just always had to buy clothes from a different tribe. Promotes social life.

You get to meet other. you know. Do you know what, Dan, you have hit the nail on the head of why people say that they used to do it. There you go. Part of like agreements, you know, back and forth agreements with other trading groups, other people. So you should be an anthropologist because I just thought, what a stupid ban? But what happens when they go to market and they're trying to buy some clothes and then the person they're buying them off points at a small baby pumpkin? And then they get into a huge argument. And then that's how war starts, isn't it? It is. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I got one here from Christopher McKay, who says, four moose were brought to Newfoundland from Miramushi, New Brunswick, in 1904, 45 years before Newfoundland joined Confederation. Today, there's roughly 125,000 moose, one for every four Newfoundlanders.

Cool. Yeah. All from those four. And I've been given a handy pronunciation guide by Christopher who says Newfoundland is Newfoundland, not Newfoundland. I thought it was Newfoundland. Yeah, well, my goodness, this is a hot potato. This is a young pumpkin being pointed out because it doesn't seem to have a consensus amongst anyone. Apparently, Christopher says, as non-Atlantic Canadians, I want to say about Newfoundland. But I found a story where it got so chaotic that in 1876, a man was shot dead over his pronunciation of Newfoundland.

Oh, my God. How did he pronounce it? We don't know which are the two who got in the fight with pronouncing it either way. But it was either Newfoundland or Newfoundland. Annunciation was unfound and land at the time. And so it says mill workers in the frontier town of Larkspur, Colorado, saw two men enter a cabin in search of a dictionary. Seconds later, they heard a gunshot. And so it was mill worker William Atchison. He first off threw a punch at John P. Davis. John P. Davis then pulled out a gun and shot him in the stomach. And he died.

How do we know what happened there? Because they've gone into the house, right? We only have the say so. of the person who came out. Yes. And not even quite that, James, for a very long time, because John P. Davis, who came out immediately went on the run, just immediately fled town. And no one heard from him for years and years and years until 1912 when he was on his deathbed

and he made a deathbed confession to say that we got in a fight about the pronunciation of this word. And I shot him to death. And so he thought, okay, well, that's it. It's out there. I'm going to die now. It got reported in the newspapers, but then he got better. He wasn't expecting to get better.

So the brothers of the deceased mad came chasing after him, and he had to get out of his now no longer deathbed and went on the run again. And we don't know how the story ends. Sounds like he wasn't even very sick, to be honest. And also, I mean, I think I can infer what's happened here, right? This guy has shot his mate. You're only going to shoot him if it turns out that you're wrong. the dictionary proved them right and you get so annoyed that you shoot them. That's why I reckon.

I can't think of any other way that that went where he ended up shooting his mate. So I think not only, probably the worst thing about this whole thing is that he was proved wrong by the dictionary. You're so right. The wrong man died. He was the one that deserved to die. Yeah, absolutely. Here is a fact sent in by the Reverend Cannon Ben Joe. which Andy Helpfully puts afterwards, he's a vicar.

And he says, Not a piece of artillery. Maybe that too. He says, I just listened to your Little Fish episode from the 15th of March where you talk about footballers in the same team with the same name. Even better, in my opinion, is that during the 2003 to 4 season,

Fulham replaced the Scottish midfielder John Collins with the Liberian-born Dutch striker, James John. The good. Collins John. So good. I love it. They must have done it on purpose.

I forgot about that. That's a brilliant fact. It's really good. No more to say on that. Okay, well, in that case, here's one from Dan Connolly. And Dan Connolly said, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art can be found in. Any guesses?

Modern art? Is that a place? I don't know. It's Louisiana, obviously. Oh, Dan, you idiot. That's so embarrassing. No, it's in Denmark, just north of Copenhagen, and the name comes from the estate on which the museum was built, which was called Louisiana by its first owner called Alexander Brun. And he named it after his three wives,

all of whom had been called Louise. Isn't that amazing? I think wife number three you've done it on purpose. You're just on the lookout. Unless it was an unbelievably common name around that time. Yeah. Oh yeah, like how in the 9th century, 90% of people were called John. Was there a time when everyone in Denmark was called Louise?

Yeah, and the thing is no one really knows what's going on because the museum was built quite a long time after this Alexander Brun had gone. and the guy who built it, who was called Knude Jensen, they asked him about it and he said, well, I don't really know anything about him apart from the fact that he had three wives called Louise. And so it kind of seems like that's really all we know about this guy. Well, while we're on names,

can I chuck in another listener name fact that's been sent in? This is from Chris Topping. Chris Topping, in 1945, Flory and Chain received a note. Nobel Prize alongside Fleming for isolating the first antibiotics. I've stumbled across a researcher called Florian Chain, who appears to be in the field of probiotics. So you've got Flory and Chain. And now we have Florian Chain.

Wonderful. This is a, yeah, and Florian Chain, not the most known names, but they were the people who helped give us penicillin. So it was Fleming who had noticed the mold in the petri dish and had tried doing stuff with it, but he couldn't yield much antibiotic out of it. And it was Flory, an Aussie who, with Chain, made penicillin into something more palatable for our bodies. And he's been called by people like former Prime Minister Robert Menzies, as in terms of world well-being, Flory was the most important man ever born in Australia.

He's saved up to 80 million people plus. And if you remember the very first time that penicillin was used on a person, it was in Oxford and it was a police officer. And unfortunately, it worked at first, but then they couldn't yield enough to keep it going to save him and he died. But they were the doctors that were part of that process, that were doing the first tests on humans to show that it could be something that would save us. Wow. Yeah. I've never heard of them. Like, honestly, I'd never heard of those two names ever.

Yeah, you've got to be the guy. who comes up with the accidentally discovered, went away on holiday, came back to find mold in my petri dish. You can't just be the, oh, we turned it into something that was genuinely useful, it turns out. Yes. How annoying. And the other guy, chain, equally amazing.

He was a Jewish scientist in Nazi Germany. He came over to the UK. He was given a position at the University College Hospital by a friend of the podcast, JBS Haldane. And he then met up with Florian's. They came up with the men. So yeah, awesome history, two unrecognized people, certainly on a popular scale, who changed the world. So cool. And then there's Florian chain person who came out with Yakult, apparently.

That's basically probiotics, isn't it? Oh, okay. I see. I think they work in probiotics. I'm not necessarily sure they invented Yakult. Okay. Something similar. Apologies to Florian if you did. Very cool. Such a cool connection to see. That must have been a really exciting moment. I have a fact here from Giles McNeil. This is such a cool fact, very cool spot. The fact is that before the song Heartbreak Hotel was sung and recorded by Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley, it was first sung and recorded by an Elvis impersonator. What? And it was before Elvis was even that famous. What is going on? This is this person who writes in, Giles is citing rock and rollers. searcher Andrew Hickey, who says that Heartbreak Hotel is written by three people called Tommy Durdon, May Axton and Glenn Reeves. And it was Glenn Reeves who didn't want credit for the song himself because apparently he thought it was ridiculous. So instead, he thought

there's this bloke called Elvis, who I've heard sung a few little ditties here and there. I think it might suit his silly voice. So he recorded a demo of the song, but did it in an Elvis impersonation to send to Elvis to say, look how much this suits your style. And he sent the Elvis impersonation to Elvis himself. And then Elvis thought, yeah, that's good. I'll do that. Impersonating my own self. That's very cool.

So cool. I read a fact the other day, which is to do also with a songwriter for an Elvis song. I think it was for a hound dog. This person was out on an Atlantic ship out in the ocean. And something happened. There was a disaster. And the ship went down. they had to be rescued.

People thought they might have been dead. They were brought back to the mainland, probably America, I'm guessing. And at the sort of dock standing there was the co-writer of Hound Dog, yelling to the guy on the ship who's just been saved, Elvis has recorded Hound Dogg. Elvis has recorded Hound Dog. He was like, yes. It's more important than saying, are you okay? Okay, here is an email we got.

through from Joshua Ghanie. And Joshua said that they found a news article and they've read it many times because they love it so much and they wanted to send it us to see if we would enjoy it. And it was about an Australian man who became wedged naked in his washing machine during a prank. This man is known only as Lawrence and he told the newspapers that he decided to have a bit of sneaky fun while in the nude, but climbed in the washing machine and found that he couldn't get fully out and had to call for assistance. Basically, he got in, crossed his legs, and then couldn't

uncross them in a way that he could get back out again. And so the article's really good. There's so many good lines in it. For instance, the self-proclaimed practical joker says he is known among his friends as Lawrence, he's always nude. And why do we know why he's got that nickname? I think it might be something to do with his practical jokes. But on the other hand, like, who is he joking? Who is he joking if he's climbing into a washing machine naked? That's a funny joke for that someone else who's trying to put a wash on.

That's a good practical joke. If he lives alone and it's just his washing machine, it's very confusing. But provided he's got a housemate. Do you think, like, his trick is the housemate throws the clothes in? And then he quickly puts all the clothes on so he's not naked anymore and then climbs out and goes, ta-da. Oh, that's so good. Yes.

And they go, God, I didn't know it had that kind of cycle. Yeah. I think that would have to be an industrial size washing machine, wouldn't it? Do you think I couldn't get into any washing machine? But if I go to the laundromat, I reckon I could definitely get into one of those. I think like some places would have top loaders that you would be able to get into. You know, in the older days, they were a bit more common, weren't they? And I think in America there might be more common, maybe.

But that wouldn't be impressive, I don't think, getting in a top loader. I assumed it was a front loader because that's what's really impressive. Yeah. If you can get into one. Is it about being impressive or is it, oh, you're naked at a tubular? That's hilarious. Oh, you're right. You're right.

It's not a circus. It's just a weirdo. You're right. Anyway, so they worked through his bathroom cabinet of soaps and lotions, tried to work him free. And then in the end, they turned to olive oil. and they managed to get him out. And they said actually it was useful that he was naked

because it made it easier for him to slip straight out. If the olive oil was on his clothes, then it might not have been quite as slippy or easy to slip him out. Very nice. And he said that the whole thing was like a birthing. And he thanked the emergency workers for keeping their composure and not asking too many questions. I sympathise with the lockdown.

legs. I've had that before where I put my legs into a, that cross them over each other and I locked in and I couldn't get out. Yeah, bad for men. Men are particularly bad at cross legs, I think. Much worse than women. That's so weird the olive oil thing, because it's been in the news this

week that a girl got wedged between two rocks on a school trip in somewhere like Dorset or Devon and she was stuck for ages and they tried loads and loads of stuff like chipping away at the rock and eventually it was olive oil that freed her. Interesting. So always carry olive with you on a survival expedition.

That is amazing. As a kid, you would always hear of people getting their head stuck in railings, wouldn't you? Yeah. Like, basically, kids' heads grow as they're getting older, and suddenly a railing that you can put your head in and out of suddenly becomes a railing that you can only put your head in and you can't get it out because your ears get stuck. Yes.

And my memory of that is people would always use, maybe not olive oil when I was a kid, because I think olive oil only became fashionable when I was in my 20s. I think people would use like vegetable oil and soap and stuff, wouldn't they? Yeah. That was as a kid growing up in Hong Kong, one of the big TV shows was Full House. Don't know if you got it here, but Bob Sagitt was dad. And there was a group of daughters in the family. And the middle girl, there was a rumor that she was at Disneyland or a theme park

and she had put her head through the rails by a roller coaster. And it came down and it took her head straight off and that she was dead. Now, back in the day, there was no internet. So that was just at school. That's what we thought had happened. She had died. That was always part of... I haven't actually Googled it.

Oh, well, look, we're working from home. You're on your laptop. Why don't you check? You guys get on with the business of actual facts and I'll... I just feel like you can't leave that hanging. Yeah. I was desperate for the happy ending reveal and it turns out she's now Madonna. Because especially if she was killed in that way, I'll definitely cut it.

Yes, yes. She was not. She is alive. She's alive. She's alive. Yeah. She's missing half her head, though. That's okay.

Just took off the top. Here's one from Alexis Grant. A lot of heliconia are hummingbird pollinated. So heliconia is a type of plant. And the hummingbirds sometimes also move flower mites that live in the heliconia around in their nostrils. The mites only get off when they get to another flower of the same species, even if the hummingbird visits flowers of multiple species. Oh, wow. What if the hummingbird sneezes really violently when it's visiting a plant of another species? They still manage to

cling onto those nose hairs and wait. Does not recount the email from Alexis. But I think it's pretty amazing that they're using these hummingbirds as Uber's. Yeah, really good. And know when to get off as well. Yeah, so more like a bus, I suppose. Like pigeons on the underground. Yeah. These heliconia are quite cool because they want their pollen to get into the hummingbird's face as well as the mites. They don't care about the mice. They just want the pollen. And they have like a jack-in-the-box mechanism.

So when the hummingbird goes into the heliconia plant, it goes, and then hits them in the face and they get a load of pollen all over them. Is that why it's called helico? Because helico, you use. assume as a spiral and is it like a spirally spring that byo-y-y-y-y-up? Do you think? Email doesn't recount, does it? It doesn't, but you know what? I was googling heliconia and it's also the name of a butterfly and it's also the name of like a mountain in Greece or something. So I thought when I was Googling it, oh, I bet it's named after that mountain in Greece, but I didn't check it out because I thought no one's going to ask that.

No, it'd be a real dick move, wouldn't it? When we know that you probably haven't happen to Google the answer. Yeah. What kind of person does that? Can I share another fact? Sent in by Rick Minat. I know it's a fact Andy would want us to hear. He says that while discussing the relative safety of being stuck on a train engine during a tornado, I discovered that manufacturers are required by law to test the windows on engines by launching a 24 pound cinder block into the glass at 30 miles an hour. Wow. So good. And then he said, seeing as it's an amazing, amusing fact about a dull subject, I thought Andy would enjoy it. But he does provide the workings and it is indeed true. Cinder blocks are hurled at 30 miles an hour. I don't know what from?

From a, from a cannon? That's incredible. Yeah, that's amazing. Really cool. A fun job to have being the person who holds that. I wonder what the protocol is, you just got to sit in a train while it passes, right? There's nothing else really you can do. What do you mean? What do you mean, sorry? If you're in a train during a tornado. Oh, you're still thinking about the tornado. I thought you meant while they're testing it by throwing the cinder block out of it. I don't think they actually put anyone in it at the time. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, your conductor here.

We're just being held at this station to quickly run a cinder block into the window next to you. I reckon they'd go into a tunnel, wouldn't they? Oh, good shout. Good shout. I don't know. Yeah, how many tunnels are out there in Kansas, you know? No hills to go through, is there? Yeah.

It's very famously flat. A tough choice for that train driver. When your conductor says this train now terminates at Oz, you know, you're in trouble. You know in The Wizard of Oz, the book, I don't think it says tornado. I think it says cyclone. And when the book was first published, the head of the US Meteorological Organization wrote to L. Frank Baum saying that there is never in history and there never will be a cyclone in Kansas because it's physically a. impossible to have cyclones in Kansas. Oh. Really?

And there's some technical difference between a tornado and a cyclone, because you do get tornadoes there for sure. Yeah, right. Oh, wow. Well, I bet he felt stupid. But that ruined a massive paycheck that came his way. Okay, okay. Well, it is the end of your facts as amazing as they were.

Like every week, we really love getting your facts. And if you have any facts, indeed, then send them to podcast. at QI.com, and he will check through them and send us the very best for a future little fish. But before we go today, we have the small matter of dishing out some of our facts to custodians on Patreon. So who has a fact to give out? Let's give a fact to Tova Cooper. Your fact is now the Millennium Bug is going to hit in 2038. Uh-oh.

When we did that fact, it felt like a long way in the future, didn't it? Yeah, we're close now. We're getting close. Yeah. That's kind of sort of a scary fact to have framed up on your wall, as I imagine this person will. It's a good reminder. It might make you live life a bit more, knowing that the end of time is on its way. Oh, yeah.

Memento Mori. Yeah. Although if you do want reassurance, I think it was just like the three computers. that still work off an old system will break down. Just in case you do look at it every day and have a small heart attack thinking the end is nigh, I think it just means your old computer might have a rough time. Okay, well, that's nice to know. How about this for Michael Woolard?

This is the fact that the diaries of scientist Richard Buckminster Fuller took up 80 meters of shelf space. Wow. What a self-involved teenager he was. We just liked a big font. Yeah. Font. Do you write your diaries in a font? Actually, people probably do type up their diaries now, don't they? I loved doing that particular fact when you find a character like him, spaceship earth and all of those incredible inventions that he did. He only slept like 20 minutes at a time or something. He had, was it called Dimaxian sleep or something that he did? Yes.

Yes, wasn't that his word that he made up, Dimaxian, which was like, and all his designs were based on this Dimaxian concept. And I can't remember what it was. It was just like, to the max. Sleep maxing. Sleep maxing. Let's give another one out. This is for Jonah Yerick. And your fact is, in 1511, the people of Brussels protested against the government by filling the city with dozens of pornographic snowmen.

That's great. That was a great one to research. 1511, to be doing that. That's one of those. Aren't we all the same, you know, no matter which? bit of history. Yeah. I can't remember how

porny what they were. Do we think it was just sort of carrots for penises? I think they were a little bit more than that. Wow. You're right though. Like back then it might have been

just the snow woman was showing her ankle, you know. Exactly. Or like maybe all snowmen are pornographic, but you can't really tell because it's so cold.

You just can't see their genitals. Nice. Okay. This one is now going out to Alex Borodovsky. And Alex, your fact is that in 2015, Australian scientists named a newly discovered species of fish, the blue bastard. Love it. I think the reason was that it was a bastard to catch. I think that's why they called it the bastard. It wasn't that it was just always born out of

wedlock. I don't think so. This one is for Hamish McClellan and this is that Harris Hawks stand on each other's shoulders to get a better view. I can still picture. I think there's one photo of, I want to say four Harris Hawks standing one on top of the other. I may have hallucinated that, but this is amazing because you'd think they'd just fly. Yeah, you would.

So why do they do it? I guess it's hard to fly on the spot, or maybe they're disguising themselves to get into a club. Yes. They just have one overcoat over them. Is that right? Exactly. He stole it from a snowman.

That's a good point. At what point is a height that it's worth expending the energy? It certainly can't be just double your height because that's why they stand on their shoulders. Worth expending the energy to fly? To fly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Once sort of hawk number 19 says, shall I go up there? It's just like, should we all just fly? This is getting silly. But also, I think like if you're a hawk, right, let's be generous and say they're two feet tall, which I bet they're not.

Like if you were to get three of them on top of each other That's still only what six feet It's not like Exactly The only way it could be possibly useful Is if they're in like tall grass or something Oh maybe it's that Or a very low wall

Or a ha ha ha ha ha Yeah We'll never know unless we listen back to that episode Okay here is another one This one now is under the custodianship of Carla And Carla your fact is that Pope Innocent the 8th was given the nickname

The Honest because he was the first Pope to acknowledge that he had illegitimate children. Good on him. A load of blue bastards. Oh, that's so good. Pope Innocent the 8th. So noble. So noble.

But it was back in the day in the Catholic Church. I think everyone could shagg as much as they wanted. I think I remember reading that the only reason people made celibacy a thing was because people kept giving their illegitimate sons loads of land that otherwise would have gone to the church and so the church decided to say okay you've got to stop having sex

because we want your land. God doesn't actually care. God is pro-sex. I'm pretty sure that's one of the main you know. How interesting. Okay who's the new Pope? What's he called? Robert Provost. I don't know what his papal name is. Oh yeah. But Rob, you need to get on this. Yeah. Bring shagging back.

Yeah, I wonder what at the meeting when they were like, okay, listen, Pope Innocent the 8th has been having a lot of kids. What are we going to do about the name? Do we go for Pope Guilty the first or do we go for the honest and just lean into it and just say, well done? And they clearly went for that. Let's get another one. This is for Jill.

Jill, your fact is now that in 2015, Spanish builders accidentally destroyed a 6,000-year-old Neolithic tomb that looked like a picnic table and replaced it with a new and better looking picnic table. That's just progress. That's just improving the area. You're right. This was great. This is one of yours, isn't it, Dan?

It was one of my favorites, I think. It's amazing. Some of these are like little children, aren't they, when you hear them again? Yeah. There you are. Where have you been up to lately? Well, you're moving into Jill's now. You're going to be on her wall, so enjoy.

Yeah, really lovely. All right, here's a final one, and this is to move into the home of Michelle Kilpatrick. Here you go, Michelle. Here's a fact for you, and that's the fact that for Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953, people dressed up as television sets. It's lovely.

Because they were new, basically. People were excited because it was on telly. Yeah, stuff was on telly. People had tellies. Yeah. It's like us. It's like how we always dress up as. TikTok now.

Yes. I'm dressed up as TikTok right now. You are? Yeah, it's a really good costume. Okay, thank you very much to Michelle, Jill, Carla, Hamish,

Jonah, Alex, Michael and Tova. You now have some brand new facts to hang on your wall and we really hope you cherish them and enjoy them. If you two would like to become a custodian of a fact,

then go to patreon.com slash clubfish and join at the highest level and that is where you can do that. But if you do not want to do that, then do not worry because we will be back next week with another little fish and in a couple of days with a big fish. For now, it's goodbye from me, James Harkin.

It's goodbye from Daniel. So long. And it's goodbye from Anna Tashinsky. Bye. Goodbye.