Little Fish: Gary Scrabble

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自動でお風呂を沸かします Welcome to another episode of Little Fish, the show when we look at your amazing facts that you've been sending to podcast at qi.com. Andy has whistled them away to the very, very cream of the crop, and then we pick out the plums, mix all our metaphors, and just chat about facts. Uh so who's got a fact? I've got one to kick off. Yeah. This is a fun one. This comes from Daniel Hamer and it's about the island of uh Kiribati. Island or islands? It's islands. The islands. Apologies.

It's starting with an apology now. I'm sorry to the people on the other islands of Kiribati apart from the big one, which is the one I was thinking of. Okay. Daniel's fact is the word for dog in Kiribati is Kamea. Right. Okay. And that is because it's a bastardization of English derived from the time dogs were introduced to the English and locals heard the English calling to the dogs Come here.

Camea. Really? Come off it. Um that's a different breed. Well I just I I looked up the language a little bit and it's called Gilbertese as well. Because it's the Gilbert Islands, but it's Kiribati is how you write it, Gilbert. It's so strange, yeah they were called Les Isles Guilbert and Kiribati kind of

Derived from Gilbert Kiribati so you can sort of see how it happens. But previously they were known to Western visitors as the Kingsmill Islands after the bread. After the bread. Oh wow. Very nice. Uh I got one here. Go on, Dad. Uh this was sent in by Arth Wallapott. uh who has added in brackets an internet name. Thank you for the clarification, Arthwallopot, who says that there is a species of Chinese ground spider whose technical name is Hot wheels of Sisyphus.

Okay, so Hot Wheels as in the uh little toy cars. Yeah. Is it? Yeah, and Sisyphus as in the the Greek guy who pushed the boulder up there. Exactly, yeah. And uh yeah, it was discovered in China and um just the nature of how the spider moved reminded them of Hot Wheels, basically. And so they gave them this name. I wonder which will stand the test of time for longer. The story of Sisyphus, the ancient Two thousand year old tale of the guy roll being punished.

For all eternity or or the Hot Wheels brand. Are Hot Wheels the ones where you pull them backwards ten times and then let go and they go really fast? Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. They they probably are within the Hot Wheels world. They are also just mi small cars and you get those big

Yeah, exactly. Imagine if Sisyphus had to push his boulder round the loop the loop. Nightmare. Nightmare. That was probably level two if he ever got to it, which he never did. Because I think that's worse in a way, because when you get to the top of the loop the loop, you have this amazingly satisfying moment where you can roll all the way back.

back down the other side. Yeah. But if he never quite reached there it's even worse than I've been to the hill where he allegedly pushed the boulder. Have you? Yeah, it's in Greece. And what do you think? Could you have done it? No, I couldn't. It's not that it's not that high. It's just outside of A city whose name I can't remember. Near the Peloponnese. Oh quite right.

Um and it's as you're in the town you can see this big hill and they the locals say that's where he pushed it. Did you say allegedly because Sisyphus is Famously litigus. Um he'll sue you and then tomorrow he'll sue you again. I suppose I didn't mean allegedly, I meant according to legend. According to leg legendarily, yeah. Um hey, this is interesting. Hot wheels. Do you know who invented Hot Wheels? Someone who's famous for making maxi sized cars. Like No. Right. Someone who's famous for toys.

Oh, okay okay. We can get this. A toy a famous toy person. Uh no Rubek. Lovely. I'm excited to know that you know who the inventor of Rubik Cubes are as your first go to. Well how many other toymakers do you I don't know, Edward Yo yo. I don't what's the Uh Gary Scrabble. What's her name? Millissa who did Barbie? There we go. There we go. She was called Ruth Handler. Oh Ruth Handler. Hot Wheels is invented by her husband, Isidore Elliott Handler.

He created Hot Wheels, he created creepy crawlers, he created Chatty Kathy. These were all massive in their day. Sure. Yeah. They were. Yeah, absolutely. And uh I'm sure someone is right now stripmining the intellectual property to try and desperately turn out another Barbie level movie. Yes. Chatty Cathy. It's happening. Chatty Cathy was one of the pioneers of pulling back a string and having a voice come out. Yeah. This is a funny idea, that's all. Right. Yeah, very cool history.

Okay, I've got a fact here from Mira Brown. Mira wrote in from Canada and they said that Jack Daniels has become a bellwether of Canada-US relations. Okay, so there have been if you've been following the news, Donald Trump has been calling Canada the fifty first state and been putting lots of tariffs on and so there's been a lot of boycotts in Canada of American goods. and especially of alcohol and especially of Jack Daniels.

And I want you to guess what the percentage drop okay in sales in Canada of Jack Daniels has been in the last month or so. And because I know you two are gonna mess up this quiz like you always do and bet like a billion percent or something. Right. I'm gonna put a prize on the line. So I've been to the shop and bought some whiskey. Oh. Oh wow. So the winner proper whiskey or proper good whiskey.

I'm so excited. And also I'm so annoyed'cause I do the emails and I did not pay any attention to this one. God damn it. Um so what percentage of sales down since Okay. Canada got into the yeah. It's fantastic. I should know this because I have been to the Jack Daniels distillery, as I've probably mentioned before. Have been to Tennessee in the last month? No, during like geopolitically calmer times right in

But they but they call you up when there's been a change in sales numbers. All right, who's gonna go first? Um okay, I will say seventy-two percent drop. Drop. Okay. I'm gonna say point five percent. Not even one percent, point five percent. Wow. Oh well, you don't like whiskey then I suppose. Well, I c still could be closer to Andy's edge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're anything under what, thirty six percent. Yeah.

I'm afraid, Dan, the answer is sixty-two percent. Oh, so Andy, there you are. You get your whiskey. Are you serious? There you go. Very nice. Um now God, this is lovely. It's really nice, isn't it? Open it up. Yeah. What is it? to do with my facts that I'm about to tell you. Oh yeah. This is like inception. This is amazing. It's called Uncle Nearest. Uncle Nearest eighty four. Oh and it's from Tennessee. Lovely. Yeah, so it is named after Nearest Green.

Uh, and Neris Greene was born into slavery and emancipated after the Civil War and he was the guy who taught distilling to Jack Daniel of Jack Daniel's fame. and the company Uncle Nearest Incorporated created this whiskey. Uh th we're not advertised by these guys. I just went to the shop and got it. Um they created this whiskey in his honour.

And Uncle Nearest Whiskey, their master blender is Victoria E. D. Butler, a descendant of Nearest Green, and the first known African American female whiskey master blender. Cool. That's terrific. There you go. Thank you very much, James. Beautiful. I've got I'm actually getting to the end of a bottle of American whiskey right now. Yeah.

I currently don't drink, so this is fine. Oh well that's perfect. Um James, you've just given me a prize and I'm afraid I'm about to not return the favour because this is a fact you won't like, basically. But it's that.

And this fact comes from Jay Bagley. The majority of the world's citric acid, which is added to so much of our food, is derived from industrial vats of black mould in China. Oh gosh. I know James, you're not a fungus person. I'm allergic to black mould.

Oh. As in I did an allergy test and there was like two or three things and that was one of the main ones. I think everyone's I don't think it does all over. Yeah. I don't think it's good for anyone. Thrive on it. Okay. Well this this stuff is safe. So I'm sure you guys have heard of Citric A.

Yeah. It's in it's in lemons. It's in lemons. It's often eight percent of the dry weight of a citrus fruit, just to give you an idea of what's going on inside your lemons. Um but The citric acid is incredibly useful for all sorts of purposes and all sorts of foods, and it's in

So much stuff. It's in ketchup, it's in fizzy drinks, it's in uh chewable vitamins. It cleans your kettle sometimes. If you you know those lime scale things you drop in your kettle, they can be they can be citric acid. Um it's used to improve the solubility of brown heroin. I knew I knew it from somewhere. You are off the drink at the moment, but you unfortunately acid

And basically so you can get it in fruit, but it's a real pain to extract it from fruit and you and the world makes two million tons of it. Does does that mean heroin contains vitamin C? Yes. I think it Probably does. Okay. I keep telling my doctor. How much would you have to take to get your recommended daily allowance? Well the good thing is it's Moorish. So, you know, even if you only have a a little bit, you know, um you'll be uh you'll be at your level soon enough.

But basically there's this fungus called Aspergillus Nigia, which causes black mold on grapes and apricots, and that is the mold that you can synthesize and use to grow and create citric acid. And it's really safe, it's approved and everything. But genuinely two million tonnes a year, if every person if we were sharing it equally between us, that's two hundred and fifty grams give or take per person per year uh that we're getting through. Is that a lot?

Um, it will probably be a lot all in one go. Yeah. That's probably a reason we don't do that. How what percentage is it in a citrus fruit, did you say? About eight. Okay, and it was two hundred and fifty grams. Yeah. So multiplied by twelve and a half times that would be about three kilograms, just over three kilograms each.

Of c of dried citrus fruits. Of dried citrus fruits. That's very important. You gotta you gotta dr you gotta leave those lemons in the sun. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Nice. Uh I got one here from John Macomb. Uh, who writes that Disney has a now closed airport where the runway plays When You Wish Upon a Star when a plane lands and goes over it at forty five miles an hour. That's incredible. Which Disney?

We're talking Florida here. Florida. Yeah. So um this was built in nineteen seventy or nineteen seventy one. No one's actually too sure and the idea would be probably they just did it in December and January. That's there's probably a spillover month to the new year, that's true.

Um so yeah, so this was this was built and it was largely used for uh the official Disney plane called Mickey Mouse One. Um when Walt Disney was alive, he had Mickey Mouse One, the original plane and like Air Force One. Like Air Force One. And it was so that he could go scouting for locations for possible future Disneyland properties. It was so that he could continue his meetings. Okay, just quick pitch. Yeah. Quick pitch. The president is visiting Disneyland, right?

Yeah. But then there's some kind of attack, some baddies attack, and the pleasant president has to flee on Mickey Mouse One. Yes. Uh huh. Walt Disney characters in all of their outfits accidentally get into Air Force One. That's it. That's it. That's it. And they've got the nuclear football and all of that. Yes. And Goofy's Goofy's trying to work it out. Yeah.

And you have some foreign president going, Who's running this country? Mickey Mouse? Which is a famous thing you would say. That's a good Yeah, we'll have a script edit, of course. But you've done all the main work, I feel. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, so it's not used. It's not used largely because um they've built stuff too near to it. There's a monorail that means that if a plane did come in it would possibly crash into it.

It's uh so it it's largely used as a parking area now. So it's still there and the strip with the music is still there. So if cars go over it you can still get 'Cause I thought from the email that it wasn't a whole abandoned Disney park that just wasn't in use anymore and had kind of been overgrown. I was getting a bit sort of excited about that concept. Interesting. Here is a fact.

This one is from Maxine Iglich. Uh and Maxine says that Slovenia harnesses the power of ASMR to attract tourists. Uh so Maxine was on the Slovenia official website for visa information, uh and they stumbled upon this page called The Sounds of Slovenia and it's amazing. It's just a load of like embedded audio clips. of the sounds of Slovenia. Right. They have bobbin lace making, Bigfoot, Dan. I love it. Uh trains, Andy. Grey. Yeah. Uh no golf unfortunately.

Uh but yeah, it's just a place where you can hear what Slovenia's like. That's great. I've actually been to Slovenia. I've not heard I didn't hear a single bobbin lace being made. No, I have two have been there and I didn't see a single Bigfoot.

No. Mm. And a as far as I can see, Bigfoot isn't a thing that's associated with Slovenia? No. I'm now trying to think of what my sound of Slovenia was, and I think it was the crunch as the hire car we had rented scraped along the side of an underground parking garage and what would turn out to be an incredibly expensive moment for me. They they do have that. It just says crunch, crunch, crunch Oh for sake This is gonna be six hundred Euros. Um so I was looking at Bigfoot.

In Slovenia to see what they're talking about. And it doesn't seem to exist, but there is a thing as in so many places. Imagine James solved Bigfoot. There he is. No, actually that's the one place you'd hide if you were Bigfoot. You'd go to a country which didn't have a Bigfoot mist. That's perfect. Yeah. They have a thing called Lieshi, which is like Slavic in general, but they have it in Slovenia.

And I was reading the Wikipedia of this sort of Bigfoot like thing that lives in Slovenia and apparently i it has green eyes or white eyes or blue eyes. It's somet it has no eyebrows, although sometimes in some stories it has eyebrows. In some stories it's devo described like a giant, but some stories it's described as a small person and sometimes he's of average height. and he wears a wide brimmed hat or a pointed cap or has no headwear.

This dad is nodding along like it's as I thought. Well there's mo I mean they're a species, it's not just one of them, so they're gonna have different fashions. Um you know. You know when I went to Slovenia last One thing that was quite interesting is we stayed in a like a hotel in a village. I was with my wife and the bed had a bundling board in it.

What's a bunch of things? Incredible children. But uh it's a board you put down the middle of a bed to prevent any um Hanky panky. Yeah. Oh between a man and a woman sharing a bed. So the idea is like In rural America they would like allow A couple to

together before they were married. But to make sure that they didn't do anything naughty, they would put this board in between and I went to this hotel and it had a board for the birthday. Did you did you ring down the reception? Can we uh borrow a drill, please? A small bit is fine, but Yeah. I didn't even realize I was wasting$415 a month until I downloaded Rocket Money. I thought I had my finances under control until the app laid out all my spending and categorized it for me.

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This is a great one. It's from Nathan Shear, and it's that the Duke of Wellington was two hours late to his own funeral. Okay. He'd be late to his own funeral. We did we did a fact, Elizabeth Taylor actively organised to be late to her own funeral. Yeah. And she wore two or three different outfits or something. Did she once on the day yeah, so really? Yeah. I've forgotten that. Anyway, uh basically eighteen fifty two.

This was the last I'd say mega funeral for many years until probably I don't know, Queen Victoria, nineteen oh one or maybe Winston Churchill nineteen sixty five. It was a big deal'cause he was obviously a big deal and basically they made this mad steampunk carriage to sort of transport him through the city. It was modelled after ancient descriptions of Alexander the Great

Funeral carriage. Right. I know. It's it was eight meters long, five meters high, it weighed twelve tons. It took six iron foundries to make this thing, like weeks and weeks. a dozen horses to pull. Unfortunately, what this all meant was that when it got stuck

It was a complete bastard to free. It took sixty policemen when one wheel got stuck to lift this thing up and get it back on the road. And uh like the horses were absolutely exhausted. A group of sailors had to help give it a push at one point. What are they doing there? I suppose

What were they doing there? There were reps of all the armed forces there and so I suppose you'd have a team of sailors following the thing. But there were one point five million people on the route, the funeral route. It was it was just one And think of the year eighteen fifty two, like the population was way lower at the time. Do you know what the biggest funeral of all time was? Um Gandhi? Very close.

Jesus Neru? Uh probably closer than Gandhi, I think. Closely it's someone you've never heard of, so that's a problem. It's Anna. Uh and Anna Anna Tajinski. Not Anna Tujinski. I've been wondering where she's going. She never texts back, so I didn't I thought it was normal. You've been on three dots for six months.

It's Anna. I've forgotten her name basically as an Indian politician. I think he might have been deputy prime minister or something like that. Um I met someone recently. Um she's Indian and she had at her wedding Fifty thousand people. What? Mm. Catered? It was catered. Yeah. And you were only invited to the evening, weren't you? Oh sorry, fifty thousand and one. Uh yeah.

Can I have a no no oh no plus one? That's no problem. That's no problem. I'll come along. It's fine. Um yes, I think she she had political connections and um or her fa her family were in politics and when you have a big politician's Even their children get married, is traditional that basically you invite everyone from the province or whatever it is. C. N. Anadurai in nineteen sixty nine and fifteen million people attended. Oh wow. He was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

Did you know him well? No, no me neither. Okay, that is enough of your facts. As great as they are And they were great. They were really great. Really enjoyed them. It is time to give custodianship over to some of our facts. So anyone who is a member of our Patreon at the top level, which is friend of the podcast, becomes a custodian of a fact.

And so Dan, why don't you kick us off with a new custodian? Yeah, okay. This is for Paul Kingham. Paul We're on episode twenty nine of the podcast, and you are now the custodian of the fact that in the nineteenth century you could be committed to an asylum for novel reading.

Very good. So this was uh this was records from West Virginia Asylum and Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital. And other reasons we were told about in that episode for admission included being kicked in the head by a horse, bad whiskey. And um uh imaginary female trouble uh was another one. Imaginary female trouble. Remember what that was? Is it imaginary trouble from females or is it imaginary females causing the trouble?

Very good. Uh probably both I would imagine. Yeah, either of'em's gonna get you locked up, isn't it? I can't hear the phrase kicked in the head by a horse without thinking of Brian Blessed. Do you know the Sandy? It was the first time that I met Brian I'd met him there and James met him as well. He arrived to do Museum of Curiosity and we went to pick him up in the main reception and he was sitting there with a giant blue head.

like the whole front of his face, nose. It was his own head. He didn't have a giant blue head by his side. It was his own blue head and he could see us clearly looking a bit worried and said, Don't be alarmed, old boy, got kicked in the face by a horse. And it had happened that morning. Wow. Yeah. He was in his field, got kicked in the face by a horse and then thought, Better go do Museum of Curiosity and came along. And was he impaired?

I think It was hard to tell. The horse's foot never recovered. Oh fantastic. Okay, Gorlandi give us another one. Congratulations Hannah because your fact This is a I'd say a Hall of Famer, is that the Greenland shark lives in cold water and can only swim at one mile an hour. Its main prey, seals, swim at two miles an hour. That was one of mine. I remember reading that.

and trying to calculate the speed at which uh the prey could escape. Does it sneak up on the side? Yeah, it has to wait till they're sleeping, basically. Okay, here's another one. This one goes out to Ian Wolfe. an old friend of the podcast himself, and his fact is now that the head of the International Chess Federation believes that chess was brought to Earth.

By aliens. That's right. This sounds like a damn fact, but it's not. It was No, it was mine. Like obviously I'm a big chess fan. Not a big aliens fan, but I love I love my chess. He said that the aliens gave us two things. Chess. And sweet corn. With a gun to my head I don't know which I would give up. Do you? That neither has pla neither plays a massive role in my life. I'm teaching my daughter how to play chess at the moment. I'm trying.

Uh basically she takes the horses and plays Rapunzel with them. You've got a c you've got a tower for her to be up with the rook. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You just need to work a bishop into the Rapunzel story. Yeah, because we have the king and queen, King Frederick and Queen Ariana. Perfect. I'm not sure where the pawns come in. Okay, Don, another one? Yep. Uh this is a fact going out to Monique Julia. To attract new members, the Japanese Yakuza Crime Syndicate has its own website.

And theme tune. I I um I'm I wanna say I'm a big fan of the Yakuza. Well we've talked about them a lot, haven't we, over the years? Friends of the podcast? No. Okay. They featured a fair bit. We've done their tattoos and their

Um their pinky thing as well, where you have to you have to lose a half a little finger. Halloween, they're they're very active during Halloween with kids and giving out sweets and so on. Yeah. Uh but they can't do the Addams family theme tune'cause they can't click their fingers. Well they've got a theme tune chain, so they don't need to. Very strong. Very strong. Don't even know what that means. Here's another one. This goes out to Kate Matthews. Congratulations, Kate. Your fact.

For now and forever is that. The first BBC radio presenter with a northern accent was given the job to make it more difficult for the Nazis to impersonate newsreaders. I remember exactly where we were when you said that fact. We were doing a Soho gig. I think it was one of our first Soho gigs. No, I think it was was it not uh Aces? Aces and Ace.

That's right. It was a live show, regardless. I think it was our first live show. Our first live show, really. I think it must be episode thirty. Wow, yeah. He was called Wilfred Pickles, wasn't he? That's right. And the British authorities knew the crossover between Nazis and Northerners is zero. The Venn diagrams are compl the circles are completely separate. Well, let's see how that Norton by election goes next week. Ha ha ha.

Um but um interesting, yeah. That's why no Nazis have ever been able to replicate this podcast. That's right. They managed to get you three to a T, but Uh okay, here is one that is now under the custodianship of Kerry Harvey. And Kerry, your fact is in China. If you want to empty a building of people, you just have to play the song Going Home by Kenny G. Yeah. Yeah, they play it if a train has reached

its terminating point in the underground. So, you know, to get off at schools they play it in the end at the end of the day. Um they still do it'cause this was ten years ago, obviously. It was ten years ago, but I think Kenny G still has the the cultural cachet that he did then. I met Kenny G as a kid in Hong Kong. Whoa. Did you

hitting on someone and so I wasn't a a welcome presence in the moment. How old were you? It was in a health club. I was about nine. Did you get an autograph for anything? I did, yeah. It says please fuck off. Yeah. I'm trying to hit on this lady. Go home. He just whipped out his sacks and played a few master you. Scram kid. That's so funny, Dan. Um

Dan, give us one more. Okay, this one goes out to Lindy Stevens. The two leading paleontologists of the nineteenth century used to destroy their fossil sites after excavating them so that their rivals couldn't excavate them. This was the Bone Wars. Basically they hated each other so much that they just wanted to stop any other finds being being discovered on turf they'd been over. And there was a big scandal when one of them got a stegosaurus the w wrong way round, wasn't it?

What put the plates on the inside? It's incredible this thing could live at all. I might be getting that wrong. Maybe it's the Diplodocus that had it that got the wrong way around. But I think I think there was a famous incident at one point. I think it was associated with one of these guys.

Yes. Anyway, that's a great thing. Episode number thirty, if you want to go back and listen to it and find out more. Andy, give us one last one. All right, this one goes out to Henry Smith, and it's the fact that in the Fuller language A computer crash is a hookie, which means a cow falling over but not dying.

Wow. Okay. And this was great. This was about Mozilla Firefox and translating into lots of languages. So there are small languages where you need to come up with new metaphors for what's just happened to your computer.'Cause they've got to translate it into all these languages, you know, so they need to say

what has happened. Where is the Fuller language, do you know? I think it stretches across lots of different countries in West and Central Africa. So it's it's it's a bit of everywhere. So yeah, yeah. Um and there are a couple of other ones which are a timeout. Which is your fish has gone away.

It's a time out in the right. Like when your request is timed out, it has you haven't collected for whatever reason. Your fish has gone away. Uh and an aspect ratio is a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. Things we can all relate to. Okay, well, Henry, hope you enjoy that fact and hope you enjoy them too. Lindy, Kerry, Kate, Monique, Ian, Hannah, and Paul. You have gotten your facts and if you too are a member of the top tier of Patreon.

friend of the podcast, then listen out in the next few weeks because your name might be mentioned as well. If you would like to become a friend of the podcast, then go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and you can find information about all of our different tiers up there.

In fact you can even sign up for free and you'll get some stuff. Some little bonusy bits that we're that we're working on. Yeah. Yeah. So go there and sign up no matter what, even if you don't want to pay, that's absolutely fine. But we hope you come back here next week. We will be having a big fish on Friday. We'll be back here for a little fish next Monday. Goodbye from me. Goodbye from Andy. Bye. Goodbye from Dan.