603: No Such Thing As Jack Can't Reacher

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

This episode's Anna Tashinsky's last episode for a while as she heads off onto maternity leave.

We'll be seeing her in nine months, but we've got one more episode.

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 my fact.

My fact this week is that Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, wrote the novel for the first time twice.

This is a story.

I found it on a website that is Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture.

It's a dedicated page to all historical articles about Harriet Beecher Stowe.

And in it, it points out that near the end of her life, she was suffering from a disease of the brain.

She might have had dementia.

She might have had Alzheimer's.

We're not quite sure.

But in that period, she found herself rewriting as if it were a new story, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and telling everyone, I've got this amazing book that I'm writing.

I think it's going to be big.

And apparently, when people were looking at the writing, it was almost word for word what the original book was.

Yeah, the Washington Post said, if the manuscript could be compared with the corresponding portions of the original copy, it is not likely that much difference of appearance would be discovered.

So it wasn't a big pro-slavery tract suddenly that she found herself producing in the 80s.

We should explain those two things, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin, I guess.

It's a property book, isn't it?

Yeah, it's like sort of How to Make a Desirable Residence.

Yeah, House and Garden.

All about it.

This is a game-changing book in America.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, she was very much against the world of slavery in America, came from a family that was very, very much fighting that cause.

And so she wrote a series of stories that were published, kind of like how Dickens used to do it.

You know, it was serialized in a magazine.

And when the book came out, it just really hit a note.

It suddenly made sense to a lot of white America about what was going on.

There was this new thing that was put in place in this period whereby if you were caught housing a runaway slave, you were now going to jail or you were going to be fined, which meant that no one was looking after these people.

And then there was very much parallels of what's going on right now in America.

People were being taken away, black Americans, with no due process, and they were being jailed.

And it was a hectic time.

So this book was saying this is not acceptable.

And arguably led to the civil war.

I think, right?

Yeah, Lincoln joked about that, didn't he?

Auntie, the little woman who started the civil war.

I love that.

So they met, Harriet Beecher Stowe met Lincoln in, I think, about 1862.

And he supposedly said that to her, Auntie, the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.

I think it it might be a later.

Her family said it had been said later.

They were allowed to do that.

They achieved a lot of family.

But for sure, it did change a lot of minds in America.

It was so successful.

I mean,

sorry to go into book sales mode, but it was so successful.

I think it sold 300,000 copies in the USA in its first year.

And it, I think, might have been the biggest seller of any book in that century, the 19th century, barring the Bible.

I think it was.

I mean, it was big.

The Times said that the amount of royalties that she got is the largest sum of money ever received by any author, either American or European, from the sales of a single work.

Wow.

In such an amount of time.

Wow.

Do you know what the second best-selling book of the 1850s was?

Oh, good question.

The 1850s.

Is this guessable?

Dickens?

No, no, it's not guessable.

I'd be astonished if you'd heard of it.

It hasn't had the same kind of longevity as Uncle Tom's Cabin.

So Uncle Tom's Cabin was the top.

And then the second was called Ten Nights in a Bar and what I Saw There.

Which

does sound like a more fun read.

Unless Unless it's like, because I've been to bars regularly, and actually, you tend to see the same things again and again.

It's like, oh, that group of people watching the horse racing.

Yeah, same look crying in the corner.

There's Andy telling the same anecdote over and over again.

And I empathize with Harriet Beager Stowe.

I don't mean to trivialise whatever condition she had, but I frequently will get to the end of an anecdote and people around me are going, yeah, yes, Andy, yes, that was.

Yeah, that was that was an anecdote I told you half an hour ago.

In the article, by the way, because I found that in the newspaper archives, they also said that that she had confusedly given permission to two publishers to write her official biography, thinking that they were the same person.

And there was a big sort of financial problem between those two companies.

I can really imagine doing that now, actually.

You see that?

Not very good with family.

You got face blindness, for God's sake.

You've probably promised your biography to 10 of them.

Yeah, I'm quite disappointed that it hasn't been written yet, actually.

What's really interesting is the reaction to the book.

Because obviously,

as we've all said, it had a huge reaction.

there was a real-life inspiration a man called josiah henson who was himself enslaved and in real life escaped to canada and founded a settlement and a school for former slaves um but what's amazing is after the book came out and had this huge social reaction and effect there was a ferocious pro-slavery pushback even in the novel sphere so at least 15 novels were published in response very much in favor of slavery,

saying that slaves in the South are better off than free men and women in the north.

So one of them was was called Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia and Tom without one in Boston.

Not a good title.

Like we can all agree.

A shit title for a book.

And the argument inside, obviously.

But yeah.

Yeah, and you were saying that it was kind of in the magazines to start off with.

It was serialized.

They also had pro-slavery magazines that were basically doing the opposite.

So if you went to W.H.

Smith's in mid-19th century America, on the shelves, you would have half of them would be pro-slavery magazines and half would be anti-slavery magazines.

Well it's like the BBC today.

You've got to have balance haven't you?

If you get on the

get on the anti-fascist you've got to get on the fascist.

But she wrote another book off the back of Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was basically a bibliography describing everything that had gone into Uncle Tom's cabin.

She named Josiah Henson as the inspiration for the Uncle Tom cabin.

Because they were like, oh, you just made it up.

You've never even been here.

You don't know any enslaved people.

You've just like

she needed to prove that it wasn't like that.

Yeah.

But good.

I mean, great.

Like when the publisher says, What's next, Harriet?

Well, it's more Uncle Tom's cabin in a good way, but it's just a good idea, like you know, like the QI fact books that we used to write, we could write another one saying, No, no, this is true.

Well, that's the thing, well done on keeping our sources because I have a panic attack every time James sends me an email going, and what do you, what's your source for this fact?

She said, I don't know, I deleted it immediately.

Wait, James, you would have published a book of just pure URLs,

it's the key to QI.

I got another one of her writings, Lady Byron Vindicated.

Whoa.

Oh, yeah.

This is where she gets spicy.

Yeah.

She was defending Byron's widow by revealing that Byron had an affair with his own sister.

Half-sister.

Okay.

Not that that changes matters.

Sorry.

Half-sister, Your Honor.

Oh, well, that's not even a fact, then, is it?

That's not interesting.

No, it was incredibly controversial.

This was her second most controversial book, I'd say.

When she published this piece in The Atlantic, American magazine still going today, it lost them 15,000 subscribers who said, I don't mind reading about various other things, but I draw the line at Lord Byron having an affair with his half-sister.

I think it was a third of its subscribers.

I mean, that's a big hit, isn't it?

That's one article.

You feel so you know what?

She wrote another book in 1873 called Women in Sacred History, where she said that one of the apostles was a woman, Lydia.

So she was just an edgelog.

Hits It's just keep on coming.

That's stunning.

Yeah.

I mean, the clue is in the name, isn't it?

Lydia the Apostle.

How has no one else spotted that?

Did you say which of the apostles was secretly?

Lydia.

No, but which was that Thomas?

No, I think like the Bible just, there are actually 13 apostles, but the Bible never mentions it.

See, it must have been one of the Judases.

Well, there were two Judases.

There was two Jameses.

One of them must have been the Lydia.

I reckon.

She just

panicked and gave the name of the person she was looking at.

That's what you do, isn't it?

it's a mrs doubtfire moment yeah um just quickly on the on the byron thing it's because she was great mates with lady byron because after uncle tom's cabin she she met everyone yeah and she was friends with uh so many eminent people george elliott wasn't she great mates um but this wrecked her reputation the byron book uh there was so much criticism she had to hire a secretary to deal with the correspondence and hire a lawyer and the person who stood up for her i'm afraid enemy of the podcast mark twain yeah he stood up for her and he was really good about you you know, it.

And I just think that's him vindicated a bit.

They were mates.

They were mates.

They were mates, but have you seen what he's written about her in their later life?

Because they were neighbours, not just mates.

Oh, what did he say about her?

It's not very nice.

She trimmed the hedge wrong and

the dog would shit in his garden as well.

No, he said her mind had decayed and she was a pathetic figure.

But I think he means pathetic, not as in we mean pathetic.

Yeah, that's absolutely, that's not criticism.

Okay,

I read that wrong then.

Yeah, that notes, pathetic back then would have meant someone that you feel really sorry for because she's got really unwell.

And then he wrote, people in the area where both of them lived would leave their doors open and then Harriet Beecher Stowe would go into their houses and then push them over and go, whoop, whoop.

It's the sound of the police.

Whoop, whoop.

She wrote that as well.

But then also that she would play her piano and you'd hear her singing melancholic songs to great effect.

Yeah, no, they were mates.

They were mates.

Okay, cool.

Can we finally talk about her husband?

Because we talk about these women all the time on this podcast, don't we?

Agreed.

Call her.

She wrote a lot of stuff, but he did write a pamphlet.

And the pamphlet that he wrote described the frequent visitations from tiny fairies that danced on his windowsill.

Really?

Yeah.

That does sound better.

And I bet he talked about his pamphlet much more than she talked about her like...

50 seminal books and crucial impact on 19th century literature.

Well, I can tell you that his fairies that he saw were ruled over by a king and queen, who were slightly larger than the other fairies, but they had a sinister and selfish expression on their faces that stopped him from trusting them.

Even though they always smiled, there is something sinister about them, so he didn't trust these fairies.

Sorry, is this a vision he had and then he wrote into a pamphlet?

Or is he like is this a metaphor for

you?

But that's kind of sad because I know he was very encouraging of her literary career and she probably felt like she should do the same for him.

I just need a quick quote for the cover, darling, if that's all right.

Just like something about the fairies and how they're really well described, just something.

Yeah, I will.

Yeah.

Sorry, I've got to go meet Queen Victoria now.

Sucks.

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We the man to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We the man to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast.

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No?

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

My fact is, some tortoises have hinges.

So these are imaginatively named animals called hinge-back tortoises, and there are loads of species, and they have a hinge at the back.

It's like a hatchback car.

Yeah.

And it means their back can just go boo and close up when they're trying to retreat into their shell.

There are loads of different species.

There's the forest, there's bells, there's the homes, there's the western.

I saw some of them two weeks ago, which is why I submitted this fact.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Could you see the hinge I couldn't get I couldn't get my arm quite far enough into the enclosure to

it was a shame but I read all about them this was in a little rainforest experience near Reading

it's the home of rainforest experience fantastic place like it's amazing the stuff they have there anyway and they have these sorry when you say retreat into their shell I would have thought that that would be on the front then you'd have they'd put their head retract their heads in and then they'd drop a hinge down but what they're retreating their bottom into their shell and then they're I think they're

legs and their tail, basically.

Their legs and their tail just go back in.

I don't think any species has yet evolved a front hinge, but that's something evolution is probably working on.

So if the predator comes from the front, the bugger.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I...

Because you're always going to be running away from a predator, aren't you?

So it does make sense that you're close in the back.

Yeah.

They can retreat a fair bit inside.

I think they can pull.

Obviously, they can pull their heads in.

I just don't know how far in.

There are some which have a really awkward thing where they put their head in and to the side and they just sort of scooch in there like that.

I'm doing it now for the benefit of listeners.

You've done a lot of physical stuff so far in this fact for the benefit of listeners that they're enjoying.

There's more to come.

I believe also the hinge helps them to open their shell a bit further and lay their eggs.

And they have eggs that are bigger than average for a turtle, which means that the hinge is useful.

Brilliant.

They're mutant turtles.

They do live into their teens, I believe.

Yeah.

And we should say, just because you've chucked in the word turtle now, and I didn't look into them, but they are tortoises, right?

Yeah, they are tortoises.

Although they're often used interchangeably.

And we've talked about the difference before.

Well, a tortoise is a turtle, but a turtle's not a tortoise.

Yeah,

okay, I get it.

Yeah, I don't.

They also, their shell is slightly different than normal shells.

It's got a little channel that when it rains, the water goes down the channel and goes straight to their mouth.

What?

No, it doesn't.

They've got guttering.

What?

Like one of those American sports hats that has a straw that comes right here.

Exactly like that.

They shouldn't be the hingeback tortoise.

They should be the beer can hat tortoise.

That's unbelievable.

yeah that's incredible evolution man i know we say it week in week out on this show but it's thrown up some cracking stuff it's yeah it does well yeah there are also uh there are box turtles and they are slightly different um

i think they might also be a kind of tortoise but they're definitely called the box turtle and they have a hinge on their belly which helps them to close the front and back half up like a box when they flex it so they

sound like all your inners are going to drop out every time you open it i believe it goes the opposite way to that.

Yes.

Right.

I think it's closing up, not opening out.

Not splitting open.

Yeah.

Got to pick that up.

I find that hard to visualise without reacting.

I'm not getting on the floor today.

I'm sorry.

But the Eastern Box Turtle.

was going to be made the official state emblem or one of the official state emblems of Virginia.

You know, every American state has like, this is the official state fern and the official state...

ice cream flavor.

yeah, exactly.

And so, Virginia, they suggested a couple of times in different years bills to honor the eastern box turtle.

And I just really like this.

I think this is from the Wikipedia about them.

In 2009, delegate Frank Hargrove of Hanover asked why Virginia would make an official emblem of an animal that retreats into its shell when frightened and dies by the thousands crawling across roads.

I just think that's such a mean thing.

Like, yeah, yeah, it's got other assets.

Well, it's not its fault that we've created the car.

No, exactly.

Ugh.

On turtles being able to do entertaining things.

In the olden days,

and I found this out in a study which was called Tortoise Rides and Alligator Slides in zoos that had tortoises.

Tortoise rides were the thing.

It was like the donkey ride, but it was a tortoise ride.

I've seen a photo of Rothschild on the back of a tortoise.

Rothschild loved riding his tortoise, yes.

But if you went to the zoo,

sorry, zoologist Walter Rothschild, who was a big old collector.

Yeah.

As anyone knows who Rothschild is,

Or it might be that I couldn't remember his first name, so I just said his surname.

But this is what you would do.

If you went to any zoo which had giant tortoises, then they would offer rides, and it would either be just lots of children would climb on top, or they had little tortoise carriages, and the tortoise would pull it.

Okay, that is...

That is cute.

That was cute.

I don't know why we stopped doing that.

No, let's

bring it back.

So what's an alligator slide?

Sorry.

The alligator slide.

No, it was said in this study that, you know, this was the most outrageous thing that they made animals do.

But basically, it was making an alligator go up a four-metre-high-ish ramp and then sliding down a steep slide, which sounds to me incredibly fun.

You wouldn't have to make me do that.

You're not an alligator, though.

I'm not an alligator.

Also, alligator rides were commonly offered.

There are lots of pictures of children.

Your children.

Children sitting on the backs of alligators.

Not for your most loved child, though.

I think it would be the least favourite.

Yeah, number three.

I guess if you lock the mouth shut, you're okay if you're not in water.

You can hold the mouth shut with no force at all.

With elastic band, you can hold the mouth.

And that's what you'll say to child number three as you send him in with.

Come on, little Johnny, you're stronger than an elastic band, aren't you?

What kind of parrot are you if you see an elastic band over their mouth?

You go, yeah, it's all good, man.

It's all good.

I gotta say, in the pictures I saw, I think the mouth was hanging open as it trundled along with the child, but I'm sure they were very well trained.

Because just to say, the jaws of these animals like crocodiles and alligators and caimans, they're really strong for closing, but they're really weak for opening.

No, absolutely.

That's the kind of QI fact that in real life, I'm not sure.

I'm willing to put my reputation on the line and my genitals.

No, you have fed this alligator a very good breakfast already, right?

I think so.

It was either today or last week that he had breakfast.

I'm sure he's still full.

Have you guys heard other unusual tortoises and turtles and things?

The African pancake tortoise.

The African pancake?

No.

This is a great one.

I'm going to say flat.

It's flat.

It's got a flat shell.

But the cool thing about it is not only that, but it's that it can flip over very quickly when it lands on its back because it's so light.

It's a bit like, you know, in robot wars, there's always one that can write itself.

Yeah.

And those are always the most dangerous robots of all.

But you're saying this can flip onto its back very quickly.

I can say it flips off its back.

It's got it.

It can write itself.

So like the thing is with tortoises is like, at least in cartoons, they end up on their back and they can't get back onto their feet, right?

I think that is real.

Yeah, I think it takes twice or three times as much energy for most of them to do that as it would to walk.

So that's great.

Well, the African pancake one, though, it has a very light shell, which means it can run much faster than your average tortoise, but it's not got a big defense because it's got a very light shell.

So when it's threatened, it just runs for cover and it runs under a rocky crevice and then breathes in

like a puffer fish.

And it's impossible to pull it out because it's just wedged in there.

Oh, so cool.

What becomes the shell?

Yeah, wow.

You really want to find the perfect shape rock.

I can imagine running to a huge pile of rocks and staring panic at all of them.

I can't get under that one.

That one's too big.

That one's, ah, where's the rock that's made for me?

But cool.

That's a really good point.

Do they suss out the local rocks ahead of them?

I don't have data.

We found the notebooks of tortoises with all the rock locations.

Well, because they do an interesting thing whereby they'll often sleep in a bit where they know the sun is going to get to them in the morning.

This is not all species of tortoises, but a lot of them.

They anticipate the path of the sun.

Yeah.

Quite clever.

So that's where they will sleep.

So they know that when the sun hits in the morning, it warms them up and it gets them going.

They only have to have been there for the previous morning they've got good memories yeah okay it's not so okay unless they go to a new place on holiday and they just work out which ways east and west quite cool because i've failed to do that on holiday when parking the car for example you park the higher car under the shade of the one tree and you think oh that'll be right for four hours then you come back same getting on a train and you sit on one side of the train and you're like oh this will be beautiful and then suddenly you're in the you're in an oven you're in an oven well that's because you're both warm-blooded creatures so you don't understand the necessity if you were a tortoise you would have died on that train.

You would have died in that car.

It's more important.

Well, when the ticket collector came, I ran and hid between some perfectly sized suitcases.

The Galapagos Islands tortoises, very famous because of Darwin going there, finding them.

And they were also really endangered, partly because we ate them all.

So Darwin came across them.

They had delicious meat.

He rode them too, didn't he?

I think he did he ride them.

There are pictures of him having a cheeky ride.

Yeah, he was good.

If you're the one who's discovered them, yeah.

And also, I think that I think if you discover any species, you should be allowed to ride it.

Yes, I'm not sure.

Oh,

just you.

The incredibly fragile bat.

No, I'm getting on there.

Saddle it up.

I think if you discover a new species, you get a little card and you can go to any zoo in the world and you just pull it out and you go, I'm allowed to ride this.

The llama is recovering from a serious lumbar region surgery.

It doesn't matter.

So yeah, they were big and delicious and they were endangered.

And actually on the island of Espaniola, there's a specific kind of giant tortoise which was down to 14 in number in the 1970s.

But now their numbers have really recovered and they're over 3,000 because of breeding programmes.

And the reason it's really important to conserve them, one of the reasons, is that they're extremely important for albatrosses because they facilitate something about albatross lives.

What do you think of when you think albatrosses?

I think of them at sea, bad luck.

Yeah.

Intramariner.

Shock warriors, crossbow, curse.

They fly for extremely long periods.

That's good.

Mubba.

Big, there we go.

You can have your guest down, but we've got the rounds.

I think, I think.

There's that phrase in card games of dead rubber, where there's absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

I want to see Dad on University Challenge where someone buzzes in,

Lord Byron.

That's correct.

Dad goes, no, no, I don't have another guess.

Sorry, Jeremy, just quickly.

I think

that quite often they need to crack things open, and there's nothing that's really hard around.

So, an albatross will fly over a giant tortoise, drop the item, be it an egg or whatever, it cracks open on their tortoise shell.

Like a reverse Aeschylus.

Yes, exactly.

That is

that's correct.

That's actually how albatrosses hatch their eggs, is they drop them all on the backs of tortoises.

So, Aeschylus supposedly died when an eagle was carrying a tortoise and dropped it on his head because thinking it was a rock.

Exactly.

Yeah, This is the opposite of that.

Is he right, Anna?

He's not.

It's really more about Andy's answer that they're very, very big wingspans

mean that they and the fact that they're very large anyway, they need a long runway to take off because they keep running and flapping, but like a swan.

And they needed to be very wide.

And as soon as the tortoises went, what they do is they tramp up and down the mountains all day and they tramp down the vegetation in straight lines and they make these flawless huge runways

and without them the albatrosses can't take off so the albatrosses were all dying out as well.

I don't think Andy got that right.

I think he just said wings, and you filled in the rest.

Very big.

Did he?

And I was about to go on to say exactly that about

the creator one.

Yeah.

Sorry.

If you're a cuckold in northern China.

Yeah.

Big shout out to the cuckolds in northern China.

And I know.

I know you guys are listening.

You've got time on your hands.

Now she's gone.

You're known as a tortoise.

That term survives.

It's a hundreds of years old term.

Really?

Yeah.

What?

Why?

Is it about being too slow and so someone's whipped someone out from under your nose oh it's very good but it's not i think it was getting it going into your shell something like that yeah that's it so they're associated

basically they're i think they're associated with i'm sorry to say a detumessing penis and so

It's all sort of go it's all sort of shrinking down and going soft and you're shirking danger as well.

So that's why thank god he didn't act that one out

I am Dan.

I am you just can't see under the table.

Can I say one thing about hinges?

Yeah.

Oh, okay, yeah.

So there's a door in this room.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It leads to the next room.

And there are three hinges on it.

What can you tell me about the spacing of the top and bottom hinges?

The equidistant?

Yeah, they seem

to seem it, don't they?

Yeah, they seem the same distance from the top of the bottom.

Is the bottom one actually a bit closer to the middle one compared to the top one?

The bottom one is further from the floor than the top one is from the top.

And there's a few reasons for that.

One of them is it's an illusion.

So to you, it looked about the same, but actually, it's not the same.

And that's because of the foreshortening effects.

So when things are slightly further away, distance looks different.

And the other thing is the top of your door, the hinge, is holding more of the weight.

So the top one needs to be closer to the top.

Closer to the pivot.

Closer to the pivot.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We can all agree the middle one is not pulling its weight, though, right?

What's it even doing?

What's the middle hinge doing?

The middle one is there just because three is a good number for the size of a door.

I guess it helps with the illusion as well, right?

Yes, because the middle one is usually exactly in the middle.

That's very good to know this.

If you ever climb a stepladder and suddenly look at your door and think, hang on, the hinges are all off, and then you get down and think they're not again, that's just the illusion.

So it might not just be the illusion if you're doing DIY, Anna.

It might be like...

And with this particular door, James, the frame that's around this door is not on the bottom, but it is on the top.

Oh, yeah.

Is that creating anything towards that illusion as well that I'm adding in the frame?

Can't hurt.

Love that.

It's the last question of the night for the physicist who wants to get home.

And our questions now go.

Goodbye.

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

My fact this week is that after Frida Carlo died, all her clothes and possessions spent 50 years in a bathroom.

Functioning bathroom.

People weren't going in and out using it.

No, with no number ones, no number twos.

Big bathroom?

Because presumably she had a lot of possessions.

She did have a hell of a lot of stuff in there.

So because it must have been.

So just to tell you how this happened, it wasn't necessarily the plan, but Frida Carlo died in 1954.

She was a Mexican artist.

And yes, to go back one step further, she was a Mexican artist.

Famously mono-browed.

Famously mono-browed.

Yes.

Imagine Oasis.

Yes.

Yeah.

But they're Mexican, and instead of singing songs, they paint stuff.

Yes.

And she modeled herself on Oasis, actually.

So I think you've got the picture.

She dies 1954.

Her, very famous also, husband Diego Rivera, shut all of her belongings in a bathroom in her house, which is called the Blue House in Mexico City.

And it was a house where she'd been born, where she'd grown up, and where she and Diego Rivera had lived and where she'd died.

And he said, I want all of her possessions to be locked in here until 15 years after I die.

15.

15.

I know a bit of a twist coming.

And we don't really know why.

We think, like, out of sensitivity for her, things that might be revealed, and thought, you know, give it a bit of time because it's all her letters and stuff.

But basically, he entrusted this task to a woman called Dolores Olmedo, who was a huge fan of Diego Rivera, as all women sort of were.

He was obviously a compelling man.

So I think she probably fancied him and definitely adored him, didn't really like Frida.

And so she just never took him out.

She just locked them in the bathroom, waited, Diego Rivera died a few years later, and she just kept them in there.

Constipation.

Because the bathroom door was locked.

Indeed, no, but the rest of the house was full of shit by the time they got there.

And yeah, it was only in 2004 after she died that someone said, should we open that bathroom full of Frida Carlo shit, see what's in there?

And it's all her stuff, 22,000 documents, 300 items of clothing, 6,000 photos, her prosthetic leg, her back brace.

Oh, wow.

And all of her makeup textiles.

So why did she need a prosthetic leg and a back brace?

Ah, yes.

Well, this is all part of her great story, isn't it?

Of pain and injury.

Well, she had a terrible, nearly fatal bus crash when she was 18.

She was involved in that.

She had already...

got polio as a girl.

She already had to wear a prosthesis on her right leg due to the polio.

And then this bus crash completely wrecked her life.

uh she broke her pelvis her collarbone her ribs her back most of her life she had to wear plaster corsets to support her and so much of this as anna says made its way into her art it frequently about pain yeah i mean it's frequently just this she's got this really badly broken body for the moment she also painted her casts quite a lot didn't she that was kind of some of the first paintings she did was on her cast and she even painted the bus that hit her on her cast which i think is pretty badass we should talk a bit about this crash because it was an extreme crash it was with her boyfriend She was about 18.

It was 1925.

And basically a tram plowed very slowly into their bus.

And the boyfriend remembers his knees were suddenly touching the knees of the people sitting on the bench opposite as it bent.

And then the whole vehicle splintered into a million pieces.

And as well as all those horrendous breakages, probably the worst thing that happened was she got impaled on a steel handrail that went straight through her abdomen.

And she didn't realize at the time the extent of her injuries.

I guess you don't in in the shock of the moment.

She said, the first thing I thought of was this Mexican toy that I had just got.

And I thought, oh no, where is it?

I've lost it in the wreckage.

And her boyfriend looked at her and was like, yeah, you're also impaled on a large metal spike.

Wow.

And they had to pull it out.

Oh, God.

And also the other mad detail that she's covered in blood, obviously.

But then someone who they speculated was probably a house painter was carrying a big box of gold paint, sparkly gold paint, and that sort of flew through the air and landed all over her as well.

Oh my God.

So she was covered covered in blood with all these gold sprinkles all over her.

And then a piano that was being lifted into a building dropped on top of her.

So every laurel and heart.

It is absolutely extraordinary.

It's just really, really kind of baroquely awful.

So she started painting, partly in recovery from this.

And she's an amazing artist.

I didn't really know much of her.

work before this

like frequently self-portraits and self-portraits throughout her life you know and then she met diego rivera who was a mural painter yeah yeah incredibly famous Incredibly famous.

Much older than her, like 20 years her senior.

Yeah.

Twice her age.

Twice her age.

He'd be married twice before.

His doctor had told him he was unfit for monogamy as a diagnosis.

What are you complaining about with the doctor when you book that GP?

I just know that when you book a doctor's appointment in the UK, I don't know if it's for everyone, but I have to go on a website and I have to click all the things that are wrong with me.

And monogamy has never been one of the checkpoints.

Did he have that as like, you know, if he got caught, he would show that note to his partner and just say...

I think he did get caught a lot.

I mean, he had so many affairs.

Yeah, so did she.

Yeah.

He did.

Well, she turned, she made a tortoise out of him.

I'll tell you that much.

But he also made a tortoise out of her a lot.

Sorry, what's the making of the tortoise?

We're in northern China and we're taking away.

I've forgotten that bit.

Her sister he had an affair with?

Yeah.

For God's sake, Diego.

Well, they had a very interesting setup there when they moved into their marital house.

Weirdly, it was two houses connected by a rooftop bridge.

And so he had his studio in one of them, she had her studio in the other, but they just had their own pads for sleeping with him models and assistants and her with just men and women that she fancied.

And Leon Trotsky.

And Leon Trotsky.

Quite the twist.

What a cameo.

Extraordinary.

I can't get over the Trotsky thing.

I can't get over the fact she had an affair with Leon Trotsky.

When he was, you know, he'd fled, he'd been kicked out of Russia, hadn't he, after the revolution.

So he was like a revolutionary who fell out with Stalin, basically.

And that was not the thing to do in the 30s.

No, no, no, no.

Of all the people in the world to fall out with, he was one of the worst.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And he needed somewhere to go, didn't he, that was safe.

And actually, it was Diego and Friday.

Spoiler, he was assassinated a few years later by one of Stalin's henchmen.

So he didn't find that place in the end, it turns out.

But he did meet Diego and Frida, and they begged the Mexican president to let him into the country and just house him.

So the president said, okay, we'll house him.

And then they kept him in the house for two years.

And their affair was very short.

It was just at the start in 1937.

He was also married.

Yes, and he was married.

Mrs.

Trotsky was around.

Mrs.

Trotsky is a funny name.

I just think that's a funny thing.

You don't think of it.

And is there a Mrs.

Trotsky?

You know, it sounds like a little pigland.

A pigminder character.

But some of their meetings,

Frida's and Leon, Trotsky's, they took place at the house of the very sister who had slept with Frida's husband, Diego.

Right.

Oh, it's messy.

His death was wild as well, Trotsky.

Trotsky's.

Yeah, because he was killed with an ice pick.

Yeah.

And the guy was a mountaineer who did it.

So he knew how to swing one.

And he thought I could probably get it in two goes.

He didn't want to fire a gun because he didn't want to raise the noise.

He needed to escape from this compound that Trotsky was staying in.

So, but he did it.

It went into his skull, but not deep enough to kill him.

So Trotsky was running around going, there's an ice pick in my head.

Can we talk about the brows?

A famous brow?

The brows.

Oh, okay.

Her brows, her brow.

She emphasized that, didn't she?

Didn't she?

She painted it on, she made it up.

She emphasized her moustache as well.

She had a tiny little bit of moustachiness, but she really emphasized it to make herself seem strong, basically, masculine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She did really like that sort of thing.

She really did push her brand, didn't she?

Like, she claimed that she was born on a day that she wasn't born at because it was the same year as the Mexican Revolution.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I mean, three years apart.

It wasn't like she claimed she was born the next week.

She came three years later.

Wow.

Well, coincidence, it makes you three years younger.

But then, of course, like, it's still the case now.

Like, Frida Carlo, if you look at all the kind of art books that my daughter's got three years old, I've all got Frida Carlo in.

Because she's just such a brand, isn't she?

She invented an aesthetic that.

I genuinely think my three-year-old will be able to recognize Frida Carlo.

Yeah, right.

That makes sense.

But they did a Barbie of her as well.

Yeah.

And the Barbie got banned in Mexico because, weirdly, they took away the monobrow as part of the look, this iconic look.

They made her incredibly slim.

So the family basically...

Yeah, it wasn't the government banned it.

Yeah.

It was there was a lawsuit because they didn't want this to be sold in Mexico and they pulled it off the shelves.

Yeah.

She did not have a monobrow, the Barbie.

The most famous thing about her.

Extraordinary decision there.

And she, so, Andy, as you said, she did paint herself a lot.

So apparently, in total, it's 143 paintings, 55 of which were self-portraits.

And they're very surrealistic.

I didn't realize she was as surreal as she was.

There's one which is called My Birth, where she's giving birth to herself.

So you see her head coming out of her own vagina.

You don't see that it's her because there's a sheet over the head of the person giving birth.

But through notes that she left in her diary and so on, we know that that was her being represented underneath the sheet.

Now that is owned by Madonna.

We know that Madonna owns roughly five self-portraits by Frida Carlo, two of which we know the names of that one.

And then there's another one where there's a monkey on the side of her arm.

Has Madonna got that one?

Yeah, Madonna's got that, yeah.

And Madonna has been quoted in Vanity Fair as saying when she brings people over who are new people in her life, she'll show them the My Birth one, and if they don't like it, she'll know that they're not going to be a long-term friend.

I feel really sad about that.

About what?

That I'm never going to be friends with Madonna.

Do you want to like, oh, because you don't like that?

I do like lots of Frida Carlo stuff, but that honestly is a bit, it's a bit much for me.

But my question is: would you really be honest about that if Madonna asked?

I think no one's saying to Madonna to her face, I don't like your painting.

Yeah, I think she's like, Well, everyone's my friend.

Jane is actually the only person I know who might just say, I really hate that game.

Actually, I didn't really care for like a virgin.

Ouch, okay, well, we can't be friends now.

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

My fact this week is that actor Noel Gugiemi played Hector in the fast and the furious.

Since then, he has played a character called Hector in 30 other projects.

And now, if he's in a movie where he's not called Hector, he'll try to change the character's name to Hector.

Yeah,

he's

confused about acting.

What acts are he?

He's found his niche.

Yeah.

He's Hector.

So basically, this is something that I saw in an interview with a Los Angeles radio station.

And apparently it started as a coincidence.

So the writers just were looking for a Hispanic name.

And they would often just come up with Hector or Carlos

because it's like not the most obvious, but it's like one of the most obvious.

Interesting.

I didn't.

So it's like not calling your English character John, it's calling him Michael.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, because I associate Hector just with the Trojan War.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I don't think of it in a Hispanic sense.

Well, it is kind of a popular Hispanic name.

So in Puerto Rico right now, Hector is the 18th most popular name,

which is beaten by Michael, Kevin, and Brian.

But in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, it was very popular.

So these characters, this guy is in his 30s.

So his character, people of that age were called Hector quite a lot in the Hispanic-speaking world.

And so, yeah, it started as a coincidence.

And then it was was noted in an Instagram post and it went a bit viral.

And he sort of ran with it.

And now, sometimes in a movie, he'll get a choice to change the name or keep it.

And if he has the chance, he'll always say, No, I want to be Hector.

Well, he's got a hell of a list of movies he's done.

He's been in so many movies.

So, Hector's not even the only recurring name that has come up in his movies.

So, he's played Jose four times, he's played Cruz twice.

So, I would say Jose is the straight-up

first Hispanic name you would go to, right?

No way.

Well, how about this one then?

Twice, he's played someone called Gang Banger One.

Again, that's the 19th most popular name in Puerto Rico right now.

This is not an unrelated film.

But it is.

It completely is.

No.

So he did it.

Gang Banger One, he's listed in the X-Files.

And that's just a gang member, we should say.

It's just someone who's in gang fights a lot.

Oh, is it?

Oh, grow up.

That's not what a gangbanger is.

I've never heard of that.

He's a gangbanger.

Is very common.

Come to South London.

You'll hear it said.

It's someone who's in a gang.

It's someone who gets in gang fights.

Who plays the drum in the gang?

No, just

anyone.

Any gang, yeah.

Are you sure?

I'm positive.

I remember from my time in the Peckham Crew, all right.

I remember from my time in the orgy, and

we all had a different understanding of it.

Yeah, it's an old-fashioned term.

It's not as much used these days as

well.

Because I would say, probably, my memory of the X-Files is there would be more likely to be gangs than bangs.

Than bangs.

Yeah.

Well, the other time was in a movie called Out of Sight, which is listed on his Wikipedia, but not listed on IMDb.

And I didn't have time to watch the movie.

Wait, not Out of Sight, but George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Jennifer Lopos.

An amazingly bad film.

Well, yeah, he's had so many roles.

He's been called Snuffy, Chicken, Lord of the Garbage, Subway Guy, Sam the Man, random.

Why did he demand to always be called Lord of the Garbage?

That's a Michael Flatley dance that I didn't really want to see.

Latin guy on a bicycle, and that was in the video clip for Pretty Fly for a White Guy.

The offspring.

He's in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very good.

Character names are funny, aren't they?

They can be.

Often they express something about the character.

Yeah, like some writers will, as soon as you see a character's name, you'll know exactly what they do.

Like Dickens, for instance, or J.K.

Rowling.

Exactly.

And then other ones, they will just call themselves Jack Reacher, and you don't know what that is.

It's just a person called Jack.

Exactly.

And so the Dickens characters, and they're called cratillic names, which I didn't know.

It dates back to Platonic dialogue.

So there's a Platonic dialogue which is all about is your name relevant to your character?

And so when Dickens has Mr.

Bumble or Mr.

Murdstone, who's a tough, hard character, that just who's the Mr.

Chochum something in

Chochum Children.

yeah.

That's a really rubbish one.

But so there's this story about Dickens that tiny Tim was allegedly going to be called Puny Pete at one point.

And it's...

I have been trying to nail this because I don't think it's actually true.

There's this piece from Dickens Quarterly in 1995, which says, actually, this might be from an advert, because there was an advert which said Little Larry, Small Sam, Puny Pete.

They were all crossed out.

And then below it, it says Tiny Tim.

Not crossed out.

And it's saying, like, sometimes you have to iterate and go through a few versions before you get the final thing.

So, that might be that's a common internet factoid that actually might not be.

It's one of my favorite things we do is explode misconceptions that only two people had,

but those two people will be listeners, so it's good.

Um, this guy, Hector, arguably is typecast.

You know, he's doing quite similar characters in all these things.

Uh, IMDb has a category of the most typecast actors in the world, and it explains the kind of character that they do.

So, I want to do a quiz where I'll give you the explanation of the character, and you have to say the name of the actor that they're describing.

So, easy one to start off with: neurotic, sex-obsessed, intellectual.

Woody, Alan.

Straight in there.

If at home you got that quicker than Dan and Andy, well done.

Greasy, weasly, slightly mental creep.

That's Dan, isn't it?

He didn't do much acting.

No, but I've got that one credit.

Gangbanger 2.

alan rickman no many weasel slightly mental creep and when i tell you you'll go oh yeah okay um hang on a sec oh um no i can picture him on my head steve buscemi correct that's who i was going for as well yes okay well done andy and and me

uh off beat quirky hipster who's a little stuck in dreamland michael sarah no it's

that annoying woman yeah

god i think she picked the mum in paddington sally hawkins sally Hawkins.

Oh, no, it's not her.

Is it a woman?

It's a woman.

Off-beat.

Say it again.

Off-beat, quirky hipster who's a little stuck in Dreamland.

I'll tell you this one.

Louis Dachanel.

It's correct.

Wow.

No, I don't know.

A tough woman who eventually shows vulnerability by breaking down in a crying scene.

Sigone Weaver?

She doesn't break down in crying scenes.

She breaks others.

Meryl Streep.

Who did you say?

Meryl Streep.

Meryl Streep, no.

We're kind of getting there.

Julia Roberts.

Correct.

Oh, he's back in the game.

Is she a tough woman?

Yeah.

Okay.

Finally, in this quiz, immature man-child.

Adam Sandler.

Correct.

Oh, there you go.

That's quite striking.

That is very good.

Clearly they come across.

Well, so the typecasting is so dangerous for actors.

There's Ed O'Neill.

There used to be a sitcom, Married with Children.

If you can't picture him from that, he was in that.

He's in Modern Family as well as one of the husbands in it.

He's like a long-suffering husband.

Yeah, incredibly funny to the point where he almost just had to shrug and people would laugh.

And so he was in a movie called Flight of the Intruder, drama movie.

1991, it came out.

Test audiences kept on laughing anytime he came on screen or did any movement that he was just cut from the film.

Wow.

They were like, you're ruining the film.

You're too funny.

You're too funny at the moment.

That's tough.

Timecasting, it is a real thing, isn't it?

So there's an actor called Mikhail Gilovani who played Stalin in 12 different films made during Stalin's lifetime.

And then the work did dry up.

I'm going to get a job now, actually, if he's in the right country.

Yeah, I read about him.

He basically played Stalin in one movie.

And Stalin really, really liked him because he was like by far the most handsome and tallest member of the cast.

And he was playing Stalin.

And Stalin was like, that's exactly who should be playing me.

And then from then on, yeah, he was like, this guy is going to play me all the time.

And obviously, there were quite a few movies about Stalin made.

Yes.

And when the casting call comes in, it must be a tricky, like, do you want to take this job?

It is typecasting me, but I'll be killed if I don't do it.

But yeah, then after Khrushchev did that speech that said Stalin was a wine curve, then no more.

No.

James Doohan had a horrible one.

James Doohan was Scotty in Star Trek.

So he was the guy who would fix things.

He had a Scottish accent.

He kept not getting films off the back of it because they kept saying, we don't need a Scottish guy in this movie.

He was Canadian.

That was just an accident.

But he was so typecast to that character that, yeah, he lost roles.

I'm sure, did you guys read about Jagdish Raj Kurana?

Who's a, he's got a Guinness World Record.

He's a Bollywood actor.

Oh, he was.

He died in 2013.

He's...

got a Guinness World Record for being the most typecast actor.

And he played the role of a police inspector in 144 films.

Which is just, and I looked at his whole Wikipedia list of films.

And God, he worked hard.

Small bit parters work bloody hard.

They do about 10 films a year.

So he also played a doctor 10 times and he had various ones where you'd think maybe he wasn't going to be a policeman, like a film called Suhag

and he's visiting a brothel and he's a bit of an underworld character.

Pick him up a gangbanger.

Exactly, doing some gangbanging.

Undercover cop.

There we go.

That was good.

But if you know the actor, you will know he will turn out to be a cop.

Yeah, you're so right that ruins it.

Yeah, I read that he had his own police uniform that he used to keep on because he was going to be a policeman so often in his movies.

And he has his son called Bobby.

Oh, from

Jesus, nice.

Super.

Lovely stuff.

You know how Jack Reacher, the character, got his name?

Because Lee Child chose his pen name because it would be between Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, is the story.

But Jack Reacher, the character, is named because he's good at reaching things.

So Lee Child is very tall, right?

That is true.

Right.

And he started writing these books during a period of unemployment.

He used to be like a 90v floor manager, I think, and he was sacked from that job and started writing.

But during that period where he was unemployed, when he was in the supermarket,

little old ladies would sometimes say, can you reach that thing from me down?

And his wife used to tease him, saying maybe you could get a job as being a reacher.

And he's since turned that into a globe-straddling

cultural empire.

That's so funny.

And I haven't read or seen the films, but is Jack Reacher someone who's always fitting light bulbs?

Is he a handyman?

He's basically like like a human mr tickle right okay they have much more fun than they appear yeah he is very the character is very tall is he which was the huge controversy when tom cruise was cast because he is

yeah it honestly was

someone who doesn't get typecast as a shortass does he jack reach is six five i believe is he

a wall of yeah and he's a he's a tough guy like there's a i think there's one book where he stops a bullet with his chest and that's right that's not that easy to do, can I just say?

But it's not that easy to survive it.

Sorry.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm sort of astonished.

I know I'm late to this party, but I'm astonished that he specifically is six foot five and is played by Tom Cruise.

Was that a funny joke?

No,

the first Jack Reacher film with Tom Cruise is brilliant.

It's really good.

The second one is also decent.

Never go back.

Do they have very small actors around him to make him look taller?

They cast Odie Munchkins, yeah.

It beats up a hell of a lot of munchkins in that film.

No, you're right.

I think they just show him he's short, but he's accelerating upwards towards your face with his fists.

I see.

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, it's good.

That bloody girl.

It's not mentioned in the movie, his height.

It's how they got round it.

They don't go, my God, he's huge.

They don't call him Jack Can't Reacher.

Dan, I have a fact that I wonder if you know, or anyone,

in absolutely fabulous international listeners, great British comedy.

Jennifer Saunders' character is Eddie, Edina Monsoon.

Do you know why she's called that?

Can you work it out if you know stuff about her life, which I reckon you do?

Eddie Monsoon is her name.

Eddie Monsoon.

Eddie Monsoon.

Do you know anything about her personal life?

Yeah, she's Monsoon.

So she's married to Adrian Edmondson, and he's Eddie in bottom.

Ed Monsoon.

There you go.

Wow.

There you go.

That's an incredible fact.

Isn't that nice?

Ed Monsoon.

Ed Monsoon.

Very, very good.

There you go.

It's a shame that Andy had to get that for you, but you helped him.

Made it all the more exciting.

You two are working as a great team today.

So sometimes character names can get you in trouble.

Oh, yeah.

There is a writer called Jake Armot, author of books.

And in 2006, he was writing a book, and he had a character in it who was a real villain.

It was a 1960s cabaret singer, and he named him Tony Rocco, right?

And the character was a real sleaze bag who preyed on teenage boys.

Now, unfortunately for Jay Carnot, there was a real 1960s London cabaret singer called Tony Rocco, who was not a pervert who preyed on teenage boys and who was still trading, having had a very successful hit single and was still performing with a loyal fan base.

Wow.

Obviously, he was not happy when this book came out.

Was it a complete coincidence?

It was a complete coincidence.

He just, it just, I don't know, he hadn't googled it, but.

Did he get sued?

There was a legal process which played out in due course and led to some compensation being paid, I think.

And Tony Rocco, the real Tony Rocco, said, I'm very glad we can just work this out and move on.

There was a famous thing with Peter Kay in Phoenix Nights.

Was it in Phoenix Knights or the one that he did before that?

But it was one of his sitcoms, and there was a character called Keith Lard

who was like a health and safety officer who had sex with dogs.

And

it turned out that Peter Kay had previously worked with a health and safety officer called Keith Laird.

And it was a complete coincidence.

Wasn't it really?

Says Mr.

Kay.

And there was some legal process.

And again, I think some

compensation was distributed.

It might have been that the compensation went to, you know, fire safety things.

Well, Dog Trust.

Wasn't there a thing within books whereby people would add the detail of a small penis if they were describing someone so that they would never sue because they wouldn't want to admit that the character was them.

Yes, it's not one pride and prejudice.

That's chapter four, isn't it?

But if I write a character called like Den Treiber, who's I write as a really a real bastard and I say, and he's got a small penis, is that going to stop you suing, Den?

What, the small penis bits?

Yeah.

Because it's so obvious I'm making fun of you in the book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, this has given me a great idea for my next novel.

Does the small penis come into it?

Well, it's part of the reason he's cuckolded by his northern Chinese wife.

Well, I'd be angry, but this sounds so damn good.

I'm in.

Well, you're not quite in.

Okay, that's it.

That is 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 over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our various social media accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram.

Andy.

I'm on Instagram at Andrew Hunter M.

James.

I'm still on Twitter.

Oh, yeah.

Don't really use it very much, but if you want to message me at James Harkin, then there's a decent chance I'll see it one day.

Yep.

And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna.

I think there's an email address, probably podcast.qi.com.

There's an Instagram at no suchthing as a fish, or you can do the Twitter thing at no such thing.

Yep, okay.

Or you can go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

Do check it out.

You can also find merchandise.

You can find Club Fish, which is our special place where we put up lots of bonus episodes.

Drop us a line, which is the mailbag episode.

There's compilation episodes of all of our outtakes.

Do check it out.

Otherwise, come back next week because we will be back.

Well, three of us will.

And Anna will be back in roughly nine months' time with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

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