No Such Thing As A Fish - 517: No Such Thing As Julius Caesar's Dad Jokes

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Anna, Andy, James and Dan discuss duplicating songs, repeating jokes, fugu and Waterloo.  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

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber and I'm sitting here with Anna Tyshensky, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go! Starting with fact number one, and that is, Andy. My fact is that, thousands of soldiers who died at Waterloo were turned into sugar. Incredible.

It's a horrible fact about a horrible battle. Wow. It's incredible. It's really bad. I'm mad at this one. Yeah, how do you turn a person into sugar? That seems very unlikely. Well, firstly, you have to lure them to Waterloo in 1815, kill them.

Oh. So I have to be French. Well, oh, I'm so glad we got onto this already. There are so many nationalities who fought at Waterloo. Oh yeah. Most of the English army was German. Isn't that nice? Yeah, two thirds were German speaking as a first language. Lots of Dutch soldiers as well.

Belgian, yeah. Yeah, they were just brought in, weren't they? Sort of, we don't have enough. Can you fight? If you're listening to this in Europe, probably your nationality was represented at Waterloo in some capacity or another. Yeah, yeah. And more than the Brits, who constituted about 12% of the British-led army.

Well, it was about a third. It was about a third. Estimates may vary. Oh, they do. They vary significantly. I think at the lower end, we think maybe only, you know. So what are we saying in case you don't like British sugar? Don't worry, there is multinational sugar in it.

Well, it was, they set up a sugar factory on pretty much on the battlefield. I mean, it's all a bit. Can I refer you to my earlier questions? How does one turn a human into some sugar? All right, thank you. Because sugar is a thing that grows in the ground in sugar beet or sugar cane.

And then you harvest it. Well. And there are no humans involved. That's true. That's true. But what you do need to do is filter sugar syrup when you're making the sugar. So this was something, basically, very, very few bodies have been found

on the battlefield at Waterloo. Like suspiciously few. Two full skeletons. It's of 20,000. Are we sure? It wasn't just Napoleon and Wellington just coming at it? And they just really over-egged, like whoever won really told them how much bigger lie about what had happened there. It's the greatest prank in history.

It was really pulled the wall over those 21st century idiot's eyes. No, so there were lots of graves and there were huge graves, but only a few bones have been found. Like, as you say, two full skeletons, they found three legs relatively recently as well recently, which was near one of the hospitals, so those were probably amputated legs on the day. Oh, right, so it's not that it was Napoleon versus Wellington, and one of them had three

legs. Yeah, that's what I was hoping, one of the skeletons was a tripod. But you're right, there should have been huge numbers of dead people, or bodies in the ground. And the theory is, and this is quite a recent theory that's been developed, is that in the aftermath of the battle, the local residents, or the sort of local peasants, they dug up the corpses and they sold the bones to people working in the sugar beet industry because the bones were really valuable at the time. And normally animal bones were used. You would cook the bones. That made a powder called noir animal,

which you could use to filter the sugar syrup and make lovely clean sugar. So these days noir animal is still used, but animal bones and also not in sugar is used for other products and things. So sugar these days hasn't been nearly found. Sugar is vegan. Don't worry, yeah, vegetarian worldwide. Sugar is vegan. But the theory is that local peasants just dug up the bodies

and used the bones for this industry and it's a pretty compelling theory at the moment. Because we're known for ages that they took the teeth out of people, didn't they? Yeah. And they used them for false teeth. And so false teeth were known as waterloo teeth. Yeah, waterly rivalry. Such a, yeah, it's so dark. And they did write about the sugar thing back in the 1800s. It was a German newspaper that actually wrote, you should be using honey to sweeten food

and avoid risk of having your great-grandfather's atoms dissolved in your coffee one fine morning. Wow. Yeah, so. I quite like that idea of recycling your grandparents. Upcycling. yeah, yeah. And in 1822, there was an article in the Observer that said, it is now ascertained beyond the doubt by actual experiments

on an extensive scale that a dead soldier is the most valuable article of commerce. And they were talking about the fact that they were ground up and used as fertilizer. Yes, they were weren't they? They covered the fields of Europe. I suppose in a way it's recycling. Yeah, good on them. Isn't it? Like once you're dead, like do you really care? Exactly. A controversial question.

Oh, it's not that controversial. Once you're dead, I'm pretty sure you don't care. Unless you're a ghost, I suppose. Sorry, a woman does one care. Some people care what happens to, you know, the dead. There was a single... Uncontro the dead. There was a single- Controversial. There was a single, the bone rush. And it was partly because, it was actually partly

because of Britain, because Britain blockaded sugar. Because most sugar came from places like the West Indies, which were British colonies at the time. And Britain blockaded that, so not much sugar could get to Europe. So Europe set up a big sugar beet industry. It was a way of making sugar that didn't rely on shipping. So then that needed the bones.

So in a sense. Thank God for Waterloo. In a sense, it's our fault. Yeah, yeah. In a sense. In a sense. Waterloo, I can't believe we've hardly talked about Waterloo before. I'm so excited.

I can't believe we're only going to do one section on it. The rest is history, guys. They would get eight episodes out of hardly talked about Waterloo before. I'm so excited. I can't believe we're only going to do one section on it. Like, the rest is history, guys. They would get eight episodes out of the Battle of Waterloo. And we have to cram it into 50 minutes. It's not fair. I think you're optimistic about 15 minutes, I'll be honest. I'm looking at some of the other facts coming up, and I reckon they might be a bit longer.

Oh, no! You're allowed one fact, Andy. No, we've got to go through the whole... What's your fave? What's your fave Waterloo fact? Apart from the headline, obviously, which title my definition is. I'm quite interested in the cavalry charges and stuff. And the farmhouse at the centre of it all and all that.

You know, the stuff that doesn't make very good stuff for our show, I suppose. You have brought a lot of toy soldiers onto the table. Well, there is. Have you heard of the Cyborn model? No. This is so cool. This is like, I tried to stick to mostly the aftermath of the battle rather than like in-depth troop movements You're welcome

But there was a captain called William Siborn who made a huge model of the Battle of Waterloo 15 years after it had happened and he spent eight weeks on the battlefield itself just researching He took seven years to make it. He made, well, he certainly put 80,000 model soldiers on this 400 square foot model. It's massive. In a way, though, what we've got is one guy going to the battlefield saying, okay, I need to know where everyone was so I can make the model.

But at the same time, all of the locals are coming in, moving all the bodies around, taking all the bodies and stuff, that must have been really awkward. Yeah, I'm sure he was very nice. And actually 15 years afterwards was around the time they were doing the sugar harvesting. And he interviewed dozens of soldiers saying, where were you at 7pm on the 18th of June, 1815? But he really went into detail. And then he assumed the government was going to pay for it because it was his life's work. And the government kind of had said we'll pay for it but kind of didn't and

Wellington was annoyed because the model had too many Prussians is the theory. So he died poor and broke just with this 400 square foot model of the Battle of Waterloo at 7 p.m. Do we still have it? It's in the National Army Museum now, which is in Chelsea. So it does still exist. Yeah, yeah It's awesome, but it kind of ruined his life Yeah We should probably say Waterloo happen because Napoleon had been dealt with Defeated by you know the combined Allied powers and he'd been sent away to Elba where he was given Which is a little island off Italy where he was given command of the island. He was also given a small army and Navy

What are you thinking? The best military commander in history. We like he's got a small army and Navy He gave that to him the British This is the best military commander in history. He's got a small army and navy. He can't possibly. Who gave that to him? The British? I think it was like a sort of allied decision. Like they just said, we'll just, it's fine. He'll step down.

He won't want to come back. What a weird, like a desert island, disk luxury island. Elba is not that far away. That's the crazy thing. Like it's quite close. I've been there. It's quite close to Italy.

It's really easy to get back. So obviously he does a few, like he improves Elba a bit to sort of fix, fixes it in various ways. Then he comes back, like straight back, but only with a small army. Only with a small army. And then, so this is in 1815, it's called 100 Days, between him like leaving Elba and getting to Walnut, where he's eventually defeated because everyone has suddenly scrambled back into action. But, and the Bourbon monarchy has been restored. It's Louis XVIII, I think,

who's been put on the throne of France, slightly embarrassing, obviously. He's just sort of sidled back onto the throne. And as soon as Napoleon lands in France, Louis XVIII sends two big forces, led by two marshals, who, like Napoleon's generals, were all called marshals, sends two marshals.

As soon as they meet Napoleon, they change sides. Like instantly, he just says, look, it's me, it's Napoleon, Boni's back, let's go. And they just change sides and he's in charge of France again and the monarchy flees again. And then all of Europe has to wake up and scramble and, you know, draw him to Waterloo and try and defeat him. And they're basically led by a duo of Wellington and Blu-Ka

and they were really different characters. So Wellington sounds like a bit of a dick maybe to hang out with, but really good general. So his forces didn't really love him because he was quite cold, quite arrogant. The Iron Duke. The Iron Duke, yes. You're never going to love someone called the Iron Duke

go to parties with him. Whereas Blur was more Very brave not a good strategist didn't plan ahead, but it was the disco bald you Exactly, yes so and he was called Papa Blu-Kur by his men and They loved and trusted him, but yeah Wellington quite cocky apparently and the interesting thing about blue curl one of the interesting things is he invented a type of boot Didn't he so just like Wellington did so Wellington had his boot hang on that? That's not his boot is it the Wellington boot is named after him. Yeah, and he didn't invent it Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure he wanted people to have a special kind of boots to go into battle. Yeah, right

Yeah, it was Two boots each. Yeah. And he was like, what? One of us had three. And he, yeah, he was, he didn't do the designing or the making of it or anything like that, but it was his idea, I think. And they weren't Wellys. They weren't Wellys.

Yeah, yeah. They were proper boots. Yeah, it wasn't like a farmer. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Imagine squelching into a pool. Or like some shiny ones like with rainbows on like you get in Glastonbury. Napoleon actually lost because he wore his kitten heels on the day of the

battle and he got stuck in some mud. So he was in Crocs. So Bluka had a boot too. Yeah, so Wellington had his boot but they weren't, that hadn't been invented at the Battle of Waterloo, but Bluka's boot had been. So the Bluka army went in in Bluka's boots, but the Wellington army didn't go out inu-ka's boot had been. So the Blu-ka army went in in Blu-ka's boots, but the Wellington army didn't go out in Wellington boots because they hadn't been invented.

The idea of generals having their kind of their merch. It's a good idea. You can imagine the final speech on the bombing of the battle. And if you put in the offer code BLU-ka, you'll get 10 marks off the price of your first pair. But no, it was this huge. Like it was 200,000 men crammed into about five square miles. It was a very, very, very deadly battle, like lots of casualties, hence

all the bodies. I think 50,000 were killed or seriously injured. It was really sort of bloody. It took place over about four days. Waterloo was on the final day and there were three, like three smaller battles leading up to the big final confrontation. And not in Waterloo as well, we should say. No, nearby, yeah. It's like with Roswell, with the alien incident. All right. It was because the aliens were brought back to Roswell.

It's called Roswell. Oh my gosh. This was the information was sent from Waterloo. Thought it was safe for me. I thought this fact was, like this is a damn proof fact. There's no way he's gonna be able to get onto the S&M. So the tripod came down onto the battlefield. That's interesting.

So that was where his office was. That's where they were stationed, yeah. And basically, as it says, it's like the official report had the date line and the location on it, and Waterloo was the location. Which was close. It was super close. It was super close. It was right next door to Corona.

Corona? That's where, yeah. What? I know, right? No one else has been pushing this conspiracy like I have, so I'm glad we're all on board. But yes, aliens gave us the Corona virus. Wow. This was the end of the Napoleonic War, or was it?

There was actually another battle afterwards, which France won in the Napoleonic War. So France won the last battle of the Napoleonic War. Get out. The Battle of Wavre. What happened was it was French reinforcements coming to Waterloo and they met up with the Prussians and there was a big battle but what they didn't realize is the battle of Waterloo had already finished and so Napoleon had lost but there was another battle going on to bring reinforcements. France won that. Brilliant! Let's go! Oh, it's finished. Wow! So that is so interesting. I didn't know that.

So technically, if you win the last battle of the war, does it mean that you win the whole war? I reckon if it's like winner stays on. This last goal wins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we trying to get more Frenchness for this one? That's good. I'm not counting it. Andy, you've probably got a few more minutes. Stop, stop, stop. We never talk about Waterloo ever again. I'm gonna get more French listeners. What's going on here? I'm not counting it. Andy, you've probably got a few more minutes before we never talk about Waterloo actually.

There are a few Joan of Arc types at Waterloo, a few women. Yes. They seem to be mostly on the Prussian side actually. There was a woman called Eleanor Prachaska and Friederike, I think she called herself, Frederick, wasn't her actual name, Kruger, and they just cut their hair. Freddy Kruger. Freddy Kruger.

How did I know? Oh my God. Wow. Oh my God. Is that real? Well, I'm trying to welcome Dan back into the conversation. Yeah, Freddy Kruger, that was where he got famous. That's so good, because there's also a famous water skier

called Freddy Kruger. Really? Because this person at the battle, we're only one away from an oldly connect question. Wow. Well, there you go, Victoria Corrin, if you're listening. Frederick Kruger cut her hair, went and fought at Waterloo, gave herself away. Apparently one account said when she spoke in a particularly high voice suddenly.

I'll find you in your dreams. I'm coming for you. Don't go for it. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi Dan, do you know how many numbers there are in the world? Oh, um, yeah, there's infinite. Oh.

Is that not right? Yeah, it is. There's lots of different types of infinity, but we'll go into that later because there's only three numbers that you need to know today if you have a small business that wants to get a new financial system and streamline its accounting. Those numbers are 37,025 and one. Okay. What could these possibly mean, man?

Well, 37,000, that's the number of businesses who have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle. 25 refers to the fact that NetSuite turns 25 years old this year. That's 25 years of helping businesses do more with less, close their books in days, not weeks and drive down costs. And one, because Daniel Schreiber, you and the business of this theoretical person that I'm talking to are one of a kind. So with NetSuite, you get a customized solution

for all of your key performance indicators in one efficient system. That's right. So if your business is absolutely humming, but you're falling behind because all this admin stuff is going on, you're buried in all the manual work, get NetSuite, it's gonna help you streamline

all your business and just make it a simple process. That's the one thing to take away from this, as well as the fact that James says, I'm one of a kind. So if you would like to use NetSuite and it's popular KPI checklist, that's the key performance indicators, that are designed to keep you excellently performing, absolutely free, you can go to netsuite.com slash fish.

That's right. So go to netsuite.com slash fish. That's right. So go to netsuite.com slash fish to get your own KPI checklist netsuite.com slash fish. Now, Dan, let me tell you about all these different infinities. OK, let's do it. But first, on with the show. On with the podcast. OK, it is time for fact number two and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that puffer fish don't have a functioning stomach, so they digest food in their rectum.

Much like President Garfield. Yes. Oh wow. I hadn't made that connection. Or those people on a boat one time, you know, who like put food up the bum. Did they? I don't remember this. Do you remember?

I don't think Hannah was there. This is one of your yacht parties, isn't it? It was they put turtle blood up their anus. Oh, yes! The shipwreck family. That's right. The enemas, the total enemas. So we've got President Garfield, those guys, the puffer fish, were just one away from an only connect question if you're

listening Victoria. So do they like President Garfield put the food up their bumps? No they do not. Okay. Puffer fish get their name because they puff up. If they're in danger they may themselves much bigger by sucking in a load of water and just becoming a big ball. Now in order to do that,

they've lost their stomach because the stomach would get in the way of this skill. You mean evolutionarily, or just every time they pop up, their stomach disappears? Evolutionarily, or by design from God, they have lost their stomach. And so the way that they eat is they get the food into their body and they absorb the nutrients When it's going down their throat when it's going in their intestines and also when it's going into their rectum They have enzymes that break down the food They have you know They have an acidic mucus all the way down the digestive system

But the reason that they don't have a stomach is to have a stomach You need to have a sphincter on either side and it to be a bag and they don't have that particular thing. They've only got one sphincter. They only have one sphincter in that system. And then the mouth is the other one. It's really interesting what you think you know we're all just a bag with two sphincters. We are really. Yeah. Yeah we're a Jutirr stone. Yeah. As in the mouth comes first and then the anus comes and then all the other bits come. So there's the tube stuff, yeah. It's humbling stuff, isn't it?

It is, yeah. But they're very cool. I didn't really, they're awesome. I really like puff fish. They're awesome. They're so cool. They're quite silly, I think. They're very silly.

I think as a defence mechanism, I think inflating yourself like a balloon rather. And I think basically they had to evolve that because they're not very good swimmers. And so instead they just puff themselves up to this too big to eat like a comedy animal. They're the only fish that my daughter can recognise, the only species of fish. Oh really? Oh wow. That's a fact. That's a good fact.

I mean if you give her a picture of loads of fish she'll recognise that they're fish, but if puffer fish she'll go puffer fish. Oh nice. That's good. I used to have a puffer fish as a kid as a pet. No. Yeah. Really? It was dead, but I was given it in Hong Kong on the...

Was it inflated? Yeah, it was. Nice. It was inflated and a guy had caught it and I went, it was a fishing village in Hong Kong and he gave it to me. It was dead. He gave it to me in a bag and I brought it home and I kept it in that we had a fridge for some reason in the hallway of the building that we lived in so it was like on the group staircase

So I used to go every day and visit my puffer fish and just open it and see it Does it count as a pet if it's dead? I think I because I visited it. That's how I count it I say I kind of like yeah, and it's stunk out the whole building I didn't recognize because I was so used to the smell and no one could locate it where this How could they not locate it where the smell was coming from. How could they not locate it if it was in the fridge? When someone else opened the fridge, didn't they say... Well, I guess no one did. No one opened the fridge.

No one ever opened the fridge. Because it was our fridge. No one touched our fridge. Right, right, right. Wait, hang on. How old were you? I was about eight. So, how come your parents opened the fridge, right? Did your parents never say, you know, Dan, I think it's time you threw out this dead puffer fish? They just didn't tell them,

so they just didn't know where this thing was coming from. Probably after a while, it would have got a load of flies and worms and stuff in it, right? It was pretty rotten, yeah. So your parents would have to, after a while, go, Dan, I've got bad news. Your dead puffer fish is alive. LAUGHTER

Yeah, so true. Anna, William, I've actually got a puffer fish anecdote. It's not as good as these two's, my daughter can recognize slash I used to have a dead pet one. But I was at an antiques market a couple months ago. And one of the items on sale there was a puffer fish lamp where someone had inflated puffer fish and then I don't know how, got a light bulb into it.

Oh, one of the sphinxes probably I'll finish it together. But I didn't buy it. Did you not? I donphinx has probably opened to get it. Probably one of the two. But I didn't buy it. Did you not? I don't regret not buying it, because it was a pretty macabre thing. Wow, this is amazing. So Andy's got a puffer fish story. You've got one.

I've got one. If we can get Anna one, we'll have another question. Not only can we get one. This is going to be the most esoteric episode of an already quite esoteric show. All right, tune in for my spin-off documentary. Anna finds a pufferfish story. Anna and the Blowfish. Is the Blowfish the same as a pufferfish?

Yes. And they're the same as Fugu. Yes. I think the Fugu are traditionally dead as well, but less rotten than Dan. This is one of their defences, the puffing up, but it's not their only defense because they're incredibly poisonous.

Is it a defense though, if you can't use, they can't shoot their livers out of themselves, right? Which is what is most the toxin suit. So, the advertiser that you're poisonous with what you look like, I suppose. Yeah, okay, right. So, you know, there's a thing in Japan where, so pufferfish and fugu, there's different species of pufferfish, right? I think there's like 200 species and they all look a bit different. Fugu is a big one in Japan, it's a delicacy. We all know it to be dangerous, if not prepared by the correct chef,

because of all these toxins and poisons. And you do get trained as a chef, you've got to be over 20, you've got to spend years in an academy doing it. Well, can I just quickly say, you don't? Exactly, this is the problem. It's regionally specific. Yeah. So in some areas of Japan, you have to, as Dan says,

you do a written test, you do a practical test, you do all sorts of stuff. In other bits of Japan, just go to a lecture. Yeah. You can do it within an hour. Can you do it on Zoom? Yeah. You can get a license.

Because that would be great, because you could just watch it and then put your camera so no one can see you. And then you can just go to the pub. Yeah. So chefs keep wanting to have regulations put in place. So I read an article 2009, hundreds of people were poisoned by badly prepared Fugu, 34 of them died.

Wow. Yeah, there was one guy, sorry, there was a group of men in northern Japan who, when they ate grilled blowfish testicles, found themselves very, very ill because of unlicensed chefs. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

I just realized I've made a mistake. That was before the new license system in 2019. Yeah. So yeah, it used to be regionally specific. I believe maybe now you can no longer just go to the Zoom lecture. That was for a long time and thousands of people were dying. What's wrong with us though? It can't, is it curiosity? It can't be that good. What's wrong with us that we want to eat it? I think it's tasty. Tasty.

It gives you a bit of a buzz. It makes your mouth tingle. But I think, and if you eat, and the liver's the best bit, and you're not allowed to eat that, I don't think, at all are you? Even if you're serving Fugu. You have to remove the, well it's meant to be. Because they serve, so like in 2011 there was a woman in a restaurant who specifically said to the chef, you know, please give me the liver. I know you're not supposed to do it, and I think they do, so like in 2011 there was a woman in a restaurant who specifically said to the chef, you know, please give me the liver.

I know you're not supposed to do it, and I think they do, so he did. And then she ended up going to hospital. Obviously. And there was a famous actor, a Japanese Kabuki theater actor called Mitsuguro Bando the eighth. And in 1975 he went to a Fugu restaurant and he persuaded one of the chefs that he had developed a natural resistance to the toxin. He built it up and he asked the chef, can you do me some Fugu livers? And he got the plate, he ate four Fugu livers, then he died.

So I don't think he had, whether he thought he had built up a resistance or not, he hadn't. The other thing is that these days you can make harmless Fugu. So they get the poison by eating the special bacteria. So if you can make your fugu fish grow up in a place where this bacteria doesn't exist, then it's not going to be poisonous. It's amazing, isn't it? It's not the same. It's not the same. Well, as chefs say, that's, it seems insane. We can now breed fugu that tastes the same, but don't poison you. And one chef has asked about it and said, no, I'm not going to serve it. It's

obviously more than a little exciting to go to a restaurant knowing it might be the last meal you ever eat, worth the enjoyment in eating something with no risk in it. I completely agree. You know how you said it's different regionally in some places? In Shimono-Seki area, it's not called Fugu, it's called Fuck You. Oh. Seems not appropriate. Yeah. Because that's actually the last words to the chef when you're done.

I don't think you know that you've been poisoned until about 25 minutes later. Yeah. So I think you've got time to get the bill and have to pay it and then you realize as you're leaving, hang on a second. As someone who's been to a puffed fish restaurant, they are very quick with the bill. We only had a starter because there was nothing that wasn't Fugu on the menu. I think I've mentioned this before. And you thought you were going to have the Czech nuggets and they were the testicles.

It was the testicles. But now that I've heard that the testicles are poisonous and killed someone, I'm kind of glad that I didn't. They're served separately often. They often have like a soul Fugu meal. And it starts off with some sashimi slices. So just little raw slices arranged to look like a crane about to take flight,

which is a symbol of longevity. How I run it. And then you get some Fugu stew, Fugu and rice porridge and hot sake with grilled Fugu fin in it. And the testicles on the side. And Fugu chile and Fugu ice cream. Oh, lovely.

It was the Fugu hundreds of thousands. And then a Fugu mint. And then a Fugu rice. Have you ever tried puffer fish semen? Which is another delicacy. Okay. Oh, no. No. Do you not have mayonnaise with your nuggets?

Is it poisonous? Probably. Oh. I don't have no idea. No, I think you have milk in the UK. Milk on toast. Yeah, it's delicious. What?

Milks is a relatively common, not these days. No. Like 100 years ago in the northeast of England, you would eat milk for sure. Stop it. Definitely. So I think my mom always eats and then goes, it's ridiculous that people don't have this every day these days.

What? It's like a combo, actually, in my Tesco Metro. Combo. You know, milk, milk and keens. Yeah. That was named after, you know, the economist Keynes, John Keynes. Yeah. He was ejaculated on by a fish.

And named the town after him. Oh, God. That is torture. Oh, I love it. I feel like we should talk about live puffer fish. Yeah. Okay. They're quite nice when they're alive.

And they make crop circles. Oh, yes. Which are stunning and worth looking at. And we only realised this recently. So we found these. It's amazing they can get that far inland. It's stunning. Well, there is a theory that the Roswell aliens actually were puffer fish. Yeah.

Yeah, there's not. But they do make these extraordinary, they look like perfect fossils. You know, you get the typical. Like ammonites. Like ammonite fossils. Yeah. On the floor of the know, you get the typical. Like ammonite. Like ammonite fossils, yeah. On the floor of the ocean, they're perfectly symmetrical. They're concentric rings with kind of spokes coming out from them and beautiful patterns.

And they were discovered in 1995 and no one knew what they were. They were just these mysterious things on the floor of the ocean. And it was only in 2013 that someone was down there doing a dive off the coast of Japan somewhere And went hey, there's this puffer fish just flapping its fins weirdly and making this pattern. It was an amazing thing or is that a different thing?

Oh yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. It was a matey ass and brook base on it wasn't it? Yeah. So the female gets to sit in the middle of these concentric circles and she likes it. She gives an egg up and he gives a sperm up and in about one second that's mating done. Yeah. And if not she doesn't. There is one theory that all and in about one second that's mating done. Yeah.

And if not, she doesn't. There is one theory that all she cares about is how much sand is there. Yeah, right. And she doesn't care about all these beautiful kind of circles and that. And the fact is that the circles are a byproduct of the fact that you have to do that to get all the sand into the middle. You just have to do it in a certain order. So is it like, it's like the equivalent of actually my wife

isn't interested in my model railway. It's that I've got a nice home which the model railway is in. Is that it? Yeah, yeah, that's almost flawless analogy. Got some questions to ask. I've got to go home actually. OK, it is time for fact number three. And that is my fact.

My fact this week is, as there used to be no way of duplicating a record, one of the best selling songs of the 1890s had to be recorded over 10,000 times by the same singer. That's amazing. What a day in the recording studio it must have been. Well, days, yeah, days, yeah, and weeks and months, because basically every single record that you used to make back in the day was a master copy. That's what got sold. There was no way of then recording that into being another record in the way that we have now. Yeah. So it's quite nice in a way because your record's different to everyone else's. Yeah, exactly. You literally have a bespoke record.

If there's a little fart in the background, that's just for you. Yeah. So there were no mics or no ampl background, that's just for you. Yeah. So there were no mics, so no amplifiers. You had to just yell into the horn of the phonograph. And if you were particularly wealthy, you were able to get four or five horns around you. And so you could make up to five copies of a single song. So it's thought that the best-selling single of the 1890s

was sung by a guy who was an African American called George Washington Johnson, and he was a street singer on the New York streets. He was just doing it for pennies, and he used to sing a couple of songs which were very, very backward and racist, and I think that's why people didn't mind a black singer being that well distributed. It was called, you know, one was had, what were they called? You don't need to read that out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did some lyrics. Yeah. No, but there was a lot of, it was a lot of taking himself down within the song. But one of the songs, which was the laughing song, that was the biggest song of the time. It sold 50,000 copies.

So it said that he did copies that were like four to five horns in one go. And it sold 50,000. So at minimum, he sang it 10,000 times. Amazing. But it was probably more than... Was the laughing song just laughing? No, that was the chorus.

So people might know it actually. I reckon people listen to this, some of them will know it, because it was covered loads of times, especially in the UK, a slightly different version called The Laughing Policeman Song. Oh, which I love. Yeah, exactly. Me too. especially in the UK, a slightly different version called the Laughing Policeman song. Which I love as a child. Me too. It's the same song, but obviously they removed all of the racist really great song. But when I was reading about this, I thought, I can't believe the things that entertained people

in the 1890s. And now you're right. We found that very entertaining in our childhood. Good on him. Yeah, George Washington Johnson. He had quite a sad end because they worked out how to replicate music. And he no longer had a job for life basically.

Yeah, because there were no royalties. No, exactly. So you got paid for doing your recording, but once they managed to just copy stuff, then you never got any money anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Spotify of its day. Yeah.

Oh, controversial for our largest distribution outlet. Let me finish. Yeah, he had the middle bit where he was singing the song, might have been the only kind of peaceful bit of his life really, because he was born in 1846 into slavery. He was made to be the best friend of the child of the family, so he sort of had- The playmate thing for the white family. Yeah, so he then was freed and he went to New York, where he lived in Hell's Kitchen and he was doing all the stuff

where he was sort of, you know, on the street singing. Then this big moment happens where he gets to sing all these songs. As James points out, then they work out a duplicate. So his career is dead after, you know, sitting in a booth 20,000 times, minimum singing this stuff. And then life gets really weird for him, as Andy points out. He was charged with murder. He was never convicted, but it was brought on to him. Both of his wives died suddenly when living with him. Yeah, he was charged with trying to murder one of them, well actually murdering

one of them. I did read a report of an altercation he had with his wife. This was in the Earth newspaper in 1899. And its headline was too much whistling, because his main thing was whistling, right? He, and he was famous on the streets of New York for whistling. And it said, George Washington Johnson is in trouble because he couldn't restrain his disposition

to whistle at all times. He crawled with his wife because she got tired of him whistling all over the house. So she shot him and he thumped her and died the next night So that was a story in what I assume was a tablet equivalent. He whistled too much. She shot him Yeah, he hit her and then she died and then she died right in the olden days You could just make a living from being really good at whistling Like you don't have to code or anything. You could just whistle. There was a guy called

Freeman Davis, who was known as Brother Bones, who was a shoe shine boy and people noticed how good he was at whistling. And he would also play his shoe shine instruments like, you know, spoons, like the spoons you might do. And he became really famous and his whistling became the theme song of the Harlem Globe Trotters. There was Sibyl Sanderson Fagan, who was one of the most famous whistlers in America in the 1920s, and she would do whistling of birdsong, so you would buy a vinyl and it would just be her pretending to be a thrush or a mockingbird or something. She left her husband, who was a playwright called Eugene P. Bardin, because she claimed that he had drugged her on her wedding day. And so she got married because she said that she'd been drugged into getting married. He drugged her into the marriage. I thought he meant after the wedding

had happened, then he drugged her. Oh my goodness. There was Fred Lowry, who was a professional whistler in the 40s and 50s, who is blinded by scala fever at the age of two, then became a whistler. And then he later went away from pop music and became a religious whistler. Oh, religious whistler. Yeah. He would go to churches and whistle hymns instead of whistling pop songs. Nice. But yeah, it's just amazing that you got all these people who all they could do was whistle.

I'm not all we can do is podcasts. So it's exactly. Yeah. Where's the whistle? Oh yeah. Let's hear your thrush. Oh my thrush Well, there wasn't the first Eurovision the half-time act was a troop of whistlers Was it? The Rossignols I think yeah, that means nightingale in French. Oh, there we go. Okay. Well, that's that is all coming together Yeah, so it's big big deal if youale in French. Oh, there we go. Okay. Well, that's that is all coming together. Yeah. Um, so it's big big deal

If you say in French J'ai les Rossignols which I think means I have Rossignols It means there's a problem with your car because it's like you have nightingales in your engine and it's making a weird tweeting noise The only a sound recording we have we actually only heard a few years ago But it was from way earlier than we thought, like 20 years before Edison in 1857, and it was a French guy called Edouard Léon Scott de Matam V, and he basically recorded sound, but he didn't know how to play it back. He hadn't invented the instrument to transmit it in, so he just recorded it onto a bit of paper. That takes a lot of trust when you go to the dragons.

Not honestly, I have recorded sound, you just can't hear it. It's fine. You can show them the paper and give it this wood sound amazing. If you try to imagine it. And we managed to engineer it in 2008 to play one of his pieces. His piece of paper. His piece of paper is 1860 piece of paper. Indicated.

Yeah, it was covered in soot and the sound waves were etched in. So vinyl is PVC, right? And that was invented or first synthesized by a guy, a German chemist called Eugene Bauman in 1872. And he had been making some vinyl chloride in a flask and had just left it on a shelf for a few days, maybe a few weeks, the sunlight had got on it and then there was a white compound in there and he thought, I wonder what this is? And that turned out to be PVC. Wow. Did he then stick his arm in the flask to try and get it out and it formed a sexy PVC glove.

And he realised this has huge implications for the erotic clothing industry. Well that is the story, that's really what happened. The Eugene Bowman also identified the sauce for the smells in urine and proved the active ingredients in your thyroid gland which is what stops you from getting goiters. Oh! So just a few things about him.

Wow! What a range. I'm gonna pull back. Yeah. It's all chemistry. What do you lead with though? On the CV. What's the...

Oh, I know why P smells. I know why Piss smells. Do you? If you're sat next to someone at a wedding and they say, what do you do? And you say, I'm a chemist. And they go, oh, if you chemist did anything that I might know? Then what is your response? Have you ever smelt some piss? I know why.

Your best man is very rude. Oh dear. I don't think we've ever mentioned chichester bell before. I didn't know about him anyway. A person. He's Alexander Graham Bell's brother. Stop it. He's. Really? Also a phonograph pioneer.

Chichester Bell, what a name. He invented the earliest voicemail. Around about the time his brother Alex was working on phones. Yeah, he invented voicemail. And the way it worked was, it was a phonograph cylinder that you recorded your voice onto. So the grooves are all in the right place.

And then you just, but you posted it to your friend. And then they could... The problem is that they would get it and they'd be like, oh, who's it from? And they go, chit-chest about and they go, fuck off. That's just spam, mate. That's just spam, mate. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast.

Hey everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Absolutely, ExpressVPN. If you're not using it and you're going online, it's like using your smartphone without a protective case. Most of the time it'll be fine, but then of course you'll drop it down the toilet one day or drop it on the street and it'll crack and then you're knackered. The thing is going online without ExpressVPN is probably fine, but the thing is if you go onto an unencrypted network in a cafe or hotel or something, there might be a naughty

little hacker sitting in the corner and your data is valuable to hackers. They can make, I'm reading up to $1,000 per person selling personal info on the dark web. That's right. So what you need is all new encrypted tunnel. That's right. Create a secure encrypted tunnel between your device

and the internet. Therefore, hackers can't steal your stuff because they don't know where your tunnel is and they don't know how to shovel their way into it. So if you want to make sure that you have the most secure experience that you possibly can online, go to ExpressVPN.com slash fish. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-V-P-N dot com slash fish and you're going to get an extra three months free with your subscription.

That's right. It's very easy to use. and you're going to get an extra three months free with your subscription. That's right. It's very easy to use. You can use it on all your devices, your laptop, your phone, your tablet. You can use it to access TV shows that are on in other countries. That's why I use ExpressVPN and you can secure your data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash fish and get your extra three months for free. OK, on with the podcast. On with the show. OK, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that the US government maintains a database of dad jokes. What an excellent fact. There we are, we're off the blocks. There we go. Three guys absolutely straining for a dad joke there. I don't know why I presented this fact, because there's promises to be held in the next 20 minutes with you guys. But this is on a website that's run by the Office of Family Assistance, which is a government resource for fathers, basically, for families.

And they have a website within that called the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse. And if you go to that website, which I would recommend, then you can click on, you know, dad resources, and you can submit your own dad jokes and you can click, give me a joke and they'll give you a dad joke and click give me another, they'll give you another. I don't know how long it goes on for or I sat there for about half an hour. If you go to the mum section of this website, is it all practical stuff?

Like how to feed a baby, how to change a baby, how to keep a baby alive. It's a load of your mum jokes. It's like, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. And I guess the idea is that being a father is perhaps something people need help with, of course, as they do with all the bits of parenting. And it's useful, a useful skill to have in your back pocket as a dad, being able to whip out a really bad, really an offensive joke, which seems to basically be the definition

is that they're bad and they're not offensive. Yeah, so they give you a bunch of the jokes with the reveals on the sides. Oh, okay. Alright, so here's the first one that came up that I saw. What do you call a man with a rubber toe? Uh, Roberto. Roberto, yes. I don't think that's a dad joke, actually.

I kind of agree. I would say. So my definition of a dad joke is a joke where it is in response to something a child often says and you always repeat it all the time, all the time, all the time. So for instance Anna's mom joke which is can you turn on the light and then your mom goes and flirts with the lights and she's like are you turned on yet? I think that's dad joke because it's something that kids will always say. I have an actual dad joke that I do and I've been doing for six years now every single time it's said and it's whenever it's kind of getting to the evening and Fenella says, can

you draw the curtains? Okay. I always say. Can I have a pencil? Let me just get a pen. I'd love to, but I don't have a pencil. Yeah, that's a dad joke, I think. Interesting.

I think they're two strands of dad jokeism, which is a complex being. I agree that is one, but then I think I remember my dadounds of dad-jokism, which, you know, is a complex being. I agree that is one. But then I think I remember, you know, my dad's whole jokes and they seem to very much fall into the dad-joke category of what does a dog call the thing on top of a house? Ruff! Would he regularly say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think these are things that you regularly say, right? I kind of feel like they're more cracker jokes. Yeah. Like Christmas cracker jokes. Well, there's a thin line. There's a really nice theory about why dad jokes are good. This is great. Okay. Why they're good?

Well, no, not sorry. Why they happen. They are good. Well, no, I mean, you're one about the curtains. It's amazing. Don't have a pencil, please. Brilliant. Gets a laugh every time.

So the idea is that this is from the British Psychological Society. I personally, I'm not sure I buy it, but I like it. It's that by continually telling their children jokes that are so bad they're embarrassing, fathers may be pushing their children's limits of how much embarrassment they can handle. That's great. So you're showing your child that embarrassment isn't fatal because the child is mortified to hear. And if your child is adolescent, which feels again a bit like the ship has sailed in terms

of, you know, dad jokes normally when a child is five or something. But there's a sort of theory built because the theory is if your child has been exposed to years of awful jokes by this point and has shown that dad can cope with people not caring that people think dad is an idiot, the children will be able to be themselves better. How interesting. Nice. But it's more for the benefit of the dad. I don't know.

I feel like, well, James, I feel like you wrote this up in a book for one of the QI books. So I read quite a few theories, that one included. Another one about why they happen is when you have a kid who's two years old, like I do almost, basically they'll laugh at anything. Like literally anything. If I say to my daughter like she wants to read Mog and I say do you want to read Moog? She will piss herself laughing. And then if I'm like oh do you want to read the very hurri-cudapune? She'll just find it the funniest thing in the world right? And the idea being you're making her racist against Belgians. I'm still not over water leaving truth.

The thing is the kids will laugh at almost anything and then as a dad that kind of builds your confidence and then as you get older you're like, this idiot will laugh at everything and she always laughed at whatever I said, move instead of mug. So I'm going to keep doing it and you just keep doing it and keep doing it and then

as the kids get older they realize this isn't funny at all. And that's when they realise that they're dad jokes. Wow. Does the dad-ness of the joke depend on the child understanding it's not funny? I think someone has to be on the outside knowing that it's not funny. It might be my wife. She would know it's a dad joke. But the other thing is quite often they're kind of wordplay-ish and there's a theory

that by doing this wordplay again and again and again it helps to teach language skills. Yeah. Yeah, exactly that. And I think also it teaches them a joke structure and it just brings funniness to the house. It's just a great way to keep things funny in the house. I still think that I really like them, I'm very fond of them. I think by definition a down joke isn't funny. That's what it is. It's a joke that's kind of predictable. So I read an article by a linguist about dad jokes and I thought the example that she used was

not a dad joke for me because I thought it was actually funny. It wasn't the bunga bunga one was it? We can't have that again. The lack of this last time. Oh, it's privately inoffensive, okay? It doesn't cross that boundary, but the joke is that a man comes up to a widow at the funeral of his old friend, and he says to the widow, do you mind if I say a word? And she nods, and the man clears his throat and says gently, plethora.

And the wife smiles sadly and replies, thanks, that means a lot. I think that's a very good joke. It's a good joke. That's a good joke. It's too good. It's too good. Can I give you some examples of dad jokes? Yeah.

When I was writing this article for the QI book, I asked my followers on Twitter for some dad jokes. So I'll give you the kid saying something and you have to say what the dad says as a joke in response. Oh yeah. Okay. So Adam Sear said that he would say, are you all right dad? No, I've got a left hand side as well. No, I'm half left.

Yeah. Okay. Chris Emerson, our friend Chris Emerson, said he would say to his dad, I'm off. Off what? Off com. No. And the dad would reply, I wondered what that smell was. Oh, that's good. Oh. And Cardinal Grumpy, I think perhaps not his real name. Senior prelate in the Catholic Church. If they said, I'm thirsty.

So, dad, what would be the reply? I'm dead. Nice to meet you. Pretty close. Oh, no, it's Wednesday. Oh, put them together. Hi, I'm Wednesday. Chased the reply. I'm Dad. Nice to meet you. Pretty close. Oh, no, it's Wednesday. Oh, put them together. Hi, I'm Wednesday. Chase the day.

Friday. I know you're not. You're Friday. You're pretty much that. Who else is Friday? Okay, I'm going to give it you. So he says, Dad, I'm Thursday. Dad says, Pleased to meet you Thursday.

I'm Friday and he's Robinson Crusoe. Oh, that's a and he's Robin St. Crusoe. Oh, wow. That's a really well read kid. Do you want to hear one of the first ever your mum jokes? Yeah, go on. Yeah. I was like Babylonian. Is it like as far as there are, there is one and it's from a it's there's one which is from a partial bit of text.

So it's not really clear what the entire joke is. Right. But there is another one from 100AD, which is Rabbi Eliezer was said to have gone and interrupted a man who had been reading a banned text, which was Ezekiel 23, by asking him, why don't you go out and proclaim the abominations of your mother? Is that a your mum joke? It's a prototype. Yeah. Absolutely your mum joke? It's a prototype. Absolutely your mum joke. You seem to be finding extremely funny,

judging by the look on your face. Sorry. Yeah. The sad thing is, I'm afraid, for the listeners, is that you'll all now remember all of these really bad jokes that we've told, more than you remember a good joke, because studies show that you remember bad jokes more than good jokes because of the way they work, because they are predictable. You know, the reason that we can kind of guess the endings to the dad jokes that James asked for is that they are formulae, good for teaching kids how these patterns work.

But the definition of good humor that makes you actually laugh is that you subvert that, like pull the rug out from under someone's feet. It's unexpected. So you never remember them. So it's so annoying. You'll only ever remember shit jokes. So it's like, are you all right, dad? No, I have a terrible, incurable disease and I won't be with you in a week's time. You got that from the new Ricky Gervais special,

didn't you? That subverts the... None? It does. I think it does still have to be funny. They exist in other languages. In France, as a child, if you say what, what, what, what, they wouldn't understand you because they're French. But if they say it in French, they say quà. Quà, quà. And any self-respecting dad will reply fà, quà, fà, quà, fà, which means hairdresser, quà, fà. And in Spain, if a dad sees some soy milk, he might say, hola milk soy papi. Lovely. Because soy means I am. So it means hi milk, I'm dad. Nice. Very nice. That's the I'm hungry. Hi hungry. I'm dad is in nine states of America, the most ticked as used dad joke. Oh, nice. That's a proper dad joke.

Is it like the parenting test you get after your kids one or something? You're back to the GP. Please check this box. Can they walk? Can they talk? How many times have you told this? I nearly got got researching this fact. There's a report on NPR, obviously really well respected radio station and great source of lots of stuff. And it was about a list of Roman jokes, ancient Roman jokes that have been found. Yeah. And it was a scroll found in an amphitheatre and they'd done some amazing analysis. You know, they, you know, the X-ray of scroll and they managed without unrolling it to scan

what's inside. And it was all these phrases found in Lassen. And like a translation was, did you hear the rumor about butter? Oh, well, I'm not going to spread it. I thought you were going to say butter. I hardly knew her. It was a bit more PG than that. This is a scroll. And then I got really far into this article.

And then eventually I got to the claim that Caesar had turned up and addressed a crowd of senators who were angry with him by asking them, what did the cute cumbersome of the pickle? And I realized I looked at the day, it was an April the first article. And what did he say? You mean a great deal to me. Oh, that's great. Oh, good grief.

Lovely. Why are you getting your knives out? So he did deserve it after all. It is weird that these exist all around the world though, this stereotype, or in so many different countries. Like Japan has old man jokes, which are Oyaji, old man, then Giyagu joke. Giyagu, like gag.

Yeah, like gag. That's how they make a lot of words in Japanese, don't they? They take an English word. Also loaning. And then adding you at the end. In Japanese, every word has to end with a vowel or an N. Like very new, yeah, so it's like a new word they've nicked off.

T-shirt too. T-shirt. Okay. Very easy to guess. This is like an extremely easy test. It's not much of a quiz, is it? Korea, they have middle-aged man jokes, literally middle-aged man jokes. Danish has various different versions. They've got Uncle Humour, Uncle Humour. And I can say, we've been advertising bubble for quite a

long time, but it seems like you could just say words slightly in an accent. That works. What's the Danish one though? Because my step-grandfather's Danish, and he always used to do whatever their version is. Oh, well, Uncle Humour is Uncle Humor, but for him, I think he would be more far vittagedda, which is grandfather humor. Right, father humor. So at the end of every meal, whenever the waiter came over to get our plates, they'd say, are you finished? And he said, no, I'm Danish. Every single time. That is very good. Would you like some water? No, fish fucking it. You know, I was a bit young for that. I was eight.

That's a WC Fields joke, isn't it? Yeah, that's all right. Guys, do you know what a BJ joke is? Dude, yeah. I do. I don't think you do. BJ joke. So what could it be?

BJ. I don't think you're going to guess. Boris Johnson. Yeah, I mean, it is technically one of those as well, I suppose. Just short for bad joke. It's one of those. It's none of those. This is in one study, at least, which seemed to use the officially accepted academic terms for jokes. This is a 2016 study because I was looking at whether men and women do find different jokes funny because, you know, it's such a genderbased concept, the dad joke.

And so there's a study that looked at whether they did and they divided jokes into EJs, AJs and BJs, which are- Excellent adequate in bed. It should be that. It's exaggeration jokes, ambiguity jokes, and bridging inference jokes. And so BJs are the bridging inference and that basically means that they require you to actually get the joke. So when you listen to the joke, you have to attribute an intention to another. So an example would be, Jack's dream of becoming a writer

comes true when his books finally publish. He asked his friend, have you read my book yet? His friend said, yes, and I bought one. And Jack happily responded, oh, that was you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's kind of bad joke that we've sort of all made about the rest books. That's how you tell them.

You really didn't sell that one at all. I think even Will would have been like, I'm sorry Auntie Anna. No, it wasn't good. Was it? I'm sorry. Why is that a BJ? Because we're inferring from the joke that he doesn't sell many of his books. But it's only told one.

And he was so thankfully gave them a blowjob. You did that with every book that you saw, didn't you? Ten thousand blowjobs, a bit like George Washington Johnson. You could do five at the same time. That's the impressive thing. OK, 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 have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram at Shriverland James. My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy. I don't have Instagram accounts. I'm on Instagram at Shriverland, James. My Instagram is NosticsThinkersJamesHarkin.

Andy. I turn on Instagram, but I'm on Twitter at Andrew Hunter. Yeah, or if you want to get to us as a group, where do they go, Anna? You can email podcast at qi.com or you can tweet at No Such Thing. That's right. Yep. Or you can just go to our website, NoSuchThingAsAfish.com. All of the previous episodes are up there. A link to the gateway to the portal that is club

fish is up there as well do check it out what's a really fun bonus episodes of pumped out every fortnight otherwise just come back here because we'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then goodbye