No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Ice Skating On Stilts

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Dan, James, Anna and Johnny Knoxville discuss skateboarding, stilt walking, supersonic speed, and some seriously savage soup.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. 

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. One little bit of time-sensitive news to let you know this morning or afternoon or evening, depending on when you're listening, is that we are doing a live show coming up next Monday. That's Monday the 12th of August, and it is in London at the Other Belly. It's going to be a full podcast, and then in between we're going to do lots of little bits and pieces that we're trying out ahead of our upcoming tour. So you get to see lots of stuff that. frankly no one will ever see again.

But it's going to be a whole load of fun. If you'd like to get tickets to that, then you'll have to be really quick because tickets went on sale earlier this week and we've already announced it to our Clubfish members. It's also a very small venue, so there won't be many tickets left. But if you go to no six things of fish.com forward slash live,

then you'll be able to get those. And actually, you'll be able to get tickets to any of our upcoming live shows. Secondarily, or actually probably much more excitingly, for most of you, We have a very, very, very, very, very special guest on today's show. Who is it, Anna? It is none other than the hero of many of our youths.

Anyone who watched Jackass as a kid or a teen and current hero still, Johnny Knoxville. We were so excited to learn a few months ago that he is a fan of no such thing as a fish. And in fact, just a big old nerd. And so we persuaded him to come on the show. and it was truly brilliant, so fun to do it with someone who knows exactly what it's about and who is a genuine geek about so many cool things. He himself has another brilliant podcast called Pretty Sure I Can Fly. It is an exploration of things that limit human beings

and then the people who smash down those limitations. They interview awesome people who've done incredible things. It's him and Elner Baker, who you might know from this American life. Definitely worth listening to. but first of all. Hello, Andy here. We actually have a bonus announcement, which is that we are making a sneaky trip

to the Edinburgh Fringe in just a few days' time. On the 14th of August, we're going to be at the Edinburgh Playhouse at 8pm. This is our last pre-tour live show, so it's just going to be a brand new episode of the podcast itself. It's going to be so much fun. If you're at the Fringe, or if you know someone who is,

or if you simply live in Edinburgh, we would love to see you there. And to lure as many of you in as possible, we have sneakily lowered ticket prices, so there are now plenty of tickets available for just 25 pounds. If you would like to come and see us, go to No Such Thing As a Fish.com slash live. That's it. Hope to see you there.

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 Shriver. I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tushinsky, and Johnny Knoxville. and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Johnny. Johnny Paychecked, who scored a number one hit with Take This Job and Shove It,

once shot a man over a bowl of turtle soup. Country music is so badass. Yeah. Guys, don't prejudge because he had had a day. Oh, really? Yeah, he had a day. Go on, justify it. Wait, what do you mean over a bowl of turtle soup?

Well, I'm going to get to that later, but he took umbrage to the fact that he was offered a bowl of turtle soup. And so he had to retaliate. He had no choice. So you've got to be careful, Anna, because I don't want you to be shot over a discussion of a shooting over some turtle soup. Thank God this is on Zoom.

Yeah. He's in a bar, right? And a fan called. He was mine in his own business. Yeah, he was in. What happened was, it was 1980. he just wound up his tour and he was hanging out at a hell's angels clubhouse because he loved to hang out with the hell's angels and at that point a bomb threat got called in from another motorcycle gang

so thinking quickly he gathered up all the cocaine in the clubhouse got in his car and took off and he's going to his mom's house in uh ohio along the way he stops at this bar right and he is pinned on cocaine and he walks in and these two guys walk up to him and They're really crowding him and talking to him really chatty. One guy's name is Larry Wise. And they start drinking together and they exchange hats, which incensed Paycheck. It made him angry. One was holding a bottle.

And I believe Paycheck's lawyer later said that he was scared of broken bottles and that further inflamed him. I think that's some bullshit they made up afterwards. Then the guy's like, hey, uh, John. Johnny, we got some turtle soup out in the truck. Would you like some turtle soup? And that was the final straw, right? Cool. He thought, well, they must think I'm some kind of hick.

And so he pulled his 22 out of his waistband and shot Larry in the head. But Johnny's so short, it just skims up his brow and shoots his hat off. You make him sound like a borrower. He can't be that school. Yeah. Larry didn't even know he'd been shot until he'd been over and his ears were ringing and he saw blood all over the floor and at that point he said, I knowed I had been shot. And he just runs out of the bar as fast as he can and paycheck follows him going, oh, come on back, Larry. I won't shoot you no more. Wow. That's really interesting. I didn't know this story and I thought, well, for me, turtle soup is supposed to be really tasty, no? Yeah. I've never had it. I think wasn't the thing that in the 19th century

all the posh people loved it and it was meant to be delicious and then fell out of favor but is it a Hick thing? Do we think it was meant as an insult? No, I think they were just he was on like eight ball or two so anything was going to come across

weird to Johnny Paycheck. Yeah, and he fought it for ages, didn't he? It went back and forth as a case about whether or not he was guilty and it was only years later that he eventually was a fan, guilty by a court and got a jail sentence off the back of it. Yeah, in 91, he went to Chilicothe prison for seven to nine years, but he was only in there

for two before the governor, Big Dick Celeste, pardoned him. Did he give himself that nickname? Yeah, that was, yeah, that was self-given. If you're a man called Celeste, I think you've got to have Big Dick as the preamination. Who is this Johnny Paycheck then, Johnny? I'm not into country music, I must admit. Is he a big name? Yes.

He was a wonderful bass player and singer. He played with George Jones for many years. And then he went out on his own in the 60s. Actually, him and his friend founded Little Darling Records in the 60s. So he was way ahead of the curve on that. And in the 70s, he had a lot of hits with the Outlaw Country Movement. Which I actually was not familiar with. the Outlaw Country movement, but it sounds like a bunch of people just thought country was way

too soft or had gone a bit soft. And so Outlaw Country artists were basically the hardcore country guys, right, who lived really rough and ready lives. And he seemed to be the extreme example. Like it couldn't help Johnny Paycheck when he was in court and they were citing previous songs that he had published like, pardon me, I've got someone to kill. That can be a great drinking and driving. Yeah. His big song was called. called Take This Job and Shove It. And that was written by a guy called David Allen Coe, who also spent time in Chilicothea prison. And he only got into songwriting when he was in prison because one of the inmates that he was hanging out with was another guy called Screaming Jay Hawkins, who is a huge singer.

He did that song, I put a spell on you. But, I mean, that prison produced a lot of great country music artists. Can I just say, this guy was in court, right? Yeah. And they're using his songs as evidence against him. Did they not realize they're just songs? Like, this guy who sang, I put a spell on you, did he get done for witchcraft? Yeah, right.

No, they obviously didn't. I'm just saying when you've got a catalogue with quite aggressive, murdery-sounding things, it can't help. I think it does with drill music here, which I don't even know if Johnny would know about, right? But that's sometimes used against people, I believe, drill music lyrics. But yeah, he became sort of a working-class hero a bit with Take This Job and, shove it, right? I think people were a big fan of that because it was tough living in America

around about that time. People didn't like their bosses. The New York Times obituary of him described him as someone who led a rowdy, jail-prone life. Yeah. Quite a few prison sentences. Yeah, he got in trouble a lot. He was on tour with Patsy Klein and he

stole her car. They were playing in his fairgrounds and he stole her car and they're like, oh, paycheck has stolen her car and they just closed the front gates of the fairgrounds and he just drove round and round the fairgrounds till the car ran out of gas and then he got out and went back to the show. What's interesting is it sounds a bit like the rowdy life was slightly encouraged. I was reading an interview with Willie Nelson. So he was on the publicity road plugging his new book, which is

called Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die. And he was saying, you know, did you ever get into scrapes just to have the material? And, his responses, I don't want to mention any names, but I do know one country singer whose manager would intentionally get him in trouble with his girlfriends and wives and then get him drunk just so that he could write, because that's when he penned his best stuff. And then it sounds like Willie Nelson had a wildlife as well. This is one of the questions from the interviewer. Your first wife, Martha, once sewed you up in a bed sheet while you were asleep and beat you with a broomstick. Was she a particularly crafty woman or were you a really bad husband?

Oh, it was a combination of both. Like, he's... And Willie didn't have to worry because he had this drummer, Paul English, who started out as a pimp in Fort Worth. And Willie was having trouble getting paid for his shows. So he hired Paul English to be his drummer and collect for him after the shows. He had his gun in Bill Graham's mouth, Paul English. Oh, my God. Bill Graham was like a famous promoter. And Bill Graham was trying to hoodwink them on the payment.

And he's like, let me leave and I'll go get the money. and English had his gun in his mouth, says, no, you're going to stay right here, son. Send him to get the money. And that guy went and got the money and Willie got paid. How long did he wait, just out of curiosity? How long was that gun in the mouth? Because that, you know, a bank run can take a while, can't it? Oh, there was drooling and, you know, hot mouth.

He comes back 30 minutes later and he's like, I forgot the pen. I'm sorry, I've got the pen. I'm going to have to go and do it again. They can know it ain't hurt, hot, heart. Is this what it's still like? Is Keith Urban rocking around with a revolver? I don't think it's like it was in the day. Well, you know, Billy Joe Shaver, legendary singer-songwriter,

was in a bar in Lorraine, Texas, and this guy was being disrespectful to Billy Joe, telling him to shut up. After a while, Billy Joe goes, let's go outside, son. And they went outside, and Billy Joe walked over to his car, got his pistol, walked up to the man, goes, where do you want it, and then shot him in the mouth, or as Billy Joe said, right between the mother and the fucker.

And the guy lived. Out of interest, when he asked the question, where do you want it? And then he shot him in the mouth. Had the guy asked for the mouth? No, he didn't answer. He didn't give him time to answer, which is where I have problem with the story. But other than that, you know, I love Billy Joel. Sure, yeah, yeah.

The mouth. No, sorry, the toe, the toe. I'm afraid I have to take your first answer. Just one thing about Johnny Paycheck that kind of endeared me to him because he is a rough guy and he led quite dark life but one quite sweet story I liked

was he was asked to sing the national anthem in a stadium before one of the Atlanta Falcons football games so he's there a Falcons game the crowds is massive and as he struck the first chord

he forgot all the worse the American National Anthem and he just it sounds awful And he said it was horrible. And he just made up the words. He just made up kind of nonsense words, poor guy. That's amazing.

Brilliant. I didn't know that story. I have to look that. I want to see if there's any footage of that. I think there might be because they've recorded what the lyrics were that he made up. I think he was a songwriter. Yeah. Imagine if they were just way better than the original.

Yeah. We changed it based on them. He did clean himself up later on, I think, didn't he, Johnny Paycheck? And he would give anti-drubes. talks to kids and stuff, but everyone was just still expecting him to be off his face on cocaine and pissed and all that kind of stuff. So I think he kind of, even though he was clean, he did play up to it quite a lot, didn't he? And that song, take your, take this job and shove it. It got turned into a movie. Did it? Yeah. I really love this. It's the first movie to ever have a monster

truck in it. Isn't that amazing? Piece of information. And apparently it like started the big monster truck craze in America. Wow. What a cool interlinking bit of history. The guy who wrote, take this job and chauvin, as you mentioned earlier, David Allen Cole, between the ages of 9 and 35, he spent about half that time in prison, in and out of correctional institutions. And got out, became a singer-songwriter, had a lot of success. But in the 80s, he stopped singing to become a magician. And let me tell you, he is a songwriter. He is a lot of success. And he is a the scariest looking magician you have ever seen.

That's so funny. And ventriloquist. And actually, Penn, from Penn and Teller, said that he saw David Allen Co. perform as a kid, and he had a big influence on him. Really? Wow. I don't know if I'd trust someone hanging around with that crew. I'd expect if they said they were going to saw someone in half, they might just actually

saw them in half. Yeah, that would be furious. His son, by the way, is a podcaster, so Tyler Mahan Co. And he makes a show called Cocaine and Rhinestones, which actually sounds brilliant. It's all about the sort of mysteries of country music and the history of its stars and so on. So, yeah. Because Coe called himself the Rainstone Cowboy, didn't he? And that was way before the real.

The mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. He performed in a mask. And here's a picture of him when he was, with his ventriloqu was dummy. Is he the most frightening? I've talked to Tyler Coe about that and he goes, my dad told me that dummy was real and alive and that really scared me when I was little.

I can just imagine someone going, tell me where you want me to shoot you and the dummy goes, in his mouth. No, none of his mouth. Yeah, in his mouth. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact is that in the 1980s,

skateboarder Nardis Karpus had his merchandise banned in many schools and shops because it was believed he was evil after some people noticed that his first name, Nardis, spelled backwards, was Satan. Wow. And was it like, had he changed his name to Satan backwards? No, he's, I mean, Johnny, you actually, you know this guy, the skateboarder, but he's Lithuanian by descent. And yeah, it's a name there.

It means birth of Christ. But it is Satan backwards. And when people saw that, there was a bit of a. panic that what if this guy is in cahoots with the devil? We can't have his skateboard and backpack sold in our shops. And so he suffered a sort of ban. It wasn't a countrywide ban, but certainly it affected him and made news. Yeah, he overcame that ban because he was one of the most legendary street skaters, him and Mark Gonzalez. You know, I think Nottis was the first guy to Ali up on a rail and and an OLLie as the three of us have probably been learning some skating terminology

and OLLI is the one where you jump in the air with your skateboard right? Yeah it's where you it's where you need a skateboard that is got two bits that flip up at the end as opposed to like the street skate board where it's flat on one end push down slide your foot forward raise in the air and land. Anna you forget that Dan really is into skateboarding. I was a skater yeah my whole teenage. Are we in a podcast where 50% of us. do and Olli?

Yeah. Oh, I can't. I'm terrible. I would only skate when we needed footage of someone smashing. Right. So you're good at falling off? Yeah. Yes.

But yeah, just on Nautus quickly, he, as Johnny's just pointed out, he was one of the originals. He was one of the guys who took skating into the modern era as such of street skating. He was one of the first people, if not the first, credited with doing a grind down a rail. He didn't land it. That still, though, is like, it was like, wow. That doesn't count. But the idea. You don't land it. The idea. Yeah, but anyone can have it. I can have an idea of what I'm going to do. Then if I can't do it, then. Yeah, but that's like saying any astronauts that died before they got to space because the ship blew up aren't astronauts. No, you didn't make it funny.

No, it's not. It's like me saying that my daughter's got a little rocket ship and she's singing Zoom, Zoom, going to the moon and she's an astronaut. No, no. Come on. He didn't just look at the rail say, I want to do that and then fall over. It sounds like he actually got up onto it, right? Okay. Yeah. He also innovated the idea of wall skating, where you can go off the side of the street and literally go on the wall and come back

down and land. And so that was him as well. So he's a big player in the history of modern skating. But it's interesting because skating has always been associated with sort of debauchery. And it's kind of like the country music of the sports world, right? Yeah. Especially in the 90s. Obviously, skating has just become an illusion.

Olympic sport and the previous Olympics, I think, was the debut for it. And so I went on their website and they've got a really interesting history of skateboarding on there, including the fact that in 1978 for a decade, skateboarding was banned in Norway because kind of like Nautus, they just thought it's leading to all these deaths, it's a bad influence and so on. They'd heard that 100,000 people had been injured and that 28 children had died. And so importing skateboards and having any ramps, of any kind were not allowed in Norway.

And so there was a black market. There was like a hidden forest area that people would set up halfpites. And they would sneakly make black market boards that they would pretend with something else. And then you would turn them into a full skateboard. And so it was through decade. What do they pretend it was, do you think? They pretended it was sort of a weird flute or something. It's still banned in Manchester in England.

Is it? Is it? Yeah, yeah. Because dangerous. I think it was because it was because it was. was associated with youths. Do you know what I mean? Like actually, the place where everyone skateboards in Manchester, they still do it.

They're just not allowed to. You know I mean? Because you can't stop kids from skateboarding. To be fair, it's quite dangerous. I think it is on safety grounds that it tends to be banned and people get injured. It reminds me quite a lot of, and I don't know if they have this in America as well, but in Britain, at the moment there's a lot of panic about scooters, you know, those electric scooters people ride.

They're so dangerous. and there's some spurious stats thrown around about how dangerous they are. But it's quite risky, but also that's what makes it cool. And I was reading that the reason actually skateboarding really struggled to get into the Olympics for a while was because skateboarders didn't want to because the Olympics is kind of lame

and really mainstream and normal people like me watch it every night, whereas skateboarders are really cool. And so I think there was a lot of organizations did not campaign to get included in the Olympics because a bit of a reputation. interesting. I think we might have said this before we started recording about how break dancing is coming into the Olympics soon and we're all looking forward to it. But I know a lot of people in the break dancing community were not happy about it being in the Olympics for that

exact same reason. And what they thought was that a lot of ballroom dancers think that ballroom dancing should be in the Olympics and all these different kind of dancing. And they thought that the ballroom dancers were using break dancing as like a gateway drug to the Olympics. And And once breakdance is in, all of the dancing will get in. Oh. And they thought the Olympics... I don't have a problem with that, actually, because there's some sports that, like, dressage where the horse dances.

I'm like, what is happening right now? Yeah. My girlfriend loves it and I'll get in trouble for saying that, but I'm just, I can't get behind it. I agree. I think a lot of the equestrian stuff is that the horses need the medals. Some of the equestrian competitors are really quite old. Because I was thinking Britain sent a team of three skateboarders.

and it's the biggest age range in a skateboarding team. And I thought maybe the guide that we sent Andy McDonald might be the oldest competitor. So he's 51. Actually, I think he turned 52 yesterday. And the two other girls that we've sent are 16. So that's quite nice. The team is two 16-year-olds and then someone who's more than three times their age. But yeah, in the equestrian, you get 60-something-year-olds.

Yeah. Just goes to show it the horses aren't 60-something, are they? Yeah. You try to think, what event could I possibly? do well in in the Olympics and it would have to be something where you sit on a horse or...

Yeah, definitely, I'm too old to be a skateboarder, I reckon, because I was reading about a 1080 trick, which is six turns, right, on a skateboard. That sounds impossible. James, if you want to try it, I'll film it. Yeah. Yeah. I think, is it not

because if it's the number of degrees, it would be three turns, right, if it's 1080. Yeah, unless the 11-year-old's dad was standing with a side just went, puttock, gave them extra spins as they were going by. I guess it is. It's three 360s, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The first person to ever do it on a standard ramp was 11 years old.

And it previously only been done on what's called a mega ramp, which is a bit like a ski jump. And the only people who'd done that last time I checked were 11 years old, 12 years old, 15 years old and 15 years old. And I'm wondering at the age of 45, whether I'm maybe a bit beyond it. Well, like I said, the other guy is 51, so it obviously takes all sorts, but it does seem to be dominated by people under the age of 20. Usually when you see those, it's like Tony Hawk waiting at the bottom of the ramp with like a nine-year-old at this like 200-foot ramp and he's like, just give it a go! That seems to be his gig at the moment, forcing nine-year-olds down ramps.

Tony Hawk seems to be the only person who's gained mainstream fame and it's massive mainstream fame. I'm not totally sure how, especially because he retired when he was 30, 31, I think, from competing anyway. And the thing I could find that he's done most recently is get into a big conversation with Apple about what the skateboard emoji should look like. So when you try and say a skateboard in your WhatsApp messages, which we all do a lot, obviously, the skateboard there is based on his skateboard. Because when we've talked about the consortium that designs emojis, but when, well, we've talked about the consortium that designs emojis, but when, when they released what they thought was going to be their skateboard emoji in 2017, he messaged them being like, that shit, that looks like something from the 80s. Here's a photo of my skateboard.

Do you want to give it another go? Right. So why is he so big? Because he is the only one I've heard of as well. He had video games and stuff, right? No one has done more for the sport of skateboarding than Tony. He's like the ambassador of skateboarding. He's one of the greatest skaters of all time.

and he's very intelligent, well-spoken. And he also, when he landed the 900 back in, I can't remember when it was, he was already big, but he exploded, you know, after that. I think that's when the Tony Hawk games came out. And he's... The 900 is that number of degrees turn? Yes. Is that what that is?

Spinning round in the air? Yes. Loads of times. Loads of the big round. He, as James points out, the big... moment in terms of commercialness was the video games. Tony Hawk Pro Skater was a global sensation. He effectively became what Michael Jordan is to basketball. He became to skateboarding. Interestingly, he's ruined the life of one man in the UK, who is a quite well-known comedian

called Tony Hawks with an S at the end, whose whole life has been absolutely ruined, his online life with people mistaking him as the skater. So a few years ago, he actually published a book called Tony Hawks the A to Z of skateboarding, where he replies to the emails of everyone who's asked him for skateboarding advice with just terrible uninformed responses. That was going to confuse people even more. People like me who do always confuse them. I'm like, hang on, he's the one who's written the skateboarding book.

When Jackass started, we got sued by this man named Jackass because we had ruined his good name. That's incredible. Did you ever meet him? Did you ever get to hang out with? I never got to meet Mr. Ass, no. I would love to. Mr. Ass suggests that the case is still going on, the respectful way. And there was some legal trouble with the guy from my hometown whose name was Reverend General Johnny Knoxville who sold plots of land on the moon. And like, I think he came after me at one point. and.

Oh, wow. Yeah. For my birthday one year, I wanted to sue all my friends, but my attorney taught me out of it. I was just going to make up some, I don't know, I just thought it'd be funny to, like, sue 10 of my friends and then have to hire attorneys and just be a big pain in their ass. Cool, yeah, yeah. How many friends do you have left now out of interest? Well, that's true. I would have had to sue, like, three people multiple times.

Yeah. While we're talking about skateboarding, I, you know, most of the jackass guys, we came from Big Brother magazine, which was a skateboarding magazine owned by Larry Flint. He owned a bunch of mags. Not as art directed one of the articles I wrote for a snowboarding mag. But anyway, Big Brother, there was a mix-up in the shipping department one day, and all the people that were supposed to get Big Brother magazine got Taboo Magazine, which was Larry Flint's dirtiest magazine. and all the people that were supposed to get taboo got Big Brother. So it was really bad because a bunch of 14-year-olds got taboo and a bunch of dribble ejaculators got, you know, big brother.

And I don't know who was more upset. I would assume the people who got taboo. I don't know. I think some of those 14-year-olds were pretty delighted. Oh, best day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I found a skateboarding record I think we could break.

A Guinness World Record. Okay. I think, well, maybe Johnny or Dan, you can say I'm totally wrong. But basically, on February 17, 2017, a guy called Brandon Gonzalez performed a stationary manual that lasted two hours and 55 minutes. And now I obviously had to look up what that was. But it's just standing on your skateboard, right? No. With one foot in the air and one foot on the ground?

No. But the tail can't touch the ground. Oh, can it not? So it's a balance act. You would be balancing. I didn't see that from the picture. On the two back wheels. Anna doing her 27th hour standing on a table going, come on guys.

I'm absolutely smashing this. It's so easy. The Guinness adjudicated going behind her going, oh shit, I didn't see. Okay, no. I got this wrong, man. Okay, I'd take that back. I'm sorry. Okay, yeah, no is the answer.

We cannot break that one. Okay, it is time for fact number three. That is Anna. My fact this week is that when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, he brought 220 gallons of alcohol on the flight with him. Nice. Are you tricking us, Anna? I've done a trick, Fathar. But I found this so surprising.

So Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, in the Bell X1 plane, and the fuel it used was alcohol. Like it was just a huge tank of alcohol. So it was burning liquid oxygen and then a mixture of five parts alcohol to one part water, which seems incredibly weird

and is not something that like occasionally you talk about alcohol fuel. There are jokes that Prince Charles runs his cars off wine. There are certain places that use ethanol in their vehicles. But it doesn't seem that ordinary, but it seems like, yeah, he ran them off ethanol. I imagine it's quite dangerous. I suppose you wouldn't want to drop a lip match in there.

But then you wouldn't want to, in any of it. And you wouldn't want to drink it halfway through the flight either. Yeah. Well, if you distill it through a sock, it's probably safe. Because I think that's what people in prison do with rubbing alcohol, they distill it through their sock and then, but hey, kids, don't do that, you know, because. But, you know, if you're desperate, if you've run out of wine.

Yeah. Was that fuel for all the P-51 bombers at the time? I'm not sure. I know it was fuel for the flights that he flew over that time period. Yeah. I don't think it will have been. I think because this was a very experimental plane, right? Yeah.

Yeah. It was more modeled on a rocket, I think. And he nicknamed it sweetly the glamorous Glenys after his fiancé, who was called Glenys Faye Dickhouse. I know. Thank God he didn't go for the surname. Imagine the sound barrier. Is it a production company?

Really? Yeah, that's our production companies. No way. Named after her. Well, no. No, no. It just... That was a coincidence. Yeah.

And it was sweet, but I remember I was reading a book about Chuck Yeager and to woo his wife. He said, stick with me, honey, and you'll be farting through silk. It had a real way with words, Chuck Yeager. Nice. The night before he broke the soundberry, this is widely known. He broke his ribs in a horse riding accident. and the doctor who is rumored to have patched him up was this man, Colonel John Paul Stapp. Now, he was a physician, flight surgeon, and led some of the most groundbreaking experiments on deceleration.

It was like the late 40s to mid-50s, and they were trying to determine what was like for pilots to eject at high altitudes. and also what they can withstand in a plane crash. So they thought a person could only withstand 18 Gs of force. And a G is like the amount of force, the Earth's gravitational field exerts on human body when you're standing still. Anyway, they thought they could only withstand 18 Gs, and he knew that was wrong

because being a flight surgeon, he could look at the crash records and see that these pilots had withstood more than that, but the plane had failed. So he did all these experiments. And one was they had this rocket sled and he would strap himself to it. And he would go up to speeds, which eventually reached 630 miles an hour and stop within 1.5 seconds. Oh, nice.

Yeah. It's not safe. No. And 630 miles an hour, by the way, was faster than a speeding bullet at that time. Wow. And come to a complete stop. And I think the last time he did it, he experienced 46.2 Gs. Wow.

And he went temporarily blind afterwards. Not only that. Not only did he go temporarily blind, but he ended up with two black eyes because when he stopped, his eyes shot forward into his socket so hard. Like somebody sees Jessica Rabbit. Yeah, exactly. They went btunk and he ended up with black eyes. And prior to doing it, he was so sure that this blindness would happen that he spent a lot of time in his room blindfolded and trying to work out how to exist without sight anymore because he thought that's what's going to happen.

That's so cool. That's like being punched in the face from the inside, isn't it? Yeah. Someone punching from inside your head. But I think, am I right that he broke the land speed record? He was known as the fastest man on Earth. Yeah, Time magazine did a bit. He was on all the TV shows.

He was a huge star there. and now no one knows him. Yeah, that's weird. I read that when he stopped for that instant, his body weighed about 7,700 pounds. What? Yeah. Which is about the same as a white rhino.

Wow. Because your weight is your mass times the gravitational force. But he didn't balloon to it, did he? No, no. It's more of a mathematical thing really. What a shame. He was trying to prove what humans could withstand, but it feels like it's a loose definition of,

with stand. Because yeah, he went blind, had black eyes, he cracked his ribs, he broke his wrists, his respiratory and circulatory systems were really badly damaged.

I mean, you know, there's withstanding and there's living through in good health, isn't there? There's withstanding and then there's a showing off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a thin line

between a great guitar fill and a smart-ass guitar player. I don't quite get that, but I think I agree with it. He's also the reason, by the way, for the term Murphy's Law. We have Murphy's Law because of him. Yeah, because on an experiment

that was done five years earlier where they were testing out the speeds, it was Captain Murphy, who was part of the test. And afterwards, when Stapp was utterly injured, like, really broken, Murphy just kind of exclaimed that anything that can go wrong will go wrong in different words.

That became Murphy's Law. It needs an addendum, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, if you are working with Colonel John Stapp, who doesn't have mental shit. Staff did nothing wrong. He was just the passenger. It was Murphy. Have you, Johnny, I imagine within the world of jackass that you've done a few things testing the pull of gravity. Well, gravity is the funniest comedian of all time. In my opinion, I never reached a speed of 630 miles an hour on anything. But yeah, gravity did

play a part. That in Newton's third law of motion. Without those two things, that had no career. Thank God for physics. Yes, thank God. That's so good. Stapp is also the reason we have seatbelts and cars now. Same really? Yeah, he was also testing restraint systems.

And finally got the Air Force to listen when he explained that we're losing more pilots on the ground than we are in the air. And there's a Stap car crash conference that he founded, I think still goes on today. So, wow, what a good guy. Yeah. Should we talk about Chuck Yeager? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

He was really hardcore. Another really hardcore one, along with those country artists. In World War II, he distinguished himself by being just amazing at dog fighting, basically, didn't he? And he loved it. So great in a plane. But he had this episode I didn't know about where he was shot down over France. And so he has to bail out with his parachute. And he said he could see German soldiers all over the ground.

below, but luckily he landed in a forest. But this meant that he had to climb over the mountains to cross the border to get into safe territory. And so he's like knee deep in snow. He's had to bail out of his plane. He's with a comrade. And they almost get caught and have a really awful scrape when they find a hut to sleep in.

And the guy he's with leaves his socks outside the cabin to dry, which I'd be so pissed off about. German soldiers came past. How about were they distaste? killing their alcohol. That's a good point. That is, oh wow. So yeah, the Germans came past and they start shooting at them.

So then they leap out the window and his navigator, who's the guy with him, is badly shot. But then an incredibly cool thing, I think this is what happened. They both jumped onto, or Chuck basically carried his badly injured navigator, onto a log slide, which I think must have just been one of those log flumes that they used to carry logs down mountains. Yeah, right. And they cascaded down. the mountain on this log side to escape. He then amputates his friend's leg with a penknife.

Yeah, just out of anger because he's so pissed off with him. That's one less sock you'll need. But yeah, and then he takes his leg off and then he leaves him by the side of the road, says bye. And fortunately, he's rescued and safe. But I mean, Yeager didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Left a legless man on the side of the road. Yeah, he had one leg.

He didn't take both his legs off. You got to make some hard decisions. Yeah. Yeah, he got picked up by the resistance. And at the time, if you spent time with the resistance and got back to America, you were no longer allowed to fly again. Because if you got shot down again, you may give up the resistance. But he went to Washington and lobbied to, I don't know it was Washington, but he lobbied with a general and said, look, I want to go back. If I get caught, I won't say a word.

And I think he was the first person to be allowed to fly again after being captured. Wow. And this is Yeager, right? Yeah, when he was young, this was way before he was Chuck Yeager. This was just a hard-ass kid. Because then when he was doing all of his flying afterwards, by all rights, he should have been one of the first astronauts, right? You would have expected him to be. But he couldn't get in because he didn't have a degree.

And I get the feeling that that really pissed him off for pretty much his whole life after that. Yeah. I got that impression. It's interesting. It's a big role in the movie The Right Stuff, which was a book by Tom Wolfe, where you see him sort of getting overlooked because he was the man. You know, he could do anything. In the movie, he kind of makes peace with it.

But yeah, you get the impression that he should have been there with Neil on the moon. Wow. Wily recognizes the greatest natural pilot to ever live. He had 2010 vision. Yeah. He was just built for it. What is that? Because I thought 2020.

was the best, but it's clearly not right, if 2010 is better. No, mate. Anything that you can see from 10 meters, he could see the same from 20 meters. Okay. So it's twice as good as you. Twice as good. Actually, a lot more than that for you, but for a normal person. Yeah, yeah, I'm not a good person to use of that.

How interesting. And he was so, I mean, bringing up the Apollo astronauts, the Glenys, Fay, his wife, It's such a shame that the sound barrier wasn't broken in a plane called the Dick House. That's such a shame. But he named three of his initial planes after her, the glamorous Glenn, and then Glenys became a name afterwards. And they were married until his dying day. And astronauts...

I think her dying day, in fact. Sorry, her dying day. He died 2020, didn't he? I used to follow him on Facebook. I used to get updates all the time from Chuck Yeager. He was very active on Facebook. Was he? Yeah.

But yeah, that was rare. All the Apollo and Mercury astronauts ended in divorce multiple times, and him and his wife were a unit all the way to the end. And in fact, I think he used that when there was discussing, who's going to try and break the sound barrier, who's going to be our test pilot? I think they said there was an argument that it should be someone who was single and childless, because then if they died, it didn't matter. It was just one person.

And I think he argued, no, it's much better to choose someone like me who's got a wife and a little boy who I love, because I'll be much more careful. And so I'll make sure that I do survive it. It's an argument that work for him, so we don't need to interrogate. Now, fill her up with booze. I'm going on a horse ride. He did an experiment with Colonel John Paul Stapp as well.

They did a wind blast experiment where they went up in a plane without a canopy on it and reached speeds of over 500 miles an hour. And people were saying, no, don't do that. you're going to be decapitated, this or that, but, you know, they were fine. Decapitated by... Just the, that much wind. The wind, yeah. How were they fine?

I'm really surprised because I'm a story that is always told about me is when my mom was driving the car when I was a baby and they had, you know, you had like a, you've got roof window. What do you call it? Sunroof. Sunroof, thank you. And my dad was holding me and my mom was a very fast driver. And my dad thought it'd be really funny to lift me up.

He was just holding me on his lap, lifted me up and put my head out of the window. and my mum said she's never been so furious with him. I mean, in a way, it was her fault for driving at 100 miles an hour along the main road. But I think it wasn't that fun for me as a baby. I'll be honest, Anna. I don't think anyone comes out well with that story. I was an innocent victim. I can just see in the background Johnny slightly going,

tell me those footage that I could use for the future. Oh, God. They survived it. Okay. it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that according to tradition of the banner people of Ethiopia, before a man can become a man, he has to learn how to walk on stilts. Okay.

You know, like, I don't drive, but I'm told that if I fail the driving test enough times, they just give it to you. No, that's not true. That's not true? No, no, no, no. All right, I'll learn then. Okay. Damn it.

How many times can you fall off the stilts before they just go, okay, have your penis anyway. Yeah, exactly. I think they always have a penis. It's just like their culture has got like quite a complex level of age groups. Like you go from this age group to this age group to this age group. And to go from, and actually this is true of a lot of people around the world, but to go from adolescence to manhood, they have a ceremony and part of that ceremony involves them having to strike a balance on stilts.

And it's supposed to show that you're strong-minded, independently willed, confident, and ready to take on a wife. Okay. It's what all women want. Man, you can walk on stilts. I've walked on stilts before. It's pretty... Have you?

Yeah, yeah. I've had, you know, not ginormously high ones, but I would say four feet in the air at least. And they're fine. They're really easy to... get used to. Yeah, straight away. What was the context in which you were walking on stilts? I think I was at a house that just had a lot of party gear and stilts were part of the gear and I just gave it a badge. Maybe you just have a natural affinity to stilts. Wow. It can't be that easy because people make a living from doing it. So it can't be that.

Well, no, but they do more complicated things with it, right? Like, I'm just trying to become a man. And to be fair, when I was watching a video of these banner kids and kids on stilts and they mostly look like they're having so much fun and they find it extremely entertaining, which it would be. And also the interviewer says to one of these little kids who's just running around on the stilts, so how long have you been doing this? How long does it take to get ready? Is it months, years? And the guy's like, I just started yesterday, mate. I mean, so maybe, I think Dan might be right. I think this is a piece of cake. You may be right. And the idea was that the tribe would traditionally use stilts to avoid wild animals. And also you can see over the savannah.

Yes. Absolutely. Because actually there's a tradition in Europe of shepherds. using stilts for the same reason, because you can get much higher up and you can see where all your sheep's are and stuff like that. Is this the landis region? It's over quite a lot of Europe. Yeah. Yeah, the landis especially. The landis in southwestern France. This is amazing. They basically, everyone in this town existed on stilts, but it largely was the farmers. And exactly it was for that. You would be on your stilts so that you could see where all your sheep, where it was also very mushy and muddy in the ground. And so it was very useful to get around by standing on the stilt. you had a big stick

which was what you would use to, what's the word for when you're getting the sheep into... Shepherds? Yeah, you'd shepherd them with your big old stick. But you would then use the big stick as a seat, like a tripod, so you'd place your bum on it

and they would just do their knitting all day long. Would they? Yeah. Oh, that's nice. With their recently shorn sheep's wool, presumably. Yeah, exactly. What else are you going to do with it? Lovely.

These, the banner people, it's weird that they say it's to then escape predators because they also paint their bodies in black and white stripes that do resemble quite closely a zebra. It's not for them and I was offering tips. You're like, don't disguise yourself as a zebra. That's true. One of the other ceremonies that they do

is when they're just about to get married and that is a bull-weeping ceremony. So you line up a load of cows in a row and everyone has to run and jump over the backs of four cows without falling. And if you can do that, then you're allowed to get married. Whoa. Four cow? It's not four, you know, like, it's not like evil-cneville jumping over four at once. You jump over one. It's like hurdles.

Oh, it's hurdles. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I'd like see James jump over four at once. I'm really becoming focused on James doing a stunt. I'm actually very scared of cows, so. Perfect. What else are you scared of, James? Oh, commitment.

Moshears. I'll make sure your wife doesn't listen to this episode then. When we were filming Wild Boys, we came across a lot of ride of passages for boys to become a man, and a lot were quite entertaining. And one sent my friend Chris Panias to the hospital. The Satari Moe tribe, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, in Brazil. They will go out in the jungle and gather up bullet ants,

which are one of the worst stings in the insect kingdoms, like 30 times worse than a bee sting. And they'll gather up all the bullet ants and they'll weave them into a glove of leaves with their stingers sticking out. And to become a man, you have to put your hand in the glove of bullet ants for 10 minutes and take it.

And Steve O' and Pontius both did it. and it was most excruciating pain that they've endured. Yeah. And that's a high bar for them, in fact. Wow. Yes. That's good to know because I think we might have mentioned bullet ants before. And, you know, they're this extreme pain animal.

And sometimes I think, are they that painful? Or are they just kind of, they've gained this reputation? But you can verify, Steve-O says, hurts a lot. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Ponies had to go to the hospital because he had an allergic reaction. Anytime he gets stung by anything, he has to go to the hospital.

I was looking up just, I was just Googling around with the word stilt, and I discovered that one of the greatest early day basketball players had the nickname the Stilt, which was Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, which I had no idea about. Yeah, so Wilt Chamberlain very famously scored 100 points in a single game. He did free throws in that match Underarm, which we know is a better way of doing three throws, but we also know that basketball players think they look too wimpy when they're doing it.

So they do it in the overarm way instead. He also is responsible for the fact that when you take a shot at the foul line, so Anna, I know it's going to be hard to describe, but this is a thing when you're fouled, you go and you get two shots in the basket in the key. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan. Anna has just written a book about sport. It's called A load of all bowls, the QI book of sport.

It's available now in all good bookshops. And she knows everything about Will Chamber. So you know all about this. Shot yourself on the foot there, Dan, if you didn't want us to mention it. Better than in the mouth, Anna. Where you wanted? So yeah, so he's responsible for a major rule change within basketball as well, which is the fact that when he used to shoot at the foul line,

he's 6'11, he would jump and dunk it. And that's not allowed anymore. So they said you have to remain behind the foul line. But the stilt thing is really interesting in his name, wilt the stilt Chamberlain because everyone called him it. It was the nickname that was used in every paper and magazine and he hated it. It was given to him in the early days and when people were on his team were playing on an opposing team, their coaches would be like, don't call him the stilt, he'll go nuts.

He's really upset about it. What's from him with the stilt? It's not, they called him, Wilt the asshole. He won't, yeah, I do. Will, Dickhouse, Chamberlain. Well, he could have been called that. He supposedly slept with. story on it. Yeah. Apparently 20,000 women were bedded by Wilp the Stilt.

He's sure they were. But he loved the name, the dipper, or dippy. And he got it because, as I said, he was ginormous, six foot 11, and it's got nothing to do with basketball. It was one day he kept walking into doorways, because he's so tall, and one doorway cracked him in the eyes. He got a black eye, and they started calling him Dippy because they needed to remind him to dip down anytime he was heading out a doorway. And that's the name he loved, but he was Wilt the Stilt to the end. Well, I had to say,

wilt the stil, it's a little snappier. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And cool, and you can't make your own nicknames, guys, so get over that. Yeah, well, Big Dick, James Harkin says different. It's like a walking stick full of bagels. I think the tallest stilt wall.

in history certainly claims to be, speaking of people who make their own nicknames, a guy called Roy Malloy. Which bit is the nickname in Roy Balloy? Yeah. I think it's not even a good one. I just think he wasn't born Roy Malloy. I think that might be a nickname, you know, to make his name rhyme. Maybe it doesn't even qualify as a nickname. He's like a nom de plume. A nom de plume. A nom de plume, exactly. Thank you. So he's set a bunch of world records, four world records. And in In 2008, he set the unverified world record for the tallest stilts walk ever. But I was looking at up, again, I know I keep making wild claims, but I think we can break this one too. Johnny, you could definitely do this.

Surely you've done something similar to this, because it was 17 metre high stilts, which is high. That's like five stories. There you go. For all the yanks. There you go for the yanks. And he had to mount them by going up to the fifth story of a building and lean the stilts next to the building. and then he mounts them from there. Wow.

But then it's a little bit like if you're teaching a baby to walk, he's got his helpers. You can just see their hands in the video, and he's clinging onto their hands. And then he just lets go for a second, does a really quick bloop, blub, blub, blub, one, two, three, four, five on the spot, on the stilts, and then falls back into their arms again

and says that's the tallest stilt walk in history. I don't think that counts. I don't think it counts either. I think you've got to get from A to B, and they need to be two different places. Did they hand him his penis? after you're now a man. 17 meter penis.

Have you not ever walked on silts, Johnny? It seems like the kind of thing that Jackass would have done some kind of stilt walking stunts. I can barely walk on my own two feet, which really helped me in stunts. But Steve O was a clown when we initially hired him.

He worked at a carnival, a circus inside of a swap meet in Florida. It was bleak. So he did a lot of stunts. stunt walking. And we did one or two things with stilts, but they're nice to look at, but you need a little blunt force trauma to make something watchable. Sure. Well, you can stilt walk into a wall if you want. Yeah. But yeah. Do you know, something interesting, I haven't actually got the research on this. I just, this is something I remember is that with stilt walking, there was a person who had cerebral

palsy and found that their walking was better when they were on stilts. It helped to improve them in some respects with their gaites and how they're walking. And Michael J. Fox also talks about that when he goes ice skating, it really causes the tremors that he has to sort of mellow down and rest a bit. Interesting. I wonder the medical benefits of, I'm not suggesting that everyone be just ice skating on stilts. No. Ice skating on stilts. I love it.

That's how you get the blunt trauma. That's James Harkin stunt. There we go. Hello, my name's James Harkin and this is ice skating on stilts. I'm there. I'm there. 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 show, we can all be found on various bits of social media.

I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland. James? My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Johnny? My Instagram is Johnny Knoxville. And Anna, where can they get to us as a group? You can get us on Instagram at No Such Thing as a Fish or Twitter. Twitter at No Such Thing or you can email podcast at QI.com. Yeah, where you can go to our website, No Such Thing isafish.com. Check it out.

All previous episodes are up there. All of the upcoming tour dates for our Thundernerds tour can be found on there and a link to our secret club. Clubfish is also there. But the main thing for you to do right now is to switch this episode off and head over to a new show. It's Johnny's show. Pretty sure I Can Fly is the name. It is a show where they look into great historical characters from history. Johnny, do you want to add anything to that? It ain't too good, but it's long. That's my Tinder profile. All right, that's it. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.