Little Fish: The Body Of A Young Paul Newman

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Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where you send us a load of amazing facts and then we marvel at how great they are. We give a little bit of extra material and then we do a little bit of extra stuff at the end. where we give away custodianship of some of our old facts. There's so much to get through that I think we should just get going. Andrew Hunter Murray, Dan Schreiber, which of you will go first?

First, I'll go first. Um, this is a fact that is sent into us by James Udell. And it is the artist behind the famous Dogs Playing Poker paintings also once wrote a comic opera about an anthropomorphic giant mosquito. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I wish I could remember his name. It's Cassius Marcellus something, but I can't remember the surname. I know it's the same as a president. Uh it'll come to me. It'll come to me. Fascinating guy. Um, I can't remember if we'd spoken about him on the show before.

No, I don't think we've ever discussed the dogs playing poker pictures. They're probably parodied more than you see the originals, would you reckon? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Something tells me of this guy. Did he invent those um sort of cardboard cutouts that you get at the fairground that you put your head through? I feel This is what's amazing. Yeah.

He is he is certainly the person that is credited with popularizing it to the point where it became a big thing. Um, if you go to the seaside and it's missing its head and you stand behind it, that's the man behind the dog poker playing. I love those things. Yeah. James, that is stunning knowledge, I've got to say. Yeah. That's really, really impressive. Isn't that extraordinary? Two seminal things that we sort of don't know the names of, but we all know. Yeah.

It's like it's like there being someone who invented benches. You just think there's s there's no way that a a a technology like bits the the beach where you put your head through the hole and get someone to take a funny foot. There's no way that has a named inventor.

I can imagine you would go to like the Lascaux caves in southern France and you would walk into the cave and there would be a little bit of a hole and if you put your head through it then it looks like you're spearing some buffaloes. But you feel like it must be as old as that, right? Exactly. Exactly. Can we get one of those for the office?

Um well what do you think well what do you mean? Like as in it will be our bodies that other people can put their heads in, or are we gonna get some bodies of other famous podcasters that we put our heads in or something? I okay, I was thinking it's our bodies and we put our heads through but we put them through the wrong heads No wait, wait. We put them through the wrong heads and that's a funny image for a tour poster or something. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, unfortunately, I would say that our bodies are not distinguishable enough. You know, it's not Like one of us is a farmer and one of us is a motorbiker or one of us is a builder. Yeah, so that one would work, but then the others I see just three middle aged men with like bodies that are feasible.

Yeah, and we can't have one where three of us have put our head through the Anna headhole and Anna's put her head through the three holes of the feasible middle aged men bodies. Wow, middle aged that's the first time anyone's called me middle aged. Really? Come on, really. You've had the brain of a middle aged man for at least twenty years. Yeah, my spirit, but that's different to my body. I've had the body of a like a young a young Paul Newman for a long time. Yeah. And again showing the mind.

Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha. Who's a beefcake? Who's a hunk? Bold human. Shall we do another fact? Yeah, I've got one here. Uh this is from Veronica Alfano from Sydney, Australia. Pretty cool. Um and Veronica writes, I thought you might be interested in a little fish fact about an amazing nineteenth century figure. And Veronica presents it as a riddle. Okay. So great.

There is a poet named Michael Field, who is neither a man nor a woman, nor a non-binary person. How can this be? Ту-ту-ту-ту. Is it a field? An actual field? That's good. You're thinking the right way though. Someone wandered over me like a cloud. Uh well it must be an animal, I would say, is it not? Not an animal.

Oh, do you remember that um we've actually done this on the show so I doubt it's this, but do you remember the person who created a poetry machine or a haiku machine? Oh yeah. Like it but it was a steampunky one that it was before computers. The Latin hexameter. Um with the Mary Beard episode. That was so good. Um no, it's not like that. Okay, I'll I'll say I'll just give you one clue. It's two names Michael Field, therefore

Very good. It's two people. But it's Michael Field is a very interesting poet because Uh i i he, quote unquote, was two women, Catherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. AKA Bradley Cooper. Interesting. Um they lived in the second half of the nineteenth century. Okay, Veronica says they were lovers and life partners, they were also aunt and niece. Mm. Wow. Quite. Striking.

I would say. They wrote a lot of extremely sexy um poems about love and and, you know, female, female romance and sexuality. They were very enthusiastically reviewed. And then when it came out that they were Not Michael Field, but they were actually an aunt and a niece. Everyone was a bit a bit surprised. I think was a bit of negative pushback against that. Um Kind of understand that.

It's it's unorthodox. Um they were ploughing their own Michael Field, you could say. Um they also wrote a book of poems to their dog, Wim Chow, who died in nineteen oh six, and they were so sad that their dog had died that they converted to Catholicism. In the hope that they would meet him in heaven. That's great. It's not good. Bye. With that premise?

Okay, um here is another fact. This one comes from Jakob Thorkin. Uh and actually Jakob gives us two facts. So the first one is that Rold Admondson's polar thrust was so well planned. That all five in his group had gained weight upon returning to base camp. Wow. That is Devastating for the Brits who starved and and died of exposure and all that. Afraid so. I think um Adminson's lot ate the dogs, didn't they? It's very nutritious stuff, clearly. Yeah.

Leave that. Oh, I'm feeling a bit oh my my cloth my polar clothes are feeling a bit tighter this morning. I'm so healthy and gaining weight. You know what? I've been going to the gym over the last couple of months a bit more than I did at the end of last year, and I feel like I'm not losing that much weight. So I can kind of empathize with these guys. Sometimes like muscle is heavier than fat, that's what they say, isn't it?

And you're eating a lot of dog at the moment, and it's that's noticeable. Gotta stop. Gotta stop. Okay, uh Jakob's second fact uh is that there is a Norwegian cross-country skier named Caroline Stavus Ski Stad. And her name translates into English as Caroline Pole Hill Ski Place. No. Ha ha ha. It's not the best nominative determinism ever. Pole Hill Ski Place. It sounds like you just made it up, doesn't it? And like look Oh, I need a name. I'm just gonna name it after the things I can see.

Yeah. Damn it, Michael Field has taken. Okay. Um I've got um a fact about Winter Olympic names. Oh yeah. So the Winter Olympics has just been uh and there is a shop called the Corona Sierra stress plants shop and they decided to do a thing where they would give plants to the athletes and let them look after them while they were in the Olympic village and the athletes had to name their plants. So James Hernandez, the uh British figure skater.

plant was called Gary. Okay. Marjorie Lajoie called hers Olympia. Lithuania's Saulius Ambrulavisius called theirs dude. And Canada's Madeline Shizas named her plant Ilya Rosinov. That's a good name. It's a very good name. Does that name mean anything to you guys? Yeah wasn't off. No. So you haven't been watching the TV show Heated Rivalry? Oh my god, is this the hockey sex show? It's the hotty hockey guy. Um and the Madeline decided to name her plant Ilya Rosinov.

In the hope that the actor Connor Story would see this and say, Hey, I heard you got a plant named after the character that I play at this show. Maybe we could get together. Fancy a puck? Surely that's the tagline. The whole show. Surely. Do you guys have a plant that you've given a name to? I do. I'm literally looking at it in my room. Really? It's cool. Yeah, it's called Baxter. Oh yeah? What's the story behind that?

So named after Cleve Baxter, who was the the CIA polygraph expert who believed that he could communicate with plants uh by hooking it up. To a uh lie detector machine. Do you remember there was that story where he had six people come in randomly and stamp a plant dead in a room and pull it out, and only one of the six people had done it?

He tested whether or not the other plant in the room could pick out the guilty person in a lineup and according to everyone involved, the plant successfully picked out the killer. How did it identify the killer? Uh by'cause it was hooked up to a polygraph so the readings when the killer walked in just like Right. Yeah. Woo woo is exactly the phrase I would use at the end of this anecdote. Ha ha ha.

Wow, Dan, what a fact. I mean no tha that's a very good reason to name a plant Baxter. Yeah. I don't have any I don't have any named plants. Well mine are mostly mosses which have a different different structure so You don't give a moss a name, do you? I think the um I think the is it the Latin or Greek for moss is Brian? Yeah. Which is why they're bryophytes now. Yeah, yeah. That's a really nice idea.

Uh okay, let's uh let's do a fact here from Hazel Dixon. And Hazel writes that the first Pre-execution last meal was in 1772 of Susan Brandt, who died by decapitation by sword. Brandt was offered a feast consisting of three pounds of bratwurst, ten pounds of beef, six pounds of baked carp, twelve pounds of lamb roast, soup, cabbage, bread, and an unspecified dessert, and eight liters of wine. She rejected this all and just had a glass of water. Wow.

Unspecified. Um what was the sparkling situation in seventeen seventy two? I'm not sure when San Pilogrino was established. It's sa it's saying that this is the first pre Execution last meal, seventeen seventy-two. I think it existed a long time before that. There's examples in medieval Europe of there being this kind of thing.

Amen. Yeah, uh there's an interesting story that's attached to the last meal from medieval times which may or may not be apocryphal, but the idea was that you would make sure that the criminal who was being put to death had a really good meal just before dying, so that they didn't come back to haunt the executioners, so that they left on good terms. What would be your final meal, Dan? Uh probably a um bowl of fried rice. As a kind of, you know, fried and then I'm fried. It's a sort of Oh okay.

Picking the are you picking the method of execution? Oh sorry, do I only get to pick my meal, not the method of execution? I I was gonna say I might have some pulled pork and then be pulled apart by horses. Yeah. There we go. Um And I suppose I'll just I'll just go Or um a nice bacon sandwich where the pickers died by firing squad. Um

I'm not that feels mean, doesn't it, saying I want a pig to be shot by firing squad. I mean it's probably no worse than happens to normal uh in normal animal processing. In this hypothetical situation, you have done a crime, so you're not a nice guy. Yeah. I guess I'm finding it hard to get into the head of someone who's not a nice guy. It's just so alien to me. Yeah. What if you did the crime with the pig? So you were both up for execution, they kill your accomplice first. We did together then.

You be the aunt, I'll be the niece. Um no I don't know. I pr I'd probably just have something um Something vegetarian. Yeah I'm trying to do my nice guy credentials, you see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And these last words. Did I tell you I'm a V Thank you. Du skulle ju köpa några nya palpstälter till lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, hade skribord, jag köpte en sån, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skitsnyggort.

Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI-produkten!

Okay, here is another fact. This one is from Lucas Cheong Smith. Uh Lucas obviously knows the show well because they say a fact for you in the form of a little quizlet for Andy. And because Dan loves mundane sci-fi, James loves numbers, and Anna loves to blow shit wide open. Here goes. Wow. How many laser pens would it take to blow up the earth? So we're firing laser pens at the Earth, let's say from space.

Yeah. Like imagine it's like imagine you have a Death Star. Yeah. Uh and you need to make a laser but you're like, uh, like that's gonna be tough to make from scratch, but we have this laser pen making factory. So let's just make a load of them and use that as a laser. Can I ask, I've never equated the laser of a laser pen as being just a very unharmful diluted version of a killer death ray. If you amplified the amount that you had, can that become harmful or is it just That's what I mean.

Yeah, it's... Yeah. Like. Really bright, yeah. Um so yeah, laser is uh amplified light basically. So it's energy and so if you fire enough energy at anything, it will it will break it up. I love the idea that the Death Star was basically a presentation gone wrong. It was saying if you'll just observe the planet all around here Oh my god. Oh no. We wanted to highlight their grain exports. Oh no!

That's what lightsabers are. They were just a slightly larger laser pointer as well. The whole thing is a stationary hub. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. I d it feels like it's gonna be a sort an impossibly big number of laser pens to blow up the earth. I'm gonna say Think of the biggest number you can think of, like as in the biggest number you can name. Trillion. Trillion. Let's try real numbers. Um two trillion. I can't go higher than two trillion. That's really big for me. Is it okay?

No, it is, according to Lucas' calculations, it is one point four two two octillion What? Uh and an octillion is one with twenty seven zeros. So um like a a million that's got six zeros and a billion that's got nine and a trillion has got twelve, but this one's got twenty seven. What? And for context, according to Lucas, this is 10,000 times fewer than the number of bacteriophages on Earth. Oh, thanks for that context. That's really helpful.

Um okay, so I read a fact recently which was really cool. It's new science that peacocks have got lasers in their tails. Okay. So those little eyes in a peacock's tail, they amplify the light. Uh and we don't really know why they do that, possibly to attract females or or whatever, but we do know that they work like lasers. And so I have worked out how many peacocks you would need to blow up the earth. Incredible. Incredible. Would you light a gas? Ha ha ha.

I feel like a peacock's less powerful than a laser. I'm afraid it is. So if you're if the highest number you could think of before was a trillion, you're not gonna get anywhere near this. I'm not going to three trillion. No, I'll say two d are we saying octillion? Octillion was the other one. Yeah. It's just fantasy football at this stage, isn't it? Dan, do you want to advance on that?

I think the best way to get close to this is to make up a number and hope that scientists have also made up that number. Bajillion is not a number. Squamillion, no, sorry. Good guess. Squenillion. Squenillion. Oh sorry, sisquinellia. No, no, you got it. Absolutely. Uh no, it is approximately 355.5 nonillion peacocks it would take to blow up the earth. So that would be about thirty-five peacocks for every virus that there is currently on Earth. Right.

Get them together in one big Death Star fire lighter. You'd have to you need a light source as well, but you know, we'll deal with that later. Let's get the people. Ha ha ha. Yeah, you're gonna need to start breeding peacocks quite sharpish if you're trying to get up to however many non ilian Well, I feel really educated by that. Thank you, Jane. I feel like Well no, thank you, Lucas.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Lucas. And then James for the the peacock calculation. All I'm picturing is James at home and his little daughter coming up to him saying, Daddy, can we play? And he's saying, I'm working on something important here. Calculations of peacocks on the wall. You're joking, you think I do this by myself now that I have a helper?

The teacher's going, Her math is um interesting, Mr. Mark. Um She doesn't yet know how to do three times four, but she does seem to be able to do three hundred and fifty-five point five non-illion divided by the number of viruses on Earth. Yeah. Her nonillion timetable is fantastic. We're not knocking that. It's wonderful.

Okay, well that is enough of your facts. Absolutely brilliant facts as ever this week. Thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in to podcast at qi.com. But now it is time to go through our old archive of facts.

Andy has spent many, many years typing these up and we have got them here to give away to friends of the podcast on Patreon. So if you join Patreon at the very top level, then not only will you get a shout-out on this show, you will get a digital certificate and forever and a day your facts will belong to you. So who is gonna be the first person to give out one of our facts? I'll dish one out. This one goes out to Matt Ray. Congratulations, Matt. Your fact is that.

Morgue refrigerators in Turkey are fitted with alarms, motion sensors, and handles to open them from the inside in case people wake up. So good. It's thoughtful, it's sensible. And do you remember we did this whole big thing about the nineteenth century where it was really unclear what dying meant and it was actually really hard to work out what the biological signal Yes.

You know,'cause there's there's the heart, there's the brain, there's I mean, there's all sorts and people had to come up with these mad methods and there were these hospitals of doubtful life where people were put when maybe they would wake up. There's gotta be a point though when you're walking into that room and your relative is half eaten by maggots and flies all around them going, I'll give it a few more days. Yeah. There's a there's a point.

There is a point, but it's just what is that point, right? Yeah. I think maggots eating through your eye hole. That's what we'll say. Okay, from now on, we have an official international standard. It's the muggets eating through the eyeballs, Schreiber standard. Ha ha ha. Uh not the thing I thought I'd be known for after my death. Ha ha ha.

Not the legacy I thought I was leaving on this planet. That's very good. Well congrats, Matt Ray. That's yours. Here's another one for Will Davidson. As a baby, Henry VIII had two official cradle rockers paid three pounds a year to rock him. Very good. I I don't know what three pounds would have got you in late fifteenth century. Mm-hmm. Not really a long term job as well. How l how long's the post? Not long. Yeah. Well, maybe he continued into his like adulthood, he was still being rocked.

Yeah. Wouldn't wouldn't you love to like just have someone you've had a stressful day, you've just been doing podcasts and like you can just lie down in a crib and someone's gonna rock you for a half an hour? That's gonna calm you right down. Yeah? No you're lo you're both looking at me like I've gone insane. Good.

Okay, this next fact is now under the custodianship of Josh Pearson. Josh, your fact is that from 800 AD to 1349, the Colosseum in Rome was used as an apartment block. Wow. And this this was not there were not active gladiatorial fights going on at the time, right? Like it wasn't like oh god, my bloody my bloody neighbours again. You remember we stayed in that hotel while we were on tour where if you got a certain hotel room, your window looked into the stadium of a football ground.

Oh yeah. I've been to a few of those. The one we went to was in Norwich. Yes. They also have one in Field, which I've been to, which overlooks the football. I think Bolton has one as well. So there's a few hotels like that. But yeah, absolutely. That would be great, wouldn't it? Yeah. Okay. Your curtains and there's some Christians being eaten by lions? No. Yeah.

Okay, this one goes out to Stacy Pugh. And uh Stacy, this might be relevant. I don't know where you live, but your facts for for now and forever is that in Australia you can be fined for swearing. This was quite a surprising one to us'cause we we think of Australia as being quite sweary. Um but it's not allowed and you better watch what's your matter. People do swear. And not get fined. Um But they're working on it.

Northern territory is Northern Territory was a place definitely we covered in the show that that people had been find a a fair bit for swearing. Mm. So if I just stand in the street in Darwin or whatever and say I'm so hungry I could bite the arse a pigeon, the Australians say. What am I gonna get arrested? I don't know if you'll serve any time. I think it might be an on the spot fine, maybe a martial cash point. I think I guess sure. I mean this was ten years ago. Yeah.

Yeah, you could be fined for swearing in the UK if you do it in the wrong place and time and with aggressive intent. That's absolutely right. Yeah, I think that probably is to cover events like this, as opposed to people saying, Um, I'm so hungry I could eat Yeah, I was off a fidget. Oh, yeah. Right, yeah. Wait. That is a phrase I think should come with some kind of legal sanction, but I don't think they just don't have the enforcement, I think.

Okay, uh I got one here. This is now for Emma Banton. And your fact is that when the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, reception was so bad that it took seventeen hours to send the first message across. I feel like it was to Queen Victoria. I'm sure everything was to Queen Victoria t like officially at the time. Um Mm. I thought it would be like the hot girls in your area. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Okay, here is another fact. This is also to another Emma. This is going out to Emma Culthurst. And Emma, your fact is that to celebrate World Vegan Day in 2013, Peter asked a town called Fryup in Yorkshire to change its name to Vegan Fryup for the day. They refused. Yeah.

There you go. So Peter, the people people for ethical treatment of animals or something like that. The people who like to get a lot of publicity by doing slightly weird things, uh, in order to further their cause. And this was one of those. And it's because Britain has so many amazing place names that are all, you know, like Big old Dead horse village. That doesn't sound British, that sounds more American. But you know what I mean. There are lots of Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and we have so many place names like Canyon Ranch. All right. All right. That was a bad example. But this was the vegetable there's fry up and then there's great fry up and then there's little fry up, isn't there? And then

I think so. Uh and basically there are there are a few places like this knocking around and Peter thought they'd they'd try and make some hay with it. I think they don't mind being refused, do they,'cause they can say, Oh, the village of Fryup has refused to rename itself just for one day. Like for them, they get the publicity no matter what, don't they? Yes, you're right. Here is another one and this goes out to Katie.

Surname withheld. But you'll have had your certificate already, and your fact is that in nineteen sixties America, on one thirty five mile bus route, you passed through seven time zones. Nightmare. Nightmare. And it's because American states just they had you know, there were borders and there were all sorts of different time zones knocking around and they took a long time to resolve it all. And in fact they still haven't got their act together and got all in the same time zone. Which is crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, they really should get like China, don't you think, Candy? Come on, guys. Yeah. We had our own time zones in the UK as well. Like if if you lived in Bristol you would be on different times than if you lived in London, for instance. Uh and then it was the transport that changed all that because once you had trains going from one town to another, you needed to everyone needed to be on the same time, otherwise you wouldn't know what time your train was gonna arrive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right. Okay, Dan, give us the last fact for the day.

Yeah, this is for John Harris, and that is if a predator gets too close to a limpet, the limpet lifts its shell and stamps on the predator's foot. Gorgeous. Interesting facts about this, I don't know if we said this on the day, but the word limp it comes from the fact that when they stamp on your toe you limp away. No. Of course not. Oh, yeah. So proud that I didn't go for it this time. So proud. Well done Dan, you're learning I've got it.

I was gonna suggest putting that in the book of things you think are named after one thing, but actually they're they're named after someone else. Okay, well, um on that note, I think we should say thank you again to our new custodians. They are John, Katie, Emma, Emma, Stacy, Josh, Will, and Matt. And thank you everyone who sent in some facts.

for the first half of this show and thank you indeed for listening. If you're listening to this and you're not yet a friend of the podcast on Patreon, then why not go to patreon.com and find out more there. Uh there's all sorts of levels. You don't have to go on the top level. In fact, you don't have to pay at all. If you sign up on Patreon, there are little bits of extra stuff you can get there as well. So do go over to Patreon.

And if you have any facts that you'd like to send to us for this show, or in fact you've heard us say something wrong and you'd like to tell us about it or you want to give us more information. Then send all of your correspondence to podcast at qi.com and it might well get into some of our output. We will see you again on Friday for a big fish. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from these guys. Yeah. Farewell, I'll be the same.

Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palstält. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skitsnygg Tipkor. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AIT.