462: No Such Thing As A Luigi Board

Start your journey toward the perfect engagement ring with Yadav, family-owned and operated since 1983.

We'll pair you with a dedicated expert for a personalized one-on-one experience.

You'll explore our curated selection of diamonds and gemstones while learning key characteristics to help you make a confident, informed decision.

Choose from our signature styles or opt for a fully custom design crafted around you.

Visit yadavjewelry.com and book your appointment today at our new Union Square showroom and mention podcast for an exclusive discount.

Cozy up with fragrance that feels like fall and smells unforgettable.

Pura's smart, app-controlled diffusers pair with premium scents from brands like Ness New York, Capri Blue, Anthropologie, and more.

Whether you're craving spiced pumpkin, warm amber, or nostalgic woody notes, there's a scent to match every mood in every space.

Discover why Pura is the go-to for premium home fragrance.

Start your fall refresh now at Pura.com.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast.

This week coming to you live from Up the Creek in Greenwich, London.

My name is Dan Shriver.

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

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

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy.

My fact is that some shows at the Roman Colosseum featured sausage dogs.

People fighting sausage dogs?

It's so unclear.

It's so unclear what the actual thing is.

Maybe.

I mean, the thing is, they would be quite far away.

You You wouldn't get great visibility on a sausage dog from that distance.

If you were in the back, you'd have no idea what was going on.

Yeah, that's true.

But maybe it was a swarm of sausage dogs against one Christian.

You know, that is possible.

Would you rather fight a thousand Christian-sized sausage dogs?

A thousand Christian-sized sausage dogs.

Or one.

Or not.

They often didn't get a choice.

Fun fact, in the Coliseum.

So we should say this is a study, there's been an archaeological study done recently, and these are Daxons, Vena dogs, whatever you want to call them.

And they were the kind of precursor, the prototypes of these dogs, because the modern breed only emerged in about the 18th or 19th century.

But they were basically this kind of dog.

If you went back in time when you saw one, you would think it was a sausage.

Exactly.

The thing is, we genuinely don't know what they thought.

The archaeologists have been crawling in the sewers under the Colosseum for a year.

They spent a year crawling in the mud on their stomachs, and they found lots of stuff.

They found seven coins, which does not feel like a good

return on investment

And they found some bones they found some leopard bones They found some lions and ostrich bones, but they also found these dogs and we don't know were they part of staged battles Which is great fun or were they acrobats, which is also fun which is amazing

explanation which is that they might have been used to kind of hunt rats okay because when you're at the coliseum loads of people there you're eating lots of snacks it could be that they tried to stop the rodents but i mean i'd rather think of them as acrobats yeah yeah yeah there's all speculation did we not write stuff down back then because i'm pretty sure we did how is it that sausage dogs have escaped history yet we are

there was a lot going on at the coliseum it was a piece of mad for about 500 years you couldn't write every single thing down every day i'm sorry if i walked out at the end of an evening at the Coliseum and I saw gladiators fighting, I'm not saying that.

I'm going, did anyone see the fucking sausage dogs?

But no, but there was so much more weird stuff than that.

Like the real acrobats did amazing things.

And one of the frustrating things is we don't have that much information because people write about it in fragments.

Sometimes we've only got little bits of writing.

There was the Pataurus, which the sources we have suggest was a giant seesaw.

And we think it was used at kind of half-time in the Coliseum.

So this huge seesaw, and you'd have two opponents competing on either side, and one would jump onto it and it would fling the other one up in the air.

I think about 30 feet in the air.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Apparently.

They'd go through hoops of flame, I think one of the sources said, and then come back down.

Then the other one gets flung in the air.

There is an account of them falling to their death sometimes, as will happen.

Wasn't there an account of them putting criminals on there?

Yeah.

And the idea is the lions come in, right?

And they're going to attack the guy who's the bottom of the seesaw.

So you're always always trying to get to the top of your seesaw so that he's at the bottom.

I think that some is speculated that that might be what they were used for.

The problem is, as soon as the other guy gets eaten, you're fucked, aren't you?

The weird thing is, this is all the half-time shows, though.

Lots of what we're talking about now is the half-time shows in between

chariot races and then maybe other fighters and crappy animals.

But a lot of the damnatio ad bestias, so being killed by wild animals, basically, organized by a group of people called the bestiari.

There are lots of sources claiming that the Bestiari were incredible trainers of animals, and they would train animals to kill people in incredibly elaborate ways that referenced myths for people.

So they would recreate death scenes.

You guys remember the story of Prometheus?

He stole fire from the gods and then he was punished, he was chained to a rock, and

a liver would fly down every day and peck out his eagle.

Eagle will find another one.

But they recreated it the opposite way around.

Exactly.

Supposedly, one bestiarius spent months and months training a single eagle to remove a man's organs.

Wow.

I don't think, I can't believe that's true.

Wow.

The halftime shows sounded amazing.

They kind of sound like a modern halftime show of, let's say, a basketball.

If you watch American basketball or Super Bowl, like it's really showstoppy kind of stuff.

So they would do things where snacks would fall from the sky and including from, I mean, they're not from the clouds, obviously, but they were sort of launched, kind of like how the people that would stand in the middle and shoot at t-shirts out of rockets.

They had a toga cannon?

Exactly.

So they had this.

Yeah.

Well,

what they actually had, though, which is amazing, is you've got this wooden ball where on the inside you would win something like a t-shirt or as,

but I know they didn't have t-shirts, so it's very progressive.

No, but it would be food or it'd be money, or it would even be the deeds to a house, you know, or an apartment.

Yeah.

So a lot of people really fought over it.

But

were there bad things in the bowls as well?

No, I don't.

No, it's a happy thing.

So like if you open the bowl, you might get a t-shirt, or it might be you have to go on the seesaw.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

That did sound pretty cool, though, didn't it?

They had, possibly, we think, like the spectators would have water sprinkled on them.

Oh, yeah.

Because they had toilets with running water.

So they would kind of get the water from the river and kind of get it to go through the stadium and go through where all the toilets are.

But they also had huge, we think because they had this in Pula, we haven't seen it in the coliseum but it's very very similar they had huge huge towers with loads of water in and that water would kind of sprinkle over everyone to keep them cool and they also had a retractable roof i know they were told 2 000 years ahead of wimbledon

it's so amazing isn't it here we go against roof that they could bring over whenever it got to wow

the valerium i think and it was operated by about a thousand sailors who would pull on the ropes because they're used to pulling on rope sailors um but yeah and you'd have advertising up and we've got the,

I want to say etchings in the stones, but we've got the evidence that you'd advertise, there will be shade, vela erund, you know, there will be shade for you.

Incredible.

Although Caligula liked to wind it back so he could watch people just boil up.

Oh, yeah.

That's absolutely classic Caligula.

Yeah, yeah.

It sounded hectic working there, though, because basically you could be a part of the show if anything went wrong, if the emperor decided.

So Claudius in particular,

there was a biographer called Suetonius who wrote about the fact that Claudius if he was watching a show and something went slightly wrong and everything was operated underneath in terms of the if the gladiators were fighting all the animals that came up into the stadium they were all in the hypogeum which was underneath which is this extraordinary kind of like the backstage of a of a theater where they have just a crazy amount of stuff that you wouldn't realize to make shows happen.

That was happening underneath.

And so if something went wrong where something came up at the wrong time and and it pissed off the emperor he would just say whoever the staff is down there they're now in the show get them up there to fight the lions

anything that went wrong if the catering went wrong get the caterers in there so he just kept adding people to be killed in the right

i heard the term sometimes hecklers would be thrown to wild animals

we should start that

I like the hypogeon because it's like it's like whack-a-mole isn't it because that's like a lion would pop up somewhere and then you have to go and fight it, and then some monkeys, and then a sausage door goes over to you.

But the whole point was that there wasn't spots you knew that they would pop up.

There were so many spots that, like the whack-a-mole, you could be facing this way, expecting a lion, and then it comes behind you.

And apparently, the system to bring them up sometimes was so supercharged that the lion would be lobbed into the top of it.

Come on!

That's an account I read!

Oh my god!

There's so much speculation about this stuff.

It's amazing.

And

the first, the best seats were reserved for the Emperor and the Vestal Virgins.

They got the best seats.

And then if you went a little bit higher up, you would get the senators and then you would get the knights and the nobles.

And then the very, very furthest strata was for commoners.

And then they built one more, even right at the very, very back strata.

And do you know who that was for?

Commonist.

Women is exactly right.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I'm afraid so.

Because they gave us the best view.

Well, yes, exactly.

You won't be able able to see the sausage dog unless it was flung really high.

It seated 50,000 people, the Coliseum, roughly.

And I went to Wembley to see a show.

And that gives you, like, if you were watching a sausage dog, Dan, as you say, like, because

I went to see Billy Joel at Wembley.

And my wife booked me this ticket as part of a Christmas present.

And I said, what are the seats like?

And she said, I didn't really check.

I'm sure they're good.

You couldn't be further away from Billy Joel.

That's possible.

It was so far away that when the gig was playing, we could hear the song and the screens that allowed us to see him, which genuinely, he's sausage dog size at that distance.

It was out of sync with the visuals.

And I was like, oh my God, Billy's going to be so angry because, you know, so much money is spent.

That's how far away we were.

Sound and vision were traveling at a different rate

that they were not in sync.

So if you counted the number of seconds between the time he opened his mouth and the time you saw it, you could tell how far away you were.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

You could tell when you're going to get struck by lightning.

That's right.

Well, you say 50,000 sounds big, but I just don't think we ever make a big enough deal of the fact that this Coliseum basically replaces Circus Maximus, which was its predecessor.

Sat 250,000 people, still the biggest ever stadium.

It's just, I found that amazing.

That was Rome as well, but it was,

you know, they got bored of it.

That was where they had lots of chariot races and then

shut the Coliseum in, which they'd never called the Coliseum.

They called it the Flavian Amphitheatre.

And we think the reason they changed the name is quite funny.

So it started being called the Colosseum in sort of early medieval times.

And we believe it's because the Colossus at the time was the Colossus of Nero, this gigantic hundred-foot-tall classic Nero statue of him,

which had it as Nero went out of fashion, its head kept changing.

So whatever emperor was in power at the time, they'd shove his head on the statue.

And eventually someone wrote a poem about the Colossus saying, so long as the Colossus stands, Rome shall stand.

When the Colossus falls, Rome too shall fall.

And when Rome falls, so falls the world.

And then almost immediately after that was written and published, the Colossus fell.

And we think they went, Well, shit, everyone's going to think the world's going to end.

We better change what the Colossus is.

And so then we think they named the Colosseum the Colosseum because it was right nearby.

And they said, let's just pretend.

Wow, that's really cool.

I've got some stuff on sausage dogs.

Sorry.

Very nice.

We've actually got to move on.

No, no, no, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

Don't go near it.

I thought this fact would go in a very different direction.

I've basically only got sausage dog stuff now.

Do you guys know where the sausage dog capital of the world is?

In Germany.

No, it's as of this year.

It's in the UK.

Oh.

It's almost totally ungettable.

Is it Maidstone?

It's on the coast.

Unlike Maidstone.

No, it's not.

I don't even know why I say it.

It was in Southwold this year, in Suffolk.

They had a lot of, you know.

Push people in the audience.

This year, Southwold hosted the world's largest ever single breed dog walk when 2,238 sausage dogs turned up for a walk.

Whoa!

At the same time.

That's a lot.

The size of one Gladiator Christian.

You said turned up.

Like, A, there were posters up around town, and the dogs just trotted up on their own.

I know, and they had one person to walk, all of them.

It was a nightmare.

Do you want to hear a fact that's not about Daxon?

Yeah, and then we need to move on.

Okay, okay.

So, I was reading an article in researching this about a Daxon, which was caught on CCTV in Germany, and it was the only police lead for a case, a crime case, because it had an unusual lead, and they couldn't see the face of the criminal, and they could only see the lead on the Daxon, and that was the

confusing case.

Do we have any leads?

Yes, we've got this one lead, I've told you.

But I only mentioned this because of the final paragraph, which I loved, but is not Daxon-related, but it was in this story.

So, here I'm just going to read it verbatim.

It may not be the first time a pet has provided key evidence.

In 2017, a woman in Michigan was convicted of killing her husband, partly on the testimony from their parrot, which kept repeating, don't shoot, in the dead man's voice.

Spooky.

In his voice.

Supposedly in his voice.

I've never heard a parrot that can do voices, but this one got

amazing.

But he didn't say don't shoot Mabel.

Did he?

Oh, yeah.

So we don't know who he was talking to.

Yeah, yeah.

How did that help convict her?

Okay, well, tune into Ada's new true crime podcast where

she frees this woman.

Dreaming of buying your first car or new home?

Knowing your FICO score is the first step to making it real.

With MyFICO, you can check your score for free and it won't hurt your credit.

You'll get your FICO score, full credit reports, and real-time alerts all in one simple app.

Your credit score is more than just numbers.

It's the key to building the future you've been working toward.

Visit myfico.com slash free or download the MyFICO app and take the mystery out of your FICO score.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anna Bay has you covered.

Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply.

It is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that in the 1920s, spiritualists started complaining that Tutan Karmoon was appearing at their seances too often.

It's just sort of spamming them.

Was he disruptive, or was it just there's too much?

Sometimes.

Yeah, he seemed to have quite bad mood swings, which I guess he was a teenager.

So

this was.

Go to your pyramid.

No!

Fuck!

Go to your tomb!

Sorry, there we go.

This was in Tutankhamun's heyday, second heyday, which was the 1920s, I guess.

So

his tomb was discovered in 1922.

It was this huge deal, and he became this massive celebrity.

Obviously, no one had ever heard of him before this.

And at the same time, seances were very popular.

Spiritualism was very popular.

And so he kept on popping up.

And there was an edition of a journal called Light, a journal of spiritual progress and physical research.

And a letter in it said, We are getting a little tired of Tutankhamun.

Messages purporting to be from him, which consist of vague generalities, are quite worthless.

Anyone could compose them.

And saying, basically, you know, either give us good evidence of your identity, I don't know how, write some hieroglyphics or something.

They're hard to do on a Ouija board.

You need the expansion pack for that.

Yeah.

You need the right font, don't you?

Some wing dings on there.

Yeah, they said we don't want unwanted random celebrities claiming to turn up.

Either we want the good evidence or we want their message to be of such high quality that their identity becomes unimportant.

Some very fine teaching comes from these visitors and it's being spoiled by Tutankhamun.

And the thought was, wasn't it, that the reason he started coming up because of this heyday thing is because the attention was so great on him that he was like invoked back into existence.

That was the excuse, wasn't it?

Yeah, rather than why has Tung Kambun not been like breaking into everyone's seance prior to that?

It's because, well, he was, he didn't know he was needed prior to it.

As in, he was like, they were claiming he was a bit of an egotistical attention seeker.

And so he was up there, like, well, no one cares about me.

And then they started caring.

So he decided, fine, I'll come and visit you.

So, what was he saying?

What were the messages he was bringing?

So, sometimes he was angry his tomb had been violated and he would smash everything up.

He injured a medium, he broke lots of Egyptian sculptures that were in the room, and then sometimes he was a nice guy.

So it really depended.

I wonder who a modern equivalent of that would be.

Someone who's very, very famous.

Well, they did.

In 2003, there was a pay-per-view Princess Diana seance.

I don't know if you remember that.

No, 2003.

2003, God.

Yeah, but pay-per-view.

It was like...

Why do you sound a pool at pay-per-view?

If you're going to see Princess Diana, you have to pay for it.

Because it's event television.

It was sort of...

Noly would be a huge event that you would have pay-per-view because, you know.

Goddamn.

Yeah.

Right.

You're saying it should have been bbc then

license fee prototype yeah absolutely okay yeah budget cards of the bbc they just can't afford it but check this out this is a this is a seance that i'd never heard of before this was a medium who was quite famous called lillian bailey and she claimed that she had a spirit guide who was called william headley wooton and he was a captain during world war one he died in world war one and she would use him in order to bring other people to talk and she received a request one day to go and do a seance, but they said, it's a bit high profile, the person.

So what we're going to do is we're going to pick you up from your place.

We're going to blindfold you and we're going to take you to the place.

So she was sat around the table and then she wasn't allowed to take the blindfold off.

So she did it.

And at the end of it, having contacted someone, she took the blindfold off and sitting in front of her was Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, and a few other of the royals.

And what it was is it was not long after the king had died.

And the queen mother was obsessed with the idea of contact.

So the queen was at a sales.

Wow.

Can you imagine taking that blindfold off?

Love me out.

She slowly put it back on.

Take me home.

But she kind of used that in the future as a kind of she's the queen's official media.

Yeah, yeah, by royal appointment.

That's who she said she was.

And the queen mother often would book sessions with her afterwards to try and do it.

And the person who set it up, which was not in the movie, was a man called Lionel Logue, who was the therapist who treated the king for his stammer in the king's speech.

Right.

He's the one who set up the seance.

Wow, they should have put that in.

Yeah, death.

What a scene.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Do you speak in a seance when you're one of the guests, or do you only speak when you're the media?

You're not really supposed to, yeah.

Okay, I just thought because that would have given it away.

As a not enough people speak like the Queen and Prince Philip or and the Queen mum to you know to conceal your identity.

Maybe they put an accent on

not like a busy accent or yeah oh copy or irish or something

german

um

whatever they're best at

actually speaking of germans there was a big thing in the war wasn't there where um there was a medium called helen duncan

and she was a Scottish 25 stone working class mother of six who swore smoked and drank whiskey she sounds great right?

But at the time she was like in the upper classes in London.

They thought she was an absolute genius.

They thought that she could speak to the dead.

She was really, really important in the high society.

And then in 1941, she was in a seance in Portsmouth and she claimed the spirit of a sailor told her that a certain ship had been sunk.

And it turned out that that ship had been sunk, but it hadn't been reported yet.

And so obviously she became, they were really worried about her.

First of all, maybe, you know, she is somehow getting messages from the dead, or maybe she's getting messages from the Germans, or

yeah, they thought she might be a spy who was seeding the and of course she got done for witchcraft, didn't she?

Yeah, she was the last person or the second last person, the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act.

But she got imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

So what was she being imprisoned for?

Being a witch.

It's absolutely incorrect.

Not being a witch.

That's absolutely right.

So the Witchcraft Act of 1735 was not about persecuting witches.

It was the first act that acknowledged witches are not real.

And so people pretending to be witches are the ones who need to be punished now for faking it.

And so she was punished for pretending to be a witch.

That's brilliant.

God, that's a real catch-22 situation as well.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it is, isn't it?

Have you guys heard of Colin Evans?

No.

Colin Evans was a Welsh spiritualist in, I think, the 1920s.

And his big thing was claiming that he could levitate.

So he would get an audience, probably an audience around this size, a few hundred people.

He would request the room went completely dark.

The audience would sit around him in pitch blackness, and they would chant, they would all chant the same thing, an incredible atmosphere, something crazy to be pressed.

Levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate.

Now the lights down?

No.

It was completely dark.

And then he provided proof of it.

He would take photos of himself at the very moment where he was levitating.

But the thing is, he was just jumping.

He would just jump, take the photo,

and then land.

That's quite impressive.

That was the whole act.

When was this?

20s?

Photos took a long time to expose back then, to capture something.

No, no, no.

You had a flash photo in the 20s, or it might have been 30s.

Exposure times were right down.

Was he smiling in the photo or was he serious?

He was very serious.

But his feet were slightly blurred.

So I suppose Dan is right that the technology must be new enough that people didn't catch on, right?

Didn't assume.

I guess.

And it was also, even if you were in the room, you'd see a tiny flash of light and him.

Oh, so that would provide the light.

Minja with a light.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I always think that back in these olden days, the seance days in the 1920s, it must have been so much darker than it is today.

I just think there was less natural light around.

Maybe we didn't have a moon back then because basically all the tricks they did were based on it being pitch black.

Could you have one candle?

You know, just a bit of atmosphere, one candle.

No, no, you can't.

You want to have any candles?

Because, well, because you had things like seance trumpets, which were these trumpets through which the spirits spoke, they magnified their voices and they used to float around in the middle of the room.

And they'd have glowing rings on their back end and front end.

And the way they floated was the a medium's assistant would just be holding it up, but he'd be wearing black so no one would see.

And it's like, how dark does it have to be that you can't see?

Yeah, this is what they all and the ectoplasm-probably the best thing about all seances, the

weird like physical manifestation of spirits which was kind of white stuff gooey gooey stuff that would come out of orifices of the mediums.

I mean it's got to be pretty dark for you to think that's anything spooky because usually it was handkerchiefs

that they would stick up their nose as far as they could and then kind of pull out.

There was one amazing medium, Mary M, who produced ectoplasm with photos of Arthur Conan Doyle on it.

So she said, Arthur Conan Doyle's coming out of my nose.

It says after he died, look at this and then pulled this tissue out of her nose with a photo of him on it, which someone pointed out later was the same photo that had appeared in a newspaper about a week earlier.

It had obviously been stuck on.

Arthur Conan Doyle solved an incredible case where someone was claiming that they'd contacted a celebrity from the other side, which was there was a book that was released called The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

We've spoken about it before on the podcast.

I actually wrote about this in my book as well.

I got obsessed with saying that.

I have the theory of everything else out now.

Anyone needs

to be selected to stars?

It's actually in most shots.

So, yeah, and they have lots of copies.

So if someone could buy one.

But no, I got obsessed with, there was a period where there were...

People claiming, because seances were so massive, that celebrities who were dead, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, all those were, they were dictating from the other side new novels, new works, and they would go on sale by real publishers and people would buy them.

They'd be reviewed in the New York Times, even if skeptically, they got sort of space.

And there was one book, which was The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

It was the final Charles Dickens book that he never finished.

And he didn't leave any notes of what had happened to the character and who had killed Edwin Drood.

So a guy called T.P.

James actually finished the book by contacting Dickens from the other side.

And he said, this is the final book.

They published it.

There was a new forward written by Dickens as well

to explain the process.

They had a new book that they were working on together called The Life and Adventures of Bockley Whippleheap.

It was a very exciting thing.

And it was Arthur Conan Doyle who said he didn't contact Charles Dickens.

The reason Arthur Conan Doyle knew that is because he himself did a seance in which he contacted Charles Dickens and asked him, Did you finish this book?

And he said, Nope, wasn't me.

Just on the Ouija board.

I was saying it right, Ouija.

Ouija.

Ouija or Ouija.

Ouija.

Ouja.

Ooh, Ouija.

Well, whenever I use it, my phone.

And there's also the squeegee board, which is a holy.

Anyway,

so it was invented by someone called Helen Peters.

She was a medium.

And then there was an entrepreneur called William Fuld who took over the business.

It was so popular, again, around the time of the 20s and 30s.

At one point, he had several factories all just churning out Ouija boards.

They sold...

thousands and thousands of thousands of them and he only sat up in such a big way because the board had told him prepare for big business So, yeah.

But this is the really spooky thing.

He went up on the roof of one of the factories to see a flagpole being replaced, right?

And then he fell off and died.

Oh, my God.

He just fell off.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And then did he came back and said something?

No, no, no, no.

But he still makes you think, doesn't it?

Oh, yeah.

The reason I think that it's pronounced Ouija is there's a YouTuber called Sex Kick who went on to Yahoo Answers and searched for various different spellings of Ouija board and found how do you make a Luigi board?

Have you played the Luigi board?

And can you burn the Luigi board?

And it seems, and quite a lot more.

And it seems like there's a lot of people in America who think that it's not a Ouija board, but a Luigi board.

It's really good.

It's coming through.

Who are you?

It's me.

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

My fact this week is that, according to his various biographers, Pythagoras could talk with animals, be in two places at once, had a shiny golden leg, and was able to tell fishermen the exact number of fish they'd caught in their net just by looking at it.

So, this was a single-I could do the last one, I reckon.

Well, it depends how many there are.

Yeah,

maybe not a trawlerment, but

two,

Screw you, Pythagoras.

I'm genuinely really shocked that we've done 400 plus episodes and we've never ever mentioned Pythagoras.

And I'm doubly shocked that after all the years of us doing this stuff, I didn't realize what a mad life.

he supposedly had according to the stories of his life.

We all know him for his theorem very famously.

He was a mathematician, he was a philosopher.

I didn't realize there was a cult around him that sort of put him into a sort of paranormal territory where he was able to reincarnate.

But he wasn't really a mathematician either.

That's the weird thing.

Because I thought he was a mathematician.

He wasn't really.

He was kind of a mystic and then cult leader and political figure.

And I mean, by the way, the cult were very into numbers, weren't they?

So that was part of it.

Exactly.

But numbers are very maths related.

So

they're maths adjacent.

Not when you're doing algebra.

Great point.

Oh, didn't you get a long way?

Look at your GCSE.

But no, but he wasn't really a mathematician.

Like Pythagoras' theorem had been come up with about a thousand years before him.

Oh, actually, related to the first ever episode we did a fish, there's a Pythagoras fact.

Is there?

Yeah, one of the people who proved Pythagoras' theorem in a new way that had never been demonstrated before was President Garfield.

President Garfield!

Really?

Oh,

yeah.

Lying in that hospital bed being fed through his ass.

You've got to do something to distract yourself.

That's a confusing sentence if you haven't heard the first episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

You'll just have to go back and listen.

Great teaser, yeah.

They were obsessed with numbers, as you say, and numbers, every number had a different personality.

Now, I don't know, because I couldn't find out anywhere how high up this went, because it can't go forever.

But masculine numbers are odd numbers, and feminine numbers are even.

Even are considered the only perfect numbers.

Although odd ones are equated with divinity, so all the genders are doing well out of of this.

Oh, yeah, quite sweetly.

The feminine number is two, and the masculine number is three.

And then five is the marriage number.

But yeah, all these numbers meant specific things to them.

Yeah, it went about as, I think it went as far as ten.

Because they had this.

They had this special thing where it's like, can you imagine like a snooker ball triangle where you have one, then two, then three, then four, and that added up to ten.

This was very special to them.

And they had a poem or a hymn, really.

Bless us, divine number thou who generated gods and men the mother of all the all comprising the all bounding the firstborn the never swerving the never tiring holy ten right yeah they love ten yeah yeah and they love triangles plague snooker must have been hell actually

pythagorean i get it the right angle thing what do you what do you guys think he was like like Let's imagine we're living in the time.

Okay, well, I can say so, like, a lot of the things that you've said there about the golden thigh and and talking to animals, they were written much, much later.

Exactly.

But some of the things that were written at the time when he was alive, they said that he did believe that the souls of humans could return as animals.

Yes.

So he did believe in reincarnation.

We know that because people said it at the time.

And also that he, you know, he had his own kind of wisdom.

He had his own kind of learning.

So we know all that kind of stuff happened.

Golden leg.

Maybe not.

Okay, so what about is the story about a dog?

And

he was passing someone in the street.

He believed that people could come back in the form of animals and all of this, as you just said.

So he once stopped someone who was beating a small dog in the street because he recognised in the barking.

You should be in the Colosseum.

He recognised in the barking the voice of a friend of his who died, who'd then been reborn as a puppy.

Yeah.

Which does come, the whole story does kind of imply that if he hadn't recognised the barking as a friend of his, he wouldn't have

thought anything was amiss.

Must have been a bad dog.

Yeah.

Just leave it.

But what does he then do with the dog?

You're turning this into a very different kind of talk show type of podcast, Jerry Springer style.

We don't know what he was doing.

No, as in

what's the dilemma?

Sorry at this.

My friend is a dog.

My friend's a dog.

Stop eating the dog.

Okay, I'll stop beating it.

Wouldn't you be like, Greg, what's up?

Come hang out.

Have dinner at ours.

Are you just going to be like, all right, see you, buddy.

Enjoy your new life.

Great to hang out.

Sucks, you're a dog.

Catch you later.

Stop humbling my leg.

You never did did that before.

He did love numbers, but he hated irrational numbers, or at least he didn't believe they existed.

Is that why they're called irrational?

Because he was so irrational about them.

He had an irrational loathing of them.

Sorry, they're the ones that go on forever.

So they're numbers that can't be expressed as a fraction or a ratio, which I only realized when I was doing this research, having kind of known this.

Irrational I ratio, they're numbers that you can't express as a ratio.

So phi,

six over two.

Yeah, you idiot.

Can't believe it.

Can't believe it.

We're all thinking.

If you take 22 divided by seven, it gets to quite close to 3.14 something, but it doesn't get to pi, which is 3.141, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which goes on forever.

And that would be an irrational number.

And he didn't believe in them because he loved finite numbers.

And they were on a boat one day on a cruise or something.

And one of his followers called Hepasus proved the existence of irrational numbers by saying the square root of two is one which not is one

is one is one

this is why I got no further than GCIC

and he according to reports was tossed overboard yeah really

so you've got to be careful with

strict teachers

yeah they killed him they killed him for proving that the square root of two is an irrational number yeah supposedly yeah but he had him walk the blank but he believed in reincarnation so he probably thought he'd bump into Monster

as a catasome

I don't know what happened with my temper that day but wow it was a fun cruise though wasn't it

when you joined his cult you had to say nothing for five years and that was how you got to the next level of the cult

and also he had he'd have gone four years and 11 months that's a tough one isn't it and you bang your fuck yeah

um but his he had a system for his followers right so there were the mathematicoi who were the senior followers, right?

And he would meet them in person and he would discuss proper maths with them, hard maths, and you know, they would think a lot and they'd do a lot of, you know, they'd do the big stuff.

And they had to make sacrifices.

They had to give up meat,

women, they're all men, and private possessions, okay?

So that's the senior tier.

And they never touched white roosters.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm out.

You'll have to give up meat, women, and private possessions.

Fine, fine.

Anything else?

There's one thing.

I'm out.

A couple more rules.

Don't eat your brain.

Don't eat your brain.

I couldn't find out really anything else, but I suppose that's all you need to know.

Don't break bread.

Don't poke fire with a sword.

Never urinate into the sun.

I've heard don't urinate into the wind.

Never into the sun.

You might put it out.

And we say that they couldn't eat any meat, which was mostly true, but they did still sacrifice an oxen whenever they proved a mathematical formula.

Sorry, what am I being sacrificed for again?

Normally it's to appease a god or something.

This doesn't sound important.

You're being put into a pie.

Oh my god.

That's sympathy.

That's sympathy.

That's the best joke you'll hear for months.

But then he also had these junior tier followers, people who basically hadn't subscribed.

And they were called the Akousmatikoi.

Is this like a Patreon?

It was a Patreon.

It was genuinely, he had a subscription service.

So the Mathematicoi were in, and then the Akousmatikoi, he would only speak to them from behind a curtain.

Wow.

And they weren't allowed to see his face, and they couldn't learn any...

proper maths, like any detailed maths.

But that was really because he wasn't the real Wizard of Orse, was he?

He was just an old man.

This thing of him hiding behind a curtain so that you couldn't see him as he was talking.

There's there is one of the stories of his death is directly associated with that.

So, someone on the lower Patreon level was part of that, couldn't see his face, got so angry that he couldn't see him, was furious that he burnt down his house, and then

burnt Pythagoras's house down, and then he chased him into a field.

So, Pythagoras was in the lead, he's going good, he gets to the field, he's escaping this man, this is how the story goes, and then he notices that the field is full of beans and pythagoras refuses to step on beans because he believes that beans much like dogs are the reincarnation

i thought what you were going to say is that the guys chasing him went round two sides of the field and he went diagonally across it

So he gets to the field of beans and he stops and he thinks, I can't step on these beans.

I'll kill the beans with my feet.

And so the man catches up.

And rather than going, fuck it, I'll just stamp on some, you know, beans,

he just stands there while the man cuts his throat and kills him.

And that's the death of Pythagoras, according to one of many of them.

I think there's another version of the story where loads of his followers gave their own lives so that Pythagoras, go, Pythagoras, go, go, you must go.

We'll give up our lives.

Well, we're killed.

While he still gets to the end of the bean field, he's like, I can't do it.

I can sacrifice them.

I can't sacrifice you, my beanie friends.

he supposedly had the power to write words on the face of the moon.

Oh, yeah.

And I forgot to write anything more about that.

Did he ever do that, or was it

how you had the power train?

I just, that's a single sentence there.

That's just, and for just $2.99 a month, you'll be able to see the words I do write on the face of the moon.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this: it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Power up fall projects with Ego at Lowe's.

Every tool delivers power beyond belief.

So whether it's leaves, limbs, or lawn cleanup, count on Ego to deliver the power, performance, and innovation you need.

And now for a limited time, save up to $60 on select blowers, chainsaws, and pole saws.

Shop Ego today at Lowe's.

Offers dollar through 10-1 while supplies last.

Selection varies by

All right, I need to move us on to our final fact of the show.

It is time for our final fact, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is

when the website health.com listed the fattiest foods in every state in the US, entrance included North Carolina's liver mush,

New York's garbage plate, and Indiana's fried brain sandwich.

See, they never read Pythagoras in Indiana.

So, yeah, this is a fact just about the disgusting things you can eat in America.

Yeah, the fried brain sandwich sounds.

Yeah,

weirdly, like the others are slightly euphemistic.

Well, not even that euphemistic, but fried brain sandwiches are literally exactly what they sound like.

Oh, okay.

Pig's brain.

Well, it used to be cow brains, but after mad cow disease came in, they're now pig brains.

One little tip: if you when you bread the brains, as in you put the breadcrumbs on there, make sure you have cold hands, otherwise, they can fall apart.

So, that's a little bit of a tip.

The best place to get them is Hilltop Inn in Evansville, and that has been dubbed recently in 2009, actually, the manliest restaurant in America.

I know I'm a man, but I don't actually want my restaurant to be manly.

No, it's never, it's not even in my top five criteria for a restaurant.

Shall we go Indian, Chinese, or manly?

Exactly.

This list is incredible, though.

It's got, I mean, so you read out some of the, you know, the most amazing sounding ones.

But even the even the other things on it, the Colorado, the Jack and Grills 7-pound breakfast burrito is the least healthy food in Colorado.

Connecticut, the two-foot-long hot dog, which, and these aren't just in one place.

Lots of them are available in lots of different places.

Yeah.

There's the quadruple bypass burger.

8,000 calories.

I've had some of one of them.

Have you?

Yeah, in Vegas, right?

It's not impressive to have had some of one of them.

They don't put your photo on the wall for that, mate.

They'll put some of your photo on the wall.

Did you hear about the Luther burger?

This is in Georgia in the south.

This is right, it's a normal burger.

The Luther burger.

It's a normal burger.

It's got egg, it's got bacon, and it's got cheese, as well as the burger.

So far, so meh.

But it's not served between a bun.

Can you guess?

Luther, between two church doors.

That's right.

Yeah.

It fills the gap between the north and south doors on the transept.

It's amazing.

No,

someone in the audience murmured it actually.

It's between two crispy cream glazed doughnuts.

Oh, yeah.

And wasn't that part of his Protestant theology?

The doughnut thing?

It was the 96 theorem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shall I just quickly say the other two, very quickly?

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, liver mush

is a savoury sliced loaf made from pork liver, scrap meat, often from a pig's head, spices and cornmeal.

Nice.

Okay, and they have a liver mush eating contest

in wherever it was, in North Carolina, every year.

They also have a liver mush pageant, but in last year's...

Consisting of what?

I mean, are there floats?

Are there.

It really feels like putting lipstick on a pig, really trying to make that attractive.

It's basically a festival and they have lots of things, but they have basically the local children or young women that kind of...

Dress as liver mush.

Oh, no, they just dress as normal.

Is it like a liver mush queen?

They often do that in the middle.

That's the kind of thing, yeah.

And the liver mush eating contest, where last year the winner managed to eat some.

And garbage plate is from Rochester, New York.

And it's basically, this actually sounds really good.

It's a choice of any meats.

So even though I am vegetarian, but let's pretend I'm not.

It's like hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, any kind of stuff.

You shove a load of French fries on it, shove a load of beans on it, macaroni cheese, and then cover it in a special sauce.

That actually sounds quite good to me.

Really depends on the special sauce.

It does well.

I think it's hot sauce.

Okay.

Yeah.

I love, we've mentioned it before, James.

You've been there, but I just love reading about it every single time, which is the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden.

And it just collects food that is utterly horrible.

And James, you tried a few things there, which tasted horrible.

I was reading an article by a guy who went there in 2019 called Arthur DeMeyer.

And he described, sort of, he gave a bit more of a sort of explanation about these particular foods.

So you can have an Icelandic shark dish there called hakarl.

And he said it was...

It was eating it was like gnawing on three-week-old cheese from the garbage that had also been pissed on by every dog in the neighborhood.

That was one thing he had.

I had that there, by the way.

Did you?

Yeah, I did.

Did you vomit?

No, I didn't vomit at all from any of them, actually, although I retched quite a lot.

Does that count?

No.

But the Hakao one was funny because the guy told me that it was seeped in urine.

And I ate it, and you could really believe it.

It did taste like piss.

Right.

And then I actually put it in a QI script and it turned out to be completely true.

Untrue.

It was a natural uriny taste that it had.

They didn't add any urine into it.

So we cut it.

There's another one, the South Korean wine.

Did you drink that?

Actually, I think that's behind a sort of glass because in order

you have fresh turds of children specifically.

And the owner of the museum, one of the founders of the museum, he actually went about scooping up his eight-year-old daughter's poo in order to make this concoct.

That doesn't count.

It's like if you're buying it from South Korea as a special thing, that's one thing.

If you're actually making it from your own homebrew, it's different.

But but it says it has to be fresh, and no turd is going to be fresh by the time it's gone from South Korea to Sweden.

I don't think turds are ever fresh.

That's not.

They absolutely are.

They can be new.

They're not new.

I see what you're saying.

If you're at a fresh deli, you wouldn't expect to see it, would you?

They're safe at least five days after their best before date.

I'm telling you.

Okay.

Gosh.

So I got slightly distracted from this because someone wrote in actually to the podcast email account,

podcast at QI.com,

and this is from Evelyn Keeley, and it's that Oklahoma has a state steak.

You know, these official state things they have?

Absolutely mad stuff.

So Oklahoma's state steak is the ribeye steak.

The state drink is milk.

This is a complete brackets, but they've got a state astronomical object, which is the Rosette Nebula 5,000 light years away.

I've no idea why.

Feels like

such an unreciprocated relationship.

Twinned with.

But they've also got, right, this is what sort of brought me back to the actual fact, which is the state meal, okay?

And the state meal is this.

It's some chicken fried steak followed by barbecued pork, followed by fried okra, squash, cornbread, grits, corn, sausage with biscuits and gravy, black-eyed peas, strawberries, and pecan pie.

That's the state meal.

Cool.

A lot of that sounds good, just not in the course of one meal.

Actually, just speaking of like many courses with meals,

there is a footballer called Robert Lewandowski who plays for Poland.

And whenever he eats a three-course meal, he always eats his dessert first.

Isn't that cool?

Does he have a reason for it?

Yes.

He's Benjamin Button, isn't he?

This is a new-ish kind of diet.

And the idea is you eat a very fatty dessert and then you eat your main course and then you eat your starter.

And the idea is, what happens is if you eat a normal meal, you have your starter and your main course, and then the dessert will come and it looks really good.

And you're like, oh, go on, then I'll have it.

And you find some extra space for it.

But people are less inclined to do that for their starter.

And they tend to choose better main courses as well.

And so there was a study done with people who were either told to eat in the normal order, or they could have a cheesecake and then choose their main and choose their starter, or they could have some fruit and then choose their main and then their starter.

And they found that the people who ate the cheesecake first had 30% fewer calories than anyone else in their meal.

And that includes the really fatty dessert that they had.

That's brilliant.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's like a trick.

It's like you're tricking your mind.

We've just cracked it, haven't we?

You've just cracked the whole food thing.

That's amazing.

The whole food thing.

I just wow.

If that works.

Retire.

You think I've had a sticky toffee pudding, so I think I'll just have a salad for the main.

Thank you very much.

Do you want to finish your meal with a nice bowl of soup, or would you rather finish with a chocolate cake?

I'd rather finish with a starter.

A starter's everyone's favourite course, isn't it?

Oh, okay.

Nope.

See?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Way fewer than a third of the people in the room said yes.

Sorry, that's not proof.

You'll always get at least one yesterday.

You are one of those people who goes to a restaurant and goes, oh, I think I might have 12 starters.

Quiz question.

Oh.

All right, great.

Can you guys guys name a processed food product that the Earl of Sandwich was responsible for inventing?

Okay.

We're not going to.

Oh, sorry, a processed product.

A food or drink product.

Oh, fuck.

I've given it away.

Or drinks, did you say?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, follow that.

So is it a liquidized sandwich?

It's the M ⁇ S new liquid sandwich.

It's fizzy drinks.

What?

Yeah.

So he commissioned Joseph Priestley, the chemist,

to work on ways of making stale water more palatable and to keep water lasting longer because of ships.

Ships would have stale water.

It would go horrible.

It's a problem.

People don't want to drink their water on board, so they might be dehydrated.

So he hired Joseph Priestley, and Joseph Priestley created carbonated water.

And as a result, it's slightly acidic, carbonated water.

So that means it's slightly antimicrobial and it means it lasts longer.

So that is actually the product that he is kind of responsible for.

And the sandwich was way, way earlier, and he just popularized it.

Yeah.

You might remember this.

I got married in the room where he invented the sandwich.

Did you?

That was such a cheap meal as well.

Interesting fact, everyone, while you're eating your ham sandwich.

It's a homage.

Enjoy your glass of Coke.

Can I just say, Andy.

Crisps are available for purchase at the bar.

which will be a meal deal which you can pay for when you leave it's not a free wedding i should have mentioned um andy said to us before the show started guys i'm gonna tell a personal anecdote tonight

was that your personal anecdote it was my personal anecdote

pretty good yeah you see

he never tells anything that was huge insight it was very brave wow well done well the guy from the council made such heavy weather of it in the room on the day it was practically more of a sandwich talk than a wedding

It was most of the ceremony, yeah.

And do you wish to be sandwiched between the holy laws of matrimony?

Can I just mention one other food, state American state food, that I didn't know about?

Again, we'll be very familiar to people from these places, but in places like Oregon and Washington State,

there's now it's spelled G-E-O-D-U-C-K.

G-E-O-D-U-K.

Goo duck.

Gooey duck.

Gooey Duck.

Weird to start with.

It's gooey duck.

Spelled completely the wrong way.

And I've never seen one.

They're the biggest burrowing clams in the world.

And they look, they've got kind of a normal-ish-sized clam shell, about the size of your palm.

And then it looks like...

Looks like a slug's coming out of it, right?

A gooey slug.

Yeah, but it looks like a slug who's tried on a dress 12 sizes too small for it is coming out of it.

You've got a slug the length of most of your arm coming out of this, bulging out of this tiny shell.

And I mean, it looks so phallic that it's very hard to get around the fact that it is.

And this is a delicacy.

They live up to 150 years.

So, and their entire lives are, they're born, they burrow really deep with their shell into the sand.

And the reason they've got this huge phallus on them is so that it can stick up and just pop out of the sand on the bottom of the seabed.

Wow.

So it can collect up what it needs.

Wait, the phallus is collecting.

No, no, no, it's not a phallus.

It looks like a phallus.

Oh, sorry.

A cutoff.

I've got a cutter.

Sorry.

Yeah, it's actually its mouth.

It's blindly.

And

it's a siphon.

And he's going to be doing some googling tonight.

It's a really creepy slogan.

It's not a phallus.

It's a mouth.

I don't know why.

Whose slogan is that?

It's the slogan of the gooey duck.

And yeah,

so it's actually a siphon.

So it sheds salty liquids, actually, that it doesn't need anymore, in fact.

I know it looks like a phallus and it's shedding salty liquids but i assure you ladies and gentlemen it is a mouth

if a gooey duck looks like a phallus and quacks like a phallus

look we've run over i need to wrap us up okay that is it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you would 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 shreiberland andy at andrew hunter m james at james Harkin, and Anna.

You can email our podcast at qi.com.

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

All the previous episodes are up there.

There's also links to all the merchandise that we've got, and also Club Fish, our very secretive, behind-the-scenes place where we do extra episodes and compilations and gossipy chat.

It's really fun.

So, do check it out.

But we'll be back again next week with another episode.

So, we'll see you then.

Thank you so much, Up the Creek.

That was awesome.

We'll be back again.

Goodbye.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics.

That means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

At Arizona State University, we've made online education better, smarter, and more personalized so you can go further in your aspiring field.

I decided to pursue medicine once I realized that ASU did have the online online program for biological sciences.

You're still required to learn the same curriculum.

You're still being tested on the same content that anyone would be tested on in person.

The comprehensiveness of the program prepared me so well for medical school.

Explore over 350 plus programs at ASUonline.asu.edu.