No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Snappedy Chat

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

Live from the Up The Creek Comedy Club, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss personalised number plates, political sexting and the Queen's weirdest birthday presents. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, James here. So we have an announcement to make before we start today's show, and that is that we have been offered our own TV show on the BBC. On BBC 2, it's going to be on at the end of May, and we are absolutely delighted. Slash terrified. Very terrified. So what's going to happen is we're going to do a pilot very soon,
Starting point is 00:00:21 and you can get tickets to come and see that. If you go to QI.com slash fish events. And the podcast you're about to hear is actually another kind of pilot. that we did, so you'll kind of see that the facts are a little bit newsy, but actually we get into the podcast pretty quickly, so you might not even notice. Okay, on with the show. To know such thing as a fish. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Chisinski, James Harkin, and Andy Murray. And once again, we have gathered around to discuss the most interesting facts we found from last week, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, James
Starting point is 00:01:09 Harkin. Okay, my fact this week is that this week, the Queen will celebrate her 600 69th birthday. Because she's a lizard. They're all lizards. Lizards, those famous animals that live for 600 years. Because she's a sponge. She's a very ancient sponge down of the sea. So why the...
Starting point is 00:01:35 Okay, so what this is, basically, is we all know the queen has her actual birthday, which is this week. And she also has an official birthday, which is when all their parties are and stuff like that. but she also has official birthdays in all the different Commonwealth countries. And so I went through all of them and found out when the dates were. And some of them kind of coincide with each other.
Starting point is 00:01:57 So this took me quite some time to work out. And I worked out that she has had 668 birthdays and their 669th will be this week. Wow. And actually, there are some countries that used to be in the Commonwealth, which aren't anymore. There's quite a lot of them. and I couldn't really be bothered working them out. But I kind of assume the queen isn't really celebrating those anyway, so, yeah, I'm going for 6-6-9.
Starting point is 00:02:21 You're saying she could be even older? No, no. She could be 1,000. No, no, no. She's still the age we think she is. She's just celebrating a lot of birthdays. I worked out that if she is that age, 669 years old, she was born...
Starting point is 00:02:36 Which she isn't, by the way. But it means that if she is, then while all of the... of us are here in 2016. She's actually living in the year 2,592. And that's very exciting. See, I worked it out the other way that she was born in 1347. I think we're both wrong. We're actually recording this on Wednesday, so she's celebrating it today and tomorrow, which is Thursday, the 21st. Today she started celebrating by visiting the Royal Mail. and looking at...
Starting point is 00:03:12 What to look for cards coming in? Money! Yeah, she went to the Roel sorting office and had a look around there. Are you sure she wasn't picking up a parcel? Yeah, that could be it. No, no, I think they had a new stamp out or something like that.
Starting point is 00:03:32 And do you know the tweet that she tweeted, because she tweets, obviously. Does she? Yeah. Unlike you. Unlike me. 669 year old queen is more modern than I am. Yeah, so she sent a tweet out,
Starting point is 00:03:47 it's from her Twitter feed, which I think is at British Monarchy or something. And it showed the people at the Royal Mail singing happy birthday, and then it said, the first of many renditions of happy birthday for the queen, and I thought that was quite cocky. What if that's the only one?
Starting point is 00:04:03 She's going to feel like an idiot. So the queen is 90 in human years and 600... 669 in queen years. But other things that she is as old as in human years, television, liquid fuel rockets, Winnie the Pooh, and the drug PCP.
Starting point is 00:04:31 And she, I believe, is going to celebrate by combining all four of those things. Does she still send around? She doesn't still send... to every single 100 year old, does she? Well, she does, but you have to apply a few weeks before, but you do get a card, and you also get a card from Ian Duncan Smith. Oh, no, you won't anymore, sorry, because he's just resigned,
Starting point is 00:04:55 but you get a card from the work and pension secretary, so now you'll get one from Stephen Crabb, guys. Pretty cool. And then a long letter from Ian Duncan Smith saying, you want to hang out? I got nothing on. Do you know who takes over? if the queen were to become infirm in some way, but without abdicating or anything like that?
Starting point is 00:05:17 Ian Duncan Smith? No. Michael Gove. Oh, God. What? So he is the Lord Chancellor at the moment, and the last time it happened was in the 19th century with George the 3rd.
Starting point is 00:05:29 I didn't realize Michael Gove was that old. Old lizard-y-gove. No, I think, well, is it not that he gets to kind of say that they have to have a regent and the region will probably be Prince Charles. Oh, I'm not sure. I thought it was that he carries out the Royal Duties. Gets into bed with Prince Phyllis.
Starting point is 00:05:53 Oh, call on Govy. Oh, there goes the OBE. There's a lot of stuff going about, sort of little bits of trivia about her this week because of the birthday. One I really liked. She doesn't have a pound. Because in the British passport, there's a thing saying that she requests that all of anyone holding a British passport be allowed into those countries.
Starting point is 00:06:19 So therefore, because she's made the request, it's kind of said, I've requested, but can you get my mates in as well? And so she doesn't need to physically carry it. I think it's that, or she needs to hope someone in front of her in the immigration queue has the British passport. She can go just read the name. But I'm quite confused about this because she also doesn't have a driving license famously. she doesn't need to have a driving license even though she drives. So I don't know, A, how she buys alcohol. I think she might just about pass for over 21.
Starting point is 00:06:51 But B, how does she, when she was walking into those countries, any of us could impersonate the queen. We could all just put on a wig and say, I'm the queen. I don't need a passport. Let me into your country. They say, oh, do you have driving license to prove you? No, I don't have a driving license. Google it.
Starting point is 00:07:06 You're in. Worth a try. Worth a try. Although the Queen does muck around with her own identity a bit. So recently, one of the former Royal Protection Officers told the story about, because he worked with her for about 30 years, and she was out for a walk near Balmoral, her estate there. And they bumped into a group of American tourists.
Starting point is 00:07:24 And they said, they spoke to her. They said, does she live in the area? And she said, well, I've got a house in the area. She's very modest. And they said, have you ever met the Queen? And she said, no. And then she pointed at the Royal Protection Officer. and she said, but he has.
Starting point is 00:07:43 That's growl. She gets some good gifts, birthday presents and general presents whenever she visits anywhere. Okay. And so they range from, I think, last year, a horse breeder called Christina Patino gave her £5,000 worth of stud sperm, of horse sperm. So that she could sperm up horses.
Starting point is 00:08:03 $5,000. Pounds worth, not pounds on. There's one tired stallion If I can think of the queen That's two OBEs down It's just you and me now Did they actually give her the sperm itself Because I heard that this lady
Starting point is 00:08:30 Christina Patino offer to let one of the royal mares visit her stallion Big Bad Bob But she gets quite cumbersome gifts And I always wonder with this sort of thing How she gets them home So Brazil has given her two sloths She got a Maori canoe
Starting point is 00:08:48 When she went to New Zealand Well, you put the sloths in the canoe What, you think she rode home? She also got given seven kilos of prawns On one occasion Oh my God She already The most boring sentence I've ever heard.
Starting point is 00:09:09 The queen being sent seven kilos of prawns. I think that's a very fascinating sentence. It's got a possibility. The queen sent an email in 1976. Nope, there's the most boring sentence I've ever. This sledgeing goes too far. In Malvern. There it is.
Starting point is 00:09:33 What did the email say? Do we know? No, I know her username, though. Oh, go on. Really? Yeah, a big bad Bob. No. It was HME2, Her Majesty, Elizabeth II. And it was an extremely boring email.
Starting point is 00:09:46 I think it said, this is Her Majesty, the Queen, sending an email or something like that, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really awesome stuff. Anything else before we move on? She's been to the moon, in a sense. Keep talking.
Starting point is 00:09:59 When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong took out a special message, a congratulatory message, saying well done on getting to the moon and left it there. Deliberately. I think his instructions were to just leave it in a metal canister on the surface of the moon. And the message was from the queen. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:15 Okay. That's not going to the moon. It's not like everyone who's got the birthday letter from the queen says, oh, the queen came around to my house. I don't know. Okay, let's move on to our next fact. Time for fact number two, and that is Anna Chisinski. Yeah, my fact is that the Brazilian vice president accidentally released his
Starting point is 00:10:35 presidential acceptance speech by sending it to the wrong WhatsApp group. I should add, so he claims, there's skepticism about this. But yeah, so Brazil has been in a bit of turmoil recently, political turmoil. The president, Dilma Rousseff,
Starting point is 00:10:57 has just Congress, the lower house in Brazil, has just voted to impeach her. But before they voted to impeach her, the vice president, Michelle Temer, was obviously practicing his, oh, when she gets kicked out, I need to make a speech,
Starting point is 00:11:12 and I better work out what that's going to be. And he recorded a 15-minute-long speech. And then sent it, he said, intended to send it to one friend and accidentally sent it to the WhatsApp group that must have been just below, which was a whole bunch of MPs and lawyers. We've all done it.
Starting point is 00:11:32 But sending a 15-minute speech by audio, that's going to take ages on WhatsApp. that's going to load. So either he put it down or he spent 15 minutes going, ah, ah! Terrifying 15 moments in politics. No, there are theories that this was an intentional move to state that he did not feel good about the current president.
Starting point is 00:11:56 But, yeah, he says WhatsApp error. So they've just voted, haven't they, the lower house you said, to impeach the president. The thing is, the lower house is also in a bit of turmoil. I didn't realize that Brazil has quite as big a corruption problem as it does. So of the 594 members of the Congress who voted, 60% of them are currently under investigation or facing investigation for, and I'm quoting here,
Starting point is 00:12:21 serious charges like bribery, electoral fraud, illegal deforestation, kidnapping and homicide. I think, yeah, that's Congress and the Senate, the 594. So it's in both houses. So at the moment it's just gone through Congress, and there are, yeah, like 303 out of 513, but then as soon as the vote goes to the Senate, in even higher proportion of them are really corrupt.
Starting point is 00:12:45 And the three people in line to replace her when she is impeached are all also facing criminal corruption charges. It's a real good situation out there. That's true. And they're all protesting at the moment, are they in Brazil? They are. I read that in the last year, there's been more protesters in Brazil
Starting point is 00:13:02 than the entire rest of the world combined. What? Wow. It's literally like, three million at a time, just complaining, yeah. That's what you? Just complaining. The Harkin attitude, the democracy, and the will of the people.
Starting point is 00:13:18 I just go out on the streets of my placat and go, but isn't it the case as well that they had, they pro-government protesters and the anti-government protesters, and they've just put a big wall in the middle of them? Yes. They've thought, well, what's a good example from the past, where a massive wall between two groups of people who disagree has solved a problem?
Starting point is 00:13:39 Yeah, two meters high, right down the middle of the capital city. Wow. Amazing. Just taking it back to the kind of incompetence of politicians with social media. I found one that has really good intentions, but it has slightly gone wrong as well. So I don't know if you guys know this, but on Twitter, Sweden has a, it's a country that has an official Twitter account. Oh, yeah. So it's at Sweden.
Starting point is 00:14:02 And so you think, okay, who runs at Sweden? They made the decision that they're going to allow their own members of the public run it. one person a time, one week a time. So they just hand it over. And so the current person running it is called Isabel. This is her pin tweet. I don't do fika. I don't do dating.
Starting point is 00:14:19 I drink beer and fuck. That is the official first tweet, you see, from Sweden. Did you see that as well that you can ring up Sweden? Has anyone seen this? This is pretty cool, isn't it? Like, they have a phone number, and you can just call up, and they just connect you to a random. them swede.
Starting point is 00:14:40 That sounds great. So someone's at home and their phone's ringing and you just pick it up and you sign up for it. You sign up for this thing and then someone from anywhere around the world at any time can just ring you up and say hi, is that Sweden? And you say, yeah, I'm into fucking and all. Or whatever.
Starting point is 00:15:01 I'd sign up for it if it was ring a British person. Would you really? Dial a Brit. Would you? Because, like, in the office, you don't really like talking to us. No, but you notice I constantly stare at my phone looking haunted and alone. So on politicians and social media,
Starting point is 00:15:22 Jeremy Corbyn has been doing a big social media push and has joined Snapchat. Oh, see. Which, yeah. Which is what exactly, please? So I'm pretty sure. I think, is it where people send. naked photos of themselves to the people they're having affairs with.
Starting point is 00:15:41 I'm not sure that's exactly what Jeremy Corbyn will be doing for it. But yeah, it's that one where, yeah, the photo disappears. You probably all know that. So he's joined Snapchat and he's posted a few photos. Some of his first ones, a few of them were sideways and one of them was extremely blurry and then most of the middle of him signing forms. But yeah, and he's also joined Instagram
Starting point is 00:16:05 and his first post was of a Tunnox tea cake. It's very exciting actually It's very exciting stuff going on in Jeremy Corbyn's social media campaign No it's good to see them embracing it I think it's really cool But yeah they do They do get it spectacularly wrong sometimes
Starting point is 00:16:21 On Twitter there was I thought this is great There was a Dutch politician This was back in 2011 I apologise for the rudeness of this in advance But he was sending a text Which he thought he was sending to a lover And he accidentally tweeted it
Starting point is 00:16:38 and the... Yeah, at Big Bad Pob. So the translation of the tweet roughly goes, as you throbbingly climaxed for the first time I feel in my mouth, as if they were the nectar of love, right? He didn't lose his job off the tweet, but he did gain 20 new followers.
Starting point is 00:17:03 So sometimes it works in their favor. Just some basic. facts about this kind of thing. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and that kind of thing is so popular now a lot more than any other kind of ways of communicating. So there are 60 billion messages every day
Starting point is 00:17:23 through some kind of messenger and that's the first is 23 billion by text message. And that means in two days there are more messages sent than humans have ever been alive. Whoa. Oh God. Yeah. It's absolutely massive in Brazil as well, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:17:39 So I think Brazilian send twice, use WhatsApp on... I'm just going to... None of these words are familiar to me before today. I'm really struggling. She called it snappity chat. Resilians.
Starting point is 00:17:57 Use social media even more than I do. No, they spend twice as much time on social media as Americans, which I would have thought is going over 100% of the time that you're alive. In China as well, ginormous. So they have a version of Twitter out there, which is called Sinawebu. It's a, it's Gino, Stephen Hawking joined it just a couple of days ago.
Starting point is 00:18:19 He got 2 million followers in 24 hours. Like, that's just how quickly and what a massive group you can get. But he had 2 million and 20 after he accidentally... Well, he is sending his tweets in Chinese. And apparently, just from the reports I'm reading, that people are saying, I have no idea what he's saying. It's in Chinese, but I have no idea. do what he's saying, but I'd like to just say
Starting point is 00:18:43 thanks for being on here. So they kind of really appreciate the fact that such a cool guy's on them, despite the fact he's making no sense for these tweets. There is a Chinese, I think it's a Chinese instant messaging app, and I think it's a dating app. I'm going off memory here, so I'm not sure on the details, but
Starting point is 00:18:59 if you send a message which says something like, do you want to get a room or something like that, if you put in particular characters, it flashes up with a warning saying, you're sure about that. Oh, that's amazing. If only your throbbingly nectar man had had that.
Starting point is 00:19:17 So about presidents and stuff like this. So President Obama is the only person outside HBO who's going to watch Game of Thrones before it goes on air. Okay. Now we know his real agenda. And there was a journalist who was called Vanessa Golombefsky who thought, if the president has a file of Game of Thrones, then surely I can get that file through freedom of information.
Starting point is 00:19:45 And so she's going to President Obama saying, I want this file through freedom of information, and they're going to see if they can get it. But the only problem is that the average amount of time to get a file is 121 days. And by that time, we'll have already seen it by about two months. It's the principle. It's the principle, exactly.
Starting point is 00:20:03 It's a nice idea, isn't it? Just on world leaders, I was reading today that Vladimir Putin did a Q&A, a sort of big, wide Q&A where anyone could ask questions. And I looked through the Q&A, they translated it into English. And my favorite question was from a 12-year-old girl who asked him who he would save if these people were drowning, the Turkish president or the Ukrainian leader.
Starting point is 00:20:29 Who would you save if that was the situation? 12-year-old girl. And Putin said, if someone has decided to drown, it's probably already impossible to save them anyway. He did say, oh, but we would lend a helping hand to whoever is in need, but that was his first response. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andrew Hunter-Mari. My fact is that a German city is fighting global terror by banning number plates starting with IS. Every little help.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Yeah, absolutely. This is the city of Marburg in Germany, and if you want to get, get a special license plate what's it cool like a one-off personalized license plate with IS at the start you will no longer be allowed to do that so you'll have to leave Marburg get it done somewhere else where it's legal and then go back to Marburg
Starting point is 00:21:23 that will cost you petrol and it slows down IAS yeah I didn't realize that license plates are so strict so the DVLA is extremely strict about the license plates that can go out and so they have a meeting every six months I think where they go
Starting point is 00:21:40 through and work out all the possible combinations that could be construed as rude. That sounds like a great job, doesn't it? So fun. Yeah. So much imagination required. A lot of them I couldn't quite work out why they would be rude. It's a 49-page document, the latest one, and it is very good reading. None of it is appropriate for tonight.
Starting point is 00:22:00 For instance, there are two-letter combinations that are banned. Two of the two-letter combinations are M-N and N-F, and I have no idea why they're rude. Nauty Fisting Can you tell me a kind of fisting that isn't naughty There's a census I never thought I'd say to me Just doing a survey Could you?
Starting point is 00:22:29 But yeah they go through And they list all the two letter combinations That are bad, all the three letters that are bad So you're not allowed on any number plates C-U-M-C-O-K I think I'm allowed to say all of this Because I'm just spelling it out CNT, BNP
Starting point is 00:22:42 You're an ad-saic because you're not a car Always Shattering my dreams, Andy BNP, yeah I think that's a real slap in the face If you're a political party that's not even allowed on number plates So I wonder if instead of naughty fisting It's National Front
Starting point is 00:22:59 Could be the National Front Oh, you see I think it's naughty fisting guys But there are some which are really You can't have V-A-6-1-A-N-A Because it looks a bit like Vagina, right But to me that looks like vagiana
Starting point is 00:23:20 So it's a very odd Sort of the rules are really You're not allowed to have A-11 NOB All-Nob Which if you get that number plate Is an accurate description of what you are A lot of these aren't personalised though
Starting point is 00:23:36 so don't hold it against. A lot of these are number plates that would be in the standard rotation but they have to specifically remove them like MA55 TBT. Ah. You see? It takes a lot of thought.
Starting point is 00:23:46 See if you can work out this one. Wait, hang on, I didn't get that one. Hi, Honour, let me show it to you. That's very weird. All right, see if you can work out this one. X351 A-R-O. Well, this is great radio. And if you're playing along at home,
Starting point is 00:24:05 you can write it down. No, so that is, look at it backwards in mirror writing, and it spells out oral sex. It's because if you're looking backwards in your car, right? Yeah. Yeah, they have to test that. They have to test the mirror writing. That's smart.
Starting point is 00:24:23 So cool. Although the R would be backwards, so it'd be like Russian yeah. Have you guys heard... James is super fun to have a road trip with, by the way. There's a new app that's out, which is... It seems quite an exciting idea. It's called Plexed, and the idea is that when you're driving, you need to have, so you need to hope this person has the app as well, but you can text their license plate and the text gets through to them. So if someone's driving in front of you, and this is what they kind of think it's made for. It's like someone's driving in front of you and they're doing a really good job. Why don't you text them? But you're not allowed to text while driving. I know. I don't know how the system works, but that's what it's meant to be. It's meant to be allowing you to communicate with other drivers to, to,
Starting point is 00:25:08 to tell them good things about their driving. I think that's entrapment legally, isn't it? Isn't that when you persuade someone to do a crime and then you convict them of that crime? I'm basically on the Catherine Zita Jones film. When they finish their journey and then they'll safely retrieve their phone from the glove compartment where we all put it when we drive.
Starting point is 00:25:29 And then they'll turn it on and then they'll get the message saying, good job. Maybe. Some comedy about ISIS? Yes. That's why everyone came tonight. So in the news this week, there was a guy called Franco Roberto, who is Italy's top prosecutor, and he says that stoners who are trying to get marijuana legalized are helping the fight against ISIS. Really?
Starting point is 00:25:54 Yeah. How quickly the stoned is turned. Whatever, yes. We'll do it. The idea is that the Italian mafia and ISIS are working. together to kind of bring marijuana over from North Africa into Italy. And they reckon if it was legal, then they wouldn't have that way of making money. Wow.
Starting point is 00:26:17 So on the subject of ISIS, I don't know if there are any Archer fans in the room, but everyone should be wrong. Is that the Archer's? Not The Archers. Archer, the car, oh my God, I've just lost everyone. So in Archer this TV series, It's about All right, hang on, hang on now, but quickly The Archers
Starting point is 00:26:43 It's about the same. The Stoner just is cheering at everything. He doesn't know what's going on. Baked out of his gorb in the front row. You've read those words in a book, Andy. Drug language of the streets, fifth edition. Is this ever going to, am I? Archer.
Starting point is 00:27:10 The main character Archer and all his colleagues work for a company called Isis. There's a bunch of spies called Isis. And in 2014, when things started kicking off a little bit elsewhere, then the programme makers decided they had to change the name. So ISIS, as everyone who watches Archer will know, has been removed from Archer.
Starting point is 00:27:26 And actually, there was quite a good episode at the beginning of series, I think it was the first episode of series five or six, where you saw in the background, as Mallory was on the phone to Archer, you saw in the background to trucks with ISIS's logo disappearing into the sunset. But this created a serious problem because it's a really popular show and they had
Starting point is 00:27:43 shed loads of merchandise. So they just shipped it off to Syria. You joke. The creator, Adam Reed, said that in a board meeting he suggested this jokerly and was met with an icy silence. So he should have been here and said, but he also said that he complained that I gave my dad one of the ISIS hats
Starting point is 00:28:05 and in the end he had to call me and say, you know, son, I'm not going to be able to wear that hat anymore. I'm getting some weird looks in the hardware store. So I have a list of places which have had to change the name, which were called ISIS and have decided that it's not worth it anymore. So there's a mobile banking app. There's a nail salon in Oakland, California, a Danish pudding company, a Belgian chocolate firm, and a wife swapping club in Leeds. And presumably they were just getting too much confusion from people. People go there and engage in all sorts of fun
Starting point is 00:28:46 and frolics and they say it's not worth the agro. So there was the nail salon in Oakland. They changed their name because people were genuinely making rude comments and rude phone calls saying, I can't believe you guys, you're sickos. And they got some good feedback, though, because one person wrote an online review of, I remind you, a nail salon in California
Starting point is 00:29:04 saying, in the last week, ISIS gave me a real nice treatment. Don't know why we are bombing them. Okay. It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the North Pole is on a head-on collision course with Greenwich, London, where we are right now. This has just happened 20 years ago, but we've just noticed. It's been going one way. It's been heading towards Canada, the North Pole, and mysteriously, they have no idea why it's suddenly just flipped.
Starting point is 00:29:42 not a complete flip, but it's changed direction and it is now headed along Greenwich Meridian, so it is heading right here where we are right now. We could be the North Pole in about a lot of millions of years. You know they do know why. Do they? Have they worked out? That's what they've discovered
Starting point is 00:29:58 this week. I should have read the article. So this, to be clear, this isn't the magnetic North Pole, which also moves quite a bit. This is the geographic North Pole. So this is just the Earth wobbles on its axis because it's not a perfect sphere. It's not kind of lumps and bumps on it
Starting point is 00:30:16 and it's got different masses in different places. So if you imagine sort of spinning a sphere round, then it's going to, like, it'll move around it. It's as if the earth is like a basketball and you're kind of spinning it on your finger and your finger is where the south pole would be and then directly above it is where the north pole would be. It's exactly like that.
Starting point is 00:30:33 And thank you very much for the metaphor, James, simile. And what's happened is they thought, first, the reason it was moving was because of the Greenland and ice caps melting. But actually, they've been doing this study since 2005, and they've realized that what it is is a water loss from Eurasia, bizarrely, which sort of changes the masses in the earth. So a huge mass of water has been lost from India and from Asia,
Starting point is 00:30:58 and that's just changed the sort of weighting and the lumps and bumps in the earth, and it's caused the earth to start spinning it differently, start pivoting differently. And it's gradually creeping towards us. But it has happened very suddenly, hasn't it? We should say the speed at which it's moving. which is 17 centimetres a year, which is about the same as hair growth. Yeah, the funny thing about that is
Starting point is 00:31:21 because I remember reading a good few years ago that Russia found the geographical North Pole and put a pole in there at the bottom of the ocean and put a Russian flag on it because the geographic North Pole was kind of disputed between Canada, Denmark, I think, and Russia. And Russia wanted to say, no, it's ours. And they put a flag there, but it's not there anymore.
Starting point is 00:31:40 It's like 17 centimeters of what. but still not exactly where they said it was. Are they going to send someone? Do you think all the way there to move it? Yeah, maybe. Although it's down at the bottom of a very, very cold ocean, so I think maybe not. I discovered a fact this week,
Starting point is 00:31:56 which I think is really, really interesting, which is in 1985. Did you guys know this? Neil Armstrong went to the North Pole. Did he? Yeah. Did he go in the sense that the queen went to the moon? No.
Starting point is 00:32:08 The queen went, but with a letter from Neil, which he left. No, Neil Armstrong went to the North Pole with Edmund Hillary. So the first man to reach the top of Everest went with the first man to stand on the moon. And with Steve Fossett, who was the first person to go around the earth. How do we not know this? I know, isn't that really odd? So they flew there.
Starting point is 00:32:28 They didn't actually do the track. They flew there, and they landed and they went to the pole, and it was with Edmund Hillary's son as well, who's also a big explorer. And then on their way back, they were staying in a hut, which was still in icy conditions. and the storms around them, the icy storms were so great that they got stuck in the hut for a number of days and all they could do was chat and apparently it was the first time ever that Neil Armstrong completely opened up about his experience on the moon.
Starting point is 00:32:53 He'd never done that before to anyone. And so Peter Hillary, who's the son of Edmund Hillary, has the total scoop on what was said because no one else is alive who was there in that room. And? He says all right. He just said, you know, he said left a letter and he came back.
Starting point is 00:33:11 No, but isn't that amazing? Neil Armstrong, and the person who organized it, wanted to bring the people who'd done firsts to the place on Earth where they'd never been before. Okay, so it wasn't a big coincidence. They didn't all get there and go... Wait, you went to the moon? Are you serious? Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:27 No. They had the North Pole Marathon this week. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was won by a man from Arkansas, and he ran the race in five hours, 17 minutes. But the record is three hours, 36 minutes. And the reason is because it really, really matters on the conditions.
Starting point is 00:33:46 Like, it's not like the London Marathon where you've got a bit of rain or something that makes a difference. It makes a massive difference. They call it the coolest marathon in the world. And they have polar bear guards all along the route. Wait, hang on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I see what you're saying here, Andy. It's people guarding against polar bears.
Starting point is 00:34:09 Shame. Because I would run faster. I looked into the marathon as well. The first one happened in 2002. It hasn't been going that long. And it only had one participant who was also the organizer. Yeah. And the entire course is floating on top of, obviously,
Starting point is 00:34:33 on 14,000 feet of Arctic Ocean. That's an interesting thing about the ice, which is that it might be the last. last time ever that people ever walk to the North Pole or it won't happen that often because the ice is melting. There's not much weight to water. And even if you are walking to the North Pole, the ice often moves southwards. So you can be walking for days and days and be further away than you were when you started. Oh, wow. Oh my God. That's horrible. Yeah, I read, there was a guy called Wally Herbert and he was trying to.
Starting point is 00:35:01 Wally Herbert. That's two words meaning you're a bit of a div. Really? Yeah. Well, he was an amazing explorer. So he was trying to prove, because there was a lot of dispute about whether or not Peary was the first person. So he was trying to recreate the trip and see if he'd made it there. So the idea is that Robert Peary claimed to have walked over the North Pole were people kind of not sure whether he did or not? Yeah, they weren't. They weren't sure. So he tried to recreate it. His conclusion was that Peary didn't do it, that he did in fact, doctor the books. But in doing so, Wally Herbert became the first person to do it. They obviously have to use compasses and work out where the North Pole was
Starting point is 00:35:43 because of the shift that's going on all the time. It's hard to tell. So they did this marathon track this one day. And they got to this point where they thought, let's stop and let's see where it is. And they realized they'd walked past it. They got to it. Kept walking, didn't bother to check.
Starting point is 00:35:56 So suddenly they were just like, oh my God, what are we going to do? Let's walk back. And Wally Herbert said, no, let's not walk back. Let's go to sleep. They went to sleep. And because of the way that it was shifting in the morning, they were back at the spot where the North Pole was. Oh, were they?
Starting point is 00:36:09 Because they worked out the hours of the shift that would happen. So he slept his way to the North Pole. Don't say it like that. It's not like a bitter rival. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. See you next week.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Goodbye.

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