No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Captive Willy

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Dan, James, Anna and Andrew discuss bingeing, beeping, recording and re-introducing. 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

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Tashinsky. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy. The beep was invented in not.

Was it? No, well... So I got this from an article which I won't name because it turns out now to be incorrect. But basically, it's about the beep that happened on the Sputnik satellite. We've launched in 1957. And really annoyingly, Anna has found about 58 examples of beeps dating back to the mid-14th century. And it's just like, welcome back, Anna. Thank you so much. Yeah, we didn't get this from Maisie Adam.

I'll tell you that much. She was listened politely to the fact I didn't question it. But it certainly the beep became popular and a big thing about Sputnik was the fact that it beeped and in fact I think I think that's all Sputnik could do It basically, yeah

It was the size of a big pumpkin and it was a ball of aluminium or metal and it just I would say the main thing it could do was go around the earth in orbit like the beep was secondary almost Yeah, you're right, you're right The main thing was it could fly around the world That's true but no one would have known if it wasn't

beeping. Because it was broadcasting radio pulses. It was, it was, uh, orbited the earth every hour and a half, roughly. It beeped for 21 days only. But the beep was seen as quite spooky, because you could hear it. Ham radio people could tune in and listen to Sputnik. Amazing. Yeah. And Life magazine said it was an eerie intermittent croak. And for, for a fair number of people, it doesn't sound like a beep actually, does it? No. I guess if you don't know what a beep is, because it's only been mentioned five million times in history. I guess for a few people it would have been. the first electronic beep they heard. It's pretty amazing really.

And it was the beep that changed the world, right? Because suddenly the Americans were like, oh shit, Russia's in space. This is evidence because we can hear it beeping. We're going to have to do something about that. And then they decided to create NASA and go to the moon. Yeah. There's a theory that if the Soviets hadn't launched Sputnik

or America had launched the first satellite, then you wouldn't have had the moon program in the same way. I'm sure that's true. You might not have had Apollo. Because it really frightened America. Oh, definitely. literally a ball that went beat. But the other thing is the reason it was so shiny is because they also, the idea was

the guy Karlov who created it or who designed it, he decided that he wanted it shiny so that people would be able to see it in space. Yeah. But actually, it was way too small and no one could see it. Was it right? I mean, if you had a really good telescope, you could. I think you could at like at dawn and dusk, although you'd have to know where to be pointing. It would probably be very hard to spot.

Not really. He wanted it to be quite a lot bigger as well. So the people would be able to see it. But it really did freak people out. at the time. Even Khrushchev said, now we not only have a rocket that can fly to other countries, but we have a satellite that flies around the world. I don't have to point to this with my finger. Any idiot can see it. They might as well put bombers and fighters in the museum. You know, he was just like alluding to like, we're now the superpower.

It's nuke's, isn't it, is what he's referring to. If we can put that out there, you know, our technology is sophisticated. And the Americans not long after try to send up their satellite. That didn't work. It was called Kaputnik, I think they called it. the Americans, the Russians, making fun of it. It was called the Vanguard. Yeah. Vanguard one, yeah. And they sort of panicked after Sputnik.

And it was, what, two months later? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was so embarrassing. It exploded on the launch pad, then it fired into a nearby swamp. But unfortunately, the firing into a swamp had made the sensors on board think, oh, great, we're in orbit. So then it just started beeping from the swamp. So embarrassing.

It's just mortified. As well as Kaputnik, it was also known as. flopnik, puff nick or stay putnik stay putnik I love that it's great it's not often you think that Soviet Russia was a really fun place to be but I think for that week it would have been a really fun place to be hanging out in Russia

just comedy gold do you know why it didn't they didn't choose the other project called Project Orbiter which had more advanced technology within it and it was run by someone and here's your clue it was run by Werner von Braun who was

in Germany you'd say Brown not Braun Oh, I thought it was Braun. In English, he's known as Ron Brown. Well, I know him as von Braun. That's how I know. Yeah. So it was managed by Werner von Braun, who was a Nazi. And the Americans thought might be a bit awkward

if our first satellite that we get into space was built by a Nazi. So he was a Nazi who was at the end of the war, as were quite a few Nazi scientists. He was taken on by America so they could get Nick Nazi technology. And so they started using his brain. and then... And his brahm. And his brain.

Okay. That's it. You can I'll go home now. I like one of the cultural things that happened with this is that in the way that everything after Watergate became gait, Nick became popularized in Western culture. So there was peace Nick, there was beatnik, neat nick.

Or all different words, but beatnik is one that's really stuck out for us. I thought it came from Nudnik, which is a Yiddish word, meaning a bit of a... It did. Nick was already used as a... Nick was already being used. Yes, but it was popularized it. It was popularized by the big.

In Russian, Nick is just, it means a person. Like, as in, you know, someone called Nick. Podcast Nick would be someone who makes podcasts. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. You know what we're saying it was a massive deal? And, you know, Chris Chov made this huge speech saying, we've conquered the world now, et cetera.

Yeah. Well, they launched Sputnik. And then no one really got that it was a big deal. Christchrov announced it to the cocktail party he was at and everyone sort of politely clapped and didn't understand it. Prafter the next day, it was like a little thing way down on their front page.

It was almost not on the front page. It was almost not on the front page. It got less prominence than Marshall Zuccoff visiting Yugoslavia, which arguably in historical terms turns out to have been a smaller story. How interesting. So why did they do that? It was because of how the world reacted. It was because the West reacted.

The West assumed technological superiority. The next day, the next day It was all over the headlines because the US had suddenly, you know, the New York Times headline was, oh my God, they've beaten us, we're flat and were ruined, and Russia went, oh, but this, maybe this is a huge deal that we've done this, well done us. And then they got really excited about it.

I did read a report saying Christrov announced it, like he got the news from the launch pad, whatever, that it was in orbit, and smiled and was happy and announced it to the room and then went to sleep that night. But the alternative to that is him remaining permanently awake for the rest of his life. In America, there were lots of restaurants

that released merch. There was Sputnik lollipops. There was a toy manufacturer did a scooter, which was just the same scooter, but they called it Pednik. There were spherical containers that held ice creams. They would put antennas on top so that you would have the straw as the Sputnik kind of look

because they had antennae that were coming out. Yeah, so the lollipops have multiple storks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It had multiple antennae, right? Did it have two or four? Four, I think. Four? Yeah, that's true.

That's really hard to eat a lollipop, which has got four sticks to keep. Yeah. Or four people can eat it at the same time. Or hold one stick and then look at it. No? How many kids have you got done? Three kids.

Yeah. If you could have one lollipop that you buy them and all three of them could eat it. You contain them. They'd be in one location. I don't know. Sorry, but if they're all licking one lollipop at the same time, people are going to think they're snogging.

And social services will get involved. Yeah, that's true. And then the next thing that happened. So, obviously, America's, smash back on its heels, it's reeling. The next thing happens, Sputnik 2. And this one's big, and it's got a dog on it. Yeah. You know, like that.

And that was when they invented the bark, wasn't it? And that was poor bloody Lika, who had a pretty rotten time in space and then sort of conked out. Which means barker, in fact, Leika, isn't it? But what all this was leading up to was the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Union being founded, right?

because it's 1957, October, you know, October Revolution, all of that stuff, or November, depending on the calendar. Anyway, what the, there was a theory in the West that the Soviet Union was launching a third Sputnik which was going to go to the moon with a hydrogen bomb on it. And an elephant. And there was a lunar eclipse coming up.

So the moon was going to be completely blotted out, you know, in the shadow of the sun, or shadow of the earth, sorry. So the theory was that they were going to detonate the bomb against the moon and create a kind of super full moon because it would be even brighter than a normal full moon with this, you know. And anyway, they weren't doing that.

Well, they did do lots of, well, Sputnik just means satellite, so anything that they send up is a Sputnik, basically. But yeah, they've done 20-odd, I think, now. But none of them have been the moon blowing up. Which was a stupid idea. I don't even think I'd know

if I saw something that was a bit brighter and a bit bigger than the moon, because you haven't got the actual moon to compare it to. Oh, yeah, maybe. Well, it would be a full moon for a second as the detonation happened. Do you not?

was up. Every now and then, like once every month or so, do you not go outside? Oh, the moon's quite big tonight. Oh yeah, yeah. It's a certain time of day, isn't it? Yeah, do you think that's always a Sputnik? I think that's it. Every morning when the moon is near the horizon, that's the Russians blowing it up. I think they're wasting a lot of resources on this. Um, Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the earth? Yep. Cosmonaut. First man in space. First man in space. Was he? I thought someone had gone up a bit before that, but not. Gone past the Carman line. is the first. Uri's, yeah,

acknowledge his first. I'm a car man waiting in the sky, was originally written about that. He was five foot two, which means that he would only just qualify it to be an air stewardess on Ryanair. Right.

Which was his dream, wasn't it? It's what he was trying to do all that time. He was just trying to get the attention of McLoughlyere. It was really bad because the first time he went in space, it was one thing, but he had to pay for his seat. You know the space dogs? The Soviet ones?

Like her. Like her. Well, there's an argument that they preserved peace and stopped the world from exploding, exploding due to nuclear attack. And here is the argument. So in 1960, the Soviet sent up some more dogs. They were called Belker and Strilker. And they went into orbit with some rats and a rabbit and some flies.

And they orbited the world, 17. times and they came back down and they were big celebrities they had chat shows and stuff because they were in chat shows I don't think they actually hosted their own chat shows sorry I think they might just guessed it they may have been a small segment but hosting is a good idea every week the guest has to feed belker and struggle I think that's a really nice idea lovely let's pitch it it's our next commission anyway so they were the first dogs who survived because some people were a bit sad that lichen didn't anyway soon after that jfk and khrushchev and their wife had a meeting, a summit, in Vienna,

and it was awkward, as things often were at the time between America and the USSR. And then Jackie Kennedy broke the tension by saying to Christchof, oh, what happened to those two lovely dogs that you sent into space, by the way? And Christoph said, oh, they actually had puppies. Do you want? And he posted her, so a few weeks later.

It arrived, unfortunately, not quite as alive as it was. That led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was a pretty good year. You put the bubble wrap in the envelope for his line. Yes, where a puppy arrived at the White House. Were they called Pupnix? I actually think they might have called them Pupnix.

That would make sense. That rings a bell. It would make sense. I think they had the same sense of humour as you did in the White House at the time. Spotnick, like Spot the dog. Oh, yeah, spot nick. Muttnick.

There we go. Yeah, very good. Just edited out my one. You got three really good ones. But keep that commenting, so everyone will always work. write in with your speculations as to Andy's shit suggestion. Anyway, he was a White House pet, puppy pet, and it really calm things down. I mean, obviously things didn't remain calm for the subsequent 30 years.

But as Bjelka and Stelka are the only ones that you learn about in Russian schools, really. They don't really mention Lika very much. No, so sad. After Lika went up, dog lovers worldwide protested. There was a march at the UN with featuring dogs wearing protest signs. Wow. It was also a producer of a chat cell who's saying, what am I going to do now?

Can we say a thing or two about beeps? Oh, sure, yeah. We don't have time to list all the previous beeps prior to this one. Let's see how far we get. So this is a really fun thing about beeps. Skodas, right, the cars. Oh, yeah.

They get tested, don't they? Car horns get tested. Sure. And these days, they're tested way more in the development process than they ever have been before. Okay. So Scotas in the 70s were tested 50,000 times.

to make sure they wouldn't run out of beeps after that. Sorry, you beeped a horn 50,000 times before selling the car. I don't think. And then you beat it 50,000 first and it ran out. You do that car dealership before. I'm just going to go quick. That doesn't happen. 50 to every car that SCoda sells.

It happens as a hand testing happens. It happens in the development process. Because I have a SCODA and I've got this big handprint in the middle of my steering wheel. I've wondered why. Don't not crash test every car before they sell them? right. Just going to drive this into a wall before we send it to you, sir. So no.

Sorry. They test it. But these days, electric scoters, they get 150,000. But that's regionally specific. And when they sell cars in India, they're tested 500,000 times. Because in India, use of the car horn is way bigger. Like, everyone is beeping all the time. So they have to test half a million honks before.

Wow. I'm going to say in India, like, they do honk in the, where you're supposed to honk. The only time you're ever supposed to honk is if someone, to let someone know you're there to stop an accident. If you drive in India, they're doing that because they're about to drive into you and that honking and stuff. They don't do it in the UK like, honk, honk, the traffic lights have gone.

You need to move. Oh, yeah, that's true. They do proper honking in India. I think you're also encouraged to honk as a way of saying goodbye to somebody you're not going to see for a few weeks, like you. That's actually, yeah, that's the only other time. Is that the highway come? Oh, okay. Yeah. And also, honk if you love blah, whatever's on the sign at the side of the right.

So when buying a car as well as asking for mileage, you should ask for honkage. Is that what we're saying? How many honk's you got? How many honk's you've got? How many honks do you've packed into this, bad boy? Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that William Gladstone once cancelled an evening engagement so he could binge on the late. popular drama series. So, this is William Gladstone, who was a British Prime Minister, and quite famously quite doer and serious and whatever. So I quite like the idea of him, you know, watching Breaking Bad or whatever. But obviously this wasn't that.

This was the woman in white, which was a story by Wilkie Collins, which was originally done in serials. It was originally sold in breakfast cereals. It was a free gift at the bottom of half-legged's boxes

and it's originally done in serials in magazines and then the entire book came out in 1860 I think 1859, 1860 and he got it and he wanted to read it so he just cancelled his I love it.

I love it. Imagine... What if he was taking a date though? Do you still love it? Oh. What if the date went to the theatre and was like,

Where's Willie? He's with Wilkie. He's with William Wilkie. You don't get, was he called Wilkie? Was that his name? No, it was his middle name. So he was William Wilkie Collins. Okay, but I'm just saying you don't get Wilkies anymore.

But actually, he wanted to be called Wilkie. So he insisted that you never call him Mr. Collins, or you never call him William Collins or whatever. He insisted that everyone just called him like Cher or Madonna. He was just Wilkie. Really? Because his dad and his grandfather, I think, were both Williams as well. So I think it was one of those cases where the middle name suddenly became the first name

and it was an honorary first name. But I think he wanted us to drop the surname as well. We should just be saying Wilkie. Well, that's what he wanted. I think we should do what shows some respect for the guy. Yeah. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says it was typical of his dislike of formality. Because he was quite an odd cookie.

He was a rum cove. He was rum. Can we talk about the book quickly? Yeah, let's do that. Because the book is, it's really good. Have you read it? I have read it. I mean, years and years ago. Yeah, I haven't. I'm really excited to.

I've read The Woman in White and the Moonstone. And he wrote, I think about 20 novels, and those are the two sort of big hits. I've read the first 50 pages because I bought it on Tuesday. Pretty good. It's really big. It's really big. It's huge. But they got paid by writing a chapter of time.

So you would, you just... And so it came out in this magazine. It was a Dickens-owned magazine called All the Year Round. And when it was first published in Chapter 4, Chapter 4, by Chapter Sales went from 40,000 to 300,000. It was mega. It was so excited. But it's weird that he caused Dickens' publication to become so popular because he actually

kind of hero worship Dickens, didn't he? Whereas really Dickens should have been thanking him for making his magazine all year round or whatever go through the roof. Well, he was younger. He was a prodigy of Dickens. And then Dickens quickly fell in love with him and sort of the role slightly reversed, where he sort of was inspired by Wilkie's writing. But he did do this weird, like Dickens tribute tour.

Because we've talked about Dickens traveling around the world and giving lectures. and then he immediately traveled around the world giving public readings and going to the same locations that Dickens had. I think he took holidays at Dickens' favorite holiday resorts. Did he? And then they fell out, didn't they? Did they?

Yeah, they fell out because Charles Dickens' daughter, Kate, married Wilkie Collins' brother, Charles. And they really properly fell out. And then Collins started really slagging off all of his books. He called Barnaby Rudd the weakest book that Dickens ever wrote. To be fair, that's true, and I don't think that's necessarily, off his books, is it? He was ranking them.

He was ranking them, yeah. Imagine if I'd ranked all the episodes of this podcast in order, which I definitely haven't. So we should... He then went on to say that Dombey and Sons, no intelligent person can have read it without astonishment of the badness of it. Yeah, I guess that's a really... Critique.

He called Edwin Drew the melancholy work of a worn-out brain. Oh, God. Well, that was fun. Finish. That's unfair. Yeah, and he must have said it after Dickens died as well, right? He was... There's stories that he was asked to finish.

true because they thought that he knew Dickens so well in the writing style well that's weird because Collins when he was writing a book called no name he got really ill and Dickens offered to take over he said I know you don't need the help but if just in case you do want that finished I can do it for you yeah they both were you know involved in that kind of project that thing of them so Dickens's daughter marrying yeah yeah yeah yeah I guess they would have been the same age because Collins was a much younger man but part of the reason that dickens really didn't like the situation was that um Wilkie Collins his brother Charles was apparently a complete just like milk toast, wet blanket.

Well, he wasn't very wet because he refused to have baths. Because he almost drowned when he was five years old and he was petrified by water for the rest of his life and wouldn't even get into a bath. Right. Okay, that might have been part of it. But it's so weird because they looked, apparently, both sibling and child, Dickens' daughter Katie,

they both looked the most like. Like Wilkie Collins' brother looked just like him and Katie Dickens looked just like Charles Dickens. Oh, really? That's so weird. Their little goatee beard, didn't she? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very funny.

They met through a bloke called Augustus Egg. That was their mutual friend. I really know. Who did Wilkie and Dickens? Dickens and Collins, yeah, yeah. And they went on holiday with egg and Collins lectured egg on art and hummed opera airs incorrectly

and interminably, is the report. The meeting of those two, they actually met because they were acting in the same play at the time, right? So Dickens brought him onto a production. The play that they met in was by Edward Bull Willitten who wrote

It was a dark and stormy night He's the guy who wrote that sentence And this is the great thing Okay so this links back to the woman in white Because Bull Willitten hated the woman in white He said it was great trash I think he meant big trash

Rather than like oh it's great trash You know And the point is that Bull Willitten had had his wife Rosina committed to an asylum A couple of years before And that plot line is in the woman in white How interesting

And all of Collins's works In some way Loads of them are about women Being mistreated by men Or being you know There's very much Spoiler if you haven't read the Women in White, by the way. Oh, yeah, that's fine.

Start from the end at this stage. Can I just say, I don't think we should be giving Spiless to Classic Words in the picture. Yeah, but Collins dedicated the book to the man, the Commissioner for Lunacy was his title, who had helped release Rosina from the asylum. Really? So obviously, Ballarat and hated the book because it was such a slam on him. It turns out. And yeah, that makes sense because I was reading an obituary of Wilkie Collins just after he died,

and this friend of his who was writing it said, that when he wrote the woman in white, Collins had told him he received a letter from Rosina, Lisson's wife, who said, I really enjoyed your book, but I thought the villain, which is Camp Fosco, I thought the villain was a really poor villain, not realistic at all, you know, next time if you want a villain, come to me.

I have my eyes upon a villain every minute of the day. It is my husband. Oh, no, nice. So one of those things that happened when the book came out is it was one of those things we've spoken about where when things take off, the merch just starts rolling in. You know, there was a waltz that was named after it. There were cloaks.

There were hats. Perfumes were made that were sort of like meant to be the woman in white's perfume. It was just full of merch around London. Walter became a fashionable name for babies because there's a character of Walter. That was a thing. Yeah, Walter's the hero, isn't he? Kind of slightly boring hero. And the heroine is slightly boring as well.

Wow. So I'm not allowed to spoil of the ending, but you're allowed to spoil of the fact that people in it are slightly boring. Terrible. It's not a spoiler? I think that's more of an opinion. Do you know what really annoys me about basically all adaptations? And this applies to lots of stuff. But I'm going to use the Woman in White to vent.

There have been loads of films and TV series of it over the years. And the most recent one was 2018 I saw with Jesse Buckley in it, who's an attractive actress. And the thing that I remember from the woman in white is that there are these two quite extreme characters who are the real good characters. There's Count Fosco, who's this hugely fat, Italian villain and then there's Marion who is very sharp very bright very bold and very ugly

She's like got a moustache. She's got a huge masculine jaw She's ugly enough that Walter's almost repulsed by her when because she looks really attractive from behind It's one of those like a weird Sort of 90s rom-com reveal and she turns around and he's like oh That face Is this shallow hell? Is shallow howl? Is shallow how I think in misunderings of shallow hell

if you thought she looked attractive from behind. And yeah, every single adaptation, she's not ugly. How interesting. Do you think that the actors are taking away jobs from ugly actors? I genuinely do. Did they ugly up?

Incredibly annoying. No, they sort of make themselves look a bit tomboyish. I think it's bullshit in entertainment today. You don't do it with men. They do fit people up a lot. Yeah. Well, they just pick a fit actress

to play an ugly role because they think that people can't handle watching an unattractive woman. Okay, yeah. Do they mention it in the dialogue, like, as in people go up to her in the movie and go, you're an ugly person. And she's just there looking stunning. I'm like, oh, yes, I know, this face. Oh, stop.

I'm a complete dog. Yeah. It does happen. The Jack Reacher books, those were adapted, and they put Tom Cruise in the role. And that was the biggest uproar about the whole thing, is that he's meant to be six foot ten. He's meant to be hulkingly massive. And that's not like, that's just.

drastic miscasting. As in, obviously, Tom Cruise is brilliant, but he doesn't look like Jack Reacher, who I think at one point stops a bullet with his chest. I think at one point in the books. Anyway, can we talk a bit about working collins? Yeah.

So his health situation was quite interesting because it was bad. He had bad health. If he had good health, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Unless it was really good. What if it was so good he was still alive? Then he'd be interesting.

No, as it was, he had. We had neuralgera rheumatism, spasm suffocation, I don't think we know what that was, gout in the eyes, a boil on his groin. At one point, his partner Caroline had to mesmerize his feet to try and cure them. Oh, wow. Yeah. How do you mesmerize? We've talked about mesmerism before, but how do you do it to feet? You know when you sit down on your leg for too long and it goes to sleep?

Yeah. Is that it? It's got to be that. Yeah, it's going to be something like that. You just sat on them. I don't know. Because you had gout eyes, so you couldn't do it through mesmerizing his eyes. They were really bunged up.

You don't get gout in your eyes. That's what I thought. I know, but when you read the descriptions of what happened to his eyes, they were bleeding, they were pussy, they were... But I believe, again, this is based on this obit written by his friend. He said that he went around to his house when he was older, and he couldn't stop looking at his eyes because they looked so weird and he couldn't really meet your eye properly.

And eventually, Colin said, I see you're looking at my eyes. I know it's distracting. I've got gout eye. And the friend implies, and we know this is a fact that it's probably all the Lordenum he was taking. Which puts his eyes to get across. It wasn't a disease of the eye. He was just off his face all the time.

It's going to be great in his biopic when Tom Cruise is playing him. You're saying, your eyes, they're horrible. Apparently he was taking enough to kill six people every day. And he was also taking poppers in about the same amount for his heart. Was he a student in the early 2000s? Wait, did poppers? I didn't think poppers existed. Well, amyl nitrate.

Oh, right. So, yeah, that's... They didn't come in those fun, colourful packets that they do now. I wouldn't know, actually. and he was taking arsenic as well at the same time. Oh my, my, Wilkie. All that meant that he saw ghosts all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, he thought he had a doppelganger, a ghost Wilkie that was with him. It was just a mirror, wasn't it? How did he come up with that amazing name? The ghost. He's one of the best. Yeah, he would, like Dan says, the doppelganger would be around. There would be ghosts pushing down the stairs when he was trying to go up to bed. So he couldn't climb it.

But you know that dream that people have? have what you just can't get up a hill and you can't quick sand that kind of thing but it was ghost pushing him down and then when he got to the top of the stairs he would be met by a green woman with tusks do you think maybe only taking enough to kill five people a day

might be a good idea Willey no no and his love life as well was absolutely it was just really interesting it was kind of for the time I guess it was interesting because he was Selman Agamus he's pretty healthy No, interesting even for today, I would say, Dan. If someone these days had this love life, I would be interested.

I want to know more. He didn't want to marry, fine. And he was in a relationship with a woman called Caroline Graves. She was a widow. She had a child from an earlier relationship. And then he started an affair with a woman called Martha Rudd. Right? And she was, I think, about 20 when they met. And they had three children together.

Caroline Graves didn't love this. She went off to marry someone else. Fair enough. Completely fair enough. And he actually went to the wedding. So it might have been all... I think it was quite friendly. Yeah.

I got the impression. It wasn't too much resentment. So that's good. So then Wilkie Collins is in a relationship with his new woman, Martha Rudd. They have three children together. He sort of keeps them in a flat away from his house. And he has sort of, he only wants to be known as Dawson when he goes over, I think.

Cool. He just sort of has an assumed name for the landlady. He doesn't want any publicity, all of that. But then Caroline, his previous partner, her marriage doesn't work out. So she comes back. She lives with him. and he's just rattling between two families back and forth and then sometimes he takes them all on holiday together to Ramsgate

and puts them in boarding houses next to each other and all the kids play together and they have a great time I think the kids play together but the women never meet Yeah it's so weird And he's at one I presume at one house or the other all the time And they just have to kind of that's the situation It sounds like a sort of amateur play Where the women are both played by the same person

Because it's so implausible that they never meet They live basically on the same street. Yeah. Yeah. They walk out of the door and they're like, oh, you just missed it. Exactly. And she sprints right out of breath. Oh, miss you.

That's married Mrs. Douthful. Do you know when Martha was born? No. She was born in Martham. That sounds like you've just conjugated her name. It's the accusative, actually. Yeah. Very unimaginative.

I was going to say where the heck is Martham in Norfolk. I think it's a village in Norfolk. So did they name her after the village? Not clear. I did try to find out. Funnily enough, wasn't one of those facts that's been recorded to history as far as I could tell. She wasn't born in Penniston. If you are in Martham listening to this now, please write in. Yeah.

Just tell us what it's like. Yeah. Send us a photo. I know a bit unsure about that but you don't do the emails anymore, Anna. Oh yeah, sorry. Of course, inundate us with emails. Everyone from Martha. If you've ever been to Martin, already been any place beginning with that,

they're writing. Because the last time I said that, I said something like, if you are eating particular foods in America right now, and it was thanks to that bloke, David Fairchild, who imported them all, and we got a lot of emails of people eating avocados, people eating rice. I can't remember what it was, but it was a lot.

Martha tended, so Martha said she could have married Wilkie Colleen. whenever she wanted. That was a bit of a lady death of the protest too much thing. But she didn't go to his funeral, nor did their kids, weirdly. Okay. But then she did. She was there, but she was called Caroline Grave. Where's Martha?

I just need to go to the blue. After Caroline died, she took over attending Wookie Collins' grave. So it just seems like there's so much happening below the surface we don't know about. Caroline was also buried in that grave. Yes, Caroline was buried in the same plot. I suppose she tended Caroline's grave as well, but she quickly dug herself into the coffin for a while. Oh, thanks for looking after my grave, climbs out of the coffin. No problem.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that 15th century Korean royals had their life so thoroughly documented that the records include kings complaining about their recorders recording them. So this was sent to me by my friend Mark Vent. I'd never heard of it. It's called the Annals of the Jocen dynasty, where basically they recorded literally everything. Included in these accounts, in 1404, for example,

there was a king who fell off a horse by accident. He was really embarrassed, and he went up to the guy recording it, saying, can you not put in the whole horse falling thing? And the guy put it in. So we've got an account of the king then bitching about the guy going, I bet he's put in the horse thing, hasn't he? Stop writing. No, no, stop writing that.

Don't break that either, you bastard. You know the never-ending story? There's a character sitting on the top of a mountain transcribing everything. This is basically how they treated their entire dynasty. And as a result, we've got 500 years worth of complete records of the king and all of the king's administrators. It's brilliant. Yeah, it's incredible. It's such a good idea.

Like, unlike now where literally this week we're hearing that people are deleting WhatsApps every, you know, they're doing government business and they're deleting the WhatsApps every, you know, they're doing government business and they're deleting the WhatsApps every seven days. and never know what they said. You're right, if we'd have had this and they couldn't have done it. Exactly. The king wasn't even allowed to see it. It wasn't allowed to see it. You weren't allowed to look at the recordings of what you've done and said. Exactly.

The rules were very strict about who couldn't look in the annals. But they were broken sometimes. Absolutely, yeah. So there was, I read an account of a tyrant king who looked in the annals and then six people were executed because of what he found written in there. So I think after that they probably had to tighten up the rules. Maybe he was the reason that kings then weren't allowed to look in the annals. So what it was.

I mean, I don't know if this is the specific account you're talking about, but the people who are writing the histories often went back in to change what they've written because the king wasn't allowed to look at what happened. You know, he'd have to die and then people could look at what was said about him. But politicians would get word that maybe something was written down. So the historographers would go back into it and kind of change it. And the king found out about that and he got really pissed off that they were more petrified of the politicians than the king himself of what the king would do. then that got banned. You weren't allowed to then go in and change your own story. They were known as the literati purges, weren't they? And the one Andy's talking about, who was Yon Sangun, who was the tyrant king,

he closed down the university and turned it into his personal pleasure grounds where he would import young girls from around the provinces. He also demolished a huge area where people were living in the capital and turned it into his own hunting grounds. and then when everyone complained, he told his ministers they weren't allowed to speak and they had to wear a sign saying a mouth is a door that brings in disaster a tongue is a sword that cuts off a head. I really thought that was going to rhyme.

It probably was in Korean. Korean, yeah. It feels like you could say plaster at some point. A tongue is a sword. Calls for a plaster, yeah. What's the plaster? Wait, what's the mouth? A mouth is a door that brings in disaster.

A tongue is a sword that calls for a plaster. looks good it's not amazing but it's not to work with I think it's good all of the teeth something knocked out by your master

oh very good lovely yeah anyway he sounds like a rotter yeah it's really there were eventually about 2,000 volumes

yeah of this stuff 2,000 volumes and it was all sorts of it was all sorts of clobber as well it was the weather it was diplomatic affairs it was the economy

it was probably quite a boring job to actually do it day in day out scribbling away and you must have had this constantly say so you slow down please

sorry Can you say that again? Yeah. And then you'd have to write that down. Yes. And then I wrote down, can you slow it down, please? Sorry, can you fall off the horse again but slower? Yeah, it's 1,967 books in total is what they have.

They say if you stacked it, it would be taller than a 10-story building, is the height we're talking of these books, which is just a fine. It means nothing, but that's quite fun as a visual. Thank you. For explaining why you've mentioned it. But the point that they make in this thing is, until it's been digitized, it was an intensely hard history to get your head around because... Because you've got to climb nine stories to get to the way you want.

Yeah, exactly. Well, if you're, there's no, it's not a history book. It's not written like, here's the story of the king. You've got a bit of the king, and then you've suddenly got the weather report. And you've something, it's all, you have to hunt through 1,900 volumes to find the thing you're looking for. Yeah. Obviously, there's, you know, when there's periods.

Yeah, exactly. But now it has been digitized, right? It has, yeah. And it's, the plan is to translate them into English by the year 2030. Okay. This dynasty was an interesting one. It was very long-lasting dynasty. Yeah, 500 years? Yeah, 500. 1392 until, well, accounts vary. But I'm going with 1910.

Controversial. Well, Japan invaded Korea at that point. That was pretty controversial. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the 14th century when it started, it was, you know, the big deal was that they were moving from an old aristocracy to state-trained bureaucrats who were running the show. And that was, you know. It was very much in the Eastern tradition of meritocracy having preceded us. Well, they were just much more organised than we were, weren't they? It was a lot better.

It was a meritocracy as long as you weren't a woman. Oh God, yeah. Women had an absolute whale of a time, of course. There was a ruling from behind the bamboo screen was a thing in the Choson dynasty, which was when, if you were a regent, so obviously if a male royal hadn't come of age yet, and you were the mother, then you could rule, but you had to sit behind a bamboo screen at the time when he sat on the throne acting like he was saying stuff my voice to the past.

Do you have your hand up his bum at the time? Like a glove puppet? I got where you were going. I mean, if we thought that Dan's three kids looking to say mommy was going to get social services in. The ruling from behind the screen, that's quite cool. Yeah, we've spoken about that before, haven't we? Well, we've spoken about it in Russia.

Yeah, with someone was behind literally the throne. The chair. Yeah, just go, puss, why don't you say? But here you weren't hit, like they knew you were there because there's a big screen, maybe with some nice pictures on it. But happened quite a lot. If your grandmother or your mother ruled, there was one queen, I think, he ruled for about 25 years from behind a screen.

What? Oh, really? With the same region? Yeah. It's kind of that you're not ready yet. I'm sorry. Oh, I thought they had a rule that when you turned 20. So it was if you were under 20.

They did, but you know, lots of weird stuff always happens. And she liked power. And so it was a bit like, oh, actually, you're not qualified, it turns out. And she was machinating behind the scenes to make sure she. stayed in control. But it was one of the good things about them recording all these details was that you got just a lot of blood and gore.

Because everyone, like royals were in the past, almost everywhere. Everyone was quite bloodthirsty. So one of the stories that I like that was recorded was the story of Prince Sado. You know what's sad? Is that the English translation? It basically should be.

Because it was a sad character. This was in the 1700s, and his dad was King Yongjo, who really wanted Sado to be studious and clever sounds like he was and well sadly he wasn't he was actually a free spirit he wanted to be a musician and an artist

kind of type classic his dad thought that was super lame bullied him used to mock him in front of the eunuchs and the ladies not in front of the eunuchs no that's so unguide it's the worst and it drove saddo a bit mad

saddo saddo and he sort of he went from being a really gentle sweet boy to murdering everyone and he used to walk into chambers holding severed heads of eunuchs in fact. Guess what else I've cut off? Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so his father was then like, well, we can't have this. We can't have you inheriting. So you're going to have to die, but you're not allowed to defile the royal body by

actually killing someone. So he asked his son to commit suicide. And saddo, saddough, though he was, was not saddo enough to commit suicide. So his dad said, okay, well, then can you climb into this rice chest? And then he locked him in a rice chest and starved him to death. Wait, did he know that that was going to be locked? I guess maybe he thought really, look, I guess this has to happen. Was he put in the chest? There might have been someone gently encouraging him with a hand. If it's in the animals, you know.

Yeah, if it's in the annals, then it must have happened. Otherwise it would be like, you know, don't say that I'm shoving my son into this rice chest right now. Yeah, you're right. He got in voluntarily. Yeah. There was a place. I can't know where it was. The tradition was that you couldn't kill the king, but you could put them in a bag and hit the bag very hard with a club.

And I think that was the Ottoman Empire, wasn't it? I think that was the Ottomans. I think you could, you beat them inside. rugs sometimes, didn't you? So that you didn't, couldn't spill blood? You say, I'm just beating this rug and actually it contains the king or whatever. And that was the means of

executing very, very posh people. Right. Yeah. Wasn't there a tradition? There's a pirate tradition as well, wasn't there? Of chest, putting people in chests. That's treasure. Oh, God. Dad goes back to the people. I can't wait to take up my treasure.

It's a simple, desiccated skeleton in there. No, it's hook. I'm thinking of the movie hook. Oh, not. Not really. Right at the beginning, yeah, but they put them in the boo box. The boo box. And he goes inside box.

Yeah, and you'd have a slide and you'd put scorpions in and close it. We don't need to go into the detail. I don't think it is historical facts. Interesting fact, it was Glenn Close, who played the male pirate. No, one really knew that. Uncredited, yeah. Right. Hook.

Who played Hook? No, played the pirate put in the treasure chest. Yeah. Okay. Okay. One interesting thing about these annals is, like Andy said, they kind of would tell you the weather and stuff like that. but it also would tell you whenever there was an Aurora

and there was a time between 1645 and 1715 which we now sometimes call the mini Ice Age and we've managed to use, or not we, a guy called Jan and his team, managed to use the records looking into the history books and have worked out the solar cycles that were happening around that time by the number of auroras that were recorded in the annals.

That's so cool. That's amazing. And so we now know that, Around that time, the solar cycle was only about eight years, whereas it's normally a bit longer than that. That's incredible. I just love that stuff. There's also UFO encounters in the Chosen Dynasty, which is very exciting. So September 1609, there was a reported case of things shaped like a bowl in the sky.

And there's a few paranormal things that make it in there as well. But what's really amazing, I'm so excited by this. I haven't seen it yet, but it's obviously immediately become one of my favorite TV shows. the Jocen X-Files. It's a real TV show, and it's a historical, and he uses accounts from the Jocen annals as the basis for each episode, and there's an ancient investigator of the time

who is assigned to go and investigate all of the weird paranormalities that we find in the annals. What kind of things are we talking? Oh, I just told you, the UFO. A bull of the guy. A crescent moon, sounds like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's obviously not a UFO, but they recorded it as unidentified stuff, there's cursed items, all that sort of stuff. and yeah, it's been turned into a... Good thing about the animals is that it's really easy to reenact so much of what happened. So you can make an incredibly accurate

historical representation and I think historical reenactments are much more popular and common in Korea now of this period because, you know, you know exactly what people were wearing, exactly how they ate their meals. Like meals were described in such detail and the order in which meals,

like the order in which different foods had to be placed on the table. It was all extremely ordered life. you know, everything was very ceremonial and so, you know, you'd have to bring in the sausages first and then the cabbage five minutes later and we know all of this, so reenactments, a piece of cake.

That's cool. Web did the piece of cake coffee? Can you guess the seven sins for which you were allowed to divorce your wife under the Joseon dynasty? So her sins, not mine. Yeah. Okay.

Adultery. Wives weren't allowed to divorce their husbands. Adultery. Adultery is in there, yes. theft very good stealing is in there inability to have children is usually one of them yes very good failure to produce

a male air you can have daughters if you want but you'll get divorced touching my stuff what about not actually on there but an oversight moving the remote control from where I like it where I like it next to where I sit on the sofa to apparently a better

place next to the television why would you put it next to the television it's a remote control it should be remote from the place that it's beeping too. I don't know if I meant to unleash this. No, no, this is brilliant. No, I love my wife and it's all going to right. You've only thought we've only got three so far,

you've done failure to bruise the male air, adultery, stealing. Well, not maintaining the household properly. No, that's not. There's excessive jealousy towards other women in the household, who I guess would often be concubines. Oh, okay. So you can't, yeah, you can divorce your wife. Bad mouthing with the friends, if they were overheard,

spotted in the animals. I'm going to give you that talking excessively. Ooh. Any, too much chat, you're gone. The last one is serious disease. Oh, right. So you've got to, I mean, I think that is irresponsible to get a bad disease when you're trying to produce a male air.

Yeah, if your wife's got gout eyes, I'm not going to... I'm not going to go there. Exactly, get rid of him, love. So the remote control thing you just stuck with? I think I might have just missed it out, yeah, and I think probably won't eat it. The eighth. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in real life, it was difficult to free Willie because he couldn't hold his breath underwater for long enough.

This is about the film Free Willy. Which, if you haven't seen it, is a classic 90s kids movie. It's brilliant. Is it? 19903? It's so good. Yeah. It really is great. I know it's about a whale who is freed.

Yeah. Yes. I feel like there's a movie. is a scene where he jumps over a wall. Yes. Very good. And that is his friend with a child who's working to free. And that is not a spoiler because the climactic moment of the film is on not only the title. It's also in the trailer and on the poster.

It's the poster. It's the whole thing. That's the weirdest thing. It's like Anna Karenna having a train on the front cover. It really is. Andy, it's called Free Willy. It's not called Free Willy question mark. We know that the Free Willy is going to happen, Charlie.

No, because Free Willy is like an imperative. Like Free Willy, you don't know they obey it, do you? Oh, it's not an adjective. No, no, no. Well, actually, he starts the film as a free whale before being captured by some rascally fisherman, you know, some scoundrels. So he starts off as free Willy.

But yeah, most of the film, he's not free. So really, to be accurate, it should have been called captive Willy, because that's the majority of the film. But captive willy is in another genre entirely in films. So he was a real whale. He was called Keiko. Yeah.

Yeah, and he was, um, so yeah, there was this whale called Keiko. and after the film came out basically, it was incredibly popular. Anyone who was a child in the 90s probably remember seeing it except James. And after it came out, there was this massive campaign.

And in fact, the film at the end of it had a number to call if you wanted to save the whales, but it was an environmental agency that you got through to. But actually, most people who called the number, or many thousands, just wanted that specific whale to be freed.

They were like, but what about the actor in the film? The actor who plays the whale. Or the kid. Oh, right. No one gave a shit about the kid. He's still in captivity. So, yeah, there was this campaign to free Keko. So they had to train this whale that had been in captivity for 15 years

to learn to live in the wild. Then it was an incredibly arduous resource-intensive process. And one of the things about Keko was that couldn't hold his breath underwater. And whales need to, obviously, because they can't breathe underwater. So killer whales, which he was, hold their breath usually for about 15 minutes underwater. He couldn't even make sort of three. But they did manage to train him, and by the time they released him, he could hold his breath with 13 minns. So very good.

Oh, right. So he had a pretty unhappy life in the wild. He was used to living with humans. He'd been living with humans almost all his life. And he was taken to Iceland and then he made his way over to Norway. But he really was pretty dependent on humans for the rest of his life. He was sad. It's very interesting because there's a side of environmentalists and people look after animals who say this was the worst thing in the world to let him back out into the wild because of all these reasons.

how could he attach himself to a pod? He's been fed frozen herring, you know, his last 13 years. But the people who did it still maintained, it was the best thing to do and that he was the second oldest orca to live in captivity ever. In the time that he was in there, something like 13 other orcas died, to just show how quickly the mortality rate was.

Yeah, and he did, yeah, exactly. He might have died anyway. He just died of a disease shortly after managing to be released. But yeah, and he hung around on the edge of a pod. but it was mostly tragic or silly at least because there should have been a fund for broad environmentally good reasons rather than probably a fun to just release this one whale which was fine in captivity.

The really sad thing is that in Free Willy's certainly two and three the Willie is played completely by an animatronic whale as in they like they um there's an early example of AI taking away jobs well largely in one it was played by an animatronic whale as well And CGII. For the bits where the child is putting his hand in the whale's mouth, I think they did have to have it. No, no.

Sorry to interrupt, because I don't know this movie. Yeah. In Free Willy 2, 3 and 4, you're saying it's the same Willie, as in the character is the same Willie. He's freed. But then what?

No, no, absolutely. In Free Willy 2, he's gone home. He's found his pod. He's found his mum, which is exciting. I think there's an oil spill or something bad. That might be the film 3. And then it turns out, look at me jumping.

in front of Dan's got the entire plot in his head. And film three, he's started a family and he's got a pregnant wife whale. So he is free throughout those extra films. They keep trying to capture him again and the kid from the first movie who appears in the second. So it's the same cast trying to make sure he remains free. How is the idea. So by at that point the title is an adjective.

He is free willy rather than an imperative. And it was sad because the character, you know, meets up with his pod again and gets together with the lady whale and, you know, she's expecting a baby in the third film. And yet K-Code never experienced any of this. It's sad. Yes, it is sad. That's right.

That's really sad. And two and three has the same cast, but four, they sort of thought the story is now told. So they had to entirely recast it. And Bindy Irwin, the daughter of Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter, is the lead role. Get out. No, I will stay in. Free Bindy. And is it a different whale?

I've seen it and I can't remember. Because we've seen Jaws 4. Yes. Which is, I think, the kid of the descendant. It might be that, possibly. It's the kid of the original shark, which is attacking the family. but not family by blood, family by marriage of the original people

and it follows them across the world. Through telepathy. This shark knows about sort of social relationships as well as smelling blood. No, I stop describing it, please. Have you heard of Orca the movie while we're talking about movies?

So I wondered if there was like a killer whale movie, which was a bit like Jaws. Oh, right. And it turns out there is. It's called Orca the movie from 1970, whenever it was. And basically, someone had watched Jaws seen how popular it was.

and got what's scarier than a shark, a killer whale. Ingress, but okay. Killer whales literally eat sharks for breakfast. Killer whales don't harm humans. They do in captivity. Sorry, two instances, because we're really horrible to them. Killer whales do not eat humans.

I think sharks generally speaking don't eat humans. The number of shark incidents. Look, we all like our ocean friends. A few people a year do get, people do get attacked by sharks. Killer whales do not attack. What about all these boats they've been attacking in the last year? They attack boats. They're not killing humans.

Who goes on boats? Humans. You're giving them either too much or too little credit, right? You're right. Anyway, got an approval rating of 9%. Oh, really? But that's and that's seen the sequel and the sequel and the sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, yeah.

Bob Irwin. Steve's in Walker 4. So when they were auditioning for the movie, Free Willy, they auditioned lots of different whales. I don't know what the process was. Singing? I think maybe But 21 of the 23

Wales they auditioned Belonged to SeaWorld And Seaworld And Seaworld apparently Uncomfortable with the movie's message Which is basically You're caging whales, you monsters This is an incredibly medieval barbaric thing to do

Yeah And they asked at one point for a new ending Yeah Presumably in which when he stays captain He refers it Yeah He jumps back over the while Yeah and so they got

Keiko from a Mexican sea life park because Sea World. They did, which is quite odd because the Mexican park was in very poor condition and the whale, Keko wasn't very poor condition in it, but the Mexican owners of the Mexican park were absolutely fine with the message. I think they were like, yeah, no, it's shit here for the whales, you should spread the word.

That was weird for Keiko in that Mexican park because the water, rather than importing seawater for it to live in, they just had water which they added salt to. Like, it was really bad. I mean, in theory, that sounds like the same, but I bet it's not. It's just kind of

not going to be, is it? It probably tastes weird. Yeah. Seasoned water. Yeah. And the altitude's quite high up for what Kako would have been used to. And so it's... Seats. So what altitude do you normally live at? Keiko. Jesus.

He didn't live in one of those really high seas. That's the high seas that the pirates go in. That's there. Why do you think the whales are? at our alpine sea experience and not happy. Here's the thing. I watched a clip of it last night. And actually, it's amazing to, James, not included in this,

but when you watch it back, my memory of Willie going over is a phenomenal scene. And watch it again. They use CGI, and it's really obvious when it lands in on the other side. You can see the splash would kind of computer graphics, early computer graphics. You couldn't do water in those days,

could you? In fact, it's still hard to do water. I think that's sensible, though, because you have got an eight-year-old child actor firing the 1,300-kilob rubber whale over that. Take 12, we're going to feed another kid. And there was a stunt, as you said then, there was a stunt double, which was coated in 1,300 kilos.

Oh, sorry, that's 1,300 kilos of rubber just on the outside. That's just the skin. And the special effects supervisor said that the dummy looked so realistic to Keko that he became aroused when he saw it. Do you know what happened to Keko in the end? Obviously he died. Except Brian died? Well, yes.

He got pneumonia? After he died. Oh. Oh, okay. Reincarnated as a rabbit. Well, possibly. But he was buried. Oh, okay.

Really? That poor grave digger, imagine. That's your gig this morning. No, poorer, what they call? The people who carry there. Paul bearers. 2,000 pole bearers. Yeah, they be so weird.

because he died in Norway or off the in the fjords of Norway Right Normally you would just tow the whale out to sea And then attach a deep weight to it and it would sink Okay And that would be good for the environment

Because animals in the bottom of the sea Could have you done it Yeah they didn't do that They dug an enormous grave And then just slid him in And is it marked? As in has it become a destination There's a little can of stones

Which marks the grave It's right next to the sea obviously In land It's not in a churchyard It's not in Birmingham or anything really, really hard. On top of a mountain. Oh, he always loved the altitude.

Yeah, but they got the special permission. There are only seven people at the funeral, which I find very sad. How many whales? None. You know, we were saying earlier about how killer whales might slam into a boat. Yeah. And scientists aren't quite fully sure why that happens. And there's a theory that the reason it happens is because if a boat is out at sea and it's

turned its engine off. They think it's possible that the killer whales love going up to the back of the boat and feeling the water get propelled through the jet through its propeller. And it's a bit like a fun kind of like if you're in a jacuzzi and you've got the weight machine. Yeah, exactly like that. So if they see one and it's not on, the thought is that they're slamming into the boat and frustration to make it start and make that thing happen that they're going to. No one knows that for sure. Well, the thing is, if you look in the newspaper archives, you do see that every now and then there's a spike. Like in 1953 there was a spike of if you search for orca ramming boat or Killowell ramming boat, you'll see one.

There was another one in 2001. And it's just, I think it happens quite regularly. And once one of them gets in the news, a few more people are like, oh, that happened to me today. So let's get that in the news as well. I don't know if that's true. I'm sure that's part of it. Definitely, yeah. They have periods, Killer whales.

They're one of the only other mammals to have periods. But, sorry, they have menopause. and they're one of the only other mammals to have menopause. They have menopause and you get postmenopausal females and we're not really sure why this is, why they have menopause

but it has been found that postmenopausal female orcas like to have sex with adolescent males. Okay. You have males. And there's one particular... The Coopers of the Sea? Exactly, yes. And there's a woman called Deborah Giles

who's director of research. She has that as well as she. Very hands on research. In case you're listening, I'm sure you don't do that. You might do that. It's fine if you do. Right in. Right in the United States.

Deborah has had nothing to do with any. She's just director of research at the centre for whale research. And she explains the reason the old ladies are doing this to the young boys could be. So it could be to provide them a bit of sex ed. Show them the ropes. Oh, wow. Show them some good moves. And also, it's because females who are looking for a sexually active male to copulate with,

they reject ones that they don't think are quite up to scratch. And young males, when they get rejected by the female orcas, get really upset and pissed off, much like a young 15-year-old boy who has been embarrassed in front of his friends when he asks out a girl. And it causes tensions in the group because these young males act out and they get disruptive. so the older females who are post-menopausal so they can't, they go and have sex with them instead. It's like a pity, a pity. It's pity sex, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. It's stiffler's mom. It's not so much, um... Another 90s film reference for years. Killer whales. Yeah. They like changes in altitude.

Basically. Yeah. So if you get big ships that are kind of trying to catch fish at the bottom of the sea, then it's an easy place to get some fish if you're a killer whale. Basically, you go down to where they're catching it, if they're dredging, and you might get some good Patagonian toothfish. And they found that quite recently there was an adult female killer whale

who got to the depth of 1,087 meters in order to get these fish, which is about as deep as Mount Snowden is high. Wow. So that's quite a big... You say wow, it's way easier to go down than to go up. No, I just, as I said, I like this. Okay, let's see you either walk to the top of Snowden, where, by the way, there's a train,

or go all the way 1,000 meters to the bottom of the ocean. Oh, look, I may not have the whale anatomy that makes it as easy as it is for this task. Anna, it's easier to come up. It's easier to float to the surface than it's to sink down. You have to actively push against the force of all that water. Think of the pressure down there. I'm finding it a bit hard, though, to visualize the Snowden reference.

how many volumes of the Anna of the Johnson Dynasty are we talking? Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, James, James Harkin. And Anna. You can email podcast.cui.com, and Andy will reply. Yeah, where you can go to our group account which is at No Such Thing or our website. No Such Thing as a fish.com.

Check out all of our previous episodes because they're up there. Also check out the little bits of merch that we have there. And also get to Club Fish, which is our secret members club where we have lots of bonus episodes, fun content, and a general amazing land called Discord where all the listeners of the club hang out and chat to each other. So do that. But otherwise, if not, come back here next week because we'll have another episode waiting for you. And we'll see you then. Goodbye.