216: No Such Thing As A Lobster War

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Perth, Australia.

Speaker 2 My name is Dan Schreiber, and I am sitting here with Anna Czaczynski, Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin.

Speaker 2 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 you, Czechinski.

Speaker 3 Yeah, my fact this week is that in the 1960s, Brazil and France almost went to war with each other over whether lobsters crawl or swim.

Speaker 2 What a just war it would have been.

Speaker 3 Whose side are you on?

Speaker 2 Whose side are you on?

Speaker 2 I think they crawl. Oh, I think they swim.
Well, I will see you on the battlefield.

Speaker 2 I assume they do both, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah. The classic Switzerland in the corner.

Speaker 3 No, so it is a problem that they do both because this is so this is the fact that in 1961 a French fisherman found that the water off the coast of Brazil was full of lobsters and they wanted to fish them so that they could get money from selling the lobsters.

Speaker 3 And so they started fishing them, but Brazil claimed exclusive rights to see creatures that were walking along the continental shelf within a certain like diameter or radius of Brazil.

Speaker 3 So if creatures were walking in that area, then Brazil had a right to them and no one else did. But if they were swimming in that area, then they did not.

Speaker 3 And so this huge argument came forward about whether they were walking or swimming. And the French said that they were swimming, so they were open to anyone, because lobsters do sometimes swim.

Speaker 3 And so they said we're allowed to fish for these lobsters. Brazilians said they crawled.

Speaker 3 There was actually, I think there was a moment where the Brazilian admiral of the Brazilian Navy said that, if you're saying that lobsters swim, you're also saying that a kangaroo would be considered a bird when it hops.

Speaker 2 That is fighting talk.

Speaker 3 But it really came to blows. So there was this huge debate, and eventually Brazil said, France, can you please go away? These things are crawling.

Speaker 3 And France refused and had a destroyer ship accompany their lobster boats, a warship. And in response, Brazil mobilized its warships, including an aircraft carrier.

Speaker 3 And then both of these sides are ready for battle. And this lasted for two years.
They were sitting there with battleships poised, ready to fight each other over whether lobsters crawl or swim.

Speaker 3 And then eventually some laws of the sea were put into force saying, Look, guys, chill the fuck out.

Speaker 2 So the official wording on the law. It was, yeah.

Speaker 3 And yeah, war didn't happen and rights were granted to Brazil because of a fishing act. And it was okay, but we were pretty close, guys.

Speaker 2 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It seems to me that countries are always going to war over fish. Are they? Things living in the sea.
So there's been a turbot war between Canada and Spain, a crab war between North and South Korea.

Speaker 2 There was an oyster war between Maryland, the state versus pirates. Cool.

Speaker 2 There was a mackerel war between UK and Iceland, a prawn war between India and Sri Lanka, a squid war between the UK and Argentina, a scallop conflict between the UK and France.

Speaker 2 A catfish dispute between the US and Vietnam. And a sprat spat between Latvia and Russia.
Wow.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 3 God, fish are real troublemakers, aren't they?

Speaker 3 And so on lobsters, which I believe this was about. So the Caribbean...
So the thing that this was originally about actually was a Caribbean spiny lobster, which was a kind of rock lobster.

Speaker 3 But this is a kind of lobster that queues. So a very British brand of lobster, but when they migrate, they form orderly single-file queues.

Speaker 3 So they migrate seasonally because they want to get away from cold water. And these, you know, these are the most precious lobsters on that coastline.

Speaker 3 And yeah, they cling to each other and form an orderly queue and move a single file. Each rests its antennae over the sort of arse of the lobster in front.

Speaker 3 And they move like a conga.

Speaker 2 That's so exciting. It's a lobster conga.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I read that in North America back when the European settlers first went there for the first time, there was so much lobster in the water that they would wash up onto the shore in piles two feet high.

Speaker 2 Like a tsunami, this tiny tsunami of

Speaker 2 lobster.

Speaker 2 Tiny and delicious. I've got a fact about release it, putting lobsters into the sea, which is a thing that sometimes people do.
So this was in Britain in 2017.

Speaker 2 Two Buddhists were fined £15,000 for releasing 700 live lobsters and crabs into the sea off Brighton.

Speaker 2 And they did it as a life release ceremony, which is a thing you might want to do if you're a Buddhist. And unfortunately, they weren't native and they had the potential to destroy ecosystems.

Speaker 2 And the government had to try and catch them again. Only 323 were recovered.
So so there are still about 400 out there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is a real problem, though. This has happened in Australia as well, genuinely, and in America.
So it's the Fang Sheng ceremony.

Speaker 3 It's a Buddhist ceremony, which is about returning life to where it's meant to be, but it's always returning non-native creatures to an unfamiliar habitat, and they always wipe out local ecosystems.

Speaker 3 And yeah, so it happens with lobsters in Australia and in China, America.

Speaker 2 Do Buddhists have like the equivalent of a confession booth that they go into?

Speaker 2 Forgive me,

Speaker 2 monk father, I don't know what it'd be. Lama, forgive me, forgive me, Llama, for I've sinned.

Speaker 2 I tried to save a life, but I've destroyed an entire ecosystem.

Speaker 2 That's 12 reincarnations that you've been deducted.

Speaker 2 You know, Peter, the people for the ethical treatment of animals, we've discussed them a few times, and they kind of suggest that people might want to do this thing as well, which they call lobster liberation.

Speaker 2 And they have posters, they put posters up saying being boiled hurts, lobster liberation. But unfortunately the lobster in their picture is bright red, which means it's already been cooked.
Oh no.

Speaker 2 Lobsters do have a very, very tough time. So whenever they molt,

Speaker 2 they have to, obviously they have to get rid of their old shell to grow larger, but they have to lose half their claw weight. because otherwise the claw is too big to fit out of the old shell.

Speaker 2 And the claw muscles are so massive, because obviously that's what lobsters are are like,

Speaker 2 they've got very slim wrists, so they have to rip the claw. Basically, when they try to molt, they have to rip out the lining of their throat, their stomach, and their anus.
Which is

Speaker 2 that's the trifecta of things you don't want to rip out.

Speaker 2 What? That's the least classy use of the word trifecta.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but they are they're weird aren't they?

Speaker 2 I was reading on National Geographic that they so okay their brain is located in their throat their nervous system in their abdomen their teeth in their stomach their kidneys in their head they hear through their legs and they taste with their feet they're all over the shop there

Speaker 3 so the bladder being very much in the head means that they urinate out of their faces and urinating is very important to lobsters and especially female lobsters because it's quite sexy.

Speaker 3 So the way that female lobsters seduce male lobsters is that they urinate out of their face into the male lobster's den.

Speaker 2 That is sexy.

Speaker 2 Oh, you wouldn't want, imagine your letterbox in the morning.

Speaker 2 Oh no, it's Valentine's Day.

Speaker 3 Well it's very attractive in some circles. But yeah, the females urinate in the male dens until the male is attracted enough to the urine or thinks, I really need to get rid of this urine somehow.

Speaker 3 So he invites the female in. And then immediately she gets naked.
So as soon as she's been invited in, she sheds all of her shell. And also, I think this is really insulting.

Speaker 3 The other thing that the female sheds once she gets into a lobster's den is the pouch where she had banked the sperm from the prior mate.

Speaker 2 I'll just leave this by the door.

Speaker 2 Can she put back her shell on if he's not interested? No, no.

Speaker 2 You can't rip out the lining of your throat, stomach, and anus and then think,

Speaker 2 I've missed those.

Speaker 2 I've misread those sides.

Speaker 2 I'll just get my pouches for them and be on my way. Hey, we need to move on to our next fact, shortly.

Speaker 3 Oh, I think we should honestly give a shout-out to the amazing lobsters, which are the largest freshwater invertebrates on earth, which is the Tasmanian lobster. And yeah, they're incredible.

Speaker 3 So they're the size of kind of a normal-sized dog, and they're extremely strong. They cross the bottom.

Speaker 2 And dogs come in lots of different sizes.

Speaker 2 That's one of the main things about dogs.

Speaker 3 They're like a cocker spaniel. Wow.

Speaker 3 They are extremely big. They live to be 60 years old at least, and they can break human bones with their claws, or they can crush beer bottles.
And

Speaker 3 they're just incredible. And they can't breed until they're 14 years old.

Speaker 2 Which we laugh at, but we're humans.

Speaker 3 That's literally the same as humans. But

Speaker 2 breed. Yeah,

Speaker 2 breed.

Speaker 2 I thought that when the lobster gets to 14, it goes

Speaker 2 That's better. Fittingly, it does make that noise, but it's a good idea of a reason.

Speaker 4 The number one resolution for people last year was to save more money, but nearly half gave up by February.

Speaker 2 Don't let that be you.

Speaker 4 Download Rocket Money to reach your financial goals this year. Track your spending, cut waste, and automate savings in one simple app.

Speaker 4 Rocket Money shows you all your expenses and categorizes them so you know exactly where your money's going and where you're overspending.

Speaker 4 From there, the app cuts waste by canceling your unused subscriptions and lowering your bills.

Speaker 2 No customer service needed.

Speaker 4 With that money freed up, the app will automatically set some cash aside for your goals. Whether it's an emergency fund, paying off debt, or saving for vacation, Rocket Money's got you covered.

Speaker 4 Users love the app with over 186,000 five-star ratings. And on average, users can save up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features.
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Speaker 4 Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started. That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel.
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Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1350 there was a man called William Stand Upright.

Speaker 2 And he annoyed everyone else in his village so much that every single one of them moved away. Wow.

Speaker 2 He sounds awesome.

Speaker 2 Do we know anything about what he did? Well, so the thing is, this comes from the parish rolls in England.

Speaker 2 So it's where, if you're a historian, it's a really good place to get all the really small things that happen in the villages.

Speaker 2 And in this one, in in particular, it says, the coroner testifies that William stand-upright is so quarrelsome and rancorous that none of the Lord's tenants can bear to live in the village because of him, and he has caused the village to be deserted.

Speaker 2 And then by 1356, so that's six years later, he had also left the village.

Speaker 2 Presumably, because he had no one left to argue with.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 2 And that's all we know about him. Like,

Speaker 2 in a lot of these things, these kind of parish things, all you see is a very, very tiny snapshot of people's lives. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 So, for instance, in 1328, John Francie claimed two shillings in damages because Alice Devanese had accused his wife of wearing her short jacket before Easter.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 2 Shut my mouth.

Speaker 2 In 1347, a man called Roger Sweatinbed

Speaker 2 was accused of fornication with Letitia Batt.

Speaker 2 Wow. Roger Sweat in Bed.
Sweat in bed, stand upright, and shut in mouth. Was that the third one?

Speaker 3 This is though, it's so fun reading through these old records.

Speaker 3 So there's actually a document called The Assize of Nuisances, and I really recommend it, and it's what I wasted all of my research time doing for this show.

Speaker 3 But it's from 700 years ago, and it's literally a list

Speaker 3 from the whole of the UK of all the nuisances that are reported by neighbours. And so I read through it, and most of them, to be fair, are about sewage leaking into other people's gardens.

Speaker 3 So there are a lot of...

Speaker 2 Maybe they were just flirting with a next-door neighbour in a kind of lobster way.

Speaker 3 It didn't sound super sexy in the write-up. So there was a woman who built her own personal toilet because she didn't like throwing her sewage out of the window, which a lot of people did, but

Speaker 3 the solids blocked her gutter, and the neighbours said they were greatly inconvenienced by the stench.

Speaker 3 So that was then. And there was one more, just in 1377.

Speaker 3 Thomas and Alice Young complained that their neighbour built a forge and they were making armour, but the sledgehammer crashing of them making the armour disturbed them.

Speaker 3 But worse than that, the smoke penetrated their house, so it smelled really bad. And also, they said, the blows of the hammer shake the walls of our house so much that it spoils our wine.

Speaker 2 Wow!

Speaker 3 That is unpleasant, actually, to have to live with that.

Speaker 2 I've got a fact about kind of

Speaker 2 a celebrity neighbor disputes, because this does happen.

Speaker 2 So, for example, in Manhattan in the early 1970s, John Cage, famous composer, he lived next door to John Lennon, and he had to go around to complain about the noise.

Speaker 2 Well, can I just say John Cage is most famous for writing that song, which is Complete Silence. Exactly.
Nice. I like the idea of John Lennon going back around and complaining any time he likes.

Speaker 2 Can you please stop playing four minutes and 33 seconds?

Speaker 2 I saw another, this is just very, to me, this is very British about noisy neighbors. In Crystal Palace in London, which is where I live,

Speaker 2 this family discovered in their basement an unexploded World War II bomb. And they found it in the evening.
But they didn't call the police because they didn't want to wake the neighbors overnight.

Speaker 2 And so patiently guarded the bomb.

Speaker 3 How loudly do they talk on the phone?

Speaker 2 They just didn't want everyone to be evacuated because they might be blown up by a World War II bomb.

Speaker 3 To be honest, if the World War II bomb has lasted 60 full years, it's probably going to be okay for an extra 12 hours.

Speaker 2 That was their logic. And imagine if it had one of those timers counting down from 60 years ago.

Speaker 2 We've overset this one, but one day.

Speaker 3 But there are often sort of surveys done about the items that people find most annoying in neighbours, and they include hot tubs that are annoying because people are making a lot of noise in hot tubs when they're in them, barbecues, automatic solar lights.

Speaker 3 Trampolines are a very common cause of complaint.

Speaker 3 And I like this from the Guardian newspaper, who commented that trampolines are complained about because they allow the neighbour's children to spy on you on an intermittent basis.

Speaker 3 Very annoying.

Speaker 2 I was just looking at some stupid names

Speaker 2 because of this guy called William Stand Upright.

Speaker 2 I found a website which had every single name that's mentioned in the Doomsday Book, and I spent most of my time reading that, to be honest.

Speaker 2 In the Doomsday Book, there are four people called Abba, twelve people called Alfred the Butler,

Speaker 2 two called Ape, one called Bonno, one fish, two gods, and a snot.

Speaker 2 And there is one person called Anna,

Speaker 2 who was a man living in Puckle Church in Gloucestershire.

Speaker 2 No relation.

Speaker 3 My past is not supposed to be delved into. That was in my contract.

Speaker 2 There were no Dans, no Andes,

Speaker 2 and there was one James who lived in Cockfield in Suffolk. Really? Wow.
He actually is a relation.

Speaker 2 I looked up a few names too. So I found that in the last decade, several dozen people have named their daughters unique.

Speaker 2 I also looked up some medieval ones as well. And

Speaker 2 just on the origins of rude words,

Speaker 2 in the Middle Ages, the early uses of the F word, the word fuck, meant to hit something. So there is a man in 1290 whose name was Simon Fuckbutter.

Speaker 2 He probably worked in dairy.

Speaker 2 There's actually, there's a really cool Twitter account which is called Name Curator, at Name Curator, and it's an account run by an Australian called Ben Osborne.

Speaker 2 And Ben Osborne just puts just his favorite names that he's found. So a couple that have gone up on the site there is these are all real people.

Speaker 2 Dick Passwater is one guy who was a NASCAR driver in the 50s. So Dick Passwater and my favorite,

Speaker 2 a guy called Hans. Hans Off

Speaker 2 and he's a former submarine official.

Speaker 2 What was he called Dick Passwater? Yeah, and he was a NASCAR driver because he was also another NASCAR driver at the same time or maybe the following decade, called Dick Trickle. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And he's one of my favorite people because Dick Trickle, he was an amazing motor racing driver, but he liked to smoke.

Speaker 2 And they changed the rules and said you weren't allowed to smoke anymore because you had to wear helmets and you couldn't smoke while you were having wearing your helmet.

Speaker 2 And so what he did was he drilled a hole in his helmet

Speaker 2 and he smoked with putting the cigarette in there. Wow.
And so for QI, I always wanted to ask the question: why did Dick Trickle have a hole in his helmet?

Speaker 2 Beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker 3 Didn't make it past the censors, did it?

Speaker 2 No, it never made it past the producer.

Speaker 3 Do you know what Shakespeare means?

Speaker 2 Just is it like literally shaking a spear?

Speaker 3 Well, according to a book that came out in 2014, which is the Dictionary of Surnames, it's written by a couple of professors, and one of them said that the medieval surname Shakespeare is probably an obscene name originally for a masturbator.

Speaker 2 No, wow.

Speaker 2 He's a masturbator. Hands off.

Speaker 2 I think it was pretty hands-on.

Speaker 2 I was on ancestry.com and ancestry.com has been listing surnames that have gone extinct. So obviously the ones that like stand upright, I believe, will have been extinct.

Speaker 2 So ones that have recently gone extinct include Chips, Temples, Rummage, Southwark.

Speaker 2 So those, they've seen that there are virtually no new members who are being born with the surname.

Speaker 2 And on the endangered list, and what counts as an endangered surname is so rare that less than 50 people in England and Wales have them. So this is for England and Wales.

Speaker 2 Included on the list is Mirren, as in Helen Mirren, Nyhee, as in Bill Nighy, and Bonneville, as in Hugh Bonneville. All three leading actors.
Endangered species, basically. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's all of our solemn duty tonight, if we can, to mate with Helen Mirren,

Speaker 2 Bill Naey, or Hugh Bonneville,

Speaker 2 depending on your preference. Form orderly cues.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the man who invented the Australian labradoodle deeply, deeply regrets it.

Speaker 2 He is so sorry that he did that to all of us.

Speaker 2 This is a guy called Wally Conron. Wally Conron, who's now approaching his 90s.

Speaker 2 He was the first person in a mass sense and is credited with creating the trend, which started in the 80s, of the cross between the Labrador and a poodle. And

Speaker 2 what he hates is it kind of took off and it became a celebrity dog. And Jennifer Aniston has one, and crowned princes around the world have them.

Speaker 2 And it became such a fashionable dog but to get the specific dog there's a lot of breeding that needs to happen and he thinks he's created the Frankenstein that has set up all these people experimenting with different breeds and so on for designer dog so yeah he's he's very sorry he asked me to say he's very sorry

Speaker 3 I thought the reason that he one of the reasons that he was sorry was because the whole reason the labradoodle came to be was because he was asked to create a guide dog for a woman whose husband had a dog allergy.

Speaker 3 And so by merging those two, they're anti-allergenic.

Speaker 3 So you're not allergic to them. And I thought that one of the reasons that he didn't like the labradoodle is that it's advertised as a hypoallergenic dog.

Speaker 3 And yet, a lot of people now breed them without actually testing whether or not they are. So I think quite a small percentage of them now are non-allergenic.

Speaker 2 But he is definitely against all of this kind of cross-breeding, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, he said, I just heard about someone who wants to cross a poodle with a Rottweiler.

Speaker 2 But that is a thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's called a Rottle. Also called a Rotty Pooh, a Rotty Doodle, or a Rottweiler Pooh.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But a Rottweiler Pooh sounds like something.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 you can get a cockapoo, that's a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle. A sheepoo, which is a shihi tzu and a poodle.
Yeah, a beach poo, which is a bich on frieze and a poodle.

Speaker 2 A peekapoo, which is a pekingese and a poodle.

Speaker 2 Stop it. I mean, it does sound like they do it just for the names, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah.
There's a schnauzer-Scotty cross called a schnotty.

Speaker 3 It's one other fun cross, which is a cross between a shihtzu and a jack russell, which has two names, but one of them is the jack shit.

Speaker 2 Ah.

Speaker 2 Have you guys, there are some other dogs that went extinct, or dogs we don't have anymore. So have you heard of the Salish wool dog? No.

Speaker 2 The wool dog was a dog you could shear and then you would wear their coat as your coat.

Speaker 2 It was a dog that was big and fluffy enough that you could keep on shearing it. Could you not do that with any dog? No.

Speaker 2 I don't know. You could have a go, couldn't you? Yeah.
Might as well try.

Speaker 2 But you know why poodles have those stupid cuts of hair that they have? Well it's proper there's a proper reason behind it and that is because they're originally to collect stuff from water

Speaker 2 and if they had this kind of really bushy hair and they would just get wet and they'd get heavy.

Speaker 2 So, but like is it hunting use?

Speaker 2 It was collecting quarry. So, you've been hunting, and then the water says it's a duck, it's in the water, and then the poodle would go in and get it.

Speaker 2 And the idea was: so, they wanted to have it to have as little hair as possible, but it still needed hair to keep its internal organs warm, so that's why it kept it round there.

Speaker 2 It still needed it to keep the joints warm to stop arthritis, so it still needed it round there. And the top knot was to keep the long hair out of its eyes when it was swimming.

Speaker 2 Wow, and that's it is a water dog.

Speaker 3 So, the word poodle comes from the old German poodel, doesn't it? For puddle?

Speaker 3 Because it was best at going into water and getting ducks out of it.

Speaker 3 But do you know the best thing about a poodle these days, when they're often shown in dog shows, is the thing that you're striving for is for them to be square.

Speaker 2 So I didn't.

Speaker 3 Squareness is the thing you strive for most above all things. So the Westminster Kennel Show allows two styles of poodle.
It's not too many. They have continental and English, like breakfasts.

Speaker 2 And the English one is a much greasier dog.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but who's gonna pay that much for a continental? That's true. The continental is

Speaker 2 so overpriced.

Speaker 3 But this, yeah, so there are two styles of poodles that are allowed at these dog competitions, and they're judged on squareness.

Speaker 3 And if properly squared, the area from their breast to their bottom has to be the same as the area from their shoulder to the ground. And it's very precise.

Speaker 3 So in shows where poodles are being shown, they have to be really groomed very well. And groomers work with only the finest scissors, apparently.

Speaker 3 And the best poodle scissors are made in Japan, and they cost more than $600.

Speaker 2 Done. It sounds like you're samurai scissors.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 My, yeah.

Speaker 2 My dad has, he's a hairdresser, and so is my mom. And he bought, when he was young, a pair of scissors, scissors that were forged in the fires of a small door.

Speaker 2 samurai scissors. They were made by samurai.
And you said that on the show, and we really did not believe you. Yeah, and then I showed you the article where he was in the newspaper.
It's true.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's still him going, samurai scissors, but

Speaker 2 they're so sharp because they're made by these samurai that when you're a hairdresser and you have your scissors, you need to get them sharpened every two or three years. You go and do it.

Speaker 2 My dad takes them every two or three years, and they say to him, There is nothing we can do for you. They are as sharp as the day you bought them.

Speaker 2 Samuraized.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 I've got a fact about

Speaker 2 dog mentality assessments. If anyone's up for that? Yes, please.
It's sorry, dog mentality assessments in Sweden. Oh, no, no.

Speaker 2 So there's a Swedish association which has to assess how

Speaker 2 relaxed and calm a dog is, and it uses this thing called the dog mentality assessment. And what it is, is basically a haunted house for dogs.

Speaker 2 So they make a dog walk along a long path in some woods and then as it walks along they suddenly they play a gunshot sound.

Speaker 2 They play the sound of a metal chain being creepily dragged along and then suddenly a ghost appears. What? Is it a dog ghost?

Speaker 2 No, it's a human ghost. It's a person covered in a sheet with a plastic bucket on their head.

Speaker 2 And they test how calm or aggressive the dog is.

Speaker 2 So are they doing this because it's like a seeing dog?

Speaker 2 I think they're doing this because they have time on their hands. Like if it was like a blind person.
I think it might be to assess it in that kind of, in working dogs, the aggressiveness. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. Wow, that's exciting.

Speaker 2 I have a couple of things on, so the main headline fact is the inventor regretting his invention. I found a few other people who've regretted their inventions.

Speaker 2 So Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, he really regrets, you know, originally when we all had to put in a web address, HTTP and so on, he regrets the two forward slashes that you do.

Speaker 2 That's the best bit.

Speaker 2 Well, I agree, James. I had great fun.
I wish there were more, but

Speaker 2 I sometimes put an extra one in just for fun. Exactly.

Speaker 2 Hours of fun. And

Speaker 2 so the two forward slashes on it were just completely useless, didn't need to be there. He just put them in because, like James and I, loves a good forward slash.
And

Speaker 2 they had no purpose at all. all, and he regrets that.
He's publicly spoken and said, I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think people thought they did. Coders at the time, I mean, they did serve purpose in certain code, didn't they? And so he assumed they were useful.

Speaker 3 But then it turned out later that they weren't. And he said, the countless hours of human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes.

Speaker 2 Oh, what would we have done with the time?

Speaker 3 I could have watched The Wire.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah. I'll never watch The Wire because of Tim Burns Burnsley.

Speaker 2 Hey, we need to move on to our final facts soon.

Speaker 2 Guys, got anything before we do? The Queen is very responsible for dog crossbreeds. Is she?

Speaker 3 Our Queen and yours, guys.

Speaker 2 Don't forget.

Speaker 3 Hers was one of the first crossbreeds, as the BBC put it, to infiltrate the Kennel Club because she bred Daksons with Corgis and she insisted on her doggie being in the portrait that she had done with her in the 1970s in 1975 and quite sweetly the secretary of the kennel club at the time that judges all of these things said that look the daxon was evolved to chase badgers down holes and corby's were evolved to round up cattle so if anyone loses a herd of cattle down a badger hole these are just the dogs to get them

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Speaker 2 Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact has a content warning.
this bit's rude. Okay cool.
Unlike that lobster bit we did earlier. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 So my fact is that the word shit faced originally meant having a very small face.

Speaker 2 So if you said I was absolutely shit faced last night it just means all your features are bunched up right in the middle.

Speaker 2 It's because it comes from the word chit.

Speaker 2 You hear that you say it's very old-fashioned saying you hear it said sometimes a mere chit of a loud. Yeah, or like a chitty as a little receipt or something.

Speaker 2 Exactly, yeah, it just means like a small thing. So the first usage that I've been able to find is 1622, where there's a child described as a peeking, chit-faced page.

Speaker 2 It just means small face.

Speaker 2 I think we should bring it back, don't you? Yes, I do. There are loads of words for being drunk, but there are very few for having a small face.

Speaker 2 Imagine if the band, The Small Faces, had originally called themselves the shit-faces.

Speaker 3 So, this is a weird thing, but last night, Andy said to all of us, Who do you think has the smallest face out of all of us four?

Speaker 2 And I forgot we were doing this for

Speaker 2 you.

Speaker 2 It's not consciously why I asked. Because you were called pinhead at school, weren't you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 But as I pointed out, pins famously have very large heads relative to their body.

Speaker 2 So, let me tell you, the drug was on those guys.

Speaker 2 Nice one, shit, Face.

Speaker 2 I was looking up other

Speaker 2 false shit words, basically. So there's the word shitle, which means inconstant.
So like a shuttle. You know, it means back and forwards, the word shitle.

Speaker 2 So you used to play badminton with a shittlecock. No way.
Yeah. No really.
No way.

Speaker 2 Shite poke.

Speaker 2 Shite poke. Yes.
Sorry, I just don't like you at all.

Speaker 2 No, shite poke was an old word for for a heron. Wow.
And the reason was because people thought that herons defecated when taking flight.

Speaker 2 Which they do sometimes, but not all the time.

Speaker 2 There was a guy in the 19th century who wrote the Dictionary of West Somerset in 1875, and he said that

Speaker 2 the 29th of May is shit-sack day.

Speaker 2 And he writes this, the writer of the dictionary says, in the northwest of Somerset and North Devon, it is common to hear boys call out on that day, shit-sack, shit-sack, but I have been unable to discover the origin.

Speaker 2 It feels to me like he's not heard them saying it to him on the other days.

Speaker 2 There's a three-volume dictionary of slang called Jonathan Green's.

Speaker 2 Jonathan Green is the guy who wrote it, he's a genius. But I looked up peculiarly Australian shit slang words.
So I don't know how familiar these might be, everyone knows them.

Speaker 2 But so, for example, I'm so hungry I could eat a shit sandwich, only I don't like bread.

Speaker 2 There's to take the shit with the sugar, which is to accept that one must have both bad and good experiences in life. My favourite is, you don't know whether you want a shit or a haircut.

Speaker 2 Which is, you're stupid. That's what that means.

Speaker 2 I think it's possible to want both, those things. True.

Speaker 3 The word shit, though, has a long history, doesn't it? And a long etymological history. So it comes from ske,

Speaker 3 which meant to cut, and so it's the same origin as words like science and schedule and shield. And it was spelled shite until the 1700s.
But they used to kind of broaden their shit-based vocabulary.

Speaker 3 So in Old English, skite was diarrhea, and beskitan was one word that meant to cover with excrement.

Speaker 3 And also

Speaker 3 in the 18th century, according to the Partridge Dictionary of Slang, to shit through your teeth was to vomit, which does make a lot of sense. And the example that's given in this dictionary is, E.G.,

Speaker 3 hark you, friend, have you got a padlock on your ass that you shite through your teeth?

Speaker 2 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 I have some swear words which are not at all rude, but they are awesome. These are incredibly rude in the languages that they are in.
Okay, so for example.

Speaker 2 So we're going to alienate not just the English-speaking world of this podcast. Yeah, the Swedish, the Romanians, and the Japanese had better buckle up when they're listening to this.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 in Sweden, you can say, go and put an old blanket over yourself, which is really rude to them. In Sweden.
Yeah, in Sweden. So that's what that guy who was pretending to be a ghost was doing.

Speaker 2 So in Japan, you can say,

Speaker 2 tofu no kado ni atama wo butsu kete shine, or hit your head on a corner of tofu and die.

Speaker 2 In Romanian, there's a phrase which means, I can't believe this is true, it means I would dry my dirty pants on your mum's crucifix.

Speaker 2 That one's quite rude in English as well.

Speaker 3 Can I just, in Romanian, I read an article on vice which had a Romanian person writing in about swearing in Romania, and they said, swearing culture in Romania is built on oral sex, mothers, and Christ.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that's very much the trifecta of things not to say in Romania.

Speaker 2 Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts.
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 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 are on our Twitter account. I am on at Schreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M.

Speaker 2 James, at James Harkin, Jaczinski.

Speaker 3 You can email pokas at QI.com.

Speaker 2 Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, our Facebook page, no such thing as a fish, no such thing as a fish.com.

Speaker 2 There's so many no such thing as a fish things you can go to. But the website does have all of our previous episodes.
It has our tour dates and everything. So head there.

Speaker 2 We will be back again next week with another episode. Guys, you have been awesome.
Thank you so much. We'll be back again.
Goodbye.

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