488: No Such Thing As A Furby in Space

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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things of Fish, which is the first in our run of live summer shows at the Soho Theatre in London.

We have all sorts of amazing guests lined up for you for the rest of the summer.

I won't go into that now because I really don't want to spoiler it, especially for the people who have tickets.

But what I can tell you is that in this week's show, we were joined by Jamie Morton.

Now, you will know Jamie if you listened to No Such Things a Fish before, because he has been on quite a few shows.

This is his third appearance.

But of course, he is most well known for being one-third of, let's be honest, the greatest British podcast of all time, My Dad Rotopono.

Now, one important thing to say about that is that the My Dad Rotipono team have chosen some of their funniest moments from across their six season run, including some Unheard Gems, and they'll be releasing best off episodes once a month, starting on Monday, the 31st of July.

I absolutely can't wait wait for those best of shows.

I'm sure you can't either.

But in the meantime, please do enjoy this week's episode of No Such Things as a Fish with Jamie Morton.

Okay, on with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Soho Theater in London.

My name is Dan Shriver.

I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin and Jamie Morton.

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 Jamie.

My fact this week, boys, is in 1782,

a woman found a drag performance so hilarious that she literally died of laughter.

Wow.

Probably not going to happen tonight.

Not with me here, for sure.

But yeah, isn't that mad?

Yeah, it's insane.

So

this was an act that was a

play called Beggar's Opera.

And it was someone called Charles Bannister who was playing a character called Polly Peacham.

And yeah, to give us a story.

Yeah, so Mrs.

Fitz Herbert okay suspiciously there's no first name but she was a widow of a Northamptonshire clergyman so she was quite it was quite salacious that she was even at this kind of submersive show okay and she found it so funny that this man came out

and he was described as lantern jawed with five o'clock shadow and a double chin in a lovely pretty dress and she just found it so funny she just couldn't stop laughing Yeah.

For three days.

Oh, wow.

That's the amazing thing.

Like, she had to leave the theatre, didn't she?

Because she was laughing so much.

But that's not when she died.

No.

The newspaper report said she couldn't get the figure from her memory.

So it's just every morning she'd just wake up and go, ah!

I mean, what a sheltered fucking life.

I'm sorry.

Like, if that makes you laugh that much to kill you.

Maybe it was a really good show.

Yeah.

Oh, the beggars are pretty.

It's a classic.

And the actor Bannister, he was one of the great actors of the the day.

He was very young.

He was.

He was famous.

A good name, too.

Charles

Bannister.

Yeah.

Yeah, so John Gay, The Beggars Opera, actually, that was the first play which had songs in it that were part of the narrative.

The Beggars Opera.

So pretty much the first musical, I would say.

Yeah.

And it was so popular, there was a thing called Beggar Mania.

And so you could go around, you could buy matchboxes, fans, fire guards, everything with this

show on.

Oh, there's like no such thing as a fish.

On your tables, there is a merchandise

leaflet.

I think it's got a QR code.

Genuinely, as I can see it, right?

Go nuts.

Get some of that merch.

Jamie, please, we rely on the merch.

We rely on the merch.

It's all that's keeping us going.

I was looking at people who had died on stage.

And I have like a weird connection to one of these people.

So Moliere.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Very famous French playwright, actor.

He collapsed on stage, ironically playing the lead in his final play called The Imaginary Invalid.

So, he was he literally died playing a hypochondriac, right?

And I have also

played the lead in the imaginary invalid.

Really?

Yes, yes, I know.

That's cool in my youth.

It's not that cool.

Thank you.

I sort of said that on autopilot, Jamie.

I wasn't actually thinking, that is really cool.

I don't care at all.

But no, yeah, but back in my youth when I used to, you know, tread the boards.

I I didn't die, obviously, but, you know.

The thing about him, actually, is because he was an actor, in those days, actors couldn't go to heaven.

So.

Wow.

If you...

I'm not sure anyone could go.

Well, no, let's not get into that.

That's an ecumenical matter.

But like, so

the thing was, if you're an actor, it was like, yeah, you had to renounce your acting job before you died.

So

on your deathbed, you might say, oh, I was never really an actor, or I wasn't a very good one, or whatever.

And then you would be allowed to go to heaven.

If you said, I'm really more of a playwright,

I'm more of a sort of immersive media creator, really.

I facilitated the heathens, I wasn't one of them myself.

But yeah, and the thing was, is that that meant that he was buried without, he wasn't allowed to be buried in a churchyard or anything like that because he died so quickly after this event.

Wow, okay.

I understand.

I went to see a mollyad player a few years ago.

Nice.

You were starring Jamie Morton?

Yeah.

No, no,

how was I?

Well,

it wasn't one with you in, but I did leave it halfway through.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So, in a sense, Molly died a second time that night.

Wow.

I'd say it's in the translation.

I think he's a fantastic player.

I'm sure he is.

There was a school party all around us, and it was tricky.

They were not having a good time.

And neither were we.

I've got a little quiz for you guys.

Oh, cool, great.

All right.

So, this is.

I'm going to say a thing, right, an object, and you have to say what it's used for by the Royal Shakespeare Company as stage gore.

Okay, oh, okay.

I love that.

So, in 2010, for example.

Oh, but Shakespeare specifically.

Yeah, okay, right.

These are all used by the RSC, right?

So, in 2010, the Royal Shakespeare Company, they used three tins of lychees during their summer season.

Bubos.

Not Bubo's?

Eyeballs.

Eyeballs.

Well, it wasn't actually an everyone play game.

That school party's in again.

These two.

No, just.

Wait for a second.

Just let

Eyeballs.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, yeah.

They can edit, though.

We can edit it though, yeah.

No, well, well done.

Well done to the people who knew it, and thank you.

Yeah, eyeballs.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

That's the, because

what scene, yeah.

Where they blind the Duke of Gloucester.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

He actually knew

very impressive.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, well, here's another one.

Chicken fillets.

Chicken fillets.

Boobs for bras.

To pump up the bras.

Actual.

What's that the real thing?

No, it's not.

No,

they're colloquially called chicken fillets.

They're not actual chicken fillets.

Well, I've got an Amazon delivery for my wife that she's going to be very confused about.

Flapping skin and muscles.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, no, it's.

Anyone in the audience?

It's...

Tongues.

Tongues.

Tongues.

And finally, tinned pears.

Tinned pears.

Tinned pears.

Tennis balls.

No.

Nothing.

Tennis balls.

I just say that.

Did you you say testicles?

I said half of it and then I pulled back.

Yeah, okay.

Well, I think testicles is a good call.

Okay, testicles.

All right.

Idiot.

You complete fool debt.

No, it's penises.

It's penises.

Tin pairs for penises.

Sorry?

What?

What?

Are you serious?

Penises?

Yeah.

Don't.

Andy.

What?

Sorry, what's the problem?

I've either been buying some really odd pairs or I need to see a doctor.

I think they're shaped a little bit, but I think it's the consistency and the.

I mean they're not.

It's the consistency of a tin pair.

Also, what are they doing with these fake penises that they need a good consistency?

I'm not sure I've seen that Shakespeare play where they all get their cocks out.

Which one is that?

Is it measure for measure?

That's right.

I don't actually, yeah.

Wow, that's amazing.

There we go.

And they have real, like, they have an amazing department.

And they have their their fake blood is a...

I don't know.

Could it be that you put it in your stockings and it gives you a shape, maybe?

I don't think I think it was for some...

There's some horrible...

Like, Titus Andronicus has lots of terrible torture and gore and all this stuff.

So they, like, it's rare.

It's not across the canon that you need a tin pair in the department.

But they've got these.

A tin pair.

Their fake blood recipe is secret.

And they've got three different consistencies.

And there was an interview with Helen Hughes, who's one of their very senior prop and design people and she was being interviewed about fake blood and they the interviewer asked her like what kind of what do you use for your fake blood and she said what kind of blood there's venal blood arterial blood newly dry blood crusty old blood they've got they can do all of it well no she's an artist she's an artist she knows her craft i know yeah helen

there was a there was a story which is um because you got this story from a giles brandreth um anecdote book didn't you yeah theater anecdote book the word fact would be questionable but yes, I did.

But there was, so there was a guy who was called William McReddy, and it was early 19th-century Shakespearean plays that he was in.

And he forgot basically to put blood on his hand because he was in Macbeth and he needed blood on his hand.

And he went to the side of the stage and it wasn't there.

It wasn't on the side, and he desperately needed it.

But there happened to be a bystander there, so he punched him in the nose.

And the

swiped the blood off his nose and ran back on.

Yeah.

According to Giles.

And that's where it falls down.

That's incredible.

But what happens when you die?

What do you mean?

What would happen to you as a person if you died?

What would you

think with what would you become?

Oh, a ghost.

A ghost.

I got so into theatre ghosts.

Oh, right.

Researching this.

There are so many.

Yeah, yeah.

Some of them are really tragic.

So actually, where this woman died of laughter at the Theatre Royal Jury Lane,

they're kind of their bit they've got it's i think it's the most haunted theatre in the world or they claim that you know and their kind of main event their big star is the is what's his name the man in grey Okay.

Who can be seen on like the upper circle, I think.

And he just like has a big cloak and is very menacing.

And it's actually founded in truth because when it was being renovated in the 1800s, they kind of found a bit of a fake bit of the wall and they looked into it and it was a little cubby hole and inside inside that cubby hole was a skeleton of a man with a dagger through his chest.

Wow.

And that's the exact place where this ghost has been spotted for centuries.

Very cool.

Dan believes it.

Dan believes it.

The theory of everything else.

I think

I feel like that would be retroactively have been inserted into a wall in order to...

Really?

Yeah, I've got very skeptical recently.

We need to move on, guys, to our next fact.

Okay.

Well, laughter can be very dangerous.

Yeah.

Right.

So there was a study from the University of Birmingham.

It was a meta-analysis.

So they looked at loads of papers.

And they found that laughter can cause abdominal hernia, dislocated jaw, incontinence, fainting, infectious diseases, because when you laugh, you breathe in a lot and you get lots of germs in your mouth.

Yeah.

Thanks for coming, everybody.

There's a thing called Bohar's syndrome, which is you laugh so much that you rupture your esophagus.

That can happen.

But despite this, they have laughing contests, and this is becoming quite common in America now.

Basically, you go in and you just try and make each other laugh.

And there's loads of different types of laugh.

It's like best giggle and best knee-slapping laugh and best belly laugh and stuff like that.

And apparently, the woman who won the American championship last year, she didn't tell anyone until afterwards, but she pissed her pants in the first round.

Oh, wow.

Is that an illegal move?

It feels like it must be, right?

Yeah.

Wow.

It was only like a couple of years ago I pissed myself while laughing.

And it's honestly, it's one of those moments where it's not embarrassing.

It's great.

It's a really wonderful feeling.

You feel like you've done laughter next level.

You feel like you've...

No, no, it was a late night.

I was quite drunk.

Someone said a joke and I just laughed so hard that I just, and it wasn't even like a little bit of weed.

It was like,

like total flood.

And I, honestly, I did not apologize.

apologize.

I was like, guys, you all need to try this.

I think we've forgotten how great this feels.

Okay, well, we've got three more facts.

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

My fact this week is that the first modern water bed was filled with jelly rather than water.

The problem was that it was too heavy to move and started to go rancid after a few weeks.

Isn't that incredible that it was jelly?

I find that one of the most astonishing facts on this show.

It makes sense, really, doesn't it?

If you want something, you know, nice and soft to lie on.

So, was it like it was it?

Was the bed like kind of the mold, the jelly mold, if you like, and you pour it in and then it sets?

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Um, yeah, I guess it must have been really, because you'd be weird to just shove in solid jelly into it, wouldn't it?

Um, I'm not quite sure.

He also used cornstarch as well.

So cornstarch would be soft, but then it's non-Newtonian.

So as you sort of push on it, it would get more solid.

Yeah.

But again, that went rancid as well.

What's a liquid that doesn't go rancid?

But he started it not as a bed, it started as a chair.

Yeah, so Charles Hall, this is right.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, Charles Hall.

So it was called the very first thing he invented.

It was called The Incredibly Horrible Thing.

And

it was a chair.

It weighed 300 pounds.

It had liquid starch inside it and had a vinyl skin.

And the point was that when you sat into it, the chair would creep up around you because you were molding into it.

It sits on you.

Kind of.

Eventually, yeah.

Kind of, yeah.

Okay, so he made that.

But what he really, really wanted to do was make an entire room that was a water bed/slash chair.

Oh, wow.

So it was almost a bit like a padded cell, I suppose.

But you would walk in, close the door, and wherever you were, you would just sort of sink into the wall or sink into the floor.

Oh my gosh.

But it was only because it was so expensive to make that you decided to go for the waterbed instead.

And what was expensive, manufacturing the jelly or the materials?

Well, the thing is, if you want to buy a room, you kind of need to buy a house as well.

Do you know what I mean?

You need to renovate your whole house to do that.

Whereas if you just want to buy a bed or a chair, you could rent.

Yes, you could.

Oh, but I don't think I'd want to rent a waterbed.

No?

No.

I mean, you could rent a flat and put your water bed in it.

Yeah, you could do that as well.

Have any of you ever slept on a water bed?

Yeah, my parents used to have mine.

I don't think I have.

Did they really?

Yeah, really.

They're so uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Oh, are they?

They're horrible.

I thought they were...

I read about them and said they're amazing.

Like,

they're the equivalent of pissing yourself while laughing.

Maybe mine was like an...

It was a friend's parents' bed

when I was a kid, and it was like being seasick it would like move it was honestly vile

and it was really cold like they hadn't heated the water oh but you can't you can get those now you've got oh oh thank god okay well it's all changed no charl charles hall these days who invented this thing what 50 years ago yeah he now he has two water beds

that doesn't that doesn't sound very impressive but he's got

Because they they come in different, it's different bladders.

You can say how many bladders are there in your water bed.

So he's got one king-size single bladder oh wow but he's also if only you had a king-size bladder that night guys

he's also got a in his guest room he's got a double mattress which has adjacent double bladders which so you can heat one if you want your bed a bit warmer than whoever you're sleeping next to oh really that's excellent you can hot water bottle your your own your whole your bed is the hot water bottle wow oh you're actually selling it maybe we should look at that one guys that's incredible this first one was the one that hall invented i think it was 1968 he He invented it.

He called it the pleasure pit.

And we should probably talk about the slightly...

It was a slightly sexy reputation they had.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

One of the manufacturers in the early days was called Wet Dream.

There was an advert,

not great advert, but it said, she'll admire you for your car.

She'll respect you for your position and she'll love you for your water bed.

So there was a kind of

lots of.

So he had invented it.

He had patented it, but everyone just did sort of spin-off water beds.

And he said that there was one company he noticed that it was sort of sexy because their other products were orgy butter and things like that.

Right.

And then when you read into Orgy Butter, and I did a lot of Googling of social

today on Orgy Butter.

You had to switch to Orgy Marge because of the cost of living.

Sorry.

So Orgy Butter was a thing.

And then when you look into, as you say, the sexual connotations about the early sales of the water bed, so a lot of it was that it was basically like having a threesome because the bed acted as the third person because it molded around you as you it feels like a third person as as part of the but hang on funny elves i'm sorry just like that's just like i feel an hour on this taking this like i'm just telling you about my experiences well these are the facts well you're telling us your parents did have one so you probably you probably conceived in it were you probably are you from a water bed I'm a god.

You're a water baby.

Nice.

Because, like, I don't want to be, like, let's not get too graphic, but like, there's got to be a purchase problem.

Supposedly, supposedly not.

It's a water bed.

Like, you're like sloshing around.

This is not

conducive to

popular.

I know they were popular.

At one point, I think a fifth of mattresses being sold were waterbeds.

Yeah, mattresses.

Yeah, I read that.

I thought that was.

That was in 1987, which is the year I was in soldiers.

And Hugh Hefner famously bought one for the Playboy Mansion that was upholstered in Tasmanian possum hair.

Isn't that the most disgusting thing you've ever heard?

They're not ever heard.

They're not very big.

To many Tasmanian possums hairs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it had this reputation for being very kind of like a sexual aid.

Another tagline for it was, two things are better on a water bag and one of them's sleep.

I know.

Like, one in five kinky people are just like getting off.

Well, your parents, one of them.

Yeah, two of them.

Two of them, yeah.

Getting off on water beds.

And honestly, it must have felt so sick because it's the worst thing to sleep on.

Isn't there a point where you stop, if you stop moving, the bed will eventually stop moving?

No, it keeps moving.

Oh, okay.

You're kind of like

you're lost at sea.

It's an extraordinary experience.

I can't remember.

I can imagine you bringing up the Coast Guard.

Away from the sexual side, it was also seen as quite therapeutic.

So, for example, the friends of Charles Hall, when he first invented it, said, well, you should name it the bed womb because it feels womb-like.

It's quite good.

It's a good line.

That's a good line.

Get a bed womb for your bedroom.

It's a good line.

And then there was in 1988, the American Journal of Disease of Children published an article in which they said that for infants that were born to drug-addicted mothers, if you kept them on water beds rather than bassinets, that would be better for them.

This sort of constant womb-like movement

going on as they sleep.

Yeah.

So it was seen as therapeutic as well.

Well, the thing is that he did invent the modern waterbed, but actually there were earlier ones and they were used therapeutically.

So they were used during the war to prevent bed sores.

These weren't like the ones that...

we had in the 80s, but they were just kind of like, I don't know, like, you know, one of those blow-up mattresses, but with water inside of it.

Yeah.

Mark Twain wrote about them.

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote about them.

Charles Hall couldn't get a patent originally because they'd been described by Robert A.

Heinlein.

And quite a few of his books mentioned them.

And when he tried to get a patent, they went, well, it's in all these science fiction books, so you can't have invented it.

So he had to change a few things to get that.

But when they became...

quite lame, which was quite quickly.

So they were like massive in the early 80s, right?

And then by the late 80s, they were really passe.

Like no one really wanted them anymore.

And they had all these water beds, beds, they didn't know what to do with them.

And they gave them to dairy farmers, and the cows would sit on them.

So, oh, and that's all they still do.

And the Queen's cows, um,

they famously sleep on water beds.

The king's cows.

Well, now the king's cows, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if he's changed it, though, but the you know, sure, okay.

I've been waiting 70 years to kick those cows off that bed,

they're my cows now.

That's what he was waiting for.

So, most if you're they're so heavy, as you say, they're so heavy.

Yeah.

The most impractical thing ever.

Like a normal mattress is quite heavy, you know, but if you fill it with water, you're joking, you know?

It's like, so some of them can weigh 900 kilos if you've got a big double or a king's.

That's a lot.

And there's a concern in some buildings, if you're in a flat or you're on an upper floor, obviously, and that it'll go through the floor.

And most New York leases contain a standard clause which says no water beds.

Right.

Probably because of it's a bit, you know, maybe it's just bureaucracy.

But in California, on the other coast, the civil code says landlords cannot discriminate against people who own water beds.

No.

As long as they have taken out waterbed insurance.

Right.

A responsible thing to do.

It is, though.

It is.

Well, I quite like it, as well.

In 1990, speaking of California, the Compton Fire Department, within their fire station, changed all the mattresses to water mattresses.

Not so that, like, if there was an emergency.

Just if they needed more.

No, no, no.

It was the effect on their back.

Apparently, someone had said I sleep better on a waterbed.

And so they all.

But that's all been disproven, that it doesn't actually help.

Because there's a lot of things that it helps your posture or like your joints.

That isn't true.

Really?

Okay.

Yeah.

Apparently, it's not true.

I'm just obsessed that there was a waterbed magazine.

Oh, yeah, I know.

I tried it.

In the 80s.

I tried finding it too.

Yeah, so did I.

Oh, my God.

Anyway, no, me neither.

So I think cool, great.

Okay.

But

I've bought us a lot of orgy butter.

Oh, great.

Okay, good, good.

Can I ask you guys one last thing?

How often often do you flip your mattress?

Do you mean flip it over?

What?

I mean.

What other interpretation

are you?

I was double checking because I thought I might have heard you say flick your mattress and I wasn't sure.

How often do you flick your mattress?

Twice a night.

No, how often do you flip it?

Well, this is what's amazing.

Not as often as I should, I'm sure.

And I was planning tomorrow to flip my mattress.

Yeah,

no.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because both Fanella and I are falling off the edges on both sides at the moment.

It's gone soft on the side.

On the outer edge.

Yeah, on the outer edge.

That's not going to help, though, because it's still going to be the outer edge.

I feel like it's upside down anyway, because I noticed recently I've been sleeping on a zip the whole time, and I'm pretty sure that's the wrong side.

Okay.

Some orgy butter will just sort that right out.

Just rub it in, you'll be fine.

Anyway, half Americans claim they flip it every six months.

And I just think half Americans are liars.

I think no one possibly does it that way.

But

why should you flip?

I think, I think it's

to it's no, it's well, I can tell you exactly why it gets soft on the outside and you fall off the bed.

That's why we're doing it.

Is it not to try and air it out a little bit or something like that?

I think it's so it's not the same bit of you always hitting the same bit of the mattress, right?

Okay, so it refreshes it a bit, it moves the scene around because mattresses are disgusting because they're full of like skin cells, sweat, like bed bugs.

So I think this is the way of just sort of redistributing the skin cells, yeah.

You should really get ripped.

They're so expensive, mattresses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're like thousands of pounds.

You can't just because you should really replace them regularly, I think.

But that's why you should get a water band.

Oh, yeah, because you just changed the water.

Well, not even, you know, because water doesn't go rancid.

Unlike jelly.

Yeah.

To bring us back to the start of the fact.

I need to move us on to our next fact, guys.

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

My fact this week is that there used to be a room in the Pentagon where employees met specifically to have Pokemon battles.

This is a discovery that was made back in 2016.

Was there a situation room elsewhere in the Pentagon where other officials monitor the progress of those Pokemon battles with big screens?

Do you think they have tables where they're pushing the Pikachu along?

Exactly, yeah.

That's the situation room.

That's what it's called.

So this is Pokemon Go.

There was a huge craze, particularly about.

Still is.

Yeah, but there was a moment.

Well, James is, what's that t-shirt you're wearing, James?

This is, I mean, this fact is up my street because I do like Pokemon and changing regimes in countries that I don't like.

So.

Jamie got political tonight.

James loves Pokemon Go so much.

I don't know if we've ever said this.

He likes it so much that when we went for a meeting for the first time ever, we were going to have a book of the year, no such thing as a fish book, and we were going to pitch it.

We ended up being a bit late to the meeting because we were following James, but it turned out James had spotted a very rare Pokemon down the road from where we were, and we just blindly followed him.

And then we were like, where are we?

And he was like, yes, snuffle off of us or whoever it is.

It was that week they did a Sesame Street special, wasn't it?

On Pokemon Go.

Okay, so here's the thing.

It's Pokemon Go, and Pokemon Go was the app, and you would go and you would collect the Pokemons in various different places.

You had to walk around, didn't you?

You would walk around and yeah, and then what they had as part of the app, I've never personally played it, so this is 101 for people that do.

You have gyms where you can take the Pokemon to the Pokemon you have collected, and they can train there, but they can also battle for dominance of the gym.

And those would be plopped all over the world in random spots.

And it just so happened that one was in the Pentagon.

And so anyone who was an employee there, and it would be specifically employees, because if you ever go on a tour of the Pentagon, you have to leave your phone.

You're not allowed to bring your phone in with you.

So it was specifically employees that were going to a very specific spot, and then they'd battle each other for dominance of this gym.

And this was a huge problem because the Pokemon app can track where people are going.

So their worry within the sort of the Pentagon was that.

it shows the routes that people are taking.

So if there are secret passages within the Pentagon or even just mapping out the general landscape, that's something that the information could possibly be hacked into and retrieved.

Someone might know that the Pentagon is Pentagon-shaped.

I mean, that would be awful.

Can you imagine?

So, they said, no more Pokemon Go in the Pentagon.

Do you know why the Pentagon is Pentagon-shaped?

I think this is amazing.

No, no.

It's because they were going to build it on a Pentagon-shaped piece of land.

And so they wanted the right shape of building for that piece of land.

So it had to be a Pentagon.

And then they decided to move it somewhere else.

And they thought, well, we've gone so far with this shape.

We might as well keep it.

That's literally the only reason.

I mean, there's lots of good things about it being pentagon shape, but the reason is just it was supposed to go in this bit of light.

That's incredible.

What are some of the good things?

Well, a circle is very good because you can get from one bit of a circle to another bit of a circle really quickly.

And a pentagon is a bit like a circle, but it's got straight edges, so it's easier to build than a circle.

Yeah, it's more of a circle than a square.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Less than a hexagon.

Oh, sure.

Food for thought tonight.

And d

in the centre of the kind of circular Pentagon is

a now closed hot dog stand.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

In like during the Cold War, the Russians always had at least two missiles aimed at this hot dog stand because they thought that that was the Pentagon's most top-secret meeting place.

It was just where people got lunch, but they were convinced that it was

because they saw people kind of congregate

and they'd be like, what?

That has to be the, that's the heart of the Pentagon.

When actually

it was just a hot dog stand.

I know.

Was it part of the Pentagon, this hot dog stand?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

It was inside.

I still feel like if the missiles hit it, the other bit of

suffer some damage.

Yeah.

It'll be so specific, the missile, that it's like...

No, yeah.

I mean, you know.

But isn't that fascinating?

Did they know that, the hot dog owners at the time?

I think they did because everyone used to call it Ground Zero, didn't they?

That was the nickname for it uh the reason being that if the russians hit it would become ground zero become flattened blimey yeah right um i read a thing that the pentagon own just their cool stuff division they own a laser which that's not the cool bit which can analyze who you are based on your heartbeat alone really so they'll you know you have it all of our hearts have the unique cardiac signature how we how our hearts beat yeah and they can point that laser at you from 200 meters away and say there's dan or whatever it might be.

What if I've just gone up a flight of stairs or something?

Would it change my heartbeats?

It would change.

Maybe it changes with the same, but it's still recognizably you.

Yeah, they go, that's James, and he's very unfair.

There's a few flaws to this thing, though.

It's called Jetson, which is what they've developed.

And the flaws consist of the fact that,

A, we don't really have that big a database of people's unique heartbeats.

So when everyone's coming, they can go, ah, ah,

no, I didn't do that, right?

And then the second floor, and this is, you know, 200 meters away, we can do this, is their claim.

The other problem is, yes, they can do it if you're wearing a t-shirt, but if you're wearing a coat,

they can't get you.

Yeah, so

it's half useful.

Yeah.

It's not as good as the fingerprint yet or the eyeball.

The light tree?

The light tree.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Do you know, I was reading about the Pentagon generally, about tour guides, because you can go there.

I imagine, Jamie, that's somewhere that you might have gone, but maybe not yet.

You haven't.

But you love this kind of stuff, right?

So

yeah, I actually have a friend that works at the Pentagon.

Do you?

He didn't reply to my emails about fun facts about the Pentagon.

So the security is really high, guys.

We're safe.

But one of the things is the stats that you get told about the tour guides that work there, and one of it is that they walk two to three miles per day.

but entirely backwards because when they're doing their tours, they never turn around to leave because they always need eyes on the people that they're taking on the tour guide so they guide themselves yeah they guide themselves by landmarks so as they're walking back they'll go there's the fire extinguisher that means you know 10 steps until you get to the next corner then i can round it like that and so yeah every day two to three miles of backward walking is what they get and there's loads of ramps that's really quite impressive to walk down a ramp backwards because you know there's like no lift to the

it was built with one lift yeah because it was built during the

World War.

Yeah.

It was made of concrete.

And in fact, it's nicknamed the Concrete Cobweb, which is cool.

And it had one lift for 33,000 people in the early days because you can't make lifts out of concrete, I suppose.

Right.

And they were saving steel for the war efforts.

They didn't want to.

Yeah, yeah.

But they've now put some more in.

They've now got dozens and dozens.

I love the idea of you repeatedly emailing your friend who's in the middle of looking at a screen and there's like a bomb counter on.

I know.

It's like, oh, it's somewhere in Ulaanbaatar, but I don't know where.

Just ping, ping.

Hi, just wondering if you saw my previous.

I was like, fun fact requesting.

Is it true that they used to have office chair races down the ramps in the Pentagon?

That's all I wanted to know.

I think what he's really going is, God damn it, Snuffaluffagus, come on, win this Pokemon battle.

No, we can't, because they've banned the Pokemon.

Yeah, of course.

They also banned.

Yeah, well, that was the whole thing that you aren't allowed it anymore, right?

Yeah, it's out, it's out.

Because they're banning things left and right at the Pentagon, like TikTok's now banned at the Pentagon.

But they also banned Furbies

in 1999.

Because they record.

What do you say?

Well, they don't, but they kind of marketed themselves as

the thinking toy or the chatty toy or something.

I don't know.

And they were like concerned that it would be a security risk that they would record what you were saying and then say it back to you.

That's so funny.

I think it's fair enough to ask people not to bring Furbies in.

It's the Pentagon.

It's an aspect of the spying thing.

It's weird having to bring your toy to work.

Well, you say that.

Pokemon Go is just as kind of

maybe childish.

I don't know.

I don't want to, you know.

But the

for all, I think we say for all ages, rather.

Sure, sure.

It's a game.

Three in the end, three episodes of no such thing as they should.

Going over the high.

The Furbies was really interesting, wasn't it?

Because the way they worked is they had a stock number of English words they had, and they had a stock number of Furbies words that were just like,

all that kind of stuff.

And it started off, they could just say the Furby words.

And then as you owned it for longer and longer, it kind of s put more and more of the English words into the vocabulary.

And so, people thought that they were picking up words that you were saying to them, but actually, it was just programmed to do that.

But that's I mean, that's a bit like how it is with children, isn't it?

Yeah, like they start off talking complete nonsense, and then by the end of their saying like nana or dog or whatever, no, yeah, no, yeah, yeah.

So, that's kind of maybe that's why they made the Furby like that, yeah.

Or maybe all children are actually fake,

prove me wrong, which is more likely, Andy, I don't know, uh, but yeah, like the guy,

the CEO of the company that made Furbies had to come out and say, this isn't true.

Our Furbies actually aren't as clever as we've been lying about.

Wow.

And he also said, you know, there was a rumor that they could send, they had enough technology to send somebody into space.

And they said that one woman...

Wait, wait, sorry.

Yeah.

Let's break that down a bit.

Wait, what are the like?

Somebody thought that Furbies had so much power that they could send a rocket into space.

Like, are we talking about a complete Cape Canaveral setup?

We can entirely stop.

I don't know.

Furbies at all the desks.

They're like, there's a Furby in the briefcase going onto the ship.

Actually, if Elon Musk zips down his jacket, it's just Furbies all the way up.

He is a Furby.

What does that mean?

They could send a rocket to space.

It's the AI worry of its day, I guess, right?

It wasn't true.

That's what he was saying.

Because he also said that there was a woman who was absolutely insistent that her Furby was singing Italian operas.

That also wasn't true.

Oh my god, but she was hearing she was convinced that she taught this Furby in Aria.

Yeah.

And she's like, my Furby's really good at opera.

And he's like, they literally don't have that capability.

So they kind of had to backtrack on all of their marketing campaign of that.

Wow.

These were like, yeah, clever toys, but they were actually all pre-programmed and what they could call them.

That's a scam, wasn't it?

Which could be a haunted Furby.

And that's a ghost, I will believe.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Imagine the next like crude moon mission that gets there and finds they have built their own society without us noticing.

The Furbies beat us to it.

Damn it.

The dark side of the moon is entirely Furby owned and operated now.

Have you heard of Tia Pikachu?

So she is a Chilean school teacher.

And they've had a load of protests in Chile against the government.

And she decided to go dressed as a giant Pikachu.

The reason being that her seven-year-old son had maxed out her husband's credit card buying Detective Pikachu merchandise.

They managed to send loads of it back, but some of it they couldn't send back.

And there's this giant sort of inflatable Pikachu they couldn't send back.

Okay, so then they have some protests in Chile, and she decides, well, I'm just going to go dressed as a Pikachu because why not?

It's a protest.

And she just became really, really, really famous because there was video of her being water, like fired with water

cannon, yeah, in a big Pikachu costume, being forced back.

She was shot with rubber bullets, dressed as Pikachu.

It's absolutely amazing, but because she became so famous, she is part of the team who are writing the new Chilean constitution.

So, after the protest, they decided that they were going to write a new constitution.

So, every five clauses, it's just going to say, Pika, Pika, Pika.

It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

My fact is that in 1972, a family who had survived a shipwreck kept themselves alive by giving each other turtle blood enemas.

Guys, it's a light-hearted and funny fact.

Let's just imagine, like, that family seeing each other at Christmas.

Yeah.

You know, they haven't seen it.

Shall we talk about that?

No, let's never talk about that again.

Never talk about it again.

No, come on.

Give us the context.

This comes from an amazing piece that was in the Financial Times by a writer called Kitty Drake.

And she was interviewing people who had

real knowledge of shipwreck and being castaway.

And she spoke to a man called Douglas Robertson, who was sailing around the world with his family, his siblings and his parents.

He was 18 years old, and their yacht was attacked by killer whales.

So they were halfway across the Pacific.

completely battered the yacht.

The family all abandoned ship into a small dinghy that was, I think there were seven people, six or seven people in this dinghy that was designed for one fewer than the number of people who ended up in it.

They were 200 miles from the Galapagos and the wind was going in the wrong direction.

So they were really in trouble.

They spent 38 days stranded in the Pacific and they were sailing towards the doldrums.

They were trying to get weirdly to the doldrums because there was a better chance of being spotted and detected where they were heading to.

So the doldrums is where there's not as much wind or exactly.

Sorry, yeah, the region where there's no rain.

But it does get lots of rain.

So anyway, so they're in big trouble.

They did manage to get some turtles on board, and they had to hunt the turtles that approached them.

And they used their blood as soup.

So that's a good thing.

Then, unfortunately, the water ran very low and they only had the old fish-polluted rainwater in the bottom of their dinghy.

And it wasn't safe to drink.

But the mother of the family, Lynn, was a nurse, and she realized you could absorb it safely through your bottom.

And so everyone in the family got a rain.

Guys, this is funnier than we're...

I feel like there's tension in the room.

They all make it.

They all made it and they got picked up.

It was all right.

Sorry.

They were all right.

But anyway, she worked out brilliant, an intuition that you could absorb it through your bottom.

So everyone in the family got a rain and turtle blood enema, and it gets into your system, but it doesn't go through your digestive system.

I'm getting confused when you say the enema bits.

What do you mean?

Up the bum.

Squirt it up the bum.

Oh, funnel it.

What have you been receiving?

Oh, it was i read.

I read.

Oh.

Where, where, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.

Just, where does the audio butter go?

Think

in those terms.

That's way more disgusting than that.

Yeah, it's horrible.

Because that's the thing.

Like, it's not just turtle blood.

It's disgusting.

Rainwater, it's like infected fish gut water.

It's thick water.

It's foul.

So the point is

that it's like if you drink this stuff, it's got all sorts of horrible things in it and it can make you really, really sick.

Now, if you go the other way,

then there's a way for the water to go into your body through your rectum.

Yeah.

But because you're already getting disgusting things going down there anyway, your body is protected against those disgusting things.

So it can still get the water, but it won't get the bacteria and all that.

So here's what I thought.

I thought they were removing the rectal membrane from the turtles and using that as a bag to collect the water.

Genuinely, that's what we're asking.

A bag to collect the water?

Well, you need to collect water to drink it through your fucking mouth.

How much water are you collecting?

It's got a massive fucking shell on it.

If you want to keep water,

if you ever get a turtle and you want to keep water, don't take the little bag out of its anus.

Just turn it upside down.

We've got to get to its asshole.

Jesus.

Wow.

Turns out it's Dan's last appearance on Ocean Season Fish as well.

I'd love to see you on one of those reality shipwreck shows, Dan.

Meanwhile, on Dan's Island, things have gone from bad to worse.

Cool.

Weirdly, I still think your one makes less sense.

I mean,

incredibly clever.

It's incredibly clever.

And it is the thing that saved their lives.

I mean,

they were really on the...

And they all just trusted Lynn when she said that?

She's a nurse.

She's a nurse.

I get that, but like, how often are you...

I did nurse her.

Okay.

That's not common knowledge, I would say.

I don't know.

Wow.

What I think is amazing is that there was the group, there was the husband and wife.

And I think they had, was it three or four kids?

It was three.

There were four, but one of them got off before this leg of the dragon.

That was lucky.

Fuck that.

Let's go, I'll die.

I'll just die.

Someone up.

So in this family of everyone putting stuff up their ass, there was one guy who'd only just met them.

Did you read his name?

He was called Robin Williams, weirdly.

Was he?

Yeah.

And And he'd just taken a job on the boat in return for his birth.

And, you know, just.

Yeah.

It sounds like such a tough journey.

Well, it was.

Oh, God.

They had to spend six hours a day just blowing the dinghy up, you know, just because it was...

It was constantly losing air.

And it's six hours a day.

Well, we've got nothing else to do, to be honest with you.

Well, you know, passes the time.

Yeah.

And they eventually got back, didn't they?

They did.

And then the husband and wife just immediately divorced.

No.

Did they really?

I'm afraid so.

So the guy who was kind of took them on this trip, Douglas, he wrote a book and went to live in the Med

and his wife became a farmer.

Oh, wow.

Oh, because they were farmers before they started.

They were

so they completely split up.

Yeah.

Wow.

Oh, that's sad.

That's sad, it is.

Did you hear?

There was a recent someone stranded out in the ocean and having to get by with what materials they had.

And it was a guy called Elvis.

And

he was found 120 nautical miles northwest of Colombia's Puerto Boliva I don't know how to pronounce that

yep and he survived he wrote help on the hull of his sailboat and so someone saw that but he was stuck out there for a long time

and he was 24 days I think he was out there and he survived almost exclusively on tomato ketchup from Heinz

and so that became the story when he got back and so they found him after being missing all this time and then Heinz decided that they wanted to give him a new boat because they thought this is amazing I thought you were about to say, like, give him some more ketchup.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a much better, that's good PR by Heinz.

Yeah, yeah.

So they thought.

Have they done it?

They did that.

Well, for ages, they couldn't find him.

So he disappeared again, but just into his normal life because he was, you know, he didn't make a big fuss of it.

So there was a huge campaign to find the missing boat guy who then, and they found Elvis, basically.

I mean, it was, yeah, a hard hashtag to use, but

they found him and he's now got his boat.

That's great.

But tomato ketchup is exclusively, yeah, what he was surviving on.

Gosh.

You can, just a tip for any of us who get shipwrecked,

do have a plastic bag if you can.

If you don't have a turtle to hand.

Yes.

Why would that be?

Well, you use a bag of water.

What are you using this bag of water for, guys?

Drinking out of?

Making fire.

You can make fire with a bag of water.

Oh, like a lens.

Like a lens.

If it's a clear bag, do make sure it's a clear bag.

A lot of caveats on this.

Not a bag for life.

Ironically, a bag for life wouldn't work.

That is.

Yeah, and you'd be kicking yourself, wouldn't you?

Paid 30 pieces.

No, a bog standard, like a clear plastic bag.

If you can make it into a round shape, you can use that to focus the rays of the sun onto your

Tinder, and then it makes five.

And if you don't have a plastic bag, you can use a light bulb.

So

if you don't have a light bulb, just have an idea.

Excuse my ignorance.

Like, would it not

melt the plastic or is that a stupid thing to ask?

It's not a stupid question, but I don't think it would.

I don't know why.

Maybe because

the point at which the raise focus is going to be the hottest point, which is not on the surface of the bag, it's on the whatever you're pointing it at.

Interesting.

I was reading some advice from a guy called Paul Hart, who is the Royal Navy's, he's a lieutenant commander for the Royal Navy.

And he was asked, if you get shipwrecked on an island, what should you be doing in order to survive?

So he wrote this big list of stuff.

And so here's the quiz-like moment here.

Oh, great, great.

Okay.

So

your boat has crashed on the shore, or your airplane has crashed into the ocean, and you've made it to shore.

What is the first thing that you should be collecting in order to survive?

From the

you're on an island, yeah.

So the sort of food.

Okay, so food would be a good idea.

Well, I would say the eight single C D's that I carry with me everywhere I I go.

A copy of the Bible that you always have.

A copy of the Bible.

And what would your luxury be?

A lovely bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Oh, lovely.

So the answer is, he says.

No, no, no.

A lifetime supply of Marmite.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Go on.

Get that right.

Orgy butter if that's not available.

Oh, God.

One of the same to him.

So life jacket.

Life jacket, no.

No.

Seats can be used as flotation devices.

I'm trying to remember what they've said to me.

What things are you going to take from your wreckage or things that are on the island?

No, things that you take from the wreckage.

Oh,

something to say.

The radio from the...

A knife.

No.

Well, knife is, yes, it's up there.

But he says...

A clear bag.

A clear plastic bag.

That's it.

That's it.

He says, Wellington boots.

Oh, okay.

What?

Sorry, when you get on a plane, do they just hand you some Wellington boots?

He's saying any kind of very strong footwear that you can have.

Because you're going to be going into the ocean a lot in order to get food.

You're going to be traveling.

Injury is the thing you need to avoid, most of all.

And your feet are most likely to be getting injured because actually on that ryanair thing it tells you to take off your high heels before you jump on the on the slide doesn't it yes and you're saying you're saying keep them on

is that

you're like no so that's that's the biggest thing that's interesting yeah

yeah i mean wellies is it is like quite a niche thing as as james just said to have yeah yeah yeah it makes sense i would personally get a knife

because then you can fashion some sort of like fashion make some welly oh come on mate wellies Come on.

But you could like get like either you've got to carve your own.

No way.

But you know what I mean?

But like a knife surely is the most important thing because that can that.

Actually, you can use it.

You can make shoes.

You can tap the rubber tree.

And then

with a simple mold fashioned from bark,

you've got your own welly factory then.

Look,

you could trade the knife for some wellies.

If there's some local welly owners.

There are local welly owners.

I don't think you need the wellies.

You can just leave.

Probably.

You're in North Devon.

Oh, my God.

It's so funny.

I read the U.S.

Army Survival Manual

to see if enemas were part of their

suggestion.

There is one mention of enemas in the whole survival manual, and the idea is to use warm water enemas as a way to treat hypothermia.

Oh, okay.

Apparently, it's good because it warms you up from the inside, if you think about it that way.

The thing that they said to drink is the aqueous fluid found along the spine and the eyes of large fish.

Right.

Oh, God.

Isn't that interesting?

Is that because it's less salty?

Yeah, so everything else that's in the fish, all the other bodily fluids, have got lots of protein, lots of fat, so it's going to make you more thirsty.

Yeah.

But just the water around the eyes and the water around the spinal fluid, that stuff is just perfect.

Right.

I just want to quickly mention this guy because one of the other things that this

Paul Hart that I was talking about, the guy who said that Wellington boots are what you need.

One of the things that he said that was really important was having positive mentality.

That's the main thing.

As soon as you crash, you go, fantastic, this is great.

And if you can keep that mindset, then you're going to be fine.

And that really kind of is, that comes into play when you read about the story of Jose Salvador Alvarenga, who was a guy who was out at sea with one other person for 438 days.

They were lost out at sea, and it was a positive mentality that kept him going.

And when he was interviewed by a journalist who wrote a book about it, he said, What's the thing that you remember most about it?

And he said, My imagination.

I imagined good food, and I had the best sex of my life.

And he used to, so they used to, the two guys used to see the planes that would fly over, that would never see them.

And they would go, What do you think they're eating up there?

And they would picture the food that they had.

And then they'd have sex with each other.

No, they never, they, they both would then have

the best food of their lives on a plane.

Has he been on a plane?

Bit of stale bread and something in a little reheated tray.

Yeah, great.

Better than whatever they were eating up their assholes at that time.

It was

they're on a dinghy now.

And so, and yeah.

Diggy food.

Oh, diggy food is terrible.

What's that all about?

Yeah.

So he used to, both of them would do this.

They would sit, but him particularly, he'd sit there every day.

He'd close his eyes.

He'd imagine that they'd actually crashed onto a beach and there was a beautiful woman walking towards him and they would have sex.

And he said every day he just had amazing sex in his head and that kept him positive.

Wow.

Yeah.

The other guy died, right?

Did he?

I think so.

Yeah.

He wasn't positive enough.

God's sake.

Unbelievable.

If you were just a bit more positive

as he's throwing him off the edge of the stinging.

I was going to ask, actually,

who?

No, just quickly, who out of

say the three of you got shipwrecked?

Who do you think would survive?

I would die first.

The fur.

I'd die within 30 seconds.

Do you think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

I would start an egg.

I would start another one.

We're going to have to eat him.

There's a guy selling.

Well, I can do something.

No, no.

Cannibalism returned to North Devon today.

Oh, my God.

And Dan's probably the most positive, so I guess you went.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan will be having fantastic sex

and eating delicious plain food.

Oh, God.

What a treat.

All right, we need to wrap up.

That is 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 have 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 Jamie.

At Uncle Eagle.

Yep.

Or you can get us on our group account, which is at no such thing.

Or you can go to our website, no such thingasoffish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

Do check it out, as well as Club Fish.

Very exciting place.

But

that is all for tonight.

Thank God.

Putting an end to this.

Thank you so much, Soho.

That was awesome.

Thank you for coming to our show tonight.

And we're going to be back again next week with another episode.

And we'll see you then.

Goodbye.