No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Quiet Whitsuntide

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Sally Phillips discuss Satan, Jason, hobbies and johnnies. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome for this week's episode of No Such Things of Fish, where we were joined in the Soho Theatre, London, by the incredible Sally Phillips. Now, a lot of you will be excited by that, I'm sure, because Sally has been on the podcast a couple of times now, and she is so funny. She is just one of us, really. She loves doing the research. She loves facts. Just for anyone who doesn't know who Sally is, she is basically the doy end of British comedy over the last, however. many years. She was in Smack the Pony, she was in Alan Partridge, she played the Prime Minister of Finland in Veep. I mean, she's been in everything. You know who Sally Phillips is. You're really going to enjoy this show. I don't really have much more to say, so I might as well quickly say, don't forget to join Clubfish. If you want to, go to no such things of fish.com slash Patreon or nosest thingsofish.com slash Apple if you want to do that, loads of bonus material,

add free episodes, all sorts of stuff on there. A few weeks ago, we gave away a cabbage patch doll. And actually that reminds me, once you've listened to this show, do go on to our various social medias because you will be able to see a couple of props that were used in this show. I'm sure we'll post them up. So definitely go and check those out because they're absolutely brilliant. Look, I don't want to use up any more of your time. I'm just going to say, on with a podcast. Oh, nice. And welcome to another episode and no such thing is a fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Soho Theatre

My name is Dan Schreiber I am sitting here with James Harkin Andrew Hunter Murray and Sally Phillips and once again we have gathered round 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

Sally. So I was entranced by the Finnish Hobby Horse Championships that was doing the round on Twitter and also I was in Finland when they were being held, unfortunately didn't make it. But my fact is that the world's best

hobby horse jumper can jump high enough to theoretically clear the first two jumps in the Grand National. It's amazing. How many of you saw it? Did I ever see it? It was really... The Hobby Horse Championships, it's mainly girls between 1118.

Okay. And is it one? Can't afford a real horse. Is it on BBC One? Like, where are they... The girls are horribly... lead. Okay. Yeah, by their compatriots for being into,

yeah, there was a film called Hobby Horse Revolution. 2019. It's a big thing. It's like, once you look into it, and it's some boys, many girls and some adult women, but I think that's a bit strange.

They often go into woodland and do it in secret. So they don't give away their moots? No, so they don't get attacked. Oh. Okay. And they start off, most people make their own hobby horses

because a pro hobby horse costs about 300 euros. Right. Yeah. And the bridle is... We're talking about the stick with the head of the horse. Yeah. So it's the realism that's the expensiveness, is it? Yes.

Or are they like aerodyne? Is it like Nimbus 2000? I don't know. I don't know. But my partner and I, because we knew this was live and we love the show very much, this afternoon,

spent a full 15 minutes. making everyone a hobby horse. What? No. No way. What? Oh my God. Oh my God.

What? So, Andy, for the people who can't see this, for the people who can't see this, bad luck. This is indescribable. It is incredible. This is amazing. Yours does like a tiny bit like a bad date night, girls. Mine is, it's a very colourful soul.

It's a very colourful sock, which is stuffed, and it has a mop hair and some eyes. And yeah, I love it. Thank you so much. Mine is ultra-realistic, I would say. This is a horse. Yeah, mine slightly looks like he ran out of materials and gave up. Yours is very cool.

It's very kind of, like, spacehorse. Mine's very space, like, glam rock sort of. This hair is like very Led Zeppelin from the year 300. I did that one. I'm quite pleased with that one. And this one's made out of bandages, a planter, and it's got radishes for eyes. Oh, wow.

This is incredible. Well, I thought, I mean, I kind of thought we could maybe have a go, but that would be too embarrassing, wouldn't it? Well, maybe we should get the audience to have a go. Do a bit of dressage? Because what would happen is it would be, there was loads of different discipline. Everyone's putting it down. Don't make me do it. Don't make me move.

I'm a geek. I don't like physical action. Yeah, they do show jumping. They do puissance, which is the only time you're allowed to run at a jump with, you're allowed to run at it rather than canter. Right. And yeah, that is the one where they've jumped a whole Peter Dinklage. Oh, is that how tall Peter is?

Four foot seven inches. Four foot seven inches. Four foot seven inches. But there's also, you know, show jumping. They do, the international is 80 centimeters, the jumps. Yeah. But the Finns so dominate that their jumps are one meter, ten centimeters. Wow.

So 10,000 hobby horses in Finland, in Finland alone. Is there a reason? But it's a reason I don't know. Is there a reason it hasn't got further or that it's so finished? It's got quite far. Right, okay. It has actually got quite, it's got so much further than you'd think. It's all the Nordic nations, Canada, Ukraine.

Yeah, yeah, it's in so many places. It's quite northern, isn't it? It's quite a northern Europe and Canada, like places we have long, dark nights with not much else to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you say that. You say that. But, I mean, at least they're nice to the horses in the Nordic nations, whereas our pretend horses have a dark, dark history.

Right. I'm talking about the... None of you came across that, the badstow, obi-orstein. Oh, the obi-a-os. Yeah, but the scariest one is in Wales. In Wales, they use real horse skulls. For their hobby horses. Really?

Yeah, with... This isn't teenage girls doing it, though. Well, the video I saw It's like a ghost horse. Elderly man with some friends goes to the door of someone's house and then sings quite a scary song in Welsh.

And if you cannot finish the song inside the house, they force their way in. And there's a lot of chasing girls with horses. It's all sort of strange folky rituals, isn't it? There are loads of these rituals. Yes, all over the place. You said, Padstow, which is another one.

There's the Hoden Horse in Kent. Did you see the Padstow? Did you look at that online? It doesn't look... I mean, it's really bizarre. It looks like a grand piano. But with a tail and a thing sticking out the front, then they sort of rock it.

Yeah, they're kind of a bit ritual. Very strange. Is this where the pantomime horse comes from? No. Because these are really weird sort of ritual fertility things. It's nothing to do with the pantomime horse. No, no, it's really strange. It's the Lord of Miss Rules.

So it's the spirit of... Well, that's what Google told me to do. What is a pantomime horse? But a kind of, you know, that's a sort of misrule thing, isn't it? You know, it's unnatural, it's weird, it's... Who's in the front, who's in the back? Yeah. No? No one of them is.

You would get on really well with Kate Beckinsale. Did you see this? Oh, really? She travels with a pantomime horse everywhere. She does. And she reckons it's like really good. Well, it kind of calms her down. If she's stressed.

Wait, sorry, with people in it? Well... Does she... Like an emotional support animal. She brings the costume around. And then if she's got a bit of downtime, then she'll get in it, and she'll find someone else to get in it with her.

And it's just a nice way of calming down, relaxing. That's very normal. I think the biggest problem on the sort of a PR level is that no matter how you try and spin it, it always sounds nuts when you say the thing you're actually doing with hobby horsing. Like I found a quote from someone who said, people assume that it's a game or that we are more or less crazy,

said chairwoman of the Finnish Stick Horse Enthusiast Association. You're never going to make it past the description, are you? It's a hard thing. But it sounds like an amazing. I genuinely think, you know, people always talk about at the Olympics, like why not have someone in the 100 meters who's just a citizen who's just running alongside and you can really see how fast they're going? Having a 12-year-old girl at the Grand National,

make the first two, and just stack it. Head first until the third. That would be amazing. Actually, imagine you had a pantomime horse, the fastest pantomime horse in the world. Yeah. And they are in the 100 meters. You know it's a person, right?

Well, two people. And they're in the 100 meters in the first ever Olympics. Yeah. Where do you think they would finish? So, sorry. Oh, in the first ever... So first ever Olympics, 100 meters race. You've got the two fastest current pantomime horse people.

Yeah. Where would they finish? finish in the race. Because people did run a bit slower, didn't they, in the first Olympics. Yeah, but they didn't have a pantomime horse costume on. Why? The first Olympics, that was Greece. Ancient Greece.

Oh, no, sorry, in 1986, the first modern. The modern ones. Just shoes were less good, Dan, and they hadn't, like, you know. Maybe someone died in the right race. Oh, okay. Not last. Honestly, it's just a straight up question. I'm going to say bronze.

I'm going to say bronze, but, no, no, I'm going to say silver and bronze, because they count as two people. Very clever. Very clever. I'm going to say gold. No, well, Dan, it's right. They would have got silver. The fastest is 12.045 seconds for 100 metres,

and that wouldn't quite have gotten gold in the first Olympics, but it would have been the second place. Does the nose of the person in the back of the pantomime horse have to get over the line? No, no. Okay. That's amazing. Can I go back to hobby horsing?

Just because it's one fact I'm just so desperate to share. Yeah. One of the rules of the hobby horse competition is that only stallions and mares can take part and gelding's a band. Gilding. Gilding being a muted young horse. Where are the testicles on this thing?

Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Yeah. Well, exactly. That's bizarre, isn't it? But that's in the rules. That's amazing. Wow. Incredible. Antimime horses.

I mean, that is the worst ever job. I mean, I always think... No. I've never done that. I've never done that. There were some pantomimes that sometimes use real horses. Right. Because John Barrowman was thrown 20 foot off by one.

They supposedly trained horse, they threw him off. In Glasgow in 2013. And there was a, Paul O'Grady, always used to tell a story about being in a panto with a trained horse that he had to get into bed with him. He used to follow him around. He was playing the Fairy Godmother and Cinderella. It used to follow him around the stage with a massive erection.

And he couldn't He couldn't say anything Because there's loads and loads of kids And they're all going, it's behind you Wow, good grief That's pretty cool Here's the thing about real horses now Yeah

If you, I don't think we've said this before If you frown at a horse And then go away And then come back It will remember and be a bit more James is doing some stunt work for the people listening at home.

It'll remember that you frown that. It'll remember that you frown. But also if you smile at a horse and then go away, it will think, oh, there he is. You know. Okay, the horse remembers you frowned. How is it then passing that data on?

Yeah. Exactly. So it's bizarre. It's which eye it looks at you with. Oh. So horses look at negative or threatening sites with their left eye and positive ones with their right eye.

Really? So if you come back, you know what the horse thinks of you, depending on which eye it looks at you with. That's really interesting. So horses understand human facial expressions? Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of animals, if you smile at them, they'll see the teeth and they think you're being aggressive, for instance. Right. So interesting. Like most comedians. Yeah. Do you know that it was illegal to dress up as a horse in Scotland in the 7th century? Really? Yeah. Okay. In fact, it was forbidden for any man to dress as a horse or a wild beast and dance anti-clockwise during January. Yeah, it was demonic.

Well, that's the thing about dressing up as an animal was to let your demonic side out. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was seen as very anti-Catholic and stuff. St. Augustine wrote that anyone carrying on that most filthy practice of dressing like a horse should be punished most severely. Oh, wow. But as soon as the 1st of February hits, knock yourself out.

We're doing no horse January this year again. That's fine. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that this June of 2023, the 6,000th, 66,66th, 666th English-language Wikipedia article was created, and that page was an entry for a Satan-Gour. Con.

Ooh. Yeah. You've got to imagine, obviously, that they were aiming to land that. But that's really hard, right? So SatanCon being... Is that like Comic Con, but with Devils? It pretty much is. Yeah, it's set up by the Satanic Temple, who are a non-theistic organization.

And they have this annual convention. It was in Boston this year. It was on April 28th, which is my birthday. So that's very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you very much. It's quite new, Satan Con. I think it's only been held twice, I think.

And this year, like, so this year was in Boston at the Boston Marriott Hotel. So good on the Marriott because you would think, oh, maybe there'll be a reputational concern if we host SatanCon. But they said, no, you come and have the conference here. And I think that's really good. Because they, no, but the first one got lots of placards and it got lots of protests outside Satan Con won. You know, in 2022, denouncing Satan and this sort of thing. Even though the satanic temple, they don't believe in Satan. They say they lie.

That's the point. That is the point of Satan. Oh, yeah, really good point. Oh, that's worrying. They do run Satan after school clubs, and I was thinking for my kids. And even if they don't believe in Satan, they're not helping themselves by calling themselves a satanic temple, are they? No. They're sort of more of a free speech organization.

That's what they say, Andy. You're right. You're being sucked in. Oh God, I've fallen right for it. Satan Prince of Lies, that's his name. Why did I get this pentagram tattooed on my back? They use the proper Latin greeting instead of saying Hail Satan, who they don't believe in.

I'm really on the temple site. They say Ave satana. What's that mean? Hail Satan. Yeah. But it scans the same as have a banana, which I really like. Aves satana. That's how you can remember it.

Yeah, yeah. I like him. I think they're kind of rationalistic. Well, there's a few of them around down there who claim to not be interested in Satan but are called the church for Satan or whatever. Yeah. And they're old, a lot of them are like

just trying to take the piss out of the government, out of the church, out of all that kind of stuff. In lockdown, I started presenting a religious program on Sunday mornings called Sunday Morning Live. And we, under the BBC, had to interview every religion that's recognised a religion. So I didn't actually do it, but they interviewed.

you the Satanists. Really? After. Is that like a proper religion then in the UK? Yeah. Yeah, Wiccan. Wiccan.

And the lady who came, I didn't talk to her actually, but she came, she'd been up all night. Doing what? In the woods with her horse. Having satanic sex in the woods. Basically, yeah.

And the big issue for Sunday morning live was that she wasn't wearing a bra and you could see really, see her nipples really, really clearly. Wait, was it radio or TV? TV. So it's like, how are we going to... Why would that story be relevant if it was radio, Andy?

How are we going to gafferate the witch's nips up? Wow. So the wicked thing is a bit different, yeah. Was she satanic? Like, did you feel that she was pushing the Satan? I didn't particularly talk to her. No, I think they... No, I don't think so.

I didn't know what happened, but it sounds like whatever spell she put on you is just suddenly kicked in. Honestly, I'm a bit scared of witches and Satan. So was David Bowie, so it's fine. He was once exercised. He got someone to do spells of protection. Well, he used to collect his urine in little bottles,

kind of like how Hugh Hefner did because he was worried that witches were going to steal them and do black magic on them. Oh, no. You collect all of it? What do you mean? He can't have collected all of his urine in bottles to prevent theft.

Because that's such an unsustainable... I mean, I know he was rich. I know he was like a wealthy guy. If someone had enough money for jars to sustain every passing of urine... Imagine how much it would fetch now. And I absolutely would buy some of that. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

But I also think, like, if you just piss it down the toilet, that's probably safer than keeping it in bottles in your house. It's so much safer. Yeah. Yeah, it must be, right? You're actually right. You've got it in bottles. No, but you're forgetting about filming trailers.

Because... Oh, yeah. Yeah, in filming, because there was it... I think I might have made this up. But I feel like there was an issue of people going to Justin Timberlake's filming trailer and trying to steal his turrets out of bed. Oh, because it's held in a tank. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Did I dream that? That would be so worrying if I did. I feel that was a thing, though. And what were they going to do with it? Were they going to clone him? eBay? Oh, right. No, no, just use it and use it for spells, I guess.

Was his, we've got to remember that this is a guy who was so coked off his head that he was collecting his own piss in bottles. I don't think there was logic to his reasoning. I think he just was scared of a... But there is a whole thing of collecting, you know, hairs and stuff, isn't that? Yeah, I mean, so that's a thing. Yoko Ono used to be seen as someone that potentially... She had an album called Yes, I Am a Witch,

because she was presented as someone who might be a witch. and she bought a single mustache hair off of Salvador Dali. She paid him for it, and he sent it over in a box, and years later it was revealed by the partner of Salvador Dali that he was so scared that she was going to use it for witchcraft that he ended up sending a painted bit of blade of grass that he picked from his lawn.

But she never noticed, according to the story. But he was petrified that Yoko Ono would do that. Yeah, well, there was the whole satanic panic, wasn't there? Was it 70s and 80s? Yeah, they thought McDonald's were haunted? Possessed? The whole satanic panic where McDonald's got a letter

from a woman in Ohio asking why the owner, Ray Kroc, was a financial supporter of the Church of Satan. And it was a rumor that just spread... She said she'd seen him on the Phil Donahue show

saying he supported the Church of Satan and he hadn't said that. But she told her pastor and her pastor put it in the church's newsletter which was called Moments of Sunshine. And very quickly that spread across America via church newsletters. Wow.

So McDonald's had to send executives out to these churches with sworn statements insisting that Croc never said those things. It was a real panic, wasn't it? And the expert on it these days is a guy called Dr. David Frankfurter. And what he thinks is it was basically like a sort of a loop where you would have these evangelical Christians saying, this is happening. and then people using hypnotic regression techniques

to try and remember things that they supposedly suppressed in their lives. And then really what they would do is kind of say what the hypnotist wanted them to say. You just had this kind of feedback loop that eventually there was, you know, in theory in some of the newspapers they were saying there were thousands of these Satanists

around America doing this. Yeah. I got a fact for you. Okay. In 2021, in the UK, more babies were named Lucifer than Nigel. Do you have the numbers? Do we know how many...

Fifteen Lucifers? Yeah. No more than two Nigels. No. Oh my word. It doesn't appear on the list. You know that thing where if they're under three, they don't say how many there are.

And do we think that it's because Nigel is associated with evil these days? Did you come across a thing of 666, though? Yeah. So I'd always thought that 666, the number of the beast, was about the number of perfection being seven, and so 6 being... imperfection. That's what I thought it was. But then today, I discovered that there's a thing called ISOCephi, which is letters equivalent to numbers. And apparently this was very,

very common in first and second century CE. So you would quite often refer to people with a number. So a joke was, by Suetonius, a calculation knew Nero his mother slew. And in this case, the emperor Nero equals 1005, which is the same value as the phrase his mother slew. And apparently most people think if you say 666, it stands for Caesar Nero. So in some early versions of the Bible in Revelations from Revelation 13, the Latin version has the number as being 616. Right. And that's because in Latin, Nero is 616, not 666.

And the reason we think that is because Revelation was written by very early Christians. It's one of the earliest of the New Testament books. And really, they were just being persecuted by Nero, so they saw him as the devil. Oh. But he was actually a good guy. Why? Well, I wouldn't go quite that far.

I mean, it depends what side you're on. If you're on Nero's side, he's a great guy. He used to drink an energy drink that was made by soaking roasted dung in vinegar. No, no, but that's still how they... That's Red Bull. That is... That's Stephen Seagall's energy drink.

Have you seen those adverts? Oh, yeah. They're unbelievable. I've not seen the ads. You've got to see the ads. What are they called? What are they called? I can't remember.

I used to drink it all the time. What? Yeah, I don't know why. I went through a period. Well, my local corner shop just stocked things like Marley's Mellow Mood, which was a Bob Marley energy drink. But it was sort of an opposite. A Bob Marley energy drink.

Yeah. It was a sort of Bob Marley anti-energy drink. And it said on the side, whatever you do, don't drive a truck after two of these. And the store, I just had all like the collection of every celebrity's weird. You know, it had a... What's amazing, Dan, is that this was at the end of your street. You would be the only person in the world who would buy this stuff.

Yeah, exactly. They probably only, they were like, oh, we accidentally ordered this one time. Oh, it's selling every week for this one guy. Let's keep getting it. It was really powerful, his drink, yeah. Yeah, the Steven Seagher one. It's the most misogynistic advert I've ever seen. Oh, really?

And he's not even bothered to turn up. You just have to watch it. Okay. That wasn't on the can. It's awful. I can't believe I was the sole funder of that ad. It is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that roughly 3% of our entire planet is called Jason. How much is called Nigel?

Shrinking amounts, yeah. So this is an amazing, okay, this is amazing, right? No, this is not 3% of all people on the planet are called Jason, right? this is 3% of the Earth itself is named Jason. By whom? Jason. By geologists and seismologists.

So there are, okay, this is a bit technical, but there are these two mysterious... Sound like Dan, when I read this out. There are these mysterious structures inside the earth, right? There are two of them, okay? And they are these massive blobs. They're called LLSVPs, large, low-shear velocity provinces,

right? Now, there's one, beneath Africa and there's one under the Pacific and that's obviously a very technical name for them and they're not very well known about they're not very well researched because they are where the mantle of the earth meets the core of the earth

so the earth goes crust not very much mantle quite a bit core quite a bit more and they're at the junction point between the mantle and the core so they're really hard to research and the researchers have named them Tuzo and Jason they are billions of years old and between them

Both blokes. That's true. They're named after two geological scientists, so they are, yeah. And we don't know what they are. They might be off-cuts from another planet, which is exciting. There's a theoretical planet called Thea from four and a half billion years ago,

which might have crashed into Earth and might have been subsumed. That's possible. Yeah, we don't know exactly what they are, but they are incredible, and they're there. And there's... I don't know why I'm having to do. justify their existence.

This is proper... Just about 15 minutes talk about Satan. These are real geological structures in the planet. They're awesome. No, yeah, it was wonderful. Why aren't you more excited?

In all honesty, it's because an eBay auction came up on my phone saying you've got three minutes to bid, so I suddenly was focused on that. Are you joking? Wow. I didn't bid in the end.

How much was it for that swimming pool of David Bowie's bottled urine? Are we saying that there's, because the description I read is that it's, there's mountains there that are taller than Mount Everest. Yes. But what does that mean? As in, there's no, it's not the hollow earth we're talking about, right? There's no space around the mountains. No.

It's just different, it's different rock that might have been this other mystery planet. Yeah, and in fact, near Jason and Tuzzo, there are these enormous mega mountains, and they're at that junction point as well. They are called ultra-low velocity zones. and it's this weird boundary zone. I did read something. I can't get my head around this. Scientists claim that the gap between the core and the mantle is bigger than the change between rock and air.

No, I can't understand that. It's because of the high pressure, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. That is amazing. And they're only found because scientists can track earthquakes through the earth and you spot where the reverberations,

how long they take to get through the earth, and you can build up a profile very slowly and carefully of what the difference structures are based on how fast waves travel. So this is just news to me that... Right. Because last time I did geography, I was a child, and I thought it was...

Then there was magma. The mantle is much more fluid, and then there's an outer liquid core in a solid core. So, yeah. There's space around Jason. No, that was me. No space at all. That was down saying a whole world. So in what sense is Jason a mountain?

It's a different type of rock. Like, you've got the sort of quite liquid mantle, but you've got much more. solid rock, which is this Jason stuff. Is that right? That's right. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's really interesting these are named after blokes because actually quite a lot of this science was done by women. Right? So a... So did you say you were surprised?

Weird. It's so weird. It's so against everything else that's happened in history. It's bizarre. One person, for instance, Inga Lehman, she was the first to work out that the earth had a solid core. And what it was, again, it's like the vibrations going through the earth and they realized there must have been a core there because the vibrations would come after an earthquake and then if you were exactly opposite the earthquake,

you wouldn't see them. And so there must have been something liquid there. But actually, she noticed that if you looked at seismographs, there were really, really tiny amounts of vibrations. So it wasn't completely dark. And what she realized was that this was because there was also a solid core inside the liquid core. But they all thought that, no, she must be wrong

and it must have been like a discrepancy in the seismograph. The seismic grass must be wrong because this woman can't possibly be right that there's an extra core in there but it turned out like in 1970 I think she was still alive but we found out yeah we found out that it was true

Wow amazing So I've got a couple of things on Jason Statham Me too I don't know Is it like a sandwich you got from your local shop So I was just looking into notable Jason's because I thought that's That's the territory.

Are you joking? I've got eight pages of dense geological data. Jason Statham is in Meg 2. He's massive. Yeah, he is. He's incredible. So he was filming Expendables 3, I think it was. I've got this too.

Have you got this? Amazing story. Amazing story. We're literally going from the structure of the entire all life, all of everything we've ever known, these amazing scientists. I'm sorry, the expendables three. Sorry, go on, yeah.

You listen to this and tell me you're not amazed. He's in a car, and he's doing a scene, and suddenly he needs to... He likes to do his own stunts, Jason, doesn't he? Yeah, and he needs to hit the brakes, because he needs to stop before there's a cliff, which drops 60 feet into the Black Sea. Gosh, 60 feet? 60 feet. That's nearly as much as the 2,000 miles of mantle

between the crust and the core. So the brakes fail. Statham's in the car and it goes off the cliff. This is a Hollywood film. He's plunging 60 feet into... A three-ton stunt truck. A three-ton stunt truck.

Sorry, he's driving the truck. He's driving the truck. He's driving the truck. We're not listening. And so then he should crash. Anyone else, any other of the expendables, you put Stallone in there, you put Schwarzenegger. You know, they would die in that moment, right?

Statham manages to leap out of the car. and successfully dive into the ocean and then comes up and he's all okay. And why is he okay, Sally? He's okay, because before he became an actor, he was a competitive diver, genuinely. And he's done a lot of free diving and has got a lot of scuba experience.

Exactly. But he was very, very good at diving, but not quite good enough to make the Olympic team so he decided to branch out. Exactly, but he did represent Britain in the Commonwealth Games in 1990. Oh, so it's not like scuba diving, it's highboard diving.

Highboard diving, which he used to practice in Crystal Palace. There's a high board there, and they have a pool there where Tom Daly would practice as well. And before Tom Daly, Jason Statham, he would be there. Yeah. That's really interesting. So Jason Statham, that's really interesting, because Jason Statham, that means, might have been helpful in the first attempt to dig down into the Earth's mantle in 1961. So this was a thing called Project Mojole, okay? It was an attempt to find the lower limit of the Earth's crust, which is very, very thick on land and much thinner over the ocean. The USA was losing the space race in 1961. The Soviets were way ahead.

And so the USA said, well, we'll just dig instead. And we'll do better at digging. And that'll be our new thing. And so they tried to get down beyond this thin layer of crust, where it meets the mantle, which is a point called the Mohorovichich discontinuity. It didn't work. So they went into the ocean. The weirdest thing was, there was a ship which was sent to do the drilling operation. And to keep stable in the same bit of the ocean. Their solution was they fitted propellers all the way around the outside and then just fired them all at the same time. Wow.

I know. It's pretty, it's very cool. They probably needed marine biologists on the boat, right, in order to do the science. I'm not falling for it. Because they didn't need... Did you know that Jason Mamoa? Absolutely not. Who became Aquaman later in his career first studied marine biology when he was at

university before transferring to wildlife biology. That is so interesting, Dan. Thank you. They did have a kind of hero of beginning with Jay and Jay named hero there because John Steinbeck was present. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck. He was their kind of writing about it. But it didn't, sadly, it didn't work.

Gosh, you weren't kidding. In the dressing room, he said, I've got 15 minutes, brilliant material on Jason. There is a bit of a bit of. of advanced this year. So this is quite sort of geeky now, but scientists have just extracted a chunk of the mantle for the first time. And they were, they were trying to work out, of Earth's mantle. Wow. We're trying to work out how to do it, right? And they realized they don't go to the mantle, go to where rock from the mantle has been pushed above its normal

resting place. So they drilled into an underwater mountain on, but like a normal underwater mountain is in at the bottom of the mid-Atlantic ridge. And they drilled in slightly sideways. And they have a core of mantle rock which is a kilometre long. Right. And they've extracted that core and that'll allow them to study all sorts of things about the deep earth. So cool. Yeah. Amazing. That's incredible. Wow. All I've got going on

here is you could keep it on your mantle piece. I just can't join in with the science stuff really. Well, Jason Statham. I do have a fact about Jason Statham. Oh, look who goes crawling back to the other. the side. He fits very well

as in he would be a great action hero even with his, you know, his human name, as in his name is a good name for an action hero. Right. So is it not his real name, Jason Stato? No, it is his real name, as far as I know. But my point is that action heroes tend to have names beginning with Jay.

Oh, that's interesting. James Bond, Jason Bourne, John Wick, Jack Reacher, John McLean, John James Rambo. Oh, yeah. And there was a study, a brilliant study by a writer at Slate called Dimitria Glace or Glass and she studied 2,000 action movies pretty much every modern western action movie

with a male sort of single every man protagonist. A third of them had names beginning with Jay. Really? Which is very unusual. So do you know that the earth is younger on the inside than it is on the outside? So when you get to the mantle level of the area...

Judas. That would be a good name for that. Judith, great action star. This is like... like freaky Friday. So as we saw in the movie Interstellar where when Matthew McConaughey is traveling out into space, gravity distorts time, doesn't it? And there's a reason that we say that when astronauts are in space,

they're almost time travelers because they age differently because time travels differently. If you were at the core of our planet, and that means then the core of our planet itself is traveling at a different time. So it's two and a half years younger than the rest of our planet. because gravity is so intense down there that it slowed down time. That's pretty cool. Whatever. Okay, let me tell you one thing about geology,

which this will totally blow your mind. So there's a place called the Heart Mountain in Northwest America. And I'm talking quite a lot of millions of years ago, but at one stage, that mountain moved 62 miles in half an hour. Really? The entire mountain. Isn't that amazing? So there's a load of basically magma

There's a big sort of river of magma there A load of water got into it It was a massive explosion And the entire mountain moved at 100 miles an hour Oh my word No When is that?

We're talking millions and millions and millions of years Oh this wasn't last year You just go skiing And you're like oh my God I just imagine Are we there yet? It's right hell fuck No

Sorry kids Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that you could tell the social status of an ancient Egyptian man by the color of his condom. I mean, surely you would have an inkling before you got to see.

Or it's a shock, isn't it? You told me you were a pharaoh. It's bizarre, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, this, I've read this in a couple of places. One is an article in the Indian Journal of Urology called The Story of the Condom. One is from an article from the Egypt Museum who have one of these very, very old condoms. And basically, they didn't use them for contraception.

They used them to stop diseases, but they also, an insect bite, weirdly. But they also use them as an insignia of rancour status. And it was just, when I say condom, I think some of it, it might have been more like almost like codpiece. Oh, okay. But they were used against diseases as well. So, you know, we can technically call them condoms. And they were made of linen soaked in olive oil.

Okay. And with different colors. The problem is, of all the sauces, maybe you guys found this, but if all the sources that I found really good academic sources, none of them told you what color you're aiming for. Ah, right. So I don't know if red was a good one or a blue was a good one. They've got Teuton Carmoan, haven't they?

Do they? Yeah, they do. No. Yes, they do. Linen, soaked in olive oil, impregnated with his DNA. Oh. And it would tie around to his waist.

Tied round his waist with string. But it didn't mention what colour it was. They didn't mention the colour. Why are we not getting the colour system? Sometimes the colours don't... At last. Yeah, right. Okay.

Gosh. That's very interesting. Hmm. In the course of researching this, I read probably the weirdest thing I think I've ever read, which is in ancient Rome, condoms. And by the way, I haven't found a legit source, but it appears in so many... No, it appears in so many places.

They used to, apparently, a ancient Roman who was victorious in a battle and had slain his opponent, would then make a condom out of the muscle of the opponent. Oh, don't be daft. Sauce. Well, they did use to make condoms out of animal intestines and bladders in Rome. So it's not impossible. It's not impossible. It feels a bit grisly.

It feels a bit grisly. It's sort of one of those facts I'd prefer. I'd just go to prefer not to believe. Yeah. I know. The ancient Egyptians used to use crocodile dung as spermicide, did you? How would you use that? I don't want to think about it.

Why is no one sleeping with me? I'm covered in crocodile shit. Do you know William Buckland? Do you know the naturalist? Yeah, who ate everything. His kids had a hobby horse made out of a dead crocodile. Wow. Just to get done a wild.

why that came into my head. Yeah. My friend Cindy used to have the crocodile that was used in Crocodile Dundee as a, like they had prop crocodiles and as you went into her house, she had the prop crocodile. Pretty cool.

From Crocundee. There's no more iconic prop. No, no. Was it a real crocodile? No, no. It was a pretend crocodile. No, I think it was a pretend crocodile. Condoms, just quickly.

Yeah. So the condoms of the 18th century were quite interesting because that was sort of getting towards modern condoms, but they're still very primitive. So they were made of sheep, Kaikum, which is the power that connects

the small and the large intestine to each other of the sheep. And they had to be treated and there was a whole nine-step process to make a proper condom out of a sheep's thing, Kaikam. And they were really scarce. They were very hard to come back, partly because butchers could not be bothered to collect.

You know, each sheep has one Kaikim, so that's one potential condom per sheep, and it was just not worth collecting, basically. So people would just use the sheep instead. Do you know what the first condominet literature was used by the wife of King Minus of Crete who is called Pacify. And she used it to stop herself being harmed

by King Midas' seaman because it contains scorpions and serpents. Ah. Yeah. Maybe we could just watch something tonight actually. Maybe. Let's watch another episode, actually. Yeah, actually, think about it now.

Yeah. I discovered that there's a condom make in China called Jizbon, which is called Jizbon because it's after James Bond. No, the name's Bonn. Jizbon, yeah. And 2006, a German entrepreneur launched a spray on condom. Yes. Did you come across that?

Yes. Yeah, but it was stopped. Yeah, the phrasing was a bit unfortunate there. Did you come across that, Andy? And it was stopped short by EU regulations. Oh, I read something slightly different about what stopped it. So he was called Jan Krauss, Krauser, and he got the idea for it in a car wash. Because he, you know, he was, I don't know, he must have been in the car,

and it was just being spread. And he thought, oh, maybe, if I, if you, you know, you know, your penis is the car, as it were, and you spray it from every angle with the latex, then you have a perfectly fitted condom. Right. You know, perfectly fitted every time. And he got 30 men to test it,

and apparently it had exclusively positive reviews. It went really well. But the drawbacks were that it was quite cold, very cold to be just sprayed with this sort of latex liquid, and it takes two full minutes to dry. To dry. By which point... By which time is probably not the right size anymore.

Yeah. It still ships internationally, though. Does it? It's still not approved by the FDA. Oh, no, that's the Galactic cap. Sorry. What's that? The Galactic cap.

Sorry, that's just titchy, titchy like a beanie for your penis. Oh, okay. What, like a hipster? Yeah. A hipster one. Leaving the shaft. It's not been approved by the FDA, but it does ship internationally. Oh, okay.

I don't know how it stays on. Right, okay. It's very exciting. You mentioned China earlier with the James Bond. I was reading about ancient Chinese contraception, because in the early days, there was a story that tortoise shell in the same way that the beanie was used

was kind of used for, I know, it doesn't quite make sense, and you can't get any further with it. And like, full disclosure, the article I got this from used the word dude a lot, so I don't know how reliable this is. Were you on the scientific journal Rad Monthly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is fine.

No, no, this was, because it has weirdly, it has sources, but it's saying that there used to be a thing where you were told to reserve ejaculation. So that basically is with, you know, coitus interruptors, right? But the other thing that they said was to move the semen back into you, basically. So that was a method that was taught. So the method was, as point of ejaculation was happening, to press a thumb against in between the scrotum and the anus, and what it would do was... My parents are in tonight.

You're kidding. This happens every time. Oh, no. It's because you mention it in every show we do. So where do you stick your thumb? So you put your thumb between your scrotum and your anus and you push, and then the idea is that it redirects... No one's like the hokey-coki-coki with you.

It redirects the semen to go up the spine through the chakras and into the brain is the idea. Because sex... I'm sorry, is there a tangible benefit to this procedure? What's that you haven't said why? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because there's an idea that you're expelling something from your body, which is energy, and unless you were receiving the other energy from the human that you were having sex with, that was a wasted energy.

So why not re-directed? You're losing your essence, as it were. Again, from somewhere that says awesome a lot in the article, and I don't know if it's legit. But it seemed legit at the time. I found that really scary there. The penis can suck things in. I don't know if it can.

I don't know. I mean, they've got a problem. People are stopping using them. So we've got the highest syphilis and gonorrhea rates in the UK for years and years. And there was a study done about men who believe they're attractive, who rate their attractiveness high, are much less likely to use a condom. Really? Yeah.

Well, that explains why I've got three on right now. How'd you enjoy that one, Mr. and Mrs. Murray? You can also use condoms as a bungee rope. And you? What? How much weight can they take? Short bungee. They can take the weight of Carlo Mosca Dorioso,

who did a 30 metre bungee jump using a string of 18,500 condoms. No. And they didn't snap. Which brand? Yeah. They didn't snap. It took him four months to tie them together.

Slippery. Well, that's what he said. The condoms are slippery. Whenever they tied a knot, it would just slip out. The testing you'd have to do on that rope to be confident of it. Yeah, well, you know what? They used mathematical formulas to work out how strong it would have to be. So they worked out how many they would need using maths

rather than using applied stuff. Right. But he did say he was 99% sure it would work, but his stomach was in the knot for a month before the jump, but it worked and he did manage to do it. That's incredible. That is really cool. You know, Trojan condoms in the States, it's a brand, it's in America, they have, as part of it, because they've got a guy there who's like the great, you know, the Steve Jobs of condoms, basically.

Like, he came into the company, he's innovated, he's made them thinner than ever before, you know. He's one of those guys who's just like constantly. And so when they have an invention that's gone through the science side of it, kind of like this bungee, then they have people who they have on their list, 20 to 30 couples who are known as the bedroom patterns. and the condoms get given to them. So once or twice a month, they'll get given a sort of new condom test design. Twice a month, the deviants. It's a whole other world, doesn't it?

One for Witsam Tide, one for Mickleness, and you're fine. They're slightly smaller Trojans, aren't they, apparently? Oh, are they? Apparently, yes. Well, I read that on the internet today, dude. I also read like the flavor. We're just blew my mind.

There's a penis-flavored condom. Are you sure you're wearing a condom? Yeah, it's penis-flavored. Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. If we'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shriverland, James. Hi, James Harkin. Andy. Andrew Hunter-Roehm. At Sally. Don't contact me. We can also be found on our group account at No Such Thing or our website.

No Such Thing is a Facebook. You can find all the previous episodes there. I just, fuck it, let's end it, we get out of here. Goodbye!