No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Sunscreen for Flies

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss smoking, sinking, sailing and sunscreen.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/patreonEdited by James HarkinProduced by Leying LeeTeam includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan RupareliaGet NordVPN two-year plan + four months extra ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fish It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. 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, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1965, you could try to quit smoking by swapping normal cigarettes for ones made of lettuce. Did you look as cool? You're not smoking a whole lettuce, I'm guessing. Yeah.

That would look cool. I think they looked more or less like cigarettes. So this is the fact I read on the blog Boing Boing, it's a lovely blog which sort of collects fun things off the internet. They found it from Atlas Obscura. and it is all about a guy called Poussont Torrigian, who's from Hackensack, New Jersey, and he created a brand of cigarettes called Bravo. Bravo cigarettes contain nothing but lettuce, which was dried and cured and made to look like tobacco. And they were marketed as tasting, well, pretty close like a cigarette.

But they didn't have any of the nicotine or tobacco tar in. And this guy, Turijian, he thought that they were going to be the next big thing. And for a couple of years in the 60s And then again later Which we might come to They became very slightly popular I wonder how many lives this guy saved cumulatively Yeah

Like how many packets were sold How many people smoked them How many people didn't get addicted Because they were really quite Not that cigarettes taste nice But you know what I mean These taste did even I think people who smoke cigarettes

Quite like the taste of it sometimes I really Yeah But like in this particular case I don't think they ever really caught on. They never caught fire. Put it that way. His idea was that you would get the physical and the psychological satisfactions that you would get from smoking. So you open the packet, you take off the little bit of plastic, you take the cigarette out, you light it, you put it in

your mouth. And then that kind of is quite a lot of the stuff that people like. It's the habit. Yeah, definitely. But they were not very popular. One researcher said that they were like smoking a potato. And another said, if I had a choice for punch in the head or one of these cigarettes, I would take a punch in the head. Wow. What a weird thing to say about cabbage? It's like smoking a potato. It's like, no, you've literally got the thing you can compare it to there.

It's like smoking a cabbage, actually. Well, lettuce. Yeah. But I suppose lettuce is more like cabbage than it is like potato. But I think they probably resent being confused with it constantly. I would if I were lettuce. Did you see why he chose lettuce? No.

So this guy was working for a cigarette company and someone said, why don't you come up with a new kind of cigarette that people won't get addicted to. And he said that he chose lettuce because it was the first thing he found in his fridge when he opened it. That's quite impulsive because the name Bravo, that came up immediately as well because he told his wife, who was Italian, about the idea. And she said, oh, puissant, bravo, bravo. And he went, yes, and that's what we'll call it. That could have all happened in one trip to the fridge, I'm guessing. He could have invented a type of cigarettes that had eggs in them, and they were called, what a fucking stupid idea.

He did try a load of different things though. He filed a patent to turn any leafy green into a cigarette. And it's mostly to do with drying the leaves and all of that. There is a leafy green that people do like to turn into cigarettes, isn't there? No, handy. Not familiar with it. But he tried so many. He tried carrot tops, the leaves at the top of a carrot.

Tomato tops. Can't get much out of that, I guess. He tried cabbage. He tried grape leaves, rhododendrons. Apparently most were awful and made him feel quite. sick. Rododendrons would make you feel really sick. They're poisonous, aren't they? Oh yeah. They could make you, Romans, all the Greeks made rhododendron honey, which would make you go crazy. Yes, of course, mad honey. Yeah, right. Maybe it's a different bit. Or maybe no one ever tried enough of

these to make it at all dangerous. Bronf has lost it until 2010. Stunning. Yeah, so they went out of business, actually. So they went out of business in the late 60s. And there was like, he borrowed, this guy borrowed some money from a company called General Nutrition. And there was quite a big acrimonious lawsuit because they said, well, you owe us all this money. You've got to give it us back now. And he said, no way. I'll give it back when I can. And they said, well, we'll give us a patent then.

And he said, no way. And in the end, everything just closed down because they kind of got stuck. But then he relaunched them in 1997 using enzyme treated lettuce. And it was these ones that carried on until the 21st century. Yeah. Carried on limping, presumably, into the 21st century. But his motives, I think, were really nice because he wasn't trying to become a multi-millionaire of his new cigarette empire. He wanted people to get off cigarettes and then stop smoking Bravo as well.

He had no interest in them because he wasn't quite sure if that had long-term effects, you know, of inhaling lettuce. That might come down the line. Well, anything that creates smoke, you're inhaling the bad, you know, things like tar and stuff like that. So it is going to be bound for you, isn't it? It's going to give you a cuff to start off with, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Okay. It took longer than I thought, actually. True. It happened. Still caught me by surprise.

He lived till 99. Did he? Clearly he was doing something right. The age of or the year of? Yes. He died aged 36. Yeah, 1999. Yeah, age of 2021 he made it too.

Did he? Good. One other thing about him is I read a newspaper interview with him and they asked him, you know, what is this like? And he said, oh, it tastes just as good as normal. more cigarettes. And to prove it, he broke one in half and ate it. I love that. They did recommend that you smoke an entire carton before you decide you don't like it. That was part of its publicity. It's like, just give it a chance. Give it 20 chances. We should do that for our podcast, shouldn't we?

Listen to 640 episodes before you stop, guys. It only gets good at about 600. I mean, people say that about quitting smoking. I think the most common advice I read online about people who've successfully quit smoking is them saying just smoke as many cigarettes as you possibly can one after the other for hours and hours until you regret it. And that seems to be the only way that reliably works because you feel so sick and revolted by yourself. Interesting advice. Yeah. And but you won't go on forever. That's the thing. You'll stop after a couple of hours. And I'm not necessarily advising this. Take it up with the people have read it. Well, e-cigarettes were invented slightly as a way to help people as a kind of bridge off smoking. Obviously there's now an enormous vaping industry which might have some

effects that we don't know about yet, but you know, certainly they seem to be not as bad for as as cigarette cigarettes. But the man who invented the modern e-cigarette is a guy from China called Honlick and he invented it to quit smoking only to find that he was then both vaping and smoking at the same time. I read an interview with him and he said, he claimed that the only reason he smokes is so that he can taste the cigarettes and that when he's making new e-cigarettes, he's he can compare and contrast them. Yeah. That's what you say.

Okay. So he's constantly having to test them, isn't he? Every day. I have to check. I forget what it tastes like. But I think there are a lot of people are not that happy with him because he sold the patent to like a big tobacco company, didn't he? Oh, really.

And the idea is that the big tobacco companies are quite happy with vaping because it keeps people doing something. I'm kind of fine. I'm with him and I'm fine with that. I'm just putting my cars on the table. Big tobacco companies have them. infrastructure, don't they, to suddenly market and all the places they used to market before.

Whatever gets people off smoking feels like a good thing. Okay. That's just my opinion. And it's not as good. It's certainly more effective than the advice. I kept reading, researching this. When you type in online, vegetables, cigarettes quit smoking.

You get this constant AI advice saying it is a common method to try and quit smoking to replace a cigarette with raw vegetables like carrots or cucumbers because it replaces the cigarette in your hand and you can munch on them. And I just want to imagine suggesting to a real addict that they try replacing their cigarette with a raw cow. Yeah, it was on 20 cucumbers a day at the moment.

Bugs Bunny was actually, he was just desperately trying to quit, you know. Yeah. Can I tell you one, my favourite method to quit smoking? Oh, yeah. You'll hate this because you're a shill for big tobacco, clearly. But this was an invention in 1972. It was patented by a guy called Lewis Toppel. He patented not a kind of cigarette to help people stop smoking,

but a cigarette case. But it had a mini record player inside it. And whenever you moved the case to open a cigarette, it plays the sound of someone coughing desperately. And it's to remind you that these are really bad for you. Wow. I don't think he ever produced it. He had the idea and patented it.

It's the audio version of the pictures he now got on cigarettes. It feels like someone definitely saw that and went, do you know what might be easier than this? Might be, topple. It's actually if we drew something. And then when you opened the case did like a load of horrible flamsock. It's like that 4D cinema experience.

Yeah, oh my God. Yeah, I found there's been some very creative methods to get people to quit smoking. This is a nice one that was developed by a Turkish man called Ibrahim Yusel, which is every day he would wake up and put a big cage around his head, lock it up, and give the keys to his wife and daughter. So he was only ever allowed the cageless head at meals

when they would unlock the cage and he would sit there under their supervision and then once the meal was done they put this big cage back over his head and that was his day it's kind of looks like an astronaut's helmet but it's a wiry cage so you can see like a cage in fact

what about those like really long cigarette holders flappers would have in the 20s you'd say you could insert it between the bars yeah that's a really good idea so the determined mind is possible to get out yeah oh that's great yeah I don't know

I think his wife and daughter left him and the only consolation is that he formed the band Dalf Punk and so at least made something out of it. All right, how about an ad campaign? Yep. To stop people smoking. Have you heard about Nick Oteen?

Cool. Nick Oteen? I feel like I have heard of him. Was it in Britain? Yeah, it was. Yeah. In the 90s, maybe? 1980s. It was Nick Oteen

was the arch enemy of Superman and there was a campaign to stop children getting into smoking, saying Nick O'teen is trying to recruit children to his army of smokers. Unclear what this army is going to do. Well, they might march for a while, but they're going to need

quite a lot of breaks. Basically, children were asked to sign an anti-smoking pledge, and you get some badges and you get some, a poster and that kind of stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if I did that. That's also, well, you might have been one of the 800,000 children in Britain who requested one of these packs.

It's quite impressive. I don't think it affected smoking rates long run though, unfortunately. No, because every single child, age 10, says smoking is disgusting, I hate that my parents do it, I'll never do it, and age 14 they're smoking, sadly. I don't think that's quite true anymore, like, smoking

is much less common than it used to be. And I wonder if that's legacy of nicotine. Legacy of nicotine. It's a longed thing. And it'd expect, why does Superman not smoke? You can get this, this is getable. This is how the campaign explained why Superman would never touch a cigarette.

has super breath, so if he breathes in really quick, the cigarette will fire through his skull backwards. Got it in one. No, no. It's boring playing these games with James. He always just gets it right. No, there is a famous thing that you can't smoke when you're flying famously. This was the 80s. You could do anything while flying.

No, there's a thing. What has Superman got that would deter him from smoking? Lois Lane didn't like it. The ability to get changed really quickly. both hands for that. He's got underpants on the outside of his. A dog? A dog?

A dog is a dog one of his powers? No, I was saying that as you said that. He can fly. He can see through things. Thank you. Oh my God. See the lungs. He can see the lungs.

The lungs. My God. That was the longest minute of my life. And he's got superhearing. So presumably when he opens up his vinyl cigarette case, It's blasting into him Stop the podcast

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On with the show. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the longest traffic jam in history lasted eight years. Masses. Yeah, that's a biggie. How much longer than the second place traffic jam? I think about seven years. seven and a half years.

So I've known traffic jam so bad where people just get out of their cars and then go home and then come back a few days later and have to pick up their cars and that makes a traffic jam worse so is that what happened here? It's about something that happened in 1967

there was a very brief but very lively war between Israel and Egypt called the Six Day War and when the war broke out Egypt's first move was to close off the Suez Canal right? So running top of the bottom from the med to the red. That's how you can remember where the Suez Canal is. Goes from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, right?

And it's a canal. And there's a bit in the Suez Canal, which is called the Great Bitter Lake, which is basically like, you know when you're driving along a very narrow country road and there's one of those passing places? It's like that, but it's 100 square miles. And then basically, so the war broke out

and all the ships that were sailing or halfway through, they got stuck in the Great Bitter Lake about, I think it's 14 or 15 ships. and there were like hundreds of thousands of explosive devices in the water and there were bits of bridge and there were sunken ships there was no way through. So these ships were just stuck there for you know weeks months and then eventually eight years

and it was only after another war in 1975 and a load of demining and all of this and you know like peace breaking out that finally they got to go home by that by the time they got out only two of them could actually sail anymore All the rest had to be just tugged to be broken up for scrap and things. Please let's not advertise that it takes another war to reopen an endlessly closed straight. I'm sure there are other methods. It's the second bonk on the head.

That's what it restores your memory to you. I can just imagine the meetings. It's like, have we tried another war, guys? It is amazing. It feels like the mood really took some peaks and troughs, didn't it, along the way? Because all these crews just trapped there. And the first month, it was just... as a little bit like a holiday.

Suddenly these people are, you know, you don't have to get to work anymore. You're stuck. And then the second month, it was really, really bad. Third month was terrible. And then all the crews of the ships, I think, kind of started getting together. They realized that with teamwork, they could do things like create their own social events, have card games together, have their own mini Olympics. It's really cool.

And it was eight different nations as well, these boats. It's not like it was one fleet. You had the UK, you had West Germany, Sweden, France, the United States, Poland, Bulgaria. there was more. And they became the Great Bitter Lake Association. They had a swimming pool on one of the boats that they'd go and do races on there. It sounds incredible. The idea is that all these boats were carrying different cargo. And so they were like, okay, we're hungry. Which of the ships has got the sandwiches? And they're like, okay, well, we'll give you some of our sandwiches and you can have some of our hula hoops. And then the other one's like, well, we've got some

orange cordial here. And then between them, they could all have everything they needed. One of the ships had a refrigerated bit because it was transporting food. It was transporting 300 tons of pairs and 8 million eggs. Right. You don't want to be devouring them on the 8th year, do you? Just check the day. It's fine. It's fine.

Can I want to stop being a fusspot? No, one of the sailors said after a few weeks, I can't bear to see another pair. I think they just ate pairs for several weeks. Oh, my God. We've run out of cigarettes. It's okay. West Germany's got 20 tons of lettuce.

like the outbreak of civilization in a way, isn't it? Is it? Bata economy, like they've developed their own stamps and they develop their own postal system and all this. These stamps were drawn by the crew. And they were used as legit stamps as if they were from a country, which is really cool. I went on eBay and...

Oh, she did. And there were some stamps from the collection of one of the guys who was on the boat. How much? 30 quid a stamp. 30 quid. I couldn't tell if it was a collection of four or a singular stamp.

Well, you'll find out when they arrived. Yeah, exactly. So they sent letters out with the stamps on. Did the envelopes contain letters saying, also please get us the fuck out of here? So they started rotating. After the first difficult bit where they were all, it wasn't like the same crews were eight years old at the end.

They were able to circulate in and out. So you'd go and do, like, however many months on board ship, and then thankfully you'd get a break. And then slowly there will be fewer and fewer people because they realized, actually, we don't need the guy who looks after the eggs anymore because they're just going to go. And like there was many hundreds of people to start.

Oh, there was hundreds of people to start off with. And by the end there was like a few dozen people like. I mean, why do you need people to be there in large numbers? After a while, when it becomes apparent that the ship, it's going to fall apart? Is it in the hope that you'll be able to maintain the ships? I think there's some maintenance, you know, because it is a hostile environment with all the sand and all the heat and all of that.

Definitely guarding as well because people will strip those ships on there. I remember I read about this when that big ship got lodged in the Suez Canal. The ever given, was it called? The ever given, yeah. Such a bad name for a ship. So when that happened, basically all the historians went, oh, this has happened before, guys. We could do our little thing.

Yes, maybe that's when I read about it, yeah. I'm sure that's when I did. But I was reading back about the ever given. 10% of the world's trade was blocked. Thank God that never happened to get with any straits in the Middle East. And people went onto the internet because you know you can follow all the ships. Like you can do it with airplanes as well and see where all the different ones are going in the world.

Well, they looked at where the ship had been, and the week before it had gotten stuck, it had drawn the image of a penis in the Red Sea. Amazing. Like it had done a few sort of like turns back and forward to kind of work out which way it was going to go. Oh, it wasn't deliberate. It wasn't deliberate.

A lot of people thought, well, these guys had taken the Mickey. They draw a penis and then they deliberately get stuck. I am always upset on behalf of it. of pilots who draw penises in the sky, sometimes on training exercises, that they always get in real trouble. There's a real sense of humour failing, I think, in the RAF and the Navy over stuff like this. I think unless you're actually firing smoke out of the back of your airplane to make an actual penis in the sky, you should be allowed to do what you want.

Yeah. Do you know when the Suez Canal was built? Oh, approximately. Early 20th century? Yeah, you're close. I would say 7th century BC. Okay. Okay.

Okay. So this is the canal of the pharaohs, also called the ancient Suez Canal. And it was, we're not sure exactly when it was first cut, but it was probably by Netsho the second around 600 BC. And then it was redug or maybe completed by Darius the Great in around 500 BC. All the way? It went all the way. So you could, that was navigable by smaller boats, obviously. Wow.

The Suez Canal could send big tankers through, but this one was just like little boats. That's amazing. Yeah, that is. 1869 the actual big Suez Canal Yeah And it was built mostly by the French Who were having a lot of time In North Africa around then

And the idea was This is quite a famous story again But everyone was ready to go through It was the opening of the Suez Canal Someone was going to cut the ribbon And all the ships were going to go through But because it's a canal You can only really get one ship at a time

So there's a French yacht Called Legel Which means the Eagle Which is right at the front and at dawn that's going to go. But at the same time, there was a British commander, George Nairz, who was in command of HMS, Newport, who wasn't very happy about being at the back of the queue.

So when it went dark at night, he kind of sneaked his boat right down to the front, put it in front of this French yacht, and then everyone's like, Sacrableu, what is it going to happen here? But because he's in the front, and it's a canal, no one can overtake him, so he managed to go through first. and he got an official reprimand by the British Navy but then was secretly celebrated and promoted to captain for you jumping?

That's a hanging offence in Britain. I'm so good. That's amazing. Can that happen in any other sports? The Formula One could the guy at the Vax very slowly. Hey? Creep to the flood. Wow.

Traffic? Traffic. So before we go to traffic, Can I just say one thing about the straight of Hormuz? Ooh. Which is kind of similar to this in many ways. And there's a very strategic bit of water and is sometimes closed. We don't know where the name Hormuz comes from.

It might have come from a Persian word meaning place of dates, or it might come from the name of a Zoroastrian god, who was called Hormoz. But another theory is it was named after Iphra Hormids, who was the mother of King Shapo, the second of Persia, who ruled between 309 and 379 AD. She was famous as like a regent, so the king was very, very young. And in fact, he was so young that he became king before he'd been born. So his father, let's say, or brother or whatever, had died. They needed the next king. They knew he was hopefully going to be born at some stage,

assumed they were guessing it was going to be a he, because in those days you weren't sure if it was going to be a he or a she. And in order to crown him, The crown was placed on Ifrah's belly. Lovely. Wow. So they had a proper crowning ceremony where she got her tummy out and they put the crown on top of it. And then when he was born, they probably said, the baby's crowning.

Like, we know. Very good. Because crowning is the thing when the head comes out. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. That's the same thing.

Guys, that's technically a very good. Technically, it had all of it there. Yeah. Technically, it had the setup, the punchline and the explanation. It had everything that the perfect junk should have. Okay. Sorry. Traffic, do you know how bad it is for you being in a traffic jam?

Oh, probably fine. Well, it's bad. Oh, no. It is bad for you. Your blood pressure goes up so much more than I expected it to. So there was a study in Beirut that measured the blood pressure of drivers who were pulling into a service station in traffic jams. And then those who were pulling into service stations when there wasn't any traffic. The ones in traffic jams had an average blood pressure of 142 over 87.

The ones not in traffic jams were 123 over 78. Oh, that's quite different. It's a big difference. And also, do you think it would be worse or better if you were running late at the same time? I would think worse. It's not. Makes no difference. Oh, okay.

So it doesn't matter if you're late or not in a traffic jam, your blood pressure is still rocketing, which really? Really? Like the number of times I'm sitting in traffic being so stressed and then don't you find you have to go, hold on? I don't need to be anywhere. But if you were going to miss your plane, that surely is more. Does the same.

When are you ever driving anywhere with no time constraints unless you're on holiday, you know, there's always something you're trying to get to. That's why you're in the bloody car of the first place, Oh, and your life sounds so stressful. What, you guys are just going for drives all the time? You all seem to sound very relaxing. If I'm a bit too relaxing. If you're going to go to the shops, you have to be at the shop at exactly 1249.

You've got a very stringent shopkeeper, haven't you? It's 958. I need to get to the shops. It's about to close, please. But you said this is Beirut. Yeah. So that is quite a geopolitically fraught place. I imagine lots of blood pressure is quite high in Beirut.

Okay. I also think, like, in different countries, like, I don't know if you guys have driven in different countries, but some of them you get much more stress than others. Driving is driving cultures. I've never driven in Beirut, but I can imagine it might be similar to other places where I've driven where it has been quite stressful. Do they have Magic FM in Brayruth?

Because that would calm things right down. That's smooth. Maybe that's what they need. Just have a cigarette. That'll be great for anxiety. Okay, it is time for fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that in 1953,

a town called NeverSink was sunk. Lovely. This is an amazing little place in Ever Sink because it's very important for New York City in particular. It's a reservoir. But it wasn't a reservoir prior to 1953. Prior to that, it was a town,

and it had a population of about 300, and it had businesses, and it had houses. But they needed somewhere to create a reservoir, and Never Sink was picked. And so all the residents had to move out. They had to move Nesync down the road. They had to reset up their lives. Do we know why it was originally called NeverSync?

I tried to find out. I couldn't find it. No, we don't. There's a few possibilities. Named after George Never Sink. No, I'm not quite sure. And also, it wasn't the only place that was flooded. The other place that was flooded at the same time was a place called Bittersweet.

And Better Sweet, we do have a slight idea of how that could have been named. It was a plant that grew in abundance. Yeah, Bittersweet's the type of plant. Yeah. Yeah, and so they think it might be that, but we don't know. There is a Neversink River. Oh, okay. So the town was, of course, named after the river.

I don't know why the river got its name. But I did read on Wikipedia that it's considered by many to be the birthplace of American dry fly fishing. Dry fly fishing. I bet you got so excited about that. Have you subscribed to a magazine or something? What is that? I don't know. Oh, Dad, you can't see that phrase and not Google what it is.

I became so bored. Is it fishing with a dry fly? It's got to be. Or is it fly fishing where there's no water? Oh, maybe you're catching flying fish. So you're just there with a net rather than a... Catch them as they leap out. Or is it like fly fishing where you don't drink alcohol?

Oh my God, I've got to look it up, all right. Or when no one's allowed to make jokes throughout the dairy fishing. Not a problem for me. All fishing with Andy is dry fishing. Right, here you are you monsters. You're really looking it up. Dry fly fishing is an angling technique. where you have an artificial fly

which floats on the surface of the water and doesn't sink. Oh, okay. So we're all glad we are, aren't we? Thank God. We couldn't leave that hanging. No, that's a really good point. Much like the fishing rods in dry fly fishing.

So a little fly is just on the... As easy as it looks, Anna, I know, I know. Because you've got to rule them in. Okay, go on down. Sorry, I'm just trying to get my head round it. You put a fake fly on the surface of the water and the fish comes to eat it. Yes.

Yeah, it's like fly fishing. I just didn't know they eat flies. They do eat flies fish. Do they? But also your fly, it's called a fly, but it might not necessarily look like a fly. It might look like a little fish. Yeah. Now it makes sense.

New York reservoirs. Oh, yeah. It's what we were talking about. Absolutely. So that's my link. And I don't know if this was the same reservoir, the Ashokan. And I might have mispronounce that. Ashokane.

That'll be it. There we go. But this is the. reservoir which supplies about 40% of the drinking water in New York that was dug between 2009 and 1914. And one of the interesting things about digging reservoirs and, you know, sinking all these towns is that you also sink the cemeteries and the graveyards and you have to relocate all the bodies.

And I was just, I just looked this up because I was like, what do they do with all the bodies? And you do have to dig them up, partly out of respects, but also because if you can guess, you've got drinking water. You're drinking the water. So you just don't want it full of corpses. And aqua ghosts. It's terrifying. Swimming ghosts, yeah.

Wait, hang on, so you're having to dig up the bodies. Yeah, so they dig up all the bodies. So there's a cemetery in New York called Bushkill Cemetery, which is the cemetery, which has 2,720 bodies from the 32 graveyards that had to be dug up to make way for Ashokane Reservoir, and they just tossed all the bodies in a new one. But surely, I'm showing my ignorance here,

but surely, if you've done the burial properly, these people are six feet down, the water is not going to be interacting. Like water goes through all sorts of coblets before it gets to our town. I do think a lot of it is going to be in America, these are not going to be like

12 century burial grounds like you might get in England, are they? There'll be recent people. There'll be relatively recent people. Yeah. People might want to visit those grades. Oh, for sure, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

No, that makes complete. The cultural thing absolutely makes sense. But it is contaminated. Yeah, I agree. Maybe some coffins are more leaky than others. Also, do you remember my sister had a house where she lived next to a graveyard and my other sister wouldn't eat the potatoes

that she grew in her garden because she thought there might be dead bodies in there. I think people are a bit icky about that kind of thing. Because when you're making a reservoir, you can't put a tarpaulin down, can you? Because it's such a huge area. It would not be practical. They don't sell them anyway, not that big.

Yeah, yeah. I'm mentioning moving graveyards, there's a fantastic airport, Savannah Airport, which is in Georgia, and they needed to expand, and have more runway, but it ran into the farmland and family house of a family called the Dotsons. And the Dotsons have graveyards of some of the family members that were buried there. And so they did a deal where they sold it, but they kept two of the Dotsons still buried there.

And so there's a runway where, as you're going over, it's runway 10 in Savannah Airport. There's not a bump on the ground. There aren't two lumps on the ground. I think there are on there. There's two tombstones laid flat down that you go over as you're, the left to the rise of the plane. It feels like a hazard. It's done the safety stuff guys. It's for clickbait.

Don't worry about the planes. The nearest one of these to where I grew up is Lady Bower Reservoir in the Pete District. And there was a village called Dohont Village. And I've driven past this a million times. And apparently when you go past it, sometimes you can hear the sound of the church bells ringing from the former. Because it was sunk under the reservoir. I love all this stuff. It's so metal.

It's so cool. I wrote about this one time, this church specifically that you're talking about. When they got rid of all of the town there, one of the things that they left was the tall turret of the church. So a mutual friend of ours, David Bramwell, also lived very close to that. And he remembers that when there was a drought, the water goes down and the church spire. You can see it, right? And he remembers seeing it as a kid. And then he started researching it.

And it turned out that in 1947 it was blown up. And that doesn't exist anymore. What? And so many people have a memory of seeing it, including Hillary Mantell talks about her family reporting seeing it as well. Yeah, I thought you could see that. And if you'd have asked me, have you seen that as a kid, I would have said yes. What's that called? It's got a name.

Mandela Effect. Thank you. Yeah. It's a Mandela Effect. The Ghost Church. What are you guys talking about? Ghost Church. On Lady Bauer, which is a very cool thing.

First of all, it's very cool reservoir because it's got these giant plug holes that are quite, I mean, just Google them. They're amazing that create these massive world pools. So you get people who row across the reservoir and almost get sucked into it. But also, when they were building the reservoirs in that area, there are three reservoirs in that Derwent Valley area. I hadn't realized that they build an entire town for all the construction workers who are working on the reservoir. So there's a town called Birchinley, which housed about a thousand construction. construction workers and all their families. This is in the early 1900s.

And it's called Tin Town. And everything in it is made of John Lloyd, our boss's favorite material. It's all corrugated iron. And it's amazing. And they had a pub, they had shops, a post office, a police station. They had bath houses. It must, if you're one of the original village and you get kicked out because they're going to put something there and another village gets made right next to the way,

you must think they're taking the piss. All the people who are working to kick you out of your village and flood your home, Yeah. No, it is. I don't understand what they're building, though, because I presume you just need a bowl of water or a bowl of land rather. To build a reservoir, you think all you have to do is just dig a bowl of water? You find a bowl and fill it up.

What do you do? Building a dam, I think, is quite a big. No, no, they're made by building dams. Usually. So you build a dam and you wait for it to do it. I thought you just have to find a bowl and fill it. Okay. What with a hose?

Like, what's your... Just the rain will do it eventually, will it? I mean, that is how they work, which I think is quite interesting. interesting with reservoirs is that you build the dam and then you wait sometimes a couple of years for it to get full up. Oh really? Sorry building the dam. Okay. But yeah they're building the dam. So it does take a while. The Tin Town was there for six years and then when it's finished the whole town just disappears. But there's one left if you want to visit Tin Town. There's one corrugated iron hut that has been reassembled in the nearby village of Hope, which is a hairdresser. It's it. That's so cool.

There's a great example of it going slightly wrong in America, which is a town called Old Jefferson, which was in Tennessee. So they had this exact same thing. They had a lake that they wanted to expand so they could act as a water supply. And this little town was sitting on the edge of the lake. So they all had to get out of there. And then the whole town was bulldozered down.

They allowed for it to flood. But what they didn't realize was that there was a lot of underground caves in the area and the water simply disappeared into that. Lovely, lovely. And the town just stayed the same, just bulldozered and nothing there. That's very fair.

Yeah. This happens sometimes. So there was a Spanish town called Granadilla And it was evacuated in the 1960s Because the government was going to flood the town And it took 10 years to move everyone out You know, they were given lots of notice And all 1,000 people living there moved out

It's amazingly beautiful town It's from the 9th century So it was a big decision to flood that Because you know, it's very old and all that And the water was finally allowed Into this massive new floodplain And it just came up to make this town A lovely little island

With one road in and out So there was no need to have evicted anyone And did they all go back? Nope, they weren't allowed. It's so often it happens. It's not allowed, you know. I think they're still trying to get back in, aren't they? The descendants of the people who live there are still saying,

can we please get back into our town? I think they're allowed to visit once or twice a year. Yes. But I don't think they're allowed to go and stay. There's a famous one similar to this called Minneth Eppent, which is in Wales. And they kicked out everyone from this little village because they wanted to make a military training area during World War II. and still now you'll occasionally see people spray paint on the walls remember Eppin

because it was such a big deal in Welsh history. And the really sad thing about this is that they thought it was going to be temporary. These people left the keys in the door because they thought they would come back one day. They'd continue to plough the fields because they thought they'd be able to come back. But they never were. And then there was one guy called Thomas Morgan who returned to his house every single day to light his fire. as sort of a symbol of we will be back one day. And so the army blew his house up.

Oh. And said, you're not coming back. Oh, my goodness. Can I ask a quick question about that? Yeah. I return to my house every day, but I don't leave the keys in the door. I take the keys with me. Yeah, but you live in a less trusting environment.

I see, of course. If I lived in a world, that's what they all do when they know they're coming back somewhere. You don't have to eat the keys in the door. What's the point of a key except to open the door? So you may as well keep them together. How often do you lose your keys? It's a lot. I should start leaving them in the door.

Now imagine you've left your house, you've gone away for like five years, and then they go, okay, you can go back now. Oh, fuck, where's the keys? Such a good point. If you've left them in the door, fine. I mean, the best thing to do is to leave the keys in the door and then just build a small metal cage around the keys,

which you can then open with a lock, you know, for safety. Yeah, yeah. But this happens a lot. Tyneum in Dorset was requisitioned for military training, and that was a war thing. And the last person left a note is on the church door saying, please treat the church and houses with care. We shall return one day.

And the army have just bombed the heck out of it since then. Well, in Wales, there's another one that was called Capellekellen. And Capelkellen was how you said it? Capelkellen. I think it's Cal. Yeah, Cabellon. And this was a town. Just Indian people in there.

You pronounce it like Donald Trump pronouncing any foreign word. I'll give it another run. Um, Capel, Kellyn. There was a great town, superb town. There's a town in Wales

called Capelkellen and Capelkellen was a town that was flooded and the people who lived there only found this out five days before Christmas. They are slow to pick up on things. It has been very wet lately,

but this is insane. This is ridiculous. They found out five days before Christmas while reading the Liverpool Daily Post. It was in a newspaper that their town was going to be flooded, and it was flooded so that they could provide water for Liverpool. So it was a cross-border reason, and they were fuming, and this became a huge, huge thing, and they were huge protests, and they would go to Liverpool, but Liverpool felt like they'd bailed this area of Wales out quite a lot, and so they were really

aggressive towards the Welsh people who were over there. Look, this is a controversial point to make, but I think we should drown loads more places. Oh, yeah. Well, where? If the government would like my place at a reasonable rate to have it, I don't care. We'll need it, we'll need more water. There are going to be more periods where there's much less rain. You need better water supply. Britain hasn't built a reservoir since 1992.

It's insane. People keep trying, but they just do a bowl of water and just nothing happens. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everyone. We'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by Bubble. That is right.

Jindobri James Yakshimash. Great. Ah yes. Where James and I have gone wrong is we are learning different language to one another on Babel. But Babel is the place where you can learn a new language. It's such a brilliant tool to use. It makes it so much easier than anywhere else you're going to go to learn languages. It recognises that lots of people learn languages in lots of different ways

so you can fit it to your preferences. Absolutely. And from the sound of what we said earlier, Adder seems to be learning Polish. and I seem to be learning English, so we'll see how that goes over the months. But no, we all use Babel and it is really good to get involved with a bit of self-improvement. Maybe you're going to travel, maybe you want to develop professionally by learning new language. It's useful in all those different ways.

They have 25 million subscribers worldwide, and they are science-backed, so it actually does work. You can make fast-lasting progress. And right now, we have a special limited-time deal for our... listeners, you can get 60% off your Babel subscription at babble.com.com. forward slash fish. Go to babel.com, B-A-B-B-B-B-B-E-L-L-Sash fish and get 60% off your subscription. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is

that in Europe, it is illegal for sunscreen to be tested on animals. In America, it is illegal for it not to be tested on animals. What? Okay. Does that mean that any sunscreen that's sold in Europe can't be sold in America and vice versa? Or is this just when you're creating it? I think it can't be sold there.

Certainly under European law, it couldn't be sold there. It's like any sunscreen that or any ingredients in sunscreen or any fully made sunscreen cannot be made or sold there if it's been tested on animals. And in the US, regulations say sunscreen, sun cream. as we call it, is an over-the-counter drug, so it counts as a drug there. So the rules are much more stringent. Drugs usually need to be tested on animals, not always.

But basically, I was reading the FDA site, Food and Drugs Administration site. And it does specify, it's trying to basically say, we don't do that much testing on animals. So it says we don't require sun cream to be tested on large animal species like dogs or primates. And we try to minimize testing on rodents. What's left? You're going to rub it on a fly? Well, they specifically say they minimize testing in rodents.

don't stop it testing in rodents. They just say we don't demand six-month toxicity studies, which I think probably means that they don't rub it on rodents and then leave them for six months and then test if it's caused damage. So they still tested on, basically, the website was a very long-winded way of saying, we test these on rodents and we have to. Whereas in the EU, in 2013, the sale and marketing of all cosmetics, sunscreen included, and their ingredients was banned. Now, there's lots of grey areas. There's this bizarre thing. There's this pink areas. There are grey areas in the EU.

So there's basically the European Chemicals Agency, which says you have to test chemicals on animals if people are going to be working with them. But then the animal testing cosmetics law that says you're not allowed to test these on animals. And they say totally contradictory things and no one understands the European law really. So sometimes sun cream is tested on animals,

even though it's illegal, because European laws are a mess. What about Brexit? Will we finally be able to slather sun cream? one flies. I did. I think you can do that outside of the lab anyway if you like James. Because that's why I voted for it. There have been worse reasons.

I was sat there at a voting booth with my pet fly in my hands going one day, Jeremy, one day. You won't be subjected to this terrible UV rays. Poor red, Jeremy. UK is basically in line with EU law on this. I'm afraid, James, so it was all for nothing for you. Great. The sun cream. The first ever sun cream, I think, was tested on animals.

Okay. So during World War II, there was a guy called Benjamin Green. He was an ermine and a pharmacist, and he was in the South Pacific, and he saw that a lot of the other soldiers were getting sunburnt, and he decided that he needed protection. And so he gave them something called Red Vet Pet, a cream that, that you used when let's say your dog got a little cut on it or something the vets would put this on to stop any infection from getting in there and what he thought was well i can put this on my

soldiers and it will stop them from getting some bird so it wasn't commercially available that came a year or two afterwards but but he founded a firm called copper tone didn't he yeah which was which was the commercial version of it so this one i found really interesting is that i guess because it's petroleum is blocking rays yeah and this is there is a are two main ways by which sun cream works. It's UV filters, ultraviolet light filters, which either reflect UV rays, so literally just reflecting the light so it doesn't do damage, or absorbing them, but either way it means that fewer actually get into your skin. And I was trying to work out what happens when it goes in, because I was thinking of the amount of sun cream I've put

on my body in my life, right? Has it all gone in? You wash it off. But some of it, I think, little bits end up in your bloodstream. Like, only tiny bits. And this is not a reason not to, this is not a reason that it might be bad for you. There's no evidence that it's bad for you at all. But I think the amount you put on you, enough will go in you. I think this is why Superman never used sunscreen

because you could see how much of it was in your body. Three weeks after you put sun cream on, if you get a blood test, you can tell that you've put sun cream on. Isn't that amazing? Eventually, you'll be pooing it out, right? Sure. All I'm saying is that I think it's interesting that the sun cream that goes into your body eventually comes out of you through your bottom.

That's what you're saying. Okay. Well, there you go. Are you saying, we can use it for, we can reapply it? No, I'm not saying, in a pinch on the beach,

you can't say, I just, I had loads a few weeks ago, so they just turn over and up. I'll get your back. The old rob some sun cream on me, darling, Or more romantic, depending what you're into.

Piss on it if you've been stung by a jellyfish and shit on it if you're out of suncream. Don't mix them up, kids. So this guy, this was in World War II, as you said James. But in 1938, there was another big moment in modern sunscreen history, which was a man called Franz Greiter, who was climbing a mountain in the Alps. And he got sunburn while he was up there. And he thought, why can't we put something on to stop this burning? And he built a business out of it. So the mountain is called Pitsbouin, and Pitsbouin is the name of the company.

It's the trading name of the company. So the inspiration was so great. It's all around that time, isn't it? Yeah, it's exactly that time. It's one of the 30s, everyone's kind of doing it at the same time. I guess chemistry has sort of just been invented, doesn't it? We're having a lot of petroleum derivatives. So I was looking at why, as in it can't be that everyone was sunburned until the end of the 1930s.

That's not practical, right? So why didn't ancient humans need sun cream? was it our skin was darker well you'd shelter at night you mostly well it's also not study at night half the problem is already solved and his night time

sun cream company has never taken off so no no I'm saying that's fine I'm saying that's fine get up kids it's 2 a.m dad yep we're off to the beach let's go so as you say dad you know the more

sun you get the more melanin your skin produces, so your skin gets darker, you know. But also the other thing is that people didn't move around much in their life, right? You were, wherever you lived, your skin would acclimatized to roughly the sun intensity. I see. And it would become the color that can cope with that data. So you wouldn't get people whose genetics is related to Northern Europe moving to Australia, which is obviously a big problem. Exactly. And that is, the basic problem is just people are much more mobile now and you can easily get, you know, in a couple of hours, you can get to a place which has a completely different sun profile for the skin that you have had and that you're where your ancestors have been living for 100,000 years. Also everyone

died at the age of 20 so it wasn't a problem but and people probably looked very very wrinkly when they were youngest because there was a lot more sun intensity. But you know what? I did read a study which suggests that sun cream might have been what made humans survive when Neanderthals didn't right for instance. Wow. Because around 41,000 years ago the magnetic of the earth reduced quite a lot, which meant that a lot more of the sun's rays could get onto the earth. And this is a similar time to when the Neanderthals died out. And humans could create technologies such as tailored clothing. We began to start sewing things. We started wearing more ochre, which is like a plant-based thing that you can rub on yourself. We know for sure that

happened because we have that left over. And I also read strategic cave use. But he didn't say a night. Indication. But yeah, the endothals might not have been able to do those things according to this theory. And I'm sure if Ella Al-Schmarh, he was here, she'd be telling me I'm talking bollocks. But yeah, that is one theory of, it was the sun cream that did it.

Can we test if they all died of skin cancer, basically? And if they did, I think we're onto something. Well, it could be that you could just spend more time outside, generally. Yeah, okay. Yeah. You mentioned ocha. Coca-Cola is off. and used as a tanning lotion.

This is really stupid, but it's true. I thought this is probably one of these things the media's made up as a thing. An internet, like two people have done it in one country and then it becomes a thing globally, yeah, yeah. That's what I thought, because Coke have on their website a thing, they have an FAQ section, and one of the FAQs is, can I tan myself nicely by rubbing Coke all over myself?

And so they have to say... They don't have to say anything. It's too obvious for words. They choose to say, as much as we love Coca-Cola, we wouldn't recommend using it this way. There's no some protection factor at all. It wouldn't protect you, but would it stain you? So that's why it's caught on, I believe, is because of its brown colour.

And people think, therefore, it does make you browner. And Peter Andre used to cover himself in Cove and Wait a Beach. And I did go on some social media sites. And I just can't tell if everyone's being ironic. But they don't seem like they're being ironic. People are just pouring cans of coke over themselves. Would HP sauce work? I think that would be even more effective, wouldn't you?

That's the Northerness answer. I think I have memories of seeing friends do that in Australia. It's been going up for decades. It's a myth that's lasted so long. It is sticky, but then you wash yourself afterwards. What's the point? Then it comes off. No, no. What?

Are you saying you've tanned in the intervene? Is this to help yourself get a tan? Yeah. It's not to block a tan. No, it's to get a tan. Right, right. It's like gravy granules during the war. Yeah.

People did that, didn't they? Yep. They would rub gravy granules up. on themselves. And then you just draw a seam to be the seam on your stocking or you're tight, you know, on the back of your leg. Oh yes, that's right. With a pencil or something. You draw all your clothes on, go around naked, no one noticed. Clothes weren't invented until 1950. It turns out. She's why it's neonival theory is really bonnors. There is a big idea out there, and I think it's a little bit unclear in the real world, whether this is true or not, that sun cream is

very, very bad for coral, right? Oh yeah. And that you see this a lot. And some beaches have even said, No, you're not allowed to go in if you've got sun cream on. Hawaii, I think, banned at one point. Thailand for sure. There are various places. And actually, I think it is a bit unclear whether in the real world the amount of sun cream that actually enters the water. Considering how big and diluted it will be in the ocean, whether it's genuinely bad for coral. But there is a sun cream that has been developed at the University of Derby, which is actively good for coral, which is nice.

So it's like sort of basically coral steroids in there. And do you rub it on coral? No, you rub it on you and then you swim near the coral, I think. Oh, really? You don't rub it on the coral. Okay, fine. Have they tested it on coral, which are animals? What?

Oh, God, I have no idea. Do you think sun cream is better for you if it's more expensive or cheaper? More expensive, of course. Which, the consumer group did a report in 2022, where they looked at some SPF 3,000, 30 sun creams. Some of them were really, really posh, expensive ones, and some of them were from supermarkets. So Morrison's Superdrug and Asda.

And they found that the claimed protection was way more often correct from the supermarket ones than it was from the super posh ones. What was it? Was it sometimes incorrect? Because I did read that a lot of the SPF is sort of really faulty. They found that these expensive ones were very, very commonly incorrect.

Really? But the cheaper brands usually. And of course there will be different ones. And I'm not saying that you should all go out by the cheapest one you can find. But yeah, the cheap ones tended to be more or less correct. You can. So you get spray sun cream, obviously. Yeah.

Sometimes. And usually that protects you from burning, but it can cause you to burn really badly. Oh, no. Why? You don't put it on as carefully if you're spraying it. You miss bits. Well, yeah. Some people don't rub it in properly.

They just allow it to absorb. No, no. So aerosols, you need something like alcohol or something to make it turn into spray, and that's incredibly flammable. So if the spray isn't controlled well enough to make sure that as soon as the alcohol in it or whatever the flammable substances lands on your skin, it evaporates, then it will be extremely flammable. You catch fire. You catch fire. So a banana boat sun cream had to recall a bunch of sun creams a few years ago. This is exactly what we didn't want to have. Sorry. Five people burst into flames. Did they really? Yeah, they did. They did.

Sorry, people caught fire. It was generally if they were doing barbecues or lighting a cigarette or something. So you spray the song cream on. And if you are too quick to go and toss those sausages on the barbie, you know, what it's like using an aerosol spray. Like hairspray, I guess, right? Like hairspray. So usually it means that the valves must have let out a bit too much of the spray and been faulty.

To allow it to catch fire. But do be careful. The spray stuff interestingly comes out in your farts, not in your poo. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you very much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast,

we can all be found on our online accounts. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram, James. My Instagram is No such thing as James Harkin. Andy. Mine is at Andrew Hunter M. Yep. And if you want to get to us generally as a group, Anna. Instagram is at no such thing

or you can email podcast at QI.com. Yeah, podcast at QI.com. Remember that email address, because if you have any facts that you would love us to talk about, you can send them in there, and we will cherry pick the best of those and bring them to our bonus Monday show, which is called Little Fish. Or if you did hear something on this show or any other show that you thought, hey, I know something more about that or I've had any other one of our shows. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It has to be specifically a no such thing as a fish show. We will accept a few others off menu.

We will talk about them. We really love talking about. My dad wrote a porno. Send those in as well. But largely, if it could be about us, that would be great. And he will go through the emails. He will pick them out for Drop Us Align. Our secret bonus show, which hides in the world of Clubfish.

That is a place that you will find on patreon.com slash club fish. There are so many fun things there. We have video versions of Drop Us Aline. We have extra long episodes of the things that you've just heard. There's tons to check out. There's three different tiers. Have a look now. But otherwise, come back next week.

Thanks as ever, of course, to the wider fish team, Leeing Lee, Ethan Ruperalia, and the other great fish busters who help make this show exist. And we will be back again. We'll see you then. Goodbye.