No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Love Spaghetti

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss dating, writing, inventing and horning. 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

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Fish. Before we get going, I just want to quickly let you know about two very exciting global live streaming events that we are going to be doing on the 5th and 6th of September. So we're going to be playing the London Podcast Festival. And as well as playing to a live room full of people at King's Place in London, we will be live streaming the event so that you can watch it from wherever you are in the world. So for those who have never made it to a live show before and always wondered what it's like, this is the first. full experience. This is a sort of warts and all version that you'll get to see. It's all the bloopers, it's all the extra bits that end up getting edited out. There's all the admin at the top of the show. Who doesn't love admin at the top of a show? Imagine getting to see that. It's going to be a great night. Also, as Anne is now off on maternity, we're going to be joined by some really fun guests. We've already sort of announced one of them on Instagram, but if you didn't see that video, on the 6th of September, we are going to be joined by one of the UK's best-selling authors of all time, Richard

Osmond. That's going to be an awesome show. That's on the sixth. We'll be making another announcement for who will be joining us on the fifth soon. But in the meantime, if you want to get tickets, they are available now. Just go to no such thing as a fish.com slash live and get your live streaming tickets now. All right, last thing to say before we get into the show, some very exciting news back at QIHQ. The Lunchbox envy podcast has been picked up by BBC Sounds. So if you happen to listen to your podcast there, do type in the words, Lunchbox MVP now. And you'll be able to get access to the most quite interesting food-based podcast there is in podcast land. Each episode deals with a different kind of food. So the episode that went up a few days ago was all

about cheese where they answer the big cheese questions like, you know, how do they put the holes in Swiss cheese? Who eats the world's hardest cheese? Why do people put Parmesan into a bank? All the biggies. And there's over 30 episodes you can access now everything from pastry through the butter and chocolate. You must check them out, but specifically do check them out now at BBC Sounds. All right. Let's get into the show. So on with the podcast. 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 Anna Tishinsky, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray. And once again, we have gathered around 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 if you are 20 years old now, there is a chance that your great grandparents might have met thanks to computer dating. It doesn't make sense. I had to ask James to explain this, even after we'd said this to be our fact.

That doesn't work, James, and he proved it. Go on, prove it. So for the hard of thinking who are listening, this is an article that I read was written by Adrian Covert in Gizmodo, and it's about a guy called Lewis Altfest. And Lewis saw a pen pal machine, which let you fill down to questionnaire, and then it fed it into a machine, and it found you the perfect pen pal. And he decided that he would do the same with dating. So he called up his friend called Robert Ross, who worked at IBM, and they made a computer program called TACT that stood for technical automated compatibility testing.

They did that in New York, and it was in 1964. So, for instance, if your great grandparents got together due to TACT in 19. 1964. Your grandmother could be born in 1965. She could have had your mother in 1985 and then your mother could have had you in 2005 and you would be 20 this year. It's stunning. It was amazing at the time. It was such like everyone thought computers would know the answer as well. It wasn't the best at pairing people. It did at one point match an older brother with his younger sister. They have a lot in common. And I turned out fine.

Yeah, that actually weirdly I think shows it does work. Shared interests. Yeah. You haven't put in the anti-incest layer into the program. You haven't clicked that button. Most people would click that button. He was crossing his fingers, that guy. So is this the one, because I read about one of the very early computer dating services,

and it asked clients to pick from the dislikes. And the dislikes were, I'd say very much of their time. Yes, this is the one you're talking about. So from 1 to 6, it was, what do you think about affected people? I think that's a really good question. Like, I'm a bit affected, you know. You mean like people who have affectations? Exactly, a bit pretentious.

I presume. And that's going. It wasn't a typo for infected because that. But who's saying I love those? Are there people going? Well, at the 60s. Some people had affectations in the 60s and that was cool. It was the new age, man.

But I think like it wasn't that you only pick one of them. You kind of picked them in order, that kind of thing. Because 2 through 6 of. that you might dislike were birth control, foreigners, free love, homosexuals and interracial marriage. But it never says sisters. Yeah, that was true. So you paid $5 basically and you would answer loads of questions. You would also, the men would be asked to rank women's hairstyles. Women would be shown pictures of men in different settings.

So there'd be a man chopping wood, a man who was painting and a man who was in a garage working with a drill. and you had to say which of those you fancy the most. The drill and the chopping wood are very similar, aren't they? What are the two different personality types? Well, some people are more discerning than you, Anna. That just sounds like outdoorsy versus indoorsy to me. I suppose, drill is indoorsy. I think, like, chopping wood shows muscular strength,

whereas drill shows more kind of industrial ability. DIY maybe. Yeah. And these things, they started off, and they were kind of thought of as a gimmick. So, for instance, this guy at Altfest, he just gave. up in the end on his tact. But actually, he met his partner due to tact. Did he? Yeah, so he married a reporter who'd come to interview him about how terrible his machine was. And they hit it off. Yeah, they were funny. There was another one in 1965 in New York, which was called Operation Match.

I was reading the memories of someone who went on one of those and had three very unsuccessful dates. But the way all these things worked, I guess, is you sent in a bit of money and you filled out a questionnaire, which could be very long. So the operation matched with 75 questions. And then they took your questionnaire and they tried to match it up with others using a computer algorithm, which is why it was computerized or computer dating.

But the questions were, I couldn't work out why this one existed. So there was a question in this one, which was, I'd consider dating a woman as young as or a man as old as. So if you're a man, it was a woman as young as 17 or whatever. And if you were a woman, it was like,

I consider dating a man as old as that. Yeah, right. But you wouldn't ask a woman I consider dating a man as young as. Did it just assume that women would date men who were infinitely young? The cougar had not been invented. That's what we're saying. Yeah, I think that is what we're saying. Yeah, I suppose so.

Very weird. And then are you sexually experienced or inexperienced? And also, what does this mean? Is extensive sexual activity preparation for your marriage? Yes or no? Answer, see previous questions. So Operation Match was invented. by Jeff Tar and Vaughan Morrill.

Jeff Tar met his wife, not by going on and doing it himself, but someone who was using Operation Match said, oh, I know someone who you'd be good with. So they met up, they got married. They had a daughter called Jennifer. She goes on to marry the co-founder of OKCupid. No.

Yeah. Whoa. Dynasty. Yeah. So dating apps are declining a lot, right? In the UK, I think users are dropping. Really? Of the really big sites, things like Tinder. And it's because people get exhausted

and they get burned out with them. And it's just this endless array of new faces. You can start thinking everyone's the same. And it's also, it's very sort of private. So the pool of dates is massive, but you don't have any friends in common. So people often behave badly. You know, they don't get back in touch or whatever.

I see. Yeah, so if you date someone who's a friend of your friend, then you kind of feel like you can't be an asshole because it will get back to you. There's a shame mechanism in there, whereas you can absolutely just ghost some random person you've met once and all that. Can you?

I don't know. But I found the, I found this claim that some sites are saying things like if you pay a lot extra. Like if you pay 45 quid a month, you'll go on three times as many dates, right? Okay. So this is just to say, yesterday I said to my wife, I'm downloading Hinge, by the way, because I wanted to test if there are special offers on. But what I forgot to say was that I was doing this as part of podcast research.

From her perspective, I just said, I'm downloading Hinge. I want to see if they've got special offers on right now. Okay. Let's not put out this fact ever and then she'll never have cause to believe that's what you were doing. I think my favourite thing is love Getty. Did you come across this gadget?

1.3 million were sold, so it was quite popular. Is it spaghetti? Love spaghetti. It's just for people who love spaghetti, yes. Is it not people who just love John Paul Getty? It's neither of these things. Or Getty images? Is that the other? Any further guesses?

It's like get you love. Love Getty. It's a love getter. There we go. And this was a thing in Japan in 1998. Basically, it was a thing that you kept in your pocket. And if you saw someone who was a bit fit, then you turned it on. And if they had the same gadget, then their gadget would buzz. Or you can keep yours on all the time.

And whenever you were within 15 feet of someone who had a gadget that was also turned on, it would buzz. And you could be like, oh, my God, something's buzzing. Can I just say, so what you do is when you see someone attractive, you start fiddling in your pockets. I mean, yeah. There's a small vibration. I don't think you need a buzzer.

I think people are going to know what you think immediately. It's such a bad idea. Like it's a stalker's charter. But also the floor seems to be that, let's say I'm looking across the room at Barry and I think he's hot and I turn my thing on. And Barry doesn't have one of these love getty's, but Norman on the other side of the tube carriage does have one. His goes off and then he's looking at me thinking she fancies me.

She's fiddling at a pattern. She's fiddling. Is that a love getty in the pocket? In Spain at the moment, if you go to supermarkets after 7 o'clock, you might not be able to get a pineapple. Okay. Is this research for this part? Just a complaint from my last holiday. No, so this is a TikTok video that's been going around telling people that if you're lonely to go to your nearest Macedonia supermarket to take a pineapple and put it upside down in your shopping cart and then see if anyone else is doing the same.

and if two upside-down panopals see each other, then they might get together. So that's just like the Love Getty. It's a slightly more basic version of Love Getty, but at least you've got deniability. Whereas if you've got a Love Getty, it buzzes. Whereas if you've just got a pineapple, you could say, oh no, I'm just...

It's upside down, though, isn't it? Just sold that way. I'm making a pinocalada. Well, the problem is that basically the trend has taken off a little bit in Spain. Police have been called to unruly crowds of people trying to find pineapples. and employees of Mercodonia are so sick of it they've been hiding their pineapples at five to seven so no one can get them

It's a huge pain People just walking around the shop With a single pineapple in their basket You're a business here You're trying to sell other goods Do we not think they buy the pineapples at the end Do you think some people probably just do it Get their date and then put the pineapple back?

I think if you don't get the date You would do that if you do get the date Probably you want to show that you're not a skin flint And that you can afford a pineapple That's a really good point I'll get this darling Yeah. Does that happen here?

Is that just in Spain? Just in Spain. The supermarket chain Mercadonia has yet to get into the British market. But next time, Andy, you're in a supermarket with your wife. Just make sure it's the right way up. That and hinge combined. Something's definitely going on. Well, do you remember Ashley Madison, the cheating website?

No. Do you not? Damn. That was so important. The what website? Well, this is listening. of hacked email addresses says different. Okay, to move on.

Time for pack number two. No, no, no. This is amazing, right? So it was an affairs website. It marketed itself to, like, mostly blokes. You say, hey, you want to have an affair, then join Ashley Madison. They were hacked into by some disgruntled staffers or former staff or something. And ha, ha, ha, ha, it turned out, 95% of the members of Ashley Madison were men, right?

So that was the headline that went round the world. It was quite a big story at the time. The really interesting thing is, A journalist called Annalie Newitz looked into it, found something much more perturbing. It was that the parent company, who were called Avid Live Media, had made 70,000 fake women bots. They would just say things like, hi, and what's up? And the men thought they were talking to real women. Like, there were 11 million interactions in the database between human men and bot women,

and the men were paying for every message. Right. And the company was paying workers to generate these fake profiles. So it was basically real people interacting with bots. having no idea about it. That's quite, that's the really sinister thing, you know. And let's talk about our level of sympathy for these men. Because I suddenly feel really bad for them.

But I suppose they had gone on a website to cheat on their wives. In a way, they're doing something good, aren't they, this company? Because this hypothetical man has gone on the website to cheat on his wife, but they're just putting a fake thing up that he can chat to. So he's not going to be able to have the affair. What is sin? I think is what we're asking. He thinks he is sinning, so is he?

If I'm just talking to a chatbot, that's for guys. I remember years ago when it was the rise of niche dating places when I was single, I went onto, I think it was like a ghost hunter's dating site. Yeah, and I got on it and it's just men. It's just all men. But the ghost dating. Yeah, but their profiles with their blurb came up and all of them sounded so interesting. So I actually messaged a couple.

Yeah, just to say like, hey, can you tell me about ghost hunting? because I'm not actually interested sexually. I'm just like, you sound really interesting. Who would like to meet? I've got one last example of someone who made it big in the world of creating online dating, a guy called Gary Kremen, who created Match.com. What's impressive about him is he seemed to have just cleaned up on domain names early on, right? Because that's where he's made a large fortune from.

So he owned sex.com. Can you imagine owning sex.com? Wow. And there was a big case where someone forged fake documents so that the domain name went over to them. And he had to fight them for years and years. And there's now an outstanding bill of 65 million that is owed to Gary Cremant, which has not yet been paid by this person. What's on Sex.com? Is it porn, I guess?

He was going to use it in the way that he was using Match.com. But Match.com just flew into huge success immediately. So it was just kind of sitting there dormant. He also owned Computer.com, which he sold for 500,000. But he set up Match.com And even his girlfriend found a partner on there, which wasn't him. She joined up and met someone else and left him. Yeah.

And he said, look how successful it is. What are you hoping for if you buycom? It's just old people going on Google and typing computer. Because they think that's how they turn it on. It's very much like Donald Trump's saying everything is computer now. It's a bit... Okay. Okay, it is time for fact number two.

And that is My Fact this week is that one of the original 57Bes, Boy Scout badges was the invention badge, which required kids to not only invent something new, but obtain a patent for it too. It's so hard. I mean, it's a lengthy process to get a patent in America for an invention. Is it hard? Because there's so much random shit that's been patented that you see. That never went in any out.

I always seem it's a piece of piss, actually. Yeah, I always thought you could just draw a picture on a beer mat and just send it in and then give you a patent. I think it works like that. This idea of yours for a beer mat is incredible, so not as easy as it looks. Is it quite a process? Well, I think it costs. You've got to pay in order to have it accepted to the submission and so on. Yeah, it's a lengthy process.

And basically they dropped the badge largely because no one was really achieving it. So the invention badge, it's part of the American Boy Scouts specifically. There were 57 original merit badges that you could get, like archery and swimming and so on, and invention was part of it. So that launched in 1911, and they took it out by 1914, and only 10 scouts. in that time managed to get it, which I think is a very high number. Actually, only nine got it in that time. One person got it in 1915 because you'd already started with his inventions. So they're like, oh, well, I guess you can have it.

That's apparently one of the rules with a badge that's been stopped. If you've started the process trying to get it, you can, yeah, finish it. And the inventions have not survived. Most of them have not survived. We don't know what was patented. But we do know one by Graham Thomas Smallwood, which was a Scouts uniform with a removable sleeve to stop your Boy Scout badge arm getting dirty. I think it's a great idea.

It's really good. But it's, yeah, it's not just that. You could take the sleeve off and use it to sew badges onto it. You can carry on wearing the rest of your Boy Scout thing. Just take the whole jacket off, mate. We must have another shirt. But I think you still had, from what I could see on the drawing, you still had an underneath sleeve.

It was a sort of on top. So it's not, you didn't look like someone had just ripped your sleeve off. Well, there's a few different things you could do. You could do that. And then you could also put a secondary sleeve on top of your other sleeve. So it's like a prophylactic sleeve. Was that so it matched the other side? No, it starts getting dirty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sleeve getting dirty. And we've all got these things these days. So, like, you're walking down the street and you lean on some wet paint. And everyone laughs at you because you've got paint on your arm. You go, ha-ha, and you pull off your fake sleeve. Amazing. There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Richly deserved patent and badge. I can't believe he's not famous. A terrific badges back in the day. Other discontinued Boy Scout badges on the Wikipedia for them is top-draud reading. There's beef, production.

Yep, that's good. Lost until 1975. You get a Boy Scout badge for beef production. Blacksmithing, nut culture, hog and pork production, taxidermy. Interestingly, hog and pork production was discontinued in 1958. So I wonder what the discrepancy between pork and beefers. We must keep the beef, the Beef Scouts going. Is it, were there a lot of nine-year-old farmers in those days?

No. To get the pork production badge, you needed to confer with meat market men. and from their instruction draw a diagram of a hog and mark and name the parts for butcher classification. I think that is good. I think our children should be learning that kind of stuff. I love those details, all the things that they had to do. Like a farmhouse and planning was one of the merit badges you could get.

And as part of that, you had to present a drawing plan of sewerage disposal for a country home. Amazing. I mean, these are the skills of the future. I don't know. I don't like that element. It reminds me a lot of Duke of Edinburgh. I don't know if anyone did that, where basically you thought it was just going on a fun walk and there's all this background stuff you also have to do.

So all the badges still, there's the family life badge, which is quite nice. It basically means being a good little boy or girl to your parents. But you have to write this full proposal, don't you, at the start? And make lists and then submit various essays on it. It doesn't mean anything to be good to your parents if you're doing it just to get a badge, does it? I think whatever works.

I'm not saying. I agree. Stalking badge was another one, by the way. Stalking. That had to go. They just renamed that as tracking just to make it more acceptable. Nice. Do you know what the rarest badge that anyone got in 2024 was?

Again, this is all American Boy Scouts, we should say. In fact, I think pretty much everything we've said is American Boy Scouts. So, okay, I would say in 2024, because there are like some old school badges like hog and pork production, but there are new ones like, you know. Being woke or whatever. Yeah. Is it one of the new or the old school ones that was the least common? Oh, it's old school.

I reckon. Is it motorboating? Because I think that... You can't put your head between women's boobs? Well, that's the thing. I think that's got connotations now. It is a badge, but I bet a lot of people are doing the wrong thing when they try to get it. I see what you mean. Only one kid actually drove a motorboat.

The others all just went, and I hope they get it. My God. It's not that. I'm trying to think if this actual thing could have any sexual connotation. Is it like a schooner construction? I mean, it's a very difficult thing to guess, really. It's something that you might associate with the army as opposed to the scouting movement.

Okay. Something that one person in an army regiment would do. Oh, only because I read through the big list. Is it bugling? It's bugling. Yes. I don't know if that is another sexual term. It feels like it probably should be.

Certainly could be, couldn't it? But, yeah, the least common are bugling, surveying, stamp collecting, drafting, composite materials. and then it goes on. We've lost so many of our traditions. The top three, or top one. Top one badge in 2024. I think pioneering, because it's so classic. That's one with like ropes and building plants.

Not where you put it with pioneer. Got to get off urban dictionary.com. I just hope to God, Anna, you never be a young boy scout who tells you they're doing a motorboating. And you go on, go on, man. Show me your skills. Don't mind my mate with the pisoners is. He's just going for his. So pioneering, that's your guest, right?

This is easy to get, I reckon. Is it like helping a person? It's helping a person, but in a very specific way. Helping old women across the road. There's no badge for that. First aid, correct. And the biggest gain in popularity in 2024. This one went from the 121st most popular badge

to the 81st most popular badge. And it's something that one of us round this table enjoys. But it's a skill. So it's whang on about electric cars or something. Thank you. Was it being a lush, James? Being weird on ghost dating websites. I wasn't being weird.

It was friendly. It was friendly ghost. The wife guy badge. No. No, it wasn't. It was the golf badge. Oh. Clever.

Cloth twist. It was him. Yeah, yeah. We were looking at the, that's very good. That's very good. There is this really big thing of, oh, all the badges they've gone, all woke, blah, blah, blah. And it's a very, very tiresome talking point because there are things like there's a money skills one or the scouts digital citizen or this. Actually, loads of them are just absolutely straight down the line like athletics, air researcher, angler, caver, climber, they're just absolute route one classic scoutster.

Oh yeah, they're all the classics. Except one of the really early classics, the swastika badge, which I don't think was on my list. No. Baden Pound loved the swastika badge. What? He thought it should be like the defining badge of the Scouts. So what are you talking about? In 1921, he wrote quite rightly that the swastika is a symbol used in every part of the world, in the ancient world, in modern day.

But now it stands for the badge of fellowship among scouts. And how you used it was, if you're a Boy Scout, you always carried around a collection of swastika badges. And if someone did you a good turn, like gave you a leg up or a pie, then you gave them a badge. And you said, always wear this. And that means if a Boy Scout ever saw you, they had to offer to do you a good turn. So are we misunderstanding the Nazis? They just did a lot of good turns for the scouts over the years. I think that was it, yeah.

It was actually just a big sponsored march into Poland. Because Baden Powell. Because that was obviously when the swastika had not been adopted by the Nazis. But he was a bit fascistic. So in 1937, he wanted to form close ties with German youth movements. He wrote in his diary in 1939 that Minecraft was a wonderful book with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation, etc. I would agree on the propaganda front. It did work, didn't it?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, he couldn't have known how it would turn out. Yeah, wow. That shows the swastika thing in a whole new light. I don't want to say, by the way, I'm not saying he was an out-and-out fascist. He was just a complicated character, very odd-fashioned these days. But I had amazing ideas about getting young people organized and working together, helping each other, all of things. that, like raising good citizens. And it impressed the world. So the reason the American Scouts started,

there's an origin story, which is such like, it's like King Arthur. It's just like total bullshit. But it's a guy called W.D. Boyce. And W.D. Boyce is one of the five co-founders of the scouts. Scouting for Boyce. Scouting for Boyce. So you got Baden Powell, who obviously is the British originator. But in America, you then had W.D. Boyce. You had Daniel Carter Beard, James E. West. And then you had Ernest Thompson Seton. The idea is that W.D. Boyce was in England. He's an American newspaper guy, and he was walking through a foggy street at night, couldn't really see anything, when out through the fog came a Boy Scout and said, let me help you across the road and let me get you to where you need to go. And he thought, wow, this young man with impeccable behavior, what is this?

Oh, you're a Boy Scout. I must do that. And he got taken to Baden Powell and immediately said, I'll set it up. Now, we know that it wasn't even foggy that day that he was there in the UK. Oh, God, who's wanted to do that research. Well, people who try to work out. Because there's a lot of sort of questions about who actually is the original founder of the American Boy Scouts. So often it's raining outside and I look at my phone up and it says it's not raining. And that's like literally happening right now. I don't trust this stuff. Yeah, I mean, who knows? But that's the kind of the story that was created, the mythology behind it. The other guy was Ernest Thompson Seton. There's a great fact. I read in a Margaret Atwood book

about him, which is when he turned 21, his father handed him a bill charging him for all the expenses associated with his childhood, including the fee for his delivery at birth. Just hand it to him. He's one of the founders of the American Boy Scouts. I will not do that for my daughter just to say, because she was on the NHS. Bay and Powell, yeah, he married a woman called Olaf Soames. He was 55 and she was 23 when they got married. And the wedding present for those two, the scouts were each encouraged to contribute one

penny and 100,000 of them did it and they bought him a car, which is quite cool. And then in 1929 to celebrate the 21st birthday of the Scouts, they all did the same again. But at this stage, there were four million scouts and guides around the world. And so they bought him a Rolls-Royce. Oh, that's great. Isn't that cool? Long con, you know? They started admitting girls in 2019, the Boy Scouts of America.

And who did this piss off? Oh, the Daily Mail readers. Was it someone in the Baden Powell's family? Because he, I mean, he... Very much so. His sister ran the Girl Guides, though, when they started. Well, that's... It was the Girl Scouts.

Right, right. Sorry, Girl Scouts, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they are furious about this because they now call themselves the BSA to try and take the boy out of their, like, name. And the girls basically said, the whole reason they've done this is to help with their massively plummeting membership

they're trying to steal Girl Scouts from our movement, from us. And they're suing them. And people who want their children to join the Girl Scouts, they might just Google Girl Scouts and get the girl members of the Boy Scouts. Yeah, absolutely. So there's beef. If it's called the, there's beef. Not since 1968, there is it?

It's gone off now. Lovely. So hopefully they'll fight. And then who do you back? But they're called the BSA now? I believe so, yeah. Boy Scouts of American. What was the B stand for if not for boy?

Well, you don't know. So you're hiding it, aren't you? That's the whole point. Why can the girls start letting boys in? Yes. Yeah, I can see how that's the logical daily male commenter's response. Sorry, I thought that was the woke response. You're trying to get your work badge?

Let me knock down the Girl Scouts, because it's about time someone that down a peg or two. They, according to a blog called Waity Matters, are saddling America with a huge amount of obesity, thanks to the Girl Scout cookies that they sell every year. So according to this person on the blog, they worked out that the Girl Scout cookies that are sold every year account to three quarters of a million pounds of trans fat. That's 3.5 billion teaspoons of sugar that they add to the American food supply. Well, that does sound bad, but we need overall figures, I think,

because it can't just be the Girl Scout cookies. Oh, no, there's other stuff going on. but it doesn't help it doesn't help they're trying to fatten up the boys make them easier to defeat okay it's time for fact number three

and that is Andy my fact is that one of London's oldest windows is made of cow horn oh the window itself the glass as it were the glass substitute can you see through it

because if not I say that isn't a window well judge for yourself James because I've got a photo here of me this morning at the cow horn window. I can see you, but you are in front of it. Oh, cool. Yeah, but you can see through it. It's very see-throughable. So a horn, it turns out, is a fantastic window material, beaten maybe only by glass. This is in London. It's a place called Guildhall. So there's a separate thing called

the City of London, which is different to London, right? The City of London is the sort of ancient body. It's... I mean, it's part of London, really. It's right in the middle of London, definitely. Yeah, yeah, you're still in London. But the actual Guildhall itself, the town hall of the city of London dates back to the 14th century. Like it's the oldest non-religious building in London. You know, there are a couple of abbeys and cathedrals and things that are older, but it's really old.

And this window dates back to the 15th century. So it has survived any manner of stuff. All the other windows in the place have been replaced. Like there's been the Blitz, there's been the Great Fire of London. This window is still there all these years later. It's kind of amazing. Come on, kids. Go and play football outside. I dare you.

And it's made of cow horn. So you pop the horn off the cow, you slice it up, you heat that, and then you can mould it into this amazing, really pretty transparent window material. It's stunning. So cool. And is it incredibly strong? Is that how it's survived this? Okay, so that makes it all the more amazing that we've still got it, right?

It's not only not, I mean, it's decent. You know, glass from the time is not incredibly strong either. And until the 18th century, cow horn was used largely for translucent sheets to go into, like lanterns? The word lantern comes from Lantthorn, you know, because it would have horn. That's the sides of it were horn. I don't think it does, I think. Because I was like, that's why they always spell it weird in old books.

You know, you read old like Shakespeare, we'll say it, Lanthorne. In old 19th century novels, sometimes you see Lansthorne. So I was like, that explains it. But actually, lantern just comes from Latin, like, meaning light. But people then did the old, got confused. Lots of their lanterns were made out of horn. So they went, should we shove a horn on the end? And I read a quite annoyed encyclopedia.

your entry from about 1803 saying Lanthorne is a completely incorrect spelling of this based on the misconception. So that's just idiots from the 18th century. But it is based on the fact that Lanthans were made of horn. Absolutely. Yeah, right. Yeah. Conception was. That's really interesting. It's so cool. I saw, I mean, basically in the 15th century, they have the equivalent of laminated menus. There were the horn books that students would use where they would have all the alphabet on it. You've got like wooden frames where you've got horn that's written on with the alphabet to learn from and things like that. But you've also got ancient books which have, which have a square of horn on the front to protect what's beneath, like a very valuable old bit of

parchment or vellum or whatever. So the horn window covers that, but it's quite delicious for insects. So a lot of the very old ones are just nibbled the way out all around the edges. The alphabet books that Dan was talking about are called horn books. And the horn book is also the title of a book from 1889, which is thought of as the principal work on sex technique in the English language. Oh, good Lord. What year?

1889. I didn't think. I didn't think they had that then? That's why it's interesting. Where do you think your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandmother came from. So it's like the Kama Sutra, basically, but for Victorian England. Wow. And they had sex techniques.

Number one, the ordinary. End of book. What was that then? Was that actually in 1888? That was upside down and back to front. Here's some more. Number five, the St. George. God.

Whoa. What? Because you're sort of prodding a dragon. Is that? Number nine, the view of the low countries. Oh, that is good. Number 48, waste not want not. Oh, dear. Number 63, the sack of corn backwards.

Wow. None of these say much about the people involved, do they? No. Oh, what's the connection to horn, sorry? It's called the horn buck. Oh, that's it, sorry. It's like if you Google, I'm just warning people, if they Google hornbooks to get these alphabet books. They might accidentally get this one.

Do be careful if you're on horn.com. There's a cleaner hornbook fact, which I quite liked, which was a poem was written in 1622 which said, because they were the thing you went to for learning your first letters, and it read, even so the horn book is the

seed and grain of skill by which we learning first obtain. And it was written by William Hornby. Oh, that's really good. Can I give you another one like that? The largest brothel in Europe is situated on Horn Street. I was trying to raise the tone. Well, it's gone straight back down again.

It's in Cologne, and it has 120 sex workers working there, and it was Europe's first high-rise brothel. But how many of the customers are going looking for alphabet books for their kids? Most of them, yeah. I think the architectural thing is not the interesting thing there, as in I've stayed in the largest hotel in Thessaloniki, and it's not a guarantee of quality. It turns out, when you...

When you just say, Europe's largest brothel doesn't mean best. That's true. They basically had a red light district in the town centre and decided to do away with it and get this huge multi-story building and stuff. And it advertises money-back guarantee in the case of unsatisfactory service. No.

Yeah. It's so awkward to complain, isn't it? This sack of corn wasn't backwards at all. Have you guys heard of the Worshipful Company? of Horner's. Yes, I know someone who's connected. Get out. Well, because London has all these guilds, which are the worshipful company of, and then you insert very old-fashioned

trade. So this is a thing, it dates back to 1284. And it was a guild for people who worked with horn, horn people. And it was a huge business at the time, obviously, because all the people needed lanterns and windows and horn books and, you know, other uses of horn. There are thousands. Now, they declined,

obviously, when pesky glass, stupid glass, took over the window industry. And they were in the doldrums for centuries, but they came back. Any guesses what they sort of reimagined themselves as? Oh, buglers. It's not buglers. They just can't get enough buglers through the door.

I'm just thinking, like, if they're still called the horners. They're still called the horners, but they took on another industry related to what they did in the first place. I read this earlier today, and I just couldn't believe I never made the connection, but shoe horns are made of horn. It wasn't, yes, that's true. That's not the gigantic industry. Come on. Globally, everyone's got a shoehorn. Absolutely.

Is it microchips? No, it's plastics. Oh, right. Horn was the original plastic. You heat it, you can mould it. So these days, all the members of the Worshipful Company of Horners are from the city, from the plastics industry. They sponsor the Polymer Apprentice of the Year Award.

Big deal in plastics. Huge. A scout badge. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, that's really. Do you know that actually being a horner is pretty tricky today? Is it?

If you're a true horn, or not one of these plastic people, but you're a person who wants to make things out of horn, it is difficult because of breeding and modern farming and feeding has changed what horns are like. So the material is not as good for moulding as it used to be. And it'll quite often retain what they call its memory.

So you kind of flatten it and then you put it into whatever shape you want it to be. But it kind of remains. members that it was horn shaped before and you can't get it flat properly. So you come down to your new car window. It was back in the shape of a cow horn. There's a cow there instead. You ride it to work. So did you read about the Abbeyhorn hornworks?

Go for it. We've said the word horn so much. I just love it. Anyway, sorry, it's on the edge of the lake district. It's the only hornworks left in the UK. Right. Because it's an endangered craft these days because there are only about 10 to 20 horn workers left. And I think most of them work at Abbeyhorn. It's been there for nearly 300 years.

and you can get some bloody good stuff there. I was going through the website and you get a horn mustache brush. Some bloody good shoe horns, Dan. You'd love it. Okay, send me that link. So absolute footlong monsters. And actually, James, as you were saying,

because horn has changed, they get some of those from, like, I think it's African cattle called the Ankhall, because they have massive great horns. And you might want to buy a novelty drinking horn if your partner is into being a Viking or whatever. How is it? Like, are you allowed to buy and sell this kind of horn

compared to like, obviously, ivory, you're not allowed to. and lots of other, like, rhino horns, you can't. It's fine. It is fine. Because all of these cattle that they're buying the horns of were bread for farming and were, they certainly weren't killed for their horns. On drinking horns, obviously a huge use of horn. And Vikings really did massively popularise them.

It really, it was kind of the Vikings that brought them to the UK, although they'd been used before. But did you know that they also brought such a drinking culture? They got so bad by the 10th century that King Edgar, who you all know, it was the late 10th century English king, said that every village had to be limited to one alehouse and every single drinking horn that any punter drank out of had to have pins inserted at certain levels,

a bit like you have measures on cups today, and whoever drank beyond those intervals in one swig had to be severely punished. Whoa. Right. Which is tough to monitor as a bar person. Who's policing that? But did it lead to drinking culture, I think, because you can't put it down?

Yeah, that's... It's like a cocktail party where there's no table. It's a nightmare. You know, you fill up your horn and you just stuck around holding it. Yeah, I must say the Vikings coming to Northern England in the 10th century is just like you're going to a cocktail party. There's nowhere to put it down. And often you lose track of your own horn. And what's good is to put a little hairband around your own horn.

Well, you're the only one who comes with a horn holder to make sure you can put it down between six. Can you think of another use of the word horning? To be horned. I'm thinking of horning in on a situation Oh like honing in No it's sort of where you interrupt Oh oh here Anna comes Horning in on our conversation

Oh yeah Very good No not that This is in a kind of sport A very old-fashioned European sport Um Marrying the Habsburg Queen

Yes that's a sport Very good No it's in bull fighting It's when you get gaud By a bull It's called It's known as a horning It's been a horning in the morning.

Yes. Morning horning would be a good Royal Rumble thing for bullfighting. Just in case the bullfighting people are listening, wanting to rev it up a bit. The record for most honings is by a guy called Antonio Barrera, who has been horned 23 times.

Is that a good record? Do you want that guy on your team? The guy from Guinness is saying, I'm so sorry, I missed the 16th morning, so you're not going to get the record. How many of those were the same occasion? They were all different occasions. Oh, blind me.

The most commonplace to be horned. Sorry, Spain, I imagine. On your buddy? In the ring. In the ring. Now in the upper leg. And second place is the perennial area. Second most popular, that's a show.

Do they have guards? Did they wear boxes? No, they don't? No, no. They wear very tight trousers, don't they? If only there was some system where there could be some kind of clown in the ring. who was able to distract the attention of the bull. Some rodeo clown idiot.

I guess you'd call them that, yeah? Have you heard of the German island of Borkham? No. This is a place that has a Christmas festival called Class Home, right? Or Classum. And they had this tradition for many, many years there where men dress up in elaborate costumes and spank women with cowhorns on the bottom.

And this led to controversy recently because a lot of the women said, actually, we really don't like this. Stop using the point. Well, I mean, we don't like being spanked or, you know, we're being spanked without permission on Christmas. But last year, there was a huge crackdown on cowhorns spanking on Borkham. And it passed without any spanking and without any complaints. Certainly without any complaints.

There may have been private consensual cowhorns banking. I think that's fine. Absolutely. And in fact, when there was this big protest, like loads of the women saying, can you stop hitting us with cowhorns on the bum every Christmas? This is not fun. A couple of hundred women did launch a counter protest saying, we love it. It's our way of life.

This is our tradition. So there's definitely debate, but for the moment, it appears that the involuntary cowhorns spanking is over. Well, why don't then women just spank the men back? Or I'm sorry, is that the Daily Mail comments coming out again? Okay. Okay. I think that takes a fun out of it. It's like giving someone a wedgy. It's not fun giving someone a wedgy, is it if you have to say beforehand, is it okay if I give you a wedgy?

Are we saying, Anna, that consent takes the fun out of things? Because I do think we're on thin ice. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that Jack Kerouac wrote his most famous novel on one long scroll. Was it sold in scroll form ever? Yeah, the audiobook started, oh yay, oh yay. That's an interesting question. It sort of is today, but not at the time. It has, as in that scroll has been sold.

That scroll, you're right, you can go and visit it. I can't remember what it's in a museum somewhere. It's owned by, or it was owned, unfortunately he died this year, Jim Mersey, who owns the Indianapolis Colts, American football team. Okay. There you go. Obviously, that's where it would be owned by. No, no, he's a big, maybe we'll talk about it later, let's get into the fact, but he was a huge collector, this guy. Oh, cool.

Yeah, I've got a big old list of other cool things he has. All right. Well, excited to skip ahead to that. But first of all, Jack Kerouac, yeah, he wrote on a long scroll, and basically he got annoyed because he was a writer who typed very fast, and it all. came flowing through him and out of his fingertips and he thought you should never have to pause or stop or have your flow interrupted. Or think at all about the next sentence. Maybe I'll put a main verb in this one, that kind of stuff. Why would you think about the next sentence considering it's about five pages away?

Which we should say if you read any Jack Kerouac, it is very stream of consciousness. It's interesting. Maybe we'll also get into a big debate over who likes his style and who doesn't. I think I know around this table who's going to be the fan. But he didn't like to reload his typewriter with bits of paper. So he got this massive scroll. It was made of like teletype paper, kind of like tracing paper, thick tracing paper. And he taped it all together. And then he made a 120 foot long scroll.

This is in 1951. And he was writing on the road. That was the name of the book. Sorry. Sorry, yeah. He was writing in his bedroom, but on the road. And when he was finished, he marched into his editor's office, who was a guy called Robert Giroux.

and he was to unspun the scroll across the floor, like you would unroll a rug, and Giroux just said, Jack, don't you realize that's not how authors present manuscripts? I can't do anything with this. Take it away. I think he did know that that's not how you present manuscripts. Also, it is often presented as if he did the stream of consciousness,

he handed it over and that's it. That's not the case. He spent years and years editing it. It's a very highly edited document. Not that it seems like it, but yeah. Should we say who Jack Kerouac is briefly? like American part of the beat generation, post-war countercultural writers who were rebelling against the way America was.

That was the basic movement and Jack Kerouac was a huge part of it with On the Road, which is extremely famous, you know. Yeah. And what's interesting is he influenced a lot of these people like Ken Kessie, who wrote One Flew the Cuckoo's Nest, Alan Ginsberg, the poet. William Burroughs. He gave the name to William Burroughs' probably most famous novel, Naked Lunch. That was something that he came up with.

But when he wrote on the road, he did spend all those years trying to get it published and editing it. And in the meantime, everyone who was influenced by reading copies of it got their own stuff published. So it ended up looking like Kerouac was copying off them, when in fact, he was the influence for this whole generation. Yes, because it only ended up being published in 1957, we should say. So he proposed it in 1951. The editor said, take it away and turn it into a proper book. So he then did type it out on normal pages. But no one would take it.

And all the publishers said, we think, This is kind of a work of genius, but no one's going to care about the subject matter. And the subject matter is... It's basically a big old road trip. It's none of his books and novels, and I hate it when people refer to them as that, because they're all completely true to his own life. They're his autobiography, basically, and this was a bit of... They're exaggerated autobiographies, aren't they?

Yeah. So it's him travelling around with his mates. And they all put each other in each other's books, don't they? Ginsberg does and Burroughs does. He also incidentally named Ginzburg's most famous book, Howl. So he named the three most famous famous... his book to the beat generation. His real skill was naming books.

All these books that he did, which were semi-autobiographical and with all his mates in, the lawyers of his publishers made him change all the names for obvious reasons. You know, there was lots of stuff happening in those books that they might object to. But Kerouac's intention was to, towards the end of his life, he was going to get all of his old books and he's going to republish them all as one enormous scroll from start to finish, but then change all the names back so that we got all the people's names. Oh, that's good.

But then he died quite young, I think. He died really young. He died in the late 60s. Sorry, can I just say that has been done now? Just to make sense of what I said earlier, I think Viking Press in about 2011, released the original scroll,

which is with all the original names, and it's with no paragraph breaks and written. I've got it at home. Have you? It's a beast of a book. I haven't read it. I mean, just no way, but it's... And there you go.

There's the fan revealed. I'm the fan of the counterculture. I've not actually read Carrowack because he is. It's a difficult read. Yeah, a stream of consciousness is harder. Can I give you one more version of that meeting with Robert Giroux, who was one of his previous editors?

And then he'd written short stories and things like that. He turns up at the office with the manuscript, with the scroll, throws it on the floor. And this is according to Robert Giroux. He was very excited. This is Kerouac. I think he was high. Anyway, I bent down to look at the thing.

And after a few moments, I looked up and said, well, Jack, this is going to have to be cut up into pages and edited and so on. Jack just looked at me and his face darkened and he said there'll be no editing this book was dictated by the Holy Ghost and the book then went to a different publisher you met him on a dating side didn't you?

Yeah I think he was off his face quite a lot He was on Benzatrine when he did this which is an amphetamine that a lot of people were on at the time it was like a nasal spray like a kind of pseudafred thing but then it made everyone gave lots of people lots of energy because it's basically amphetamines.

It's not very cool though, is it? It's not like the jazz guys trying to find a new vein for the horse. If it's a nasal spray, I do think that's an uncool administration for a mind-altering drug. Yeah, I guess so. But it was cool at the time.

Yeah. And then it did go out of fashion. And he went out of fashion within his own circle as well. Like that's one of the tragic things. So he did die young. I think he was 47 when he died. And even his friends,

his closest friends, like Alan Ginsberg didn't want to know him at that point. He had turned from this amazingly magnetic character that basically defined this whole movement to someone who became very bitter, very angry. He used to write newspapers about Boy Scout badges changing. They got quite right-winged in the end. He was always quite racist.

But those letters to the newspapers, they were so long, they couldn't get in. They were all on little scrolls. It's so sad. You know, the original on the road, a dog ate part of his homework? Yeah, genuinely. It was auction some years ago

and the condition notes noted that the final 25 pages, or equivalent of, had been chewed and tall away by a dog belonging to Kerouac's friend in April or May, 1951. But the thing is that no one who read it ever got up to the last 25 pages so no one ever noticed.

On the Road was published in 1957 was a huge hit and immediately he couldn't handle it. He just like, he sort of had a breakdown. His publisher said he ended up lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, not knowing what to do, became terrible alcoholic. I think we said that he was,

went to a lookout tower, didn't he? Was that after that as well? Yes, that's right. He kind of just lived on his own for months and months in the middle of the forest looking for fires. Did you find any? No, he didn't, but apparently he did leave behind him a column of feces about the height and size of a baby.

What an upsetting simile point for your column of feces. There's so much else you could compare it to, like a melon. A melon? Melons are smaller than babies. How big at your melon? Excuse me. How small are your babies?

Alan, we're not getting into motorboating again. Do you know the only reason he became so famous and it all ruined him anyway? It was because of one review he got in the New York Times. Oh, yeah. So if the review had not been printed, he would have probably stayed small time. He was small time before it came out, right?

But the main reviewer, guy called Orville Prescott, hated him. Hated his stuff. But he was away on holiday. And so there was a different review who just got drafted in for holiday. cover called Gilbert Milstein, and he gave it the biggest smash hit review the New York Times had ever given anything. He said, its publication is a historic occasion. The writing is of a

beauty, almost breathtaking. And this gave the book absolute rocket fuel that made it a huge success. Prescott, who was the main guy in charter reviewing, was so angry about this. He almost didn't allow it to go in. And then he fired Gilbert Milstein. He was never hired again to write the New York Times because he loved this, you know, stream of consciousness, hard to read, beat generation thing. Wow. Love it or you hate it. Well listen guys I can hear the audience at home script well I can hear at least my mum screaming tell us about the collection that Jim ursy had in which the scroll was contained. He was the he was the owner of the cults the football team in America and he bought up the scroll and it's part of this big traveling collection that he has so he has the big

book the original Alcoholics Anonymous book the first manuscript that was ever written. Oh I thought you with everyone's names. It's alcoholics not anonymous. That's the compromise book. Just one guy is allowed to know who you are. No, this was the original book that William or Bill W. Wilson had written. Actually, wasn't that the Holy Ghost who gave him that as well? It was, you're right.

You're right. It was a huge episode for the Holy Ghost, this one. He has two tickets from the performance of our American cousin for Ford's Theatre, the night that Lincoln was assassinated. He's got a rocking chair that was used by JFK inside the White House. I should just say he did die this year. He did. He keeps saying he has. Sorry, he did. He died just over a month ago.

Well, he'll be getting a chance to chat to the Holy Ghost, won't he? That's exciting. He has the greatest collection of guitars in the world. Or he had, I should say, again. It was called that in the guitar magazine in 2021. And every famous guitarist you can name he has. Eric Lopton. George Harrison.

Django Reinhardt. Oh. I just don't think you've written them all down. No, I haven't. I bet he does, though. I bet he does, though. I bet he does. Yeah, I'm sure he does, because I was really hoping that you would just name any of these 20 names that I have on my list. Give us one or two.

Oh, okay. Well, I mean, Elvis, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jerry Garcia, Prince, Les Paul, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kirkcabane. He has Kirkcabane's never mind guitar. It's like one of the most iconic grunge guitar. It's the guitar he brings out at a party, and they say, oh, for fuck a sake. Leave them mind, never mind. 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 have said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram under at Shreiberland. Andy?

I'm on Instagram at Andrew Hunter M. And James? I'm on TikTok. No such thing is James Harkin. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna. We are on Instagram at no such thing as a fish or on Twitter at No Such Thing. email, podcast.uI.com.

That's right. Or you can go to our website. No Such Thing Asafish.com. We have all our previous episodes up there. You can check out things like Clubfish, which is our secret members club. Do join that. Get bonus episodes, add free content, all that stuff. And we're going to be doing a couple of live gigs in September at the London Podcast Festival. Tickets are available for that now.

Go check it out. Otherwise, just come back here next week. We'll have another episode waiting for you. We'll see you then. Goodbye.