456: No Such Thing As Glass in the Future

Hi, everybody.

Just a quick announcement before we start this week's show, and that is that we have a special guest on.

He's been on once before, and he was so good that we decided we absolutely had to have him back.

It's Jamie Morton from My Dad Wrote a Porno.

He is the star.

He is the one whose dad actually wrote a porno.

And we're having him on partly because he's a brilliant guest, and also because it's a very sad time in podcast land because the final episodes of My Dad Red Aporno have just gone out, all apart from the very, very last one, which is coming out on the 12th of December.

And it features an exclusive interview with, for the first time ever, Rocky Flintstone himself, the Banksy of Erotica, as they call him.

Missed opportunity to call him the Wanksy of Erotica, but never mind.

Shavy was absolutely brilliant.

This was such a fun episode to record.

He is so funny.

We think you're going to love it.

And so do check out the final My Dad Red Apporno episodes and all the other ones too.

all right on with the show

hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish a weekly podcast coming to you from the qi offices in coverant garden my name is dan shreiber i am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and special guest, it's Jamie Morton.

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

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Jamie.

Okay, so my fact this week is this week, I'm not on the show often, but this week, my fact is, Barry Fitzgerald is the only actor in Oscar history to be nominated twice for the same role in the same film.

Amazing.

Was the film an early version of Mrs.

Doubtfire?

Best actor and best actress.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no.

He had one role.

It was Father Fitzgibbon in 1944's Going My Way, which did win Best Picture, actually.

Yeah, he was nominated for both Best Leading Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

Yeah,

which is insane.

It doesn't say much for the rest of the cast, does it?

Exactly.

But he won for best supporting actor.

So he could have conceivably won for both.

Yes.

But it went to Bing Crosby, who was the lead in the film.

Or co-lead, to pay for the film.

Co-lead.

Hang on, so it won best film.

It won best actor for Bing Crosby.

Yes.

But then Fitzgerald lost...

Best actor, but he won best supporting actor.

Yes.

Koran is amazing.

I know.

What a sweep.

Yeah.

Do you have to pay entry fees for the Oscars?

That is a great question, James.

Andy.

Yeah,

you do.

I imagine you do.

I imagine you do.

You have to nominate yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

There's probably an administration fee,

like 20 quid or something.

20 quid, probably.

But this movie sort of set a lot of records.

For example, it was the first film to ever have two actors win the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

Interesting.

It was the first movie to get the Academy Award for Directing and Writing, which was by a guy called Leo McCerry, who wrote and directed it.

He won two.

He won two at that one.

It was the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

It was the first picture to win Best Picture and Best Song.

It has all these records as the first movie.

And no one's seen it.

Exactly.

It seems such a waste.

I suppose in 1944 we had other things to worry about, didn't we?

Hide Your Republic.

Well, it's interesting you should say that because during the war, all Oscar statues were made of plaster instead of gold, or gold-plated bronze, which is what they're actually made of.

So he got a plaster Oscar, and he was a massive golf fan with old Barry Finns.

He sounds great.

And he was practicing his golf swing one day, and he decapitated his Oscar.

There's a great picture of him with like the head

and the body.

I was reading a bit more about this guy, Barry Fitzgerald.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, interesting man.

Yeah.

He was childhood playmates with the siblings of, okay, fine.

James Joyce.

Okay.

But not James.

No, they thought he was weird, didn't they?

He was so older, yeah.

He was a bit older, and they said that he had a beard and glasses and was always reading books, and so he didn't play with them.

Tracks.

His name, Barry Fitzgerald, it's not his real name, is it?

And usually you do that because you arrive into the world of the arts and someone has your name and so you have to register your name right and you change it.

But for him it was because he was trying to hide from the fact that he was sort of doubling on his work when he was meant to be working in the civil service.

So

his name would be on the bill and they wouldn't know it was him.

The worst thing was he worked in the unemployment department.

So they had all of the, yeah, they had all of the lists of who was supposed to be working and who wasn't supposed to be working.

So all of his mates would have known that he was doing this.

He's a movie star.

Oh, this was quite funny.

It's hard to hide being a starter star is when he started.

He was in the vaudeville days, he was doing plays.

He worked in the Abbey Theatre with Sean Yates as well.

So, more.

Oh, yeah.

What a milieu.

I know.

He was once almost kidnapped before the opening night of a play he was in.

Amazing.

By his boss, who said, You should be working.

It was called The Plow and the Stars, right?

And it was quite a controversial play.

And Ireland was very recently out of a civil war.

You know, it was a feebrial time.

And the play had a lot of controversial stuff in it.

And the Irish Times reported this.

It was in 1926.

Several gunboys turned up at Fitzgerald's mum's house.

I don't know what a gunboys are.

Gunboys.

Young gunman.

I mean, we've got a gunman.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

And it's just a young one of those, I guess.

I think people who carry guns around between places, maybe.

Like gunrunners, the young people, maybe.

Might be.

Well, anyway, the gunboys were there at the door, and they met his mum, and they said, right, we're here to take him, just keep him safe until the opening night is gone, so he won't be able to appear on stage in this play.

Right.

And she said, well, he doesn't live here.

This is his mum.

And I'm not telling you where he is.

And so they had to go away.

And then he did the play.

Wow.

Yeah.

What polite gungboys?

Just because the gunboys still live at home doesn't mean that everybody still hits it.

Yeah,

they were 12.

They're almost like knocking his bury.

Okay, to come out of the play, please.

Have any of you ever held an Oscar?

No.

In real life?

Oh, my God.

I reckon that's an addict they'll come in.

You haven't lived, boys.

And I'll tell you something.

I've held two.

So have I, yeah.

Same time?

Same time.

Oh, my God.

I was name drop, hideous, name drop, but I was at Emma Thompson's house for dinner.

She's not that hideous.

No, the name drop.

She's lovely.

She fed me and everything.

No, but in her downstairs loo are her two Oscars right there.

And interesting fact about Emma Thompson, you might know this, that she's the only person in history to have won Oscars for writing and acting.

Oh, is she still to this day?

What?

Yeah.

Were they both for I mean, was the writing one sense and sensibility?

Yes.

Correct.

And the acting.

I think Jane Austen wrote that.

Well.

Agreed.

It was a controversial year.

It's like when Kenneth Branagh won the Oscar for Macbeth or whatever he thought.

Best adapted screenplay, literally, just use the words.

Didn't actually win for.

I was going to come on to that.

I just didn't know you mentioned Kenneth Branagh.

You know, they used to be married.

Emma Thompson.

What?

I did not know that.

They used to be married, and he just won

an Oscar for writing Belfast at the last Oscars.

And if he were to win an acting Oscar, him and Emma Thompson would be the only people in history to have acting and writing Oscars.

And he's been nominated for two acting Oscars, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

We sort of parent-trap them back together, right?

Well, maybe not.

He's very happy married to Greg Wise, but you know.

Jeremy, did you take a selfie of yourself in Emma Thompson's toilet?

And what he was holding two Oscars.

I mean, what would you have taken to be good?

Well, I didn't, but my friend did.

And then, weirdly, later on in the evening,

somehow, I think we were taking pictures and we were like, say, oh, airdrop me them or whatever.

And Gaia, M's daughter, took his phone and found honestly about 50 selfies in this camera holding the Oscars.

And she was like, oh, my God, that's so embarrassing.

But I didn't because, you know.

Too classy.

Too classy.

Wait till you get your own.

Well, I'll be waiting a while, but there there we go um i'm not sure that barry fitzgerald should have got the oscar for best awarding actor well for example there's a there's a little a little goof in this which is that so he plays a catholic priest in this film um but barry himself was protestant so he wasn't kind of fully aware of how priests act and in the film i haven't seen the film myself but but you're gonna say he didn't deserve the award though aren't you well apparently when he does the crossing of himself you know yeah he does it the wrong way which feels like as an actor you would look into the basics

think.

Oh, my God, that's possible.

He doesn't do it the wrong way, upside down, though.

He just does it right to left, the way you should be doing it left to right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think you meant to do the left to right.

You do the top to bottom to left.

I go top to bottom, left to right.

That's correct.

Okay, so yeah, take it back.

Take it back.

Accuracy isn't everything in the arts, Dan.

It's an interpretation.

Do you think maybe he was making a comment on Catholicism?

You know, like the devil probably would do it that way, wouldn't he?

Yes, yes, really good call.

Oh, my God, it's even deeper than I realised.

But do you know that it's, this is a bit of a reach guys, but uh I found this and I thought I'd share it.

Uh male actors who have won or been nominated for an Oscar are statistically more likely to get divorced than their Oscarless acting peers.

Do you know that?

Interesting.

Because

they've just got women throwing themselves at them.

Well, because there's a thing called the negative consequences of positive status shifts.

So basically when you get a bit arrogant because you've just been nominated or won an Oscar, men

tend to leave their wives.

Interesting.

But

I can do so much better.

And then it was, I remember years ago reading a book where Dustin Hoffman, struggling actor for years and getting bit roles and stuff, suddenly gets cast in The Graduate.

Yeah.

And this line being that when he got the call, he tells his wife and they just stare at each other and there's an unspoken thing that's happening there, which is, this is the end of our marriage.

Bloody hell.

Yeah.

Because he's now going to be

globally famous and obviously he's going to go off and

that's obviously in the room to them too.

It was obvious to them too in that moment that that was the end of their marriage.

Gosh.

To be fair, this does remind me a little bit of the time.

I don't know if you, Dan and Jones, remember the time we won our first Chortla award.

Yeah, I do remember that, yeah.

We all split up with our partners, didn't we?

Speaking of Oscars,

I keep my Charleston award in the bathroom, actually,

which has led to a lot of weird stains on it.

I keep one of my awards in the bathroom as well.

We won a Webby Award.

One of my awards?

Plan.

One of many.

They don't all fit in the cabinet.

That's the problem.

Mine is next to a review that I got in the Sunday Times, which called Madad Rotoporno the, quote, worst cultural event of the decade.

So it's yin and yang in my battery.

It was in the Christmas edition of the Sunday Times 2019.

It was like a roundup of the decade.

And some absolutely poisonous little

toad of a journalist, I won't name him, he knows who he is.

He finds a way to worm us into any bad review he ever gives.

This was terrible, but not as bad as Madame Rena Porno, so he'll be thrilled that we're ending.

Yes, I thought it's important to kind of have them both to realize that neither really matter, do they?

Oh, that's very good.

That's like Rudyard Kipling, isn't it?

If the triumph of the disaster, and you know, you treat them both the same.

It's exactly like that, Andy.

I'm often called.

If you've got an IMDb, they have lots of sort of tagging that you can do and people just go and do it.

It's not like an official thing, but there's loads of different tags and each movie might have 20 different tags.

Someone went through them to see if there's any correlation between these tags and whether you can win an Oscar or not.

And apparently, there are some keywords that have never been even nominated for an Oscar.

So zombie, food fight, and breast implant.

There has never been a movie with any of those three things that has ever been nominated for an Oscar.

Interesting.

I don't think that's true.

It's the tagging, so it could be that someone has a tagging for it.

I'm pretty sure that Hook has a fantastic food fight.

Oh, was that nominated for Best Picture?

Absolutely not.

But it must have been nominated for something, like production design or song or something.

You're saying that my screenplay, my

double D undead custard brawl

is not probably not Oscar worthy.

Damn it.

A chocolate award, though.

Can I just quickly ask, in my double D undead custard

brawl, sorry,

is it simply the breasts that are undead?

It is.

It's about a woman who goes in for a routine operation,

a breast enlargement, and she gets given the breasts of a dead person.

Ah, yes.

Yeah.

And they come to life and they come to but still attach to her and she's alive.

Wow, that's weird.

You rarely have a zombie attached to a human who's alive.

We We don't have a woman on this podcast where we normally do, but is that how breast implants work?

They just take the breasts off another person and stick them onto you.

Is that right?

I believe so.

I do need to do the screenplayer's still in the research phase.

Russell Crowe has an Oscar, doesn't he?

Russell Crowe?

Russell Crowe has one.

Was he?

For Gladiator.

Yeah, he's got few.

He had a best actor.

No, he's the only one once.

But you know where he keeps his Oscar?

He doesn't keep them in his bathroom like

I haven't been to his house and taken self-voices.

This is Oscar.

Okay.

What's the most Russell Crowe place to keep an Oscar?

Like his barn or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So close.

No, really?

In his chariot.

I bet he has the chariot from Gladiator.

He's got...

In a haystack.

He's like, it's a needle in a haystack and he keeps it in his haystack.

It's like it's sort of metaphor.

It's like your thing.

Yeah, you know.

Has he got a coliseum?

Did he take that home as a prop?

He has a chicken coop and he keeps it in his chicken coop

at his ranch and he claims that it helps his hens to lay bigger eggs.

Wow.

I mean he's all the coins.

That's all he wants.

All the cockerels, sadly, leave the chickens.

That's the problem that she introduced it.

Rosamond Pike buries her awards in the garden.

What?

Right, yeah.

So bloody.

She's so weird.

She's a bloody goth, Rosamond Pike.

She's

all classy and la da la.

But actually, there's a heart of darkness there.

She like leaves a little bit of the top of them to kind of glint in the sun.

That's nice.

Yeah, I know.

It's kind of interesting, isn't it?

And what awards has she won?

She's won like a golden glow.

Okay, but she hasn't got a chortle.

She has got a chortle on your hair.

You can't...

It's sacrilege to bury a chortle in the car.

They'll come and dig it up and take it off you.

It's not allowed.

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

My fact this week is that one of the attractions at Disneyland in 1956 was the bathroom of tomorrow, which included, amongst other exciting exhibits, an array of interactive faucets and a dramatic story of valves.

Wow.

Not valves.

Yeah.

What a narrative.

What a narrative.

Any Oscars in this bathroom?

Oh, God, there should be, right?

Except the...

Well, there's not, but the whole thing is kind of one big Oscar because it's gold.

The entire thing is.

So the idea was in the 50s, they thought in the future everyone will have a gold bathroom.

I think so, basically.

But sadly, only Donald Trump has managed to make that dream a reality.

Yeah.

So this was part of an area of Disneyland that was opened along with the original Disneyland in America called Tomorrowland.

And Tomorrowland was going to have lots of exhibits where they could showcase how the world was going to look in the futuristic future of 1986.

And it included things like this.

bathroom of tomorrow whereby air conditioning was going to be in there.

There were dumbbells so that you could do exercise while you're having a bath that were on the side of the bath.

You know, all these sorts of like little innovations.

But the whole premise of it, it was done by a company called the Crane Company.

They were selling it now.

So the bathroom of tomorrow was actually today.

And yeah, and so this was one of many of these little exhibitions that were put on that were slightly sponsored by corporations who wanted to showcase the related stuff within this area of Disney.

Yeah.

Very cool.

It was designed by Henry Dreyfus,

who was a designer.

Dreyfus also designed the classic black telephone, you know, this one that you basically see everywhere.

He also invented most of the Hoover models of vacuum cleaners, the upright ones.

And he was also the chair of the meeting of the International Organization of Standards Committee in Berlin when they kind of came up with all the different signs that there would be around the world.

You know, like if you go to an airport, the sign for a taxi rank is the same everywhere.

I love that.

I love those shadowy organizations that, you know,

secretly dealing with signs.

I went on a mad research, Bender, last year for QI about

plug sockets and the standardization of plug sockets.

And are we going to hear about it now?

I think for everyone's benefit.

That would be the worst cultural event of the 2020s if we did that.

I had such an amazing time doing the research.

And I look back and I've written about 20 paragraphs of just dross.

This bathroom does have some good things in it.

It had a sink, which you can adjust the height of.

You just sort of pull it up or down.

That's clever.

Accessible.

Accessible.

And

if for kids, they can pull it right down.

And it's there.

And it was hydraulic powered.

I think that's

cool.

It's a good idea.

I mean, clearly a huge pain in the bum to install.

But once it's in, it's in.

Once it's in.

Exactly.

You know?

Never think about it again.

Yeah.

And is it still there?

No, it shut down after a couple of years.

Yeah.

Surprisingly was not as exciting for kids

as they probably thought.

Well, Disney isn't just for kids, Dan.

It's also for adults.

Absolutely true.

Because you know, I have worked for Disney Parks and Resorts for

more than 15 years.

I direct a lot of stuff.

Are you in the mouse suit?

No, you're not.

There is no mouse suit, James.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry.

Yes, I have been to the parks a lot.

Wait, wait, wait, but there is a suit, right?

No, you're saying it's just Mickey.

It's just me.

It's just the new rodent man running around.

Genetically modified.

Mouse mouse.

One Mickey mouse.

that's cool yeah it is cool so I have been there a lot actually and have you then got access we've spoken in the past on the podcast about all these like crazy corridors that you can go yeah the tunnels underneath what this you've done all those yeah I've been in those tunnels they are called what are they called they're called the utilidors

all of these tunnels and you know they're actually not a basement people think they're the basement but because it's built in Florida and it's essentially on a swamp you can't have basements in Florida okay so it's all so everything else is on the first floor exactly Magic Magic Kingdom's on the first floor.

What?

Yeah.

That's so funny.

And if you walk up to Magic Kingdom, it's on a very, very subtle slope.

Wow.

So you're actually climbing up a full flight of stairs as you approach Magic Kingdom.

That's incredible.

Oh, it is incredible.

Yeah.

Wow.

But those tunnels are mad.

And there's everything in there.

There's like coffee shops.

There's like dry cleaners.

Yeah, it's amazing.

For the staff, exclusively.

For the staff, yeah.

Wow.

And it's good to kind of get people through the park so that like no character or cast member from one part of the park will ever be seen in a different part of the park.

They'll just go through the

I imagine like a race of troglodytes who live under there and have never come to the first floor.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That's it.

That ironically would be a great movie.

That's one that Disney will never make.

No.

From the maker of Double D undead Custard Bro

comes.

Just a quick down to Morrowland before we go to Brawl Disney.

It does sound absolutely bananas because all of it was sponsored by one company or another.

So the House of the Future itself was actually sponsored by Monsanto, who later became extremely controversial as one of the makers of Agent Orange, which was used in GitHub.

Oh, really?

Yeah, so Disney kind of dropped that sponsorship once that sort of came out.

But all of these different firms, so American Dairy Association, American Motors, National Lead Paint, who sound great.

Wow.

It's very much of an era, aren't they?

Very 20th century um the dutch boy colour gallery was sponsored by dutch boy paint wow wow can't find much more information about them friends with the gun boys yeah

amazing um and when they opened it they didn't cut a ribbon did they they just turned some taps on instead of yeah like

yeah because it was the the house of the sky just to show that it's the future yeah what's more the past than cutting a ribbon yeah yeah um i was told by someone that i worked with over there that this is an this is insane, this fact.

Okay.

And I'm not sure if I believe it, but he told me, and I, and he's very...

And he works there.

Yeah.

Quite senior.

Where, though?

Is he one of the troblodites?

Has he got nuts?

Has he not seen sun in 10 years?

Let's just call him Mr.

Mickey M.

No, M.

Mouse.

The boss.

No, 4%

of all the photographs taken in the United States are taken at either Disneyland or Walt Disney World.

Stop it.

4%.

4%.

That's all.

Isn't that insane?

It's quite a big country, isn't it?

Yeah.

United States of America.

4% is that's mega.

You've got mad, right?

Yeah, it doesn't.

You're right to be skeptical.

I was like, is that true?

Wow, amazing.

And you know, they also, it isn't just theme parks, they have cruise ships.

Have you been on a Disney Cruise?

Oh, my God.

Okay, I've got so many questions to ask you, right?

Okay.

Wow, I've never seen you so animated.

Not since we started talking about plugs that time.

Okay, I was reading an article called Disney Cruise Secrets.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And I have to say, it was the most disappointing article I've ever read.

Okay, let me just.

I'm just going to tell you a few of the secrets, right?

The Disney Cruise Secrets.

Okay.

Okay.

Secret number one.

Disney Cruise staterooms are not ready until 1:30 p.m.

Secret.

Secret number one.

Wait, how's that a secret?

I know.

It's only a secret if someone rocks up at 12:30 and they say, Yes, it's ready.

Secret number five: you can

bring bottled water on board.

Ah,

and secret number 14, Disney will provide you with soap.

Oh, the soap's so good on the cruisers.

It's some of the best soap you've ever had in your entire life.

I may have taken it with me.

It's really good.

Really?

Okay, so that does.

Yeah, yeah.

So, can you confirm about the runs not being ready?

No, one.

I actually hacked that because you.

Here's the thing that

with those ships is that you have to get off them really early'cause they have a they're they're changed over the same day.

Yeah, yeah.

So everyone's got to be off the ship by like nine or something.

So how long are you on it for?

Is it a turn?

There are multiple you can die, you can do two nights, you can do four nights.

Dan, you can do a week.

Um I'm now a travel agent.

Uh but uh so yeah, I guess the turnaround is for the yeah, so until one thirty, that gives them time to clean all all the all the state rooms.

That must be a chaotic four and a half hours on board.

Just finding out what's left left in all the rooms.

I mean, that happens in every hotel in the world.

And it must be absolute mayhem every day.

But what's fascinating about the Disney cruise line is that they're the only cruise line on the planet that has fireworks at sea.

Okay.

Oh, good.

Yeah, so they have a big deck party, normally on the penultimate night.

And they have fireworks that are set off from the ship.

And what's fascinating about these fireworks is that they are made from a biodegradable material so that when they hit hit the water, they become fish food.

Oh, so that's cool.

Isn't that cool?

That is really cool.

Do you need special dispensation for fireworks at sea?

I don't think so.

I think you would be able to, yeah.

Because it might be seen as a signal.

It might look like flares, right?

Flares at you.

In SOS.

Yeah.

Wow.

They're going very whimsical with their very extravagant flares.

Wow.

They're sinking, but they also want to let them know that Goofy is having a great time.

And then, well,

I was once on one of these ships, and they have these rides on board the ships, like a slide that goes off the edge.

Actually, no, this one that is like kind of you stand on like a trapdoor and it opens, and it goes, and you go down a chute and stuff.

I got all the way up to the top,

stood on the trapdoor, yeah,

and I was too heavy.

But instead of saying, I'm sorry, sir, you're too heavy, they said, I'm so sorry, buddy, you're just too full of magic today.

Too

full of

magic.

I mean, I could see what they were going for, but it was even more annoying.

I was like, this call me a fat bastard, to be honest.

That's so funny.

So I had to walk all the way down in front of all the children and their parents.

And what you said to each one, too full of magic.

Yeah, full of magic.

And I was like, I forgot something in my room.

Sorry.

I couldn't get into 1:30.

It was no one.

It was a low point on what was otherwise a beautiful trip.

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

My fact is that 5% of the world's electricity is spent turning big rocks into small rocks.

Jesus Christ.

Mad.

That is mad.

It's a lot.

5%.

5%.

That is crazy.

For something that sounds unbelievably dull.

I know, but

this is a big business.

So, what exactly is it?

Because

I tried to research this topic.

I failed.

I'm not going to lie.

I will be a passenger for this part of the podcast.

Andy, educate me.

I found this in an interview.

I was reading an interview with a guy called John Stanton, who specializes in crushing big rocks into small rocks.

That's his

line of work.

He loves it.

He's a big rock crusher.

And basically, when you're mining, you might get some big rocks out of the ground, but the ore is inside those, and you can't just deal with the big rock you've got.

You need to turn it into a small rock.

You need a rock crushing crushing machine.

And there are

lots of great models available on the market.

Can I ask, when you say he's a big rock crusher, is he a big, is he like big in the industry rock crusher?

Or is it specifically he's a big rock crusher?

I think he's both of those.

He works on two levels, though.

It does.

Yeah.

But I don't know how big he is as a man as well.

It could work on three levels.

Ooh,

I don't know how much.

How much magic does he got?

I saw that piece in the Times.

He's got as much magic as me.

Wow.

It's called communution, isn't it?

Turning big rocks into little rocks.

Oh, man.

And then you screen them, and then you might grind them smaller again.

Grinding.

Yeah.

Crushing, grinding.

Do you know what's better, wet grinding or dry grinding?

Oh, my God.

Because they're both done.

I do know.

I do.

No, of course I don't.

I would feel like...

What do you say, better?

Yeah.

Grinding mills can be operated both dry and wet, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Let's go wet.

Yeah, and wet grinding is predominant.

Yeah.

Wow.

So what is wet grinding?

You just add

literally read it directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

You add water to the crushers.

Yeah, I just wonder why it helps.

I guess it's lubricates.

Yeah, lubrication.

And it helps with the dust, probably.

Absolutely.

Like when you cut into flagstones and things,

it helps to have a bit of water to kind of.

That's look at the shoe comes from.

I'm sorry.

Cannot have arrived.

I'm going to say.

Yeah, but most of them are like massive nutcrackers, basically.

They're all top-loaded because then the pressure from the rocks above acts on the rocks that you're trying to crush down, and so they're being forced into two different directions.

Right.

And you just feed the rock in, and the rock cracks, and because the metal surfaces are harder than the rock, that's you know, that's the process.

And then eventually, when it's small enough, it's a dust, and you can get the lithium out or the

gold.

So, hang on, so you're using big rocks as your tool to crush the former big rock into smaller rock.

It's helping.

That's so cool.

It's a partner.

There is actually a thing called autogenous milling, where it's literally just the rocks that you're crushing are all crushing each other.

That's so clever.

That's incredible.

I love that.

I was reading about the history of crushing rocks from big to small and one of us had to.

I just want to give a shout out to the website machinerypartner.com.

Okay.

Because, and I'm quoting directly here, it's an event in 1881 when Philetus W.

Gates got a U.S.

patent for his device, which was that was the sort of uh rock crusher, you know, that was the basic model.

Philotus, not a name you hear often these days, is it?

As a first name, yeah, Phil Gates.

In 1883, Mr.

Blake challenged Mr.

Gates to crush nine cubic yards of stone in a contest to see which crusher would finish the job faster.

The Gates crusher completed the task 40 minutes sooner.

I was looking into humans who can crush rocks.

Oh, that's a good thing.

Because I thought before we had machines, we must have needed humans.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I thought, you know, can anyone do it with their bare hands?

And I actually found the first non-Roman emperor, Maximinus Thrax

who was who was supposedly a rock crusher the first non-Roman Emperor yeah that's in he wasn't born in he wasn't an empire yeah but he was sorry but he was emperor of Rome of Rome yeah exactly yeah

and he he's a person who was very tall but because he was quite a lot taller than most people the exaggerations have been written down and it's hard to know where he was so supposedly and this was a Roman emperor he was eight feet six inches tall

no Yeah.

Yeah.

Apparently his

thumb was so large that he wore his wife's bracelet as a ring on it.

That's how

he was good at hitchhiking that guy.

And so during public events, he used to impress people by picking up rocks and crushing them with his bare hands and pulling wagons on his own.

Which, yeah.

It feels a bit demeaning for the Emperor of Rome to be having to do like, hey!

He had a very short tenure.

It was three years as emperor because he was overthrown because of his disastrous

ideal war.

Just by some people, some other people.

Yeah, that's very impressive that they managed to overthrow.

So I mean, it's not just him fighting against everyone.

He's not like, let's do a thumb war.

If anyone can beat me in a thumb war, I will hand over.

Oh, God, yeah, when he's telling the gladiators whether or not they've survived or not.

There's no mistaking that.

It's like a foam hand at a basketball match.

So this was a really interesting topic for me.

Yeah.

So

I have decided to go a little off piste and discuss The Rock.

Did you know that The Rock's nickname as a kid was Dewey?

I bet you didn't.

No.

Dewey.

Dewey.

I wasn't covered in Dew.

Yes, exactly.

And that's the reason why.

Do you know that he has a degree in criminology?

Didn't not know that.

I bet none of you knew that.

He's an ordained minister, guys.

He's an ordained minister.

Okay, that's more understandable.

That makes sense.

On Dewey, is it like Huey, Dewey, and Louie kind of thing?

Do we know why?

Or is it the Dewey Decimal System?

He spent all his time in the library as a kid.

I'm going to be honest.

These are bullet points.

I haven't really delved deep into it.

Okay.

Right.

Do you guys know what the smallest rock is?

Here we go.

Back to business.

Back to proper rock, boys.

Well, okay.

Well, what is a rock?

You know, is a speck of dust a rock?

No.

Oh.

Is a pebble a rock?

Yes, I think it is.

Okay.

Is it grit?

Is it

smaller than grit?

You guys are never

going to get it.

Tauk seems pretty small.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's.

Clay.

Clay.

Clay.

Clay.

Oh, my God.

Clay.

Clay.

Clay.

I'm so expected and excited.

I'm going to have to really sell this puppet.

Okay.

No, this is really interesting.

Genuinely,

this sounds so boring, and I appreciate that.

You don't need to keep saying that.

Everything in this segment follows that trend.

So, which is smaller, sand or clay?

We now know it's clay.

Clay, clay, clay.

But you might not have thought that, right?

No, you're not.

In the middle of clay, no.

Like, sand feels so fine.

Like, you know, that very fine Caribbean sand, it feels so fine.

Okay, so clay particles are unbelievably tiny.

The smallest ones.

What is clay?

Small rocks.

It's a sort of little silica.

I think it's a silicate.

But yeah, you never feel it as like sand.

It doesn't fall through your fingers.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Right.

But I think you've got clay soils and stuff like that, and there it is in granular form.

So particles of clay can be less than 0.002 millimeters across.

I think that's two microns, possibly.

It's unbelievably small.

So the largest particle of clay you can get is not even a thousandth as big as the smallest particle of sand in the world.

Oh, that's incredible.

That's the scale of difference we're talking about.

I told you.

I take it all back.

And this is the really weird thing.

Clay particles can be so small.

I'm quoting directly from a site I read here.

Clay particles can be so small that it could take hundreds of years for them to settle from the top to the bottom of a bottle of water.

What?

Because it just takes, everything gets in their way.

Everything, you know, the tiny molecule of anything just disrupts the clay from its path.

And this is why clay soil is so sticky.

It's because there are so many spaces in between these tiny, tiny particles.

The water fits in between the particles.

So it just holds huge amounts of water.

That's why clay soil is is so heavy.

Has someone actually done that experiment?

No, we found a plastic 100 years ago.

Yeah, well, that's if they started then,

they would have watched it hit the bottom.

I'm afraid.

I don't think anyone's done that experiment properly, but it just needs sort of, yeah, yeah.

And also, we're actually banning plastic.

Yeah, we don't want to encourage that, do we?

Sorry.

I found a mystery rock.

Oh.

It's a mystery rock that grows baby rocks.

And it's very bizarre.

So, and it's only found, found, so far as we know, in one place in the world, or at least so far as the article claims, and this is in Romania.

And it's in a town called Costesti.

And these are called Trovant rocks, T-R-O-V-A-N-T.

If you saw the rock one day and it's raining overnight or whatever, and you come back the next day, suddenly the rock has grown.

It's got like a bulbous new bit of rock that's on top of it.

And they basically secrete cement and harden.

So what happens is during rain, during a heavy shower, they absorb the rain minerals and then they come into contact with chemicals that are inside the rock, which then create a pressure reaction which pushes out this kind of concrete.

And sometimes they become so bulbous that they loosen and they fall off.

And that's the baby rock that's created next to the rock.

Other times they just stick like giant pimples coming out of it.

It feels like we could utilize it to build things, like build a bridge.

You put one of these rocks and then you fire a hose at it

and then shake it.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

I think it's true.

And some are tiny, they can be really, really tiny or 15 feet high, these rocks.

So when the bulbous bits are secreted, they're like giant rocks.

Yeah.

Troman emperors.

Ridiculous.

Yeah, like what, and you just get it in this one spot in the world, so far as we know.

Wow.

That is so interesting.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

But did you know that the rock has a tattoo that took 60 hours to do?

So,

you know.

What is it of?

Yes.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that one of the biggest TV events of 1966 involved someone reading extracts from a book written by a relative known as Rocky Flintstone.

What?

This is an outrage.

This is insane, James.

This is an accusation of plagiarism.

Isn't it?

Against my father.

This is astonishing, I have to say.

I've never heard this.

So I was just reading the old newspaper archives and I searched for Rocky Flintstone because I thought maybe there was someone with that actual name who lived in the past.

And I couldn't find anyone like that.

But there was a big spike of mentions in 1966.

And that was when the final episode of The Flintstones aired.

And you can still watch this today online.

It's an episode where Fred finds an old diary of his grandfather, Rocky Flintstone.

His name was Rock Bottom Flintstone, but he was nicknamed Rocky.

That's an even better name for that diary.

And it was about a run-in with some Stone Age Nazis and a romantic escape with a character called Mata Harok, like who's based on Matahari, this fine.

So there's a little bit of romance in there as well.

Do you know what?

That makes some sort of sense because

my dad recently tried to trademark Rocky Flintstone because...

He's an idiot and he thinks that that's going to be able to be done.

And he got a letter back from Warner Brothers basically saying,

absolutely not.

Really?

Under no circumstances.

And actually, you're lucky that we're not suing you for using it up until this point.

But you know what?

The parallels here go a bit further than just the name being the same.

So My Dad Rota Porno is ending now

after six seasons.

Because we're being sued by the Flintstones.

And the final episode of My Dad Rota Porno is going to feature for the first time Rocky Flintstone himself.

So it's the first ever appearance of Rocky Flintstone.

Someone's read the press release.

So Flintstones, this episode where Rocky Flintstone appears for the first time is the final episode of season six.

That's the Flintstones.

Yeah, so it's the exact same scenario

as you.

That's so.

This is...

So did you have any idea that your dad, I mean, has your dad seen this episode of the Flintstones?

Did he sort of see it and then forget all about it and then years later?

No.

No, because he would have been...

I think it's just an awesome name and the coincidence.

Yeah.

He named himself the Rocky After a Dog in Brazil, which we don't need to to go into.

But the Flintstone bit was because he really relates to, you know, in the title sequence, when he gets locked out of the house, he bangs on the door.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Apparently, that's, yeah, that's very much

like my parents.

So I think that that's where he was inspired from.

But that is mad that Rocky Flintstone is actually a character.

And the...

the grandfather of Fred, you say.

Yes, right, yeah.

Yeah, so one generation difference, but closer.

And I watched a bit of the episode.

In it, it's going from Fred reading out loud to his wife and Barney, his friends.

So it's a similar thing.

Extracts of the diary out loud while they then cut to the scenes itself.

I think there's something of Alice in Wilmer as well, isn't there?

What you've got to say?

Yeah, Redhead.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not sure how I feel about this.

It kind of makes me think my whole career has been a lie.

But obviously, The Flintstones was massive in the 60s.

Yeah.

It was absolutely enormous.

And so the end of The Flintstones was watched by, I don't know how many people.

They didn't have the actual figures, but it was like 30% of the TV watching.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it was the end of the original series, because obviously it's gone on and on and so on.

We're going to talk about the Flintstones movies later on.

Don't you worry.

I bloody hope so.

Iconic bits of cinema.

But The Flintstones, the cartoon, I didn't realise, was also originally aimed at adults just as much as children.

Yeah.

Broadcast late in the show.

Prime Time Show, 8.30 p.m.

Yeah.

And I really like the fact it was originally called The Flagstones.

And then the Gladstones.

Yeah.

And then The Flintstones.

They finally hit on that as a...

Because those two both sound so so weird yeah comedy called the flagstone

have you seen the pilot of the flagstones

I actually watched it

all 90 seconds of it 90 seconds

and it was it was good it's amazing that it got picked up are you saying it is good or is it good no it is good it is it is it is good but it it doesn't have the magic of the flint was it the same characters as well yeah okay right

yeah but it was it was made in 1959 but never aired until 1994 when it was discovered okay right when it was researched you should watch it it's interesting 1994 is the year that the Flintstones movie came out.

No.

So, anyway, in the original series,

one of the things that to appeal to adults as well that they did, I'm pushing on, is they would have celebrity guests that would come on, or they would parody celebrities of the day in order to give some comic, as you would say, for the adult sort of recognition.

So, quick quiz, because they loved a pun.

They absolutely loved a pun.

Okay, Carrie Grant is a character.

What has he been renamed?

Clay Grant.

Oh,

there's Carrie Granite.

Yes.

1-0.

Tony Curtis, who voiced himself, is on.

What is he called?

Boney Curtis, because they were in the.

That's good.

Yeah.

No.

Close.

You're in the right area of the name.

Stony Curtis.

Oh, that was obvious.

That was easy.

Yeah, keep going.

There's more of these.

Yeah.

There's Rock Hudson playing himself.

Amazingly, yeah.

It's Rock Huds Stone.

Oh, my God.

And Hallie Berry in the movie The Flintstones, I don't know if you're keen to talk about that.

She was actually directly named after a famous female celebrity.

Hallie Beryl.

No, so no, so you've got to step away from Hallie's name altogether.

Shayley Berry.

No, no.

What?

Hallite.

Berry.

No, her name has nothing to do with it.

It's another famous actress.

The character's name.

Yeah, the character's name.

Yeah, named after another famous actress.

Shaley's The Rock.

No, so there's no pun.

It's just outright her name.

Oh,

Sharon Stone.

Yep, there we go.

And she's called Sharon Stone in the movie.

Yeah, Halle Berry's called Sharon Stone in the movie.

But that's enough on the movie.

Let's get back to the TV series.

Well, just lots of.

I really find it interesting that the sort of adult elements of it, because I did not.

I never watched The Flintstones, really.

Yeah, just not very familiar with it.

I guess so.

But

they were sponsored by cigarettes in the original days, which.

Winston

Andy, how many times did I have to tell you?

Jesus,

anyway, they were sponsored by this firm, Winston Cigarettes.

Was that when it was going out to children?

It feels like that was when it was going to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even then, it was.

Well, yeah, because advertising was just different back then.

They were advertising to adults, they weren't kids smoking.

Have you seen that as well?

I actually watched that.

Yeah, it isn't the smoking that got me, it's the outrageous misogyny of those two men.

Oh, right.

Oh, really?

It is insane.

Like, Barney and Fred are just like watching their wives do loads of chores and housework.

And then they're like, let's go around the back.

And they sneak off.

And they're just

reclining and just smoking and just chatting and watching their wives work.

Right.

They are cavemen, but it is.

Literally.

There's a theory that the Flintstones are from the future, which I quite like.

That's the Jetsons.

Well, they do meet the Jetsons at one stage, don't they?

So that's part of the theory.

One theory is because they have four fingers um obviously we have five fingers in this time so perhaps the little finger has sort of vestigially disappeared because you don't need it anymore because you know what do you use your little finger for you're right and we never had four fingers so that has to be an evolution yeah they the animals in the flintstones can speak obviously these days animals can't speak and never in the past as far as we know have animals been able to speak yeah so perhaps in the future they will be able to speak humans Humans coexisting with dinosaurs never happened

in the past.

Jurassic Parkinson's Park.

Is it a sequel to Jurassic Park?

There is a.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

The theory is that it's a post-apocalyptic future where all current technology has collapsed and they're trying to replicate it using the mutant dinosaurs that they've got.

My theory is that they listened to this podcast and rocks became so popular because of the last section that we just did away with all of the technology and people lived in a rock-based society.

Yep, I'd live there.

I'd move.

Wow.

Did you guys see the Flintstones Kids Just Say No Holiday Special?

No, I missed that one.

This was something that went out in 1988 and it was a public service say no to drugs Flintstones episode.

Brilliant.

Oh man, can I tell you the plot?

Yes, please.

So the Flintstones kids, it's like young Flintstones.

This is Bam Bam and Pebbles.

No, it's not.

It's actually the main generation we know, but like the Mucker's young people.

Exactly.

Like the mother babies, yeah.

Nice.

They're trying to win tickets to a Michael Jackson concert, who in this is called.

Michael Jackstone.

Thank you.

Exactly.

And Wilmot is tempted to join up with a gang of older kids whose leader, Stony, smokes

crack marijuana, unfortunately.

You're right, they should have gone.

And then Wilmot talks to her parents, and they tell her that a real friend wouldn't offer you drugs.

And Stony is arrested for drug usage.

And it ends with a version of Michael Jackstone's song Beat It.

And the episode also features Nancy Reagan as herself.

Does she have a funny name?

I think she might have been doing a kind of extra, like, hi, everybody, you know, rather than

Nancy Reagan.

Nancy Reagan.

Nancy Reagan.

Yeah, that is a really hard.

That's probably why she never made it onto the princess.

Can we talk a little bit about the movies?

Yes.

Oh, go on.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, this is kind of tangential.

It's not really about the movies, even though it is.

The The B-52s,

the band

of Love Shack Fame.

What a tune.

They recorded versions of Meet the Flintstones and the bedrock Twitch, which I'm sure you've got used.

Did you?

Yeah, the B-52s.

They changed their name.

That's the thing.

They changed their name to the BC52.

Very cool.

Brilliant.

Very cool.

And they even appeared on the top 40 chart as the BC52.

That's committed to a bit.

That's great.

Yeah, isn't it?

Everyone got on board.

I like that.

That's a

I really want to see both the Flintstones film and the Flintstones film sequel, Viva Rock Vegas.

Yeah, yeah.

They're both great.

So you've seen both?

Of course, yeah.

I just mentioned to my wife that we were recording this.

She says, I've seen that.

Hallie Berry tries to have sex with John Goodman in the film.

And it's

quite, there's quite a sort of saucy plot where John Goodman is Fred Flintstone because he's incredibly eminent as an actor now.

And seeing him in 1994 playing Fred Flintstone is very funny.

But he looks so like Fred Flintstone.

He does look like a fancy thing.

Yeah, it's amazing.

to say yes.

Is it not a good film?

It's quite.

Like it's a cult film.

It was commercially successful.

But afterwards, the entire cast refused to return for the sequel, which is why the prequel, Viva Rock Vegas, was recast entirely.

Nobody the same.

Yeah, because the first Flintstones movie is...

Elizabeth Taylor's last ever film.

I know.

Which is really terrible.

The casting is amazing.

What a way to go out.

It's got Rick Moranis.

Rick Moranis.

It's got

Elizabeth Taylor.

They clearly thought they had One thing I read was that Rick Moranis basically quit acting after this movie because they realised that they were using him.

It peaked.

How do you talk about it?

I can't follow it.

Personally, I think I'd read that

he had family issues, which meant he had to step back from acting.

But the thing claims that he was just like, I can't be put in any more movies like this.

Rick's moraine is.

Like a moraine is like a...

It's like scree that you get on top of a mountain.

It's brilliant.

Very nice.

Absolutely cool.

Because Rock Morenus was right there.

You don't settle for the easy job to it, huh?

He needs the puns you need explaining for.

That's his puns.

Glass was banned from the entire set of the Flintstones.

How many guesses why?

No glass in the future.

In the future, there's no glass.

That's correct.

What's it that, though?

Because I know that in,

is it in Downtown Abbey, you're not allowed to wear Calvin Klein underwear.

Because even though it's not on show, they think maybe your sackcloth or whatever it is they wear might ride up and they might see it.

I haven't seen Downton Abbey.

Do you think it's that like in the 14th century?

It doesn't seem to be.

Is it not?

It's not, it's not.

But you can have it.

You can see there are lots of...

It's an Abbey.

I thought it was about monks.

There are lots of probably quite sheer and slinky gowns and outfits that maybe if you're wearing a bag.

You can't wear modern underwear, basically, even though it's not going to be on show.

Oh, thank you.

Is it similar?

It's not that, no.

Glass bands from set.

I think Jemmy, you're the only one who hasn't.

Thank you again.

James has got quite a good one.

Dan's, no glass in the future.

So there's a wide range of plausibility.

I've forgotten it again.

Then we talk about the Flintstones.

The Flintstones movie.

Were they worried that because there was so much rock on set?

No shoes.

No one's wearing shoes.

Oh, no one's wearing shoes.

The entire cast of filming barefoot.

That's clever.

So obviously.

Yeah.

Well done, Devil.

That is good.

That's pretty good.

There was the actor in the original series, Miss Jean Vander Ply,

or Pill, P-Y-L, was her surname.

And she was the voice of Wilmer.

And

she gave an interview in 1995 where she explained that they were basically, for the amazing amount of money that this made, because it was syndicated around the world.

I mean, there was just so much money being made.

She only received $250 an episode.

And then she did a contract that said the residual payments from syndication, she did a one-off payment of $15,000.

And that was it.

that she got.

And she was a great voice.

She did a lot of voices in the Jetsons as well.

And she did, I think, as well as doing Wilmer, she did Pebbles in that.

She was Rosie in the Jetsons,

she was the maid, yeah,

yeah, so incredible.

Um, oh, that's awful, yeah.

And so, yeah, she said, if I got residuals, I wouldn't be living in Sam Clement, I'd own Sam Clement.

Um, oh, yeah, so well, she should have a better agent, frankly, exactly.

Learning by yourself,

okay, that's it, that's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on at Schreiberland.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

James.

At James Harkin.

And Jamie.

At Uncle Eagle.

Don't Ask.

Okay.

That's the whole thing.

Yeah, or you can get us on our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website, no such thingasafish.com.

Check out all of our previous episodes.

They are up there now.

You can also buy the new merch that we've released.

It's a bunch of t-shirts and pin badges and so on.

And also, you can get access to Club Fish, the private member club.

Jamie, you can listen to the final episodes of My Dad Wrote a Porner, which are going out in December.

These are the final episodes, one including Jamie's dad, Rocky Flintstone, for the first time ever.

No one's ever heard his voice before.

Well, you have, Dad.

Well, I know your dad, but yeah.

And it's a good voice, so I'm very excited to hear it.

But on behalf of the podcasting world, we're very sad to see you guys go.

No, we're delighted.

Well, I mean, financial.

outlived us, all right.

Fine,

fish live on forever, don't they?

Anyway, we're gonna miss you guys.

Uh, but uh, we hope to see you coming back for reunions.

Anyway, that's it, that's all of our facts.

We'll be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Oh my god, I just broke it.

What's broken?

Absolutely.

I didn't see there was one behind it.

Oh my god.

Are they both chortless?

Oh no.

You know when people win awards, they're like, I wish I could break it in half and give it to the other nominees.

I really don't know.

I'm gonna take my golf swing down the arm.