No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Furby in Space

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Jamie Morton discuss water beds, water retention, Pentagon Pokemon and PMSL. 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/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things of Fish, which is the first in our run of live summer shows at the Soho Theatre in London. We have all sorts of amazing guests lined up for you for the rest of the summer. I won't go into that now because I really don't want to spoiler it, especially for the people who have tickets. But what I can tell you is that in this week's show, we were joined by Jamie Morton. Now, you will know Jamie if you listened to No Such Things of Fish before because he has been on quite a few shows. This is his third appearance, but of course he is most well known for being one third of, let's be honest, the greatest British podcast of all time. My Dad Wrote a Pornow.

Now, one important thing to say about that is that the My Dad Routes Porno team have chosen some of their funniest moments from across a six-season run, including some unheard gems, and they'll be releasing Best Off episodes once a month, starting on Monday the 31st of July. I absolutely can't wait for them. best off shows. I'm sure you can't either. But in the meantime, please do enjoy this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish with Jamie Martin. Okay, on with a podcast. Hello and welcome to

another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Soho Theatre in London. Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin and Jamie Morton. And once again, we have gathered around the microphone. with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Jamie. My fact this week, boys, is in 1782, a woman found a drag performance so hilarious

that she literally died of laughter. Wow. Probably not going to happen tonight. Not with me here, for sure. But yeah, isn't that mad? Yeah, it's insane. So this was a, this was an act that was a, it was a play called Beggars Opera,

and someone called Charles Bannister, who was playing a character called Polly Peacham. And, yeah, to give us the story. Yeah, so Mrs. Fitzherbert, okay. Suspiciously, there's no first name. But she was a widow of a Northamptonshire clergyman. She was quite, it was quite salacious that she was even at this kind of submersive show.

Okay. And she found it so funny that this man came out and he was described as lantern jawed with five o'clock shadow and a double chin in a lovely pretty dress. And she just found it so funny, she just didn't stop laughing. Yeah.

For three days. Oh, wow. That's the amazing thing. Like, she had to leave the theatre, didn't she? Because she was laughing so much. But that's not when she died. No. The newspaper report said she couldn't get the figure from her memory.

So it's just every morning she just wake up and go, Ah! I mean, what a sheltered fucking life. I'm sorry, like, if that makes you laugh that much to kill you. Maybe it was a really good show. Yeah. Oh, The Beggars Opera. It's a classic.

And the actor, Bannister, he was one of the great actors of the day. He was very funny. He was famous. A good name, too. Charles Bannister. Yeah. Yeah, so John Gaye, the Beggars Opera, actually. That was the first play which had songs in it that were part of the narrative,

the Beggers Opera. So it's pretty much the first musical, I would say. Yeah. And it was so popular, there was a thing called Begermania. And so you could go around, you could buy matchboxes, fans, fireguards, everything, with this show on. Oh, it's like no such thing as a fish. On your tables, there is a merchandise leaflet. I think it's got a QR code.

That genuinely is, I can see it right there. Go nuts. Get some of that merch. Jamie, please, we rely on this. We rely on the merch. It's all that's keeping us going. I was looking at people who had died on stage. And I have like a weird connection to one of these.

So, Molière. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Very famous French playwright actor. He collapsed on stage, ironically, playing the lead in his final play called The Imaginary Invalid. So he literally died playing a hypochondriac. Right. And I have also played the lead in the imaginary invalidate.

Imaginary in reality. Really? Yes. Yes, I know. That's cool. In my youth, it's not that cool. Andy, but thank you. I sort of said that on autopilot, Jamie. I wasn't actually thinking, that is really cool.

You don't care at all. But no, yeah. Back in my youth when I used to, you know, tread the boards. I didn't die, obviously, but, you know. The thing about him, actually, is because he was an actor, in those days, actors couldn't go to heaven. So, if you, I'm not sure anyone could go. Well, now, let's not get into that.

That's an ecumenical matter. But like, so the thing was, if you're an actor, it was like, yeah, you had to renounce your acting job before you died. So on your deathbed, you might say, oh, I was never really an actor, or it wasn't a very good one or whatever, and then you would be allowed to go to heaven. If he said, I'm really more of a playwright. I'm more of a sort of immersive media creator, really.

I facilitated the heathens. I wasn't one of them myself. But yeah. And the thing was, is that that meant that he was buried without, he wasn't allowed to be buried in a churchyard or anything like that because he died so quickly after this event. Wow, okay. I went to see a Moliere player a few years ago.

Starring Jamie Morton? No, it was. How was I? Well, it wasn't one with you in, but I did leave it halfway through. Did you? Yeah. So in a sense, Moliere died a second time that night. Wow.

I'd say it's in the translation. I think he was a fan. Fantastic playwright. I'm sure it is. There was a school party all around us. It is. It was tricky. They were not having a good time.

And neither were we. I've got a little quiz for you guys. Oh, great. All right. So this is, I'm going to say a thing, right, an object. And you have to say what it's used for by the Royal Shakespeare Company as stage gore. Okay. Oh, great.

So in 2010, for example. Oh, but Shakespeare specifically? Yeah. Okay, right. These are all used by the RSC, right? So in 2010, the, the, well, the, we're used. the Royal Shakespeare Company, they used three tins of lichies during their summer season?

Bubos. Not bubos? Eyebles. Well, it wasn't actually in everyone play a game. That's school party's in again. Please do. No, just... Wait for a second, just let the...

Eyeballs. Yeah, that's it. They can edit that. We can edit that. No, well, well done. Well done to the people who knew it, and thank you. And, yeah, yeah, okay. That's the...

Because... What scene, yeah. Where they blind the Duke of Gloucester. Oh, yeah. He actually knew. That's very impressive. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, here's another one.

Chicken fillets. Chicken fillets. Boobes for bras to pump up the bras. Actual... Well, that's a real thing. No, it's not. That colloquially called chicken fillets. They're not actual chicken fillets.

Well, I've got an Amazon delivery for my wife that she's going to be very confused about. Flapping skin and muscles. Oh, nice. Yeah, no, it's... Anyone in the audience? Euse. It's tongues.

Tung. Tung. Oh. And finally, tinned pairs. Tinned pairs. Tennis. No. Nothing.

Tennis, I didn't even say that. Did you say testicles? I said half of it and then I pulled back. Yeah. I think testicles is a good call. Yeah. Okay, testicles. All right.

Idiot. You complete fool death. No, it's penises. Pinuses, tin pairs for penises. Sorry, what? Are you serious? Yeah. Don't...

Andy. What? Sorry, what's the question? I've either been buying some really odd pairs or I need to see a doctor. I think they're shaped a little bit, but I think it's the consistency and, I mean, the consistency of a tin pair.

Also, what are they doing with these fake penises that they need a good consistency? I'm not sure I've seen that Shakespeare play where they all get their cocks out. Which one is that? Is it measure for measure? That's right. I don't actually, yeah.

Wow, that's amazing. There we go. And they have real, like, they have an amazing department. And they had their fake blood as a... Could it be that you put it in your stockings and it gives you a shape, maybe? I don't think it was for some,

there's some horrible... Like, Titus Andronicus has lots of terrible torture, gore and all this stuff. So, like, it's rare. It's not, it's not completely... across the canon that you need a tin pair in the department. But they've got these... A tin pair?

Their fake blood recipe is secret, and they've got three different consistencies. And there was an interview with Helen Hughes, who's one of their very senior prop and design people, and she was being interviewed about fake blood. And the interviewer asked her, like, what do you use for your fake blood? And she said, what kind of blood? There's venal blood, arterial blood, nudely dry blood,

crusty old blood. They've got... They can do all of it. All the bloods. She's an artist. She knows her cross. I know. Heaven.

There was a story which is, because you got this story from a Giles Brandreth anecdote book, didn't you? Yeah, theatre anecdote book. The word fact would be questionable. Yes, I did. But there was, so there was a guy who was called William McRedy,

and it was early 19th century Shakespearean plays that he was in, and he forgot basically to put blood on his hand because he was in Macbeth and he needed blood on his hand. And he went to the side of stage, and it wasn't there, it wasn't on the side, and he desperately needed it.

But there happened to be a bystander there. So he punched him in the nose. Swipe the blood off his nose and ran back on. According to Giles. And that's what falls down. That's incredible. But what happens when you die? What do you mean?

What would happen to you as a person if you died? What would you become? A ghost? A ghost? I got so into theater ghosts. Oh, right. Researching this. There are so many.

Yeah, yeah. Some of them are really tragic. So actually, where this woman died of laughter at the Theatre Royal Jury Lane, yes. They're kind of, they've got, I think it's the most haunted theater in the world. Or they claim that, you know.

And their kind of main event, their big star is the, what's his name, the man in gray. Okay. Who can be seen on like the upper circle, I think. and he just like has a big cloak and is very menacing. And it's actually found it in truth because when it was being renovated in the 1800s, they kind of found a bit of a fake bit of the wall

and they looked into it and it was a little cubbyhole and inside that cubbyhole was a skeleton of a man with a dagger through his chest. Wow. And that's the exact place where this ghost has been spotted for centuries. Very cool. Dan believes it. Don't believe it?

The theory of everything else. I think I feel like that would be retroactively have been inserted into a wall in order to... Really? Yeah, I've got very skeptical recently. We need to move on, guys, to our next fact. Well, laughter can be very dangerous. Yeah.

Right? So there was a study from the University of Birmingham. It was a meta-analysis, so they looked at loads of papers. And they found that laughter can cause abdominal hernia, dislocated jaw. incontinence, fainting, infectious diseases, because when you laugh, you breathe in a lot and you get lots of germs in your mouth, yeah? Thanks for coming, everybody. There's a thing called Boer Harvards Syndrome,

which is you laugh so much that you rupture your esophagus, that can happen. But despite this, they have laughing contests, and this is becoming quite common in America now. Basically, you go in and you just try and make each other laugh, and there's loads of different types of laugh. It's like best giggle, and best knee-slapping laugh

and best belly laugh and stuff like that. And apparently the woman who won the American championship last year, she didn't tell anyone until afterwards, but she pissed her pants in the first round. Oh, wow. Is that an illegal move? It feels like it must be, right? Yeah.

Wow. It was only like a couple of years ago. I pissed myself while laughing. And it's honestly, it's one of those moments where it's not embarrassing. It's great. It's a really wonderful feeling. You feel like you've done laughter next level.

You feel like you've... What was it? It was a late night. I was quite drunk. Someone said a joke. And I just laughed so hard that I just... And it wasn't even like a little bit of wee. It was like, like, total flood.

And I honestly, I did not apologize. I was like, guys, you all need to try this. I think we've forgotten how great this feels. Okay, well, we've got three more facts. Okay. Time for fact number two, and that is James. My fact this week is that the first modern water bed was filled with jelly rather than water. The problem was that it was too heavy to move and started to go rancid after a few weeks.

Isn't that incredible that it was jelly? I find that one of the most astonishing facts we heard on this show. It makes sense, really, doesn't it, if you want something nice and soft to lie on? So was it like, was the bed like kind of the mould, the jelly mould, if you like, and you pour it? it in and then it sets. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I guess it must have been really because you'd be weird to just shove in solid jelly

into it. I'm not quite sure. He also used corn starch as well. So corn starch would be soft, but then it's non-Newtonian. So as you sort of push on it, it would get more solid. Yeah.

But again, that went rancid as well. This is a, what's a liquid that doesn't go rancid? But he's so good. So he started it not as a bed, it started as a chair. Yeah, so Charles Hall, this is right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Charles Hall. So it was called the very first thing he invented,

it was called the incredibly horrible thing. And it was a chair. It weighed 300 pounds. It had liquid starch inside it and had a vinyl skin. And the point was that when you sat into it, the chair would creep up around you because you were molding into it. It sits on you. Kind of.

Eventually, yeah. Kind of, yeah. Okay, so he made that. But what he really, really wanted to do was make an entire room that was a waterbed slash chair. Oh, wow. So it was almost a bit like a padded cell, I suppose.

But you would walk in, close the door, and wherever you were, you would just sort of sink into the wall or sink into the floor. Oh, my God. But it was only because it was so expensive to make that he decided to go for the waterbed instead. Gosh.

What was expensive, manufacturing the jelly or the materials? Well, the thing is, if you want to buy a room, you kind of need to have, buy a house, as well. Do you know what I mean? You need to, like, renovate your whole house to do that. Whereas if you just want to buy a bed or a chair, you could rent. Yes, you could. Oh, but I don't think I want to rent a waterbed.

No? No, I mean you could rent a flat and put your waterbed in it. Yeah, you could do that as well. Have any of you ever slept on a waterbed? Yeah, my parents used to have one. I don't think I have. When I was a kid, really? Yeah, really.

They're so uncomfortable. Yeah. Are they? They're horrible. I thought they were. I read about them said they're amazing. Like they're the equivalent of pissing yourself while laughing. But it's that good.

Maybe mine was like, like, it was a friend's parents' bed when I was a kid. And it was like being seasick. It would like move. It was honestly vile. Huh. And it was really cold. Like they hadn't heated the water.

Oh, but you can't get those now. Oh, thank God. Okay, well, it's all changed. No, Charles Hall, these days, who invented this thing, what, 50 years ago, He now, he has two waterbeds. No, that doesn't sound very impressive, but he's got,

because they come in different, it's different bladders. You can say how many bladders are there in your waterbed? So he's got one king-sized single bladder. Oh, wow. But he's also... If only you had a king-sized bladder that night. He's also got a, in his guest room,

he's got a double mattress, which has adjacent double bladders, which, so you can heat one. If you want your bed a bit warmer than whoever you're sleeping next to. Oh, really? Oh, that's excellent. You can hot water bottle your...

Your own... Your bed is the hot water bottle. Wow. Oh, you're actually selling it? Maybe we should look at that one, guys. That's incredible. This first one was, the one that Hall invented it, I think it was 1968.

He invented it. He called it the pleasure pit. And we should probably talk about the slightly... It was a slightly sexy reputation they had. Yeah. Oh, yeah. One of the manufacturers in the early days was called Wet Dream. There was an advert...

I don't know. It's not great advert. But it said she'll admire you for your car. She'll respect you for your position and she'll love you for your waterbed. So it was a kind of... He had that to begin with. So he had invented it.

He had patented it, but everyone just did sort of spin-off waterbeds. And he said that there was one company he noticed that it was sort of sexy because their other products were orgy butter and things like that, right? And then when you read into... Orgy butter. I did a lot of Googling.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We've had to switch to Orgy Marge because of the cost of living. Sorry. So Orgy Butter was a thing. And then when you look into, as you say, the sexual connotations about the early sales of the waterbed.

So a lot of it was that it was basically like having a threesome because the bed acted as the third person because it molded around you as you. It feels like a third person as part of the... But hang on. I'm sorry. Just like, let's just like, zoom out on this. Taking this like, I'm just telling you about my experiences.

Well, these are the facts. Well, you're telling us a lot of them. Your parents did have one, so you probably conceived in it, were you? Are you from a waterbed? Probably. Oh, God. You're a water baby. That's nice.

Because, like, I don't want to be, like, let's not get too graphic, but like, there's got to be a purchase problem. Supposedly not. Supposedly not. It's a waterbed. Like, you're like, sloshing around. Apparently. Apparently, they were very popular. I know they were popular.

At one point, I think a fifth of mattresses being sold were waterbed mattresses. Yeah, I read that. In the 80s. In 1980s. In fact, in 1987, which is the year I was born. And Hugh Heffner famously bought one for the Playboy Mansion

that was upholstered in Tasmanian possum hair. Isn't that the most disgusting thing you've ever... Ever heard. They're not very big. Possums, are they? Tasmanian possums has. Yeah. Yeah.

So it had this reputation for being very kind of, like a sexual aid. Yeah. Because another tagline for it was two things are better on a waterbed and one of them sleep. Hmm.

I know. Like, one in five, kinky people are just like getting off, well, your parents, one of them. Yeah, two of them. Two of them, yeah. Getting off on waterbeds.

And honestly, must have felt so sick because it's the worst thing to sleep on. Isn't there a point where you stop, if you stop moving, the bed wall of it will stop moving? No, it keeps moving. Oh, okay. You're kind of like, you're lost at sea.

It's extraordinary experience. I can't. I can't imagine you ringing up the Coast Guard. Where are you? Away from the sexual side, it was also seen as quite therapeutic. So, for example, the friends of Charles Hall, when he first invented it, said, well, you should name it the bed womb, because it feels womb-like. It feels very...

It's a good line. It's a good line. It's a good line. Oh, call you a therapist. And so, and then there was, in 1988, the American Journal of Disease of Children published an article in which they said that for infants that were born to drug-addicted mothers,

if you kept them on waterbeds rather than bassinets, that would be better for them. This sort of constant womb-like movement going on as they sleep. Yeah. So it was seen as therapeutic as well. Well, the thing is that he did invent the modern waterbed, but actually there were, earlier ones, and they were used therapeutically.

So they were used during the war to prevent bed sores. And these weren't like the ones that we had in the 80s, but they were just kind of like, I don't know, like you know, one of those blow-up mattresses, but with water inside of it. Mark Twain wrote about them, Elizabeth Gasco wrote about them. Charles Holt couldn't get a patent originally

because they'd been described by Robert A. Heinlin, quite a few of his books mentioned them. And when he tried to get a patent, they went, well, it's in all these science fiction books, so you can't have invented it. so he had to change a few things to get that. But when they became quite lame, which was quite quickly, so they were like massive in the early 80s, right?

And then by the late 80s, they were really passe. Like, no one really wanted them anymore. And they had all these waterbeds. They didn't know what to do with them. And they gave them to dairy farmers, and the cows would sit on them. And that still happens. The Queen's cows.

They famously sleep on waterbeds. The King's cow. Well, now the King's cows, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if he's changed it, though, but, you know, sure. Okay, all right. I've been waiting 70 years to kick those cows off that bed. My cows now.

That's what he was waiting for. So most, if you're, they're so heavy. As you say, they're so heavy. Like a normal mattress is quite heavy. Yeah, yeah. But you fill it with water? You're joking, you know? It's like, so some of them can weigh 900 kilos if you've got a big double or a king.

That's a lot. And there's a concern in some buildings. if you're in a flat or you're on an upper floor, obviously, and it'll go through the floor. And most New York leases contain a standard clause which says no water beds. Right. Probably because of, it's a bit, you know,

maybe it's just bureaucracy, but in California, on the other coast, the Civil Code says, landlords cannot discriminate against people who own waterbeds. No. As long as they have taken out waterbed insurance. Right. The responsible thing to do, you go to do, though.

It is. Well, I quite like it as well, in 1990, speaking of California, the Compton Fire Department within their fire station changed all of the mattresses to water mattresses. Not so that if there was an emergency... Just if they needed more water, no, no. It was the effect on their back, apparently.

Someone had said, I sleep better on a waterbed, and so they all got there. But that's all been disproven, that it doesn't actually help, because there's a lot of things that helps, like your posture or like your joints. That isn't true. Really? Okay.

Apparently it's not true. I'm just obsessed that there was a waterbed magazine. Oh yeah, I know. In the 80s. I tried finding it today. Yeah, so did you get any luck. No, no, me neither, so... Cool, great.

Okay. But I've bought us a lot of orgy butter. Oh, great, okay, good, good. Can I ask you guys, one last thing? How often do you flip your mattress? Ah, you mean flip it over? What... I mean...

What other interpretation... Are you... I was double checking, because I thought I might have heard said you say, flick your mattress, and I wasn't sure. How often do you flick your mattress? Twice and nine. No, how often do you flip it?

Well, this is what's amazing. Not as often as I should, I'm sure. And I was planning tomorrow to flip my mattress. Get out of here. No, get lost, you won't. Because both Finela and I are falling off the edges on both sides at the moment. It's gone soft on the sides. On the outer edge?

Yeah, on the outer edge. That's not going to help, though, because it's still going to be the outer edge. I feel like it's upside down anyway, because I noticed recently I've been sleeping on a zip the whole time. And I'm pretty sure that's the wrong side. Okay. Some orgy butter will just sort that right out.

Just rub it in, you'll be fine. Anyway, half of Americans claim they flip it every six months. And I just think half Americans are liars. I think no one possibly does it that much. But why should you flip? I think it's... I can tell you exactly why. You get soft on the outside and you fall off the bed.

That's why we're doing it. Is it not to try and air it out a little bit of it? something. I think it's not the same bit of you're always hitting the same bit of the mattress. Right. So it refreshes it a bit, it moves the scene around. Because mattresses are disgusting because they're full of like skin cells, sweat, like bed bugs. So I think this is the way of just sort of redistributing the skin cells and sweat. You should really get rid. They're so expensive mattresses. Yeah. They're like thousands of pounds. You can't just, because you should really replace them regularly, I think.

But that's why you should get a water burned. Oh yeah, because you just changed the water. Well, not even, you know. Because water doesn't go rancid. Unlike jelly. Yeah, to bring us back to the start of the fact. I need to move us on to our next fact, guys. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that there used to be a room in the Pentagon where employees met specifically to have Pokemon battles. This is a discovery that was made back in 2016. Was there a situation room elsewhere? in the Pentagon where other officials monitor the progress of those Pokemon battles with big screens. Do you think they have tables where they're

pushing a Pikachu along? That's the situation room. That's what it's for. Yeah. So this is Pokemon Go. There was a huge craze particularly about... Still is. Yeah, but there was a... Well, James is... What's that t-shirt

you're wearing, James? This is... I mean, this fact is up my street because I do like Pokemon and changing regimes in countries that I don't like. Oh. It's getting a bit political tonight. James loves Pokemon goes so much.

I don't know if we've ever said this. He likes it so much that when we went for a meeting, for the first time ever, we were going to have a book of the year, no such thing as a fish book, and we were going to pitch it. We ended up being a bit late to the meeting because we were following James,

but it turned out James has foddered a very rare Pokemon down the road from where we were, and we just blindly followed him, and then we were like, where are we? And he was like, yes, snuffelophagus, or whoever it is. It was that week they did a Sesame Street special, wasn't it, of Pokemon Go? Okay, so here's the thing. It's Pokemon Go, and Pokemon Go was the app, and you would go and you would collect the Pokemon's in various different places. You had to walk around, didn't you?

You would walk around, and yeah, and then what they had as part of the app, I've never personally played it, so this is 101 for people at do. You have gyms where you can take the Pokemon, too, the Pokemon you have collected, and they can train there, but they can also battle for dominance of the gym. and those would be plopped all over the world in random spots. And it just so happened that one was in the Pentagon. And so anyone who was an employee there, and it would be specifically employees, because if you ever go on a tour of the Pentagon, you have to leave your phone.

You're not allowed to bring your phone in with you. So it was specifically employees that were going to a very specific spot, and then they'd battle each other for dominance of this gym. And this was a huge problem because the Pokemon app can track where people are going. So their worry within the sort of the Pentagon was that, it shows the roots that people are taking. So if there are secret passages within the Pentagon or even just mapping out the general landscape,

that's something that the information could possibly be hacked into and retrieved. Someone might know that the Pentagon is pentagon-shaped. I mean, that would be awful. Do you imagine? So they said no more Pokemon Go in the Pentagon. Do you know why the Pentagon is Pentagon-shaped? I think this is amazing.

No. It's because they were going to build it on a Pentagon-shaped piece of land. and so they wanted the right shape of building for that piece of land. So it had to be a Pentagon. And then they decided to move it somewhere else. And they thought, well, we've gone so far with this shape.

We might as well keep it. That's literally the only reason. I mean, there's lots of good things about it being pentagon shape. But the reason is just it was supposed to go on this bit of land. That's incredible. What are some of the good things? Well, a circle is very good because you can get from one bit of a circle to another bit of a circle really quickly.

And a Pentagon is a bit of a bit of a circle. is a bit like a circle, but it's got straight edges, so it's easier to build the circle. Yeah. It's more of a circle than a square. Absolutely. Yeah.

Less than a hexagon. Oh, sure. Food for thought tonight. And in the center of the kind of circular pentagon is a now-closed hot dog stand. Oh, yeah. Yeah. During the Cold War,

the Russians always had, at least two missiles aimed at this hot dog stand because they thought that that was the Pentagon's most top secret meeting place. It was just where people got lunch. But they were convinced that it was... Was it because they saw people kind of congregate here? And they'd be like, what, that has to be the...

That's the heart of the Pentagon when actually... It was just a hot dog stand. Was it... Was it part of the Pentagon, this hot dog stand? Yeah, yeah. Okay. It was inside. I still feel like if the missiles hit it,

the other bit of Pentagon... Well, exactly. suffer some damage. They're not very so specific the missile that it's like, yeah. I mean, you know. But it's fascinating, I think. Did they know that the hot dog owners at the time? I think they did because everyone used to call it

ground zero, didn't they? That was the nickname for it. The reason being that if the Russians hit, it would become ground zero and become flattened. Blimey. Right. I read a thing that the Pentagon own, just their cool stuff division. They own a laser which, that's not the cool bit, which

can analyze who you are based on your heartbeat alone. Really? So they'll, you know, you have, all of our hearts have the unique cardiac signature, how our hearts beat. Yeah. And they can point that laser at you from 200 meters away and say, there's Dan, or whatever it might be.

Why, if I've just gone up a flight of stairs or something, would it change my heart beat or? It would change, wasn't it? Possibly. But maybe it changes with the same, but it's still recognisably you. Yeah, they go, that's James, and he's very unfair. There's a few flaws to this thing, though. It's called Jetson, which is what they've developed. And the floors consist of the fact that, A, we don't really have that bigger database of people's unique heartbeats.

So when everyone's coming, they can go, ah, no, no idea. And then the second floor, and this is, you know, 200 meters away we can do this, is their claim. The other problem is, yes, they can do it if you're wearing a T-shirt. But if you're wearing a coat, they can't get you. So it's half useful. Yeah, it's not as good as the fingerprint yet or the eyeball. The light tree.

The light sheet. Thank you. Yeah. I was reading about the Pentagon generally about tour guides because you can go there. I imagine Jamie that's somewhere that you might have gone

but maybe not yet. I haven't. But you love this kind of stuff, right? So, yeah. I actually have a friend that works at the Pentagon. Do you? He didn't reply to my emails

about fun facts about the Pentagon. So the security is really high guys. We're safe. But one of the things is the stats that you get told about the tour guides at work there and one of it is that they walk two to three miles per day but entirely backwards

because when they're doing their tours they never turn around to lead because they always need eyes on the people that they're taking on the tour guide. So they guide themselves. Yeah, they guide themselves by landmarks. So as they're walking back, they'll go, there's the fire extinguisher.

That means, you know, 10 steps until you get to the next corner. then I can round it like that. And so, yeah, every day, two to three miles of backward walking is what they get. And there's loads of ramps. That's really quite impressive to walk down a ramp backwards. Because there's like no lift to the Pentagon.

It was built with one lift. Because it was built during the second world. Yeah. It was made of concrete. And it was in fact, it's nicknamed the Concrete Cobweb, which is cool. And it had one lift for 33,000 people in the early days. Because you can't make lifts out of concrete, I suppose. Right.

And they were saving steel for the war efforts. They didn't want to... But they've now put some more in. They've now got dozens and dozens. I love the idea of you repeatedly emailing your friend who's in the middle of looking at a screen and there's like a bomb counter on it. I know.

It's like, oh, it's somewhere in Ulaanbatar, but I don't know where. Just ping, pink, hi, just wonder if you saw my previous... I was like, fun fact, request email. Is it true that they used to have office chair races down the ramps in the Pentagon? That's all I wanted to know. I think what he's really going is, God damn it, snuffalofugus. Come on. There's Pokemon battle.

No, we can't, because they've banned the Pokemon. Oh, yeah, of course. They also banned, yeah, well, that was the whole thing that you aren't allowed it anymore, right? Yeah, it's out, it's out. Because they're, like, banning things left and right at the Pentagon, like TikTok's now banned at the Pentagon. But they also banned Furbies in 1999.

Because they record, what do you say? Well, they don't, but they kind of marketed themselves as that it's like the thinking toy or the chatty toy or something, I don't know. And they were, like, concerned that it would be a security risk that they would like, yeah, record what you were saying and then say it back to you. That's so funny.

I think it's fair enough to ask people not to bring Furbies in as a, like, irrespect of the spying thing. It's weird having to bring your toy to work. Well, you say that. Pokemon Go is just as kind of maybe childish. I don't want to, you know. But the... I think we say for all ages.

Sure, sure. It's a game. Three in the end, three episodes of no such things. Do they say it? Yeah. Going on high. Not a Furbies was really interesting, wasn't it? Because the way they worked is they had a stock number of English words they had. And they had a stock number of Furby's words.

They were just like, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. And it started off. They could just say the Furby words. And then as you owned it for longer and longer, it kind of put more and more of the English words into the vocabulary. And so people thought that they were picking up words that you were saying to them. But actually it was just programmed to do that. But that's a bit like how it is with children, isn't it?

Yeah. Like they start off talking complete nonsense and then by the end of they're saying like, Nana or dog or whatever. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of, maybe that's why they made the Furby like that. Yeah, I guess so.

Or maybe all children are actually fake. Prove me wrong. Which is more likely, Andy, I don't know. But yeah, like the guy or the CEO of the company that made Furbies had to come out and say, this isn't true. Our Furbies actually aren't as clever as we've been lying about. Wow.

And he also said, you know, there was a rumor that they could, send, they had enough technology to send something into space. And they said that one woman... Wait, wait, sorry. Yeah. Just break that down a bit. Wait, what are the... Somebody thought that Furby's had so much power

that they could send a rocket into space. Are we talking about a complete Cape Canaveral set up? Yes. I don't know. Furbies are all the desks. There's a Furby in it with the briefcase going on to the ship. Actually, if Ila Musk zips down his jacket, it's just fine.

Furby's all the way up. He is a Furby. What does that mean? They could send a rocket to face. It's the AI worry of its day, I guess, right? It's what he was saying. He also said that there was a woman who was absolutely insistent that her Furby

was singing Italian operas. That also wasn't true. Oh my God. But she was hearing... She was convinced that she taught this Furby in Arya, and she's like, my Furby's really good at opera. And he's like, they literally don't have that capability. So they kind of had to backtrack.

on all of their marketing campaign of the these were like, yeah, clever toys but they were actually all pre-programmed in the journal. Scam, it could be a haunted Furby. And that's a ghost I will believe in. Okay, yeah, yeah. Imagine the next, like, crude moon mission

that gets there and finds they have built their own society. Without us noticing. The Furby's beat us to it. Damn it. The dark side of the moon is entirely Furby owned and operated now. Have you heard of Tia, uh, Tia Pikachu? So she is a Chilean school teacher

And they've had a load of protests in Chile Against the government And she decided to go dressed as a giant Pikachu The reason being that her 7-year-old son Had maxed out her husband's credit card Buying Detective Pikachu merchandise They managed to send loads of it back But some of it they couldn't send back

And there's this giant sort of inflatable Pikachu they couldn't send back. Okay, so then they have some protests in Chile, and she decides, well, I'm just going to go dressed as a Pikachu, because why not, it's a protest. And she just became really, really, really famous because there was video of her being water, like, fired with water. Kevin?

Water cannon, yeah, in a big Pikachu costume being forced back. She was shot with rubber bullets dressed as Pikachu. It's absolutely amazing. But because she became so famous, She is part of the team who are writing the new Chilean constitution. So after the protest, they decided that they were going to write a new constitution. So every five clauses, it's just going to say, pika, pika, bicka. It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

My fact is that in 1972, a family who had survived a shipwreck kept themselves alive by giving each other turtle blood enemas. Guys, it's a light-hearted and funny fact. I just imagine, like, that family's seeing each other at Christmas. You know, they haven't said, should we talk about... No, let's never talk about that again. Never talk about it again. No, go on. Give us the context.

This comes from an amazing piece that was in the Financial Times by a writer called Kitty Drake, and she was interviewing people who had real knowledge of shipwreck and being cast away. And she spoke to a man called Douglas Robertson, who was sailing, around the world with his family, his siblings, and his parents. He was 18 years old, and their yacht was attacked by killer whales. So they were halfway across the Pacific. They completely battered the yacht. The family all abandoned ship into a small dinghy that was, I think there was seven people,

six or seven people in this dinghy that was designed for one fewer than the number of people who ended up in it. They were 200 miles from the Galapagos, and the wind was going in the wrong direction. So they were really in trouble. They spent 38 days stranded in the Pacific, and they were. were sailing towards the doldrums. They were trying to get weirdly to the doldrums because there was a better chance of being spotted and detected where they were heading to. So the doldrums is where there's not as much wind or... Exactly. Sorry, yeah, the region where there's no rain. But it does get

lots of rain. So anyway, so they're in big trouble. They did manage to get some turtles on board and they had to hunt the turtles that approached them. And they used their blood as soup. So that's a good thing. Then unfortunately, the water ran very low and they only had the old fish polluted rainwater in the bottom of their dingy. And it wasn't safe to drink. But the mother of the family, Lynn, was a nurse, and she realized you could absorb it safely through your bottom.

And so, everyone in the family got a rain. Guys, this is funnier than we're... I feel like it's tension in the room. They all make it. They all made it and they got picked up. It was all right. Spiler alert, honey. They were all right.

But anyway, she worked out brilliant and intuition that you could absorb it through your bottom. So everyone in the family got a rain and turtle blood enema and it gets into your system, but it doesn't go through your digestive system. I'm getting confused when you say the enema bits. What do you mean? Up the bum. Squirted up the bum.

Oh. What have you been researching? Well, because I read, I read. Oh. Where, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan. Just, where does the orgy butter go? Think in those terms. That's way more disgusting than what I thought.

Yeah, it's horrible. Because that's the thing. Like it's not just turtle blood. It's disgusting rainwater. It's like infected fish guts water. It's like, it's foul. So the point is, but ingenious. Yeah, it's amazing.

If you drink this stuff, it's got all sorts of horrible things in it and it can make you really, really sick. Now, if you go the other way, then there's a way for the water to go into your body through your rectum. Yeah. But because you're already getting disgusting things going down there anyway, your body is protected against those disgusting things.

So you can still get the water, but it won't get the bacteria and all that. So here's what I thought. I thought they were removing the rectal membrane from the turtles and using that as a, as a bag to collect the water. Genuinely, that's what the future is. Yeah, a bag to collect the water? Well, you need to collect water to drink it through your fucking mouth, right? It's like, how much water are you collecting?

It's got a massive fucking shell on it. If you want to keep water, if you ever get a turtle, you want to keep water. Don't take the little bag out of its anus, just turn it upside down. We've got to get to its asshole. Jesus, wow. Turns out, it's Dan's last appearance on those since I'm going to sing as a fish as well.

I'd love to see you on, like, one of those reality shipwrecked shows on. Meanwhile, on Dan's Island, thanks of God, for a bad, for worse. Cool, that makes, yeah. Oh, Daniel. Weirdly, I still think your one makes, like, sense. I mean, it's incredibly clever. It's incredibly clever.

And it is the thing that saved their lives. I mean, they were really on the, you know, they were struggling. And they all just trusted Lynn when she said that. She's a nurse. I get that, but like, how often are you? She's a nurse, then. Okay. That's not common knowledge, I would say.

I don't know. Wow. Yeah. What I think's amazing is that there was the group, there was the husband and wife. And I think they had, was it three or four kids? It was three. There were four, but one of them, got off before this leg of the journey.

Yeah, but that was lucky. Fuck that. It's cool, I'll die. I'll just die. It's cool. So in this family of everyone putting stuff up their ass, there was one guy who'd only just met them. Did you read his name? He was called Robin Williams, weirdly.

Was he? Yeah. And he'd just taken a job on the boat in return for his birth and, you know, just... Yeah. It sounds like such a tough journey. Oh, God. They had to spend six hours a day just blowing the dingy up,

you know, just because it was constantly losing air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got nothing else to do, to be fair. Puffs the time. Yeah. And they eventually got back, didn't they? They did. And then the husband and wife just immediately divorced.

No. Did they really? Did they? I'm afraid. So the guy who was kind of took them on this trip, Douglas, he wrote a book and went to live in the med. and his wife became a farmer. Oh, because they were farmers before they said out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they completely, they split up, yeah. Wow. Gosh. Oh, that's sad. That is sad. Yeah, yeah. Did you hear, there was a recent someone stranded out in the ocean

and having to get by with what materials they had, and it was a guy called Elvis, and he was found 120 Nordical Miles, northwest of Columbia's Puerto Bolivar. I don't know how to pronounce that. Lovely. Yep. And he survived.

he wrote help on the hull of his sailboat and so someone saw that but he was stuck out there for a long time and he was 24 days I think he was out there and he survived almost exclusively on tomato ketchup from Heinz and so that became the story when he got back and so they found him after being missing of all this time

and then Heinz decided that they wanted to give him a new boat because they thought this is amazing I thought you were about to say give him some more ketchup yeah yeah that's a much better that's good PR by Heinz yeah Yeah, yeah. So they thought... How have they done it?

They done that? Well, for ages, they couldn't find him. So he disappeared again, but just into his normal life because he was, you know, he didn't make a big fuss of it. So there was a huge campaign to find the missing boat guy who then... And they found Elvis, basically. I mean, it was, yeah, a hard hashtag to use, but they found him and he's now got his boat. That's great.

But tomato ketchup is exclusively, yeah, what he was surviving on. Gosh. You can, just a tip for any of us who gets shipwrecked. Yeah. Do have a plastic bag if you can. If you don't have a turtle to hand. Why would that be? Well, you use a bag of water.

What are you using this bag of water for, guys? Brink it out of? Making fire. You can make fire with a bag of water. Oh, like a lens. Like a lens. If it's a clear bag, do make sure it's a clear bag. A lot of caveats on this.

Not a bag for life. Ironically, a bag for life wouldn't work. That is... And you... you'd be kicking yourself, wouldn't you? Paid 30 P for this. No, a bog standard, like a clear plastic bag. If you can make it into a round shape,

you can use that to focus the rays of the sun onto your Tinder. And then it makes fun. And if you don't have a plastic bag, you can use a light bulb. If you don't have a light bulb. Just have an idea. Excuse my ignorance.

Like, would it not melt the plastic Is that a stupid thing to ask? It's not a stupid question, but I don't think it would. I don't know why. Okay. Maybe because with the point, oh, the point in which the race focus is going to be the hottest point, which is not on the surface of the bag.

It's on the whatever you're pointing at that. Interesting. I was reading some advice from a guy called Paul Hart, who is the Royal Navy's, he's a lieutenant commander for the Royal Navy, and he was asked, if you get shipwrecked on an island, what should you be doing in order to survive? So he wrote this big list of stuff,

and so here's a quiz-like moment here. Great. Okay. So your boat has crashed on the shore or your airplane has crashed into the ocean and you've made it to shore. What is the first thing that you should be collecting in order to survive?

From the aircraft? You're on an island. Yeah, so the food. Okay, so food would be a good one. Well, I would say the eight single CDs that I carry with me everywhere I go. A copy of the Bible that you always have. Copy of the Bible.

And what would your luxury be? A lovely bottle of Tabasco. sauce. Oh, lovely. So the answer is he says... No, no, no. A lifetime supply of Marmite. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, go on. Get that right? Orgy butter, if that's not available.

One of the same to him. So, life jacket. Live jacket, no. No. The seats can be used as flotation devices. I'm trying to remember what they've said to me on the island. Things that you're going to take from your wreckage or things that are on the island. No, things that you take from the wreckage. Oh. Something to say, the radio from the...

A knife. No. Well, knife is, yeah. Yes, it's up there, but he says... A clear bag. A clear plastic bag. That's it. That's it. He says Wellington boots. Oh, okay.

What? Sorry, when you get on a plane, do they just hand you some Wellington boots? He's saying any kind of very strong footwear that you can have. Right. Because you're going to be going into the ocean a lot in order to get food. You're going to be traveling. Injury is the thing you need to avoid, most of all. And your feet are most likely to be getting injured.

Because actually, on that Ryanair thing, it tells you to take off your high heels before you jump on the slide, doesn't it? Yes. And you're saying, you're saying, keep them on? Is that? No, so that's the biggest thing. That's interesting, yeah. Yeah, it is interesting, yeah.

I mean, wellies, it is, like, quite a niche thing, as James just said to have a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense. I would personally get a knife because then you can fashion some sort of, like, make some well-oh, come on, babe. Not wellies.

Come on. But you could, like, get like, either you've got to carve your own, oh, no way. But you don't mean, like, a knife surely is the most important thing because that can, that's very important. You can take, actually, you can use the knife shoes for yourself. You can tap the rubber tree and then...

With a simple mold fashion from bark, you got your own wellie factory then. You could trade the knife for some wellies if there's some local wellie owners. There are local wellie owners. I don't think you need the wellies. You can just leave. You'll probably...

You're in... Devon. That's so funny. I read the US Army Survival Manual to see if enemers were part of their suggestion. There is one mention of enemers in the whole survival manual and the idea is to use warm water enemers as a way to treat hypothermia.

Oh, okay. Apparently it's good because it warms you up from the inside if you think about that way. The thing that they said to drink is the aqueous fluid found along the spine and the eyes of large fish. Right. Oh, gosh. Is that because it's less salty?

Yeah, so everything else that's in the fish, all the other bodily fluids, have got lots of protein, lots of fat, so it's going to make you more thirsty. But just the water around the eyes and the water around the spinal fluid, that stuff is just perfect. Right. I just want to quickly mention this guy, because one of the other things at this Paul Hart that I was talking about, the guy who said that Wellington boots or what you need is.

Oh, yeah. One of the things that he said that was really important was having positive mentality. That's the main thing. As soon as you crash, you go, fantastic, this is great. And if you can keep that mindset, then you're going to be fine. And that really kind of is, that comes into play when you read about the story of Jose Salvador Alvarenga, who was a guy who was out at sea with one other person for 438 days. They were lost out at sea.

and it was a positive mentality that kept him going. And when he was interviewed by a journalist who wrote a book about it, he said, what's the thing that you remember most about it? And he said, my imagination, I imagined good food, and I had the best sex in my life. And he used to, so they used to, the two guys used to see the planes that would fly over that would never see them, and they would go, what do you think they're eating up there?

And they would picture the food that they were doing. And then they'd have sex with each other. No, they never, they both would then have. Also, the best food of their lives on a plane. Has he been on a plane? A bit of stale bread and something in a little reheated tray. Yeah, great. Better than whatever they were eating up their assholes at that time.

That's fair. They're on a dingy out. And so, and yeah. Diggy food. Oh, diggy food is terrible. What's that all about? So he used to, both of them would do this. They would sit, but him particularly, he'd sit there every day.

He'd close his eyes. He'd imagine that they'd actually crashed onto a beach and there was a beautiful woman walking towards him and they would have sex. And he said every day he just had amazing sex in his head and that kept him positive. Wow. Yeah. The other guy died, right?

Did he? I think so, yeah. He wasn't positive enough. God's sake. Unbelievable. If you were just a bit more positive as he's throwing him off the edge of the stinking. I was going to ask, actually,

who? No, just quickly. Who out of... Say the three of you got shipwrecked. I'd die first. Who do you think would survive? I would die first. The fur...

I'd die within 30 seconds. Do you think? Yeah, yeah. I would start an egg. We're going to have to eat him. We're going to have to eat him. There's a guy selling Wellington booze on there. Cannibalism returned to North Devon today.

Oh, God. And Dan's probably the most part. If so, I guess you win. Oh, yeah, yeah. Dan will be having fantastic sex. And eating delicious plain food. Oh, God. What a treat.

That is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James.

At James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter. And Jamie. At Uncle Eagle. Yep. Or you can get us on our group account which is at No Such Thing

or you can go to our website No Such Thing Asafish.com all of our previous episodes are up there do check it out as well as Clubfish very exciting place but that is all for tonight thank God putting an end to this

thank you so much Soho that was awesome thank you for coming to our show tonight and we're going to be back again next week with another episode and we'll see you then goodbye Five.