No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Jousting Parrotfish

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss NZ, Oz and Ozempic. 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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Starting point is 00:00:02 Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Anna Tashinsky. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that L. Frank Baum based one of the witches in The Wizard of Oz on his mother-in-law. I didn't know that he was a 1970s stand-up comedian. It sounds like such a sexist fact that, doesn't it? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:52 But if we tell you who the mother-in-law involved is, it won't sound sexist. And also which witch-wich it was. And which witch it was. Yeah, that's more important. It's the beautiful and benevolent Glinda, who is the good witch of the north. Gotcha. You thought it was the green one. No, I don't know what colour she is I've never seen the film
Starting point is 00:01:09 Is it black and white? She's famously great The wicked one is famously green Okay And it also is black and white And then not It was sort of the introduction of technicolor to cinema world
Starting point is 00:01:19 Really Is it? So it's not like Follow the black and white road They didn't do that No They invented the colour process Halfway through the first screening
Starting point is 00:01:26 Of the film It's very exciting So quickly Just randomly He had this mother-in-law He was called Matilda Electa Jocelyn Gage and it turns out that she was a very, very awesome woman,
Starting point is 00:01:39 as well as being his mother-in-law. She was one of the three leaders of the women's rights movement in the US. So you might have heard of Susan B. Anthony. There was also Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and there was this lady, Matilda Elector Jocelyn Gage. She was very cool. Yeah. She gave him lots of ideas for the story.
Starting point is 00:01:56 In fact, she maybe even gave him the idea of becoming an author. And she came up with the idea of putting a cyclone in the story, which spoiler alert is what sends them to Oz. These are spoiler alerts from a guy who hasn't seen the film I couldn't work out and therefore I have a theory on this how she suggested the cyclone She died in March 1898
Starting point is 00:02:17 Which is just when he started writing And I wonder if he was having a massive mental block Where he just spent years like I've got this idea But I've got no idea how to transport them And then on her deathbed she said I've got it Cyclone and that was it Because she literally died as he was starting the book
Starting point is 00:02:33 because it must have been the first idea that was had. I wonder if she just already half-written this book. And then when she died, he picked it up and went, oh, this is good. Because she was also an expert on witches. Oh, yes, she was, the real kind. Was she? Yeah, because when she did a lot of her sort of feminism and all that kind of stuff, people just kept calling her satanic and heretic and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:02:54 And they would call her a witch, which is obviously a way of demeaning women in those days. And as such, she decided, okay, I'm going to study them. and she was a real expert on witches. So that's another part that she had to do. That's very cool. She inspired a term. So she not only was a suffragette. She also was looking at any kind of discrimination
Starting point is 00:03:15 that was going on in the States at the time. And she wrote a pamphlet, and it was called Women as Inventors. And she basically said, here are all the women who have not been given their credit for all the inventions that they've done. And years later, the term, the Matilda effect, is used to describe exactly that.
Starting point is 00:03:31 So women who have been brushed aside from history and should get the credit. Now, interestingly, there's a male equivalent to this, which is called the Matthew effect. And the Matthew effect is when a male scientist who is distinguished and older often gets the credit if he has a co-writer who is younger and new to the field. That was invented by a guy called Robert K. Merton. Interestingly, his wife, Harriet Zuckerman, appears on the Matilda effect list because she provided all the data that led to him inventing the math. Matthew effect, yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:03 Can I ask the Matilda effect, if you're talking about a really awesome woman who is like one of the main leaders of the women's rights movement, but you start the fact off about her son-in-law who wrote a children's book. Is that kind of similar? I think your banked rights. Do you guys know what the reverse Matilda effect is? Okay, so it's where women get loads of extra credit for stuff that they hadn't done. You'd think it was that. Is it this podcast? Wow.
Starting point is 00:04:29 That is the reverse though, isn't it? I mean, it is logically the reverse. I'm afraid that's not the thing that's been labelled the reverse. Okay. This was a quite interesting study that was done in Poland last year, actually, where a Polish scientist ran this study where they showed over 800 school children a bunch of presentations about the history of math and science and STEM stuff.
Starting point is 00:04:50 And then as part of it, they mentioned people who'd invented certain mathematical or scientific physics-based things. But these were made-up inventions. They were made-up people. And for one group of students, they had a woman be the inventor. And for the other group of students, they had a man be the inventor. And it turned out, when they asked the students afterwards,
Starting point is 00:05:07 when they'd mentioned that a woman was the inventor, the people just weren't interested in the subject. They were like, well, that sounds like a shit subject. And they didn't want to study it anymore. And so we need to stop talking about women in science in order to get women into science. And it was the girls and boys. They were both like, oh, women did this.
Starting point is 00:05:24 It was the same level of coolness of invention they were discussing for both the women and the men. It was the same invention itself. Oh, it was the same. It wasn't like the someone invented a doily. And this man invented the space rocket. You'd run some great studies. I think a doily is a cool.
Starting point is 00:05:42 I've come into contact much more with the doily than the space rocket. A doylee has probably avoided more human misery than a space rocket. No, it is more up your street. I can imagine you, Andy, starting your Doylee X company. When you become a billionaire. The world's most reverend. revolutionary doily. So before he was a writer, L. Frank Baum worked in shops and he did amazing sort of window displays,
Starting point is 00:06:09 didn't he? Really, that's what he was famous for at the time. Didn't you have a magazine? How famous can you be for writing a magazine about window displays? Well, I think he did. I think in the areas where he had window displays, people would copy his ideas. And then he had the magazine and he came up with lots of different ways of doing things. Like he thought that if you had an American flag in your window display, you shouldn't have a fan blowing it because that's not the correct way for an American flag to be flown. It should be on the end of a massive stick with someone waving it, like a figure of eight.
Starting point is 00:06:41 And he came up with like a mechanical system to get a flag to go that way instead of being blown with a fan. Oh, incredible. So like he just came up with loads of amazing innovations that we all know today like that. And then put it in his magazine. And then he put it in this magazine and said, this is what you should be doing, guys. Not a stupid fan thing. I didn't know he did the window displays. I thought we just wrote about it.
Starting point is 00:07:01 Oh, no. We should say the magazine was called The Show Window, which then became a book called The Art of Decorating Dry Goods, Windows and Interiors, which was almost the last thing he published before The Wizard of Oz, actually. I think it was in the same year, was there? That was 1900. So it was maybe a year or two before. I wonder if he's got anyone out there who, if they say,
Starting point is 00:07:19 what do you think of El Frank Baum? They go, I prefer his early stuff. He had a shop called Baum's Bazaar, which was a complete disaster, because it was lots of tat, lots of tat, basically. It was sort of a, do you say it called it, a bizaraster? Very nice. Didn't want to let that go unmarked. You know, I probably would have cut that out, but now that you've made a point of it,
Starting point is 00:07:40 I think let's keep that in now. Let's shine a harsh light on that job. Thank you, Andy. And it sold also, it was a very novelty-based shop. It was not a dry-good Zemporeum. It was, you know, like chocolates and... It was based on Woolworths, wasn't it? Yeah, any old stuff.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Like lanterns, paper lanterns, strange glassware. Anyway, he opened it shortly before a very harsh drought decimated the entire region. And the appetite for paper lanterns and amusing glassware just went through the floor. And lots of people were ruined. And I think that was the point at which, I think his mother-in-law, I think Matilda was very concerned about his prospects. She didn't originally want her daughter to marry him because he was a bit of a bum. Well, he was just a very bad businessman.
Starting point is 00:08:21 Brilliant. Brilliant. See, that's how you do it. That's good. Thank you for the lesson. Say it loudly and then a loud laugh to follow it up. Yeah, he was very bad at business and that bizarre in fact had to be renamed Gage's Bazaar. And this was another member of his wife's family who helped him out, who I think was Helen Gage, his sister-in-law.
Starting point is 00:08:42 So he drove the shop into the ground. And his sister-in-law was like, oh, my God, poor Frank. He's screwed up again. And so she bought up all the remaining stock, renamed it Gage's Bazaar, and made it a very successful job. That's so good. We haven't mentioned his wife, Maud, daughter of Matilda. She came into his life as it was a quite quick marriage. They were introduced by Bown's auntie.
Starting point is 00:09:05 He immediately said, I'm going to be marrying you one day. They married a few months later. But she was quite brutal from some of the stories about how she ran the house in certain ways because she sort of did everything in the house. Do you mean the donut incident? Yeah, the donut incident. Let's talk about this. It's incredible.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Okay. So he comes home one day. Frank with a box of donuts. Right. But he hasn't consulted her about buying these donuts. She is furious. She's the one who decides
Starting point is 00:09:29 what food enters the house. She wants only good food in the house. So if he was going to do anything like that, it had to go through her and it was not going to go to waste. So he was going to have to eat all of these donuts. He couldn't manage it. By the fourth day...
Starting point is 00:09:40 It's very much a Matilda and Bruce Bogotter situation, isn't it? He has to eat the whole cake. Do you remember that? Oh, yes. Yes, exactly. It's that. So by the fourth day, they start going moldy and he thinks, I can't eat these anymore.
Starting point is 00:09:52 So he sneaks out into the backyard and he buries them under the ground. Right? She knows something's up. So she goes into the garden. She digs them back up. And she presents them back to him and says, you never buy donuts again.
Starting point is 00:10:07 And he doesn't. And she sounds... Can I ask, how many donuts did he buy that he couldn't eat them in four days? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. One of those Krispy Cream full packs, they're like a dozen in there.
Starting point is 00:10:18 Anna, I've seen you go through those packs. James, we don't need to talk about. about my history of total. No, you're right. That is, that is the whole in the story. Yeah. I reckon I could get through 50 in four days. No problem.
Starting point is 00:10:31 50. You'd have a happier marriage than he did, clearly. I love the sheer list of his failures. Actually, he is one of these guys who makes you think, if I haven't made it by age X, like, you know if you haven't started by the age of three, you're not going to be a tennis pro, for example. Baum, until 35, mid-30s?
Starting point is 00:10:51 Yeah. We're still just knocking about doing random stuff. So has he given you hope? He's given me a lot of hope. He was a chicken breeder. He managed to fail selling oil in America in the 1880s and 90s. He just couldn't hack it. How do you fail a petrol company?
Starting point is 00:11:10 Just ridiculous. I thought the saddest story about Frank was, did you read about when he tried to be an actor? No. I will say for him. He tried so much. The reason I know I'm not him, I'm not going to suddenly be successful at 14. is that he like had a new fad every year and he threw himself into it and his dad bought a bunch of theatres and he decided I'll be an actor
Starting point is 00:11:28 so he kept on asking producers to cast him and eventually one said oh yeah I'll definitely cast you in loads of leading roles but you need to provide all the costumes for all of the possible leading roles you could be cast in so he went home told his mum and dad his dad said no the mum said oh come on he's got a job buy the stuff so they spent thousands and thousands of dollars buying up all the leading like, you know, Romeo Macbeth, all the costumes. He turned up with the theatre troupe.
Starting point is 00:11:54 On the first day, the actor was playing Romeo said, oh, my doublet's a bit broken. Can I just borrow that costume of yours? Within four days, every single costume had been taken from him and not returned. Did he play anyone in the play in the end? He got some tiny little extra parts. That's amazing. Speaking of costumes, by the way,
Starting point is 00:12:12 obviously a movie, The Wizard of Oz. Yeah. Yes. The cowardly lion costume. It was very, very heavy. But the really interesting thing about it is because it was made of real lion fur, and because lions have distinctive fur patterns, they had to use the same one all the way through.
Starting point is 00:12:30 Because if they were a different lion, they'd be like, oh, that's just a different lion's costume because it's a different pattern. Wait, as in would a casual viewer of the film think, where did the lion go? Who's this? Who's just a new character they've just introduced? Well, on the other hand, you might say, good work to say, let's try and make it as much continuity as possible.
Starting point is 00:12:51 To kill as few lions as you need to. I agree with all of this. I don't know if you needed to kill one. If I'm going to be totally honest, was the real lion fur completely necessary? Actually, I'm thinking about the character of the film, he looks nothing like a lion. They could have just put a yellow carpet on him, couldn't they?
Starting point is 00:13:07 And they always just keep using the same yellow carpet. Actually, use a second yellow carpet. It doesn't matter. I had no idea that that was an actual lion's skin. Well, they have that perm. Lions don't have that natural perm. Like the head bit was. was separate. The head bit was molded, right? But the actual fur bit was real fur.
Starting point is 00:13:23 Wow. Another interesting thing about that is that it went up for auction in 2014, and one way of authenticating it is they looked at the patterns on the movie, and they could see it was the same on the costume that they had, so they knew it was real. And it sold for $3 million, which makes it the third highest priced outfit ever sold from a Hollywood film. Incredible. The winner is? Can we guess the others? I think you can guess one of them.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Batman's costume with the nipples on from the Cleary version. Very true. Jim Carrey's wig and dumb and dumber, the ball haircut. Is it just a skirkrow and the tin mat? I'm going to say Ruby slippers, which surely... No, so they're not from that movie. Marilyn Monroe's dress from, is it the seven-year-rich? Is the winner?
Starting point is 00:14:08 Four point six million dollars that sold for. Rosebud, the sleigh from... No, you won't get the other one. That was an actor in that. Not that you won't know. it, but you won't have guessed it. It's Audrey Hepburn's dress from My Fair Lady. Oh, from My Fair Lady. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. Andy, back to your point very quickly about he was going through lots of different careers and he finally had enough and he was like, I'm going to become a proper writer. And he
Starting point is 00:14:32 sits down finally to write The Wizard of Oz. I really like this because you do often wonder if you've written something that is going to change the world. I always wonder, does an author have that feeling? He clearly did. He got to the end of it and he had his pencil that he'd used to write the manuscript with and it was right down to the nub. And he was right down to the nub. he immediately framed that pencil because he knew that he'd written something that was great. Yeah, it was next to his window display pencil and his exotic chicken pencils. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the journey towards modern weight loss drugs begins with the venom of a Gila monster.
Starting point is 00:15:16 Do you mean a Gila monster? I do. And that is how I've seen it written down. It's because I don't live in Utah. I've never heard it called a Gila monster. We have had this discussion before we came on mic, and I always called it a Gila monster, but apparently you've been wrong.
Starting point is 00:15:28 No, it's Heela. I don't even think you need to do the... Yeah, I don't know where that came from. I think it's just healer. Wait a minute, wait a minute. It's healing people, and it's a healer monster. Oh, my God. We blow the shit wide up and wow, wow, wow.
Starting point is 00:15:42 You've got to reword the facts. That's terrific. So I read this on a great blog called Astral Codex 10, and it was from a piece about a Zenpick. And it was about this whole class of weight loss drugs and where they come from. They're called GLP1 drugs. They were invented for diabetes. And then the scientist noticed, no, everyone's losing weight.
Starting point is 00:15:59 Human and rat, who we're trying us on. They're all losing weight. The basic thing about these drugs is, and the reason they work for weight loss, is that when you eat a meal, your intestine detects that you've eaten, and it releases this hormone, which is called glugogon-like peptide 1, gLP1. That hormone tells your body you're full and commences operations to sort of deal. with it so, you know, your body will, you know, it tells you pancreas to release insulin,
Starting point is 00:16:24 it pushes sugar down, and so on. But the problem is, originally you couldn't make a synthetic version of that exact chemical, the GLP 1, because it decays within a minute. So if you were going to use that as a drug, you would have to inject yourself with it every hour. You know, it's not an effective way of tricking your body into thinking you're full. But in 1992, scientists found that healer monster venom, I pulled out of the full, the full Espanella, Healer Monster Venom. It has this chemical in it which does a similar thing. It triggers all the processes that GLP1 does, but it lasts two hours.
Starting point is 00:16:57 And so they started playing around with the structure of that and making a synthetic version of that. And they came up with something called Exenotide, which was sold to treat diabetes. And then other scientists piled in and started the thing which led to his MPEC, basically. I really like, so it was 1984, Dr. Daniel Drucker. I have a lot of connection to that. I was born in 84. I'm called Daniel as well. God, it's spooky.
Starting point is 00:17:17 It's really weird, isn't it? Jesus Christ. I love that he found out this thing about the Gila monster and thought, I need to test it, but they didn't have any of its DNA in the banks or any that they did wasn't usable. So he had to get in contact with the zoo. He had to go and actually get one in person and had to apply for them to go and find one. He didn't go and get one. Well, actually, it flew to him on a plane, yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:39 Yeah, it was brought to him to him. He'd go in the zoo and sneak one out in his company. But he sort of talks about how it was very different back then when you were trying to get any of these kind of DNAs that you had a theory about, and that's what it was. He said, I think this could be to help diabetes. And they went, fine, that's good enough. We'll go and get you one. It came in a cage with a metal bottom because they're so good at digging
Starting point is 00:17:59 Gila monsters that they thought, if we'd put it in any other cage, it'll just dig its way out. Dig its way through the bottom of the plane. Oh, my God. Imagine if that's what caused a terrible tragedy. So then he did this work, and then there was a guy called John Eng, who synthesized a version. So this Daniel Drucker was working with actual Gila monsters and then John Eng came up with this version which was fake, not fake, but you know what I mean. Yeah, synthetic.
Starting point is 00:18:25 And he had never seen a healer monster in his entire. He probably pronounced it Gila monster like I did. He'd never seen one in his whole life at that stage. Also, we should say, obviously, Ozepic has become one of the most valuable, remarkable drugs in the world. It does sound like the beginning of a horror film, doesn't it? Like, it was great. We all started inventing this synthetic lizard saliva. And the effects were great at first.
Starting point is 00:18:48 And we should also say that Novo Nordisk, who make a Zenpik, they say that the Gila Monster study has nothing to do with Zempec. That it was an important step in the making of this kind of drugs, but their work was separate to the GERM. Well, actually, I don't know if you know this, but the Healer Effect, James, is the name for when Heelam monsters are not given due credit for the inventions that they made. There isn't an enormous bank of...
Starting point is 00:19:15 Gila monsters somewhere in Denmark being systemically drained of their venom. Yeah, yeah. That's not happening. But it did take about 20 years between the Gila Monster discovery all the way for it to be approved by the American pharmaceutical companies. Yeah, that's because it was two different. Yeah, it was a long journey. And yeah, so that happened April 28th, 2005, which is my birthday.
Starting point is 00:19:36 No. That's stunning. Your 21st birthday when you became a man is the, my God. And here's one more thing just to say. Like these new drugs that people are taking to make them thinner, it gives you this GLP1, which helps you not want to eat. You can get GLP1 naturally. Good news for everyone. But unfortunately, you have to eat basically healthy foods and exercise.
Starting point is 00:20:01 Well, guys, it doesn't have to be that healthy. You could literally just eat porridge instead of taking a Zen pic and it does the same thing. And that's an exaggeration because it's not nearly as powerful. But I did find it really interesting, the role of fibre. I had no idea what fiber did as an appetite suppressant. Okay. So it does the same thing. When you eat fiber, it goes through your digestive system really slowly.
Starting point is 00:20:23 You can't really digest it. So usually the stuff you eat, like Andy said, it triggers the release of this GLP, which tells your body, I'm full, don't eat any more. But then it goes away really fast. But if you eat loads of fiber, you know, some brown bread, some porridge, then that takes ages getting to your colon. And then that triggers way more release of it later on.
Starting point is 00:20:41 So as a Zempic does, it will tell you, I'm full two hours, three hours after you've eaten. There's a weird thing about Azempic, which is that it works inside the brain. So the anti-diabetic effect happens in your intestine, because that's where the GOP1 is released, and that is what triggers the body to slow down its release of sugar, for example, to prevent a big sugar spike. But scientists didn't know for a long time exactly how Azempic controls the mental sensation of hunger, and it shouldn't be possible for it to happen, because there's the thing in your body, the blood-brain barrier, which is meant to keep your brain
Starting point is 00:21:15 just working on nice, clean blood with no other stuff in it. Just stops any big molecules from getting in. And a Zempic, the drug, is a big molecule. So what the hell is going on? And it turns out that if a little bit gets in and that activates a bit of the brain stem which in turn acts as a kind of transmitter relay station
Starting point is 00:21:33 for other bits of the brain, that then makes your brain generate its own GLP1 because it's not only made in the intestine. So that's why you feel less hungry. That's really weird. Interesting. So there's another thing that I was going to mention off the back of A Wonderful Fibre would do this for you, and I don't think it does. One of the side effects of taking an ozambic and other weight loss drugs is a lot of people have reported the stopping of what they
Starting point is 00:21:56 call food noise. And food noise, I've never personally had it, but it's, if you need... I've sat next to you while you're eating and you do have a lot of... I have outward food noise, yeah, not inside food noise. And inside food noise is if you can't help but keep eating and keep eating, It's your head talking to you going, we need food, we need food right now. Do you see that place? Why don't you get some food? And it's this thing that people really suffer from when they're trying to be on a guy. I don't think it's always necessarily like a voice saying it.
Starting point is 00:22:22 It could be just a feeling. Exactly. They call it the noise and supposedly a Zempec knocks out the noise as well as suppressing the... But is that just because you feel full and so your bodies, your brains can stop saying it. I think people who are full still have the noise going, we could probably get a bit more. I'm sorry. Another donut. I know, come on, you could do it.
Starting point is 00:22:42 It's great that mold off the top, but it's still good. It is the case that it's not just about when you're full because it stops other cravings, I think. So it's supposed to be quite good for people who are addicted to other things. Yes. And unfortunately, people who are addicted to exercise, it seems to stop you from wanting to exercise. You don't need to any more you're in. We haven't actually mentioned the real major player in the O-Zempic story, and that is the great theme tune it has. Oh.
Starting point is 00:23:10 You know, Magic by a band called. pilot so that it's oh whoa oh it's magic you know that one okay okay Andy doesn't know it well we might not be able to put that in for legal reasons but we'll Google it if we haven't but they changed it to okay so oh oh oh oh it's magic they changed it to oh oh oh Zempic and so everyone was singing it and they were saying that psychologically they think it worked really well because it's such an upbeat song it makes you feel good but you all at the certain age know that the word that ozempic represents is magic and magic is now in your head and so the lead singer of of pilot had no idea that this was happening. He just started getting messages going,
Starting point is 00:23:46 I'm hearing your song everywhere in America. And he was like, what's going on? Because they're able to license the song out, no one had to ask him for its use of adverts and rewritten. It sounds like we can use it. Sing the whole thing. Unfortunately, it'll be owned by a huge multinational music company. That's the issue. Yeah. But so he himself is so on board with it that he's even gone back to Abbey Road to record the O-Zempic version of the song. Is it possible that all of the science behind a Zemper?
Starting point is 00:24:12 is nonsense and the only way it works is that that theme tune is replace food noise in people's heads that could be it should we go on to Gila Monsters
Starting point is 00:24:21 I said at the start we were blowing shit wide open they do open their bumps to keep cool yeah clever can they do it can they just
Starting point is 00:24:31 with thought or like with muscle movement they don't hold it open okay they don't have a posable thumbs stand that you can do
Starting point is 00:24:39 with a finger they could do each other's yeah Basically, a lot of reptiles keep themselves cool by opening their mouths. Yeah. But they can open the cloacas as well, which will help moisture evaporate, and it can cool them by up to three degrees. That is a lot for Gila monster parties that must be,
Starting point is 00:24:55 are you feeling too hot? No. I think you are. Shut your asshole at the dinner table. Because they're found in the deserts of North America, aren't they? They live underground mostly because it's so hot. They only come out for a few weeks each year. You just see a bum sticking out.
Starting point is 00:25:12 But their tail as well, right, is an amazing, like when I was reading about them, I thought, that's a cool thing. I wish we could do that as well. Store your fat in a tail? Yeah, so it means that they only need a few meals per year, basically. And if they're in trouble, that's their stock sitting there, all the fat in their tail. There's another thing they can do. And this, I'm afraid, it's sort of, it's at that end of the body related to the bum thing. They store water in their bladder, right?
Starting point is 00:25:36 And then the phrase I found was, they reabsorb it across the bladder epithelium. And what that means is they can, they can have. have a reverse piss inside themselves back into their system. Isn't that mad? Can they do that just with thought or do they have to shove the hands up? Squeeze. Okay, it is time for fact number three. That is my fact.
Starting point is 00:26:05 My fact this week is that for many years in the 2000s, New Zealand's highest earning sports personality was Tiger Woods' caddy. It's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? Well... Who's your greatest sports, does? by brute force of economics. It's this guy who carries stuff around. There's a lot more to it than that.
Starting point is 00:26:23 There's so much more. It's an incredible job. Being a caddy. If you don't carry the things around, you do get fired. That's undoubtedly the main part. I'll give you that. How much are we talking? Well, I very specifically worded it as personality.
Starting point is 00:26:39 Obviously, it's not sports star. You know, the 2000s, you would have had Jonah Lomu. You would have had all these characters. I didn't want to call, and his name is Steve Williams, I didn't want to call him very specifically a sports style. I would say he's famous in the golfing world. Absolutely. The reason he got so rich is because caddies have a salary, right? They get paid all year round by their golfers if they're playing the whole year.
Starting point is 00:27:03 But on top of that, when the golfer wins something, a percentage of it goes to the caddy. Now, those numbers are sometimes hidden. It's often thought to be 10% of what they get. So if you're winning, you know, a million dollars, that's a good. amount and he was Tiger Woods's caddy. There was an unprecedented, I think I'm right in saying James, moment in golf where he won all the majors. He won four at back to back. And would, were there signs on the golf course that it was going to the caddies head? Like, was he turning up with a golden bag? And things like this. You know. He had his own caddy. I think. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:27:36 I don't really do the carrying part. It's not really far me that. Yeah, I think they're all quite humble caddies actually having met a few in my life. Right. I think because it's historical, isn't it? It goes back to, you guys must have found this. It was like people in Edinburgh or something. A few hundred years. And they used to be kind of general porters in Scotland who were,
Starting point is 00:27:59 the word caddy was applied to just someone who was like a delivery driver kind of thing. Yeah. It was a kind of person who would pick you up something and bring it to your house. And they were unionized and stuff like taxi drivers kind of thing. And, you know, if you needed someone to do. do you a job, then you would just get a caddy to do it. Right. And the thing they seem very keen to emphasize now,
Starting point is 00:28:19 which probably people don't know who aren't into golf, is that there is more to it than carrying all the clubs around, even though that's the main part. And I didn't know that they do give lots of advice. I'd actually like to know from James, actually, in reality, on the golf pitch. Jesus. You know, how much do they do that? Because the idea is with a caddy, you have to know the whole course, like all the bumps and lumps.
Starting point is 00:28:41 Are they like a pilot for a ship? You know, you have pilots who know the local terrain and advise how to get out of this particular river without something. Okay, so if you play normal golf with your mates, you don't have a caddy. Okay. It'd be very rare to have a caddy.
Starting point is 00:28:54 Would you look like a real tool if you turned up with one? Yeah, you would. I mean, it would be insane. It would be utter, utter insanity. However, if you, like, let's say you go and play in St. Andrews, which is the oldest golf course, one of the oldest golf course is in the world, probably the most venerable.
Starting point is 00:29:08 You turn up. It's a really important moment in your life because you're a huge golf fan, they will have caddies there who will carry your bags for you and give you lots of tips. And they will really tell you, okay, on this hole,
Starting point is 00:29:20 it looks like you should go to the right, but actually it's better if you go to the left, that kind of thing. And in the professionals, though, would Tiger would have its caddy, you know, give him advice? Yeah, yeah, too good. Like, you know, in reality,
Starting point is 00:29:30 would it be a good shot. Yeah, so before the round start, your caddy would walk out and walk the whole course. They would make their books, which would tell you where all the shots come in from, the different yardages.
Starting point is 00:29:40 They, yeah, They just get loads about that. The suggestions about which irons to use, because you have multiple different ones. You have, you know, it goes even deeper than that. Like, for example, in Tiger Woods's case, there was one time when there was a boulder in the way of his ball. So he hit his ball and it landed behind a boulder. And they worked out that the boulder was loose on the ground, which meant it was a loose impediment. And his caddy Ciciface was able to temporarily remove it.
Starting point is 00:30:05 Just for the moment. Yeah. But no, and so that was his job. He had to get down. I think what happened there is they got a load of people. who are watching to move it. It was part of, actually, Tiger Woods had such a large team
Starting point is 00:30:14 that it was his team, but legally on the rules, you can have onlookers come and move an object. If it's just sort of resting on the ground rather than... Yeah, exactly. So because it was loose, he was allowed to move it. This Steve Williams,
Starting point is 00:30:25 who were talking about, he used to be the caddy for Raymond Floyd. One of his jobs was when Raymond hit the ball towards the hole, both Raymond and Steve had to stare at the ball and will it into the hole. That was part of his job.
Starting point is 00:30:39 Part of his job. That's good. Job description. Well, you might get fired if it doesn't go in and he looks at you and says, you weren't willing it. That was your fault. So, yeah. So, yeah, it's a real, it's like when you watch those car races that are off road where they've got someone sitting there with a little buck telling. It's like that.
Starting point is 00:30:57 Raleigh drivers. Yeah. Well, so there was a very famous caddy troupe in the Augusta National Golf Course, which I guess is the best biggest deal in the world as a golf course. One of the biggest deal. One of the biggest. A big deal. Yeah. It's where the Masters happened.
Starting point is 00:31:11 Correct. America. America. Thank you. In Georgia. Yes. Okay, got it, got it. And they had a very famous troop of caddies. So it was started in the 1930s, 1934, I think. And the caddies were all sourced from a local area, which was a completely black area. And they were all like black kids who were making a bit of extra money by carrying their bags around. And between 1934 and 1983, I think it was.
Starting point is 00:31:34 It was like all black caddies who were sourced from there. I think the first white caddy there was 1983 when Golver started bringing their own, which was very controversial. But the godfather of the Augusta caddies was this guy called Willie Pappy Stokes, who started when he was 12, and he ran this caddy school. But yeah,
Starting point is 00:31:51 they said a lot of the golfers at the time said it was completely down to the caddies that they won. There was a champion called Fuzzy Zella, who was very, we all know the champion called Fuzzy Zella. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know Fuzzy. And we all know that he was the only person
Starting point is 00:32:05 ever to win the Masters on his debut. And that when he did so, he said it was, nothing to do with him. He said he was led around by Jerry Beard, his caddy, like a blind man with a seeing eye dog. Fuzzy and Beard? Is that your takeaway of that? It's all I can remember.
Starting point is 00:32:24 Is this true, James? I don't know if you, as the person who plays golf here, they're known as the 15th club. I can understand that because you're only allowed 14 clubs. Right. And there's this great... But you're not allowed to use them for that, aren't? Rare circumstances where... They're a bit like the demon, daemon in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, you know?
Starting point is 00:32:46 Yeah, they're always a different animal. But they're so umbilically tied to the golfer, you know, there's a real team thing. There's a golfer, right, if I'm saying his name wrong, I'm sorry, Ian Wuznum. Correct. He was doing extremely well in 2000 in the Open Championship. He was playing the golf of his life. Was he? Yeah, he was very far ahead.
Starting point is 00:33:05 No, was he? Wuzzy. That is his nickname. Wuzzy? Yeah. As far as he ever played, Woozy? And then at this key moment
Starting point is 00:33:14 when he was doing brilliantly, his caddy said to him, there's too many clubs in the bag. And he'd miscounted the number of clubs. And the golfer, Wuznam, had to go up to the judge, umpire, man in charge. Rules official.
Starting point is 00:33:29 Biggo. And say, I've got 14, I've got 15 clubs. Yeah, he loses a shot for every hole, I think. He was penalised a couple of strokes and he lost his cool. And it was all the. fault of the caddy just not counting how many because he'd tried two different versions of the
Starting point is 00:33:44 same club and then they'd all just gone into the bag. That's terrible. And he was ahead and he would have won big money and then he didn't. And then he was forgiven, Wuzden and forgave him, probably through quite gritted teeth. And then the next, he failed to show up on time for an early tee-off. I think a few, not long after that, I think he got a show in the door. Fair. Absolutely fair. They do get fired every now and then. There's a guy called Robert Allenby, who's an Australian golfer and he has fired a couple of caddies, but one of them, he fired them halfway through the round. And so one of the spectators had to come in and carry his bag for the rest.
Starting point is 00:34:14 Really? It has got to be a serious infraction if it's. I think he was a troubled man at the time. Okay. They'd had a bit of a set two. Okay. Did the spectator provide the other, was he going, hit it sort of over that way?
Starting point is 00:34:27 A bit higher than you did before. It does sound really scary, like the intensity of some of these moments because of the penalties that you can get. They're fascinated by the rules of golf. There's a story from that same period, with Tiger Woods and with Steve Williams, where it's the final day of one of the major tournaments, and he's going into the bag to get Tiger Woods a ball.
Starting point is 00:34:48 And he's suddenly like, there's way less balls in here. There's only three balls in here. There's meant to be six. And what happened was Tiger Woods had been practicing putting in his hotel room and forgot to put three balls back inside. Okay, so that's what he was doing in his hotel room. So that's Tiger Woods' fault. Tiger Woods is fault, except no,
Starting point is 00:35:09 it's Steve's fault. Steve should have checked the balls before they started. Now the game is started and the issue is you can't say to the guy next to you can I borrow one of your balls if he's playing with a different one. You will get a penalty and strokes will be added to your count. So he's going, got three balls. Don't tell Tiger. It's absolutely fine. Tiger hits the first ball, scuffs it, goes, oh, this is crap, hands it to a kid. Steve goes, I can't take it off the kid. This is live TV. It's going to look so bad. So he doesn't do that. Then they go and then later in the game. It's very rare to ask a kid, can I have my ball back? Yeah, true.
Starting point is 00:35:41 And then he hits it off into, he hits into a spot where I think he wants to reset the ball. So he goes, give me my next ball. Now, Steve knows this is the final ball. Oh, God. So things are going to screw everything over for Tiger Woods if he doesn't land this next shot. I'm so stressed.
Starting point is 00:35:55 I know. That's the thing. It's like high octane. It's like a poly 13. Anyway, it makes a shot and it's fine. But like, you know, you don't really know what's going on. Is that it? Does it all right?
Starting point is 00:36:05 And it's all good. Yeah, it's all fine. Yeah. Right, okay. It's intense. It's so intense. There's one other caddy who got fired that I read about. I don't know if you guys know about him.
Starting point is 00:36:16 So first of all, they all have nicknames, apparently, which is quite cool. Like literally every Cali seems to have a nickname like John's stovepipe Gordon or Frank Marbleystokes. And there was one called Willie's Cemetery Pertit, who was Dwight Eiffenhowers' caddy. Oh. So his nickname Cemetery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So his nickname Cemetery. So he was fired in the end for being too old and slow.
Starting point is 00:36:35 But the way he got... We all get there eventually. James, your days are numbered. But the reason he got his nickname, it was given to him by Eisenhower, and it was because he, by night, was a jazz drummer, and he was leaving a gig, and he was jumped by this gang with knives
Starting point is 00:36:55 who had been sent by his ex-girlfriend, who was upset that he dumped her. And he was very badly injured. He was sent to hospital. People thought he was dead. He basically woke up in a morgue, staring into the eye of a mortician who was about to, you know, cover him
Starting point is 00:37:10 and wax whatever and embalm him because he'd been given the wrong meds and everyone thought he had died. Wow. And so from that day on he was called Dead Man until Eisenhower said, I don't like having a caddy who's called Dead Man. Shall we go with Cemetery? Isn't that
Starting point is 00:37:24 good? It's a good nickname story. That is good. That's really cool. That's a solid one. I wonder if he's in the Caddy Hall of Fame. He's not. He's not? Oh man. I had to look into the Caddy Hall of Fame. 130 men and women have been entered into the hall of them. Well, 129 men. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:37:40 Actually, 128 men. There's two women, but one of them isn't a caddy. So it's a lady, so Fannie Sunnison, who is a very famous caddy. She was Nick Faldo's caddy for many years. She's the only actual female caddy in there. The other person's called Laura Cohn, and she's who founded the Caddy Hall of Fame. And so she's in there for honorary purposes. Just to get herself in there.
Starting point is 00:38:03 Yeah. That's very fun. Someone else who's in it is George Lucas. Oh, yes. Yes. In a caddy, all of fame. Absolutely. George Lucas started his career as a caddy,
Starting point is 00:38:12 and he is actually the king of the yardage books that James mentioned, which are the books that now everyone carries around on the golf course. Actually, now they've been banned, actually. Have they been fully banned? Like as in the last maybe six months. I'm sorry, what's a yardage book? It's a thing where a book that was sort of invented by a few individual golfers in the 50s or 60s, where they drew up the complete lay of the land,
Starting point is 00:38:33 very detailed, all the contours, the distances, the angles and everything. And then this George Lucas guy was like, I'm going to make an official one. Spoiler, it actually wasn't the same George Lucas, I don't think. Although I didn't 100% check. It is a different George Lucas. What an incredibly, incredibly misleading fact. Jesus. Here we go.
Starting point is 00:38:53 I'm going to bring you back. Oh, great. Okay. He's actually more interesting than George Lucas. And they could be the same person because the way he measures all the distances is he goes around, or he went around golf courses with a laser and he fired lasers at different spots on the golf course and, you know, the time they took to bounce back
Starting point is 00:39:10 told him the distance it took, which if that's not a light save. A light save, yeah. I don't know what it is. Well, he does insist all the golfers he caddies for go as they're about to hit with the club, doesn't he? Wow. He's wild. What's his nickname?
Starting point is 00:39:25 He has a nickname. This is George Lucas. George, not that one. It was something like gorgeous Oh yeah gorgeous with a J Yeah Yeah wow Very nice
Starting point is 00:39:37 Okay I don't know how I got onto this But I was trying to find Sports where you can Bring a friend Like caddying I suppose Okay So you know weightlifting
Starting point is 00:39:49 You often have someone to like Help you with the weights No You wouldn't know someone to spot you You know when you're lifting a big heavy bar They might be able to step in If you get into difficulties or whatever Professional stuff
Starting point is 00:39:59 Do they? I don't know. But I found... They might do. They might do. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, just the Google... You know, what shows up automatically when you type in sports where you can.
Starting point is 00:40:10 It's quite interesting. You've got sports where you can be short. Oh, yeah. Fair few. I didn't look it up. Lindo. Sports where you can start late. And I thought, originally I thought that meant like at noon or whatever.
Starting point is 00:40:24 Actually, it turns out it's sports where you can start. If you want to be the L. Frank Baum of... Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Start late. I meant if you just, the gun's fired. Everyone's gone.
Starting point is 00:40:36 You go on. Just give me a second. I'll start on the next lap. Yeah, yeah. And most of those articles, I did follow this one. It's mostly, look, even if you're 12, it turns out you can start this sport and be fine at it in life. But the one exception does seem to be equestrianism. Yeah, jockeys.
Starting point is 00:40:52 So old. Show jumpers are often in their mid-40s. There was another New Zealander called Julie Braum, who debuted at the Rio Olympics, age six. And a lot of the horses are old too. Are they? In teenagers. In horses. In horses.
Starting point is 00:41:05 That's quite old for a horse. Yeah. We've spoken to a lot of sports people for our other podcast that we won't go into because No, I don't want to mention it here. It's embarrassing. It was last year when we did all that plug in. But occasionally, like I think shooters tended to be a bit late. And occasionally you do come up with someone who started when they're at university and stuff.
Starting point is 00:41:23 Like you get rowers who start university. Yeah. So it's time to get into it, isn't it? Yeah. Often in the Paralympics, you start later, which is quite hard to decide to do that. That's a slightly weird thing that I wasn't expecting to learn about caddying, which is I assumed that maybe it was an alternative career
Starting point is 00:41:39 once you tried to be a golfer, and then you pivoted into that as a secondary job. But Steve Williams started doing it at six, and a lot of caddies started when they were very, very young, and that was the primary job. Is it? Like, it's a job. That is interesting.
Starting point is 00:41:54 It's a skill. It's got this whole. The money is so variable, depending on whether you're tiger with scaddy or not, basically. And there have been some controversies. Like there was a goal for some years ago who he won $1.3 million on an event
Starting point is 00:42:06 and he paid his caddy $5,000. And that was a real controversy. That was that Jim Furik was it? It was Matt Kuchar. Oh, Matt Kuchar. That's right. Matt Kutja. And there was a little bit of backlash
Starting point is 00:42:18 to that at the time. But he said, look, we had an arrangement. He's very happy with it. He's own five grand at a week. Well done him. He's really happy with that. Honestly, still, people bring that up. To Coocha in interviews and stuff, yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:31 So they're discreet because Dan was saying you have to pay some of the prize money to them. But his normal caddy wasn't there, so he brought in a new person and said they'll pay you this flat sum. Right. So it's not a rule, which is like you have to pay them 10%. No, no, no. Just on rich sports people and jockeys, you can be super rich and old as a jockey. And do you know the... Keep talking.
Starting point is 00:42:52 So I happen to come across a list of the 50 most well-paid jockeys in the world. Current. And current. And 29 of them are Japanese, weird. 29 out of the top 50 are Japanese. It's huge in Japan because it's one of the only four sports you can gamble on legally. So they get loads of money. And the top guy, Utaka Take, is 56.
Starting point is 00:43:14 And he's earned a billion dollars. But actually, I think a lot of that money was when he was a sumo wrestler before he got the Azenpix. You're absolutely correct. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that if 88 elephants balanced on a 50-p piece on a parrotfish's beak, the beak would not break. What part is the 50-p piece playing in this?
Starting point is 00:43:49 It feels like an unnecessary intermediary layer. I'll tell you, I'll tell you what part is playing. Pressure is depends on area. And I have to say, and I have to come out and say it at the top, Because otherwise someone's going to mention it, I was clicking through some stuff, and I ended up reading an article in Scientific American called Fun Facts About Teeth. And yes, I'm a senior QI researcher, and it's a long time since I read an article called Fun Facts About X. But it was a good article, and it was in this article, and it said it's about an inch.
Starting point is 00:44:16 So if you have a square inch, so I thought 50p is about an inch, probably, one of the old ones. I had the 50P on its side. Did you hit on its edge, but it's not. No, sorry. No, I think that would break it. Sorry. No, it's a 50P laid down flat. Then I've got a big apology to make to my parrotfish. And this is just...
Starting point is 00:44:39 We're going to cut to live to see the experiment in action. Abort! Abort! Have you factored in the weight of the 50p? Because it's exactly 88 elephants. I haven't. Okay, it's 87.999 elephants and a 50p. Asian or African elephants?
Starting point is 00:44:58 Bucks. Are we talking full-grown males? or are we talking newly hatched? I'm just going to give you the amounts, okay? Let's just take away the stupid metaphor, and I'll tell you that one square inch can take 530 tonnes of pressure. You happy?
Starting point is 00:45:11 Okay, what's a parrotfish? Okay, thank you. So it's a fish, and they have these beaks, so that the fish you often see on coral reefs gnawing away, and they're quite beautiful. Often. Once you move the elephants out of the way. Yeah, it wasn't a great dive.
Starting point is 00:45:32 The reef was covered in an elephant dung. It was horrible. That's why they're dying out. They have, they're very beautiful, except for their faces, I would say. And maybe it's just a personal thing. I get that a lot. Because they've got these weird beaks. And it looks a little bit like if you've ever seen, what's it called,
Starting point is 00:45:55 the sheephead fish, which has almost human, giant human teeth. But their beaks are made from, about a thousand teeth arranged in 15 rows, but that have been compressed and compressed and compressed and sort of a molecular level woven to make them incredibly hard. It's the stiffest biomineral ever found, which of course is not the same as the hardest.
Starting point is 00:46:14 It's only the second hardest. What's the difference between stiff and hard? The question it took me. I've had a long time to work that out. Did you have to be you did? Harder as if you like get a diamond on it. One of them will scratch the other. Yes.
Starting point is 00:46:26 Yes. Okay. That's hardness. Diffness, I think, is more about how better. It's commendable it is. So if you try and dent it with your fingernail, it will dent the least out of any. What did you call it, biomineral?
Starting point is 00:46:37 Biomineral. Yeah, basically just a thing that's made by nature. It's fluoropatite, right? Yes, flora appetite. And flora appetite is the same stuff as you get on your teeth if you use fluoride toothpaste. Your teeth create floraepatite, which makes them so strong. I did not know that.
Starting point is 00:46:54 Yeah. So it's sort of, but I would not be able to, for example, as these fish do, chew coral. No, because most of your teeth are made of dentine and other stuff, but you do get small amounts of fluoropatite and your teeth have used flooring. That is very cool. But don't try the elephant trick. Okay. Okay, so these parrotfish, they're very good in a way for coral reefs, despite the fact they eat large chunks of coral reef because the reef gets some algae growing all over it, doesn't it?
Starting point is 00:47:20 And that slightly inhibits the growth and the natural functioning of it. So along comes Mr. Parifish and just crunch, crunch, crunch. Yeah. Because it wants to eat the algae. Weird thing is the parrotfish don't want to eat the coral. They just want to eat the algae on it. But it's bloody hard to scrape off, isn't it? Well, there are loads of species.
Starting point is 00:47:36 Some of them just scrape off, and some of them do more gouging. They do all kinds of varieties. But they're massive. So each adult green humphead parrotfish, which is a particular species of parrotfish, they're the biggies. They can get about a meter and a half long. They can eat five tons of reef per year. It's a lot. It's so much.
Starting point is 00:47:57 Yeah, and then they pooed out, we've mentioned before, as sand basically. A beautiful white sand. They're responsible for so much. They're put out hundreds of pounds per year. A single parrot fish can produce up to 90 kilograms of sand each year, which is enough to fill the most popular parasol holder on Amazon. At the bottom of a parasol, you have a really heavy sort of thing. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:48:19 But it's not always heavy, because otherwise how do you get it to the beach? What you do is you bring it to the beach, then you fill it with sand, and that makes it heavy and stops your parasol from blowing away. Sorry. Anyway, we're the only produced that. That actually is quite disappointing to me. One parrotfish would fill that in a year. Well, that's less than I thought.
Starting point is 00:48:35 At first I thought you were talking about one of those parasols that ladies had in, like in my fair lady. Exactly. Yeah. But you mean a big one. I don't think we've said before about parrotfish. One of the other brilliant things about them is that they have two sets of jaws. Okay. Like the alien in alien.
Starting point is 00:48:52 You know, they open the mouth, then a-oh, there's a little mouth inside. A second one. Okay. What are they using it for? What's a word for that? There is a word for that, isn't it? Pharyngeal teeth. Pharyngeal.
Starting point is 00:49:02 So I think moray eels have them. Yes. And a few other things, but they're really rare. If you're diving a wreath with feroencial teeth, that's a moray. Look at that. James, that's beautiful. Brilliant. And those are the teeth which grind up the coral and turn it into sand, basically.
Starting point is 00:49:20 Yeah, okay, right. So the main teeth just bite off chunks, and the fernigial teeth are the ones that do that. A fine milling of the coral. You mentioned the giant bumphead parrish, the big ones. Yeah. And they, so they fight each other by headbutting, which I think was only filmed recently for the first time. And it's just, it's quite funny to watch because they've got quite thin heads. Like if you look at them face on, they're almost two-dimensional.
Starting point is 00:49:42 So you watch them going after each other and they miss each other. About three quarters of the time. They just whizz past each other and then spiral back around and then eventually bump into each other. It's like jousting. Yes, yeah. Did that happen a lot in jousting? You just went straight past. I saw some josting last summer at a castle.
Starting point is 00:49:59 Of course you did. What do you mean, of course you did? You're a Renaissance man. Thank you. Oh, you really flipped that into a compliment. That was amazing. Yeah, no, it was great. But they didn't.
Starting point is 00:50:09 Was it not violent? Oh, it was. Oh, that's why you liked it. Well, I blindfolded myself for the violent bits. But I, no, it was, it wasn't too, there wasn't enough gore. It was, you know, everyone walked away. Okay. What was it?
Starting point is 00:50:21 Like, it was a... It was just a, I think it was Hever Castle in Canada. Beautiful, Anne Boleyn's old house And they were just having a Sort of medieval faria And it was jousting And we all There was a great hype man dressed as Henry the 8th
Starting point is 00:50:35 Who was doing a lot of crowd work And then they did a good Good bash at each other It was really fun And was it as with the giant bumper parrotfish That the winner got to shag the woman at the end That does explain why They sent us all home
Starting point is 00:50:48 Wow So that's how that ends That's how that ends Yes yes it is Although they all start out, almost all parrotfish start out as women, don't they? As females. There are a few that are born male known as primary males, but quite rare. And then as they get older, they get sexually mature.
Starting point is 00:51:09 And the biggest female in the group has a sex change, I think. Well, it's one male and then a load of females. So it's a Harim situation. And then one day the male wakes up and finds out, oh, hello, my biggest girlfriend has turned into another bloke, who's now challenging me. This is a nightmare scenario. And the thing I find amazing about it is that if you've got the Harim, which they do seem to be referred to as a female and a male,
Starting point is 00:51:31 but then the male dies, another female will know to change sex. And how does that happen? Does she think about it or does she kind of go inside? Do some moulding. There is a different kind of parrotfish. So these are not the only fish that get called parrotfish. This is a, I never know how to say it.
Starting point is 00:51:51 Sitchlid. Oh. I always call them chick lid, but I don't. think they are chicklids. That's a word that I always mispronounce. Sicklid is what I... Let's land on that. C-I-C-H-L-I-D. But they are called the Parrarfish. And these were invented in the 80s. I just find that's so weird. I like sea monkeys. They were a hybrid of two different cichlids, sicklids. And I was on Tropical Fish
Starting point is 00:52:14 magazine website, which said it was as improbable as Steve Urkel and Madonna getting together. That's one for the old bees, isn't it? Steve Urkel? Well, Dan knows who Steve Erkel is. No, I don't actually know what show he was from. I can't remember. Oh, God. But he was like a very annoying sort of nerdy American.
Starting point is 00:52:33 Point Dexter sort of like. Oh, right. And who's Madonna? Which is the Virgin Mary, which is why it would be so surprising for to cop off with Steve Urkel. But they get bread, because they're breedable ones. These are for aquarium nuts because they're on tropical fish magazine. They get bread jelly bean parrotfish, which have been soaked in a dye and artificially colored.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Some of them have tattoos. So they're soaked and a dye and then permanently they say that colour? Yeah. Wow. Some of them have tattoos on. You get people who tattoo their fish. It feels bizarrely unnecessary because of all the fish, parafish are famously beautiful patterns and colours.
Starting point is 00:53:08 And everyone is different. And those are proper pair of fish, not these sick. These are the proper fat pairfish. Oh, so maybe these ones are a bit more dull and they wanted to be more like the proper ones. So they tattooed them. Very weird. But yeah. And they get even more colourful when they're pissed off.
Starting point is 00:53:21 So in their defending territory, they'll get even more attractive. Yeah, vibrant. There's quite a few species of them as well, right? There's between 60 and 90 subspecies of a parrotfish. So when we're talking about one, a thing we're saying might not occur in another subspecies. But they do do that thing that we've mentioned on the show before as well, where they create a mucus bag when they go to sleep.
Starting point is 00:53:41 So it's a sack that they just sleep in overnight. It looks amazing, doesn't it? It looks incredible. And that means that they sleep so long, they're so lazy. They sleep 10 hours a night. Oh, I imagine. I know. You just need to learn to build your own mucus.
Starting point is 00:53:53 bubble. I have been trying. I have been trying, Anna. Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. We need to clean this room every time. They do it every night. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:03 It takes an hour, I think. The idea is that they do it to stop parasites right. And the way that they worked that out is scientists got a load of them in a pool or something. And when they made their sleeping bags, once they'd fallen asleep, the scientists sort of very slowly pulled the blankets off them. So they didn't have them anymore. And then they put parasites in and found who got bitten the most and they got way, way more. Oh, that's interesting. Because there's also a theory that they are using it so that if anyone is trying to pull the blankets off,
Starting point is 00:54:34 they've got time to escape rather than just being outright sitting there to be eaten. I'm sure there's multiple reasons behind it. Yeah. So it's for big predators and small ones. In a way, yeah. That's what pajamas are for. That's great. Your pajamas are covered in metal spikes, aren't it?
Starting point is 00:54:50 But no parasites on Andy. No, exactly. There was a test on the Moro Eels actually An experiment just while we're on the experiments done on these things So on the pharyngeal jaws The cool thing about them for the Morales Is that it means they don't need to feed in water Oh, well they can grab something like a mosquito or something
Starting point is 00:55:10 Kind of or a little bit of prey outside But I find this so weird Basically it's to do with the mechanics of how you eat Like all other fish need to be in water The mechanics of water so that they can feed It's just we would find it difficult to eat if we were submerged in water. Do you know what I mean? The mechanic, the physics doesn't work as well.
Starting point is 00:55:26 So the scientists who did this on the eels, they trained the eels. They took five years training seven eels to slither up a ramp, grab a mouthful of fish from outside the water and then go back into the water. I don't think there was evidence that they were doing this before. They were eating outside water, but I think they were trying to show how these drills worked. What if that knowledge spreads among the eel community and now... They all leave the ocean. Yeah, I mean, again, that's the start of a horror movie, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:55:54 Like beachgoers... Oh, you mean disastrous for us? I was thinking disaster for the eels, but you're afraid of the... I just think we shouldn't be teaching animals to come out of the water and bite live prey and go back in. Yeah? Sorry if that makes me old-fashioned. Guy who's seen a jousting match at a castle. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts.
Starting point is 00:56:22 Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact... with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland, James. My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. And Andy, I'm on at Blue Sky. Oh, I don't know how to... Am I, you, you are at Blue Sky. Oh, gosh. I'm old. I think I'm at Andrew Hunter M on Blue Sky. I'm not sure. Okay. Nice. Good luck, everyone. With that hunt. Or you can get to us as a group through various different means, Anna, what's the best? Yes, you can email podcast
Starting point is 00:56:59 at QI.com or you can tweet at No Such Thing or you can Instagram and no such thing as a fish. That's right. If you want to find out anything more about us, our club fish, you want to find all our previous episodes, you want to just read general stuff about us. You can go to no such thing as a fish.com. All of that stuff is there. But otherwise, come back next week. We'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.

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