571: No Such Thing As Dudley And The Dippers

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Speaker 8 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Speaker 7 Don't compromise quality for price.

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Speaker 19 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 20 What do you think makes the perfect snack? Hmm. It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
Could you be more specific? When it's cravenient. Okay.

Speaker 20 Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right now in the street at AM PM, or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at AM PM. I'm seeing a pattern here.

Speaker 20 Well, yeah, we're talking about what I crave.

Speaker 2 Which is anything from AM PM?

Speaker 20 What more could you want?

Speaker 21 Stop by AMPM, where the snacks and drinks are perfectly cravable and convenient. That's cravenience.
AMPM, too much good stuff.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

Speaker 20 And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Anna.

Speaker 22 My fact this week is that ancient Rome had a secret name, and no one knows what it was to this very day.

Speaker 20 To this. To this very day.

Speaker 22 It's very cool.

Speaker 20 It is very cool. It also, when you're looking into it, it also seems like, did they? Was there definitely a secret name? Oh, you think they're all making it up?

Speaker 20 It seems like it might have been something that was written by historians a bit later. No, no, it was written at the time.

Speaker 22 There's a bunch of ancient sources that claim it from about the first century onwards. So it's Pliny and Plutarch are the first.

Speaker 22 But they quote...

Speaker 20 Paulini. She's quoting Paul Linny.

Speaker 22 Yeah, yeah. It was about six or seven different writers throughout the ancient Roman period saying this was a thing with like varying different accounts of what exactly it was.

Speaker 22 But they mostly said it's a name that only very few people know, like just really extreme dignitaries, the queen and her corgis, basically.

Speaker 22 And then even though they know it, they're not allowed to say it, even in special ceremonies.

Speaker 22 A couple of the writers said, Sometimes in ceremonies, they say the name, but no, there was what do you reckon?

Speaker 20 It was there's a few ideas, right?

Speaker 22 There are some ideas which are bullshit.

Speaker 20 There's more

Speaker 22 is the main one, first mentioned in the sixth century.

Speaker 20 An anagram of Rome,

Speaker 20 indeed. This Rome backwards, the palindrome.
And they call the city of love, don't they? That is Paris, famously

Speaker 20 Syrap, I call it.

Speaker 22 Yeah, there is that theory, which is from a scholar called John the Lydian in the sixth century, who said, just confidently, it was called Amor. That was the secret name.

Speaker 20 We don't seem to have evidence for that. And why?

Speaker 22 For protection, I think. So there's also a lot of stuff alongside it saying there was a secret goddess who protected Rome.

Speaker 22 And the reason you can't say the goddess's name is that then your enemies will know her name and then they can use her and they can call upon her and say, help me in sections.

Speaker 23 She would defect was the idea, right?

Speaker 20 Yeah. And go with the enemy.

Speaker 23 That's quite a common thing, I think, with gods, right? It's like if you know their name, then you can tell them what to do kind of thing. I think that happened in Egypt quite a lot.
Absolutely.

Speaker 23 Like in the Book of the Dead, for instance, when you go to the underworld, you have to pass through these gates.

Speaker 23 But the only way you can pass through is if you name the gods because you name them and when you've got the name, they have to do whatever you tell them.

Speaker 20 Is that, I mean, I'm hearing Rumple Stiltskin big time here. Yeah.
That's basically the same story, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Except he's going to, what is it? He's going to marry you if you don't.

Speaker 20 If you don't know his name, he'll marry you, which is a bigger, it's a more immediate threat.

Speaker 20 Yeah. Yeah.
There is a lot of people who've come up with ideas about this. So the Roma amour idea, there was an author called Dolores Prato,

Speaker 20 and she said that one reason for saying that this could be the case is a lot of early Romans used to read and write from right to left. So they were very good at knowing

Speaker 20 palantromes, basically. Wait, did they?

Speaker 20 why did they read and write from right as in the early romans according to dolores pretto maybe arabic influences did i what is that likely in ancient in the pen

Speaker 23 so sure and i've never heard that i mean well i'll tell you one thing they did do is they used to write like secret squares right where you would write loads of five-letter words one after the other and then the last one would be the reverse of the first one and then if you read them up and down or left and right or on the diagonals they all said the same thing.

Speaker 20 Abracadabra is one of those words. Well, you can write it in a triangle.
So it's like one of those. And that's very powerful.
Famous thing called the sator square.

Speaker 23 Which goes sator something, opera something, rotas.

Speaker 20 In fact, it sounds like prato is a name that would fit in one of these mystical squares. Dolores Prato.
Yeah, and what is that?

Speaker 20 Prato must be an anagram that says gotcha, you know, something like that. Obviously not that.

Speaker 23 So there was someone supposedly who was executed for saying the name.

Speaker 22 Yes, yeah, no, it was terrible punishment if you said it.

Speaker 23 Sauranus, he was called.

Speaker 20 Well, well, what's he doing?

Speaker 23 He was called Soranus. Now, people who listen to the podcast might remember Sauranus.

Speaker 23 There was a guy called Sauranus of Ephesus

Speaker 23 who came up with the idea of a midwife putting their fingers up your bum to orient the head of a baby before you give birth. But it's not that Sauranus, it's a different Sauranus.

Speaker 23 And this Sauranus is, according to Pliny, he was the first writer to provide a table of contents in a book ever.

Speaker 23 Before that, if you wanted to look something up, you just had to to read the whole thing.

Speaker 23 But he invented the idea of putting a table of contents and then he got into a Barney with some other bloke and then he went to court and he said the name of Rome and he got executed.

Speaker 20 Yeah, right.

Speaker 23 But the main thing is the contents thing.

Speaker 20 Which is a bigger contribution to history? Which Serenus? Well, I think Serenus the

Speaker 20 midwife. You say Serenus and I say Serenis.

Speaker 23 I think the midwife guy, because he saved quite a lot of lives with that.

Speaker 20 Does that work? It does work, yeah, yeah. I know that.

Speaker 23 If you've got a breach baby and not like a a full breach one, but if you're just trying to move the head in the right place.

Speaker 20 But if you don't have a table of contents, how can you even read a midwifery book and learn that in the first place?

Speaker 23 Well, in fairness, Anus will be right near the start of the book.

Speaker 20 That's true. I wonder, you know that thing of in ancient Rome, so many things would have been invented, so many amazing characters who've been lost through the footnotes of time.
And is...

Speaker 20 Do we have two Sorenuses purely because their name is Sorenus?

Speaker 22 You have so misunderstood classical historians.

Speaker 20 I don't know where to start.

Speaker 20 There are a lot of these sort of mystery cults, weren't there? So, this name of Rome was to be used in sacred rituals, you know?

Speaker 22 Maybe, according to some.

Speaker 20 Maybe never. Okay, well,

Speaker 20 if it's never used, then what are we all doing here? I mean,

Speaker 20 but there was a place called the Cave of Rome. Did you hear of this? No.
No. This is great.
This is buried deep under the ruins of the palace of the Emperor Augustus.

Speaker 20 It was

Speaker 20 full of mosaics and seashells. Right.
Which is pretty cool. And

Speaker 20 this may, according to legend, this is where Rome itself came to be. Okay.
I.e.. Where Robulus and Remus got suckled.
They were found there by the wolf, the twins.

Speaker 20 I didn't know they were the sons of the god Mars.

Speaker 20 That gets glossed over a lot in the story. They were Nepo babies, basically.
They weren't just random twin babies who were left and then found by a wolf.

Speaker 23 Don't think they are in all stories, are they?

Speaker 20 Oh, okay. Maybe not.
They might be. But there were ceremonies there for hundreds of years, and that's the secret cave of Rome.
Do we know where it is?

Speaker 20 It's under the ruins of the palace of the Emperor Augustus, as I said, 30 seconds ago. But it's a real thing.
Yeah, it's real.

Speaker 22 Right. On these secretive cults, I think my favourite is Mithraism or Mithraism.
The thing about secret cults is they were really secret, so no one was allowed to write anything down or say anything.

Speaker 22 So it was all just rumor about what happened there based on what people said. But they did stuff like there's lots of archaeological sources of Mithraic temples where there's people killing bulls.

Speaker 22 There's one in London.

Speaker 20 There's a Mithraum in London. Yes.

Speaker 20 They found it when they were excavating. I can't remember what they were digging up.
Yes,

Speaker 20 it was.

Speaker 22 I think it was near the Museum of London, weirdly, it was found.

Speaker 20 They've reconstructed what it would have looked like. And at the end, there's the classic image of Mithra slaughtering a bull.
That was the big image of him.

Speaker 20 Wearing a Phrygian cap and Anatolian trousers. Oh, lovely.
That was his.

Speaker 22 I can picture it now.

Speaker 20 That was his look.

Speaker 20 The Phrygian cap is what the Smurfs wear. Yeah, yeah, they do.

Speaker 20 And Anatolian trousers, I don't know what they are. They're just trousers from modern-day Turkey.

Speaker 22 I imagined like pirate pants.

Speaker 23 I remember, yeah, like whirling dervish pants. So, quite wide around the thighs and then tight around the knees.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 So, like MC Hammer. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 20 It was a primitive MC Hammer cult, basically. That's what he's based on.

Speaker 22 My favourite place in Rome is Amithraic Temple. It is

Speaker 22 by far the coolest site. Forget everything else, forget the Coliseum.
About five minutes from the Coliseum, there's a Basilica of San Clement. Have you guys been to it? No.

Speaker 20 I think I might have been. Maybe.

Speaker 22 It's an 11th-century church. You go in, 11th century church.
And there was a cleric who worked in the church in 1867, the friar who worked in the church, who just found that underneath it was hollow.

Speaker 22 And so they excavated underneath and they found a fourth century church. And now you can go descend down into that.

Speaker 22 So that's, you know, in the olden days, things were lower down because the ground hadn't accumulated on top of it yet. And that's incredible.

Speaker 22 And you're looking at fourth century stuff, artwork preserved.

Speaker 20 Wow. And then bring it home.

Speaker 22 Here it comes. A layer below, they discover not one, but two things.
An An ancient Roman house, which you can now wander through deep underground, and the Mithraic temple,

Speaker 20 which you can sit in.

Speaker 22 It's the coolest thing ever. And you can sit there and pretend to be taking, you know, sermons from the bull killer.

Speaker 20 Wow, that's very cool. Yeah, that's really cool.

Speaker 23 We don't know much about these places because you weren't supposed to...

Speaker 23 You weren't supposed to go there if you weren't allowed and you often didn't write about them, right?

Speaker 22 Yes, exactly. It was only for initiates.

Speaker 23 But there was one, there was a festival of the goddess of fertility who's called Bonadia.

Speaker 23 It was only women who were allowed to go. And since men were the people who write stuff down, we didn't really know anything about it.

Speaker 23 But there was a huge scandal because a guy called Publius Claudius Pulcha or Pulcha, he disguised himself as a woman in 62 BC and went to the festival. And when people found out about it, oh my days.

Speaker 20 Pissed off. That's bad news.
Pissed off boy. I think that story is in one of Cicero's speeches.
I think I've read the prosecution's speech from that trial. I think it exists.
Wow. But the

Speaker 23 well, the interesting thing is that he was prosecuted for incest.

Speaker 20 What? Clodius was one of the sort of chief

Speaker 20 gang dudes in ancient Rome, and he had a very, very attractive sister.

Speaker 20 And that was a big... No excuse, Andy.
Absolutely not, but it was a.

Speaker 20 Your honour, but your honour.

Speaker 20 Just look at her, Your Honor.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and

Speaker 20 that was his big, one of his big rivals.

Speaker 23 But can I say, for the listener,

Speaker 23 even though he was done for incest, he hadn't had sex with his sister.

Speaker 23 It was like a technical thing because there was a thing about if you had sex with a vestal virgin, then that was counted as incest because they were kind of the children of the city kind of thing who looked after the city and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 23 And this was like an extension of this because he defiled this cult of women. It counted technically as incest, even though none of them was related to income.

Speaker 20 Why do we know his incest?

Speaker 20 He also had, in his speech, I'm pretty sure I remember Cicero says, look at the Cicero on him, though. You know,

Speaker 20 he was very much implying that he had also, I think, slept with his actual sister.

Speaker 20 That was a sort of low trick from Cicero. It wasn't.

Speaker 20 Is James, what you said, is that unbiased history, or is that the defense lawyer's speech that you read that you got those facts?

Speaker 23 I don't know. Like, I got it from Wikipedia, I'll be honest.

Speaker 23 No, I did read some of the, I read the Cicero thing. I don't think it's biased.
I think this is stuff that actually happened.

Speaker 22 No, that's just he got in trouble for invading the women's space, as people shouldn't. But did he find out anything good? What were they doing? Were they all teaching how to insert tampons and stuff?

Speaker 23 They were all reading scary stories and kissing each other.

Speaker 20 Knew it. Knew it.

Speaker 20 Hey, can I tell you very quickly, this is not ancient Rome, but it's ancient China. It's a pretty astonishing thing.
I was just looking into general secrets that we still don't know much about.

Speaker 20 For a good 3,000 years, there was a secret women's language called Nushu, which is lady writing basically.

Speaker 20 And it was for women who needed to pass on information to each other that they didn't want men to have any idea about. And they created an entire script.

Speaker 20 It's only in the 1980s that we even found out it existed. It lasted, yeah, for close to 3,000 years.
So the only thing I hate is you guys found out it existed.

Speaker 20 If you've ever watched ITV, the show Loose Women is actually broadcast in that language.

Speaker 23 And this language that women only speak is called New Shoes.

Speaker 20 sex in the city's based on a lot of it's writing yeah it's been amazing all these years and it's coming back the last um the last writers of it died a couple of decades ago yeah but they're they've worked it out and they're teaching it again and so it's becoming a language again it's beautiful to look at it's actually as someone pointed out very sexy to look at if writing could be sexy this is it yeah um have you guys heard of boob slang Oh, geez.

Speaker 20 This is not related to new shoe, by the way. This is a modern thing.
This is New Zealand. We're in now.
Okay. And what's an environment where you get a lot of slang? Sailors.

Speaker 20 Not far off. It's an enclosed space.
Workshop. Prisons.
Prisons.

Speaker 20 Not far off.

Speaker 23 Just want to say to any sailors listening.

Speaker 20 Yeah, we know what you did. You're very lucky that you haven't been banged up yet.
No.

Speaker 20 What are they going to do, James? They're at sea. I can just hear right now,

Speaker 20 set a course for London.

Speaker 20 Right now, ships are turning. I just need to stay.

Speaker 20 I just need to stay in central Leicestershire and I'll be fine. No boob slang.
Grand Union Canal?

Speaker 20 No boob slang is a New Zealand prison language

Speaker 20 and it has 3,000 separate words. So obviously, let's get into it.

Speaker 20 What is boob?

Speaker 23 It's the name of the language.

Speaker 20 Yeah, well, boob slang is the language. Oh, so what is a boob?

Speaker 23 It's the name of a person.

Speaker 20 It's prison. Prison.
It's prison.

Speaker 20 We're in boob. Okay.
So what's

Speaker 20 a boob story? It's a story to tell when you're in prison. Yeah.

Speaker 20 Are they all hang on?

Speaker 20 Is this how they all work?

Speaker 20 I'm not a boob pancreas.

Speaker 20 If I said, has anyone eaten boob lunch today? What am I asking?

Speaker 20 I think boob story is how you ended up in the big house, basically. All right, what's a double yoker? Oh, a double yoker.

Speaker 22 Is it two black eyes?

Speaker 20 Is it a bit of of great luck? It's just an idiot. Is it a double yoker? I don't know why.
I would think a double yoker would be brainier than the average.

Speaker 23 Is it like a yokel, but then they're doubly as yokely as a yokel? It might be.

Speaker 20 It doesn't have an N on it. Let's have one more.
What's a good night kiss? Oh,

Speaker 22 it's one of those shower things that we don't think we should get into.

Speaker 20 Knockout punch, is it?

Speaker 23 Get your hands off my boob boobs.

Speaker 20 Dan's right. It's a knockout punch.

Speaker 20 So be very careful if you ask someone in prison to give you a good night kiss. Do you think you would?

Speaker 20 I don't know. I think it'll make you feel happy, wouldn't it? It would reassure you a bit.

Speaker 22 To the guards.

Speaker 20 I'll to the guards on night number one. Excuse me.
My mommy always.

Speaker 1 Time for a sofa upgrade.

Speaker 2 Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.

Speaker 5 Every anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 7 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Speaker 8 Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 1 Liquids simply slide right off.

Speaker 11 Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink and feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 12 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Speaker 7 Don't compromise quality for price.

Speaker 14 Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 16 Sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Speaker 17 Get early access to Black Friday now.

Speaker 18 The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 13 Plus free shipping and free returns.

Speaker 14 Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Speaker 19 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

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Speaker 20 Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James.

Speaker 23 Okay, my fact this week is that in 2010, Jaguar made a car that sounded like an actual Jaguar

Speaker 20 Give us a idea of what that sounds like

Speaker 23 I have to do the hand gesture when I do that as well.

Speaker 20 I sort of think cars sound a bit like

Speaker 20 roaring animals.

Speaker 23 It was easier than making it sound like a laughing hyena for instance. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, there wasn't much to tweak.

Speaker 20 But I did listen because you can hear a sample online and it does start with the regular car sound and in your head you're going, oh, that doesn't sound.

Speaker 23 And then out of of nowhere a jaguar sound and yeah so it does it is distinctly different yeah so this was debuted at the 2010 paris motor show and it was the jaguar cx75

Speaker 23 and it was designed by a guy called ian callum and then last year he's started his own business now called callum that makes cars and he is making his own version which is the original one was a concept one i think it was in the movie spectre yeah um but he's making ones that are street legal so they've got the basic safety that you need and the right emissions and stuff like that um so if you want to give him a load of dush he'll make you one so spectre um they were provided supposedly with about five of these cars five to seven no one actually knows how many of these have been produced as of yet because it's not on the road another one of those secrets it's another secret yeah and if anyone watches it it's a chase scene Bond is in the Nasten Martin and he's been chased by someone who is in this Jaguar.

Speaker 20 Don't watch Spectre just for that chase, though.

Speaker 22 Are there other reasons reasons to watch it? No.

Speaker 20 Right, okay.

Speaker 22 Well, so if you're going to watch it, it should be just for that chase's house.

Speaker 20 Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 23 Can I just say one more thing about Ian Callum? No, yeah, by the way.

Speaker 23 When he was 14 years old, he submitted a car design to Jaguar in the hope of getting a job.

Speaker 23 And then later on, he went on to work for them.

Speaker 20 Yeah. That's very cool.

Speaker 23 I just want to see that car that he designed because I'm sure... I mean, he's one of the great car designers, but for 14-year-old, it's going to look like Homer Simpson's car, isn't it?

Speaker 20 Have you seen a cyber truck?

Speaker 22 So, so on-car sound, something that is added by manufacturers is the noise of car doors closing, or it's enhanced by manufacturers.

Speaker 20 Shuck. Yeah, because

Speaker 22 they think that, so cars used to be, you know, heavier, made of different materials, so they made that really satisfying deep clunk.

Speaker 22 And now, car manufacturers don't actually need to use such heavy materials, they're a bit more efficient, but they think if people hear a lighter, tinny clunk, they'll think it's not as expensive.

Speaker 22 So then they alter the design to make the car door thudding clunk sound more. And they go to huge lengths.
So, what was it?

Speaker 22 Cadillac was saying that they listen to dozens and dozens of different cars and make notes on their sounds and then investigate all the cars to work out what's making that sound the way it sounds.

Speaker 20 And then combine them. I don't know if you've heard Anna.
Car's a big business.

Speaker 20 I've never seen one. What would you add to your car sound sonically if you could?

Speaker 22 One of those

Speaker 20 horns. A clown horn.
A clown horn. A clown horn.
Yeah, that's horrible. Yeah.

Speaker 23 It's like someone grabbing a boob in the 1970s.

Speaker 20 Yeah,

Speaker 20 I do have a favorite car sound now as a result of looking up this fact, which is pink noise. Have you heard a pink noise?

Speaker 20 This is a really fascinating innovation. So this noise is something you would only ever hear if you're about to get into a crash.
And they're anticipating.

Speaker 20 Oh, you have heard it

Speaker 20 yeah pink noise it's really interesting so one of the things that happens to a lot of people who get into big crashes the sound is incredibly loud and it damages their hearing so when it detects a potential collision it puts out this sound which is at 80 decibels which basically prepares your ear for this even louder 165 decibels that it's about to receive And so it's a way of getting your ears into a place where they're not going to get damaged.

Speaker 20 What? Yeah, it's really interesting. My car has a thing where it beeps when it thinks I'm about to hit something.
But that's not this, right? And it's going off all the time.

Speaker 20 I've actually had to rip it out.

Speaker 20 That's incredible.

Speaker 22 And that protects your ears. What? By warming your ears up to that.

Speaker 20 I don't think your ears could be tricked out of

Speaker 20 mechanical deafness. No, it's so, okay, this is what it says.

Speaker 20 It says it triggers muscles in the ear to contract by reflex, automatically bracing the inner ear and the eardrum for extremely loud noise by the crash.

Speaker 20 You've all heard of Hans Zimmer.

Speaker 23 Yeah, of course. Yeah, if they're to the Zimmer frame.

Speaker 20 That's right.

Speaker 20 So we're talking Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, Gladiator, Dunkirk, Dune. He did the music for them.
He did the music. He did the music for all of these.
Dune 2.

Speaker 20 He also designed the sound of the BMW. So electric cars, they don't have an internal combustion engine.
They do not need to sound like a car.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 20 But you can't just have them sounding like anything because if you're driving close to someone, they need to know there's a car passing by.

Speaker 22 And they need to know it's a car. You can't do a horse noise or like a crazy bird noise.

Speaker 20 exactly that's a temptation yeah but hans zimmer was given the brief to define what was it to compose the sound of e-mobility for um for bmw that is his accent

Speaker 20 yeah yeah um and i listened to it and it just sounds like a car well that's the idea then no but it sounds too much like a car as in if i was getting zimmer on the case yeah i want something that revolutionized yeah but when you watched dune did you think oh that just sounds like a giant worm

Speaker 23 like he's just brilliant at making things sound like they're supposed to sound.

Speaker 20 Maybe the worm sounds like a BMW.

Speaker 20 It's very confusing. Yeah, no, and they have an in-helps person, don't they, BMW, who is doing this?

Speaker 20 So Zimmer was sort of brought in to collaborate with a guy called Renzo Vitale, who's already there creating these sounds.

Speaker 20 Because as we know, and we've spoken about on this podcast before, it is a time where the electric car is knocking out sounds and people are finding that incredibly scary.

Speaker 20 In fact, Jaguar are saying that they're going to go entirely electric by this year. And who knows if that's going to happen? But that certainly was said a while ago.

Speaker 20 And so so, things like the British Library are starting to archive car sounds.

Speaker 20 So, the Jaguar car sound, which is a notably famous car sound amongst car connoisseurs, is now part of the audio library in there because my children might never know that sound.

Speaker 22 God, imagine the bore if you see someone listening to that audio in the British Library of all the things you could be looking at. You're not talking to them, are you?

Speaker 23 Imagine you see an attractive person on the other side of the train and they've got their headphones in and you think side lover, hey, what are you listening to?

Speaker 20 To the boomer. Oh, I love that list.

Speaker 23 One thing where this is important is in Formula E, which is like Formula One, but for electric cars.

Speaker 23 I read an article in the Washington Post that was talking about this, and they said that the cars were going round and they sounded like electric toothbrushes going around,

Speaker 23 which when you think about the Formula One, it's like,

Speaker 23 but then I read another article that said that the old F1 engines, they had a volume that would peak between 500 and 2500 hertz, which is about the same frequency as a human scream.

Speaker 23 And that's the reason people like it so much because it really puts you on edge. Right.
Like this, you're watching the cars, but you're kind of on edge the whole time.

Speaker 23 You're really like excited about it because your brain is thinking, is someone screaming there or something?

Speaker 20 Yeah, yeah. The drivers, it's always their first time and they're very, very scared.

Speaker 20 Even they got pink noise in there. But even petrol car noises are fake.
That's what I find so weird. Even these days, like the cardor thing, it's this thing, skewomorphism.

Speaker 20 We've talked, maybe we mentioned this before, is where you have a new technology, but you keep an element from the old technology for aesthetic reasons.

Speaker 20 Like an app which has a picture of a bookshelf to trick you into thinking you're reading an ancient tome. You know, it's just that skeuomorphism.

Speaker 20 And all these modern cars, even petrol ones, still, they play fake engine noises. Some of them literally have speakers in the cabin.

Speaker 22 They do. Wasn't it? I think a car journalist found this out.
It was in the Ford Mustang, which has apparently an incredibly famous sound.

Speaker 22 He broke his speakers or something or pulled a fuse that took his speaker out. And he was like, oh my God, the engine's gone off.
Yeah. And it turns out that's just

Speaker 23 great.

Speaker 20 I think so many sounds must be manufactured in a way that we don't realize. Like it's like secret sounds everywhere.

Speaker 20 Someone was telling me that they have an old mouse, which when you click, you hear a noise

Speaker 20 and apparently it's a little speaker in there that is playing that.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's a little tiny speaker. When you click, it's playing a sound.

Speaker 20 It's not the click itself that's happening because people found it quite disorientating to have a mouse that wasn't clicking anymore. And so they created a little

Speaker 20 bit.

Speaker 23 I have like a little speaker that I keep in my trousers because I can only do silent but deadly farts and it really puts people off.

Speaker 20 So whenever I know what's coming, I press the button and it makes the noise. Wow.
Yeah. Oh, that's good.
Is it both? Because yours are very basic, basic. Yeah.

Speaker 20 Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that Queen Queen Elizabeth I never visited Shakespeare's globe.

Speaker 20 However, she did visit a venue down the road to watch bears fighting a dog and monkey.

Speaker 20 Oh. It does depend on the Shakespeare play, I would say.
Right. Some Shakespeare plays way better than a dog fighting a monkey.

Speaker 20 Others.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 20 I read this, by the way, in a book called London, A Travel Guide Through Time by Dr. Matthew Green.
I love this book, and my wife actually was the editor on the book. And it's actually...

Speaker 20 yeah is this cool this is spond is it it's like eight ten years old now this book she's still she's still getting royalties

Speaker 20 anyway if you could all buy it with three children to feed uh no it's a fantastic book where matthew green takes the reader as if they were a time traveler through different periods of london the first one you start in is walking along the south bank and you're heading towards shakespeare's globe but he makes the point that surprisingly uh

Speaker 20 queen elizabeth i never went to the globe, but she did go to a venue that was very near to it to watch this extraordinary thing where bears would be brought into an arena and they would have dogs that were let loose on them.

Speaker 20 And they would just fight until either it looked like the dogs have had way too much and we're going to die, or that the bear looked a bit injured because these bears were kind of like professional wrestlers.

Speaker 20 They were famous in their day. People knew their names.
One's even named in a Shakespeare play itself. So this was a big deal.
So yeah, it's a which is the famous one.

Speaker 23 can you remember?

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's called Timon of Athens.

Speaker 20 It was called Sackerson, I believe. Oh,

Speaker 20 the real celebribear. Yeah, there was Ned Whitting, there was Harry Hunks, there was Blind Bess, and then Sackerson, yeah, in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
And yeah, incidentally, the worst play.

Speaker 20 The worst of Shakespeare's plays, arguably maybe the worst of all plays ever written. It's really about the merry play.
So did they throw Sackerson in just to sort of boost up its interest?

Speaker 20 I get this rating. There's a theory that Shakespeare wrote it in nine days.
It was a very, very rushed job play. He had to quickly come up with something.

Speaker 20 And he just sort of said, I'm going to pull this out.

Speaker 22 I'll chuck a bear in there. People will rock up.
And it was a fair fight. I think you said that it was bears fighting a dog and a monkey, but I think they would usually give them a few dogs.

Speaker 20 Yeah, yeah, a bunch of dogs.

Speaker 20 Sometimes the monkey. The monkey was usually on horseback.
Like it was. So it has an advantage there, doesn't it? Yeah.
Wait, who's fighting who? The monkey's on a horse.

Speaker 20 Who's the monkey on a horse fighting? No, I think in that case, I think the monkey is just riding around on a horse as a bit of entertainment.

Speaker 22 Oh, wait, so the bears didn't fight the monkey?

Speaker 20 I think monkeys did fight bears, but I don't think you could incentivize incentivize a bear to repeatedly attack a horse, can you?

Speaker 23 Who's the horse fighting?

Speaker 20 The horses are having a good time. Yeah.
It's just a day out. Horse is confused.

Speaker 20 It's just hanging out.

Speaker 20 It was confusing, wasn't it? Because this is gruesome entertainment, yet when you read people writing about it, it was like a great day out.

Speaker 23 I read a lot of articles about it for this. One thing I really liked about it is they sometimes did it in pubs.
And they do seem to have had bear gardens. which is where they did the fighting.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 Which is just that way we get bear garden. Well, I think.
I found out that.

Speaker 22 But yeah, lots of places. There's a trollum.
I think the way we live now has the Bear Garden as the gentleman's club they go to. The name stayed on.
And Bear Garden was anywhere the Bears fought.

Speaker 23 And there is a road called Bear Garden now on the south by the way.

Speaker 20 And Bear Lane, yeah, near the spots where this happened. It's one of those sports which makes you think, oh, people in the past were just, I owe nothing to them.

Speaker 20 I don't care about their civilisation. I don't think their values are at all interesting.
to me. What about all this?

Speaker 22 Well, let's not get into the cultural relativism. Is it better to tear the foxes to to shreds? Who knows?

Speaker 20 Who are we to jump on? Yeah, like you do everything.

Speaker 20 I told you that.

Speaker 20 I've seen you on the hunt.

Speaker 20 Yeah, but

Speaker 20 it's so... Oh, it's really grim.

Speaker 20 But the Puritans didn't like it. They're boars, though, weren't they?

Speaker 20 The Puritans carried out plenty of atrocious things in other spaces and times.

Speaker 23 Sorry, who were the Boers fighting?

Speaker 20 The Puritans banned it. I think part of their objection was that it happened on Sundays.

Speaker 20 Not that it's a bit grim.

Speaker 23 One of these arenas collapsed on the the south bank. Yeah.
And the Puritans all said that this was because God was displeasured about what was going on.

Speaker 23 Actually, they weren't that bothered about birds getting hurt. They just thought everyone was having too much fun.

Speaker 20 Yeah, that's the thing. It was encouraging odd ideas.
Some of them cared about the animals, but majority of the Puritans didn't.

Speaker 20 And one of the places that collapsed is where Queen Elizabeth went to the venue itself when it was rebuilt and had a French ambassador come and see a show. So it was a private showing.
I asked Dr.

Speaker 20 Matthew Green about the Globe thing, and he said, to be fair, Queen Elizabeth didn't need to go to the Globe. Shakespeare came to her.
So it's not as if she was against Shakespearean plays.

Speaker 20 But she did go to one of the Bear Garden places. And the Bears wouldn't go to her.
The Bears wouldn't go to her. They were drunk in the pub.
They were all Republicans. Yeah.

Speaker 20 And the other thing is, is that this whole point of trying to ban it on the Sundays, Queen Elizabeth herself actually overturned a parliamentary

Speaker 20 motion to have it banned on Sundays because she was like, no, this is great entertainment.

Speaker 22 The Bears, we should say, as you sort of did, they they weren't killed that often it was just a lot of dogs they got through the bears actually had a killer did you see what they were wearing yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 22 but the mastiffs my god they went through a lot and there was actually

Speaker 22 the yeah the dogs there was a master of the king's bears who was deployed from about the 1400s i think he was the person who was responsible for looking after the royal bears or basically looking after bear fights and they were constantly having to restock mastiffs so i think in queen elizabeth's time and king james's time it was a guy called alain who was an actor uh so who acted in plays and stuff but also he had to be always going around the country and he had the right to take people's dogs I think if he needed spare ones or of course he negotiate and if any anyone was doing a bear fight around or a bear dog fight around the country then he got a cut which is pretty sweet it is wild and apparently bears were literally walked past you in the streets you know they weren't like in cages they're just on like a leash like a dog just sort of from the pub heading over to so watch out for the bear it's just wild time step aside darling yeah i'm with Andy that this is a bad thing.

Speaker 20 Yes, actually.

Speaker 20 James and I are.

Speaker 22 We're not putting you two against us still.

Speaker 23 Look, I'm just saying, like, if anyone at home agrees with me and Andy, then you know.

Speaker 20 Thanks, James. I'm really, thank you for the support there.
And I'm so glad that we're on the screen.

Speaker 22 Oh, it was very brave of you.

Speaker 20 Well done.

Speaker 22 There was other stuff that was like peripheral to the bear baiting, which was actually quite fun.

Speaker 22 So I was reading an account by, I think, a foreigner who came to watch one of these obviously barbaric displays.

Speaker 20 But also, there were Amazon board now.

Speaker 20 Feeling a bit cold now, Dan.

Speaker 20 Sorry that I slipped that in.

Speaker 22 So there were dogs chasing horses around as one of the rounds. So this is in between the bear baiting.
You know, you use the arena for other things. Dogs chasing horses.

Speaker 22 Men and women were brought out in boxes to fight, dance and converse with each other for entertainment.

Speaker 22 There was another quite fun thing where a man threw some white bread among the crowd. The crowd all scrambled for it.

Speaker 22 And then over the middle of the arena, a giant rose was fixed and then set on fire by a rocket lots of apples and pears fell down from this rocket while all the people were scrambling for the bread and scared the shit out of them that sounds like hellagabalis doesn't it the roman emperor who used to do weird things like that like drown people in rose petals and stuff yes i think that none of these people even drowned in the uh in the reigning apples and pears and um bread they just got a nice bit of white bread it's just quite weird to imagine that a crowd goes that mad for some crumbs of white bread i might have said this before but i was in a cricket crowd once where people were throwing out bits of sorreen malt loaf and everyone went absolutely mental for it.

Speaker 20 Oh, I don't blame you.

Speaker 20 I would too.

Speaker 20 That's nice. Elizabethan sort of hobbies in general? Yeah, yeah.
Sort of that kind of thing. I got a bit distracted by things that Queen Elizabeth liked doing.
All right.

Speaker 20 She liked going to parties. Specifically, large parties held for her around the country.

Speaker 20 Didn't you just have to go to those? Do we know that you like... Far from.
No, no, no. So you know this thing of royal progresses? No.
It's where the monarch would go around the whole country.

Speaker 20 And it dates back to a time when there wasn't a proper court and a proper castle.

Speaker 20 You might have a bit of a fortress, but basically to subdue your territory and show you're still the boss man, you have to go around quite a lot. And the court is always on the move.

Speaker 20 And that still survived, even when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, you would...

Speaker 20 progress to various different stately homes around the country and they would go into a huge tiz because the queen or king was coming and you is that the same thing as like certain stately homes still have laws that if the monarch goes there, then they have to give them a bed?

Speaker 20 I think it's that. It's exactly that.
New toilet seats and all of that.

Speaker 20 And there was one party which was hosted by the Earl of Leicester, who was Robert Dudley. Yep.
Her fave.

Speaker 20 Well, her fave. He was constantly proposing to her.
That was her other hobby was turning down the proposals

Speaker 20 of Dudley.

Speaker 20 And he threw this huge party, the Kenilworth spectacle, in 1575, 19 days of partying. He built her own micro-palace on his grounds.

Speaker 20 And then she complained, I can't see the garden you've commissioned from my bedroom. So he had his gardeners build her a new version of the garden overnight under her window.

Speaker 20 Crazy. There was a water pageant with an 18-foot-long mermaid.
There was a moving island. There were fireworks.
There was hunting. There were plays.

Speaker 20 He was the least popular man in England, we should say. Really?

Speaker 20 He was incredibly unpopular because his wife he'd married when he was a teenager had mysteriously died two years after Elizabeth became the queen. Right.

Speaker 20 And there was a lot of talk that maybe he was responsible. I guess back then as well, you don't know so many people.

Speaker 20 people like yeah there's like six celebrities back then right so he would have been one and one's got to be the most hated it's not like you could have like some people hate piers morgan yeah some people hatelon musk like you basically everyone's going for the same one i got six people to pick from that's it yeah well he was so unpopular probably because everyone knew that he fancied elizabeth right everyone always hates the person who's trying to have the affair with the the monarch and might have killed his first wife

Speaker 20 i mean she definitely died two years after she became queen so an old lady from Brentwood told her neighbours that, My Lord Robert hath given Her Majesty a red petticoat,

Speaker 20 implying that they've slept together. New Zealand jail slang.
It's boob slank, yeah. She was jailed for even telling her neighbours that.
So they were cracking down on it. But yeah, so that was

Speaker 22 the Kenelworth thing that displayed he put on. That was where they accidentally burned a town to the ground, right?

Speaker 20 That can only have not helped his popularity.

Speaker 20 I don't know that.

Speaker 22 It was 1572. It was one of the things that he put on for Elizabeth, and he staged this huge mock battle for her.

Speaker 22 And they had these amazing fireworks, and then they had cannons that they just fired randomly into the air, and they all landed on the adjacent town and burned down a bunch of houses and killed at least one person.

Speaker 20 That's the most upper-class English sentence ever. Is that the town I accidentally burned down?

Speaker 20 Jeez.

Speaker 20 Just very quickly, Henry VIII, father of Elizabeth I, also loved bear baiting, and he used to go around the country as well.

Speaker 20 And one thing that he always brought with him was a locksmith who always put a new lock on the door that he was sleeping in of the room that he was in. Really?

Speaker 20 Yeah, because he was so worried about assassination. And then when they left the next day or however many days later, he would take the lock off the door again.

Speaker 20 So you just have this messed up door as a result of the stay. And he would bring it to the next house and he would lock it onto the new door.
Also, it's one lock. He's not having to do that.

Speaker 20 I'm sure he had multiple, but he would always put it on and take it off. So you left with the lock.
That's quite good. That's a good plot device.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 20 Like, the lockman is the assassin, you know?

Speaker 23 He's got to be the first person everyone suspects when suddenly the lock has been opened.

Speaker 20 I would be a point.

Speaker 20 Who could have done this?

Speaker 22 It feels like someone who's got something to hide, doesn't it? If they rock up at your sleepover and they say, I've brought my own lock, don't mind me.

Speaker 22 What are you doing in there? What are you doing in there that you're so paranoid?

Speaker 20 It's locked going on the sleeping bag here. Wait, why would it what? Sorry, you just said someone turns up at your sleepover and they brought their own lock.

Speaker 20 Yeah, because at a sleepover, everyone gets their own rooms.

Speaker 20 We're all going to go to bed in our separate rooms now. We're all going to a different wing

Speaker 20 for the scary stories. Yes,

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Speaker 20 Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

Speaker 20 My fact is that in Edwardian times, you could order a barrel of sea water to be delivered to your inland home so you could keep on enjoying the health benefits of of your holiday after it ended.

Speaker 23 Do you have to get some sailors to come from their boats?

Speaker 20 Oh, no. I crack open my nice fresh barrel of seawater to have my bath.

Speaker 20 It's full of jacktars.

Speaker 22 Yes, was it to have your bath or was it to drink?

Speaker 20 It was to have to massage yourself. A bit of everything.
A bit of everything. There's nothing that seawater couldn't do.
Right.

Speaker 20 And this is from a great, it's from a sub-stack I subscribe to called Reading on Trains by Andrew Martin, which is all about trains.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 it's mostly about trains that I got interested in.

Speaker 23 This isn't about trains, though, is it?

Speaker 20 No, it's about seawater. But seawater delivered by the Great Eastern Railway.
Oh my God.

Speaker 20 So this was in Ebordian times, so what, early 20th century, you would get a barrel of seawater from Lower Stoft to Liverpool Street, and they would pump it into these massive wagons at one end, and then they decant it.

Speaker 20 They'd have a little spigot at the other end. They just decant it into a barrel.
And then they send the barrels all around, you know, everywhere.

Speaker 20 And you would order a massive barrel of seawater and have a a bath in the sea in your house.

Speaker 22 Were there any poor kids who said, can we go on a beach holiday to see your mom?

Speaker 20 I'll do you almost as good. We have the sea at home.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was basically that.
And this was all because people were obsessed with seawater being a really good thing for your health.

Speaker 20 Yeah, this is a mat so I now live in Margate and there's still a ginormous hospital there which was built as a royal bathing house basically using sea therapy as a way of fixing people.

Speaker 23 But ironically at the moment the trains don't really go from here to Margate do they're That's why you're half an hour late this afternoon.

Speaker 20 It's all right, because once you get there, the sea's full of poo anyway.

Speaker 17 So it's fine.

Speaker 20 I know. This is the problem with sea these days.

Speaker 20 But it was, this is a big deal that kind of actually weirdly transformed the way that we visit beaches now because it was like a pauper's thing and it was never part of holidays.

Speaker 20 And then suddenly when this hydrotherapy thing came in, suddenly everyone was going back to the beach. And that's kind of the best.

Speaker 22 And it actually started much earlier, didn't it? Like 1750s, I think.

Speaker 20 1700s, yeah, exactly. There was one doctor.
It was a guy called Richard Russell.

Speaker 23 And he's basically responsible for Brighton existing. He thought that seawater was great for you and much better than getting the water from Bath or from an inland spa or Buxton or something.

Speaker 23 And he got a big old house in Brighton, the biggest house at the time, because Brighton wasn't really a thing. And he got a load of people there and he cured them, supposedly.

Speaker 22 Of anything as well. It was the usual cures in the olden days.
You could cure scurvy or jaundice or TB, a lot of TB cured by just

Speaker 22 drinking or bathing in.

Speaker 22 I think Richard Russell advised his patients to drink seawater and he said that a pint of it was sufficient to give three or four sharp stools, which I think he meant as a good thing.

Speaker 20 Yeah, you don't want it sharp, do you?

Speaker 22 It seems not today, but maybe it was sought after in those days.

Speaker 20 You dilute it with milk or honey? Yeah. Either way.
I mean,

Speaker 20 I did read that he variously included a few extra things, like he'd sprinkle in some, I read crab's eyes, which I can't believe was a cost-effective thing because seawater is quite cheap to get.

Speaker 20 Crab's eyes eyes feels like quite labor-intensive. Yeah, it feels like they've got a little bit of grit in the bottom.

Speaker 23 Yeah,

Speaker 20 no, that's crab's eyes.

Speaker 20 Is it because basically medicine wasn't very good at the time and seawater is at least relatively benign? Is that it?

Speaker 20 Is it fresh air? They just didn't know about evidence-based medicine, did they? Oh, but I imagine the fresh air.

Speaker 23 I think people just sometimes get better.

Speaker 20 Yeah,

Speaker 20 like from some things.

Speaker 23 Sometimes people will say, oh, you've got, you know, tuberculosis and actually you've got a terrible, awful cough. Right.

Speaker 23 And eventually it gets a bit better and you're like oh i'm cured of my tb but they didn't do an actual test to see if you had tb right i see that yeah yeah this guy anyway he um he sold his house to george i third and then george ii invited the prince of wales to visit him the big prince regent and it was originally called the bright helmstone and they decided to change its name to brighton because the royals had started going there so it literally was him that started brighton brighton wasn't a thing bright helmstone is such a cool name

Speaker 23 when i look at it i bet the locals pronounced it brighton anyway.

Speaker 20 Brieck Thelmstone. No, it's one of those English names.
I did read that it was from about the 1600s.

Speaker 20 Most people had been calling it Brighton, but it was still officially Brikthelmstone until about 1810, I think, which is back in the period you're talking about. This was the same with Margate.

Speaker 20 So in 1791, this big hospital was called Margate Infirmary for the Relief of the Poor Whose Diseases Require Sea Bathing. But then it got a royal patronage and became the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary.

Speaker 20 And if you go down to Margate these days, most of the houses have very very randomly just a little porch on the first floor.

Speaker 20 And the idea was you would push out your elderly relative onto the balcony of your house and you just leave them outside.

Speaker 20 And then you'd come and get them after hours and hours just to see how it affected their... So you see them all over these random balconies on all the houses there.
Fresh air is good for you, right?

Speaker 20 And cold water is good for you, right?

Speaker 22 A lot of things about going to the beach are very good to you, but you get away from the stresses of daily life, the pollution of London.

Speaker 20 Being dunked. Being dunked in cold water is definitely good for your health.
It sort of triggers all sorts of adrenaline responses in the world.

Speaker 23 There's pneumonia, it's not really that.

Speaker 22 I don't think there's a huge, I mean, I'm a huge fan, as you know, big cold water bather, but I don't think there's a huge amount of scientific studies that have been done that definitively prove that.

Speaker 23 A few things like, because you have this weird sort of reflex, don't you? Like a diving reflex.

Speaker 23 So I think it's something to do with your vagus nerve.

Speaker 20 Yeah. Yeah, and that was the idea at the time that it shocks you, shocks you out of something.

Speaker 22 So this is why women were dips, right? And dippers were celebrities.

Speaker 20 And they'd be...

Speaker 20 There were fewer famous people at the time.

Speaker 20 This is a Robert Dudley problem. It was Robert Dudley and the dippers.

Speaker 23 Dudley and the Dippers is a great 1960s band.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And the dippers were great. So they were men and women.

Speaker 22 And if you were a male bather who'd gone to Brighton, and often you'd be someone who couldn't swim, because most people couldn't, then you'd need a dipper. And as a man, you'd have a male dipper.

Speaker 22 As a woman, you'd have a female dipper. These were beefy, muscly people.
I think one of the most famous ones was Martha Gunn in Brighton, who did it from 1750 to the early 1800s.

Speaker 20 and the idea was that you have your client wow she would have been quite old by this time yeah she did it from you know 20 to 80 or whatever she lived until she was 90 she just was constantly dunking just standing in the water all the time yeah rain or shine yeah she must have had very wrinkly toes

Speaker 20 she's 90 year old to start off with

Speaker 20 she's in the water all day you won't be able to tell where it was natural wrinkle versus ocean wrinkle yeah

Speaker 22 but you did a lot more than just dunk of course you tailored your treatment to your client. So, if like Dan came to me and was like, I want to be dunked, I'd say, Why? What's wrong with you?

Speaker 22 I'd work out how long you want to be dunked for, how many times, um, how deep, which bit of seawater, whether you want to massage with it.

Speaker 20 We all know he wants to be dunked in lock mouth until he's found the monster.

Speaker 20 It's not seawater, though, it's going to do nothing.

Speaker 20 There's a cool invention that came off the back of people wanting to bring the sea to them, as Andy was mentioning.

Speaker 20 You could use normal water as well for this, but there was an item that was invented in the 1890s called the rocking bathtub.

Speaker 20 And what it was is, it's a bathtub which is shaped in a sort of like crescent moon sort of shape. So, like a, as if like a rocking chair.

Speaker 20 And you would sit inside, you would put three barrels of water inside with you, and then you would start rocking back and forth. You empty the water out of the barrels, no, into your bath, right?

Speaker 20 Or the water. Sorry, yeah, you don't hug the barrels.
Yeah, it's not Donkey Kong.

Speaker 23 So the idea was to create the ocean,

Speaker 20 the waves, to make it feel as if you were in the ocean. So not only do you have your salt water with you, you have the vibe of an ocean.
I quite like doing that.

Speaker 20 I think that's good to do in the bath anyway. It's just my bath is not a rocker.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 22 Who's mum has to come in and clear up the bathroom afterwards?

Speaker 20 Well, it supposedly didn't leak, but it did. But supposedly it didn't, but it absolutely did.

Speaker 23 I just, Andy's bathroom, after every time he has a bath, water all over the floor, isn't there?

Speaker 20 It's pretty bad. A lot of rubber ducks, a lot of accurate models of World War II battleships strewn about the place.
Do you know? It's still. So, Andy,

Speaker 20 I know that sometimes you read these things and you think you want to have that in your own home. That's often how you are.
You can get seawater delivered to your house still to this day. Yeah.

Speaker 20 I found a place. If you want the details, I'll forward them on.
You can get 20 liters sent to your house for 19 pounds.

Speaker 20 And it's sourced, it's seawater that's sourced off the Dorset coastline from a deep water supply. And so, this is largely for aquariums and so on.

Speaker 20 Have water delivered. I'm still interested.

Speaker 22 It's such a shame because I literally just watched Andy write down all those details he gave him.

Speaker 20 Now he's thought, I'm going to have to get a fish. I've written 20 litres, 90 pounds in source Dorset.
That sounds great. Yeah, but yeah, it happens.

Speaker 23 Like, deep sea water, I think, is like a trendy thing that's supposed to be good for you, right?

Speaker 23 Because the minerals go down to the very deep part of the water.

Speaker 23 And all the carbon goes down there, and it can't really get anywhere else. So, there's a lot of the the minerals in there are really, really awesome, apparently, and it's supposed to be good for you.

Speaker 23 I think, like, some sports people use it to rehydrate because it's supposed to have more chemicals in it.

Speaker 22 But, where's the evidence that they're any healthier than the rest of us?

Speaker 20 No, I've heard that. I think that's plausible.
And also, but shallow seawater, genuinely, there is a problem in the UK with lots of

Speaker 20 sewage.

Speaker 23 Yeah, but you, I mean, you would fish the turds out, wouldn't you, before you drink it?

Speaker 20 And there's our slogan: we fish the turds out,

Speaker 20 may contain turds,

Speaker 20 But prepared in a facility which contains turtles.

Speaker 20 We've made our best efforts. Yeah, yeah.
I found some cool waters that exist out there. Melted water.
Would you drink melted water?

Speaker 20 So melted, so it was frozen?

Speaker 23 I've had like water that comes from icebergs.

Speaker 20 Yeah, so this is Lithuania.

Speaker 20 But what's interesting is they grow and create the iceberg and then they melt them. So it's not natural icebergs.

Speaker 20 And then they put that melted ice into a bottle. And so, yeah, apparently it tastes like puddle water.
But it won the Lithuanian product of the year 2013. It won gold for that.

Speaker 20 They don't have a lot going on in Lithuania, do they?

Speaker 20 It starts winning. In thin year in Lithuania.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 Also, interestingly, mentioned just a few minutes ago, Loch Ness water. is now bottled.
Is it? It's taken, it's put through filtration systems, and they sell it.

Speaker 20 For example, the AIG Women's Open Golf Championship in 2024, it was the official sponsor. So all of their players were drinking Loch Ness water.
Okay.

Speaker 23 Now, I wasn't interested in that until the very end. Now I am.

Speaker 22 Finally, the crossover of interest in you and Dan.

Speaker 20 Sliver. Yeah, the most famous person who would have done the seabathing thing down in Margate is T.S.
Elliott. Really? Yeah, T.S.
Elliott came down and he did it.

Speaker 20 And he took time off from his bank job. He moved down there and his wife came with him.
And that's where he started properly writing The Wasteland again.

Speaker 20 is that based on Margaret?

Speaker 20 Yeah, my house gets a shout out, which is quite cool.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and so in The Wasteland, there's only one moment where you see through the eyes of T.S.

Speaker 20 Elliott, as in, like, as in he's sitting in a spot looking up, and that's by a bus stop down on Margate Beach as he was there using the sea air to recover. Has it got a plaque?

Speaker 20 It did, and that's down now, unfortunately. And what's even more annoying for T.S.
Eliot, we did a great fact that his name is an anagram of toilets. It is literally right next to the public toilets.

Speaker 20 People see the plaque saying T.S. Elliott, they just think it's a massive typo.

Speaker 20 No, right next to his plaque is in block words, toilets.

Speaker 22 They put underneath in brackets wasteland, but that didn't help anyone.

Speaker 20 Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts.
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 20 If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our social media accounts.

Speaker 20 I'm on Instagram under the name Schreiberland. Andy? I'm on blue sky at Andrew Hunter M.
James?

Speaker 23 I'm on LinkedIn

Speaker 23 under my real name.

Speaker 20 Nice. What's your real name?

Speaker 20 And Anna?

Speaker 22 You can email podcasts at qi.com or you can tweet at no such thing or Instagram at no such thing as a fish.

Speaker 20 Yep, or you can go to our website, no such thingasafish.com. Do check it out because you'll find there all of our previous episodes.

Speaker 20 You will also find a link to our awesome private members club club fish where we put lots of bonus episodes out and fun things happening there do check that out otherwise just come back next week because we will be back with another episode and we'll see you then goodbye

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