No Such Thing As A Fish - 540: No Such Thing As The Three Gorgeous Dams

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Dan, James, Anna and Andrew discuss clippers, snippers, naval eunuchs and wasserkochers. 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

Hey everyone, Dan here. Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish. Before we get going, I just have a quick personal announcement that I want to make, which is to tell you that my first ever non-fiction kids book is out today. You can get it in shots now. It's called Impossible Things, Unbelievable Answers to the World's Weirdest Questions, and in it I have gone on 10 adventures to try and answer some of the big questions that kids often ask us about the mysteries of the universe. Oh my god, get out of here James. Is time travel possible? Will we ever talk to animals? Do ghosts exist?

Can imaginary friends come to life? Are we all actually living in a giant video game simulation? Using these questions as starting points, I've written something that combines really interesting facts with great spooky tales and along the way I managed to get a 2500 year old Babylonian ghost a Guinness World Record and also sit down with a psychic spy. It's the perfect summer read for your kid for any of those questions if they've ever wanted to know why we haven't been taken over by zombies, why in 1991 there were over 60,000 jellyfish in space, and how to throw their own time traveler party, well then this is the book for them. So guys, I'd really appreciate it if you could buy it. So hard for authors these days to sell their books,

but we rely on people like you, our fish club, to help us do that, and I'd really appreciate the support. So if you can do it, it's out there now. Impossible things in all good bookshops. Thank you so much and on with the show. Also buy my book! Yeah, no! Next week, buy weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tyshinsky and Andrew Hunter Murray. Once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that Yves Saint Laurent's gardener used hair clippers to keep his cactuses perfectly trimmed. That is care. And hair clippers are those ones that men use to keep their hair really short, right? Yeah. So you set them to a setting and you go. Or you may use it for your beard. Right. So yes, that's what hair clippers are.

Cactuses are succulent plants. And Yves Saint Laurent was a fashion designer. Any more announcements in this? Can you explain them? I didn't think that cactuses, I've never seen a shaggy cactus. Do you know what I mean? Ah well the thing is there's lots of different types of cactus and Yves Saint Laurent loved cactuses. He had a garden in Marrakesh called the Jardin Magerel. Actually it was started by another artist called Jacques Magerel but Yves Saint Laurent bought it when it was going

into disrepair and he looked after these cactuses and it's a really beautiful garden it's a place that I've been quite recently where I saw this fact there was a video of his gardener who was going around with these hair clippers making them all perfect. The only thing I can imagine you could do with hair clippers on a cactus is to trim the spines. Yeah, that was it. Is that what he's doing? Yeah. Is he blunting them so they don't prick anyone? No, it wasn't. It was just to make them all look perfect because I don't think it's controversial to say that Yves Saint Laurent was something of an Yves-thete. Yeah.

His career. I don't understand when, because I don't know much about fashion, but what I read about Yves Saint Laurent and his achievements, his concrete accomplishments, they're all quite, you know, he took risks by turning a trench coat into haute couture. What does that mean? I don't understand. I don't know what's going on. This is the inheritor of Dior. He has taken on the mantle of one of the biggest fashion houses ever, and he's looking at trends

that are going on out in bits of America, bits of France, and he's saying this is seen as low rent, I'm putting it back into that's a risk It's basically me not understanding the plot of the film. The devil is Prada Thing I guess that I found interesting was his personality because I agree It's hard to get a grip on fashion if you don't know fashion But it is striking that he was so young when he took over at Christian Dior, right? He was 21 and he was for someone who was kind of famous for being a strong character, maybe not that likable a character later on, he was incredibly shy and couldn't even look

anyone in the eye. He was just new at Christian Dior and Christian Dior died suddenly and I think there were these four women who worked there and the company was left to him to basically take charge. This weird shy boy who couldn't look anyone in the eye. It's an amazing story because he moved to Paris when he was 17, 18 and he entered a competition where he just did some designs. He then took it to Diehl. Diehl saw it. It

really was so similar to what he was working on at that point that he just on the spot said you're now my second in command, you're my assistant. What's nice is this little competition, you know sometimes you hear about a school where it's like seven comic book writers were there at the same time. Carl Lagerfeld came second in that competition that he won that eventually got him his job at Dior. Dan, was this the competition of the international wool secretariat? Yes. Yeah. I think we're going to say that. Yeah. Did you have to make everything out of wool? Yeah. They gave you a big pile of wool and 20 minutes.

20 minutes? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I think it was just the design. Do you know? This is off topic now, but I was reading about wool this morning and in, let's say, when was it? Probably about the 15th century, there was a wool guild and a knitter's guild.

And if you wanted to be a knitter and sell your knitting, you had to be part of this guild. And in order to be part of it, you had to study for six years and then do a knitting exam at the end of it. And the knitting exam would take like a day where you showed off everything you've learned over the six years. And if you didn't pass that exam, you couldn't be like a professional knitter. Could you take the exam again? Good question. It's an all or nothing. You know what? I didn't go into all the admin yet, but...

You will because you're applying, aren't you? Dior, so he obviously became very famous, colossus of the industry, all of this. He was responsible for, I think, the most French thing that has ever happened, right? Okay. It was in 1998. Yeah. We're in Paris. Yeah.

What's going on? 1998. Diana died the year before. Oh, that's right. It was the one year anniversary. Was it the World Cup? It was the World Cup. Yeah.

So Franz was hosting. Yeah. And they won it. And they won it. And all that. Bloody hell, had they? I do contain multitudes. It's a Desidane and all that. Bloody hell, Andy. I do contain multitudes.

It's on the paper in front of him. It's not, it's not. It's not in the paper, it's not in the paper. Before the final of the World Cup, on the pitch in the big stadium was an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective show with 300 models celebrating 40 years of Yves Saint Laurent. I just think that's so French.

We will have the football, but first, fashion. They do take it seriously, the way that Yves Saint Laurent's career is reported on sometimes when it talks about the absolute scandal. What was the scandal? The scandal, so it was 1971 and it was this show called Carrente, which was a reference to the fact that it was an imitation of 1940s fashion and it was put on into Paris, this show, to waylapped. And And of course it was early 1940s fashion. Now as you may or may not know listening at home, the early 1940s was a difficult time for

the people of France and the fashion was meant to imitate kind of occupied France and sort of not only that but the costumes that he recreated sort of imitated people who were doing quite well in occupied Paris. We're talking collaborationists. Are we talking like René Artois from Allo Allo? It was all... One for the younger listeners there. Good moaning to you, if you're listening. Yves Saint Laurent's cameo in Allo Allo was so weird, wasn't it?

Yes, it was all Allo Allo and and you know, dad's army based fashion. No but look- It was like Vichy France right? It was Vichy, it had a lot of nods to Vichy France and it was quite extreme, the press were very offended saying you know it's a very insensitive reminder of the Nazi days, it's an insult to fashion. But this was obviously good for him because any publicity is good publicity. So it was things like, I think people had to wear practical clothes because they didn't have many materials. So it was lots of tiny mini skirts

and platform shoes. Actually this is like hello hello. When was this? 71. Okay, wow. So that was when he was an Yves Saint Laurent designer, not a Dior designer, right? Yeah, he was himself. Because he was Dior and he did all this stuff where he's taking stuff off the streets, like Dan said. But then they basically kicked him out, didn't they? Or rather, he got conscripted to the army and the fashion house could have said, well, no, he's so important to us that he can't go to the army. But they didn't say it. They just let him go. Yeah. Interesting.

And he had suffered a nervous breakdown, didn't he? Yeah, well, he didn't go to war because he had a breakdown in the induction. Did he even make it? Because he was going to be sent to Algeria, wasn't it? The Algerian front. He didn't even make it to Algeria. Didn't even make it to Algeria. But the thing is that while he was doing his induction before he collapsed, they replaced him with someone else. And they really shouldn't have done that. Like they should have kept his job open for when he came back. And so they sued Dior and they got some money from Dior.

And that's when they set up their own fashion house, East End Lerone. Right. And when you say they, you mean him and his partner, lover, best friend in the world, soulmate guy, right? Bergé. Bergé. With whom actually he bought this cactus garden in Marrakesh.

Oh. Just to bring it back to that. And of course, while we're in North Africa, Zinedine Zidane himself of Algerian stock. Andy? What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if Yves Saint Laurent had made it to the war, he might have met Zidane's family, you know. What have you done with Andrew Hunter-Murray? I feel like you've just recently read the encyclopedia entry on Zed and you're desperate to smuggle in. It's the last football I paid any attention to because I was 11 at the time. I'm so impressed.

Yeah, Berger was an interesting guy and seemed to run Yves Saint Laurent's life because Yves Saint Laurent was a very vulnerable person, wasn't he? And Pierre Berger just was the organizer. So he was his lover from 58 to 76. And then they were very good friends. And he had a weird introduction to Paris as well. So he moved to Paris from an island and he was 18 years old, moved there on his own. And on the day he moved, he was walking down the Champs-Elysées and a famous poet called

Jacques Prevert fell from the sky above him and landed at his feet. Wow! Not on him, like right in front of him. No, he says, oh I always remember my first day in Paris as the day a famous poet landed on my head. But he didn't. In his actual description, he fell out of a French window a few stories up. Oh, right. They're all French windows, if we're in Paris. Sorry. Oh, right. They're all French windows, if we're in Paris.

All these people are so young at the time when they sort of move and have their formative experiences. So when Saint Laurent was, when he got the job, when Dior died, did we save the 21? 21. And at that point he went home and again, this is the story, he drew a thousand designs in a fortnight. I can't imagine once you've drawn like five different pairs of trousers. No, it's... Oh, God.

There are only five. How many pairs of trousers can there possibly be out there? There's skinny, there's straight, and there's flares. I think all of that football knowledge has pushed out all of the fashion knowledge that we had. Do you remember Andy having any fashion knowledge if you cast your mind back over the last 10 years? And then they moved to Marrakesh, didn't they? Because it was the cool place to be in those days. It was where all the hippies went. And there had actually been an international zone in Tangier, which was like not owned by anyone really. It was just like a trading port and it was very, very low tax.

And there weren't many rules compared to other places in North Africa and loads and loads of hippies went there. But eventually Morocco took over it and then they decided actually Marrakesh is a better place to go. And it was set up this kind of hippie group in Marrakesh by Talitha Getty, who was the wife of John Paul Getty of the Getty millionaires. And he was like a playboy and he had this partner who was just wife of John Paul Getty of the Getty millionaires. And he was like a playboy. And he had this partner who was just absolutely crazy. And she had all the best parties.

And Keith Richards said she had the best friends and the best opium. And she and John Paul Getty named their son Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty. Which is a name, isn't it? Oh, yes. Gramophone. Gramophone. We've got options when you grow up, you know? If you want to be a bit kooky, you can take on gramophones.

That's true. I actually think they took the other option of removing their middle names as they got older. I have a gramophone related fact. Brilliant. Which brings it in a big circle, because cactuses are incredibly useful in the world of gramophones. The needles. The needles. No. Yeah. It's so cool. I did not know about this, but in the 1920s when people had wind up gramophones, 1920s and 1930s,

cactus spines or prickly pears were really, really popular and they were thought to produce a much higher quality sound than the actual steel needles. It's amazing. Yeah. And you could sculpt them, couldn't you? Because they're a bit softer than the steel. So you could sculpt them so they don't break the record. Wouldn't break the record. Yeah. And just this one company found the niche in the market. Some cactus names. Yeah. Big nipple cactus. Lovely. Wally nipple cactus. woolly nipple cactus, bonker hedgehog cactus. Sorry, is that bonk a hedgehog? It bonks a hedgehog? No, it's bonker hedgehog and it's named after Frances Bonker. She was a cactus expert

and she also wrote a book called The Mad Dictator, which was a novel about Hitler's life. The prohibition cactus, because it likes its home place dry, likes a dry area. Clever. Applies to a lot of them, doesn't it? It does actually, doesn't it? And there's a lot named after nipples, but I think that's because the part of a cactus where the spines come out of is called the areola. Oh, is it?

Yeah, because they are kind of little bumps, aren't they? This is so weird. I have a related nipple cactus nipple fact. Yeah, which is that? Scientists of this is a very recent discovery. There are a hundred species of cactus which act as breasts for ants Okay, okay words. So they have these tiny nipples in their flesh not I think where the spines are But they produce this tiny supply of sweet nectar and the ants go crazy for the nectar and then the ants protect the mother udder against insects and they clean bacteria and they fertilize the soil they spread the seeds to new sites so that is that's not what babies do though if they're drinking from

breast i mean they do a lot of fertilizing but not necessarily they do very little protective work you're right um i didn't realize the threat, so the climate is one thing because it is obviously they're living in an extreme environment already, you know, and if it gets much off or dry then they're in trouble. But the other risk to them is cactus smuggling. It's one of the speed, it's one of the... I had 10 cactuses down my underpants when I went abroad last time. Can I go hate the cocaine next time, please? I I can't fit another one up there. There is a cactus called the dildo cactus. It doesn't look very usable, does it?

No, I'm not actually sure why it's got that. I tried to find out why it's called the dildo cactus. I think because it's slightly phallic in shape, but obviously. But so many are. And in fact, if any of the cacti that I have seen that one could do with pruning It's yeah, it's a very it's very Yeah, people like different things. Yeah. Yeah, do you guys know about so we're we're recording this on the 4th of July big election day And I found a nice little political connection to cactus, which is Nick Clegg the former head of the Liberal Democrats

Yeah, do you know that he was arrested in Germany or certainly was taken, got in trouble in Germany because of arson, because he was lighting cactus up. I remember that, yeah. Was he smoking them for a drug? No, he was just drunk and he was just setting fire to cacti, you know, and he admitted this. You're a prick. You're a prick. You're a prick. Stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. Just to let you know, we're sponsored today by Squarespace. Yes, Squarespace is the place to go if you want to build a website. In fact, it's an all-in-one website platform for all you entrepreneurs to use to make you stand out online and sell your stuff. It makes it so easy for you. So once you set up a website with Squarespace, they've got these professionally curated layout options and styles. So, you know, you don't have to

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Basically what it means is it's super easy to make your website. Yes. So go to squarespace.com slash fish and you will save 10% of your purchase of a website or domain using the code fish. That's right. So head to www.squarespace.com forward slash fish and you will save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain using the code fish. Okay on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay it is time for fact number two and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in the early 1400s China had ships four times larger than anything else in Europe. By the 1500s it China had ships four times larger than anything else in Europe.

By the 1500s, it had deliberately destroyed them. European ships tiny, Chinese ships massive. European ships perfectly acceptable. Chinese ships unbelievable. I just think more people should just know about this fleet because it is an amazing period in Chinese history. It was called the Treasure Fleet. And they seem to have now proven how big they were

because the claims were that these ships were up to 140 meters long. And I think no one really believed it. And no one believed it. No, it's like come on that's not possible. Genuinely, I mean the ship that Columbus sailed on was 20 meters and that was sort of huge. That's almost the same size as the world's largest foosball table. It's not credible.

It's not plausible. It just doesn't make any sense. It's believable, yeah. Thank you, James. So yes, ships as long as a particularly large football table. And there were tons of them as well. There were 3,500 of them. So for comparison, our pathetic navy today has 6 to 6 ships.

And even. There have been some cuts lately. We had a lot more in 1945. I think it's not necessarily something we need. Russia and China though, they have the largest navies in the world and they're in the 700s, so this is much bigger than any of those. Almost 30,000 sailors went on just one of the voyages. So the whole scale of it is mad. Over 300 ships would sail out at once and they went an incredibly long way. And they're mostly to just show off, weren't they?

Well, it is quite confusing. Yes, basically, yes. It was a cultural sort of just say, hey, have you heard of China? It's like kimchi. Yeah, yeah. It was about last week. Exactly. It wasn't really plundering.

They did bring back some treasure, but it wasn't, when I read about it, I thought, oh, well, they'll be going off finding treasure, bringing it back. And that wasn't really... No, no, not really. It was more showing off their treasure there was it was destroying pirate fleets occasionally for a bit of fun imagine if you're a pirate I mean it's not fair is it like just doing your thing and a little bit of plunder here and there and then suddenly 300 table

size you've got to stop using that comparison. It's so confusing. But, so the Wikipedia on the treasure fleets is great because it does acknowledge there are a couple of gaps, right? So listen to this. There is still much debate regarding issues such as the purpose of the voyages, the size of the ships, the magnitude of the fleet, the routes taken, the charts employed, the countries visited and the cargo carried. Basically we don't know who was going or where or why or what they were on or who they were with or how. Well I think what we have is, that's very good in our time on it actually,

what we have is very detailed records from China. So we do know a lot about it, it's just we don't necessarily know the negative things that might have been how many ships sunk. I mean we have no evidence that any of them sunk, but it's implausible surely, and we genuinely thought it was impossible to make ships out of wood this big. They're the biggest wooden ships

that have ever existed by a long way. And one thing was discovered not too long ago, which was an 11 meter long rudder. And that's one of the most concrete bits of evidence we have for the size of these ships. If I was a 15th century Chinese emperor, I would just make a massive rudder to mess with future historians I think you're misunderstanding their ambitions They're not trying to impress us The thing I find most amazing about this whole this whole saga this whole sort of journey that these fleets went on is the Leader of it. So this was a guy called Zheng He who was basically he was he was a young kid whose father was killed in a war.

He got taken as prisoner, brought to the Emperor's palace in China, made into a eunuch and just showed amazing skills in the world of warfare. Britannica says he was six foot five, others say he was seven feet tall. This is the guy, imagine a ship's come in and this seven foot giant- So to him the ships were quite small. He kept hitting his head. They said his voice was as loud as a bell. He was by all accounts an extraordinary character. I've never heard of a huge range of bells.

We've got a tiny dinner bell in our house. It's just going ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding Pause the show. Oh, shoot. I knew this had to come out eventually. Is that because your gong is at the repair shop? Or is it... But that's a good point because I have been thinking he's going to have this deep, booming voice, but I've completely forgot he was a eunuch. Yes, that was it. Yeah. Meow. One of the reasons they think that he was chosen is because he was also a Muslim.

And they were going... Yeah. Didn't know that. And they were sailing. part of where they got to was the Gulf. And so he was going to be in lots of Islamic territory. And so the idea is it's a diplomatic mission to go and make contact with these places

and basically say, will you acknowledge that China is the best country in the world? And if you do that, we sort of won't take over you. And it was lots of Muslim countries. So, you know, he would have been able to go and be like, hey, I get you, my dad went to Mecca, is China the best? Yes, great, off you go. He sounds amazingly lots of Muslim countries. So, you know, he would have been able to go and be like, hey, I get you. My dad went to Mecca is trying the best. Yes. Great.

Right. He sounds at amazingly impressive. Chang He. And I'm interested also in why their voyage has ended. Cause there's lots of debate about what brought them to an end. One theory is that they were worried about Mongolian invasions and obviously Mongolians invade over land. But another reason they were discontinued potentially is that there was a conflict between the Confucians and the eunuchs. Yeah. There's this big eunuch power base in the court and there was a eunuch establishment partly because it was thought, oh well if eunuchs can't have children then they're not going to be seizing power and starting a dynasty. That's why they were chosen. That's why they were the court assistants really wasn't it? That's what I mean. Yeah.

But for some reason obviously that builds up into a powerful bureaucracy. It feels like the movie franchise we're all waiting for, the bureaucrats versus the eunuchs. I mean, it's weird, isn't it? There being this court of eunuchs and then this court of Confucian bureaucrats and this war between them. Yeah. Joking for position. When Zhong He died, basically, he was the main eunuch. When he died, there was kind of a vacuum in the eunuch world and it meant that the Confucianist could jump him. In addition to the obvious vacuum in the eunuch world, of course.

And it was a new emperor as well. So Zhong He's emperor who took him on had died. A new emperor came on. He became part of the expansion of the Great Wall of China. There were lots of different projects going on. He tossed him into one final adventure going out and Zhong He died on the way back. So then that was kind of it. I think that's it. Kind of like you can't spend all your money making a massive wall

to stop the Mongolians coming in and you can't spend the same money making massive ships to go to the Muslim lands. You have to choose one or the other. Well tell that to the Labour Party. You apparently aren't even going to raise taxes, James. No, I... Wow, I can see why you've got a dinner bell and not a satire bell in your home. So yeah, I think the main thing was you say the Confucian bureaucrats and mostly the bureaucrats complain whether it was f***ing expensive. And there was one claim that it costs half of the tax revenue of a whole year to send

them out, which is mad. And probably an exaggeration. But also, there's one other theory that they just done what they wanted to do. I mean, they got as far as the East African coast, they got to Somalia, they've shown everyone how good they are. Everyone has said, yeah, you're the best. Yeah, they've gone, cool, chopped on. Zhong He supposedly named the durian. Yeah, fruit.

Supposedly he ate it when he was on one of his journeys and he was so delicious he forgot where he was and he stayed there for three days and then realized, oh, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be doing this three days. And so he went back again and the name Durian means to linger and forget to return. Oh my god. Supposedly named by him. And also he supposedly invented the queen fish. So the queen fish is like a fish which has got like five spots on it.

And the theory goes that there was a big storm, there's a hole in his boat, he prays to God, and the storm dissipates and they realize that they haven't sunk because there's a fish in his boat, he prays to God and the storm dissipates and they realise that they haven't sunk because there's a fish in the hole in the boat. Brilliant. Okay? And it's this queenfish. He takes it out, his five fingerprints go onto the fish and forever are on this fish and for that reason Chinese people in Malaysia don't eat queenfish. Although some sceptics point out the fact that it is quite poisonous. Just the second best reason not to eat it. Obviously the shark hunting is the main reason

we don't eat it. There's another thing about these giant ships. They had rigging that was decorated with yellow flags. The sails were dyed red with henna. The hulls were painted with huge elaborate birds and on the front were large eyes painted onto the bow so as it was coming towards you just the sense of a big face heading towards you. I mean that's what an image, what a striking thing. And a seven-foot giant walks off the ship, be like, Avatar, have we been invaded? Aliens?

Here's a last legacy of the treasure fleas. Oh, yeah This is a New York Times report from 1999 right what they're on year after the most French thing that has ever happened They had a report called Nicholas Kristoff, right and he went to this tiny island off the coast of Kenya, which was called I think it's called patty Pate it might be paid might be I think it's called Patay. P-A-T-E. It might be Pate, it might be Patay. I think it's Patay. It's called Patay. Great.

I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah. It's a very squishy ground. And he found there a number of elderly men and they claimed to be Chinese, right? Now they look like they might have Asian ancestry, East Asian ancestry, and they claim they've been there for 600 years. Well, they claim that their ancestors had got there 600 years ago. They claimed that they were descended from the sailors of the treasure fleet who'd been shipwrecked on Patay 600 years ago. And they supposedly they had some very ancient porcelain in their homes. Some sort of relics, which is incredible. If true, that is unbelievable. I mean, you know, big tongs on that one, but it does sound like you can tell when you go somewhere

if someone's because they can't have much outside if they've only been there. Can't we take a swab or something? Like we've got technology now. It might have been pre swab. I don't know if anyone listening is in Patek and you write it and tell us in return, we'll send you some very small bits of toast. Vikings had big ships. Oh, yeah. Namely, I mean, they're not bike embarrassing. But they were also quite decorated like the ones we were talking about. Yeah. You should always realize.

But it turns out they had woolen sails. I was just saying that I was reading about wool today. So that's why I bring this up. And there's a traditional handicraft expert called Amy Lightfoot who decided to try and make a sail like a Viking woolen sail and she and her colleagues had to spin 188,000 meters of yarn to make this sail. It took them three years to complete and it used the equivalent of a year's production of wool from 2,000 sheep. What? To make a single

sail. That's insane. So how did the Vikings manage to make all these sales? Is there an answer that you can tell us? Okay, okay, okay. We can get this. Did they tie together their clothes and make a sort of amusing like jangle? Like you're trying to escape from a large building. Exactly. How would they do it? They just, they had 2000 sheep. They had lots of sheep? They had lots of sheep is half the answer. And lots of people and lots of time. No telling. Yeah, that's basically all of it. The only missing bit is that obviously there were lots of them going on sailing missions. So they didn't really have time to make the sails. Did they knit as they... So who made the sails? Did they knit as they sailed? Like you row and

then you knit a little bit. I guess the wives could make them. When the oars come together. They settle. Precisely, it was all the women basically. All the women would live near the coast and they would make all of the sails for the ships. I feel like we were really working our way

towards a good wrong answer there. I know, I was so on board. And I can't ruin it by like... So sorry, reminding you women were also existing in vacant times. Actually, just on what you were saying, and on women, I was reading about wool earlier today. And you know the herring girls, do you remember them? Yeah.

They would like gut herring and they would start in the north of Scotland because the herring shoals would come down the coast of England and they would follow the coast because they would follow the herring. So as the year went on, they would just like get further and further down the coast until they ended up in great Yarmouth and they would stop off at the gutting centers. But as they went, because they were walking this whole way, they would knit as they went and then they would sell their goods as they were walking down. So they would do walking and knitting, walking, knitting,

sell their stuff and then do your gutting and then do walking, knitting, walking and knitting. Do you think it was, you know when you see someone on their phone walking down the street and you're like, oh for God's sake, just put it away. Do you think people thought that when they saw them? Just admire the scenery for a minute. Do you remember we talked about the drovers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Similar. With their magic dogs. Do you remember they walked long knitting as well, didn't they? Well, they had woolen socks for their pigs, didn't they? Yeah, it had woolen socks for their pigs, didn't they? Yeah, it's quite romantic. The idea of, you know, a drover and a herring girl meeting,

knitting. Yeah, they wouldn't ever meet. That's quite a long distance between shoreline and... Yeah, but if you're drovering in from the coast, maybe. I don't know, it's just so romantic, like they accidentally swap balls of yarn and then, oh no, and then they've got to get back to each other. I just think it's... I know it's the same ball of yarn and it's like in Lady and the Tramp, reverse Lady and the Tramp, they're getting further apart, but connected by the same yarn. James, you're shaking your head.

It's a break up story. There's a screenplay in this somewhere. He was a drover. She was gutted herring for a living. Can I make it any more obvious? Let's not imply any historical consultants when we're making this film. No, no, no. Or geographical ones.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that the largest kettle in Hamburg is called Caroline. This is about a very large kettle called Caroline, Caroline with a K. Does she get offended if you misspell it? You're quite scoffing about that. So this is because there's a lot of renewable energy being built in Europe at the moment, mostly wind and solar, and it's pretty cheap, especially during sunny or windy hours, basically.

Prices drop massively. It just gets really, really cheap because there's so much excess being produced. And in some cases the prices get negative because the power has to go somewhere. And so it's kind of not totally ideal because you want to put power to good use basically when you're generating it. You just see what I mean. This is all from an article in The Economist. And you need to use the power a bit better. You need to link to other countries which don't have a surplus at that moment maybe, or you shift demand so like everyone charges up their cars in hours where there's lots of power on the grid, whatever, and another option is to boil up the largest cattle in Hamburg, called Caroline, and... Just teas all around.

Just tea everyone in Hamburg, whether they want one or not, is getting a cup of tea. This is a giant electric cattle basically, and it turns surplus wind energy into heat. It heats up water using the electricity, and it gets used in a thing called a district heating network, which is like where everyone's hot water comes from, Caroline. And sort of 20,000 houses, I think, are on this system. So yeah, and that's, that's Caroline. Good on her. I know. And she doesn't look like, you know, she doesn't whistle and she doesn't have a spout and a handle, right?

She looks like a big tank, presumably. Basically, a big container of hot water is what I have chosen a kettle is. Yeah, fair enough. I think that's fine. It heats up to very, very hot and yeah. Nice. Renewable energy. Well, I think it's amazing because we're at a point now in history where we're literally looking at everything around us going, how do we turn this renewable? How can we be using this to be? I was reading the other day that in toilets now, there's a thing that they're trialing whereby how do you create renewable energy off the back of toilets?

Oh, what if you put in the equivalent of a wind turbine into the pipe? For your farts? No, yeah. You lean over and fart at the little windmill. Yeah, yeah. That's good. No, it's using the idea of gen... The water. It's using the water.

Do you mean a water mill? More like a water mill. Sorry, I forgot about that. I'm trying to talk to the kids. Sorry, I haven't got LOLO references to this, but... It's basically you flush and it spins and it creates. That's a good idea. I'm trying to talk to the kids. Sorry, I haven't got allo-alo references in this, but it's basically your flush and it spins. I actually came up with this idea quite a few years ago of putting mini sort of water

wheels in everyone's gutters. That's what I thought. I thought it was a brilliant idea that no one had thought of. Right. Yeah. And then I never pursued it and it seems like it's actually going to become reality. We should go back over all the things, quirky renewable energy ideas we've mentioned over the years and look at how many of them have come to giant fruition. All right, big aisle. Sorry, I must clarify here. I am incredibly pro investing huge amounts of money in the big scale ones.

But quite a lot of these little ideas are so nice aren't they? But they can't scale up and you can't like fix them into the... But I reckon they're like a good science fiction idea. They're worth saying out loud as much as possible because someone listening out there somewhere will go, That's a great idea. Actually, I could do this with that and turn that into I just think as much as it pumped out. What happens when a poo gets stuck in the water wheel again? Again? Every day, every day millions of engineers are going to be called out. Yeah, unaccountably there's a poo in the water wheel again. Here's the thing about Kettle's. This is crazy. It

comes from a book I read recently. I think I may have mentioned it before. It's called Power Up. Okay. It's a great book. This is about the world's first ever coal powered public power station, right? Right. So it was called the Edison electric light station. It was built in London in 1882 and It generated enough electricity to power 30 modern kettles. Wow. That is partly it was a small power station. It's also partly British kettles are world-leading. They're just so powerful. Sounds actually like the dream would be that your kettle didn't use that much power in order to do the same thing. power station. It's also partly British kettles are world leading. They're just so powerful. Sounds actually like the dream would be that your cattle didn't use that much power in order to do

the same thing. No, no, no, no, no. You want tea now. That's the point. Did they call this power place Electric Eels? No, they didn't. It was the Edison Electric Lights Station. They should have done. They should have done. But they didn't. And it generated 93 kilowatts of electricity at one time, which was for lights in the local area. But basically it's partly a function of just British kettles being absolutely punishingly powerful. That's the thing we should say to foreign listeners, especially Americans, what a kettle is, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Americans don't have kettles. It's like a saucepan with a lid. If you want to make tea with water that's more than 40 degrees in temperature, and that's Celsius, not your Fahrenheit system. You know what? I think if we start a battle with the Americans over tea, then we're only going to lose.

What do you think? Oh, I see. It's a funny reference. It's a reference to the Boston Tea Party. Yeah, yeah. Very nice. Very lovely. Don't rig that satire, delegate.

Another China fact for this section. The world's largest hydroelectric plant is in China, unsurprisingly, like the world's largest most things, and it's the Three Gorges Dam. She probably heard of, and it's obviously massive. And well- Gorgeous, sorry. Sorry? I heard gorgeous.

The Three Gorges Dam. Well, it is gorgeous. I think it is gorgeous. Yeah, yeah. Do you think it's gorgeous the displacement of over a million people? What about the people living downstream of the Three Gorgeous Dam, Andy? Oh, I dropped you in that one, mate. Do you think it's gorgeous the submerged villages? I actually think it's complicated and they have to be trade-offs, Emma. Yeah, look, I'm with you. It obviously produces a huge amount of power.

But it does slow the Earth down. What? Oh yeah. Really? Yeah. I think it was NASA who verified this in the end because there are rumours that it slowed down the rotation of the Earth and lengthened our day a little bit. So if it's 459 and you're at work looking at your watch right now, you can blame the Three Gorges Dam.

Yeah, it's the dam's fault. Damn it. Oh god, Anna. Anyway, it's quite... In fact, kind of everything does that when you move mass around, but it does it to a measurable extent. And so it's because it's this huge amount of water is being held. It's 39 trillion kilograms of water is held 175 meters high above sea level in this dam. So that's a huge amount of water that's being held at quite a big distance from the center of the earth. Imagine you're spinning round on a chair, right? You're spinning round at a steady speed and then you get a huge water balloon and you hold it in your right hand at arm's length, it's gonna slow you down a little bit.

And it actually has slowed us down by 0.06 microseconds. A microsecond being a millionth of a second. So where does that matter most? Like what business? The Olympics, you know? So Usain Bolt has always just missed out and smashing the 100 metres. That would be good, wouldn't it, if you could just let the water out at the same time. Give your athlete an advantage. That's great. You are all running in the same direction in the 100 metres, I suppose. Yes, it's true. There will be a use, I'm sure. The next Chinese Olympics, they're taking notes. I can imagine them doing that sort

of thing. But you know that got proposed in 1919. Well, they drain the dam just to help someone win a hundred kilos of sprint. The building of the dam was proposed by Sun Yat-sen, first president of China. Really? Yeah. And it took, it was partly because they got insane floods about once every decade that were just totally destructive. So it was partly that and partly for electricity.

And the water that they store up there gets dropped through tubes and turn a turbine, much like Dan's toilet idea. But it drops one hundred and eighty five meters, which is two statues of liberty in height. Like it really is. And it generates so much power. It's just extraordinary. I think it's 20% of China's electricity comes from hydro power and China's big and they had also

the construction of it they had to divert the entire Yangtze River while they built the dam imagine yeah it's just it's stunning it's good I can see who the propaganda is working on. Is China the best country? For this? Yes. So there's another heating plan operating at the moment because waste heat is massive. Like waste heat, if it can be used, would be an enormous resource. So there is currently a project going on. You know when you're somewhere cold and you get those little hand warmers where you snap a coin? Yes, I do know those.

And it heats up. Oh yeah, it's like this jelly. Use them on the golf course. Yeah, it's got like stored heat and you snap the coin, this little metal thing in it. And I always thought it's like two little chemicals sort of mixed together and then that heats it's exothermic reaction. That's exactly it. And then you can put the heat back in, like you can reheat it and it sort of, those things

only last about like 40 times right those little hand warmers but there is a system currently being worked on to charge thermal batteries from like places where they burn rubbish for example and then transport the heat back into the centre of London and use the heat there where it's needed. Right. Like really creative things that are being proposed to deal with... Like using burning rubbish basically. Well that's already used for example maybe you'd only generate a bit of electricity from that

but it gives off a lot of waste heat in the process. That's amazing. I'll catch that. Well similarly in if you swim in Redditch in the Abbey Stadium Leisure Center, anyone who's ever done that you are being heated by dead bodies from the crematorium. And they came up with the idea in I think it was 2012 that they started implementing it and it saves 40% on the leisure center's energy bills because it's so much cheaper. And you know, what a useful thing to contribute in your last moments on this earth.

They're doing this system in Sweden, by the way, as well. But it's actually crematoriums that are using it to heat their own crematoriums. So if you're waiting in a crematorium... Yeah? Yeah, yeah. You don't need that. Having been into a crematorium, it's like a room. How much heat do you need?

Oh, there's a waiting room. There's a there's the front desk. You've got a person got an office. You've got a whole system there. What country is this in? Sweden. Sweden gets very cold, Anna. It does get colder there.

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. So they're using that. I love just, by the way, Andy, that thing you said with the coin that you snap. That technology colder there. Yeah. Yeah. So they're using that. I love just by the way, Andy, that thing you said with the coin that you snap, that technology is going wild at the moment. I was at an arcade down the road from where I live and my son had enough tickets to win a prize and he got an inflatable hammer.

And instead of having to blow it up, you just snap a thing inside it now and inflate. I was not on board with this anecdote until I heard the end of it and now I'm so on board with it as somebody's had to blow up lots of inflate holes in the last year or so. Yeah, this giant hammer that you don't do anything to other than snapping a thing in the middle. I asked the guy behind the counter and he was like, I don't know, mate. I really do just work here. I didn't actually construct everything you see. I'm not Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. That's the first thing I'd do. I'd be like, how do these hammers inflate? I really do just operate the till and I open up a clothes shop at night.

Can I do a quick fact on Caroline before we move on? Oh yeah. Because that was the name of this so-called kettle. Do you remember a few days ago when England won the Euros? We all sang Sweet Caroline. Yeah Prime Minister Farage came out to shake the hands of the boys. We're both recording in the past and in a parallel universe. So we recorded this before the Euros, but at the time of recording we had just absolutely battered Slovakia to one after extra time and we did sing Sweet Caroline or the England fans did yeah and Sweet

Caroline is written by Neil Diamond about his wife Marcia and he called it Caroline because Marcia doesn't scan the tune but what's interesting is that the reason England sings Sweet Caroline is there was a DJ at Wembley Stadium called Tony Perry who was supposed to play something else and he played Sweet Caroline before the game and it had gone really well. And so after England won, this was against Germany, he thought, well, I'm going to play it again. And he played it again and it really kind of took off. And when the women's football team won the Euros, whenever that was, a few years ago, it was the big sort of song for them. And it is the big song for England teams now. And this guy, Tony Perry, he's said something really interesting in an interview, which is like, he's quite important for the team. Because if you

imagine like England played Denmark a few years ago and there were 15 minutes left, England are winning, they have the half time of extra time, the fans are getting really nervous, the nerves of the fans can kind of go to the nerves of the players and it can kind of affect the game, but what he can do is he can get the fans going and he would play Free For Desire by whoever that's by. It's like a real proper dance anthem. The crowd go absolutely mad. The crowd are suddenly really, really infused and that helps the team to do the job. So actually the DJ who's at the football stadium can affect the game. Can alter the game. That's amazing. I didn't know they had DJs in

football stadiums. Yeah, they do. But where do they set up? They're going to annoy the people on either side of the money. Decks in the middle of the just in a little booth in there. So if England does lose, and you want to take out some steam of your own sort of anger, you mean in the next world, obviously, we want to get in the next world cup. Yeah, yeah, find the DJ and kick the shit out of it. Didn't do his job. I thought it was all chanting the referees are wanker and stuff like that. Is that gone out these days? Well, during half time you don't just sit there shouting the referee. I mean, the referee's having a cup of tea. You can't hear anything. There's no point. Okay, that's interesting.

But then they'll play music. They'll play loads of music and there's specific DJs whose job it is to do all these big events and they'll do the Super Bowl and do the World Cup and all this kind of stuff. And they make their living by knowing what will get the crowd going. That's interesting. Do they take requests? Can I pop to the booth and say, could you please be a bit quiet? Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the classic textbook, The Art of Editing, was co-written by Jack Scissors. Very good.

Yeah, it's great. It's 432 pages. It was 434 though before Jack got involved. Do you know that in the old newspapers when they were editing is they used to use scissors because big part of making your newspaper was you would take all the stories from all the other newspapers and you would cut them up and then you would put them on a sheet of paper to make sure that they all fitted in the right place and then you would send them to your printer who would then print them. Hang on, that implies that to do your newspaper, you're just taking other stories from other newspapers. Well, they borrowed from your edition yesterday.

That's basically kind of how it works. So if you're a national newspaper, you would take it from the from the towns and stuff like that. In the really early days, there were things called avisi, which were like newsletters that were sent around people. And then they would be all sent to the newspaper and they would cut those up. But actually all the newspapers would just copy off each other a lot of the time.

And obviously you had to have someone who wrote it originally, but there were so many newspapers and so many pages to fill, you wouldn't have enough reporters to do all that. So you did have to do that. And you would usually credit wherever you got it from. In the same way that today it would say this is an Associated Press report that is in the BBC or whatever.

And that was really, really common. That's amazing because if you got something just completely wrong, usually you'd think as a local newspaper, you go, well, at least only a couple of thousand people saw that. Suddenly it's global news, literally by the name of it. Exactly, and there was the Charlotte News, this was in 1902, so towards the end of when they were doing this, but they set up a trap saying that there was a gang of anarchists in Vladivostok who were going to kill all of the prominent rulers on the globe and the

leader was Count Robjian Ruamorff Laetsu. And if you read that backwards it says we steal from our neighbor. Oh very good. That method of cutting out and arranging on the page, that survived Private Eye magazine where I work also until quite recently. Yeah. Oh is that done now? No longer, it has gone out, but it's during my time working there I was at it stopped I one day popped into the office while you're there and you showed me how it was laid out It was fast sometimes, you know, someone picks up one of the finished pages carries it across the room There is a bow or a frog is Yeah, so scissors yeah

cough. Yeah. So scissors. Yeah. Scissors. I was looking into a few words around the world for what scissors are in different languages. Oh yeah. That's a good idea. It's quite fun. So the Maori for scissors is cuti cuti or cuti cuti. German, Andy, you speak German. Do you know what scissors are? It's something, isn't it? It's like sheer. Yeah. So like shearing has a similar answer. Say it in English, I guess. Shears. This is the most interesting one. Hungarian word for it is ollo. Ollo. Yeah.

Now, why is that interesting? Is it because it looks like a pair of scissors? Looks like a pair of scissors. Yeah, that's why it's called that or not? Well, that's what... Actually, what you've drawn looks like a penis. That's a pair of cheeky testicles on the other side. That's great. Yeah. Good on him. That isn't presumably why it's pair of cheeky testicles on the other side. That's great,

yeah. That isn't presumably why it's called that. No, I don't think so. I think it might. I mean, but it's hard to think that that's not why it's called that. They're still made in the UK? Scissors? Yeah, but you know, lots of manufacturing has gone this way. But in Sheffield... Bingo. There used to be, in Sheffield, 40,000 workers in the scissors and cutlery trade. Mostly cutlery. Mostly cutlery. But some scissors too. And obviously a lot of them aren't in business anymore. But I think, I think there might still be two. There's Whiteley who've been going since 1760 at least. And there's also Ernest Wright and Son. They have two, they're

called master putter togetherers. That is what the title is for anyone who does the job of putting scissors together. The putter togetherer. And they're proper, you know, they're metal, all the way handle, blade, everything. They're sort of proper. Stainless steel, I guess.

Yeah, and there was a brilliant video in 2014 showing the trade and how it still operated. So I don't know if this guy is still working there anymore because he'd been there about 50 years when this was made. So he probably isn't still there now. But he, one of the two master put-it-togetherers, was called Eric Stones. Now, you would have wet stones in there. Oh, I was thinking, I was thinking like rock, paper, scissors, what's another way for I see. Does anyone ever say stone paper scissors? Yeah, and in other countries. There we go.

I did see a story of someone trying to rob a shoe shop with a stone, but the person behind the counter had some scissors. Oh, sorry. But the story made it into the papers, so you've got all three there. Anyway, Sheffield, yes, did used to make even more exciting scissors. They made the smallest pair of scissors in the world in the 19th century. Did they? Yeah, they did.

So they claimed. Was it for cutting something very small or was it just for fun? I think it was just for fun and to entertain the royal family, they went to show them off. Britain's chief industry until the mid-20th century was just doing things to impress the Queen. It was actually the 1820s, so it was King George IV. Oh wow. And the manufacturer was Joseph Rogers and Sons, and they took some tiny scissors to show George IV, and according to Sheffield Museums, they dropped them on his carpet,

and they were so small that they were never found. No! Get out! Oh my. They're still there on the floor of Puckian Palace. That's a risk, isn't it? You know, you don't want to walk around barefoot, do you? No. On a knee carpet where you know there's a pair of scissors here somewhere. That's why risk, isn't it? You know, you don't want to walk around barefoot, do you? No.

On a knee carpet where you know there's a pair of scissors here somewhere. That's why the Royals are always wearing shoes. From small scissors to large scissors. I didn't know this, but often, you know those large scissors that you get when someone's unveiling something? Oh yeah, the novelty cutting ribbon. They don't look very sharp, those. I don't think they are. No. I think, I don't know. Oh, they're sharp enough for a ribbon. Oh yeah, the novelty. Oh yeah. Coming ribbon. Ribbon cuts. They don't look very sharp, those. I don't think they are.

No. I think, I don't know. Oh, they're sharp enough for a ribbon. Oh yeah. Ribbons really aren't that hard to cut. They can't do microsurgery or anything like that. But why would you want them to? But they're normally, they're tough.

Your doctor brought those out during microsurgery. The last thing you see is you're doing the count for the anesthesia. Five, six, what the fuck? I'm... Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. P, what the fuck? But normally you hire them, I guess because why on earth would you want to keep a two foot long pair of scissors? It's just, but there can't be many in the country. There

aren't many in the country, James. I'm so glad. So there's this in the UK, this unveiling curtains.co.uk. They say no unveiling ceremony is complete without a pair of our giant ceremony ribbon scissors But in America, there's golden openings comm. Oh, I saw the website really great. Yeah, I go to know what were you googling? But they are 40 inches long they advertise themselves as the largest working scissors in the world Someone who apparently keeps scissors on them at all times is? A hairdresser. A hairdresser, yes. In this very specific case, Richard Branson.

Oh. This is such an odd thing that he does. He hates when people are a bit too formal. He thinks that businesses should be relaxed. He's often asked by CEOs, how can I make my business more relaxed? If he sees anyone around the table with a tie on, he gets his scissors out

He goes over and he cuts their tie off and he says everyone laughs everyone has a great old time, but that's his thing I'm sure they'll continue laughing when he's left the room Just call him a wanker. Yeah, this tie was given to me by my grandfather Does he have special they must be quite sharp scissors, I'm sure they are but Does he have special... they must be quite sharp scissors. I'm sure they are, but... You know, how strong are you? Do you have ties made of wood? No, to cut through a tie in a single amusing chief executive gesture is quite... He must have killed thousands of underlings. I do have a tie made of wood, like a bow tie made of wood out of cork.

Of course you do. But I think if I ever meet Richard Branson I'm gonna wear it and see how strong his scissors really are. Oh, exactly. There's a pair of scissors that I've only ever used three times. What are they? I know what they are. Oh yeah, I mean what, umbilical cord scissors? I don't own them myself, I've only ever used them.

But yeah, umbilical scissors, which I have used three times because I have three kids in hospital. Okay, you haven't used the same, it's not like you bought some specially. No they're hanging up in the hospital and they're labeled property of de-trival, do not touch. He will be back for another one soon. Yeah I use the ones that were in the hospital, I was asked if I'd want to cut the umbilical cord but did you say yes every time? How interesting you said yes because I was like why would I, why? Oh right. I thought everyone said yes. Why would I though, why would I want to do something that a professional can do?

Were you offered the chance? Yeah, of course. I think they always offer me. I frequently will sneak into hospitals and ask if I can pretend to use, like, oh, when the time comes, can I do the cutting? You're subbed in.

You're there on the sidelines, yeah. Is it quite thick and sort of grisly? It is. It's a bit odd and you're a bit nervous when you're doing it, because you think, well, what if I get this wrong? Nothing can happen. Well, you don't know that in the moment. Unless you get really wrong and like shop your baby's willy off or something. Yeah. That's not the umbilical cord. It was a very well endowed baby.

That's so funny. No, but you can, I looked online, you can buy from Amazon umbilical cord scissors to use on your own at home, say for home births, right? That would be good if you were opening a new wing of a maternity ward. You could, like instead of a ribbon, you can have an umbilical cord. So a newborn baby just gets slowly pulled away from a mother. A mother just after birth. Sorry, do you mind if we just move you to the ceremony room? It's the grand opening.

Is there anything special about them except a gimmick to get money out of people who want to invest? No, no, these are used. Are they any more special than them? They're specially shaped. They're different types of scissors. You don't use your classic scissors. Really?

I thought they just need to be sharp. Really? Okay. I think they're slightly curved and like half moon shaped. But yeah, I had a one star review. This main pair that comes up. Is it one star? Baby's still attached. He's four years old now.

Basically said, does not cut well. Stiff to use needed several attempts to cut, which is a bit terrifying. But I was trying to look into them. This is a very random tangent, but I discovered a guy who said, hey, when you're in the hospital and you are offered to cut the baby's umbilical cord, why not suggest biting it off instead of using the scissors and blessed like Brian blessed style. That's right. Who?

What? He did that in a park. Apparently he said that he said that he did. But this guy, this guy said that he did. He said, I went in, I said to them, is it cool if I do the umbilical cutting? He believed that because I started the baby with my seed, this is me ending the process by using my mouth to bite into it. It's a bit. He said it tastes like calamari, the rubbery kind of-

It wouldn't taste like calamari. Yes, it tastes like blood. Plus his wife was a squid. Were you watching My Octopus Keeper or whatever that thing is? No, no, you said it was basically like blood, iron-like, the texture of it was calamari-like. And apparently if you ask, they might say yes. So if anyone fancies it, worth asking. They'll think you're a real weirdo, but they might say yes. Can I give you a riddle? Yeah.

Okay. 2017. Yes. There's a guy in Vietnam, 54 years old, he has a road accident. And this is not a good riddle. There seems to be something sharp inside his stomach. Is it scissors? Wait, I haven't finished the riddle. He's recently been to Buckingham Palace and was licking the carpet. How do they get

to Buckingham Palace clean? Do the servants have to lick the floors? That's the deep clean. No, and the second hospital scanned him and they found a six inch pair of scissors inside him Okay, which had been there since 1998 oh did he have an operation year of the most fresh thing Because he was actually watching the World Cup at the same time No, 19 years this guy had had a six inch pair of scissors inside him and had had a little bit of stomach pain, but basically nothing else. Isn't that just the six inches is long.

And is it from having an operation and someone dropped it in? Yes it was. But I mean, so the riddle is a bad one, but forget the riddle element. But I just think that's stunning that he'd had a previous road accident in 1998, had an operation for it, they left the scissors in and then and they only found it as a result of the second road accident. Right. That's kind of amazing.

I think if you're a surgeon and you need to put down the scissors for a second, put them on a tray. Yeah, yeah. Don't put it on someone's spleen. That was the gross thing. They had rusted and they had become stuck to his nearby organs because they've been there so long. That's going to make him super sick.

He was all right. Was he? Yeah, he was fine. It is weird that the body can withstand that size because it must have really misshapen various bits of him, but they obviously just stretch to accommodate them. Yep. Spleen went, hey, all right, I'll take you. Do you know what knob cutters are used for?

Knob cutters? Yeah. Are you good at visectom for? Knob cutters? Yeah. This is the type of scissors. Vesectomies? No. Unix? No. Knob cutters. Knob.

Oh, doors. Door knobs. The type of cactus. Knob of butter. Closer. Oh. Cactus have nipples, but what has knobs? Oh.

A plant with a knob? Yeah, just trees, I guess. A tree. Tree. Well, why would you use scissors on a tree? You want to make it nice and smooth? Because you work for Yves Saint Laurent and he's mental. Well, you would use shears or you would use like a chainsaw, right?

Tiny tree then. It's going to be Bonsai! Bonsai! They are used by Bonsai gardeners. That's so great. The Bonsai Scissor world is pretty amazing. Well they're like, the knob cutters are really cool looking because the bit which you cut looks like it could be a tiny Sheffield, like the world's smallest scissor, but then the

handles are normal sized handles. Because obviously you need to sort of put your fingers in it, but also you're cutting something really, really small. That makes so much sense. That's a good thing for like a James Bond super villain to say is, you know, when Bond's tied to the chair or whatever. and put your fingers in it, but also you're cutting something really, really small. That makes so much sense. That's a good thing for like a James Bond super villain to say is, you know, when Bond's tied to the chair or whatever, bring me the knob, Cattery. He just turns to his Bond side trick. It's a little trick.

That's brilliant. You would have to set up that joke earlier in the movie. Oh, yeah. I would ensure that I did. Or put some subtitles explaining what they are. Sean Connery's like, I don't know what you mean about the knob. And Blo Felt's like, well actually it's the name of some scissors they use in bonsai. Now bring in the dildo cactus. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram. James?

My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy? On Twitter at Andrew Hunter M. Yep, where you can get to us as a group, where Anna? You can go to Instagram at no such thing as a fish or Twitter at no such thing or email podcast at qi.com. Yeah, and head to our website no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. There is link to our upcoming Thunder Nerds tour tickets are still on sale. Check out if we're coming to a city near you and book them now. And also a link to Club Fish, our secret place where we put up bonus episodes and extra content. It's really awesome. Check it out. If not, just come back here next week where we'll have another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.