527: No Such Thing As A Rum and Woke

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hi everyone welcome to this week's episode of no such thing as a fish where we were joined by the incredible dr erica mcalester now erica has been on the podcast before so you might remember her but if you don't the one thing you need to know is that she is an expert in flies

insects.

I won't say creepy collies, I won't say mini beasts, because I know Erica doesn't like that, but she is essentially a senior curator at the Natural History Museum and an absolute legend in this office.

She is so enthusiastic about her subject but also so funny, so interesting.

We really really enjoyed making this show.

The main thing I do need to tell you is that Erica has a book out.

Her book is called Metamorphosis, How Insects Are Changing Our World.

It's a lovely thing.

I've got a copy of it right here.

It's got loads of amazing pictures, incredible stories.

It's just a really, really great object to own.

And obviously, you'll learn a great deal about insects if you buy that book.

Another thing to say is that the Radio 4 show, which spawned the book, get it spawned,

it's called Metamorphosis, How Insects Transformed Our World.

That is currently available on BBC Radio 4.

If you google Radio 4, Erika McAllister, you will find it.

It's a great show and it is full of amazing facts.

Anyway, not much more to add.

Join Clubfish if you haven't.

Buy our books if you haven't.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Let's get on with the show with Dr.

Erica McAllister and on with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Things a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QA offices in Hoban.

My name is Andrea Hunter Murray and I'm here with Anna Tajinski, James Harkin and Erica McAllister.

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

So in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one and that is Erica.

Some flies have tits on the inside.

Tits on the inside.

Yeah.

I mean do they have to wear bras on the well how to tight because the bra is tough enough to do off on the outside actually.

I just think it's an evolutionary advantage of them avoiding males, groping them in public.

Do you think male flies are gropers?

Oh, look at how many hands they have.

So it's

okay, take your head away from imagining loads of little mammary grounds on the inside.

But they have this kind of flat surface and they've got no nipples, so it's like a big area.

But they do give birth to live young.

So they will, instead of like shooting off hundreds of thousands of eggs, they've decided to actually, do you know what?

Let's concentrate on raising one larvae.

And this, yeah, I know.

That's unusual in flies, right?

It's unusual in insects.

Ah.

So we generally think of the mammals doing that.

You know, let's, let's actually look after just one and go for it.

Now, this is in the super family Hippobosoidea.

And they include the things that people would have heard of, like Tetsi.

Tetsi flies is, no, because Tetsi means fly.

Isn't that a little fact?

And what is amazing, like the Tetsi, when she gets pregnant, because she probably does get pregnant, the larvae, when it's born, can have a mass bigger than her.

Oh, yeah.

I've seen a video of them giving birth, and it is remarkable because imagine having a baby and it's bigger than you.

First of all, it seems impossible.

So, how do they, what do they then shrink as they get older?

Otherwise, they just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

They go through metamorphosis, remember?

Oh, I've forgotten that.

Is that a video that they show at fly nct because i like the idea look this is this is just to get you ready now if you light a lot of candles and play some nice music it won't be as bad as you think

i mean you look at her her stomach before she gives birth her abdomen just looks like the radicio cabbage you know it's really easily swell it is absolutely engorged it's red it's got these white veins all over it it is just amazing i mean she only gives birth about three or four times

i mean only as quite as I know.

I think I would have given up after one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're actually just going to say one and done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've made a decision.

It's easy with the schools.

Also, what a great way of putting me off a Rediccio Cabbage for the first time.

Sorry.

So one thing I read about specifically the Tetsi flies is that the females get a lifetime's worth of sperm from mating once.

And then they just use it bit by bit as they go.

They kind of hoard it.

I suppose if you only have one child, a lifetime supply of sperm is just one sperm, isn't it?

Yeah, that's true.

So many insects do this, and a lot of flies, it's called a spermatheca, and it's where they store sperm.

They can get rid of sperm, they can replace sperm.

Now, this might be a question that you can't answer, but I was really wondering this when reading about it.

A, really sad, because presumably every shag is a one-night stand, so a bit of a shame there.

Yeah, but

some of them only live for hours, so it's not even like a night.

Okay, fair enough, a one-minute stand.

But then when you've got all the sperm inside you, you want to pick the best one.

Do you know how, like,

what's the mechanism where you've got sperm within you?

No idea.

No, it's going to be a good idea.

No,

you're beginning to look at this because you've got this is cryptic female selection going on.

So, this is all quite exciting.

So, the Victorians had this whole thing about, oh, it's always about the males, the males, this, the males choose, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, okay, back off.

We know this is not the case.

We can see it in our own sex.

So, we're looking at the biochemistry now.

We're looking at the hormones.

We're looking at that.

So, her body is trying to kill sperm.

His sperm is trying to drug her.

It's all sorts of of things going on.

Why is her body trying to kill?

Because her body wants the best.

So she kills off all the weaklings, only the best gets.

How does she do?

What was the other thing about them poisoning?

Oh yeah, the males drug the females.

Yeah, so his sperm is going to have a load of pheromones in loads of different chemicals.

And so with Drosophila, we know that immediately they've had sex.

The sperm makes the female less likely to have sex again.

So they are trying, there's lots of sneaky behavior going on.

Some of these flies, the bat flies, which I really love.

So, I spend a lot of time running after bats in the Caribbean, which is nice.

The female, when she gets pregnant, some of them undertake some extreme morphological adaptations at this point.

So, there's one that when she gets pregnant, she rips her legs off and she rips her wings off, and then she sticks her head into the back, and basically, most of her body, she undergoes this complete metamorphosis.

What does she rip off her last two legs with?

Well, she's still, I guess she's like she's sort of ripped her wings off first she's learned that the legs they can break them

so i presume she's broken them off but mother nature's sort of a lovely solution for this so she can stick her head in but she invaginates herself like she kind of i beg your pardon she kind of blacks her abdomen invaginates she kind of goes like invaginate meaning sheath so she kind of like draws herself into her own body like pulling herself into a sleeping bag yeah well what a chat up line i've never got fancy a spot of invagination

i think that writes yourself out of the picture in that line.

You mentioned you were running around chasing bats in Barbados, and I've tried to catch two bats in my life inside rooms to get them out, and it's extremely difficult.

How do you, what are you doing, just leaping along beach, luxury beaches after bats in the dark?

No, it was in Dominica, and we have mist nets.

So have you ever seen mist nets catching birds?

No.

Obviously, you lot have never done holidays like I do.

So you put a bird in this net and a bat comes flying into it.

And male bats, they're really obviously male bats.

These two giant testicles straight in your face.

And you're holding them open because you're trying to weigh them, sex them, speciate them.

And then I'm the little entomologist next to you trying to find these little bat flies.

So they look like little drunk spiders running all over the bats.

So they're visible enough, and you can see them without one.

Oh, yeah.

They're big enough.

And they're like,

running around and dogs.

Do they annoy the bats because they've got parasites?

I don't know, because the bat's so angry at this stage.

I don't know what's annoying.

Someone's measuring his testicles.

So there's a lot going on.

Imagine having sort of parasites the size of your own thumb just running around your body.

I'm guessing

there's a whole lot of interesting things.

There's a group of flies that are slightly different.

These are called bee riders and they hang around honeybees.

They will go down and feed around the mouth of, say, the queen, which they more often on.

And these have mimicked her smell.

So the queen knows that something, there's this bit running around on her, her, this other creature, but it smells like her.

Amazing.

So she thinks it's herself?

She's like, is that, is that me?

I don't know, but that literally is, imagine your head running around your body.

Like, going, pardon a minute.

What is that?

Gosh.

Anna, did that answer your question of how to catch a bat?

Thank you, yes.

Sorry, perfect.

It would be cool if you, if you had a beard, which you get crumbs in.

Are there beard mites that

the food is?

There's eyelash mites.

Oh, yeah.

You rarely get crumbs in your eyelashes, do you?

And there's obviously other things.

Again, you don't get crumbs there either.

I think some people get crumbs there.

I do.

There's a lot of feasting in bed.

Okay, let's not ask too many questions.

Magdalene, there's a custard cream down here.

Has this hub not been imaginated?

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Let's talk about flies.

A negative about flies, because I know you're a fan, but Tetsi flies are quite big big disease spreaders and

well you're making a you're making a face like maybe they're not well I mean it's it's not a Tetsis fault again it's the same well no it's not because they are vectors they're being manipulated by this trypanosome okay and they are their behavior is altered if they have this within them if they have the trypanosome is a parasite yeah so it causes them to go into environments they you know and feed for longer feed earlier and do all of this so there is manipulation going on with the parasite of course it's not parasite's faulty You're always advocating for the poor flies, those poor Tetsi flies killing millions and millions of people every year.

No, I know, and I'm not, I'm not taking away from that, but also, there has been a case that a Tetsi has helped massively with conservation

because we couldn't go into certain areas, we couldn't take livestock into certain areas, we left all of it.

So, some of the original national parks in southern Africa were set up because it was like there's nothing we could do with the land.

The indigenous animals were fine because they're like, they've got you you know, skin so thick that Tetsis were

not doing that.

So yes, so there is a case that Tetsis are very nice.

Here's an attempt to deal with Tetsu flies.

This is quite a clever one.

It's what Zimbabwe did in the 1980s.

I didn't know this.

There are 60,000 fake cows across Zimbabwe, which

you can't tell.

You can't tell, really.

I bet I could.

Depends on how distant it is.

Is it like where they take one of those mobile phone masts and try and make it look like a tree?

Exactly.

It just looks like a green mobile phone mast.

It's exactly that, except you're you're trying to lure people into the mobile phone mast to give them a shock to blast.

Basically, they have these chiromones, hope I'm pronouncing it right.

These are chemicals that Texifies love.

And they lure them in and then they kill them with insecticide because these fake cows also ooze insecticide in some way that I don't fully understand.

But they brought cases down to almost zero in Zimbabwe.

So

we tether cows often and put nets over them too, because they are really good lures.

And so we, yeah, so there's various different sampling methods using that.

They've done this with rabbits, chickens, all sorts, put them in boxes, chickens' head poking out.

Yeah, all that.

It's better than human bait, which is another way we do it.

Have you stood in the middle of a net with arms out?

People I know have.

Oh, really?

So, yeah, so it's human bait.

So every hour, they will stick their hand out and let all the mosquitoes feed on them.

Oh, yeah.

And they would do this.

Can I ask Erica?

I'm one of the people who, when I go on holiday, I get bitten really, really badly, and my wife doesn't.

So these people who are the human baits, do you look for people like me to do it?

As in, are you looking for people who are just people who would taste it?

No, I think we just ask and hope that someone does it.

Right.

But that gets me choosing.

We're looking for someone to lure in the incredibly rare North African penis bite who fly.

Are we willing?

Funny you should say that.

So there's New World screw worm.

Oh, it was awful.

This guy went to Venezuela to visit his family there and he got back to the UK.

This is a horrible story.

Do you want me to carry on?

Please.

Okay.

Our favourite kind of thing.

Okay.

He got back to the UK and it's obviously moaning.

And New World screw worm, you can have multiple infestation of the maggots.

And is it a screw worm because it screws its way into your body?

Yeah.

His screw worm infestation, of which he had multiple, was in his scrotum.

Oh, no.

No.

Now he's let this

infest, as it were, for a couple of weeks.

Now, at this point, these maggots...

Yeah, but you're busy, you you can't get a GP's appointment.

They're saying, Can you do three in the afternoon?

It might source itself out exactly.

Well, they eventually will because they will pop out by themselves, but you have to put up with a writhing maggot

in your scrotum.

If I googled that and it was like it will eventually cure itself, I can imagine being the kind of person so lazy, I'd be like, you know what, I'll deal with this.

I just don't think you would.

Now, I'm not a male, so I do not have them.

But I think if my scrotum was moving by itself, I would be tempted to do the same about it.

Can I ask a question?

Did his scrotum still smell like him?

I did not.

That was obviously.

I don't think that was written in the scrotum.

They do, they don't move exactly by themselves, but they're certainly

they move more than the rest of you.

Oh, I see, we're talking about it.

If I'm running and then I stop,

it keeps running.

That's when Andy runs the 100 meters.

He actually only runs 99.98 meters.

Stop dead.

Wow.

I go over the line that way.

actually on genitals can i ask a question about fly genitals generally because i i've struggled to find the definite answer to this i was reading an article from new scientists in 1990 about um how all flies when they have sex their penises the male flies their penises rotate either 180 or 360 not all of them okay but some of them do yeah so it sounded very interesting and cool so when i rear mosquitoes when the adult males hatch we leave them for 24 hours because their genitalia has to rotate 360 degrees to be in the correct position yes yeah

wait a minute because if it rotates

not in one it doesn't just do that it moves down around so it's not like the hand of a clock no

no no but it does wrap itself internally around the other organs i think you know there's a lot of rapids going on but not all of them rotate and you can see this because some of them will copulate in a missionary you know or doggy style as it were flyy style and others a female would drag the male along behind her okay so that depends on how much genital rotation has gone on.

But also, that's fixed rotation.

There is temporary rotation, so they can move their penis into position.

Like during sex, yes, I think you're saying this.

And what I've really liked is an explanation of maybe why.

It allows you to be a bit more flexible in the same way that a balloon animal,

if you've got a long balloon and then you rotate it 360 like a magician would when he's making it into an animal, suddenly that you've got strength there in that twist in the middle and you've got flexibility.

I quite like that.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, but this is all runaway evolution.

So, there's some flies that have a penis that is just extraordinarily, it's like a massive curly whirly, and you're like, whoa.

So, she's evolving internally, he's trying to do all these crazy stuff.

So, are her body parts running away from his body parts?

I mean, basically, yes.

I'm now thinking all the things that I'm off Rodicio cabbages,

off curly ways,

two of my major food groups.

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Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that the oldest rum brand in the world was founded by a man named Cumberbatch Sober.

Wow.

Ironic.

I've never heard Cumberbatch as a first name.

Sorry to completely distract from the sober element of it.

No, I've never heard of it.

Cumberbatch was a crucial part of the fact as well.

Me neither.

I'll be honest, I'd never heard of it as a surname until Benedict Cumberbatch came along.

Yeah, it is a relatively uncommon name.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a funny word.

Cumberbatch.

Anyway,

this is Mount Gay Rum, and it's probably been producing rum since 1663.

It was, and I've sort of cheated on this fact because it was originally called Mount Gilboa, and then it was taken over by the Sober family, and they put someone in charge called Sir John Gay Alain to manage it, and to manage the distillery.

A gay rum became, you know, biggest rum in the world, an amazing business.

And so when Sir John died,

John Sober's son, Cumberbatch, renamed Mount Gilbo a Mount Gay, and that's what we get Mount Gay Rum.

So he named it.

I have seen that Mount Gay Rum for sale and never realised it was the oldest.

That's quite cool.

And they've got weird names, a lot of them.

There's Pussa's rum, which I like,

and Mount Gay.

There are all sorts of eccentric names.

You can get an extraordinary variety of strength in rum.

Didn't realise the strongest rum in the world, I think, is one called Rude to Your Parents' Rum.

It's not really an official rum.

You can't really get it unless you go deep into Jamaica and ask the right people.

But a journalist tracked it down, and it's 160 proofs, so 80%

rum.

Journalists said he sniffed it and almost passed out.

Yeah.

Can you even...

I mean, that's what we're preserving insects.

Yeah.

I mean, this is like...

Isn't that really that as well?

I don't think we know where rum comes from for sure.

The word rum.

Because there was a drink called rumbullion.

rumbullion which was made from boiling sugar cane stalks which is the leading theory and that sounds pretty convincing to be honest but um there was also a pirate drink called bumbo which i really like nice yeah yeah but definitely came from the caribbean right yeah yeah and it was from sugar plantation owners who had this kind of molasses which was leftover black sticky stuff and they would add water to it and then leave it to ferment and and it became rum yeah but i read in greg jenner's book um which is a million years Years in a Day, that they would add dead animals or human urine to their wash.

So you go to preserve them, as Erica says.

Was it entomologists?

To preserve your urine.

I think you're preserving the dead animals, but yeah, sure.

What's that?

Apparently, the idea is that it would stop the enslaved people who are working on your plantation from drinking all of your rum.

But you then have to drink dead rat rum.

Well, presumably when you're selling it, you don't advertise the fact that there's been dead animals and urine in it.

Or perhaps it was a story that you told the people so that they didn't drink it, and in actual fact, you didn't do that.

Well, if your rum is strong enough, I mean, I'll drink it.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, as if that was going to put you in the middle.

Exactly.

I mean, implantation.

We drink a lot of like tequila, you know.

I mean, although the worm is only a recent thing, isn't it?

Yeah, all the bottles have a little worm.

Well, they don't all.

Oh, don't they?

No, and I think that could actually be a recent thing.

Oh, really?

So, yeah, so, and we're not even sure why they did it in the first place.

Just one guy had a lot of spare ones in his scroll tonight.

Do you know what?

I've been handed.

My friend went walking and found a load of ticks all over him.

So, he had a tiny little whiskey bottle.

So, it's now in whiskey.

And I can't,

I haven't had the heart to put it in the collection because it looks so cute.

And his only label he had on him was a plaster.

So, it's handwritten on a plaster

where on his body it was and where he collected it in this little miniature of whiskey.

So, he's preserved it in that.

How late and desperate into the night night would it be before you decided that this was the last thing you could drink?

Yeah, I've got a lot of those bottles.

Can I tell you a bit about Navy rum?

So this was the big thing in the Royal Navy was all sailors got a tot of rum every day.

And in fact, it wasn't a tot.

It was about half a pint a day of rum.

And this was, you know, this was great.

And then until

in 1740, it was watered down from that point on

by one to five.

So you did get your rum still, half a pint, but it was watered down with two pints of of water.

So it was a bit.

Okay.

So you were getting two and a half pints worth of stuff, were you?

Yeah, it was called grog.

This sort of mixture.

And basically, if you were a senior officer, you were allowed to drink your rum neat, because you were probably a trustworthy chap.

And if you were on the rest of the ship.

An able seaman.

Exactly.

Untrustworthy, you'd go on a bender, maybe, you'd save it all up, and that you'd, you know, and you'd steer the ship wrong.

Anyway, so they had it watered down.

And basically, this is the amazing ritual they had.

The officer of the day, the master at arms, the supply petty officer, and the butcher, no idea what he's doing here, they meet at the ship's spirit room.

They unlock it.

The butcher inserts his pump into the bunghole.

I'm sorry, what?

Come on, sit down.

He imaginates the farrell.

He draws off the ration, which is then transferred to a small breaker, which is spelt barrico, but pronounced breaker.

So that's then padlocked and then carried to the rum tub.

At which point, you've got the rum tub is now full of the day's rum.

Then the rum call is sounded on bugle.

Everyone gathers and you know, then each mess, like a little, like let's say the four of us would be a mess.

We would nominate a mess man.

Let's say James is the mess man.

Yeah.

James goes up, gets the rum for all of us, carries it back in his rum fanny.

That is the imagination.

It's a large egg-shaped container for our mess's rum.

And then while we're drinking it, we sing a special song called Nancy Dawson.

Oh, yeah, I know the Nancy Dawson.

I forget that I've mentioned it before actually.

Maybe I have.

But I think it is the same tune as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

Oh okay.

And it was about a famous sex worker called Nancy Dawson.

And every sort of every verse is ruder and ruder than the last one.

I've not learned that version of the Mulberry Bush.

I'm very bored of singing the other one.

Do you know why it's called grog?

I didn't know this.

But it's because for international listeners, grog is sort of what we call general alcohol now, quite often.

Oh, yeah, we do.

A glass of grog.

Yeah.

You know, not if you're of a certain age, perhaps.

I live in the deep, deep countryside as well.

You don't get many orders in the sort of London cocktail bars I frequent for a glass of grog.

For £12.

Gin and tonic.

A half of.

Here's my rum, Fanny.

So

top that up.

And then a round of here we go around the Nancy Birch order, that's cool.

No, it's because, as Andy said, in 1740, the rum was watered down because people were a bit worried that sailors were getting out of control or being irresponsible.

And it was watered down, diluted by a chap called Admiral Vernon, who is an admiral.

And he wore this big cloak, which was made of a special fabric that happened to be called grogrum.

So people used to call him old grog.

And that's one of those nice etymologies where we just know it comes from there.

Yeah, because it sounds fake, but it's not fake.

Yeah, I mean, he just wore this cloak.

They call him old grog, so they call drinks grog.

And we do to this day in some parts of the country.

Do you know what grog blossom is?

No.

Have a punt.

I think you already know it.

I do know it, yeah.

Is it also to do with Admiral Vernham?

Did he have a case of genital warts or something?

It's higher up.

Okay.

It is a bodily condition.

It's even higher.

Even higher than your nipples.

Yeah, strike north.

Is it your nose?

It's your nose and your cheeks basically.

It's your countenance.

Oh, exactly.

It's a ruddy, red.

It's all where the blood vessels have sort of, you know, given up the ghost if you've been drinking a lot for a long time.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

It's in Gross, that, isn't it?

Gross's dictionary.

I read Gross's dictionary for some other rum words because, like, we were talking before the mics came on about whether we say the word rum to mean, you know, like he's a rum bugger, we would say, in Bolton, for instance.

Dodgy rum.

I'd say that's a bit rum.

Yeah.

I wouldn't use it.

But you would say rum in that sense to mean bad, right?

Kind of a bit dodgy.

Yeah, yeah.

But it did used to mean more like good, like rum.

Oh, that's, you know, so your rum peepers would be very expensive glasses.

You mean you mean spectacles?

Spectacles, yeah, yeah.

Rum drawers, do you know what they were?

E-R-A-W-E-R-S.

They're where you smuggle your rum out of the rum shop in your drawers.

Another word we use in the countryside.

Yeah.

Well, you're using the right kind of drawers.

It's silk or other fine stockings

known as rum drawers.

And rum gaggers.

Do you know what a rum gagger was?

Rum gagger.

Someone who can't hold their drink.

No, it was someone who would tell wonderful stories of their sufferings at sea or when taken by the Algerians.

And

they would tell these stories and they get your confidence and then they would swindle you.

Oh, rum gaggers.

Right, okay.

I found a thing which is

in your wheelhouse, Erica, which is related to rum.

can you have a guess?

So, related to insects, we're thinking.

Yeah, oh, and are these things insects?

Okay, related to insects slash erased animals.

They're certainly creepy crawly.

Mini beasts, they call them.

No, I don't use either of those terms.

I don't like either of them.

I like mini-beasts.

It's a bit tall.

It's a bit cutesy, but beasts, it's still beasts.

That's negative.

I just think the negative words should be mini great guys.

Yeah.

Beasts.

I mean, beasts are exciting.

We don't say big beasts.

We don't say low.

I do.

I think like a bigger thing.

Well, okay, we can claim beasts for a good thing.

Hansen Beast.

Another one that we use alongside rum and grog for a loving beast in the wilds of Huntington.

Okay, I'll tell you.

It's the Isle of Rum.

Yes.

This is off Scotland and it is home to the biggest something in the UK.

Oh, this is, it's got a huge population of red deer.

Might it be something that lives on a red deer?

Well, I'd be very surprised because these are the largest worms in the UK

found on rum, the Isle of Rum.

They're three times bigger than your standard worm.

It's basically like Dune the Isle of Rum.

It's like they're huge.

These worms, they're just worms, are they?

Are they different?

It's just.

Just take that away.

The earthworm specialist in the museum right now will be having kittens thinking about you saying just worms.

Just kittens.

Are they common or garden worms?

They are.

They're standard earthworms.

They're earthworms.

But

the reason they've grown massive is that they...

I know, hold your horses, Erica.

There are no predators.

It's island gigantism.

Island gigantism.

The soil is very fertile.

Scientists from the Uni of Central Lancashire have

apparently discovered very large worm burrows.

I don't know how large, but they're big.

Like Badger said.

Pretty much.

And apparently, they might be living for up to 10 years.

And a normal worm lives two years on the mainland.

The natural predator of a worm, I would say, is the early bird.

That's right.

Do they not have birds on rum then?

Well, because it's further north, you know, it gets light later, so the early bird can't see what it's doing.

Do you know what splicing the main brace is?

Is it where you have a rope and you cut it so that it...

That's what I was saying.

It's very close to it.

Well, I thought splice.

Yeah, you divide it into two.

Basically, these days, it means give everyone on board some rum.

a tot of rum.

But back in the day, it meant something incredibly fiddly,

which then was so fiddly that everyone who'd done it deserved the extra tot of rum.

The main brace is a piece of rope and it's the longest line in what they call the running rigging.

And the running rigging is what keeps the ship mobile.

It's what means you can navigate, basically, as opposed to the standing rigging, which is what keeps the masts in place, right?

And the main brace is the longest and most complicated bit.

It's the most fiddly-changing job to do because it goes through all sorts of bits of wood and it's just, you know, you have to, oh, God, it's just so, so fiddly.

And so that's what, that's what means it.

So

that's what means it, is it?

That's what means it.

That's what means it.

Sorry for using my nautical terms.

Yeah, so and that's what

Splice the Main Brace.

Now it's just a ceremonial thing, but originally it had a meaning of

yeah, but they both resulted in rum, basically.

So we should say that rum is no longer in the Navy rations, but it lasted so due to woke.

Whoa, indeed.

It lasted a bloody long time until 1970.

And I was reading the Hansard debate, the parliamentary debate, for when it was abolished, and the outrage was palpable.

I can imagine.

MPs just standing up one after the other, Dr.

Reginald Bennett, MP for Gosport and Ferrum, saying, I represent a constituency which has been plunged into gloom and horror by this iniquitous decision.

So, the reason it was abolished was because it was said that maybe their judgment in quite fiddly tasks at war could be impaired.

Splicing them baseball,

for instance,

could be impaired by having a rum ration.

And the argument was that.

No, no, well, this is.

We've used it.

I know my friend got a bot fly in his head, so

we needed the rum for him for morale or for his yeah to slightly anesthetize him so when you split open his quite how deep so it embeds itself in no well it doesn't because it because of your skull it just goes along so you can see it growing

if you just leave it will it get better or yeah oh and there's this beautiful guy uh Gil he's he he did a study of his own butt fly and so he's got all the photos and then he's got the adult when it hatched out that's like an entomological dream because it's been part of you your whole life.

Yeah,

he really became a foster parent, so he's quite pleased.

I mean, it's a bit upsetting apparently if you get by flight at night because you can hear it.

Oh, wow.

And moving around your skull.

Well, I don't move around it.

But what do you hear it doing?

Eating and defecating.

So it's just like you're asleep and it's going, oh, oh, oh.

And give it a minute.

okay it's time for fact number three and that is james okay my fact this week is that the amazon rainforest is man-made

no not having it well is it sort of a forest it's all plastic yeah

it's all mobile phone masts

so I bring this up because Erica's just come back from the Amazon, but the basic argument is

that the Amazon's home to 16,000 trees, a species species of tree, but 227 of them cover more than half of the forest ecosystem, which is suggestive of people deliberately planting them in certain places.

There seems to be two distinct layers of soil in the forest.

The bottom layer is kind of the normal stuff you find around there, which has got quite poor fertility.

But then there's a top layer called terra preta, which is like some kind of super soil that's made with like burnt charcoal and stuff.

So it's as if humans have made that.

And the more kind of deforestation we do, thank God we're doing this deforestation because we find evidence of farming societies, of human structures, of artifacts.

And even recently they've been doing laser technology from the air and they're finding earthen mounds hidden and lots of what they think are ancient roads that go in between all these places where people lived.

And there is historical evidence that when Europeans first arrived there, they said that lots of people were living there.

And now, of course, very, very few people live there.

So that's the argument.

I buy it.

Yeah.

I absolutely buy it.

Eric.

Well, you know, no,

when I read this, I was like, oh, so I went back to all the primary sources and I was like, oh.

The thing is, they do make a valid point.

To say that the Amazon is man-made, however, I mean, no.

There probably would have been something there.

There probably would have been lots of trees in this area, even if people had.

shaping some of them,

is a nicer way of saying it because these species, we didn't make these species.

No, so we are manipulating the environment.

To that extent, nothing is man-made, even this building we're in now, because it's all.

Well,

okay, I think about these as secondary and tertiary, but when it comes to the actual species, we're just manipulating them along the way like that.

So the Amazon is man-manipulated.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe.

So it was quite extensive as well.

So they did over a thousand plots

and quite far apart.

So what to test?

To test.

It's so cool.

The area of this soil, the Terra Praetor, is twice the size of Great Britain.

It's got lots of fish bones and seeds in it.

They basically burned it to produce charcoal.

So it's really fertile stuff.

It's really good soil.

And it dates from the last 2,000 years.

I mean, the argument against it is maybe there was a fire and maybe then it was washed down by the Amazon.

I mean, that's just to say that's another argument.

I can't believe it.

We're all now thinking and arguing, like, the Amazon being partially man-made is the more plausible explanation.

But this layer, it can be 12 feet thick.

It's really thick.

And basically, I love the idea that basically the primary building material in the Amazon was the soil.

So

it's not built.

I still think you've got to be careful by saying, I mean, there is...

Yes, areas of it have been manipulated by humans, but I don't think we'll think.

I just want to take it back a bit.

But the reason it doesn't look like what we think of as a built environment is that so much, if you're moving large amounts of soil around, it doesn't look like that to us.

So Percy Fawcett, the explorer, who went looking for the lost cities of the Amazon.

Great name.

It's such a good name.

I know.

There was a theory that when he came through, you know, on his travels, he may have walked through some of these sites, which actually were the city he was looking for and not recognized them as that because he didn't know about the soil because they're not like Western cities.

Also, wasn't he hoping to find an existing living city, lots of bustling people trading, hanging out?

I don't think he was hoping to find a series of slightly raised bits of black.

He was hoping they would be made of gold rather than black soil.

It seems almost inevitable because I really hadn't realized how many people were there

in the Amazon itself, in the Amazon rainforest, when Columbus arrived in 1492.

So there were probably between eight and ten million indigenous people living there, which is at least five times more than there are today living in the Amazon.

So when you've got millions and millions of people, it makes sense.

Of course, they're going to be sculpting things.

It is very big.

It's big.

It's large, yes.

So if you have 8 million people there, I worked out that would give you a population density still less dense than Mongolia,

which is the least dense big country in the world and about three times emptier than modern Australia.

Yeah, it's wildly big.

Okay.

But I mean, it's still a lot of people.

That's what is what scares me about going to it, the idea of getting lost.

It's 28 times bigger than the UK.

Just I can't.

I mean, humans aren't very good at conceptualizing space and it is huge.

just, we were on the, on a boat going across the Amazon, and this is like, you know, this is not at the mouth.

So this is really quite narrow.

Where else were you?

What's Iquitos in Peru?

So you're up, you know, at the other end.

You're not down in Manaus.

You haven't got the Amazon at its fattest.

But even still, I'm like, oh my God.

The idea of a river being this wide,

you know, it's still, I'm not used to it.

I'm from the UK.

Is it wider than the Thames then?

Real hidden,

isn't it?

Because the Thames gets gets pretty wide if you go down, you know, Doppler's Way.

It's wide.

Yeah, but you can still see the other side.

Yeah, that's true.

You can't see the other side.

There are bits, you can't.

You're just like, this is amazing.

Holy moly.

How do you even know then?

How do you even know?

How are you?

It sounds like you're on the coast.

It was just like, but no, it was weird.

Because we were in a bit where there's all these different tributaries coming in.

And so there's one bit you're just like, this is amazing.

You know, we did throw a tarantula in.

But it's all right.

We were a tarantula.

It wasn't on purpose, and I didn't do it.

I'll have you notice.

notice.

But it was one of the students panicked with a tarantula on them.

So she just threw it into the Amazon.

Died.

But it swam off.

So luckily.

Swam off.

Yeah.

I'm amazed tarantulas can swim.

And do they swim like an underwater restaurant?

Crawl.

Surely cruel.

It's going to be more like the butterfly, I presume.

Yeah, okay.

That's good.

That's good.

I like that.

We should say about the Amazon being partially man-made thing.

Oh, yeah.

It sounds like, oh, you might take the implication that, oh, well, it's fine with what we're doing now then.

And what this was is, this is people producing food in quite small batches.

And they did have things like fish farms, but it was relatively sustainable.

Whereas what we have now is chopping down ancient forests to grow soy or raise cattle, which is really, really, really, really unsustainable.

Although in good news, which we don't get a lot

in the world of climate change, it is getting better.

I mean, I don't think we make enough of a big deal about the fact that Bolsonaro left power and Lula came in.

Given the awful damage that he was doing, you're looking sceptical, but there's no question that he's better.

So deforestation in Brazil has halved.

Yeah.

Halved in 2020.

In fact, halved.

This is again, see the figures.

It's still very bad.

It's really bad.

It's better than doubled as in the middle of the day.

Yeah, he doesn't.

No, no, I mean, you're right.

You're absolutely positive, but they still think we all need to, we've got to stop it.

I think it's something like in the 80s, the amount deforested globally per year was roughly the size of India

and now it's the size of Switzerland.

It just shows how big it is that it's still, some of it's still left, right?

Yeah, it's amazing.

So I'm going out there and we're looking for new species and we're doing all of this and still you know i could just walk down this tiny little transect next to where i was staying and knowing that i'm looking at new things to science and it's just so sad we're kind of this you know the pos the probability of life is so random and it's so odd the fact that i'm here and you're here is also random and all these different species and this is the only proven bit of life this planet and yet we're hell-bent on destroying it and it's like come on it's it's an amazing thing i caught okay this is my favorite discovery of the Amazon.

We caught this stick insect and my friend was like, well, the woman who got it, she was like, Erica, what's that?

It's got an egg on it.

And I'm like, oh, it's this midge.

And this midge feeds on the veins.

of the wings of this stick insect and it's engorged it's engorged now imagine growing your abdomen to the size of this table you know like mr creosote is the only thing i can think of that's but mr creosote would have to be four or five times bigger to be this midge anyone else not know No, I'm afraid I don't.

It does a Monty Python sketch with the guy who's just had a huge, great meal.

One more waffer thin meat?

Oh, waffer thin!

But yeah, but it was amazing.

And this midge does it all around the planet.

And I'm working with this guy at the moment.

He's looking at all these migrating insects.

And some of them will latch on to a dragonfly.

So the dragonflies can migrate.

in their masses up there

migrating across continents and there's this little female midge clinging on

like feeding go

what's going on here?

And so it's like all of these little discoveries everywhere.

Yeah, oh, it does sound incredible.

And some quite scary stuff, some quite painful insects that I think they've got the most painful insect in the world, the bullet ant.

Yeah.

Which is as painful as being shot, hence the name.

30 times more painful than a beasting.

But the Soteri Maui people have this ritual that I don't think we've mentioned before, where boys from 12 onwards, you have to gather them up, you make gloves, special bullet ant gloves, and you stuff your gloves gloves full of them, don't you?

And it's to sort of prove.

Well, I read a quite nice quote from a tribe chief who said, it's meant to show that a life without suffering or without any kind of effort isn't worth anything at all.

To teach you that suffering is a crucial part of being alive.

Well, I suppose so.

Yeah.

It does feel like extra sort of bonus suffering, though.

Yeah.

I mean, sounds like I'm a celebrity, get me out.

Well, actually, Steve, I did a podcast with Steve Baxhaw, and he was saying he did that.

So he does Nature's Deadliest.

And he was reduced to tears.

It was the most, he said, it was excruciating.

He did the bullet ants.

Yeah, he did the bullet ants.

And, you know, it's 13, 14-year-old boys generally.

And yeah, this grown man who's completely tough.

Oh, and he was just.

But yeah, I feel like teenage boys can cope with a lot of

weird stuff.

Do you?

Okay.

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Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show.

That is my fact.

My fact is the man who invented the karaoke machine also invented a device you could throw at robbers as they ran away so they would be indelibly dyed.

Oh,

dead.

Dead?

Dyed.

No,

you cover them in dye.

So this is a guy who's called Shigechi Nagishi, and he has just died.

And again, I'm using the dyed word to mean he's passed away this year, aged 100.

he was born in 1923.

Amazing.

And he invented the karaoke machine.

So Japan had all these kind of early versions that were kind of approaching karaoke.

And he was in the right place at the right time.

He ran his own electronics firm, basically.

And there was a radio show called Pop Songs Without Lyrics, which is quite karaoke-ish.

You know, they just play the songs and then you can sing along.

And he was teased about his singing voice brutally by his boss.

And he was sad about that.

And he thought maybe it would sound better if he had a professional, proper backing track behind him.

And so he wasn't just singing along along to the radio.

So he asked a colleague to hook up a microphone and he could hear himself singing then over the recording.

So rather than just him singing, he's hearing himself through the speakers.

And that's what he set up.

And he called that the Sparko box.

And that is basically the first karaoke machine.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

But he's invented this other thing as well.

So ironically, the thing that's famous for revealing people's inability to sing was made by someone who wanted to improve his singing.

That is tragic, yeah.

And there was actually loads of people, like you say, who kind of claimed invention of the karaoke machine, right?

Because it was of its time.

It was just like, like you say, there was this program on and lots of people doing it.

There was another guy called Inui Daisuke, and he had been, he was a keyboard player, and people used to invite him around to play keyboards so they could sing because it would improve their performance.

And then so many people were asking him that he thought, well, maybe I'll come up with a way of recording my keyboard playing and then people can use that as a backing track.

but he also invented a cockroach repellent so he was also a double inventor it's so interesting people how did he repel cockroaches uh oh that is a great question he's in trouble now no it it doesn't i don't know is the answer um but the problem was that his karaoke machines were getting infested by cockroaches i know it's not the cockroaches fault

i know that they just like karaoke machines but they would get inside build nests and chew on the wires have you have you not seen joe's apartment who's apartment Joe's Apartment.

It's a film

with the singing cockroaches.

No?

No, it's this tenement building in New York and the guy moves in and the whole place is falling down.

So the cockroaches all start helping each other, but they're always singing.

It's quite funny.

So maybe that's why they were aiming the karaoke machines because they really liked it.

It's pre-ratatouille.

Yeah.

It's like a much, I'm sorry, less cute version of Ratatouille.

I'm sorry.

Singing cockroaches.

Can I ask, Erica, we were discussing before the mics came on about how if you read a book or watch a movie where it's not entomologically correct, you don't enjoy it quite as much.

Okay, right.

Jurassic Park, when it came out.

Okay.

Those insects were massive.

Yeah.

Okay, there was, no, we ignored the dinosaur bit.

We just let that go.

But when they had old Dickie with his little stave and it had the mosquito in it, the first scene of that is not a mosquito, it's a crane fly.

No.

And I'm like, oh, God.

And then they do show a mosquito and it's a male.

And we're like, no, because males don't collect blood.

And it is so big, we think actually it was a toxinchitis, which obviously you all know that even the females don't blood feed.

So we were like in entomological rage.

Almost every film that you ever watch would have a fly or some sort of insect in the background, even just flying around, right?

So really every film should employ an entomologist just to make sure.

Yeah, yeah.

You can come up with a website, FlyMDB.

Yeah, hey, that would

fly some movies, yeah.

Fact karaoke.

Quickly.

Are you guys karaoke fans?

I do.

I love karaoke.

Do you?

What?

Well, no, I mean, these days, now that I have a child and no life, I don't do it so much, but I certainly used to do it all the time.

I used to do it every week.

Have you invited us?

And to be honest, I'm okay with that.

Me and Jenny Ryan from the Chase, we used to do views.

Yeah, yeah.

We got asked in Australia to leave a bar because we weren't respecting the karaoke.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Well, we were laughing too much.

It was very much, will you go?

You were diving into the machines, getting the cockroaches out.

We were just not responsible.

Because it is really serious.

They do take it very seriously in a lot of Asian countries.

And what I found really interesting is that it's particularly huge in Japan, of course, where it was invented.

And, you know, everyone still does it.

And it's also very big in Europe, certainly, and I think outside of Asia, it's biggest in Finland.

And I was reading an article about this, and lots of people said the same thing, which is that both of them have populations that are quite reserved.

Or the Finland one was saying that Finnish people tend to be quite reserved.

And a lot of the Finns who love karaoke were saying it's kind of a way of going out without having to spontaneously communicate with each other.

Because you can go out and you just have to do this other thing.

You like doing a pup quiz.

That's a very good plea.

I do like that kind of activity.

There you go, like a game.

One which replaces proper communication.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

What does karaoke mean?

It means empty orchestra.

And the term existed before Mr.

Negashi came up with his Sparko box.

It was an industry term, and it was when singers went around the country to rural areas, they would sometimes not have an orchestra with them, so they would play with just a tape, like a tape backing them.

They'd do the gig, but the orchestra pit was empty.

It can be bad for you.

Can it?

Yeah, 2019, there was a man whose lung collapsed due to the high lung pressure caused by singing high notes, according to the paper.

There was a study in 2003 saying that people who sing regularly, this was in Korea,

they have sounds higher than 95 decibels and it can cause hearing damage.

Do you know what?

There's a, this is slightly off track, you're just talking about hearing damage.

There's a

micronector, it's a tiny little water bug and it stridulates with its penis and thankfully it's in water because otherwise it's 99 decibels.

Oh, so how loud is that going to sound?

Like an orchestra, front row of an orchestra.

And like as nice as Mozart or Mozart.

Well, I presume he's trying to be as nice as possible because he's trying to attract the ladies.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Wouldn't it be amazing if humans did that and that's what your orchestra was?

Yeah.

Just the string section.

She plays the horn.

But this is the thing about.

So Mr.

Negashi invented this thing, but he invented lots of other stuff too.

And inventors frequently do.

Yeah.

They're inventing things.

It's kind of the way business people, it doesn't actually matter what the business is.

What they're good at is doing business.

You know what I mean?

And inventors invent, and that's the thing.

Can I drop a plug with the book?

Yeah, so this recent book is all about...

people looking at nature going, do you know what?

That's amazing.

And let's think about how we can copy it.

My favorite ones are like looking at a maggot.

And they're making tiny little nano-robots that look like maggots that can actually now go through your body.

Some of the maggots, they're looking at encapsulating medicine.

You know, they're being inspired by these things already there.

And I love the fact that people are looking at nature in a different way.

So it's all different people.

Some of them might be artists, some of them might be, you know, engineers, some of them are medics.

So lots and lots of different disciplines.

And I think that's what's really great.

Evolution has taken millions of years to get the insects to where they are.

And we're just looking at and we're just in the last minute coming in and taking the glory.

Have you got a favorite invention based on that?

I quite like our debridement therapy.

So this is maggots eating necrotic flesh.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I love that one.

And the fact that we can get it on the NHS.

Can you?

Can anyone get it?

Yeah.

Great.

I'll ask.

Well, you have to bring your own necrotic flesh, I think.

You can't just tell them, say, I'd like some maggots, please.

Oh, no.

And they come now in little like tea bags.

So, because people get offended by maggots crawling around their flesh.

I prefer loose leaf.

I know.

I know.

I'm just so wakiers.

I read the other day that fenus flytraps, which you probably hate, Erica, because they eat flies,

but they will also eat human athlete's foot skin if you feed it to them.

No, someone tried it and it worked.

But they won't, you can't put your foot in and then pull it out an hour later and it's even the athlete.

You mean like those fish that nibble yarns, actually.

Yeah.

Your shopping centre experienced me really badly, didn't you?

Lots of people.

But no, that is, I think you'd need to wiggle it about because the trap won't close unless it thinks it's an insect, right?

So

you need to get a piece of athlete's foot skin off your foot, wiggle it around so that it closes on it but it will digest it and it will eat it cool

useful um can i send you my favorite inventor yeah arthur fisher so he died in 2016 he had 1100 patents to his name wow and his main thing is the fisher wall plug so you you will know what this is it's that little plastic wall plug that you you drill a hole you stick the plug in the hole and then you can put a screw in yeah and it means you can hang things off a wall which you couldn't if you just shoved a screw in because screws don't work like that

This man is a hero.

I just think he's great.

And I didn't really realize that had been invented by someone, but it was.

It was by him.

Does he have any?

Is that his only one?

Have you read the full 1100?

I've read a few more.

I've read a few more.

I read a couple of obituaries.

So he also, he also invented, I like these two, edible building blocks for very young children.

So just in case they try to eat them.

It's great.

Isn't it like fragile rock?

Yeah.

The diggers, they'd build all these buildings and the fraggles would just eat them.

Exactly.

It's exactly like that.

I love fraggle rock.

Don't worry, I wasn't saying that.

Oh my god, you've got Andy here to understand all your references.

Thank you for that.

And

the other one of his, which is one of my favourites, is a plastic egg holder which could be stretched to fit any standard size egg.

Not waitress eggs.

It's too large.

So you can go from a goose to like

a quail.

Again, I think standard size probably means hens.

It's 10.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I mean, what a thing.

Was the world crying out for that?

I wonder.

I've never found my egg cup is not sufficient.

It's probably lowered down the list of his 1100, you know.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

Erica, have you ever used a puta?

Oh, yes.

I have.

I use a puta a lot.

We have to be careful where we use the term puta because if any of you speak Spanish, it has a very different meaning in Spanish.

Does it?

It's an insulting term for a lady.

It's a lady of the night.

Oh, of course.

Oh, like puta.

And so I, when I was in Honduras and they're like, where do you get in in your suitcase?

And I'm like, 13 putas.

They're like, what?

And I'm like, yeah.

And I give everyone their puta.

What is a puta?

It's an aspirator.

So I.

And a follow-up question there.

It enables us to suck up insects.

You suck a straw face.

A straw.

And then the insect goes through another straw and into a box.

Is that right?

Kind of, yeah.

So nowadays, when I was little, we didn't put gauze over the end.

So

if you missucked, you would end up with spiders in your mouth.

I only bring it up because it it was invented by a guy called Frederick Poose.

Brilliant.

Named after him.

Yeah, Frederick William Poose.

He's another one, just for your information, Erica.

Andy collects names of people that are verbs.

And Frederick Pooze is one.

Short sentences.

That's sentence people.

Yeah, Frederick Poose.

That's absolute slam dunk.

My favourite author who wrote the book on the cow dung community of invertebrates.

His name's Peter Skidmore.

Yeah, which always makes me giggle.

Okay, that's it.

That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm at Andrew Hunter M.

James.

At James Harkin.

Erica.

Flygirl NHM.

Anna.

You can get in touch with us on Instagram at no suchthing as a fish or on Twitter on at no such thing or you can email podcast at qi.com.

That's right.

And if you go to no suchthingasafish.com, you can can find lots of episodes there.

You can also find the sacred portal to Clubfish, which is where we keep our exclusive private members' lounge, complete with and free shows, private, exclusive content.

Free peanuts.

Free peanuts.

So many peanuts.

It's really fun.

Clubfish is great.

If you haven't joined Clubfish, what are you waiting for?

Go and join.

Right.

What is more important than that, Andy?

Oh, buying Erica's book.

Yes.

And Erica, what's it called?

Metamorphosis.

How insects are changing our world.

Make sure you put the last bit in, otherwise you might get a Kafka novella.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Or some Ovid.

Ovid.

Metamorphoses.

10,000 metamorphoses, technically, of course.

And with that last incredibly panelic correction, it's time to end the show.

Thank you very much, Erica.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you for listening.

Goodbye.

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