No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Lobster War

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

Live from Perth, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss the most annoying man in history, the regretful inventor of the Australian labradoodle, and how lobsters nearly started a war. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:04 And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Perthus. Dan Schreiber and I am sitting here with Anna Chisinski, Andrew Hunter Murray, 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 you, Chisinski. Yeah, my fact this week is that in the 1960s, Brazil and France almost went to war with each other over whether lobsters crawl or swim. What a just war it would have been. Who side are you on? Who side are you on?
Starting point is 00:01:12 I think they crawl. Oh, I think they swim. Wow. I will see you on the battlefield. Okay. I assume they do both, right? Yeah. The classic Switzerland in the corner.
Starting point is 00:01:26 No, so it is a problem that they do both because this is, so this is the fact that in 1961, a French fishermen found that the water off the coast of Brazil was full of lobsters, and they wanted to fish them so they could get money from selling the lobsters. And so they started fishing them, but Brazil claimed exclusive rights to sea creatures that were walking along the continental shelf
Starting point is 00:01:48 within a certain, like, diameter or radius of Brazil. So if creatures were walking in that area, then Brazil had a right to them and no one else did. But if they were swimming in that area, then they did not. And so this huge argument came forward about whether they were walking or swimming. And the French said that they were swimming, so they were open to anyone, because lobsters do sometimes swim. And so they said, we're allowed to fish for these lobsters. Brazilian said they crawled. There was actually, I think there was a moment where the Brazilian Admiral of the Brazilian Navy said that
Starting point is 00:02:20 if you're saying that lobsters swim, you're also saying that a kangaroo would be considered a bird when it hops. That is fighting talk. But it really came to blows. So there was this huge debate, and eventually Brazil said, France, can you please go away?
Starting point is 00:02:39 These things are crawling. And France refused and had a destroyer ship accompany their lobster boats, a warship. And in response, Brazil mobilized its warships, including an aircraft carrier,
Starting point is 00:02:50 and then both of these sides are ready for battle and this lasted for two years they were sitting there with battleships poised, ready to fight each other over where the lobsters crawl or swim and then eventually some laws of the sea were put into force saying look guys chill the fuck out
Starting point is 00:03:07 that's the official wording on the law it was yeah and yeah war didn't happen and rights were granted to Brazil because of a fishing act and it was okay but we were pretty close guys Wow. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:22 It seems to me that countries are always going to war over fish. Are they? Things living in the sea. So there's been a turbot war between Canada and Spain. A crab war between North and South Korea. There was an oyster war between Maryland, the state, versus pirates. Cool. Oh.
Starting point is 00:03:40 There was a mackerel war between UK and Iceland. A prom war between India and Sri Lanka. A squid war between the UK and Argentina. A scullop conflict between the UK and pirates. a catfish dispute between the US and Vietnam and Spratt spat between Latvia and Russia. Wow. That's amazing.
Starting point is 00:04:03 God, fish are real troublemakers, aren't they? So on lobsters, which I believe this was about. So the Caribbean... So the thing that this was originally about, actually, was a Caribbean spiny lobster, which was a kind of rock lobster. But this is a kind of lobster that cues. so a very British brand of lobster
Starting point is 00:04:22 but when they migrate they form orderly single file cues so they migrate seasonally because they want to get away from cold water and these are the most precious lobsters on that coastline and yeah they cling to each other and form an orderly cue and move
Starting point is 00:04:40 single file each rest is antennae over the sort of arse of the lobster in front and they move like a conga that's so exciting The lobster conga. Yeah. I read that in North America, back when the European settlers
Starting point is 00:04:54 first went there for the first time, there was so much lobster in the water that they would wash up onto the shore in piles two feet high. Wow. The tiny tsunami of lobster. Tiny and delicious. I've got a fact about
Starting point is 00:05:11 putting lobsters into the sea, which is a thing that sometimes people do. So this was in Britain in 2017. Two Buddhists were fined 15, thousand pounds for releasing 700 live lobsters and crabs into the sea of Brighton. And they did it as a life release ceremony, which is the thing you might want to do if you're a Buddhist. And unfortunately, they weren't native and they had the potential to destroy ecosystems.
Starting point is 00:05:32 And the government had to try and catch them again. Only 323 were recovered. So there are still about 400 out there. Yeah. This is a real problem, though. This has happened in Australia as well, genuinely, and in America. So it's the Fangsheng ceremony, it's a Buddhist ceremony, which is about returning life to where it's meant to be, but it's always returning non-native creatures to an unfamiliar habitat,
Starting point is 00:05:55 and they always wipe out local ecosystems. And yeah, so it happens with lobsters in Australia and in China, America. Do Buddhists have, like, the equivalent of a confession booth that they go into? Like, forgive me monk father. I don't know what it would be. Lama? Forgive me Lama, for I've sinned. I tried to save a life, but I've destroyed an entire ecosystem.
Starting point is 00:06:18 that's 12 reincarnations that you've been deducted you know Peter the people for the ethical treatment of animals we've discussed them a few times and they kind of suggest that people might want to do this thing as well which they call lobster liberation and they have posters they put posters up saying being boiled hurts lobster liberation but unfortunately the lobster in their picture
Starting point is 00:06:44 is bright red which means it's already been cooked Oh no. Lobsters do have a very, very tough time. So whenever they malt, they have to, obviously they have to get rid of their old shell to grow larger, but they have to lose half their claw weight, because otherwise the claw is too big to fit out of the old shell. And the claw muscles are so massive,
Starting point is 00:07:04 because obviously that's what lobsters are like. They have to rip, they've got very slim wrists, so they have to rip the claw. Basically, when they try to molt, they have to rip out the lining of their throat, their stomach and their anus, which is, I think... That's the trifector of things you don't want to rip out.
Starting point is 00:07:22 Yes. What, that's the least classy use of the word trifecta? Yeah. But they're weird, aren't they? I was reading on National Geographic, that they... So, okay, their brain is located in their throat, their nervous system in their abdomen,
Starting point is 00:07:39 their teeth in their stomach, their kidneys in their head, they hear through their legs, and they taste with their feet. They're all over the shop. So the bladder being very much in the head means that they urinate out of their faces. And urinating is very important to lobsters
Starting point is 00:07:55 and especially female lobsters because it's quite sexy. So the way that female lobsters seduce male lobsters is that they urinate out of their face into the male lobsters den. That is sexy. Oh, you wouldn't want... Imagine your letterbox in the morning. Oh no, it's Valentine's Day.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Well, it's very attractive in some circles. But, yeah, the females urinate in the male dens until the male is attracted enough for the urine. All things, I really need to get rid of this urine somehow. So he invites the female in. And then immediately she gets naked. So as soon as she's been invited in, she sheds all of her shell.
Starting point is 00:08:35 And also, I think this is really insulting. The other thing that the female sheds, when she gets into a lobster's den, is the pouch where she had banked the sperm from the prior mate. I'll just leave this by the door Can she put back her shall on if he's not interested? No, no.
Starting point is 00:08:58 You can't rip out the lining of your throat, stomach and anus, and then think, I've missed those. I've misread those sides. I'll just get my poucher's furmed be on my way. Hey, we need to move on to our next fact shortly. I think we should honestly give a shout-out to the amazing lobsters which are the largest freshwater invertebrates
Starting point is 00:09:18 on earth, which is the Tasmanian lobster. And yeah, they're incredible. So they're the size of kind of a normal-sized dog. And they're extremely strong. But Anna, dogs come in lots of different sizes. That's one of the main things about dogs.
Starting point is 00:09:35 They're like a cocker spaniel. Wow. They are extremely big. They live to be 60 years old, at least. And they can break human. bones so with their claws or they can crush beer bottles and they're just incredible and they can't breed until they're 14 years old which we laugh at but we're humans that's literally the same as humans but breed yeah breathe oh I thought that when the lobster gets to 14 it goes
Starting point is 00:10:08 that's better. Fittingly, it does make that noise, but it's a clean of a reason. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1350, there was a man called William Stand Up Right, and he annoyed everyone else in his village
Starting point is 00:10:40 so much that every single one of them moved away. Wow. He sounds awesome, doesn't it? Do we know anything about what he did? Well, so the thing is, this comes from the parish rolls in England, so it's where, if you're a historian, it's a really good place to get, like, all the really small things that happen in the villages.
Starting point is 00:11:04 And in this one, in particular, it says, The coroner testifies that William's stand-up right is so quarrelsome and rancorous that none of the Lord's tenants can bear to live in the village because of him and he has caused the village to be deserted. And then by 1356, so that's six years later, he had also left the village, presumably because he had no one left to argue with.
Starting point is 00:11:30 That's amazing. And that's all we know about him. In a lot of these things, these kind of parish things, all you see is a very, very tiny snapshot of people's lives. It's amazing. So, for instance, in 1328, John Fronzie claimed two shilling in damages because Alice Devaney's had accused his wife of wearing her short jacket before Easter. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:11:55 Shut my mouth. In 1347, a man called Roger Sweating Bed was accused of fornication with Letitia Bat. Roger Sweat in Bed. Sweat and bed, stand up right, and shut in mouth. about the third one? This is, though, it's so fun reading through these old records. So there's actually a document called the Assize of
Starting point is 00:12:23 nuisances, and I really recommend it, and it's what I wasted all of my research time doing for this show. But it's from 700 years ago, and it's literally a list from the whole of the UK of all the nuisances that are reported by neighbours. And so I read through it, and most
Starting point is 00:12:39 of them, to be fair, are about sewage leaking into other people's gardens. So there are a lot of people... Maybe they were just flirting with the next or they bring a kind of lobster way. It didn't sound super sexy in the write-up. So there was a woman who built her own personal toilet because she didn't like throwing her sewage out of the window,
Starting point is 00:12:57 which a lot of people did, but the solids blocked her gutter and the neighbours said they were greatly inconvenienced by the stench. So that was then. And there was one more just in 1377. Thomas and Alice Young complained that their neighbour built a forge, and they were making armour, but the sledgehammer crashing,
Starting point is 00:13:16 of the making the armour disturbed them. But worse than that, the smoke penetrated their house, so it smelled really bad. And also they said, the blows of the hammer shake the walls of our house so much that it spoils our wine. Wow.
Starting point is 00:13:31 That is unpleasant, actually. Tough to live with that. I've got a fact about kind of celebrity neighbour disputes, because this does happen. So, for example, in Manhattan, in the early 1970s, John Cage, famous composer,
Starting point is 00:13:47 he lived next door to John Lennon, and he had to go around to complain about the noise. Well, can I just say, John Cage is most famous for writing that song, which is complete silence. Exactly. I like the idea of John Lennon going back around and complaining any time he liked.
Starting point is 00:14:02 Can you please stop playing four minutes and 33 seconds? I saw another, this is just very, to me, this is very British about noisy neighbors. in Crystal Palace in London, which is where I live, this family discovered in their basement an unexploded World War II bomb, and they found it in the evening, but they didn't call the police
Starting point is 00:14:28 because they didn't want to wake the neighbours overnight and so patiently guarded the bomb. How loudly do they talk on the phone? They just didn't want everyone to be evacuated because they might be blown up by a World War II bomb. To be honest, if the World War II bomb has lasted 60 full years, it's probably going to be okay for an extra 12
Starting point is 00:14:48 hours. That was their logic. Imagine if it had one of those timers counting down from 60 years ago. We've overset this one, but one day. But there are often surveys done about the items that people find most annoying in neighbours,
Starting point is 00:15:04 and they include hot tubs are annoying because people are making a lot of noise in hot tubs when they're in them. Barbecues, automatic solar lights. Trampolines are a very common cause of complaint. And I like this from the Guardian newspaper, who commented that trampolines are complained about because they allow the neighbor's children to spy on you on an intermittent basis. Very annoying. I was just looking at some stupid names because of this guy called William Stand Up Right. I found a website which had every single name that's mentioned in the Doomsday Book.
Starting point is 00:15:41 And I spent most of my time reading that, to be honest. in the Doomsday book there are four people called Abba 12 people called Alfred the Butler Wow Two called ape One called Bono One fish, two gods and a snot
Starting point is 00:15:56 And there is one person called Anna Who was a man living in Puckle Church in Gloucestershire No relation My past is not supposed to be delved into That was in my contract There were no Dan's, no Andes. And there was one James who lived in Cockfield in Suffolk. Wow.
Starting point is 00:16:20 He actually is a relation. I looked up a few names too. So I found that in the last decade, several dozen people have named their daughters unique. I also looked up some medieval ones as well. And just on the origins of rude words, there's in the middle ages, the early uses of... of the F word, the word fuck, meant to hit something. So there is a man in 1290 whose name was Simon Fuckbutter.
Starting point is 00:16:51 He probably worked in dairy. There's actually, there's a really cool Twitter account which is called Name Curator, at Name Curator, and it's an account run by an Australian called Ben Osborne, and Ben Osborne just puts just his favorite names that he's found. So a couple that have gone up on the site, these are all real people, Dick Passwater, is one guy, who was a NASCAR driver in the 50s, so Dick Passwater, and my favorite, a guy called Hans.
Starting point is 00:17:20 Hans off. And he's a former submarine official. What was he called Dick Passwater? And he was a NASCAR driver, because there was also another NASCAR driver at the same time, or maybe the following decade called Dick Trickle. Oh, yeah. And he's one of my favorite people, because Dick Trickle, he was, an amazing motor racing driver but he liked to smoke
Starting point is 00:17:46 and they changed the rules and said you weren't allowed to smoke anymore because you had to wear helmets and you couldn't smoke while you were wearing your helmet and so what he did was he drilled a hole in his helmet and he smoked with putting the cigarette in there wow so for QI I always wanted to ask the question why did Dick Trickle have a hole in his helmet
Starting point is 00:18:05 beautiful didn't make it past the senses did it No, I never made it past a producer. Do you know what Shakespeare means? Just is it like literally shaking a spear? Well, according to a book that came out in 2014, which is the Dictionary of Surnames, it's written by a couple of professors,
Starting point is 00:18:28 and one of them said that the medieval surname Shakespeare is probably an obscene name originally for a masturbator. No. Wow. He's a masturbator. Hans off. I think it was pretty hands-on. I was on Ancestry.com
Starting point is 00:18:49 and Ancestry.com has been listing surnames that have gone extinct. So obviously the ones that stand up right, I believe, will have been extinct. So ones that have recently gone extinct include chips, temples, rummage, Southwark. So those, they've seen that there are virtually no new members who are being born with the surname. And on the endangered list, and what counts as an endangered surname is so rare that less than 50 people in England and Wales have them, so this is for England and Wales. Included on the list is Mirren, as in Helen Mirren, Nihi, as in Bill Nijie, and Bonneville, as in Hugh Bonneville, all three leading actors.
Starting point is 00:19:30 Endangered species, basically. Yeah. It's all of our solemn duty tonight, if we can, to mate with Helen Mirren, Bill Nyee, or Hugh Bonneville, depending on your preference. Form orderly cues. Okay. It is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the man who invented the Australian Labradoodle deeply, deeply regrets it.
Starting point is 00:20:00 He is so sorry that he did that to all of us. This is a guy called Wally Conron. Wally Conron, who's now approaching his 90s, he was the first person in a mass sense, and is credited with creating the trend, which started in the 80s, of the cross between the Labrador and a poodle. And what he hates is it kind of took off,
Starting point is 00:20:29 and it became a celebrity dog, and Jennifer Aniston has one, and Crown Princes around the world have them, and it became such a fashionable dog. But to get the specific dog, there's a lot of breeding that needs to happen. and he thinks he's created the Frankenstein that has set off
Starting point is 00:20:45 all these people experimenting with different breeds and so on for designer dog. So yeah, he's very sorry. He asked me to say he's very sorry. I thought the reason that he, one of the reasons that he was sorry was because the whole reason the Labradoodle came to be
Starting point is 00:21:00 was because he was asked to create a guy dog for a woman whose husband had a dog allergy. And so by merging those two, they're anti-allergenic, they're, so you're not allergic to them. I thought one of the reasons that he didn't like the Labradoodle is that
Starting point is 00:21:16 it's advertised as a hyperalogenic dog and yet a lot of people now breathe them without actually testing whether or not they are. So I think quite a small percentage of them now are non-allergenic. But he is definitely against all of this kind of cross-breeding, I'm pretty sure.
Starting point is 00:21:32 Yeah, he said, I just heard about someone who wants to cross a poodle with a Rottweiler. But that is a thing. Really? Yeah, it's called a Rottel. Also called a rotty poo, a rotty doodle or a rotweiler poo. Yeah. But a rotweiler poo sounds like something. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Yeah. Yeah, you can get a cocker poo. That's a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle. A she poo, which is a shitsu and a poodle. Yeah, a beech poo, which is a bichon-freeze and a poodle. A pika poo, which is a peekingese and a poodle. No, stop it. I mean, it does sound like they do it just for the names, doesn't it?
Starting point is 00:22:07 Yeah. Yeah. There's a schnauzer Scotty cross called a schnosh. It's one other fun cross, which is a cross between a shih Tzu and a Jack Russell, which has two names, but one of them is the Jack shit. Ah. Have you guys, there are some other dogs that went extinct, or dogs we don't have anymore. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:27 So have you heard of the Salish wool dog? No. The wool dog was a dog you could shear, and then you would wear their coat as your coat. It was a dog that was big and fluffy enough that you could keep on shearing it. Could you not do that with any dog, no? I don't know You could have a go couldn't you? Might as well try
Starting point is 00:22:45 But you know Why Poodles have those stupid cuts of hair that they have There's a proper reason behind it And that is because they're originally To collect stuff from water And if they had this kind of really bushy hair And they would just get wet and they'd get heavy
Starting point is 00:23:02 So But like is it hunting? It was collecting quarry So you've been hunting And then the water say it's a duck it's in the water and then the poodle would go in and get it. And the idea was, so they wanted to have it to have as little hair as possible, but it still needed hair to keep its internal organs warm.
Starting point is 00:23:21 So that's why it kept it around there. It still needed it to keep the joints warm to stop arthritis, so it still needed it around there. And the top knot was to keep the long hair out of its eyes when it was swimming. And it's a water dog. So the word poodle comes from the old German Pudel, isn't it, for puddle? because it was best at going into water and getting ducks out of it.
Starting point is 00:23:44 But do you know the best thing about a poodle these days, when they're often shown in dog shows, is the thing that you're striving for is for them to be square. So squareness is the thing you strive for most, above all things. So the Westminster Kennel show allows two styles of poodle. It's not too many.
Starting point is 00:24:02 They have continental and English, like breakfasts. And the English one is a much greased dog. Yeah, but who's going to pay that much for a continental... Yeah, true. The continental is absurdly... It's so overpriced.
Starting point is 00:24:18 But this... So there are two styles of poodles that are allowed at these dog competitions and they're judged on squareness. And if properly square, the area from their breast to their bottom has to be the same as the area from their shoulder to the ground.
Starting point is 00:24:30 And it's very precise. So in shows where poodles are being shown, they have to be really groomed very well and groomers work with only the finest scissors, apparently, and the best poodle scissors are made in Japan, and they cost more than $600.
Starting point is 00:24:46 Dan, it sounds like your samurai scissors. Yeah. My, yeah. My dad has, he's a hairdresser, and so is my mom, and he bought, when he was young, a pair of scissors that were
Starting point is 00:25:02 forged in the fires of Mordor. Yeah. They are samurai. scissors. They were made by samurai. And you said that on the show, and we really did not believe you. Yeah. And then I showed you the article where he was in the newspaper. It's true. I mean, it's still him going samurai scissors, but they're so sharp because they're made by these samurai
Starting point is 00:25:24 that when you're a hairdresser and you have your scissors, you need to get them sharpened every two three years. You go and do it. My dad takes them every two, three years, and they say to him, there is nothing we can do for you. They are as sharp as the day you bought them. Samarize. Wow. I've got a fact about dog mentality assessments. If anyone's up for that? Yes, please. Sorry, dog mentality assessments in Sweden.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Oh, no, no, no. So there's a Swedish association which has to assess how relaxed and calm a dog is, and it uses this thing called the dog mentality assessment. And what it is, is basically a haunted house for dogs. So they make a dog walk along a long path in some woods, and then as it walks along, They suddenly, they play a gunshot sound.
Starting point is 00:26:11 They play the sound of a metal chain being creepily dragged along. And then suddenly, a ghost appears. What? Is it a dog ghost? No, it's a human ghost. There's a person coming in a sheet with a plastic bucket on their head. And they test how calm or aggressive the dog is. So, are they doing this because it's like a seeing dog?
Starting point is 00:26:32 I think they're doing this because they have time on their hands. Like if it was like a blind person's dog. I think it might be too. in that kind of working dogs, the aggressiveness. Yeah. Right. Wow, that's exciting. I have a couple of things on, so the main headline fact is the inventor regretting his invention. I found a few other people who've regretted their inventions. So Tim Berners-Lee, inventor, the World Wide Web, he really regrets, you know, originally when we all had to put in a web address, HTTP and so on, he regrets the two forward-slashes that you do, because,
Starting point is 00:27:08 See, that's the best bit. Well, I agree, James. I had great fun. I wish there were more. But... I sometimes put an extra one in just for fun. Exactly. Hours of fun.
Starting point is 00:27:22 And so the two forward slashes on it, which is completely useless. Didn't need to be there. He just put them in because, like James and I, loves a good forward slash. And they had no purpose at all. And he regrets that. He's publicly spoken and said,
Starting point is 00:27:38 I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Okay. Yeah, I think people thought they did. Codes at the time. I mean, they did serve purpose in certain code, didn't they? And so he assumed they were useful. Yes. But then it turned out later that they weren't,
Starting point is 00:27:53 and he said the countless hours of human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes. Oh, what would we have done with the time? I could have watched the wire. Okay. I'll never watch the wire because of Tim Berners-Lee. Hey, we need to move on to our final fact soon. Guys got anything before we do? The queen is very responsible for dog crossbreeds.
Starting point is 00:28:16 Is she? Our queen and yours, guys. Don't forget. Hers was one of the first crossbreeds, as the BBC put it, to infiltrate the kennel club because she bred dachshunds with corgis and she insisted on her doggy being in the portrait that she had done with her
Starting point is 00:28:34 in the 1970s in 1975 and quite sweetly the secretary of the kennel club at the time that judges all of these things said that look the Daxon was evolved to chase badgers down holes and corgis were evolved to round up cattle so if anyone loses a herd of
Starting point is 00:28:50 cattle down a badger hole these are just the dogs to get them okay it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy my fact has a content warning This bit's rude. Okay, cool.
Starting point is 00:29:06 Unlike that lobster bit, we did... Oh, yeah. So my fact is that the word shit-faced originally meant having a very small face. So if you said, I was absolutely shit-faced last night. It just means all your features
Starting point is 00:29:24 bunched up right in the middle. It's because it comes from the word chit. You hear that. It's very old-fashioned saying. You hear it said sometimes a mere chit of a lad or whatever. Or like a chitty is a little... receipt or something. Exactly, yeah. It just means
Starting point is 00:29:36 like a small thing. So the first usage that I've been able to find is 1622 where there's a child described as a peaking chit-faced page. It just means small face. I think we should bring it back, don't you? Yes, I do. There are loads of words for being drunk
Starting point is 00:29:55 but there are very few for having a small face. Imagine if the band The Small Faces had originally called themselves the shit faces. So this is a weird thing But last night Andy said to all of us Who do you think has a smallest face
Starting point is 00:30:11 Of all of us for? And I forgot we were doing this fact Is that why you asked? It's not consciously why I asked Because you were called pinhead at school, weren't you? Yeah But as I pointed out
Starting point is 00:30:23 Pins famously have very large heads Relative to their body So let me tell you The drug was on those guys Nice one shit face I was looking up other false shit words basically. So there's the word shittle, which means
Starting point is 00:30:46 inconstant. So like a shuttle, you know, it means back and forward, the word shittal. So you used to play badminton with a shittlcock. No way. Yeah. Oh, wow. Way. Shite poke. Yes. Sorry, I just don't like you.
Starting point is 00:31:02 I'm sorry. No, shite poke was an old word for a heron. Wow. And the reason was because people thought that herons defecated when taking flight which they do sometimes but not all the time there was a guy in the 19th century who wrote the Dictionary of West Somerset
Starting point is 00:31:18 in 1875 and he said that the 29th of May is Shitsack Day and he writes this the writer of the dictionary says in the northwest of Somerset and North Devon it is common to hear boys call out on that day shit sack shit sack but I have been unable to discover the origin
Starting point is 00:31:36 it feels to me like he's not heard them saying it to him on the other days. There's a three-volume dictionary of slang called Jonathan Green's... Jonathan Green is the guy who wrote it. He's a genius. But I looked up peculiarly Australian shit slang words. So I don't know how familiar...
Starting point is 00:31:56 These might be everyone knows them. So, for example, I'm so hungry, I could eat a shit sandwich, only I don't like bread. There's to take the shit with the sugar, which is to accept that one must have both bad and good experiences. in life. My favourite is you don't know whether you want a shit or a haircut.
Starting point is 00:32:17 Which is, you're stupid. That's what that means. I think it's possible to want both of those things. The word shit, though, has a long history, doesn't it? And a long etymological history. So it comes from skey, which meant to cut. And so it's the same origin as words like science and schedule and shield.
Starting point is 00:32:42 and it was spelled shite until the 1700s, but they used to kind of broaden their shit-based vocabulary, so in old English, skitté was diarrhea, and Besketan was one word that meant to cover with excrement. And also in the 18th century, according to the Partridge Dictionary of Slang, to shit through your teeth was to vomit, which does make a lot of sense.
Starting point is 00:33:06 And the example that's given in this dictionary is, E.G. Hark you, friend. Have you got a padlock on your ass that you shite through your teeth? Wow. I have some swear words which are not at all rude, but they are awesome. These are incredibly rude in the languages that they are in.
Starting point is 00:33:27 Okay, so for example... So we're going to alienate not just the English-speaking world of this podcast. Yeah, the Swedish, the Romanians and the Japanese should have better buckle up when they're listening to this. So in Sweden, you can say, go and put an old blanket over yourself, which is really rude to them.
Starting point is 00:33:46 In Sweden? Yeah, in Sweden. But that's what that guy who was pretending to be a ghost was doing. So, in Japan, you can say, tofu no kadoi atama will putsookete chine, or hit your head on a corner of tofu and die. In Romanian, there's a phrase, which means, I can't believe this is true.
Starting point is 00:34:11 It means I would dry my dirty pants on your mum's crucifix. That one's quite rude in English as well. Can I just, in Romanian, I read an article on Vice, which had a Romanian person writing in about swearing in Romania, and they said,
Starting point is 00:34:31 swearing culture in Romania is built on oral sex, mothers and Christ. That's very much the trifector of things not to say in Romania. Okay. Okay, 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 are on our Twitter accounts. I am on at Shreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, James. At James Harkin. You can email podcast at QI.com. Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, our Facebook page, no such thing as a fish, no such thing as a fish.com. There's so many no such things of fish things you can go to. But the website does.
Starting point is 00:35:15 have all of our previous episodes. It has our tour dates and everything. So head there. We will be back again next week with another episode. Guys, you have been awesome. Thank you so much. We'll be back again. Goodbye.

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