Oh Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin. Andrew Hunter-Murray and Anna Tashinsky. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that L. Frank Baum...
based one of the witches in The Wizard of Oz on his mother-in-law. I didn't know that he was a 1970s stand-up comedian. It sounds like such a sexist fact that, doesn't it? Yeah. But if we tell you who the mother-in-law... And also which witch it was. And which witch it was. Yeah, that's more important. It's the beautiful and benevolent Glinda. who is the Good Witch of the North. Yeah. Gotcha. You thought it was the green one. No. I don't know what colour she is. I've never seen the film.
Is it black and white? She's famously green. The Wicked one is famously green. Okay. And it also is black and white and then not. It was sort of the introduction of Technicolor to the cinema world, really. Is it? So it's not like follow the black and white road. They didn't do that. No. invented the colour process halfway through the first screening of the film. Yeah. It's very exciting. So quickly. Just randomly. He had this mother-in-law who was called Matilda Elector Jocelyn Gage.
And it turns out that she was a very, very awesome woman, as well as being his mother-in-law. She was one of the three leaders of the women's rights movement in the US. So you might have heard of Susan B. Anthony. There was also Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and there was this lady, Matilda Elector Jocelyn Gage. She was very cool. Yeah. She gave him lots of ideas for the story. In fact, she maybe even gave him the idea of becoming an author.
And she came up with the idea of putting a cyclone in the story, which, spoiler alert, is what sends them to Oz. These are spoiler alerts from a guy who hasn't seen the film. I couldn't work out, and therefore I have a theory on this, how she suggested...
the Cyclone, she died in March 1898, which is just when he started writing. And I wonder if he was having a massive mental block where he just spent years like, I've got this idea, but I've got no idea how to transport them. And then on her deathbed, she said... I've got it. Cyclone. And that was it.
Because she literally died as he was starting the book. So it must have been the first idea that was had. I wonder if she just already half written this book. And then when she died, he picked it up and went, oh, this is good. Because she was also an expert on witches.
Oh, yes, she was. The real kind. Yeah, because when she did a lot of her sort of feminism and all that kind of stuff, people just kept calling her satanic and heretic and stuff like that. And they would call her a witch, which is obviously a way of... demeaning women in those days and as such she decided okay i'm going to study them and she was a real expert on witches yeah right so that's another part that she had that's very cool she um she inspired a term so she she not only was a suffragette
She also was looking at any kind of discrimination that was going on in the States at the time. And she wrote a pamphlet and it was called Women as Inventors. And she basically said, here are all the women who have not been given their credit for all the inventions that they've done.
And years later, the term the Matilda effect is used to describe exactly that. So women who have been brushed aside from history and should get the credit. Now, interestingly, there's a male equivalent to this, which is called the Matthew effect. And the Matthew effect is when a male scientist who is distinguished and older often gets the credit if he has a co-writer who is younger and new to the field. That was invented by a guy called Robert K. Merton.
Interestingly, his wife, Harriet Zuckerman, appears on the Matilda effect list because she provided all the data that led to him inventing the Matthew effect. Can I ask the Matilda effect, if you're talking about a really... awesome woman who is like one of the main leaders of the women's rights movement but you start the fact off about her son-in-law who wrote a children's book is that kind of similar do you guys know what the reverse matilda effect
Okay, so it's where women get loads of extra credit for stuff that they hadn't done. You'd think it was that. Is it this podcast? Wow. That is the reverse though, isn't it? I mean, it is logically the reverse. I'm afraid that's not the thing that's been labeled the reverse. Okay. This was a quite interesting study that was done in Poland last year actually where a...
Polish scientists ran this study where they showed over 800 school children a bunch of presentations about the history of maths and science and STEM stuff. And then as part of it, they mentioned people who'd invented certain mathematical or scientific physics base.
things. But these were made up inventions. They were made up people. And for one group of students, they had a woman be the inventor. For the other group of students, they had a man be the inventor. And it turned out when they asked the students afterwards, when they'd mentioned that a woman was the inventor.
The people just weren't interested in the subject. They were like, well, that sounds like a shit subject. And they didn't want to study it anymore. And so we need to stop talking about women in science in order to get women into science. And it was the girls and boys. They were both like, oh. Women do this. It was the same...
level of coolness of invention they were discussing for both the women and the men? It was the same invention itself. It wasn't like this woman invented a doily and this man invented the space rocket. You'd run some great studies, though. I think a doily is a cool... I've come into contact much more with a doily than a space rocket. A doily has probably avoided more human misery than a space rocket. No, it's more up your street. I agree with that. I can imagine you...
And he's starting your doily X company when you become a billionaire. The world's most revolutionary doily. So... Before he was a writer, L. Frank Baum worked in shops and he did amazing sort of... window displays didn't he really that's what he was famous for at the time didn't he have a magazine how famous can you be for writing a magazine about window displays well i think he did i think in the areas where he had window displays people would copy his ideas and then he
the magazine and he came up with lots of different ways of doing things like he thought that if you had an american flag in your window display you shouldn't have a fan blowing it because that's not the correct way for an American flag to be flown. It should be on the end of a massive stick with someone waving it, like a figure of eight. And he came up with a mechanical system to get a flag to go that way instead of being blown with a fan.
Oh, incredible. So he just came up with loads of amazing innovations that we all know today. And then put it in his magazine. And then he put it in his magazine and said, this is what you should be doing, guys. Stupid fan thing. I didn't know he did the window displays. I thought we just wrote it.
Oh, no. We should say the magazine was called The Show Window, which then became a book called The Art of Decorating Dry Goods, Windows and Interiors, which was almost the last thing he published before The Wizard of Oz, actually. I think it was in the same year, wasn't it? That was 1900.
So it was maybe a year or two before. I wonder if he's got anyone out there who, if they say, what do you think of L. Frank Baum? They go, I prefer his early stuff. He had a shop called Baum's Bazaar, which was a complete disaster because it was...
Lots of tat, basically. It was sort of a, do you call it a bizaster? Very nice. Didn't want to let that go unmarked. You know, I probably would have cut that out, but now that you've made a point of it, I think let's keep that in now. Let's shine a harsh light on that joke. Thank you, Andy. And it was a very novelty-based shop. It was not a dry goods emporium. It was, you know, chocolates and... It was based on Woolworths, wasn't it?
Yeah, any old stuff. Lanterns, paper lanterns, strange glassware. Anyway, he opened it shortly before a very harsh drought decimated the entire region. And the appetite for paper lanterns and amusing glassware just went through the floor. And lots of people were ruined. And I think...
That was the point at which I think his mother-in-law, I think Matilda, was very concerned about his prospects. She didn't originally want her daughter to marry him because he was a bit of a bum. Well, he was just a very bad businessman. Brilliant. Brilliant. See, that's how you do it. That was good. Thank you for the lesson. Say it loudly and then a loud laugh to follow it up.
Yeah, so he was very bad at business and that bazaar, in fact, had to be renamed Gage's Bazaar. And this was another member of his wife's family who helped him out, who I think was Helen Gage, his sister-in-law. So he drove the shop into the ground and his sister-in-law was like, oh my God, poor...
frankies screwed up again and so she bought up all the remaining stock renamed it gage's bizarre and made it a very successful really yeah so good we haven't mentioned his wife maude daughter of matilda um she came into his life
It was a quite quick marriage. They were introduced by Bowne's auntie. He immediately said, I'm going to be marrying you one day. They married a few months later. But she was quite brutal from some of the stories about how she ran the house in certain ways because she sort of did...
everything in the house. Do you mean the donut incident? Yeah, the donut incident. Let's talk about this. It's incredible. Okay, so he comes home one day, Frank, with a box of donuts. Right. But he hasn't consulted her about buying these donuts. She is furious. She's the one.
who decides what food enters the house. She wants only good food in the house. So if he was going to do anything like that, it had to go through her and it was not going to go to waste. So he was going to have to eat all of these donuts. He couldn't manage it by the fourth day. It's very much a Matilda and Bruce Bogtrotters.
situation, isn't it? He has to eat the whole cake. Do you remember that? Oh, yes, yes, exactly. It's that. So by the fourth day, they start going mouldy, and he thinks, I can't eat these anymore. So he sneaks out into the backyard, and he buries them under the ground. Right? She knows something's up, so she goes into the garden, she digs them back up, and she presents them back to him and says, you never buy donuts again.
And he doesn't. Can I ask, how many doughnuts did he buy that he couldn't eat them in four days? Exactly. Well, he had one of those Krispy Kreme full packs, didn't he? There's like a dozen in there. Anna, I've seen you go through those packs. James, we don't need to talk about my history. No, you're right. It's a lot, isn't it? It's the hole in the story. I reckon I could get through 50 in four days. No problem. 50? Yeah. You'd have a happier marriage than he did, clearly.
I love the sheer list of his failures. He's one of the, actually, he is one of these guys who makes you think, if I haven't made it by age X, like, you know, if you haven't started by the age of three, you're not going to be a tennis pro, for example. Baum, until 35, mid-30s, was still just knocking about and doing random. So has he given you hope?
He's given me a lot of hope. He was a chicken breeder. He managed to fail selling oil in America in the 1880s and 90s. He just couldn't hack it. How do you fail a petrol company? Just ridiculous. I thought the saddest story about Frank was, did you read about when he tried to be an actor?
No. I will say for him, he tried so much. The reason I know I'm not him, I'm not going to suddenly be successful at 40, is that he had a new fad every year and he threw himself into it. And his dad bought a bunch of theatres and he decided, I'll be an actor. So he kept on asking producers.
to cast him and eventually one said oh yeah I'll definitely cast you in loads of leading roles but you need to provide all the costumes for all of the possible leading roles you could be cast in so he went home told his mum and dad his dad said no the mum said oh
come on, he's got a job, buy the stuff. So they spent thousands and thousands of dollars buying up all the leading, like, you know, Romeo, Macbeth, all the costumes. He turned up for the theatre troupe. On the first day, the actor who was playing Romeo said, oh, my doublet's a bit broken, can I just...
borrow that costume of yours within four days every single costume had been taken from him and not returned did he play anyone in the play in the end he got some tiny little extra parts that's amazing speaking of costumes by the way obviously a movie The Wizard of Oz yeah yes the cowardly lion costume was very very heavy but the really interesting thing about it is because it was made of real lion fur and because lions have distinct
fur patterns, they had to use the same one all the way through. Because if they wore a different lion, they'd be like, oh, that's just a different lion's costume because it's a different pattern. Wait, as in would a viewer, a casual viewer of the film think, where did the lion go?
Who's this? Who's just a new character they've just introduced? Well, on the other hand, you might say, good work to say, let's try and make it as much continuity as possible. And probably to kill as few lions as you need to. I agree with all of this. I'm sorry.
If you needed to kill one, if I'm going to be totally honest, was the real lion fur completely necessary? And also, because actually I'm thinking about the character of the film, he looks nothing like a lion. They could have just put a yellow carpet on him, couldn't they? And then, oh, we'll just keep using the same yellow carpet. Actually, use a...
second yellow carpet, it doesn't matter. I had no idea that that was an actual lion skin. That was a real lion fur. What about perm? Lions don't have that natural perm. The head bit was separate. The head bit was moulded. But the actual fur bit was real fur. Wow.
Another interesting thing about that is that it went up for auction in 2014. And one way of authenticating it is they looked at the patterns on the movie and they could see it was the same on the costume that they had. So they knew it was. reel and it sold for three million dollars which makes it the third highest priced outfit ever sold from a Hollywood film incredible and the winner is can we guess the others
I think you can guess one of them. Batman's costume with the nipples on from the Clooney version. Very true. Very good, though. Jim Carrey's wig in Dumb and Dumber, the ball haircut. Is it just the Scarecrow and the Tin Man? I'm going to say Ruby Slippers, which surely... they're not from that movie oh marilyn monroe's dress from is it the seven year rich four point six million dollars so far rosebud the slave no you won't get that's not a costume that was an actor in that
Not that you won't know it, but you won't have guessed it. It's Audrey Hepburn's dress from My Fair Lady. Oh, from My Fair Lady? Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. Andy, back to your point very quickly about he was going through lots of different careers and he finally... had enough and he was like I'm going to become a proper writer and he sits down finally to write The Wizard of Oz.
I really like this because you do often wonder if you've written something that is going to change the world. I always wonder, does an author have that feeling? He clearly did. He got to the end of it and he had his pencil that he'd used to write the manuscript with and it was right down to the nub and he immediately... framed that pencil because he knew that he'd written something that was great. It was next to his window display pencil and his exotic chicken pencils.
Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hey, everyone. This week's episode of Fish is sponsored by Monzo. Yes, that's right. So it's like any high street bank, but unlike many other banks.
Monzo has pots. You know this, Andy, because you're with Monzo, aren't you? I certainly am. And I'm looking at my Monzo now, and it's very intuitive. You can set up a pot. Let's say you want to have one for bills, or let's say you're putting aside tax because you know you're going to need it come the end of January.
whatever it is you just put it in a pot and you can name your pots different things you can have little characters for your pots you can date lock them you can put targets on them it's really powerful when it adds up how many pots have you got Andy? I've got lots of pots
I've got three. Look, I'm a fan of personal admin. It makes it fun, all right? Well, here's the thing as well, is that I'm someone who's terrible at that kind of stuff. So they've thought of this. As soon as money hits your account, whatever you have assigned to go percentage-wise from that cash that...
comes in it immediately disappears into the pots and does all of the organizing for you it's very simple and if you search monzo pots you can see what all the fuss is about well yep as andy says and as andy uses do search monzo pots and just to say if you are Thinking of setting up your Monzo current account, you must be 16 plus and a UK resident. T's and C's apply. And on with the show. On with the podcast.
Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everyone. We'd like to let you know that this week we're sponsored by Squarespace. Yep. Squarespace is that all-in-one website platform if you want to suddenly become the biggest thing online. since that video where that person's shouting, Alan, Alan, across a field.
Do you remember that? That was a big thing online. Well, if you want to become the next one of those. You're getting mixed up between a clip from Alan Partridge and a video online of a dog chasing deer where the owner goes, Fenton, Fenton, come back. I'm confusing those two things. Wouldn't that be a great video?
You could make your own website and then make that video, put it on that website and just make money out charging people to see it. Yes, you can because Squarespace has so many amazing tools. So it has ways to sell content like online courses, blogs, videos. even weird ones like the one Adam's talking about. It has design intelligence, so you can use AI technology to make the absolute best website you can. And you too can go and make your website now by going to Squarespace.
for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com forward slash NSTAAF and you'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Yes, do it now. Get those videos out there. The world needs them. Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the journey towards modern weight loss drugs begins with the venom of a gila monster.
Do you mean a gila monster? I do. And that is how I've seen it written down. It's because I don't live in Utah. I've never heard it called a gila monster. We have had this discussion before we came on mic, and I always called it a gila monster, but apparently you've been wrong. No, it's gila. I don't even think you need to do the... Yeah, I don't know where that came from. What are you meant to say? Just heal it around. Wait a minute, wait a minute. It's healing people.
And it's a healer monster. Oh, my God. We blow the shit wide open. MG, you've got to reword the facts. That's terrific. So I read this on a great blog called Astral Codex 10. And it was from a piece about a Zen pic. And it was about this whole class of weight loss drugs.
they come from. They're called GLP-1 drugs. They were invented for diabetes, and then the scientists noticed everyone's losing weight. Human and rat, who we're trying us on, they're all losing weight. The basic thing about these drugs is... And the reason they work for weight loss is that when you eat a meal, your intestine detects that you've eaten and it releases this hormone, which is called glucagon-like peptide 1, GLP-1.
That hormone tells your body you're full and commences operations to sort of deal with it. So, you know, your body will, you know, it tells your pancreas to release insulin, it pushes sugar down and so on. But the problem is... originally you couldn't make a synthetic version of that exact chemical the glp1 because it decays within a minute so if you were going to use that as a drug you would have to inject yourself with it
every hour. You know, it's not an effective way of tricking your body into thinking you're full. But in 1992, scientists found that Gila monster venom... I pulled out of the full Espaniela. Gila monster venom. It has this chemical in it which does a... similar thing it triggers all the processes that GLP-1 does but it lasts two hours and so they started playing around with the structure of that and making a synthetic version of that
And they came up with something called Exenatide, which was sold to treat diabetes. And then other scientists piled in and started, you know, the thing which led to his MPIC, basically. I really like, so it was 1984, Dr. Daniel Drucker. I have a lot of connection to that. I was born in 84. I'm called Daniel. as well. It's really weird, isn't it?
Jesus Christ. I love that he found out this thing about the Gila monster and thought, I need to test it. But they didn't have any of its DNA in the bank. So any that they did wasn't usable. So he had to get in contact with a zoo. He had to go and actually get one in person.
to apply for them to go and find one. He didn't go and get one. Well, actually, it flew to him on a plane, yeah. Yeah, it was brought to him. He'd go in the zoo and sneak one out of his cup. But he sort of talks about how it was very different back then when you were trying to get any of these kind of DNAs.
that you had a theory about. And that's what it was. He said, I think this could be to help diabetes. And they went, fine, that's good enough. We'll go and get you one. It came in a cage with a metal bottom because they're so good at digging Gila monsters that they thought if we put it in any other cage, it'll just...
dig its way out dig its way through the bottom of the plane oh my god imagine if that's what caused a terrible tragedy so then he did this work and then there was a guy called John Eng who synthesized a version so this Daniel Drucker
was working with actual healer monsters and then John Eng came up with this version which was fake. Not fake, but you know what I mean. Synthetic. Yeah, synthetic. And he had never seen a healer monster in his entire... He probably pronounced it Gila monster like I did. He'd never seen one in his...
his whole life at that stage. Also, we should say, obviously, as Epic has become one of the most valuable, remarkable drugs in the world, it does sound like the beginning of a horror film, doesn't it? It was great. We all started inventing this synthetic lizard saliva. And the effects were great at first. And we should also say that Novo Nordisk, who make a Zempick, they say that the Gila Monster study has nothing to do with Zempick. And that it was an important step.
in the making of this kind of drugs, but their work was separate to the deal. Well, actually, I don't know if you know this, but the healer effect, James, is the name for when healer monsters are not given due credit for the inventions that they made. an enormous bank of gila monsters somewhere in denmark being systemically drained of their venom yeah yeah that's not but it did take about 20 years between the gila monster discovery all the way for it to be approved by uh the american
American pharmaceutical companies. Yeah, that's because it was two different. Yeah, it was a long journey. And that, yeah, so that happened April 28th, 2005, which is my birthday. No! That's stunning. Your 21st birthday when you became a man is the... god and here's one more thing just to say like these new drugs that people are taking to make them thinner it gives you this glp1 which helps you not want to eat you can get glp1 naturally
Good news for everyone. But unfortunately, you have to eat basically healthy foods and exercise. It doesn't have to be that healthy. You could literally just eat porridge instead of taking a Zen pic. And it does the same thing.
And that's an exaggeration because it's not nearly as powerful. But I did find it really interesting, the role of fiber. I had no idea what fiber did as an appetite suppressant. So it does the same thing. When you eat fiber, it goes through your digestive system really slowly. You can't really...
digest it so usually the stuff you eat like andy said it triggers the release of this glp which tells your body i'm full don't eat anymore but then it goes away really fast but if you eat loads of fiber you know some brown bread some porridge then that takes ages getting to your colon and
then that triggers way more release of it later on so as a zempick does it will tell you i'm full two hours three hours after you've eaten there's a weird thing about a zempick which is that it works inside the brain
So the anti-diabetic effect happens in your intestine because that's where the GLP-1 is released and that is what triggers the body to slow down its release of sugar, for example, to prevent a big sugar spike. But scientists didn't know for a long time exactly how... as mpick controls the mental sensation of hunger and it shouldn't be possible for it to happen because there's the thing in your body the blood-brain barrier
which is meant to keep your brain just working on nice, clean blood with no other stuff in it. Just stops any big molecules from getting in. And a Zempic, the drug, is a big molecule. So what the hell is going on? And it turns out that if a little bit gets in and that activates a bit of the brain stem, which in turn acts as a kind of transmitter relay station for other bits of the brain. That then makes your brain generate its own GLP-1, because it's not...
It's not only made in the intestine. So that's why you feel less hungry. It's really weird. So there's another thing that I was going to mention off the back of, I wonder if a fibra would do this for you, and I don't think it does. One of the side effects of taking an Ozembic and other weight loss drugs. is a lot of people have reported the stopping of what they call food noise.
and food noise i've never personally had it but it's if you need i've sat next to you while you're eating i have i have outward food noise yeah not in inside food noise and inside food noise is if you can't help but keep eating and keeping
eating it's your head talking to you going we need food we need food right now do you see that place why don't you get some food and it's this thing that people really suffer from when they're trying it's always necessarily like a voice saying it it could be just a feeling exactly they call it the noise and supposedly
Zenpick knocks out the noise as well as suppressing the... But is that just because you feel full and so your brains can stop saying it? I think people who are full still have the noise going, we could probably get a bit more. Yeah, I'm just going to use some more in. I mean, I have that.
the donut Anna come on you can do it it's great that mold off the top and it's still good it is the case that it's not just about when you're full because it stops other cravings I think so it's supposed to be quite good for people who are addicted to other things yes and unfortunately people who are addicted to exercise it seems to stop you from wanting to exercise you don't need to anymore we haven't actually mentioned the real
major player in the ozempic story and that is the great theme tune it has oh you know magic by a band called pilot so that it's oh whoa whoa it's magic you know that one okay okay okay andy doesn't know it well we might not be able to put that in legal reasons but google it if we haven't but they changed it to okay so oh oh oh it's magic they changed it to oh oh oh oh zempic and so
everyone was singing it and they were saying that psychologically they think it worked really well because it's such an upbeat song it makes you feel good but you all at the certain age know that the word that ozempic represents is magic and magic is now in your head and so the lead singer of pilot
had no idea that this was happening. He just started getting messages going, I'm hearing your song everywhere in America. And he was like, well, what's going on? Because they're able to license the song out, no one had to ask him for its use of adverts and rewriting. Sounds like we can use it.
Unfortunately, it'll be owned by a huge multinational music company. That's the issue, yeah. But so he himself is so on board with it that he's even gone back to Abbey Road to record the Ozempic version of the song. Is it possible that all of the songs...
behind a Zen pick is nonsense. And the only way it works is that that theme tune has replaced food noise in people's heads. That could be it. Shall we go on to Gila Monsters? Oh, yeah. I said at the start we were blowing shit wide open. They do... open their bums. to keep cool can they do it can they just with thought or like with muscle movements they don't hold it they don't hold it open they don't have a poseable thumbs down what do you do with a finger they could do each other's
Yeah. Basically, a lot of reptiles keep themselves cool by opening their mouths. Yeah. But they can open the cloacas as well, which will help moisture evaporate and it can cool them by up to three degrees. That is a lot. For Gila monster parties, it must be, are you feeling too hot? No. I think you are. Shut your arsehole, let the dinner table. Because they're found in the deserts of North America, aren't they? They live underground, though.
because it's so hot. They only come out for a few weeks each year. You just see a bum sticking out. But their tail as well, right, is an amazing... When I was reading about them, I thought, that's a cool thing. I wish we could do that as well. What, store your fat in a tail? Yeah, so it means that they only need a few...
meals per year basically and if they're in trouble that's their stock sitting there all the fat in their tail there's another thing they can do and this i'm afraid it's sort of it's at that end of the body uh related to the bum thing they store water in their bladder right and then The phrase I found was they reabsorb it across the bladder epithelium. And what that means is they can have a reverse piss inside themselves back into their system. Isn't that mad?
Can they do that just with thought or do they have to shove their hands up? Squeeze! Okay, it is time for fact number three. That is my fact. My fact this week is that for many years in the 2000s, New Zealand's highest earning sports personality was Tiger Woods' caddy.
It's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? Who's your greatest sports star by brute force of economics? It's this guy who carries stuff around. There's a lot more to it than that. There's so much more. It's an incredible job. Being a caddy. Yeah.
If you don't carry the things around, you do get fired. I'm just saying. That's undoubtedly the main part. I'll give you that. How much are we talking? Well, I very specifically... worded it as personality obviously it's not sports star you know the the 2000s uh you would have had Jonah Lomu you would have had all these characters um I didn't want to call and his name is Steve Williams I didn't want to call him uh very specifically a sports star I would say he's famous
the golfing world. Absolutely. The reason he got so rich is because... caddies have a salary right uh they get paid all year round by their golfers if they're playing the whole year but on top of that when the golfer wins something a percentage of it goes to the caddy now those numbers are sometimes hidden it's often thought to be 10 percent of what they get so if you're winning you know a million
That's a good amount. And he was Tiger Woods' caddy. There was an unprecedented, I think I'm right in saying, James, moment in golf where he won all the majors. He won four at back-to-back. Were there signs on the golf course that it was going to the caddy's head?
turning up with a golden bag and things like this. He had his own caddy. Yeah, I don't really do the carrying part. It's not really for me that. Yeah, I think they're all... quite humble caddies actually having met a few in my life and um i think and because it's historical isn't it it goes back to you guys must have found this it was like a
people in edinburgh or something few hundred years and they used to be kind of general porters in scotland who were the word caddy was applied to just someone it was like a delivery driver kind of thing yeah there's a kind of person who would pick you up something and bring it to your house and they were unionized and stuff like taxi drivers kind of thing and you know if you needed someone to do you a job then you would just get a caddy to do it right yeah
And the thing they seem very keen to emphasize now... which probably people don't know who aren't into golf, is that there is more to it than carrying all the clubs around, even though that's the main part. And I didn't know that they do give lots of advice. I'd actually like to know from James, actually, in reality, on the golf pitch.
Jesus. You know, how much do they do that? Because the idea is with a caddy, you have to know the whole course, like all the bumps and lumps. Are they like a pilot for a ship? You know, you have pilots who know the local terrain and advise how to get out of this particular river. Okay, so if you play normal golf...
with your mates, you don't have a caddy. Okay. It'd be very rare to have a caddy. Would you look like a real tool if you turned up with one? Yeah, you would. I mean, it would be insane. It would be utter, utter insanity. However, if you, like, let's say you go and play in St. Andrews, which is the oldest guy. course, one of the oldest golf courses in the world, probably the most venerable. You turn up...
It's a really important moment in your life because you're a huge golf fan. They will have caddies there who will carry your bags for you and give you lots of tips. And they will really tell you, okay, on this hole, it looks like you should go to the right, but actually it's better if you go to the left, that kind of thing.
And on in the professionals, though, would Tiger Woods have his caddy, you know, give him advice? Yeah. Like, you know, in reality, before the before the round start, your caddy would walk out and walk the whole course. They would make their books, which would tell you where.
all the shots come in from the different yardages they yeah they just the suggestions about which irons to use because you have multiple different ones you have you know it goes even deeper than that like for example in tiger woods's case there was one time when there was a boulder in the way of his
so he hit his ball and it landed behind a boulder and they worked out that the boulder was loose on the ground which meant it was a loose impediment his caddy Sisyphus was able to temporarily remove it just for the moment yeah but no and so
that was his job he had to get down I think what happened there is they got a load of people who were watching to move it it was part actually Tiger Woods had such a large team that it was his team but legally on the rules you can have onlookers come and move an object if it's just sort of resting on the ground
Yeah, exactly. So because it was loose, he was allowed to move it. This Steve Williams, who we're talking about, he used to be the caddy for Raymond Floyd. One of his jobs was when Raymond hit the ball towards the hole, both Raymond and Steve. had to stare at the ball and will it into the hole. That was part of his job. That's good. Well, you might get fired if it doesn't go in and he looks at you and says, you weren't willing it. That was your fault. So, yeah.
it's it's a real it's like when you watch those car races that are off-road where they've got someone sitting there with a little buck telling it's like that rally drivers yeah well so there was a um very famous caddy troop uh in the augusta
national golf course which i guess is the best biggest deal in the world as a golf course one of the biggest deals in the world one of the biggest a big deal yeah uh it's where the masters happened correct america america yes um in georgia yes got it got it and they had a very famous troop
of caddies so it was started in the 1930s 1934 I think and the caddies were all sourced from a local area which was a completely black area and they were all like black kids who were making a bit of extra money by carrying their bags around between 1934 and 1980
I think it was. It was like all black caddies who were sourced from there. I think the first white caddy there was 1983 when golfers started bringing their own, which was very controversial. But the godfather of the Augusta caddies was this guy called Willie.
pappy stokes who started when he was 12 and he ran this caddy school but yeah they said a lot of the golfers at the time said it was completely like down to the caddies that they won there was a champion called fuzzy zeller who was very yeah we all know the champion called fuzzy zealot oh yeah we all know fuzzy and we all know that he was the only person ever to win the masters on his debut
And when he did so, he said it was nothing to do with him. He said he was led around by Jerry Beard, his caddy, like a blind man with a seeing eye dog. Fuzzy and Beard. Is that your takeaway of that? It's all I can remember. Is this true, James? I don't know if you... That's the person who plays golf here. They're known as the 15th Club.
I can understand that because you're only allowed 14 clubs. Right. And there's this great... But you're not allowed to use them for that, are you? Rare circumstances where... They're a bit like the demon in Philip Pullman's Northern... lights you know they're always a different animal um but they're so umbilically tied to the golfer you know there's a real team team thing um there's a golfer right if i'm saying his name wrong i'm sorry ian woosnam correct he was doing extremely well
in 2000, in the Open Championship. He was playing the golf of his life. Wuzzy. Yeah, he was very far ahead. No, Wuzzy. Wuzzy. That is his nickname. Wuzzy. Yeah. Has Fuzzy ever played Wuzzy? And then at this key moment, when he was doing brilliantly, his caddy said to him, there's too many clubs in the bag. And he'd miscounted the number of clubs. And the golfer, Woosnam, had to go up to the judge, umpire.
Man in charge. Rules official. Bingo. And say, I've got 14, I've got 15 clubs. Yeah, he loses a shot for every hole, I think. He was penalised a couple of strokes and he lost his cool.
And it was all the fault of the caddy just not counting how many, because he'd tried two different versions of the same club and then they'd all just gone into the bag. That's terrible. And he was ahead and he would have won big money and then he didn't. And then he was forgiven. Woosnam forgave him, probably through quite gritted teeth.
And then he failed to show up on time for an early tee-off. I think not long after that, I think he got shown the door. Fair. Absolutely fair. They do get fired every now and then. Yeah. There's a guy called Robert Allenby, who's an Australian golfer, and he has fired a couple of caddies, but one of them, he fired them halfway through the round. And so one of the spectators had to come in and carry his bag for the rest. Really? That's got to be a serious infraction.
I think he was a troubled man at the time and they'd had a bit of a set two. Okay. Did the spectator provide the advice? Was he going, hit himself over that way? No, no, a bit higher than you did before. It does sound really scary, like the intensity of some of these moments because of the penalties that you can get. They're fascinated by the rules of golf.
There's a story from that same period with Tiger Woods and with Steve Williams where it's the final day of one of the major tournaments and he's going into the bag to get Tiger Woods a ball. And he's suddenly like, there's way less balls in here. There's only three. three balls in here. There's meant to be six. And what happened was Tiger Woods had been practicing putting in his hotel room and forgot to put three balls back inside. Okay, so that's what he was doing in his hotel room.
So that's Tiger Woods' fault. Tiger Woods' fault, except no, it's Steve's fault. Steve should have checked the balls before they started. Now the game has started. And the issue is, you can't say to the guy next to you, can I borrow one of your balls if he's playing with a different one? You will get a penalty and strokes will be added to your...
to your count. So he's going, got three balls. Don't tell Tiger. It's absolutely fine. Tiger hits the first ball, scuffs it, goes, oh, this is crap, hands it to a kid. Steve goes, I can't take it off the kid. This is live TV. It's going to look so bad. So he doesn't do that. that. Then they go, and then later in the game... It's very rare to have to ask a kid, can I have my ball back?
Yeah, true. And then he hits it off into a spot where I think he wants to reset the ball. So he goes, give me my next ball. Now, Steve knows this is the final ball. So things are going to screw everything over for Tiger Woods if he doesn't land this next shot. I'm so stressed. I know. That's the thing. It's like high octane. It's like Apollo 13. Anyway, it makes the shot and it's fine. But like, you know, you don't really know what's going on. Is that it? Does Apollo 13?
end that abruptly as well. It all works out fine. It's intense. It's so intense. There's one other caddy who got fired that I read about. I don't know if you guys know about him. So first of all, they all have nicknames. apparently which is quite cool like literally every caddy seems to have a nickname like john stovepipe gordon or frank marbleized stokes and there was one called willie cemetery pertit who was dwight eisenhower's caddy oh so his nickname cemetery yeah yeah
So his nickname, Cemetery. So he was fired in the end for being too old and slow, but the way he got... We all get there eventually. James, your days are numbered. But the reason he got his... The reason he got his nickname, it was given to him by Eisenhower and it was because he, by night, was a jazz drummer and he was leaving a gig and he was jumped by this gang with knives who had been sent by his ex-girlfriend who was upset that he dumped her. And he was very...
badly injured. He was sent to hospital. People thought he was dead. He basically woke up in a morgue staring into the eye of a mortician who was about to, you know, cover him and wax or whatever and embalm him because he'd been given the wrong meds and everyone thought he had died. Wow. And so from that day on, he was called dead. Dead Man, until Eisenhower said, I don't like having a caddy who's called Dead Man. Shall we go with Cemetery?
Isn't that a good nickname story? That is good. That's a solid one. I wonder if he's in the Caddy Hall of Fame. He's not. He's not? Oh, man. I had to look into the Caddy Hall of Fame. 130 men and women have been entered into the Hall of Fame. nine men exactly actually 128 men there's two women but one of them isn't a caddy
So it's a lady. So Fanny Sunison, who is a very famous caddy. She was Nick Faldo's caddy for many years. She's the only actual female caddy in there. The other person's called Laura Cohn, and she's who founded the Caddy Hall of Fame. And so she's in there for honorary purposes. Just to get herself in there. Someone else who's in it is George Lucas.
Oh, yes. In the Caddy Hall of Fame. Absolutely. George Lucas started his career as a caddy and he is actually the king of the yardage books that James mentioned, which are the books that now everyone carries around. Actually, now they've been banned.
actually. Have they been fully banned? Like as in in the last maybe six months. I'm sorry, what's the yardage book? It's a thing where a book that was sort of invented by a few individual golfers in the 50s or 60s where they drew up the complete lay of the land, very detailed, all the...
Contours, the distances, the angles and everything. And then this George Lucas guy was like, I'm going to make an official one. Spoiler alert, it actually wasn't the same George Lucas, I don't think. Although I didn't 100% check. It is a different George Lucas. What an incredibly, incredibly... misleading facts.
Jesus. Here we go. I'm going to bring you back. Oh, great. Okay. He's actually more interesting than George Lucas. And they could be the same person because the way he measures all the distances is he goes around or he went around golf courses with a laser and he...
fired lasers at different spots on the golf course and you know the time they took to bounce back told him the distance it took which if that's not a lightsaber yeah I don't know what is well he does insist all the golfers he caddies for will go as they're about to hit with the club, doesn't he? Yeah. Wow. He's wild. What's his nickname? He has a nickname. This is George Lucas. George, not that one. It was something like...
Gorgeous. Oh yeah, gorgeous with a J. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Very nice. Okay. I don't know how I got onto this, but I was trying to find sports where you can bring a friend. Like caddying, I suppose. So, you know, weightlifting. You often have someone to help you with the weights. No. You wouldn't have someone to spot you when you're lifting a big, heavy bar.
They might be able to step in if you get into difficulties or whatever. In professional stuff, do they? I don't know. They might do. They might do, yeah, yeah. Anyway, just the Google, you know, what shows up automatically when you type in sports where you can. It's quite interesting. You've got sports where you can be short. Oh, yeah. Fair few. I didn't look it up. Sports where you can start late. And I thought, originally, I thought that meant like...
at noon or whatever. Actually, it turns out it's sports where you can start. If you want to be the L. Frank Baum of... Exactly. Exactly. Start late. A moment if you just... The gun's fired. Everyone's gone. You're gone. a second I'll start on the next lap yeah yeah and most of those articles I did follow this one it's mostly look even if you're 12 it turns out you can start this sport and be fine at it in life but the one exception does seem to be equestrianism
Yeah, jockeys. So old. Showjumpers are often in their mid-40s. There was another New Zealander called Julie Braum who debuted at the Rio Olympics aged 62. And a lot of the horses are old too. Are they? They're teenagers. In horse years. In horses. They're quite old for a horse. Yeah. Wow. We've spoken to a lot of sports people for our other podcasts that we won't go into. No, I don't want to mention it here. It's embarrassing. It was last year when we did all that.
plug-in but um occasionally like i think shooters tended to be a bit late and occasionally you come up with someone who started when they're at university and stuff like you get rowers who start university and yeah
So it's time to get into it, isn't it? Yeah. Often in the Paralympics, you start later, which is quite hard to decide to do that. That's a slightly weird thing that I wasn't expecting to learn about caddying, which is I assumed that maybe it was an alternative career once you tried to be a golfer.
And then you pivoted into that as a secondary job. But Steve Williams started doing it at six. And a lot of caddies started when they were very, very young. And that was the primary job. Like it's a job. It's a skill. Because the money is so variable depending on whether your Tiger Woods caddy or not, basically. And there have been some controversies. Like there was a golfer some years ago who he won $1.3 million on an event and he paid his caddy $5,000. And that was a real controversy.
That was Jim Furyk, was it? It was Matt Kuchar. Oh, Matt Kuchar, that's right. Matt Kuchar. And there was a little bit of backlash to that at the time. But he said, look, we had an arrangement. He's very happy with it. He's earned five grand a week. Well done him. He's really happy with that. Honestly, still people bring that up to Kucha in interviews and stuff. Yeah.
so they said that it's great because dan was saying you have to pay some of the prize money to them but i think his normal caddy wasn't there so he brought in a new person so they'll pay you this flat sum right so it's not a rule which is like you have to pay them ten percent no no um just on rich sports people and jockeys. You can be super rich and old as a jockey.
And do you know the... Keep talking. So I happened to come across a list of the 50 most well-paid jockeys in the world. Okay. Current. And... Current. And 29 of them are Japanese. Weird. 29 out of the top 50 are Japanese. It's huge in Japan because it's one of the only four sports you can gamble on legally. So they get loads of money. And the top guy, Yutaka Take, is 56. And he's earned a billion dollars.
But I think a lot of that money was when he was a sumo wrestler before he got the Zen pick. You're absolutely correct. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that if 88 elephants balanced on a 50p piece on a parrotfish's beak, the beak would not break. What part is the 50pp playing in this? It feels like an unnecessary intermediary layer. I'll tell you what part it's playing. Pressure depends on area.
And I have to say, and I have to come out and say it at the top, because otherwise someone's going to mention it. I was clicking through some stuff and I ended up reading an article in Scientific American called Fun Facts About Teeth. And yes, I'm a senior QI researcher and it's a long time since I read an article called Fun Facts About X. But it was a good article and it was in this article and it said it's about...
An inch. So if you had a square inch. So I thought 50p is about an inch. Probably one of the old ones. I had the 50p on its side. On its edge, but it's not. No, sorry. No, I think that would break it. Sorry. No, it's 50p laid down flat. Then I've got a big apology to make to my pirate fish. And this is just about... We're going to cut to live to see the experiment in action. Abort! Abort!
Have you factored in the weight of the 50p? Because it's exactly 88 elephants. I haven't. Okay, it's 87.9999 elephants and a 50p piece. Asian or African elephants? Bollocks. Are we talking full-grown males or are we talking newly hatched? Got it. All right, I'm just going to give you the amounts, okay? Let's just take away the stupid metaphor and I'll tell you that one square inch can take 530 tonnes of pressure. You happy? Okay, what's a parrotfish?
So it's a fish. And they have these beaks. So they're the fish you often see on coral reefs gnawing away. And they're quite beautiful. Once you move the elephants out of the way. Yeah, it wasn't a great dive. The reef was covered in elephant dung. It was horrible. why they're dying out yeah um they have they're very beautiful except for their faces i would say and maybe it's just a personal thing i get that a lot
Because they've got these weird beaks, and it looks a little bit like if you've ever seen, what's it called, the sheephead fish, which has almost giant human teeth. But their beaks are made from about 1,000 teeth, arranged in 15 rows, but that have been compressed.
and compressed and compressed and sort of molecular level woven to make them incredibly hard. It's the stiffest biomineral ever found, which of course is not the same as the hardest. It's only the second hardest. What's the difference between stiff and hard? It took me a long time to work that out. Yes, but you did. Harder is if you get a diamond on it.
One of them will scratch the other. That's basically it. That's hardness. Diffness, I think, is more about how bendable it is. So if you try and dent it with your fingernail, it will dent the least out of any, what did you call it, biomineral? Biomineral, yeah, basically just a thing that's made by nature. It's fluorapatite, right? Yes, fluorapatite. And fluorapatite is the same stuff as you get on your teeth if you use fluoride toothpaste.
Really? Your teeth create floripatite, which makes them so strong. I did not know that. Yeah. But I would not be able to, for example, as these fish do, chew coral. No, because most of your teeth are made of dentine and other stuff, but you do get small amounts of fluoropatite in your teeth if you use fluorine. That is very cool. But don't try the elephant trick. Okay, so these parrotfish...
They're very good, in a way, for coral reefs, despite the fact they eat large chunks of coral reef, because the reef gets algae growing all over it, doesn't it?
slightly inhibits the growth and the, you know, the natural functioning of it. So along comes Mr. Parrotfish and just crunch, crunch, crunch. Yeah. Because it wants to eat the algae. Weird thing is the parrotfish don't want to eat the coral. They just want to eat the algae on it. But it's bloody hard to scrape off, isn't it? Yeah. Well, there are loads of...
species some of them just scrape off and some of them do more gouging and they do all kinds of kinds of varieties but they're massive so each adult green humphead parrotfish which is a particular species of parrotfish they're the biggies they can get about a metre and a half long. They can eat five tonnes of reef per year.
It's a lot. It's so much. Yeah. And then they poo it out, we've mentioned before, as sand, basically. Beautiful white sand. Beautiful white sand. They're responsible for so much. They poo out hundreds of pounds per year. A single parrotfish can produce up to 90 kilograms of sand each year. which is enough to fill the most popular parasol holder on Amazon.
at the bottom of a parasol you have a really heavy sort of thing oh yeah but it's not always heavy because otherwise how do you get it to the beach what you do is you bring it to the beach then you fill it with sand and that makes it heavy and stops your parasol from blowing away sorry anyway we are the only producer that Actually, it's quite disappointing to me. One parrotfish would fill that in a year. Well, that's less than I thought.
At first, I thought you were talking about one of those parasols that ladies had in Black and My Fair Lady. Exactly. Yeah. You mean a big one. You mean a big one. I don't think we've said before about parrotfish. One of the other brilliant things about them is that they have two sets of jaws. Okay. Like the alien in Alien. You know, they open the mouth.
Then, uh-oh, there's a little mouth inside. Second one. Okay. Yeah. What are they using it for? What's a word for that? There is a word for that, isn't there? It's pharyngeal teeth. Pharyngeal. Pharyngeal. So I think moray eels have them. Yes. And... A few other things, but they're really rare. If you're diving a wreath with pharyngeal teeth, that's amore. Look at that. James, that's beautiful. Brilliant.
And those are the teeth which grind up the coral and turn it into sand, basically. Yeah, okay, right. So the main teeth just bite off chunks and the pharyngeal teeth are the ones that do the fine milling of the coral, yeah. You mentioned the giant bumphead parrotfish, the big ones. Yeah. And they...
So they fight each other by headbutting, which I think was only filmed recently for the first time. And it's just, it's quite funny to watch because they... they've got quite thin heads like if you look at them face on they're almost two-dimensional so you watch them going after each other and they miss each other about three quarters of the time they just whiz past each other and then spiral back around and then eventually bump into each other it's like jousting
Yes, yeah. Did that happen a lot in Jousting? You just went straight past. I saw some Jousting last summer at a castle. Of course you did. What do you mean, of course you did? You're a Renaissance man. Thank you. Oh, you really flipped that into a compliment. That was amazing. Yeah, no, it was great, but they didn't... Was it not violent?
Oh, it was. Oh, that's why you liked it. Well, I blindfolded myself for the violent bits. No, it wasn't too... That wasn't enough gore. You know, everyone walked away. Okay. What was it? Like, it was a... It was just a... I think it was Heaver Castle.
in Kent beautiful Anne Boleyn's old house and they were just having a sort of medieval fare and there was jousting there was a great hype man dressed as Henry VIII who was doing a lot of crowd work and then they did a good bash each other it was really fun and was it as with the giant bumper parrotfish that the winner got to shag the woman at the end that does explain why they sent us all home
Wow. So that's how that ends. That's how that ends. Yes, yes, it is. Although they all start out, almost all parrotfish start out. As women, don't they? As females. There are a few that are born male known as primary males, but quite rare. And then as they get older, they get sexually mature. And the biggest female in the group has a sex change.
Well, it's one male and then a load of females. So it's a Harim situation. And then one day the male wakes up and finds out, oh, hello, my biggest girlfriend has turned into another bloke who's now challenging me. This is a nightmare scenario.
find amazing about it is that if you've got the harem which they do seem to be referred to as a female and a male but then the male dies another female will know to change sex and how does that happen isn't that unbelievable does she think about it or does she kind of go inside Do some moulding. There is a different kind of parrotfish. So these are not the only fish that get called parrotfish. This is a, I never know how to say it, sitch lid.
I always call them chicklid, but I don't think they are chicklids. That's a word that I always mispronounce. Cichlid is what I... Let's land on that. C-I-C-H-L-I-D. But they are called the parrotfish, and these were invented in the 80s. What? I just find that so weird. They're like sea monkeys. They were a hybrid of two different... Cichlids. Cichlids. And I was on Tropical Fish magazine website, which said it was as improbable as Steve Urkel and Madonna getting together.
That's one for the oldies, isn't it? Who's Steve Urkel? Well, Dan knows who Steve Urkel is. No, I don't actually know what show he was from. I can't remember. But he was like a very annoying sort of nerdy American. Point Dexter sort of. Oh, right. And who's Madonna? laughter laughter
Which is the Virgin Mary, which is why it would be so surprising for her to cop off with Steve Urkel. But they get bred, because they're breedable ones. These are for aquarium nuts, because they're on Tropical Fish magazine. They get bred jellybean parrotfish, which have been soaked in a dye and are...
officially coloured. Some of them have tattoos. So they're soaked in a dye and then permanently they stay that colour? Yeah. Wow. Some of them have tattoos on. You get people who tattoo their fish. It feels bizarrely unnecessary because of all the fish. Parrotfish are famously...
Beautiful patterns and colours. And every one is different. And those are proper pair of fish, not these six. These are the proper pair of fish. Oh, so maybe these ones are a bit more dull and they wanted to be more like the proper ones. So they tattooed them. Not very weird. But yeah. And they get even more colourful when they're pissed off. So they're demanding territory.
They'll get even more attractive. Yeah, vibrant. There's quite a few species of them as well, right? There's between 60 and 90 subspecies of a parrotfish. So when we're talking about one, a thing we're saying might not occur in another subspecies. But they do do that thing that we've mentioned. on the show before as well where they create a mucus bag when they go to sleep.
So it's a sack that they just sleep in overnight. It just looks amazing, doesn't it? It looks incredible. And that means that they sleep so long. They're so lazy. They sleep 10 hours a night. Oh, I imagine. I know. You just need to learn to build your own mucus bubble. I'll be trying. I have been trying, Anna. It's pretty disgusting. We need to clean this room every time you're in it. They do it every night? Yeah. It takes an hour, I think.
The idea is that they do it to stop parasites, right? And the way that they work that out is scientists got a load of them.
uh in a pool or something and when they made their sleeping bags once they'd fallen asleep the scientists sort of very slowly pulled the blankets off them so they didn't have them anymore and then they put parasites in and found who got bitten the most and they got way way more oh that's interesting because there's also a theory that they are using it so that if anyone is trying to pull the blankets off they've got time
to escape rather than just being outright sitting there to be eaten i'm sure there's multiple reasons behind it yeah so it's for big predators and small ones in effect in a way yeah yeah that's what pajamas are for That's great. Your pajamas are covered in metal spikes, aren't they? But no parasites on Andy. No, exactly.
There was a test on the moray eels, actually, an experiment, just while we're on the experiments done on these things. So on the pharyngeal jaws, the cool thing about them for the moray eels is that it means they don't need to feed in water.
Oh, well, they can grab something like a mosquito or something. Kind of, or a little bit of prey outside. But I find this so weird. Basically, it's to do with the mechanics of how you eat. Like all other fish need to be in water to have the mechanics of water so that they can feed. We would find it difficult to eat if we were submerged in water. Do you know what I mean? The mechanic, the physics doesn't work as well.
So the scientists who did this on the eels, they trained the eels. They took five years training seven eels to slither up a ramp, grab a mouthful of fish from outside the water.
And then go back into the water. I don't think there was evidence that they were doing this before, that they were eating outside water, but I think they were trying to show how these drawers worked. What if that knowledge spreads among the eel community and now... They all leave the ocean trying to hunt deer. Again, that's the start of a horror movie, isn't it?
Like beachgoers. Oh, you mean disasters for us? I was thinking disasters for the eels, but you're afraid of the... I just think we shouldn't be teaching animals to come out of the water and bite live prey and go back in. Yeah. Sorry if that makes me old-fashioned. Guy who's seen a jousting match at a castle.
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 Instagram on at Schreiberland. James? Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. And Andy? I'm on at Blue Sky. Oh. I don't know how to... You are at Blue Sky. Oh, gosh. I'm old. I think I'm at Anjunter M on Blue Sky. I'm not sure.
Okay. Nice. Good luck, everyone. Or you can get to us as a group through various different means. Anna, what's the best? Yes, you can email podcast at qi.com or you can tweet at no such thing or you can Instagram. and no such thing as a fish. That's right. If you want to find out anything more about us.
our club fish. You want to find all our previous episodes. You want to just read general stuff about us. You can go to no such thing as a fish.com. All of that stuff is there, but otherwise come back next week. We'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.