504: No Such Thing As Captive Willy

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

My name is Dan Schreiber.

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

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

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy.

The beep was invented in 1957.

Was it?

No, well.

So I got this from an article which I won't name because it turns out now to be incorrect.

But basically, it's about the beep that happened on the Sputnik satellite.

It was launched in 1957.

And really annoyingly, Anna has found about 58 examples of beeps dating back to the mid-14th century and it's just like welcome back Anna.

Yeah, we didn't get this from Maisie Anna.

I'll tell you that much.

Listen politely to the facts, we didn't question it.

But it certainly the beep became popular and a big thing about Sputnik was the fact that it beeped.

And in fact, I think, I think, that's all Sputnik could do.

It basically,

it was the size of a big pumpkin and it was a ball of aluminium or metal and it just...

I would say the main thing it could do was go around the Earth in orbit.

Like, the beep was secondary almost.

Yeah.

You're right.

You're right.

The main thing was it could fly around the world.

That's true.

But no one would have known if it wasn't beeping.

Yes.

Because it was broadcasting radio pulses.

It was orbited the Earth every hour and a half, roughly.

It beeped for 21 days only.

But the beep was seen as quite spooky.

Because you could hear it.

Ham radio people could tune in and listen to Sputnik.

Amazing.

And Life magazine said it was an eerie, intermittent croak.

And for a fair number of people...

It doesn't sound like a beep, actually does it no i guess if you don't know what a beep is because it's only been mentioned five million times in history i guess for a few for a few people it would have been uh the first electronic beep that's pretty amazing really yeah and it was the beep that changed the world right because suddenly the americans were like oh russia's in space yeah this is evidence because we can hear it beeping we're gonna have to do something about that and then they decided to create nasa and go to the moon yeah yeah there's a theory that if if the soviets hadn't launched sputnik or America had launched the first satellite, then you wouldn't have had the moon program in the same way.

I'm sure that's

a fact.

Yeah.

Because it really frightened America.

Oh, damn.

It was just literally a ball that went big.

But the other thing is, the reason it was so shiny is because they also, the idea was the guy Karlov who created it or who designed it, he decided that he wanted it shiny so that people will be able to see it in space.

But actually it was way too small and no one could see it.

Well, it's right.

I mean, if you had a really good telescope, you could, but.

I think you could at like at dawn and dusk.

Although you'd have to know where to be pointing it would probably be very hard to spot really he wanted it to be quite a lot bigger as well so that people would be able to see it but it really did freak people out at the time even um uh khrushchev said now we not only have a rocket that can fly to other countries but we have a satellite that flies around the world i don't have to point to this with my finger any idiot can see it they might as well put bombers and fighters in the museum you know he was just like alluding to like we're now the superpower it's new it's nukes isn't it is what he's referring to if we can put that of course yeah yeah, yeah.

You know, our technology is sophisticated.

And the Americans, not long after, tried to send up their satellite.

That didn't work.

It was called Kaputnik, I think they called it.

Not the Americans, the Russians, making fun of it.

Yes, it was called

the Vanguard.

Yeah.

The Vanguard one, yeah.

And they and they sort of panicked after Sputnik, and it was, what, a month, two months later?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And oh, it was so embarrassing.

It exploded on the launch pad, then it fired into a nearby swamp.

But unfortunately, the firing into a swamp had made the sensors on board think, oh, great, we're in orbit.

So then it just started beeping from the swamp.

So embarrassing.

It's just mortifying.

As well as Kaputnik, it was also known as Flopnik, Pufnik, or Stayputnik.

Oh, Stay Putnik, I love that.

That's great.

It's not often you think that Soviet Russia was a really fun place to be, but I think for that week it would have been a really fun place to be hanging out in Russia.

Just comedy gold.

Do you know why they didn't choose the other project called Project Orbiter, which

had more advanced technology within it and it was run by someone and here's your clue it was run by Werner von Braun

who was would you in German you'd say Braun not Braun oh I thought it's Braun you'd say would you say

in English he's known as von Braun

oh I know him as von Braun that's right

yeah so it was managed by Werner von Braun who was a Nazi and the Americans thought it might be a bit awkward if our first satellite that we get into space was built by a Nazi so

a Nazi who was at the end of the war as were quite a few Nazi scientists, he was taken on by America so they could get nick Nazi technology.

And so they started using his brain and their.

And his brawn.

And his brain.

Okay, that's it.

We can all go home now.

I like one of the cultural things that happened with this is that in the way that everything after Watergate became gate,

nick became popularized in Western culture.

So there was peace nick, there there was beatnik, neat nik or all different words, but beatnik is one that's really stuck out for us.

I thought it came from nudnik, which is a Yiddish word meaning a bit of a it did.

Nick was already used.

Nick was already being used, yes, but it was popularised.

It was popularised.

That's why.

Neither of us get away with that.

In Russian, nik is just, it means a person, like cousin, you know, someone called nick.

Podcastnik would be someone who makes podcasts.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

You know how we're saying it was a massive deal and you know, Khrushchev made this huge speech saying we've conquered the world now, etc.

Yeah.

Well, they launched Sputnik, and then no one really got that it was a big deal.

Khrushchev announced it to the cocktail party he was at, and everyone sort of politely clapped and didn't understand it.

Perafter, the next day, it was like a little thing way down on the front page.

It was almost not on the front page.

It was almost not on the front page.

It got less prominence than Marshal Zhukov visiting Yugoslavia, which arguably in historical terms turns out to have been a smaller story.

How interesting.

So, why did they do that?

It was because of how the the world reacted.

It was because the West reacted.

The West reacted.

The West assumed the reaction.

So the next day.

The superiority.

The next day and for, it was all over the headlines because the US had suddenly, you know, the New York Times headline was, oh my god, they've beaten us, we're flattened, we're ruined.

And Russia went, oh, well, maybe this is a huge deal that we've done this.

Well done us.

And then they got really excited about it.

I did read a report saying Khrushchev announced it, like he got the news from the launch pad, whatever, that it was in orbit, and smiled and was happy and announced it to the room and then went to sleep that night.

But the alternative to that is him remaining permanently awake for the rest of his life.

In America, there were lots of restaurants that released merch.

There were Sputnik lollipops.

There was a toy manufacturer who did a scooter, which was just the same scooter, but they called it Pednik.

There were spherical containers that held ice creams.

They would put antennas on top so that you would have the straw as the sputnik kind of look, because they had antennae that were coming out of the street.

Yeah, did the lollipops have multiple?

I reckon the pole is the...

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It had multiple antennae, right?

Did I have two or four?

Four, I think.

Four.

Yeah, that's true.

That's really hard to eat a lollipop because you've got four sticks sticking in.

Or four people can eat it at the same time.

Or hold one stick and then lick it all.

No?

How many kids have you got then?

Three kids.

Yeah, if you could have one lollipop that you would buy them and three of them could eat.

You contain them, they'd be in one location.

I don't know.

I think.

Sorry, but if they're all licking one lollipop at the same time, people are going to think they're smogging.

And social services will get involved.

Yeah, that's true.

And then the next thing that happened, so obviously America's smashed back on its heels, it's reeling.

The next thing that happens, Sputnik 2.

And this one's big and it's got a dog on it.

Yeah.

You know, like that.

And that was when they invented the bark, wasn't it?

Yeah.

And that was poor bloody Leiker, who had a pretty rotten time in space and then sort of conked out.

Which means barker, in fact, Leiker, doesn't it?

But

what all this was leading up to was the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Union being founded, right?

Because it's 1957, October, you know, October Revolution, all of that stuff, or November, depending on the calendar.

Anyway,

there was a theory in the West that the Soviet Union was launching a third Sputnik, which was going to go to the moon with a hydrogen bomb on it.

And an elephant.

And there was a lunar eclipse coming up, so the moon was going to be completely blotted out, you know, in the shadow of the sun.

Or shadow of the Earth, sorry.

So the theory was that they were going to detonate the bomb against the moon and create a kind of super full moon, because it would be even brighter than a normal full moon,

you know.

And anyway, they weren't doing that.

Well, they did do lots of sputnik.

Well, Sputnik just means satellite, so anything that they send up is a Sputnik, basically.

But yeah, they've done 20 odd, I think, now.

But none of them have been the moon blowing up,

which was a stupid idea.

I don't even think I'd know if I saw something that was a bit brighter and a bit bigger than the moon, because you haven't got the actual moon to compare it to.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, it would be a full moon for a second as the detonation happened.

You would think something was up.

Every now and then, like once every month or so, do you not go outside and go, oh, the moon's quite big tonight.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It's at a certain time of day, isn't it?

Yeah, do you think that's always a spotnik?

I think that's it.

Every morning when the moon is near the horizon, that's the Russians blowing it up.

They're wasting a lot of resources on it.

Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the Earth?

Yep.

Cosmonaut man in space.

First man in space.

Was he?

I think.

I thought someone had gone up a bit before that, but not.

Gone past the car man line.

He was the first.

That space.

Yuri's

first.

I'm a car man waiting in the sky was originally written about that.

Jesus.

He was five foot two, which means that he would only just qualify to be an air stewardess on Ryanair.

Right.

Which was his dream, wasn't it?

This is what he was trying to do all that time.

He was just trying to get the attention of Michael O'Leary.

Yeah, it was really bad because the first time he went in space, it was one thing, but he had to pay for his seat.

You know, the space dogs, the Soviet ones, like

well, there's an argument that they preserved peace and stopped the world from imploding, exploding due to nuclear attack.

And here is the argument.

So, in 1960, the Soviets sent up some more dogs.

They were called Belka and Strelka, and they went into orbit with some rats and a rabbit and some flies.

And they orbited the world 17 times and they came back down and they were big celebrities.

They had chat shows and stuff.

Because these were chat shows.

I don't think they actually hosted their own chat shows.

Sorry.

I think they might have just guests.

They may have been a small segment.

But hosting is a good idea.

Every week, the guest has to feed Velka and Strauka.

I think that's a really nice idea.

Lovely.

Let's pitch it.

It's our next commission.

Anyway, so they were the first dogs who survived because some people were a bit sad that Leica didn't.

Anyway, soon after that, JFK and Krzysztof and their wives had a meeting, a summit, in Vienna, and it was awkward, as things often were at the time between America and the USSR.

And then Jackie Kennedy broke the tension by saying to Krzysztof, oh, what happened to those two lovely dogs that you sent into space, by the way?

And Krzysztof said, oh, they actually had puppies.

Do you want to draw one?

And he posted her.

So a few weeks later.

It arrived, unfortunately, not quite as alive as it was in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

No, he put the bubble wrap in the envelope.

It It was fine.

Yeah, so a puppy arrived at the White House.

Were they called Putniks?

I actually think they might have called them Putniks.

That would make sense.

That rings a bell.

It would make sense.

I think they have the same sense of humour as you did in the White House at the time.

Spotnick, like Spot the Doug.

Oh, yeah.

Spotnick.

Muttnick.

Muttnick.

There we go.

Yeah, very good.

Yeah.

Just edit out my one.

You got three really good ones.

But keep that comment in, so everyone will always wonder.

Write in with your speculations as to Annie's shit suggestion.

Anyway, he was a White House pet, puppy pet, and it really calmed things down.

I mean, obviously, things didn't remain calm for the subsequent 30 years.

Those Bjelka and Strelka are the only ones that you learn about in Russian schools, really.

They don't really mention Leica very much.

It's so sad.

After Leica went up, dog lovers worldwide protested.

There was a march at the UN with featuring dogs wearing protest signs.

Wow.

He was also a producer of a chat cell saying, what am I going to do now?

Can we say a thing or two about beeps?

Sure, yeah.

We don't have time to list all the previous beeps.

Try to this one.

Let's see how far we get.

So this is a really fun thing about beeps.

Scoders, right, the cars.

Oh, yeah.

The horns get tested, don't they?

Car horns get tested.

Sure.

And these days, they're tested way more in the development process than they ever have been before.

So Scodas in the 70s were tested 50,000 times to make sure they wouldn't run out of beeps after that.

Sorry, you beeped a horn 50,000 times before selling the car.

I don't think.

And then you beeped it 50,000 first and it ran out.

Did you do that in the car dealership?

I'm just going to give a quick.

That doesn't happen.

52 every car that Skoda sells.

It happens.

How testing happens.

The development process of it.

I have a Scoda and I've got this big hand print in the middle of my steering wheel and everyone needs to ride.

Did they not crash test every car before they sell the truck?

Just kind of drive this into a wall before we send it to you, sir?

So no.

Sorry, yeah.

Test it.

But these days, electric skirters, they get 150,000.

But that's regionally specific.

And when they sell cars in India, they're tested 500,000 times.

Because in India, use of the car hoard is way bigger.

Like everyone is being bigger all the time.

So they have to test half a million honks before.

Wow.

I'd say in India, like they do honk in the way you're supposed to honk.

The only time you're ever supposed to honk is if someone, if to let someone know you're there to stop an accident.

If you drive in India, they're doing that because they're about to drive into you and they're honking and stuff.

They don't do it in the UK, like honk, honk, the traffic lights are gone, you need to move.

Like, oh, yeah, that's true.

They do proper honking in India.

I think you're also encouraged to honk as a way of saying goodbye to someone you're not going to see for a few weeks, don't you?

That's actually, yeah, that's the only other time.

Isn't that the highway car?

Is it the highway car?

And also, honk if you love blah, whatever's on the sign at the side of the road.

That's important, too.

So when buying a car, as well as asking for mileage, you should ask for honkage.

Is that what we're saying?

How many honks have you packed into this, bad boy?

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

Okay, my fact this week is that William Gladstone once cancelled an evening engagement so so he could binge on the latest popular drama series.

So, this is William Gladstone, who was a British Prime Minister and quite famously, quite dur and serious and whatever.

So, I quite like the idea of him, you know, watching Breaking Bad or whatever, but obviously, this wasn't that.

This was The Woman in White,

which was a story by Wilkie Collins, which was originally done in

cereals.

It was originally sold in breakfast cereals.

So it was a free gift at the bottom of Coughlex boxes.

And it's originally done in cereals in magazines, and then the entire book came out in 1860, I think, 1859, 1860.

And he got it and he wanted to read it.

So he just cancelled his.

I love it.

That's so great.

I love it.

Imagine.

What if he was taking a date, though?

Do you still love it?

Oh, wow.

What if the date went to the theatre?

I was like, where's where's Willie?

He's with Wilkie.

He's with William Wilkie.

You don't get.

Was he called Wilkie?

Was that his name?

He knows his middle name, so he was William Wilkie Collins.

Okay, but I'm just saying you don't get Wilkie's anymore.

But actually, he wanted to be called Wilkie, so he insisted that you never call him Mr.

Collins or you never call him William Collins or whatever.

He insisted that everyone just called him like Cher or Madonna.

He was just Wilkie.

Really?

Well, because his dad and his grandfather, I think, were both Williams as well.

So I think it was one of those cases where the middle name suddenly became the first name and it was an honorary first first name.

But I think he wanted us to drop the surname as well.

We should just be saying Wilkie.

Well, that's what he wanted.

I think we should do what to show some respect for the guy.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says it was typical of his dislike of formality.

Because he was quite an

odd cookie.

He was a rum cove.

He was rum.

Can we talk about the book quickly?

Just

because the book is

really good.

Have Have you read it?

I have read it.

I mean, years and years ago.

Yeah, I have.

And I'm really excited to.

I've read The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

And he wrote, I think, about 20 novels.

And those are the two sort of big hits.

I've read the first 50 pages because I bought it on Tuesday.

It's pretty good.

It's really big.

It is really big.

It's huge.

But they got paid by writing a chapter at a time.

So you would, you would, you just.

And so it came out in this magazine.

It was a Dickens-owned magazine called All the Year Round.

And when it was first published in chapter form, chapter by chapter, sales went from 40,000 to 300,000.

It was mega.

It was so exciting.

But it's weird that he caused Dickens' publication to become so popular because he actually kind of hero-worshipped Dickens, didn't he?

Whereas really Dickens should have been thanking him for making his magazine all year round or whatever go through the roof.

Well, he was younger.

He was a protégé of Dickens and then Dickens quickly fell in love with him and sort of the roles slightly reversed where he sort of was inspired by Wilkie's writing.

But he did do this weird like Dickens

tribute tour because we've talked about Dickens travelling around the world and giving lectures and then he immediately travelled around the world giving public readings and going to the same locations that Dickens had.

I think he took holidays at Dickens' favourite holiday resorts.

Did he?

And then they fell out, didn't they?

Did they?

Yeah, they fell out because Charles Dickens' daughter Kate married Wilkie Collins' brother Charles

and they really properly fell out and then Collins started really slagging off all of his books.

He called Barnaby Rudge the weakest book that Dickens ever wrote.

To be fair, that's true.

And I don't think that's necessarily slagging off his books, is it?

He was ranking them.

He was was ranking.

He's ranking them.

Imagine if I'd ranked all the episodes of this podcast in order, which I definitely haven't.

So we should.

He then went on to say that Dombey and Sons, no intelligent person can have read it without astonishment at the badness of it.

Oh, yeah, I guess that's a really

critique.

He called Edwin Drude the melancholy work of a worn-out brain.

Oh, God.

Well, that was fun.

Finished.

That's unfair.

Yeah, he must have said it after Dickens died as well.

There's stories that he was asked to finish Drood because they thought that he knew Dickens so well and the writing style.

Well, that's weird because Collins, when he was writing a book called No Name, he got really ill and Dickens offered to take over.

He said, I know you don't need the help, but if just in case you do want that finished, I can do it for you.

So they both were, you know, involved in that kind of project.

That thing of them, so Dickens' daughter marrying Wilkie Collins' brother.

I guess they would have been the same age because Collins was a much younger man.

But part of the reason that Dickens really didn't like the situation was that Wilkie Collins' brother, Charles, was apparently a complete just like milquetoast, wet blanket.

Well, he wasn't very wet because he refused to have baths

because he almost drowned when he was five years old and he was petrified by water for the rest of his life and wouldn't even get into a bath.

Oh, right.

Okay, that might have been part of it.

But it's so weird because they looked, apparently, both sibling and child, Dickens's daughter Katie, they both looked the most like.

Like Wilkie Collins' brother looked just like him, and Katie Dickens looked just like Charles Dickens.

Oh, really?

Okay.

She had the little goatee beard, didn't she?

Yeah.

That's very funny.

They met through a bloke called Augustus Egg.

That was their mutual friend.

Who did?

Wilkie and Dickens?

Dickens and Collins, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

they went on holiday with Egg.

And Collins lectured Egg on art and hummed opera airs incorrectly and interminably, was the report.

The meeting of those two, they actually met because they were acting in the same play at the time, right?

So Dickens brought him onto a production.

The play that they met in was by Edward Bullwillitton, who wrote It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.

He's the guy who wrote that sentence.

Yes.

And this is the great thing.

Okay, so this links back to The Woman in White, because Bull Willitton hated The Woman in White.

He said it was great trash.

I think he meant big trash rather than like, oh, it's great trash.

And the point is that Bull Willitton had had his wife, Rosina, committed to an asylum a couple of years before.

And that plot line is in The Woman in White.

Oh, interesting.

And all of Collins' works in some way, loads of them are about women being mistreated by men or being, you know, like...

It's very much a spoiler if you haven't read The Woman in White, by the way.

like start from the end at this stage can i just say i don't think we should be giving spyless a classic lesson

yeah and but collins dedicated the book to the uh the man who the commissioner for lunacy was his title who had helped release rosina from the asylum really obviously borger lyton hated the book because it was such a such a slam on him

it turns out and that makes sense because um i was reading an obituary of wilky collins just after he died and this friend of his who was writing it said that when he wrote the woman in white collins had told him he received a letter from Rosina, Lytton's wife, who said, I really enjoyed your book, but I thought the villain, Camp Fosco, I thought the villain was a really poor villain, not realistic at all.

You know, next time if you want a villain, come to me.

I have my eyes upon a villain every minute of the day.

It is my husband.

So one of those things that happened when the book came out is it was one of those things we've spoken about where when things take off, the merch just starts rolling in.

You know, there was a waltz that that was named after it.

There were cloaks, there were hats, perfumes were made that were sort of like meant to be the woman in white's perfume.

It was just full of merch around London.

Walter became a fashionable name for babies because there's a character there.

Walter.

Did it?

That was a thing.

Yeah, Walter's the hero, isn't he?

The kind of slightly boring hero.

And the heroine is slightly boring as well.

Wow, so I'm not allowed to spoiler the ending, but you're allowed to spoiler the fact that people in it are slightly boring.

Terrible.

Is that a spoiler?

I think that's more of an opinion.

Do you know what really annoys me about basically all adaptations?

And this applies to lots of stuff,

but I'm going to use The Woman in White to vent.

There have been loads of films and TV series of it over the years, and the most recent was 2018 I saw with Jessie Buckley in it, who's an attractive actress.

And the thing that I remember from The Woman in White is that there are these two quite extreme characters who are the real good characters.

There's Count Fosco, who's this hugely fat

Italian villain, and then there's Marion, who is very sharp, very bright, very bold and very ugly and she's like got a moustache she's got a huge masculine jaw she's ugly enough that Wolf is almost repulsed by her when because she looks really attractive from behind it's one of those like a weird um sort of 90s rom-com reveal and she turns around and he's like oh that face is this shallow pal is shallow based on women

I think in the sentence of Shallow Howell if you thought she looked attractive from behind

and yeah every single adaptation she's not ugly.

How interesting.

Do you think that the actors are taking away jobs from ugly actors?

I genuinely do.

I really, because they ugly.

Incredibly annoying.

No, they sort of make themselves look a bit tomboyish.

And I think it's bullshit in entertainment today.

You don't do it with men.

Why?

No, they do fit people up a lot.

Yeah.

Well, they just pick a fit actress to play an ugly role because they think that people can't handle watching an unattractive woman.

Okay, yeah.

Do they mention it in the dialogue, like as if people go up to her in the movie and go, you're an ugly person.

And she's just there looking stubborn and like, oh, yes, I know, this face.

Oh, stop.

I'm a complete dog.

It does happen with the Jack Reacher books, those were adapted and they put Tom Cruise in the role.

And that was the biggest uproar about the whole thing.

That he's meant to be six foot ten.

He's meant to be

hulkingly massive.

And then you've got like, that's just drastic miscasting.

As in, obviously Tom Cruise is brilliant, but he doesn't look like Jack Reacher, who I think at one point stops a bullet with his chest.

What?

I think at one point in the books.

Anyway, can we talk a bit about Wilkie Collins?

Yeah, he's a good one.

So his health situation was quite interesting.

Because it was bad.

He had bad health.

If he had good health, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Unless it was really good.

What if it was so good he was still alive?

Then you'd be interested.

No, as it was, he had

neuralgia, rheumatism, spasm suffocation.

I don't think we know what that was.

Gout in the eyes, a boil on his groin.

At one point, his partner Caroline had to mesmerise his feet to try and cure them.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

How do you mesmerize?

We've talked about mesmerism before, but how do you do it?

You know, when you sit down on your leg for too long and it goes to sleep?

Yeah.

Is that it?

It's got to be that.

Yeah, it's got to be something like that.

He just sat on them.

I don't know, because he had gout eyes, so he couldn't do it through mesmerizing his eyes.

Like, they were really bunged up, aren't they?

You don't get gout on your eyes.

That's what I got.

Well, no, I know, but when you read the descriptions of what happened to his eyes, they were bleeding, they were pussy, they were...

Well, I believe, again, this is based on this obit written by his friend.

He said that he went round to his house when he was older and he couldn't stop looking at his eyes because they looked so weird and he couldn't really meet your eye properly.

And eventually Colin said, I see you're looking at my eyes.

I know it's distracting.

I've got gout eye.

And the friend implies, and we know this is a fact, that it's probably all the laudanum he was taking, which caused his eyes to go quite blurry rather than...

It wasn't a disease of the eye.

He was just off his face.

It's going to be great in his biopic when Tom Cruise is playing him.

And they're saying, Your eyes, they're horrible.

Apparently, he was taking enough to kill six people every day.

Yeah.

And he was also taking poppers in about the same amount for his heart.

Was he a student in the early 2000s?

Wait, did poppers?

I didn't think poppers existed.

I didn't know.

Well, amyl nitrate.

Oh, right.

So, yeah, that's.

They didn't come in those fun, colourful packets that they do now.

I wouldn't know, actually.

And he was taking arsenic as well at the same time.

Oh, Wilkinson.

All that meant that he saw ghosts all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah, he thought he had a doppelganger, a ghost Wilkie that was with him all the time.

It was just a mirror, Willie.

How did he come up with that amazing name for the ghost?

He's one of the best.

Yeah, he would, like Dan says,

the doppelganger would be around.

There would be ghosts pushing him down the stairs when he's trying to go up to bed.

So he couldn't kind of...

You know that dream that people have where you just can't get up a hill and you're kind of in quicksand, that kind of thing, but it was ghosts pushing him down.

And then when he got to the top of the stairs he would be met by a green woman with tusks

do you think do you think maybe only taking enough um to kill five people a day might be a good idea will be no no

um and his love life as well was absolutely

um it was just really interesting it was kind of

interesting because he was so monogamous

he's very healthy

no interesting even for today i would say dan if someone if someone these days had this love life i would be interested I want to know more.

He didn't want to marry, fine.

And he was in a relationship with a woman called Caroline Graves.

She was a widow.

She had a child from an earlier relationship.

And then he started an affair with a woman called Martha Rudd, right?

And she was, I think, about 20 when they met.

And they had three children together.

Caroline Graves didn't love this.

She went off to marry someone else.

Fair enough.

Completely fair enough.

And he actually went to the wedding, so it might have been all...

I think it was quite friendly.

I got the impression there wasn't too much resentment.

So that's good.

So then Wilkie Collins is in a relationship with this new woman, Martha Rudd.

They have three children together.

He sort of keeps them in a flat away from his house.

And

he only wants to be known as Dawson when he goes over, I think.

Cool.

And he just sort of has an assumed name for the landlady.

He doesn't want any publicity, all of that.

But then Caroline, his previous partner, her marriage doesn't work out.

So she comes back, she lives with him, and

he's just rattling between two families back and forth.

And then sometimes he takes them all on holiday together to Ramsgate and puts them in in boarding houses next to each other.

And all the kids play together and they have a great time.

I think the kids play together, but the women never meet.

Yeah, it's weird.

It's so weird.

And he's at one, I presume, at one house or the other all the time.

And they just have to kind of, that's the situation.

It sounds like a sort of pl amateur play where the women are both played by the same person.

Because it's so implausible and they never meet.

They live basically on the same street.

Yeah.

But yeah,

they walk out of the door and they're like, oh, you just missed her.

Exactly.

And she's going to drop it out of breath.

Oh, you just missed her.

That's married to Mrs.

Doubtfully.

Do you know where Martha was born?

No.

She was born in Martham.

That sounds like you just conjugated her name.

It's the accusative, actually.

Yeah,

very unimaginative parents.

Martham in Norfolk.

I was going to say, where the heck is Martham?

I think it's a village.

A village in Northampton.

In Norfolk.

That's so good.

So did they name her after the village?

Not clear.

I did try to find out funnily enough wasn't one of those facts that's been recorded to history as far as I know she wasn't born in Penniston

if you are in Martham listening to this now please write in yeah just tell us what it's like yeah send us a photo

I know a bit unsure about that but you don't do the emails anymore Anna it's

just emails of course inundate us with emails

everyone from Martham if you've ever been to Martham or indeed any place beginning with that write in

because the last time I said that, I said something like: If you are eating particular foods in America right now, and it was thanks to that bloke, David Fairchild, who imported them all.

And we got a lot of emails of people eating avocados, people eating

rice, I can't remember what it was, but it was a lot.

Martha tended.

So, Martha said she could have married Wilkie Collins whenever she wanted.

That was a bit of a lady doth protest too much thing.

But

she didn't go to his funeral, nor did their kids, weirdly.

But then she did.

She was there, but she was called Caroline Graves.

Where's Morph?

I just need to go to the moon.

After Caroline died, she took over tending Wilkie Collins' grave.

So it just seems like there's so much happening below the surface we don't know about.

Caroline was also buried in that grave.

Yes, Caroline was buried in the same plot.

Well, I suppose she tended Caroline's grave as well, but she quickly dug herself into the coffin for a while.

Oh, thanks for looking after my grave.

Climbs out of the coffin.

No problem.

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

My fact this week is that 15th century Korean royals had their lives so thoroughly documented that the records include kings complaining about their recorders recording them.

So

this was sent to me by my friend Mark Vent.

I've never heard of it.

It's called the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, where basically they recorded literally everything.

Included in these accounts, in 1404, for example, there was a king who fell off a horse by accident.

He was really embarrassed, and he went up to the guy recording it, saying, can you not put in the whole horse falling thing?

And the guy put it in.

So we've got an account of the king then bitching about the guy going, I bet he's put in the horse thing, hasn't he?

And he's like, stop writing.

No, no, stop writing that.

Don't break that either.

you bastard.

Like, you know the never-ending story.

There's a character sitting on the top of a mountain transcribing everything.

This is basically how they treated their entire dynasty.

And as a result, we've got 500 years worth of complete records of the king and all of the king's administrators.

Yeah, it's incredible.

It's such a good idea.

Like, unlike now, where literally this week we're hearing that people are deleting WhatsApps every, you know, they're doing government business and they're deleting the WhatsApps every seven days.

So you never know what they said.

You're right.

If we'd had this this and they couldn't have done it because the king wasn't even allowed to see it until he died.

You weren't allowed to look at the recordings of what you'd done instead.

Exactly.

The rules were very strict about who couldn't look in the annals.

But they were broken sometimes.

Absolutely, yeah.

So there was, I read an account of a tyrant king who looked in the annals and then six people were executed because of what he found written in there.

So I think after that they probably had to tighten up the rules.

Maybe he was the reason the kings then weren't allowed to look in the annals.

So what it was, I mean, I don't know if this is the specific account you're talking about, but

the people who were writing the histories often went back back in to change what they've written because the king wasn't allowed to look at what happened.

You know, he'd have to die, and then people could look at what was said about him.

But politicians would get word that maybe something was written down.

So the histographers would go back into it and kind of change it.

And the king found out about that, and he got really pissed off that they were more petrified of the politicians than the king himself, of what the king would do.

And then that got banned.

You weren't allowed to then go in and change your own stories.

Those were the literati purges, weren't they?

And the one Andy's talking about, who was Yon Sang-gun, who was the

tyrant king, he closed down the university and turned it into his personal pleasure grounds where he would import young girls from around the provinces.

He also demolished a huge area where people were living in the capital and turned it into his own hunting grounds.

And then when everyone complained, he told his ministers they weren't allowed to speak and they had to wear a sign saying, A mouth is a door that brings in disaster.

A tongue is a sword that cuts off a head.

I really thought I was going to rhyme.

It probably was in

Korean, yeah.

Wait, plaster?

It feels like you could say plaster at some point.

A tongue is a sword that calls for plaster, yeah.

Wait, what's your what's your what's the mouth?

A mouth is a door that brings in disaster, a tongue is a sword that calls for plaster.

Looks good, it's not amazing, but it's a lot to work with.

I think it's good.

What are the teeth?

Something knocked out by your master.

Oh, very good.

Lovely.

Anyway, he sounds like a rotter.

Yeah, it was really strange.

So there were eventually about 2,000 volumes of this stuff.

2,000 volumes.

And

it was all sorts of clobber as well.

It was the weather, it was diplomatic affairs, it was the economy.

It was, you know.

Probably quite a boring job to actually do it day on, day out, scribbling away.

And you must have had this constantly say, Can you slow down, please?

Sorry, can you say that again?

Yeah, and then you'd have to write that down.

Yes.

And then I wrote down, can you slow down, please?

Sorry, can you fall off the horse again, but slower?

Yeah, it's 1,967 books in total, is what they have.

They say if you stacked it, it would be taller than a 10-story building, is the height we're talking of these books, which just a fine means nothing, but that's quite fun as a visual.

Explaining why you've mentioned it.

But the point that they make in this thing is until it's been digitized, it was an intensely hard history to get your head around.

Because you've got to climb nine stories to get to the 11.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, if you're, there's no, it's it's not a history book, it's not written like here's the story of the king.

You've got a bit of the king, and then you've suddenly got the weather report.

You have to hunt through 1,900 volumes to find the thing you're looking for.

Yeah, obviously, there's you know, when there's periods, yeah, exactly.

But now it has been digitized, right?

It has, yeah.

And it's the plan is to translate them into English by the year 2033.

Okay.

Um, this dynasty was a um was an interesting one, it was a very long-lasting dynasty, yeah, 500 years, yeah, 500 years from 1392 until well, accounts vary, but I'm going with 1910.

Which was controversial.

Well,

Japan invaded Korea at that point.

Certainly occupied anyway.

That was kind of...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In the 14th century when it started,

the big deal was that they were moving from an old aristocracy to state-trained bureaucrats who were running the show.

It was very much in the Eastern tradition of meritocracy having preceded us.

Well, they were just much more organised than we were.

It was a meritocracy as long as you weren't a woman.

Oh, God, yeah.

women had an absolute whale of a time, of course.

There was um ruling from behind the bamboo screen was a thing in the Choson dynasty, which was when um if you were regent, so obviously if a male royal hadn't come of age yet and you were the mother, then you could rule, but you had to sit behind the bamboo screen at the time while he sat on the throne acting like he was saying stuff.

Do you have your hand off his bum at the time?

I got where you were going, but

I mean if we thought that dance three kids looking at the same mummy was gonna get social services then

the ruling from behind the screen that's quite cool

we've spoken about that before have we spoken about it in Russia

with with someone was behind literally the uh the throne yeah yeah just going

yeah but here you weren't hit like they knew you were there because there's a big screen maybe with some nice pictures on it but have a quite a lot if your grandmother or your mother ruled.

There was one queen I think who ruled for about 25 years from behind the screen.

What?

Really?

With the same regent.

Yeah, that's...

It's kind of that you're not ready yet, so I'm sorry.

Oh, I thought they had to rule it when you turned 20.

So it was if you were under 20.

They did, but you know, lots of weird stuff always happens and she likes power.

And so it was a bit like, oh, actually, you're not qualified, it turns out.

And she was machinating behind the scenes to make sure she wasn't in control.

But it was one of the good things about them recording all these details was that you got just a lot of blood and gore.

Because everyone, like royals were in the past, almost everywhere, everyone was quite bloodthirsty.

So one of the stories that I liked that was recorded was the story of Prince Saddo.

You know what Sado is.

Is that the English translation?

It basically should be.

It was a sad character.

This is in the 1700s and his dad was King Yongjo who really wanted Sado to be studious and clever.

Sounds like he was.

Well sadly he wasn't.

He was actually a free spirit.

He wanted to be a musician and an artist kind of type.

Oh, classic.

His dad thought that was super lame, bullied him, used to mock him in front of the eunuchs and the ladies.

Not in front of the eunuchs.

No, that's so unkind.

It's the worst.

And it drove Sado a bit mad.

Sado went Maddo.

And

he sort of, he went from being a really gentle, sweet boy to murdering everyone.

And he used to walk into chambers holding severed heads of eunuchs, in fact.

Guess what else I've cut off?

Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And so his father was then like, well, we can't have this.

We can't have you inheriting.

So you're going to have to die.

But you're not allowed to defile the royal body by actually killing someone.

So he asked his son to commit suicide.

And saddo, saddo though he was, was not saddo enough to commit suicide.

So his dad said, okay, well then can you climb into this rice chest?

And then he locked him in a rice chest and starved him to death.

Wait, did he know that that was going to be locked?

I guess maybe he thought really, look, I guess this has to happen.

Was he put in the chest?

It might have been, there might have been someone gently encouraging him with a historical.

Oh, the history?

Yeah, if it's in the annals, then it must have happened.

Otherwise, it'd be like, you know, don't say that I'm shoving my son into this rice chest right now.

Yeah, you're right.

He got involuntarily.

Yeah.

There was a place, I can't remember where it was.

The tradition was that you couldn't kill the king, but you could put them in a bag and hit the bag very hard with a club.

And I think that was the...

I think that was the Ottoman Empire, wasn't it?

Was it the Ottoman Empire?

I think you beat them inside rugs sometimes, didn't you?

So that you couldn't spill blood.

You say, I'm just beating this rug, and actually it contains the king, or whatever.

Yeah, and that was the means of executing very, very posh people.

Right.

Yeah.

Wasn't there a tradition?

There was a pirate tradition as well, wasn't there, of chest, putting people in chests.

That's treasure.

Dad goes back to the people.

Come on, pick up my treasure.

Oh,

shit.

Some poor desiccated skeleton in there.

No, it's Hook.

I'm thinking of the movie Hook.

That's right.

Yeah, not really.

Right at the beginning, yeah.

They put them in the boo box.

The boo box.

And he goes inside the box.

Yeah, and you'd have a slide and you'd put scorpions in and close it.

We don't need to go into the details.

I don't think it is historical facts.

Interesting fact, it was Glenn Close who played the male pirate.

No one really knew that uh uncredited yeah great hook who played hook no played the the pirate put in the treasure chest right yeah got it okay anyway

one interesting thing about these annals is like andy said they kind of would tell you the weather and stuff like that but it also would tell you whenever there was an aurora

And there was a time between 1645 and 1715, which we now sometimes call the mini ice age.

And we've managed to use, or not we, a guy called Yan and his team managed to use the records looking into the history books and have worked out the solar cycles that were happening around that time by the number of auroras that were recorded in the annals.

That's so cool.

That's amazing.

And so we now know that around that time, the solar cycle was only about eight years, whereas it's normally a bit longer than that.

That's incredible.

Just love that stuff.

There's also UFO encounters in the Chosen Dynasty and

which is very exciting.

So September 1609, there was a reported case of things shaped like a bowl in the sky.

And there's a few paranormal things that make it in there as well.

But what's really amazing, I'm so excited by this.

I haven't seen it yet, but it's obviously immediately become one of my favourite TV shows.

The Josun X-Files.

It's a real TV show, and it's a historical, and it uses accounts from the Josun annals as the basis for each episode.

And there's an ancient investigator of the time who is assigned to go and investigate all of the weird paranormalities that we find in the annals.

What kind of things are we talking about?

Oh, I just told you the UFO.

I bought a ball.

A bullshit.

A crescent moon, sounds like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who knows?

I mean, it's obviously not a UFO, but they recorded it as unidentified stuff.

There's cursed items, all that sort of stuff.

And it's been turned into a UFO.

The good thing about the annals is that it's really easy to reenact so much of what happened.

So you can make an incredibly accurate historical representation.

And I think historical reenactments are much more popular and common in Korea now of this period because, you know you know exactly what people were wearing, um exactly how they ate their meals.

Like meals were described in such detail the and the order in which meals like the order in which different foods had to be placed on the table.

It was all extremely ordered life, you know, everything was very ceremonial and so you know, you'd have to bring in the sausages first and then the cabbage five minutes later.

And we know all of this, so reenactments, piece of cake.

That's true.

Where did the piece of cake come from?

Can you guess the seven sins for which you were allowed to divorce your wife under the Joseon dynasty?

So her sins, not mine.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think wives weren't allowed to divorce their husbands.

Adultery.

Adultery is in there, yes.

Theft.

Very good.

Stealing is in there, yes.

Inability to have children is usually one of them.

Yes, very good.

Failure to produce a male heir.

You can have daughters if you want, but you'll get divorced.

Touching my stuff.

What about?

Not actually on there for doing oversight.

Moving the remote control from where I like it, where I like it, next to where I sit on the sofa to apparently a better place next to the television.

Why would you put it next to the television?

It's a remote control.

It should be remote from the place that it's beeping to.

I don't know if I meant to unleash this.

No, no, no, no, no, this is brilliant.

You can apologize with everyone.

You do.

No, I love my wife, and it's all going to go out.

We've only got three so far.

You've done failure to produce a male air, adultery, stealing.

Well, not maintaining the household properly.

No, that's not.

Well, there's excessive jealousy towards other women in the household, who I guess would often be concubines.

Oh, okay.

So you can't, yeah, you can divorce your wife first.

Bad mouthing with the friends if they were overheard.

Spotted in the annals.

I'm going to give you that.

Talking excessively.

Ooh.

Any too much chat?

You're gone.

The last one is serious disease.

Oh, right.

So you've got to...

I mean, I think that is irresponsible to get a bad disease when you're trying to produce a male air.

Yeah.

If you've got...

If your wife's got gout eyes, I'm not going to...

Exactly.

Get rid of him, love.

So, the remote control thing gets stuck with?

I think I might have just missed it out.

Yeah, and I think we've probably got eight since.

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

My fact this week is that in real life, it was difficult to free Willie because he couldn't hold his breath underwater for long enough.

This is about the film Free Willie.

Which, if you haven't seen it, is a classic 90s kids movie.

It's brilliant.

Is this?

1993?

It's so good.

Yeah.

It really is great.

I know it's about a whale

who is

freed.

Yeah.

Yes.

I feel like there is a scene where he jumps over a wall.

Yes.

Very good.

And that is the comedy.

And it's his friend with a child who's working to free.

And that is not a spoiler because the climactic moment of the film is on not only the title, it's also in the trailer and on the post-it.

It's the post-it.

It's the whole thing.

It's the weirdest thing.

It's like Anna Karenina having a train on the front cover.

It really is.

Fancy, it's called Free Willie.

It's not called Free Willie, question mark.

We know that the Free Willy is going to happen, surely.

No, because Free Willie is like an imperative.

Like, free willie.

You don't know they obey it, do you?

Oh, it's not an adjective.

No, no, no.

No, it's not.

Well, actually, he starts the film as a free will before being captured by some rascally fishermen, you know, some scoundrels.

So he starts off as free willy.

But yeah, most of the film, he's not free.

So really, to be accurate, it should have been called Captive Willie, because that's the majority of the film.

But Captive Willie is in another genre entirely in films.

So he was a real whale.

He was called Keiko.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and he was, um, so yeah, there was this whale called Keiko.

And after the film came out, basically, it was incredibly popular.

Anyone who was a child in the minds probably remembers seeing it, except James.

And

after it came out, there was this massive campaign.

And in fact, the film at the end of it had a number to call if you wanted to save the whales.

But it was an environmental agency that you got through to.

But actually, most people who called the number, or many thousands, just wanted that specific whale to be freed.

They were like, but what about the actor in the film, the actor who plays the whale?

The kid.

Oh, right.

Don't give a shit about the kid.

He's still in captivity.

So, yeah, there was this campaign to free Keiko.

So they had to train.

this whale that had been in captivity for 15 years to learn to live in the wild and it was an incredibly arduous, resource-intensive process.

And one of the things about Keiko was that couldn't hold his breath underwater.

And whales need to, obviously, because they can't breathe underwater.

So killer whales, which he was, hold their breath usually for about 15 minutes underwater.

He couldn't even make sort of three.

But they did manage to train him.

And by the time they released him, he could hold his breath for 13 mins.

So very good.

Oh, right.

He had a pretty unhappy life.

in the wild.

He was used to living with humans.

He'd been living with humans almost all his life.

And he was taken to Iceland and then he made his way over to Norway.

But he really was pretty dependent on humans for the rest of his life.

He was sad.

It's very interesting because there's a side of environmentalists and people who look after animals who say this was the worst thing in the world to let him back out into the wild because of all these reasons.

How could he attach himself to a pod?

He's been fed frozen herring, you know, his last 13 years.

But the people who did it still maintain it was the best thing to do and that he was the second oldest orca to live in captivity ever.

In the time that he was in there, something like 13 other orcas died to just show how quickly the mortality rate was.

And he did, yeah, exactly.

He might have died anyway.

He just died of a disease shortly after managing to be released.

But yeah, and he hung around on the edge of a pod.

But it was mostly tragic or silly, at least, because there should have been a fund for broad environmentally good reasons rather than probably a fund to just release this one whale, which was fine in captivity.

The really sad thing is that in Free Willie's, certainly two two and three,

Willie is played completely by an animatronic whale.

It's an early example of AI taking away jobs.

Well largely in one it was played by an animatronic whale as well as CGI.

For the bits where the child is putting his hand in the whale's mouth I think they did have to have an artificial sorry to interrupt because I don't know this movie.

In Free Willie 2, 3 and 4 you're saying it's the same Willie as in the character is the same Willie.

He's freed.

But what?

No, please don't let me know.

No, no, absolutely.

In Free Willie 2, he's gone home.

He's found his pod.

He's found his mum, which is exciting.

I think there's an oil spill or something bad.

That might be the film 3.

And then it turns out, look at me jumping in front of Dan when Dan's got the entire plot in his head.

And film three, he's started a family and he's got a pregnant wife.

So he is free throughout those extra films.

They keep trying to capture him again, and the kid from the first movie who appears in the second.

So it's the same cast trying to make sure he remains free.

So by that point, the title is an adjective.

He is free, Willie, rather than an imperative.

And it was sad because the character, you know, meets up with his pod again and gets together with a lady whale.

And, you know, she's expecting a baby in the third film.

And yet Keiko never experienced any of this.

It's sad.

Yes, it is sad.

That's right.

It's really sad.

And 2 and 3 has the same cast, but 4, they sort of thought the story is now told.

So they had to entirely recast it.

And Bindy Irwin, the daughter of Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter, is the lead role.

Get out.

No, I'll stay with you.

Free Bindy.

And is it a different whale?

I've seen it and I can't remember.

Jaws 4.

Yes.

Which is, I think, the kid of the original shirt.

It's the descendant, it might be that, possibly.

It's the kid of the original shark, which is attacking the family, but not family by blood, family by marriage of the original people.

And it follows them across the world.

It's through telepathy.

This shark knows about

sort of social relationships as well as.

No, I stop describing it.

Have you heard of Oka the movie while we're talking about movies?

So I wondered if there was like a killer whale movie which was a bit like Jaws.

Oh, right.

And it turns out there is.

It's called Orca the Movie from 1970, whenever it was.

And basically someone had watched Jaws, seen how popular it was, and thought, what's scarier than a shark?

A killer whale.

Yeah.

In Gret, but okay.

Oh, yeah.

Killer whales literally eat sharks for breakfast.

Killer whales don't harm humans.

They feed in captivity.

They eat humans.

Sorry, two instances, because we're we're really horrible to them.

Killer whales do not eat humans.

I think sharks, generally speaking, don't eat humans.

Sharks are shooting.

A few people a year do get people do get attacked by sharks.

Killer whales do not attack humans.

What about the whales?

What are the boats they've been attacking in the last year?

They attack boats.

They're not killing humans.

Is it?

Who goes on boats?

They lose.

You're giving them either too much or too little credit, right?

You're right.

Anyway, you've got an approval rating of 9%.

Oh, really?

Darl and Ladley have seen the sequel and the sequel and the sequel, single, sequel.

Bob Irwin, Steve's son, is in Orc at 4.

So

when they were auditioning for the movie, Free Willie, they auditioned lots of different whales.

I don't know what the process was.

Singing?

I think maybe.

But 21 of the 23 whales they auditioned belonged to SeaWorld.

And SeaWorld were apparently uncomfortable with the movie's message, which is basically, you're caging whales, you monsters.

This is an incredibly medieval, barbaric thing to do.

and they asked at one point for a new ending

presumably it went when he stays captain he just does it yeah he jumps back over the mark

yeah and so they I think they got keiko from a mexican sea life park they did which is quite odd because the Mexican park was in very poor condition and the whale Keiko was in very poor condition in it but the Mexican owners of the Mexican park were absolutely fine with the message.

I mean they were a bit like, yeah, no, it's shit here for the whales.

You should spread the word.

That was weird for Keiko in that Mexican park because the water, rather than importing seawater for it to live in, they just had water which they added salt to.

Like it was really bad.

I mean weird.

In theory that sounds like the same, but I bet it's not.

It's just kind of not going to be as it.

It probably tastes weird.

Yeah.

Seasoned water.

Season your water.

And the altitude's quite high up for what Keiko would have been used to.

So what altitude do you normally live at, hey Carl?

Jesus.

You didn't live in one of those really high seas.

That's the high seas that the pirates go in.

That's them.

Why do you think the whales had an alpine sea experience and not happy?

Here's the thing.

I watched a clip of it last night.

And actually, it's amazing to...

James, not included in this, but when you watch it back, my memory of

Willie going over is a phenomenal scene.

And watch it again.

They use CGI and it's really obvious when it lands in on the other side.

You can see the splash with kind of computer graphics, early computer graphics.

You couldn't do water in those days, could you?

In fact, it's still hard to do water.

Right.

It's really sensible there, because you've just got an eight-year-old child actor firing the 1,300-kilo rubber whale over that.

Take 12, we're going to need another cat.

And there was a stunt, as you said, Dan, there was a stunt double, which was coated in 1,300 kilos.

Oh, sorry, that's 1,300 kilos of rubber just on the outside.

That's the outside.

That's just the skin.

And the special effects supervisor said that the dummy looked so realistic to Keiko that he became aroused when he saw it.

Did you know what happened to Keiko in the end?

Obviously, he died.

Except Brian died.

Well, yes.

But did you not have

to?

After he died.

Oh, oh.

Oh, okay.

Reincarnated as a rabbit.

Well, possibly.

But he was buried.

Oh, okay.

Really?

That poor gravedigger, imagine being told that's your gig this morning.

No poor.

What they call the people who carry pora.

Pole bearers.

2,000 pole bearers.

Yeah,

so weird.

Because he died in Norway or off in the fjords of Norway.

Normally, you would just tow the whale out to sea and then attach a deep weight to it and it would sink.

And that would be good for the environment because crammed at the bottom of the sea could bleed on it.

Yeah, they didn't do that.

They dug an enormous grave and then just slid him in.

And is it marked?

Has it become a destination?

There's a little can of stones, which marks the grave.

It's right next to the sea, obviously, inland.

It's not in a churchyard.

It's not in Birmingham or anywhere really, really far enough.

I don't know.

On top of a mountain.

Oh, we always love the answers.

Yeah, but they granted special permission.

There are only seven people at the funeral, which I find very sad.

How many whales?

None.

You know what we were saying earlier about how killer whales might slam into a boat?

Yeah.

And scientists aren't quite fully sure why that happens.

And there's a theory that the reason it happens is because if a boat is out at sea and it's turned its engine off, they think it's possible that the killer whales love going up to the back of the boat and feeling the water get propelled through the jet, through its propeller.

And it's a bit like the fun kind of like, like if you're in a jacuzzi and you've got the machine, yeah, exactly like that.

So if they see one and it's not on, the thought is is that they're slamming into the boat in frustration to make it start, make that thing happen that they're going to.

No one knows that for sure.

Well, the thing is, is if you look in the newspaper archives, you do see that every now and then there's a spike.

Like in 1953, there was a spike of if you search for orca ramming boat or killer whale ramming boat, you'll see one.

There was another one in 2001.

And it's just, I think it happens quite regularly.

And once one of them gets in the news, a few more people are like, oh, that happened to me today.

So let's get in that in the news as well.

I don't know if that's true.

I'm sure that's part of it.

Definitely, yeah.

They have periods.

Killer whales, they're one of the only other mammals to have periods.

But

sorry,

they have menopause.

And they're one of the only other mammals to have menopause.

They have menopause and you get postmenopausal females.

And we're not really sure why this is, why they have menopause, but it has been found that postmenopausal female orcas like to have sex with adolescent males,

young males.

And there's one particular

exactly, yes.

And there's a woman called Deborah Giles who's director of research.

She

does that as well, doesn't she?

Very hands-on research.

In case you're listening, I'm sure you don't do that.

You might do that.

It's fine if you do.

Right in.

Right in and let us know.

Deborah has had nothing to do with any.

She's just director of research at the Centre for Whale Research.

And she

explains the reason the old ladies are doing this to the young boys could be, so it could be to provide them a bit of sex ed, show them the ropes,

show them some good moves.

And also,

it's because

females who are looking for a sexually active male to copulate with, they reject ones that they don't think are quite up to scratch.

And young males, when they get rejected by the female orcas, get really upset and pissed off, much like a young 15-year-old boy who has been embarrassed in front of his friends when he asks out a girl, and it causes tensions in the group because these young males act out and they get disruptive.

So the older females who are postmenopausal, so they can't, they go and have sex with them instead.

Pity, pity, it's pity sex, yeah.

Yeah,

it's it's stiffless mom.

Stiffless mum.

It's not so much another 90s form reference for you.

Yes.

Killer whales,

they like changes in altitude.

So, if you get big ships that are kind of trying to catch fish at the bottom of the sea, then it's an easy place to get some fish if you're a killer whale.

Basically, you go down to where they're catching it, if they're dredging, then you might get some good

Patagonian tooth fish.

And they found that quite recently there was an adult female killer whale who got to the depth of 1,087 meters in order to get these fish,

which is about as deep as Mount Snowden is high.

Wow.

So that's quite a big altitude difference.

It's way easier to go down than to go up.

No, I just, as I said, I like visualizing it.

Okay, let's see you either walk to the top of Snowden, where, by the way, there's a train, or go all the way 1,000 meters to the bottom of the ocean.

Oh, look, I may not have the whale anatomy that makes it as easy as it is, but it's nice.

I don't know, it's easier to come up.

It's easier to float to the surface than it is to sink down.

You have to active push against the force of all that water.

Think of the pressure down there.

I'm finding it a bit hard though to visualize the Snowden reference.

How many volumes of the animal of the Johnson Dynasty are we talking about?

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