No Such Thing As A Fish - 509: No Such Thing As A Sausage Dog Helicopter
Episode Date: December 14, 2023In a review of 2023, live from the Soho Theatre, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss crocs, rocks, Berlusconi and Ivan Toney. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and mo...re episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
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Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things, a fish ho ho ho, it's nearly
Christmas, the presents are already wrapped, you've already bought your copy of everything
to play for, the QI Book of Sport by James Harkin and Anna Toshinsky, you've already bought
your copy of The Theory of Everything Else by Dad Shriver and you've already bought two
copies of The Century and The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray, The Sprouts are
simmering, The Quality Streets are already been mostly eaten apart from the horrible ones,
and what else is this new apart from listening to some podcasts?
Well, what do we have for you?
It's basically the start of our Christmas season, we're already in the Christmas mood, so
the next three episodes are all special episodes.
The first one you're going to hear right now is a look back at 2023. All of our favorite facts
from the news of this year recorded live at the Soho Theatre in London. Then next week you're
going to get our Christmas special where again at the Soho Theatre we talked about all of our
favorite facts about Christmas food and drink.
And then, in the silly season between Christmas and New Year, you'll get a very special show
where Andy opens up the mailbox and finds all the facts you've sent us over the last couple of years.
And we discuss those, find out which ones are true, which ones are not true, which ones are interesting,
and which ones, frankly, you probably shouldn't have sent in that drug-conupor at 2am. Anyway, really hope you enjoyed these three episodes. I'm
away from my deaths for the next couple of weeks, so I'll be enjoying them with
you too and we will see you in the new year. Okay, there's not much more to say
apart from to remind you to buy all of those bucks, go to nosicthingsaffish.com
forward slash bucks to find information about those.
But sit back, relax, put your feet up, and listen to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this
week coming to you live from the Soho Theatre in London!
My name is Dad Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anatoch Sinski, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin.
And once again, we have gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts,
but this time with our four favorite facts from the news of the year 2023.
And in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, that is Andy.
My fact is that after a journey of 60 million miles,
this year, NASA finally brought a fragment of an asteroid
back to Earth in a special capsule.
Unfortunately, they can't get into it
because they don't have the right screwdriver.
LAUGHTER
Pretty amazing.
Does anyone else feel it?
Yes, it's a problem.
Yeah, yeah.
No, so this is true.
So that's a launch to a mission to an asteroid called Benu,
which is big, and it's about...
No, no, no, no, it's low down, Professor. Sorry.
Yeah.
It's not that big, actually, but it's fine.
It's chunky enough to do some damage if it hit the Earth,
which it might, at some point in the next 300 years.
Not imminent, but we need to keep an eye on it.
Will there be ironic if it came down, hit the earth,
and then the box just sort of sprang open.
Yeah.
So it's not why we're getting bit.
Are they going back and forth, back and forth,
gradually making it smaller and smaller?
Oh, that's right. That's what it is.
What a great idea. It's not...
Yeah!
It's not exactly what I think they're doing it
because it was nearer than a lot of other asteroids
and it's worth studying, basically.
So, it's 500 metres across, which is not tiny.
It's called the most dangerous rock in the solar system.
That sounds pretty bad.
Yeah, it's...
But isn't that truly the most dangerous rock?
Earth.
No, no.
It's poop-thop.
Anyway, because it's home to man... No, we got it. Sorry, no. It's poop-a-thop. Anyway, because it's home to man.
No, we got it.
Sorry, we understand.
So what's the deal?
They've built a box that they can't open.
Yeah, we are.
Because presumably it didn't come in the box.
The after we did the right thing in the box.
That would be more worthy of study of anything.
But no, it's very, very old as well.
It hasn't changed its composition for four billion years,
which is why it's worth studying as well.
It predates the solar system.
That's pretty interesting.
So NASA launched this amazing mission.
They launched it seven years ago.
It took four years to get to Bennu.
It landed.
Or in fact, it didn't even land.
So it just sort of nicked the edge of it.
It scraped it for six seconds.
It just touched the edge of it, grabbed some fragments from it,
got those into a specially made capsule,
an incredibly good capsule,
and then it finally landed back on Earth this year.
It feels like a pickpocket at the asteroid, doesn't it?
It does, it did.
The thing I read said, it touched its bottom for six seconds,
which is...
But isn't that amazing, behavioural?
All that, all, like, I often get blown away
by the precision of science in space,
where that's your window.
If you miss that, you probably, it's probably a big deal
to have to turn around, go back, probably.
Probably, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they're like, but six seconds, that's what we have.
Six seconds.
Incredible, it's been wonderful.
And the problem is now it's in a glove box, right?
Yes.
And they can't get it out of the glove box.
They call it a glove box, don't they?
Yeah, and it's like, especially, it's a really good box.
It's a really good box, but you have to wear gloves to get into it.
Yeah.
You know those things, like, I don't know how to describe them,
but it's like a Perspex box,
and the kind of rubber gloves are attached to the box.
Oh, yeah!
You have to put them in.
Which is where it consists of mantling a bomb,
or they're like,
like Homer, Homer at the beginning of the Simpson.
That is the bomb, that's just like a new-
No, no, no, I was thinking of the movie Speed,
and then I went to the Simpson's very quickly.
Why?
I want to know, who's put a bomb inside this box?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's such a weird place to put a bomb, isn't it?
Thank God they put it there.
You can get to it safely.
So what is true here?
You have to wear special gloves to open this box.
Well, that's so, yeah.
Inside the glove box, you're not allowed to put just anything in there
because it's such a sealed environment.
They've got some tools in there already
but none of them is the right tool.
They've undone all bars two of the screws.
Right.
They're not the screws originally, it wasn't just two.
But the last two are proving really fiddly
and they can't just use a Phillips screwdriver
because everything has to be like,
it's a clean room and they can't get any, even it, I think it's filled
with nitrogen. Yeah, yeah.
Because they don't even, it'll react with oxygen
and that'll be a disaster. All right.
So they're having to be so careful.
The amount they've got inside the box
is about the weight of a hamster, roughly.
But just like... We don't know, it's not a hamster.
No. There's no way of knowing.
Well, it is... See through, so we can... Wow.
We can't see it's not a hamster. That also, it came with a load of bonus stuff. Like, it is C-3, so we can't. Wow. We can't see it.
It's not a hamster.
Also, it came with a load of bonus stuff.
Like, when it's gooped into the...
Oh, this stuff, sorry.
When it's goop...
What else? Yeah.
When it's no no no.
When it's churning my dad went to this asteroid
and all that gums, it's shitty shit.
When they did the scraping,
most of it ended up in the capsule,
but there's loads of other stuff around the edge of the capsule,
and other 70 grams or so.
So they had started studying that already.
Okay. It's very exciting.
Have you seen the screws that they can't get into?
Yes. This is piece of them. It basically looks like an Allen key, doesn't it?
It does.
And by its light, you know, you can never quite get the right size of Allen key.
Yeah. That's what it looks. I think that's what it is, isn't it?
I think so. So when can we get in, do you think?
Well, they're sort of designing special tools to get into it.
It's not going to be forever.
But I mean, task rabbit is very good for this sort of thing.
But they do know a couple of things already from it,
which is really exciting.
And so Britain has a little bit of it, very thrilling.
What? Sorry.
Britain has a bit of the sample, very thrilling.
CHEERING
Wait a minute, how can that be?
Yes. It's all in a box.
No, no, because there was 70 grams of bonus material outside the box.
So that has been passalled up and sent around the place,
but Britain has 100 milligrams total.
Brilliant.
Unfortunately, it's now in centre of Wanda.
Well, it will be.
Yeah, but I read a thing about the scientists who are looking at it,
and they're analysing it grain by grain.
They have such detailed studies that they can do that some of them said,
yeah, we might be looking at this for the rest of our careers
and it's literally 100 milligrams of dirt.
And what do they think they're trying to work out from what they're studying?
In the composition.
In the origin of like clues to the origin of the solaceous. Yeah, okay, right.
Apparently it contains nanoglobules of organic material, which sounds faintly.
Ah, so that could show that maybe a life can be seeded around the universe as well by asteroids?
Yes, always what they're hoping for, isn't it?
No, but it's just a little bit of dust.
Lifeless dust.
Another bit of lifeless dust.
But there are things in that there are things called pre-solar grains, which this is so cool,
right? These are grains of particles. They're less than one micron across, which really is very small.
And they belong to the previous dead stars and ancient cosmic dust that our solar system formed from.
So they're like the ingredients of our sun, but before our sun formed are on this thing.
Wow. That's cool.
There's also, as we're recording in the last day or so,
been a very exciting discovery made by NASA as well.
They found a tomato that's been missing
on the International Space Station for eight months.
LAUGHTER
That's not still going to be good.
It's not going to be good. You did it.
But there was, you didn't tell me.
I did it. Yeah, I'll have it.
If it's still going.
There was a guy called Frank Rubio and he was basically doing a harvest up on the International
Space Station.
He had a bunch of little tomatoes and other things and one of them just went missing and
he got accused of eating and he was like, I didn't eat it.
And they were like, well, we can't find it anywhere.
He left the International Space Station.
It's been eight months and just yesterday someone's like, is that the tomato that has
been incredible?
And it's all shriveled and all disintegrated.
Wow.
Yeah, so...
He's back on Earth going, I told you so.
He literally is, because every press conference,
they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
great stuff about space.
The tomato, did you definitely not eat it?
Because it feels like you did.
And it's, you know, the International Space Station
is about six bedrooms worth of room
if you were walking through it.
It'd be an elsewhere six bedrooms. It's quite big. But you would think you'd be able to find a tomato.
Oh, I don't know. Cherry tomato, a normal tomato.
It's like more like a cherry tomato.
I think we have a format here, actually.
Yeah.
Okay, so it's the four of us.
Yeah. We go to a celebrity's house. Sure. Yeah, it's like with the keyhole. Yeah. Okay, so it's the four of us. Yeah. We go to a celebrity's house.
Sure.
Yeah, it's like through the keyhole.
Yeah.
Wait, what's the...
How to hide the tomatoes somewhere in the celebrity's house?
Yeah, it's fine there.
But what's through the keyhole there?
Well, the interesting part is not finding the tomato.
That's deadly boring.
Yeah.
You actually get to see the celebrities all the way around.
You're going through the underwear draw,
because they were tomato.
OK.
But then the problem is you go around Alan Titchbar's house,
is it's fucking tomatoes everywhere.
That's the last page of Where's Wally.
I remember, there's just loads of Wally.
That's right.
Alan Titchbar's included.
Yeah. Wow.
So you know these people, you're talking about Andy,
you traveled millions and millions of miles
to get this cosmic bit of asteroid.
Well, they didn't.
I mean, it was an uncrewed mission.
You're right. They sent out their little, yeah, drone.
But yeah. They didn't need to do it.
Because there's loads of it on Earth, isn't there?
I don't want to.
As I think we've discussed before,
a bit lots of bits of asteroid raiding down on Earth
all the time.
And this was in the news this year
because scientists have identified 13 cathedrals
that they're going to start vacuuming
for bits of asteroids.
Wow.
Really?
The gottos or inside the...
Roofs.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, up top.
So it's the penny of Bosniancivic
and the Matthias of Anginikin.
And they basically want to understand how bits of debris from space come to.
These come to like two Russian guys and they're going to come looking at archaedrals, are they?
They've done souls, Bri, and they like what they saw.
No, it's a man and a woman who I don't think are related to,
Putin's regime in any way.
But yeah, they've said here are 13 cathedrals,
like Kent Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral,
all the big guns, and they go up onto the roofs of the cathedrals
with these big hoovers on their backs, like ghostbusters.
They climb up the walls, they climb onto the roofs,
and then they just hoover up all this dust,
and the idea is that remnants of asteroids and comets
can be found amongst, obviously, just lots of shit.
But you can see.
Did you say what is cathedral in particular,
as opposed to residential?
It's cathedrals because they're touch far less often,
so it'll be undisturbed, because not many people
hang out on top of cathedral.
And super old, super old.
Right.
Yes, very old, but also very well recorded when they've been redone.
When they've been revamped, you always have good records for it.
So if they find a bit of space dust, then they'll know
well, this bit of roof was redone in the 1960s.
So that's how long this has been there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they found another asteroid that possibly could hit the
Thon Valentine's Day in 2046.
Mm-hmm.
So that's something to bear in mind when you're buying your gifts
that year.
Carly, we have a...
What, don't bother.
No, bummer, yeah.
You've got a 600 to one chance of this asteroid hitting
earth on that day, which is the same as an average flight
being canceled or delayed by three hours.
Wow.
That has happened to me.
Does it happen quite a lot, that's it?
One in 600, I thought. You're fine. Yeah.
But is it okay if it hits it?
It's not if it hits it. No. No, I really.
It's a big one. There's a 600 to one chance that we...
That's really close. It's not...
In trouble. Look, it's 20...
It's 20... When did I say it all?
Only 20 years. 20 years. 20 years.
Well, I'll be gone, so...
Right.
But it's not going to... It wouldn't wipe out the entire... It's one of those, which is big enough 24th. 24th. 24th. 24th. Well, I'll be gone, so. Yeah.
But it's not going to, it wouldn't wipe out the entire,
it's one of those which is big enough that if it lands
in the middle of Manhattan, it's going to cause a problem
of chances are it'll land in the ocean.
If you were in the air and in aeroplane, do you think you'd be okay?
If it hit your aeroplane, no.
Yeah.
But I'm also thinking of your chances being in the air,
the same, of the three three hour delay that you would oh
Yeah, you're probably gonna be at the gates still
We like to be able to call on. We should be missing this
So there's this kind of thing where scientists are looking at all different asteroids and there's
1448 of them on their spreadsheet and there's something called the Terenos scale
Which tells you how likely they are to hit the earth.
And this is the one that's most likely to hit the earth.
It's still, according to NASA, poses no unusual level of danger.
And the chance of collision is extremely unlikely.
That's what they say.
OK.
But on this scale, it is one on the scale.
And all the other 1,447 have a ranking of zero.
Oh, OK.
So everything is a zero, apart from this one, which is a one.
What does it go up to?
Like, it goes up to two. It goes up to ten.
Oh, it goes up to ten. Fine, fine, fine.
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
I feel fine.
I'm still trying to work up titles for that tomato show.
I've got, like,. ...tomato.
...tomato, indeed, please.
What?
Tomato, who?
Er, and it's...
It's Tom, where?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because we already know who owns house it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm so glad you interrupted with that.
Here's a bit of exciting news.
LAUGHTER
Oh, shit, I can't stop thinking what the title will be now.
It gets you, doesn't it?
Let's try and move on. Can I tell you about a new invention this year?
Sure, right after I say the thing I was about to say.
Yeah. Oh, yes, I got it.
It does the same thing and told you that and they can you believe what you said was worthwhile.
He actually has something to report.
Damn, you were saying.
Well, just really quickly, another space-sciencing that we've discovered this year
is what the speed would need to be Miles Perauer for Elliott from the movie ET
and his brother and his buddies to get the bicycles up to the height that they need to get
to go past the moon.
to get the bicycles up to the height that they need to get to go past the moon.
The reason we know this is because it turns out
that the composer, John Williams,
has spent the last 40 years wanting to know that answer.
No.
Yeah, he said while he was conducting it,
he saw the footage and he went,
how the fuck would they do that?
And over the last 40 years, he's just constantly like
and the shower just going,
wow, how the fuck would they actually do that?
And finally, this year, he got given an honour by NASA.
And while he was there, he said to an astronaut,
listen, I've been thinking about this for 40 years,
when you go up, like, what's the escape velocity
that you need to break gravity?
And they said, basically, you need to go 17,500 miles an hour.
And he went, and so it's all sorted out from now.
It doesn't seem like that.
They must have slowed it down.
Yeah, because watch on Williams is missing.
It's a bit of a big plot point,
which is they had a magic alien in the basket.
Here's the weird thing.
I suddenly realised that John Williams,
when he's conducting to ET,
he does with the footage in there, and he's conducting the orchestra to it with his baton, right?
But he also conducted the theme tune for Harry Potter,
and that must have been so weird when he's holding his magic one stick.
I mean, like, bassoon!
And, you know...
You know, the really good conductors don't shout the insides.
Chalau! Don't shout the insides. LAUGHTER Shallow!
LAUGHTER
It's a lifetime's training.
This is starting as well.
If you listen very closely to the soundtracks...
Yeah.
You hear John Williams.
Trumbo!
Yeah.
Can I give you a free and vegetable-related fact?
A scientific one from this year? Yeah. Not I give you a free, free and vegetable related fact to scientific going from this year?
Yeah.
Not tomato one.
Have you heard of a new vegetable
that has been invented this year called the Garlic.
Is that part, garlic, part leak?
Oh, I was hoping we'd have a bit more of a fun test here.
LAUGHTER
They're just two members at the Indian family.
LAUGHTER
Thanks for 10 years working on this.
Not the name.
12th of the day.
I rather think they might have come up with the name first.
That would be...
But it sounds great.
It sounds so good. Because I had a meal before we came out here
and I made it with Lee Congalic.
Right. Imagine if I had a garlic.
Exactly.
Imagine all the time I was saying.
Yeah.
Actually, that would be nice not only to chop up bloody garlic every time you eat.
Right. They could merge.
Like all the ingredients.
That we have to do a Lee Congalic, come cum onion cum carrots. Why do I want so much?
So I like my dinner. Okay!
Stop the podcast!
Stop the podcast!
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OK, on with the show.
Up with the podcast.
It is time for fact.
Number two, and that is Anna.
My fact this week is that the airs who inherited
Silvio Berlusconi's properties had to deal
with the 20 Bunga Bunga Showgirls still living in them.
LAUGHTER
And...
That's amazing.
This is just an odd conundrum to be faced with
when your dad dies.
You know, not a lot of people will have to go through,
but he'd so bad as going died in June.
And he's got lots of houses,
and he'd lent 20 of them to various women,
along with sometimes a little monthly allowance.
And it was a little bit controversial as to why he'd lent these houses to them.
He'd promised them that they would be able to take over ownership of them.
So apparently he said to one of these women, Barbara Grera,
I promise you, on my five children,
that I will let you own this house.
But he said, I can't give you the right to ownership
until all my trials are over.
So he's been having lots of trials,
like many world leaders, person present,
because then I'll be accused of bribery,
because the accusation was that these women were women
who attended the Bunga Bunga parties.
Everyone remember the Bunga Bungas?
I think we should say for young listeners what Bunga Bunga is.
We should...
Not young listeners.
We're not young and younger.
Andy's kids podcasting.
The CBB bedtime story with Andy Murray.
So these were parties that he quite famously had about 10,
it was a long time ago, now actually, 10 years ago.
And they were basically mass orgies,
if you believe one account, and they were sophisticated gatherings
if you believe another account.
But lots of world leaders, sort of,
or lots of politicians and dignitaries
from around the world attended them.
They happened in his big mansion.
And there were lots of women there
who were kind of showgirls who perhaps perform services
for people who were paid for them.
And Wadamata.
And Wadamata.
And Wadamata.
And Wadamata.
That was always his excuse. So I was trying to find the spot.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, and the idea was, Bunga Bunga might have been
possibly the punchline of his favourite joke.
Yes. I don't know if you know it. I don't know.
Well, I'm not going to say it now, because it's a bit racist.
Oh, OK.
You can do a non-racist version, I think. Go for it.
I'll have a go.
So you've been with your mates.
You were two of your mates, and you've
been kidnapped by an enemy.
And the enemy says, OK.
It's from your country.
What's ever country you're from?
What ever country you're from?
It doesn't matter.
You've been kidnapped by an enemy from another country.
I think we've seen where the race has been seamlessly excised,
because. And the leader of the seamlessly excised, good.
And the leader of the other country says, OK, I'm going to give you two choices.
You can either have Bunga Bunga, or you can have Death.
And the first one says, OK, I don't want to die.
So I'm going to choose Bunga Bunga.
And then the second one also chooses Bunga Bunga.
And turns out, this means that they are tortured
in a sexual manner, and then killed anyway.
So the third one thinks, well, I don't really fancy
this Bunga Bunga.
So he just says, I'm going to have death.
And so the leader of the country says, well,
death you shall have.
But first, a little Bunga Bunga.
That's not a terrible thing.
It's good.
Apparently you heard it from Gaddafi, which is always the best.
Oh, right, yeah. But to be honest, Gaddafi, which is always the best. Oh, yeah.
But always, you have to be able to be pretty.
You have to be able to tell it much better than you do.
Yeah.
I love the idea of you just taking a lot of racist comedian sets and reinterpreting.
I'm really upset that I can't enjoy a Jim Davidson set or a boated manning.
Like Anitishinsky, reimagines boated manning.
That's a good format.
Okay, so that's fine.
So anyway, there are these women living in these houses.
They are still there at the moment.
I think they're in the process of trying to evict them now.
And they don't want to go, understandably,
because Boris Goney said to them these houses are yours.
But they also want Marta Faskina, who was his last companion, who was with him for the years
before he died to leave the mansion where she used to be
in house, like his mansion where she used to be.
She called Faskina.
Yeah, yeah, she's got a lot of fascist, doesn't it?
She's got a lot of letters of the word fascist in her name,
and she is an MP for Forza Italia.
Wow, really?
So...
Which was his party?
Which is the very right wing Italian party.
So, normative determinism.
Mm.
I only know one thing about...
Oh, sorry, do you have more about her?
She was left a hundred million euros in his will.
But I suppose he was loaded.
Yeah.
He didn't know this. Yeah, we did know.
Oh, well.
He used to be.
It was very, very corrupt.
I think it was all got through...
Oh, no, we can say it now.
It's all right. He's dead. Yeah.
Although he was acquitted of everything in the end, except fraud,
so he was a completely acquitted of paying underage people for sex
and other such things.
He did a quite a lot of influence in the courts, though, and the judicial.
I'm not saying he had a lot of money to...
You know... I'm just clearing it for the lawyers. Okay.
There are no lawyers. Ah!
Erm...
The only thing I know about him is that he left.
And he left an amazing art collection.
He has 25,000 paintings.
Yeah.
And it turns out that almost all of them were rubbish.
As in...
Ah, really?
..and actually, let's tell you an art critic had a look through
the collection of 25,000 pictures
and said maybe six of these were worth anything.
And a lot of them, you just bought on,
like, you know, those late-night TV shows,
where it's...
No, yeah. Did he really?
Yeah, wow. He would just watch and order those things.
Wow. That's what sad man.
And it comes with a free salad mixer.
It was that kind of... Yeah.
Level of art. Yeah.
He's become art himself, Bellasconi.
Oh, is he? Yeah, so there was an artist called Gianni Moti,
who supposedly, this is alleged,
went to a liposuction center.
He had fat taken out of him, and this artist bought the fat
from this center.
No. He then turned it into a bar of soap.
And so you could go to a museum,
and you could see a bar of Belisconi fat soap
that was just sitting there.
And then the liposuction centre
denied that they sold it to this artist, obviously,
because it became big news.
Yeah, yeah.
But the family denied it as well, didn't they?
But then the artist said, OK, I'll do a DNA test.
And they all went, we're going to shut up now.
Oh, yeah.
And they just kind of let it drop after that,
because I think they know it was him, right?
Yeah.
Guys, knowing what we know about Burlis Goney
and his Bunga Bunga parties,
would you feel clean if you'd wash yourself
with the Burlis Goney fat soap?
That's so interesting.
I think you're dirty or if anything,
when you've done that.
You can't wash away the stains of corruption.
Very profound. Very corruption. Very profound.
I don't know if anyone could tell we're moving from interesting facts and comedy into profundities.
I've got a few things about other people who've died this year, so Bellscooney died this year.
One great Brit that we lost this year was, of course, Mystic Meg.
She was awesome. I course Mystic Meg. Oh, yeah.
She was awesome. I love Mystic Meg.
She was super famous back in the 90s,
where I wasn't living here, but where she would go onto the national lottery
and she would predict that someone's won the lotto
and the bulls would be the...
She'd never say the numbers, though, which she...
No, exactly, yeah.
She would say that this one will be 14.
She would say, make sure to check your numbers if you haven't
from the previous week and someone did that and they found out that they won.
So there were like these few occasions.
But the thing about Mystic Meg was,
she used to be a journalist
and she kind of fell into astrology and clairvoyance
as part of a gig of being a newspaper editor.
And when she set up a hotline for you to call up
and get your predictions,
it was the number one hotline in the UK.
Some places say globally, it was so big that people just wanted to get these predictions.
She was massive.
And despite being as massive as she was, there's virtually nothing that we really know about
her personal life that might change in the next few years.
But the two things I could find is one, someone who went to her house said that in every single
room she had a naked photo of herself framed.
And then the second one comes from her.
It's one memory that she has
from the time that she was doing the national lottery.
And this is a direct quote from her.
She said, my most vivid memory of the lottery
is when I was doing my prediction to camera
and out of the corner of my eye,
I saw a naked man running towards me.
The security guard caught him
inches before he got in front of the camera,
painted on his backs with the words, pick my balls!
The world's oldest dog died this year.
Oh, Bobby. He was 31 years and 165 days, which is 220 in human years.
Yeah.
And there was someone at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
who said, not a single one of my veterinary colleagues believes Bobby was actually 31 years
old. But he was in the Guinness World Records, but I think generally speaking people don't
think it was him. I mean, quite a lot of the pitches of him have different coloured paws.
So funny.
Hollywood actor, Requel Welsh, died this year as well.
I can't actually remember too much.
She was in bedazzled with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
There was a famous one, like a million years BC or something.
Yeah.
I think she was the woman who had the world record
for kicking male co-stars in the genitals the most
out of any actor.
Really?
Well, these movies are on set.
Yeah.
It was just live, yeah.
No, it was in movies.
I think, from memory, I think it was 21 times.
Wow.
Do you think she read scripts and decided based on that,
just rifling through looking for the stage direction?
Yeah.
It was probably in the claws of her contract.
Must-need-balls at some point.
Kind of my thing. Yeah. It was probably in the claws of a contract. Must-need balls at some point. Kind of my thing.
Yeah.
Cosano, I reckon, did probably kick a few co-actors in the balls.
Um, was Glenda Jackson, who also died this year.
Did Glenda Jackson die?
Yeah, so sorry that you're discovering this now.
Yeah.
And also, sorry if anyone's just discovering about Berlusconi as well.
Mm-hmm.
LAUGHTER
Mystic Meg, you should have seen that coming.
Um...
Oh, Glenda Jackson did die, yes. I'm sorry to say, but she was 86.
But she was so great. I didn't know that much about Glenda Jackson.
I feel like she was slightly before our time,
but she was so successful as an actress.
She got two Oscars, three Emmys and a Tony Awards,
so like the Holyinity of acting things.
Then of course, she quit it all to join the Labour Party
and become an MP.
She had these two careers one after the other,
both very effective, very successful.
And mostly what people say is that she was absolutely terrifying.
Really?
There was, I read, yeah, yeah, she was so,
this is why I feel like, you know, she wasn't kicking people
literally in the ball, but some testicles were shriveling on set with her, I think.
There was an interview with her in Vogue a few years ago
where the interviewer said she was the most terrifying person he'd ever interviewed,
greeting me with the level of warmth, a non-animal lover reserves for next door's cat.
Even Chris Bryant, who's is you know Chris Bryant,
the Labour MP, he wrote her biography,
and she agreed to two interviews with him,
two four-hour long interviews,
and insisted during those interviews
on sitting with her back to him the entire time.
Wow.
Wow.
Maybe it's like you're telling your sort of telling your story
rather than telling Chris Bryant your story.
Yeah. You're sort of telling it all into yourself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it helps you be a bit more reflective.
Boop a thump.
No, that one didn't fly.
All right, how about Dick Fosbury?
No, the flopper.
Really? He'd invented the Fosbury floppy die this year.
For the last time.
Oh.
Gosh.
He invented...
Doing the high jump.
Doing the high jump backwards.
And when he invented it,
the US Olympic track coach said,
he will wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers
because they will all have broken necks.
So what's controversial at the time?
There is a crash map, of course.
Well, it does help you not break your neck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
The interesting thing was that had just been developed
like a few years before he came along.
And that's why it was of its time.
Because it was a woman called Debbie Brill
who did it around the same time
but wasn't quite so successful.
And she did it in Canada and it was known as the Brill Bend.
Which I think is better than that.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
But Cosfosbury won the Olympic gold medal.
That's why it was named after him.
40 years after he won the gold medal in the Olympics,
there was a dinner in his honor in London.
And Dorothy Tyler, who was an 88-year-old high jumper
around the same time as him, as he was getting his speech,
she ran onto the stage, well, ran as much as an 88-year-old can,
went onto stage, grabbed the mic, caught him,
and said, you can't go over that bar head first.
It's cheating.
You're all cheats.
Oh, wow.
It was just 40 years after he did it, that's what happened.
That's incredible.
She was the first British female athlete
to win an individual Olympic medal in athletics.
And it was at the 1936 Olympics in Germany,
and she met Adolf Hitler on that day.
And she later said, he was an odious little man
in a big uniform who I probably should have slapped.
Ooh!
That's beautiful.
Sharing that good on her!
Yeah.
Finally someone brings that guy down a peg, I'll say.
Yeah.
Yeah. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James.
Okay, my fact this week is that England footballer Ivan Tony, who was suspended for
gambling in May, has a middle name's Benjamin Elijah, meaning his initials spell out,
I bet.
It's so good.
It's amazing.
Yes. I bet. So good. It's amazing.
He bet on 126 games in competitions he was playing in.
And he bet 13 times on his own team to lose,
but he wasn't playing in those games.
But they banned him for quite a few months.
And I think when this goes out,
he will be just about to come back.
So you're not...
I genuinely don't know anything about the rules.
Are you not allowed to bet on your team to lose even if you're know anything about the rules. Are you not allowed to bet on your team
to lose even if you're not playing?
You're actually not allowed to bet on your spot at all.
In your spot?
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
Well, because you've got so much insight in for, haven't you?
Yeah.
I bet on podcasts all the time.
LAUGHTER
And we're going to get...
What's the bet?
This is going to give you a good episode.
LAUGHTER
Yeah. Even by the looseest definition podcasting isn't a sport, I'm not a bad. I bet this is going to give you a good episode. LAUGHTER
Even by the loses definition, podcasting isn't a sport,
so I think you're all right.
I seem to remember that when I was living in Australia,
in corner shops where they sold lottery tickets,
and if you worked at the corner shop,
you weren't allowed to do the lottery ticket.
OK, it's ruins and family weren't allowed.
The scratch cards and stuff.
Really? Yeah.
But of course, the problem is with football, it's entirely sponsored by gambling companies.
Yeah.
And so we're expecting these young men to not gamble.
And at the same time, they're wearing names of gambling companies
on their shirts and they're being advertised,
them and stuff like that.
So it is a big problem in football right now.
It is. And he was...
I don't...
I wouldn't say that we think of him as a villain.
It's like he's a gambling addict, right?
And I think it is an important distinction when you heard he bet on games
where his team lost, is he Brentford?
A time of recording, yes.
But we expect since moving there.
OK.
But yeah, he didn't throw the games or anything.
So it is just that he was so addicted to gambling that, you know,
he couldn't help himself from doing it.
And it is made way too easy, isn't it?
I got this quick football thing, which is slightly interesting.
The World Cup, Qatar.
It was the first time in World Cup history
that no British person as a fan was arrested.
Uh...
Yeah. Get away. Yeah, this is...
This is according to Mark Roberts,
so it's how it's put it to us as a country.
LAUGHTER
This is not in sacred. They're so shameful. They don't a country? LAUGHTER They think...
This is not in sacred.
They're so shameful.
They don't know for sure.
They think it's a dry country that might have contributed to the situation.
No arrests of Brits on the World Cup.
Another bit of World Cup history was actually made this year.
And that was by Bethany England.
She became the first player to play for a country that shares her own name.
That's good. That's the first time ever.
Yeah, so there are people like Alan Brazil. I think there are people with the surnames of countries that they don't play for.
They exist for the first one. Sorry, Alan Brazil. That's a very funny person.
That's very funny. What. That's a very funny...
What? Is Alan Brasile really mega-famous?
Brat-famous.
I'm sorry, that's a funny guy. That's a funny guy.
That's the least Brazilian name I've ever had.
Gavin Hong Kong.
What does he play football?
If it was, too, yeah. He used to play football.
They had a very, very, very long football match played this year.
I think the longest football football match played this year.
I think the longest football match ever played.
Oh.
Week is often the time of the football matches.
Very specific, isn't it? Yeah.
Dale.
Well, this one lasted for 102 hours.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. That's too long. Did the ref got to grow the whistle?
Yeah, it's it.
No, it was a charity thing. It was in Southampton,
and it was 36 players, but there had to be like 11-11
aside, stand a match and they subbed in and out and you know they were exhausted.
I can't even you sub in and out.
102 hours is very, sorry.
Yeah, with only 36 players, you can't sub out that much.
No, you can't exactly. The final score was 910 to 725.
was 910 to 725. LAUGHTER
That's...
I'm on stage. You know, like, if you're playing actual...
We can catch it, we can catch it.
LAUGHTER
But Captain, he's the discard of the 250 goals.
And there's only three hours left.
That's like Roy of the Roeva's shit. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, my God.
I got another football fact from the year,
but this is American football, NFL.
Soccer.
As part of... No, no.
Sorry.
No.
Hence the specific NFL.
American. American football.
I'm with you. Yeah.
So there's a Seattle stadium called Lumenfield.
And this year Taylor Swift, as part of her era's tour, she played it.
What record did she break at this tour?
Okay, well, she's dating an NFL player from Scelsie right now.
Yeah.
So is it something she, no, that would be disgusting.
She...
I don't know where you're going with that.
So I don't even, I don't even know where.
I don't know.
Charles Kelsey is a tie-tend if that helps.
Oh, right.
No, okay, so the previous record was set in 2011 with the Seahawks.
What did she break this year?
So Seahawks.
Biggest attendance at an American verbal stadium.
No. All right.
I don't know anything about that. Most Larry fan, drunkest fan.
I only thought, no.
There was a thing where she did a gig that started
a sort of earth tremor.
There we go.
She has set the record for the largest magnitude earthquake
caused by fans at a gig or a match in this venue.
So in 2011, the Seahawks fans registered 2.0 on the Richter scale
and Taylor Swift fans from jumping and yelling
and the music combined went to 2.3.
So she has the seismic activity record
at Lueb and Clearwood in Seattle.
That's great. It's very impressive. It's pretty cool.
We talked about athletics earlier on.
There was a race at the World University Games
where one of the Somali competitors
finished more than 10 seconds behind the person
who came second last.
And when you watch the video, everyone runs,
and they just sort of, like, pretty much how I would run.
They just sort of waddle their way down the track.
And it's very clear that they shouldn't have been there.
And as a result, a Somali sports official was suspended for abuse of power,
nepotism, and defaming the name of the nation.
Okay, but the amazing thing about this was it was like such a good example of that escalated quickly,
because so they had this race.
And then the Somali Minister of Youth said this person was clearly not
a sports person nor a runner.
And then the Association of Somali Universities said, actually, we didn't send anyone to
that event.
Oh!
Botwist.
And then the Ministry of Youth and Sports said, as far as we know, there's no such thing as
the Somali University Sports Association.
Oh!
Oh, wow.
How far does this go?
Like, tell me it doesn't exist.
Somali doesn't exist.
Right.
I found out about it, sport, that happened this year,
but that I had never heard of before.
It just like had it standard annual thing this year.
You've got sort of competitive life-saving. No! You have this, who? I had never heard of before. It's just like how it's standard annual thing this year. Yeah.
You've got sort of competitive life-saving.
No!
Yeah.
This is amazing.
Wow.
It's a real sport.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
So the people who don't win, the people die?
That's why it's not big.
They just can't get the volunteers.
No, the Royal Life Saving Society holder
happens every year or two, I think,
and it definitely happened this year.
And they sort of stage incidents,
so your team, you're in a team that you go into a room
which is either a dry room or it's a pool
or a wet room or something.
The joy room sounds easier for a start.
LAUGHTER
And you have to react to whatever situation is happening in there, work out what happened.
And an incident has occurred.
There is one where the four-man relay,
where your team have to drag each other through the water
in a relay, which sounds really fun.
Wait, so you're dragging someone, and then they hand me
the drag over to you.
They come to life, and then you collapse,
and then they have to.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, you become the baton.
This is really nice. Yeah, yes. That's it. Oh, yeah, you become the baton. This is really nice.
Yeah, yes.
That's the most zen relay team that was there.
Just become the baton.
LAUGHTER
Sorry, Andy.
No, no, no, no.
I was just looking up where the England team
are from around the country.
And quite a lot of them are from Crawley.
Oh, nice.
And of course, the front crawl is a swimming stroke.
Yes, yes.
Yes. Any from Breastley? No. Oh, nice. And of course the front crawl is a swimming stroke. Yes, it is. Any from breastly?
No.
No, backly.
Not that I saw.
Not a place, I suppose.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can I just alert people who don't know.
There's something amazing that happened in cricket this year
that I didn't feel like got enough attention for its face-iness.
Yeah.
Which is, and I'm sure cricket fans are probably aware
that this had happened, but maybe not how rare it was.
So there are 11 ways of getting out in international cricket.
And it's an international cricket that's been played since 1844,
which I actually didn't know it was between the US and Canada in 1844.
So a long time, this year, for the first time in all of that time,
and in 240,000 innings, someone got out by the 11th way.
Wow.
They've been saving it up for that long.
Isn't that cool?
And the what you reckon it could be.
So it caught bold stumped.
Yep, it's it.
Leg four wicket. Run out. Run out. Leg four wicket. Yep, it's it. Leg-for-wicked. Run out.
Yeah, yeah.
Straighten the field.
Unseen tomato on the ground.
Yeah.
You slip on.
Is it like a procedure with it?
Like you've rude to the umpire.
It's very similar.
It's sort of like rudeness, yes.
OK.
What's the one way of being rude that you really hate?
Lending your dog poo on the green.
LAUGHTER
Is that it? LAUGHTER Losing your dog poo on the on the green
Andy's cricket matches bags of dog shit on the stumps
It's the other thing you you do hate it when we have our dogs shit before the ballcast
But the other thing you hate will be late late this
Lateness exactly time time down. Yes, so people. Lately. Lately. Lately.
Lately.
Exactly.
Lately. Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately.
Lately. Lately. Lately. Lately. Lately. And he is chin strap was broken. So it wasn't even really his fault, I don't think. I didn't say it like, but his chin strap was broken.
So he was waiting for it to be fixed off
or a new one to be delivered.
And the bowler appealed to the empire to say, all right,
two minutes is up.
Usually you would just ignore it, right?
And like some people have taken longer than two minutes
before and you would not appeal
because it's kind of a mean thing to do.
And the umpbra even said twice,
are you sure you want to, right,
you want to get your opponent out this way,
like this?
And the ball was like, yeah, don't care, I win,
as long as we win.
And so the umbra had no choice, had to say, yeah, you're out.
Wow, that's the 11th, that's never happened.
Never happened in 240,000 innings, that's the first time.
Do you think that was in his head as he was walking off going,
I can't believe that's what I'm going to be remembered for.
Yeah, entire career.
Yeah.
Guys, just because we're running late, I am going to have to move us on.
Can I just do an initials fact?
Yes, sure.
Really quickly, because this was a fact about initials.
One of my favorite stories of the year was the man who had to apologise
for carving his girlfriend's initials into the Colosseum,
saying that he'd had no idea at the time
that the building was particularly old.
LAUGHTER
Fortunately, her name was IVX.
LAUGHTER
LAUGHTER
Um, okay, we need to move on to our final fact of the show.
And that is my fact. My fact this week is that this year,
we discovered that crocodiles are horny for helicopters.
LAUGHTER
So this is what happens, right?
This is in... This was discovered in Karana,
crocodile farm in Queensland.
There's a path that goes over this field
where Chinook helicopters...
Chinook helicopters are those ones that have double rotors.
That really, it's like a long sausage dog
of a helicopter, which has two sets of the rotors
spinning around like that, right?
So when that flies over...
I would think the Royal Air Force
would appreciate that kind of presentation.
Forotious war machines.
Is that the only old sausage dog in the army?
Of the army.
So these Chinook helicopters would fly over
and in a few cases, because they're flying over an area
where there's a lot of crocodiles,
if they've got people on board that they want to show off
the area to, they might dip a bit low
and fly closer and say, look at the crocs.
And the guy who owns his farm realized that when this happened,
all of his crocodiles got extremely
horny and started mating and they, out of season, out of the time when they usually
would.
And it's been a bit of a mystery as to why they're doing it.
And so at the moment, as it stands, in 2023, we are on a theory level with it.
There's a few ideas.
They think it's emulating either in its tone or changing the temperature of the
water when the rotors are pushing down onto the water, they're emulating something that
signifies an incoming storm.
And basically, storms are like aphrodisiacs to crocodiles in Queensland because the areas
will flood and then the flooding would die down.
And then, six weeks later, after you mated, the eggs would be born in a much drier area.
Always would take six weeks to go from mating to laying the eggs.
It's to laying the eggs. So when they feel a storm is coming, maybe when they hear the
noise of a storm coming, they're suddenly like, it's sexy time. And they have sex so that
they can match it to the best circumstances for the eggs to survive. Is the theory?
I read the papers because there was a scientific paper about it, wasn't there?
And they said that that is the most likely.
The other option is it could be they think it's like the mating roar of rival males.
That was a claim your female now.
I think what Dan said is most likely.
They said that whatever it is, what makes them horny is the sonorous thump of the choppers.
They're all empathised with that.
So there's no...
LAUGHTER
Is it your wife or helicopter pilot?
LAUGHTER
That is the true fact, yeah.
There's no suggestion in the paper that they confuse it
with a sausage dog, and that's what makes it horny.
I just had another story about an animal, a funny animal story.
And this was also about a chap called Felix Popescu, who is a Romanian surgeon.
And he's a Romanian surgeon who has a holiday villa in the mountains.
And he was in the city and he got a call from the caretaker of his holiday villa,
saying it had been raided by a bear,
and it caused 10,000 euros worth of damages.
No.
But what Pepescu was most furious about
was that he drank all of his alcohol.
Was quoted as saying...
And stole all of his picket-ic baskets.
Exactly. So he had a load of vodka there and it just
drank all of it. Vodka, whiskey, champagne, the man said he the
bear left him without any of them. He had a very good time in my house.
Wow. Wow. It was like it is. Yeah. It's amazing. I think there's a kids
book in that like the tiger who came to see. Yeah. Who came to get pissed?
Yeah.
And I think you've lost a lot of the undead audiences.
I've got another alcohol fight, actually.
Oh, yeah.
There's been a new beetle that's been discovered in South America
and it has been named after Cal's Burg.
It's the long-covilius Cal's Burgui beetle.
And the reason it's been called that is because its penis looks like a bottle opener.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
Couldn't you put in theory, you use it?
Well, the entire animal is only one centimetre long.
So it would have to be a very, very small bottle of beer.
Oh, beer, yeah.
But yeah, I was reading the report about it,
and they said that genitalia are the organs in insects
that evolve to be different in every species.
As such, they are often the best way
to identify species.
That's why entomologists, like us,
are always quick to examine insect genitalia.
He protested too much.
Yeah. I'm going to have to wrap us up really soon. He's taken it earlier. He protested too much. LAUGHTER
I'm going to have to wrap us off really soon.
I have a little quiz question for you.
Oh, good, yeah.
Vienna Zoo has stopped giving its animals what?
This year.
Schnitzel.
Very good, Schnitzel.
Mozart.
Yeah?
Canjobs?
LAUGHTER
James had to scrupulously V&E's things.
That's what those are.
Have you, I obviously went to a different bit of the city?
It was a fun place.
Is there anything related to Vienna?
That had us closest, isn't it?
No, it's...
I said, I'd have food. It's no, it's something core to your sense of self.
Oh, names.
Is this another name of undersea?
It's names, it's momentous of non-determinism.
It's the oldest zoo in the world, it's called churn bloom.
And they used to have loads of animals,
you know, they had Ricky the bear or Susie, the tiger, whatever.
And she came to teed it, she.
And they've said it's too personalising.
They said we should be representing whole species.
And it's actually a bit of a false friend to say,
oh, this is Anton the adverb, you know,
because then you think about Anton,
you should be thinking about our varks.
You know what I mean?
Oh, really?
Oh, I think a weird communist zoo is it?
No, I respect that.
No, I think that makes sense.
But then you miss out on things. I read about a pig that ran away in New Jersey Who is this? No, I'm in respect. No, I think that makes sense.
But then you miss out on things.
I read about a pig that ran away in New Jersey
who was called Albert Einstein.
I'm like, right.
Right.
And then you don't give him that name.
Like what's the new, like, you know,
the police officers were able to say he was hard to catch
because he's very clever, you know.
I was always reading another kind of animal mating story.
Oh, yeah.
And this is another study that's been done this year,
and it's about elephant seals.
You know, those things, they're absolutely huge.
Huge creatures.
Well, actually, they're very differently sized
between the sexes, so I think the males are five times
bigger than the females.
So the males are massive difference.
They're not very attractive are they elephant seals?
To us?
Conventionally.
Like...
Yeah, like...
They're quite hideous.
Looking creatures.
Yeah.
Go on, but that's all picture of the loving sex, why don't we?
Well, it's basically the indulgent, I think,
called extreme polygyny, right?
Now, this is where small numbers of large males,
which are known as beach masters.
Um.
Is that self-designation type?
I think so.
Um, but once they can have
horrible of up to 100 females, one male.
Yeah.
And that means a lot of other males get cut out of the equation.
Um, although when a male gets to having a horrible of 100 females,
they might take on a younger male as an apprentice beachmaster. That genuinely happens. And so only about
4% of males become beachmasters. That's when they can have sex. Yes, I think they might
have a smaller hurry. The beachmasters are the very successful ones.
So they're not beachmaster baiting until they're a little bit too long? Sometimes the steel
jaws close and you realise you're in a trap.
And you don't know how to do it.
Amazing. No, but so this is the thing,
because being big as a sign of success for them
and it's sort of like a positive signal for them for mating,
they compete very fiercely to gain weight
with other male elephant seals,
and they forage at sea in areas which are really dangerous.
Right. Because those are the bits
which have a bit more food in,
but they also might contain sharks or killer whales,
both of which love to eat elephant seals,
and it seems like the male survival rates drop rapidly
after they're about eight years of age,
which is when they're sort of looking for mating.
So in a very, very rare example of something
in the animal kingdom not doing well,
not because of human interaction or interference,
it's basically they're dying solely because they think it'll increase their odds of mating.
Because they think they're bigger, the better. So they just do absolutely anything they can.
They go, anyway, for the most dangerous place in the world, for them to get more food.
Stuff, their faces.
Yeah.
I don't know if bigger is sexier in elephant seal communities.
I know if it's established, I don't find them attractive.
But if a male is five times bigger than you,
I probably wouldn't fancy someone who was 25 foot tall.
I think there is that in humans, like, just a...
What is a cult?
It's called super, oh, I forgot what it's called now.
But it's the fact that animals sometimes
the one thing they find attractive,
if you make it a million times more,
then they do find it way more attractive.
Supernatural selection.
Something like that, yeah.
It's the, like a goose likes an egg,
but if you give it a volleyball, it loves it.
Yeah.
And the idea being like sometimes if you see like a model
with enormous fake breasts,
then humans think that that's attractive
even though it's unnatural.
Right.
Oh, okay.
So yeah.
Supernatural selection sounds like falling love with a ghost. Right. So yeah. Supernatural selection sounds like falling in love with a ghost.
Yeah.
Yes.
And that's why natural selection is not going to be kind to you in the long time.
We do need to wrap up very very soon.
Anna, you feel like you want to say one more thing?
I felt like you looked at your paper.
Well, I glanced down. I was just going to rant actually about another animal naming thing,
which is that they're renaming all of American birds next year. Sorry, all of American birds
that are named after people. So the American All-Nithological Society has decided to change
the name of all bird species, named after people, as of next year. Because a lot of the ones
named after people, they're quite controversial people,
were they racist, were they not?
It's quite a lot of effort finding out
whether all of them were or not.
So why not just rename everything?
And I was all pro this.
I thought it sounded like a really good idea.
Until I realised, of course,
the Anna's hummingbird.
Oh.
Yeah, but you did tell that bunker-bunker joke earlier, so.
LAUGHTER Yeah, but you did tell that bunker, bunker joke earlier, so... LAUGHTER
OK, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.
If you would like to get in contact with any of us
about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.
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And Andy.
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In a range of places.
And Anna, how can they get through Dors' Group?
You can get in touch with the book us by emailingpookas.qi.com
or tweeting at no such thing.
Yeah, or you can go to our website
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Very exciting place, lots of extra fun places
that you can find like Discord,
drop us a line as a show,
there's compilations, all sorts of fun things.
We're going to be back again with another episode next week.
We'll see you all, thank you so much, SoHo.
Goodbye!
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