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'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter-Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Tashinsky. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that if an eel ends up in a predator's stomach, it can reverse out through its gills. That's pretty amazing. This is Japanese eels, and it's recently found out that they can get swallowed by these sleeper fish, dark sleeper fish, and then they go through the digestive tract, but then...
They are just able to wibble their way back, back out towards the gills and then slink out. I think some slunk out through the mouth and then some were able to slink their way out actually through the slits that were the gills. Yeah, that's amazing. I actually don't really have a...
good idea of fish anatomy, I wouldn't have thought that the gills would be attached to the digestive system. It does sound all hollow, doesn't it? Our gills, as people... Our lungs. Yeah, are sort of connected. You know, there's a bit where the... pipes branch but that's true it's like if you swallow a piece of apple the wrong way it goes down towards your lungs exactly i mean kind of sort of the same way they're coming out of the bit we use for breathing
You'd have to take a few turns, probably. But it is mad. It is insane. And the scientists who did it, I love it, it was a team at Nagasaki University, and they filled the eels with a chemical that meant they could show up on an x-ray. And then, it was really a bit mean, they just introduced the eels to the dark sleeper fish, which were going to be very hungry for them. And one would get swallowed and then they'd just observe. And about a third of the time, the eel escaped.
by this man that's interesting do we think it happens in the wild then i think i think yeah it does it's been i think and they see that some make it halfway out some almost make it out but they get stuck with their heads uh it's not yeah it's not a foolproof process but what a weird thing to be the sleeper fish you eat your lunch and then it's sitting next to you a minute later it does happen a bit in nature doesn't it that things get eaten and then can escape
Yes. I reckon. Like Jonah. Is that a nature? There's a snail. called Tornatellides boeningi that's also found in Japan and it's swallowed by this bird and 5% of them are able to escape out of the bum. Out of the bum? Out of the bum. That's all the way through. That's very impressive, isn't it?
That's a waiting game. Well, on the other hand, you don't have to reverse. You just put your head down and go for it. But then 5% of them can get through and survive for at least one week. And actually, quite often when they come out, if it's a female who's pregnant...
they will give birth straight afterwards and some people as in like it brings on labour yeah wow like eating a curry or something maybe she did it on purpose she was so sick you think it's like in the land snail community they're like oh maybe if we have sex then the baby will come
Yeah, but maybe if we get eaten by a bird it will come. That sounds like that's just the inducing method. Imagine that at hospitals if you had to be swallowed by an animal. Baby needs to come early. I found this great book called Eels by James Prosek.
um right it's one of those classic books that we love where it's just a single subject the whole history of the animal and uh it's pretty fascinating we've spoken about before about how eels they have the call which kind of brings them back to the ocean because they are born in salt water
and they find... uh river water in order to give birth and most animals do the opposite of that salmon do the opposite of that they're so mysterious and we've spoken about this they've never we just never have seen any pregnant eels really or how they give birth but what's fascinating is how strong
that call is so this guy james prosek he has some eels in his house in a tank and he said he woke up one morning and they had busted through the top which was held down with rocks and they were wriggling on the floor just trying to get out reinforced it he put them back in put the lid on and then he came down and they were slamming their heads constructing a rudimentary drill from the stuff in the tank
That was incredible. He said basically some of them even like to the point of killing themselves, but they were smacking their heads so hard to try and get through this thing. Okay, I'm not going to say that that's not true, but that's amazing. It's a horror film. It's in his book and he's like a lead in. I was implying...
There is a thing that when they first realized that there was a homing instinct in birds, one of the experiments they did was they got the birds in a cage and put little sort of ink on their feet and then they would put paper on the floor.
of the cage and then they could see that the birds were trying to go in a certain direction it is amazing because they they will often if there's a bit of damp ground in a field they will make their way out of their pond or whatever bit of fresh water they're in and they'll slither along
and start eating some farmland stuff and come back but when they want to go back to the ocean this is all true james they can stay and wait they just wait and wait until the circumstances are right to get them back to the ocean and then once they need to make that trip once say a storm
has come and the water levels have risen a bit and everything's wet they perform like ninja like abilities so if they get to a hill they roll into a ball and roll down the hill yeah yeah they can climb up walls by braiding themselves along the side of moss walls and It's extraordinary. Did you watch a cartoon? This is James Prosek, Eels. It is incredible. Do you know where has an eel festival, by the way? Ely? Oh, Ely, yeah. Ely. Correct.
Which one? Ely. Well, there we go. Not Eeling, London. It wasn't a trick question. It was actually just an on-the-nose. Because Ely is named after the eels, isn't it? I believe so. But very sadly, the last eel catcher in Ely retired ten years ago. Because they've had this terrible decline in population, mostly due to humans. But, you know, they used to be a staple food in Cambridgeshire. I just find that so bizarre. Like a thousand years ago, throw a rock, you'd hit an eel.
effectively. And the main thing to do now is removing barriers in rivers. Because there are just so many hundreds and thousands of these things. And most of them are out defunct. They're like an old water mill. Yeah. You know, build a barrier across the river because they needed to harness the power. And locks and stuff. Like we've got quite a lot of eel, we've got quite a lot of eel stairs near us. Which would like to go over locks.
I live in the Fens, which is where they used to be all over. You're eel country. Yeah, I'm nearly, yeah. But it's incredibly hard to get an atlas of eel barriers because the researchers looking at it found there are 300 different words which describe obstacles in rivers.
which I find insane. You know, a sluice or a lock or a weir or all of these things. There are hundreds of terms, so you need to map them. But there are groups removing them slowly but surely, which is very cool. I think it's a bit mysterious why they've...
their numbers have declined so rapidly, you know, by 90% in the last 50 years. But they're so sought after now. There are 350 million eels taken from Europe to Asia every year. Is this legal or illegal? All illegal. This is smug eel smuggling. Yes, because... They're very endangered now, and so they're very protected. You're only allowed to take certain ones. I'd love it if they get there, and then they wake up the next morning after having arrived.
All the eels have just migrated back. Eel-shaped holes in all of the buildings. Which are just holes, aren't they? Well, they might go sideways through it or not. Speaking of smuggling, or not speaking... Speaking of smuggling, but you'll see where the connection is. Last year, there was doctors in Vietnam who pulled out a two-foot eel from a man's intestines after he inserted it into his bottom.
Oh, dear. And the problem was not so much putting the eel up there, although that was quite bad, but he'd also shoved a lemon up there so that it couldn't escape. No, I don't believe it. I don't believe this, James. Well, it's true. It's true.
It sounds like he's trying to make a delicious meal inside himself. A squeeze of lemon and then a sprinkle of salt. The man survived even though the eel had started biting through his abdominal cavity. I don't think we can blame the eel a touch for that. No, no. I'm blaming you for raising this and I certainly for one I'm not finding it funny because I'm well aware that in 2013
There was a similar, very serious incident and 33 people, staff at Auckland City Hospital were punished and a few of them sacked for looking at an x-ray unnecessarily of a man who had an eel stuck in the lowest parts of his digestive... you can get fired for looking at an x-ray it was found that they did not need to be looking at the x-ray or his notes oh i can see the notes maybe if it has incriminating down over here speaking up for medical malpractice if as long as it's funny
You have to learn as a doctor that you have to see things you would not normally see. Exactly. What happens if then the next day someone else comes with a niggle up the bum but you don't recognize it? Sorry, I don't know what to do. It was too funny and I wasn't allowed to do it. Do you know where European and American eels come from? Europe and America?
No, the ocean bit where they're born, do you know? Haven't we said on the orders from the Sargasso Sea? Sargasso Sea, but do you know what the Sargasso Sea is? It's in the Atlantic. Is it Bermuda? It's Bermuda. Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no, no. It is within the... Let's head this off at the pass. Is it within the triangle?
Well, the triangle is an undefined border. We don't really know how far the triangle extends. Are we in the triangle now? Technically, yes. I thought it went from Bermuda to the tip of Florida to the tip of South America. I thought it was defined, no? I don't know. I don't really know about this. stuff.
It might be my area of interest. It might be a lumpy triangle. There might be a little bit of flexibility. I heard it on a podcast called The Cryptid Factor. They were very clear about the definitions. Oh, well, I trust them. Great share. Yeah.
theory they're all getting no theory just saying just saying the the mystery of them i can't believe that hasn't been folded in as an extraordinary if they're being called to a yeah let's say a mothership yeah you know metaphorically speaking that's there drawn to a mother ship yeah and they talk about it they say the mystery of them being this calling to the sargasso sea you know they left as as
Glass eggs, basically, is in their look. They get carried in the currents all over the world. They end up in fresh water. They live there up to 100 years. And then... They somehow find their way back to the Sargassus. I suppose that is also true of many, many, many other species. Yeah. That they managed to go back to their original breeding grounds. They are mysterious, aren't they? They are kind of... It's incredible we haven't cracked it, even with all our knowledge.
you know you can all your computers and all of that and all your internet and you still can't do it can you can't crack the eels yeah get onto an eel oh god well done well done let's distract him with that We've mostly been talking about, yeah, European and European eels. But conga eels we have. And they're massive.
And they all hold on to each other. They all go back to the Sargasso Sea in one big line. Yes. Apart from when one line of Congareas accidentally breaks off and goes to the wrong place. That's the European eel, the American eel. No, the conga reels, different spelling, were hunted all over British Isles, particularly in Cornwall in the Isles of Scilly. And I just read in an old book and I can't find it anywhere else. But the way to catch conga reels, you know, sometimes you'll put a stick.
into a river and the eels would wind around it and then you'd pull it up. I think that's what people did. Well, apparently the traditional way to catch them in the Isles of Scilly is you suspend a small boy. upside down in front of the hole in which they live, wait for the eel to wrap itself around him. And these things can be up to three meters long. And then you pull the boy up.
Why does he need to be upside down? I think maybe he wants me to grab them. He will get a headache before too long, this boy. I think they come pretty fast. We don't seem to be concerned about his welfare, so it's fine. He's happy to oblige. He gets some of the jelly deal.
You guys remember, I'm sure I pitched an eel fact about six months ago and it didn't get any traction with you guys. It was because in my local newsagent, they had a Fisherman Monthly magazine and it had a picture on the front of a guy with the largest eel you've ever seen.
incredible yeah but that's not a fact that's the thing you can't just say my fact this week is you get really big eels he'd broken the record for biggest eel caught in britain i can't remember his name now i wrote it down at the time but i've forgotten it and what was the fact it's just like the record for the largest eel
fished in britain have been smashed by this guy but guys honestly it was so it's like an elephant's trunk it was incredible yeah it was a few feet long i think this is maybe because this was this period where all your facts were the most massive kettle in just everything
was an undefinable size you refused to tell us the measurements of it was a trolley big eel anyway i bought that magazine and i think i'm sure there's a fisherman near where i live who's gone absolutely devastated because he trots along to his news agent for the one copy they stock of this magazine
It's not a big rack of them. Oh, he's missed the biggest eel news for centuries. Still living in a fool's paradise. He's done the time, Andy. He owned that edition. I feel like there's an elephant in the room.
given that we're doing a fact about things surviving being eaten. In years to come, people will have forgotten this news story that has been quite big this month of the person who's been eaten by a whale. He was a kayaker, wasn't he? A Venezuelan guy. Did that happen? Because I saw the head...
headline didn't read the article and then saw a debunk and didn't read that article either. It did happen. The video is quite good. How enticing does something have to be before you click on it? I go through a lot of web pages. He got into the world's mouth. So he didn't go through into the... No, no, no. It was a few seconds later. Actually, I heard about this story on a recent episode of... What was the show you were talking about? Cryptid Factor.
They did a really good breakdown of that whole story. Did you go through that bit by bit? They did, yeah. Actually, that was the thing where I saw the headline and just scrolled past it. Very sensible. I saw the weird thing about it. Well, there were two quite sweet things. So they were going on a kayaking trip for this guy's dad's birthday. Initially, the headlines were like caught on camera by his dad. And I thought, oh my God, this...
insensitive fathers filming the whole bloody thing but he did have a kayak mounted camera if that's what anyone else is worried about he wasn't holding the camera rather than saving his boy yeah did you take the piss out of the insensitive dad on your show I defended him because I think that
If you know the eating habits, you'd probably go, he's not going to swallow him. He'll be back in a second. That's a bad defense. And also, he was a distance away. What are you going to do? Swim over and have a word? You just keep filming at that point. You're both fathers.
you'll need a crime reference number from the police. So they need evidence. Take it from me. I mean, I'm not normally on any side of this kind of thing, but I've just been skiing with my three-year-old and the number of times I filmed her falling over as opposed to going and helping her. Yeah. Right, you guys, social...
services are coming for everyone imagine this is all right i'm sure i'll come out with a mouth anytime now so it was mounted on his kayak so the dad was not just holding a camera filming him but i thought the quite interesting thing about human reactions is the dad didn't make a sound when it happened so
Well, he's seen what happens, but he's so shocked. And when the guy was then spat out of the whale's mouth, the dad was like, mate, you're okay. Shit. Don't panic. It's still there. Get back in your kayak. But it's silent as he watches his son gets followed by a whale. Men don't like talking to each other. What do you want?
unless it's in a podcast format even then the only question is is that the new kayak that's just been um i think we want to normalize this and we want to say to guys if you're listening to this if your son is ever eaten by a whale then try and talk about it yeah yeah be a legend have a chat stop the podcast
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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that Sweden's Minister for Equality has a pathological fear of bananas. But all bananas equally. Very nice. Yeah. This is incredible. I mean, it really is clear, isn't it? Well, yes, it is a fear. It was in the newspapers quite recently, especially in Sweden. unsurprisingly that's where it started yeah sweet afraid of not bananas oh yeah herself is a vegetable yes yeah
I suppose so. There was some leaked emails to a tabloid newspaper called Expressen. And they said that this lady, who's called Paulina Brandberg, has a strong allergy to bananas. So we would appreciate it if there were no bananas in the room where she'll be staying. And the big scandal really is that she isn't allergic to bananas.
she's just scared of them yes and she said like they asked her they were like are you really allergic to rely on us and she's like well it's sort of an allergy you could say uh it's something that i got professional help for and then eventually it came out that she was just really hated them. But, I mean, in fairness, you know, it's equally bad. Is it equally bad? Well, it depends how bad your allergy is. Yeah, I don't think this is a big scandal. There have been bigger.
in the world of politics. I know Sweden's politics are changing, but it's still, guys, if this is still what you're concerned with. And you know what? The opposition party, they could have taken advantage of this and maybe brought down the Swedish government. But one of...
One of the opposition social democrats, Teresa Carvalho, said that she also has a fear of bananas. I love that. And on this issue, we stand united against a common enemy. Yeah. That's not plausible. Stop trying to jump on the bandwagon.
There can't be two, you're right. It's quite a rare phobia. I think it's lovely. You know, she can't just... spot a banana and be alarmed by it she can smell bananas or if someone has recently eaten a banana in the room she can truffle that out you know why speaking of truffles it's a bit like my severe hatred of mushrooms yeah isn't it like i can
tell if there's a mushroom in the or someone's eaten mushrooms recently and stuff you don't have a phobia of mushrooms i think i do really actually yeah because it's in i find them really disgusting but also if there's one growing in the corner i'll try and not walk near it kind of it's a stronger it's a stronger version to something which actually is not going to harm you. The Prime Minister backed her as well.
He sort of said, yeah, so like, when he found out it was a phobia. I think she was getting mocked and he said we shouldn't be mocking people for their various little known phobias. Well, it's hard, isn't it? Because loads of people have phobias of things that are quite mainstream.
upstream like heights is that a phobia heights are a bit dangerous spiders some spiders are dangerous you know I would say these are phobias because these are like they're phobias of things that aren't going to harm you a phobia of spiders in this country is totally irrational there is a theory that there's some kind of spider called that i think it's called the six eyed
I can't remember. Wolf spider. It's a bad one. And it can be lethal if it bites a human. And that lives in the plains of Africa, which are the cradle of humanity. So maybe there's something genetic going on there. So that might be where spider fear comes from. Yes, six-eyed sand spider.
and spider there you go and i think the problem like the reason that the prime minister of sweden and the opposition sort of backed her on this is one because it's ridiculous that anyone should care about it but two because it was kind of distracting from the good work that this woman's
The famously unequal country of Sweden. It's not as obscure as you think. It was an issue that was brought up on Loose Women because one of the stars, Charlene White, has a phobia of bananas as well. Oh, come on, all these people suddenly claiming. one person with a banana phobia who is the most ironic person given the name oh can you guess who it is um the guy who voiced banana man no no banana rama the
Oh, the band. I actually checked to see if they were allergic, but they're not. The founder of the Big Yellow Storage Company. Oh, very good, but no. So it's this person's surname is very related to bananas. John Peel. Very good, but no. Okay. Oh, um... Monkey something? Famous types of banana. Oh, Cavendish! The Duke of Cavendish!
Cyclist Mark Cavendish. It's the first Cavendish you think of. The first Cavendish that all of our listeners will be thinking of when they hear that name of the Duke of Cavendish. No, Mark Cavendish. the cyclist. He says even seeing someone eating a banana gives him goosebumps and even thinking about it makes him gag.
That's incredible. Wow. And he said it's the stringy bits on a banana that he really hates. They're not the best bits, for sure. They're not the sweetest parts. Well, he once won a...
bike race in Alanya in Turkey and he was given the world's biggest bunch of bananas as a prize. That's the Godzilla of your fears. And that's why it's bad having one of these niche phobias because it's very hard to, like no one presents you with it like a a bouquet of pigeons at the end of it another person who has a fear of bananas harriet kemsley the comedian the comedian yeah um on another podcast called off menu which i've never heard of you guys
cryptid factor i think the fans yeah well she was on that and she said she hates it when you throw a banana peel into a bin and it doesn't go all the way in so it looks like it's crawling out yeah and i think i can see that actually People have a lot of time to think, don't they? Sorry, but just...
I think it's instinct. I mean, really non-intended, yeah. Did we say that the Cavendish banana is named after the Duke of Cavendish? We'll get emails otherwise. I think we have meant, I think, yeah. I think all of our listeners are very familiar with the Duke of Cavendish, Andy. Fears of banana.
bananas i just the guardian did a bit of digging into this i think off the back of the swedish politician they found a woman with a banana phobia who you know had it pretty strongly like again breaks out in sweat can't bear being around them avoids them in the supermarket that kind of thing Once was on a flight, quite a long haul flight, she woke up in the morning after everyone on the flight had been asleep and everyone around her had been given their mid-morning snack.
A banana. I mean, just absolute nightmare territory. Imagine, you're in a plane. Bananas on a plane. It's basically a motherfucking... I was looking up kind of more common, uncommon phobias. And bananas was a surprising one. I didn't know that it was quite common among the uncommon phobias, but it does seem to be bananas. Cydonglobophobia, which is an intense fear of cotton balls, seems to be another one. Cydonglobophobia.
surely more niche these days. Cotton balls. Are cotton balls still a big part of... I use them every day. Okay, Grandma. You know, Anna has an extremely common accent, but she puts them in her cheeks and it makes her speak this way. Exactly. I've got a lovely glass antique container next to the bath full of cotton balls that I really like.
It doesn't surprise me in the least. Are they useful for washing things? Yeah, I actually do it to... Makeup removal. Like women will be more okay with cotton balls than men. I mean, I have more makeup in the time that you've known me. He's washing food off a child's mouth. cleaning very very young babies bums whenever you wear makeup you basically continue to wear makeup for the next two weeks until it goes off whenever we do a photo to every company
He is. I look more and more like I've got black eyes. But another one is balloons. I need someone with a phobia of balloons. Oh, yeah. Oprah Winfrey.
really yeah she's got fear of balloons she the popping sound reminds her of a gunshot so apparently balloons are not allowed near oprah in the same way bananas are not allowed near this uh Swedish well there was one guy who has a phobia of balloons who had to miss his brother's wedding because his brother had balloons at the wedding and I just thought as his brother are you gonna insist on balloons at your wedding
or let your brother come to your wedding. Good point. I mean, balloons are not a big feature of a wedding unless both parties are nine years old and it's one of those European royal weddings. I do always get balloons at weddings. Every wedding that I've been to, I reckon. Excuse me, James, you're at my wedding. I challenge... to spot a single balloon in there. James brought his own. I floated in on a wicker chair. Stop the wedding! It should have been me! But would you, if the groom had...
said, listen, my brother has an extreme phobia of balloons and can't come if you have the balloons. Would you have gone to the trouble of taking the balloons away? That's such a good point. Dodgy phobias. I just love this. In 2014, a French government minister... He had failed to pay his income tax for three years and explained it was due to administrative phobia.
which also meant he hadn't paid rent on his flat in Paris for three years and he also hadn't declared a company he owned you know what I didn't read about that but I did read about a man in Sweden who got a load of letters saying that he'd been speeding but had a phobia of brown envelopes and he got off.
He said, I thought I hadn't got any warnings because I hadn't read any of my... No. Come on. Well, and then I went on to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and looked if there was any weird phobias on there. And I found someone called Gina Frattini, who was a British... fashion designer
in the 70s. And she also had a brown envelope phobia, according to the ODMB. Really? So I think it is like this thing of, you know, you think it's going to be bad news all the time. Well, it is bad news. It's the tax of writing. You're so scared of it that you just won't open any of the envelopes. I can kind of see where that comes from. You knew they'd arrived, hadn't you? What did you think was in the brown envelope? A couple of other famous names who have phobias. Macaulay Culkin.
After making Home Alone, developed a fovea of leaving the house. Did he? Yeah, he had agoraphobia, and that was because his life... absolutely changed the paparazzi everywhere leaping out of bushes sort of following him in cars he got petrified so he needed to stay home he needed to be away from everyone pretty reasonable now horan from one direction the band petrified phobia of pigeons
And when they're on tour, they have people sweep the area for pigeons if he's going to a venue. You would think he would just carry like a sparrowhawk with him wherever he went. Or a dachshund. Sparrowhawk's better. Sorry, that's more rock and roll. Much more rock and roll. I wasn't thinking about the optics. On agoraphobia, as you mentioned, I think that was the first ever modern recorded phobia, really.
psychologists started talking about um phobias and it was a guy called Westphal who was a psychologist in the 1870s but people were quite obsessed with it in the late 19th century and Westphal described a patient who basically was a fear of anything that doesn't remind them of home so he'd be out
in a big square and he'd have to cling to the buildings on the way around because that reminds you of being like surrounded by your all four walls and then he said to get home if he has to get home and can't cling to the buildings then he'll either follow someone very very closely or he'll acquaint himself with a lady of the night and begin to talk to her until she realises that he's not trying to get any custom. Officer, let me assure you, this is all a...
Simple misunderstanding. Read Freud and he'll understand. Would he go to walk him home? He'd get a number of ladies of the night to walk him home. So he'd go with a chain of ladies. Officer, officer. Me again. It's not an erotic conga, it's... Bye. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that after Chernobyl, nearby children were treated for potential radiation sickness with compulsory hourly drinks of red wine. So, yeah.
I think was sent in originally by Billy Vishen. So thank you, Billy. Chernobyl was in the Soviet Union, now in Ukraine. It was a nuclear reactor. It fell over in 1986. Fell over? You know what I mean. It went badly wrong. Bang. It went bang. It was a huge explosion. And in the wake of it, obviously, lots of radiation, which spread all the way across a big chunk of Europe. Including the UK. Including the UK. And in the local area...
There was a belief that red wine was good for radiation sickness and doctors recommended it. And there were numerous cases of children who were hospitalized, not because of radiation sickness, but because their parents have been giving them red wine on the hour, every hour. It wasn't just around the area.
it was in the whole of the soviet union really so i spoke to my in-laws who were there at the time apparently it was common opinion that alcohol help radiation poisoning and they said that actually most people as opposed to red wine they would drink something called rectified spirit which is 97.2% alcohol which you kind of get by getting normal vodka and then
distilling it and distilling it and distilling it until it's like really really strong wow well the red the red wine connection was there was a talk that went around at the time that uh soviet submarine sailors would have wine with all of their dinner meals while they're down
there and the idea was to clean the system of radiation in the submarines wait so were they actually doing that oh that was a rumor that they did that they were definitely i saw a menu from a submarine a soviet submarine i'm sorry incredible menu really yeah how i didn't i wasn't aware menus. Yeah. As you sit down, do you have anything a bit further away from the reactor, please? I ordered the eel, but it escaped. Wow.
would have a ration of red wine for most dinner meals of most of the week so yeah so rumor went around and was that because of radiation Who knows, but that was what, yeah, according to people who lived in Chernobyl at the time who recounted stories. And of course, we now know that actually it does help. Yes, bizarrely. It seems to have been a study, hasn't there, that sort of proved it. Yeah, a bit. Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2008.
found that something called resveratol, which is an antioxidant found in red wine, may offer protection against radiation. It helps cells. If you've got some cells in a Petri dish, then it helps them against radiation. but it didn't help mice when they tried it on mice. Oh, I thought it did help some of the mice. No, there was something called acetyl resveraterol, which is like the previous thing that I tried to pronounce, but has got acetyl at the start of it, and that does help.
mice right okay but the thing that you get in red wine on its own doesn't and also as they said it was a really funny thing to report because journalism is mad every headline read wine can be like the telegraph headline literally was red wine can protect against radiation scientists may soon recommend that it is best you start drinking heavily if exposed all of them saying it will protect you the scientists who did this study it was very clear
He said that the dosage you would need to get enough to help you with any kind of radiation sickness would be 720 bottles of wine. Yeah. So... Right. It's pretty amazing all the stuff that happened just after Chernobyl had the moment where everyone in the government was... trying to downplay it.
within the soviet union trying to say it's not as bad as it seems so i read this amazing article by a lady called natalia chorikova um who spoke about being there and what it was like and all the things that were being done uh she was saying that experts were going up onto tv
just saying you know what actually small doses of radiation are really beneficial we found in rat health and so actually this is like it's like the study saying yeah wow so this is not actually going to be too bad for you like that happened in the us as well after um the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were 132 news items in the New York Times about the bombings and not a single one mentioned anything about the radiation. And there were 15 articles in the 10 months after the blast.
that mentioned radiation at all and they all said there are some medical and biological benefits to be gained from radiation. And the other thing is Oppenheimer said there is every reason to believe that there was no appreciable radioactivity on the ground in Hiroshima.
So he was just like, oh, no, it's all fine. Yeah, no, we just blew them up. Gosh. At Chernobyl, when it happened, they flew over in helicopters. They dropped 5,000 tons of sand and lead and clay on top of the fire to snuff it out, basically, to stop.
The rest of it, because only a small amount of radioactive material in Chernobyl actually... uh was in this explosion and so the the impetus was to put out that fire which they managed to do because if that if the rest of it had gone up europe might have become uninhabitable basically um yeah and it worked i mean what they you know it worked eventually although i didn't realize
that the dumping in the first three days was almost completely ineffectual, the sand and boron. So they dumped lots of sand to try and put out the fires and the boron was to counteract the radioactivity. But I read the opening in the roof.
where they were trying to get it was really small and basically all the sand missed it at first. And also when you dump sand, you picture it going down in a big lump. I hadn't thought about it, but when you dump sand, it all like scatters out in the air and sort of ends up floating down. They should have put more water in it. Should have made...
Wet sand. Or big hourglass. I'm sorry to have some creative thinking here, but you know, that funnels it, doesn't it? Oh, you mean the top half of an hourglass? Yeah, I wouldn't have the whole hourglass. It just goes up and down. Or a gigantic sandcastle bucket where you just lower the sand on top.
and just build a lot of good solutions. The interesting thing about the hourglass is you can have as big an hourglass as you want, but the little funnel bit has to be the same size because it has to be the size of a grain of sand. So actually, you're only going to get a tiny trickle. That's a good point. It will take a while. Sitting in that helicopter, day nine. Andy, are we sure about this?
um so then what and then obviously you've got to cover this thing over so they built what they call a sarcophagus like this massive steel and concrete structure to cover the reactor the what's left of the reactor and i find this amazing the crane operators who put that sarcophagus in place Did so without ever seeing what they were doing. What do you mean? Riddle me that. Okay. Okay. So they're in a crane next to this thing that's happening. Yep. They were given blindfolds because...
they weren't allowed to know where it was and they got led away. Any advance on that? Not bad, not bad. The secrecy, official secrecy. um grave was it where they blindfolded everyone and i feel like it was genghis khan yeah or attila yeah yeah um it was night time oh that's good that's actually the
Did they just use a pencil? Yeah. What it was is they were inside lead-lined cabins because the radioactivity when this was being lowered was... more well known about and it was very high so they were following instructions over the radio they were basically doing pin the
sarcophagus on the reactor. Wow. They were getting instructions from people who were observing from a long distance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they just were doing it blind. Left, left. No, my left! No, my left! Okay, we're going to need another sarcophagus now. Well, they did put a second one on in the end.
didn't they they did in fact this is something we talked about on no six things the news our short-lived tv show oh yeah yeah um when because i think it was around that time when they put a new big bit of concrete over it and it was like the biggest dome that had ever been created is it concrete i thought it was
one of them was steel right because I feel like the first one was concrete and that got dilapidated and then they have now made this steel dome which I think is going to last a hundred years ish it still feels like you're gonna have to set an alarm for a hundred years time when you've all forgotten about it isn't it basically yeah because it basically is chernobyl turned into basically a giant russian doll
Oh. It's just bigger and bigger. Yeah. Massive Ukrainian doll, we should say. Yeah, Ukrainian doll. You can now, given that we're talking about alcohol at Chernobyl. you can get a drink called Atomic. And I've ordered some of this. I love this. It's harvested from apples from abandoned orchards in the local area, all of which are now producing apples, which are...
you know, very low in radiation. It's completely safe for consumption. And it goes to funding local bits of Ukraine, which have been, you know, severely hammered not only by... the nuclear reactor going off, but also by the war. And it's still being made and distributed, I believe. That's good. The thing is, you don't drink vodka, so...
I'm going to try. But good on you. If it's made of apples, it might be more like schnapps. Exactly. I think it is, actually. I think it's basically schnapps. Is it an apple sour? yeah it's amazing um the fallout how far it did travel like they have found a little layer of radioactive materials at the bottom of Loch Ness for example which has come here we go hey listen i can't did the beetles fight by any chance they were in a yellow submarine on the menu each night
But no, do you know what's interesting? Talking earlier about the sort of the experts coming on and trying to downplay it. As a result, people sort of started thinking, actually, this might not be true. And according to Natalia, whose article I read about the experience of living there at the time, she said.
everyone started experiencing radiophobia like her grandmother used to put iodine in her meals uh just to make sure that yeah yeah um then also parents were just if they couldn't get out from where they were we're just putting their kids onto trains with their names
And this is my name. Please look after me. And just saying, go. And they sent them out further away and further away. Because these weren't people in the exclusion zone. Because the exclusion zone was completely evacuated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People who were just close enough that they thought, I'm really scared now. Yeah, it just spread around. It was. Everyone.
A lot of people in the UK were scared as well. It's in all the newspapers. I probably would have been quite scared. I got one of the letters that was sent out to people living in the local area at the time. It's really interesting, the phrasing, because they're trying to persuade people...
to take some precautions, but also trying to say, it's all fine. So the letter begins, dear comrades, positive, the result of detailed analysis showed that living and working in your village will cause no harm to adults or children. Great news. And then it said, we've got a few tips. Do not...
eat berries and mushrooms gathered this year children should not enter the forest limit fresh greens remove topsoil from the garden and bury it in specially prepared graves far from the village but apart from that I think mushrooms are particularly bad, aren't they? Because they sort of get the nutrients from the soil and they can't really... Now. Is that not true? Is this where your mushroom thing comes from, James? Oh, maybe. You look at a mushroom and you see radiation.
You were alive at the time. It was in the news. It's true. There might have been a triggering incident. Could have been. That's usually the case, isn't it? That's what they all say, that these people who are scared of bananas must have had some terrible bananas. There was a woman who was electrocuted while... Looking at a bowl of bananas. Sorry, it's not funny. It's not funny. Got an electric shock. Not electrocuted. Electrified. Well, she wasn't...
She didn't convert to run-on electricity. It's a word we haven't worked out yet. Have you guys heard about this? Many things about the Samosali. They're the people who chose to return. So about 1,200 people after they were evacuated decided...
you know what my home's chenovel or the surrounding area i'm going back and they went back in the couple of years that followed wow what and like two two three years after like some of them went back months after a lot of them did and there are about 200 of them left and it's fascinating because there's
spread across about 164 villages. So there were just over one person per village. And they live extraordinary lives. I was reading an interview with one called Ivan, who was remembering the time and said that, you know, they weren't really scared.
going and handing alcohol to everyone there because they all knew it would cure them. And he lives in a village with two other women. The journalist said, do you ever see them? And he said, no, we almost never socialize. I'm really sorry to say this, but sitcom?
I know I say it all the time when something like this terrible thing happens. But you think this is the one? I mean, one guy and two women living in a village on their own and they never like to speak to each other. It's a recipe for comedy. Did you see bio nerd 23?
What's that? She's someone who had a YouTube channel and she made over 60 videos of her going in the exclusion zone. And she would do things like pick apples off a tree and take a bite into them. But she was also a scientist. And so she would show you that it was safe. But she hasn't posted. I think in about five years now.
And she never gave her name and no one really knows who she is. So we don't know what's happened to her. But she's a legit sort of YouTuber from back in the day. A legit YouTuber? What is a legit YouTuber? Well, she was a scientist who was trying to show you that it's changed. Yeah, legit. Because a legit YouTuber.
is just someone who has a camera on their phone. There it is. Everyone apart from you. There are a lot of dogs around Chernobyl today and they're genetically distinct from dogs that are just about 10 or 20 miles away.
Is that just they've mated with each other, they've got their own clan, and so they've become... It honestly is that. It's just they've kept themselves to themselves, and the other dogs have kept themselves to themselves, and they've lived apart for long enough that they have genetic markers that are different between the two dogs now.
wow that's incredible they're quite sweet because they're basically survivors of the cull aren't they when one of the less well all the jobs are quite unpleasant after it but a specific police squad were sent in to kill all the pets that were left in Chernobyl so that they didn't go and spread And the idea is perhaps there was something about them that made them able to survive the cull. And that's like a slightly genetic difference that has then, you know, continued.
Ability to hide under a sofa. But that's the same. All the frogs around there are now black. And this is very weird. It's because initially slightly darker frogs were slightly likelier to survive the radiation. And this is how long ago? Nearly 40 years now, which is 10 to 15 frog generations. So they have observed microevolution even at this time and darker ones in the... In the exclusion zone, the frogs are all black now. I've read recently that...
grey squirrels are turning black. Is that so? We've got black squirrels around us and I always wonder what the hell they're doing there. Well, apparently they're more likely to survive if they're dark because it means they can hide. What do they blend in? That's a bit...
It's depressing, isn't it? I read that in a study this week. And actually, I just read the headline. I haven't read the study yet. But hang on, concrete is grey. I would have thought grey squirrel or grey concrete is perfect for them. Yeah, you would think so. And then you'll come, but you get run over. Black squirrel used to stand out.
And is that why, do they want to stand out? I really wish I'd read this article. It feels like it would have helped a lot. Let's just speculate wildly, isn't this what Dan's other podcast is? Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the song Take Me Home Country Roads was written by three people who had never been to West Virginia.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game was written by two people who'd never been to a ball game. And the Pina Colada song was written by one person who had never drunk one. Lovely. A lot of this makes sense. I mean, the reason you want to be taken to a ball game, because you've never been to one. Oh, that's true. That holds together, doesn't it? But on the other hand, take me home to West Virginia. That's tough. So that famously is a John Denver song written by three people. Bill Danoff.
Taffy Nivert and John Denver. The first two were in a band before, and Danoff wrote that song, Afternoon Delight, if you know that. Skyrock is in flight. Yeah, exactly. If you've seen Anchorman, you'll know that movie. Sorry, you'll know that song.
but yeah so they were they were riding around in their car on clopper road in montgomery county maryland and they had an idea for this song um but it didn't scan home clopper road yeah it didn't scan and they were they were writing the lyrics one night and john denver happened to come over to their house having busted his thumb and gone to emergency hospital surgery
He was sitting with them in their house early in the morning. They'd planned to sell it to Johnny Cash. And he started hearing the song. He thought, this is incredible. And they stayed up all night writing the song. And because none of them had been to West Virginia, they got an encyclopedia down and they had to look up all the details.
in order to make the lyrics work. Is the rest of the song, does it show an encyclopedic knowledge of West Virginia? Population! 384,000! I heard that they basically... liked the scanning of Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenador River and stuff like that. They like these phrases. And that's kind of why they went for West Virginia. Because those are the famous bits. If you just do the main population centre, there's probably going to be less romantic.
Yeah, but also they were going to use Massachusetts because it's got four syllables as well. Just looking for something with four syllables in it. Right, West Virginia. Yeah, yeah. What about this ballgame thing? Oh, the ballgame? well ball game uh that was written in 1908 and that was written by a guy called jack norworth and he wrote the lyrics and he brought the song the lyrics to this guy called albert von tilzer and he put it to the tune that we now know it as both of them had never been
to a game before. They would only go one of them 32 years later after writing the song and then the other 20 years later after writing the song. But it became popular because it was an incredible announcer for the Chicago White Sox. He would announce their games called
Harry Carey, who used to sing it. We should just say that this is, if you go to a baseball game, they play it at every baseball game in America. So that's why it's kind of famous. It's massive. And they play it at the same point as well, during the seventh innings. I don't think I know it.
Is it like the equivalent of like... I'm thinking British people wouldn't know it. I don't know. Take me out to the ball game. No. Wow, really? British people would not know that. It's just in so many American movies and... Is it the equivalent of the referee's a wanker?
That was their follow-up, interestingly. That was actually written by a man who had never masturbated. A lot of people look back on this song now because most people don't know the lyrics to the song. Certainly the first verse. They just know, take me up. They know the main chorus. his song.
But it's pushed as a really progressive song for women at the time. And this was a result of he based it on, he was having an affair at the time with two vaudeville characters. His main girlfriend was someone called Trixie Fraganza, who's also... a bit sorry Trixie but not a real name before you say so she was an outspoken suffragist as well as a vaudeville sounds like a suffragist name doesn't it Trixie Fraganza but she had her most famous act
was a striptease where every time it looked like she was going to take off an item of clothing, she did, but you never saw anything because there was always more clothing underneath. She would just keep going and there'd be more and more and more clothes. She's covered in layers of suffragist pamphlets.
Yes, but it's... pushed as a really progressive song for women at the time and this was a result of him basing it on Trixie so the lyrics basically say she was baseball mad this was a time 1908 where women weren't going to baseball and it was so it was a real push it was good Go, Trixie. Aggressive. I won't hear a word against her. Okay, what was the last one? Pina Colada. Yeah. I love this. Yeah, well, do you want to take over, Andy? Well, so Rupert Holmes from Northwich in Cheshire.
Really? Yeah. Who wrote the Pina Colada song? He wrote the Pina Colada song. Lovely part of the world. Is it? I've never been. No. It now has a Pina Colada festival every year. it does and he had never had one and also it wasn't meant to be pina colada in the song initially when he was writing it it was Humphrey Bogart yeah
If you like Humphrey Bogart. If you like Humphrey Bogart. Yeah, you would have to say Humphrey Bogart. No, I think you can go, if you like Humphrey Bogart. No, guys, if you like Humphrey Bogart. That's easy. so yeah he just thought what is a nice sounding drink he had never had it and the sales were terrible of the song at first despite the song being mega popular so it's a great it's a brilliant song it's about this guy who's of his lady.
And he posts... Are you going to spoil a pina colada, son, now? I think I am, actually. He reads an advert in the newspaper. If you're halfway through listening to the pina colada, son, just turn off now. He reads this advert in the newspaper saying, if you like pina colada and get it caught... in the rain uh if you blah blah blah blah then you know let's get together and then he turns up and um it's his wife they realize they were they did love each other they they are compatible but
Anyway, whatever. What a lovely story. And the thing is, come with me and escape. And the song is called Escape. And everyone was listening on the radio. The radio fans were going nuts for it. DJs were playing it all the time. But no one was buying it because they could not remember the name of the song. Oh, my God. It was, what's that song? Oh, you know, the Pina Colada song. And then his record label. But how unhelpful were Shopkeepers in those days?
What was the song about Pina Colada? Where they're like, lips are sealed. No, never heard of that. And his record label put on escape brackets, the Pina Colada song. I just love the idea of him saying, unless you... say the exact correct name, you're not going to get it. A lot of record shots were staffed by Rumpelstiltskin in those days. But the record label added those brackets, literally escape brackets, the Pina Colada song, and it went quadruple platinum. Really?
nuts yeah yeah um on uh i sort of songs that don't befit their writers which i suppose is the topic of this a hard one to research but the famous one really is the Barry Manilow song, I Write the Songs, which he didn't write. It was actually written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. Wow. Which I hadn't realised. And Manilow did say at the time that he knew that he would be in trouble as soon as his...
producer handed it to him and he said look I know that I'm going to get in shit for this because I didn't write it but have you ever heard the Barry Manilow song I really do write the songs no it's really good I love a song sequel it's it's so good so it's a spoof basically
to all his critics who were saying, but you didn't write, I write the songs. And it's a manual for how to write a song. So it has lyrics like you start off with the verse and that's the part that tells you what the song's going to be about. And you can talk about dope or death. but love is probably the best it's better than this the actual lyrics it does sound like they have used an encyclopedia entry for that one you know the thing with i write the songs he didn't want to sing it
because he wanted to write his own songs. And he was presented with it by his producer. And it's the singer of the song, Is the Spirit of Music. It's actually from the perspective of music itself. I write the songs, right? Like, I'm the inspiration of your channel. But when he read the lyrics, he thought, this just sounds like me, Barry Manilow, singing I Write the Songs, and that's what people interpret it as. So I don't want to do that. And Bruce Johnson said...
No, this is God narrating the song. And it's going to come as much better if you're speaking as God. He really didn't want to sing it until he was strong-armed into it by his producer. And then it went to number one. I think he quite enjoyed it. As in, I think now, like doing that piss take that ends in the climax, sometimes I really...
do write the songs and he does refer to it. I feel like he's taken it quite well. You could have got quite pissed off about that tension. Not like Frank Sinatra actually did a version, which I didn't know. And he insisted on changing the lyrics to I sing the songs, which I think is a bit of a cop out. Yeah, it is. Do you guys know the song Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Love it. Cyndi Lauper. Well, she didn't write it. It was written by a man called Robert Hazard.
And the amazing thing is not only did he write it, he also sang it. And he sang the same lyrics, more or less. They're slightly different, but they're more or less the same. But when you listen to them, how he sang them, it's got a really different meaning. I bet. So if you think about it, my daddy said, what are you going to do with your life?
you're not the fortunate one girls just want to have fun what he's saying is i'm not gonna care what i'm doing my life i'm going out and i'm going to sleep with a load of women because they just want to have fun ah yeah fair enough yeah yeah yeah but it's a different song it's a different tone isn't it yeah
Yeah, definitely. I think I'm Every Woman was also largely written by a man. Was it? Yeah. What do you mean largely written? Like he wrote I'm Every Man. Someone had to do the W-O. I think it was co-written, but he wrote most of the lyrics. Really? Yeah, yeah.
I do know that respect R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. R-E-S-P-E And a civil rights anthem. But that was originally written about a man saying, my wife's got to respect me when I come home tired from work after a long old day. And yeah. Wow. She's reclaimed it. One little tweak.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite one's always been that the song It Wasn't Me by Shaggy. 15 years after the song was released, he revealed that it was in fact him. He was the cheater in the song. Because it's about someone cheating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually used legally now as the shaggy defense. It's where you've got...
irrefutable evidence that you did something and you just say, no, I didn't do it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The shaggy defense. The toddler defense. It's a bad defense. It's a Trump defense. Look at this, yeah. Toto. You can guess what I'm about to say about them. Africa. They've never been to Africa. This is David Page who wrote... I was reading about...
I basically thought, I bet Toto had never been to Africa. And I looked at it and they hadn't when they wrote it. And the guy who wrote it was a member of the band called David Page. And he sounds quite... arrogant he said he was humming the melody and then the words came to him and he thought to himself hang on i'm a very talented songwriter but even i'm not this talented a higher power is writing through me that god again that bloody
Thank God he gets everywhere. And he used descriptions that he'd read in National Geographic. And I think he'd read a biography of Dr. Livingston to get his Africa... So bang up to the minute.
Very latest news out of the continent. He's basically been, I think we can say. Are there any really incongruous lyrics in the song? I can't remember how it goes. There are a few. I hear the rains down in Africa. Is that it? Yeah. The Serengeti is in the wrong place. I can't remember what the lyric is. Like something right.
The mountain rises over the... Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti, I think, which isn't... It's not too far away, is it? Close enough. It's all Africa. Yeah, okay, got it. He did admit... that he hadn't been. And then he went in the late 1990s. So he wrote it in 1982. Then they toured in South Africa. And apparently, he said, when he was touring in South Africa, all these South Africans ran up to him and said, wow, so when were you in Africa? And when he said he wasn't...
they said, but you described it so perfectly. The way that the pyramids reflect the beauties of Johannesburg. It's incredible. The other Toto. Sorry, I've just got one more thing about the other Toto. Toto the dog. Wizard of Oz.
What's the famous song? We're off to see the wizard. Oh, sorry. Somewhere over the rainbow. Oh my god, the author had never seen a rainbow. I shouldn't have picked a film which is banger after banger after banger. Somewhere over the rainbow is the song I'm thinking of. There were concerns about... that song. Can you guess why?
So it's an ecosystem based on selling sheet music. Okay. Studio executives were very nervous about this song. Is it because it's a set, it's very short? No. It's because of the way the notes muck around. There's an octave leap. Somewhere.
And it's really, you know, it's hard for amateur singers to sing that well. And the studio bosses were like, no one's going to buy the sheet music. This is junk. Change it, you know. Because you can't sing along to it easily. Pretty much. Yeah. And so therefore that would, you know, damage their margins.
Oh, interesting. I think I should shout out to our colleague, James Rawson, who I appeal to for this fact. And he just really wants to air something that's annoyed him for years, which is that Alicia Keys... Debut album, Songs in A Minor, which was a great album. Where's this going? You might remember. Are not songs. They're all in A Minor. It's fine. Yeah, there's only, well, the internet says there's only one.
song in a minor and i wasted quite a lot of time i'm not very good at the piano putting spotify on and then working out what key they're all in and i think there are two songs in a minor on it but it's still not all of the songs it's only two out of 16. So Alicia, that's great. Sort yourself out. And then I learned you have a son called Egypt, but he has been to Egypt. But in fairness, she's called Alicia Keys. So obviously going to be in different keys.
Brilliant. That's a good point. She's pulled it back. Here's an interesting thing. The song Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers is unfinished. Is it? Yeah. Really? Because he just goes, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. And I've never got to the end of that bit. That's the bit. He got to the recording booth with the song Unfinished.
And he just improvised. I know, I know, I know, I know. And he's like, I'll do this later. And walked out the booth so it sounded like a fade. Is that true? Yeah. That's really funny. Well, thinking it'll come to me in the moment, it's fine. Yeah. That's great. At the end, if you listen long enough, he goes, no, I don't know.
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 be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram, on at Schreiberland, Andy. Who's going at? Andrew Hunter M. James? I am on the artist formerly known as Twitter, at James Harkin. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna?
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