0:01

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode

0:03

of No Such Thing As A Fish.

0:05

Ho ho ho, it's nearly Christmas. The

0:07

presents are already wrapped. You've already bought

0:10

your copy of Everything To Play For,

0:12

the QI Book of Sport by James

0:14

Harkin and Anna Terszynski. You've already bought your

0:16

copy of The Theory Of Everything Else by

0:18

Dan Schreiber and you've already bought two copies

0:21

of The Sanctuary and The Last Day

0:23

by Andrew Hunter-Murray. The sprouts

0:25

are simmering, the quality streets have already

0:28

been mostly eaten apart from the horrible

0:30

ones and what else is there to

0:32

do apart from listen to some podcasts?

0:35

Well, what do we have for you?

0:37

It's basically the start of our Christmas

0:39

season. We're already in the Christmas mood

0:42

so the next three episodes are all

0:44

special episodes. The first one you're going

0:46

to hear right now is a look

0:49

back at 2023, all of

0:51

our favourite facts from the news of this

0:53

year recorded live at the Soho Theatre in

0:55

London. Then next week you're going

0:57

to get our Christmas special where again at

1:00

the Soho Theatre we talked about all of

1:02

our favourite facts about Christmas, food and drink.

1:04

And then in the silly season between Christmas

1:06

and New Year you'll get a very special

1:09

show where Andy opens up the mailbox and

1:11

finds all the facts that you sent us

1:13

over the last couple of years and we

1:15

discuss those, find out which ones are true,

1:18

which ones are not true, which ones

1:20

are interesting and which ones frankly you

1:22

probably shouldn't have sent in that drunken

1:24

stupor at 2am. Anyway,

1:26

really hope you enjoy these three episodes.

1:29

I'm away from my desk for the

1:31

next couple of weeks so I'll be

1:33

enjoying them with you too and we

1:35

will see you in the New Year.

1:37

Okay, there's not much more to say

1:40

apart from to remind you to buy

1:42

all of those books. Go to nosuchthingsofish.com/books

1:44

to find information about those. But sit

1:46

back, relax, put your feet up and

1:48

listen to this week's episode of No Such

1:51

Thing As A Fish. Okay, on with the

1:53

podcast. Hello

2:07

and welcome to another episode of No

2:09

Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly

2:11

podcast this week coming to you live

2:14

from the Soho Theatre in London! My

2:17

name is Dan Schreiber. I

2:20

am sitting here with Anna

2:22

Tsusinski, Andrew Hunter-Murray and James Harkin.

2:27

And once again

2:29

we have gathered around the microphone with our four

2:31

favourite facts, but this time with our four favourite

2:33

facts from the news of the year 2023 and

2:35

in no particular order

2:38

here we go! Starting with

2:40

fact number one and that is Andy. My

2:43

fact is that after a journey of 60

2:45

million miles, this year NASA finally

2:47

brought a fragment of an asteroid

2:49

back to Earth in a special

2:51

capsule. Unfortunately they can't get

2:53

into it because they don't have the

2:56

right screwdriver. Pretty amazing. Amazing. Yeah,

2:58

so this is true. So NASA launched a mission

3:00

to an asteroid called Bennu which is big and

3:02

it's about... No,

3:13

no, no, slow down professor. Sorry.

3:17

It's not that big actually but it's fine. It's

3:20

chunky enough to do some damage if it hit the

3:22

Earth, which it might at some point in the next

3:24

300 years. It's

3:26

not imminent but we need to keep an eye on

3:28

it. Wouldn't it be ironic if it came down, hit

3:30

the Earth and then the box just sort of... Yeah!

3:34

So is that why we're getting bits? Are they going back

3:36

and forth, back and forth, gradually making it smaller and smaller

3:39

than the next 300 years? Oh that's it, that's it,

3:41

yeah. What a great idea! Is it? Yeah!

3:44

It's not exactly what... I think they're doing

3:46

it because it was nearer than a lot

3:48

of other asteroids and it's worth studying basically.

3:50

So it's 500 meters across which is not

3:53

tiny. It's called the most dangerous rock in

3:55

the solar system. That sounds pretty bad. Yeah,

3:58

but isn't truly the most dangerous rock... Because it's home

4:00

to man. No, we got it. We understand. So what's

4:02

the deal? They've built a box that they can't open.

4:04

Presumably it didn't come in the box, the afterwards it

4:07

arrived in the box. That would be more worthy of

4:09

study, if anything. But no, it's very, very old as

4:11

well. It hasn't changed its composition for four billion years,

4:13

which is why it's worth studying as well. It

4:16

predates the solar system. That's pretty interesting. So NASA launch

4:18

this amazing new thing called the NASA launch. It's a

4:20

very, very old thing. It's a very old thing. It's

4:22

a very old thing. It's a very old thing. It's

4:24

a very old thing. It's a very old thing. It's

4:27

a very old thing. It's very interesting. So NASA launched

4:29

this amazing mission. They launched it seven years

4:31

ago. It took four years to get to

4:33

Bennu. It landed. Or in fact, it

4:35

didn't even land. So it just sort

4:38

of nicked the edge of it. It scraped it

4:40

for six seconds. It just touched the edge of

4:42

it, grabbed some fragments from it, got those into

4:44

a specially made capsule, an

4:46

incredibly good capsule. And

4:49

then it finally landed back on Earth

4:51

this year. Sounds like it pickpocketed the asteroid, doesn't

4:53

it? It kind of did. The thing I read

4:55

said it touched its bottom for six seconds, which

4:58

is... But isn't that amazing? Amber behavior. All that.

5:01

I often get blown away by the

5:03

precision of science in space where that's

5:05

your window. If you miss that, it's

5:07

probably a big deal to have to

5:09

turn around, go back. Probably would be.

5:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're

5:14

like, six seconds. That's what we

5:16

have. It's incredible. It's wonderful. And

5:18

the problem is now it's in a glove

5:20

box, right? Yes. And they can't get it out

5:22

of the glove box. They call it a glove box, don't they? Yeah, and it's a really good...

5:26

It's a really good box, but you have to wear gloves to

5:28

get into it. Yeah. You know

5:30

those things, like, I don't know how to describe them,

5:32

but it's like a Perspex box and the kind of

5:34

rubber gloves are attached to the box. Oh, yeah. You

5:37

have to put them in. Like when they're dismantling

5:39

a bomb or they're like Homer at the beginning

5:41

of The Simpsons. That is the bomb. That feels

5:43

like a new... No, no, no. I was thinking

5:45

of the movie Speed and then I went to

5:47

The Simpsons very quickly. All right. I

5:50

want to know who's put a bomb inside this Perspex

5:52

box. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a weird place to put

5:55

a bomb, isn't it? Thank God they put it there,

5:57

though. You can get to it safely. What a true story. Yeah.

6:00

You have to wear special gloves to open this box. Inside

6:03

the glove box, you're not allowed to put

6:05

just anything in there because it's such a

6:07

sealed environment. They've got some tools in there

6:09

already, but none of them is the right

6:11

tool. They've undone all but two of the

6:13

screws. There were loads of screws originally, it

6:15

wasn't just two. But the last two are

6:17

proving really fiddly, and they can't just use

6:19

a Phillips screwdriver because everything has to be...

6:23

It's a clean room and they can't get any... I

6:25

think it's filled with nitrogen because it'll react with oxygen

6:27

and that'll be a disaster. So

6:30

they're having to be so careful. The amount they've got

6:32

inside the box is about the weight of a hamster,

6:34

roughly. But... We don't know

6:36

it's not a hamster. No.

6:39

There's no way of knowing. Well, it is a

6:41

T3, so we can't... Wow. It

6:45

can't see it's not a hamster. Also, it came with a

6:47

load of bonus stuff, like when it's gooped into the... What

6:49

is that? Sorry. What like DVDX's?

6:51

Yeah. No, no, no. A pea shirt

6:53

thing, my dad went to this asteroid and all like, I

6:56

want a shitty shirt. When they did

6:58

the scraping, most of it ended up in the capsule,

7:00

but there's loads of other stuff around the edge of

7:02

the capsule, another 70 grams or so. So they have

7:04

started studying that already. Okay. Very exciting. Have you seen

7:06

the screws that they can't get into? Yes. It's

7:09

a piece of them. It basically looks like an Allen key, doesn't it?

7:11

It does. By sight, you

7:13

know, you can never quite get the right size of Allen key. Yeah.

7:16

I think that's what it is, isn't it? I think so. So

7:19

when can we get in, do you think? Well, they're sort

7:21

of designing special tools to get into it. It's not going

7:23

to be forever. I mean, TaskRabbit is

7:25

very good for this. But

7:29

they do know a couple of things already from it,

7:31

which is really exciting. And so Britain has a little

7:33

bit of it. Very thrilling. Sorry. I

7:35

said, Britain has a bit of

7:37

the sample. Very thrilling. Wait

7:41

a minute. How can that be, though? Yeah. It's

7:43

all in a book. No, no, no. Because there

7:45

was 70 grams of bonus material outside the box.

7:47

Oh, right. So that has been parceled up and

7:49

sent around the place a bit. Britain has 100

7:51

milligrams total. Brilliant. Yeah. It's

7:55

unfortunately now in centre wonder. Well,

8:00

it will be. Yeah,

8:04

but I read a thing about the scientists who

8:06

were looking at it, and they're analyzing it grain

8:08

by grain. They have such detailed studies

8:10

that they can do that some of them said, yeah, we might

8:12

be looking at this for the rest of our careers, and it's

8:14

literally 100 milligrams of dirt.

8:16

And what do you think they're trying

8:18

to work out from what they're studying?

8:20

They might find the origin of, like,

8:22

clues to the origin of the solar

8:24

system. Yeah, okay, right. Apparently it contains

8:26

nano globules of organic material, which sounds

8:29

faintly. Ah, so that could show

8:31

that maybe a life can be seeded around

8:33

the universe as well by anthroids. That's always

8:35

what they're hoping for, isn't it? No, but

8:37

it's just a little bit of dust, lifeless

8:39

dust, another bit of lifeless dust. But

8:42

there are things in there, there are things called pre-solar grains, which

8:44

this is so cool, right? These are grains

8:46

of particles, they're less than one micron across, which really is very

8:48

small, and they belong

8:50

to the previous dead stars and ancient

8:53

kind of cosmic dust that our solar

8:55

system formed from. So they're

8:57

like the ingredients of our sun, but before

8:59

our sun formed, are on this thing. Wow.

9:03

That's cool. There's also, as we're recording

9:05

in the last day or so, been a very exciting

9:07

discovery made by NASA as well. They

9:09

found a tomato that's been missing

9:11

on the International Space Station for

9:13

eight months. That's

9:17

not still going to be good. It's not going to be

9:19

good. You'd eat it. But there was...

9:21

You'd eat it. I'd eat it. I'll have

9:23

it. If it's still going. There was a

9:25

guy called Frank Rubio, and he was basically doing

9:28

a harvest up on the International Space Station. He had

9:30

a bunch of little tomatoes and other things, and one

9:32

of them just went missing. And he got accused

9:34

of eating it, and he was like, I don't need

9:36

it. And they're like, well, we can't find it anywhere.

9:38

He left the International Space Station. It's been eight

9:40

months, and just yesterday someone's like, is that the tomato

9:43

that has been... That is incredible. It's all shriveled

9:45

and all disintegrated. Wow. Yeah,

9:47

so... And he's back on Earth going, I

9:49

told you so. He literally is, because every

9:52

press conference they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

9:54

great stuff about space. The tomato, did you

9:56

definitely not eat it? Because it feels like you

9:58

did. And you

10:01

know, the International Space Station is about six bedrooms

10:03

worth of room if you were walking through it.

10:05

It'd be a house with six bedrooms. It's quite

10:07

big. But you would think you'd

10:10

be able to find a tomato. Oh, I

10:12

don't know. Cherry tomato or normal tomato? It's

10:14

a... Yeah,

10:16

it's like more like a cherry tomato. I think we

10:18

have a format here, actually. Yeah. OK,

10:21

so it's the four of us. We go

10:24

to a celebrity's house. Sure. Yeah,

10:26

it's like through the keyhole.

10:28

Yeah. Wait, what? How? We

10:31

hide the tomatoes somewhere in the celebrity's house. Oh, that's

10:33

the last one. Yeah. And

10:35

then find it. But what's the keyhole bit? Well,

10:38

the interesting part is not finding the

10:40

tomato. That's deadly boring. Yeah. You

10:43

actually get to see the celebrity's house. Oh, because

10:45

you're going through their underwear draw, go, because they're

10:47

a tomato. Yeah. Yeah. OK. But

10:50

then the problem is you go around Alan Titchmarsh's

10:52

house and there's fucking tomatoes everywhere. That's

10:54

the last page of Where's Wally? I remember.

10:56

There's loads of Wally. Yeah,

10:58

that's right. Alan Titchmarsh included. Yeah. Wow.

11:04

So, you know, these people, you're talking about Andy, you

11:06

traveled millions and millions of miles to get this cosmic

11:09

bit of asteroid. Well, they didn't. I mean,

11:11

it was an uncrewed mission. You're right. They

11:14

sent out their little drone. Yeah. They didn't need

11:16

to do it because there's loads of it on

11:18

Earth, isn't there? That's the thing we've discussed before.

11:21

Lots of bits of asteroid raining down on Earth

11:23

all the time. And

11:25

this is in the news this year because

11:28

scientists have identified 13 cathedrals that they're

11:30

going to start vacuuming four bits

11:32

of asteroids. Wow. Really?

11:35

The gothos or inside the roof.

11:39

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, up top.

11:41

So it's the Penny Vozniakjevic and

11:43

the Matayas Ivan Ginnikin. And

11:47

they basically want to understand how bits of

11:49

debris from space come to Earth. These sound like two

11:51

Russian guys and they're going to come look and get

11:53

our cathedrals out of there. They've done

11:55

the tools, Brian. They like what they saw. They're done the

11:58

tools, Brian. It's

12:03

the man of the women who I don't think are related

12:05

to Putin's regime in any way. But

12:08

yeah, they've said here, there are certain cathedrals like

12:10

Kent Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, all the big guns, and

12:14

they go up onto the roofs of the cathedrals

12:16

with these big hovers on their back like

12:18

Ghostbusters. They climb up the walls, they climb

12:20

onto the roofs, and then they just hover

12:22

up all this dust. And the

12:25

idea is that remnants of asteroids and comets

12:27

can be found amongst obviously just lots of

12:29

shit. Did you say it

12:31

was cathedrals in particular as opposed to

12:33

residential houses? Cathedrals because they're touched far

12:36

less often so it'll be undisturbed because

12:38

not many people hang out on top

12:40

of the cathedral. Super old, super old.

12:43

Right. Yes, very old but also very

12:45

well recorded when they've been redone, when they've

12:47

been revamped, you always have good records for it. So

12:49

if they find a bit of space stuff, then they'll

12:51

know, well this bit of roof was redone in the 1960s. So

12:54

that's how long this has been there. Yeah.

12:57

They found another asteroid that

12:59

possibly could hit the earth on Valentine's Day in

13:04

So that's something to bear in mind when

13:07

you're buying your gifts that year. Apparently we

13:09

have a big... Don't bother. No

13:11

bother, yeah. You've got a 600

13:13

to 1 chance of this asteroid

13:15

hitting earth on that day, which is

13:17

the same as an average flight being

13:20

cancelled or delayed by three hours. Wow.

13:22

Because that has happened to me. It does seem to happen

13:25

quite a lot, doesn't it? One in 600 I thought. You're

13:27

fine, yeah. Yeah. But is it okay if

13:29

it hits it? It's not... Is it definitely not okay? Oh

13:31

really? It's a big one. There's a

13:33

600 to 1 chance that we're... That's really close. It's

13:35

not in trouble. Look, it's 20... when did

13:37

I say it? Only 20 years. 20

13:40

years. Well, I'll be gone, so. Right.

13:43

But it's not going to... it wouldn't wipe out the

13:45

entire... it's one of those which is big enough that

13:47

if it lands in the middle of Manhattan, it's going

13:49

to cause a problem. Like a chances are it'll land

13:52

in the ocean. If you were in the air

13:54

in an airplane, do you think you'd be okay?

13:56

If it hit your airplane, no. But

14:01

I'm also thinking of your chances being in the

14:03

air the same of the three hour delay that

14:05

you would... Oh yeah, you're probably going to be

14:07

at the gate still. We should be missing that.

14:13

So there's this kind of thing where

14:15

scientists are looking at all different asteroids

14:18

and there's 1,448 of them on their

14:20

spreadsheet and there's something called

14:22

the Taruno scale which tells you how likely

14:24

they are to hit the Earth and

14:27

this is the one that's most likely

14:29

to hit the Earth. It's still, according

14:31

to NASA, poses no unusual level of

14:33

danger and the chance of collision

14:36

is extremely unlikely, that's what they say. But

14:38

on this scale it is one on the

14:41

scale and all the other 1,447 have a

14:43

ranking of zero. So

14:47

everything is a zero apart from this one which

14:49

is a one. What does it go up to?

14:52

If it goes up to two... It goes up to

14:54

ten. Oh it goes up to ten? Fine, fine, fine,

14:56

fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. I feel fine. I'm

14:59

still trying to work out titles for that tomato

15:01

show. I've got like... On your own time

15:03

Andy, please. What, no, Tomah-hoo?

15:06

It's not where, is

15:08

it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

15:10

Because we already know who's

15:12

house it is. Yeah, yeah,

15:14

yeah. I'm

15:16

so glad you interrupted with

15:18

that. Here's a

15:21

bit of exciting news. Oh

15:25

shit, I can't stop thinking what the title

15:27

will be now. It gets you, doesn't it?

15:30

Let's try and move on. Can I tell you about a

15:32

new invention this year? Sure, right after I say the thing

15:34

I was about to say. Yeah. I

15:36

was just trying to indulge you there and making you

15:39

believe what you said was worthwhile. He

15:41

actually has something to report. Stan,

15:43

USA. Just

15:46

really quickly, another space science thing that we've discovered this

15:49

year is what the speed would need to be miles

15:51

per hour for Elliot from the movie E.T. and his

15:53

brother and his buddies. to

16:00

get the bicycles up to the height that they need

16:02

to get to go past the moon.

16:05

The reason we know this is because

16:07

it turns out that the composer John

16:10

Williams has spent the last 40 years

16:13

wanting to know that answer. No. Yeah,

16:15

he said while he was conducting it, he saw

16:17

the footage and he went, how the fuck would

16:19

they do that? And over

16:21

the last 40 years, he's just constantly like,

16:23

in the shower, just going, well, how the

16:26

fuck would they actually do that? And finally

16:28

this year, he got given an honor by

16:30

NASA. And while he was there, he said to an

16:32

astronaut, listen, I've been thinking about this for 40 years.

16:34

When you go up, like, what's the escape velocity that

16:36

you need to break gravity? And they said, basically, you

16:39

need to go 17,500 miles an hour. And

16:44

he went, ugh. And

16:47

so it's all sorted out from there. Wow, it doesn't seem like

16:49

that. They must have slowed it down. Yeah.

16:52

Because what John Williams is missing is a bit

16:54

of a big plot point, which is they had

16:56

a magic alien in the basket. Here's

16:59

the weird thing. I suddenly realized that John Williams,

17:01

when he's conducting to ET, he does it

17:03

with the footage in there and he's conducting

17:05

the orchestra to it with his baton, right?

17:08

But he also conducted the theme tune for

17:10

Harry Potter. And that must have been so

17:12

weird when he's holding his magic wand stick.

17:15

Basoon! And, you know. You

17:19

know, the really good conductors don't shout the

17:21

instrument. Shalom!

17:29

It's a lifetime's training. If

17:34

you listen very closely to the soundtrack, you

17:37

hear John Williams. Trumbull! Can

17:42

I give you a fruit and vegetable related fact? It's not difficult

17:44

going from this year. Not tomato one. Have

17:47

you heard of a new

17:50

vegetable that has been invented this year

17:52

called the garlic? Is

17:54

that part garlic, part leek? Oh,

17:57

I was hoping we'd have a bit more of a fun

17:59

time. I

18:02

spent 10 years working on this. Not

18:08

on the name. I

18:11

rather think they might have come up with

18:13

the name first. But

18:22

it sounds great. I

18:25

had a meal before we came out here and

18:27

I made it with leek and garlic. Imagine if

18:29

I had a garlic. Imagine

18:32

all the time. That

18:35

would be nice to chop up bloody

18:37

garlic every time you eat. They could

18:40

merge all the ingredients. They

18:42

could do a leek, cum garlic, cum onion,

18:44

cum carrot. Why do you want so much

18:46

cum in it? How

18:53

would I like my dinner?

19:05

Okay. Stop

19:09

the podcast. Hi

19:18

everybody, we just wanted to let you

19:20

know that this week we're sponsored by

19:22

ExpressVPN. Yes, ExpressVPN this Christmas. Do

19:24

you not want people to see what

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websites you're going on? Because I know

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I don't. I just use the internet

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for donating to charity and bettering myself.

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It's really embarrassing when people see my

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history and they see what a great

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guy I am. Yeah, because we all

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think you're a bit of a dick, so it would be

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awful for the illusion to be shattered. ExpressVPN

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because they are my secret research website

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and I know they could sell that

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information to James Harkin my

20:00

hidden fact sources. So if you do

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20:54

on with the show. On with

20:56

the podcast. It

21:02

is time for fact number two

21:04

and that is Anna. My

21:08

fact this week is that the heirs

21:10

who inherited Silvio Berlusconi's properties had to

21:12

deal with the 20 Bunga

21:14

Bunga showgirls still living in them. That's

21:17

amazing. It's

21:22

just an odd conundrum to be faced with

21:24

when your dad dies. Not a lot of people

21:26

will have to go through but he died

21:28

in June and he's got

21:31

lots of houses and he lent 20

21:33

of them to various women along

21:35

with sometimes a little monthly allowance and

21:38

it was a little bit controversial as to why he

21:40

lent these houses to them. He promised them that

21:42

they would be able to take over ownership

21:44

of them. So apparently he said to one

21:46

of these women, Barbara Guerra, I promise you

21:49

on my five children that I

21:51

will let you own this house. But he

21:53

said I can't give you the right to

21:55

ownership until all my trials are over. So

21:57

he's been having lots of trials like many

21:59

world leaders. because

22:02

then I'll be accused kind of of

22:04

bribery because the accusation was that these

22:06

women were women who attended the Bunga

22:08

Bunga parties. Everyone remember the Bunga Bungas? I think

22:10

we should say for young listeners what Bunga Bunga

22:12

is. We should say. I mean

22:15

not for young listeners. We're not young. Andy's

22:20

Kids Podcast. The CBB

22:23

bedtime story with Andy

22:25

Murray. So these

22:28

are parties that he quite famously

22:30

had about 10, it was a long

22:32

time ago now actually, 10 years ago and they were basically

22:37

mass orgies if you

22:39

believe one account and they were sophisticated

22:41

gatherings if you believe another account but

22:43

lots of world leaders sort of or

22:46

lots of politicians, dignitaries from

22:48

around the world attended them. They happened

22:50

in his big mansion and there were

22:52

lots of women there who were kind

22:54

of showgirls who perhaps performed services

22:56

for people. And one tomato. That

23:01

was always

23:04

his excuse. I was trying to

23:07

find the party. Yeah and the

23:09

idea was Bunga Bunga might have

23:11

been possibly the punchline

23:13

of his favorite joke. I don't

23:16

know if you know it. I don't know. Well I'm not

23:18

gonna say it now because it's a bit racist. Oh okay.

23:22

You can do a non-racist version I think.

23:24

Go for it. I'll have a go. So

23:26

you've been, you're with your mates,

23:28

you were with two of your mates and you've been

23:30

kidnapped by an enemy and the enemy

23:32

says. It's from your country. Whatever country you're

23:34

from. Whatever country you're from. Doesn't matter. You've

23:36

been kidnapped by an enemy from another country.

23:39

I think we've seen where the race

23:41

has been seamlessly excised. Good. And

23:46

the leader of the other country says okay I'm

23:48

gonna give you two choices. You can either have

23:50

Bunga Bunga or you can have death. And

23:53

the first one says okay I don't wanna die so I'm

23:55

gonna choose Bunga Bunga. And then the second one

23:57

also chooses Bunga Bunga and

23:59

turns out this means that they are tortured

24:02

in a sexual manner and

24:04

then killed anyway. So the third one thinks, well I

24:06

don't really fancy this bunga-bunga, so he just says

24:08

I'm gonna have death and so

24:10

the leader of the country says, well death

24:12

you shall have, but first a

24:15

little bunga-bunga. It's

24:18

not terrible, it's good. Apparently

24:21

you heard it from Gaddafi, which is always the

24:23

best. But always the guy

24:25

you want to be. So the guy is being

24:27

good talent much better than you do. I

24:30

love the idea of you just taking a

24:32

lot of racist comedian sets and reinterpreting them.

24:36

I'm really upset that I can't enjoy

24:38

a Jim Davidson set or a Bernard Manning.

24:40

Anna Tyshinsky reimagines Bernard

24:43

Manning. That's a

24:45

good format. Okay,

24:48

so anyway there are these

24:50

women living in these houses and... They

24:54

are still there at the moment. I think they're in

24:56

the process of trying to evict them now and they

24:58

don't want to go, understandably. Because Berlusconi said to them

25:00

these houses are yours. But they

25:02

also want Marta Faskina, who was

25:04

his last companion, who was

25:07

with him for the years before he died, to

25:09

leave the mansion where she used been housed. Like

25:11

his mansion where he... Is she called Faskina?

25:15

She sounds like a female fascist doesn't it? She's

25:17

got a lot of letters of the word fascist in her name and

25:19

she is an MP for Forza Italia. Wow,

25:21

really? Which is

25:23

his party... Which

25:25

is the very right wing

25:27

Italian party. So normative determinism. I

25:31

only know one thing about... Oh sorry, do you have more about her? She

25:33

was left 100 million euros in

25:35

his will. Berlusconi was loaded. Yeah,

25:39

we did know that. It's

25:41

very corrupt. I think it was

25:43

all got through... Oh no, we can say it now. It's alright, he's

25:45

dead. Although he was

25:48

acquitted of everything in the end except fraud. So

25:50

he was completely acquitted of paying underage people for

25:52

sex and other such things. He did quite a

25:54

lot of influence in the courts though and the

25:56

judicial... I'm not saying he's... I'm

26:00

just clearing it for the lawyers. OK. There

26:03

are no lawyers! Ah! The

26:07

only thing I know about him is that he left

26:09

an amazing art collection. He

26:12

had 25,000 paintings. And

26:15

it turns out that almost all of them were rubbish. Oh

26:18

really? An actual Italian art critic had a look

26:20

through the collection of 25,000 pictures and

26:23

said maybe six of these are worth anything. And

26:26

a lot of them he just bought on, like, you know those late

26:28

night TV shows where... No way!

26:30

Did he really? He would just watch

26:32

and order those things. Wow! That's

26:35

what's that man? And it comes with a

26:37

free salad mixer. It was that kind of

26:39

level of art. He'd become art himself, Bellascone.

26:41

Oh, is he? Yeah, so there

26:43

was an artist called Gianni

26:45

Motti who supposedly,

26:47

this is alleged, went

26:50

to a liposuction centre. He had fat

26:52

taken out of him and this artist

26:54

bought the fat from this centre. No.

26:58

And he then turned it into a bar of

27:00

soap. And so you could go to a museum

27:02

and you could see a bar of Bellascone fat

27:04

soap that was just sitting there. And

27:07

the liposuction centre denied that they sold

27:10

it to this artist, obviously, because it

27:12

became big news. And the

27:14

family denied it as well, didn't they? But

27:17

then the artist said, okay, I'll do a DNA test.

27:19

And they all went, we're going to shut up now.

27:22

Didn't they just kind of let it drop after that

27:24

because I think they know it was him really. Yeah.

27:27

Guys, knowing what we know about Bellascone and his

27:29

Bunga Bunga parties, would you feel clean

27:31

if you'd washed yourself with

27:34

the Bellascone fat soap? That's so

27:36

interesting. Oh, I think you're

27:38

dirtier, if anything, when you've done that.

27:41

You can't wash away the stains of corruption.

27:44

Oh, wow. Very profound.

27:48

I don't know if anyone could tell, we're moving

27:50

from interesting facts and comedy into profundities. I've

27:54

got a few things about other people who've

27:56

died this year. So Bellascone died this year.

27:59

One great... Brit that we lost

28:01

this year was of course mystic Meg She

28:05

was awesome. I love mystic Meg She was super

28:07

famous back in the 90s where I wasn't living

28:09

here But where'd she would go on to the national

28:11

lottery and she would predict Someone's

28:13

won the lotto and the balls would be

28:16

there like she always talked about the numbers

28:18

though, which no exactly. Yeah 14

28:22

she'd say make sure to check your numbers if you haven't

28:24

from the previous week and someone did that and they found

28:26

out that they Want so there were like these few occasions.

28:28

Yeah, but the thing about mystic Meg was she was she

28:30

used to be a journalist And she kind of

28:32

fell into astrology and clairvoyance as part of a

28:34

gig of being a newspaper editor And

28:36

when she set up a hotline for you to

28:39

call up and get your predictions It

28:41

was the number one hotline in the UK

28:43

some places say globally It was so big

28:46

that people just wanted to get your predictions.

28:48

Yeah, she was massive and Despite

28:50

being as massive as she was there's virtually

28:52

nothing that we really know about her personal

28:54

life That might change in the next few

28:56

years But the two things I could find

28:58

is one someone who went to her house

29:00

said that in every single room She had

29:02

a naked photo of herself framed Yeah And

29:04

then the second one comes from her it's

29:07

one memory that she has from the time

29:09

that she was doing the national lottery And

29:11

this is a direct quote from her She said my

29:13

most vivid memory of the lottery is when I was

29:16

doing my prediction to camera and out of the corner

29:18

of my eye I saw a naked man Running

29:20

towards me the security guard caught

29:23

him inches before he got in front of

29:25

the camera Painted on his backs with the

29:27

words pick my balls The

29:32

world's oldest dog died this year

29:35

Bobby He was 31 years and 165 days, which

29:37

is 220 in human years Yeah

29:43

And there was someone at the Royal College

29:45

of veterinary surgeons who said not a single

29:48

one of my veterinary colleagues Believes Bobby was

29:50

actually 31 years old But

29:55

he was in the Guinness World Records, but I

29:57

think generally speaking people don't think it was him

30:00

a lot of the pictures of him have different colored

30:02

paws. Very funny.

30:06

Hollywood actor Raquel Welsh died this year.

30:08

Oh, yeah. I can't actually remember

30:10

too much. She was in Bedazzled with Peter Cook and

30:12

Dudley Moore. There was a famous one like A Million

30:14

Years BC or something. Yeah. I

30:16

think she was the woman who had

30:19

the world record for kicking male

30:21

co-stars in the genitals the most out

30:23

of any actor. Really? Within

30:26

movies or on set? Live,

30:29

yeah. No, it was in movies. I think from

30:31

memory, I think it was 21 times. Do

30:34

you think she read scripts and decided,

30:36

based on that, just rifling through looking

30:39

for the stage direction? Yeah. It was

30:41

probably in the claws of a contract.

30:43

Must-knee-boom at some point. Kind of my

30:45

thing. Cos

30:47

the one who I reckon did probably kick a few

30:50

co-actors in the balls was

30:52

Glenda Jackson, who also

30:54

died this year. And I feel like Glenda Jackson died.

30:56

Yeah. I'm so sorry that you're

30:58

discovering this now. And

31:00

also, sorry if anyone's just discovering about

31:03

Belisconi as well. Mm. Mm. Missing

31:07

Meg, you should have seen that coming. Mm. Glenda

31:11

Jackson did die, yeah. Sorry to say, but she was 86. But

31:14

she was so great. I didn't know that much

31:16

about Glenda Jackson. I feel like she was slightly

31:19

before our time. But she was so successful as

31:21

an actress. She got two Oscars, three Emmys, and

31:23

a Tony Award. So like the Holy Trinity

31:26

of acting things. Then, of course, she quit it

31:29

all to join the Labour Party and become an

31:31

MP. She had these two careers,

31:33

one after the other, both very

31:35

effective, very successful. And mostly what people

31:37

say is that she was absolutely terrifying.

31:40

Really? So as I read, yay,

31:42

yeah, she was so... This is why I feel

31:44

like she wasn't kicking people. Literally in the balls, but

31:46

some testicles were shriveling on set with her, I think.

31:49

There was an interview with her in Vogue a

31:51

few years ago where the interviewer said

31:53

she was the most terrifying person he'd

31:55

ever interviewed, greeting me with a level

31:57

of warmth, a non-animal lover reserve, for

31:59

next... George Catt. Wow. And

32:03

even Chris Bryant, who's, you know, Chris

32:06

Bryant, the Labour MP, he wrote

32:08

her biography and she agreed

32:10

to two interviews with him, two four-hour long

32:12

interviews, and insisted during those interviews on sitting

32:14

with her back to him the entire time.

32:18

Wow. Maybe it's like you're telling,

32:20

you're sort of telling your story rather than

32:22

telling Chris Bryant your story. Yes. You're

32:25

sort of telling it almost to yourself. Yeah. Yeah,

32:27

yeah. Helps you be a bit more reflective. No,

32:29

that one didn't fly. All right. How

32:31

about Dick Fosbury? No, the flopper. Really? He

32:34

died the wrong. Inventor of the Fosbury flop. He

32:36

died the wrong. Fosbury for the last time. Oh.

32:39

Oh. Oh. He

32:42

invented... Doing the high jump. Doing

32:44

the high jump backwards. And when

32:46

he invented it, the

32:49

US Olympic track coach said he will wipe

32:51

out an entire generation of high jumpers because

32:53

they will all have broken necks. So

32:56

it was controversial at the time. They're in the crash, Matt.

32:58

Of course. It doesn't help you not break your

33:00

neck. Yeah. The interesting thing was that

33:03

had just been developed like a few years before he came

33:05

along. That's why it was of its

33:07

time. Because there was a woman called Debbie Brill who

33:10

did it around the same time. It wasn't quite

33:12

so successful. And she did it in Canada

33:14

and it was known as the Brill Bend. I think

33:17

it's better than Fosbury. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

33:20

But because Fosbury won the Olympic gold medal,

33:22

that's why it was named after him. Forty

33:24

years after he won the gold medal in

33:26

the Olympics, there was a dinner in his

33:28

honor in London and Dorothy Tyler, who was

33:30

an 88-year-old high jumper around the same time

33:32

as him, as he was getting

33:34

his speech, she ran onto the stage. Well,

33:36

ran as much as an 88-year-old can, went

33:39

onto the stage, grabbed the mic of him

33:41

and said, you can't go over that bar

33:43

head first. It's cheating. You're all cheats. Oh,

33:46

wow. It lasted 40 years after he

33:48

did it. That's what happened. That's incredible.

33:50

She was the first British female athlete

33:52

to win an individual Olympic medal in

33:55

athletics. And it was at the 1936 Olympics in Germany.

34:00

She met Adolf Hitler on that day

34:02

and she later said he was an

34:04

odious little man in a big uniform

34:06

who I probably should have slapped. Ooooh.

34:09

That's beautiful. Sharing

34:12

that. Good on her. Yeah. Finally

34:15

someone brings that guy down a peg off the...

34:17

Yeah. Yeah. Okay,

34:24

it is time for fact number three

34:26

and that is James. Okay,

34:29

my fact this week is that

34:31

England footballer Ivan Toney who was

34:33

suspended for gambling in May has

34:36

the middle names Benjamin Elijah meaning

34:38

his initials spell out I bet.

34:40

So good. It's

34:42

amazing. He

34:45

bet on 126 games in competitions

34:48

he was playing in and

34:50

he bet 13 times on his own team

34:52

to lose but he wasn't playing in those

34:54

games but they banned him for quite

34:56

a few months and I think when this goes out

34:59

he will be just about to come back. So

35:01

you're not, I genuinely don't know anything about the rules, are

35:03

you not allowed to bet on your team to lose even

35:06

if you're not playing? You're actually not allowed to bet on

35:08

your sport at all. In your sport? Yeah, in the most

35:10

sport. Yeah. Well, you've got so much

35:12

inside info haven't you? Yeah. I bet on podcast all the

35:14

time. Am I going to get... What better bet? I

35:17

bet this is going to give me a good episode. Yeah. Even

35:19

by the loop the definition of podcasting

35:21

isn't a sport so I think you're alright Andy. I

35:30

seem to remember that when I was living in Australia

35:32

in corner shops where they sold lottery tickets

35:34

and if you worked at the corner shop

35:36

you weren't allowed to do the lottery tickets

35:38

and friends and family weren't allowed as well

35:40

like the scrap cards and stuff. Really? Yeah.

35:44

Well of course the problem is with football it's

35:46

entirely sponsored by gambling companies and

35:48

so we're expecting these young men to not

35:50

gamble and at the same time they're wearing

35:52

names of gambling companies on their shirts and

35:54

they're being advertised them and stuff like that

35:56

so it is a big problem in football

35:58

right now. And he was...

36:02

I wouldn't say that we think of him as a

36:04

villain. It's like he's a gambling addict, right? And

36:07

I think it is an important distinction when you hear he bet on

36:09

games where his team lost. Is he Brentford? At

36:11

time of recording, yes. But we expect him

36:13

to move in there. Okay. But

36:15

yeah, he didn't throw the games or anything. So

36:17

it is just he was so addicted to gambling

36:19

that he couldn't help himself from doing it. And

36:21

it has made way too easy, isn't it? I

36:24

got this quick football thing, which is

36:26

slightly interesting. The World Cup, Qatar. It

36:28

was the first time in World Cup

36:30

history that no British person

36:32

as a fan was arrested. Yeah.

36:36

Get away. This is

36:38

according to Mark Roberts. What happened to us

36:41

as a country? They

36:44

think... There's nothing sacred. That's so shameful.

36:46

They don't know for sure. They think

36:49

because it's a dry country that might

36:51

have contributed to the situation. No

36:54

arrests of Brits at the World Cup.

36:57

Another bit of World Cup history was actually

36:59

made this year. And that

37:01

was by Bethany England. She

37:04

became the first player to

37:06

play for a country that shares her own

37:08

name. That's good. That's the

37:11

first time ever? Yeah. So there are people

37:13

like Alan Brazil. I think there are people

37:15

with the names of countries that they don't

37:17

play for. They exist. Who's the first one?

37:20

Sorry, a real person, Alan Brazil. Yeah. That's

37:22

very funny. That's

37:24

very funny. What? Is Alan Brazil really mega

37:26

famous? Quite famous. I'm

37:28

sorry. That's a funny name. That's

37:31

the least Brazilian name I can find. Gavin

37:34

Hong Kong. What

37:38

is he... Is he play football? He's football.

37:40

Yeah. Yeah, he's play football. They had a

37:42

very, very, very long football match played this

37:44

year. I think the longest football match ever

37:46

played. Week

37:48

is often the time of the football matches.

37:50

Very specific, isn't it? Yeah. Well,

37:53

this one lasted for 102 hours. Wow.

37:56

Yeah. That was too long. Did the rest forgot

37:58

to play the version? No,

38:01

it was a charity thing. It was in

38:03

Southampton and it was 36 players but there

38:05

had to be like 11, 11 a side

38:07

standard match and they subbed

38:09

in and out and you know they were exhausted and they kept

38:12

going. I kept on the count if you subbed in and out.

38:14

Well 102 hours is very, very, very important. Yeah, no, it's, yeah,

38:16

with only 36 players, you can't sub out that much. No, you

38:18

can't exactly. The final score was 910 to 725. I'm

38:22

on stage, you know, late if you're

38:24

playing the actual card. We

38:28

can catch him, we can catch him. I

38:31

got another football fact from the year

38:34

but this is American football, NFL. Soccer.

38:46

As part of, no, no. No.

38:53

Hence the specific NFL reference. American football,

38:55

I'm with you. So

38:59

there's a Seattle venue,

39:02

sorry, Seattle Stadium called Loom &

39:04

Field and this year, Taylor Swift,

39:06

as part of her eras tour,

39:08

she played it. What record

39:10

did she break at this tour? Okay, well

39:12

she's dating an NFL player, that's Kelsey right

39:15

now. Yeah. So

39:17

is it something she, no, that

39:19

would be disgusting. I don't know

39:21

where you're going with that. I

39:24

don't even know where. Kelsey

39:27

is a tight end, if that helps. Oh,

39:31

right. Okay, so the previous record was

39:33

set in 2011 with the Seahawks. What

39:36

did she break this year? Seahawks. Biggest

39:39

attendance at an American football stadium. No.

39:43

I don't know anything about that. Most leery

39:45

fan, drunkest fan. I

39:48

thought, there was a thing

39:50

where she did a gig that started a sort of earth tremor.

39:52

There we go. She has

39:55

set the record for the largest magnitude

39:57

earthquake caused by fans. at

40:00

a gig or a match in

40:03

this venue. So in 2011,

40:05

the Seahawks fans registered 2.0 on

40:08

the Richter scale and Taylor Swift

40:10

fans from jumping and yelling and the music

40:12

combined went to 2.3. So

40:15

she has the seismic activity record

40:17

at Lumen Co. in Seattle.

40:20

Very impressive. Pretty cool. We talked

40:23

about athletics earlier on. There was a race

40:25

at the World University Games where

40:27

one of the Somali competitors

40:30

finished more than 10 seconds behind

40:32

the person who came second last.

40:35

And when you watch the video, everyone runs.

40:37

And they just sort of like pretty much

40:39

how I would run, like just sort of

40:41

waddled their way down the track. And it's

40:43

very clear that they shouldn't have been there.

40:46

And as a result, a Somali sports

40:49

official was suspended for abuse of power,

40:51

nepotism, and defaming the name of the

40:53

nation. But

40:55

the amazing thing about this was such

40:57

a good example of that escalated quickly.

41:00

So they had this race. And

41:02

then the Somali minister of

41:04

youth said, this person was clearly

41:07

not a sportsperson nor a runner. And

41:10

then the Association of Somali

41:12

Universities said, actually, we

41:14

didn't send anyone to that event. Oh,

41:17

pointless. And then the

41:20

Ministry of Youth and Sports said, as far

41:22

as we know, there's no such thing as

41:24

the Somali University Sports Association. Oh,

41:27

wow. How

41:32

far does this go? Somalia doesn't

41:35

exist. Somalia doesn't exist. All right.

41:38

I found out about a sport that happened this year, but

41:40

that I had never heard of

41:42

before. It just had its standard annual thing this

41:44

year. You guys heard of competitive lifesaving. No.

41:49

This is amazing. Wow. It's

41:52

a real sport. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So the

41:54

people who don't win, the people die? That's

41:58

why it's not big. I can't get the volunteers. No,

42:03

the Royal Life Saving Society holder, it happens

42:05

every year or two, I think, and it

42:08

definitely happened this year. And they

42:10

sort of stage incidents, so your team, you're in a

42:12

team that you go into a room, which is either

42:14

a dry room or it's a pool or a wet

42:16

room or something. Yeah, the dry room sounds easiest for

42:19

a start. And

42:21

you have to react to whatever situation is

42:23

happening in there, work out

42:25

what happened. And an incident has occurred.

42:28

There is one, the four-man relay, where

42:30

your team have to drag each other through the water in

42:32

a relay. It sounds really fun. Wait,

42:34

so you're dragging someone, and then they

42:37

hand me, the dragger, over to you, and

42:39

I'm not going to... They come to life, and

42:41

then you collapse, and then you have... Yeah, yeah,

42:43

yeah. I think that... You become the baton. This

42:45

is really nice. Yeah, yeah. That's the most Zen

42:47

relay team ever, and just

42:50

become the baton. LAUGHTER Sorry,

42:54

Andy, go. No, no, no. Well, I was just looking up

42:56

where the England team are from around the country, and quite

42:58

a lot of them are from Crawley. Oh!

43:00

Oh, nice. And of course, the front crawl

43:02

is the swimming stroke. Yes, it is. Oh, yeah. Any

43:05

from Brestley? No.

43:07

No, not that I saw. Not a

43:09

place, I suppose. LAUGHTER

43:14

Yeah. Can

43:17

I just alert people who don't know to something amazing that

43:19

happened in cricket this year, that I don't feel like got

43:21

enough attention for it, amazingness. OK, yeah. Which

43:24

is... And I'm sure cricket fans are probably aware

43:26

that this has happened, but maybe not how rare

43:28

it was. So there are 11 ways

43:30

of getting out in international cricket. Mm-hm.

43:33

And international cricket's been played since 1844, which

43:36

I actually didn't know it was between the US and Canada in 1844. So

43:40

a long time, this year, for

43:42

the first time in all of that time, and

43:44

in 240,000 innings, someone got out by the 11th

43:46

way. Wow.

43:51

They've been saving it up for that long. Isn't

43:54

that cool? Andy, what do you reckon it could be?

43:57

LAUGHTER Uh,

44:00

so you caught bulb stumped. Yep. Yeah.

44:03

Uh, leg pull wicket. Run out. Run out. Yeah,

44:05

yeah. Leg pull wicket. Struts in the heels. Um,

44:08

unseen tomato on the ground. Yeah. You

44:11

slip on. Is it like a procedure? Are

44:13

you rude to the umpire? It's very similar.

44:15

It's just sort of about rudeness. Yes. Okay.

44:17

What's the one way of being rude that

44:19

you really hate? Letting your dog poo on

44:21

the green. Is that it? Andy

44:30

Triggin matches. Bad

44:32

the dog little. Um,

44:36

is the other thing you ha- you do

44:38

hate it when we have our dog shit

44:40

before the podcast. But the other thing you

44:42

hate- Oh, we late. Lateness. Lateness. Exactly. Party

44:44

time. Time out. Yes. So people,

44:46

um, basically there's an amount of time, it's

44:48

two minutes isn't it, uh, that, uh,

44:51

you have to step up if you're going into

44:53

bat. And there was Angelo Matthews who

44:55

played for Sri Lanka. And Sri Lanka

44:57

were playing Bangladesh this year. And

45:00

he- his chin strap was broken. So it wasn't

45:02

even really his fault, I don't think. I didn't

45:04

see it live. His chin strap was broken. So

45:06

he was waiting for it to be fixed or for a new one

45:08

to be delivered. And the bowler

45:10

appealed to the umpire to say, alright,

45:12

two minutes is up. Usually you would

45:14

just ignore it, right? And like some

45:16

people have taken longer than two minutes before.

45:18

And you would not appeal because it's kind

45:21

of a mean thing to do. And

45:23

the umpire even said twice. Are you

45:25

sure you want to- right, you want to get

45:27

your opponent out this way like this? And the

45:29

bowler's like, yep, don't care how I win as long

45:31

as we win. And so the umpire

45:33

had no choice, had to say, yeah, you're out.

45:35

Wow, that's the 11th. That's never happened. Never happened

45:38

in 240,000 innings. That's

45:40

the first time. Do you think that was

45:42

in his head as he was walking off going, I

45:44

can't believe that's what I'm going to be remembered for

45:46

in my entire career now? Yeah. Guys,

45:48

just because we're running late, I am going to have to

45:51

move us on. Can I just do an initial fact really

45:53

quickly? Because this was a fact about initials. One

45:55

of my favorite stories of the year was

45:57

the man who had to apologize for carving

46:00

his goal. girlfriend's initials into the coliseum saying

46:02

that he'd had no idea at the time

46:04

that the building was particularly old. Fortunately,

46:07

her name was IVX. Okay,

46:21

we need to move on to our

46:23

final fact of the show, and that

46:25

is my fact. My fact this week

46:27

is that this year we discovered that

46:29

crocodiles are horny for helicopters. So

46:32

this is what happens, right? This

46:35

was discovered in Kurana Crocodile Farm in

46:37

Queensland. There's a path that goes over

46:39

this field where Chinook helicopters. Chinook helicopters

46:41

are those ones that have double rotors.

46:44

Really, it's like a long sausage dog

46:46

of a helicopter, which has two sets

46:48

of the rotors spinning around like that,

46:50

right? So when that

46:52

flies over... I don't think the

46:55

Royal Air Force would appreciate that

46:57

kind of correlation. Ferocious war machine.

46:59

Is that the early

47:01

old sausage dog of the army? So

47:05

the Chinook helicopters would fly over, and in

47:07

a few cases, because they're flying over an

47:09

area where there's a lot of crocodiles, if

47:12

they've got people on board that they want to sort

47:14

of show off the area to, they might dip a

47:16

bit low and fly closer and say, look at the

47:18

crocs. The guy who owns this

47:20

farm realized that when

47:22

this happened, all of his

47:24

crocodiles got extremely horny and started mating, and

47:26

they out of season, out of the time

47:29

when they usually would. And

47:31

it's been a bit of a mystery as to why they're

47:33

doing it. And so at the moment, as it stands in

47:35

2023, we are on a theory level with it. There's

47:39

a few ideas. They think it's emulating

47:42

either in its tone or changing the

47:44

temperature of the water when the rotors

47:46

are pushing down onto the water. They're

47:49

emulating something that signifies an

47:51

incoming storm. And basically

47:53

storms are like aphrodisiacs to crocodiles

47:55

in Queensland because the areas will

47:57

flood and then the flooding would.

47:59

die down and then six weeks

48:02

later after you mated the eggs would be born

48:04

in a much drier area. Always

48:06

would take six weeks to go from mating to

48:08

laying the eggs. Yeah, to laying the eggs. So

48:11

when they feel a storm is coming, maybe when

48:13

they hear the noise of a storm coming they're

48:15

suddenly like it's sexy time and

48:18

they have sex so that they can match it

48:20

to the best circumstances for the eggs to survive

48:22

is the theory. I read the papers because there

48:24

was a scientific paper about it wasn't there and

48:26

they said that that is the most likely. The

48:28

other option is it could be they think it's

48:30

like the mating roar of rival males.

48:34

They claim you're female now. I think what

48:36

Dan said is most likely. They said that

48:38

whatever it is, what makes them horny is

48:40

the sonorous thump of the choppers. I'll

48:45

empathize with that. So there's no... Is

48:49

it your wife a

48:51

helicopter pilot? That

48:58

is the truth actually. There's no suggestion

49:00

in the paper that they confuse it

49:02

with a sausage dog and that's what

49:04

makes them horny. I

49:08

just have another story about an animal, a funny

49:10

animal story. And this

49:12

was also about a chap called

49:15

Felix Popescu who is a Romanian

49:17

surgeon and he's a Romanian

49:19

surgeon who has a holiday villa in the mountains

49:21

and he was in the city and he got

49:23

a call from the caretaker of its holiday villa

49:26

saying it had been raided by a bear and

49:28

it caused 10,000 euros worth of

49:31

damages. But what Popescu was

49:33

most furious about was that he

49:35

drank all of his alcohol. Was

49:38

quoted as saying... And stole all of his

49:40

Picadic baskets. Exactly.

49:45

So he

49:47

had a load of vodka there and they just drank

49:49

all of it. Vodka, whiskey, champagne. So the man

49:52

said the bear left him without any

49:54

of them. He had a very good time in

49:56

my house. Wow, look

49:58

at this. That's amazing. I think there's a

50:00

kids book in that like the tiger who came to tea. Yeah

50:03

who came to get pissed There's

50:13

been a new beetle that's been discovered

50:15

in South America and it has

50:17

been named after Kalsberg,

50:20

it's the long co-villious Kalsberg ei

50:22

beetle and the reason it's been

50:24

called that is because its penis

50:26

looks like a bottle opener Wow,

50:30

wow Could

50:32

in theory use it? No well The

50:36

entire animal is only one centimeter long

50:39

Though it would have to be a very very

50:41

small bottle of beer of beer Yeah, but yeah,

50:43

I was reading the report about it and they

50:45

said that Genitalia are the

50:48

organs and insects that evolved to

50:50

be different in every species as

50:52

such They are often the best

50:54

way to identify species. That's why

50:56

entomologists like us are always quick

50:58

to examine insect genitalia

51:02

He protested too much I'm

51:06

gonna have to wrap us up really soon.

51:08

I have a little quiz question for you.

51:11

Oh good Yeah, Vienna Zoo has stopped giving

51:13

its animals What this

51:15

is this year? Good

51:18

schnitzel Mozart, but yeah hand

51:21

jobs I

51:24

said to scrupulously be anything

51:38

Is there anything related to Vienna

51:40

that Alice closest no, it's one

51:43

those I think I food It's

51:46

no it's something poor to your sense of self.

51:48

Oh No, there's another

51:52

Nominous of non-determinism is to the oldest doing the world.

51:54

It's called Shunbloom and They

51:56

used to have loads of animals, you know, they had

51:58

Ricky the bear or vice-versa the tiger,

52:00

whatever. And she came to tea,

52:03

didn't she? And they said it's

52:05

too personalizing. They said we should

52:07

be representing whole species. And it's

52:09

actually a bit of a false friend to say, oh, this

52:12

is Anton the aardvark. You know, because you think

52:14

about Anton, you should be thinking about aardvarks. Oh,

52:17

really? What kind of weird communist

52:19

zoo is this? No, I

52:22

respect that. No, I think that makes sense.

52:24

But then you miss out on things. I

52:26

read about a pig that ran away in

52:28

New Jersey, who was called Albert

52:30

Einswine. And

52:35

then you don't give

52:37

him that name. Like, what's the new, like, you know,

52:39

the police officers were able to say he was hard

52:41

to catch because he's very clever. You know, I

52:45

was reading another kind of animal

52:48

mating story. Oh, yeah. And

52:50

this is another study that's been done this year. And

52:52

it's about elephant seals. You know, those things, they're huge,

52:54

huge creatures. Well, actually, they're

52:57

very differently sized between the sexes. So

52:59

I think the males are five times

53:01

bigger than the females. So the males

53:03

are massive difference. Are they not

53:05

very attractive, are they, elephant seals? To

53:07

us. Conventionally. They're

53:11

quite hideous looking creatures. Go

53:14

on, but they're not pictures of having sex, why

53:16

don't they? Well,

53:18

it's basically they indulge in a thing called

53:20

extreme polygyny. Right. Now, this is where small

53:23

numbers of large males, which are known

53:25

as beach masters. Is

53:29

that self-designated? But

53:34

once they can have haremes of up to

53:36

100 females, one male. Yeah, that

53:38

means a lot of other males get cut

53:41

out of the equation. Although when a male

53:43

gets to having a harem of 100 females,

53:45

they might take on a younger male as

53:47

an apprentice beach master. That genuinely happens. And

53:50

so only about 4% of males become beach

53:52

master. That's

53:54

when they can have sex. Yes. They

53:56

might have a smaller harem, you know, beach masters

53:59

are very successful ones. they're a feature master baiting

54:01

until they're 11 years old. Oh my god.

54:03

Sometimes the steel jaws close and you realize you're in a

54:05

trap and you have no idea. Amazing.

54:08

So this is the thing, because being big is

54:10

a sign of success for them, and it's sort

54:12

of like a positive signal for them for mating,

54:15

they compete very fiercely to gain weight with other

54:17

male elephant seals, and they forage

54:19

at sea in areas which are really

54:21

dangerous, because those are the bits

54:23

which have a bit more food in. But

54:25

they also might contain sharks or killer whales,

54:27

both of which love to eat elephant seals.

54:29

And it seems like the male survival rates

54:31

drop rapidly after they're about eight years of age,

54:34

which is when they're sort of looking for

54:36

mating. So in a very, very rare example of

54:39

something in the animal kingdom not doing well, not

54:41

because of human interaction or interference, it's

54:44

basically they're dying solely because they think it'll

54:46

increase their odds of mating. Because they think the

54:48

bigger the better. Yeah, yeah. So the

54:50

bigger the crying. So they just do absolutely anything they can to go anywhere, it's

54:53

the most dangerous place in the world for them to get some more

54:55

food. Stuff their faces. Yeah. I don't know

54:57

if bigger is sexier in elephant seal

54:59

communities. I know we've established I don't find them attractive. But

55:02

if a male is five times bigger than you,

55:05

I probably wouldn't fancy someone who is 25 foot tall. I

55:08

think there is that in humans. It's called super...

55:11

I forgot what it's called now. It's

55:14

the fact that animals sometimes, the one thing

55:17

they find attractive, if you make it a

55:19

million times more, then they do find it

55:21

way more attractive. Supernatural selection. Something like that,

55:23

yeah. It's like a goose likes an egg,

55:26

but if you give it a volleyball, it

55:28

loves it. Yeah. And

55:31

the idea of being like sometimes

55:33

if you see like a model

55:35

with enormous fake breasts, then humans

55:37

think that that's attractive even though it's unnatural. Right.

55:41

Okay. So, yeah. Supernatural

55:43

selection sounds like falling in love with a ghost.

55:46

Yeah. Yes,

55:49

and that's why natural selection is not going to be kind to

55:51

you in the long term. We

55:53

do need to wrap up. very

56:00

soon yeah um Anna you feel like you want to

56:02

say one more thing I felt like you looked at

56:04

your paper. Oh I glanced down I

56:06

was just going to rant actually about another animal naming

56:08

thing which is that they're renaming all of American

56:10

birds next year uh sorry all

56:13

of American birds that are named after people so

56:15

the American Ornithological Society has decided to

56:17

change the name of all bird species

56:20

named after people as of next year

56:22

because a lot of the ones named after

56:24

people they're quite controversial people were they racist

56:27

were they not it's quite a lot of effort

56:29

finding out whether all of them were or not so

56:31

why not just rename everything and I was all

56:33

pro this I thought it sounded like a really

56:35

good idea until I realized of course the

56:37

Anna's hummingbird ah

56:40

yeah but you did tell that bunka bunka joke earlier so

56:56

okay that is it that is all of our

56:58

facts thank you so much for listening if you

57:00

would like to get in contact with any of

57:03

us about the things that we have said over

57:05

the course of this podcast we can be found

57:07

on our twitter accounts I'm on at Shriberland James

57:09

on Instagram no such thing as James Harkin and

57:12

Andy Andrew Hunter M in

57:14

a range of places and

57:18

uh Anna how can they get uh through

57:20

to us as a group uh you can

57:23

get in touch with the podcast by emailing

57:25

podcast.qi.com or tweeting at no such thing

57:27

yep or you can go to our website

57:29

where you can find all of our previous

57:31

episodes you can find a link to Club

57:33

Fish the secret membership society that we have

57:35

very exciting place lots of extra fun places

57:37

uh that you can find like discord drop

57:39

us a line as a show there's compilations

57:41

all sorts of fun things we're going to

57:44

be back again with another episode next week

57:46

we'll see you all thank you so much

57:48

so goodbye