No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Radioactive Jenga

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss your facts, including domes, mushrooms, hiccups and the Flying Doctors.   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

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things a Fish. It is our summer audience facts special. So we're going to be going through all of our mailbag to find the best facts that you have sent in. Because right now, Dan, we're not in the office, are we? No, we are on the road. We are doing our 10-year anniversary tour, Thunder Nerds. We've already done one in Bristol. We're on our way to Dublin to do our next one.

And, man, it is... What amazing gigs. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. It's always amazing to do these shows because there are so many dorky, nerdy, geeky people out there. We absolutely love it. We feel like we're in our element. And the shows themselves have been so much fun. We've been doing quizzes.

People have been sending in their best facts. We've met some incredible people, Dan. Yeah, so we've set up for this tour, the Hall of Fame, where we're inducting a new person who's appeared as one of the facts in our show, and we get them coming live on stage. But James Anna and Andy don't know who they are. I've been bringing them secretly in. We have had the descendant of Confucius on stage with us.

We have had the Asperamancer, the person who predicts all of the future political situations using asparagus, aka Mystic Veg. She was there in Bristol. We've had the co-writer of Fatberg, the musical. I have very exciting ones lined up for Dublin and for Glasgow, as well as Cardiff, London and Manchester. I am so excited for these things. It's an amazing night. Have you got anyone for Newcastle?

You didn't mention Newcastle. Oh, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Newcastle might be the best. Oh, wow. Okay, well, if you are in any of those aforementioned towns, then make sure you come to the show. There are still tickets available for all of them.

I think there might be a London show that's sold out, but we did put on a new show. So the tickets are available, and you can get them by going to no such things. Fish.com forward slash live. Okay, Dan, we've got a flight to get. We do. So let's get onto it.

You guys get your tickets. We'll see you there at the live show. Come say hi afterwards when we take photos. with everyone. It's a great night. See you there, but for now, enjoy the audience fact show. Hello and welcome to No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban. My name's Andrew Hunter-Murray. I'm here with Dan Shriver, James Harkin and Anna Tijinsky, and once again, we have gathered down the microphones with your favorite facts from the last three months. That's right, it's our summer audience facts special. You've been emailing your

facts in to podcast at QI.com. We've caught a few of us. the very best ones and we're going to be serving them back to you today. Here we go, starting with James. Okay, well, the first one that I've got on my big pile of facts is from Glenn Matthews and Glenn writes to rival the Eiffel Tower. One suggestion for the Chicago World's Fair was a 200-person bungee. Cool. Oh. On the same but extremely strong bungee rope. No, no. All different bungee ropes. This is from a book called The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, which Glenn read, and he has lots of other amazing things that you could have instead of an Eiffel Tower to celebrate your city, in this case Chicago.

Hang on, tourists go every moment of every day to see the Eiffel Tower. If you were truly going to rival it, you would need 200 bungee jumpers doing that every second of the day. There's nothing wrong with that. I just want to make sure. You could do it like not every second, but you could do it every half an hour, say, right? I remember staying in a hotel in Las Vegas and there was a bungee jump place on the top of the hotel and just you were to open your window at the morning

and then there'd just be a guy sort of plummeting past your window if you checked in late at night and you didn't know that was happening oh my god someone's oh no cancel it no mine he's going back up he must have changed his mind Didn't when we stayed in New Zealand on our first fish tour The hotel was having a special That big tower in Auckland, whatever it's called Yeah

I don't remember this Yeah, they do bungee off there as well It's all they do in New Zealand, isn't it? Having been, people bungee jump all the time It's everywhere Yeah, quite a long Australia, but New Zealand It's just New Zealand and Lord of the Rings tourism

This is your weird stereotype I've never heard that It's not a stereotype In New Zealand there's a different legal thing And it's to do with the insurance that you get for extreme sports. And I think the government might cover some of it, which means that it's much easier to set up an extreme sports thing in New Zealand

than it is anywhere else in the world. Wow. I see. That's why. I thought we're just into it. So it's not a tax break. It's not tax deductible. It's not tax break so much as you don't.

It costs you less to do it. How would that work? If you're caused any bungeying, you don't pay any tax. If you're sitting with your accountant to say, God, you've really gone over the threshold this year. But good news, Mrs. Saunders. You can do 76 bungee jumps. Your investments can go down.

And up. And down. And up. So, yeah, what do you think we could have? Let's say, for instance, in London, we wanted a new tower to rival the Eiffel Tower. They did actually come up with some ideas, didn't they? But what do you think would be a good thing to have? I guess the London Eye was meant to be that, right?

Kind of. Well, actually, the London Eye was supposed to be temporary, I think. Okay, what about this? The London Ear. Oh, yeah. Right? Oh, yes. Keep going.

Well, it's a huge ear. Like a London eye looks like a big eye, sort of. And if you go in it, you can hear sounds from all over London. So it's not an amazing view. It's an amazing sound. And every day, those people from gladiators uses one of their massive pugil sticks to clean it. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, okay, that's a good idea.

Well, you'd want to be able to hear something, right? So maybe you need another ear set up over in Paris. So it's like one of the, you know, when you go to... Like a telephone. Kind of like a telephone, but in, in, uh, no, in China, in the summer palace, I seem to remember that you would go to either end of the palace and they would have somehow that you would whisper to the wall and you could hear it. Like having playgrounds.

You often have other end of the end of playgrounds. Those things you talk into that never work. There was also one of those at Grand Central Station in New York, whispering gallery. I think it's a simple cultural. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good idea. Thank you.

Jenga Tower. Jenga tower. Everyone plays. every Londoner gets to play and you just have to insert a brick each and then the person who causes it to come out That's not quite how it works and they're spiling every game of Jenga

She's brought her in bricks We've been playing this game of Jenga for hours I don't understand Great well come on James What did they propose? Sorry Was this Chicago? This was for the World's Fair in Chicago

Nice, yeah So J.B. McCumber thought you could get massive tower, which is much bigger than the Eiffel Tower, 10 times the size of the Eiffel Tower, and you would put rails from the top going all the way to New York, Boston and Baltimore, which you can toboggan down to get home. It's a great idea. Hang on, you toboggan all the way from Chicago to one of these.

That's going to be a long toboggan commute, isn't it? That's fine. You know what? The gradient is going to be quite unexciting, I would guess. Yeah, it's a green run. Oh, but it has to be enough. It has to be enough that you can bombarding. You know when you go in a water slide and there's not enough water and there's not enough

radiant that you just have to pull yourself along on your butt? Terrifying. Like a dog with worms. You have to do that for 400 miles. He said in his proposal, as the cost of the tower and its slides is of secondary importance, I do not mention it here, but will furnish figures upon application.

Beautiful. Yeah. Should I do another fact? Yeah, yeah, that's that one. This one is from, this one is from Suleiman Ilius Cherat. and he said that he recently learned that since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, this will be the first US election since 1976

that doesn't have a Bush, a Clinton or a Biden on the ticket. Cool. Including vice president. What? And he said, I even checked it myself because I didn't believe it and then gave us a Wikipedia link, which admittedly I didn't check. I thought it would be balsy to put that link in there if it didn't prove his point. Biden's not a great inclusion.

Biden just is a normal president. He for a term. But he's think he covers the last three, because he did vice president for two terms. Oh, it includes VP's. Yeah, yeah. So Bush is running native Reagan. God, that's weird.

Do you want to hear a fact about presidential names? Because I thought I'd find one myself after having read this. Do you know what Grover Cleveland's nickname was? Rover Cleveland. Yeah? Because he liked to go for a long walk. Oh, yeah. No, it's not that.

Drove a Cleveland, because he would heard. his sheep across America any more rhymes of Grover you want to go working on, dude shall I tell you? Yes Well two, you can have two options One is Big Steve

Mm-hmm Yep Isn't that a great nickname Big Steve Was Steve even a name then? Well, believe it or not It was Grover Cleveland's first name Because Grover was another nickname

That he had Oh, was it? He was actually called Stephen Steve Cleveland But as in I'm surprised that Steve, of course Stephen has been a name forever and ever, but Steve. You don't get a lot of Steve's popping up in Dickens or in... Yeah, but he's American.

It's a very American name. It is now, but again... Stephen Fry has this whole thing that his American adventure, he's so nearly moved to America when he was a kid and he pictures this whole world where he was Steve Frye because that's the name he would have undoubtedly bad. It's such a, yeah. I don't know. Edith Water and Henry James aren't mentioning many steves.

I don't think, but I don't know. If you're called Steve and you're 150 years old. Right here. Okay, let's go a few more facts. Mandarin writes in, and she writes in with some nominative determinism. Lovely. Arthur Owen Blessett is a travelling Christian preacher who is known for carrying a cross through every nation in the world. Lovely.

Every nation. Every nation. That's very impressive. Presumably all 193 of them. He must have been annoyed when South Sudan was founded. Yes. Whenever there's a new one, he must be like, oh, for God's sake, he picks up his cross. Do we know if he takes a position on places like Taiwan and Macau?

Or micronations, yeah. I don't know that. Has you visited all those tiresome former oil rigs off the edge of the British coast? Yeah. Some Pratt has said, oh, this is Steveland. All the utopian failed areas. I could just imagine that are going to him going. So Arthur, bless it, have you been to Germany?

And he's like, blah! In black adder. Yeah. And we got one more bit of nominative determinism from Nathan Dwyer. He said that Scottish poet Iva Cutler kept a set of ivory cutlery in his home. That's great. That's fair enough. Probably a lot of people did, didn't they?

He's also a comedy writer. Exactly. Is he? Oh. Ivercullo. He's a poet, isn't he? Yeah. I don't know anything about Iva Cutler.

But he sounds great. A friend of the Beatles. Okay. He was in... Sounds like a euphemism that. Friend of the Beatles. I don't know what. before. He was in the magical mystery tour where he played a bus conductor called Buster Blood

Vessel, which is where the pop star from Bad Manors gets his name. We've gone down a train that I have not been able to follow. We're actually on a bus right now. Do you guys remember when I visited the man with maybe the biggest collection of cutlery in private hands? Yes, not only that, but this just shows where the hierarchy lay back in those days. You visited him because you did the original QI research and he picked up of the cutlery. And then once we were done with it, I had to do. a Schlepp there to take it all back to him.

I didn't even know that we'd bothered returning it. You wouldn't have Andy. You were on to your next project. Wow. That was the 11th series of QI because it was the K series. Yes. What series are we on now? 22 or 3. So you've been carrying around that grudge for how many years?

I'm so glad I've got it off my chest. The wording, it felt like you've practiced it in the mirror. It felt like this has been something you've been ready to get off your chest. I'm very excited. So you did that. You took his cutlery and then. And you just didn't think he might want this back? No, I probably said something I, oh, someone sort this out.

Some fucking idiot. Well, he would never have said that to a colleague, but I'd say, can we get one of the, you know, the genius to sort of that? James, give us another fact. So Lowell Bender writes, if you haven't already covered this, I'd like you to know that some US banks have their own zip code. Oh, nice. That's cool, isn't it?

Lots of buildings actually have their own. own zip codes in America and in fact the shoe floor of Saks on Fifth Avenue has its own zip code. The one floor of a building. One floor that sells shoes. Ironic because shoes are one item of clothing that rarely has lips. There speaks a woman unacquainted with high fashion. Yeah. Auntie and Dal are both wearing their knee-high boots today. So many shoes have shoes.

I mean, they're not most. I think most shoes would have lace. Go into a leather shop and you'll see a lot of zit. Leather shoes have zips? High heel, female high heel boots, beetle-like boots. No, you're right. It's not as ironic because I led everyone to believe because some shoes do have zips.

What's something that never has zips? Hats, if it was a hat shop, it wouldn't be wrong. Oh, well, contrary, I know. Lifts off his top hat to show. A fully zipped trilby. Yes, so the zip code of the shoe shop was created as a one-off partnership between Saks and USPS.

I feel very mucky about that. I'm not sure about that. It's like when, so sometimes London Underground stations will do a humorous collaboration with them being like a mega-corp company and they'll change the name of the station for the day to Bond James Bond Street. Oh, yeah. Or something, if there's a James Bond film out to plug. I don't know if they've done that. But I just think it must be really confusing for people who are just trying to get around London. Maybe you're a tourist, maybe you're not familiar with it. What do you think you turn up to Bond Street station, which is on Bond Street?

And you see it's called James Bond Street. You're like, it must be somewhere else. That's a bad example. That's a bad example. I just got back from Turkey, right, and I was at the immigration desk, handed my passport in. And the guy behind it, he looked at my passport, and he went up and he looked to me and he went, Mr. Bond. And then he laughed and said, I bet you get that all the time.

And I laugh going, yeah. And I was going, I've never had that in my life. And then I realized it's because my middle name is Craig. So I am Daniel Craig on my passport. I actually get it quite regularly, I must say. You get James Bond. James Bond, because I'm called James. Like, I've definitely had it.

at least twice going through immigration in Russia, for instance. And I've had it in a few other countries as well. Really? Yeah, yeah. It's really weird. That's so weird, because there are other famous Jameses. Yeah, but I was carrying a revolver and having sex with a woman and drinking a martini at the time. While we're on Russia and also kind of on trains, I read a thing which I wonder if you know the Russian word for train?

Is it like Vaux? How would you spell it? Oh, Vaxal means. Vaxal is. train station. Yeah, and the story goes, a bunch of Russian engineers came over to the UK. They went to, yeah, that's, they went to Vauxhall Tube. And they were like, this is so good, we'll just go back and name everything after it.

It was the Vauxhall Overground Station, I think, which was really ornate at the time. I don't know if it still is. I haven't been there for. Oh, it's, I wouldn't, if I had to reach for one word to describe Vauxhall, I would not describe it as ornate. It's very functional. No, really, because almost all train stations are quite beautiful. So, Vauxhall hasn't managed to achieve that. But mind you, they're probably going for that Soviet aesthetic,

which often isn't ornate. Although, in fairness, Russian train stations are pretty beautiful. Are they? Generally speaking, yeah. And the underground, especially, like, the undergrounds tend to be huge bolts with very ornate artwork and stuff on them. Vauxhall Underground is the eighth wonder of the world. Oh, yeah.

Can I do one more? Yeah. Robbie Garman writes about mushrooms. He's found a phrase on a website, If it smells spermatozoic, eat it. If not, you'll probably die. All right. Wait.

I need a reminder of what that smell is. No, no, no, I don't think you do. What's a deal? All mushrooms that smell like sperm is safe? No, it's a very specific mushroom called the Miller. I don't know if anyone's told our colleague and Miller about this. But it can look very much like the deadly poisonous fools funnel. and apparently the best way to tell whether your mushroom is a miller or a poisonous fools funnel is to sniff it

and in most polite books it says it smells like raw dough but actually scientific places says it smells spermatozoic what if someone just wanked off on a fool's funnel. It's a great question. It's a good question. It's not worth the risk I think it's not. It's possible. Wow. We're about to be told like God we've got bad news about your weird fetters.

You thought it was all innocent. You're out in the fields, making the mushrooms. You've killed 50 people. You're under arrest. Okay, it's now time for fact number two, and that is the facts that have been sent to, Anna. My headline fact this week is from Geoffrey Partica. He said my fact is that every March,

the US has a 50% increase in vasectomies so that men can spend their recovery time watching the men's college basketball tournament. That's superb. It is, and it seems to have been a very clever bit of PR from the vasectomy industry because this is known as March Madness in America and it's where...

The basketball. The basketball, yes. And it's where all college basketball teams play each other and it's all done very intensively like a knockout tournament all happens in the same three-week space. So ideal for recovery time. I mean, actually it only takes about six hours to recover from a vasectomy,

so this is a lot of malingering men on there. It could be a botched one. They always ask for the broochers. I was talking to the comedian John Bishop about vasectomies, and he had one, and he was telling me that on the day, because you're awake when you have it, right, but they go in, so they sort of cut open the ball sack, and you've got to go into each testicle with the tube. So doctor does the first one, and he's laying there, and he's sort of like, it's very weird sensation, he's very aware of it, gets the second testicle, and the doctor says, do you mind, we have a

a student doctor who's in today who would be interested to... He's a big fan trying to... Can he keep one of your testicles? Is that all right? You won't be using it. So he says, yeah, the student doctor goes in and gives it a cut. And then all he hears next is, oh no. And the doctor says, what are you done? And suddenly there's a bit of a crisis moment where he sees his testicle being lifted out and so on. And he's going what is going on?

It was a total botched job. And they managed to fix it. They sewed him up. So you can get botched, even when you're famous comedians. Especially when, I would have thought, if you go in as a student doctor and it's Judy Dench there, who's a vasectomy or performing, which I know is unlikely. So when they're advertising these for sexomies, so you can watch basketball, and did they say it'll give you a free shot?

Brilliant. As in you can have sex without having kids. They should. They advertise it as that. Madness. Why don't they call it basketball? I'm sure

that's in the press releases. Okay. If not, you're welcome. Yeah. America. Why don't they get

Keith Fas to do the address? I mean, they might be already doing it. I'm sure he is. You're welcome. Anyway,

this guy sounds great, actually, Jeffrey. He said, I wanted to link this fact with information regarding frozen pea sales in America because that's a solution

often for men who don't have an ice pack, but there was no public information breakdown of monthly sales of frozen peas, so I've tended a letter to the US Department of Agriculture about this deficiency. Wow.

He also says, I feel it should be noted that I left the mushy pea jokes to the professionals despite the low-hanging fruit. There we go. Yeah, he didn't give us the low-hanging fruit jokes. He jumps in with that one. Well, thank you, Geoffrey. That's great. This is a great little fact from Robin.

During World War II, the German city of Constans actually kept its lights on so that pilots flying overhead would think they were still over Switzerland. So clever. Must just be close to the Swiss border. Lake Constance. I've been to Lake Constance. Have you? Nice.

Did it have its lights on? It was daytime. So they were cleverly... So you just bond it anyway. No, so yeah. Very cool. I think I was on the Swiss side of Lake Constance. Yeah, me too, actually.

Interesting. Funny, didn't bump into each other. It was at different times. You don't know that? I do. We're not allowed to take holidays at the same time anymore. No, that's true. In case you're both killed at the same time.

No, that is really cool. And can I remember why I was looking this up. But, oh, in fact, it was one of my facts. It was about Royal Albert Hall. During the Blitz, or maybe it was in the First World War, but whatever it was, they would put over massive curtains over the top of it. And it was the same stuff as they would use to black it out whenever they showed movies. But they would put it all the way over the...

That's so cool. On the top of it, so that no lights would come out and would give anything away. Or lights would shine off the glass. So they usually use it to black out at the inside. Yeah, yeah. Wow, and they sort of turned it inside out. That's very cool. I thought you're going to say, wasn't that the roof of the Albert Hall isn't attached?

It was mostly that it was built in Manchester and then taken apart and then rebuilt on the roll. It's just sitting on top. It's just loose. It's like an upturned bowl. I mean, domes are just mental, aren't they? Like, what's the one in Florence? Is it Brunelleschi made the one in Florence and we still don't know how he did it.

Because it's got no structure holding it up. It basically holds itself up. Is that the Duomo? Duomo maybe, yeah, I think it is. I've been to the Duomo when I was saying. I was trying to put in all the same time. But yeah, and we don't know how he did it. What we think is he built like the first circle

and then the next level sort of interlocked with the previous level of bricks. The next level interlocked with those and then eventually it sort of holds itself up. Like a jigsaw. Like a jigsaw, kind of. Interesting. Like Lego almost.

But we don't fully... But we still don't know how he did it. Do you think if you're one of the builders doing it and you're like, this doesn't work? And he's like, no, it will. It will. Like, what's your confidence as a builder when someone's handed you a blueprint or something that no other architect can make sense of? Yeah.

I can only imagine Brunelleschi was saying, just do it, mate. Just do it. Yeah, don't ask questions. Just take this cutlery where I tell you to take it. I think it's amazing anything was built before about 1800. I agree. Anything substantial. It's insane that they did that.

Using what? And built better, really? And built to last longer than bloody buildings today, am I right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look at that. It's not that good of how.

You want to live in Stonehenge, would you? The pyramids were the tallest building on our planet until something in America. Until the I feel like. No, no. It's the Lincoln Center. Lincoln Cathedral. Lincoln Cathedral. In Lincoln, UK.

Right. Not in the United States. And then there was Lincoln Cathedral for 400 years. And also the Duomo, I think, was the biggest dome in the world until the Royal Albert Hall, I think. Nice. Good fact. Yeah. Good stuff. I think this is my favourite fact that came through. It's from Justice Goldstein Shirley.

And it's this amazing thing that Bookland is a made-up country. Bookland. Where all books come from? Did that preacher manage to get there? Arthur Bless it. Yeah. I don't know if blessed it has been there. To me, this is not a good fact.

This is a poor fact because it's just made yuppie. No, no, no, because it's where all books come from. Ah, but no. I've been to a place where books are printed. It wasn't in Buckland. You went there as well, didn't you, Andy? Not at the same time as I was trained. Basically, as they say, I've just learned a fact you all may enjoy.

According to their barcodes, all published books come from a country called Bookland. And it's because when barcode numbers were being. standardised in the 1980s, the first three digits of all barcodes of like products that you buy in shops, whatever, were assigned according to a country of origin. But books already had ISBN numbers. And so they didn't want to completely change the system for books. So they thought we're just going to add a country onto the front of the ISBN numbers a little bit added to the barcode. But to make things easy, we're just going to say all books are from the same country. And it's 978, which I'd never noticed every single book has the same first three,

letters at the start. Numbers at the start. We better check. 978. This one's got a label on it. How many should we do? 978? Mark Mason's book, 978.

Katie Higgins book, 978. Dan Shriver's Impossible Things, 978. Out now. Out now. Dan Shriver's Impossible Things, 979. Yeah, all they've got 978 at the start. Amazing.

All the numbers. It works. That's great. Anyway, and that's book plan. Yeah. Like, this is called book plan. That's like the shoe shop having its own zip code. All books.

have their own country of origin in a non-existent country. Yeah, love that. Do you want me two more? Yes. Yeah. Great, I will. Benjamin Cut.

1986 movie The Manhattan Projects. Is anyone seen it? No. It's about a kid who makes... Nice. It is. It was fine, man. It was quick.

It wasn't funny, but it was quick. It was a Richard Feynman. Oh, was it? Oh, wow, Dan. That was good. That was highbrow. Yeah. It's about a kid.

who makes a nuclear bomb and the prop designer took things a bit too far and designed a bomb that might actually have worked. Is that based on a real story? Because there was a kid who made a bomb, wasn't there? Do you remember? Yeah, there was. I think that was that not more recently. Was he a Boy Scout? I think it was about then. And it was in his shed or something. And they had to take his shed and bury it in the middle of the desert. That's right. Wow. It doesn't claim so, but maybe they did plagiarise the story. How do they know it might have worked? Well, this is the thing.

It said it would have worked, but it was minus the plutonium sphere. And then I went down to such a rabbit hole about how you make atomic bombs. And basically the plutonium sphere is the centre, which is quite important. It is the main bit, isn't it? Yeah. So this is the explosives around it. But I ended up looking up. But still, you know, you've put all the explosives together.

All you need to do is chuck a plutonium. Exactly. If you watch the mission in possible films, those things are ten a penny. They're constantly being traded across that world. I love the idea, though, of prop makers doing it. so well that the thing of, like, can you imagine if Michael J. Fox actually disappeared when he hit 88 and the Delorean? Barry!

Have you guys heard of the demon core? No. It's kind of cool. So I looked up plutonium's fear and this is the only thing that comes up. It was the third bomb. So it was meant to be the bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nakasaki. The Americans had a third one ready to go if the Japanese didn't surrender. They nicknamed it Rufus, but it was renamed the Dinolems.

demon core, but basically when Japan surrendered, they were like, well, we've got this spare plutonium core now. Let's do loads of experiments with it. And these scientists just went nuts with it, trying to experiment with how much radiation it took to kill you and, you know, where you reach the critical point where there's a radiation explosion. But it kept on going wrong, understandably. So there was a scientist called Henry Daglian in August 1945, who went to the lab after dinner, which sounds a lot like he had a lot to drink, stumbled back to the lab, built all these bricks around the plutonium core made of tungsten carbide, which apparently makes it more and more radioactive.

And he got to the exact moment where he knew if he added one more brick, it would suddenly have this radiation explosion. This is your version of Chega as well, is it? It's just going to add one more brick. It's the most dangerous Chega game in the world for bad kids. And did he add it? No, what he did was he thought, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the bricks away now because I don't want to kill myself.

But he went to take one brick away and he dropped it on the core and there was a big flash of radiation. It was only for a split second and he went and grabbed it and pushed it off. But that was enough and within 20 days he was dead. Whoa! Yeah? It's the scariest thing, isn't it? Because you think, oh, that tingled a bit. It's probably fine.

But it's actually not if it's a plutonium core. Good to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Public service. Anyway, that was just the rabbit hole I went down. Wow. That's brilliant. Okay, let's have one last one from Sam Bromley, who says, During a bout of hiccups today, I did some Googling and found out that some proven remedies for hiccups include finger in the rectum or a fist.

I'm afraid there's nothing more to that. The thing is, like, if a finger in the rectum works, why go full fist? Or did it start off with an arm? and then they thought actually just the fist will work and then they're like oh actually just a few fingers will work actually maybe just give it 10 minutes and we'll go naturally certainly would be a shock you know

you're told to shock someone if you start hiccup in and someone puts the fist up your accent then it will be a shot and it's worth two in the bush right here is the fist in the a fist on the ass

is worth it oh Tandy Jesus Sorry. I bought my wife something called Hickaway. What? It's an anti-hick-hook-up thing. What shape is it?

It's a mechanical arm that just... It's not that. What is it? It's a thing that you drink from, but it's like a straw. And it's supposed to be proven to get rid of hiccups because my wife suffers from hiccups. James, I'm here to tell you that you have given your wife the fist, whether you know it or not. That's what the fist is. So a finger in the rectum study, and he has cited studies which actually show finger up the rectum works, but the fist is something completely different. F-I-S-S-T, and it stands for Forced, Inspiratory Suction and Swallow Tool, and it is the Hiccaway. So you fisted your wife without even knowing it.

Stop it, Ella. It's the blue of show. It's just facts. So what is it? It's a straw that's particularly hard to suck, I think, isn't it? Why does the finger work out of curiosity? Surprise. No, because if I'm doing it to me, that's not a surprise. I think it'll still be a surprise. I'll be surprised.

It's not surprised to yourself. It's like trying to tickle yourself. You can't tickle yourself. I believe if you're schizophrenic, you can shock yourself with a figure of your own anus. Right, there we go. No, I think, is it, they just nerve stuff. I actually didn't read the study. It's a digital rectal massage that you give yourself.

But I felt like I'd gone deep enough. The only thing I remember about putting finger at the bottom is it's the way to get a dog to stop biting you. I'll put the dog bottom on your own. The dogs. The dogs like, that's disgusting. We're not biting this guy. Thank God you clarified, though, Adam. We'll be someone out there who will remember that little nugget one day.

He died being bitten by a dog with his finger up his ass. We can't quite work out. Okay, it's time for facts. Number three, and that is Dan. Yep, so we've been sent in a fact here by John Waldrop from 1934 to 1947, And then from 1951 till his death in 1954, the mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana was Harry Boles. Very good? Yeah, I remember mentioning him years ago on the show, but I don't think it made it to an edit in the end.

He's called Harry. He's called Harry Bulls. B-A-A-L-S. The pronunciation is that because he was once on a radio show with a guy called Bob Chase, who wasn't quite sure what to say in the moment. And so he pronounced the mayor's name Bales. So he said Mayor Bales is with us. And he called him on it and he said, son, this is your mayor.

I pronounced my name, Boles. So he was very into that. But yeah, he seemed to be quite an interesting character. He did a lot of stuff for the city. He sort of helped to build underground sewage systems. He launched lots of city departments, lowered the city tax rates. A liked guy by all accounts. I looked him up on eBay and you can find.

You can buy him for 12 nights ago. Yeah, he's available now. No, there's a lot of like of the old paraphernalia that you can buy from his, I guess, election time and just general stuff. And I can't tell which ones are genuine and not, but it's, it's, you know, on the badges it will say stuff like, I'm proud of my Harry Balls. Right, right, right. So they obviously leaned into it. And apparently one of the most stolen street signs that you can get in the States is Harry Ball's Drive. And that's constantly being.

Yeah. So they had to rename it to H.W. Balls Drive just to avoid that. The balls bit is kind of part of the problem. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you very much to John Waldrop. Here's an interesting one that we got sent in.

Someone was saying that I love the show. Oh, that's great. Yep. Move on to the next one, maybe. Yeah, so this is from Jessica Ackerman. I love the show. In episode 538, Anna's fact is that there are only two colors of cat. As a cat lover, I love the conversation.

And I have a rad fact about cat Alex. to share. We can use chickens to make cats less allergenic. Okay, this is how it's done. The protein, Fel D1, is responsible for around 90% of cat allergies and humans. The protein is found in cat saliva. Scientists have found that chickens raised in the proximity to cats develop an antibody to Fel D1 called IGY. That is passed into the yolk. If you feed a cat, egg yolks from the cat exposed chickens, the IGY antibody will cause their cat's body to produce less of the fell D1 protein, thereby lessening the allergen that most humans react to.

So sorry, keep a chicken near your cat. Then feed the cat the eggs that the chicken is laid. Yes. And the cat will produce less of the stuff that... How do I convince my cat to eat this egg? Do I mix it in with some Evian? Yeah. It's exactly that.

You mix it into the cat food. There's also companies now. There's one called Purino that sells a cat food that I believe has it. mixed into it already. But the DIY solution, as Jessica points out, is you mix it into the food of your cat. We can't eat the eggs and sort it out on our side. It has to be the cats. Because then the cat would have to eat you.

Yes. That's a great fact. Yeah, that's very cool. That's very cool. Well, this is quite similar, actually. This is from Zoe Keene. She writes that Dr. Anthony Waddle has created budget frog sauners. And this could be amazing.

I hate it because I always spend so much money on my frog sauners. About time someone hit the lower end of the market. So there are frogs that are being wiped out by a fungal infection called chytrid or citrid. C-H-Y-T-R-D. It's a really big problem, isn't it? All these rare frogs in places like Hawaii, which are just dying by the thousand because they're just getting these fungal infections. Yeah, so it's thought to have caused 90 species to go extinct, decline of a further 500 species. It's a big, big problem.

And the idea is that once this fungus reaches an environment where the frogs are, living, it's pretty much impossible to save them. That's what it's been like up until now until Dr. Anthony Waddle comes in with his frog saunas, because what he's worked out is that heat treatment will prevent frogs from croaking, as Zoe has written. So they set up, basically, they set up a bunch of experiments where they put frogs into a sauna-like condition. It was very heated. They made it so that it was fun for them to be in there, and they noticed that the frogs. Sorry, how did they make it fun? Well, I guess. They said you can pour the water on the cold. Lovely fluffy towels

to where they make sure there's a good storage uniform there, gold and watches and all that. Relaxing music. You don't go to budget sodas, Steve, then. Where's the gold locker?

Sorry. Isn't that what you have to do? You want to take off all the jewelry? Oh, like your wedding ring of the things. Yeah. It sounded like you were turning up with a huge chain. Also, you shouldn't really take off

your wedding ring when you go into the sword. I know. Shouldn't you? I don't know because I don't really use saunas. They're not burn through your fingers. It sends a message, doesn't it? So, okay, so basically the idea is that they created what are effectively saunas for the frogs to be in. And they discovered that the frogs seem to have an immunity once they are in this heated area.

And that the fungus can't handle the heat and dies off. Is it, if they've caught it, they can be saved? Do you know what I mean? Is it, do they have to have already contracted the fungus? Yeah. Maybe that builds up a resistance. It must be because if you just put a bunch of uninfected frogs in saunas, they're also not going to get it, but also you've got a bunch of uninfected frogs stuck in a sauna prefer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, hang on. So in the lab, they allowed infected frogs, the option of spending time in the warm environment. They sprang at the chance to use the saunas. The fungus could not handle the heat and the frogs recovered. A control group without sauna access stayed infected. Right. So what they're trying to work out now is how do we create natural saunas for these frogs in these.

For warming! There we go. It's naturally going to happen. It's going to be, we're all going to die except the frogs. Well, it's fact that they should have a turn. Do you know that fungi are two times more deadly than they were in 1990? Why? Because...

People keep spaffing off onto them. It's so rude. It's an epidemic. It is. It's a substance that we're putting on them. But it's fungicides, basically. James, sorry, I'd never do this. But just a quick request for the edit.

Can you just remove all the earlier mentions that animated that? So it comes absolutely out of them. no one. Yeah, we're using more fungicides than ever. And like if you use too many antibiotics, you get antibiotic resistant bacteria. You can get more antifungal resistant. So they're much more dangerous than they were 30 years ago. Uh-oh.

I've had a thought about this fact that we got in, was it from Zoe? Yeah. About the frog's sauna one. Yeah. You know, it's nice because now we can update a saying, can't we? There's that classic saying, you know, if you put a frog in warm water. and raise the temperature how long before it screams or whatever

or how long before it, you know, panic and dumps out. Is it a catchy one? Is it a parable? Is it like, count your chickens? I didn't know. Is this another, there's a frog in, frog in a bath and you raise the temperature and, you know, how long before it actually realizes that it's dangerous and tries to jump out? It's not a saying. No, but it's a bit. It's a thought.

It's a thought experiment. Use it in, like, I'm at your house. When would you say that to me? For instance, oh, Dan, you know what? These tax rises, they're happening, but they're happening in quite, slowly and so people don't complain about them. It's like a frog being in a pot of water and it getting warmer and warmer and warmer and they never jump out because they never realise it's gotten too hot.

Thank you. It's a very political option. Not the one I would have gone for. That's basically the premise. This is an update because you've got a frog in a sauna and it's nice. It was more of a slam dunk in my head when I was planning this. More than that, really. Let's move on to Oliver Titcombe, who says my fact this week is that Canadian police

procedural due south was set in Chicago but filmed in Toronto. In one episode, the characters crossed the border to reach Toronto. This scene was filmed in Chicago. Very nice. Is that a funny joke of the directors? I looked into it slightly and that's kind of one of those IMDB factoids that you don't get much more on. Maybe it's out there. I never watched You South, but I always assumed it was Canadian.

All of it. It was set in Chicago. Yeah. Which is not in Canada. I know, right? So how did you assume it was Canadian? You recognised all the sites of Toronto. Why do they keep referring to Chicago when there's the famous...

Cien Tower's right there in the middle. Wait, hang on, where was it? It was filmed in Chicago. It was filmed in Chicago. No, filmed in Toronto. Thank you. I think, I actually didn't look into this bit, but I'm going to assume that it's a Canadian police show

that is based about a Chicago police station. In what sense is it a Canadian police show, except that it's filmed in Toronto? The show follows the adventures of the role. Canadian Mounted Police. What are they doing in Chicago? What is going on then? Why are they? Wait a minute. Who first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father. I see. So it's a mountain. It's like a fish out of water or a frog out of sauna. Right. He goes to Chicago. I think this would have been helped if any of us had seen due south. Yeah. Also, Oliver Zima was a bit

longer and I cropped it to just that one paragraph. So he actually did explain a little more, but I thought, okay. I'm sending it to Dan. I've just got to include the first para. Yeah, Yep, that's a... The show's format looked at the stereotypical differences between Canadian and American culture at the time. That sounds quite good. Created by Paul Haggis. Great, man. I want to see the show where he goes to Scotland.

Yeah. Okay, another fact from Sarah Ellis. And I'll do this as a quiz question because I think it's sort of presented like that. In parts of Australia, there will be two minutes in a day that last for a minute and a half each. Why? So I've seen the answer because it came into the inbox so I'm going to rule myself out

or I'll try and trick these others actually Okay I'll say it's because Australia is so big They have to stretch the minute Oh that's a good idea Isn't that? Yeah, I'm going to go for that Yeah

Can I ask some follow up questions? Absolutely, yeah Great Is it just on one particular day Or is it every day? It's every day Right Could you say it one more time?

Yeah so in parts of Australia There will be two minutes in a day and those two minutes last for a minute and a half each. Okay, okay. Do we lose the other minute? Because the number of minutes in a day presumably is the same as anywhere else. So we've got an extra half minute from each of those. Have we lost that minute somewhere else?

Yes. Ah, okay. So they've decided to do away with one of the minutes of the day. Which minute would you lose? What question? I reckon I'd lose the minute of you to talk. talking about people spunking over mushrooms. Why would you lose a minute?

Well, logically, you'd say the first or last minute would be a good one to lose. Maybe the confusion of zero zero, zero, like as in midnight, is it one day or is it the next day? Bang on. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely it. Wow. But where in Australia? This is a bit too hard to get. This is too hard to get.

We can get it. It's a bit misleading. How many places in Australia, rather. Sydney. Melbourne. Have we heard of this place? It's not a place. It's a, let's say, it's a... The exact centre. It's an institution. Help me out, Andy. Oh, is it space agency?

GPS. Think, like, they're related, related to that. Who invented GPS? Who owned GPS for a while? NASA. And the... And the Space Force. And the American... They've got big guns. Army. The army!

Wait a minute. Is he still tricking us? I don't remember. Is it the Army? It's the Royal Australian Navy. Oh, sorry. So the explanation Sarah gives is that the Royal Australian Navy uses a 24-hour clock as opposed to 12-hour time. 24-hour time starts at 0-000, and it goes until 2359, as we all know, then resets. Now, some reason, they just don't like the 0-0-0. So what they do is they make the minute 2359 last a minute and a half,

and then when it flicks over, it flicks over to 0-0-1, and that lasts for a minute and a half. I love that. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could lose? I was just thinking about the minute of the day that I would lose. And getting out of bed is the worst moment of the day, right? If you could lose the minute between when you're lying down and when you're standing up. So you could just be lying down and be like, okay, fine, can I skip ahead a minute now? And then you're standing up.

That's a great premise for something, a story or a film or something. You have a button that you press and it just, I think that's a great. a minute. Thanks, Andy. And this is a published novelist here. Okay. You're saying that. 978?

978. 978? 97. Okay, it's time for the final facts of the show, and those are my ones. So get ready, guys, because these are the really good ones. These are the creme de la creme. So here is a great one. This is from Derek Deiaman, and he writes,

I'm a train operator on the New York City subway. And I noticed the most bizarre Shakespearean coincidence within the system that I want to share with you. This is great. The fact is, the Romeo train goes through the Montague, tunnel and the Juliet comes close but never gets to join it. Okay, this is insane and I'm pretty sure this is

Derek's generated fact. I think he's the first person to notice this, which is so cool. Okay. So there are all these subway tunnels connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, right? One of them is called the Montague Tunnel. Presumably not named after the family and Romeo and Juliet. No, it gets its name from the street that it runs underneath once it reaches Brooklyn, which is Montague

Street. So, in New York, the subway lines are, they just have a letter or a number. You know, the A train, the B train. Is it like alpha and beta? Well, they do the phonetic alphabet. So train crews on the R train, call themselves Romeo's. And train crews on the J train called themselves Juliet's.

And the R train goes through the Montague Tunnel. There are tracks which would allow the J and Z trains to also use the Montague Tunnel, but they aren't used in passenger service. They both terminate just before the entrance to the tunnel. So Juliet never gets to join Romeo through the Montague Tunnel. I just think that's great. That's so good. Brilliant. Well done.

Do you want to hear, this is a great, this is an Australian one. We're going to Australia soon. This might be helpful. From Will Davies from Emerald Beach, New South Wales. Familiar to? Yeah, it's by the coast, I think. I'll do this one as a riddle as well, actually.

The third largest airline in Australia does not charge its passengers to fly. What? Is it? So it's going to be animals that it's... Yeah. Or some sort of freight or... military.

Flying doctors. Not freight. It's not. James has got it. Flying doctors. Nice. The third-in-law just by fleet size. So I suppose that's not total

passenger capacity, but number of planes you've got because they're most of quite small planes. So yeah, it's a flying doctors, who I don't think we've ever spoken about. No, no. How does, what are they?

Well, they, outbag doctors, basically. As it sounds. As it sends. But as in, is it like, if you call an ambulance in the outbacker you've been hit by a kangaroo, then you call,

and a doctor has to get to you. Yeah. Or something even less stereotypical I don't know, one of the cogs went in my eye for my hat. Leroux fell on me. Yeah, that kind of, yeah. I guess because you normally have just a paramedic go and then take them to a Yeah, but some of these places are so remote. You're distant.

And they've got very low, small populations. And so you just need, if you need a doctor within a couple of hours, the reason I actually knew about it is probably 10 years before due south came out, there was a TV show called The Flying Doctors. Yeah. Which was, I didn't really watch it, but I knew. that it was about this. Yeah, I used to watch it back home. Yeah, it was a sort of staple of, you know, along with Home and Away and all that.

Okay, here's a bonus quiz. This is something because I was reading a bit about the flying dark. Yeah, yeah. So they, if they're landing in the dark, places they're flying to are not equipped with airports, most of them, right? No, no. So what they want is proper sort of flares or electric lights on the runway to clearly mark out where they have to land at night.

So if you are landing somewhere which doesn't have those lights, what is the best alternative that the flying doctors like to use. Pumpkins. Not bad. Bio luminescence. You have to breed some phosphorescent shrimp and you chuck them out of the tags. You just throw the aquariums.

Every community under 20 people in Australia has millions of shrimps on standby if someone breaks their leg. No, it's... Phones. Hold your phone up. That's a really nice idea. You are setting light.

something. What does every house have? Netflix. A washing machine? Gold safe. Ebian. It's Dunny roll. Oh, okay. It's new roll. What you do is you soak toilet rolls in diesel and you just line them along your impromptu runway

and set fire to them and they burn for half an hour. Yeah, right. And if you can't do that, if for whatever reason you've got to the end of your last roll, maybe that's the crisis that you're calling the fine doctors for. Then you have four cars with their headlight. at the corners of your runway. Nice. I just have to put on the headlights. Very cool.

Flying doctors. They're awesome. Here's one from Henry Biggs. Until the mid-1920s, Italians drove on both sides of the road. Well, we all drive on both sides of the road, because that'd be a complete waste of road. Yeah, so you mean one way. What? It's not like you look at a road, and only half of it's being used.

Oh, we're in pedantry cul-de-sac. Now, they drove on the left and the right in the same direction. Thank you. Why did they do such a thing? Well, Italy largely adopted driving on the writer's law in 1912, but in some cities with tram networks, drivers would have to switch to driving on the left as they approached the city centre.

Quite confusing. You know what? I once drove the wrong way roundabout in Italy, and they were very annoyed the people who were also on the roundabout. But I should have just said, I thought we were still in 1912. That would have calmed it down.

Yeah, but weirdly, they think. the Romans drove on the left. So I looked into this a bit off the back of the Yeah, I think that's true, isn't it? So they look at the ruts in the road and stuff. You've got it. Yeah. Oh, that's going to be a little quiz. Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's quite alright. Just forget, okay, Dan and Anna forget you had that. Yeah, yeah. I can't believe James doesn't even eat the quiz question at this point. It just comes in with the answer. How do we know they weren't just always reversing there? That's true. Well, it was It was in 1998 they worked out because there was a quarry near Swindon.

And archaeologists found it and they found the ruts on the... So if I'm looking at the quarry from a distance, right, the ruts on the right and side of the road are deeper than the ones on the left. So what they think is that carts were arriving lighter on the left because they're not weighed down. And then they're weighed down with stones as they're leaving. So the ruts are heavier. So that's how they can tell which side of the road was driven on. Very cool. That's real ever.

That is amazing. It's great detective work. One last one. From Adam Wilson, according to the leading piracy historian, Marcus Reddica, more people have worked on the pirates of the Caribbean franchise than there were ever actual pirates of the Caribbean. And it's partly because the number of pirates was so small, he reckons Marcus Reddica, who is a probably, he's a very eminent historian,

that there were 4,000 total ever, cumulative pirates. Yeah. That's amazing. Imagine that, like 4,000 of them and what they have influenced every child. pretends to be a pirate. Honestly, it's incredible. Four thousand people. And they are pretending to be golden age pirates.

Yeah, probably they're pretending to be a hundred of those, right? Most of them wouldn't have been Army Harties. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I think four thousand. I know. And I presume the number of people who works on the, I presume even the graphics department

for one pirates. There have been about four thousand of the films. That's true. Okay, that's it. That's all of your. facts. Please keep sending them in to podcast at QI.com. We love hearing from you and they all get read and some of them may get read out. So that's an added incentive. So thanks to everyone who contributed to today's show. If you would like to get in contact with us about any of the

things that we said, we can all be found on our various social media accounts. Dan, you're on at Shreiberland on Instagram. James, you're on. My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Lovely. Anna. You can get in touch with the podcast as a whole by going to Instagram at No Such Thing as The Fish, Twitter at No Such Thing, or emailing podcast at QI.com. And I'm at Andrew Hunter M on Twitter. And if you enjoyed this kind of show, slightly different format, we actually have a club. A secret, private, highly publicised, members club. It's called Clubfish.

It's so much fun for a few quid a month. You get ad-free episodes and you get bonus content, including Drop Us Aline, which is our audience feedback bit, which is very funny. It's not dissimilar to what you just heard. No. Audience is funny than the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's really, it's, you know, I think a lot of the intellectual life is happening in clubfish at the moment. You know, it's the salon.

It's the sauna. It's the sauna. So whip off your wedding ring, pop me a gold in the safe and step on down. That's on Patreon or Apple and you can get that at No Such Thingsofish.com as well. And if you go to our website, no such things of fish.com, you can listen to previous episodes. you can get tickets for our tour. We are going on tour around the UK, Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand. We are very excited about it.

It starts soon. There are still some tickets left for some of the UK dates. Australia and New Zealand is mostly sold out at this stage. Gothenburg, Andy? And we're going to Gothenburg. We're going to Gothenburg for the Book Festival. On the 27th of September, that's going to be a fantastic fun. We're going to be doing a show there.

So if you live in continental Europe, that's your opportunity to see us. and we'll be back again with another episode of this show next week. We'll see you then. Goodbye.