No Such Thing As A Fish: 489: No Such Thing As A Quiet Whitsuntide

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things as a Fish, where we were

joined in the Soho Theatre London by the incredible Sally Phillips. Now a lot of you

will be excited by that, I'm sure because Sally has been on the podcast a couple of

times now and she is so funny. She is just one of us really. She loves doing the research,

she loves facts. Just for anyone who doesn't know who Sally is, she is basically the doyead

of British comedy over the last however many years. She was in Smack the Pony, she was

in Alan Partridge, she played the Prime Minister of Finland in Veep. I mean she's been in everything.

You know who Sally Phillips is. You're really going to enjoy this show. I don't really have

much more to say, so I might as well quickly say don't forget to join Club Fish. If you

want to, go to notionsthingsasfish.com slash patreon or notionsthingsasfish.com slash

Apple if you want to do that. Loads of bonus material, ad free episodes, all sorts of stuff

on there. A few weeks ago we gave away a cabbage patch doll and actually that reminds me, once

you've listened to this show do go on to our various social medias because you will be

able to see a couple of props that were used in this show. I'm sure we'll post them up

so definitely go and check those out because they're absolutely brilliant. Look, I don't

want to use your penny more of your time. I'm just going to say, on with a podcast.

Oh, nice. Hello and welcome to another episode and no such thing as a fair show. This is

a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Soho Theatre. My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Sally Phillips. And once

again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last

seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one and that

is Sally. So I was entranced by the Finnish hobby horse championships that was doing the

round on Twitter and also I was in Finland when they were being held, unfortunately didn't

make it. But my fact is that the world's best hobby horse jumper can jump high enough to

theoretically clear the first two jumps in the Grand National. It's amazing how many

of you saw it? The hobby horse championships, it's mainly girls between 11 and 18. You can't

afford a real horse. The girls are horribly bullied by their compatriots for being into

it. There was a film called Hobby Horse Revolution, 2019. It's a big thing. Once you look into

it, and it is some boys but many girls and some adult women, but I think that's a bit

strange. They often go into Woodland and do it in secret. So they don't give away their

moves? No, so they don't get attacked. Most people make their own hobby horses because

a pro hobby horse costs about 300 euros. We're talking about the stick with the head of the

horse. So it's the realism that's the expansiveness, is it? Or is it like Nimbus 2000? I don't know.

But my partner and I, because we knew this was live and we love the show very much, this afternoon

spent a full 15 minutes each making everyone a hobby horse. What? No way. What? Oh my God. What? So, Andy, for the

people who can't see this, for the people who can't see this, bad luck because it's indescribable. It is

incredible. This is amazing. Yours does look a tiny bit like a bad date night, girls. Mine is, it's a

very colourful sock, which is stuffed and it has a mop hair and some eyes. And yeah, I love it. Thank

you so much. Mine is ultra realistic, I would say. This is a horse. Yeah, mine slightly looks like

he ran out of materials and gave up. Yours is very cool. That's very kind of like space horse. Mine is

very space like a glam rock, sort of, this hair is like very Led Zeppelin from the year 3000. I did that one,

I'm quite pleased with that one. And this one's made out of bandages of plantar and it's got radishes for

eyes. Oh, wow. This is incredible. Thank you. Well, I thought, I mean, I kind of thought we could maybe

have a go, but that would be too embarrassing, wouldn't it? Well, maybe we should get the audience to

have a go, do a bit of dressage. Because what would happen is there was loads of different

discipline. Everyone's putting it down, don't make me do it, don't make me do it, I'm a geek, I don't like

physical action. Yeah, they do show jumping, they do puissance, which is the only time you're allowed

to run at a jump with, you're allowed to run at it rather than canter. And yeah, that is the one

where they've jumped a whole Peter Dinklage for four foot seven inches, seven inches, but there's

also, you know, show jumping, they do the international is 80 centimeters, the jumps. Yeah. But the

fins so dominate that their jumps are one meter, 10 centimeters. Wow. So 10,000 hobby horses in

Finland. That's incredible. But it's spreading. It's a reason I don't know. But there's a reason

it hasn't got further or that it's got quite far. It has actually got quite, it's got so much

further than you'd think. It's all the Nordic nations, Canada, Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, it's in so

many places, but sometimes it's Northern, isn't it? It's quite a North, Northern Europe and Canada,

like places we have long dark nights with not much else to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you say that,

you say that, but I mean, at least they're nice to the horses in the Nordic nations, whereas

our pretend horses have a dark, dark history. Right. I'm talking about the, none of you came

across it, the Padstow, Obi-Wan. Oh, the Obi-Wan. Yeah, but the scariest one is in Wales. In Wales,

they use real horse skulls on a stick. Really? Yeah. This isn't real. This isn't teenage girls

doing it though, is it? Well, the video I saw. It's like ghost horse. Elderly man, go with some friends,

goes, goes to the door of someone's house and then sings quite a scary song. Yeah. In Welsh,

and if you cannot finish the song inside the house, they force their way in. Okay. And there's a lot

of chasing girls with horses. It's quite, it's all sort of strange folk rituals, isn't it? Very strange

folk rituals. There are loads of these rituals. Yeah, it's all over the place. Okay, there's the,

there's, you said Padstow, which is another one. There's the Hoden horse in Canada. Did you see

the Padstow? Did you look at that online? It doesn't look, I mean, it's really bizarre. It looks

like a grand piano. Oh, really? But with a tail and a thing sticking out the front, then they sort

of rock it. Yeah, they're kind of a bit rich. Very strange. Is this, is this where the pantomime

horse comes from? No. Because these are really weird, sort of ritual fertility things. Yeah, no.

It's nothing to do with the pantomime horse. No, nothing to do with pantomime horse.

Well, no, it's really strange. It's the Lord of Mist rules. So it's the spirit of,

well, that, that's what Google told me. I'm being, I'm talking like I've got. What is the

pantomime horse, but a kind of, you know, that's a sort of misrule thing, isn't it? You know,

it's unnatural, it's weird. Yes, so. Who's in the front? Who's in the back? Yeah. No, no, no, no.

You would get on really well with Kate Beckinsale. Did you see this? She travels with a pantomime

horse everywhere. She does. And she reckons it's like really good. Well, it kind of calms her down

as she's stressed. Wait, sorry, with, with people in it? Well, does she? Like an emotional support

animal. She brings the costume around. And then if she's got a bit of downtime, then she'll get

in it and she'll find someone else to get in it with her. And it's just a nice way of calming down,

relaxing and. Yes, very normal. I think the biggest problem on the sort of a PR level is that no

matter how you try and spin it, it always sounds nuts when you say the thing you're actually doing

with hobby horsing. Like I found a quote from someone who said, people assume that it's a game

or that we are more or less crazy, said Chairwoman of the Finnish Stick Horse Enthusiasts Association.

You're never going to make it past the description, are you? It's a, it's a hard thing, but it sounds

like an amazing, I genuinely think, you know, people always talk about at the Olympics, like,

why not have someone in the 100 meters who's just a citizen who's just running alongside and you

can really see how fast they're going. Having a 12 year old girl at the Grand National make the first

two and just stack it head first until the third. That would be amazing. Actually, imagine you had

a pantomime horse, the fastest pantomime horse in the world, and they are in the 100 meters.

You know it's a person, right? Well, two people and they're in the 100 meters in the first ever

Olympics. Where do you think they would finish? Oh, in the first ever Olympics, 100 meters race,

you've got the two fastest current pantomime horse people. Where would they finish in the race?

Because people did run a bit slower, didn't they, in the first Olympics? Yeah, but they didn't have

a pantomime horse costume on. Why? Well, the first Olympics, that was Greece. Oh no, sorry, in 1996,

the first modern Olympics. Right, first modern Olympics. Just shoes were less good then and they

hadn't, you know. Maybe someone died in the in the right race. Okay. Honestly, it's just a straight

up question. I'm going to say bronze. I'm going to say bronze, but no, no, I'm going to say silver

and bronze because they count as two people. Very clever. I'm going to say gold. No, well,

Dan is right. They would have got silver. The fastest is 12.045 seconds for 100 meters and

that wouldn't quite have gotten gold in the first Olympics, but it would have been the second place.

Does the nose of the person in the back of the pantomime horse have to get over the line? No, no,

okay. Okay. Just that's amazing. Can I go back to hobby horsing? Just because it's one fact I'm

just so desperate to share. Yeah. One of the rules of the hobby horse competition is that only

stallions and mares can take part and geldings are banned.

Gelding? Gelding being a muted young horse. Where are the testicles on this thing? Well,

that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Well, exactly. That's bizarre, isn't it? But that's in

the rules. That's amazing. Incredible. Pantomime horses. I mean, that is the worst ever job. I mean,

have you ever done that? No, I've never done that. I've never done that. I've never done that.

There were some pantomimes that sometimes use real horses, because John Barrowman was thrown

20 foot off by one. They supposedly trained horse, they threw him off in Glasgow in 2013.

And there was a Paul O'Grady always used to tell a story about being in a panto with a

trained horse that he had to get into bed with him. He used to follow him around.

He was playing the fairy godmother in Cinderella. He used to follow him around the stage with a

massive erection. And he couldn't say anything because there was loads and loads of kids.

And they're all going, it's behind you.

Oh, wow. Good grief. That's pretty good. Here's the thing about real horses now.

Yeah. If you, I don't think we've said this before, if you frown at a horse and then go away

and then come back, it will remember and be a bit more...

James is doing some stunt work for the people listening at home.

It'll remember that you frowned at him. It'll remember that you frowned.

But also if you smile at a horse and then go away, it will think, oh, there he is.

The horse remembers you frowned. How is it then passing that data on?

Exactly. So it's bizarre. It's which eye it looks at you with.

So horses look at negative or threatening sides with their left eye

and positive ones with their right eye. Really?

So if you come back, you know what the horse thinks of you,

depending on which eye it looks at you with. That's really interesting.

So horses understand human facial expressions. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of animals, if you smile at them,

they'll see the teeth and they think you're being aggressive, for instance.

Right. So interesting. It's like most comedians.

Yeah.

Do you know that it was illegal to dress up as a horse in Scotland

in the 7th century? Really?

In fact, it was forbidden for any man to dress as a horse or a wild beast

and dance anti-clockwise during January.

Yeah. It was demonic.

Well, that's the thing about dressing up as an animal

was to let your demonic side out.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It was seen as very anti-Catholic and stuff.

St Augustine wrote that anyone carrying on that most filthy practice

of dressing like a horse should be punished most severely.

Oh, wow.

But as soon as the 1st of February hits, knock yourself out.

We're doing No Horse January this year again.

That's fine.

Stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast.

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Yeah. All of the best people who might work for your business

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OK, I'm going to the town hall square to see if anyone needs to imply a new researcher.

On with the podcast.

On with the show.

OK, it is time for fact number two.

And that is my fact.

My fact this week is that this June of 2023,

the six millionth, six hundred and sixty six thousand six hundred and sixty sixth English

language Wikipedia article was created and that page was an entry for Satan Con.

Yeah, you've got to imagine obviously that they were aiming to land that,

but that's really hard, right?

So Satan Con being is that like Comic Con, but with devils?

Pretty much. Yeah, it's set up by the Satanic Temple,

who are a nontheistic organization, and they have this annual convention.

It was in Boston this year.

It was on April 28th, which is my birthday.

So that's very exciting.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

It's quite it's quite new Satan Con.

Yeah, it's only been held twice, I think.

And this year, like, so this year was in Boston at the Boston Marriott Hotel.

So good on the Marriott because you would think,

oh, maybe there'll be a reputational concern if we host Satan Con.

But they said, no, you come and have the conference here.

And I think that's really good.

Because they know, but the first one got lots of placards

and it got lots of protests outside Satan Con 1,

in 2022, denouncing Satan and this sort of thing,

even though the Satanic Temple, they don't believe in Satan.

They don't.

They say they lie.

That's the point.

Wow.

That is the point of Satan.

Yeah, really good point.

Yeah.

Oh, that's worry.

No, really good point.

Yeah.

They do run Satan afterschool clubs.

And I was thinking for my kids.

Even if they don't believe in Satan,

they're not helping themselves by calling themselves

the Satanic Temple, are they?

No, they're sort of more of a free speech organization, really.

That's what they say, Andy.

But no, you're right.

It's all such a good point.

You're being sucked in.

Oh, God, I've fallen right for it.

Satan, Prince of Lies.

That's his name.

Why did I get this pentagram tattooed on my back?

They use the proper Latin greeting for,

instead of saying hail Satan, who they don't believe in.

I'm really on the temple side.

They say ave satana.

What's that mean?

Hail Satan.

Yeah.

But it scans the same as have a banana,

which I really like, ave satana.

That's how you can remember it.

Yeah, yeah.

I like it.

Yeah, I think they're good.

Oh, do you?

Yeah, they're kind of rationalistic.

Well, there's a few of them around, aren't there,

who claim to not be interested in Satan

but are called the Church of Satan or whatever.

Yeah.

And a lot of them are like just trying to take the piss out

of the government, out of the church,

out of all that kind of stuff.

In lockdown, I started presenting a religious program

on Sunday mornings called Sunday Morning Live.

And we, under the BBC, had to interview every religion

that's recognised as a religion.

So I didn't actually do it, but they interview the Satanists.

Really?

After...

Is that like a proper religion then in the UK?

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, Wiccan.

Wicca, yeah.

And the lady who came, I didn't talk to her, actually,

but she came, she'd been up all night.

Doing what?

In the woods with her horse?

Having satanic sex in the woods.

Basically, yeah.

And the big issue for Sunday Morning Live

was that she wasn't wearing a bra and you could see really,

see her nipples really, really clearly.

Oh, wait, was it radio or TV?

TV.

Or three of the TV.

So it's like, how are we going to...

Why would that story be relevant

if it was radio and TV?

How are we going to gaffotate the way she snips us?

Wow.

So the Wiccan thing is a bit different, yeah.

Was she satanic?

Like, did you feel that she was pushing the Satan?

I didn't particularly talk to her.

No, I didn't...

I think they did...

Yeah, no, I didn't think so.

I don't know what happened, but it sounds like

whatever spell she put on you is just suddenly kicked in.

Honestly, I'm a bit, I'm a bit scared of witches and satans.

Yeah.

So is David Bowie, so it's fine.

He was once exercised.

He got someone to do spells of protection.

All right.

Well, he used to collect his urine in little bottles,

kind of like how Hugh Hefner did,

because he was worried that witches were going to steal them

and do black magic on them.

Oh, no.

Bowie went to all of it.

What do you mean?

He can't have collected all of his urine in bottles to prevent theft.

Because that's such a big thing.

Because that's such an unsustainable...

I mean, I know he was rich.

I know he was like a wealthy guy.

If someone had enough money for jars to sustain

every passing of urine in his belly...

Imagine how much it would fetch now.

And I absolutely would buy some of it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

But I also think, like, if you just piss it down the toilet,

that's probably safer than keeping it in bottles in your house.

It's so much safer.

Yeah.

Yeah, it must be, right?

Because once you've got it in bottles, people...

No, but you're forgetting about filming trailers.

Because...

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, in filming, because there was a...

I think I might have made this up.

But I feel like there was an issue of people going to Justin Timberlake's

filming trailer and trying to steal his turrets out of him.

Oh, because it's held in a tank.

Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Did I dream that?

That would be so worrying if I did.

I feel that was a thing, though.

And what were they going to do with it?

Were they going to clone it?

eBay?

All right.

No, no, just use it and use it for spells, I guess.

Was his...

We've got to remember that this is a guy who was so coked off his head

that he was collecting in his own piss in bottles.

I don't think there was logic to his reasoning.

I think he just was scared of a...

Right, okay.

But there is a whole thing of collecting, you know, hair stuff, isn't there?

Well, yeah, I mean, so that's a thing.

The Yoko Ono used to be seen as someone that potentially...

You know, she had an album called Yes, I Am a Witch,

because she was presented as someone who might be a witch.

And she bought a single mustache hair off of Salvador Dali.

She paid him for it, and he sent it over in a box.

And years later, it was revealed by the partner of Salvador Dali

that he was so scared that she was going to use it for witchcraft

that he ended up sending a painted bit of blade of grass

that he picked from his lawn.

But she never noticed, according to the story.

But he was petrified that Yoko Ono would do that.

Yeah, well, there was the whole satanic panic, wasn't there?

Was it 70s and 80s?

Were they thought McDonalds were haunted?

Possessed?

McDonalds?

No, the whole satanic panic, where McDonalds got a letter

from a woman in Ohio asking why the owner, Ray Crock,

was a financial supporter of the Church of Satan.

And it was a rumor that just spread...

She said she'd seen him on the Phil Donahue show

saying he supported the Church of Satan.

And he hadn't said that.

But she told her pastor, and her pastor put it in the church's newsletter,

which was called Moments of Sunshine.

And very quickly, that spread across America via church newsletters.

Wow.

So McDonalds had to send executives out to these churches

with sworn statements insisting that Crock never said those things.

It was a real panic, wasn't it?

And the expert on it these days is a guy called Dr. David Frankfurter.

And what he thinks is it was basically like a sort of a loop

where you would have these evangelical Christians saying,

this is happening.

And then people are using hypnotic regression techniques

to try and remember things that they supposedly suppressed in their lives.

And then really what they would do is kind of say

what the hypnotists wanted them to say.

You just had this kind of feedback loop

that eventually there was, you know, in theory,

in some of the newspapers they were saying

there were thousands of these satanists around America doing this.

Yeah.

Um, I've got a fact for you.

Okay.

In 2021, in the UK, more babies were named Lucifer than Nigel.

Do you have the numbers?

Do we know how many?

15 Lucifers.

Yeah.

No more than two Nigels.

No.

Yeah.

Oh, my word.

It doesn't appear on the list.

You know that thing where if there are under three,

they don't say how many there are.

And do we think that it's because Nigel is associated with evil these days?

Did you come across a thing of 666, though?

Yeah.

So I'd always thought that 666, the number of the beast,

was about the number of perfection being seven,

and so six being imperfection.

That's what I thought it was.

But then today, I discovered that there's a thing called isosephi,

which is letters equivalent to numbers.

And apparently this was very, very common in 1st and 2nd century CE.

So you would quite often refer to people with a number.

So a joke was, by Seatonius, a calculation knew Nero his mother slew.

And in this case, the emperor Nero equals 1005,

which is the same value as the phrase his mother slew.

And apparently most people think if you say 666, it stands for Caesar Nero.

So in some early versions of the Bible, in Revelations from Revelations 13,

the Latin version has the numbers being 616.

Right.

And that's because in Latin, Nero is 616, not 666.

And the reason we think that is because Revelation was written by very early

Christians, it's one of the earliest of the New Testament books.

And really, they were just being persecuted by Nero.

So they saw him as the devil.

But he was actually a good guy?

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far.

I mean, it depends what side you're on.

If you're on Nero's side, he's a great guy.

He used to drink an energy drink that was made by soaking roasted dung in vinegar.

Oh, but that's still how they that's that's Red Bull.

That is.

Well, that's Steven Seagal's energy drink.

Have you seen those adverts?

Oh, yeah.

They're unbelievable.

I've not seen the ads.

You've got to see the ads.

What are they called?

You've got to see the ads.

What's it called?

I can't remember.

I used to drink it all the time.

Yeah, I don't know why.

Why?

I went through a period.

Well, my local corner shop just stocked things like Marley's Mellow Mood,

which was a Bob Marley energy drink, but it was sort of an opposite.

A Bob Marley energy drink.

It was a sort of Bob Marley anti energy drink.

And it said on the side, whatever you do, don't drive a truck after two of these.

And the store, I just had all like the collection of every celebrity's weird, you know, it had a.

What's amazing, Dan, is that this was at the end of your street.

You would be the only person in the world who would buy this stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

They probably only they were like, oh, we accidentally ordered this one time.

Oh, it's selling every week for this one guy.

Let's keep getting it.

It was really powerful, his drink.

Yeah.

Yeah, the Steven Seagal one.

It's the most misogynistic act I've ever seen.

Oh, really?

He's not even bothered to turn up.

You just have to watch it.

OK, that wasn't on the can.

It's awful.

It's really, really.

I can't believe I was the sole funder of that ad.

It is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.

My fact is that roughly 3% of our entire planet is called Jason.

How much is called Nigel?

I'm shrinking amounts.

Yeah, so this is an amazing.

OK, this is amazing, right?

Now, this is not 3% of all people on the planet are called Jason, right?

This is 3% of the earth itself is named Jason.

By whom?

By Jason, by geologists and seismologists.

So there is.

OK, this is a bit technical,

but there are these two mysterious,

sound like Dan when I read this out.

There are these mysterious structures inside the earth, right?

There are two of them, OK?

And they are these massive blobs.

They're called LLSVPs, large, low shear velocity provinces, right?

Now, there's one beneath Africa and there's one under the Pacific.

And that's obviously a very, you know, technical name for them.

And they're not very well known about.

They're not very well researched because they are where the mantle

of the earth meets the core of the earth, OK?

So the earth goes crust, not very much.

Mantle, quite a bit.

Core, quite a bit more.

And they're at the junction point between the mantle and the core.

So they're really hard to research.

And the researchers have named them Tuzo and Jason.

They are billions of years old and between them they are six.

Both blokes.

That's true.

They're named after two geological scientists.

So they are, yeah.

And we don't know what they are.

They might be, they might be offcuts from another planet,

which is exciting.

There's a theoretical planet called Thea from four and a half billion years ago

which might have crashed into earth and might have been subsumed.

That's possible.

Yeah, we don't know exactly what they are,

but they are incredible and they're there.

And this, I don't know why I'm having to justify their existence.

This is proper, I just spent 15 minutes talking about Satan.

These are real geological structures in the planet.

They're awesome.

No, yeah, it was wonderful.

Well, are you more excited?

In all honesty, it's because an eBay auction came up on my phone

saying you've got three minutes to bid.

So I suddenly was focused on that.

Are you joking?

Well, I didn't bid in the end.

How much was it for that swimming pool of David Bowie's bottled urine?

Are we saying that there's,

because the description I read is that it's,

there's mountains there that are taller than Mount Everest.

Yes, but what does that mean?

It's not the hollow earth we're talking about, right?

There's no space around the mountains.

It's just different rock that might have been this other mystery planet.

Yeah, and in fact, near Jason and Tuzo,

there are these enormous mega mountains

and they're at that junction point as well.

They are called ultra low velocity zones

and it's this weird boundary zone.

I did read something, I can't get my head around this.

Scientists claim that the gap between the core and the mantle

is bigger than the change between rock and air.

No, I can't understand that, but okay.

It's because of the high pressure, right?

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is amazing.

And they're only found because scientists

can track earthquakes through the earth

and you spot where the reverberations,

how long they take to get through the earth

and you can build up a profile very slowly and carefully

of what the different structures are based on how fast waves travel.

This is just news to me because last time I did Geography,

I was a child and I thought it was, then there was magma.

The mantle is much more fluid

and then there's an outer liquid core in it in a solid core.

So yeah.

There's space around Jason.

No, that was me saying that.

No space at all.

Yeah, no space at all.

That was down to saying the whole world.

So in what sense is Jason a mountain?

It's a different type of rock.

Like you've got the sort of quite liquid mantle

but you've got much more solid rock,

which is this Jason stuff.

Is that right?

That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think it's really interesting

these are named after blokes

because actually quite a lot of this science

was done by women, right?

So a...

Sorry, did you say you were surprised?

Weird.

Yeah, it's so weird.

It's so against everything else that's happened in history.

It's bizarre.

One person, for instance, Inga Lehmann,

she was the first to work out that the earth had a solid core

and what it was, again,

it's like the vibrations going through the earth

and they realized there must have been a core there

because the vibrations would come after an earthquake

and then if you were exactly opposite the earthquake

you wouldn't see them

and so there must have been something liquid there

but actually she noticed that if you looked at seismographs

there were really, really tiny amounts of vibrations

so it wasn't completely dark

and what she realized was that this was because

there was also a solid core inside the liquid core

and but they all thought that, you know,

she must be wrong

and it must have been like a discrepancy in the seismographs

the seismographs must be wrong

because this woman can't possibly be right

that there's an extra core in there

but it turned out like in 1970

I think she was still alive

but we found out, yeah, we found out that it was true

Wow, amazing

So I've got a couple of things on Jason Statham

Me too

I don't know, is it like a sandwich you got from your local shop?

Because I was just looking into notable Jason's

because I thought that's the territory

Are you joking?

You?

I've got eight pages of dense geological data

Jason Statham is in Meg too

He's massive

Yeah, he is, he's incredible

So he was filming Expendables 3, I think it was

I've got this too

Have you got this amazing story, amazing story

We're literally going from the structure of the entire

all life, all of everything we've ever known

these amazing scientists

Yeah, sorry, the Expendables 3

Sorry, go on, yeah

You listen to this and tell me you're not amazed

He's in a car and he's doing a scene

and suddenly he needs to

He likes to do his own stunts, Jason

Loves to do his own stunts, Jason, doesn't he?

Yeah

And he needs to hit the brakes

because he needs to stop before there's a cliff

which drops 60 feet into the Black Sea

Gosh, 60 feet?

60 feet

That's nearly as much as the 2,000 miles of mantle

between the crust and the core

So the brakes fail, Statham's in the car

Oh no

And it goes off the cliff

This is a Hollywood film

He's plunging 60 feet into like just

A three ton stunt truck

A three ton stunt truck

Wait, he's sorry, he's driving the truck

He's driving the truck

He's driving the truck, we're not listening

And so then he should crash

Anyone else, any other of the Expendables

You put Stallone in there

You put Schwarzenegger

They would die in that moment, right?

Statham manages to leap out of the car

and successfully dive into the ocean

And then comes up and he's all okay

And why is he okay, Sally?

He's okay

Because before he became an actor

he was a competitive diver

Genuinely

And he's done a lot of free diving

and has got a lot of scuba experience

Exactly

But he was very, very good at diving

but not quite good enough to make the Olympic team

so he decided to branch out

Exactly

But he did represent Britain in the Commonwealth Games in 1990

Oh, so it's not like scuba diving, it's high board diving

High board diving

Which he used to practice in Crystal Palace

as a high board there

and they have a pool there

where Tom Daly would practice as well

And before Tom Daly, Jason Statham

He would be there

Yeah

That's really interesting

So Jason Statham

That's really interesting

because Jason Statham that means

might have been helpful

in the first attempt to dig down into

the Earth's mantle in 1961

So this was a thing called Project Mohole

Okay

It was an attempt to find the lower limit of the Earth's crust

which is very, very thick on land

and much thinner over the ocean

The USA was losing the space race in 1961

The Soviets were way ahead

And so the USA said

Why, well just dig instead

and we'll do better digging

and that'll be our new thing

Right

And so they tried to

they tried to get down beyond this thin layer of crust

where it meets the mantle

which is a point called the Mohovovich's discontinuity

It didn't work

So they went into the ocean

The weirdest thing was

that there was a ship

which was sent to do the drilling operation

and to keep it stable

in the same bit of the ocean

Their solution was

they fitted propellers all the way around the outside

and they just fired them all at the same time

That's brilliant

I know

It's pretty, that's very cool to me

They probably needed marine biologists

on the boat right

in order to do the science

I'm not falling for it

Because

They didn't need

Did you know

Jason Momoa

Absolutely not

Who became Aquaman later in his career

First studied marine biology

when he was at university

before transferring to wildlife biology

That is so interesting, Dad

Isn't it?

Thank you, yeah

Well they did have a kind of hero of

beginning with Jay

and Jay named Hero there

because John Steinbeck was present

of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

Oh really?

Yeah, yeah

He was there kind of writing about it

But sadly it didn't work

Gosh, you weren't kidding

In the dressing room

he said I've got 15 minutes

brilliant material on Jason

There is a bit of advance this year

so this is quite sort of geeky now

but scientists have just extracted

a chunk of the mantle for the first time

and they were trying to work out

Of Earth's mantle?

Earth's mantle

Wow

We're trying to work out how to do it

Right

and they realised

they don't go to the mantle

go to where rock from the mantle

has been pushed above

its normal resting place

so they drilled into an underwater mountain

but like a normal underwater mountain

is in at the bottom of the

mid-Atlantic ridge

and they drilled in slightly sideways

and they have a core of mantle rock

which is a kilometre long

and they've extracted that core

and that'll allow them to study

all sorts of things about the deep Earth

So cool

That's incredible

Wow

All I've got going on here is

you could keep it on your mantle piece

I just can't join in with the science stuff really

Well Jason Statham

I do have a fact about Jason Statham

Oh look who goes crawling back to the other side

He fits very well

as in he would be a great action hero

even with his, you know, his human name

as in his name is a good name for an action hero

Right

So is it not his real name Jason Statham?

No it is his real name

as far as I know

but my point is that action heroes

tend to have names beginning with Jay

Oh yeah

James Bond

Jason Bourne

John Wick

Jack Reacher

John McLean

John James Rambo

Oh yeah

And there was a study, a brilliant study

by a writer at Slate

called Demetria Glace

or Glass

and she studied 2000 action movies

pretty much every modern western action movie

with a male sort of single everyman protagonist

A third of them had names beginning with Jay

Really?

Which is very unusual

Like very few villains

Do you know that the Earth is younger on the inside

than it is on the outside?

So when you get to the mantle level of the Earth

Judas, Judas

That would be a good name for an action movie

A great action story

Yeah

Yeah

This is like Freaky Friday

So as we saw in the movie Interstellar

where when Matthew McConaughey is traveling out into space

gravity distorts time doesn't it?

And there's a reason that we say that

when astronauts are in space

they're almost time travelers

because they age differently

because time travels differently

if you were at the core of our planet

and that means then the core of our planet itself

is traveling at a different time

so it's two and a half years younger

than the rest of our planet

because gravity is so intense down there

that it slowed down time

That's pretty cool

Whatever

Okay

Let me tell you one thing about geology

which will this will totally blow your mind

Oh yeah

So there's a place called the Heart Mountain

in Northwest America

and I'm talking quite a lot of millions of years ago

but at one stage that mountain moved 62 miles in half an hour

Really?

The entire mountain

What?

Isn't that amazing?

So there's a load of basically magma

there's a big sort of river of magma there

a load of water got into it

there was a massive explosion

and the entire mountain moved at 100 miles an hour

Oh my word

No

What happened?

An hour

We're talking millions of millions of millions of years ago

Oh this was the last year

You just go and ski and you're like oh my god

Are we there yet?

It's right here, fuck

Stop the podcast

Stop the podcast

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Okay on with the podcast

On with the show

Okay it is time for our final fact of the show

and that is James

Okay my fact this week is that you could tell the social status

of an ancient Egyptian man by the colour of his condom

I mean surely you would have an inkling before you got to see

or it's a shock isn't it

You told me you were a pharaoh

It's bizarre isn't it

Yeah I mean this I've read this in a couple of places

one is an article in the Indian Journal of Urology called The Story of the Condom

one is from an article from the Egypt Museum

who have one of these very very old condoms

and basically they didn't use them for contraception

they used them to stop diseases

but they also an insect bite

but they also use them as an insignia of Rancor status

and it was just when I say condom

I think some of it might have been more like almost like cod piece

I mean like that

but they were used against diseases as well

so you know we can technically call them condoms

and they were made of linen

soaked in olive oil

okay and with different colours

the problem is of all the sauces

maybe you guys found this

but if all the sauces that I found

really good academic sauces

none of them told you what colour you're aiming for

so I don't know if red was a good one

or if blue was a good one

They've got Teuton Carmine's condom haven't they

Do they?

Yeah they do

Yes they do

linen soaked in olive oil

impregnated with his DNA

and it would tie around to his waist

right away

tied around his waist with string

but they didn't mention what colour it was

they didn't mention the colour

why are we not getting out of the colour system

sometimes the colours don't last

yeah right

okay gosh

that's very interesting

in the course of researching this

I read probably the weirdest thing I think I've ever read

which is in ancient Rome condoms

and by the way I haven't found a legit source

but it appears in so many

no it appears in so many places

they used to apparently an ancient Roman who was victorious

in a battle and had slain his opponent

would then make a condom out of the muscle of the opponent

oh don't be daft

source

well they did use to make condoms out of animal intestines and bladders in Rome

so it's not impossible

it's not impossible

feels a bit grizzly

feels a bit grizzly

it's sort of one of those facts I'd prefer

I'm just going to prefer not to believe

I know

the ancient Egyptians used to use crocodile dung as spermicide

did you

yeah

how would you use that

you would use

I don't want to think about it

why is no one sleeping with me

uncovered in crocodile shit

do you know that William Buckland

you know the naturals who ate everything

yeah

his kids had a hobby horse made out of a dead crocodile

wow

just to get done I don't know why that came into my head

yeah

but yeah

right

my friend Cindy used to have the crocodile that was used in crocodile dundee

as a like they had prop crocodiles

and as you went into her house

she had the prop crocodile

all pretty cool

from croc dundee

there's no more iconic prop

I think that you could get

was it a real crocodile

no no

was it a pretend crocodile

no I think it was a pretend crocodile

yeah

condoms just quickly

yeah

so the condoms of the 18th century were quite interesting

because that was the sort of getting towards modern condoms

but they're still very primitive

so they were made of sheep kaikum

okay

which is the powers that connect the small and the large intestine to each other

of the sheep

and they had to be treated

and there was a whole like nine step process to make a proper condom out of a sheep's thing

kaikum

and they were really scarce

they were very hard to come by

partly because butchers could not be bothered to collect

you know each sheep has one kaikum

so that's one potential condom per sheep

and it was just not worth collecting basically

so people would just use the sheep instead

oh my god

do you know the first condom in literature was

used by the wife of king minus of creed

who's called pacify

and she used it to stop herself being harmed by king minus's semen

because it contains scorpions and serpents

oh

yeah

maybe maybe we could just watch something tonight actually

maybe

let's let's watch another episode actually

think about it now

yeah

I discovered that there's a there's a condom making china called jizbon

which which is called jizbon because it's it's after james bond

no the name is bond jizbon

yeah

and in 2006 a german entrepreneur launched a spray on condom

did you come across that

yes

yeah but it was

yeah the phrasing was a bit unfortunate there

did you come across that

and it was stopped it was stopped sure by EU regulations

oh I read something slightly different about what stopped it

so he was called jan claus

clausa and he got the idea for it in a car wash

because he you know he was he was I don't know he must have been in the car

and it was just being spread and he thought oh maybe if I if you you know your penis is the car

as it were and you spray it from every angle with the latex then you have a perfectly fitted

condom right you know perfectly fitted every time and he got 30 men to test it

and apparently it had exclusively positive reviews it went really well

but the the drawbacks were that it was quite cold very cold to be just sprayed with this sort of

latex liquid and it takes two full minutes to dry to dry yeah

by which side is probably not the right size anymore

yeah it still ships internationally though

does it still not approved by the FDA oh no that's the galactic cap sorry

the galactic cap sorry that's just titchy titchy like a beanie for your penis

oh okay what like a hipster kind of like what leaving the shaft it's not been approved by the

FDA but it does ship internationally I don't know how it stays on I okay it's very exciting

um you mentioned China earlier with the James Bond thing I was reading about

ancient Chinese contraception and because in the early days there was you know there was a

story that tortoise shell in the same way that the beanie was used was kind of used for I know

it doesn't quite make sense and you can't get any further with it and and like full disclosure

the the article I got this from used the word dude a lot so I don't know how reliable this is

were you on the scientific journal rad monthly yeah yeah yeah yeah no no this was this because

it's weirdly it has sources but um it's saying that there used to be thing where you would you

were told to reserve ejaculation so that basically is with that you know coitus interrupters right

but the other thing that they said was to move the semen back into you basically so that was a

method that was taught so the method was as point of ejaculation was happening to press a thumb

against in between the scrotum and the anus and what it would do was my parents are in tonight

you're kidding this happens every time oh no okay right it's because you mentioned it in every show

we do so why do you stick your thumb so you put your thumb between your scrotum and your anus

and your push and then it's the idea is that it redirects the hokey-cokey with you

it redirects the semen to go up the spine through the chakras and into the brain is the idea

because sex because I'm sorry is there a tangible benefit to this procedure what's that you haven't

said because there's an idea that you're expelling something from your body which is energy and

unless you were receiving the other energy from the human that you're having sex with that was a

wasted energy so why not losing your you're losing your essence exactly again from somewhere that

says awesome a lot in the article and I don't know if it's legit but it seemed it seemed legit at the time

I find that really scary that the penis can suck things suck things in I don't know if it can

yeah I mean they've got a problem people are stopping using them so we've got the highest

syphilis and gonorrhea rates in the UK for years and years and there was a study done about

men who believe they're attractive who rate their attractiveness high are much less likely to use a

condom what really yeah well that explains why I've got three on right now

how'd you enjoy that one mr and mrs marie

and you can also use condoms as a bungee rope

short bungee they can take the weight of carlo mosca donnie oso who did a 30 meter bungee

jump using a string of 18 500 condoms which brand yeah yeah they didn't snap it took him

four months to tie them together slippery well that's what he said the condoms are slippery

whenever they tied a knot it would just slip out and the testing you'd have to do on that rope to

be confident of it yeah well you know what they used mathematical formulas to work out how strong

it would have to be so they worked out how many they would need using maths rather than using

like applied stuff right and but he did say he was 99 percent sure it would work but his stomach

was in the knot for a month before the jump but it worked and he did manage to do it that's incredible

yeah that is really cool you know trojan condoms in the states it's a brand in America um they have

as part of because they've they've got a guy though who's like the the great you know the

steve jobs of condoms basically like he came into the company he's innovated he's made them thinner

than ever before you know that he's one of those guys who's just like constantly and so when they

have an invention that's gone through the science side of it kind of like this bungee um then they

have people who they have on their list 20 to 30 couples who are known as the bedroom panel

and the condoms get given to them oh right so once or twice a month they'll get given a sort of new

condom test design that twice a month the deviants

it's a whole other world isn't it one for witsom tide one for mickleness and you're fine

they're slightly smaller trojans aren't they apparently oh are they apparently yes well

i read that on the internet today dude i also read like the flavors where just blew my mind

okay what is a penis flavored condom are you sure you're wearing a condom yeah it's penis flavored

okay that is it that is all of our facts if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the

things that we've said over the course of this podcast we can be found on our twitter account

so i'm on at shriverland james hi james harkin andy at andrew huntrem at sally don't contact me

we can also be found on our group account at no such thing or our website no such thing

is afish.com you can find all the previous episodes there i just i'm getting shit fucking let's head

there we get out of here goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.