Little Fish: It's Not Shaped Like A Hobnob

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お風呂を沸かせ Welcome to another episode of Little F This is the show where we do away with our facts, the ones that we spent time looking for, and we look at your facts, your brilliant, excellent, amazing facts that you send to us every week at podcast at QI.com. We will read through them, we'll chat about them, we'll give you a little bit of extra information that we found ourselves.

And then we will go into our custodianship section where we hand out some facts to people who are in our friend of the podcast here on Patreon. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into the facts. Dan, give us a fact. Okay, this has been sent in by Fiona MacDonald, and she says, I found out that cheese meltability is measured using a scale called the Schreiber scale. Lovely.

Fantastic. I'll I'll be honest, I haven't read the article in depth but thought it sounded interesting. So thank you, Fiona. Um, yeah, so this is there was a company that was founded in nineteen forty five, uh which came to be known as Schreiber Foods. And it was founded by a man called LD Schreiber in partnership with his friend Merlin. Um I just first thing.

A German, are they? No. No, they're North American, um, I believe. I guess interesting to give your company a German name in nineteen forty five. Yeah. Well, um they're they're massive, by the way. Are they? It's yeah, so they big cheeses. They provide the cheese slices that are used on seventeen of the top twenty hamburger cheese. chains in the in America. Wow. So it's like they're they are massive. Seven billion dollar in sales every year. They developed the Schreiber meltability test.

to monitor how cheese handles heat. Didn't we have a live stage cheese eating competition with each other? We did record for the most cheese slices eaten in something like a minute. I set up uh while we were on tour a chance for us to get a Guinness World Record and Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief, came onto stage, pre-printed a certificate to say in case we managed it, and the four of us Try to eat as many slices now.

It was an impossible task, I would argue. I don't think even the greatest cheese eater could manage it. No, that that that Like the greatest cheese eater can manage it. That's the thing about the record. This isn't a record. No one has ever set it. We were gonna be the opener. But we were so shit that we didn't even get the record that has never been set before. Yeah. Because the what a lot of people might not realize about the Games World Records is that

You can't just like be, I'm the first person to do this and this is where I got up to. Yeah. They set a bar of where the entry point for the record is, and I think it was ten slices. Wait a minute. I was the record holder on stage out of us, right? I got like three or four slices. So that means I am a world record holder. I'm just not a Guinness world record holder. Yes.

We need a make you a digital certificate. Who on earth would want a digital certificate? That's all I want to know. We might come to that later. Um is it true that Craig then had to destroy the certificate? In theory, that's what he should have done. He ate it. Yes. Yeah. And he ate it in record time, may I say. But he unfortunately didn't take off the plastic and so that caused huge, huge issues. No, I uh old sneaky shreiber here. I I've got it in my house.

Have you really? Wow. An illegal An illegal Guinness bomb record. As you say this, an alarm's gone off in Guinness HQ and a SWAT team has been dispatched to tear the house down if you have to. And the w the worst thing is that the world's best SWAT team. Um Dan, when he printed that certificate off, there was no name written on it. Uh because he didn't know which of us was gonna break the record. Yeah. Have you written your own name in there?

No, I think it said no such thing as a fish. What I did do in pen was add where it said they broke the record. I added in did not. Very honest. Um okay, let's do another fact. Handy, what have you got for us?

I've got a fact from Alex Rogers, which is that Ben Nevis is the highest point in the British Isles. But it's only the third highest, Ben Nevis. That's great. That's lovely. There are lots of other places around the world, at least two, that have been named after Ben Nevis, and they're higher. Where are they? Australia?

Oh, you're so close. You're about I want to say so close to Australia. New Zealand. Several hour flight away. Yes, New Zealand. Right. Um, there's one that's sixteen, nineteen metres, there's one that's over two thousand meters, and Ben Nevis original edition Is only one three four five.

Wow. I've climbed Ben Nevis. Have you guys climbed Ben Nevis? No. It was on my honeymoon and me and my wife climbed it and we got a guide who took us up there, even though there's only one path and you can't really get lost. Uh still still follow me. Is he holding the umbrella all the way up? I don't really c I remember going online.

And some people saying, Should we get a guide or not? And then some people replying, Yes, you should get a guide. But now I think back at it, maybe it was the guides who were repli writing those replies. Yeah. But no, he was very good this person and gave us some um energy bars to eat on the way up and stuff like that, and then took our photo when we got to the top. I gotta say, James, you could have taken a selfie stick and uh and

an energy bar yourself. But I look I'm I'm glad there are guides. And actually people do get into difficulties. There are stories every single year of people going up uh basically in flip flop. And then it turns out oh the weather's turned really bad on this actually quite high mountain. And uh Yes. Yeah. Uh well James, did you see um the piano?

No, I didn't see a piano but I have did people have brought them up, have they, or people have brought them up. Basically, in two thousand and six there were some litter pickers on Ben Nevis and they found a grand piano. They were going through a pile of litter. They had one of those long plastic sticks with a claw on the end going, I can't get a good grip on it Uh Yeah, basically they found a massive Grand Piano two hundred metres from the summit. No one knows how it got there.

There was so there was someone who carried a piano up for charity in nineteen eighty, but he took his down again. So it's really baffling. And there was a biscuit wrapper tucked inside where it said best before nineteen eighty six, but that doesn't really tell you very much. It's a lovely idea, by the way, of having an achievable mountain that has the name of a

Very hard. Like you know, if there was a lesser Mount Everest that was really achievable that you could go, Yeah, yeah I've climbed that Everest. That was like just in passing. It was like the time when I entered the Boston Marathon, do you remember? And I was gonna run the Boston Marathon. Uh but it was just before COVID and then it got cancelled. But I did the one in Boston and Lincolnshire because that is the it's the easiest marathon in the UK because Lincolnshire's so flat.

Uh very nice. Um okay, here is a fact from Lindsay Whelan. And Lindsay says that the length of the inch is based on the millimeter. What? But surely metric units are much newer than Imperial units. Yeah, an inch is twenty five point four millimeters or something. Correct. Are you saying that they took the millimeter and they said, well, let's have twenty five point four of these?

I'm that's exactly what I'm saying. No. It was the nineteen fifty nine International Yard and Pound Agreement. And basically all the different countries had different versions of the inn. and they all got together in 1959 and said look guys we're gonna have to standardize this The US inch was twenty-five point four zero zero zero five zero eight millimeters, while the UK inch was twenty five point three nine nine nine seven seven millimeters.

Um, so if you had if you measured something that was two and a bit miles long, the difference would be about a centimeter. So that could be very important. It's hard to imagine when. Uh but like let's say you're d building a tunnel from uh New York to London. Yeah. And then the difference can be quite and you think, Well we've measured it. We've dug the distance we've said we should. We're not we're it sounds like there might be something on one centimeter away.

Through through that soil, but we're gonna go home now. We're not gonna You wouldn't go home, you just keep digging. And eventually you'd get there and you'd end up with two tunnels. Yeah. Um okay, Dan, let's have another fact. Yes, well actually I'm taking us back into the mountains. Uh this is from Hayden Freeman, who says as most people know, New Zealanders, Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to knock the bugger off.

and climb Mount Everest, but what few people will know is that fellow Kiwi Mark Inglis was the first person to climb Mount Everest as a double amputee. Cool. Yeah. This is uh this is someone who's quite a notable mountaineer, has written books and has been the subject of documentaries and so on. It's quite crazy. When he was climbing Everest, he actually broke.

one of the carbon fiber prosthetic legs in half and so they had to temporarily fix it with duct tape while a spare was brought up from base camp to meet him so that he could swap it in. Pretty wild. So New Zealanders quite have made quite an impact on Everest. Well they've had so much practice on the high Ben Nevis. I was gonna say when Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest, Has anyone checked that he didn't actually climb a mountain called Mount Everest in New Zealand?

I don't think that's been checked. That's a really good That's a really good point. Oh dear. And the last number. Yes. Uh this is a fact from Alistair Bowden. And we're staying in the mountains. Mm-hmm. I don't think we've ever covered this. Oh yeah. Uh which is in Greece. Yeah. Uh and it's that there's an eighty-two year old Greek monk, Mihailo Tolotos, who reportedly never saw a woman in his entire life.

Because He was born to a woman and ver very sadly his mother died of when he was just a few hours old and he didn't have any family, so he was taken to a Mount Athos, this monastery, which is in Greece, it quite remote and there are no women allowed. And he lived eighty two years

Uh he died in nineteen thirty eight, I think, and uh the details are quite scant, but it appears that he lived there his whole life and he just never saw a woman. Yeah. Also he allegedly he never saw a car, a plane, or a film. Right? Well how did he not see a plane? They literally Thessaloniki Airport is no more than twenty miles away from Mount Athos. But maybe he died in nineteen thirty eight, so maybe the last few years of his life he was indoors and you know.

In fairness, he didn't s he didn't see an iPad either. Like it was born in eighteen fifty six. So the first forty odd years of his life, not seeing a plane was an absolute cinch. Or a car. Yeah. Or a film. I wouldn't include that on the list, the plane one, given that it hadn't existed for that long. Women on the other hand had existed for centuries before that.

Yes. Um, okay, here's a really good one. So this is from Ewan Hopper. Ewan wrote to us about the nineteen fifty two Texas gubernatorial election. Which sounds unpromising, but um the person that who won at that election was called Alan Shivers. And Alan ran for both the Democratic and the Republican parties in the same election. And the reason was that the Republicans knew that he was gonna win. So there's no point putting anyone up against him.

But they wanted to encourage people to vote for their candidate Dwight Eisenhower as the president. And they thought that people might not go for a Democrat and a Republican. They might want to stay on party line. So if they made Shivers a Republican as well, then they might just tick Republican Shivers, Republican Eisenhower. Are they allowed to do that? Well they did it. So I guess so. Um and Shivers got one point eight million votes in total.

Uh one point three million of them came to him as a Democrat and just under five hundred thousand came to him as a Republican. And he also got six hundred and sixty four votes as a no party candidate. And that's where people wrote in about who they wanted to win, but didn't put the um the party in there. Right. A popular guy. Yeah. He um so yeah, one point eight million votes. No preference got thirty six thousand six hundred and seventy two votes, so one point nine five percent.

Got no It's not bad. It is, but the thing is with no preference Two options and they're exactly the same. To me, no preference means I like them both equally. It doesn't mean I dislike them both equally. That's a good point. If it's Alan Shivers against Alan Shivers and you're saying I d I don't have a preference exactly. In fact that should have been a hundred percent no preference, shouldn't

Uh but Texas law later removed that option, so now you you don't have a chance to do no preference anymore. I think that's sensible. That's very funny. Alan Shivers, very popular, massive racist. Oh um said that segregation of black and white people was God's will and no law could supersede it. And he also said that being a communist should be punishable by death and that being a communist was worse than murder. Right.

I always enjoy it on Fish where we have a really funny, light hearted chat about someone and then the person who's got the information says anyway, massive racist and So here's the thing with homemade.

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Five years ago, I was paying$65 a month for my subscriptions. Today, those same subscriptions cost$111. And I don't even use half of them anymore. That's why now I use Rocket Money to manage my subscriptions for me. The app gives you a list of all of your subscriptions and reminds you of upcoming payments so you're not hit with any surprise charges. On top of that, it also sends you alerts when subscription prices go up.

So you always know the price you're paying. If you decide you no longer want a subscription, you can cancel it right from the app. No customer service needed. And the best part is, Rocket Money even reaches out and tries to get you refunded for some of the money you lost. On average, people that cancel their subscriptions with Rocket Money save$378 a year. And overall, Rocket Money has saved its members$880 million in canceled subscriptions.

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started. That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel. Rocketmoney.com slash cancel.

Uh can I move us north of the border to Canada for another fact? Yes, please. This is from Julie Pithers. And Julie writes Uh Canadian scientists are currently collecting people's toenails. Um thousands of them as well. Thousands and thousands of sets of toenails the Canadian scientists want.

For for science. For science. They'll get they're gonna be melting them down apparently. That's really cool. Um basically Uh twenty percent of Canadians live in homes which have uh slightly unsafe levels of radon. Oh yeah. Which is a gas, it can cause cancer, and it occurs naturally as well. It's basically if you live in places which have uh uranium in the soil or the rock.

And it can break down. Normally it's fine if you live out in the open, but most people don't live out in the open. Most people live in homes.

And if it's in an enclosed space at a house it can cause some damage. It's the same reason as why radiation levels are higher in coal mole than any place in the Ukraine. Exactly. Um and there's a doctor called Aaron Gudazi who's looking into this, trying to find the causes of lung cancer w in high radon environments'cause it can cause lung cancer or uh which is very obviously uh very harmful.

And you need toenails because they're an archive of past exposure to radon. Your body takes in radon, it turns it into a kind of lead and then it just sort of shoves it into the slowly shedding tissues. So we're talking skin and hair and fingernails and toenails. And uh about ten thousand Canadians, I believe, are being recruited to test their homes of radon and then send in their clippings. Wow. Yeah. on earth. Oh is it right? Do you mean percentage per rock or how many rocks?

Okay, well interestingly, the percentage per rock is almost zero. And the percentage of rocks globally is almost a hundred percent. So Andy was basically right on both of his two guesses. Nice. Um but yeah, because uranium is basically inside the earth, ev almost every single rock that you pick if you pick up a stone on the side of the road, it's probably got a tiny, tiny, tiny trace of uranium in it.

Good lord. Isn't that amazing? I didn't know that. That is really amazing, yeah, yeah. If you live in Devon or Cornwall, you can uh put a detector in your home, which is about the size of a biscuit, and test it. That's fun. Yeah. I would make it a size and shape of something that you don't eat. It's not a little bit more. Shaped like a hobnob. I believe. I believe. It's got chocolate on one side.

Okay, well that is enough of your facts. Absolutely brilliant as every week. Thank you so much to everyone who sent those in. And if you have a fact yourself, then do send it to podcast at qi.com. But We have not come to the end of this week's show because before we do that, we have to give out some facts. If you become a member of our Patreon at the friend of the podcast here, then you will immediately be assigned a fact.

you will slightly less immediately be sent a certificate and you might be even less immediately than that mentioned on the show. But we will get round to you all. And who is the first person we're getting round to today? Andy. This one goes out to Kate Armstrong. Congratulations, Kate. Welcome to Friend of the Podcast here. It's that. Alexander the Great banned beards in battle to combat beard pulling. Which was apparently the scourge of the Macedonian I wouldn't have thought it was.

A major problem. If you have a sword, you might have a way to stop them. Just because cut off your beard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that was uh that was his innovation. And look, the guy was the terror of three continents or whatever. So I'm not gonna gainsay him. Well done Alexander. Yeah at the age of thirty he had no more worlds to conquer. Exactly, exactly. Um so he probably he knew what he was doing with the beard stuff.

Dan, what have you got for us? Uh this is a fact for Bo. Congratulations, Bo. This is a fact of mine, which is that psychopaths don't experience contagious yawning like the rest of us. See, I'm no y I am now yawning. I'm not James just yawned. I think it was a fake yawn to see four psychopaths. It started off, I did I thought I'll do a fake one for comedic purposes.

Not realizing that this is a podcast medium and people won't be able to see that. But actually halfway through it turned into a real one. Oh well there we go. Fake it till you make it. Very nice. Um Yeah. I experience a lot of contagious yawn. In fact, I experience yawning contagiously so much that I think I'm especially unusually empathetic. Yeah, or just very tired. That's a good thing

Yeah. It has happened a lot more since you had children. Yeah, that's true. Uh contagious napping, it turns out, is also a real thing in meetings. Uh And contagious meltdowns, apparently. Shut up, Dan. Shut up. Uh I I can't quite remember where we got that fact from. It was either John Ronson, who had ridden the psychopath test, or it was Kevin. A a a professor called Kevin. Sounds legit. Yes. And he wrote a book on psychopaths. And I once had dinner with Kevin. Um

Along with Terry Jones of Monty Python. What a table. And uh yeah, and he told me that he was working with Andy McNabb. To train the England football squad. to not change their decision on where they were kicking a penalty goal right at the last second. They were brought in as psychologists to say, make your decision and stick to it because apparently that was a a problem within the squad. I'm sorry, Dan. Professor Kevin is working with Andy McNabb of the SAS to help the England football squad

Not change a decision on a penalty. Yes. And it's worked. Like when was the last time we lost a penalty shootout? It's a long time ago. You know when people say to you like what's your ideal dinner party? Yeah. I always say, Dan Schreiber Terry Jones from Monty Python. And Professor Kevin. That's they're my three. Maar nog maar knap. Oh dear James, he's not gonna be happy. He's gonna be bursting in through the windows halfway through the starters.

uh annoying things he needs to happen. He needs the room to be lit black where he's sitting so you can't see his face. He needs that Vokoda thing so that he talks in a different voice. He's a nightmare to have over at dinner. Interestingly they didn't get to find out that World Cup whether or not It worked because it never went to penalty shootouts. England lost, didn't they? Uh Bravo 2-0. Thank you.

Thank you. That's the name of Andy McNabb's book. Very good. And it's Kevin Dutton's just come back to me. Kevin Dutton. Kevin Dutton. Okay, here is a fact that is now in the possession of Keith Baxter. Keith, your fact is that the Big Bang was quieter than a motorhead concert. Interestingly, And the you spelt motorhead without the umlaut.

That's not intentional and I'm very sorry. We will have to get that certificate corrected, Kevin. Or or Keith, or Keith for that matter, we'll have to get Keith, I know your name. I just I just spelt motorhead wrong. Oh no, this is'cause it's all all it's all based off my ancient um record keeping and sometimes. Fairness, Andy. Like your record keeping, like we use this spreadsheet in order to check that we haven't done facts before.

And it would be correct to spell that without the Umlaut, I think, because I'm never gonna search motorhead with an Umlauhead. Oh yes, good point. So wait, the Big Bang was quieter than a motorhead concept. Yeah, motorhead a hundred and twenty six decibel. And the Big Bang, apparently a hundred and twenty decibels according to people who have studied the background radiation of the universe. It's insane that we we know that or think we know that.

Yeah. Let's go on to our next fact. So whose turn is it? It's mine. This one goes out to George Wade. And it's a great one. It's that Pixar accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 halfway through making it. This was an Alex Bell fact. Yeah. Basically they deleted it. The only thing that remained was one person who'd gone on maternity leave and she she had a computer at home that was kind of separated from the rest of the system.

And so I think they basically drove the computer in under extreme caution. Like just just strapped it in the back of a car or whatever and and coddled it until it got in because that had almost everything on it. So yeah, so she had an early saved version. Yeah. Um you won't be able to do that these days, obviously. Getting in touch with people on maternity leave is very much a no no. Toy Story five has ground to a halt for the next nine months. Uh Dan, let's go on to the next one.

Yeah, well we're moving on to episode twenty four. So that was that was tw episode twenty three to all the custodians of the last four facts. And uh this one is for Ronnie. You are now the custodian of the fact that when he was bored, President Calvin Coolidge would ring a bell to summon bodyguards and then hide under the Oval Office desk. Was Coolidge the person who also Oh god, there were so many eccentric presidents uh that did very odd things in the White House, like the the shower head.

Was that Coolidge or was that something? Oh Z L B J it was. That's why he had a shower head directed at his genital area. Yes. Yeah. Um Coolidge is the one who never said anything. He was very much the opposite of the the current incumbent. Uh he he just never s he just n barely said three words.

You know, there was a there's that story that someone went to dinner with him, sort of flirtatious young woman who said, Oh, President Coolidge, I I've I've made a bet with my friends that I could get you to say just three words tonight, and he just said to her, You lose and then said nothing for the rest of the evening. Very good. Okay, the next fact comes from someone whose name could be made up of two US presidents, Andrew Jackson and Jimmy Carter, because it's Andrew Carter.

And your fact is that until twenty eleven the sun was only, in theory, a sphere. Dan, this is yours. Yeah. I love this about science, whereas they knew it was a sphere, because that by all indications is what it was. However, until two probes were sent around to either side of it, twin probes, They couldn't officially confirm that it was a sphere, and that's what this did. They said, Con it's confirmed. We've we've we've seen it. We've actually seen it from the other side.

Yeah. With two different probes. So I j I just love that about science. I'll do one. This goes out to Erin Eldridge. Congratulations, Erin. Your fact is that some birds' nests contain over one hundred rooms and weigh up to one thousand kilos and cause trees to collapse. Rubbish. It's true. A hundred rooms. This is a bird called the Sociable Weaver. Uh and it basically has these ginormous nests.

Well it needs them, it's so sociable. Yeah. These are for parties. It's like dance house. The description of this badness. How many kids does it have in there? Uh yeah, but it's very cool. I think I think I've seen pictures of them where they're absolutely ginormous and they're just a permanent uh sort of palace. Amazing. And Dan, last one for the day.

The last one goes to Rohan Singh, and this is a James Harkin fact. It is the worst baseball team in South Korea, has replaced its supporters with robots. Brilliant. Yeah, the Hanwa Eagles. They lost four hundred games in the last five years, and that's as of recording from twenty fifteen, I believe. And they are nicknamed the Hanwa Chickens. So they've put up screens and you can put up your photo on the screen and that you can do things like Mexican waves and chants.

uh along with it as you're watching the match. But yeah. Hark, do you remember more on this? No, I don't remember anything about them. And I thought since we're doing this on Zoom, I can quickly check. and see if they've won any games recently. Yes. Uh and in twenty twenty five. They had a record of played a hundred and forty four, one eighty three. So actually, yeah, they've improved quite a lot, I would say. Wow. Oh well there we go.

Um, so good old Hanwa Eagles. Yeah. Uh anyway, so that is the end of the show. Thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in. Thank you especially to Rohan, Erin, Andrew, Ronnie, George, Keith, Bo, and Kate. who are new custodians of facts in our friend of the podcast tier. And if you would like to do that yourself, go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and you will find details of how to join our many tiers. We have

More tears than a cinema at the end of Toy Story 2. Lovely. Does that work? I haven't seen it.

Uh but you can find everything on there and more. And if you'd like to hear more from us, then come back on Friday when we will have a regular episode of No Such Things as a Fish. In the meantime, it's goodbye from me, it's goodbye from Andy. Bye. And it's goodbye from Dan. So long. Just trying to do my audition for University Challenge.

It's time for a great deal on a new Honda. It's time to take an adventure with rugged capability and commanding style. It's time for powerful performance, plus, plenty of room in. Start your journey in a brand new vehicle. Check out the Honda Ridgeline, pilot, passport, or CRV. See Dealer for financing details.