459: No Such Thing As A Bee On The Moon

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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'm sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones, but not with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, but with some of our favorite facts from the last 12 months.

This is no such thing as the news meets the book of the year that we didn't get to do, all smashed into a 30-minute podcast.

So,

in no particular order, here we go, starting with a fact.

Who wants to jump in?

I can jump in because we're recording this at the same time as the World Cup semifinal is happening between France and Morocco and I have a fact where 40,000 people in France thought they were watching a World Cup match Germany versus Japan on YouTube but they were actually watching someone playing FIFA 23

And apparently this is a group of people in Vietnam.

This is what they do.

They play FIFA, they pixelate it so that someone watching the game thinks that maybe they're watching a pixelated version of the actual match.

And they make hundreds and hundreds of pounds by just going to be a match.

Because people are

because the ad money or whatever.

That's the thing.

They're genuinely...

I read this too and it's amazing.

And what a letdown when you find out that it's not.

And how foolish you are.

I saw some pictures of the pixelated and it does kind of look right.

But when they clean it up, it's very much a video game.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the goodness it is a video game.

Yeah, but I thought

I haven't played FIFA almost ever.

So I assumed it's it's like...

Could we do that with the podcast?

Like, if we sort of play a kind of slightly garbled version.

So it's like,

like that.

Yeah.

People might listen to that.

Does that mean there are people out there who might think that Wales won the World Cup?

Oh, yeah, because you could totally rig it.

Apparently, they're not that gullible, it says.

Sorry, sorry.

But they did, as James was pointing out, they matched up the right match.

So everything was fine.

The thing that was the kicker was it was a Vietnamese commentary as you say and that's but I don't think

that's no that added sort of a realism to it because when you go onto YouTube and you're watching some hockey channel it might be in a different language so it kind of gave realism to it yeah another news story from the year uh the queen queen died oh what oh wow way to bring a downer on it

so uh so just to to to cheer us all up let's remember the greatest tribute paid uh to her majesty which was by the london tourist attraction trek's adventure Do you guys remember this?

A lot of companies jumped on the bandwagon.

Domino's Pizza said everyone at Domino's joins the nation and the world in mourning.

Pizza Express went for a slightly different message, but they also said the same kind of thing.

And Shrex Adventure London said, Shrek's Adventure London joins millions of mourners around the UK and world in paying tribute to HMQE2.

Yeah.

I went to Shrek's Adventure this year.

I thought you could

see the Queen.

No.

The queue was shorted by just a bit at the Shrek Adventure on the south bank of London.

Wow.

Actually, I remember a few weeks ago,

I never used this on the podcast, but I found out that the longest ever theme park ride was eight hours long.

So you could have done that ride three times in the time you'd have got to see the Queen.

Really?

What was it?

What was the ride?

It was the Hogwarts one at Universal in America.

There's an eight-hour long Hogwarts ride.

Well, it was when it first opened.

What was like a broken motor or something?

Like, what was the motor?

No, it was like so.

Everyone wanted to go there.

Everyone was going to go.

The queue was eight hours long.

Sorry.

You said the ride.

You You said the ride was eight hours long.

You said you could go on it three times.

Well, let's see if I said that by the time the edit goes out, shall we?

Imagine not knowing it was an EL ride on it.

Sorry, on the queen.

The queeny thing, yeah, yeah.

So you remember for the day of the funeral itself,

the Queen's coffin was carried on a gun carriage.

You know, that was the thing, and it was pulled by lots of naval ratings.

That was the thing, hundreds of them all all pulling it in front and behind to get it exactly the right speed so that carriage this is a just an interesting thing the that carriage has been kept in a sort of storage room that's not the interesting bit

it's been kept there for 40 years and every single week its wheels have been oiled and turned around one quarter just in case gravity affected and miss misshaped the wheels and meant that they wouldn't work properly on the day of the funeral.

But because, I mean, gravity doesn't do that.

We've got other wheels in the world, haven't we?

And

we don't turn them, of course, reference.

Yeah, it's not like I come back to my car after I haven't driven it for a month and they're all square.

What's gravity doing to it, sorry?

Well, it's making it flat.

It's a heavy carriage.

It weighs tons.

You get that, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So you want, and the wheels are obviously quite sensitive, and you just want to, you just.

By shifting your wheel, that's effectively an anti-gravity machine.

It's not anti-gravity.

No, because you even

out the effect of gravity.

If you flatten out this bit, if if you shift it around a quarter turn, you flatten out that bit, and then you flatten out that bit.

It's like doing something culinary, like dough or something.

There's a culinary metaphor in there, which if I cooked, I'd be able to give you right now.

Right.

Domino's Pizza actually had to change their turn

in anticipation.

I just think that's an interesting example of the extreme thought and preparation that had gone into it over decades.

Yes.

You were talking about the different things that different brands did.

Oh, yeah.

So Morrison's, apparently, it was said that they turned off the beeps in in their checkouts

in deference to the Queen dying.

But they denied it and they said they merely turned down the sound.

Oh, okay.

So instead of going beep, it went beep.

Although for someone who's dying, going beep is a beep.

You don't really want that, do you?

They should have replaced it with the Big Ben bongs.

That would have been nice.

That would have been great.

Yeah, yeah.

Bong!

She caused confusion as a result of her death in Canada.

I don't know if you saw this, but in Canada, there was not long after she died, like quite soon, there was a citizen ceremony going on where they were anointing new citizens of Canada and doing the pledge and so on.

And it was all done virtually, and there was 140 people there or so.

And they started doing the ceremony and they had to stop it and say, sorry, we can't make you Canadians.

We don't know who you're pledging to.

Is it the Queen or is it to the King?

Really?

Yeah, really.

So they had to go off and find out who the fuck's in charge.

Does that mean it doesn't count?

If they said the Queen instead of the King, it doesn't doesn't count i think so yeah really because quite a lot of the england team in the world cup matches would sing god save the queen instead of god save the king so do you think we could get a rematch against that

hey here's a crazy stat that i read is that the queen was she was obviously very old what was she 96 years old when she passed so that means that of all the people alive in the country only a hundred thousand people had been around longer than her.

So everyone else of us had her in our lives.

That's still quite a lot, I think.

100,000?

I can't believe 100,000 people are older than 96.

Yeah.

That feels a lot.

It's gone the wrong way.

You just needed to present that with a different tone.

Yeah, sorry.

100,000 people have been around longer than the Queen.

Wow, that's a great fight.

And that'll make the edit.

That will make the edit.

Just on royals,

we're not the only royal family in the world.

Obviously, the Saudi Arabian royal family forgave Thailand this for a really interesting thing i had no idea they've been having this feud for 30 years but like there haven't been any flights from saudi arabia to thailand for 30 years there have been no ambassadors anything like that um and it was caused because 30 years ago a thai cleaner who was employed as a servant at the royal palace the saudi arabian royal palace uh he was called kriang krai tekamon he stole 20 million dollars worth of gems and diamonds and precious stones uh hid them in some vacuum cleaner bags, because you use what you've got and like duct tape them to himself.

Oh, he didn't accidentally suck them up and then

that may have been his excuse in court.

I don't know.

And he smuggled them out of the country.

And I love this, the way he smuggled them out was he got them to Thailand by putting them in a big box of cargo.

And then he knew that the Thai officials at the other end would check them at customs unless he did something.

So he bribed them with an envelope stuffed with some cash and with a note saying, hey, in my cargo, I've got loads of really bad porn and I'd really rather you didn't search it because that would be really awkward for me.

So can you not?

And they didn't.

Oh, really?

I would have thought you'd go for something slightly less tempting than that, wouldn't you?

You're right.

They're very respectful, the Thai officials and customs.

Anyway, this year, finally, Saudi Arabia forgave Thailand because it became this huge diplomatic incident.

People were shot dead because of it.

Oh, yeah, there was lots of back and forth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's terrible.

But the blue diamond's still missing, so check under your seats before you go.

It's not Oprah.

We're not Oprah.

Just while we're talking about porn, even though it was just a word,

I'm just going to quickly grab that and bring it over here.

There was a news story which in Manhattan, a congressional candidate called Mike Itkus, he's running and he has a sex positive approach as part of his campaign.

So he thought, I'd like to demonstrate how positive I am about sex.

He released a 13 minute long porn video with himself and a porn star that he filmed and put out to say, I'm a man of my words.

It's called Bucketless Bonanza, and it's with Nicole Sage, the porn star.

And yeah,

what party is he from?

I would say wherever he is, there's a bit of a party going on.

There was someone called Alexandra Hunt who ran in the third district for Congress.

And she was a former exotic dancer.

But rather than hiding it, she decided to embrace it.

And one of her campaign slogans was, just elect hoes.

And the other one said, I may have danced for money, but I'm no corporate whore.

Wow.

That's quite good, isn't it?

Yeah, that's quite good, yeah.

There was a guy in Nebraska, Bruce Bostelman, who apologized for repeating the rumor that schools are accommodating children who self-identify as cats by putting litter trays in the corner of the classroom.

Why are they putting litter trays in the corner?

Oh, no, they're not.

Right, okay.

So the premise of his accusation is flawed.

Yes, he accused them of doing something that definitely did not happen.

Right.

I got a fact that was sent in by someone, actually, like a couple of weeks ago, someone called

Brain Blobs on Twitter.

So thank you, Brain Blobs.

This is a really thrilling thing, guys.

So

this doesn't sound thrilling, but

there's been a general conference on weights and measures and some scientists...

No, no, stay with it.

Because some scientists from the National Physical Laboratory in the UK attended that conference on weights and measures.

And obviously, I don't need to tell you that that's the authority of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.

And so, anyway,

we've got some new units to celebrate, and that's really good.

So,

a measure of weight, a ronogram.

A ronogram is.

It sounds like it's someone's birthday.

And you just send some welcome run around.

Hello.

What does it mean?

I'm Ron.

Happy birthday.

Oh, that's so much better than what I've got here.

So a ronogram is a one followed by 20 zeros, okay?

And I think the Earth weighs six ronograms, which is really good because previously we had to say it weighs like 250 million blahs, and even that was the previous biggest unit.

Okay.

So you see what I mean?

Now we can just say it's six ronograms, and that's a much more convenient way of putting it.

Great.

Yeah, that's good.

That's very handy.

Yeah.

Because people often ask how much does the Earth weigh?

And you know what?

Yeah.

There are many more units.

Well, there's the Ronometer.

So, the universe is one.

That's how you measure runs, isn't it?

The entire universe is just one ronometer across.

What?

Oh, that's crazy.

Because it's very big.

It's huge.

You sound surprised, but you have just heard that a ronogram is a large thing.

It's bigger than a gram.

But I don't think that then helps you understand anything.

All right, Dan, okay, Dan.

No, no, no, that's fair enough.

All right, it's fair enough.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's an expanding universe.

Well, eventually it'll be two ronometers.

Okay, here's okay.

Better example, better example.

The other end of the scale, they've added some very, very small things as well.

Yeah.

Right?

So what about a quectogram?

Okay.

Okay.

There's a rontogram, which is the weight of an electron.

So this will be the weight of a quark or something like that.

It's the weight of something even.

So the weight added to your phone, if you get one extra bite of data on your phone.

That is one quectogram.

Right.

So that has actual weight?

Yeah.

I swear to God, I emptied my phone at some apps the other day

it floated away.

I'm not kidding.

It felt so much lighter.

I was like, wow.

And so that's true.

That's it.

Yeah, yeah.

There we go.

Yeah.

Do we think any of these are going to come in handy at Weight Watchers meetings?

Maybe, yeah.

You've lost a ronogram this week.

That really is.

Wow.

Well, actually, on the Earth and universe,

worrying news this year is that our days are getting longer and we don't really know why.

So

there's this quite confusing thing where in the very, very long term, the days are getting slightly longer because the Earth's rotation is slowing because the moon's moving away from us.

That's over millions of years.

You don't need to worry about that.

But in the short term, like the last 50 years, weirdly counterbalancing that, they've been getting shorter, which we haven't really known why.

And now suddenly, the last couple of years, they've gradually started getting longer.

Don't know if anyone's noticed here.

The extra.

Filter during Andy's bit a tiny bit, actually.

So there's a new measure of time, the Andy Graham.

It's only a matter of minutes, but you will age.

But yeah, we think it might be because of the Chandler wobble.

Chandler wobble.

Could that be any more weird?

Lovely.

For someone who I know has never seen an episode of friends.

Someone who's read the Wikipedia page, old friends.

Halfway through, I was thinking I'm out of my desk.

Alright, you nailed it.

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Do you know whose

time on earth has been made longer by one to two years as of six months from now?

Oh, yes.

I think I, I mean, despite the way you phrase that.

Yeah, I think I actually do.

So it's South Koreans.

South Koreans have just extended their life by one to two years, and that's going to happen between June of next year because they usually in South Korea, the way that they measure your age is when you're born, you were born one years old.

So they say that you're, you know, nine months is rounded up to 12 months, you are one.

And if you're born, I think it's like close to December, then you become two because it just is a new year.

So you go, you're two quite quickly if you're born in, let's say, November.

So that's been a thing where people have always found confusing if they go overseas because their birth certificate or the passports, we all carry our birth certificates, right?

Their passport will say an age, but they'll say a different age.

And it's really confusing.

So now South Korea has decided to abandon the whole thing of saying you're one or two when you're born.

And they're going to be like the rest of the world's metric, or I guess the majority of the world's world's world's world's.

Yeah, it's really sad.

That's true.

It's really sad.

It's really sad.

Well, I just think it's a cool, interesting

thing to do.

Yeah, to find that.

It's a interesting cultural difference.

Yeah, don't do it, Korea.

Go back.

Because it would be cool if, as you claimed, they're adding two years to their life.

And if that's how they've tricked them into it, then yeah.

Oh, I think if I could, I'm 38, if I could be like, I'm now 36, I think that would make my day.

No, but you wouldn't be.

You're still going to die on the same day.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, but

sooner than you think.

But I will have died two years younger.

Also, more people will say, such a shame.

It went too soon.

There were only 100,000 people older than Dan Schreiber.

Can I drag us quickly back to sport?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And, well, actually, one thing I just wanted to say about Southgate, which Gala Southgate.

Sorry, yes, I'm not familiar.

I'd like to.

I think you're on the tube station, weren't you?

I was actually thinking a scandal.

Southgate.

Did you hear about Southgate?

So football manager for England.

England's football manager.

And, you know, everyone thinks he's a really great guy now.

So obviously he was the bad guy in the 90s because for international listeners, he missed a penalty at the Euros.

Bit of a crisis for his popularity.

Everyone loves him now because he wears waistcoats and England's a quite a good team.

But I found out how he met his wife and it is ropey.

Oh.

She did with ropes.

It's actually not that bad.

But he saw a woman he fancied who works in a shop in Croydon.

And so he, first of all, would like loiter around the shop, pretending he was looking at the clothes there a lot to try and talk to her.

What sort of shop?

Clothes shop, I reckon.

Oh, yeah.

It's a hardware store.

He kept

picking up pad locks and going, I love this t-shirt.

Love this high-viz jacket.

Okay, sorry.

So he's hanging around the shop.

He's hanging around the shop.

He finds out she's got a very serious live-in boyfriend.

But it happens he goes to a restaurant one day and her and her boyfriend are sitting nearby at the table and he senses that they're having a bad time together you know he senses this relationship on the rocks so when the boyfriend's not looking he sneaks over to her and drops a letter in her hand with his number a letter a full reader yeah

18 pages

um

a note i suppose a note and um saying you know when this cocks up which clearly it's going to why didn't you give me a call and she did and she did and they had their dates in tesco car park for a long time because they had to be secret i think oh so she hadn't left they just started dating secretly.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow, this is a gossipy story, isn't it?

A Tesco Car Park is not a very secret place either.

It's actually open to anyone who wants to go there.

I assume her boyfriend shopped at Sainsbury's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, it's the only safe place for them.

Anyway, so that is some hot goss from 30 years ago.

13 years ago about Carcassgate.

Are they still together?

Yeah, they are.

It's very sweet, actually.

Well done, Gareth.

I've got sports news here as well.

This is to do with the world of badminton.

You'll all know this, I'm sure.

But just to remind you, four Chinese badminton players were put on probation for two years this year after failing to try their best to win in 2018.

So the match happened in 2018.

They finally had the thing.

Basically, the people that were watching the match noticed that either side were sort of not really giving it.

They were just sort of like dicking about.

And that apparently is illegal in badminton because

they did it for a very good strategic reason, right?

What both sides?

Is it so they can play a different team in the next round of legal?

Yeah, exactly.

I thought you were going to say maybe they'd been paid to throw the match.

No, I'm pretty, I think it was because they, if whoever won, would be playing the better team.

And I believe it was two Chinese, a Chinese team, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Who, if they won, were going to end up playing the other Chinese team.

And so that was silly because they want China to win.

So it's pointless China playing China because they're going to knock one of them out.

And so they all won.

And then I think, was the other one Korean?

I don't know.

Apparently, you know this way better than me.

I'm just guessing.

I'm just like crystal ball.

Yeah, I think then the other team were like, hang on, you're trying to lose.

We're going to try and lose as well.

And then they got picked up.

And then in the second half, they kind of went for it properly because I think they realized we've been caught out.

But now they're banned, yeah, for playing shit,

which is amazing.

In 2024, the Olympics are going to be in Paris.

This is the fact about next year, I should say,

Because this year, they unveiled their mascot they're going to have.

And everyone said the same thing, that it looks rather like a clitoris.

Oh.

And the woman who designed it, when they said to her, you know, it's a bit weird that your mascot looks like a clitoris, she said, I'm so happy after everything that's happened with feminism that people can now recognize the clitoris.

I saw the mascot.

I didn't think it looked like...

And they did find, I'm sure everyone saw this today, they found the snakes clitoris for the first time, haven't they?

And it's got two.

It's got two.

Two.

Yeah, because they have hemi-penis, don't they?

Like double penises.

So they have double clitorises as well.

Oh, good for them.

I've got a few records.

Oh, yeah.

Can you do a little quiz?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right, this record was broken in January.

By Laura Noonan of Sydney.

It's the most cartoon characters identified in one minute.

How many?

20.

Okay.

In one minute.

40.

31.

106.

Wow.

Imagine that.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

How

identified by photos?

Or?

I mean, yeah, some kind of pictorial

kind of voice, I guess.

I thought it might, yeah, I thought a voice might be.

No, I think it was pictures.

You know, Popeye, Betty Boop, Donald Duck.

Okay, you know.

Question two.

Question two.

All right, all right, all right.

February record.

Franz Huber from Milan.

Most swords swallowed while hanging upside down.

Well, hang up.

Okay, I've seen, I reckon I've seen people swallowing around six or seven, so I'll go for that.

Six.

Okay.

One.

Hundred.

Sorry, you didn't let me finish one.

Hundred.

You're both right, it's a hundred swords.

No, of course it's not.

It's nine.

Oh, okay.

Although, is that if you're upside down, is it still swallowing something?

Yes.

Well.

What is it if it's not?

It's just sort of pushing something up, isn't it?

You know, like swallowing is where you swallow something down and it goes in, you know, it still ends up in your stomach, though, no matter which way you're orientated.

Yeah, I think you've forgotten the definition of the word swallow.

Okay, well, you can't like say, oh, I didn't swallow those diamonds, officer, because I was upside down at the time.

Please go on your way, sir.

We legally can't arrest you.

Okay, fine, fine, fine.

All right, final one, final one.

March record.

This is Miyabe Kukimachi of Tokyo.

Most socks sorted with one foot in one minute.

And I want an answer in pairs, please.

How many pairs of socks sorted?

Half.

Half of one.

James has lowballed it.

30.

25.

Pairs?

400.

12 points.

4 again.

400 pairs of socks.

I half listened to the question.

Eight pairs of socks per second.

Final answer.

I don't know or care who got it right.

I think it was Anna.

I think it was 15.

Peggy.

Do you think?

No, no, no, I know.

I just can't remember what everyone's saying.

Oh, right, I know.

I'm angry with you for guessing 400, but I kind of forgot Anna's answer.

I think you guessed sort of technology.

25 shots.

Yeah, I meant single, so 12.5, I thought.

Wasn't this, I think I saw this, and wasn't she known on YouTube for foot-related content anyway?

I believe the person who won.

Or maybe I came across her in a different walk of my life, but

it's foot-related content.

I know it means sexual sexual stuff, but what does that mean?

What does that mean?

I actually don't know what that means.

Just sexy photos of feet?

I don't know.

I guess it's sorting socks with your feet.

I don't know.

I've never sorting socks with your feet.

Yeah, well, that's what she's doing.

That's what's loaded with.

I didn't hear the question.

Okay, I have a related fact on these kinds of people.

It's about influencers who do strange things.

Oh, okay.

And this is Stephanie Matto, who sold farts in a jar.

Oh, yeah.

And she managed to get very, very sick because she was trying to fart too many times because she got so many orders.

She was trying to make as much as possible.

And what that meant, because I found another story in the same week, is that you can end up in hospital if you fart too much and if you don't fart enough.

Because there was a woman called Cara Clark who got extreme stomach pain when she'd been holding in her farts too much.

And then this influencer, Stephanie Matto, had been farting too much and she ended up in hospital as well.

Were they in the waiting room at the same time?

But what that says to me is there's an optimum amount.

Yeah, well the other thing if you read the uncut version of Goldilocks there is that scene where

one of the bears in hospital could yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Why was the second woman holding in her farts?

Because she had a new boyfriend.

No.

And she's she's fine now.

They had a laugh about it.

Okay.

The way that I'm saying is we're all walking a kind of quite quite a thick line of yes, I think so.

But Stephanie has now retired from selling farts in jars uh you'll be glad to hear her family are glad to hear uh but she is now selling her fart jars as nfts uh okay

there's um can i can i mention one of the big stories of the year um

the very infamous chris rock will smith moment

at the oscars I fell in love with this story because it was just a very good example of how very quickly we all jump to insane theories to sort of justify why it may have happened.

So, there were two theories that came out immediately after it happened.

One was that someone said that the slap is much less interesting when you realize that Will Smith almost certainly went through the Scientology courses that tell you to unapologetically use slaps and physical force to let a fellow Scientologist know they've done something wrong.

So, the idea is that in the training, they just go quapang on the side of your face because they're bored or whatever, and that's them letting you know that.

Can we introduce that to the podcast?

Please, please, no, please, no.

I won't last one ever.

Tell us some more ULIP facts, Andy.

Pow!

But yeah, so, but then Scientologists, including ex-Scientologists, jumped to the immediately saying, no, no, that's not a thing.

My favorite one, though, of all the theories that came out is that someone noticed just before Will Smith came up to slap him on stage that Chris Rock had dared to say the word Macbeth on stage, which you should never do.

The curse of Macbeth.

Oh, sure.

Anna, you know what to say.

But so, just a few moments before, he congratulated Denzil Washington on his performance on the tragedy of Macbeth.

And so, now, if you go to the Wikipedia page for incidences after invoking the word Macbeth, you will find Will Smith slapping Chris.

But isn't that only a viable theory?

And I can't remember his wife's name.

Maybe it is Macbeth.

It's not later on.

Is it not?

Will Smith's wife would have to be called Macbeth?

Because I believe it was accompanied with an explanatory

words, wasn't it, by Will Smith.

He didn't want to leave us in the dark, didn't he?

Say, get my wife's sister.

Remove my wife's name from your mouth, please.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And his wife's not called Macbeth, so that's where that theory completely falls down.

But aside from that, well, that's the only reason he'd be annoyed about him saying Macbeth.

No, the whole idea of the Macbeth curse is that it's out of your control what then happens.

So then he goes on to tell a joke he thinks is going to be fine, and the curse takes over.

Oh, you're not saying Will Smith was furious because he broke it up.

The way you told it, it did sound like Will Smith.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Scottish Blay, you dickhead.

Go up and tell him.

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On celebrities, another celebrity of the year was Liz Truss.

Truss.

And

a cheer of slight recognition in the room, wasn't it?

Can you just, for any international listeners, can you just say who?

Yes, so she was the short-lived Five Minutes of Fame Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

She still lives.

She's still alive.

She lives.

Yeah.

Liz Truss lives.

She wasn't Prime Minister for long.

For God, how long was it?

37 days?

49 days.

49 days, actually.

That's not too bad, is it?

But she, I learned this year that she was often compared to Margaret Thatcher, obviously, because she tried to compare herself to Margaret Thatcher quite a lot.

And

she actually played Margaret Thatcher in a school play when she was eight years old.

Really?

So, what was the school play?

Macbeth.

I was in a couple of plays at school, and none of them featured a Brooklyn Thatcher character.

It was a nativity.

Nativity, yeah.

It was the school play was the 1983 election.

wow,

it was a weird,

they did things differently in Paisley in the 80s.

I think the Thatcher election was going on at the time, and so they reenacted it.

And they asked people if they wanted to be certain candidates.

They said, Would you like to be Margaret Thatcher and try to get people on your side?

And then everyone would vote for who they liked best, who was pitching their political theories.

And Liz Truss actually got zero votes, not even voting for herself.

Oh, because

she was left-wing at the time, because her parents were quite left-wing, and she wouldn't have been a Thatcher supporter until much later.

Well, what she said was,

yeah, that probably was it.

What she said was she knew the Tories were so unpopular in Paisley at the time that she couldn't be seen voting for Margaret Thatcher, even though it was her in this instance.

My school did the 1997 election, and it's a good, it's a good fun

thing to do.

So

who did you play?

Sean Prescott?

Well, we didn't do it as a play.

It was just

a shit.

And Michael Gove wasn't around then.

Yeah.

Who were you?

I'm Whitticom.

I wasn't no

we weren't playing individual people it was just like it was done as a like I can't remember there was a talk about it or something

you played people talking about the election it wasn't a play for fuck's sake

should we talk about the letters

we've got to talk about the letters the trust letters the trust lettuce the letters that lasted longer than this trust

but of course there's a big argument between left and right on Twitter like there always is with the right wing saying that actually there was some discoloration in the lettuce and maybe it hadn't lasted as long as Liz Truss.

But the Atlantic said that it was still usable in a salad.

So that counts.

What happened to it in the end?

Yeah, straight afterwards, for the next month, it was doing personalized messages on cameo for £13.

Are you serious?

Serious, funny.

Finally.

That's really good.

There was a really good quote about Boris Johnson in the Times this year.

Boris Johnson for International List is another Prime Minister that we've had this year.

This is around about the time when he was flying flying back from his holiday to claim the title of Prime Minister again and then decided against it.

And there was a school report written by one of his teachers when he was 18, and it was just so good and prescient.

So the school report said, Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility

and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed captain of school for next term.

I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else

all right

we were talking just before the show do you guys remember the sue gray report

this time last year that wasn't that wasn't out yet it was still that's all happened this year we're getting some no's over there so you're gonna have to refresh people nah

it's uh straight boris uh another boris like person chair bolsonaro in brazil uh he's been away from the public eye for the last couple of months and no one's really known what's happening there's been a lot of rumours uh what since the election because you lost

yeah yeah um the vice president said that um he'd had covid three times uh even though he denied it existed uh and he had a skin disease which stopped him from being able to pot on his trousers

and so he couldn't do any public events

you can still do zoom calls though can't you

we should think of wrapping up in very not just yet but soon is.

Can I say a science fact?

Yeah, of course.

So one thing that we've just been getting this year, it's been in the works for years and years, the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched, I think, at the very, very end of last year.

We've just got the first photo spec this year.

It's amazingly exciting because we're seeing lots and lots of the universe in completely new ways.

And I've just been reading a bit about it.

It's so sensitive, the James Webb Space Telescope.

It could detect the warmth of a single bee that was on the moon from Earth.

Okay.

Wow.

Isn't that good?

Well, we don't have bees on the moon, though.

Well, maybe now we'll find out if we do have bees on the moon then.

And do we?

Well, no, but

that's quite amazing.

Yeah, it's taking these pictures.

They get called the baby pictures of the universe because it's photographing light from 13 and a half billion years ago.

Really, really long time ago.

So you can see what was happening just after the universe was born.

Well, that made me think that all of our baby photos are still traveling out into

space.

As in, if you were far enough away, you'd be able to see yourself as a baby, you know, what you're up to.

Yeah.

You'd have to be firing them out somehow.

Like, for instance, broadcast stuff.

Yeah.

Something that's broadcast over the airwaves, that would go into space and that could be seen for a long time.

So technically, no such thing as the news is still on.

We got cancelled on Earth, but if you're on Alpha Centuri, you can watch it live.

Oh, wow.

Do you think the owner of all the originator of the the James Webb Space Telescope spams their friends on WhatsApp constantly with annoying photos of the baby universe?

Yeah, almost certainly.

Quite ugly, but they have to say something nice.

I've got a bit of a silly story here, which I just loved.

There was a guy in China, two guys in China, that were picking pine nuts from a tree recently.

And the tree was a bit high, so they thought the way we'll get to it is let's just fill up a hydrogen balloon and we'll attach ourselves to that.

So they go up in it, and they're picking their pine nuts, but then the balloon becomes untethered.

One of the guys jumps out, the other one's too afraid to.

He disappeared for two days into the air.

He went on a 200-mile-long journey,

really high in the sky.

They were monitoring as he went.

Fortunately, he had his mobile phone, and he was constantly calling and running low on battery, going, What do I do?

And they had to navigate him to slowly let air out over somewhere that was landable.

But for two days, he just fucked up across the air.

What an adventure.

It's like up.

So great, yeah.

We got any last stories?

In Nigeria, they seized thousands of donkey penises because they were mislabeled as cow penises.

Okay.

There's a romance novelist who wrote an online essay called How to Murder Your Husband, and she was sentenced to life for murdering her husband.

The old double bluff.

It doesn't always work.

And according to a recent study at the University of Singapore, the three funniest word purrs in the English language are playboy parrot, weasel penis, and spam scrotum.

We'll try them in the next episode.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts from the year.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on at at shreiberland andy at andrew hunter m james at james harken and anna you can email podcast at qi.com if you want to get in touch with us as a group we're on at no such thing or you can go to our website no such thingasafish.com all of our previous episodes are up there so do check them out there's a bunch of other fun things up there check it out too uh thank you very much up the creek for being here for our big end of year no such thing as a new smashed with the book of the year bonanza uh and we'll be back again next week with another episode we'll see you then Goodbye!

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