No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Siegfried Bassoon

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss particles, poems, plums, and Antonio da Ponte. 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 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

Hi everybody, Anna and Andy here. We have a little bit of exciting news for you before this week's show starts. Yes, we do. We are actually doing two live shows in the very near future, very excited about both of them. So one of them is on the 7th of June, and that's in Belgium. Yeah, it's lovely Belgium. And it'll be even lovelier if you're at the Nerdland Festival. This is run by longtime friend of the podcast, Leven Skider.

It's such a good festival. There's all sorts of amazing, sciencey, nerdy, comedy, brilliant stuff there, including a show from us. We're going to be doing a show there on the 7th of June, which is a Saturday. And the whole festival is amazing. It's just an amazing weekend of wonderful things going on. It's so much fun. We highly recommend it if you haven't been already. We really do. So book yourself a trip there now and then book yourself a trip to Sheffield for the Crossed Wires Festival. That's on the 6th of July and again, we'll be performing there on the Sunday. And to get tickets for either of these events, you can go to no such thing as a fish.com. That's right. So do that now.

Just do that now. Yeah. Do it. Do it now. No such thing as fish.com. And has already said it. You know the address. It's the same as the show name. It's always the same. For God's sake. Why do we keep saying it? Yeah. All right. See it. Those shows. On with the podcast. On with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, 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 no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Andy.

My fact is that Venice's most famous bridge was built by a man named Antonio the Bridge. Oh. Was it? Was it? Yes. Was it? Is it Rialto? It's the Rialto Bridge, which is the big.

It's not the biggest, but it is the It's the famous one. Most venerable. And the builder was Antonio da Ponte, which certain members of this podcast have pointed out might mean Antonio Orvo from the bridge. It just doesn't mean Antonio the bridge. Lame. Lame. Can't a fella

have a little flare on this podcast. We don't want to alienate the Italian listeners. Well, this was sent in by Marco Batuzzo as originally wanted. So I think he will be pretty alienated by you now. So thanks to Marco for sending us in. This is about Venice

La Serenissima You know City of canals That doesn't sound very sexy Does it? Queen of the Adriatic That sounds sexy Yeah

The floating city Yes Gondolas Smells quite like shit Does it? For a lot of the year Yeah Have you guys been to Venice

Yeah lots of pigeons I seem to remember There was in St. Marks Square is it Yeah Pigeons St Marks Square But yeah For a lot of the year

The effluence sort of backs up but it does smell pretty whiffy. You and Dan should take charge of their tourist industry. You can really solve a lot of their problems. They're trying to put people off, aren't they? Yeah. Anyway, Antonio Deponte designed the Rialto.

And this actually gets from another fact. I've been trying to smuggle into this podcast for some months now, which is that Canoletto, the man most famous for painting all the canals in Venice, was born Giovanni Canal, John Canal, was his name. And then he painted canals for a living. And these guys didn't think that was a good fact. I think it's a good fact. I just thought it was more well known than.

Antonio off the bridge. Yeah, true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seems weird that we don't seem to know much about Mr. Bridge. We know his nephew had nepotism on his side because he built a bridge himself. This was the bridge of

sighs. Oh, that's the second most famous one in Venice. We'll get back to your bridge, Andy. But that bridge was called that because it was the last site that prisoners would see before they were then put into a building. So the idea was the sigh would be, oh, this is it.

Supposedly... What a shit bridge to end? supposedly Byron gave it the name the bridge of size Did he? We don't know it was an epitism. He might have just been a naturally good bridge builder like his uncle. Can you tell us any more about Antonio or not? I've got one thing about Antonio Duponte. So it was 1591. He's designing it. And there is a legend that he made a deal with the devil. Oh, it's one of those is it? It's one of those. Wow. And the bridge would be a success. But in exchange, the devil would claim the soul of the first person who crossed the bridge. Actually, I would say that's quite a good deal for him. Because usually,

it's the person who designs it who has to give their soul away. Exactly. Exactly that. And he tried to trick the devil by making a rooster walk over the bridge first. That never works. The devil sees through that kind of shit. The devil saw through it and then ensured that the first human to cross was DePonte's own wife. Uh-oh.

He died. Running after the rooster. Do we know anything about her? No. Did she die? Did she die? She died. Yeah.

She's not still alive. I mean, I don't think the story is. I don't think we need to. Not true. I don't think we need to dig into that story. There's quite a few legends about it, isn't there? So this was the fourth bridge that was built in this spot. It's not the fourth bridge.

Is that an actual bridge? That's in Scotland, of course. So there were previous bridges, and it was going to cost a lot, a lot of money. And there's a story that goes that a couple who were talking to the government who were financing it, they said, this is an impossible feat. It's going to collapse. It's not going to work. If it happens, to God, let a nail graham.

out between my thighs, said the man. And the lady said, yes, and let a fire burn my vagina. Well, she said a fire should burn my nature, but that's what she was talking about. Now, if you look on the bridge, there are two facades where there is a lady with a fire in between her legs, and there's a man with a sort of third leg that's coming out. And supposedly it's in connection to that legend. I think it is, isn't it? Yeah.

Even though that probably didn't happen. But, you know, it was a like screw you, middle finger to the people who said it would never happen. Because it took almost 100 years to be built from. when it was promised. So the whole of Venice, it was a joke that no one was ever going to build it. So they did do that sculpture as a middle finger. But I feel like the man got off lightly because, A, he said a nail grow between my thighs

and it's not a nail, it's a leg. It's a leg, he got a third leg. He's just got a third leg. That's almost an asset. Well, I'm not sure. You wouldn't say no to a third leg, would you? I think I would, actually, because I think it's associated with certain entertainers from the 1970s that I wouldn't want to be associated with it.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's not go down that. with that bridge. So can I ask the previous bridges? So this is the fourth one, the Rialto, right? Yeah. Were they all wooden and burned down or something? Or what? A wolf came and huffed and huffed.

They were kind of a mix. They were often replaced for reasons like we need to get ships along this bit of the lagoon or the lake or the canal or whatever and actually it's too tall. So one of the previous ones was the drawbridge, great fun. But I think they wanted something a bit more permanent. So previous times that this bridge went down. One was it was burnt down as part of a revolt, and then the next time, the rebuilt one, which was in 1444, collapsed because a crowd of people were running to the marriage of the marquee of Ferrara, and the weight couldn't take it. And so it just collapsed. Wow. Obviously the marquee of it.

It sounded like you were just clearing your throat. Ferrara. Ferrara. Farara. Farrara. What famous thing about the bridges in Venice is they used to fight over them a lot, didn't they? And when I say fight over them, I don't they? I mean, they were walking over them.

It's mine. It's mine. It was like families, and they used to just have big old scraps over the bridges. Yeah, it sounds like such a fun era. Yeah. It's sort of, was there a particular day? You'd go to a bridge on a day and there would be the day of fighting. You know what? I think it happened quite regularly.

But yeah, like it would be an Easter thing or a, you know, a special day of the year. And it's just fist fights. Just fist fights. And they weren't really fighting over anything in particular. It wasn't like we want this bridge like Anna says. It was just like we want honour. So it'll make everyone in our family like us if we win this fight. Yeah, I think it was originally started with the two massive factions,

which kind of split Venice, the Castellani, who were the shipbuilders and the sailors, and the Nicolotti, who were the fishermen. And, you know, they just hasted each other. So they came and they had some stick fights for a while, and then I think they decided to convert to fists. And it only ended in 1705. So it started in 14th century, happened all the time, always a bridge you can find somewhere with a fight on it.

Ended 1705. when one fight got so big and so popular that the Sanjur Alamo church, somewhere else in the city, caught fire and was going to burn down. And they relied on firemen volunteers to come and fix it. But all the firemen volunteers were watching this fight and refused. And so this amazing church burned down because these lazy firemen were too busy at the fight. You do wonder what happened in the past with it being fights between the shipbuilders and the fishermen. Because they must get together quite often for business, right?

Oh, yeah, you're right. You want someone to build you a ship. Exactly. The fishermen depend on the shipbuilders, and the shipwaters depend on the fishermen to buy their boats. Why are they alienating each other? It's not good business. That's just rivalry, isn't it?

It's like us and the Big Bang theory, you know? Like, we're all part of this great comedy world, but we're daggers drawn. Oh, yeah, they really care about us. With hindsight, I should have said off-menu, but I think... Yeah, at least say people who we've actually met. Yeah, and are still going.

Dan, we won, we defeated the Big Bang community. So obvious. I was looking up other notable people from Venice. And specifically people whose name sounded like the thing that they did, found an archaeologist called Iocomo Boni. Brilliant. Oh, can we guess? Brilliant.

Unfortunately, he was an archaeologist of Roman architecture as opposed to finding bones. But he must have come across some bones when he was doing that stuff. He would have cleared some bones out the way. Yeah. And that's the only one I found. That was really good How long did that? Was that a couple of days work?

I actually lost a lot of time because Leonardo da Vinci is of Vinci and I thought okay where is Antonio the bridge from? So I looked up bridge and there's a few places around the world called bridge but none in Italy and I thought oh my God

so where is he from? Now after about half hour I realized you searched the word bridge not Ponte so I've got a lot of facts about little villages called Bridge around the UK

You didn't give us some of them. That's great. Well, there's one in Canterbury, near Canterbury, called Bridge, population 1,500. Its only cultural milestone for it is that it was once featured in a show called Robbie the Car, in which Bridges' traffic congested roads were shown. That's the only popular cultural reference that it has ever had. And do you mean Robbie The Car or Robbie of the Car? Don't fall for it. But Ponte, there are lots of Pontees, it turns out, when I re-googled it,

in Italy, but we also have a Ponte in the UK. Ponte Prit? We've got Ponte Fract. Ponte Fract, which literally means broken bridge. Broken bridge. Yes, why does it mean that? I'm not talking about that. I stopped researching it, but it was...

You'd gone off course at this point. Someone quite famous. There was a bridge that was broken and they rebuilt it. And so we got its name off the back of it a very long time ago. Nice, thanks. There's a detail you needed. I didn't know this. Maybe it's very well known if you've been to Venice.

but it's obviously in the middle of this lagoon. Do you know the average depth of the lagoon? It's going to be either 90 centimetres or it's going to be two miles. I think it's really shallow. One metre. Get out. And it varies quite a lot. But if you are in a boat, you really need to know the right route.

Otherwise you are going to get beach, but basically you could paddle across. Do people swim across? No, they don't. They really don't. And people say, you know, even foreigners are not recommended to boat across because you won't be able to navigate. Because like, unlike the channel swim that people, do. If you get tired, you drown, but in this one, you could literally stand and just fake that you're still with front crawl.

Oh, still gone. That's how I swam until I was about 11 years old. When you were there, you've been there, you've been there down. I've been there a few times. Yeah, when I was very young. Did you go in the gondolas? Yeah. And did you have a maestro on board singing? Oh, no. Because they don't sing, I believe, the gondolas. I didn't. No. Yeah. I think you have to actually, ours was quite tacit and thinking about it. Right. Well, I think they are because they're really busy punting you along. It's really high effort. Like, you'd have to be Taylor Swift. I was going, sing. Sing, damn it.

They get a bit snippy when you asked them to sing. And I read an interview with the gondolier who said, yes, we know if anyone sings just one cornetto that they're British. I don't think that's fair enough. But there are only about 430 proper gondoliers in the city. Yeah. Like, the gondolas are a very specific kind of boat. And there are also the trageti, which are like bus gondolas, which go, there are more

like ferries across waterways. I just remembered I have been in a gondola where they were singing. Oh, really? Yeah, and they were singing, oh, Soleimio or not? Just one coletto. Just one coletto. Yeah, yeah. But the effect is the same.

And that was in Las Vegas. Okay. Because there is, like, is it called the Venetian? Maybe it is. One of the hotels, they have, like, gondoliers on the outside. Yeah, yeah. They all lean a little bit to the right, don't they? The gondolas.

The gondolas, yes. Politically, you mean? Yes, they're all very, very Republican. That's that. No, I don't know their political leanings, but their physical leanings to the right. Every gondola is exactly 24 centimetres longer on its left-hand side so that the keel bends round to the right and it tilts a bit to the right. Why?

It's because it's kind of like if you imagine you're punting, but the gondoliers punt on one side. They row from the right side. And so if they rowing the right side and it was straight, then it would keep veering to the left. So you need to bend to the right. That is clever. It's all wonky. We haven't even talked about the doge. Oh.

That's the guy who ran it. He's in charge? Yeah. Or she, but mostly guys. Was there ever a female Doge? I believe not. But the Dogeers, they lasted for, the Republic lasted a thousand years until Napoleon came along and just ended it like that.

Yeah. What I said. Do you know who was instrumental in the restoration of the Doge Palace? Yoko Boni. He was, okay. He was very much involved in that. Brilliant. Okay.

Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that for the last seven years, a science lab in Italy has continuously been looking for something that supposedly happens less than once every trillion, trillion years. It's very cool. You making the tea. What? I thought one of us had to have come up with a joke in advance for that, and none of us had.

And I could see it hadn't happened. So that was a prepped joke as well. No, that was on the fly. I suddenly realized we should have prepped something. Got it. Guys, why didn't you prep anything? Yeah, what is this, Dan? This is the cryogenic underground observatory for rare events, also known as Cura, which is heart in the Italian language.

It's a particle physics experiment. It's underground, and it is trying to basically work out why it is that the universe is in the way it is. We are missing a lot of mass in the universe. Dark matter is not there. Scientists, it's one of the biggest problems. How can we not find it? study it's done by a guy called Giovanni Nutrino. I have a question done.

Yeah, yeah. If this only happens once every trillion, trillion years, and they've been going for seven years. Are they just hoping to get incredibly lucky? It's got to happen sometime, right? Even though we're living in a 14 billion year old universe. So what's the deal there? Are they trying to make it happen? Effectively, yes.

What is the actual thing that they're looking for? What they're looking for is they're trying to work out whether or not neutrinos, which, they're incredibly, incredibly tiny. There's a comparative which says that if an atom is the size of the solar system, the neutrino at the center is the size of a golf ball. So this is an extraordinarily... Oh, now I'm interested. When radiation happens, isn't it right that neutrinos are created,

when radioactive molecules decay? Yes. So I think basically what they're really excited about finding here is a decay that doesn't spit out neutrinos, right? Neutrino-less decay. So the idea is that when atoms decay, they spit out two electrons, sometimes they spit out two electrons, two neutrinos, and scientists have gone for ages.

We reckon that sometimes atoms decay, and the two neutrinos that would be spat out, will actually erase each other, because one will be a neutrino, one will become an anti-nutrino, and nothing will be spat out, and this will answer all our questions about why there's so little antimatter in the universe. But I don't know if they found it yet. I think we would have heard if they had, no, they haven't found it yet. And the way that they can do it in seven years, or not do it yet in seven, years, but they're hoping to do it sometime, is just they have a lot of stuff, right?

So it would happen to an individual molecule once every trillion, trillion years. But if you've got a trillion, trillion, trillion, molecules, then it'll happen every year. I understand. Do you know what I mean? Oh, so it only happens less than once every trillion, trillion years to each molecule, kind of thing, right, not ever in the universe. And so they're observing it in this incredible refrigerator that they've built. It's called the cryostat, and it basically...

Would they keep milk in this refrigerator? You probably would know where milk is kept. Basically, the idea, let's get back to the physics, guys. So the refrigerator takes the temperature down to what is called 10 miller Kelvin, which is just barely above absolute zero. And the conditions are basically the colder than the coldest spot of space. It went out to the coldest bit of the void of space. This is colder.

So it's a pretty amazing thing going on. It's amazing we can create the coldest spot in the universe. It really is. And the other amazing thing about is about where this thing is, because if you're trying to study neutrinos, you want to avoid cosmic bombardment. Oh, yeah. So. Because there's neutrinos going around all the time, right? They're everywhere. Everywhere. So if you're looking for them, that's going to be tough because they're everywhere. Yeah. They're in you. They're in your cup of tea that Dan didn't make. They're everywhere. So you need to create an environment where they aren't. Exactly. And so what they do, they go beneath a mountain race. which helps. But another layer of protection they've got is, and this is something we've mentioned a few years ago, ancient Roman ingots of lead, which were found in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck,

and they gained the permission to use these for science rather than, I don't know, putting them in a museum, I guess because they're 2,000-year-old lumps of lead. Who cares? But they've been at the bottom of the ocean all this time, so they haven't absorbed any cosmic bombardment. So they're relatively clean, and they've been melted down

and formed into a shield to protect these towers of fridge units basically. Crystals, which are making the place so cold. So it's surrounded by 2,000-year-old Roman-led shield. It's just under a mountain in Italy. It's mad.

It's James Bond stuff. It is. And it's the coldest cubic metre in the universe. Like, that's just nuts. That is the final cherry on the top. It's just nuts. And the Romans helped to build it, as if they didn't take credit for everything else.

I mean, neutrinos have been causing problems for scientists for a while, haven't they? Since we imagine they might exist, people try to look for them for ages, because they're so tiny and chargeless, and they don't interact with anything at all. They're almost totally undetectable. So I think Wolfgang Paoli in 1930,

when he said, I think neutrinos must exist, immediately said, I've done a terrible thing. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected. I thought really bad about it. But they did find it 26 years later, and this was two scientists called Rings and Cairns and Can in 1956. Do you know what their original plan was for how to find a neutrino?

Here neutrino. Here, here neutrino. It's a whistle, yeah. What was happening in the 1950s? So there were some big experiments going on in America. Nuclear bombs. Yeah. They were like, set off a nuclear bomb since it's happening anyway.

And they went to the US government and they said, do you mind if we sell a nuclear bomb about the same size as the one in Hiroshima? Yeah. And then we'll plant a neutrino detector near it and it'll detects And that was what they were going to do. And it was only at the last minute they thought actually a nuclear reactor would be easier. Oh, okay. Yeah, Pauli, by the way, was in Friend of the podcast, the smartest ever photograph.

He was one of those guys. And he won a Nobel Prize a bit later for bombarding uranium with neutrons and creating two new elements called Ossinium and Hesperium. I mean, do you guys know those elements? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, they don't exist. It turns out that he'd made a huge mistake

and even though he won Nobel Prize for it those two elements don't exist. Do they then take the Nobel Prize back? No, they didn't. Because all the work was very important what he was doing. What he'd actually done and they only found out this way later

is that he'd actually split the atom. Oh. And what he'd made was not arsenium and hesperium, but it was a mixture of Berium, krym, krypton and a load of other elements that he got from splitting the atom. Really? So, yeah.

It turned out he'd done something even more important. I love it, isn't it? I love these stories. It turns out the atom was split by mistake. Someone was walking across the lab with a tray and they'd trick. Cut some carrots in the kitchen. You know, so neutrinos are everywhere, as we've said. And they don't get, they don't change course.

So they're good at being traced back. If you can trace the direction of a neutrino, which is obviously very hard to do. You can just say, oh, look, it comes from that supernova over there. Because they're not affected by like gravity or anything. Like anything, anything at all? They pass because they're so tiny, they pass through, if they, like if they part 100 million, no, sorry, hang on one. Oh, I can tell you how many. Oh, okay, great.

If you listen to the song Bound for a Reload by Oxide and Neutrino, the garage. Brilliant song. Yeah. Number one, with a casualty theme tune in the background. Exactly. Yeah. In the time it takes you to listen to that song, 2.27 quadrillion neutrinos will have passed through your body. Wow.

Have you listened to that song? I've listened to half of it. Oh, so how many neutrinos pass through your body before you gave up? Only about a quadrillion. And I thought, do you know what? It's not for me. But what's weird, apparently, is they're so tiny that as they're passing through you, they don't make contact with the neutrinos that they're in the atoms of your body.

It only happens like once or twice in your lifetime. But if you threw a golf ball through the solar system, it wouldn't hit another. So is that astonishing? A neutrino could go through lead for a light year of distance and not hit a single atom on the way. Solid lead. It's just mad. Only lie. Mad things.

And there's an argument to say, what's the point in studying them? Because they don't interact with anything. They don't bother anyone. But they were really, really essential in one specific period. And that was the lepton epoch. So they're a type of leptone, which is type of particle. Do you guys know how long the leptone epoch lasted? Again, it's either going to be an eighteenth of a millisecond or it's going to be five.

I have a feeling it might have been less than an eighteenth of a millisecond. Was it at the very start of the universe? It was a start of the universe. It wasn't quite less than that. It lasted between one to ten seconds after the Big Bang. That was their moment of glory. That's longer than you managed to get through that UK garage sun. Yeah, that was when they were important.

It was just them hanging out, establishing the structure of the universe. That's this stuff. It is crazy. So these guys are looking for neutrinoless double beta decay, as very well explained earlier on. But do you know who discovered double beta decay OG? As in with all the new tree notes involved. Is it a friend of the podcast?

No, it's not. It's someone called Maria Gurpett Meyer. Maria Gurp. Maria Gurp at Maya was, she basically took 30 years to become a professor because she was at school. And then her school closed down because she was at school for girls. And they just closed it. She was in Germany just before she was due to graduate. When was this?

This was in the middle of the 20th century. She was born in 190 something. Okay. And she basically, yeah, it took her ages and ages to get a professorship because basically women couldn't really do it back then. And then three years after she got a professorship, she won a Nobel Prize. And of all the people who were linked with the Manhattan Project, there were 30 men who got Nobel Prizes,

and she was the only woman to get a Nobel Prize for the Manhattan Project. And she kind of came up with loads of ideas. One of them was something called spin-orbit coupling, and it's the way that particles go around. like orbit in atoms and stuff. And the way that she did it is she knew Enrico Fermi. She was like one of these people who, when she had an idea, she was just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.

And like, it was almost like an avalanche coming over you and telling you what was happening. And then Enrico's like, look, it's too much. I don't understand. It's too complicated. It's too many words. Just go away and think about it. And she came back and basically then started dancing the waltz with him.

And then her whole theory from then on was that these little things move around the atom exactly. the way that couples move when they're waltzing. And it means that the ones on the outside move a bit slower, the ones on the inside move a bit faster, and they all kind of interact with each other in that way. Do you think it was that? Or did you just spend ages and ages studying it and then think, I've got to come up with some sort of romantic revelatory moment.

Maybe. Get on the dance floor. For the inevitable biopic. Yeah. It kind of more felt like Fermi didn't really understand it. Because like this is like the most advanced physics at the time and still is pretty advanced now. So it was her actually dumbing it down for him? I'm on Burmie.

It's good that people were doing the waltz at the time, as in modern dances don't really rely on that kind of... If you're advancing to oxide and neutrinos, just chaos. Yeah, we'd never know. We'd never have discovered. Actually, on particle spin, this is something I don't think we've mentioned before,

but it is amazing if people don't know it, the whole universe is left-handed. Okay. We're all on a massive gondola. So what does that mean? Which basically means that there are certain interactions, weak interactions involving this weak force, which is what radioactive decay involves, where all the neutrinos involved spin clockwise, which means they're left-handed. And it's in lots of stuff. So all proteins that create life, the amino acids are lefty, so they're amino acids that spin clockwise. Is there an advantage to it, like with tennis players?

Oh, you think we're like the Nadal universe? Right, exactly. We don't know. About two-thirds of galaxies spin clockwise. We don't really know why. It's very, very weird. That principle of weak interactions is actually what the Big Bang Theory sitcom was based on. Suck it, Big Bang.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna. My fact is that Siegfried Sassoon's grand. grandfather once owned half the opium in India and China. It's a lot of opium. It's so much opium. All personal use? Yeah. So high.

Definitely intent to supply, isn't it, when he's pulled over? He didn't bring it all over in his bun, though, did it? It wasn't stuffed up his anus, no. No, they were classier than that. I don't think it was that classy. The opium was. Oh, look, don't twist my words, James, to make it sound like one of our lowest colonial moments. I think it was a low point of the British Empire, personally speaking.

So what was it? Britain was owning and trading opium, like growing it in India and then selling it to China and basically getting China hooked on opium? Yes, exactly. Because it's for trade, for money. And then China said, please don't do that. And Britain said, all right, well, we're going to go to war then. Right.

Because we're going to make this happen. And they had a big old war. Then Britain said, well, we're going to keep Hong Kong. And so then we kept Hong Kong. And then Dan was born. That's the story. If you read my bio. online. That's my origin story. Wow. Do you feel guilty? Do you feel partially responsible for the

subjugation of China? Absolutely. It's why I don't make tea for anyone. I don't want to be part of any British traditions. That is a very good joke for anyone unfamiliar with the opium wars because the whole point was China was exporting so much tea to us and we needed to export something back to sort the trade deficit and we found opium. Anyway, the Sussons, were they responsible? Weren't they? Well, complicit. Complicit, yes. So they were a massive Jewish Iraqi family originally in the 18th century and much earlier. And there was this guy, Sheikh Sassoon Ben Sala, who was basically the treasurer to all the highest-ranking politicians in Baghdad. He was like the treasurer of Baghdad.

And then Jews started being persecuted very badly in Iraq in the early 1800s. And so the family fled and this guy called David Sassoon, his son, fled to Bombay with, I think he had something like 18 children. Something mad. 14. 14 children. Still quite a lot. So they got to Bombay. They were very successful. They traded lots of things. They allied with the British Empire who were doing quite well in India back then, obviously. And it was around this time when the opium wars were happening. And Britain was realizing how valuable opium was and how much money they could make trading it with China. And the Sassoons caught onto that. And they got so big they literally owned half of the opium. Which I actually don't know who owned the other half. But yeah. Some other company, I guess. So that means Siegfried basically is a Nipo baby. Oh, 100%. Yeah. We should say who Siegfried Sassoon?

Oh, we should, yeah. Because not everyone will have had the same British education. So Siegfried Sassoon, one of Britain's great war poets. First World War, he was in the First World War and he lived from 1886 to 1967. So he survived the war. Spoiler. But he wrote some cracking poems along the way. and yeah he's a pretty famous name in the UK. It's huge.

Definitely. We all have to study him at school. Yeah, exactly. And all the other war poets like Wilfred Owen. Exactly. Yeah. If you think of a famous war poem and you wonder who it's by, it's always by Wilfridone. It is because Andy and I were talking before this about which secret Sassoon poems we know.

And everyone I listed, Andy was like, no, that's what's. Yeah. No, that's Wilfrid Owen. He did the bigies. Well, he was his mentor, wasn't he? They both met in a hospital that was looking after them after they suffered some major shock from the war and Wilfred Owen came up and said I write poetry as well would you have a look and he saw potential and he was a mentor to him and then now he's eclipsed him and then a bit later they met robert

graves who was the other really really big war poet uh we only recently found out where they met we knew it was somewhere in scotland but we didn't know where and a university of the abidine lecturer called neil mcclennan found out that it was actually at a place called babbitton golf club oh god oh god the old james Google search. Insert word, insert golf. And secretes to soon love golf. It turned out, yeah. One of his poems called David Cleek

goes till saints and angels him forevermore, the miracle of your astounding score. Hmm. Not one of his best, but... Was this before or after his war poetry? Do we know? He probably had shell shock at this stage. Well, he was writing poetry from before the war.

You know, he grew up very affluent, obviously. But he was already a poet. He sent a lot of his early poems to cricket magazine. Oh, yeah. Just a cricketer's magazine. Yeah, right. And in the war, so the first three years of the war, when he got a commission as a lieutenant, he was extremely brave.

He was recommended for the Victoria Cross at one point. He won, I think, the military cross. He did nearly suicidal things to rescue wounded men who were left out in no man's land and things like that. Apparently, single-handedly acquired a German trench. It's crazy. And then he just sat there apparently reading. poems and then he came back.

Maddh. Yeah, it was mad. Well, Mad Jack was his name, right? Yeah, he was labelled that. I couldn't see the point in the German trench thing. And I probably should look for it. But basically, he acquired this trench, as you say. Acquired.

It's sort of, captured. Yeah, drove away like 60. When you're so soon, you were quiet. Anyway, my question is, when he got there, what was the point? Because then he went back to the trench. And I think all the Germans just came back into the trench that he scared them out of. And his commanding officers were very annoyed because a bit of an attack had had to be delayed or called off because they said

oh there's this weird bulge in the line because Sassoon has done something extremely brave. And I think that's why he didn't win the Victoria Cross. Because like you say he was nominated and it was for this thing that he was nominated but he didn't win it. Actually he did a quite pointless thing and jeopardised another operation. Incredibly brave but he became very disillusioned

with the war as lots of soldiers did and he wrote a letter saying that the war was being deliberately prolonged and really blaming the generals and politicians, the English generals and politicians and that it was being conducted really badly. And I think some people suggested that he should be court-martialed.

He certainly was meant to be court-martialed. He was meant to be court-martialed. But every time, yeah, he was so, like, gung-ho that he took a bullet to the neck, but it missed the main artery, so he survived. He almost had his head blown off. Yeah. I think it's nihilism. When I was reading about, I was thinking that he's so pissed off, isn't he?

He's just gone sod this. This is all meaningless now. Because a lot of his poems are like, this is all meaningless. Yeah. Yeah. But he was basically, like we said, said a Nipo baby. He got all this money from his aunt called Rachel Beer,

who had married, well, I mean, it was a very rich family anyway, but she'd married this guy who was in charge of the observer, Frederick Beer, and she'd taken over as editor, becoming the first female editor of a national newspaper when she did that. But she was a Nipo editor? She was a Nipo editor. How deep does this Nipo thing go? Well, it goes all the way back to David Sassum we've established.

But yeah, and then she later purchased the Sunday Times. Times, became editor of that as well. Which is mad. She edited those at the same time. Really? Opposite ends of the spectrum. Now they are. Like in those days, the Sunday Times is just like a pamphlet, really.

Yeah. But yeah. And then she and her husband, well, basically her husband started getting these headaches. I read one quote in the ODNB saying that it suddenly made this mild man irritable or at times feverishly gay. And he basically went mad. He insisted that he would have the family crest clipped out of his black poodles back and walk around with it all the time.

And it seems that he probably had syphilis. And then he died and as soon as he died, Rachel got really distraught, but also started to succumb from syphilis. And she started writing articles in The Observer and the Sunday Times about how great cannibalism is and stuff like that. Oh, really? And then she wrote one article in the Observer,

which rambled on, rambled on. And then it just said, continued in the next. and then we never heard from her again. She was committed to her asylum. And that was her. But she had a shit ton of money and she left it all to Siegfried. And Siegfried then could become a gentleman of pleasure

which meant he loved fox hunting. Yes. But he also love golf. So pros and cons. Very interesting. His grandfather, so David Sassoon was his great grandfather. His grandfather was called Sassoon Sassoon. No.

But to be fair, he had had 14. children. You're running out of ideas by then. It's so odd. It feels like you put the word in the wrong box, doesn't it? Yes. Can I get another form? No. Okay. Well, can I put the first name in the surname? No.

Well, I found a thing that was made a few years ago, which is slightly relevant to this. There's an instrument maker called Steve Burnett, who a few years ago made the Sassoon violin. I think I'm going to say the Sassoon Bassoon. I know. What a waste. In the missed opportunity of the century, he made the Sassoon violin. It's so annoying.

And it's because they'd made the Wilfred Owen violin a few years before. So it's a sort of well-known violin. It's beautifully made, and it's played all over the world in famous orchestras and all of this kind of stuff. And rather nicely, the Sassoon violin was made from the same branch of the same tree as the Owen violin. So that's kind of cool. They're united by these violins. Lovely. But I agree.

Bassoon. Sassoon. It's a no-brainer. Owen works. You can say you're Bowen with an Owen. Oh, very good. Swoon just made me sense. Did you guys say that David Sassoon invented a pickle?

Did he? Yeah. Which Sassoon is this now? This is the original Sassoon who fled to Bombay. The Opium guy. Captain Opium, yeah, 1813. Just to give a little bit of, you know, also he founded a lot of hospitals, libraries, museums, orphanages and schools.

When you got that sweet, sweet drug money rolling in, You're going to need to do some reputation laundry, aren't you? So he invented a pickle. Was this before or after the opium? Was it like his passion project was to make a pickle, but he had to wait while he made loads of money off opium? He had to earn the money. He had to earn the money to make the pickle. In meetings, he was like, so what I'm really interested in pitching is my pickle?

And they were like, just like loads more opium, please. What if we got the entirety of China addicted to pickles? It's a great idea, David. We're going to continue with our order for another million kilos of opium. Okay, what if I say for your million kilos of opium, you get 10 free pickles? Yeah, that's fine. We're not going to be very hungry after all that opium, but we will try to get around to them. No, this was just a thing he had on the side, and it was, in fact, a condiment, and it's amber, which is a huge deal in Iraqi cuisine and in Jewish-Israeli cuisine.

It appears everywhere. it's like one of the national foods of Iraq. And basically, he went to India and he thought, I love these Indian mangoes. It was either him or a member of his family. And by the way, this is the story of the amber pickle. We don't know that this actually happened. But the story of the ambi pickle is the Sussuans invented it.

Went to India, love the mangoes, was like, got to send some of these back to my mates in Iraq. So I'm going to pickle them and found a great way of pickling them that people love to this very day. And any Iraqi listeners we have, I'm sure, we'll be showing down on amber right now. Yeah, very nice. Can I very quickly just mention the greatest Sassoon of them all, which we've not mentioned, which is Sigfried. So most of his life, he was gay. He had multiple relationships with men. And then out of nowhere, he gets married to a lady. They have a child, George Sassoon. So George Sassoon was a guy who also became an author. He wrote three books. And he was quite well known because two of those books were pushing his belief that we were once visited by aliens in the ancient. world and that they had created a machine that invented food that allowed for the Israelites to walk

across their 40-year journey in the Sinai Desert, right? Now, it's called the Manor Machine, his book, yes, exactly. So, according to George Sassoon, there's a nuclear reactor that used to power the manor machine, and that was stored where else the Ark of the Covenile. I'm afraid we had to fade Dan out there because he carried on talking for another day. 20 minutes and you really didn't need to hear that. Available in bookshops now, the matter machine. Okay, it is time for our final fact to the show and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that no living person has ever seen Murray's plums. Okay. No, no, let me carry on. Okay. One man thought he saw them in 1997, but they were much hairier than expected, so he probably saw something else. I'm not sure how hairy my plums were in 1997 when I was 10. That's why it was surprising.

Plums. What's what about? Plums is a fruit. So we shouldn't have researched Andy's testifying. I wondered what all those anonymous phone calls were. Stop answering your wife's phone. Prunus Murriana called the Murray's Plum. It's a critically.

endangered shrub native to Texas. The fruits are supposedly red with white dots, hairless, and with a waxy coating. But they're so rare that apparently no one's ever seen the fruit. No one living, no one living. So I've read some reports saying that maybe when they were first scientifically described, they were mentioned. But I've looked for the first scientific description, which was by Edward Palmer in 1929. And he said, although I have not seen the fruit, this species is so distinct in character

of its inforescence and in the pubescence from any of the plums with which I am acquainted that I venture to describe it as new. So even the guy who found it hadn't seen one. So maybe it might be that they don't exist, but I've seen some places saying that they might exist, but definitely no one seen one for a long old time. It could be that they reproduce with fruit suckers like underneath the roots as in their clonal. Right. It could be that. And they're in Texas, you say? They're in Texas. Do we have a region of Texas? If we've got any listeners in Texas, should we ask them to look out? Because they must, you know, if we have a mass,

is that going to solve it? Is that? I just think it's how it could be how we get ourselves on the map. No one's looking. Yeah, yeah. We've rediscovered a plot. Yeah, you know what? There is, it is a certain place, but I never wrote down where it was. There was a guy called Marshall Enquist a bit later, who wrote a paper about them, and he said that he'd found this

type of plum, and he thought it was Prunus Mariana. But really what he wrote didn't sound to me like that. Everywhere else, like most articles and textbooks today, they say Mariana is its own species and no one's seen the food. It's like the big foot of the fruit world, isn't it? It's sort of, people have claimed to have seen it, but we've got no solid evidence.

If you're in Texas, how big can Texas be? Is it like, probably small? Yeah, yeah. Then have a look. There is a place called plum in Texas. Is there? Yeah, but it's a very tiny unincorporated town, and as far as I could tell, no plums. Is there any way called bridge?

Yes, actually there is. I think instead of burying a very cold fruit, freezer under a mountain range and bombarding it with atomic energy. Well, the plums, unfortunately, will shrink under those circumstances, which means they're even harder to find. An absolute zero. I think your plums go to the size of a dot. It's definitely a prune at the very least, isn't it?

Plank's constant. Plum's good. Yeah, they're good. It used to mean any kind of dried fruit, actually, plum. It's very odd. Yeah, raisins would be plums. Like plum pudding, which has got raisins and sultanus in, the plum part of that is referring to the old word for raisins.

I always assume. that plum pudding used to contain plums and then just gradually people stopped making them because all Christmas puddings used to be called plum puddings in the UK. And there's a food writer called Francesca Green Oak who was writing about this and she reckons that when Little Jack Horner was first written, which is in the 16th century,

plums still meant raisin then. So when he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, apparently he pulled out a raisin according to this right now. Harder to get on your thumb? Well, you could pull out a raisin, but you're more like dragging it out as opposed to shoving your thumb inside it. I actually read that the plum wasn't a plum at all.

It was the deeds to a mansion. In a fun... They're all made up. I know, but I really like this because there was a Jack Horner. Sorry, but the fact that James just said about a nursery rhyme, oh, they're all made up.

James as a boy was constantly saying, citation needed. Well, they're not real. the not real Jack Corner story which has been around for over 200 years is that there was a Jack Corner which there really was who was the steward

to the Abbott of Glastonbury called Richard Whiting and basically Henry the 8th at the time was dissolving all the monasteries famously and Richard Whiting didn't want Henry the 8th to dissolve his monastery

and so he sent his steward Jack Corner to Henry the 8th with a pie in which he'd hidden the deeds to 12 manor houses. I think as a sort of a bribe. And on the way, little Jack Horner put his thumb into this pie and nicked one of those deeds for himself, which I believe that family did get Mel's manner. So that, and that's little Jack Horner popped his thumb in, pulled out a plum of Mel's

manner and the family have it to this day. And he said, what a good boy am I? And he said, what a good boy am I? This is, yeah, no further questions. There we go. There's the story. A plum used to mean something desirable, like you've got a plum drop. Oh, that still means that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, yeah, yeah. But sorry, what it used to mean was £100,000. Oh. There's a specific value in Victorian times. Yeah, because that's a lot of money in Victorian times. A mega amount.

Yeah, yeah. Why did it get that name? Do we know? I don't know. I think it's all connected to the plum thing being something desirable. Yeah. But I don't know why it was exactly that value. Yeah. It's nice that we've made, because we're always getting in trouble for bastardizing the English language,

the we modern people, but we've made the word plum more pure. because it comes from the Latin prunus for a plum tree. They screwed it up by the 1600s. It meant raisins and whatever you have. And now we've made it plum again. So kind of well than us. We've reclaimed the word plum. Well done, everyone. Yeah.

Yeah. Just a little part on the back sometimes. Pack yourself on the back if you're listening to this at home and you've used the word plum correctly. Plums in Japan used to be a very big thing. They still are. They like with bento boxes and so on. But in wartime, as part of rations for soldiers, we're talking 14. 167 to 1615. This is what was known as the Senkoku period. Roughly. Just roughly those numbers. And so they got given these kind of bento boxes and they would go out to war and it had things like chili pepper, but they wouldn't eat the chili peppers.

What they would do is because it get really cold out there. They would just chew on the chili peppers and then they would wipe it all over their butt and all down their legs. Why? Why? So it would keep them hot. Maybe it makes you move around it. But hey, take it up with the Japanese from roughly 1467 to 1615. I just thought that like there are other parts of you, don't go first for the bum. No. No. Chili peppers around the bum does not feel like a good. It doesn't feel like a good idea.

I've touched my eyes after cutting chilies. Yes. And it's awful. And I can only imagine. Supposedly they would take these dried plums with them. And supposedly they'd get one each in their ration. And if they were out in the field and they were sort of short of breath and they were having a pretty hard time, they would take it out of their lunchbox. And they wouldn't eat it.

They wouldn't taste it. they would look at it for inspiration because it was seen as something that would give you hope to go on. That's nice. It's really interesting. There's a lot of stuff about plums in this period where is this true? Like, for example, samurai swords supposedly when they were being heated up to get the metal to the right heating, you would take out a dry plum and to match the coloring of that would show you that you've heated it to the right level. This is all put out by big plum.

It doesn't feel real. That's true. Big plum is very powerful globally. So in the First World War, the Daily Telegraph ran a campaign to get every single soldier fighting on the front. That was 3 million soldiers on the Western Front, a portion of plum pudding. Yeah.

For Christmas, I guess. It was definitely for Christmas. But I do think Siegfried Sassoon at some point would have received his daily telegraph backed plum pudding. I wonder if that's where Rachel hid the deeds to the inheritance that he got. Yeah. But they were a big, just plum pudding was so big. Yeah.

The plum pudding riots of 1640? happened in Canterbury. That was a Christmassy thing because the Puritans were in a child at the time, Oliver Cromwell and his gang. And their main thing was keeping shops open on Christmas Day. They said... The Puritans said that. Yeah, yeah. Because we're not

celebrating it. It's a special day. It's not religious. Exactly. And the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, whose name was William Bridge. Good? William Deponte, as he would have been known. Hang, we had a Canterbury Bridge fact earlier as well. And now... There's a place near Canterbury called Bridge. So maybe William Bridge was from bridge. Oh my God. That's likely of us, you might say. Well, he was walking along the streets

trying to encourage shopkeepers to stay open and stay serving. This is a Christmas day. They all wanted to close and go and party and all of that. And he was thrown to the ground and muddied. Oh, no. Rias were sometimes a bit gentle back in the back, you know. You never hear about the lighter riots. It's so nice you've shared that. Does that mean just made muddy? It doesn't mean he sheds himself. I don't believe so. I'm sure it was a scary time and no one would blame him if you did.

No, no. I'd certainly not. In 2001, big plum stepped up again and forced the US Food and Drug Administration to allow them legally to call prunes dried plums. Prunes are dried plums, I'm there. They are, yes.

But until then, you could get sent to prison for saying that, honestly. As soon as you say that, they'd be banging down the door. The club police They've got very fetching outfits though Which is lovely Yes, no they are So it was the truth

Which is why they were allowed to do it But also because So they were marketed as prunes Obviously But prunes have a bad rep Well I think it's a good rep They're a great relief to many of us Oh, a lack of a bit of sticky situation

Yes But their argument What big plums argument Big prunes argument was Now everyone just thinks If you're buying prunes That it means you're constipated So they're reluctant to buy prunes

We're going to rename them dried plums And did that masterful piece of disguise work? Yeah, but the entire country was constipated Because they couldn't get hold of any prunes I don't need these dried plums Do you guys remember that story of Ash Who is the, for listeners, he is the writer of our theme tune For Fish

Which one of the many? He was going out to a party in London And he was really hungry And he was nothing in the house to eat and so he opened up the cupboard. Oh, a big bag of dried plums. Big bag of dried prudes. He ate the entire bag.

Oh, no. Got on the London Underground. Oh, no. Was midway between stops when he felt a little in his tummy and he went, that's a bit weird. And then a second later, shat himself completely. Yeah. Just outside mud chute, wasn't it?

That's the best. That's the fastest London Underground Diary drug I've ever heard. Oh, dear. What happened? Oh, he had to get off. Did he go to the party still? I'm not, no, he went into an alleyway that was just outside of the station, called his dad, said Dad, I've shot myself.

How old was he? He was 22, 23, called his brother Jazz, and jazz came with a bucket and a cloth and some extra trousers. With a bucket? Yeah, because he just said it was everywhere, because Ash had to take off his shirt. I think he was wearing shorts on the tube as well, so he took off his shirts. He took off his shirts. And he didn't used to wear underpants. either. Yeah, exactly.

Oh my gosh. They probably had to close down that line for a day, I would say. Yeah. Christ of my. Hey, Ash, if you're listening. Yeah, did you authorise that story to go out? So, yeah, California Prune Board did all this, didn't they? And they also came up with the idea of adding prunes to all burgers in U.S. schools. Really?

What? Weird. Yeah. So the idea was... Sorry, as part of the mince mixture or a layer on top like the tomato? Oh, no, part of the mixture. So the kids wouldn't know it was in there. And the idea is it's a way to sort of get vegetables into kids' diets without them knowing. Sounds like you're trying to prank all the kids and make them all shit themselves in the lunchroom, isn't it?

Well, you know, they did it. They did it. Yeah, it was a big thing. It was called Prune the Fat, they called it. Nice. And the USDA bought 10 million pounds worth of prunes in 2003 to put into school lunches. Wow. And the whole project finished in about 2006.

due to a sudden drop in plum production. Right. Wow. So there was just some problem. There might have been a drought or there might have been some disease or something. Gosh. They just couldn't make enough plums and so they stopped putting them in burgers. Does anyone know why they have this laxative effect?

Because plums, do plums in particular? Is it just dried fruit in general? It's just fibre? No, it's partly fibre. I did happen to look into this because I'm particularly grateful to prunes personally. And I don't think it should be a source of shame. Okay. So they are high in fibre because they're dried fruit, which is very useful.

But they also contain this thing called sorbitol, which has a laxative effect. And sorbitol, you may recognize the name. I do. It's not in chewing gum. It's not chewing gum. It's a sweetener in sugar-free chewing gum, which means that if you look at sugar-free chewing gum, there's often a warning on it, apparently, saying if you have to... Don't eat two packs of this if you're on the chew.

It's along those lines, and there's a picture of ash. You know, I stopped eating chewing, I used to eat a lot of chewing gum and I stopped because I read the article about them putting microplastics in your body. Oh yeah, right. Isn't that weird? Does it? Yeah, it does. And I don't think it does you any harm, but just something about that gave me the yick and I just stopped using it. But you know you're meant to spit the chewing gum out, right?

Have you been swallowing gum? You're allowed. Well, you are allowed for. No, it's not that. It's the crunchy bit on the outside. Okay, the shell kind of makes its way in. That makes sense. Oh, do you not cut yours open and knife and fork out the meat?

you're not meant to eat the shell it's like a lobster you get a special chewing gum fork yeah you are a bit don't you Andy when you're eating chewing gum

okay that is 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

you can find us on our various social media accounts I'm on Instagram with at Tribaland as the handle Andy I'm on blue sky at Andrew Hunter

James? I'm on TikTok. No such thing as James Harkin. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna. You can email podcast at qI.com or go to Instagram at No Such Thing as Official, Twitter at No Such Thing. As the handle, as Dan just said. In case you're wondering. I did hear you snigger when I said that. Yeah, so or head to our website. No Such Thing.asafish.com. Plenty of stuff up there for you to check out all of our previous episodes.

We have a link to an upcoming live show that we're doing in Sheffield in July at the Crosswires Festival. There's the portal, the gateway to club fish, the very exciting land where bonus episodes exist, they're compilations, that's the mailbag episodes, and he goes through all the emails that you send in, and we pick out the best ones to talk about the facts you've sent in and so on. So do check that out if you're not already a member. There's also bits of merchandise you can find there, or just come back here next week, because we will have another episode waiting for you. We will see you then.

Goodbye.