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Hello and and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from four undisclosed locations in the UK.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Anna Toshinsky.

And once again, we have gathered round 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 Andy.

My fact is that for years, scientists thought starfish had no heads.

It now turns out they have no bodies.

Wow.

All head.

Or even the arms heads.

No.

Yeah.

Kind.

I think what this shows is that it's actually quite hard to describe starfish in terms of human anatomy.

Yeah.

So what's the difference between head and body according to this definition?

Okay.

This is the result of a new study from Stanford University and I think maybe one or two other places.

And it's about the genetic code that sort of programs starfish.

Because starfish are really, really weird bodily.

As in, they start out with bilateral symmetry, which is what humans have.

As in, you've got two sides, you've got a left and a right, and you're sort of the same.

You know, you're mirrored.

So starfish start out like that when they're first born, and then they kind of grow out of it, and they become the starfish shape that we know.

And so what this study is, it looked at the genetic code which kind of programs head-like territory.

And it turns out that they have that in each of their arms and so them and the middle the middle bit uh which joins all the arms together has more head-like genetics not one bit of the starfish contains the genetic program which we associate in in our own bodies with a trunk or a torso are they one entity or are the arms mini heads okay so it's not like one big orbiting head it's it's a bit like that

like we used to think it was imagine your body but then we cut off your head and so you're just a middle with some arms and legs sticking out but now what it turns out is: imagine someone took off your arms and legs and superglued them to your head.

That's it.

That's it.

Although, I read, and I don't know if this was one of the guys involved in the study, a biologist called Thurston Lacalli,

which is just a really cool name.

He said we should be thinking of them as a disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips.

So, I guess he's saying the legs are the lips,

well, yeah, kind of, except that also, Dan, in this example where we've removed your arms and legs, we've also super glued your anus to the back of your head.

So yes, you are walking around.

Dan, you're becoming more and more attractive by the minute.

Please, fan art center handy.

Basically, what the main headline is, is that there's no way for a starfish to sing the song head, shoulders, knees, and toes.

There's just no analogy for that.

That is head, head, head, lips, feet.

Anus.

Anus.

Anus, head, head, lips, and feet.

Lips and feet.

Amazing.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Well, I wonder, is this why

they have that feature that I think we must have mentioned before, where even if you cut off the main circular

bit that looks like a body to us and just are left with a leg, they can regrow and regenerate their entire self from just a leg?

Maybe is that related to the fact that each leg actually has this genetic head material in it that can sprout everything

new?

But it's a cool thing to be able to do anyway.

Imagine someone just cutting all of your body off except your finger, and then your finger grew a whole new body on it.

It's mental.

It's absolutely crackers.

The regeneration thing is insane because, as you say, like a tiniest bit can be chopped off and they can grow into a whole new starfish.

And that's really messed up a lot of fishermen back in the day.

So there's areas of the world where they would eat the local oyster population.

This is the starfish, and they were depleting it.

So what fishermen used to do is when they got a starfish out, they'd kill it.

And they'd kill it by slashing it into two or five or whatever, and then just chucking them back into the ocean, not realizing they were creating a giant army of starfish.

Like what I imagine the gremlins were if I ever watched that movie.

Is that what happens?

You put water on them and they all double instantly.

Is that what happens?

Do they multiply?

I can't remember.

I haven't seen it.

Guys, what are you...

What are you?

Yeah, of course.

Dan, I'm really disappointed in you.

Sorry.

Do the gremlins get chopped up into smaller pieces and then create more gremlins?

If you put water on them, they multiply.

If you feed them after midnight, they become evil.

If you expose them to sunlight, they die.

How many anuses do they have?

That is very vexed doctrine.

There is a big debate among us gremlin heads.

There's an amazing thing that they do as well when they're eating.

Starfish will basically send their stomach to go and get the meal.

So, say if they're eating something, like there's a thing called the sand dollar, which is quite a flat little species, and you find it on the floor of the ocean.

They'll send their stomach out, they'll surround it, and they'll melt down the body of it into the food, bring it back in, and just leave the skeleton.

You know what?

If we did that, then probably the job of deliveroo driver would be quite bad.

Well,

my deliveroo drivers don't stick around and watch me eat my meal.

Yeah, but they don't have to because instead of you coming to the door, your stomach would come to the door.

And when they handed you the food, your stomach would kind of envelop around the bag of Chinese takeaway.

Leaving only the plastic Tupperware behind.

Yeah.

I can't believe yours don't watch you eat Anna it's maybe I'm tipping generously enough yeah they do but they always

tip around through the letterbox yeah one interesting thing about this stomach inside out thing is that you know oxytocin they call it the love chemical love yeah very important in childbirth it's like what stimulates a lot of changes in the body when you when you have a baby and stuff like that.

Oh god.

God, they go on about it, don't they?

They don't have it.

Oh my god, light some scented candles play some music oh that'll get your oxytocin going literally if you ever go to one of those things where they teach you how to be a parent if they ask you any question just say oxytocin and that is always the answer it doesn't matter what it is but anyway not if you're a starfish if you're a starfish oxytocin makes your stomach go inside out cool so it's in starfish world it's known as the stomach inside out hormone not the love hormone and they go to special lessons don't they about how to eat their first meal and it's well, lighter-scented candle, difficult underwater, but you can do it.

So it's good for them.

As in it's not in a bad way, as in it's not bad for them.

Yeah, it's good.

It's the chemical which they release when they're hungry so that it kind of sets into motion this thing that Dan described.

And so we kind of use it for something different?

Yeah, we use it to feel love.

Yeah, to make changes in the body to help you to procreate.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm s I'm seeing the difference in romantic stuff that you two say to your partners.

Andy says, I love you.

And James says, I'm having changes in my body that are helping me to procreate towards you right now.

Oh, well, can we say what some starfish do in exactly this?

Now we're kind of on their love life.

Have you heard of pseudocopulation?

Pseudo-starfish.

That's all the copulation I've ever done.

I'm so glad we've reached like 70s comedian.

It actually is quite like that because normally, or loads of species of starfish, obviously there are dozens and dozens.

Normally normally they release um sperm and eggs near each other and uh they then meet up and you know there's no sex as we understand it at all but pseudocopulation is kind of similar so a male and a female they form a pair and the male quite sweet this puts all his arms between the female's arms so they're kind of cuddled and then she releases eggs right there and he simultaneously releases all his sperm so it's like a very intense cuddle basically oh okay that's that's nice did you say that's how they that's how a particular species does it?

It's how some species do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not all of them.

Do you guys happen to know?

I'm only thinking this because Andy's brought this up.

But if you chop a starfish in half and it regenerates into a new starfish, does it carry the same age or does it start fresh?

Because, you know, they can live up to like 35 years, roughly.

I think they can start fresh because for some of them, that's actually how they procreate is just by dividing.

Even more sexless.

That's what I mean.

They don't need copulation, really.

They just slob an arm off and

good.

Well they don't necessarily need it but it's good for genetic diversity.

Copulation.

That's what I always say to my wife.

This will be good for the genetic diversity of our species, darling.

Oh Valentine's Day for Argonne Else.

There are some very cool...

There are some very cool versions.

I think I really like the cushioned starfish because it's not actually star-shaped.

If you look at it, it's like it forgot to sprout its lip slash legs.

It's just a pentagon, really.

And when it's young, it starts out as a pentagon and it just gets bigger and bigger and then it ends up as a big blob like a cushion.

And it's quite nice.

There's about 2,000 of them, 2,000 species.

And

we're in dangerous times.

So back in episode 45, James mentioned a thing which was the starfish wasting syndrome, which is this really horrible disease that has just been sweeping through the oceans.

And within hours of a starfish getting this disease, they are dying.

And they're dying in really weird ways.

So, as James mentioned, one of the arms sort of dislodges itself and just walks off into the distance.

So, they keep finding these arms everywhere, just laying on the seabed, and then a completely gooey, yucky starfish that's just been, you know, eaten by this disease.

And we are losing billions at a time at the moment.

It's so huge, it's so bad.

And as far as I can tell, the leading scientists who are trying to work out what's going on are studying it in a tank.

And do you know where this tank is?

It's in Star City.

No, it's in.

It's in the Madame Two Swords.

It's in the Pentagon, and it's got Pentagon starfish in there.

Very nice.

That's lovely.

It's on the.

How are we supposed to know that?

It's in one of those restaurants where you go and they've got all those lobsters, sort of sad-looking lobsters hanging around.

And it's in there.

It's not that.

I'll give you a clip.

It's in the Mexican aquarium where Free Willy was based.

Oh, that's great.

You were basically there.

It is literally in a warehouse right behind the place where Keiko was held.

Hopefully.

Where Free Willie was held.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

That was such a good guess.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

So they're studying them there and they've found a method which is kind of helping them, but you can't get that into the oceans right now.

It's insane.

There's nothing we can do.

But what's causing it?

Is it they think it's a bacteria?

Yeah.

But they don't actually know.

And James mentioned this close to 10 years ago and we're still nonetheless.

What's the point of me bringing these subjects to light if they're not going to do anything in nine years?

Honestly.

You guys, listen back to episode 45, 46, 47.

I was always bringing up these really important things, and everyone just ignored me, like Cassandra.

Yeah, it is hard to know what to do about it, isn't it?

As your everyday man on the street, maybe we need a free starfish, you know, free willy sequel.

Oh, yeah,

flinging it into the ocean.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Since 2013, 5 billion have died from this disease, and they're down population-wise by 90%.

It's mad.

Oh, my goodness.

That's terrible.

You can also eat starfish.

Can you?

Yes, some places in the Far East do.

There's a place called Qingdao where it's quite common that they eat starfish.

I've seen a blog of people making them and eating them.

What you do is you kind of break off the leg and then you open it up and then the meat is inside.

And it looks like...

If you can imagine...

a baby's nappy when they've first gone onto solids it looks a bit like that uh why did you get fired as the restaurant menu description writer for this place, James?

I don't know.

I thought it was a visceral way of describing it.

And apparently

the taste is the same as the beach smells at low tide.

Right.

Wow.

So yeah, they eat them in Qingdao, but to be honest, these days it's mostly a thing for tourists who go to Qingdao.

They eat it.

The locals don't really eat it anymore.

If you ordered it for dinner and you ate sort of like three quarters of it and asked for it in a doggy bag, by the time you got home, would you have a full meal of

Brilliant.

They leave footprints wherever they go.

So very bad criminals.

Lip prints.

Lip prints, sorry.

Yes.

This was actually an interesting study that I read about on a blog called the Echino blog.

It's this guy called Christopher Maher, who calls himself the starfish guy.

He's written multiple entries a month on just starfish for 10 years.

Stopped in 2018.

So, like, literally, just hundreds and hundreds of entries just about starfish.

And he reported that they don't have suction cups on their feet, which is what everyone always says.

They stick to things by suction.

Yes.

It's actually more like glue.

So they have a fuzzy coat, what's called a fuzzy coat, on each foot.

They've got hundreds and hundreds of feet on each leg.

So on each foot, they've got a fuzzy coat.

And when that touches the ground, they push this kind of f gluey film through it, which forms a mesh, and that sticks them to the ground.

And then when they lift their leg up again, they leave the fuzzy coat behind.

And you can track a starfish across the seafloor if it's shoplifted.

Because they leave these constant, every single one of their little suction things leaves a little fuzzy coat behind.

And then you have to take a lip print, which is quite sexy.

If you had an underground group who would do you Botox in your lips, like if you'd just done a crime, they'd be able to do it.

Like face-off.

It's like face-off, but just with lips.

Lips off.

Yeah, lips off.

Oh, and is it Travolta and Nicholas Cage?

They have to swap lips.

Just the lips.

Just the lips.

I think I would watch that film if it was Mick Jagger and Michael Gove.

Oh,

like you want two people with very different types of lips, don't you?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

And I mean, we are getting into the realm of a body swap comedy here where Gove has to live as Jagger and vice versa.

Yeah.

It's weird you say vice versa because the body swap comedy genre,

which includes what, like Free Free Friday Friday, all that stuff.

It began in the 19th century with a book called Vice Versa.

Oh, it was the first ever one.

It was about

father and a son who swap places.

And the story goes that Anthony Trollope was reading this book out to his friends, and he found a bit which was so funny that he just got into a laughing fit and he died.

No, no.

Trollope died of laughing?

I mean, no, he didn't really.

Let's

clear all the faith.

He did.

He died of a stroke.

He died of a stroke, which he had due to intense laughter.

And he died a few weeks later, but I think that is true, actually.

What?

Hold on.

He laughed intensely and then, oh, and then he had a stroke immediately, and then he died a few weeks later.

Sorry, it wasn't like he had a stroke a few weeks later, and they went, remember when he laughed a couple of months ago?

No, but it was that.

That's a better story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically, Freaky Friday killed Anthony Trollope.

Wow.

Now that's a fact.

Since you've been coming.

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

My fact this week is that one of the best times for Dracula to suck your blood is while you are watching a Dracula movie.

Oh.

Is that because it's so thrilling normally to watch a Dracula movie that you'll be distracted?

Or is it because you're watching the Dracula movie?

Then if you see Dracula in your house, you think, oh, well, that's normal because it's happening on the TV.

So it's happening

here as normal as well.

We've stumbled into the confusion of the fact immediately, which is, do you mean the best time for Dracula or the best time for you?

Because often what's good for a vampire is not good for the person the vampire is sucking on.

Or is it mutually good for everyone?

It's for, no, it's never good for the person being sucked unless they want to become a vampire, which often does happen within that world.

But it's fantastic for dracula the fictional world it's fantastic for dracula himself because uh he loves blood and your blood is at its thickest or at least it's much thicker when you're watching a vampire movie a horror movie anything with scares in it so okay two things yeah does he like thicker blood exactly like if your milkshake gets too thick you can't get it through the straw oh great point

but if it's too thin you send back your cup cup of milk, don't you?

That's true.

So maybe it's just right.

And secondly, you said much thicker.

It's presumably not so thick it can't get through your veins and arteries.

It's like tar.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Okay, yeah.

No, it's just a bit thicker.

So

it's a nice meal for Dracula.

This is a study that was done at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

And basically, they wanted to analyze blood samples from volunteers who had watched a horror movie and then at another point watch a very distinctly, very unfrightening movie, a documentary.

And so, what they did was they found two different movies to show them.

They found the 2010 horror movie Insidious, which they showed to them.

And then a week later, they showed them a very, they call it non-alarming documentary called A Year in Champagne.

What they found is that the people who sat through Insidious had high levels of the blood clotting protein, which is called Factor VIII.

Did you know that this is pretty unrelated to the subject of this fact, but champagne in Russia now can only be called champagne if it's made not in champagne, if it's made in Russia.

I think, so everywhere else we're only allowed to call champagne champagne if it's made in the champagne region.

It's one of those.

Whereas Russia has changed trademark laws so that it can only be if it's Russian champagne.

It's so funny.

Not in America as well.

You're allowed to call whatever you want.

champagne in America.

Really?

Yeah, because it was in the decision to call things champagne, that rule, was in the Treaty of Versailles.

And the Americans never ratified the Treaty of Versailles.

They had their own treaty against the Germans.

Sorry.

Why are there being bolt-ons added to the Treaty of Versailles about champagne nomenclature?

I mean, shouldn't we be just focusing on...

Should we just focus on the war-to-ender wars and bring that safely to a conclusion?

I kind of feel like we're going quite a long way away from dancing back to Tracula here.

But yeah, basically, it was because Germans were making sparkling wine as well.

And also, the Champagne region had been been quite badly hit by the war.

Vampires?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can talk about real vampires for a bit.

Yeah, go ahead.

But the proper like

the real the people who live in the world are vampires.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I was reading about them and they

it's really interesting because basically most of them don't drink blood.

There are a few, the sanguinarians.

But even they're really careful, obviously, because you can get all sorts of diseases from drinking blood.

But I think the vast majority are apparently psychic energy drainers who go along to places and feel the energy at places like concerts and then suck the life force from that.

But we all know people who, when you talk to them, you feel like you're having the life force suck from you.

And I just thought those were boring people, but it turns out they might actually be vampires.

Is that right?

I think they also give like massages.

I think the idea is like

if you give someone a massage, you can suck up their energy from that.

To rub it out of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, also, if someone has suck away my psychic energy, then I want to be getting something in return for it, I guess.

So it masses seems like a fair deal.

That is a good deal.

Let's like reverse Reiki.

Instead of putting your good energy into someone, you're taking it out.

Oh, yeah.

You know, Reiki.

Okay.

I don't really know Reiki.

No, not really.

We've got into some ropey territory here, haven't we?

Some non-facts-based territory.

Yeah, yeah, it's pseudoscience, but it's quite famous.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, let's get back to vampires and sucking psychic energy.

Yeah.

Well, you do get fangsmiths as well, people who make prosthetic fangs for other vampires.

Oh really?

I read an interview with a bloke who's called Father Sebastian.

So Sebastian, but with two A's at the end in the final bit.

It's very touching actually that he's a fangsmith because his grandfather was an orthodontist.

Oh,

so he's stayed in the family business, but he's just catering for a slightly more niche audience.

Only makes canines, basically.

You can't do insizes, mate.

Sorry.

Real vampires refer to themselves sometimes as hemosexuals, which I find quite funny.

That's nice.

That's quite good.

But it doesn't imply that you're attracted to blood sexually.

Well, they're very clear that they're not attracted to blood sexually.

That's a completely different thing.

Well, then why do they call themselves hemosexuals?

It's a funny quip, alright?

It's just a...

Yeah, I don't think they're doing themselves any favours of people thinking they're just

people.

So maybe it's a nickname coined from outside the vamp community.

I don't know.

They should focus really on the fact that we are in the minority as blood drinkers in history, really, because there are just so many instances of people drinking blood,

which I suppose makes sense.

It was quite available, but

and it's always the blood of criminals, it seems to me.

And so there's been this belief for thousands of years that blood drinking cured epilepsy.

Don't know where that came from, but it's right from ancient Rome.

And people would drink the blood of vanquished gladiators, or more commonly, they'd drink the blood of beheaded criminals.

And this ran all the way up to, you know, 1500 years later.

In fact, in 1860, there was a source that reported epileptics would still stand around the executioner's block in Alaskan Islands with cups in hand, waiting for the blood to spew out

so that they could drink it.

It was always said that medically, the blood that was best for curing epilepsy was the blood of criminals, which does seem quite convenient that it's also the blood that happens to be likely to flow from the executioner's block.

Yeah, that's true.

I read one article on this subject, which I think made a a good point, which is if you see someone bleeding,

God forbid they're bleeding to death, they're getting weaker and weaker as they lose the blood.

And so it does kind of make logical sense that ingesting blood would make you stronger.

And that's probably why people have done it for most of history.

Right.

Right.

So if you see someone dying of loss of blood on the ground, should you hand over your arm and just let them gnaw on it until help comes?

No.

Show them a very, very, very scary film.

And it will clot fast enough that actually they'll be fine.

Yeah.

Or try and maybe put some pressure on the large veins.

Maybe try and stop the bleeding.

Yeah.

Hopefully there's two of you.

So one of you can do the boo and the other one can do the tourniquet.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I'll just reenact a Dracula film while

oh one last thing.

Vampire bats.

So they do, you know how we were talking at the top of this fact about how would Dracula prefer to have thicker blood?

Would that not be too thick?

So, vampire bats have a saliva that contains an enzyme which is called Draculin,

and it basically prevents blood clotting so that when it releases this thing, it goes into the bloodstream, which means that the blood can just all flow much quicker.

So, obviously, directly named after Bram Stoker's creation.

How did you pronounce it then?

Draculin.

I think it's pronounced draculin.

Sorry, yes, there's a silent ha ha ha in the writing here.

But yeah, and so what they've worked out is if they can take this enzyme, and there's tests that have been going on, there may be new results, but from when I last read it, it was still in

the research stage.

It can be applied to help stroke victims by breaking down blood clots.

And stroke is an anagram of stoker.

Dun, dun, dun.

Wow, you've really picked that together.

I love it.

I've got shivers down my spine and I can feel my blood thickening as you see.

This goes all the way to the

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

Okay, my fact this week is that in 1554, thousands of people in London were convinced that they heard an angel talking to them from behind a wall and slagging off the queen.

Sorry, is that what an angel would do though if it came to the wall?

That's where angels hide.

That's an angel's habitat behind

I accept the wall thing.

I'm just not sure angels are going to bother to make the journey down to earth to slag off the queen.

Well, if the queen was Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, who was doing terrible things in the name of religion, then you might do.

I don't know.

Maybe you would as an angel.

So, yeah, that's spoiler alert, the queen that I'm referring to, Bloody Mary, who was on the throne at the time.

Obviously, lots of upheaval in Europe about

Protestantism and Catholicism and stuff like that.

The Queen was about to marry Philip II, I think, of Spain.

And there were lots of people in England who weren't very happy about this because he was a big old Catholic.

And so they tried to do whatever they could to stop it.

One of the things would be to rouse up the rabble.

And one of the ways that they thought to do this was to pretend that there was an angel in a wall.

And the angel in question was a woman called Elizabeth Crofts, who, according according to the Dictionary of National Biography, nothing is known of her before 1554, and nothing was heard of her after 1554.

She just comes into history, does this amazing thing, and then disappears again.

It's incredible.

Angels have got a lot on, haven't they?

Yeah.

I read a blog by a history writer called Susan Abernethy, and she was saying that they believe she might have been born in 1535 because there's details written that she was of a certain age, and so they've just pieced it back that way.

They believe that she was working in a house at the time as a maid and so she was put behind this wall.

She was given a whistle so that she could make weird whistling noises.

And then she also began to speak sort of anti-Catholic propaganda and

people started calling her the angel or a bird that was in the wall.

So it could have been a bird is the other option, by the way.

Still crazy if a bird is saying stuff that's

about the queen's forthcoming marriage.

I would still stop on the street and listen to that.

Yeah.

And And they hid people in the crowd.

Unless it was a parrot.

He was going, ah, parrot, arr.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I'm sort of now wondering what I would stop on the street for.

As in, if a parrot was doing quite convincing sectarian propaganda,

I would probably

pause.

But even if you're in a rush, you're five minutes late for the podcast already.

We're going to have no sympathy if it's, oh, I stopped on the street because there was a parrot giving anti-Catholic propaganda.

Yeah, if I was in a rush, I'd probably just sort of hope it would still be be there when I came back.

Yeah.

The other way.

Which I think she was, wasn't she, Elizabeth Cross?

She had to be stuck in.

I think she was in the wall, sort of.

It's kind of a hidden wall.

She was hidden inside the wall.

Well, it was like a facade wall.

Yeah, that was put out in front of the main wall, I think, and she was sort of in between.

And it lasted days.

So, yeah, did she sleep there?

Did she go home?

Was there a door in the other wall that she could go through?

That must have been a way of getting around questions.

I think the point, though, Anna, is it's saying it's a bird or an angel.

That would be the debate.

Andy would be going by, and he would just have an opinion going, well, it's obviously a parrot.

And they're saying, well, we think it might be an angel.

You know, there's mystery there.

I see.

I see.

There was a pickhold uproar in the end, and they went to the mayor of London.

And the mayor of London said, well, why don't we just knock down the wall and see whether it's a bird or an angel or what?

And they knocked down the wall, and sure enough, it was this woman,

Elizabeth Croffs.

This just reminds me so much of when I'd hand essays in late, and I just wouldn't have a plan for when the teacher said, Where's your essay?

It's like, surely the people who know that there's a girl behind the wall are watching the demolition men knocking brick after brick and thinking, how are we going to deal with this?

Yeah, they should have put her in.

Why didn't they get rid of her?

They should have put her in like either an angel or a parrot costume, shouldn't they?

Yeah,

exactly.

Or a brick costume.

Oh, brilliant.

Yes, no, but that's dangerous.

That's dangerous to someone.

You're right, that is dangerous.

Sledgehammer hitting bricks.

You don't want to be dressed as a single thing.

But she could just say, I'm a talking brick.

I'm a magical talking brick who's got strong opinions about the Queen's religious faith.

Yeah.

Yes.

You wouldn't dare destroy that would you no I think should we just say sort of quickly the context like what like why is all I mean James you've already said a bit of it but basically England had been through a right old nightmare in the previous decades where you know England was Catholic and then Henry VIII Mary's dad broke with the church and dissolved the monasteries and then his son Edward the sixth took England even further away from the Catholic church and then he died aged about 16 and then Mary, his half-sister, became queen and

she was very Catholic, you know.

know, so dragged it back.

I mean, poor old Edward, who always gets accused of introducing a very Protestant regime, and the guy was nine.

I mean, there were just lots of old men behind him saying, say this, now Edward, say that.

And the wall was very pro-Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth.

The wall, yeah, the angel

in the wall.

Um, because they would cry out things like, you know, God save Queen Mary, and the wall would stay silent, and then they'd say, God save Lady Elizabeth, and the wall would say, So be it.

So they really wanted her to get into power because she would have kept it Protestant according to what they believed at the time you know that um Pink Floyd song Brick in the Wall is actually based on this incident in 1554 you know you're just another brick in the wall is addressed to Elizabeth Crofts

and then what happened was

because she was just a maid who don't need no education and she was

She was let go basically.

They decided that she must have been

There must have been other people behind it and must have been other people who talked her into it.

And probably she was just a porn in their scheme.

And they let her go.

I think she was in prison for a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

And then

was she doing it for any money?

Which is, of course, another very famous pit point.

I hope she didn't suffer any brain damage as a result of the wall being broken in on.

Is that another one?

It is.

I think it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, anyway.

I always think it must be so awkward in the Tudor era when, as you say, there was Elizabeth, who was a daughter of Anne Boleyn, obviously, and who was Protestant, and then there was Mary, who was very Catholic, and there was Edward, who was Protestant, but they all hung out together as well.

I mean, Mary was essentially sent away from the royal household when Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon, but then she was sort of brought back in a bit of a disgrace because she was Catholic, but brought back in, she's hanging out with Elizabeth, but at the same time, they both know that they're on opposite sides.

They also, Elizabeth also lived with Lady Lady Jane Grey, which I didn't realize, which for internationalists is a famous hero as the nine-day queen.

And she's the Liz Truss of the monarchy, isn't she?

Famous is such a generous way of putting it, Anna.

I mean, Lady Jane Grey is not a...

We're not all going around talking about Lady Jane Grey today.

She's pretty.

She's a huge celeb.

It's Lady Jane Grey and the Kardashians very much forefront of everyone's mind.

No, okay, maybe she's famous in like year 10 history classes.

So basically, she was the Protestant who Edward and the people behind Edward wanted on the throne.

And then Mary had her executed.

Yeah.

And then Mary had her executed.

Which was kind of par for the course because you've got to have the people who are claimants to the throne executive.

Blah, blah, blah.

I do like Mary, Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, has a really, really bad reputation.

And I think a lot of it is deeply inherited propaganda.

As in you're just kind of...

You assume that...

Oh, just that she was the awkward, awful bit before Queen Elizabeth came in and sorted it all out.

But her teenage years were really...

I just think of how embarrassed you are as a teenager.

And basically, firstly, your parents break up.

Okay.

Then your dad changes the entire religious structure of the country so that he can remarry.

That must be tough as a matter of fact.

And then...

Exactly.

And then he annuls his marriage to your mum.

So suddenly...

Your parents were never married.

So now she's illegitimate.

Yeah.

And you're downgraded from a princess to a lady.

So, I mean,

she's always...

It must have been very embarrassing.

But whenever she's whinging about that, she's always got a little sister Elizabeth there putting putting her hand up going, mate, our dad killed my mum.

Chopped her head off.

So keep your mouth shut, love.

But I read that she had to then become part of the sort of servant crew for Elizabeth.

So she didn't even just get demoted.

She was actively then sort of like, here's your own little sister.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, harsh.

It is funny that she's remembered as Bloody Mary

still now, even though that is anti-Catholic propaganda, really.

Or it's the fact that Protestantism or the Church of England won over.

And also,

there was that very famous book, Fox's Book of Martyrs, that was.

I mean, it's hard to underestimate how popular this book was.

It was published in 1563, so shortly after Mary had died.

And it was basically the book of all the great Christian martyrs who had died for their faith throughout time.

And it ended with all of Mary's martyrs.

So she killed about 260 people, I think, burned at the stake.

And so this was a great piece of propaganda against Mary, but it sold like 150 million copies.

Come on.

Hang on.

That's greater than the world's population.

It was over many hundreds of years.

So for about 300 years, it was the best-selling book alongside the Bible.

And it was so gory.

I mean, there's got to be a reason it was so popular.

And I think it was the amazing detail of how these people died.

Like, Anne Askew.

Do you know Anne Askew?

Was she called Anne Askew before she died, or did the Askew bit come after?

Whatever happened to her?

She was the first English woman ever to demand a divorce because she was Protestant, her husband was Catholic, she didn't like that.

And she refused to accept transubstantiation, so refused to believe that the bread was the body of Christ.

And we should say of all these people, I think if they'd recanted, they wouldn't have been burned.

Oh, yeah, it's their fault.

Oh, take their side.

Yeah, take the side of Bloody Mary.

Go on, doy, don't you?

That showed a bit of balance.

She was put on the rack and stretched, which is always nice when you hear about one of these really sort of

torture instruments you learn about at primary school being used.

And she was stretched and all of her limbs were dislocated.

So that will make you askew.

She was right askew.

Yeah.

Fitting.

And then she was executed and she had to be carried to the stake on a chair because she couldn't walk understandably.

I imagine sort of flopping over this chair.

Lovely.

Yeah, so it's that kind of stuff.

You can see why it's a bestseller.

Yeah.

I think another, I mean, obviously the 200 years of propaganda and England defining itself specifically as being a non-Catholic country will have played into it.

But I think another thing was that the burning at the stake.

Elizabeth had loads of people executed.

Yeah.

She had loads of religious heretics executed as well, but she tended to execute them as traitors instead of heretics.

So it was seen as more of a political thing, or it's easier to write off as a political decision rather than Bloody Mary, the religious, you know, religious.

I mean, Henry VIII, like, what, 60,000 probably compared to a few hundred for Bloody Mary but yeah they're just like oh well they weren't burnt at the stake it wasn't heresy so yeah yeah I was trying to think if because I knew nothing about Mary and the Bloody Mary name is that where we get the name for the drink I sort of had a quick look into that well no there's no idea lots of theories about what it could be bloody mary is obviously one of them she's included in there there's a thought that it might be the Hollywood star Mary Pickford um but one of the main ones is that and this is there's quite a famous bar called Harry's New York Bar, which, you know, weirdly is in Paris.

But according to their manager...

Run by a guy called Jeff.

According to their manager, there used to be a cocktail waitress called Mary who used to work in a Chicago bar called The Bucket of Blood.

And

supposedly it was that.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, we don't know.

Yeah, probably after that rather than the really famous historical figure who was just called Bloody Mary.

It is amazing, all those cocktails, because they're all within memory of people.

You know, they're all within a couple of generations, but almost every cocktail, the name is lost to the mists of time, isn't it?

It's because everyone's pissed, aren't they, as soon as they've invented it?

No one can remember how it happened.

I was looking up the sort of propaganda of the time.

Oh, yeah.

And

it was the big age of the pamphlet.

Oh, yeah.

I kind of hope it comes back one day, the pamphlet.

Yeah.

Because it's a right old arse writing a book.

And you've tried recently, James?

Oh yeah, I have actually.

Anna and I in fact wrote Everything to Play For the QI Book of Spots, but you know, far be it from me.

I just wrote a pamphlet version which I think you incorporated into your algebra book.

But yeah, it's basically there was such good propaganda, pamphlets.

I don't mean your book.

I'm sure your book is scrupulously even-handed.

But and you know, you can print them in a couple of days, you can distribute them fast and cheap, and it was like people having sub stacks today.

Yeah, and I found out this is slightly later, this is a later anti-Catholic document from 1624 called The Travels of Time, right?

And it was printed again as a sort of regal monarchy commentary.

So Charles I,

who was seen as being quite pro-Catholic,

was going to marry the Spanish infanta,

which was a princess, not an infant.

I mean, given the time, she might also have been like eight, but I don't know.

But the marriage collapsed, and people printed, I find this so, like, again, it's quite, um, it's quite gossipy but they just printed these pamphlets to celebrate the collapse of the marriage the prospective marriage between the two of them and again if people were doing that about me I'd be hurt but there were all these allegorical images that was a huge thing and people got all the allegories in these pamphlets so one of the images in this pamphlet showed the Spanish ambassador to England Don Diego Samiento de Acuma Gondamar using his buttocks to incubate locust eggs and that was an acceptable political point to make at the time

what's the political Hold on, what do the locust eggs represent?

Is that

the soul of the devil or papacy,

popism, you know, that kind of stuff?

And it was incredibly rude.

This is quite an obscure historical paper I found this in because he was, and I'm quoting here, the renowned sufferer of an anal fistula.

So it was especially funny to show him with locust eggs in his bum.

Ouch.

I know.

That's tough on that.

What a terrible part of your bio that gets used for like chat shows.

Famous sufferer of anal fist.

He prefers to talk about Anglo-Spanish diplomacy, but of course, we know it's Mr.

Fistula.

Welcome to the stage.

Mr.

Fistula does sound like quite a good music hall name for someone.

Yeah.

Until 1910, when you became king or queen, you had to swear that you repudiated Catholicism as superstitious and idolatrous.

Isn't that amazing?

Until the 20th century, you had to do that.

And then Edward VII said,

Edward VII did do it, but he insisted on whispering the words because he thought it'd be an insidious to any Catholics who were living in the country at the time.

It does sound like it was.

Yeah.

Who were famously hard of hearing, weren't they?

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

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

My fact this week is that this year a woman was injured when she was attacked twice.

Once by a five-foot-long snake that fell from the sky, then immediately afterwards by the hawk that dropped it.

This was really some idle maternity leave reading, actually.

I think I read it in the week.

It's just the most incredible story.

It's a woman called Peggy Jones in Texas who was mowing her lawn.

and a large snake fell out of the sky.

Her husband estimated later that it was 4.5 feet long, which is large.

And it wrapped itself around her arm.

Like, I'm kind of imagining, you know, those things that you used to slap your arm with as a kid and they

wrapped around them.

It would wrap around, yeah.

Yeah, I'm sort of imagining it did that as it fell.

And she tried to shake it off, and it got tighter and tighter.

And the hawk that had been carrying the snake in its mouth plunged down and started attacking her to try and get the snake back.

And they both managed to inflict multiple injuries.

So the hawk was flying at her and grabbing for the snake and slapping her with its wings and clawed these deep cuts in her arm.

And the snake, meanwhile, was striking her in the face and chipping her glasses and apparently spewing a liquid.

Yeah.

And I love her husband, Wendell, got to her by riding over on his mower.

Yeah, I might have said.

Oh, wow.

Hurry up, Wendell.

Go into fifth gear.

What a scene.

So this is...

She's one of the first people to have been involved in a snake and bird incident since just two years ago when Dwayne Tharok Johnson

was

I mean it was a minor celebrity story he was temporarily barricaded in his home because there was a snake right outside his front door which was busy being eaten by a large hawk which was busy eating the snake and whenever he kind of got near it it was threatening and flapping at him and

yeah

minor celebrity probably one of the highest paid actors on earth sorry i don't mean to call him a minor i mean the story is a minor story about a major celebrity but i think we can all agree it's not one one of the main things in his life.

This story.

Sorry, I have no huge

robot.

I just don't want to smell what he's cooking, and I'm very happy to say he's a big deal.

You know, he's in Jumanji, for heaven's sake.

The new one, not the original.

The new one, by the way, which has a body swap part in it, which reminds me of an old book called Vice Versa.

Animal attacks.

They happen way more than I realized.

As in, if you just do a news search, there are multiple stories globally that are just pumped out every single day.

So just 24 hours ago, when I was looking at these facts, an Australian farmer...

He described himself to the BBC and other outlets as lucky to be alive after repelling a crocodile by biting the crocodile back.

So he found his face leaning against the crocodile's head and he bit the eyelid of the crocodile, making the crocodile freak out.

It let go of its bite and he was able to escape.

But it was only by biting the the crocodile back that he was able to get out there.

Um, so many news articles.

Look, this is literally the last three days.

Arizona woman fatally trampled by elk.

She might have been trying to feed.

Pornstar's pet python bites partner's penis and horrine.

Blood everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, the animal world is famously dangerous, Dan.

But on things that you don't expect to attack you,

I think of otters.

Well, otters, I think, are the cutest animals alive.

And so I was very surprised about an otter attack on someone called Leah Hillia.

This was a few years ago, and it's really incredible.

It was in Minnesota on this remote lake.

And she always went for a swim in the lake.

She was staying at her grand uh her dad's lake house with her kids.

Always went for a swim in the lake.

She swam a mile a day, felt one day something bite her leg.

And then, about 20 feet away, really quickly, an otter bobbed its head up and then it kept swimming back to her leg and biting her leg again and then swimming away and then bobbing its head up and looking at her.

And it bit her 25 times and like properly, it pierced her ankle bone, it pierced through her calf muscle.

She was an otter.

And she was screaming for help.

And her dad, her poor dad, heard these screams and tried to start the motorboat to get to her.

And in his panic, he flooded the engine of the motorboat.

And he also had to get the kids.

She had two kids who were two and four, so he had to get the kids on the boat.

So he got another boat started, got out to her, dragged these poor kids' blood-drenched mother out of the water.

And the maddest thing for me is she got out of the water, got to hospital, was given a rabies shot in every single one of the 25 bites, which made her vomit.

Two weeks later, she got back in the lake.

Matt Louis.

Oh, nice.

The otter's still in it.

The otter's just there, bobbing away.

I feel like I wouldn't go swimming again.

That's balls.

You see a few otter stories of them attacking people.

There was a minor celebrity story, and I actually will say say this is about a minor celebrity, an actor called Crystal Finn, who was in succession, but one of the quite minor characters in succession.

I'm sure she's an amazing actor, but I'd never heard of her before.

She got bitten on her backside and on her leg this year by otters.

There was a guy called Graham George Spencer who was bitten 26 times in 10 seconds.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing?

Was that multiple otters?

It was a pack of otters, yeah.

I don't know whether that police call his fastest jewel, but that'd be otter.

His friend ran over screaming to try and scare off the otters, and they sort of

swam away.

But then the pair said they ran towards the visitor centre to get help, still pursued by the otters.

Oh, no.

Exit pursued by an otter.

I was reading an article about why animals don't attack us more than they already do.

And obviously, most of the time when animals attack humans, it's because we're in their space or because they're protecting their young nearby or because we're on their territory, you know.

But because we're bipedal, we look bigger.

We don't look bigger than we are, but you know what I mean.

We look bigger than we would if we were on all fours.

And so that's kind of a little bit of a bluff.

It makes us look a bit tougher.

And also, it does mean we're slower.

You can't outrun a cat.

So

that's kind of maybe perceived as a bit of a...

a show of strength.

Like, I don't need to be able to outrun a cat because I'm so tough.

That's risky, isn't it?

It is really.

I don't know if that's that way.

your

MMA career is going so well, Andy, because you're like, I'm so good at MMA.

I don't even have to work out.

I don't have to get buff.

I don't have to be strong looking.

Yeah.

No one has ever turned up to a fight with me in the MMA ring because they're so terrified of this

white, average-looking bloke who seems to have done no exercise.

I'm always really skeptical about the old make yourself look bigger by putting your arms out.

And I guess it must be true because it does work.

But it is like, are bears blind?

Can they not see that once we put our arms out, it's just two small spindly things sticking out at us?

Why do they suddenly go, oh my god, he's absolutely massive?

You hadn't noticed before.

If you're bipedal, you're bigger looking to something that's looking at you from the side.

But like worms probably think we're smaller than we are.

Because from a worm's eye view, if we were on our all fours, we'd be much bigger.

Yeah.

And hawks, actually.

Maybe this one was attacked by a hawk because

I should have gone for hawks, actually.

Yeah.

Rather than worms.

Yeah.

No, I like worms.

I think that's good.

That's why you get so many worm attacks these days.

They cover them up.

You do.

We just wouldn't know.

Worms are attacking us all the time.

We've just got no idea.

Just head-button us from below.

The Hitchcock film The Worms was a complete commercial and critical flop, wasn't it?

You know what?

Aeschylus.

So we mentioned before, ancient Greek playwright who was killed when a bird dropped a tortoise on his head.

Oh, yeah.

I thought the idea was that

hawks dropped turtles on rocks to open them up so they can eat the delicious turtle inside.

And they thought his head was a rock because he was so bald.

That was the claim.

That is the claim.

Yeah.

So I just sort of looked him up because I don't think we mentioned anything really more about him at the time, just he was an ancient Greek playwright.

And so I found out this about him.

There is a theory that he invented people talking to each other on stage.

So

he was a pretty early dramatist.

And this is a claim by Aristotle.

So, you know, pinch of salt and some earlier sources would have been lost, blah, blah, blah.

But Aristotle claims that basically he invented characters who had conflict between each other.

And before that, characters could only speak to the chorus, and everyone was speaking to the chorus and not to each other on stage.

What an innovation.

What a moment.

Yeah, that must have been huge.

And if he hadn't come up with that, we would still all have to be talking to each other.

Everything would be to the chorus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's so weird to have invented the chorus element first, though, right?

Because it seems less obvious.

Because in normal life, it's not like when I chat to someone, it's always mediated by a group of 12 people singing annoying songs.

I just do it direct.

It's quite odd, isn't it?

Yeah, but then maybe that's what separated it as fantasy from real life.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, maybe.

He's like Ricky Gervais inventing the office.

Suddenly, sitcom is just Aeschylus, the Ricky Gervais of his time.

Just back to snakes that have been attacking people.

I read a story about a guy who's called Valentin Grimaldo from Texas.

A coral snake came up and bit him on his hand.

He grabbed the snake, he bit its head off, and then used the snake as a band around his arm to cut off.

Oh,

like what they call the tournicarius.

Yeah.

He used that around his arm, and then they went off to the hospital's emergency room, and he was fine.

He's still got the head as a keepsake.

Wow.

That's really ignominious.

That's a snake, isn't it?

How embarrassing.

You know dragons

are real.

There is a theory, and I think it is a true theory, that basically dragons are just sexed up snakes.

To what extent is it a true theory, Zuri?

I think it's true.

I think when you look at like people writing about dragons, especially in the Middle Ages, they start off being these worm-like creatures with no legs that have stripes on their body and forked tongues.

And then, as the Middle Ages progresses to the Renaissance, they just become more and more fantastical that they can fly and breathe fire and stuff like that.

And so, what we reckon is because the kind of story started off in the southern Europe and Egypt and whatever, where there were plenty of snakes, and then they came up into Europe where there weren't so many snakes, people just started adding stuff because they didn't know what snakes were like, really.

In the Iliad, the original or the earliest version of of the Iliad that we have it says that the dragon could be eaten by eagles which obviously the modern day dragon you would not be possibly to do that but no.

Bizarrely on an earlier fact I had a thing about the Odyssey which I didn't say which is that the Odyssey features the first appearance in literature of black pudding.

Oh, does it?

Does it?

And it was about people eating blood.

I think that was why I was on that tangent.

Yeah, yeah, and it's a sort of goatee blood sausage that they have and it is clearly a black pudding.

And that's in the Odyssey.

What's the bigger innovation, do you think, Andy?

The introduction of black pudding or chatting to each other on stage?

Interesting.

Gosh.

They're both massive, aren't they?

They're both huge deals, but in such different spheres of endeavour.

I reckon most people on earth could say they could live without one.

I could live without black pudding.

That's the one I think, Anna was.

No, no, no.

I think some people would say they could live without drama, but not black pudding.

You know, I'm sure there are people in the people

who are like,

Yeah, say it, Anna.

People in the north.

I was actually, actually, I was going to go as far as Scotland, in fact, in my stereotyping.

We still get Coronation Street and that pudding.

Can we say that at least?

You can get Coronation Street, but everything is mediated through the character of Elsie Tanner, who plays the chorus.

Yeah.

Speaking of snakes, have you guys ever seen, and I address this mainly to Dan, a documentary on the Discovery Channel in 2014 called Eaten Alive?

Is this where the guy decided to be eaten by a snake

and ingested.

Yeah.

Well, because he went in the wrong way, I think, is the story.

He went in head first.

He went in the wrong way.

Sorry.

He didn't crawl up the snake's ass.

Sorry.

I've got it the wrong way, guys.

It's such a mad, stupid thing to do.

And

Paul Rosalie was his name.

And first of all, he was on an expedition in the Amazon to find the biggest anaconda there was, a biggest biggest green anaconda there was.

He'd heard tell it existed.

It would be over 24 feet long.

It'd be the world's longest.

And once he got there, he was going to let it eat him.

And this...

Was that that he was in a sleeping bag or something, or that he was in some kind of sack which he could then wriggle out of?

He wore a special suit so he could survive it, and then he was going to be extracted from the snake.

So he wouldn't be digested, yeah.

Did he go into the...

He totally screwed up.

So first of all, he didn't find the big anaconda, so he had to be supplied with a 20-foot one from a zoo.

And then he had this suit which they drenched in pig's blood to make the snake want to eat him.

And he said he saw the snake's mouth open, everything went black.

I think his head went into the snake.

His shoulders maybe went into the snake.

What about one of those?

And then he was a starfish.

So it became very confusing.

That is going to be a real.

When I listen back to that edit and see which of us got in burst with that one,

it was a photo finish.

Yeah.

So wait, sorry.

His head went into the snake and everything went black.

How mysterious.

Yeah.

Like, so then, yeah, then what?

I mean, I think he tapped out.

The snake started twisting his body and started wrenching his arm around a bit.

And he suddenly thought, oh, this hurts.

My arm's hurting.

Yeah.

And started shouting to the technical assistants, can you get me out now, please?

He wasn't on his own, so he was shouting from inside the snake, get me out, I'm done.

And so they managed to extract him from the snake.

Wow.

Yeah.

Did he shout, I'm a minor celebrity, celebrity, get me out of here?

He's not the rock.

He said it was all to raise awareness about the plight of wildlife in the Amazon, about which there's some skepticism from me.

Well, he just has because now we haven't.

No one's coming away from this podcast singing, oh, the plight of animals in the Amazon.

That's what I've remembered.

They're thinking idiots shoved his head in a snake.

Okay, Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on at Schreiberland.

James at James Harkin.

Andy at Andrew Hunter M.

And Anna.

You can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website, no such thing as a fish.com.

All of the previous episodes are up there, so do check them out.

Bit of a merch store up there as well.

And also a link to Club Fish, the secret behind-the-scenes club that we have created where there's lots of bonus episodes.

A big old place where the fans get together called Discord.

It's a great place, check it out.

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

Goodbye.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.