No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Zillion And One

Episode Date: February 12, 2016

Dan, James, Anna, Andy and special guest Corey Taylor discuss noisy silent discos, squid holograms, and a trillion seconds of porridge for breakfast.

Hi everyone, just before we start this episode, wanted to drop in that it's our 100th birthday. We have been going for 100 years. Time has flown. No, it's a 100th episode. And so happy birthday to us. Thanks so much for sticking with us for 100 full episodes. And this is just the 100th. Have I said 100 to many times?

It's no big deal. It's just 100. Just 100. 100. Roll the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the Q-O-W. eye offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Andy Murray, Anna Chisinski, James Harkin, and a special guest making his second appearance, his first being

as a secret track on our vinyl. It's Stone Sour and Slipknot's frontman, Corey Taylor. And once again, we've gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Corey. Oh, the honors, yes. My fact is a million seconds is 11. point five days. A billion seconds is 32 years. So that is bizarre because just basically because of the vast difference you think that a billion is a bit more than a million. And when we talk about billions and trillions, when you hear about trillion dollar debt or billion dollar debt, you kind of think they're essentially the same thing. And yeah, I know. I know so I only just found out

there's no zillion. I thought that was a thing. I'd always be like it was a billion billion zillion. Not a thing at all. Well, it jumps to, I think there's like there's one in between, but there's a Google and then there's a Googleplex. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Which are, you know, quite large. So a Google is one with 100 zeros. Yeah.

And a Googleplex is one with a Google zeros. Because you can't write out a Googleplex because there are more zeros than there are atoms in the universe. I think so, yeah. That's the problem. That's the problem for me. Otherwise, we'd all be doing it. That's why we let the computers do it. I mean, come on.

You know. But so, it wasn't it the case that billion? in America used to be a different billion. No, we've half copied America, but half not copied it. So a billion means two different things now. So a billion in America is a thousand million. And in the UK, it's generally a thousand

million now, but also sometimes it's a million million. Since 1974, they officially have the standard where we have the American short billion now. I can only apologize. Sorry. But it's a lot easier for us all to become billionaires. Well, I guess so.

Yeah, that's why we all are. Are the only billionaire sitting at the stadium? Do you know how long ago it was a trillion years ago? A trillion years ago? I know exactly how long ago was a trillion years. In seconds, please. No, do you know how many a trillion seconds ago? How many years ago that was?

So is that a thousand billion? Yes. Okay. So it's 31,710 years ago. And that was about the first time humans started eating porridge. Really? Wow. That's good.

What a big day. I wonder what they ate up until that point. Oh yeah, breakfast, nothing. Breakfast, nothing. Breakfast, nothing. Breakfast, porridge. Yeah, we're still eating it. Yeah. I mean, I'm a billionaire. I eat meat carved right off the animal that's brought to the table.

That's probably what they were having before they were having porridge. You do have my breakfast before. Yeah, well, I'm just saying, you know, we've gone, you know, I've gone backwards. You know, I'm keeping it real. Was there anything else that was going on then, do you know, James? Yeah, it was about the same time as the first cave paintings in Europe. Cool. I believe Bruce Forsyth was also born.

Oh. Right. Hey, it's the one English joke I had. Such a strong cultural reference. So impressive. Hey, I know my thing. What would be the American version of that, someone who's, like, really old? Of Bruce Forsyth?

Yeah. Maybe, but I don't even know if he's still alive. Bob Hope. Bob Hope. Yeah. He has died. He did. Yeah. He made it to 100 though.

Yeah. Although it turns out, I was reading this thing about Bob Hope that he actually lied about his birthday just for a sort of like, he just knocked it a year younger. He was only like 26. No, no. No, so he, I think just for some kind of reason, he knocked it a year back. So secretly, he knew he'd hit 100. Yeah. But he couldn't tell anyone.

So then when he hit 100 officially in the country, they're like, happy birthday, but he would have been over it by then. Yeah, well, he's just greedy and he? He shot himself in the first. there. I knew that was always and I didn't like Bobho. One of the great things the Buddha could do, apparently, according to Buddhist legend, is count really, really high.

Really? How high? He, well, super high, James. I'll tell you how high. A mathematician asked him what's the highest number you know, and so the Buddha said, well, I know this number. That's a bit different. He could name it, though. He's the guy who probably came up with zillion in a panicked moment.

Like a zillion, I can count up to. Right before he said, gajillion. And the mathematician said to, that what about a zillion and one? In your face, Buddha. And on this basis, a great religion was founded. There was a really good article in I-09, which I love,

about how we can't even comprehend this million, billion, these massive numbers thing. Humans haven't evolved to comprehend them. Like when we were, you know, 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, we didn't need to think about anything except people in our immediate vicinity. We didn't have much astronomical knowledge, stuff like that. So we didn't have all these big numbers. So this article was written by someone

called a mathematician called Spencer Greenberg is talking about how you can make numbers be more manageable or make huge things seem more manageable. So like for instance, the time thing is one. So you say you could do this over a certain amount of time. Another one is breaking stuff down. So if you say the US

has $17 trillion of debt, the best thing to do there is actually say that's $54,000 of debt per person. See, this is the problem because you say how many dollars was it for every person in America? 54,000. So I can't picture 300 million people, which is about the population of the USA.

So that's where it all falls down, unfortunately. It's a manageable amount of money for an unimaginable. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans can't handle 54,000. In Germany, after the war, they had very bad inflation, and things started costing, you know, 10,000 marks. This is after World War I. Yeah, exactly. And they had this mental disorder called zero stroke or cipher stroke, where people just just kept writing down zeros all the time

because they just couldn't deal with these massive numbers. Really? And you would ask them, how many kids do you have? And they'd be like, I've got 10 trillion children. Or how old are you? I'm 7 billion years old or something.

Wow. That's so interesting. Because they just couldn't deal with these massive numbers. Wow. In 2009, Zimbabwe printed 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar notes. I have one. Do you? And it's worth like something,

like 20 pounds or something. Yeah, I think. I think I bought mine for about. a fibre. Nice. Okay. You've got it on the cheap. James collects these kind of things, though, just so he can pull things out of his wallet to impress you. James literally has two tickets to the gun show.

He literally has two tickets to the gun show. I was in Florida and there was a gun show going on. I didn't want to go to it, but I wanted the tickets, so I just passed on tickets. I've actually been meaning to ask since you did that what a gun show is, and it's gone so long that I just haven't now. Does everyone else know what a gun show is? You just go along and look

at guns and... I think you you can buy them. It's kind of a pageant for gun. Do you dress them up? Yeah. Is it like crafts for guns? A little more explosive. I mean, if I'm honest.

The only thing is, I have a house in Las Vegas, and there's kind of an, there's almost like a perpetual gun show going on in that, and there, because like, and it's like this giant warehouse just full of dealers who are just showing you, AR-15s, M-16s, rocket launchers, minis, like, and then there, then they have a range out back. bags. It's like, well, go test fire it before you buy it. You know? It's like a test drive for a car, you know, but you go out back, all right, here we go. And then it's just, it's very louder. I'd be so tense all the time.

Funny thing is, they advertise it. They advertise for it at the airport. So you're on the moving walkway and you're just grabbing in. There's this chick with a gun and a bikini. And you're like, hey, that's a place to go. I don't think they sell boots, but I'm sure they're working on it. Yeah. Las Vegas is very much. the James's shirt of America.

There's a permanent gun show going on at all times. Quite, quite. Yeah, 24-7. Lock it in. Amazing. This is an amazing thing. I can't believe I didn't know about big numbers. Yeah. So there have been two attempts in human history

to estimate the number of particles in the universe, I think, or two that have two big ones that we know about that have been written down. So one of them was by Archimedes. So this was over 2,000. years ago and he was estimating the number of grains of sand in the universe actually but now we know how many particles in a grain of sand. Arthur Eddington, 2,000 years later, estimated the number of particles in the universe. They came to exactly the same number. No, no, really. Isn't that completely insane?

Was he just kind of copying off of Arqueney? Why is you published in ancient Greek, Mr. Eddington? Well, never mind that. Never mind that. How pissed off would you be, though, when you realize you got the exact same way as Archimedes? I was like, really? this was five years I think you would add an extra couple to the end it's like 10 to the power

of 72 plus 7 so it doesn't look like you copied him right well there was a thing about Everest because they measured Mount Everest and they found it came to a really annoyingly round number is that right? Do you remember this? So is it actually not the tallest mountain in the world? Yeah you know that I don't know if I've said this on the podcast

before last year was the first year that no one's reached the top of Mount Everest in 41 years since it became a The whole the chef has went on strike. No, it was just the conditions were really bad. Because there were a few avalanches, they closed off a couple of routes. But they didn't close off the extreme routes. And the last chance was in December.

Someone got really close and then had to come back down. So it's the first year. Really? Yeah. And it lost an inch last year from the earthquake. So you think it would have been easier. Yeah. You tell me, if Everest lost an inch.

Well, it is quite cold. We know exactly what that feeling is like. It's like, it's really chilly. I don't care, I'm not going to climb you tonight. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Chazinski. Yeah, my fact is that Star Trek was almost not commissioned because the pilot was considered too erotic. Now, this fact entailed Googling the phrase Star Trek erotic, which is quite dangerous. I see you have a lot of paper there with you.

So what's that? Well, so this was a pilot. called The Cage. That was the name of the episode. It was sent to NBC in 1964. And actually, I was very skeptical about how erotic it could really be because it's Star Trek,

but it does sound quite raunchy. It was, the idea of the show was that a planet led out a call for help to the guys on the spaceship, on the, you know, Star Trek spaceship. And I'm obviously showing how much they know about Star Trek.

The Star Trek. That was the original plan for the name of the ship. We'll see. And, yeah, so they went down to this planet and actually it was a plant and there was a beautiful alien on this planet who seduced the Star Trek spaceship crew members

and because she had to have sex with them in order to repopulate this planet because it was suffering from, you know, population crisis. So it was about someone being planted to seduce Captain Kirk who wasn't Captain Kirk at the time. No, it was Captain Pike.

It was Captain Pike. It was Captain Pike. Yeah. Didn't know Pike was in the... Yeah, well, they brought it back because then they were able to use pieces of the original pilot in the episode, I can't remember the name of it,

but it has to do with Spock is on trial. Captain Pike has been destroyed, and he's in this chair, and Captain Kirk is testifying on his behalf, and they keep cutting to footage of the original pilot. Cool. I was kind of a trek. I liked, I wasn't a Trekkie,

but I used to watch it all the time, because it was on in repeats. So I watched it when I was a kid, you know, and I was, He's fascinated by it. It's like, why does the future look so old? Yeah. I mean, there's that used future look,

and then there's like, well, Christ, that's like from the 70s. I read that the original plan for Mr. Spock, or one of the original things for the design of the character, was that he was going to not eat anything, and instead he would have a plate in the middle of his stomach, and energy which struck the plate would be his food. Yeah. Wow. So he'd just feed off the, you know, if the cosmic radiation hits the plate.

So he'd be like, you know, photosynthesizing. I suppose. So, wow. Yeah. Sounds great. Sounds like a good idea. It's James' dream. Yeah.

Don't have to waste all this time, having meals. Oh, the other day, Dan was saying to me the other day, it's so relentless having to eat all the time. It's three meals a day. I can't believe we don't talk about it more. It's bullshit. We just, again, I need to feed this thing again. I know. We have discussed this, and it's like my greatest joy, and I can't believe you want to take that away from it.

I love eating. Yeah. I love it, but sometimes I'm just like, I just want a day off. Right. That's called the 5-2 diet. There are products being developed, though, which are, I can't remember the name of them, but they are basically nutritious mush, which really doesn't taste very much at all. Please keep selling it.

Oh, wow. And there is a sea slug that's managed to get genes out of plants, so it can eat like an animal, but it can also photosynthesize. So I would like to get these plant genes into my brain. body so I can sometimes photosynthesize as well. Wow. So while sunbathing, you're also eating. Yeah. That is the dream actually. Thinking about it now. It's not my dream. I hate to somebody that I love to eat. It sounds awful. My favorite thing I found out about Star Trek generally. So created by Gene Roddenberry. There's a lot of rules. He wrote this kind of Bible for Star Trek of what

would be if you made an episode. My favorite one is that he believed that there was no chest hair in the future. Captain Kirk, in all the shots where he's naked, they were shaving his chest because there is no chest hair in the future. He thought ahead, he thought evolutionary. Oh, so it's not a fashion thing. In the future, he's not shaving it every day. He just doesn't grow it.

He thinks, much like the pinky toe. We would just phase that out. Because why not? Well, it makes sense. I mean, if you think about it, like, well, and I guess I'm the only one who can really recall it, but then when the one episode where everyone goes a little crazy and Sulu's running around with the sword.

Completely, you know, he's got a bald chest. Right. You know? Spock, when he's fighting Kirk on the planet and they have to fight each other, bald chest. Or maybe Klingons just didn't have chest. I'm not sure. No, Vulcans. Yes, they're right.

God, what the hell was I? You know what? Not a real fan. I'm embarrassed. I'm going to walk away from the table now. I'll come back in a second. Dan has just saved us a lot of posts. Never have this. You are.

The worst was when we had Daniel Radcliffe on. QI and he got the rules to quidditch wrong. No. Oh my God, how many emails have we had about that? Well, maybe that's why Potter won so many matches. Screw the rules. I'm a maverick. I'm ready. On the Vulcan thing,

we have done this in a previous episode, but if you don't know it, you might like it, which is that he was originally meant to be Martian. He was meant to be from Mars. When they were writing the scripts and getting everything approved, the people at the studio said, we think you need to change it, because by the this series goes out and it's in its second series

is something, we will have landed on Mars and we will have seen Martians. And they were like, and that would make your series just look ridiculous. He also had red skin at first. He was supposed to have red skin, Spock. But then it was in black and white a lot of the time and it turned out it looked like he just painted himself

black, so he couldn't have red skin. Oh, really? But also on skin painting, in that pilot, the seductress, this woman who's supposed to seduce them all, is green. and so she had to be painted in thick green paint and it's quite hard and time-consuming to do that and so that it shows up properly on camera

they filmed a test thing to see how it'll work on camera they sent it away to be re you know to be properly done they got the video back and she looked normal skin colour and they were like my god this hasn't worked and so they went through it all again made it a bit thicker a bit brighter green sent the video you know sent the film away to get the video converted to get the video back

got it back again and they were like what is going on she's still peach coloured with a tiny bit of green tinge and it turned out the color technicians when they got the film had gone, well, this is obviously an error. They didn't mean to, something's gone wrong here. So they stayed up all night every time trying to make her skin color again. That's hilarious. James, didn't we do a thing about how early TV, early film stars,

did they wear green makeup? Better on the black and white cameras. You know who did that? Max Factor. That's where the name Max Factor comes from. He was like the greatest, at the time, he was the greatest, film makeup artist. And as they were starting to go from

like silent film to like the different the different types of film and everything, it looked very oily, very, you know, very, just very much like they were just painted with a bunch of crap. When they went to technical. So, yeah, and so he spent, I want to say two years developing what is now widely known as like the standard for film makeup.

And that's why, and that's, after that, he started his own cosmetic. line and that's where Max Factor comes from. That's awesome. That's very cool. T.S. Eliot used to paint his face a tiny bit green and no one really knows why. So maybe he was

just desperately hoping for a film deal all the time. Might up. When are they going to bring the wasteland to Hollywood? Now, talking about Star Trek, before we move on, a lot of people probably don't realize that one of the first

interracial kisses on television was between O'Hura and Kirk. And at the time was very, very risque. And they almost pulled it because the censors thought it would be too inflammatory. And honestly, they got a few letters, but other than that.

Really? Oh, really? Yeah. And I don't know if this is why they were able to pull it off, but they were both under the spell of, I can't remember what the character's name was, but they were basically forced to do it. And that's how they were able to kind of get it through. But yeah, that

was the first interracial kiss on television. I read the Uhura was going to leave Yeah But then Martin Luther King Like talked her out of it And said like you know You're a trailblazing

Kind of African American woman who Like no matter what you think Yeah Is happening Children watching you Are seeing a black woman in space And at the time was so radical Yeah

Yeah It's one of the things I give credit for Roddenberry Like he looked so fat I mean he was very misogynistic But he looked so far past Color religion He did You know

Like that was the theme of a lot Star Trek episodes really, wasn't it? It's like this strange other alien, which actually isn't that strange, which is normal. And it was weird because a lot of the characters were not white in the 60s when that was a radical thing to do. Yeah, Mr. Sulu, you had, yeah. Just even on

Checkoff, who was Russian. At the time, right in the middle of the Cold War. Yeah. Just one last thing on censors. Yeah. Because I was reading about the history of censorship on American TV. Oh, boy. So, in 1931, cows were not permitted in cartoons to have udders. They had to be pictured in a skirt.

In a skirt. This is 31. This is 31. What happened again later, because I found another source, a really good book called America's First Network TV Sensor, which says that in 1958, cartoon cows were only permitted wearing skirts. Was there a, like, a specific length of skirt they were allowed to wear like that. They weren't allowed to wear a mini skirt or anything like that. It had to be quite a floral, nice, loose, flowing numbers, so you couldn't see their legs. Where did they put it? I think this is why then they said cows had to stand upright, because they At first had them on four legs. And they had it halfway down their torso.

And then it touches the ground. It's that thing off the internet the other week about where do you put a dog's trousers? Like, do they go round all four legs or just the back two legs or what? If a dog wore trousers. If a dog wore trousers. Well, it would wear two pairs of trousers, wouldn't it? Yeah. Well, you should have told the internet two weeks ago because they were all arguing about it.

That's amazing. Yeah. So then even in 1940, there was a cow called Elsie, the Borden cow, who was a real cow fearing in a live action film and they said the udders should be suggested rather than shown we'd rather see the bulge than the action back my country sometimes it's pretty weird okay it's time for fact number three and that is james okay my fact this week is that the swiss city of losan has banned silent discos for being too loud they're party animals in switzerland that's great isn't it So why?

They make a lot of noise, apparently, because while you've got the headphones on, you're listening to music and it's supposed to be silent, a lot of people are just singing along or kind of bouncing around. Oh, I've witnessed this first time. Really? Yeah, at download, they have a special tent specifically designed for silent disco. Okay. Now, I was wandering around the grounds one time,

trying to find one of the tents where my buddies were going to play, wandered into the silent disco tent, and was assaulted by this I mean it's it's full contact like it's like I mean they're saying like screaming

stomping it was much louder and then you look around like these people are having fits what is happening I backed out I'm not turning my back on them screw that

I mean but I mean they've got the lids on you know giving it large and I was terrified I never went back so I think we're saying that Los Salah's done the right thing

They are on the right track. I like a silent disco. You can have the music nice and quiet and you can wander out if you, you know, you can turn it right down. I love it. It really suits me. Everyone else is rocking out of download and Andy's listening to Radio 4. And now the shipping forecast. Woo!

Dogger! Fairbank! So maybe we're saying this is a sensible thing. It seems that way. Yeah, I wasn't really O'Fay with the silent disco but it seems that, yeah, they're right. Oh, they're really good.

But the things you get people, because often they have two DJs or even three playing different tunes. So people are dancing to different rhythms and different beats. So people, it sort of, I think people care a bit less what they look like when they're dancing.

You don't get as much kind of posy dancing. Yeah, because you could be saying, I'm totally in rhythm, by the way, to what I'm listening to. You just don't know that. It's not obvious when you're not dancing in tune, or singing in tune, I guess. A lot of them have their eyes closed

and they're constantly running in. to each other. At different tempos. So it's like, it's honestly, it's like, it's like watching CCTV footage of like the damned just outside the gates, you know, just getting ready. Do you know where silent disco comes from? No. Or when it comes from.

So this is, well, the theory online is that it dates back to a 1969 Finnish sci-fi film called, I'm going to mispronounce it as well, Rusien Allia, which means time of roses. and people all wear headphones to a party and that's the first time as it was ever seen in popular culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were definitely listening to stuff because sometimes I didn't want to admit this,

but I've put my headphones on in the office so people don't talk to me, but I'm not actually listening to anything. Is that so? Yeah. Well, you've lost your advantage now. Were they doing that? Maybe. They were all just like, I'll go to the party,

but I'm not speaking to anybody keeping my headphones on online. That's really interesting because when was, so 1969? And it's set in 2012. So when were cassettes, audio cassettes, audio cassettes invented? 80s?

Because what were they listening? Late 70s? Yeah, because it was headphones even a concept of a thing you take? It just held up. The grammar phone really. In America, the giant headphones had been around for quite a while. They kind of went hand in hand with the high-fi system that were sold in like the early 60s.

Okay. The first ever jukebox was made by Edison, and he had some kind of music system, and there was like stethoscopes that would come down and like five different people would kind of put the stethoscopes next to their ears and listen. So that's kind of headphones. Yeah, yeah.

And they used to come with a towel that you could clean. it after, well, before you would use it. That's fantastic. Just so you wouldn't catch ear diseases of people. Those famous ear diseases. There's a guy called George Foy who lived in New York where it's loud and he had some kids who were making noise and he decided he would go on a quest to find the quietest place on the planet and he's obsessed with finding quiet places.

But he says, and he's been inside the anechoic chamber in Massachusetts. Minneapolis. Minneapolis. And he's clarified that there is no such thing as silence and he said he found it really annoying going inside this chamber, which didn't drive him mad like it drives other people mad. I have read that the longest anyone's ever spent in an anarchoic chamber is 45 minutes. He beat that. Did he?

Yeah, because he was fine with it. They actually had to kind of break the door down to get them out. Did they? It's just having a great time. Did they not have a handle to the door? That's a design clause. Yeah, it was a real issue. Wow.

I've been to an an anechoic, I've been to a semi-anich chamber. Wait, what was a semi-what? Where there's some noise? Yeah. Because that's a defeat. Oh, yeah. I was with you. Yeah, you were.

It's the echo. It's the lack of echo. So you can make noise, but it's just it won't bounce back at you. And so with this one, there was a floor which was just normal, and all the other walls were kind of had this special stuff that stopped any echoes. And was it? Was it weird? Yeah, it was really weird. It was odd.

Really, really weird. Yeah. Do you know the most echoy place in the entire world? It's this massive oil tank in Scotland. It's in a place called Inchendown. And they dug these huge oil tanks into a hillside during the second. World War to store millions and millions of gallons of oil because they need to fuel ships, which were moored at the nearest naval base, but they didn't want it to be at risk of bombers,

you know, long-range German bombers, so they had to dig it into the hill. The only way to get in is through one of these four tiny pipes. They're 46 centimetres across, so it's a squeeze. But when you get inside there, they've got inside and tested it. And the way you test it, by the way, is firing a blank, a pistol loaded with blanks. And see how long it takes. And see how long it takes. Why can't it just say echo? Like any normal person does? It's just a standard way of doing it. There are more modern ways.

But the echo in this chamber lasts 112 seconds. You're kidding. Wow. Oh my God. That's so cool. We played a place the other night. It was this hall in Frankfurt in Germany. And the delay in there was seven seconds long.

Because it was just so cavernous. Wow. And even when you get people in there. Like, I mean, it's such a battle for us to dial in the sound and everything to fight that. Wasn't that unbelievably distracting? Well, we bring our own PA system with us. So we're able to really control that. Plus we have probably one of the best sound guys in the business.

He is able to really control that, you know. And he's spent so many hours and so many, you know, just he knows how to really dial it in. Yeah, it was pretty intense. So that was seven seconds. That was seven seconds. I can't even imagine. 112. I mean, it's incredible.

That means it's just hanging there. And I mean, and. I mean, it's something like that. The decay rate has to just be just sick because it's just, it's feeding itself, man. I'd love to go in there and do some vocals. Wow, yeah, yeah.

I've done vocals at the bottom of a well before. Really? Yeah, I don't really recommend it because you're wet. So was this part of like a plan? Yeah, well, we were recording some stuff for Slipknot. And we were recording out, it was when we were doing All Hope is Gone,

which was the fourth album. and we were out at our buddies It was a place called Sound Farm Basically he lives there And he's got a studio there So we were doing a lot of like experimental stuff You know just to kind of get away from like the Pro Tools Plugins and everything like that

It's like let's try and capture something unique So they they fished me down the bottom of this well Because you know you had a proper well down there It was deep very dark And of course we waited until the sun had gone down to do it I was like this was poor planning on our part but then we fished a telephunk in U-87 down and I was able to kind of do

and it was just this kind of spoken word thing that we were just doing again but the reaction just picked it up was really, really cool. I love doing stuff like that. I'm all about it. Is it true? Because it's online this about you

that your vocal range is... That's the biggest... No, it's not big. It's in metal. Apparently I have a pretty good range. five and a half octaves. Yeah,

octaves. But I didn't even know that, to be honest, you know, like I was like, uh, because you just kind of saying. It's like,

well, I can't sing that, but I can sing this. I mean, that's really, that's the end of my gig. Yeah. But so that rate,

the high range, the scream got you into getting a gig on Doctor Who, right? Well, yeah, well, the low growl was what did it.

Yeah. And then the guys who directed it, Daniel O'Hara, who I just saw last night, he came to the gig. They were, he and a couple of producers,

a lot of the people that were like huge Slipknot fans growing up. And I was like, yeah, right. And they were like, they, they,

when we played in Cardiff last year, where they film and they took us to the doctor who experience. So I'm just freaking out, you know, like, we were there for hours. And they were like, we gotta go.

We have a get. And I'm like, but no. They took us to BBC Cardiff, or BBC Wales, excuse me. And they walked us through some of the sets and everything. and then they were like, so we've got this idea.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And it described the Fisher King, who was the alien who I provided the screen for. And then Peter and I can't pronounce his last name. Seraphinovish. There it is. Thank you. Thank you for that, because I butcher it every time I try to say it.

He did the spoken voice. And I did the growl. So it was kind of a cool mashup of a duet. Yeah, basically, essentially. I mean, I let him take the lead. He's pretty good. But yeah, so I just, I went, I'd screamed for about 45 minutes, and they were like, we've got plenty.

And I went and did the gig. We actually only asked for three seconds, but thanks for it. You've quite overdid it. Anyone got anything else? An amusing noise complaint. Oh, yeah. I saw, so this is a big sign that somebody left outside someone else's house when that person had been keeping them up all nine.

with their loud music and their partying. And the sign says, to the people that kept us awake all night by singing on the balcony, 2.23 a.m. pinball wizard, 3 out of 10. Your performance of this would cause the band more shame than Pete Townsend's liberal attitude.

3.15 a.m. Walk this way. The lowest point of the performance. I hate this song. One out of 10. But then 8.20 a.m. So, you know, this has gone on a while. Tiny dancer.

actually very good, seven out of ten. I think they're a bad critic because that's very good seven out of ten it's a little bit harsh, is it? Yeah, it's harsh. All right, time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact this week is that

the giant squid's brain is wrapped around its throat, so if it eats anything too large, it risks brain injury. It feels like a design flawed, isn't it? It does. So good. I know, but they've got to do a lot with a little space because they've got this thing called the mantle, which is basically everything

except the tentacles, and they have to fit a huge amount of stuff in there. And so they feed through this sort of the hole in the middle of the mantle. And they, you know, they have a beak and they have all sorts of strange features. And so their brain is wrapped around their esophagus. Yeah. How stressful. Yeah. Every meal. That would put me off eating if I was going to be brain damage every time I did. You just have to chew. You just have to chew. That's all it is. Yeah. And it's one of very few things that we know. about the giant squid because we know so little. Yeah. We don't know how they hunt. We don't know how many species there are. They think there might be up to eight different species of

giant squid. So they've obviously got eight tentacles, but then they've got two feeding tentacles as well. So the feeding tentacles can stretch out to 33 feet. That's what they found in like. So imagine you've seen like a squid ages away and you're like, I'm pretty safe here. You can just lob these two feeding arms and grab you and bring you back like a big tongue on a lizard. But they will be able to swallow you, Dan. You're way bigger than that.

I was in my head. As I said that, I was a fish. Yeah, yeah, I was picturing myself swimming along going, oh, I'm safe here. Eating Nemo. They are huge. They are the size of a bus, aren't they? They are enormous. What?

Some of them are as long. So basically, the maximum length, including the tentacles is 13 meters. Yeah. And half of them will be the feeding tentacles. But still, that's big. That's a cheat, though, I would say. because if you grew like an eyebrow hair really really long, you could say, wow, I'm actually this length.

Because those are just two little tentacle arms. You count your legs when you're talking about how tall you are. Well, I know, but that's true. You count your arms, which are your feet in tentacles. If I'm talking about a bus, I'm not going to talk about a bus that has two extra poles hanging out at the top and go, get on my massive... I thought you'd just say, get on my massive poles.

There was footage of that one kind of washing up next to a shit. I want to say it was fishing just off like maybe the Alaskan coast, but it was, I mean, quite big and it was caught in one of the nets and it took them forever to disentangle. Yeah, I mean, it was, but it was big. I mean, and this was a big ship, you know, this one of the crabbing ships. And Christ, it was half, like maybe three quarters as long as the ship itself. Yeah. I was like, oh, God. Someone called like the squid police in Weymouth, I think.

The squid police. The official name. Yeah, that's what you call. It's 9-9-10. 9-9-10. Oh, well done. Someone called the squid police saying a giant squids washed up on a beach and it turned out to be a mink whale, which is huge. So they look like whales when they're dumped on beaches, at these huge formless lumps.

Wow. Yeah. And they have the biggest eyeballs in nature, don't they? Yeah. Gigantic eyeballs. Yeah. So all animals, I think the eyes evolved one time. but I think the squid, I think the eyes evolved completely separately, even though they do exactly the same thing.

So it's like eyeballs have evolved twice and two different types of animal. Really? I think that's right. Is that because of the depths that they have to deal with? Yeah, I think that's right. Probably. I was looking into why they have these enormous eyes, and there's a really good paper from 2012 by a team led by Dan Eric Nelson, a shout out to him, that is to help them spot sperm whales, who are their main predators.

So he did a paper, and the question was, why do they have eyes? That's was so they could see things. No, no, hang on. But why they're three times wider than almost any other animal, apart from colossal squid, which are the other kind. Anyway, never mind them. So sperm whales are the main things that hunt them, and 600 metres down, using an eye that size,

you could spot 120 metres away a sperm whale. But sperm whales have got sonar, so they can identify a giant squid from a long way away. So it's really just to give them any kind of advantage and a head start in getting away. And lots of sperm whales, when they wash up, but when they die, they've got scars all over them,

which we think are from grappling with squid and their enormous tentacles. Oh, is that what it's from? I was wondering what that was when I was looking at the pictures of those ones that washed up. They've got those scratches all down their backs. Yeah. And they think that about three quarters of everything sperm whales

eat is giant squid. From the number of squid beaks they find in the stomachs of the whales. So they have these enormous battles underwater. It's probably one happening right now. Right. Right. At the spot, let's go. You know squid ink.

So it's... Not personally, but we have mutual friends. Yeah, it's a metal band. You guys... Yeah, they're from Shiboyah, Wisconsin. Shout out, Squid ink. So they actually do two batches of squid ink that go out when they're using it as a defense system.

So the first batch is kind of pure ink. It's very inky. And it's meant to create a blob so they can create a distraction. The second batch is a more mucusy little bit of ink. So it's mixed with mucus. And the idea... is that when they spit this out, that they are creating a shape that looks exactly like them. So it's like a decoy.

It's like this weird squid-looking decoy. It's like a squid hologram. Exactly. And they've got video observation of animals that were going after the squid, then going for this, and being like, whoa, where's the squid? And he's off. That's so cool. I love that. Yeah.

That is rad. That's intelligent. Male squid have to be quite careful what they do with their sperm because the way they inseminate a lady squid is they deposit these sperm packets, these sperm metaphors into a little pouch on her body. But she loves to eat them. That's really what she likes doing best

is to reach around with her tentacles, pick the sperm out and eat it. So that's obviously a problem for the man, or the male squid, because that means that he doesn't get his offspring out of her because she's just eaten his potential offspring. If I are nickel. Sorry, I was miles away.

You can empathise. There you go. So when she eats the sperm that you may have deposited on her, it actually helps her to develop her unfertilized egg. And so helps out the next guy, his competitor that comes along. So you've got to really make sure that... So that's why sometimes when you deposit your sperm into a female's pouch, they try and get it really, really deeply in

so that she can't actually reach around to it and get it out. Another species called the coastal squid. and it's usually the bigger males that are successful with the females, but they're also sneaky males or sneaker males, and they're much smaller. But what they do is when the female is about to lay her egg, she lays it out of her front, and they deposit sperm on her face,

and then when the egg comes out, then it kind of collects their sperm, and their sperm's much bigger than the other males. I'm not sure we can safely say anything about it. I'm back here just biting my sperm. Corey's like those nickels are really piled up to that. Giant squid have penises, but other squid don't. Do you think they ever trick people by saying,

I have a giant squid penis? And then it's unclear which bit the giant is referring to. I like to think they do. I hope they do. So you're saying it's like, sorry, are you saying that it's a giant squid penis? Or a giant squid penis? It's actually an.

extremely small, giant squid penis. Of all the giant squid penises I've had to deal with. And I'm just saying, there's been quite a few. Yours is by far the smallest of the badge.

I was just reminded to that. Are you saying four candles? Yeah. I'm saying four candles. That was the... In an original draft of the sketch, it was about giant squid penises. I've learned so much.

today. I'm so happy. So this is a really gross idea. So there was a woman in South Korea recently who was eating squid. So we all eat squid. We call it Calamari for reasons I don't understand. But she was eating some boiled squid in a restaurant and she suddenly felt a pain in her tongue.

And it turned out the squid wasn't quite dead and it was a male squid and it had deposited its sperm packet into her tongue. So she felt horrible pain in her tongue and then felt lots of stuff crawling around inside her tongue and had to go to hospital and they took out a whole bunch of. of sperm. And apparently this does happen a bit. Like there's been reports in Japan of it happening.

That's so fucked up. I will never fucking eat that shit again. Oh my God. Fucking hell. Oh. Fuck that. Vegetarianism. Here you come.

It had to be in the tongue. Why? Okay. That's it. That's all of our facts. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to get in contact with any of us about the things we've said over the course of this podcast.

We can be found on Twitter. I'm on at Schreiberland. James. At Egg Shapes, Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Corey. Corey Taylor Rock. And Chisinski. You can email podcast.uI.com. Yep, that's right. Or you can go to at QI Podcast. That's the group Twitter handle. Or go to no such thing as a fish.com. That's our website. We got all our previous episodes up there. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you guys again next week. Goodbye.