No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Dwayne Johnson's Hare

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Adam Chase joins Dan, James and Anne Miller to discuss Chinese maps, German trains, London Marathons and International treasure hunts.   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

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Visit us at Pluralsight.com to learn more. This podcast is supported by the Real Real. Meet Christine. She loves shopping. And this? This is the sound of fashion overload. Too many fabulous things, not enough space. So Christine started selling with the Real Real.

I've always loved collecting designer pieces. Gucci bags, prodded heels. But my style keeps evolving. Selling with the Real, game changer. I earn more, and they do everything. Seriously, just drop off your items or schedule a pickup. We handle the photos, descriptions. pricing, even shipping. You just sit back and watch your items sell, fast, to our 38 million

members. And I get peace of mind knowing I earn more selling with The Real Real than anywhere else. Exactly. This? That's the sound of your closet working for you. The Real Real. Earn more, save time, sell fast. And right now, you can get an extra $100 site credit when you sell for the first time. Go to therealreel.com to get your extra $100. Thereelreel.com. That's thereelreel.com. That's TheRealReal.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No Sixth Things of Fish, where we were joined by one of my actual heroes. We had one of Andy and Dan's heroes, Michael Palin, last week. But this week we have one of my heroes, and that is Adam Chase from Jetlag the Game.

Now, Andy, do you know who Adam is? I do. I'm not as big a fan of JetLag the Game as you, but I quite like that he's got nominative determinism because it's all about checking. all over the place, isn't it? You're absolutely right. It is absolutely huge in the QI office. All the QI elves watch it. It's available on YouTube or also on Nebula, which is like another platform for creators.

But basically what it does is Adam is with his friends, Ben and Sam, and they play board games, but instead of on a board, they use the entire world. So Andy, you would love it. It's all about infrastructure. It's all about getting on the right train or the right plane, but they do challenges. There's so much jeopardy involved in this show every single week. It genuinely is my absolute favourite bit of content that comes out in the world. Wow.

And having Adam on the show was so exciting. It's really good. I have actually had a sneak preview. I've already heard the episode. I can confirm you're in for a treat. He's such a nice guy. And yeah, it's a great episode. Adam has also done a documentary about the world's biggest scavenger hunt.

That's called Scav. That's available on Nebula. But if you want to find out more about him, then go to YouTube. search for jet lag the game. Yes, and the other thing we know is Christmas is coming up. If you are looking for a present to give someone, why not give them membership of club fish? This is our members club where you can get bonus bits of fish for the fish fan in your life. You can get extra shows, you can get am free shows.

If you want to experience even more fish or give that to someone else who you know who likes the show, then why not do that? Just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. But in the meantime, really hope you enjoy this show with Adam Chase from Jet Like the Game. On with the podcast. On with the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of No such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast. coming to you from four undisclosed locations around the world. My name is Dan Schreiber.

I'm sitting here with James Harkin and Miller and Adam Chase. 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 Adam. My fact is that every map of China is a little bit wrong. And I would like to say, say that it is not for any of the controversial reasons that people might interpret that statement.

This does not have to do with any disputed territories. I'm not delving into that issue at the moment, but nonetheless, every map of China is a little bit wrong. Okay. Why? If not for the first reason. Okay. So basically all of the maps, pretty much all the maps in the world, like the digital maps, right? You know, your Google Maps, your Apple Maps, your whatever. They all use this system called WGS-84, which is a system that was made in, you're never going to believe this, 1984. World Geodesic system, I believe, 84 it is. And this is, you know, just like a system that is able to store and keep and communicate coordinates of all the different things. So it knows that the post office is at this exact set of coordinates and it, you know, these are how maps work. Now, China does not

use this system. Since 2002, they basically have very tightly controlled the ability to make maps of China. Only Chinese companies can make maps of China. And they have to put it through this system called GCJ02 instead of WGS 84, which basically takes in accurate data of where everything is. And it randomly adjusts it anywhere between 50 to 500 meters in a kind of of random direction just to make the map all be a little bit like skewed in various ways but in random ways that you can't predict because obviously if they moved everything 20 meters left you would say okay great well I can fix it'll move everything 20 meters right what this does is it just sort of like turns at all so that nothing is quite right

and you can see this if you go on Google Maps and you compare the satellite view to the non-satellite view, you'll see there's all kinds of things that don't line up. You'll see that there are like banks in the middle of a river and they're like, banks were at the edge of the river. Well, no. But it's, Adam, it's, why? Just to mess with us. I looked into this. The one thing I just couldn't understand was, why is this the case? Who does this help? So to my understanding, it is a national security thing for the most part. I can read you the exact wording of Article 1 of this law, which just says it is enacted to strengthen the administration of surveying and mapping undertaking, promote its development, and ensure it

renders service to the development of the national economy, the building up of national defense, and progress of the society. So the answer is, of course, they're doing it for the national economy, the building up of national defense and the progress of the society. Yeah, come up, that's obvious. Well, that makes sense. Kind of a dumb question. because that's an obvious answer. Yeah, it's just pretty astonishing. It's how does anyone get around in China? Well, one of my, one of my favorite things about how they do this is that so on like

U.S. Google Maps, we have an accurate satellite image, but an inaccurate, inaccurate data. So the satellite and the data don't line up. If you go to, at least when I did this last, when you go to Google Maps China, then the satellite and the data do match up. So you go, oh, do they just mess it up for like the U.S. versions, but the China, Google, it works fine. But it's actually something way crazier, which is that you're not looking at an accurate satellite map with an accurate, you know, with accurate data. They've taken the inaccurate data and then they have made the satellite map also wrong, but in a way that matches the inaccurate data.

So they have warped the satellite map in the same way that they warped the other stuff so that things do line up, but it still is all wrong. So it tracks, but it tracks incorrectly? Yes, exactly. Amazing. That's very funny. So the bank is still in the water, but it's in the water on both roads. I guess the accurate satellite map is the best way to know that the bank is not there.

I guess there are some things that aren't on the satellite maps either, right? Oh, well, all kinds of things. So the world's second largest island that's inside. a lake wasn't on any maps until very recently. In fact, it's never been on any maps because it currently isn't an island anymore. This is a place called Vosrogyzdienia, which is in Russia. And it's mentioned in Call of Duty Black Op, so some people might know it from that. But basically it's where they had their big smallpox factory in Russia. It was on this huge island in the RLC, but it was on no maps. It was always blurred out when you got there. And then before they could put it on any maps,

because eventually this factory was closed down. It stopped being an island anymore because the RLC dried up, and now it's just part of the land. Well, there's lots of weird national security things that have to be dealt with with maps. One of my favorite stories is that, do you know Strava? Yeah, the running app. Yeah, it's like a running app.

And Strava was accidentally giving away the location of, like, secret U.S. military bases, and the exact parameters of this. shape because, you know, soldiers would be running with Strava and they would run along the wall of the base, basically. They would make a full loop along the wall to, you know, get the, you know, for their lap to be the longest period, right, that it could be in the space. And so you could see on Strava, it was literally just outlining, here is the exact shape

of this military base. Here's exactly where it is. Here's exactly what it looks like. The super secret military. base. Yes, exactly. You know what they should have done? Like in the Second World War, when the bombers were coming over, we made fake cities. So they would put like fires and lights and stuff just outside the city so the bombers would go to the wrong place. So what they could have done is leak out this Strava thing and then get the soldiers to run

maybe 200 meters away from the base. Oh, yes. Well, they didn't think of that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, your fake World War II cities are a significant plot point in the recent film, now you see me, now you don't. Has anybody been to the theater to see that one? Yeah. Adam, now you're talking about a friend of the podcast. We've mentioned this on this show recently,

how much we unironically love that series of them. It's unbelievable, those movies. I love those movies. I would watch, you could, I would watch, the number of heist movies that I would watch before I got sick of them is unbelievable. And they're not good, right? They're not.

Preach. My friend, my friend, I was talking to my friend literally last night. He's, I mentioned, he asked me if I wanted to see it. I said, oh, I already saw it. He said, is it good? I said, of course not. I said, but it's amazing. I think I've watched the first one about 20 times in the last few weeks.

It's just so moorish. I've just had it on in the background just while I'm doing research. It's so. There's a great fact, which. John Lloyd from QI either mentioned on this show, or was going to mention on this show, which was as part of Google Earth, making all of these amazing maps of the world.

There was also sort of a lot of unfortunate discoveries for people who were trying to hide things from authorities. And in Athens, they have a thing whereby, if you build a pool in your backyard, there's a special tax for the pool. So only 324 pools were declared in Athens suburbs. But after Google Maps came around and Google Earth, It was discovered 16,974 pools were in the area.

So, yeah. Well, do you remember, like, I mean, I was a kid when this happened. Like, when Google Earth first started to be a thing, and I remember being, like, at school on, like, the computers in the library. And someone telling me, like, if you put in your address here, it'll show you a picture of your house. And I remember being, like, surely that's illegal. I was like, you're telling me that people could see what my house looks like. I remember it being like, it's just funny how things that are so mundane now, like when that first became a thing, I was, I mean, I was also a child, so maybe I didn't have a lot

of perspective on it. But I was like, this is the most crazy, outrageous thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I can say as someone who was not just an adult, but quite an old adult when that happened, that we also thought it was outrageous. Yeah, everyone did. And also, it did lead to a great game, which was, can you spot yourself standing outside your house? I mean, I wonder, Adam, with the amount of travel that you've done in different countries, if you and your jet lag crew have ever tried to work out who has appeared in most Google Earth images for the street view?

We are on Street View. We are on Street View. We know that we're on Street View. In season three, we were in France outside, I believe, Massey Palace You Station. and the Google Street View car came through and we did get on Street View. It's a weird thing where different portions of that street use Street View images from different years. So you have to be on a really specific part of the street view to see us.

It may be the case that we're not on there anymore, but at least there was a period where you 100% could see us on Street View. That's very cool. Which was very exciting to us. I happen to know the world record for the most numbers of times a person is on Google Street. Really? It's not as high as you would think, but it is high given it was taken on one single dog walk.

Go on. I'm going to say a dozen, 12. All right. Any more backs? I'm going to say 48. And Shriver? 6. 43. Whoa. Apparently.

Very close. Yeah, apparently she is seen as looking quite suspicious. because it was crawling really, really, really slowly down the street. And so she says they have got her every few meters. That's amazing. I got a random message the other day from a friend who sent me a picture of a parking fine that he got. And in order to give you your parking fines, they send you two photos of when you entered

the place and when you left. And he was like, is this your family? And in the shot, as my wife and my kids. I was. Now their heads are blurred. So you'd think, how would they possibly know that that is by wife and kids? But he knew, because for the last few weeks, my son has refused to get out of his Halloween pumpkin costume. So he's just been walking the streets dressed as a giant pumpkin.

And that has appeared in the parking photo. That is an incredible bit by your son. That's awesome, dude. That's so funny. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everyone. We'd like to let you know.

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Yes, it is. James, I recently went away with my family. Oh, yeah. What did you go? We went, I think, four roads down from our house in Margate because we were having something done to the house. We needed to get out. So we decided to go four roads down. And did you use Airbnb to get there? So we did. And it was incredible. It's a bit annoying when you're staying somewhere four roads down and you think this is way better than my house. How am I going to return to my house now?

I've got to now live in my house and walk past that house. every day. So it's a bit of a problem, except the experience was extraordinary, and I discovered something really amazing while I was there, which was the house. The person I was dealing with wasn't the person who owns the house. Because their house is listed on Airbnb, and they've used the co-host network. Oh, what's that? Okay, so the co-host network means you can get someone to deal with all the listing things. So they create the listing, they can manage reservations, they can manage guests, they can do on-site support. All of those things can be done by bringing someone in as the co-host.

Okay, but I imagine these co-hosts are almost impossible to find. No, this is the amazing thing about the network. They're everywhere. What? So I'm very excited as someone who lists my house on Airbnb that I can use this now too. And if anyone else out there wants to see if a co-host can do the hosting for you, you can find a co-host at Airbnb.com. Dot-Uk slash host.

Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hey, everyone. This week's episode of Fish is sponsored by ExpressVPN. That's right. And may I say, Dan, Merry Christmas. Oh, to you too, my friend.

You're going to be doing a great deal of streaming. If I know you, you're going to be streaming your way through to 12th night. What I do in the privacy of my home, Andy, is my business. You might want to save a bit of money on doing that. One way to do that is to use a VPN such as ExpressVPN. Most streaming services show you a fraction of their library simply because of where you live. The various things are locked off around the world. With ExpressVPN, if you want to find a VPN,

If you want to fire up a holiday classic that you can't get in your own location, you can do that. Yeah, I mean, this really is unlocking quite a magic world if you're a movie lover, a TV show lover. There are over 18,000 titles worldwide that you can get through Netflix, but in the States, you're only getting about 7,000 of them. So open that door. I use ExpressVPNs all the time because getting every single one of the Adam Sandler movies on the UK Netflix is not an option, but I can go to France, I can go to Brazil, and I can see 50 first dates

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slash fish And if you take out a subscription You can get an extra four months of it By going to ExpressVPN.com slash fish Do it now Okay, on with the podcast On with the show Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anne.

My fact is that German train station tannoys are so bad that an idiom for I don't understand in Germany is if Fristair nor Bonhoff or I Only Understands Train Station. What does that phrase specifically mean? When would you use that in response? So if someone, if you sort of lost a train of thought or you're not following, it's kind of like, I'm wary of rocking it. any other country into this, but it's like you say, oh, that's all a foreign language to me. Well, we would say all Greek to me in English, but then different countries say, like, I think in Russia they say it's all Arabic to me. Someone said it's all Dutch, but we've done this on QI, so I've completely lost track of

who actually uses them in which country. In the US, we would say Greek, we would say it's all Greek to me. There's also, there is an alternative explanation that the train station comes from the fact during World War I, soldiers just were so fixated on getting home, they would say, I'm just thinking about a train station, I only understand train stations. There's sort of two takes on it, but I only understand train station. Adam, we thought of you and your long, suffering times with Deutsche Bahn. Do you have any opinions about the German train network?

Look, here's the thing about the German trains, is that in a lot of our games, you know, there's three competitors, there's me and then my colleagues, Ben and Sam. And when you get into Germany, a fourth competitor enters the game, which is Deutsche Bonn, which really is able to impact the game in a way that's much greater than any of the other players can. Deutsche Bahn can give and Deutsche Bahn can take. Sometimes you'll be able to get on a train much earlier than you thought because you'll be getting on a train that was supposed to leave an hour ago, but that's been

delayed an hour. And other times, your train will get hugely delayed. And so in a lot of our, you know, the game we've played most in Germany is a tag game where you're chasing after somebody. And it's like when you enter Deutschebahn territory, I would say that just you enter a world of extraordinary variance. But it's like it's completely observable. Like it is the case that Deutsche Braun trains are delayed way, way more than any of their contemporaries. Oh, wow. Like only about 60-ish percent of the high speed,

Bejbond trains reach their destinations on time. It's crazy. Which is defined as being within five or six minutes. Because you know what? Like we have a stereotype of Germans being very efficient. Exactly. Yes. And it's very strange.

And like we would have thought, if you asked someone who didn't know this, who probably hadn't seen your show or hadn't been to Germany, they would expect that the German trains would really run on time, but they absolutely don't. And I think the Germans know it as well. There was the professor of transport policy at Berlin, Andreas Knier He recently said that the Deutsche

Barn and our failing football team are proof that we aren't making great things anymore So I also would have thought they were super reliable and so when it kept happening on jet lag I was like, what's going on with these trains? And then I was looking into it and there was a big piece in the Washington Post in August this year

about the absolute identity crisis happening in German trains and basically in particularly bad news for you Adam it's basically been getting bad since the 90s and it plummeted since 2020. It just got worse worse and worse. To the point that in April this year, Switzerland, actually banned some German trains from coming across because it was so embarrassing the delays they kept bringing. It was just calling knock on chaos onto their trains. So they were like, no, we've had enough. What's so sad

about it, though, is I'll have lots of people be like, you know, oh, don't you hate the German trains, don't you whatever? Your friends will be visiting and they'll be like, well, I know I shouldn't get on a train in Germany. And what I always say is like the thing about the trains in Germany, the high-speed trains is once you're on the train, it's lovely. Like the actual trains, the high speeds, at least, they're really, really nice. The food is I think some of the best of like European trains. The trains are really, you know, nice. It's just that they're so delayed.

But the delay flies by and comfort? Once you get on the train, you're doing great. I mean, they used to be real leaders in the world of trains. I in 1933 had a train that was called the Flying Hamburger, and it was said to be the fastest regular railway connection in the world for its time. But yeah, it sounds like things have gone down. Interesting. I was looking into what trains were like during the wartime period, during World War II, and there was a really fascinating thing that the Americans tried to do as part of a propaganda push that involved trains in Germany, which was an operation called Operation Corn Flakes. And Operation Cornflakes, so on the 5th of February, 1945, American bombers attacked a German

mail train that was heading towards the Austrian city of Linz, and they blew it apart. And minutes, just minutes after that attack, there was a second wave of planes that came over, and they dropped off eight mailbags. And the idea is that all the letters that scattered that they dropped would be collected by people coming to see the train wreck. And the idea was that they would then be taken to the train wreck. And the idea was that they would then be taken to the houses and inside would contain pure propaganda of how Germany was losing the war and how Hitler was not as strong as you thought

he was. And so it wasn't just this one event. Between February and April of 1945, 320 mailbags with over 96,000 forge letters were dropped during 10 missions over southern Germany and Austria. Operation Cornflakes, the idea was that you would read these letters while eating your corn flakes in the morning. That's really cool. I've never come across that before

Yeah And who were these letters purported to be from About how like the war was going badly I don't think That's overly mattered I think it was I think as in some of it might have been Just as it were a leaflet

Talking about propaganda Okay I think in some cases they wrote them As if they were like pen pals from America Germans who happened to get away Saying I'm sending you a random letter They could have pretended that they were from Hitler and Hitler's like

Oh dear Mr Schmidt I'm writing to tell you that things aren't going quite as well as I imagine that I'm not as strong as you might think I am Yes I love that idea Dear Schmidt Hitler here

And Schmidt going Oh hey That's perfectly normal letter from the furor But can you imagine being like Hitler's teenage pen pal You'd just be like This has taken a real turn Yes

Well there's actually a film Is there? Is there? this. Well, not exactly. Have you seen Jojo Rabbit, which is about a kid? Oh yeah. Perhaps not pen pals with Hitler, but his, um, you know, who is, is best, his imaginary best friend is Hitler. Who made that done? Was that? Tyca white Tiki. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, very cool movie. One of the issues they found in the end was a lot of these letters couldn't get delivered to the houses they wanted to, because the Americans had done such a huge blitz of bombing the areas that most of these

houses didn't exist anymore. And so people had moved on to other places. So going back to Tanoys on German trains, there was an announcement in one of these newspaper articles about Deutsche Ban that said, The train driver has not yet arrived because of another delayed train. Unfortunately, we are currently blocking the track for his train. We are curious ourselves to see how this will be resolved. That was brilliant. But there was a kind of train that existed in Coney Island in 1909. This was just like, it was just to try it out to see if it would work.

And what it was, it was a train that had tracks that went over the top of the train. So if you ever wanted to overtake it, you could kind of drive over the top of the train and they never made it, probably because how often are you going to want to overtake a train and you can't just go around it and whatever. But it did exist for a short amount of time in 2009. Clever idea. Well, you know, this brings up, of course, one of my hobby horses, which is, you know, we're talking a lot of, you know, we're talking a lot of smack about German trains, but I don't really, I'm not really in much of a position to criticize given the state of trains in my country. Oh, yeah.

Because Amtrak is even worse than Deutschebahn in terms of its on-time percentage when you look at long-distance trains. I think that on average, long-distance Amtrak trains tend to be delayed by around an hour and a half. Okay. It depends on the route. But, you know, the reason for this is actually largely not Amtrak's fault, at least not directly. It's because for the vast, vast majority of rail in the United States, the actual rail is owned by freight companies. And so all these long-distance trains that are always so delayed, it's because the Amtraks have to stop and wait for freight rail to pass through. And even though technically legally, as part of like Amtrak's original charter, they are supposed to have the right of way over all of this rail.

That law is just pretty much straight up not followed. Here's a thing from the early days of U.S. rail. and there was a thing called snake heads Can you guess what they are? Is it where it goes off in two directions? Ah, junction, no. This was something that would be in the train itself. A snake has.

So like imagine what a snake does like when it's slithers. It slithers, but when it's attacking, it goes... Oh! Is this when a train stops? It's the brackets in between lift up to bring it closer? That's pretty close. What it was, it was bits of the iron rails below

being jolted up and then coming through. through the bottom of the train, and then sometimes impaling the passengers. Oh, my God. This apparently happened in the South. There was a guy called Henry Whipple, who wrote in 1844, you would just be sitting down in the train, and a huge bit of iron would come up and hit people. Wow.

And there was actually one occasion where someone actually died from it as well. I always think if there's a list to be done of what would be the most surprising deaths to witness sort of in front of you. That surely has to be a top tenor. You're just on a train and someone has a bar of iron. It's like final destination, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. There's a big issue in New York City with subway surfing. Have you heard about this?

That, like, kids and teens, they'll ride on the top of the subway car. And it's extremely, yeah, and it's extremely dangerous. And, like, many, it's very tragic. Like, it's really, you know, there have been people died from it. I was going to say, is it jumping the barrier, but that's way more. No, you ride on top of it. of it. And if you ride the New York City subway, especially in certain areas, there are many subway announcements where they've gotten, like, people who are famous and cool among, like,

young people who, like, it's like a celebrity doing, like, an announcement. And they're like, hi, I'm Nigel Sylvester. Don't subway surf. It's stupid and you shouldn't do it. Like, yeah. I mean, as famous as Nigel Sylvester is, do you mind just explaining who some of us who I don't know who he is, is. You could have picked any name, Adam. I have to be honest with you. I mostly know Nigel Sylvester from his role in this awareness campaign because I am not the target demographic. I wasn't subway surfing.

But I can tell you that he is a BMX athlete. So I think the idea is that it's like he is like an extreme trick, stunt athlete guy. And he's telling you don't do this. We should say that we all knew who that was. We were just saying it for the listener. Yeah, yeah. Right, no, for the listener. Oh, I've got a Nigel Sylvester tattoo.

Like, I am all in on that guy. Can I tell another train tannoy music fact? Yeah. So I share a desk with Joe in the office, and he told me that if you listen to David Gilmores, rattle that lock, so he's the guitarist from Pink Floyd. He has sampled the beginning of the French train station tanoi announcement. Really? And so, yeah, he's on a loop.

It plays through. and I played it for my French husband who I suddenly went, I know that noise. Well, you know, in Billy Eilish's song, Bad Guy, the thing that sounds like a high hat is actually the sound that is made in Australian walkways when it's telling you to walk. That little, and it goes like,

and then they sampled that, and that's the thing that sounds like it's the percussion element of that season. So Adam, in the UK, we have a very brilliant. very impossible quiz show called OnlyConnect. I'm familiar, of course. Oh, brilliant. I feel we've got two transport-based musical facts, so we just need like two more,

and we can slip that over to this guys. I've got one more story that I'd love to just shove in here because it made me laugh, which is it's back to Germany, back to German rail. In 2015, members of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party were on their way to Freiburg, because they were going to do a protest.

The police stopped them from getting on. There was about 20 of them who were getting on as part of this neo-Nazi party, but it just so happened that that train was full of a far-left ultra-football support group. So they went, okay, we'll get the next train, actually. And so they did get the next train, but, confusingly, that platform

just had a train going to a completely different place in a completely different direction. And so they ended up in Mannheim and ended up having to cancel the protest altogether because they just were in their different bit of the country. So yeah, I just love that idea of, is there any worse group of people to jump on a train with if you're the opposing side than a group of ultra-left supporter football fans?

I feel like they would just sort of get together and gel over the state of the Deutsche ban. Yes, me. And eventually the entire political problem will just disappear. Yeah, it's the unifier. Okay. It is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that female London marathon runners are 20% slower than Boston marathon runners.

But they urinate 170% quicker. Okay. How did they find this out? Well, this is due to the fact. First of all, the Boston Marathon is overall downhill. So it's not even, you can't even. use it for world record attempts because it's theoretically slightly easier than the other marathons and it's all relative because it's not easy but like easier than some of the others but the urine

thing is due to a company called pequel uh which is a woman's event urinal company and they've come up with these new urinals which are at the london marathon and they are basically you go in shorts down, squat and then leave and so they're much quicker than using the previous port-a-luse that they had which means people can pee much quicker

and the great thing about them as well is that they take the urine and they can turn it into fertilizer and the 24 London Marathon could theoretically have fertilised enough wheat to bake 3,142 loaves of bread according to this company NPK recovery

who do that. So it's like a great story of urine and saving the planet and running. Adam, are you a runner? I was a runner. Certainly I was. I have aspirations of running the New York City Marathon in 26. But I have run much less in recent years. I was a very competitive cross-country runner in high school.

The New York one is that one where you need to have a certain time. before you can do it or can anyone do it well it's complicated um mostly you have to uh have raised money uh for um some sort of charitable causes the way the vast majority of people uh get into the new york city marathon for enough like the london marathon you can either be fast or you can like run in a suit of armor or dressed as big ben or like how many slots are there for uh dressed as big ben how many people get in on that one that's actually the majority yeah Yeah, that makes sense. You know Heinz who make ketchup?

Yes, yes, of course. They have found that runners have been using ketchup on their runs as like a way to get fast energy because it's mostly sugar, right? Like, when I was running, I would have Haribos like candies to get fast energy, but apparently a lot of people have been using ketchup. And so they've laid out routes, routes, on running gaps where if you're on the running gap, you can see where the nearest place is that you can. can run in and get a ketchup sachet. What you'd want to do is you'd want to leave the drive-thru McDonald's open purely for marathon runners that day. So you just pass the window and they hand them out as you're going along.

That feels like that would make more sense. When I did the Great North Run, which is a half marathon in the UK, there was like just kids on the side of the road and they just give you candy or they would give you like ice lollies or just all sorts of just basically the whole way. There were just loads of kids with buckets, just handing them out to the runners. That's such an opposite of never accept candy from strange children. But speaking of that, so this is the only time I've done any long distance running. And I won't tell you what my time was, but I recently read that there was a robot that finished a half marathon this year.

It's called Tiancung Ultra, and it ran it in Beijing. and my question for you is the time of the robot comes somewhere in this list of half marathons so the world record human half marathon the record wearing Laderhosen the record dressed as a clown

the record in a straight jacket my time for the Great North Run the record for a woman in high heels the record for someone hula hooping and the record for someone wearing armor. Now, where does the robot finish in that list? I'm going between straightjacket and you. Okay. I'm going to go between James and person in high heels. Yeah. I'm going to go faster than the world record. Just above the hula hooper.

Well, Dan's right. It's basically not quite as fast as me is the headline. So you are faster than all running robots is what you've taken. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So when the robots, if, do, may take over you cannot run them over a distance of 13 miles yeah it's a good start here's here's something i'd like you know i was about to say i hope you don't mind me being pedantic but i feel like i'm you know on this show it's probably permitted yeah um this occurred to me actually the other day because mr beast did a video about like the fastest running robot and the fastest man on earth um no lyle and they did like a hundred meter uh race and i thought to myself, well, that's not really the fastest robot at all. Is it? The fastest robot would be an

F1 car. Would it not? Yeah. I feel like we, we sometimes we have this conception or say, well, a robot, if a robot runs a marathon, does that just mean that it was a robot that was shaped like a person? Because to me, I'm like, the whole thing that makes robots better at stuff than us is that they don't have to be shaped like a person, right? Yeah, that's true. This was the bipedal robot. But But then on the other hand, you get robots that aren't bipedal like Daleks, and they have their own problems getting around, don't they? They can't go up steps. Are you familiar with Doctor Who, Adam?

I'm familiar with Daleks. They're those little trash can guys. Oh, you say little. They're massive, mate. You wouldn't fancy your chances against a Dalek. They're huge. What are you talking about? No, you're right.

And I shouldn't piss them off because they're listening to the podcast. Exactly. Yeah. They're the size of putting an actor inside them. That's how big they are, basically. Yeah, they're about the size of an. actor plus a little bit of leeway, aren't they? My reference point of this is Malcolm in the middle, but there's an episode where

the speed walking, like it come down to the technicality of when your feet leave the ground, if you can have them both off the ground at the same time. So I feel it with the Formula One car, maybe its feet or wheels are on the ground all the time. Maybe it doesn't count as running. That's interesting definition of running. That's a very good point. Thank you, Malcolm in the middle. Adam, I wanted to ask you, because you said you were a track runner back in the day.

I was. I was tracking cross country. Did you ever do steeplechase events? I never did steeplechase. I always wished I could. They didn't have it where I competed. But I love the steeple chase. I love that it just makes no sense at all.

I just think it's so great. They're just like, you're going to run, what is it? It's like a 3,200, right? It's like a 3,000 meter race. It's 3,000 meters. So it's like you're going to run roughly two miles, but just at one point you have to jump over a big thing and also seemingly for no purpose other than to mess with you,

you're going to get your feet all wet just because why not? The little pool on the other side of that jump. We have something where you just run. It's called regular running. And we have a different thing where you have to jump over stuff. It's called the hurdles. Why didn't we decide? It was a drunken evening.

It's so phenomenal. I love this deep. Yeah. Well, there's a great moment because it's been in the Olympics. basically from the get-go, modern Olympics, and it's a 3,000-meter race, except for it in 1932 at the Summer Olympics, where it was a 3,460-meter race. That's the only time they ever did this, and then it returned to 3,000 meters again. Do you guys know why they did that for that year?

Just for fun, because they're fucking with them already with these jumps, they might as well. I'm going to guess that it was by accident. It was completely by accident. The guy who was meant to be concentrating and ringing the bell on the final lap was too busy watching a long jump event, didn't notice that they had already passed. Yeah. And so they just had one more lap that they had to do. And as a result, all the finalists had times that came in much worse than all of the qualifiers. So yeah, just a total mess up. It was a decathlon, part of a decathlon thing going on. He's just distracted. You know, in track running, they have the

crouch start. Sure. You know, where you're on your haunch is at the start. That was a originally known as the kangaroo start, because we think it started with an Australian athlete called Bobby MacDonald. And he said that he saw how kangaroos looked, and he might try the same thing. And do you know why he said that he originally started to do this crouch start? Can you guess? So everyone used to start standing up, right? Yeah. Oh, do you drop something? He did it drop. Every time. Jesus. He had to tie his shoe. Laces before he started. Yeah. No, what it was is he was running not in Australia, but in Europe. And it was really cold and windy and rainy. And he said that by crouching down, it meant that he got less

wet and less cold before the race. That's why he said. So interestingly, it was also an Aussie, at least who was credited, a guy called Charlie Booth, who in 1929 invented starter blocks. And so prior to this, what people used to do is they would dig holes into the ground so that they could put their heels in. And this was a problem largely because you're messing up the track for anyone else that's using it. You'd have to fill them in and so on. So this guy, Charlie Booth, came up with them and they were adopted. But the very first time that someone used them in a race was a guy called George Simpson. And in 1930, he ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 second. So the first person to ever do it under 10. And he was disqualified. It was disallowed

because they said that is contraband. That is illegal. Yeah, you're using something that is... Did he put like catapults in them, though, that sort of fired him forward? No, they were just the classic things. But yeah, so the very first use of them in a race got him disqualified. Hi, everybody. Just let you know, this episode of Fish is sponsored by Squarespace. Yes, Squarespace. You know it. It is the all-in-one website platform that allows for you to create the most professional-looking thing, be it for a passion project, you've always wanted to get up there online, or whether you have an actual business that needs an online presence. This literally is the best place for you to go. Whether you're just starting out, whether you've been doing it for a while, Squarespace gives you absolutely everything you need. So let's say, Dan, you have, what's your business? business. It's let's say your Laurel and Hardy themed cafe, right? It's going well, but you need to

grow it, right? Well, you can offer services via your Squarespace website. You can offer consultations, you can run events, you can showcase everything that's at the cafe. You can solicit donations. And frankly, with that bid as Model Dan, you will be needing donations to keep you afloat. Squarespace makes it easy to do all of these things. I mean, I've never been so excited in an ad that I'm part of. I'm literally going to go set this up right now. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to Go to Squarespace.com slash N-S-T-A-A-F, so that's no such thing as a fish. And when I'm going to do that, I'm going to get 10% of my first purchase of a website or domain. That's right.

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The cafe business is hard, man, particularly in Kosovo. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that there is a hair that has been missing for 40 years, but I know where it is. Oh. When you say hair, is it like something you find in your soup or what? Yes.

this is a rabbit hair and it's not a real rabbit hair it's a golden rabbit and when I say I'm the only one who knows kind of everyone knows now because it's at Sotheby's currently being sold at auction you know it was at Sotheby's the whole time

so this no this is quite a famous story from back in the late 70s this is the masquerade hair a lot of people in the UK of a certain age are going to prick their ears up right now and go, yes, I remember this. This was massive when it happened. And what this was is there was a book that was published by an author and illustrator called Kit Williams. It was for kids. And it had a story in it, but not only that, it had a

series of codes that were put all the way through it. And the idea was that if you could crack this code, it would reveal the location of a golden necklace that was secretly buried somewhere in the world. And that was the challenge of the book. It was incredibly hard, and Kit Williams didn't think that this would become a big book, but somehow it broke through. It got to international press. The book ended up selling over a million copies, and it sparked a global treasure hunt. Some say the very first major global treasure hunt looking for this hair. Okay. And where is it? Well, very excitingly, now that it's been sold, I've been told by the family that own it, that I am allowed to reveal where it has been for the last 40 years.

Oh. Now, before we get to that, let me explain why it's been missing for 40 years. Oh, come on. Show us the hair, Dan. This is quite a complicated story. So let's just jump back a couple of steps here. Okay. Over 30,000 people sent letters to Kit Williams claiming to have discovered where it had been buried.

American Airlines were offering masquerade packages where they would fly you to the UK. Every passenger would be given a free shovel so that on arrival in London, they could start looking for the masquerade. hair. He's digging up bits of London in case it was there. Exactly. A man from Sweden who thought that the hair was out in Cornwall had to be rescued from the side of a cliff after he found himself stuck halfway up when the tide came in. It was a huge, huge thing. And it is said that a few people went quite insane over trying to find it and actually had to go and be put up in hospitals as a result of it. So it was eventually found by a guy called Ken Thomas. A day later, Kit Williams got a letter from two teachers who also found it, and they legitimately

found it, whereas Ken Thomas got information on where it was from someone who was associated with Kit Williams. So it was a cheat of a find. So it was really unfortunate because the two teachers did genuinely find where it was on their own terms. Did they find the location or have to physically dig for it to get that to win? Yeah, exactly. And that location turned out to be Amt Hill, which is in Bedford. Wow. Yeah. So what ended up happening was this, this guy Ken Thomas, he put a new game together, which was a video game version, and he hid the masquerade hair again, but it was so hard that no one solved it, and he put so much money into this video game that he went bankrupt, basically. And so he sold it at Sotheby's,

and so someone bought it at Sotheby's, and then it disappears. And then no one saw it for decades. No one knows where it's been, except for me. Are you going to tell us? Well, as I said, the family said that I'm allowed to reveal now that it's being sold. where it is, that is up until about three hours before we started recording and they actually changed their mind and now I'll have to say where it is. I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm having to do this to you guys. Yeah. Give me a break. That is ridiculous. Yeah. Okay. It's so the mystery unfortunately is going to have to remain because it's not my story to tell. But it's quite fun having such a... It was fun until the last 30 seconds.

How do you know where it is? I was at a dinner party one night in London and someone who was at the dinner table accidentally drunkenly slipped that it was in their possession and... So it's someone who eats and drinks alcohol. He's been to London.

It's always dangerous telling James my little details. Okay, who does Dan know? Let's go through everyone. Dan knows everyone. Hey, can I just quickly add, by the way, that just because I met the person in London, that doesn't mean that that's where the masquerade hair has been this whole time. I don't want to give any false leads.

The only thing I will say is that everyone thought that it was in the Middle East, and that is not the case. So one of the reasons we wanted to talk about this today is because you've just done a documentary about scavenger hunts, right? I have, yes. Is that the one about the University of Chicago one? Because that's the crazy one. It is.

It's the UChicago one. This is the one where they have unbelievable things that you have to find. Yes. And it's interesting in that it's not exactly all a traditional scavenger hunt. So it's not just finding things. There's quite a lot of making things as well. I think the most famous story from it is that one year, one of the items was a nuclear reactor. And how did that go?

Well, one team made one. One team made a breeder reactor reactor. It was the North Korean team. Yeah, exactly. No, it was in 1999, and one of the items, basically as a joke, was a nuclear reactor, and a team built a breeder reactor. And it was very, to my understanding, it was very low. You know, there was not any significant radiation that it produced.

But there's like a very famous picture of the two students who built it. And they're in, you know, like hazmat suits, standing outside of the reactor. And then they didn't win. They didn't win that year. Oh, no. Really? They put, they put all of their time into this one item. And I think they ended up, I think it was third or something that they ended up in.

Are you allowed to just build a nuclear reactor? As in other. No, I don't think so. Would you guys know about Fensgold, this another, you know, famous real life treasure? hunt. So this is one that still hasn't been found. It's a guy named Forrest Fenn, and he has hidden supposedly at least $2 million worth of, I believe it's mostly jewels, a chest with $2 million worth of, I believe it is mostly jewels, somewhere in like, I think it's generally like the area in the Rockies. Like it's quite a large area.

People aren't entirely sure. But he left a 24-line cryptic poem, which is the key to unlocking it. And this has been around for, I believe, I believe it was in 2010 that he put this out. And so it's been 15 years. And to my knowledge, no one yet has found the treasure. Although, I suppose, maybe someone has and they just haven't told anybody. Well, that's the big question. Oh, I reckon if you found it, you would tell everyone, right?

Do you tell Dan at a party at least? Yeah, I know where it is. I had a drunken evening with the owner. Hey, Dan, come on, actually tell us where it is now. You're going to tell us? No way. I promised. Can you tell us and then bleep it out of the episode?

That's the issue is that I can't start telling everyone. Like, you're telling Adam Chase. He's going to pass it on to Nigel Sylvester. Suddenly everyone's going to hear it. And I will tell Nigel. You're crazy? Is it someone that we would know as well? No.

Is it like Mr. Smith or is it like... Who's Mr. Smith? Like it's like a person that we don't know. It's not like it's like, I don't know, like the rock. It's not... You know, it is the rock. You got it. Shoot.

So good. I'm so sorry. The rock had it. Here's an interesting fact. At the time it was buried, the only other major person who knew about it because they went there to help them bury it is someone completely unexpected. I read this because I had to read it again. I was like, I must have read that wrong.

Bamberg Gascoigne was the only other person. But the publisher's got to pick who was like the impartial observer and they chose Bambracca. So you know, Adam, but just for the people at home. Yeah. Now, I know. Go on, Dan. Who's Bambergascoing? Yeah, well, he was, he was the, he was a TV personality and a quiz host.

He was the host of University Challenge for many years. Which is like universities doing very difficult quizzes against each other. I'm familiar. I'm familiar with University Challenge, but I think I perhaps did not watch far back enough to be familiar with this gentleman. I have a feeling you might not have been born when Bambergascoe was doing it. Yeah, I think that's right. And there's a wonderful detail, which is when Bambergascoing went with Kit Williams to bury it, they took such care to make sure that no one could find where it was buried. So once they had put it into the ground, they did basic things. to make it look as if the earth hadn't been touched. The last thing that they did

was to drop some cow pat over the exact spot and Kit Williams was going to do it but Bamber Gascoigne said, no, I should be the person to do it because I happen to know the average exact height of a cow's anus and therefore held it at the height

and dropped it to give it the realism the accuracy of the splat. How did he know that because that question had come up on University Challenge the week earlier. I assume so, yeah, exactly. I do have to very quickly circle back to our joke that The Rock had the hair, because I do just have to say that there's no way that it could be him because he famously is horrible at keeping big secrets.

I don't know if you guys recall when he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed like 15 minutes before Obama did. I don't think I know the story. Did Obama call him and say, hey, Dwayne, just so you know, we've got a big announcement coming up, but I wanted you to know first. We got him. I think he's never revealed exactly how he knew this, but it was some friend or friend of a friend who was like in the military who told him this and that Obama was going to announce it very shortly. And so Dwayne Johnson waited, you know, like 15 minutes or whatever and then tweeted out, have you never seen that? He tweeted out, just got word that will shock the world, land of the free, home of the bird. brave, damn proud to be an American. He tweets this out 45 minutes before Obama goes on to announce

that Osama bin Laden has been killed. And Dwayne Johnson, in his telling, is like, only learns after he has tweeted it. It's like, oh, Obama has not announced it yet. And then, so the news was obliquely, but was broken by Dway Johnson, 45 minutes early. That's like the American version of when Prue Leif accidentally gave out the winner of Great British Bakeoff, Right. Which was equally seismic in British. Wait, did that happen? When?

Yeah. One of the judges tweeted. It was a big scandal over here. Oh, no. The British Bake Off is a brilliant show. I think it's called The Great British Baking Show in the States. Oh, I'm familiar with the Great British Bake Off. You guys, this whole podcast, you keep naming a popular British show and you go, oh, Adam, let me explain the show to you.

I know your shows. Adam Chase does UK pop culture This is the spin-up I have had one final thought to add here Which is that Imagine if I do one day You know pass away suddenly And no one knows

Where this hair is I should let one person know So I'll tell you what I'm going to do To end this show on I am going to message on WhatsApp right now live James Harkin And Alan Adam

No he doesn't trust me Where's my phone? I have to keep it. And James, you have to promise never to tell anyone this. I don't know where my phone is done. Hang on let him get his phone. I was sitting on it. He was sitting on it.

Okay. Here we go. Just for a live reaction. James, you swear you will not tell anyone this. I swear on Dwayne Johnson's hair that I will not tell anyone. I'm breaching major, major promises here. So here we go. I'm sending it to James right now. This is so exciting. My heart's exciting.

Adam, you and I are going to find the fans gold and we're not telling those guys. We'll split at 50-50. Oh, very interesting. Well, what am I supposed to do? I can't say. You now suffer the same pain that I have, the curse of knowledge. And I have to tell you, I think that what Dan just texted James was, say, ooh, interesting. I don't think he told him anything at all. I think you just said, have a good reaction to this text.

Adam, I am so annoyed that that's not what I did. I'm so annoyed that I genuinely said who it was. What an idiot. That's a magician's trick. I should have seen. Now you see me 20 times. You think I'd learn a simple lesson. Yeah.

All right. All right, look, we need to wrap up. Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this show, well, some things that we've said over the course of this show. You can get us online on various places. I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland. James. My Instagram is no such

thing as James Harkin. Ann? My Instagram is at Ann Miller Books. Adam, where do you hang out online? Yeah, you follow me on Instagram. We're doing Instagram. It's Adam H. Chase. And Adam, where can we catch Jetlag if we want to and your documentary? Well, Jetlag is on YouTube. Jetlag, the game, is the channel. Or if you want to watch it one week early and add free, then you, of course, could do that on Nebula. And Scab, the documentary about the University of Chicago Scavenger,

that is a Nebula exclusive. The first episode is on YouTube if you want to check it out and see if you like it, but then the rest of it is only on Nebula. Great. And if you want to get to us as a group, podcast at QI.com, you can send us any facts that you want to let us know about it. You can send us any corrections to things that we've said wrong. Whatever you want. And he gets all these emails. He goes through the inbox and he cherry picks

out the best and they make their way to drop us a line, which is our bonus show where we discuss all the behind the scene stuff that happens on fish. If you want to listen to that, you've just got to join Clubfish. That's our super secret members club. You can get to that by going to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. There's quite a few tears there. So check them all out. You can also tune into our new show, Little Fish, every Monday. that's where we read out the best of your facts. So again, podcast at QI.com, send all your stuff there, and hopefully some of it will make it to our shows.

Otherwise, just come back next week because we will be back with another episode, and we will see you then. Goodbye.