98: No Such Thing As Planet George

34m

Live from the Up The Creek Comedy Club in Greenwich, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Snowmageddon, the most planety planet, and the world's unluckiest lottery winner.

Listen and follow along

Transcript

So, what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at ov.coop and taste the difference.

At Larsen, we've perfected storm doors, like the Larsen 60 Maximum View with Shurelatch.

It's a guardian, keeping your little escape artists securely inside.

The Defender, protecting against what you don't want with the most secure, first-ever magnetic latching technology.

When you hear, you know, your 60 Maximum View is secure with Shurelatch.

Larsen, it's not just a storm door.

Find us in aisle or learn more at larsondoors.com/slash Shurelatch.

A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the Up the Creek Comedy Club in Greenwich.

My name is Dan Shriver.

I'm sitting here next to Anna Chasinski, Andy Murray, and James Harkin.

Once Once again, we have sat around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go.

Okay, time for fact number one, and that's my fact.

My fact this week is that even though we're not sure it exists, the new planet, planet number nine, is the most planety planet of all the planets.

So this is a major discovery that we found.

Yeah, a new planet.

Or didn't find.

Or didn't find.

Either way, it's big news.

Yeah, we think it exists because of computer modeling.

They've modelled the solar system.

They think this thing exists.

It's absolutely massive.

And one thing that is very important with planets is that it clears out the area of its orbit.

So there aren't other things going around with it.

And they think, according to their calculations, this planet has done that more than any other planet.

And that's what makes it the most planety planet of all the planets.

Wow.

According to the guy who discovered it, or one of the two guys who discovered it, Dr.

Brown.

Right.

So a planety planet is a planet that no other things want to be close to really right well if that's the case then i am a planety planet

um i read a description of it that it was a almost certain to be a fifth member of the jupiter saturn uranus neptune quartet so it's like the fifth beetle but it's like the fifth beetle was cast into deep space

um yeah The really cool thing about the new planet is, you may have seen this in the news, the man who discovered it, one of the two guys who wrote the paper on it, is the same man who killed Pluto.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it's Mike Brown.

Mike Brown.

It's like a grudge match.

It's so exciting.

His Twitter account is at Plutokiller.

Yeah, isn't it?

It's actually.

Yeah.

And he says he still gets

abuse from...

He gets letters and obscene phone calls from people who miss Pluto.

He said,

these are his exact words.

He said, I got hate mail from young children for many years.

And he doesn't get any more now because young children these days know that Pluto is no longer a planet.

Pluto was named by a child, wasn't it?

Was it?

Yeah.

It was named by an 11-year-old girl, Venetian.

I read such a nice interview with her, which was about five years ago, I think, about how exciting it was that she'd named Pluto.

And the interviewer kept on asking her why she'd named it Pluto.

It was a NASA interview.

The NASA interviewer said,

and you thought about it because of the Greek and Roman mythology about Pluto being the god of the underworld, yes?

And she was like, no, no, I don't think it was as subtle as that.

No, it was just a name I knew hadn't hadn't been used okay but it was also because the first two letters P L have a connection with Percival Lowell

no no I certainly didn't realize that appreciating your time

poor interviewer just give me something she got she got five pounds for that but they took that five pounds off her when they demoted it from the planet

she said she was in her late 80s when it was demoted and they they asked her about it at the time she said, at my age, I've been largely indifferent to the debate.

She's just saying that to hide all the hate mails she's been sending to Mike Brown, hasn't it?

And so they're going to come up with a new name for this planet, and they don't know what they're going to call it yet.

The working name is George, isn't it?

Oh, is it?

No, but that's quite nice because we almost did have a planet called George.

Well, Uranus was called George.

Well, it was called George, and they said, that's a ridiculous name.

And then they said, let's go with Uranus.

It was going to be named George after King George III.

And then they said, no.

Why did they say no to King George III?

Was it the other thing?

Because all the other planets were named after Roman gods, and suddenly some dickhead kings gone, oh, name it after me.

So Mike Brown and his friend Konstantin Batigin,

who's the other person who's kind of found this one, their working name for it is Planet Fatty.

Okay.

They said that they're going to call it Planet Fatty because it's 1990 slang for something that's cool.

But I went on to Urban Dictionary.

And fatty does not mean cool.

It means something that I really cannot say on this stage.

Really?

Yeah, something very rude indeed.

Wow.

Yeah.

Fatty with a pH.

Oh, yeah.

So, James, you think another news story that's going to come up is that Pluto is going to be renamed a planet?

I think it will do in the next couple of years, yeah.

What?

I think what will happen in the next couple of years is that.

I'm going to get a lot of hate mail for this.

Give me a stamp.

But I thought the thing was it's so tiny, and there are so many hundreds of other objects which are the same size.

All the other hundreds will get cold planets as well.

No way.

That's my guess.

So much more memorizing to do in year nine at school than isn't there going to be when there's 2,000 name old planets.

Well, how long have you got?

I was reading about the current status of Pluto's current official name is asteroid number 134340, which is a long way from falling.

Why did they call it that?

Was it because it's like an asteroid?

It's named after the ancient Greek god 134340.

Some of the names that they maybe,

some people have suggested names on Twitter and whatever for this new planet.

Minerva, Persephone, Nyx, who's the goddess of the night, is quite a good one.

Some people have said Bowie because of the timing of that.

And the first person to suggest this one, which is my favorite, was at Ted Vogel underscore Wilson.

And he thinks it should be called Pluto.

Very nice.

That's a good name.

That's very good.

I think we should have more puns in the skies.

So there's been other news this week, which has been really exciting in sort of NASA news, space news, which is I saw an article about Scott Kelly, who's been up there now 300 days, and he was celebrating for 300 days of being in the space.

He got up there and immediately started celebrating.

I'm in space, guys.

Well, actually, it's weird you guys bring that up.

They now factor in all-ness

when astronauts go up.

So, Tim Peake, when he went out on his first ever EVA, when he went outside the ship, they didn't used to, they used to have a really tight schedule, go straight here.

They now factor in time because any astronaut who would go outside would find themselves just going, oh my god, I'm hanging in space, I'm looking at the planet Earth.

And they never factored in time for that.

So they've now given all time where you can just go, oh,

and then get on with your work.

So all time is now a thing.

That's great.

But yeah, so he's up there.

He's with this guy, Scott Kelly, who's been up there 300 days.

And Scott Kelly made this clip to celebrate it by showing how you play ping pong in space.

And what they do is they have these little bats that are built to move water.

And so

this is just as a practical thing in space.

And so what they do is they play ping pong using a droplet of water.

And you just hit a droplet of water over and it heads that way and then you hit it back.

He was playing on his own.

I don't think it's caught on as a game yet up in the ISS.

But so I was watching this video, it was really interesting because he's playing and he's talking about it.

And I noticed as I was watching it that he's wearing a belt.

And I'm like, why are you wearing a belt in space?

Like,

that's not going anywhere.

So

I googled it, and I was looking why wear a belt in space.

And it turns out you wear a belt in space to stop your trousers from falling up.

We need to move on to our next fact in a second.

Anyone got anything else before we do?

Just one last thing on Mike Brown, the astronomer at the center of all of this.

I just love the title of his 2010 book on the whole matter.

It is How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at OV.co-op and taste the difference.

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm where nutritious, delicious, organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at ov.coop.

Okay, it's time for our second fact of the show, and that is James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is that the first use of the word snowmageddon came in the same press release as the first apology for the use of the word snowmageddon.

Because of all the snow in America, I thought I'd see like the history of snowmageddon.

And I found a use in 2008.

It was a press release from the Canadian government, and they said about how it's snowmageddon.

And then, right at the end, in a very Canadian way, they say, We're sorry, we're not trying to like take the Mickey and say that it's not very important.

It is important.

Sorry about Snow Mageddon.

No, we're really sorry.

And then the Snow Mageddon was kind of not used that much for a couple of years.

And then this was in 2008.

And in 2010, they had a massive storm in Washington, D.C.

And that's when Snowmageddon really took off.

Right.

And according to Wikipedia, there was a few other things.

Snowzilla within a few hours of Snowmageddon.

And apparently that storm also popularized the term Kaiser Snowze.

This latest storm, it's produced a thing, because you guys, I'm sure, have all seen all the enormous snowfall on the east coast of America.

It's It's been thunder snow is what's been produced.

Oh yeah, because Scott Kelly tweeted it.

Scott Kelly, who is on the International Space Station, I think that was how we found out.

Or he very early on when it was happening, he tweeted thunder snow.

And because he's obviously such a knowledgeable guy, he said, this is unbelievably rare, by the way, guys.

And it's even more rare that I'm seeing it from the other side of it.

But yeah, it's super rare, isn't it?

Thunder snow.

So it's where a storm, instead of producing rain, produces snow, because of the different way the air rubs together or or something.

So

some nerdy bullshit that we're not going to

give the time to.

I think when a cloud produces snow instead of rain, it's usually just because it's cold.

You can blind me with all the meteorology you like, babies.

I read today, I had no idea about this.

So it snows on Mars.

So it's not your classic snow.

It's not your like...

It's not like snow, but

they call it like it's kind of like a snow.

It's a big cold that falls from the snow yeah exactly and so the mars rover uh was looking up don't know why it was just looking up and it could see this snow coming down and it was having awe time

wow wow wow wow

but so mars has the craziest of atmospheres there's there's spots in mars in the same this was the article i was reading it told me this that you if you stood in a certain spot of mars your feet could be 21 degrees, but your chest would be zero degrees.

That's how the difference between down there and there's a lot of money.

There's so little atmosphere.

Here, to get out of the atmosphere, you have to go really, really high, but there,

by your chest, you wouldn't be in the atmosphere anymore.

So it'd be really, really cold.

Actually, speaking of hot and cold, I was reading, so something that's happening, to go back to space news, is the Kepler Space Telescope that was sent out a few years ago is due back or back this year, I think.

And so that's found tons of new planets.

And one of the planets it's it's found is this planet called Gliese 581C.

And what NASA says about that is: so it's tidally locked.

So that basically means that it doesn't really rotate.

So half of it is, one half of it is scorching hot, while the other half is constantly frozen.

It is believed to be the best candidate for human expansion.

So the current storms in America, there is a guy who's capitalizing on them at the moment.

He started it last year.

It's a business called shipsnoyo.com.

He's called Kyle Waring, and you can buy snow in a box from him, and he sends it over and he keeps it cool.

And how does he make sure it doesn't melt?

He packs it in.

It's like an anesci.

He packs it in an ESCI, yeah.

So he sends it over.

An anesi is an Australian word for like a fridge.

Yeah, it's like really?

It's like if you're going to the beach and you're bringing some bottles and you're just going to go sit there down some tinnies.

It's that kind of thing.

It's weird because when the Australian comes out and you,

it really comes up

i'm an aussie by the way i just can't sound it so just very just quickly following up on this he offers if by the time your uh your esky's arrived and your snow's melted he offers you a refund and he'll send you a whole new batch of uh snow there's also someone cap light so quite a few people have made it even though a lot of people are in serious trouble a lot of people actually are quite comfortable and having a lot of fun with it people are making bars out of the snow and and serving drinks there yeah they sold tons of extra booze didn't they as soon as they knew the storm was coming, they just like went to the shops and bought as much booze as they can possibly get.

And someone on Airbnb put up an igloo that they've built for

$10 a night.

You can rent the igloo.

You've got to bring your own sleeping bag.

But it's suddenly, so since reading the article, it's been updated, the article, and it's now no longer on Airbnb.

They're not sure if it was banned or if it melted.

So on naming storms, this storm doesn't need a name.

And the weather channel, I think, is again the US Weather Channel.

So, why doesn't it need a name?

Because you only name, so a snowstorm is not a finite thing.

It's just, I think one meteorologist I was reading said it's just an extension of normal weather.

So, something like

everything's just an extension of normal, there's no supernatural weather, which

no site, something like a cyclone has a very finite start and finish.

You can pick on exactly when and where it started and exactly when it finished.

So, they need names, but storms don't.

But the Weather Channel has announced announced the storm names for 2016 and they are things like Ajax so there's gonna be a storm called Ajax Kyler

Kwo as in status and Xandor Waylon and YOLOLO

well you only die once

and there's a paper in in Canada that came out this week that warned people against eating snow

Because apparently, snow is really good at collecting kind of bits from car exhausts or kind of bits of toxins from the air.

Snow is really, really good at picking it up.

And so, if you kind of take a little bit of scoop of snow from the ground, like a lot of people do, and just kind of eat some of it.

Like everyone does, yeah, yeah.

It's snowing tonight.

The South Korean government a few years ago made an explicit thing to people saying you must not eat yellow snow.

There was an actual press release saying you must not eat yellow snow.

And that's because they'd had this snow that had come which was yellow and it had like heavy minerals and stuff from some power stations.

Oh, really?

Oh wow.

And so that's the one reason that you should never eat yellow snow.

Minerals from power stations.

We're going to have to move on.

Just before we end, I read one thing which is a new theory that's erupted this week.

Penguins, they think, may.

there are so many qualifications in this already.

You can get away with saying anything at this point, though.

So penguins, they think,

they

think, think, may

possibly,

when they're about to mate, they

will need a nice...

Wait, is this the they who think this?

No, this is the penguins.

No, the penguins, if it's true, know it.

It's us who think that.

So they think that the penguins are like, oh, we need somewhere to have a good time.

Why not here?

But, oh, it's really cold and icy and snowy.

So they'll poo on it, and then the poo melts the snow, and then they go, now that's where we have sex.

There's a new theory.

It's true that they poo.

Can't believe that.

Blah, blah, blah.

Okay, time for fact number three, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray.

Okay, my fact is that that this week we have discovered the largest prime number ever.

We would have discovered it in September, but the computer which found it forgot to tell anybody.

So

this has happened.

So there are computers all over the world looking for new prime numbers, and they're up to really enormous ones now, and they're very useful in encrypting stuff.

Yeah, they're called GIMPS.

GIMPS.

Something massive prime.

Great internet Mersine, which I I think is Merzine Prime Search.

Yeah, Mersenne.

It's Mersenne Primes.

So these are Prime numbers named after a French guy called Mersenne.

Yeah.

And you can download a computer program onto your computer and it will look for these prime numbers.

And if you find one, then you get like 100 grand or something like that, $100,000.

And everyone, a lot of people have put it onto the computer, but the people who found it this week or last year or whenever it was, they have so much computer processing power that they've managed to find loads of them.

Right.

Yeah, I think they found like four of the last five or something like that.

That's right.

Wow.

Yeah.

So the new one, I'm going to read this out from here.

The new number is 5 million digits longer than the previous largest one.

It's 2 to the power of 74,207,281, all of that minus one.

Yep.

And it's, if, if you were, if you were going to write it out, and you could write 10 digits in four seconds, this is a calculation by a New York Times correspondent.

It would take you three months without slowing down.

Yeah.

It's got 22 million digits in it.

My phone.

It starts 30037641.

Stop me when you get bored.

It starts off.

And then it ends 007-339-1086-436351.

And for people at home.

See, we've just given away the ending, there's no point in reading the middle now.

For people at home, we edited out the other 22 million that I just didn't say.

And you can download the actual number and get it on your computer and have a look through it, which I did.

Oh, great.

It contains my six-digit code to access my bank account.

Oh, James, don't say that.

People will know.

It contains it 21 times.

Wow.

That's how big this number is.

It contains my library number twice.

And at one stage, it has eight sevens in a row.

So I'm just giving you the edited highlights here.

I was watching an interview with the guy who discovered it, or rather the guy who set the computer up that discovered it, and there was a moment that like this is amazing.

This is a big new prime number.

It's beyond any that we've had before.

What can we do with it?

And he was like, we have no idea, literally nothing.

It has no point.

It has no purpose.

So most of them can be used for encrypting things on computers.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, this one is now such a global celebrity that it will be noticed immediately by hackers.

So if you have a team with several million digits.

The thing is,

you use prime numbers in encryption by taking two prime numbers, multiplying them together, and then it's finding the factors of that secondary number.

Now, if you have a number which has got 23, 24 million digits in, you know that one of them must be this number.

So everyone knows that it must be this one, so it's really easy to crack.

So the only time this will be useful is when we get some even bigger numbers that we can use, which we will do one day.

Yeah.

Right.

I like that.

I'd never heard prime numbers described like this, but they're the building blocks of maths, really.

And they're the equivalent of atoms in science because prime numbers are, because nothing goes into them, everything else is a factor

of something else.

So everything else can be split up, but you can't split up a prime number.

I like that, the equivalent of an atom.

And something else I didn't know about prime numbers, because you think that they're kind of so randomly distributed, if we've taken this long to work out what, you know, the pattern is, is that all prime numbers, if you square them, are a multiple of 24 and then adding one.

Now, you just write that down, not the really small ones, not the ones on the five.

Anything over five is seven is.

Oh, God, are we gonna go through them all?

11 is 13 is

11 is.

Yeah, so they found this using the GIMPS

software.

And this is the weird thing.

The weird thing about GIMPs is

if you go onto Google and type the word GIMPS into Google,

all of the first five things that you get are about this prime number thing.

The same is not true of Google Images.

This is amazing.

So cicadas, you know, there's that kind of cicada in North America which only comes up to the surface and breathes every, well, in it's every prime number of years.

so in some places it's every 13 years in some places every 17 years in some places it's another prime number of years and which sounds ridiculous but uh it was hypothesized in the article i read that that actually does make sense because if you come up in a prime number of years you have the least chance of coinciding with predators which also have like periodical patterns because so let's say you come up every eight years then if you're hunted by a panther that appears every two years then they're going to bump into you a lot but if you're coming up every prime number of years then you're not going to bump into the predators every prime number of years.

Do you think there's a cicada that comes up every two to the 74 million years?

And the only reason we haven't seen it is because, you know, you'd be pretty lucky to see that when you.

Yeah.

I don't know what a cicada is.

It's a little insect.

Like a cricket.

Yeah, like a cricket.

Got it.

A cicada fact.

There's only one cicada in the UK.

One species of cicada.

Oh,

lonely cicada.

Lonesome Trevor.

There's only one species of of cicada in the UK.

It's called the New Forest Cicada.

And we think they live in the New Forest, but they might have died out because no one's seen one for about 10 years.

And you should be able to hear their call, but you can't really hear it because it's outside of human hearing range.

But you can buy an app, and the app can hear the cicada call, and so you can walk around the New Forest with your app listening for cicadas.

And then if you find one, then you'll have discovered that they still exist.

Wow.

That'd be cool, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

So I didn't find any Prime Number stuff, but I started looking into numbers the other week, and there's a very famous set of numbers.

This is going to be a long list now.

Six.

No, there was this week a set of numbers, which was, there was this massive lotto, the big lottery draw that went, and there was a story about this lady who thinks she's won the lottery, has found the ticket that she's won with all the numbers, but the barcode is...

is missing.

She put it in the washing machine, didn't she?

Yeah, she put it in the washing machine.

It's missing.

It's one of those things where you think that must be the worst situation, right?

That you've won the lottery, and now you've not won it because you've lost the thing.

And so I was looking into is that genuinely the worst situation anyone's had in the lottery?

And I found a guy that I think contends.

So this guy, yeah, this guy won the lottery.

Okay.

Okay.

But this is what led up to him winning the lottery.

His name is Franz Seller.

He was born in Croatia.

He was a teacher.

He was born in 1929.

In 1962, his train derailed and plunged into an icy river, and he managed to escape and not die.

The next year in 1963, while flying, the door blew out and he got sucked out of the plane and he survived.

Oh, good.

It was all good.

Three years later, 1966, he's riding on a bungee.

That's something wrong.

He's riding on a bunch.

It's Australia, it's an Australian term.

I was riding along the bungee, mate.

Whatever you do, don't check that urban dictionary when you get it.

So he's riding on a bus, and the bus suddenly

He gets out and survives.

So this is 1962, 1963, 1966.

1970.

He must take no public transport by this point.

Exactly.

He's in his car.

He's in his car and it just blows up in flames.

So he escapes and he's alright.

So that's 1970.

1973.

He's still weary of public transport.

In his car, once again, another fire blows up in his car.

Loses all his hair.

Manages to make it out.

There's a whole nice period between 1973 and 1995 when nothing happens.

But he stayed at home, I guess.

But then he went out and got hit by a bus.

So that's 1995.

Then in 1996, 1996, he's back in his car.

He drove, and another, either it was a truck or a car, is coming towards him.

He swerves away.

He manages to escape his car as it plunges over a cliff, lands in a tree, and then the car goes 300 feet down and breaks into an icy river.

In 2003, he won the lotto.

One million.

That's divine justice.

That's amazing.

I think that's worse than losing your ticket and not winning.

There was a couple, there were two other very bad lottery stories.

So one couple, I think this was actually last year, Edwina and David Nylan, who had an app, a lotto app, and they got the right numbers and they sent them off in the app, and they'd won £35 million.

And their app broke and it failed.

So they had the photographic evidence that they tried to send it on the app and it only sent it after the deadline because they ran out of signals.

They've been using their phone to search for cicada noises in the new forest.

At Larsen, we've perfected storm doors, like the Larsen 60 Maximum View with Shurelatch.

It's a guardian, keeping your little escape artists securely inside.

The Defender, protecting against what you don't want with the most secure, first-ever magnetic latching technology.

When you hear, you know know your 60 maximum view is secure with Surelatch.

Larson, it's not just a storm door.

Find us in aisle or learn more at larsondoors.com slash Shurelatch.

Time for a sofa upgrade?

Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices with sofas starting at $699.

Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Perfect for both small and large spaces, spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Liquid Simply slides right off.

Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Plus, our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Don't compromise quality for price.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Okay, let's move on to our final fact of the show and that is Chaczynski.

Yes, my fact is that in a press release about the new English language test for migrants, the British government misspelled the word language.

But yeah, this so this has been a big story over the last few weeks.

It's the new test for migrants and there's lots of controversy and people who, even if they're on spousal visas, if they fail these language tests, they might be made to leave the country.

And it turns out that people who are releasing the press release spell language with the A and the U the wrong way around.

There was a very snotty reply from the government.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said, all of us are open to mistakes at times.

The Prime Minister is fully confident that his team speaks English competently.

Touched a bit of a nerve.

I went through, I basically haven't researched that much of this because I just went through trying to find the mistakes in all government

bits of legislation over the last 50 years.

No, I went.

Well, first of all, the Independent put together a list of 10 questions that are taken from the government's list of possible migrant language questions.

And here's the Independent's introduction to the questions.

Listen to this sentence.

The questions below have been taken from practice exams for the B1 test that those who need to prove their knowledge of the English language to gain their indefinite leave to remain.

And then, so one of the questions is, maybe I'm wrong about this, but it's multiple choice questions and it's completely under this sentence.

So one of them is, have you finished with the newspaper?

And it's ABCD.

And the options are.

Is this to gain citizenship?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, to gain citizenship.

You have to say whether you've finished with the newspaper or something.

That's the only criteria.

Just give the freaking newspaper back, you can come in the country.

No, it's have you finished with a newspaper?

And then it's what is the grammatically correct ending to the sentence?

Have you finished with the newspaper now, still,

yet, or already?

Now, the answer they want, and I did the test, yet is the answer they want.

Already is completely correct.

Yeah, if you want to be really passive-aggressive about it.

Yeah, you could say, You finished with that newspaper already?

Well, yeah, but you know,

it's not that, it's not that, it's the opposite of that.

It's so they want you to fall into the trap of the American, you know, have you finished with the newspaper already?

But you could also just ask a valid question: Have you finished with the newspaper already?

As in, have you read it that fast?

Have you finished with the newspaper already?

Oh, completely correct.

You could also passive-aggressively say, Well, have you finished with the newspaper now?

What more British than that?

It doesn't make any sense.

That's very bad.

Yeah.

So my wife, who's Russian, she will have to take these tests quite soon.

And she was trying out some questions from the citizenship test, which is like a general knowledge test.

And she tried them out on me and literally I got none of them right.

Really?

And my general knowledge is not bad.

I brought along one to test you, because I think your general knowledge is quite good.

Okay, well, one of the ones that she was asked in the practice test was what is a national dish of whales?

What?

Coal.

Coal.

Coal.

Oh, yeah.

Coal.

Well, you might think that.

According to the government.

Well, exactly, but according to the government, it's Welsh cakes.

There we go.

Sorry, fellas.

Sorry, guys.

The Home Office will be sending a man.

Welsh cakes.

Yeah, apparently Welsh cakes.

But the other thing is, if I want to become a citizen of Russia, I would have to take a Russian language test.

And And the Russian language test has all the normal things that you would expect, but you also have to be able to interpret hidden meanings.

Wow.

That sounds cool.

You know, Bill Bryson released a new book, The Road to Little Dribbling, and it's all in the beginning.

He talks about taking a test to become a British citizen.

He decided to become it.

And he was saying that not only are there mistakes in the test, but in the books that guide you into how to take the test are just completely filled with mistakes.

One that he pointed out was they were talking about Anthony Hopkins and saying that he's someone to be proud of.

As a British person, he's someone to be proud of.

They spelt his name wrong.

And also, he's taken up American citizenship.

He's not British anymore.

Tina Turner is Swiss now.

Is she?

Yeah.

Wow.

So I was looking into the news for other language mess-ups over the last week, and I found one that happened in Sweden.

They were having having at their parliament a political debate about

very serious issues, actually.

It was like a really long debate.

They made a mistake, though, of when they transmitted it, they put the wrong subtitles onto the debate.

So you had guys like Jean Borglund, who's the Minister of Education, looking really serious, saying something really serious, but the subtitles reading, I will build the best sandcastle in the galaxy.

I vote for him.

And then you had Stefan Loffin, the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister going, the latest invention, the fantastic dinosaur submarine.

And then the Minister for Environment going, greetings, earth creatures.

I have two pairs of boots, one red pair and one yellow pair.

Which ones should I take?

I'm going to ask my dolls.

original subtitles from

it was a cartoon animation

has just been awarded Japanese citizenship.

It was done as a press sort of press PR stunt, obviously, but it was in a particular district of Tokyo that he got it, Shinjuku, which is a very cool, extremely busy one.

I think that's it's very near the famous crossing in Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing.

But they released the certificate which they'd done, and it said previous visits to Shinjuku Ward, three, Godzilla, 1984, Godzilla versus King Ghidorah, 1991, and Godzilla Millennium, 1999.

Those were these trips.

That's very good.

We're going to have to wrap up in a sec.

So, yeah, anything you want to...

Just as you know, to get a South Korean citizenship, the test requires you to sing the first four verses of the national anthem.

Sing it.

In tune.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a tough gig, isn't it?

And the Dutch citizenship, you have to watch a video that includes beach nudity.

What?

Where's the phone?

Do you know what?

I'll do it even if they don't give me Dutch citizenship.

It's because

they're such a liberal country, they want to show you what to expect if you come to the Netherlands.

Like if people come from other countries that are a bit more conservative, they might turn up into the Netherlands and think, wow, what's going on here?

Beach nudity.

So they want to show it so that you're not shocked when you see it in real life.

So can you fail that?

that is it like if you get an erection or you cry then

feelings are confusing

on that?

That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

So I'm on at Schreiberland, James, at Egg Shapes, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, M.

Chalzinski.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yeah, or you can go to at QIPodcast or go to our site, no such thingasafish.com.

We've got all of our previous episodes up there.

We're going to be back again next week.

Thank you so much for being here, guys.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home.

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

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and brilliant marketing.

But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making selling simple.

For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify.

They're the home of the number one checkout on the planet and the not-so-secret, ShopPay, that boosts conversions up to 50%,

meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales happening.

Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.

Upgrade your business and get the same checkout all birds and skims use.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/slash start selling.

All lowercase.

Go to shopify.com/slash start selling to upgrade your selling selling today.

Shopify.com/slash start selling.