469: No Such Thing As A Rubik's Tube

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Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

We have another very special guest for you today, and that guest is our very good friend, Lucy Porter.

You will remember Lucy from previous episodes on Fish.

I know you'll love her.

She's so smart.

She's so funny.

In fact, she's got a stand-up show that is touring at this very moment, which is called Wake Up Call.

And really, I'll be honest, the best way to find out about that is to Google Lucy Porter Wake Up Call.

And you'll find all the dates, but she's doing the whole of the UK.

It's definitely a show that's worth going to see.

She also has a podcast called Fingers on Buzzers.

It's all about quizzing and she does that with my very good old friend Jenny Ryan.

It's a brilliant podcast, so listen to that.

And And she has a Radio 4 stand-up special called Lucy Porter's Lucky Dip, which is going out at 11:30 on March the 15th.

It'll probably be on the BBC Sounds app after that.

So again, Google Lucy Potter's Lucky Dip and you'll find that.

And apart from that, just enjoy the show.

So nothing more to say apart from on with the podcast.

On with the show.

Oh, hi, Andy.

I've been here the whole time.

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

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Lucy Porter.

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 my fact.

My fact this week is that it took the creator of the Rubik's Cube a month to solve it the first time he tried.

That is mad.

A month

of really trying as well.

So crazy.

I would have thought after about 20 or 30 days, you would just make a new one if you'd invented it.

Well, this doesn't work.

So, yeah, invented 1974.

He was a professor, and he just had this idea.

What if I could make something that was static on the inside but fluid on the outside?

And that's what gave him the idea.

And he had a bash at it.

It's later been worked out, quite a famous number, if you know Rubik's Cubes, that 43 quintillion is the number of permutations that you can make on the Rubik's Cube.

And so luckily he got there within a month.

Yeah.

That's pretty good.

Well, I'll tell you what's weird.

His prototype wasn't three by three.

His prototype was two by two.

So I've got this.

And that took him a month.

That's the thing.

Well, I'm curious to know if this is the one that took him a month, because this is...

Okay, so Dan's showing us an image and it's like four wooden blocks that have got various colours and numbers on it and they're held together almost by bits of wire.

Yeah, there's a wire meshing inside and he took a month to do a Rubik's Cube.

It must have been a 3x3.

It must have been a 3x3.

That one's piss easy.

Yeah.

If you're clever enough to make that, you're clever enough to solve it.

Yes.

You can do a Rubik's Cube, James.

I can.

I think you can, Lucy.

Well, I, yeah, my children are obsessed with them.

We've got the hundreds in the house, and all those weird ones, you know, there's like weird different shaped ones and mirror ones where there's absolutely no colours on it and stuff.

So this is a long way of me saying I should be.

And I have at one point been.

Wait a second, because James, you know what I mean?

Well, I don't want to do this one.

Because that one's tough because it's got like Dan's mixing up one from the Transport Museum.

I'd rather do the one with the colours.

James, you do the one with the colours.

The other thing is about the Rubik's Cube is that I find that when you're under pressure, it's almost impossible.

Yes.

Because you do it kind of with muscle memory.

Yes.

And then as soon as you start thinking about it, you can't really do it at all.

Yeah, I made a terrible decision when, because I did learn to do it when my kids got into it.

And then I decided we were doing a live podcast recording of fingers on buzzers.

And I said, oh, I see what will be fun.

I'll solve a Rubik's Cube while we do this round.

And it took about 15 minutes.

Is there an algorithm basically?

It's like a set pattern of moves that will help you work on the side you're working on.

But layers, that's the key.

Yeah, exactly.

It's layers, not sides.

Are you using that?

So you can see at the moment that I've done the bottom layer.

Right.

Or the top layer.

Right, right.

And then you do the middle one, then you do the top one.

I remember when we went on Only Connect, Andy, and they asked you for facts about yourself.

And my fact was that I could do a Rubik's Cube in less than a minute.

And the team that we were playing with, apparently one of them said that he could do three Rubik's Cubes in 30 seconds.

They decided they weren't going to use that fact.

Made you look pretty foolish.

But it's huge, the speed cubing, because we had to get a timer so that we could record my kids' times.

And also, my kids said, oh, can we have some cube lube?

And that's a moment that I was like, I'm sorry.

As a mother, you've got to worry.

Could we have some cube lube?

Is there a brand?

Is it a specifically sold lube?

There is one of the best cube lube.

We didn't get a good cube lube.

So we call it cube lube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We got dodgy cube lube.

And it's allowed as well.

It's allowed in competition.

Yeah, yeah, you're aware of it.

It's like chalk on your hands if you're an athlete.

Yes.

Well, there's just

a piece about the, you know, there are so many cubes.

The world.

There we go.

For listeners, James had just completed the rubbing somewhere.

That's why I've been silent for the last three minutes.

But by the time I've edited this, it'll be about 20 seconds.

But it just listed the GAN 356 iCarry, the MoU RS-3M Maglev, the GAN 11M Pro, and it's all, there's a kind of FIFA of cubing.

The World Cube Association.

It's sad.

They're corrupt.

They're hugely corrupt.

Millions and millions of dollars change hands.

So, 1981, the top-selling book in America was a book that was called The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube.

Sold six million copies, and it was the number one book of the year.

It was massive.

Guy called James G.

Norris, he was a professor.

He did it as a pamphlet for his university.

And then someone saw it and said, Can you expand that into a like 64-page book?

So it wasn't that big.

And it was double the expansion of the pamphlet.

And so he published it.

And in it, he gives categories of what you're labeled as as a cuber if you manage to do it within certain times so this is 1981 20 minutes if you did it in that time you were a whiz 10 minutes you were a speed demon five minutes you were an expert and three minutes you were an mc the master of the cube oh that's what i am learning yeah you're a master of the cube well in the 80s you in the 80s

let's not it's actually been updated so 2013.

James, if you take longer than 60 seconds, I do.

I take probably about a minute and a half Okay, I'm afraid you don't even qualify as a whiz at this point Whereas a whiz was 20 minutes It's now 60 seconds

to 40 seconds Oh my god an expert has gone from five minutes to 15 to 25 seconds and the master of the cube which is now called world champion from three minutes to three to five seconds That's amazing the difference isn't it?

I can't even pick it up within three seconds

my old arthritic fingers but I because I remember you know I remember the original crate in the 80s I'm old enough for that and it was but it was one of those things that boys would learn to do and this is a terrible sexist generalization but it did tend to be boys would learn to do it thinking it would really impress the girls and all girls just went meh

I found that I've never ever impressed a girl with a Rubik's Cube I impressed the QI's accountant once oh yeah with a few Rubik's Cubes tricks but he wasn't my type

I did because I brought mine in today so I did sit on the tube doing it and you people don't look at you with admiration i'll be honest

it's pity uh no one going no no honey honey we'll just have to get up at the next stop like me to is she gonna do it

um the the craze just is unbelievable the 80s craze so it was the uk toy of the year in 1980 and then again in 1981 as if they just thought we've got to give it to the cube again yeah nothing better um so dan you were mentioning the books that sold unbelievably well so at one point in 1982 i think it was four or five different books on on the New York Times bestsellers list were Rubik's Cube books.

There was a boy called Patrick Bossert who was 13 years old and wrote a book called You Can Do the Cube and sold nearly a million copies of it.

He was the youngest ever author on the New York Times bestseller list.

It kind of came from nowhere, right?

Like Dan says, it was invented in 1974 and this was 1980.

In 1981, there was absolutely huge.

I looked on the newspaper archives and the first mention of it, it doesn't even call it the Rubik's Cube, it calls it the Hungarian Magic Cube.

And this was in 1979.

This is in the observer, and they said that at first, most people tried to take the cube apart, but that is not the object.

And it said, if you even get one face done of the cube in 20 minutes, then you've done well.

And it says, but there are several people, brackets, well, at least three, that are able to solve the cube in less than five minutes.

Wow.

Dan, you mentioned that there are 43 quintillion different states that you can have.

The newspaper said, and this was in 1979, at one per microsecond, a computer would take around 3,000 million years just to count up the number of states.

Wow.

And in 2022, we got the first ever quintillion per second computer.

So today, a computer could reach it in just under a minute.

Wow.

I think what's extraordinary, the numbers are so bamboozlingly big.

I remember reading an interview with Erno Rubick where he was talking about the fact that he'd invented more kinds of Rubik cubes now.

And there was a snake Rubik's Cube that he'd invented.

Did you buy that, Lucy?

I did.

I did have it.

Yeah, the Snake on the Rubik's Snake, which sounds a bit dodgy now.

Why did they call it the Snake or not?

The Rubik's Cube.

Sorry.

Very nice, yeah.

Very good.

But he said that, and this one has potentially even more permutations.

And the guy writing the article just went,

once you've hit 43 quintillion, I'm not impressed anymore.

But what's interesting, so very randomly, day before yesterday, I bumped into a Rubik's Cube Guinness World record holder.

He's a guy called George.

He holds two records, one which he's just done, which I'm not allowed to reveal.

I know.

How cool is that?

I've got secrets.

Oh, my God.

Rubik's Cube Goss.

I'll tell you guys after the show.

The other one is that he has the most Rubik Cubes solved while riding on a skateboard for, I think, like an hour or something.

He did like 500 of them just going around a skate park.

Quick question, Dan.

Did he have on him a bag of 500 Rubik's cubes, which he then had to get out of the the skateboard.

No, you have a big sack of

it.

It wasn't like Santa, yeah.

He was what he was was he had people stationed around the skate park, so he'd hand the solved one to the person, they would mix it back up, and he'd grab a new one because he was traveling around.

Um, so they mixed them back up again, so he used the same one.

It feels kind of pointless, it's like a punishment from the gods, actually.

Yeah, he's Sisyphian, isn't it?

Yes, yeah, that's right.

So, he demonstrated one thing I found amazing, which is to do with the bamboozling numbers.

If I took this right now and I mixed this up to give to him to solve, whatever I've just done here is a combination that he will have never seen yeah in his life every combination is unique because of the 43 quintillion

I think what's extraordinary like when it started getting big there was a big concern that is this thing solvable so there was a world fair that he was taken to and he's not a particular he's quite a philosophical guy he's quite sort of very serious and he wasn't the best ambassador of what this item was, but they needed him there to prove it could be solved.

Otherwise,

it was the Americans, wasn't it?

Yeah, they got sent to an American toy company, and they thought, well, this is a good toy, but it probably can't actually be done.

And I think they sent an executive to Budapest to meet Rubick.

So, if you can solve this, we'll make it and we'll manufacture it and we'll distribute it.

And then they sold 150 million in the next three years.

But they sold it thanks to the most famous Hungarian at the time.

So, Rubick obviously couldn't really do all the press and stuff.

Such a great question.

I'm going Jajar Gabor, but I can't imagine.

Was it?

Absolutely, Jajar Gabor.

Jaja Gabor?

Yes, Rubik's Cube?

That is not a Venn diagram.

Amazing, right?

So this is the earliest mention of the actual phrase Rubik's Cube I could find.

This was from 1980, and Jajar Gabor had put on a party for the Rubik's Cube, where she invited all of her Hollywood friends

with a buffet of Hungarian delicacies, it said, but it didn't say what I suppose gulash, but I'm not sure what else was there.

And yeah, that was, she was hired by the Ideal Toy Corporation to promote the to promote the Rubik's Cube and she said even if you can't solve it the cube feels so good in your hands it may replace worry beads oh nice oh yeah like the original fidget spinner or like a those new poppers

I mean that is true if you do just play with the Rubik's Cube even if you don't solve it it is fun to play with it yeah yeah well especially if you've got a cube lube because then it really oh it flies through your hand I saw an interview with him from quite early and he said that children are better than adults at solving it.

Which, would you agree with that, Lucy?

My own anecdotal experience would bear that out.

Was it Rubick?

That was Rubick that was saying that.

He had a couple of reasons why he thought that kids would be better

nimble risks.

Turning, I think, purely physical terms, smaller hands, so you know.

Yeah.

And I suppose fearlessness.

Like, I always think with technology, my kids will just pick up anything and go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Whereas I am hovering,

tempted to think,

and I think I overthink it a bit, so maybe there's a sort of an impulsiveness.

I think overthinking is kind of one thing he said.

So he said it requires a certain innocence that children had, because adults will try out a pattern and it doesn't quite work out, and they'll just never do that again.

Whereas kids will keep trying things.

And the thing is with the Rubik's Cube is it is all algorithms and it's just repeating things again and again and again.

And so kids are good at that.

He also said that kids, and I think this is probably quite true, is certain kids anyway will get very absorbed with one thing and won't let anything else distract them, they'll just kind of concentrate on it and do it.

And the other thing he said is that kids have good visual memory, and that is true.

Children can have much better visual memory, and until around 10 or 11 or 12, they have almost eidetic memories that they can just remember things really well.

Oh god, that's interesting.

Do you say anything about the wrists?

He didn't mention nimble fingers at all.

It was weird.

Because I know Rubick was Hungarian.

In 1981, the spokesman at the Hungarian Embassy in London said, The cube is our secret weapon to pacify the West.

Wow.

There was even a cartoon.

Did you guys see the cartoon?

Rubik's Cube.

It's a sentient Rubik's Cube that is.

Oh, gay Latin, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So great.

And it was a Rubik's Cube that was completely useless if it was out of position.

So, and that could happen quite easily.

If a passing pigeon knocked it, it would just sort of go and it would become useless.

But if it was in its right solved state, it was this powerful, sentient thing.

Could he change, could he solve himself, or did he require

required?

Yeah, nice, that's a good shot.

Yeah, so it's called Rubick the Amazing Cube.

And it has, and there's, I love it, his IMDb page has, you know, goofs.

One of the goofs is, even in its solved state, the colours of Rubick are often in the wrong position.

White is always across from yellow, correct?

Yep.

Yep, yeah.

Yeah.

And so it says, in many of its solved states, the colours are sitting next to each other that shouldn't be.

So yeah.

What a blueprint.

But, yeah, but it was actually not a long-lasting series, but it was very much praised because the

long-lasting format.

But

the family that were entrusted with the Sentient Cube was a Latino family, and that was not shown on TV really back then.

It was a very progressive show.

It was seen as, you know, it's nice to see a family who aren't white.

It's the leads in a cartoon.

Bring it back, is what I'm saying.

They didn't announce a film in 2010, which I'm not sure

ever saw the light of day.

They met with loads of them, didn't they?

Lots of them.

Like loads of toys, and they made one or two, like battleships they made.

Battleships got made,

but they also announced Ridley Scott's Monopoly, which I don't think happened unless I really missed it.

But they're about to do Tetris as a big series.

Oh, yeah.

I think guess who would be a very good one?

Yeah, because you know, he's very instantly recognisable characters.

A mystery, do you think, like a mystery

because

did the suspect wear a hat?

It's the weirdest follow-up to Knives Out.

Yeah.

Operation, that'd be another good one.

That'd be a great one.

Operation, yeah.

Grueling, harrowing medical job.

It's his bunny bone.

Let's get the tweezers.

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

It is this fact.

On at least three occasions in the last 16 years, the government of Shanghai has tried and failed to stop people wearing pajamas outdoors.

Which seems, I mean, famously, Chinese authorities are so laissez-faire, aren't they?

I kind of can't believe that.

The fact they've tried and failed is quite interesting.

It doesn't say much for the all-powerful machinery of the state.

You can't even stop people wearing their pajamas out.

I don't think they've sent the army in.

I think

they've just disapprovingly said you shouldn't do this.

No, well, they haven't really tried then.

Yeah, there's been several attempts because it's quite a big thing, particularly in Shanghai, for people to wear pajamas out and about.

And they think it's partly because in the early 20th century, it was a real status symbol to be able to afford imported pajamas.

So, people would

take to the streets in their finery, going, Look, I can afford these and slippers, and

they've got little teddy bears on them, or whatever.

And so, it was sort of a status symbol, and then it's just become a thing.

And I mean, I'm all into it because I wear pajamas at all times.

I'm doing a tour at the moment in which I wear pajamas, so I'm very much on the side.

On stage, you're in the pajamas.

Yes, yes, because I decided during lockdown, there's nothing you can't.

Like, if I do a Zoom and the other person is wearing something smart, I think you absolute loser.

Why would you dress up to have a meeting in your own home?

Especially now, you think if they're not wearing three layers and a blanket, you think, ooh, showing off, you can afford heating.

So what you're doing then is possibly what they're doing in China as well, which is you've got daytime pajamas and then you'll go home and you probably have nighttime pajamas that you wear, right?

This is what they do in China.

So these aren't the pajamas they're waking up in and just going out onto the street.

They'll get out of their pajamas to put on some pajamas to then go out into the street.

Yeah, they are the daywear pajamas.

I can't say that for everyone, but that's for a lot of people.

To be honest, I would try and get away with going, oh, no, these are my fancy pajamas.

And they'd be like, why have they got egg stains on there?

No.

No, no, I definitely didn't sleep in these.

Definitely didn't.

Have you ever done a school run or anything in your pajamas, Lucy?

Well, do you know?

I was on Five Live the other day because the Prime Minister's wife had gone and done the school run in her slippers, except they were like £500.

I saw this.

And five live phone me up and said, oh, for our breakfast show tomorrow, do you want to do a phone-in about should you be allowed to wear slippers on the school run?

And of course, I'm desperate to promote my tour, so I said yes.

But the great thing was, nobody cared.

And it was one of those, it's lovely when you're part of a sort of supposedly controversial phone-in that is not at all controversial.

Did people just phone in and say, I don't care?

Yeah.

They just said, well, you can wear what you want.

This is a tantrum.

Do you know the most amazing radio phone-in I've ever heard?

I was in

a cab on the way somewhere or something.

It was quite a long journey.

This is 2020.

And it was: if we get a new royal yacht, right?

Oh, yeah.

Should Prince Andrew be allowed to go on it?

Okay?

There's not going to be a new royal yacht.

It's just not.

No.

And people had such strong opinions.

This must have been in the first two months of 2020, I hope.

It was.

It was.

Yeah, yeah.

The

events overtook that one.

Where do you stand on what should Prince Andrew be be allowed on the roll yacht?

Oh god, he's actually thinking about it

It's a tricky one isn't it because it's a it's a taxpayer-funded yacht.

Yeah, you know if they're buying their own yacht they can do what they like on it, I guess.

Yeah, but if we're if I'm paying for this yacht Yeah, I think I am actually angry about it.

I think he shouldn't be allowed to go on it

What if he's not allowed to come above decks?

What if he's only allowed in the car?

I think he shouldn't be allowed to be in steerage.

That's fine.

That's more work.

You can't keep him like hidden in a basement.

You don't want to get on that yacht and then discover Andrew Gasseller.

Oh, God, no.

They used to use sign language on the old Royal Yacht.

Did they?

Yeah.

Because they wanted to keep it quiet for the Royals.

So they had this complicated system of, like, waving at each other.

That's not...

So not typical BSL sign language.

No, sorry.

They had a specific like a royal yacht based hand language.

Like the people on Rainer, when they need a new tin of Pringles, they have a special sign that they make.

Do they?

Yeah, yeah.

The attendants, they have a secret sign language code

for whatever they've run out of.

And you'll notice it now.

Next time you go to flight, you'll notice that.

Do they make the shape of a hyperbolic paraboloid for a Pringle?

I don't know.

I'm not party to the code.

I just, I know that they exist.

It's so good.

Like bookmakers.

Bookmakers.

Oh, nice.

Perfect.

I can get us back to pajamas.

Go on.

The other thing they did on the royal yacht was I think they wore soft-soled shoes, the crew, so they weren't stamping around the decks and presumably infuriating Princess Margaret or something.

So they had a specific, you know, yeah.

Everything was designed to.

Well, speaking of pajamas.

Oh, yeah.

They did used to be outdoor things, didn't they?

Well, they originated in like Persia, Ottoman Empire, and they were just basically...

loose-fit trousers which you would tie around the waist.

They were taken by the colonial British and they realised that actually they were quite nice to sleep in.

So that's how they became pajamas.

But Coco Chanel thought that we should wear them down the beach and they became really fashionable.

People wearing pajamas down the beach in the 1920s and 30s.

Ah, really?

Yeah.

There was a place called, uh, I don't know how to pronounce it, it's in France, so it's J-U-A-N.

So is it Juan?

Juan Le Pin.

It is Juan Lapin.

I think it's Juan Le Pin.

I've seen it and not been able to pronounce it, but I'm going to go with Gustav.

It feels like Juan Le Pin feels like the nice way to say it, right?

But it was called Pajamaland in English and Pajamapolis in French because there were so many people in pajamas on the beach in that town.

I think it does come come and go as a fashion, doesn't it?

And there's pockets of it.

I remember being in Cardiff for quite a long time, and there was one area of Cardiff where everybody went out in their pajamas all the time.

Is that right, really?

Day pajamas or the ones they slept in?

I think the ones they slept in, but it's a fine line between leisure wear.

But the, there's been, shall I tell you about the various attempts to shut down pajama wearing in

China?

Yeah.

So in the 1990s, there was an education campaign and they put signs up in Shanghai saying, please don't wear your pajamas.

2008, the Rixen neighborhood in northeast Shanghai had a public campaign saying don't wear your pajamas.

But then 2020 in Suzhan City, which is near to Shanghai, there was a social media post entitled Exposing Uncivilized Behaviour, Increasing the Quality of Residence and the local government put out various pictures of people who were engaged in antisocial behaviour, including seven people in pajamas and they used facial recognition technology to find out who they were and put their names up.

Which, what you need there is you need pajamas that have got some sort of balaclama.

A sleep mask.

Oh, a sleep mask exactly.

But yeah, it does seem extraordinary.

I think around the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 as well, there was quite a campaign to stop people wearing their pajamas.

Yeah, that was a big one, wasn't it?

The government at that one hired sort of 500 members of the public who volunteered to sort of stand at bus stops and just, just if someone in pajamas came along, go hey that looks daggy you need a change out of that mate

500 oddies

do you know what kind of pajamas james bond wears

or what he wears to bed surely he doesn't wear anything i mean because i don't think pajamas are sexy are they can they be sexy well great point because they're obviously fancy silk pajamas which might be sexy or there are sort of grubby cotton ones which might not be or might be sat pajamas aren't sexy because they cling it's like you get static unless it's proper

yeah you get proper silk government, but that's a problem.

All the balloons in the house which had

sexy sales totally.

So Anthony Horowitz is a thriller writer.

He writes lots and lots and lots of books.

And he, for a while, was the, he wrote James Bond sequels.

He was the official sanctions

estate choice for, and he wrote a couple of Bond books, and one of them was called Trigger Mortis, right?

And he wanted to, great name.

And in the start of the book, pretty much the opening chapter, Anthony Horowitz wrote a description of Bond, jumping out of bed naked, and he sent this off to the Fleming Estate, and they got back in touch.

They said, you can't have that because it's official Bond canon in one of the books.

I can't remember which one it is.

I think it's You Only Live Twice or something.

Bond wears a bed jacket, which is

maybe the least sexy item of clothing you could possibly imagine.

It's kind of buttons up to the neck and it goes down to the knees.

And I think it's like a sort of wee-willy-winky night shirt style.

So he just rewrote it not saying that Bond was naked.

He just didn't, and he didn't describe the bed jacket because he thought that would be a way of

destroying it.

Bond undid the top button of his night jacket.

Bond hung up his nightcap on the side.

You just imagine a little packet of Rennies in the pocket.

Oh, there's a hanky in there.

What's happening there, Bob?

Interestingly, for a very long time, the classic trouser pajama with the jacket button up kind of thing.

For a long time, worn by men, and that changed during World War I.

This is where women started wearing it.

This is according to a professor at the University of Glasgow called Lucy Whitmore, who talked about the fact that Zeppelin raids meant that whenever you heard the alarm and you needed to run out of your house, it got to a point where you became quite conscious of what you were wearing.

You would come out in your 90, you might look a bit disheveled, and also it's not the most practical thing to be running around in a 90.

So to begin with, at the start of it, it would be people would leave very nice looking jackets in a very good spot so that as the raid was happening and they would grab it and go out and look fashionable.

There was an old lady who suggested leaving an emergency toupee by the door as well so you could grab that on the way out.

And then eventually people started wearing, women rather, started wearing pajamas.

And the popular color was dark blue because if you're outside, you obviously don't want any Zeppelin.

Oh, come on.

You don't want to give away, I guess, if you're being bombed, you want to do everything to stop yourself from being seen, right?

Is that also why you need the toupee to stop the bulb and

let fly flickering back up?

Yeah.

Dan Widley, I found the same Zeppelin-based First World War faction.

I went to the library to do a bit of research on this one, and I got a...

There are a couple of books about the history of underclothes, and I sat there looking like a dirty old man sitting in the library.

Well, you did have your penis out.

You should never.

Hodler Q Blue, wouldn't they?

But almost every page in the book had

a line drawing of some corset or some

girdle or something.

And I just, I was quickly flipping through.

I'm just here for the pajamas, actually.

Or the least sexy.

Do you know what, though?

Anyone looking at that would go, that is the most adorable thing if that's how you're getting your kicks.

I look at line drawings of ladies' petticoats.

It's just

it's not Andrew Tate, is it?

Let's be honest.

And what did you find?

Anything extra on the underclothes?

Because they were, the onesie was sort of invented in that period as well, wasn't it?

We know Winston Churchill used to love wearing a onesie, and that was a World War I.

I called his like a boiler suit.

Siren suits.

Siren suits of the air raid sirens.

He had slumber suits.

I think that was later.

I think he just realised he meant siren suit because of the air raid sirens.

I was thinking that he would sit on a rock and sing.

Imagine if he had a lovely singing voice.

We'd never really heard him sing.

I wanted to meet them on the beaches.

We will seduce them on the beaches.

Most men claim not to wear anything to bed.

But you're doubting them, okay.

Interesting.

I am doubting them, I think.

I think pajamas have a reputation of being a bit cozy and a bit comfy and a bit, you know.

Yes.

I think there is a sense that men want to be thought of as being tough and rugged and like, oh, I don't wear anything to bed, even if it's minus four in the house or whatever.

Is there not, and it now, listen, I know nothing of the male anatomy, I'll put that right out there, but is there not do things not get a bit twisted and I I would imagine discomfort if you slept completely naked as a man?

Do things not

is it not nice enough?

That's all right.

That's okay.

Is it all right?

Oh, okay.

Good to know.

Good to know.

Thanks for that.

Yeah.

I've never been welcome up by that.

You've never twisted anything, were there?

Scott, trapped under the bed again.

Honey, you're going to have to find the fire brigade again.

Or if you tried to leap out for an air raid and you've got to catch you up, that's what we've got.

I feel like that was one of the weirdest moments ever on our podcast where you had three guys sitting here picturing ourselves naked in bed.

The poor listeners now.

The mental images, please send in your fan hearts.

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

My fact is, the flow of the Amazon is so big that even 100 miles into the Atlantic, you could drink over the side of your ship and the water would still be fresh.

Amazing.

That's incredible.

I love it.

I should say where I got this fact festival.

It's from a guy called Thomas Pueyo on Twitter.

And so I thought,

I couldn't believe it when I first read it.

And so I did a bit more looking.

And some sources say the water's going to be a bit brackish.

It might not be totally sparkling Evian style fresh, but it would definitely be noticeably less salty.

So you would not be able to see South America if you were 100 miles out.

And you would still get water that was much less salty.

If you were, let's say you were sailing across the ocean,

before you knew where you were, you could keep tasting the water.

And as it got less and less salty, you could almost find your way to the what an incredible idea, yeah, to navigate your way there.

Well, sailors must have worked that out, though, because they're very wise.

There'll be some sort of sailor, you know, sailor rhyme: like, if the water tastes nice,

if the water tastes nice, Brazil you'll be in in a trice.

If the water tastes salty, then your compass is faulty.

It really is.

There you go.

It's so every single day, the water that we're talking about,

that sort of pushes out into the Atlantic, it's 17 billion metric tons of water that flows out.

It's hard to work out what that is.

What that equates to, if you were getting fresh water in New York City, that's the daily amount for nine years that would be used.

Nine years' worth of fresh water in New York City is what goes out daily

into the Atlantic.

They should move New York.

I don't know if that's practical.

But it's weird that we can't somehow harvest it.

It's just going into

becoming salty.

I think it is useful.

I think it goes into the water cycle and eventually rains down on us.

Yeah, but we could keep the planet alive.

No, I don't think.

I think we've done enough mucking around, actually.

Maybe we should just leave the Amazon.

I actually disagree.

I think a huge pipe at the mouth of the Amazon that just takes it all the way to New York.

Brilliant.

Not New York, but somewhere that needs fresh water.

There's lots of places where they don't have water.

Yeah.

Somewhere closer.

Yeah, exactly.

Like New Orleans.

Yeah, there you go.

New Orleans.

I can't see it not working.

I'm just saying it's a bit of a waste.

That's 17 billion metric tons.

I think it's a waste.

I really don't think it's a waste.

Donald Trump listening to this is going to be diverted to his golf courses somewhere.

Yeah, anyway, the Amazon.

It's big.

It's big.

It blows my mind.

In fact, my mate's got a new Brazilian girlfriend and he was saying, you know, you go to Brazil.

It's just massive, mate.

It's just massive.

the thing I always find interesting about the Amazon is that you can't build bridges yeah

because it's too

because it it the width of it varies so much and it's sort of so soft crumbly at the edges

so it would have to be such a massive bridge because it would have to start and so what they just go across on boats and stuff yeah yeah yeah so and there's yeah I think they've built one now there is one but it's right up in the north it's sort of it's over a tributary Right.

It's the Rio Negro, which is a tributary of the Amazon, but it's before it joins the river proper, basically.

So there are no bridges across the Amazon-Amazon.

And yeah, like you say, Lucy, it's during the wet season, the Amazon is 190 kilometers wide at its widest.

That's wide.

It is really wide.

Imagine from here to Stoke.

Maybe Stafford, somewhere.

My electric car wouldn't be able to drive.

If there was a bridge that went over that there,

there would have to be a charging point on that bridge otherwise they won't be able to get across

that is insane i like that the amazon river is part of effectively an amazon river sandwich it's the it's the meat of of a sandwich in that go on well this is a tortured metaphor

i know what you're talking about and even i'm struggling with

this well there's a there's a river below it the hamde and there's a river above it oh is there well there's more there's more water above the amazon river in the clouds above the actual Amazon itself.

The clouds kind of follow the shape of the river, right?

Yeah, I believe they do.

Yeah, ha.

It's a water vapor stream, isn't it?

Yeah, it's amazing.

I think it's 20 billion tons of it.

20 billion metric tons of water, yeah.

And that's more water than is actually in the river itself, they say.

That's very cool.

Isn't it something like every tree in a day, like a big tree in the Amazon perspires or transpires or whatever it is, a thousand litres of water in a day?

Yeah, that's right.

One tree.

It just sweats it up.

Yeah, exactly.

One tree.

And then underneath, you've got the Hamza.

Yeah, so Secret Underground River.

You can only get to it if you defeat

an Aztec boss on the final level.

So, yeah, so under the Amazon, there is a sort of aquifer that is even wider, even bigger, even bolder, even fresher.

It's Amazon 2, the revenge.

And it's, yeah, the River Hamza named after the Strictly winner this year, obviously.

Oh, Hapu Hamza.

He's got a a big hook in it, yeah.

Ranger Hamza.

Yeah, and it's very, it's quite recently discovered, isn't it?

So Hamza was the name of the head of the team that discovered it.

And it's very low down.

4,000 meters.

The river itself.

Wow.

Super slow moving.

To the point where you can't really call it a river.

Like it's not flowing.

It moves at one millimeter an hour.

Yeah.

That's flowing.

I relate to this river very hard.

It's very slow, low down.

If you drop something in it,

you'll be reunited with it quite quickly.

It won't be swept away suddenly.

But you gave a poo sticks would be quite low stakes, wouldn't it?

The giant Amazon leech, which you find in the Amazon River,

do you think it's longer or shorter than the world's longest cat's tail?

Now, I actually know the length of the leech, but I have no idea about the world's longest cat's tail.

That's the difficulty of this quiz question.

You actually need two quite arcane bits of knowledge to even make a guess.

I think the longest cat's tail is not that long.

Really?

This is the domestic cat's.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, very, very.

Oh, right.

Here we go.

I think the leech is about a forearm.

I think it's about 18 inches.

Okay.

Like the biggest giant leech.

Yeah, yeah.

So is the cat's, is the longest ever cat's tail longer or shorter than 18 inches?

I'd say cats tail.

This gives it away a bit.

It's a Ferndale cat.

Ferndale.

Well, no, you've made it too easy, and I actually don't want to submit an answer anymore.

I mean, exactly the same length.

Well, Andy is spot on with the 18 inches for the Amazon leech.

And the longest cattail, according to Guinness, is 17 inches.

Do you think that the giant Amazon leech

is longer or shorter than the height of the world's tallest doughnut?

Right, so it's good now we know we've got 18 inches.

Yeah, put the doughnut down flat.

Yeah, so not the diameter, not the roundness, it's how tall it goes.

I think the doughnut's taller.

Yeah.

No, I think it's still the leech.

Yeah, Andy knows his stuff.

Tallest doughnut 16 inches tall.

It was quite wide in fairness.

Right.

Yeah, but actually, what's that foot and a foot and a half?

I mean, that's a tall, that's a tall donut.

I could eat that though.

I want the world's biggest donut to be a donut that I was like, I couldn't eat that.

It's big as a house.

Yeah.

You can make novelty doughnuts that big.

Or like the ring road of a small town.

Exactly.

Oh, this is a great quiz.

That's the end of it.

Well, I loved it.

I had a great time.

Have you heard of the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory?

This is a cool thing.

Okay, so this is, and it's a really new thing as well, actually.

So it's an observatory.

It's,

but not a space observatory.

It's to look down at the Amazon.

And so it's in the middle of the rainforest.

And the trees are...

What are tall trees?

They're about 80 to 100 meters, aren't they?

A good tall tree is up to...

You know, that's a really tall tree, 100 meters.

And the tower...

That's, yeah, I think the tallest ever tree is about 120 meters.

Like, the tallest ever measured, you know.

But this tower is 325 meters.

Okay, it's a...

It's about as tall as the Eiffel Tower, which actually is really tall when you look at it.

The Eiffel Tower.

Yeah.

Wow, busting some myths today out in the ample.

I never think of it as tall, but actually, if you, I went there.

It's big, the Eiffel Tower.

You can see it from a long way away.

Exactly.

And this is, it's much thinner than the Eiffel Tower.

It's just one needle going up from the ample.

It looks mad, this thing.

I was up the Eiffel Tower once

in a restaurant, and we had a table next to the window, which is really nice.

And it was overlooking the bridge.

And what you would see is they had these guys playing, you know, we have three cups and you have to hide the ball and just taking loads of money.

And then, about every 20 minutes, the police would turn up and they would leg it.

And then you could watch them go all the way down the river, over the next bridge, back over again, and then back on the bridge, and then start playing again.

And then the police would turn up.

It was like a cat and mouse.

I really thought you were going to say that from your perspective of the idolatown, you can see which cup it was hundred and just yelled down, middle one.

That's what I was thinking.

Your wife's down there looking up.

You've got a special cupboard sign language in the middle.

How are they doing it?

We have never been fucked before.

I was done in that restaurant too.

We didn't get a window seat.

No, well, you need to.

What if

there are tables that don't have window seats in the animal town?

Just looking at a big piece of iron.

God, they really saw you coming.

Was it on the ground floor?

Was it everyone's room?

Did you get the basement table?

Is she a Prince Andrew sir?

Didn't know Pizza Express was in France?

Wow.

Oh, that's funny.

I didn't.

Is the restaurant still going?

Is there a restaurant?

I think it's called us.

I didn't even get into the restaurant.

Me neither.

We'll go together.

Yeah, I'd love that.

Observe.

This tall tree.

Oh, yeah, this observatory is 325 metres, and it's one metre taller than the Eiffel Tower.

And it's got 1500 steps up to it.

And it takes about an hour to walk up to the top.

I don't know if there's a lift, actually.

And basically, it's just to

sniff the breath of the forest, as they call it.

They're measuring all the chemicals in the air, whether there are forest fires, they measure the concentrations and how dangerous that is, and deforestation.

They can tell things about that and the tree emissions.

And it's just, I just think it's amazing.

Imagine you go up, you've forgotten your glasses, and you're heart raised,

snip back down.

I can't even see the guy with the cup and the ball.

I've never felt like this before.

It's like you just get me.

I feel like my true self with you.

Does that sound crazy?

And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous.

Okay, that's it.

I'm taking you home with me.

I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere.

Find a shoe for every you from brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, and more at your DSW store or dsw.com.

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that while playing a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Danny DeVito ended up becoming a psychiatric patient himself.

Was he going method?

Some people did go method.

We might get to that, but DeVito's problem really is quite sweet, actually.

He had recently gotten together with Rhea Perlman, the actor,

the amazing Rhea Perlman.

And she was right, just to put

her head in your cat.

Carla can cheer.

And obviously they were filming, or not obviously, but they were filming a long way away from where she was, 3,000 miles, in fact.

And so he really missed her.

And in order to deal with that separation, he invented an imaginary friend to talk to at night.

And he became a little bit concerned about his mental health, perhaps because they were making this film and there was a lot of it in the air.

And so he decided to see the doctor on set who was called Dr.

Brooks and asked for his advice.

And Dr.

Brooks said, Yeah, don't worry about it.

As long as you're aware that it's an imaginary friend, imaginary friends, perfectly normal thing to have, it's no problem at all.

But also, that doctor, the on-set doctor, was actually in the movie, of course.

Was he?

Yeah, so

Dr.

Brooks, yeah, so he, but an amazing man because he owned the clinic in which they filmed it.

So it's no wonder they were all a little bit stir-crazy because they're in an actual mental institution filming this very intense movie.

He's the one who sort of checks in Jack Nicholson's character, McMurphy, at the start of the film and interviews him.

And he, I think, I think, I don't know if he was going to be in it, but he was really insistent that everyone in the institution, all the patients, got involved with the film.

He was quite forward-thinking.

You know, he took lots of the patients on expeditions, he took them white water rafting, and he taught them kind of to rapple down cliffs and things.

I mean, like, really,

because this was in the 70s, they were filming it.

It was pretty progressive at the time.

And I think about 90 inmates ended up involved in the film in some capacity or another.

That's really cool.

I must say, I haven't seen the film.

It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I've heard very good things about it, so I will try and watch it.

And I started reading the book this week and got about a third of the way through, but I think the book's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

And apparently, the film's even better.

So

they're both.

I'll tell you what was even better.

It was a stage production that was put on about 20 years ago, 2004.

I was in

a stage production.

Who are you?

Were you the giant next to the railroad?

Yes, that's me.

Chief Bromden, that was me um well no do you know what though so we did this basically so it was um Christian Slater from Heathers etc yeah came over and was McMurphy so

and it was amazing'cause it was at that time there weren't that many West End shows with big Hollywood stars.

McMurphy being Jack Declaration's role.

Exactly, yes, the main guy.

And

I played a nurse who had about two lines.

And I some of my friends came to see it and they said, oh, we just thought you were being modest'cause I'd said, Oh, I'm playing a nurse who mumbled over the cookie's nest.

And they were like, oh, we thought you were just being modest and you were playing Nurse Ratchet, but you really were just

a nurse who has two lines because Frances Barber was Nurse Ratchet and Mackenzie Crook was in it.

Wow.

Mackenzie Crook.

Yeah, yeah, he played Billy, the sort of little shy.

That's a good role for him, I can see.

And should we super quickly just say what the basic premise is?

Just for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a bit confused.

Oh, we should, shouldn't we?

Yeah, it's Jack Nicholson is.

God, it's been so long.

Yeah, Lucy.

So, yeah, Jack Nicholson plays McMurphy, who is this sort of tear away who is sent to this secure psychiatric facility at which Nurse Ratchard is this horrible nurse who sort of rules with a reign of terror over everybody.

There is one nice nurse, though, isn't there, who just has a couple of lives.

There is the

star of the entire production is that nice nurse, yeah.

And then the Indian chief.

Oh, spoilers, are we worried about that?

It came out quite a long time ago.

Yeah, so anyway, Jack Nicholson kind of creates this air of chaos and rebellion in the place and rebels against Nurse Ratchard.

And then the Chief Bromden, the Native American chief, smothers him with a pillow.

We should maybe say that Jack Nicholson's character suffers a lobotomy.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

It's not just that Chief Bromden wants to restore order in the hospital.

Exactly.

It's a mercy killing, basically.

Yeah.

And the whole sort of thing is it's not, hey, we're not mad.

Society's mad.

And who is there?

Yeah, all of that.

McChiece's point.

And there's a bit of the book where McMurphy finds out that all the patients are allowed to leave if they want to.

They just don't.

He's incredibly freaked out by it.

He says, Why don't you just go home?

You're allowed.

And he says, Well, I'm not ready to.

And, you know, the person he's talking about.

It's amazing.

Anyway,

it sounds like it was a very tense filming experience in lots of ways as well, because you had a lot of big personalities.

He had Ken Casey, who wrote the book, and then ended up hating the film.

Never watched it.

He once started watching it when it was just on TV and then he realised what film he was watching and changed shut up.

I mean, I love that.

Just point blank amazing.

He was channel flipping, yeah.

And he was like, oh, what's this?

This looks great.

Oh, no.

Um, and then so the director was uh Milos Foreman, uh, and Jack Nicholson and Milos Foreman had a big disagreement about Maffey's character.

And, um,

basically, it's very ordered, and then Jack Nicholson arrives and he turns the place upside down.

And Milos Foreman wanted it to be more like it was already chaotic, and then he arrives, and he sort of draws the patients together and they become a team.

They had a big falling out over there, and they would end up they ended up they were only talking to each other through the cinematographer, so it would have to be kind of so can you tell

Jack Nicholson to act this way of the six?

I mean, it just sounds so tense.

But Danny DeVito as well, because he, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Danny DeVito and remembered him as Lou in taxi, the sort of

doer dispatcher.

But he,

when he was in Matilda, the actress he played Matilda, said that actually, although he was playing a horrible dad,

he actually became like a really lovely father figure to her.

And then, you know, in Mum Play of the Cuckoo's Nest, you could argue that he actually was playing a sort of psychiatric patient, but he was taking care of his his mental health.

What I'm saying is he's always the opposite of how he appears.

And actually, in twins, if you put him and Arnold Schwarzenegger together, he's taller.

What a film.

What a twin.

He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2010.

So I thought I'd look at some other people who are in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

New Jersey Hall of Fame.

So you've got Buzz Aldrin, Frank Sinatra.

Oh, okay.

Do you have to be from New Jersey?

Can I just ask?

Well, Thomas Edison is there, born in Ohio.

Okay.

Yogi Berra, born in Missouri.

Harriet Tubman, born in Maryland.

And Albert Einstein, not even born in America.

So we've all got a shot at the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Wild son of New Jersey.

I think you have to have lived there for a while because Einstein works in Princeton, of course.

Oh,

that's great.

On One Flew Over, it was nearly defeated by the Cold War.

It nearly didn't get turned into a film because of the Iron Curtain.

Oh, yeah.

You know this?

This is cool.

So I didn't know.

So the book came out in the early 60s and Michael Douglas.

No, sorry.

Kirk Douglas bought the rights.

He was in the play.

He was in the first play version.

And then the film is actually based on the play, not on the book, which is maybe why Ken Casey hated the film.

So Kirk Douglas was the initial McMurphy, which is mad.

It's so strange to imagine now because it's so Jack Nicholson's role.

And then he bought the rights.

And he wrote to Milos Foreman in Czechoslovakia and said, got this great play, got the rights to it, think it should be a a film, I'll send you a copy of the book.

Milos Foreman said, great.

The book was then seized by Czech customs in 1963 and it took more and Foreman was really annoyed because Czech Gogg said, I'll sell you a book, never sent the book, rude.

Kirk Douglas was very annoyed because Milos Foreman never said thank you for the book.

Rude.

It took a decade to sort out this misunderstanding between them.

The film was made in something like 1975, I think.

1975.

Yeah, yeah, it took a long time.

And eventually, Kirk Goggles gave the rights to his son, Michael, who then said, Should we just try again with this book thing?

Do we think that the...

Sorry to interrupt, sir.

Do we think that the Czech customs didn't let the book go initially because they were worried that it was seditious?

Maybe.

It's not clear.

It's not clear why it was seized.

Maybe they just wanted to read it.

I've no idea.

I was wondering if it was the Ruby's Cube, but going in the opposite direction.

Yeah.

I have no idea.

Yeah, I don't know what their reason is.

Kessie was quite notorious as a LSD proponent.

He was quite famous with the counterculture of America at that point.

He had a bus that he used to take everyone on.

What a radical free thing.

It was a psychedelic bus.

Oh, my God.

A multicoloured bus.

Oh, we've got that.

We've had those all the time.

London buses are bright red.

I mean,

it's what it represented.

They were called the Merry Pranksters.

And they used to, and Tom Wolfe wrote a whole book about this.

It was a non-fiction book about these guys who just would go around.

They used to do things like they would have people playing flutes on the top of the bus whole.

Just a public safety warning do not take acid on a london bus

it's not a friendly environment to do that but it is possible it was the counterculture thing and his name was very much associated with it that's a good point i don't know if it was but it's possible it's interesting because he was an author already at this point kessie before he wrote one flew over the cuckoo's nest and he was working on a book called zoo and in order to fund it he needed a job so he worked at a psychiatric ward in order to fund it and the book idea came to him when one night he was in there i think he was cleaning and he was on peyote and he was tripping and he saw a full-blown chief broomden there as a sort of vision.

Just a psychedelic peyote.

Sorry.

Oh, sorry.

Is it like a cactus or something?

Yeah, it's like a cactus which you, yeah, it's a drug.

I know it is a word and I know it's a drug, but I can't tell you the specifics.

Come on, Andrew, that's big old square.

Sorry, not to hurt.

Peyote, yeah.

Yeah.

But he said he saw a full-blown Native American, he said Indian, Chief Broom, the solution, the whole mothering key to the novel.

And that's how he wrote of the novel in that.

Because in the novel he's the main, like, the narrator, right?

The narrator, sorry, and in the movie, not.

He's not, and that's why Kessie immediately hated it.

It wasn't told from the perspective of him.

He is a big character in it, but he's he's not.

Yeah, yeah.

Interestingly, um, the guy who got the role of Chief Bromdon got it because Michael Douglas was sitting next to a used car dealer on a plane, and the used car dealer's dad was an acting agent who had a load of Native American actors on his books.

And so and the thing about Chief Brompton is he's about eight feet tall in the thing, and and and so and Michael Douglas got a phone call saying, I was just met the tallest Native American guy you've ever seen, and it was Will something, I can't remember his name who yeah, yeah, but anyway, he got the role as Chief Brompton.

Will Sampson, Will Sampson, Will Sampson, Samson, old name for someone incredibly tall, and he's got long hair.

Wow.

Oh my god, it's perfect.

So, this movie was made in an actual, as we've said, hospital that was originally called the Oregon State Mental Hospital.

It's since been renamed, it's now Oregon State Hospital.

And

it's an interesting place in its own right.

It had a really controversial bit, which was they found 5,000 canisters of unclaimed human remains in there.

And this was, yeah, this was a lot of the patients who had been cremated, but no one had come to collect them.

And they put out the list.

They found all the names of the people, and a lot of relatives, distant relatives, came and reclaimed them.

And there was a documentary called The Library of Dust that was made about it.

it was just tragic yeah yeah it was pretty it was pretty mad but also they had a railroad underneath the hospital, a specifically built one, so that they could deliver items to different bits of the hospital, but also to transport patients that they didn't want the members of the public to have to come across if they were visiting the hospital because they were worried something might go wrong.

They'd be very dangerous, you know, all that sort of stuff.

And some of the tunnels possibly are still there, but you just walk them now or use bicycles.

It's just Prince Andrew in there now.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, and then they had a horrible thing.

I found just horrible things about it, unfortunately.

1942, there was a mass poisoning by accident.

They were serving scrambled eggs, and they accidentally, and 47 people died from this.

They used, instead of powdered milk, they used sodium fluoride, which is a poison you would use to kill cockroaches.

And that was accidentally added to the scrambled eggs.

And 47 people.

And I used to work as a,

in a kitchen.

We had a Christmas party, and instead of putting white sauce on the Christmas pudding, they put garlic sauce on it.

Which is a very less problematic version of what you just said.

But it's good to know you can relate.

Yeah, I mean, just said it's easily done.

Yeah, it's easily done.

Gosh, I want to use cube lube instead of

instead of what?

It twisted sideways, didn't it?

Should we just quickly mention Louise Fletcher, who was like, she played Nurse Ratchet

in the film and died last year, sadly.

But she was amazing.

And

I think she kept herself separate from the rest of the cast, didn't she, for a lot of the filming, so that she could be an icy authority figure.

And did you do that when you were in the play?

I'm always an icy authority figure

in every situation.

I keep myself.

Well, didn't she also take all her clothes off, though, at one point?

Yeah, at the end of filming, wasn't it?

Yeah.

She'd go, look, hey, guys, look at this.

All along, I was fun.

It was her saying I'm fun, that's right.

Yeah,

I think she had her underwear on.

I don't think she was fully naked.

Maybe she was fully naked.

She wasn't that much fun.

I'm fun, but I'm not that fun.

There must be a better way, like bring in some cupcakes in or something

to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues.

Just wait till the end of this podcast.

But yeah, she...

There were two others.

There was Anne Bancroft and Angela Lansbury were both offered the role, but turned it down because they didn't want to appear so evil on screen.

Wow.

This was in an obituary of Louise Fletcher that I read.

And also it said in this that she was repeatedly turned down from roles because she was five foot ten.

And in those days, a lot of the leading men were much shorter than that.

And she couldn't play roles opposite people who were shorter or about the same height as I am.

And actually, in the nurse's cap, she'll be more than six foot, you know.

And Jack Nicholson is quite, I think he's quite a short guy.

But it really works for the authority for the sort of power struggle happening between them.

I just think she's brilliant.

And she went on Star Trek.

That's right.

Yeah, she was a character on Star Trek.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Wow.

And she said that she found her role so disturbing that she also couldn't watch the film.

In Star Trek.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Aliens are scary, right?

Did she?

As in Nurse Ratchet.

She found it really hard and she just found it too disturbing to watch as a

role.

Actually, the last time I watched it, which was a couple of years ago, the person I was watching it with sided with Nurse Ratchet, which didn't make me think, no, hang on you've taken the wrong message there and she said no no no look the point is she's someone's got to keep order

she's just doing her job she's just doing a job if mc murphy was running the place it would be an absolute it would be mayhem one last thing just about ken cassie the author because he was a pretty amazing author um his method for a certain period when he was writing was to be completely off his head on drugs and he would write a crazy amount then in the morning he'd sober up and become his own editor so he'd sort of say okay what who let's see what the author's written and chop out all the junk and get down to the good meat of it.

Wow, that's clever.

Yeah,

yeah.

Apart from presumably the first draft was absolute dog shit.

It just didn't make any sense at all.

And then you'd think, but hang, what if the editor was drunk as well?

But it's different.

Oh, yeah, I'll drink it.

And then I'll make sure the copy editor will be sober.

So that'll be fine.

Okay, as long as the printer is sober, it'll be fine.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

So I'm on at Schreiberland.

Andy at Andrew Hunter and James at James Harkam and Lucy at Lucy Porter Comic.

That's right, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can email us at podcast at qi.com.

Also, check out our website, no such thingasofish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there, so you can listen to those.

But most importantly of all, if you'd like to see Lucy in her pajamas, make sure to get out of your house and into a comedy club to see Wake Up Call.

It's the show that she's touring and she's going to be going around the UK doing that.

So go Google it, see where she's going and try and see it.

Okay, that's it.

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

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Sucks, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.