534: No Such Thing As The SS Enterprise

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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, which was recorded when I was on my holiday.

So Anna, I presume you have someone else in my place, not just a cutout of me.

Um, nope, we had a little hand puppet of you and then did insulting northern accents the whole way through.

It was actually more enjoyable.

No, that wasn't the case.

We had the brilliant Ali Plum on the fantastic film critic, who I'm sure many of you will be very familiar with from Radio One and such like.

He's known for interviewing the biggest celebs on the face of the earth, and then he finally got to meet us.

He did indeed.

And if you would like to learn anything more about Ali, then the best thing to do is watch his interviews on Radio One's YouTube channel or BBC Radio One's iPlayer.

He also has a podcast called BBC Radio One's Screen Time, where you can hear him talk about movies and you can of course follow him on social media as at AliPlum and don't forget there is a B at the end of his name is P-L-U-M-B AliPlum on all those social medias.

I'm fairly certain I have to say that because I'm assuming Dan will pronounce his name correctly all the way through but you never know maybe Dan is going to say Ali Plum.

I'm very excited to find out.

Actually that is the main reason I'm going to listen to this podcast.

So do keep listening for that but we do have another announcement as well.

Absolutely.

We are going on tour.

We are going all the way around the world.

Well, actually, specifically the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

But what we want to do today is remind those of you in the UK and Ireland that we are playing Edinburgh, Bristol, Dublin, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, London, and Manchester.

I'm pretty sure London is at least on the verge of selling out if it hasn't already sold out.

But there are a few tickets left, I believe, for all those other dates.

So snap them up, ASAP.

And to do that, go to no such thingasafish.com slash live and you know, click on the links and stuff.

You know how to do it.

We'll see you there.

Can't wait.

Absolutely.

We can't wait.

And I can't wait to hear this episode of No Such Things As a Fish with Anna, Andrew, Dan Schreiber, and the incredible Ali Plum.

Okay, on with the podcast.

On with the show.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky, and Ali Plum.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Ali.

My fact this week is Jurassic World Dominion is the first film to have its parody movie be released before it itself was released.

Lovely.

Lovely.

You with me?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Does that mean that Jurassic World Dominion is actually, it becomes the parody?

Like, whatever comes out second becomes the spoof.

Whoa.

Because I've seen it, and it's quite funny in lots of ways.

I think arguably funnier than the parody that came out of it.

And that's a sick burn because I love the director.

I will say, yes, that the bubble fails to give as many lols as Jurassic World Dominion, but it is the bubble we're talking about.

This is a Netflix movie that somehow came out in April 2022, whereas Jurassic World Dominion came out in June that same year.

And the reason why it happened is essentially because of the pandemic.

And the idea of the bubble is that you have a group of actors in this meta-comedy.

trying to make a movie except everyone keeps getting COVID.

And they're inside this bubble, hence the bubble, and the movie they're making is the sixth in a franchise of a sci-fi sort of horror, sort of adventure, dinosaur movie.

And it's called Cliff Beast Six, Battle for Everest, Memories of a Requiem, needless to say.

And it's from Judd Appertow, and it features the likes of David Dakovny, Leslie Mann, Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal.

And is it not good?

That seems a great colour.

I can only say that the first half hour is not good.

There it is.

There it is.

I am built to love everything Judd Appertow does, so I did like it, but I can see arguably it's not his best.

Wow, that's the biggest slam you've ever given anything, Dan.

Yeah, that's a sick burn.

Yeah.

You should be the film critic.

I know, right?

Take over.

Yeah.

I just find these weird coronavirus glitches, now that we can sort of-ish find it funny, quite bizarre.

For example, Billie Eilish won an Oscar for best original song.

for No Time to Die before the film itself came out.

Right, yes.

Because she was eligible to win for that year.

year.

Because the song was actually released as a single prior to it, so it had to be in the year of the Grammys.

But she hadn't already, she hadn't written the song and then they said, you know, that'd be an incredible name for a Bond film.

That wasn't it, was it?

She'd been contracted to have a film.

Okay, I don't know how it works.

Parody movies go back a long, long way.

Oh,

this has got a beautiful history and the earliest that I could find, and it certainly comes up at most lists as the opening one, was a movie that came out in 1905 called The Little Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S.

Porter.

And so it was a parody of a 1903 movie called The Great Train Robbery, which was also directed by Edwin S.

Porter.

Nice.

He parodied his own movie.

Maybe it's easier to parody if you've got the inside track.

Yeah, and you're not going to really annoy anyone because you're the person you're annoying.

But actually, it says it's a parody.

I would argue that he was almost making a kids' version.

Well, it's the same film, scene for scene, except starring children.

Yeah, it is.

It's Budsy Malone, right?

I think it sounds really...

Have you not watched it?

No, I haven't.

Is it good?

It's only 12 minutes, mate.

Yeah.

I was in that shame for that.

It was the first half hour of the bubble.

I did not have time.

It is.

I mean, is it good?

It's made in 1905, so you've got to take it for his time, haven't you?

I looked at the reviews on IMDb and someone's like, three stars.

No, it's not quite his best work as a parody.

And you're like, come on, buddy.

Where's the guy?

Who invented parodies in Fiddle?

He, um, sorry, the director of the Great and Little Train Robberies changed his name because he was born Edward.

And he changed his name to Edwin Stanton after the Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln, which I think is niche anyway.

Hello.

The ladies love it.

And sort of 40 years later, as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I did find out.

Was he trying to pass himself off?

You might have seen my earlier work in the Civil War.

One of mine.

One of the early funny ones.

But yeah, it's very good.

And they hold up the train at the end, as they do in the 1903 Great Train Robbery.

But in the kids' version, they just get sweets and sort of toys off them.

I love it.

By the way, on the earliest incarnation of a certain kind of movie, we're talking about early parodies, in 1900, so that's even before the Great Train Robbery and the Little Clone Robbery, the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes as a character on screen was in a very short short, seriously short short, that came out again at the turn of the century.

And that was a parody of the concept of Sherlock Holmes knowing everything because it was one of the first trick cinema shorts where it was cuts in and out, things disappearing, and it was Sherlock being baffled, and that's why it's called Sherlock Holmes Baffled.

And that's the first time anyone ever saw Sherlock Holmes.

And as a result, his popularity has meant that he's been the most seen character almost inarguably across the history of cinema and television.

Wow.

That's cool.

Because he's there at the very beginning.

Yeah, everyone who's ever seen a screen would have seen a version of Sherlock Holmes on screen at some point or another.

That's extraordinary.

That's very cool.

I just find all this stuff fascinating.

And again, it's only 30 seconds.

So So maybe it'll be on a TikTok soon.

Yeah, right.

I won't find the time.

I'm sorry.

I'm just so busy.

So was this, was Jurassic World Dominion...

Wait, what was it called?

The real serious film?

Jurassic World Dominion.

Jurassic World Dominion.

And I do want to kick the tires of this fact a little bit because I'm aware that there are more direct parodies in the universe, right?

So Hot Shots is definitely a parody of Top Gun.

Yes.

There's loads of other stuff going on in there, but you can see the direct parallel.

Here, when it comes to the bubble and Jurassic World Dominion, it's the sort of bubbliness.

This coronavirus,

that's the parody.

And the parody film seems to be within the film, The Bubble.

You've got it.

So it's sort of double meta.

And this reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, I think, in any movie, which is in Hot Shots Part Duh.

Oh, beautiful movie.

Now, in this film, Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen both appear.

And referencing each other's Vietnam War movies, they're writing in their own little diaries excerpts from each other's movies.

They both then, as the boats that they're on, pass each other in a river, stand up and say, father to son, I loved you in Wall Street.

Okay, think about that

for half a second, and your brain explodes because they were both in Wall Street in the universe of Hot Shots Part Deuce.

They've both seen each other's film that they were both themselves in and their father and son, and they've both seen the other be it.

Wow.

Wow.

I guess in a darkened movie cinema, you can tell who the critics are in the crowd.

You just hear a brain blow.

No, you just hear a load of scribbling as they write down the joke.

That's how you can tell when it's funny.

No one's laughing.

Yeah.

So we said that it was delayed.

I assume it was delayed.

Maybe you did say that.

But the film coming, the serious film was delayed.

Jurassic World Dominion was delayed.

It's also just got much more CGI at a much higher level.

Although, ironically, it was ILM, Industrial Light and Magic, who did the dinosaur visual effects for both movies.

So, you know, why not do both?

Just if they both ask you, then just go ahead.

You'd think there would be a contractual thing that you'd say you're not allowed to to work on any other dino stuff.

Or one that's directly taking the mick out of this.

Yeah, yeah.

Can I tell you about the another dinosaur?

This is not a parody.

This is a very cool thing.

So this was a film that's out in 1993.

And it is a famous dinosaur film from 1993 that was released before Jurassic Park, right?

Okay.

So Jurassic Park was the second dino movie in 1993.

The first one was Carnosaur.

Yes, go on.

And it was about a

doctor.

It was about this mad scientist planning to exterminate the human race and replace humans with genetically engineered dinosaurs.

Much better plot, arguably.

Wow.

Roger Ebert, who's a famous film critic, he named it the worst film of 1993.

But the thing is, it wasn't a parody of Jurassic Park because it was also based on a book, right?

There's a book called Carnasaur by a writer called John Brosnan, which was written in 1984 before Michael Crichton wrote the book of Jurassic Park.

However, the film was only greenlit when they heard that Jurassic Park was being made.

So they were kind of looking around, I wonder if we have some other dinosaur content that we can get out.

But this is the crazy thing.

Diane Ladd, the actor, was cast as the evil protagonist.

She is the mother of Laura Dern.

Oh, in real life.

Who's in real life?

Who's in Jurassic Park?

Jurassic Park.

Yeah, so that was a casting coup to say, let's get your star's mum to be in R.

And then there's that scene in Dominion where they're passing each other in a boat.

There are so many dino parodies, though.

It seemed to have spawn so many.

Like Jurassic Park is such a cultural phenomenon and it's so easy like a Bond movie to go, right, I get it.

Welcome to Jurassic Park.

There's an old man with a cane, Mr.

DNA, all this stuff.

Here are all real names of real dinosaur parameters.

The Jurassic dead,

because they've come back from the dead, because one of those evil scientists has managed to

undead, it should be.

Yeah.

But that sounds good.

That does sound good.

Well, it sounds good.

The Jurassic games, it's like the Hunger Games, but with dinosaurs.

Lovely.

Would I watch that?

Yep.

And this is my favourite.

And it knows that it's dumb, but it's called the Velocirpastor.

As in, it's a vicar.

Brilliant.

Who has the ability to turn into a Velociraptor and kill evildoers?

when he can't control his anger sort of thing.

But the punny tagline is godlike, man of the claw.

Hold on.

Give me a minute.

Wait, he's not done.

He's not done.

Sorry.

Man of the cloth.

Correct.

Man of the claw.

You can't interrupt people mid-joke.

I would put that on Ali for stopping that long mid-joke.

I think after.

Man of the cloth is good.

That's good.

How are they spelling cloth?

They just.

I think Ali pretty clearly spelled claw.

Cloth.

Hyphenated it.

It was a fake trailer that you'd see on YouTube.

And then someone said, you know, this is actually pretty good fun.

And they went, well, let's get like 10 grand and make a movie out of it.

So let's not pretend like the Velocirpasta is trying to be the next Jurassic Park.

It knows it's dumb.

Do you, as part of your job, which is in film criticism, have to watch all of these?

No, I think there needs to be an audience desire for my thoughts on the Velocirpasta.

And if there isn't, then I don't feel the obligation.

I bet there will be now.

It just just sounds so good.

Dan, have you heard of the film Caveman from 1981?

And there's a very specific reason I'm asking Dan this.

Yeah, I haven't seen it.

Ringo Starr.

It stars Ringo Starr as a caveman who lives one zillion BC.

And they also meet an abominable snowman at some point in the movie.

So I just thought this is the most Dan film.

Dan, why haven't you seen it?

Yeah, it's weird.

It's too much like a glitch in the universe, like I've proven this was all fake.

It's the Truman show.

No one would have made this film.

it.

I think the only thing it produced was Ringo Starr's Second Marriage.

And that's about the owner.

So Barbara Bach.

That's right.

So who is a Bond girl?

Well, she was also the female lead in

Caveman 1981.

Which is she prouder of, I wonder?

Don't know.

Who could say?

Probably Ringo.

By the way, speaking of Bond, obviously, Bond is such a huge franchise, news just in, that it can inspire its own franchise, its own genre of Bond parodies.

And we have to at least acknowledge them.

But are you guys aware of the film called Ok Connery?

Oh, it's also called Operation Kid Brother.

Yes, so good.

And what happened here is that Sean Connery's brother, Neil, got into the press for, and I think it was like the mirror or something, for being fired from his job because he lost his tools.

This was a little bit of news.

Bond's brother loses tools, loses job, all this sort of thing.

And someone said, a bit like a joke, well, he does look a bit like Sean, let's get him into some sort of like Euro cheapo Bond knockoff.

And it got called OK Connery because when they were giving him his first notes for the audition they kept going okay Connery okay Connery anyway so that became the movie and what I love about it is that it is dreadful but also it features bond stars that came back to appear in a bond spoof which happens quite a lot Johnny English has two in the form of Rosamond Pike and also Olga Kirilenko And they have said, and it was, I think, Lewis Maxwell, that she got paid more for Ok Connery than she ever did for her work as Money Penny.

Really?

On the Bonds.

Now, I think she was sort of saying it as a joke, but you have to watch O.K.

Connery because he was, so sorry, Neil, so bad at it.

Right.

An American voice actor had to come in and dub his lines.

So half the reason why you hired him just got removed at the last minute.

That's so funny.

You must look it up.

So someone doing an impression of Sean Connery.

Oh, not even.

It's just an American voice.

Oh, right.

So they didn't ask him to pretend to Sean Connery.

Oh, I do like when the relatives of the main stars get brought in for these kind of things.

You'll know this, Ali.

I'm pulling this out the top of my head here, but Toy Story, the merchandise.

The merchandise.

The merchandise.

The merchandise, the toys.

I think it's Tom Hanks' brother who does the voiceover for the toys themselves.

Not Tom Hanks' brother who had a handkerchief company.

That's his son.

That's his son.

That's his son.

They're my achieving family.

Poor Hanks' family.

Poor Tom with this cottage industry around his removal.

A chief.

He's not entirely insane, but it is very bizarre.

There's a lot of nepotism in the film industry, like anywhere else, isn't there?

Actually, speaking of Bond Spoofs, Austin Powers, the actor who played Mr.

Bigglesworth.

The cat?

The cat.

It was an actor called

Ted Nude Gent, but he has...

I'm so confused.

So this was a cat called Ted Nude Gent.

Who played Mr.

Bigglesworth?

Okay.

Funny name.

Very well.

I'm sure.

Unveiled it.

Very talented actor.

But then he's got two nephews.

Don't know how talented they are.

They're called Hairless Potter and Skindiana Jones, and they are also actors now.

But you do have to wonder: is that pure talent, or is that

you know the nepotistic connections that have got you there?

Skindiana Jones is an absolutely ranked name.

I'm sorry, it's a brilliant pun, but it's horrible.

Is it one of those little hairless?

Oh, God, but it's not healthy.

I have a bunch of terrible but also funny Bond parody film titles.

Oh, great.

Please.

These are all quote-unquote real.

Never Say Never Mind, The Swedish Bikini Team, Dr.

Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Agent 077 Mission Bloody Mary, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die.

That's arguably just a good title.

It is a good title.

All the others sound like they're made by very early AI.

Extremely early AI that hasn't quite got it.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy.

My fact is that Britain is home to the planet's largest manhole cover.

Whoa, strong brag from Britain.

Yeah,

how big we're talking.

It's enormous.

Wow, you can't.

Don't make it it so sexy so quickly.

How big a man can get into this hole?

Any man.

Any man.

So this is a 1200-ton concrete lid.

It's huge that is going, and at the moment, it is used for access by workers.

So it is technically a manhole and it's round.

So, you know.

Yeah.

But what is it?

As in, how do you get through the concrete?

How do you lift it?

And what's underneath it?

It is going to be closed.

And then I believe the plan is that it's not going to be lifted up again.

So, you know, it's playing a bit fast and loose with what a manhole cover is.

It's experimenting with the form.

And this is part of a thing, an amazing thing, if you haven't heard of it, and if you're overseas, you won't have done, called the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

It's the biggest infrastructure project in Europe.

It's happening right now.

Some of you aren't overseas, you may also not have heard of it.

Don't feel bad.

No, don't.

It's...

A new thing is happening in London.

It's going to be called the Super Sewer.

Cool.

And it is a ginormous pipe that is going to run under.

Everyone's looking at me like this is boring.

it's no issue i feel like you're being paid by them at this point

you're talking like trump all of a sudden it is ginormous it is huge can you give us some numbers trump can you give us anything that's true

it's going to be 16 miles long right and the the the basically the problem in london is it has got this amazing sewage system for the 1860s right unfortunately time has moved on and london's population is now way bigger than it was then So you get all of this sewage that if it rains heavily, the sewage system overflows because rain water and sewage water go to the same place.

That was a clever thing to do at the time, but these days it doesn't work anymore, and you get lots and lots and lots of horrible sewagey water in the river.

Probably.

We say it overflows, also, every single sewage company in the country deliberately dumps billions and billions of gallons of it into the rivers.

Just again, if you're overseas, you might not know.

Let's not act like it's an accident.

Please go on, Andy.

It's not an evil scheme, but it is a bad, it's a bad system as it hasn't been updated.

Anyway, the super sewer is essentially, as the project manager Ryan Moore said, a massive toilet.

It will be able to take a huge amount of overflow, so it's going to make things a lot better.

And it has this enormous manhole cover on it.

It's enormous.

And I'm just so excited.

Can I just tell you one more thing before we talk about manhole covers?

Is that how big it is?

Yes, it is.

It's so huge, right?

Please withhold your what are you compensating for emails.

It's funny, isn't it?

Because I've been on a quest quest to find the most boring thing.

Interesting.

And I think now I might have got there.

Ali actually checked his watch a second ago.

This is somebody who's been dying to come on our show.

He's been listening to us for 10 years.

Right.

So the huge...

falling down pipes where the the overflow water is going to smash down they had to be designed specially because if you just let the water pour into it it would smash into the bottom and erode the base of the thing yeah so it has to be kind of channeled around these huge great massive cathedral pipes i mean it goes around in a spiral.

Put in a vortex, bubbles put in.

Not like an awesome, like a water slide.

It would be the most disgusting water slide you could possibly imagine.

Please, field trip.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And it's all about to be sealed off.

Humans won't go in for the next 10 years.

So if you want that ride, get there now.

Absolutely, yeah.

And it's opening, I think it'll be fully opened next year.

But basically, it's just an amazing, it's an amazing thing.

I found out that sewage moves at about walking pace.

Wow.

Isn't that a nice idea?

That is nice.

So the way it's.

Hang on, is it?

It's nice to know if I ever dropped into a sewer.

That you could escape it.

You could escape it and it's not going to be gushing past you.

That's a fear I have.

Imagine falling down a manhole.

Like lava.

Yeah.

Like lava moves quite slowly when it's flowing across ground.

Very similar.

Although I think this is average, but basically the way it works is largely by gravity.

So, in fact, it really reminds me of a log flume.

This is certainly in London.

Internal joke here.

Let's take a photo.

London's most real log flume.

I don't want this on my keychain, actually.

It saunters at walking pace down because it gradually slopes downwards, the sewerage system.

And then, once it's got as low as it can go, lower than anyone wants to dig, then it's pumped up again, like on a log flume.

So you get on the ramp and it's tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

You get up to the top, and then it flows down again.

That's interesting.

Yeah, very fun for the little bits of bits of poo.

Yeah.

What a scented little

stuff.

Manhole covers.

There's a thing that I had never heard about before, which is that they were one of the most notorious questions that you would get asked if you were doing an interview for Microsoft.

Yeah.

So the question, you'd be sitting in your interview with Microsoft and they would say, why are manhole covers round?

That's the question.

And you have to give an answer.

And it's part of these lateral thinking questions that these huge corporations have become famous for.

So people around the world have submitted the questions that they were asked from Microsoft.

A summer intern candidate was asked, devise a way to make sure there is always milk in my fridge.

I'd like that.

Big fridge.

Let's sort of have a field in there.

Maybe some cows.

Yeah, yeah.

Cow in the fridge.

Oh, just lay relay, sorry, just put a label saying fridge on the cow.

He's got it.

No, you can't make something.

Call your cow fridge.

Your cow, it's called fridge.

She won't mind.

She won't.

There you go.

If I put a label on you saying genius, Andy, does that meant you're genius?

If I'm labeled that by you, it's not meant for me to say, but it's not for my fridge to say whether it's a fridge or not.

I'm saying that's like, if I gave that answer.

You've got a job.

You've got the job.

You've got the job.

You've got a job.

You're now running Microsoft.

Yeah, yeah.

James is going to resign.

We're at a press conference later today.

We're going to say we found the better answer.

Here's another one.

Okay, here we go.

The infamous clock hands question.

This is what a software development engineer candidate was asked.

How many times do the hour and minute hands of a clock overlap in a 24-hour period?

Rename the clock.

If it's a stopped clock, they won't overlap at all.

I karate kick my way out of the room.

Throw the clock on the ground.

Peace out.

Right out on Fridge the Cow.

We're buying Apple.

Yeah, great.

Our watches are all digital at Microsoft.

Nice.

I keep learning this guy back in the room.

I was going to say, interviews always go well when the interviewee is going, ooh,

duh.

Oh my God, this is going to be so annoying for you guys.

I haven't got the actual answer yet.

Yeah.

Because most of them, I forgot to notice that that had an actual answer you could give, because most of these are hypotheticals.

You know, how do you fill the milk in my fridge?

By the way, on the round manhole thing, there's loads of answers to it.

Yeah, that's, yeah, if you were giving genuine answers, there's

one which is so obvious, you go, oh yeah, duh, is that you, there's that noise again.

You take it off and you can just roll it easier.

Yeah.

If you need to move it, that's easier to move than a square one.

You go, well, obviously.

Also, it can't fall in because if you have a little rim, the edge means it can't go in.

It just kind of stays there.

Like, there are loads of reasons, but if someone asks you that question point blank and you're not expecting it, you just go, uh, duh, because they're round.

Do you know how people steal manhole covers?

Because this used to be a thing, they're very valuable for scrap.

They're big, heavy things, they're made of metal.

Yeah.

Scrap metal is valuable.

um this is so clever there are some theft vans

right theft vans theft vans scrap steeler vans which have

how are they how do they do it well they oh they park over it they have their own manhole in the bottom of their van and then they pick it up and replace it with

it's not that clever i've got it clever i've got it magnets

really big magnet i mean we've already had the answer oh i see i've not got this you're hanging around outside Microsoft HQ.

I've thought of...

I've counted.

I've waited a whole day and I counted the number of times the hands.

No, that is...

Okay, that is interesting.

So if you see a fan parked, it's probably ceiling a manhole cover.

Can I say the most...

I just think the most incredible thing about manhole covers that I didn't know is that they're always exploding.

In New York, a manhole cover explodes every day, explodes off its manhole into the air.

Oh, really?

Yes, every single day on average.

How many deaths do we get?

Some deaths.

Yeah, really?

I think the last one was 2008, but a lot of injuries.

And it's especially in January and February and it seems to be this combination of old wiring and then there's rain and snow melt and then salt spread on the roads to stop ice gets in and that's all corrosive and electrical and it creates this massive explosion.

So like there was a guy sitting in a parked car recently who just his car, he heard an explosion and then his car lifted off the ground.

Wow.

And then it shot back onto the ground and he legged it and then watched it explode.

That would be just the comeuppance for somebody trying to steal a manhole cover.

They go, right, we've nearly, we've nearly got it.

BASS!

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna.

My fact is that a spaceman was originally a journalist paid according to how much space their writing took up.

Brilliant.

So good.

Yeah, I just...

I think I came across this researching fact a couple of weeks ago, and I was just looking in the OED for something, and I saw Spaceman, clicked on Spaceman, and actually the first definition of it is from 1892 and it is a journalist.

Well, as I said, they got paid in those days according to how long their articles were, how much space they took up.

And the meaning to mean someone from outer space or someone who goes into outer space didn't rock up till 1932.

Right.

40 years later.

This is like the classic fact of Batman existed before Batman existed.

What does that mean?

I.e., a Batman is somebody who would help an officer in an army.

Yeah.

And then later we have the understanding of what a Batman is.

Or a valet?

So is Batman a parody?

That's right.

Yes, correct.

He was a man who really took his job much too seriously and then ended up dressing up as a bat.

Yeah.

And then his parents died and then insert more jokes here.

I don't know.

But it's not a pun, it's not a direct.

It's not a pun at all.

But if Batman is the valet,

the boss.

Oh my god, that's right.

Coffin isn't Batman's Batman.

What's his name?

Pennyworth.

Oh, no.

So Pennyworth is Batman's Batman.

No, who's the old guy?

Alfred.

Alfred.

Alfred Pennyworth.

Alfred.

Oh, Alfred.

Sorry.

Alfred Pennyworth.

It's this thing on.

Who calls Alfred by his surname?

Even Batman has never done that.

The guy who watched the TV show that's based on, I kid you not, the use of Alfred Pennyworth called Pennyworth.

I'm going to leave.

Didn't know that.

There's a TV series about the butler.

Correct.

That sounds boring.

It's

no manhole covers, I'll give you that.

Oh, sorry.

What a great point.

Why am I on so nice?

Master Wind.

That guy.

Yes, he's got his own TV.

Were you doing Michael Kane?

Master Wave.

I was doing the version of Master Wind.

I'm actually Michael Kane's brother.

Roger Kane.

I've had so many series.

Do you want to blow the doors off, Lynn?

Only supposed to blow the bloody.

Master Wave, you're

supposed to blow the bloody doors off.

Dreadful cold you've got, Michael.

Anyway,

early journalists.

The Gilded Age.

Very brief period of time, the Gilded Age, 1870s to 1890s in the US.

And that was where journalism, I think, was undergoing a little bit of a revolution.

I think newspapers had finally stopped increasing in sales and they were trying to give journalism a boost in various ways.

And yeah, people will get paid by length and people will get furious because also the idea of an editor was coming in as well.

And I read a rant actually by a journalist at the time who was saying that editors are the worst, obviously, because they hack away at your salary.

So you've written 17,000 words of tripe in the hope of getting paid 30 quid or whatever.

And yeah, people used to get furious.

One writer saying, many a time have I had my financial prospects of a big bill grow smaller and smaller as that inexorable blue pencil went on its avalanche-like mission of extermination.

Yes, I think we can see why your writing is cut down sometimes, sir.

Your loquatiosity is noted.

I've got a list of old-fashioned terms that were used in the olden days.

Great.

Which sound a little bit naughty, but they fit in with what you're saying.

Do you know, and this is relatively famous, what a dog's dick is?

Yeah, I certainly do.

Yeah, a dog's dick or a dog's cock or a screamer or a shriek.

I normally say the word screamer.

It's one of those big exclamation points at the end.

of a headline.

Lovely.

There are other words like fudge box.

Is that to mess with the facts?

That is a small area you kept free, the the sort of fudge box that you could sneak in just at the last minute.

Oh, right.

So when people literally said the phrase stop the press, they'd use that fudge box and then shove it in.

And then

you could have things in after the deadline that could be fudged.

Like how you always think that the Ivy Restaurant's fully booked, but they've always got a couple of tables on reserve in case it's not.

Very relatable.

Very relatable stuff there, Emma.

Am I right, guys?

If I had

a nickel for every time.

Well, that's the thing, the sort of empty stuff being filled in later.

I didn't really realize the precursor to newspapers is basically the substack model, which is newsletters.

So

before papers, you would subscribe to a newsletter, which I really like.

Really?

And it would be delivered personally to you?

Yes, it would.

And it was handwritten.

You would get a handwritten letter rounding up interesting events.

It was basically like news as gossip in a way.

But there were hundreds of clerks who would write these out.

And sometimes in your...

newsletter the handwriting would change halfway through because there'd been a shift change or something and the next person would that come in.

And they were formatted like letters, some of them, and they started with the foreign news and they ended with local or more recent news.

That's amazing.

So, I mean, circulation can't have been very much.

I wonder how many letters you subscribe today.

You might share a subscription with your neighbor because they were really expensive.

So you might club up with a panel.

And other newspapers were limited by official licensing laws.

The government restricted newspapers very heavily until the late 17th century.

So this was a workaround.

Right.

There's another term, just jumping back to Ali's terms, called yellow journalism, which was back in the 1890s as well.

And this was, and it's kind of almost the start of where newspapers started sensationalizing things and exaggerating headlines and bending fact into what it's not for the sake of getting newspapers sold.

And yellow journalism was named after a comic book that used to appear in one of the newspapers in America where the character was called the yellow kid.

And

he was a bald-headed kid.

His head had been shaved because of lice.

He wore a long jumper that was yellow, and he would always have a slogan on it, which would parody, as it were, the big billboard advertisements that you would get for products.

And because they did that, and he would often parody news of the day and so on in the comic strip, that became the go-to term for what these big people like William Randolph Hurst were doing, where they were trying desperately to sell their version of the newspaper.

Because when back in the day, you would go to a newspaper stand, particularly, that's almost a famous image in America, right?

Where it's read all about it, read all about it.

And so they'd be yelling the headlines.

You go, well, that headline headline sounds better than that headline.

And so you get it.

And so it was a war of fake news.

Or of exaggeration.

Or exaggeration, rather.

Yeah.

I didn't know that was where it came from, because you still sometimes refer to the, you know, sometimes one hears yellow journalists.

Not fashion phrase, but it is.

Because it was a time of fake news, hugely.

In fact, there was an issue of The Journalist, which I guess is the sort of paper that analyses journalism in 1892 that estimated that the majority of stories supplied to newspapers were fiction, just completely made made up.

And if you weren't going to make something up, people staged their own things.

So journalists would kind of try to create

a mad event.

There was one, I think this is the 1880s in Buffalo, New York, who bought a cadaver's arm and then cut it up into loads of pieces, dropped all the pieces in the canal, and then found one of the fingers and then wrote an article on, where has this finger come from?

What's it doing?

in the canal, why isn't there a missing person?

And created a big storm that everyone else reported on.

And then, you know, other bits turned up in the canal that other people found.

That's a good question for Microsoft interviews.

I've just found a finger in a canal.

What's going on?

No, no, that's a good way of losing a job.

I'm just trying to figure.

Well, get out.

I think you should answer, not set the questions, Andy.

That's what we're learning here.

I think if you go into the interview with extra questions that they should ask, that's another power move that will get you the job.

You're answering back with a questionnaire of your own.

To you, sir.

Yeah, when they say at the end of the interview, do you have any questions for us?

You'll be like, yeah, tell me where I got these fingers from.

Just on spaceman's, quickly, we're talking fake news and we're talking about the fact that the word means obviously someone in space, but that also in newspapers, I have found a spaceman that combines all three of those things.

Oh, wow.

So an astronaut who was paid by...

I've cheated it.

Okay.

It's not a real astronaut.

It's someone who spent a large part of their time in space, but in the world of television and film.

It's Sir Patrick Stewart.

So, Jean-Luc Picard of the SS Enterprise.

He used to be a local journal.

When he was a young, when he was age 15,

he left school and he stayed in the area he was living in, which was Murfield, and he joined a local newspaper.

And so he became their person who would sort of write up the births and deaths, all the announcements, and then he would go to local plays and so on, and he would watch them and do little bits of critique writing as well.

Can I just check?

This is the character, right?

This is Sir Patrick Stewart.

Sorry, this is Sir Patrick Stewart.

I'm sure the backstory of Captain Picard and Star Trek.

I started out in local journalism of course before I started spreading peace through the universe.

Seems like I was joking but genuinely I listened to that whole thing going, so did all the Star Trek people have backstories based on their earth jobs?

They're always reading the newspapers.

They've got a little printing press in the back on the Enterprise.

His actual backstory is that his family were in vineyards.

Yeah.

So there you go.

Also, was it the USS Enterprise?

I had to stop saying anything.

I know, no, no.

Glad I've got that in because otherwise that sounds like a Nazi ship chasing after them, the USS Enterprise.

I was thinking to myself, there'll be so many letters, but I just didn't want to interrupt your flow.

So, yeah, the USS Enterprise.

And so, Sir Patrick Stewart, before he was an actor, he was a local journalist.

But he, because he was busy getting ready for his acting world, used to have a lot of evenings where he would go and practice his own plays.

So, in some cases, he never saw the play that he was meant to see and critique.

He would call people up and say, what was it like?

Or he just made it up.

And he often made up a lot of the news.

So he, a spaceman in two forms, was responsible for fake news.

Brilliant.

Very nice combination.

Also, we love you.

Can I just something that I find so weird about journalism around this period we've been talking about when it changed is that the revolutionary thing that was happening was it was going into the inverted pyramid structure, which is a journalistic term.

It's still taught today, The inverted pyramid, yeah.

There you go.

And the inverted pyramid is how we read almost all journalism, and it's very simple.

The way it works is that at the top of an article, you have the amazing, most newsworthy, big news.

And then the second bit of the article is the next bit of the pyramid, which is the important details in it.

And then the third bit of the article is like background, general information, you know, can you be asked to get there?

Maybe if you've got nothing else on the day.

Yeah, exactly.

But that, and we're so used to reading stories like that, it's hard to imagine journalism written another way.

But I was reading from when it was done in narrative style, where you just start at the beginning of a story and you would move on.

And I don't know if you guys have ever read the Associated Press report from April 1865

from the report from Ford Theatre.

Have I?

Have I?

Have you ever?

What year?

What year?

This is Lincoln?

Sure is.

Here's how it begins.

This is the story.

President Lincoln and wife visited Ford's Theatre this evening for

the purpose of witnessing the performance of The American Cousin.

It was announced in the papers that General Grant would also be present, but that gentleman took the late train of cars for New Jersey.

Hang on, is this a Patrick Stewart thing where he hadn't actually been, but he just wrote it up?

You've buried the lead and the president.

It's so weird.

How far until we get to it?

It's the third paragraph.

The next paragraph is: the theatre was densely crowded, everyone seemed delighted with the scene before them, etc., etc.

And then it goes on to say a sound was heard and someone ran across the stage and he said these were, finally, it's the groans of Mrs.

Lincoln first disclosed the fact that the president had been shot.

I mean, isn't that amazing?

Was there a headline out of five?

What do you recommend?

Was there a headline on this piece?

That's such a good question.

I don't think there was.

Because this might have predated

book headlines.

Yeah, I think this predated book headlines.

Yeah.

There was no dog stick.

That would be inappropriate.

No.

So you really had to focus on, you really had to read the full thing.

Imagine that, you never know whether this is the most important story of the decade.

Imagine not having somehow missed the news that Lincoln had been killed, and you're just reading a nice review, and that pops up halfway through.

Sorry, what?

What?

What about the plane?

Yeah, another phrase that you might say to do with journalism is: Today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip paper, right?

So, I was thinking about that because I've moved to a seaside town and I'm getting a lot of fish and chips at the moment, and I ain't seeing any newspapers.

They're not wrapped in it.

So, I think that might be something that's been phased out.

But what do we know about the newspapers?

Where did they get them from?

Oh, you run a fish and chips,

yeah.

Where did you get your newspapers from?

Pick them up off the street when they're discarded.

So, that's a bit disgusting.

I don't want to know it.

I mean, it's a bit disgusting.

Yeah, okay.

I will actually only have my fish and chips from a copy of the Daily Telegraph.

Because you get more chips that way, it's a massive paper.

It's a big, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, not the job.

No, so what it is, is one thing you probably will have noticed is that if you ever opened up your fish and chips, you never had the front page of a newspaper.

You would always have had something from the body of the newspaper.

So they never used old newspapers.

What would happen is at the end of the day at a news agent, they would have return copies that they would need to send back.

But that's huge and bulky.

And what are the papers going to do with it?

They don't need it.

So what you would do as a news agent is you'd rip off the front page or enough that you would have the date and the title of the newspaper and you send that back to the newspapers to get your refund.

And then you give your unread newspapers newspapers to the fish and chips, and they use it from there.

Hang on, so the newspaper will refund you for just sending the front page.

It's proof that you haven't sold the paper, I guess, which is the main thing.

They don't actually physically want it back unless they're trying to pulp it, which I guess they weren't doing.

Yes, yeah.

That's brilliant.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Wow, that's really cool.

I remember thinking if I had a big printout image of ink on it, I don't want that on my chips.

No.

Well, now you can get fish and chips delivered on BBC News articles online, don't you?

It's on a Kindle these days.

I get mine.

Mine keep popping up as alerts.

I don't need another chip.

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Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that there is a spider in East Africa that really wants to eat us, but because it can't, it finds other animals that have eaten us and eats that instead.

Brilliant.

Yeah, it's extremely clever.

This is the East African spider.

It's sometimes known as a vampire spider.

And it really wants to eat us.

It wants our blood so much, hence the word vampire, but it doesn't have pincers that can penetrate enough.

It doesn't want to be killed.

It's got all sorts of issues.

So what it's done is it's identified that if it instead didn't eat us and then hunted female mosquitoes instead that had just eaten us, it could get the juicy, juicy blood out of them.

So when you say eats animals, it's mosquitoes mainly.

Because I read that as, like, I don't know.

What lions?

Yeah, a lion is just, and they go, oh, wow, the lion's got a really good tourist.

I'm going right after that lion.

Yeah, no, it's specifically mosquitoes.

Hence, the vampire thing.

By the way, this was discovered in Australia at Macquarie University, and basically they wanted to see what the eating habits of this spider were and why.

And so they did that.

They put in mosquitoes in there that didn't have any human blood in it, and then they put in female mosquitoes that did.

And they kept noticing that it could smell it out

even by sight because they didn't two different ways.

There was one where they put it in front of mosquitoes and let it smell the, you know, a male, a hungry female, or a full female, pick the full female, and then it showed them from behind glass, like an ID parade.

And the same thing, a male, an empty female, and a full female, but it couldn't smell them, but it definitely knew it.

Sort of said, I want that one.

Really?

Yeah.

Like a menu.

It's a really clever thing.

I like the sound of it.

They're really cool.

They're also really into smelly socks.

That's the other thing.

So they

explain that to me.

Well, it's appealing to mosquitoes.

Smelly socks contain secretions from your foot which which smell good to mosquitoes.

So mosquitoes are seeking those out.

So the spider is going where the mosquitoes are likely to be.

This is just, what a genius.

That's brilliant.

This has blown my mind because you know how people have sweet blood and they say, oh yeah, they always get bitten.

Oh yeah.

It's because they have sweet blood and that sort of colloquialism.

The truth is your feet stink.

You've got really stinky socks.

So forget the sweet blood thing.

That's just your mum trying to be nice.

I've never noticed mosquitoes gathering around my feet, around my socks.

That's a superpower no one wants.

could i talk a little bit about other animals that have vampire in the name of course yeah the vampire brand it's very strong not all of them glitter but it's just interesting that you can have a vampire squirrel bear with me so this is a rare tufted ground squirrel that is only found in the hilly forests of borneo and it is notable not just because it has the taste for blood reportedly but also because it has an incredibly bushy tail it has the bushiest tail of any mammal compared to its body size again it's called the vampire squirrel and i just think is it a vampire squirrel or is it just a very big tailed squirrel

but it likes blood yes i mean that that it doesn't matter how big your tail is if you like blood you're a vampire i guess so uh the species is really very bizarre so the tail is 30 larger than the rest of its body but in terms of like the blood it will eat giant acorns of course it will but it also will perch on low branches and then jump onto a deer go into its jugular vein

and also disembowel the carcass okay sorry

no

no there's no squirrel that can take down a deer it's not taking well if it's disemboweling the carcass and it's step one is jump onto it from your tree no but it but it's the pincing must be like a vulcan death grip right like it must be uh a pinch or whatever that says more letters coming in goes to the neck takes it down yeah if you can if you can get the right spot you can incapacitate it's just like, I've seen lions fighting with deer for minutes on end.

But they're the same size.

They're the same size.

It's like, have you ever had a kid punch you in the balls?

Not you.

But have you, you know, like fighting a kid, it takes a while before you can get a good punch in.

You think that's hard.

You think fighting a kid.

Can I use another analogy?

No, no, no.

So you're saying fighting a kid is harder than fighting a fully grown adult?

I'm saying it's like it's in so many fights.

Margate Seafront is full of, is littered with bodies large and small.

Give me a fish and shit, boy.

No,

if a little thing is a spider crawling on you or whatever, it's hard to

punch.

It's hard to punch a spider.

And if it's on your balls, you're in big trouble.

As the saying goes.

Look, I will say, it's not been scientifically observed that there have been deer kills in this manner.

But the local tribe, these are the forest-dwelling Dayak hunters, say that it does attack and kill deer to eat their stomach contents.

So again, squirrels, cute.

Yeah, yeah.

So the spider you wouldn't think is very vampirey as well because its length is five millimeters long.

So we're talking about like a little, tiny, little thing here.

It's very, very small.

Oh.

The most vampire thing of the animals has to be the vampire bat.

That's a fair shout, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it literally.

They've earned the name.

And I was reading about the vampire bats, and we've mentioned a couple of things about them in the past, but what I didn't know is that if they are taking blood from an animal, so a vampire bat will land on the ground and crawl over, sink the fangs in.

a if it's a particularly hairy animal and this animal's usually asleep it will shave the animal

yeah

it uses its teeth and cheek teeth it's got cheek teeth inside and it will shave a patch as if it's about to do surgery and then it will put its fangs in so it does it's like a barber it's just a little

you'll wake up with ball patches all over you and you'll know that someone sucked your blood yeah i guess so if you're an animal and do we know is that because you know how it's very unpleasant to kiss someone who hasn't shaved is that because it's also unpleasant to drink blood from someone who hasn't shaved is that just to make it a more comfortable experience for them?

You get your food in their bid.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, you don't want that.

There's that other documentary, The Twits.

This is

an acting-related fact for these spiders.

There's a spider which only survives because it's a bad actor.

Oh,

it's one of those spiders that fakes a death kind of thing to avoid predators thinking it's alive.

And you pity them because they're so bad.

And you're like, oh, well, oh,

alas, I am forsooth I am dead oh wow he's got a lot of work I don't want to eat that and then you Ellie you go soft on it in the press tour I do you know you think it doesn't do that as well yeah yeah so this is called Scylla Collingwoodi and it pretends to be an ant right because ants are often quite scary for predators they've got strong jaws and they can really bite you back as it were so a lot of predators avoid them this spider doesn't have that but it lifts up its front legs and waves them around as if they're antennae.

Oh, okay.

And it shakes its abdomen about.

So it looks a bit like, it looks a bit like an ant, but its impression is so bad that it could be any one of multiple ant species, effectively.

It's not a very good specific ant impression.

But that means it deters multiple predators.

That's correct.

Because it sort of looks a bit like loads of ants.

It's like me being able to do one accent, which actually sounds plausibly like loads of different countries it could have come from.

Minor.

Can you say that?

Exactly, yeah.

It's an all-round impersonation.

It's a generic impersonation.

It does.

Am I doing a Welsh accent?

Am I doing a completely different accent?

It doesn't matter.

It's the factory setting of accents.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So every animal goes, I don't, it's like it's something that's on the turn.

It's like, I think it's okay to eat, but it might be that poisonous accent.

It might be an ant, yeah.

Exactly.

It's a little bit in, yeah.

Yeah.

This spider is only found in Lake Victoria.

You know how big Lake Victoria is?

Big.

It's so big.

It's a biggie.

It's six times the size of Yorkshire.

Is that bigger or smaller than that manhawk of you were wanging on that?

Genormous.

Shine born.

This lake is messy.

Yeah,

it's just it's so it's East Africa.

it's um it's Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, right?

The three countries on its borders.

It's so, I love this, it's so big.

It's one of only two places in East Africa where you can watch the sun set over water,

but you're not on the coast.

Oh, isn't that good?

Yeah, that's nice.

You just look out and the sun sets, and it's actually there's more land on the other side of it.

Yeah, it's kind of cool.

That is cool.

Yeah,

um, it's basically half of England.

That's nice.

That is large.

And it's amazing, isn't it?

It's an ecological wonder.

I didn't know about this at all.

And it kind of helps you out, Dan.

And just to update you, Ellie, Dan makes references to evolution a lot, and occasionally they are verging on incorrect.

But it does help out your evolutionary arguments when sometimes you assume evolution can happen quite fast.

Because in Lake Victoria, it's like zhm.

And it seems like we don't really know why.

And this is specifically these cichlids.

So about 16,000 years ago, there were three species of cichlid, which is a kind of fish.

You see them in aquariums a lot.

There were three species of cichlid there.

There are, by By the mid-20th century, there were over 500 species.

And now that is an incredibly short amount of time for them all to have shagged, mutated, turned into different species, not been able to.

And as far as I can tell, one of the reasons it happens so far seems to be that they're quite bad swimmers.

Oh, so they get stuck in specific bits

doing their own breeding.

Yeah, exactly.

They can lose touch with...

Yeah, lose touch with

the home planet.

How interesting.

Cichlids carry their newly hatched offspring in their mouths.

That's another reason why they don't breed very much.

They couldn't outcompete because it limits your breeding drastically.

Rubbish at kissing.

Absolutely.

Give me a cichlid image.

What's a cichlid look like?

It's like you think, think of a fish in an aquarium in a shop.

Yeah.

It's like that.

Okay, right.

Classic.

It looks like a nice, colourful little fish.

It's a classic fish.

Yeah, no, you're right.

That's not good for like a date night where you go to kiss, they open their mouth, and the children are in there.

Anything I should know?

She was lovely, great listener

she sounds a bit like michael cage

okay that's it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast we can be found on various social media accounts i'm on at shreiberland andy at andrew hunter m allie at ally plum with a b on the end and anna where can they get to the four of us you can tweet at no such thing or Instagram, no such thing as a fish, or you can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep, or you could head over to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

You'll find all of our previous episodes up there.

You'll find bits of merchandise up there.

But most importantly, most crucially, you will find links to the live tour.

Thundernerds, we're back on the road later this year, so come grab a ticket if we're coming to a city or town near you.

And otherwise, just come back here next week because we're going to be back with another episode and we'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Guys, before we go, I've googled it.

So how many times do the two hands on a clock coincide in a 24-hour period?

Okay, so the obvious guess was 12.

I think it's going to be 12.

Or 24.

Or 24.

24?

It's a 24-hour period.

Oh, sorry, it's a 24-hour period.

It was in the question.

You're out of the interview process.

I'm so out of it.

Get your stuff and leave.

Ellie and I are still in it.

Always read the top of the exam paper.

I need final answers, guys.

22.

23.

22 for Andy?

23 for Anna.

It makes no sense.

I'm just going to split the difference.

22.5?

22.5?

Yep.

Okay.

That was a terrible idea.

I'm out of the bloody.

There we go.

Bye.

The answer is 22 times.

Andy's right.

The hands coincide at times 12 o'clock, 105, 2.11, 3.16, and so on.

Every 65 minutes, not 60 minutes.

They coincide 11 times in 12 hours, therefore 22 times in 24 hours.

So when I thought it was 12, then I was right with 11.

But because I was so stupid, I didn't even listen to the wording of the question.

And that is how you don't get the job.

And that's why Andy is now working at Microsoft.

Thank you very much.

I cannot excuse why I made my guess.