No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Glazed Lizard Donut

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Disney Princesses, brave tailors and tangled lizards.Head to nosuchthingasafish.com/Risummer for tickets to our July shows at the Royal Institution!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, just before we start the show, we've got a couple of exciting things to announce for July to fill up your July calendar. One is that we're doing a whole bunch of live shows. Yeah, time to get back on the stage. And they're going to be at the Royal Institution, which is such an exciting venue. Yeah, we've played there once before, but we were missing an essential ingredient. And this time we're getting that ingredient four times over. It's Anna Tysinski. It's going to be the four of us on stage for the first time in a very long time. And if you want to come, tickets are available. They are going quick. I think a few of them are nearly sold out. So if you head to No Such Thing asafish.com slash live, you can get tickets there. This is obviously in London, the Royal Institution.

But if you live overseas, good news. We're live streaming the first show on the 21st of July. So you can sit in the comforts of your home and tune in to a room that is one of the headquarters of science knowledge. It's an amazing place. It really is. So do that now. book for all four shows. Why not? They'll be different. And also earlier on in July to fill up your time, we are doing a quiz, a live quiz that you can participate in on the 8th of July at 7 p.m.

That's right. And we've done these quizzes before, but they were missing an essential ingredient. And this time we have it. It's Anna Tishinsky. She's going to be joining us. If you have not joined one of the fish quizzes before, it is an absolute couple of hours of chaos that you will love if you love our show. in order to get to be a part of it, all you need to do is join Clubfish at the highest tier. So if you go to Patreon.com slash Clubfish, you will find Friend of the podcast

as a tier option. Join that, and you can join us 8th of July at 7pm, and it goes on for an hour and a half or so, and it is absolute chaos. Okay, that's all from us, me, the essential ingredient, and Dan, just Dan.

Okay, enjoy this week's episode, on with the podcast. On with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones 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 my fact. My fact this week is that if you want to make your work of art more profound, give it a pretentious name. This is scientifically the case.

Do you mean just art hasn't painted or does the podcast count? Oh. It's an art form. It's an art form. Is it? It is. In this particular case, it's art paintings as opposed to art podcasts. This was a scientific paper that was released in.

November 2019, and it was called Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder. And what they did was... Forced. We know fourth jokes. Coming from me, that is a lot. They did study where they showed different bits of art, and they gave them different names. So one piece had a very mundane name, but then the next person might see the same piece, and it had an interesting name that might make them go, ooh, something like the death. echo, right? I think this

completely makes sense. So they found it more meaningful, right? This is, I guess they were just testing this idea that if you give something a pretentious name, does it add to it? Sorry to interrupt. Does it work with human names? Like if you give yourself a pretentious middle name like, oh, you don't oh, Andrew Hunter Murray, for instance.

No, hang on. You are more profound. What do we think? Write in. What's that? It's a perfectly good name. Wow. What was a definition? There, didn't I? Very definition. How do you determine pretentious? Who's deciding whether death echo is pretentious? Good call. What is pretentious? I think that's a really good question. I found myself asking

it the whole time as I was reading this. Did the study answer it? I think pretentious means it's completely unrelated to the content of the work, right? So if it's a painting of a lemon and I call it Sicilian dreams, you know, Sicily grows a lot of lemons, right? That's a normalish title. Whereas if I call it Grandfather Then is that I see Is that a pretentious name

It is the way he said it All right The well The well of sorrows That is Yes It's much less related To the content of the picture

But if you called it Shit sandwich That's not pretentious Even though it's not related I think it can be I think it can be pretentious Yeah okay It's a bit

This is old mentioned In my new podcast What is pretentious Hmm Is it the cat that drinks Evian or is it the owner who feeds the cat Evian? Wow. I'm going to get defensive now.

It has, doesn't it, James? Yeah. I think this is completely reasonable though because what is, apart from, you know, an artist creates a work of art of whatever kind and then the viewer engages with it in whatever way and if you're thinking about it and if it's more conceptual, it's harder to get your head around. And there is always the question of

does this painting mean something or does it mean nothing? And I didn't know about disumbration, the art movement disumbration, which is the epitome of this. It's so cool. So this is an art movement that was started in 1924 by an artist called Pavel Jerdanovic. And he created this painting called Exultation, which is of a woman holding a sort of floppy, banana-y, starfishy type thing and a tilting hut in the background. And it became very popular. It was reviewed.

And it looks a bit like kind of naive art. Yeah, what it looks exactly like is, do you remember that mural that was defaced by women trying to fix it a few years ago? Or the picture of Christ, Ekeomo. Yeah. I thought it looked a lot like that, do you not the thing? Yeah. So I thought it looked like Goggan. Well, I would say a lot of his others look like Gogan.

But anyway, this guy was not an artist. He was a guy called Paul Jordan Smith, who was pissed off at people like Picasso, who he thought were impenetrable. And his wife happened to have done some still lives, which were very realistic, that hadn't been very well received. And so he said something like, you know, I've made up my mind that critics will praise anything unintelligible. So he painted this exultation and it is, I suppose, bad. But there were art journals like posh art journals who, one of the best quote I thought was from the French journal, of course, the review of the true and the beautiful that said, Pavel Giordanovic is not satisfied to follow ordinary paths. His spirit delights in intoxication and he has prey to the aesthetic agonies, which are

not experienced without suffering. And then in 1927 he went, I was taking the piss, guys. I thought some of his were actually okay. Even knowing he was meaning to be silly. Actually, did you like it more because you knew the story maybe? Because that is a thing. So there was a study where people were shown and painted by Van Gogh. And they said, what do you think of it?

And half of them were told, it's just by Van Gogh. And the other half were told, oh, this is by Van Gogh, who cuts his ear off. and the people who were told that he cut his ear off liked it more because their artist is slightly wacky and I think that's absolutely again absolutely makes sense like for example when I make jokes if I have a story behind them as to why the joke is there

when have you ever had a compelling story behind any of your jokes well that's what I need clearly people would laugh a lot more if I said and I'm cutting my ear off right now wait so do you think we would actually think one of your cop dramas is good if you came in with a missing earlobe Oh, there's no question.

Right. A guy in an alley cut off my ear, but it gave me this amazing idea. Deaf Echo Cup. Yes. Yes. You only said yes once there, but it bounced off the world. But this is a thing, isn't it? Tortured artist is a thing that we get drawn to. The story behind the artist, and they have done a few studies where they've shown portraits and general artwork from the artist from different periods of their life.

And weirdly, when they voted on them, they voted for the ones that were not done in a point of mental anguish from the artist's point. Oh, really? And they voted that the better one. So it's interesting that it sort of doesn't correlate with their tortured artistness. Sorry, you're saying when someone is calm and happy and productive, that's actually when they're doing the best work. According to this. Yeah, that's really interesting. One encouraging thing I think about this whole tortured artist thing is AI can probably already do art better than any human on Earth, right?

But people really care about the stories behind the people doing the work. And so even if my painting of a unicorn with three legs is not quite as good as one that ChachyPT can do, if people know that I did it because my daughter loves unicorns and I love my daughter, then they're going to think that it's a better work of art than the thing that the computer does. That's a question. What I'm going to think is incredibly nah. Yeah, that's why your art journal folded, Amman. This is all shit.

But this is the really interesting thing about how technically good, quite a quote of art is, right? Because it's not about whether it's an accurate or a realistic drawing of a unicorn. And this all relates to the early 20th century when photography was coming in in a big way, right? A century before that, if you could paint an incredibly good picture of a lemon, you were set for life, right? They were like, this guy paints bloody good lemons. I mean, it looks like a lemon, you know. Have you seen Sicilian Dream? It's extremely.

Right. And then when photography comes along, there's this question of, oh, right, photography's kind of eaten our lunch here. So art becomes more conceptual, partly as a response to the fact that you can now just get photos of things. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Okay. And then that is when you get more titles coming in because the art has become more conceptual and you're getting more like theoretical work underpinning the art. Yeah. So that's when these titles. It's like, what's the point of me painting a perfect picture of your face when I could just take a photo on my phone? But if I put the nose on the side and the eyes.

on the top of your head and it tells us something about your mental state then suddenly that's much more interesting. Bingo. I think it tells you about your mental state. Here's a question for you guys. Jackson Pollock.

We all know and love Jackson Pollock. Okay, sure. Do you think a child could do it? So it's just basically it's dripping lines on a canvas, right? They're kind of squiggles on a canvas lots of different colors. Do you think a child could do it or not?

I think so. Could they get away with a Pollock imitation that we would say that's apollock is that what you mean are they forging apollock that's what i'm asking yeah let's say for instance and he forges a pollock yeah that sounds like a euphemism and a ten-year-old forges of pollock don't come in mum I'm um I'm forging a pollock

what's that dripping like a ten-year-old forges of pollock or Andy forges of a pollock which one is going to be the best forgery I think a child will be more naive about it and therefore better. You are absolutely right. When computers have analysed ones that children have done, ones that adults have done and ones that Pollock have done, the Pollock ones are more like children's ones than like adults. Because they're more simple, people like them a bit more because it's almost like shapes are easier to see.

But when adults try and do it, they always try and do it a little bit too complicated. That is the skill of the artist in a way, is to reclaim that innocent childlike state. The innocent state, exactly. Here's an interesting thing relevant to the fact that this is about names of art. A lot of artists don't like naming their art pieces. That's why you often see something just called untitled. And a lot of people, like Ringo Star of the Beatles, when he is giving names to his artwork, he has to pick a name because when you're saving a file on MS Paint, you have to write a name, right?

So, what do you just call them, one, two, one, two, three, four, doesn't it? No, he calls them Ringo's artwork one. Ringo's artwork, this one. Ringo's artwork, finished, finished, this one. Real final. But yeah, so they have to give it a name. They're often asked if it's going on exhibitions, touring and so on, what's this called?

And they have to give it the name, so it can be cataloged and not lost. And this is a thing that only started happening sort of as the 18th century came around. Before then, you just didn't give names to any pieces of art because they didn't travel around. They were staying in people's houses, so you didn't need a name for them.

They were either massive, or they were on the wall of a monastery or whatever, as in they were locationally specific. Yeah. And if it was on the monastery, you would know it was St. Clair devouring an angel because you're a monk, so you know that stuff. Yeah.

Or if it was in your house, you know it's Uncle George. You don't need a title for it. Or it's a lemon. Everyone knows. It's a letter of a letter. It's a bloody good leaven. And also, nobody can read. So no one's coming by going, what's this?

Is that a melon? So then also the name. that we do have for certain paintings are not names given by the artist. The Mona Lisa, that was someone many, many, many years later who just needed to give it a name and that stuck. Well, I think that modern paintings

do benefit from titles so you know what was in the artist's head because that's got to be the point of all this pollock, bollocks. And yet, it doesn't seem to matter. I mean, there's this case of Pacifici, which is one of his most famous paintings, which I actually think is quite nice to look at,

painted it in 1943, and it was originally called Moby Dick. Now, Pacifici is the queen who gave birth of the Minotaur when she shagged a bull. Moby Dick, obviously, is Moby Dick, a whale in a story. Yeah. And so it's very weird. Does it look like heathroth then?

Obviously not. It looks like a load of things that a child could paint. But I find that bizarre that Pollock called it Moby Dick thinking it was that. And then he just showed it to Peggy Guggenheim and another art critic. And they said, like the painting, don't like the title. Have you thought about calling it Pacific? Because one art critic had read the story that morning. And Pollock was like, yeah, we could switch to that.

So what then are I supposed to be saying in that painting? But does it matter? But he can't call them all squiggle. He's going to give them some name. Some people do. Some people say you're just like squiggle number three or whatever. So Whistler, famous for his mother. His mom.

Wistler's mother. He called that painting arrangement in grey and black number one. What that point of that was is he was trying to draw attention to how it's composed rather than look at my mum. you know, so that's why he calls it that. Well, you shouldn't have such a fit mom, Whistler. Yeah, yeah. It didn't work because everyone just calls it Whistler's mother, obviously. And they're more interested in the sun painting his mother.

Also, if you say the grey and black painting, there are just loads of those around. Whereas if you say the one of Whistler's mother. Yeah. Even the much of people started giving it the right name. You know, the black and white and grey one. People were like, which one, you know, the one of Wistler's mother. Yeah. No, I know. Eventually.

It's a title that sounds like you're trying to be woke in some kind of way. You're like, you know, the black and white one. The black and white one. You've seen it. I don't see colour. It seems to me quite obvious that he didn't name that because if he did it would be called my mother. Have you seen his your mum series of pages?

Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that most Disney princesses are ambidextrous. I just thought we've done too much pretentiousness. So we're going lowbrow. Is that because they've reversed the... film for the projector.

So obviously it's backwards. So they're all left-handed, but then they thought they had to compensate, so they re-made them right-handed and they ended up with both. Yeah, see my colleague Anna. For the clarification. It's not enough to have a 16-inch waist and huge boobs and long blonde hair

and just be perfect. You have to be good with both hands as well. But enough about you. So this is a study from Montclair University, and they looked at how Disney princesses have evolved over the years. and really they wanted to see whether attitudes towards handedness has changed, and they did it by looking at the princesses.

And they found that before 1992, most princesses were right-handed, and most villains were left-handed, or more villains were left-handed than princesses. But in general, things have kind of changed over the last, like, 20, 30 years, and now the characters are much less strongly handed than they ever have been before. and they have quite a few left-handed princesses and quite a lot of right-handed villains now. And they don't really know why it is. They put it down to perhaps

that there was a group of animators called the Nine Old Men who had these kind of ideas that villains should be left-handed and that good people should be right-handed. Someone else said that it could be the handedness of the animators. Maybe they've just employed a load of left-handed animators

and that's why they're doing it. I personally think probably it's because the animators keep forgetting what they're supposed to do. You'd make them right with whatever hand is closest to the camera. It's like we put the pot on this side, so if you can get it with that hand. But this is what they say. They think that it might be due to the left-handedness being less of a bad thing than it has been in the past. Yeah, absolutely.

Because people were, left-handed people in the 50s and 60s in schools were forcibly made to write with the right hand. Yeah, exactly. So a good example of that is Ringo Star. And we've mentioned this many, many years ago. but he was left-handed and he got made to become a right-handed person in his childhood, but then he slowly, after he left school and left home, went back to being left-handed. So he drums as a left-handed drummer, but he writes with his right-hand. He'll sign with his right hand.

What about his artworks? What does he produce those? I think he draws them with his right hand, but he saves the file with his left. Yeah, it must just be that it's less of a social stigma. There's much less. Well, you do think. I think it's just because it's random. right? No, the animates are thinking through.

In the old days, there was more social stigma. Even though this is my fact, I will kind of agree with Anna. Also, it's a very small sample size. True. Oh, yeah. How many Disney princesses are there? There's been like a dozen. Because they are always like an indication of the society that they're produced in,

right, the Disney princesses. Because the very early ones are homemakers, you know, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, who I didn't know was in Sleeping Beauty. And then the modern ones are all CEOs and stuff. Are they? Moana?

They're girl bosses. What's Ariel running under the sea? Is it maybe like some wave power that she's getting? What's Mulan doing? She's running like under the sea tidal solutions incorporated. But as it, do you know, they've got more agency is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, they've changed enormously. Although I can't believe Ariel's the most modern Disney princes you can think of change.

Come on. It was more of which one is least likely to be a CEO. Yeah. CEO. There we go. No, you're absolutely right. Disney princesses now are just, they're sort of like painfully strong, confident women. I want one who's just like as lazy and crap as me. Where's the lazy crap on? I ask you. One of the thing that hasn't changed that much is hand size. I'm actually reading this ages ago and now I can't not see it. If you compare hand size of women to hand size of men in Disney films, it is insane. They are on average three to four times bigger. And I was looking at the difference in hand size between women and men on average. And men sounds a 12% bigger. 8 to 12%. Four times bigger.

Yes. It's mad, isn't you? Are you just watching Beauty and the Beast? I'm telling you, what was it that was looked at? How to train your dragon two, weirdly. Nomio and Juliet, Frozen. Four times bigger. Frozen is the only one of those that has a Disney princess.

This is, we're just women and men. I want this did a table read-through for Sherlock Nomes 2. Oh, sorry, Nomeo and Juliette, too, Sherlock Nomes. when they get a load of improvised comedians in to read the script. Who did you read those? I'm very proud to say I played Sherlock Knows. And then they went with someone called James McAvoy for the real thing. But what was going on there?

I thought I was auditioning. I was not. Your hands are too small. Maybe if I read this really well, they won't give their role to James McAvoy. Disney princesses, I did not know that this is a canonical thing. There are only 13 of them. And they have to be. very specific kinds of person.

So they have to be human. They can't start off in a sequel. Wait a minute. What about the mermaid? Yeah, you're right. That's controversial. I guess she's she's only half human. But she's a princess for sure. She is a princess. How does it end? Does she stay in human form? No, she has her legs at the end, doesn't she? Yeah, exactly. So she does stay in human form. She doesn't go back to fish.

So right at the end, she qualifies. She's the daughter of fish man in the sea, isn't she? Yeah. But they can be born royal or they can marry royal or they can be Mulan who apparently just like gets around it. Anyway, I found this wonderful argument on the website, Polygon, that there is a Disney-owned franchise which does have a queen who should be included in the Disney Princess Canon, which is the queen from Alien. Because, you know, bigger her hands.

Well, tiny. But, you know, she's bipedal. So that's a, she's human-like in some respect. You know, she's a wonderful mother. She's explored multiple planets, defends her children. She's a strong woman, inspirational figure from a magical far. offland. I just love the argument. Does she have flound hair and big boobs? It's not clear.

She's got big eggs. I'll say that right. Look at any of her eggs on her. Yeah, two of the princesses that were part of the canonical 13 got demoted. So I don't know what the number was when they were there. Petrice and Eugenie. No, that's okay. Sorry. Yeah, it was Tinkerbell was one. Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.

Not a human. Not a human, a fairy. So she got put in her own new category. And she was a sidekick. She didn't have her own sidekick. There's quite a few interesting things that qualify for it. And in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Esmeralda got taken away because she's not princess. But neither is Moulin.

The whole thing falls apart on those examine. Basically, whoever they're going to put in the big show in Disneyland, isn't it? Yeah. Basically, that's who it is. If the film does really, really, really well, you're likely to be made a princess. As in some film just bombed. So Mulan is a Chinese girl who is not a princess or anything, right? This is in the original Chinese story.

So she's like a peasant girl. And then she joins the army, pretends to be a boy. And then they find out that she's not a boy. And then she saves the country or something. I can confirm that's also in the Disney film. That's in the Disney film. What isn't in the Disney film is in the original stories, she served under the Emperor Yang of Sui,

who wanted to take her as a concubine, but she took her own life before he could. That's in the city. Have you not seen Moulin too? I haven't seen enough. Very short film Moulin too. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Gosh. Or she could be a concubine in Moulin Rouge. Brilliant. Very nice. I haven't seen the Hunchback of Notre Dame one. But I do know that the character, Esmeralda, in the book,

certainly does seductive dancers for nearby men. And I don't know that made it into the film. You know who did it? Yes. Oh my gosh. there's the most dark song in the film about how much the villain fancies and wants to shag Esmeralda, even though he also hates her. It's very in approves. Well, you know who voiced Esmerelda? I believe I'm right in saying this. Demi Moore,

who was in Striptees. Hey. Well, as well as many other... The prosecution rests, Your Honor. That was, you presented, that was such a flourish. Yeah. And it's really good knowledge. But it's... I don't think it means what you think it means. It's just like you said,

De Me More, it was like everyone was automatically supposed to go, oh, who was famously in stripping. Can't believe I had to say the extra bit of that sentence, in fact. And go, oh, it's come full circle. Okay. There's a topless woman in the rescuers. Okay. Thank you, pardon.

Sorry, what's the rescuers? There's two mice. Mice. Chipp and Dale, are they? It's so much like Jim and Dale, but they're Bernard and Bianca, mice who ride atop a large bird. This is the topless woman you're talking about?

That's not the top of it. women. Chippendale are such better names for kids' animation characters than Bernard and Bianca. Hey, it was the seven minutes. Wait a minute. What are the name of the strippers? Chippendales. Oh, this is coming full. I rest my case. And you know who played Chip? Do me more. Andy did the run through. There's a topless woman. She's not meant to be there, but this is amazing. I never heard this because you know there are all those, like, in the Lion King, he plumps in the sound and it spells out sex and there's always rumours like that. This is for real

in 1977 the first rescuers was released. It wasn't until 1999 that it was noticed that in a few of the shots, Bernard and Bianca on the back of the big bird, the albatross, and in the background in the window, it's actually a real, it's not a cartoon, it's a real

image of a topless woman. I couldn't make out her head it's just her boobs and sort of slim torso and it stayed in between 77 and 1999 when someone pointed out and Disney suddenly had to say and we don't know who put that in there. No animators are putting their hands up and saying it was me.

And they removed it and then we recalled all the videos. Imagine if you're the woman and you know your boobs were in the rescuers. You're not going to watch it like in the cinema and go, wait a minute. Rewide, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind. Darling, how dare you? I really like the way. All these studies are done on Disney princesses and the social attitudes that they reveal or how they change and all of this

because they get a lot of stuff pinned on them. And I know it does have an influence on the children watching, right? I do know that. But I think sometimes academics might go a bit far. So there was a study by a Durham University expert about the cultural perceptions of work who says that these princesses in these films may have contributed to reluctance among the younger workforce

to join traditional workplaces. So you're always hearing, right, the kids these days, they don't want to come into the office, all of this. Maybe that's because Cinderella has to slave away for her stepsisters. And that's why millennials want flexibility of the workplace. Millennials aren't watching Cinderella, lad. Who are these Durham University academics?

Exactly. Maybe they all want to grow their hair really, really, really long and throw out of the tower. Surely you do want to do the work because if you work hard enough, eventually you'll get swept away by a prince or something. Is that what happens? Yeah. And that's exactly, the same expert said, if you think about that situation in a modern workplace,

that's a dangerous view to have. You just carry on being exploited because you think everything is going to turn out to be okay. I just don't think that's a reasonable... There's plenty of stuff to pin on those films, but I don't think people wanting to work from home two days a week is because of Cidorella. I also think it's a stretch to call people who do these studies academics, to be fair. Wow. I'm very happy for them to confront me about that.

Interesting. Here comes out as big crunching fist again. I've just got ambidextrous stuff. So there was the ambidextral culture society in the early 1900s, which I hadn't heard of, But it is the cause of Boy Scouts Handshakes. I also didn't know this. I don't know that either.

Boy Scout handshakes, always left-handed, apparently. Are there. And it's because there was this guy called John Jackson. He was a head teacher at a Belfar School. And he decided that we all should become ambidextrous because we're wasting half of our brain by being either right-handed or left-handed. He wrote that each hand eventually should be absolutely independent of the other. One hand should be writing a letter while the other can play the piano with no diminution.

with no diminution of concentration. He said, what are you playing on the piano with one hand? Chopstick. You're right. Piano was a terrible example. Maybe this guy was an idiot. I mean, his theory is pretty wacky.

But he said he imagined a brave new world of two-handed, two-brained citizens. And it was a very pervasive view that training yourself to use your other hand would make you smarter. It really pervaded until the 50s and 60s when they disproved it. And Baden Powell was one of the

doctors who is vice president of the society and who believe that, you know, make yourself right with the other hand and your brain will get better. Actually, it doesn't at all. And there's some evidence that maybe it would make it worse because the reason that we have lateralized brains is so that we can specialize in certain things. Was anyone else here in the Scouts? Yeah. Did you ever do this left-hand? I've never heard of that. I'm either. Yeah. I don't think of Scouts as having a hand-check. I think of Masons is having one. Yeah. Freemasons. I'm sure they, I'm sure it does exist, but we didn't do it in Bolton. No, no, I think maybe it might have died out.

You know, we're all getting more ambidextrous. Are we? Yeah, as we get older. One thing that we do gain as we get older is more ambidexterity. There was a 2007 study that looked at a bunch of different age groups, youngest group, age 25, on three writing tasks, much better with their right hand or their left hand in everything, depending on, you know, if they're right or left-handed. At 50, they were better with their dominant hand at some things, but like an aiming task.

They were about equal. And then by 70 and 80, people were equally good with both hands at most of the tests. And it's because you're just quite shit at that point with both hands. It is literally just because your right hand gets worse and worse and worse until it's as bad as your left hand or vice versa. So you're kind of not ambidextrous, you're ambi-sinistrous. I'm afraid that's the case, yeah. Okay, it is time for fact number three.

And that is Andy. My fact is, Saddam, who? Hussein and Nelson Mandela had the same tailor. Where there are always awkward weights in the... Probably in the room. So this was a guy called Resep Caesar. The really strange thing about him is he was a Kurd, right? In fact, I think he might still be alive.

But, you know, Saddam Hussein visited enormous evil on the Kurdish people. But as Recep Caesar said, he was a good customer to me. So Saddam went there for, I think, 80 suits. He was a very loyal customer. And this guy, Caesar, has served all sorts of people. Lots and lots of world leaders. So Pakistan's president, Afghanistan's, Nelson Mandela was only a one-time customer. Yeah, he bought a jacket and trousers from Recip Caesar's label.

Yeah. I'm not sure he even went to the shop or anything. Well, he was probably on Robin Island at the time. Perhaps, yeah. It was in 2000, so I think he was off by then. Do we know why he didn't do repeat custom? You know, did he not like this? The clientele, yeah.

Yeah, sort of shots of Hussein being sent to him. Nelson Mandela had very specific suits that he wore, didn't he? He had like African patterns on his suits and stuff, so he wouldn't have won these ones. So maybe this was for a rare, a rare occasion. What do you think Mandela would make a your headline, Andy? I think he'd forgive me for it. This guy, I saw an interview with him who said that he watched Saddam's trial with great interest because he wanted to see how he looked in his suit.

Yeah. Probably the only guy watching for that reason. But he said that sales in Iraq tripled during the trial. Yeah. Because people watching saying, hmm, love the fit. Why would you need ever 80 suits? How sweaty a man was Saddam Hussein?

Oh, well, I mean, I suppose that's kind of the Zuckerberg thing, isn't it? You know, you open the wardrobe and it's just all the same clothes. So you don't have to think about what you wear. Just take another suit off the thing. But that means that he only does a wash once every two months. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

So it's a very busy day when you see Saddam at the laundret. I don't know, Anna. Why did it get dozens of cars when you can only drive one at a time? I don't know. You're saying it's not all about practicality. I'm saying it's not exclusively that. Why have the royal family got such a big house?

They could just live in a two up to two down. You can only have one living room. You've only got one ass to sit on one sofa. I've been wearing the same pants in 10 years and I'm absolutely fine. I love, when he was in court, I love this little detail in an intervie. interview that he gave, where they said, do you know what you provided for him? And he brought out a list

from his files. And he said it shows two complete outfits with a total cost of 1,540. And we included two pairs of socks as a gift. I'll give him gifts as well, are you? That little extra detail of the socks is wonderful. Gosh. Yeah. Speaking of socks, did you know you can buy socks made by the Pope's official tailor? Wow. Amazing. Yeah, I've bought some, but they've not arrived yet. Have you? Yeah, I've got some come in in the post. We might bring it up at a duel sometime. Oh, wow. But yeah, the tailor of the Pope is called Gamarelli. And

basically in the late 20th century, the rules on like vestments for priests kind of changed and there were not as many priests anymore. And when the Iron Curtain came down, the priests in Eastern Europe were not getting these clothes anymore. So basically

they started losing a load of money. Right. And so they decided to diversify and started making normal suits for normal people. So they were making stuff for priests and popes and stuff. But now you can just buy one of their suits and you can buy socks. And are they sort of novelty socks with lots of brightly-coloured on them? They're the ones that the Pope wears and either the same colour.

No. So James, I was reading about this too. Gamorelli, because they do, how do you say, holy socks. Well, not holy socks. As in they don't have holes in, send that back. But they're an individual pairs and they're knee-length silk apparently. You've ordered knee-length silk socks. And if you're a different level in the church,

she gets to wear a different colour. They do, it's like karate belts. You give black, scarlet and violet socks, only the Pope. So hang on, are you saying you've managed to get... Yeah, they tricked them. Have you put your addresses like the Vatican, you're having it redirected through a PO box?

Supposedly, they only sell the white knee-length ones to the Pope. But I may be wrong. On the website, they sold them. I don't know. Maybe I've ordered something different. Might be a different shade or something. Maybe there's going to be a Swiss guard arriving with them to a rescue and take you into custody.

Well, maybe I become Pope as soon as I put them on. Okay. The easy way in. The loophole. This is a movie. This is a movie. The Pope sucks, basically. There's a mix-up at the sorting office.

Yeah. The Pope gets my sort of like wacky golf socks. And I get his. And then when I put them on, I turn into the Pope. Beautiful. And he wins the PGA. He has to do a podcast. And he, I'm going to say it, he's out of his depth.

Are the kind of stuff we do? Yeah. Right. I'm sorry. I'm not, like, he delivers amazing speeches. He knows fuck all about Disney princesses. Absolutely. This is a good film. Wow. You know your question earlier about why would you need so many suits? James Bond, on average, will have 60 suits of the same kind.

He's not real. Yeah. He's per film. So this is when they're filming. If they're doing a scene where he's in a particular suit, 60 versions of that suit will be tailor-made to Saville-Roe standards. and they use Tom Ford for the last Daniel Craig ones. 30 of those will go to the stunt doubles who will be acting in the scene.

Now, this is for an action scene. Okay. But he basically has an impossible suit because when he's on a motorbike, the coat that he's wearing has longer arms specifically made so it doesn't come up. I think he'll inspect a gadget. Exactly. It's so odd.

But his trousers are tailor made to be longer if you see him on a motorbike in that suit so that his ankles don't show. So he doesn't look like Rishi Sunak on a moment. So Bond is wearing technically an impossible suit. That's amazing. Why doesn't everyone do that? Why don't all men, when they want to cross their legs,

immediately put on a different pair of trousers? Another famous tailor is a guy called Jonathan Mayer, who was Bo Brummel's tailor. And he and Bo Brummel, the reason I bring it up now, is that they invented a new kind of trousers, which had a loop underneath, and you put the loop underneath your feet. And so whenever you moved your legs,

It wouldn't ride up or down. I don't want to reveal my social status here, but just like dodpers. Yeah, actually, I don't know if you know, but I do a bit of horse riding myself. I would say it's exactly like that. James has been on a horse once in your absence and he's not let us forget about it. Did they squeeze you into a pair of jobpers with those elastic bits around the foot? No, they did. Not pro yet.

Several row tailors are having a good time at the moment. Are they? Can you guess why? Because you've just mentioned the mum. the podcast. Yeah, so, you know, if you guys do want to send a few over to us, we'll read out our inside legs at the end of the show. I actually, I like a Disney princess. I dress to both sides. Is it, um, is it to do with pop culture at all? It's to do with something that's happening a lot now. Oh, okay. Um, what's happening a lot now? People are wearing suits. People are having to

go back into the office. No, people on Zoom wearing suits because they want to seem professional. It's Got an O and a Z in it. This thing that people are having... A Zemik. They're going to Australia. Nope. Not Oz. I was a Wizard of Oz, so...

Yeah, there's a big Judy Garland core trend in the city at the moment. A lot of business were wearing Gingham suits. So many pairs of red shoes there. It's a Zemke. So basically, people are... Having a Zemke, finding their shape is changing quite a bit. And they're then getting clothes altered. You know, maybe clothes that have fit them perfectly a year ago, but now really don't.

Or clients are saying things to one tailor like, I'm going to wear a thick velvet dinner jacket for the first time. That's what you actually do when you've lost a couple of stone. Getting more experimental. Circling back to Saddam Hussein and having so many different suits while in jail. He was on the pen, wasn't he? No, but he was losing his weight going up and down. And so they did do it to different sizes.

Well, one of my favorite conversations with a tailor, and I've got a lot in my bank, is about that, is about how size changes. and the Taylor needs to adjust to that. And this is the conversation that Lyndon Johnson have with his tailor, which if you haven't heard it, is absolutely fantastic.

You have to look up on YouTube. He's ordering six new pairs of trousers. And Lyndon Johnson, like, I think we probably talked about him. He's a quite an unpleasant man. He's doing a power play a lot of the time and he's really obsessed with his penis.

And he said, but I want half an inch left in the waist. I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month. Is that a good Lyndon Johnson? No, he's more. Has anyone heard of? I'm not heard of his voice. I don't think that the voice is so well known

that, Yeah. I think just tell us what he said. He says, look, I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month, so you need to leave half an inch in in the waist so I can let it out if I want, which I thought quite impressive that he can let out his own trousers when he wants to. And then he said, the crutch down where your nuts hang is always a little too... You've gone back into it.

You can't say down where your nuts hang in an English accent, can you? The crutch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight. So when you make them give me an inch so that I can let it out there because they cut me. It's like riding a wire fence. And when I gain a little weight, they cut me under there. Leave me an inch from where the zipper. That's a big burp he does. From where the zipper ends.

Round under the back and back to my bum hole. And it just goes on and on this incredibly in-death conversation with this tailor, talking about how much more space he needs for his balls and his bumhole. And then at the end. Who is recording this, by the way? I don't know why it's recorded. I guess it's just a matter of public record. Why else conversations?

Probably because it's America, they'll have said, right, this needs to go in the presidential library. Now, we need to preserve this artifact for all time. And it's just a bizarre touch at the end when the guy says, where would you like it sent? And he says, the White House, look, I have to go. I've got to go to a funeral now. So let me hand you over to my boy who will take it from here. Right. It's just amazing.

It's very interesting. Yeah, I'm sure Taylor's, any Taylor who doesn't know to conceal the bumhole isn't doing their job. You know what I mean? It feels like as soon as you get your cloth, that's the first bit of cloth who goes there. And then you work out from there, don't you? It's amazing. I wonder if you search the Library of Congress with the word bumhole. How many times does that come up?

Might that be the unique moment? Well, we've got President Garfield, of course. He's going to wait through his bum hole. So maybe there's a book in it. Powerful bumholes, yeah. Whitehouse bum holes? The first bum hole. There's something in this.

I think we should focus on the body swap with you and the Pope first. But I do think that's good Not paying your tailor is a big thing, isn't it? Sorry? What do you mean? Not paying your tailor. You know, in the old days, that was the mark of a true aristocrat

was that your tailor was constantly saying, my children are hungry, I need to eat. You're saying, yeah, I think I'll pay you in a year. Really? Yeah. Not paying your tailor was a huge, you know, thing for the upper classes. Okay. My friend is a tailor, a Savile Road tailor,

and weirdly, she was saying this just the other day. She said, no one ever pays. That's so hard. Yeah, she's like, it's nuts. We have to invoice for months and months and months and months. at the till now. I just don't understand. So basically, I only bring us up

because of speaking of world leaders, tailors, there was a 19th century one called E. Tauts, which is a great name. And Churchill never paid. Spent six years, I think, owing for some gold-laced trousers.

And then another tailor he had later on, 1937, he owed them a hundred and 97 quid, quite a lot of money in today's money, over 10 grand. They were so insistent on saying,

look, can you just pay us for the clothes, please, that he said, right, I'm not coming anymore. I'm dumping you as my tailor. Outrageous. Did they fight him for the breaches? There you go.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that desert grassland whiptail lizards get pregnant by pretending to mate with each other. This is crazy. Yeah, this is pretty amazing. Yeah, it's basically by grinding. Oh. Sorry, I wish I hadn't used that. I feel sick. These are amazing though. So many species of whip-tail lizards are all-female. Desert

Grassland, whip-tail lizards are an all-female species. They're across North America. And basically, this fact was discovered in 1979. There was a biologist called David Cruz who had collected a bunch of them because he'd heard these are all female. This is amazing. We'd have a look at how this works. And he noticed one lizard in the cage biting its cage mates' legs and tail, which he knew was a sign that they were mating. because that's what they do. They bite their legs and tail. And then climbed on top of her and started riding her, adopting, as I think he described it, the donut pose,

which is kind of where I imagine you're riding someone, but also you're bending your head around and biting their tummy. And there's a little hole in the middle that you could sort of fit your hand through. They look like a bracelet or a donut, in fact. But these were female lizards, both females? Two females. And the thing is, this actually helps them to get pregnant. Because by simulating this act of mating at the right,

time, it triggers these hormonal changes in the receivers, as in the person underneath's body, that mean that the egg can start developing into a new lizard. Yeah, it's really interesting. And it's different times of the month, there'll be either like the male, as it were, version or the female version, as in different times of the months. If they're higher in progesterone, then they'll know that they're to go on top. And they do it as a couple. Is it the same two lizards, or might they find another lizard to act the male role?

I think they go to find another. I think maybe they pass it on. So once you've got pregnant as a female, then you can play the male role and go and pass it forward to someone else. Oh, wow. Yeah, pay it forward. It's nuts. Well, there are no nuts. That's the thing, isn't it?

It's nutless. Nutless. One thing I found interesting is there's a guy who studies this called Professor Alexander Mikaev. And he says that it's almost, I mean, he's slightly anthropomorphizes it, but he says it's nature and evolution placing certain checks on eliminating sex completely. even though they're not having sex they're still going through some of the motions and that means that sex is not going away because actually having sex

is a good thing for animals because it usually means that they can diversity. Yeah, you get diversity in your genome and stuff like that. But this is the really bizarre thing because they are doing the activity of sex but they're not having sex and as a result the one who gets pregnant

her genome is completely replicated in the next generation right? So they're not getting the advantage of sex which is mixing up your genes and, you know, more resilience and diversity across the species. They're just having to do the sex. I don't get to tend to like a little clone. They're getting to do the sex, Andy. Okay, let's not say having to do the sex.

Okay. All right. I wasn't aware we were suddenly a sex positive podcast. But actually, I think in some of these lizards, I don't know if it's this exact same species, but they have twice as many chromosomes as other lizards. Yes. And so actually, it's not an exact clone because let's say you have a hundred different genes or whatever, you might get half of them from one of your set of chromosomes and half of them

from the other set of chromosomes. So actually, there is some shuffling going on. And probably what happened is this species is a hybrid of two other species. But when they mate it one time, they somehow got both sets of chromosomes inside them. Yeah. And in fact, they've got, because we have like two sets and they've got a third set, which makes it, so they've got three sets. So they're doing all this shuffling, like recombination, we call it when we do it. sex. So yeah, it's not what I thought at all. Like pathogenesis doesn't lead to clones. So it actually seems that if we could perfect it, men become... Okay, Anna. Look, I just want to read a quote that I really enjoyed because I thought this was good. This was in, it was in a Nautilus article,

I think, the website Nautilus, which is very good. Sex is far from the perfect way to reproduce. It imposes a huge cost on a species and that cost is called males. If half a species is made up of males, obviously, who can't make babies. Like, what's the point in that half? They're just a massive waste. So there was a big push for this in the 1970s, especially among radical feminist lesbians, who basically said, this is happening in the animal kingdom. Let's do it in humans as well.

And let's get rid of all the men. And when you look into it, basically, they're all radical feminist lesbians, but they're also quite eugenicistic and also quite interracial superiority. There's one amazing paper about these. people written by Greta Rezenbrink. But it's almost impossible to like find anyone who was into this idea who wasn't also eugenicist.

I'm necessarily saying I'm definitely married to it. For evolutionary purposes you can see the it's basically you can see the advantage of not having any males. Everyone can have a baby at one point or another which means you can spread the species further. It all came from some work by a friend of the podcast

actually, Dr. Helen Spurway and she was the one who was I think in a relationship, yeah, in a relationship with JBS Haldane and Those two did loads of experiments about not having oxygen in their body. Yeah. So as well as doing that, she did a lot of work on guppies who reproduced through pathogenesis. And she was the one who said, I don't see any reason why humans can't do it.

In fact, there are reasons why humans can't do it. But she was one who said it. And it was her work that all of these people started jumping on the back off saying, well, let's do this. How did they propose to do it? There's quite a big jump in there from let's do this to let's start reproducing. pathanogenetically. Yeah, I think the idea, well, for instance, when this started, there was one tabloid who kind of got on the back of it as well and started sending out messages saying, have you ever given birth to someone without having sex? And loads of people replied, going, yes, I did. It was me. It was me. That's so funny. This is really cool. One percent of American mothers nearly claim their births are virgin births. Come on, why do you say like that, Dan? That's completely insane. No, I read it.

I find it fascinating because there's qualifications behind that 1%. Absolutely. So this comes from 2013 and it was 0.8% of respondents who said that they gave birth despite being virgins. And the good news is there are things you can do to make it like clear that you can have a virgin birth. So 31% of the virgin mothers had signed a chastity pledge. That really helps. If it's during Advent, that's even more helpful. I think something like 60%, some mad number found out they were pregnant during Advent. run up to Christmas you're likely to be younger

and also to have parents who did not tell you about sex or contraception those are the things you can do to really game the system and ensure you have a virgin birth very cool very nice hey by the way this whole thing that these two lizards go through the act that you were describing

if you would like to experience that yourself there's actually a workshop you can do to simulate it were you kind of getting a donut with someone yeah well I assume the donut must be part of it there was a play that gets put in various places around the world by two performance artists. It is called the Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards.

It's a dance drama. They dress up as the lizards. They come out on stage. And there's sort of scientific captions explaining what's going on. They just sort of put their tongues out and so on. And then they start mating on stage. And then you see a post-coital moment at the end of the play. And it was so successful.

Spoilers. It was so successful. It's literally called Desert. grassland whiptails lizards they needed to give it a more pretentious name at the moment i'm not really into it yeah but there is a donut of erotica would be good oh yes donut of love donuts of love double glazed oh because like donuts have glazing they're glazing yeah i don't think anyone's getting glazed scenario but clearly it's so popular they got asked how do i get involved and so they do workshops now where you come and you lay down as the lizard

and you understand the movements and it's this specific one and I've seen photos, it looks fantastic. That's got to be a 100% pervert audience for the workshop, isn't it? It doesn't look like that's how it's being presented. We have actually touched on these guys before. Just to quickly say,

people who listen to the Merry Roach episode might remember, we talked about the state lizard of New Mexico, which is the leaping lesbian lizard. And that is a subspecies of the world. ones that we're talking about. Another whip tail. Another whip tail, yeah.

And again, the reason they're called the leaping lesbian lizard is because they mate without the need for males. Right. Did anyone else start to feel a bit, sorry, for all whiptail lizards, that they are known for just one single thing. When you're actually trying to research anything else about them, you can get to page 20,000 on Google and you're still at, oh, they have lesbian sex. They probably have really interesting hobbies.

I read that they stress eat in response to noise. So there's a load of them who are living near an air base in America And whenever the aircraft go over They have a higher level of cortisol So they're more stressed And they're also eating way more So that's one thing They also don't like eating very colourful grasshoppers

They found that the more brightly coloured a grasshopper is The less likely it is that these whiptails will eat it May I be honest I can see why this is left to page 20,001 on Google Is sex worthwhile? This is the debate? Is it? Yeah.

Between who? You and your wife? Yes, it is because you get genetic diversity. That's it, right? All animals have genetic mutations that crop up every now and again. In humans, it is possible to deal with negative mutations through this recombination thing that Anna, you mentioned. but with other animals like pure pathogenesis animals

which never have to have sex they only clone themselves the bad mutations just escalate and then mutations are normally negative so they just slowly affect your fitness over time until that genetic line that particular lizard or whatever is just absolutely screwed

you know it just can't function very well in the world you can't say I'd like to go back to only having two balls please or whatever well learn to have sex yeah well actually that does that does sometimes happen so there's some species of stick and sex that have arguably the best or the worst of both worlds, whichever way you look at it,

in that they reproduce pathogenetically, but every now and then they have sex. And so, yeah, they've just, they've looked at their, like, the genetic line of all these guys and seen that it's very similar, very similar, very similar, very similar. And then suddenly there's, like, quite a big difference. And it looks like they're having sex at that moment, and then they'll go back to Parthenogenesis for a few more generations. That's crazy. That generation must be so disapproved of when it comes along.

But every generation thinks they invented sex, right? In this case, it's actually true. But in a time fashion, it comes around in 70-year cycles or something, doesn't it? Sex is back. There seem to be other species that have sex sometimes and then parthenogenetically procreate sometimes. One of them is boa snakes. So in 2024, there was a Brazilian rainbow boa called Ronaldo.

I don't know why. It doesn't have any feet. Been kept in a cage in Portsmouth and hadn't been in contact with another snake for nine years, so they claimed. And there was a student monitoring his cage and a student came and reported to their superiors, her superiors, that 14 babies had appeared in Ronaldo's cage.

And how bad would this intern have been that the animal care technician, who this was reported to, said, we just didn't believe him at first. They thought they'd made a mistake, which is quite weird to come and report that you've seen 14 new. snakes in the cage for the pots to go

I don't think you have you must have can you go and recount it's just one okay that's 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've said over the course of this podcast we are all online

on social media I'm on Instagram under Shriverland Andy at Andrew Hunter Em James no such thing as James Harkin

Yep or you can get to us as a group by going, where Anna? You can email podcast.kwai.com or on Instagram at No Such Thing. That's right. And if you would like to contribute to the Monday show, which is known as Little Fish, do send in your best facts to that email address as well, podcast at qI.com or the feedback that you've got about the show generally because we gather all that stuff up and we bring it to our secret club, clubfish, which exists on Patreon. If you want to join, patreon.com slash clubfish and you'll find multiple tiers of exciting stuff that you can get involved with,

one of which is drop us a line. This is the audience feedback show. We love reading out your mail. So do check that out. Otherwise, just come back next week because we're going to have another episode. Thank you as ever to our team here, Leying Lee, Ethan Ruperalia, as well as the other fish busters. And we will see you again next week with another episode.

Goodbye.