No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Beurre War

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Ella Al-Shamahi discuss wailing whales, stock cocktails and immersible immortality. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we were joined at the Soho Theatre by Ella Al-Shemahi. Yes, it is Ella, our explorer friend. She's a paleoanthropologist. She's an evolutionary biologist, a TV presenter. She is absolutely badass, and she came to join us on stage for a really, really fun show. Absolutely certain you're going to really love this one. I just messaged Ella.

She's off somewhere around. around the world and asked her if she wanted me to plug anything, she said not, but I really think I should probably mention that she does have a book. It's called The Handshake, A Gripping History. That's available wherever you get your books. One last thing, while I have a little bit of time, is if you go to no such things of fish.com and look for the shop there. I don't think we've mentioned this for a while. We have quite a bit of merch that you can get hold of. There's nerdy t-shirts, There's pin batches, there's all sorts of stuff. There is also the Ultimate Guide.

This was like a program that we made for our live shows. It was put together by Alex Bell. It's got interviews, it's got photos, it's got tons and tons of facts. Andy did a whole page on Moss. Basically, if you love the show, you will definitely, definitely love it. So yeah, go to Noseshtonoffish.com and look for the shop and you'll find the details there. But anyway, let's just get on with the show, live from the Soho Theatre in London with Ella Al-Shame. Okay, on with the podcast.

And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Soho Theater. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Ella al-Shemahi. 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 Ella. Whales don't have tear ducks because there's no point in crying in the ocean.

I feel like I must have at some point cried in the ocean and felt a bit better for it, you know. That's true. None can see you cry in the ocean is the point, right? This was salty when I got here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you not see people cry in the ocean? If your head's underwater.

No, hold on. No, hold on seriously. Okay, if you're actually properly bawling, would you be able to? to tell? You'd certainly be able to tell the facial expression of someone who's crying, for sure. Okay, so that, I think that's what's really amazing to me about this fact, is that I, when I think about whales, I think about their songs, right? And how, like, emotive they are, how they move people. Like, there's been congressional hearings in the US

where people haven't actually given testimony they've just played whale song. Wow. And to think that those beautiful creatures who sit there, like, communicating in this way that's just, like, moves us, can't cry. really tired. But they cry vocally, don't they? Yeah. That's that we know about what they do that, right? How is your CD selling, Dan's song? Shriver's Whale song.

You sell it in shopping centres, don't you? Dropping to sleep, it's very calm. But they do do that, right? Yes, so 100% they express emotion, et cetera, et cetera. I've got a question. So if, because obviously they live in water, if you cry, there's, your water is coming out of your eyes,

would it be a pressure problem as in as would it be harder to push a tear out of your eye probably not through a whale? Apparently they just don't have tear ducts so they just don't have the ducts full stop they've still got the ability to secrete and clean their eyeballs

yeah so they've got like a useful tier like a windscreen water it's like a windscreen yeah exactly can I just want to test a misconception that I definitely had before researching this and I wonder if anyone else in the room had it right I have had tiered ducts wrong my whole life

I thought that tear ducts take the tears from wherever they're made to your eye. Right? Does anyone else think that? Yeah. Yeah, some. Okay, so I'm not not as many as not nearly as many as I hoped would have made this

error. But no, they carry tears away from the eye. Oh, I see. The tear duct is the gutter for tears. They get made kind of in your eyes, lacrimal sack, and then they run into the corner and then that collects and then it drains into your nose which is why when you cry your nose runs

If you look into the corner of someone's eye you'll see a little black dot and that's the tear duct where the tears go into it right and it's just the gutter it's not like a sort of I thought it was a kind of So how come our nose doesn't run every single time we cry? It will do but it might go down the back of your nose as opposed to another thing

that's similar between the nose the tear ducts and the nose is that in Wales they have this stuff that they put on their eyes but it's much more viscous than human tears. And it's full of mucins, which basically means it's the same as snot, pretty much. Not exactly the same, but it's got the same stuff in.

And they don't have to do it very often. They only have to do it every couple of hours. They kind of smear their eye with snot, and then they don't have to blink again for hours and hours. Is it worth the trade-off of never having to blink, but you have snotty eyes? I would go for that. Would you?

I would go over that. Yeah. Yeah. Because the ocean would wash it off, right? It does eventually, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty useful. Okay. No, I'm just thinking, you just save all that time.

You know, constantly. Sorry, I'm like, I was blinking. But you miss, like, a tenth of whatever's happening in the world, don't you? Oh, this is why you need more women on this panel. What? Oh, should we have snotty eyeballs? Yeah, such as lads. Fucking lad chat.

Come back to mine, guys, let's talk about fucking island. on whales. Strip clas, fuck that. We're going to talk about the nose problems. I preferred it, Dan, when you were doing whale sound from to be a two months. Should we do some lads, lads, lad's stuff,

so what is the one body part of a whale that will be able to tell you what species they are better than any other body part? Ooh. Oh, like what species of whale? Yeah. Because I know it's a whale already. You'll know it's a whale.

You're like, oh, is this a pygmy right whale or is it a whatever whale? Well, the right whale has the biggest test. in all of the whales species. There we go. Of all species on Earth, right? Of every species? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's bigger than in. They're big.

Yeah, I would have thought, yeah, I would have thought blue well. Okay, Ella, do you want to have a pitch? Oh, geez, the... That's right, the vagina. Oh. Wow, the... Do you know what? You laugh about this. I was once on camera

trying to do a whale necropsy, which is like the autopsy you did give an animal. walking past this huge say whale and on camera we're like talking through all the different bits and then I'm about to point at something and be like, so what's that?

Because it was so huge. Wow, that's amazing. It was quite terrifying. I've never seen one in real life but I've only gone off what I've read. But apparently, so there's a woman called Dr. Sarah Messnick who studies whale vaginas and she says that basically

they're just a series of flaps, folds, blind alleys, funnels. They said the first time they open one up, they couldn't work out, like in a maze, they couldn't work out how to get from the opening to where the sperm's needed to be. They literally couldn't work out the maze. Wow. Like most men. But yeah, and because they're so different in all the different species,

they're a really, really good way. If you only have one piece of a whale to look at, go for the vagina. Can I pick the whale's head to differentiate the species? Is that allowed? And you'll say the vaginas would better steer. Well, they all just look like whales, don't they? Yeah, that's true. And that's really not true, but...

Like, there are some of the whales, like a beluga whale looks really different to a sperm whale, for instance. But a lot of the, like, closest species do look quite similar, I would say. Do you want to factor about whale eyes? Sure. As we're on tier ducks in whales.

Yeah. Lots of whales can't see blue. Oh, that's another really sad one. It's really sad. They're monochromatic. They just see you. shades of grey. Yeah, it's really depressing.

Yeah, they can't cry. They can't see colours. I don't know what, I just feel really moved by, everyone's moved by whales, right? That's like a thing. Yeah. Yeah, so I think my facts like that just make me a bit sad that they don't.

But they can see something very cool. This is great. So whales have big, big eyes, right? Actually, not that big. As in compared with the size of the whale, they're obviously way bigger than our eyes, but they're not huge. And their pupils are about half as large

again as human pupils. So again, not a huge discrepancy, but enough that means I was reading an article about astronomy. It was a brilliant article. Even with that smallish difference in pupil size, they would be able to see twice as many stars in the night sky as we can. Wow.

But they live underwater. But they do come up. They do come up. Although they have to remember to breathe, which I think is quite amusing. Imagine having to remember to breathe. Yeah, yeah, it's not automatic. That's incredible.

Oh, because they can commit suicide, can't they? It's really dark. It's really dark. Join us next week on Sad Facts about whales. No, they can't. Those are the interstitials between my whale cries on my CD. Wales commit suicide.

Anyway, listen, can I steer us away from this incessant lad chat and get us to something different, which is in Star Trek, as part of the crew, there are whales and dolphins on the actual Starship Enterprise. Yeah. Yeah, there's a cetacean navigation lab which is always alluded to,

which consists of 12 bottlenose dolphins and a couple of whales that are on board. And is it because they can see the stars better? It's echo location. It's the navigation system. What like space echolocation? Yeah, so they're navigating for Captain Picard. They're like, where should we go?

Ask the dolphins and whales. Isn't that cool? That's utterly bizarre. Surely their echolocation wouldn't work in space. They're probably space whales, as in they're probably... Oh, right. I assume they're space whales, as in... I think it's the future Star Trek, right?

So they must have evolved to... Has the universe evolved to have molecules in between the stars as well? We're going to have to move on in the same. Oh, no, no, no. Wait, what about all crying? So many. Yep.

Doves don't cry. Doves don't cry. I think most animals don't cry, really, do they? That's true. But there's only one song about doves that do cry. It's like Princeton really so-called when worms crying. No, they do have tear ducts, gutters, and can keep their eyes moist,

but they don't do emotional crying. Talking with birds, you know how we always think, like, the birds' songs? Talking of birds, who's the lad now, hey? So, you know how we think birdsong is all about communication? Yeah. They've discovered that actually, no, sometimes birds are just muttering to themselves. It's just so cute.

Apparently sometimes they're just like, it's just really not going well today. I read that whales, if there's like predators around and they have their baby whales near them, they'll whisper like, guys, we've got to be kept. Like, whales whisper. That's pretty fascinating that they know to lower their tone. So my second crazy whale fact, if I can get it in,

is that since the 1960s, blue whales have lowered their sound. So they've got more baritone. shifting the equivalent of three white keys on a piano, which ironically used to once be made of whalebone. And it's really mad how they've completely changed, as well, the distance that they can communicate in. And part of that might be a good reason.

So it might be that they have gone lower in sound because there's more of them since the 1960s because the whaling conventions and anti-whaling and blah, blah, blah. It's actually worked. But the bad explanation is that the ocean's more acidic and therefore sound travels quicker and it was like, so it's like you can pick your explanation, be happy or depressed, basically.

Okay, great. Bad place to end, isn't it? Well, let me quickly tell you about some new science that's been done. So there were some people who were swimming next to a whale, and before they knew it, this guy who was writing about it said, the water was like chocolate milk. I couldn't see my hand when I held it in front of my face. I had poo in my eyes, mouth, wet suit,

everywhere and I was soaked in it from head to toe. Oh, no. Okay, but the interesting thing is they reckon this is evidence that perhaps whales will expel feces when they're scared as a defence technique to try and stop people from attacking them. So that's... I have a mate who collects whale poo.

She's like Asha DeVos, yeah, she's really into, Sri Lankan whale poo. Has she ever been covered in it, like this person? I think there's a bit, but not quite to that extent, maybe, I don't know. Well, I read this article in Vice and they said, if this Puneado was newly observed defense mechanism, then the divers have made a great discovery. If not, they just got covered in shit.

It is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in the 1950s, Campbell's tried to persuade people to start drinking cocktails made out of beef soup. No? It sounds amazing. It does sound amazing.

Do you not fancy that? It was over ice, maybe with a bit of alcohol. Lovely. No? Perfect temperature for beef soup. I see. What was the beef soup made of? Beef.

Like beef broth or like... Beef boulon. What does that mean? It's just like beef soup, basically. It was like... Soup. I don't know what to say. It's like Campbell's so they're like tins of tins soup, basically.

Yeah, I know, but for any boozy women, in the room. You know that there's this movement right now with like beef broth and bone marrow. Is it? No, what's that? It's bone marrow is like supposed to be really good for your gut health. Right. Where are my BS ladies in the room? Oh yeah. Sorry, this is a bit of a laddie podcast.

We don't really do that stuff. This is in 1955 and the idea was Campbell's, they decided that this was going to be their new marketing campaign. They sent a load of what could just be described as cans of soup and ice buckets and recipe cards to a load of magazine editors and influencers,

what we would call influencers today. And they just said, this is the new thing. This is what you have to do. They did adverts in magazines. These soup cocktails actually appeared on menus in Los Angeles and New York. And it was all the way up until the 1970s. They were saying that this is something you could do. You could even add bitters.

You could add vodka. You could add lemon. but the main bit of it was soup over ice. It's so disgusting. Did they have a massive surplus or something, whether they were trying to shift or was it? No, it was just how do we find a new market? And as James says, it was sent to the Dodgers, the baseball team.

They all received it. It was the marketing, this is the wording that they were sending some of the stuff out with it in the adverts. For a summertime drink, it is low in calories, less than 30 calories per generous serving. It is inexpensive. It is specially valuable to athletes and golfers in replacing salt loss through exercise.

Best of all, it's downright delicious. And they would put the recipes on the side of cans, and there was a moment where they almost made it a thing. Yeah, there was a guy called Lester Lannin, who was an orchestral leader, and he introduced a new dance called The Soup, which you would dance after you've had a few soup cocktails. Oh, it's so...

It's a lack of foresight, really, that you didn't think to buy some Campbell. We should have done. Yeah. Added some... Because the amazing thing is last year Campbell's did it again. No. Disappeared in the 70s. And then last year, the Campbell's website had a page

where it could tell you how to make a mushroom truffle daquery, a faux mango bourbon sour, a Thai chicken nagroney. No. And a pork ramen margarita. No, thank you. Some room temperature water, please. It's so grubby.

Who would try it? I'd try it. Who would try it? Yeah. Oh, do you allot? Oh, really safe, aren't you? It was a massive thing. And one of the other things,

which I had never read about before, but this is a thing like James has said, kind of just keeps coming back. And this is largely down to people on TikTok sort of reintroducing this as a thing. But there's also tomato soup cake. Oh, yeah. It's a big thing.

And people were genuinely doing this. Was that 50s as well? Yeah, it's in the 50s. It does feel like people thought, well, it's the nuclear age now. Fuck it. Yeah. That's just nothing matters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now it's 2022, and they're doing the same thing. It's a bad sign. I've got a lot of cans of soup left over from COVID. Right, yeah, yeah. Don't do something with it. Well, enjoy your Thai chicken nagroney. Lovely.

Can I tell you a hero of soup? Oh, yeah. One of the heroes of the soup world. This guy called John Dorrance. Oh, Don't know. And John Dorrance became the head of the Campbell's Soup Company. Through his genius, he realized at one point, you know, because he was working for Campbell's, and he realized, my God, we're just transporting water, you know?

because that's a huge part of the cost of soup is moving it all around and he invented condensed soup he created the magic formula and as a result his family are all billionaires now because he just thought let's just take the water out that's clever well I saw so the Dorrance family there was a list of the richest

people in the world the richest families in the world so we're not talking individual billionaires in 2023 they are listed as the 19th richest family in the world according to this list and above them is basically just a bunch of cox.

You've got in at number eight, the Cox family, who they are the ones that have done cable and broadband, cox communications. Who else have we got? Legally, I'm feeling quite nervous. I know. Have you got more cox?

Well, no, it's interesting. There's two coxes. There's one that's spelled differently. There's the butts, the butt family, and there's a bush. So within the top 20, four of the richest families are two cox, one butt and a bush. What more do you need? Well, there's a hunt, but it was close.

How much money was putting into this marketing campaign? Well, they were just sending stuff out to people. They did do a full-page adverts on Life magazine, so that would have cost a bit. But mostly it was just sending out recipe cards and stuff, so not too much. I just find these food trends to be completely bizarre.

Like, remember that paleo trend that was going on? Yes. Oh, the diet, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was it? You eat like a caveman, so. So you eat raw meat and dinosaurs? You eat like, no.

Oh God, somebody teach them geology. Okay, so the dinosaurs, okay, but no. But yeah, no, that's just when, you know, you just eat beef and you eat like a lot of meat and grain and stuff. But it was really awkward for those of us that actually study human evolution because they kept asking us about it. And we were like, yeah, I mean, two things. One is they were eating all aspects of the animal.

So unless you're going to start eating the intestines of an animal and the inside of the intestines of the ant, like squeeze out. the inside of the intestines and the animal and eat the eyes of the animal and the teard ducts then it's not really the paleo diet because that's what our ancestors were doing they were like being quite you know nose the tail yeah like everything

but then the other side of it is like I love this whole like oh the original thing was the best thing because I'm like they were all dead by our age so oh yeah they were all killed by dinosaurs that's the same yeah they were actually but anyway yeah oh god we never talked about Bavril properly

We've still mentioned it once or twice. All right. What is that? Exactly. God, reminds me you're stagged you, Andy. Bobville is, it was originally called it's Johnston's fluid beef. And it's just, it's ultra, that's nice.

It's ultra-condensed, very condensed, paste, which is very beefy. And it's a bit, can we say it's a bit marmite? It's kind of, like you make a drink out of it. It's like a very thick substance. You turn it into a drink. Yeah. It's like very weak, beef.

soup but you drink it like tea. Meat tea. You drink it? Meat tea. Yeah, yeah. It's a drink. This is an English thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. This is... But Bovera used to be absolutely huge. It was invented about the 1870s and it was again condensing all the good stuff and the invention of stock and things like that. But in fact, the Pope appeared in a Bavreel advert at the time.

Yeah. What like a TV ad? Is that not unethical for him? A TV ad in 1870s. Sorry, I missed the year. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It was only in 1900, but it was a digital. It was a magazine ad. And I don't think it had full papal clearance because it showed him drinking bovril on his papal throne.

And the slogan was, the two infallible powers, the Pope and Bovril. So it was not strictly on brand, I think, for him. But have you heard of Chevrill? Chevril. No. Can you have a guess? Is it chicken bovril?

It's not. It's Cheve... Is it Cherval? It's not Cherville. Cheval. Horse? It's horse. Oh.

And this was not an official drink, it was a siege drink during the Bur War. The Boer War? The Boer... Is that the one that keeps appearing on my iPhone that tells me to celebrate the day? No, that's the Battle of the Boyne. And so, the Boer War.

Bur War, yeah. How are we saying... The way you sound there, it's like a butter war in France. The... Boer. Boer. Yeah. Oh, we all know...

Said again. Boer. Boer. Boer. B... Anyway, during that conflict, it was the second of those two wars, by the way. There was a siege.

There was a place called Ladysmith that was under siege. As part of the... It was part of the... Oh, it might have been the first one. And the garrison, they were so desperate that they made themselves horse bovril. Because by the end of the siege, they were so reduced to eating.

You eat all the food. They ate all the stuff that looked a bit like food, and then they had to eat the horses. But they had a bit of fun with it because they got to, you know, boil down the horses and make Chevrill. So that just shows the cultural power of Bovril. It seems...

It might seem... It seems like I said that quite long thing for no good reason, but that's not the case. Just, okay, do people still eat, drink, Bovril? Yes. Yeah, it's very big here. It's massive. Really?

You would get it if you go to a football match, you would see it. Yes. At the end, you've been to a pub at last orders. Yeah. Yeah. Have you noticed, everyone around you get a steaming hot mug. Yeah. That's the final...

Yeah. It keeps you warm on the walk home. Yeah. Yeah. Boverall for your walks, sir. Yeah. You must have... Okay.

I know that's untrue, obviously. They ring the bovril bell, don't they? This is a podcast about facts, guys. But, okay, so you guys have all had bovril? Yeah. Well, not. You've had bovril? Ella, it's like everyone. It's very, like, and I'm not British, but I've, yeah.

Well, after this, if anyone wants bovril, we'll go together. Well, we've got to wait for last orders. We've got no choice. Well, why don't we all go and have the most expensive soup in the world? Do you fancy some of that? Sure. It's called Cordyceps soup. Would you like some cordyceps soup?

Sounds like a mushroomy thing? Yeah, mushrooms. Do you like it? It's got chicken, so obviously it's veggies. Yeah, yeah, sorry. But we can have it without the chicken. Red dates, Logan berries, and cordyceps, which is a mushroom. Yeah.

It's that mushroom which goes inside caterpillars and sort of makes them climb up to the top of a plant and then grows out of their brains and then makes birds eat them. You know that mushroom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely parasitic mushroom. Yeah. It goes out of the brain. and then they explode and all the spores go everywhere.

Yeah. Again, I think the room temperature of water just feels hungry. Wow, is that... This is the world's most expensive soup. One bowl is $688, last time I checked. And it's made with this stuff. And these cordycep fungi,

which grow in the insects and caterpillars, especially in China, in the Tibet area, they get it, and it's supposed to be, you know, very good for you. Right. Is it... That's the same mechanism as in the TV show

and the computer game, the last of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it's based on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the, like, if the zombie apocalypse happens because some people wanted expensive soup, that's going to be so...

Can you time it as well? You know, when we go see flowers that we know are going to bloom once every hundred years and they open? Can your meal arrive as just an intact bird? And then suddenly it just explodes out. That would be great in the mouth. Yeah.

Also, you're saying people in the Himalayas are burning $600 pounds? No, so they take them and then they take them to rich Chinese cities. Oh, they're sure. They own so much, don't they? Honestly, those guys. But there was the Chinese national games in Beijing a few years ago,

and there was two athletes, Wang Zhongshia and Chu Yongshia, and they beat the world records in the 10,000 meters, the 3,000 meters and the 1,500 meters. And the newspapers all said it was down to this stuff, this cordyceps soup that they were drinking. Were they getting close to the finish line, and then something just erupted out of their head and pushed them over? It seems, looking bad, that it might have been due to state sanctioned doping, but...

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? Probably just that delicious mushroom soup. Do you know Webster in America? Dictionary, Webster. Yeah. So when he was putting the dictionary together, he kind of just changed certain words to what he thought was the better pronunciation, the better wording, rather, the better letters to be used in the word.

Spelling? Yeah, so, like, the reason... Sorry, I don't have his book on me to have looked that up. But so the word center, he changed to ER. Okay. That's why Americans do it. He's responsible. Color, there's no you in color in America because of him.

But there were words that he tried to use, but were kind of rejected by others. Did he do soup? And soup was one. So soup was meant to be spelled S-O-O-P, according to Webster. So the Americans might have had soup. Yeah. Gosh, imagine having that kind of packed. power that you can just

literally change words. Exactly. An island he tried to change as well. So island he was going to get rid of the yes. So it is. And is, he was going to get rid of the S and put it as is. Oh, and that's that. Yeah, sorry. Otherwise, yeah. That's just I. Yeah, yeah. I need to move us on to our next fact.

Okay. Are you upset? Do you want to cry? Well, there was it... I have crying. You can't tell because I'm crying into the ducts. No, I was going to ask if you wanted to talk about portable soup, pocket soup. No. Okay.

It is time for fact number three. Well, give us portable soup. Give us portable soup. Well, it's also known as veal glue. I mean, there are a few different names, but it's basically just solid soup. And again, it was invented in the 17th century. It's something

to carry around, something to take away to see with you. Like a proto-boboral, really. It's just condensing. You boil it down, you boil it down, to eventually you have this gelatinous chunk of soup and then you just rehydrate it. And so Lewis and Clark, when they did their expedition, they took 193 pounds of solid soup. So that would have fed them for ages,

but they only ate it when food when things were really desperate. I think that's because it was disgusting. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. We had a fact also from a listener about Lewis and Clark, which is part of the reason I mentioned this, is that when they went on their amazing trans-American voyage,

they took 150 pounds of semen with them, which was their dog. He was called Seaman. Lovely. All right, I'm out. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in 2003,

there were 4,096 fraudulent votes in the Belgian election. The culprit, it was later discovered, was the universe. So what happened is... The universe... It's always pantos season at the Soho Theatre. The universe accidentally voted in the Belgian election, and it was down to cosmic rays. So basically, at 2003, there was a lady who was running for a unionist party,

and she was called Maria Vindfogel. Prologies for the pronunciation. And it was National Election Day, and there was a precinct where they were having the votes counted. And as they were counting it, it's sort of registered 4,096, which seemed impossible because that was more than there was possible to have in that area. So they thought something dodgy's going on.

They had every single person in computers in the area, look at the machine, try to work it out, what the hell's going on? Why are you laughing? Have you tried telling that off and on again? They tried that. Sorry. So computer people came. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're in computers. So they looked at it. They looked at it. And they looked at and they saw that 4,096 was a very computery number. Yes. Isn't it? Is it genuinely? It is, genuinely.

Some people here will have worked it out. Two to the 12. Two to the 12. Two to the 12. Bavril later, you lot. It's two to the 12. So in binary, it's one zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, 12 times. And so one of the zeros must have turned into a one.

Yeah. So that's... Oh, okay. Exactly. I did get that, but sure, yeah. Like a mad tiny glitch. A mad tiny glitch suddenly, and they couldn't work at what it was. And then a while later, there was a conference of the American Association for the Advancement

of Science. This was happening in Boston. And it was during a talk called Cloudy with a chance of solar flares that it was revealed that they believed that it was the cosmic rays of the universe that had hit it at this precise moment, which happens a lot on our planet. I think somebody to call Trump up or his lawyers and be like, yo, we've got you a better excuse for that whole election debargle.

This man is just sitting here ruining democracy by like telling everybody, well, here's another excuse we can use in court. It's actually solar flares. And that one over there's giving you mathematical formulas. I'm like, no part in any of this. But carry on. No.

I like the way that it was solar flares that changed this election. So that old newspaper headline, which was the son what won it, literally was true. Super. That's very good. Yes, yeah. Should we say what a cosmic ray is? Yeah.

So it sounds like a ray, but actually it's not, it's a, they're particles, they're pieces of atoms. They're obviously incredibly tiny, and they are passing through all of us right now. Even in this basement, we're not safe. They're not harmful, that's the good news. But every, at sea level, roughly where we are, every square centimeter of the planet gets hit by one muon every minute. And they're going at 90... Muon. It's what you make Borrow from.

It was discovered during, what was that war again? A muon. Mewan. Yeah. All right. But all of us now, all of us are being just bang, bang, bang, bang. Mewon's passing right through us. All of us now are being, is no one concerned even slightly?

I'm concerned. But you said it doesn't harm us. It doesn't harm us at all. I'm not concerned. That's exactly what the Mewan lobby would say. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. We say it doesn't harm us.

It absolutely does harm us because it harms the things that we use. It harms communications. It harms, if you're, there's examples of airplanes literally dropping hundreds of feet. Yeah. Because they've been hit by a cosmic ray and the system has rebooted and freaked out. And those... It's rare. It's rare.

It's really, really rare. It's really, really rare. So the problem, one of the problems that there is going forward is that these particles have energy and they can change, they can flip. transistors basically. A transistor is a little switch in an electrical thing. Now, the smaller transistor is, the less energy you need to flip it. And the more you have, the more susceptible you are. And as time goes on, we have way more transistors in everything and they're way, way smaller. So in theory, it could be worse as time goes on. It's bad. Yeah. It is bad.

You said it didn't harm us. You know when this happened? I'm wrong. Yeah. Do we know if people were scared, was suspicious, thought there was some kind of fraud going on. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, fortunately, because it was so obviously fraudulent that it was called immediately even by the party that they just knew. They were a small party, right, so it wasn't... And they know because in the Belgium elections,

these machines, they do multiple different counts in different ways, and if any of the counts are different, they know there's something off. That's clever, basically. Did she end up winning, by the way? I don't think so. No, no, she didn't, no. Oh, that's sad.

Yeah. She never was going to, which hence why it was sort of... She saw the numbers, and she was like, God, the revolution is here. This is the way that they do the elections in this part of Belgium. So the voters are given a magnetic card with a magnetic strip on it. They feed that into a computer. Then they use a light pen to point at a television screen. And that information then goes back onto the card.

They take the card out. They put it into an urn. People go into the urn. They pick the cards out. They put it into another computer. That information is sent on the internet to another computer, which is in the polling station. That information is then put on a 3.5 inch floppy disk.

This was in 2003. This was happening. And then it was sent to the head office in the area where they would then put it into another computer which added up all the numbers. Wow. I think there's a lot more than solar flirts going on. That's amazing.

You think after that, I mean, I just imagine if it had been a serious election, the mood would have been, like, democracy would have been at stake. I'm sure the people of people of Belgium thought it was a serious election. Belgium was quite chaotic. They did. They had no government for about five years. Yeah, and it was fine.

Yeah. We could just... Yeah, because have you seen how long it takes to vote? It's fine, you'll do. Stay where you are. We need to be more like Makasar, Indonesia, which in 2018, there was one guy running completely unopposed from mayor,

and he still lost the election, to none of the above. Do you say Indonesia? Yeah. They have almost the, I would say, the opposite system to the Belgian 2003 system. It's entirely... It's not, well...

Cross it off the touring schedule for 2024. Looking forward to that. They have nail-based voting. So you get a ballot form, ballot paper, ballot sheet. Might just call it a ballot. A ballot. You get your ballot. And then you...

punch a hole next to your chosen candidate with a nail, and then you hold it off during the count, you can see where the light shines through the little hole, and that is it. And they introduced pens in 2014, but the authorities said, you must use the pen as a nail. Just one other

election thing that I read. Do you know who won the 2020 Nambian election? It was a local election. Namibian? Sorry. Are you using Webster's Dictionary for us? Sorry, I was looking for the and then I got confused as I was saying it. So there's a Namib...

Boer. Wait, no, if I take it slowly and we all concentrate, it'll be okay. You can do it, you can do it. In 2020, a Namibian politician. Guys, if I cut out all the other stuff, it sounds like you're all massive fans of Namibia. Hey, they have great landscapes, is all I'm going to say. Beautiful.

No, okay, there's a local politician in Namibia who is a... I'm sorry, where? I don't know that weird as well. Did you say Barbibia? I don't know. I don't know what comes out my mouth. In Namibia, there's a candidate. Yeah, in 2020, there's a Namibian candidate

who won a local election who is... Can you guess his name? Whatever we guess it's going to be closer than whatever you read. It's a former politician, so it's a name that we know. So it's kind of like... Like Winston Churchill. Kind of like.

Tony Blair? No. Just because lots of children were named Tony Blair in places like Kosovo. No, they were called Tonneble. Tonneble.

It was a squashed name. Tonneblur. It was a Christian name. Okay, so a famous politician. Mulmolum. No. That's good. Ming Campbell.

Think bigger than England. Bigger? Eric Pickles. No, you're all close. Maybe George Washington. Really famous politician. Yeah, that's a good one, but no. Adolf Hitler.

Yeah, there's a politician there called Adolf Hitler So Adolf is actually a common name over there Is it still a common name? Well, I guess there's a generation that are, yeah, that are sort of like getting into political power age And Adolf Hitler said And it's Adolf Hitler, that's his first and middle name And he says, my dad absolutely knew who Hitler was

I don't think he knew who was a bad guy necessarily, you know, He sort of gives his dad a bit of coverage on that But he says Wasn't there maybe a German colony or a projectate or something It was okay exactly it was So he seems I mean I didn't have enough time to go to a deep dive into him But he seems like quite a cheery happy guy Might be restoring the name I don't know

But he said they said are you gonna change your name And he said this is it's on all the papers already I think I'll just leave it actually it's fine So he's just kept it And he won his election? Yeah, yeah, he won it. It's recognizable. Yeah, exactly.

His Wikipedia says, by the way, it says... Not to be confused with... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, not to be confused with Adolf Hitler. And then on that sidebar, it has occupation, political activist, known for sharing the name as Adolf Hitler.

That's got to be the disambiguation on Wikipedia with the biggest difference in article length between the one guy and the other guy. I don't know what he's achieved in Namibia, you know. No, true, very true. That's true. Do you know it was 1964, the general election, which Harold Wilson was the victor in?

Yes, defeated Alec Douglas Hume. Go on. Well, that's kind of hot. Oh, Dan, where were you during my university years? But, yeah, so 1964, he says that one of the big reasons he believes that he won the election is because they managed to swing a bunch of the marginal seats that might not have gone to labor

had the turnout not have been as massive, right? So he needed to get the turnout to be massive. And according to him, he managed to do this by persuading the BBC to delay a repeat of Steptoen's son of the TV series and moving it to another time. And as a result, no one was glued to the TV

and they went, all right, let's go out and vote instead. And he says that he thinks that that's what helped shift the vote. Harold Wilson said that. It's actually a bit more complicated than that. So it's a... Okay, I need to move us on to our final fact of the show. It's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

My fact is that the man who just broke the world record for living underwater got a visit from his 80-year-old mother halfway through to keep him cheerful. Oh, that's nice. That's a sweet story. Yeah. He's a guy called Joe Duturi, and he's a brilliant scientist, and he's been studying how extreme pressure affects the human body over long periods of time, and it might be helpful for space missions.

if humans ever go to Mars. So he moved to the Florida Keys. There's an underwater lab and you go down about 22 feet and you're living under there. The pressure is much higher than at the surface, obviously. So it's a dry environment.

You're in like a sort of pod, capsule thing. And he was doing tests on himself every day. He managed a hundred days, which is huge. Lones never lived that far down for that long before. Unless you're in a submarine. Slightly vexed question.

Never mind. And his... It's the longest underwater in a fixed structure. Sorry, because otherwise, a lot of our listeners are on submarines, nuclear subs, and we'll get emails. Eventually. Yeah, and he's an incredible guy, and he got a visit from his mum, who sounds like an incredible woman.

She scuba dived down to go up to meet him. So he did 100 days, and it was a bit further than the halfway. It was 81 days into it, and she scuba dive down with his brother, and there's this great photo of them just sitting in this underwater, you know, It is quite cool. It's quite a, you know, Ellie, you're an explorer, and it's good that people go down this and do all this thing. But it is a commercial hotel that you stayed in. So, like, any of us, if we could afford it, could just go and live there ourselves. Yeah. Really? Yeah. The problem is, there's so many people doing these, I'm going to stay down here, the longest

attempts, that the booking is like, have you got anything in August? Nothing? Yeah. September, nothing. One guy? It's like, yeah, they're fogging it. They don't have someone coming by and cleaning the room every day, do they? Someone scuba diving down with a mint that they have to leave. They will send you down pizza though. So it's $800 a night for two people and there's... Is that it? Well, you know. No, no, come on. 800. That's like full... I would have expected that to be much higher. Yeah, if you can't scuba dive, you also have to pay for a three-hour scuba diving class.

Okay, there you go. But like some premier in the centre of town are that at busy times. That's not bad. I guess so. It includes a pizza dinner which they send out. Apparently, I read the TripAdvisor reviews. Apparently the pizza is sometimes slightly damp. Oh, really? Wow. And, yeah, and then you can stay, and then you can't fly or dive again for 24 hours afterwards

because of the pressure change that you've had. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because your pressure rise, down there. Yeah, that's the kind of the point of his science, isn't it? He's like, he thinks that the pressure down there is going to help us live for a million years. 110 at least. So he's 55 years old, and he's saying,

I believe that if I was living down here, that would be, I'd be at the halfway mark on my life expectancy. So I can make it. It's really interesting. It is interesting. So, like, there's two things that come to mind. One is that this, yeah, you kind of touched on it, which is like this, forgive the words, I'm about to use the interface between extreme adventure and science, is becoming really weird

and actually happened quite recently with Ocean X, right? Like, it's just this idea that anyone can go on an expedition. Basically, as long as you're willing to pay enough money, like, even Everest. we're talking about Everest. There's loads of people that now aren't really training for Everest and they've just got these poor Sherpers basically, like literally hiking them up. And there is, I don't know, it's really weird.

I don't know how I feel about all of it. Dutri is a legit. No, no, no, I know. But the thing is, it's like a lot of, there's now this really weird move in exploration where a lot of really big research vessels are actually also tourist vessels. So you can get on these massive vessels

that are basically, for people that are spending like 60,000 pounds for their, like, trip of a lifetime. And there's a bunch of like actual hardcore scientists in the corner doing all the stuff, but also have to give like a lecture to like all these people. And it's just, I don't know how I feel about it. And they're doing it to help pay for it. That's a thing. It's a funding issue, isn't it, ultimately?

So it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of a good way of making sure that your expedition happens at all. But I get what you're saying. It turns it into a tourist proposition. But he's found out a lot of amazing stuff because he was down there. He was monitoring every single bit of his body every day. So one thing that is going to be probably annoying for the next person in is that the toilet gets a lot. usage when you're down there because your bladder is really squished, right? So he

said you're constantly just going to the toilet. Increased frequency and urgency of urination is how he put it. And also he says that it's interesting that the, your... I'm so glad you're saying this because I've got it in my notes and you're working out a delicate way to say it. I was trying to look for the phrasing.

Your semen travels at... Your dog? Yeah. Seamen travels at shorter distances when you're down there as well. His mother's down there. Maybe that's what stopped it. Don't come in.

Don't scoot when I'm down here. I'm doing an experiment. You can only enter by rising up through the moon pool in the floor as well. So I'm like, go back down. Go back down. Is that going to be a problem for people having children? Yes.

He says that maybe we won't be able to continue the species beneath 22 feet under sea level. Which is an interesting observation because his point is that part of the research, and this was happening a lot in the 60s, could we set up underwater bases where people could live for the long periods of times? Jacques Cousteau did that. Sylvia Earle went down. She's an amazing oceanographer.

They would go down for 30 days, 40 days, 50 days and so on, trying to work out, can we live down there? That was the big push. Let's build these giant underwater civilizations, basically. But we won't be able to ejaculate properly. So we will. You've got to go up for that and then you come back down. Just a lot of teenage boyages go, I'm just going to go for a quick.

Just want to see the surface quickly. Just want to see the stars. There's a whale up there. He can show me some cool new constellations. I was thinking a lot about James Cameron recently. Oh, yeah. Because, again, because of the Ocean Gate thing, when I first heard about what he did in the ocean space,

I'll be honest, I didn't really believe it. Because he went down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench? Yes, he did. He's been deeper than any person. It's insane that the guy who directed Avatar 2 has been deeper than anyone else on the planet. Yeah, well, you also directed Titanic, so that's closer, right?

Well, Avatar 2, The Way of Water, is a largely aquatic film, so it's actually a more relevant thing for me to mention at this point. Sure, Andy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Touched a nerve, don't know what that was about, anyway. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, your CGI movie example.

I'm sorry, I got really, really crossed. Yeah. And can I say, that was not hot, okay? Oh, have I undone? Anything you undid the sexiness of earlier. The Alec Douglas Hume moment earlier, yeah. It's so interesting because he gave up his seat in the House of Lords to run as the conservative leader.

That's very rare. You were saying something about... Cameron also went down to see the Titanic. Yes. So the Marianas Trench, and that's his oceanography credentials. No, no, no, that's not... But that's the thing. not just his oceanography credentials. So people think, oh, he, you know, so he's been to like

the Titanic more than 30 odd times and you're like, oh, that's something. But what's actually amazing is that he is legitimately in his own right, a deep sea explorer, not in any way as a tourist, as an engineer. And there are all these crazy stories. So for example, Bob Ballard, who find the Titanic, I don't know if you guys were following this, but after the whole catastrophe, with that submersible, Ballard and James Cameron came out publicly and were like, look, there were safety concerns, there were always safety concerns. We've tried to highlight this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what was really fascinating was watching the interaction between the two of them.

Because at one point, Bob Bloody Ballard turns around and goes, I mean, yeah, I'll defer to what he said about the mechanics of it. And you're just sitting there going, Bob Ballard is respecting this guy who was one. Like, God knows, stay in your lane. Stop making us feel bad about ourselves. The guy is like this incredible filmmaker and is also this incredible tech guy and the detail he will go into. And then I did some digging. And apparently, like, this has always been the case. Sorry, this is, you've got to understand.

It made me feel really bad about myself. So apparently, at the age of 14, James Cameron turns up to the Royal Ontario Museum, where outside they had Canada's first permanent submersible, and they had it out there, and then they were going to put it in the water in Lake Toronto for like two years. And it's outside the museum, and he writes to the museum, at the age of 14, asks for a blueprint for the bloody submersible. And the guy, I think his name's Joe McGuinness, who's like a really, really famous oceanographer.

He's like, okay, this is insane. Sure, I'll give you it. And he sits there, James Cameron 14, and tries to make it based on this blueprint, puts a mouse in it. Well, he tries to make his own one? Yeah, yeah. But a small one, puts a mouse in it

and puts it in a lake behind the Niagara Falls where he lives. And apparently the mouse makes it, but it's slightly traumatized. and then he's like, oh, I've got a problem with the windows, all again at the age of 14, writes to this scientist again and goes, can you help me with the window design? And the guy gives him the address to a company that he can write to to get, what's it called?

Perplex? What's it called? Namibia. Namibia. Why can't I pronounce things today? Anyway, I think. And they actually sent him a sample, and then he attaches it and does it again

and like does this whole, the age of 14, you're thinking, oh, this guy's a genius. Yeah, that's amazing. We're going to have to move on in a sec because we run away over. Yeah, we need to get out of here and get our bovrolls. Well, I can tell you a few more things

about going on the world. So the word urinator originally meant someone who dived. Okay, that's the first use in English of the word urinator is someone who goes deep sea diving and then later it became someone who urinated. Must have been a crossover period.

With hilarious consequences. It's impossible to fart past 20 metres. A challenge. A challenge from the people at Guinness. Are you going to cry and fart underwater? Is that what the aim is? Deepest underwater simultaneous fart cry, won by Andrew Hunter Murray. Wow.

This guy couldn't have farted in the whole time he was there. He couldn't do. Dr. Deepsy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because what happens is the... Due to Boyle's law, the volume is much, much smaller of your fats, and your body just can't push it through. And so what that means is as you go up, it expands. No. Oh, what?

Wait, that doesn't happen with the other thing, does it? At the front? You mean the ejaculation stuff? I do mean the ejaculation stuff. It's actually, you blast your way back to the surface. Lads, lads, lads, lads. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast,

we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hander Em. And Ella. Ella, Al-Shimahi. Underscore Al-Shamahi. Ella underscore Al-Shimahi. Or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing.

Or you can go to our website. No Such Thing as a Fish.com. All of our previous episodes up there. So do check them out. So, Theodore. Guys, thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate it. Don't tell anyone what happened.

But that's it, and we'll see you again another time. Thanks so much. Goodbye!