No Such Thing As A Fish: 500: No Such Thing As A Cougar Called Jeff

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just a couple of announcements before we start this week's show.

The first announcement is that as you will see from the episode number here,

this is the 500th episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. And we just wanted to say we are so thrilled

to have made it to 500. We definitely didn't think we would when we started this in 2014.

And we wanted to say thank you to all of you for listening. We know loads of you have been

listening for many years. Plenty of you have been listening right from the get-go. And whether

you've listened to 500 episodes or whether you've just started, we wanted to say a huge thank you.

It would not have happened without you and we're thrilled you're here. This show is a very special

one. It was recorded live at the London Podcast Festival. And as many of you know, we've been

having lots of guests to cover. Anna on maternity leave. This time we pulled out all the stops.

And our special guest is a name that will be familiar to many of you because it's Anna. Anna

Tadzinski is back everybody. She's back. She's better than ever. She insults us all in the first

three minutes of the recording. We really hope you enjoy this show. And Anna will be back full

time in another month or so. The second announcement is about a very exciting new book that's been

published. It's called Everything to Play for the QI Book of Sports. And its authors are none other

than James Harkin and Anna Tadzinski of this podcast. That's right. James and Anna have written

their first joint book without me in damn weird. It's a brilliant book. It's a history of basically

the entire world through the medium of sport. So it's great for people who like sport, but it's

also great for people who don't think of themselves as sport lovers. I don't think of myself as a

sport lover, but I'm reading it now and I'm absolutely engrossed. I'm learning fantastic

new things on every single page. If you know someone who likes sport, or if you like this podcast,

you will love this book. It is absolutely full of mad, bizarre, wonderful niche things about the

biggest sports in the world and the smallest ones and everything else in between. James and Anna

have also read out the audiobook. So if you'd like to listen to them reading it, that's like a

huge bumper bonus episode of Fish. That can be done too. Once again, it's called Everything to

Play for the QI Book of Sports. Get it now. Get one for yourself and one for someone else at Christmas.

That's it. Hope you enjoy it on with the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of No Such Thing as a Fish, our 500th show.

One more thing about us.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to King's Place.

Please welcome to the stage No Such Thing as a Fish.

Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for coming, everyone. Tonight, how are you doing?

Fuck yes. All right. Cool the music, please. So we are so excited to be here tonight for our 500th

episode. Thank you so much. We've been having a lot of guests over the last nine months to come on

in Place of Anna because she's away of maternity and so we've had a lot of fun. Arguably the show's

been better, I would say. It's felt stronger. I'm joking, guys. Do you think I'd ever say that?

She heard that. She kicked my fucking ass. So yeah, anyway, we've been having amazing guests coming

on, but we thought for the 500th episode we need a big gun. We need someone who's going to really

deliver the goods. Unfortunately, we found someone a rookie. So please make or feel welcome, kind of

guide her in. Please welcome to the stage, ladies and gentlemen, it is the return of Anna Tyshynskay!

Hello.

What a funny ruse, Dan. What a hilarious little gag there.

We're back. Shit. Can I just say, no intro music for me, huge, ridiculously disproportionate build-up

that's like welcoming Neil Armstrong back from the moon style build-up, and then no intro music for

the super special, most exciting guest you've ever had on, currently. Just a little director's note.

Well, let's see how you do in this episode and we might have you back for more.

Thanks. All right, so are we all ready to go? Should we do it? 500th episode? Let's do it.

Okay, let's roll theme tune.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming

to you from the London Podcast Festival. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James

Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and ladies and gentlemen, it is the return of Anna Tyshynskay.

And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts

for this very special 500th episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, and in no particular order,

here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in

preparation for the 500th anniversary of the creation of Michelangelo's David, the people in

charge of cleaning him had a huge falling out because they couldn't agree if he should be washed

or dry cleaned. This was a big deal. There was 10 years of preparation for this big

birthday that was coming up, but the one thing that they couldn't decide on near the end

was how do you actually do the cleaning process itself? From the image behind us,

it looks like he's been hoovered. Well, so this is after a decision has been made and a vacuum was

involved, yes. I see. And also I haven't seen Michelangelo's David. Is he really, really big,

or is the person doing it a tiny little borrower? He's 17 foot, which I'm told by the internet

is the average size of a giraffe. If you want to picture that, because we've all seen a giraffe.

Well, no, I have. I've just realized I have. Sorry. That's why I say no. Yeah, they've got one

at the zoo. Yeah. But they don't have one of these at the zoo. No. That's how you can tell the

difference in many. Take a tell if you're in zoo or in Florence. Yeah. What if you're in Florence?

Yeah, that's the one test case, which doesn't work because they've got both.

Has it always been this slick? It's not director's commentary, mate.

No, it is amazing. In fact, for the people listening at home that we've got a picture here

of the lady who's cleaning him, I think her name might be Eleonora Pucci, because she's the lady

who currently cleans David, and she was interviewed about it this year, and she does it every two

months. And she photographs him very carefully to see basically whether dust is and whether any

extra grime has accumulated. And then she dusts it and she has this special vacuum cleaner designed

for statues, which I had no idea was even a thing. And she gets on a scaffold and she has this backpack

vacuum cleaner and just hoops him. Is it? I just thought it was a low pressure vacuum. Is it designed

for statues? It's not just a crap vacuum cleaner. It's a Henry. Okay, Henry is high pressure. Is

it famously? Yeah, I think my vacuum cleaner, I might have accidentally bought a statue vacuum

cleaner. I can't even get rid of a cobweb thread. But yeah, I think there might be some jealousy

amongst the other statues, because did you read, I think it was the comment from her,

when she said we dust the other statues four times a year, but his majesty gets the treatment every

two months. After they did the big restoration, I was reading an interview with a member of the

team called Antonio Pallucci. And he said only someone with expert knowledge and a thorough

and long familiarity with the statue will be able to tell that certain irregularities

are no longer there. Okay. And I'm just thinking that that's what I would say if I hadn't done it.

Yes. Oh, you can't say it. Well, that's because you're not an expert. If you're an expert, you'd

be able to see what I've done. Yeah, they got so angry about it, didn't they? There was so much

drama. Someone resigned over which cleaning method they were going to use. Can we talk about what is

the difference in statue terms? Because I'm not even sure what the difference is in clothes terms

between washing and dry cleaning. What's the difference in statue terms? Okay, well, okay.

So what I'm going to tell you has a lot of gaps because I don't understand it, but

roughly what I'm about to tell you, yeah, roughly it's this. It's very hard to clean a statue. Okay,

that's one of the big problems. You're not even dealing with the grime that it's accumulated

over the past. It's about the previous cleaning methods that have messed up the statue. So you're

kind of dealing with the problems of the past. So David was cleaned in the 1800s at some time,

and then nothing until 2004 or three when they were getting ready for the big 500 anniversary.

So if you use anything that's wet on it, you're going to be making things worse. Whereas the brush

is just a light. So is that dry cleaning? Dry cleaning is the brush. The vacuuming is the

dry cleaning. A wet cleaning would be washing machine, soapy water. A big car wash. I'll imagine

a car wash with the David King. But you had these two people, you had the director of the museum

who was going for one side, you had the person who was brought in arguing for the other side,

and then there was an international body of artists who were protesting and writing letters

saying, let them just stay dirty. They didn't want them cleaned at all. Yeah, so it's... Why do we

want them to stay dirty? Is that because... I think they did in the olden days, didn't they?

Like they cleaned in with hydrochloric acid, I think, that time in the 19th century. Yeah.

Which really screwed them up. Yeah. Wow. Have you heard of natural enzyme cleaning?

No, what's that? This is a thing that lots of curators do, and it's basically spitting on the

artworks that you... Oh, yeah! They don't actually spit... Well, the good ones don't spit on the artworks.

Basically, you lick a cotton bud, and then you use that. But during COVID, they stopped this

practice, but loads of really simple... I wouldn't even try. But it's so safe, that's the thing. It's

one of those things which was a bit overkill. Yeah, people aren't going licking David, are they?

Exactly. Unless visitors are actually licking the thing, then it is totally safe. So if you are in

the National Gallery and you spit on a painting, is that defense, do you think? When they come around

and say, we said not to go near it, I think you can probably say, I'm just cleaning,

Mona Lisa or whatever, who's not in the National Gallery, I know. It's worth a try, I think, if

you do anything. Do you know, so one of the few things that were on David that needed cleaning,

there was beeswax on him. Why would there be beeswax? Because bees have made a

made a hive inside his butt crack. Good call. No, yeah. I'd say the same answer was James.

Correct. Yeah. Sometimes I just need to hear it a second time. So beeswax is used to...

That's a cleaning product, isn't it? That's why. Yeah, you get beeswax to clean with,

you know, presumably. So they're not entirely sure, but what they think it is, is that back in the day,

pre-electricity, when people were coming to see, and they were on, let's say, a higher ledge to

look over it, the candles that they were holding to get a better view was melting on top of David.

And so they found 15 splashes of beeswax. He was actually bald originally, wasn't he?

That's all just wax accumulated. It is weird, isn't it? Because David is famously a smaller

person in the story. Yeah. He's so big. Have you not seen the Goliath statue? It's next star

in the zoo. There's one thing in particular that I have in common with David the statue.

Can you guess what that is? Not the penis.

What do we know about it? You make your wife whoop you every day before you go to work.

We have a lot of suction on our Henry.

It's very much a three-person relationship. I meet my wife and Henry.

That's why he's smiling all the time.

What do you have the same as him? Does he have the face blindness thing that you have?

Because he looks like he doesn't recognize anyone who's in front of him.

He's mad at us so many times. Look at him. He's like, who are you? I know you.

I'll be honest. You're not going to get this. We would both collapse if we were tilted forward 15

degrees. Is that not the case with all of us? No. So a normal human will fall over after about

20 degrees have tilt. You've got your big head. Is that what it is?

He's got cracks on his ankles and if you tilt him, his ankles will absolutely collapse.

I tried this. I videoed myself at home, leaning forward until I fell over and then paused it

and then measured exactly where I stopped. Did you? Really? Your wife's next door? Darling,

Henry and I are waiting. And it turns out that I can't get much further than 15 either.

Wow. Wow. I just want to be clear. I meant you've got a physically big head,

not a metaphorically big head. That's because that's better, I think.

Oh, here's the thing. Michelangelo. Are you calling Michelangelo or Michelangelo?

What do you prefer? Michelangelo. Yeah, I think calling by the name that everyone knows him by.

Yeah. Okay. So he was shorter than real life David. I want to say real life David.

He was just 16 feet. Yeah. No, I'm so sorry. So David in the Bible, the thing is,

the Bible doesn't say the height and weight classes of David and Goliath before they went

into the fight, but there are lots of sort of biblical scholars who've had a rough

how to go at it. Some think he might be five foot three and Michelangelo was five

two, but we only know that because shoes were found in his house and they basically measured

from the shoes. They assessed how tall like if his shoes are this big, then he's this big.

So how big was he? Five two. He's five foot two. So that's about the same as Lady Gaga or Yuri Gagarin.

Right. And he would be too short to be an Emirates airline flight attendant.

This is one of those studies, whoever came up with that, that is one of the many reasons I

left this show originally. Shoes back in the olden days were not measured with that kind

of precision A, that meant you could judge someone's height and then B, you do get tall

people with small feet. Yeah. It's, it's, it's an asset. Also, we don't know if they were his

shoes, but yeah, they were found in his home. So, you know, yeah. Could have been a servant,

could have been his wife. Could have been a servant, could have been his wife. I'm not

sure if there was a Mrs. Michelangelo. I don't know. Right. I think so. A lot of people think that

he liked men and Michelangelo. Yes. And one of the reasons, fancy men, I mean, and one of the

reasons is that his female sculptures often seem to be men with breasts and a lot of people have

looked into it and you should like look up Michelangelo female drawings and sculptures.

They are, they're just men. It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger and then with a sort of pair of

lemons jammed onto the front. It's so weird. Do you know there's a theory as to why his penis is

so small? Have you read that? David's. David's. Look, after all those nights with Henry, as tall as

it used to be. Oh dear. Okay. So he famously has a small penis. Yeah. What is it called? No, it's

so. I thought you said, what is it called? I don't know. Jeff? It's a private thing.

No. So there was a study done and someone who read this study kind of pulled this out as a,

I don't think the authors of the study was specifically saying it, but they read from

the detail. It's because he's about to fight a fucking giant and he's terrified. Right. Right.

So his penis has shrunk in terror and that's, that's Michelangelo showing that, um, yeah,

that's how it happens. Like it was an adrenaline thing, isn't it? As in the body, the body doesn't

it remove blood from where it's not needed at the moment and puts it in, you know, like muscles

for fight or flight and things like that. Your body doesn't suck it up so that it doesn't get

hurt in the battle. The actual penis on this statue is about six inches in length. So, you know,

it's not, not small by real terms, but someone on Reddit called bendy bendy spine.

He worked out that in real life, if David was brought down to real size, he would be just under

five centimeters. And that means according to standard UK guidelines, he would be considered

a candidate for penile lengthening surgery.

I noticed though, he's converted it to centimeters to make it sound bigger.

Yeah, there, there, there are a number of standard maneuvers you can pull. That's

sure. But also it's not, it's not, it's not, um, it's not up. No. So it's facet. Yeah. But is that,

is that, is that the measurement under which you qualify? Not, I don't need to ask. I'm not asking

so let's just, you know, um, I'll send you a link after the show. Thank you very much. Cheers.

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Okay. On with the show. On with the podcast.

It is time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact is that having 10 fingers and no thumbs

is very useful for playing the piano. Okay. Yeah. So if anyone's got that in the audience,

then take up the piano. Okay. So how do you end up with? So this is a condition, a rare condition,

sure. But it's where you can be born with no thumbs. And instead of thumbs, you have fingers.

And I just find all this stuff so interesting. So it's little tweaks in our genes. So we have

genes that specify the position of things in our body, and they're called hox genes. So that says

like your arm goes on your shoulder, your foot goes on your leg. It's like funny bones, that book

is kind of like that, the hox gene. And if the hox gene gets a mutation in it, then you might end

up with something in the wrong place. And so if there's a particular mutation, you might end up

with a finger as your thumb. And I happen to read two accounts. One is of a woman who had this

five finger trait in 1957. I actually initially read this in a book called quirks of human anatomy,

an evo devo look at the human body, which is so interesting. And I would recommend. Anyway, yep,

she said she didn't think of it as a disability. It didn't hold her back in any way. And actually,

it meant that she played the piano more easily. And then there was a Reddit AMA quite recently

with a man who has the same symptom. And again, he's a professional musician. And he said it makes

me better at the piano. Really? Now I know they don't know how good they would have been at the

piano if they'd had eight fingers and two thumbs. But wait, hang on, have you got two joints? You've

got I think it varies a little bit. But one of them had one of them was opposable and the other

wasn't. Because some people get this is a trifalangeal thumb. That's what it's called. And it's where

your thumb has three phalanges, those are the bones inside your fingers, instead of two. So it might

give you a longer thumb, but it might also give you a weaker thumb. And often those are not opposable,

which is a pain. That is a pain. So it's useful very much on piano as in on a flat surface,

but not on a, you know, another environment like a guitar, which is weird because this guy also

played the guitar and said it was useful for that. It sounds like he's a really sunny guy. Like it's

like, yeah, he's making it work. It's amazing. In the report about this woman in 1957, the woman

with the five five fingers on each hand, it said that she came into hospital because she was giving

birth and that's when they documented her. And then it said her newborn was the same. So we think

the trait is probably genetic. That's a proper scientist. It's not like those chances he found

a shoe in Michelangelo's house and said, Oh, well, we think he was five foot two, actually.

Do you guys think a thumb is a finger? No. Yeah. For the audience, is the thumb a finger? Yes.

Is it not? Pretty evenly match. Well, it's a good job. You guys aren't finger

surgeons. Because this is a problem in finger surgery, that some surgeons count a thumb as a

finger, and some don't. And if you say to someone, you need to remove the fourth finger on someone's

hand. There have been cases where people have counted from the thumb when they shouldn't have

done. Oh, and they've taken the wrong finger. Really? That's happened. We've invented so much

stuff as a species. We kind of like the label to go, that's crazy. Well, there are a few papers

that have talked about this, and most of them say we should call them index finger, ring finger,

all that kind of stuff, and that will remove any problems. But as late as 2009 was the last

paper that this came in in the Canadian Medical Journal, who said, we really need to stop saying

fourth finger or third finger or whatever. I mean, for instance, you could be counting from this

way or from this way. Yeah. No, who starts with a little finger? That's like people who say

potato. They just don't exist. Or Michelle Angelo. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They should have a like

this little piggy system. Yeah, like which little piggy, the piggy who had roast beef there. We all

know which piggy we're talking about. There's not usually toes. Yeah. Oh, God, you'll be a terrible

surgeon. Great news. Got both little piggies. Won't be needing those middle fingers again. What?

Back in the 19th century, they used to use fingers as a way of determining quite a few medical

things. And one of the things was, are you dead? How did they do that? So one of the things was

there was a guy who's a French doctor, Leon Colange. It's like being on the backs of the

sand, isn't it? It's lovely. I can't say Colange. It reads like colon juice. I can't like

colon juice. Join me to read out your facts. Yeah, yeah, please. Leon. Leon Smith.

His way he believed of confirming if someone was dead, I think they were quite nervous about

actually if someone was dead in a coma, if there's if their stats were just lower, we didn't have the

technology was to take a finger. He would take their finger and he would put it in his ear.

And he would listen for a buzz because they sort of thought that the body just emitted a buzz when

it was still alive. So he would sit there and he would take their finger put it in his ear and say,

no, he's dead. But wait a minute, fingers don't emit buzzes. So does he just think that everyone's

dead when he puts a finger in there? I mean, you know, this is a time where he was developing

a theory and obviously he wasn't someone. I do know that this is about when they didn't know

whether they didn't really know about the pulse and brain activity in the way they do now. And

there were competitions to see which doctors could come up with a guaranteed way of determining

whether. Yeah, actually, I think we still don't really know whether brain is dead compared to

the rest of the body. Yeah, but they did have all and this was one method and they had another

was to put an insect in the patient's ear, I think or nose. It must say but like who can resist

are going, you know, if you don't know that you're dead. And then another finger based one

from the 18th century was if someone was in a coma or potentially dead, you would cut their

finger off. And yeah, and the idea was you cut it off and they'd be like whoa. And they'd either

wake up from death or from a coma. So that was another method. Yeah. Do you know just speaking

of bodies giving off buzzing sounds? I remember really ages ago, you know, tinnitus. Yeah. Obviously

is when you can hear a buzzing in your ear. Some people have a form of tinnitus where they emit

a buzzing. So if you get really close as the ENT surgeon, you can be like yep, you're right,

you've got tinnitus. I must be really annoying. And isn't that insane? It's crazy. Wow. But I

like I wouldn't hear your tinnitus and go God, I've got tinnitus because I was sitting too close

to you. No, you wouldn't. You'd be able to hear it if you were really used it as my own. No,

because I would leave the room and then you go God, it's so weird. My tinnitus only appears when

I do usually get a weird headache when you are around. That's perfectly normal.

Can I tell you about Joe Swarbrick? Yeah. Joe Swarbrick was a Belfast man who lost a

finger in the luckiest way imaginable. Oh, okay. So one that he wouldn't have otherwise needed.

I actually don't know that. Oh, okay. No, I like your thinking. A lucky finger to have lost.

It's more about the circumstances under which he lost the finger. And he's called Swarbrick.

That won't help you. Are you sure? I don't know. I was thinking people used to be named

like after things that they'd done and he may have sworn at someone with his middle finger and

then a brick took it out. It's gone. Brilliant. I've missed the theorizing. Nope. That's not it.

Okay. He was in a job where he only ever had to count to nine. Yeah, that's it. So he was

trying to travel to Canada. Okay. Is that a clue? Barely. Oh, barely. Is this of the two with bears?

No. Okay. And he and his brother wanted, he wanted to go with his brother from Belfast to Canada.

Yeah. Okay. And he found a job. Oh, Titanic. Titanic. He found a job on a ship. But sadly,

at Southampton, there was an accident in the end room, lost his finger. They had to kick him

off the ship and he said, and take your brother with you too. His brother escorted him off the

ship and that ship was the Titanic. Wow. Yeah. Why did the brother have to go from the version I

read unclear? I guess. Wait, you've got a brother, Dan. You're working with him on a job. His finger

in an awful accident gets chopped off. Yeah. He needs to be escorted away from where you're

working on the job. You'd be like, well, mate, I still want to do my holiday. So

hang on. Is it go with him? Wouldn't you? Is it on launch day? It's out Southampton at that point.

Yeah. So it's just before it was just before it's really just about. You would have got on,

wouldn't you? Oh, it's the Titanic. I'm going to send a postcard. How's the finger? Yeah.

You won't send a postcard, you know. Spoiler alert. Okay. Yeah. That's a good story. And then he

was in the Navy in both World Wars and he lived until the 50s. Wow. He was injured in the Second

World War as well. He was really, yeah, he was very, so he went back to sea and still risked his

life then. Wow. After that, very impressive. And the brother. This guy's getting shafted and more

shafted than this story. Why? He's kicked off his job because his idiot brother loses a finger.

Next fingerless guy goes on to World War hero. He's written out of history. He actually,

Joe Swalbrick himself did get an OBE for his work, not even in the war, just being a great guy in

shipping. So yeah, no word on the brother. That's a fucking rough deal, man. You really take

insides of which brother you are. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You're the brother here. Stay on the

boat that's going to sink. That's what I say. Yeah. Wow. Do you guys know what kind of finger a

masculine is? Say it again. Masculine. Masculine. Masculine. You're not going to get it. Is it

like an animal finger or is it a? No, it's not. I'm just going to tell you it's a finger that's

under your armpit. Oh, and it's... Can you beckon with it? Yeah. Because that is the greatest

finger to have. I have to. This is awful, but I have to explain for people listening to the podcast

what just happened. Andine is giving me the come to bed finger underneath his armpit.

I haven't been so aroused since I saw that smile on Henry's face. Oh, gosh. No, it's not a means of

seduction. And I don't know why you think exposing your armpit would usually be a means of seduction.

Well, normally, if you're getting to exposing your armpit, things are getting pretty hot and heavy,

aren't they? What? Do you go to the beach and go, wow, these people want it?

Normally in a three-piece tweed suit, you know, heavily dressed down for this. Yeah.

You cut the holes, don't you? And then it's armed off if you like someone.

It's nothing to do with that. Is that another genetic quirk? No, this is actually something in

ancient Greece. And I came across this in a study that was called armpitting among the ancient Greeks.

And basically, it was where if you'd killed someone, then you would cut their finger off and

shove it under their armpit. Oh, wow. And we're not quite sure why they did this. We think maybe it's

either offering it to the gods as like, sorry, I killed this person. Please forgive me. Have their

finger thing, which seems a bit kind of on the nose. Or it means that the dead person can't

take vengeance in the next world because they don't have a finger. Can you point out the guy who

killed you? No. Anyway, this was so common, also known that there was a specific word, which was

masculitzane, which literally means stuff under the armpit, which refers to fingers under an armpit.

Fingers tucked into an armpit. Or sorry, mascalismata is the stuff under the armpit. Masculitzane is to

put a finger under the armpit. Do you know what animal has the longest finger? Is it the Madagascar,

the II? The II, you've got it. So if you ever see an image of an II, they're like a really cute little

primate thing, but they've got this really, really long finger that's almost as long as their,

probably their whole head, maybe a bit more even. And the interesting thing about that is they love

to pick their nose. And when they pick their nose, they go all the way in. And no one could work out

exactly what was going on because where does your finger go? If your finger is, let's say human

finger is three times longer at least, and you're putting it all the way up your nose, where is the

finger going to end up? A bit in the brain or in the eye socket. Exactly. That's what you think,

right? So they did a CT scan on an II who was picking her nose. And they turned out that actually

it kind of goes into the nose, through the sinuses and then down into the back of the throat.

And this is get rid of phlegm as well as snot. Is that what it's for? It's almost like that,

almost as disgusting as that. In fact, perhaps more disgusting than that. Basically, they think

that what they're doing is picking their nose and then they're eating it, but they don't have to go

through the mouth. Oh, brilliant. So it doesn't get stuck in their teeth. Secret bogey eating.

I'm saving. I would argue not that secret. And what secret until those bloody scientists came

along with their CT scanner? What a great scam, rumbled. We need to evolve that. We will eventually,

socially, so that you'll never know who's eating their bogeys and who isn't.

We will no longer be socially ashamed. They will no longer be socially ashamed of those people.

It is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay. My fact this week is that in the

late 1950s, a woman called Cougar Annie put an advert in a newspaper looking for a younger man to

marry. But that isn't why she got her nickname. She was just really good at killing Cougars.

There she is on our screen for people at home. She was one of the most badass people that I've

ever read about. She lived on Vancouver Island. Long story short, we'll get into it all, but

basically she was married to an opium addict. And she lived in Vancouver. And to escape the

opium dens of Vancouver, you know, those famous opium dens of Vancouver, her family moved to this

really remote area of Vancouver Island. And she spent her whole time clearing the lands, so getting

rid of all the shrubbery, getting rid of all the any kind of wild animals that came to protect

herself and protect her family. She often had to kill them. And according to reports, obituaries

and stuff like that, she definitely shot at least 60 Cougars in her life, mostly in self defense.

But then later the government started giving money to people who did it because they wanted to

have more humans living in that area. So she was making money from it as well.

Some contemporary obituary said that she shot more than 100 Cougars in her lifetime. And she also

got 80 bears as well. But yeah, she was basically going to this area where no humans lived and

she was just trying to clear the area so she could live there.

And so her husband dies, she has three kids and she decides I want to look for another husband.

So in 1936, she advertises, oh, this is sorry, there are two separate occasions on which she

advertised for a younger husband. Yeah, yeah, this is the first one, but she used the same to

use the exact same at both times. Exactly. Yeah, 1936, the Western producer, which is where she

advertised it, she said BC widow with nursery and orchard wishes partner widower preferred

object matrimony. And someone she married someone right and she had a few marriages in the end.

She lost the husband that she had from the 1936 advertising in 1942, when he accidentally shot

himself and allegedly allegedly. He was dressed as a cougar at the time, though wasn't he?

He was. Yeah, there were suspicions. Yeah. And so then and then she read advertisers as Andy says

with the exact same wording, copy and paste for a new husband. Yeah, it's so good. Well,

when you've worked on the wording, it's clearly done the job once. Use it again. Did it work?

Hard to say because he was indeed a younger man 12 years younger was it? The last one? Yeah,

the fourth husband, but he was also not very nice. So I think he was a drunk and he stole from her.

And then eventually, and you probably read more about this, apparently he attempted to run any

off a cliff in order to take over her farm and she chased him away with her shotgun.

She did. That's what happened. And he never came back. And then she lived on in the homestead

into her 90s and carried on kind of working on their living off the land, kind of selling bits

and pieces. She also set up a post office in the area. There was no one else there. And so basically

she would be able to get all these stamps in and then she used the stamps to pay her bills. It was

like a bit of a scam. But yeah. And by the way, a lot of this time when she was clearing the land

and trying to get rid of these wild animals, she was pregnant. So between 1915 and 1931,

which was when she did most of the work, she gave birth to at least 11 children. So I'm just saying,

Anna, nine months off. But maternity leave conditions weren't as beneficial in those days.

If she'd got full salary for a few months, then she would never have killed all those cougars.

How many bears have you killed during the... No, she does sound remarkable. They paid a lot of

bounties, didn't they, for killing cougars back in the day? Because they were trying to tame the

frontiers effectively. And so there were like 200 professionals in the USA in 1930. And those

were the federal ones and the other state ones. People like Cougar Smith or Ben Lilly, who hunted

cougars with a knife, which I respect a bit more. Okay. As then I think, you know, that's giving the

cougar a fighting chance. Yeah. It's not as efficient, is it? It's like if I did this podcast every week,

but I decided to find all my facts from the local library only using books between 1812 and 1829.

It's like, how interesting that you do that. You're not nearly as good at the job. I'm pretty

sure you've just described that Andy finds facts. Dan, can you not spoil my fact about the Prince

Regent today? On one occasion, Annie heard her dogs barking outside. It was the middle of the

night. Obviously, she's in the middle of nowhere. So there's no streetlights or anything like that.

She went outside. She could hear a commotion. She got her gun to shot into the darkness and then

went back to bed. And then when she woke up, she saw that she had actually got a cougar

with her gunshot. What? It's very impressive. Wow. That's amazing. Canada was wall to wall cougars at

the time. It's less impressive than it sounds. You couldn't miss. So she's not the origin of the

word cougar to mean a woman who goes out the younger bed. No, that came well after she died.

Yeah, that was in the 90s. They think it might have been 1999, which seems quite early. There was

a website called cougardate.com, which was specifically for women of a certain age looking

for men of a younger age. That was the idea. I mean, it's definitely that. There are some

etymologies lost in the midst of time where we don't know the source, but I think we can say for

sure. I must say, I actually read some articles of the people who set up cougardate.com and they

said that they'd heard the name mentioned through their friends earlier sometime in the 1990s in

Vancouver. Yeah, but it was Vancouver, which is where cougar Annie was from. Absolutely. Cougars

themselves are not cougars. Really? So actual cougars, the cats I'm talking about,

females reach maturity at two and a half years of age and males at three. Yeah. So

do you see what I mean? Yeah, they don't go for, they don't go for younger males. Yes. Yeah. Do

you know what? I was so glad just because it confirmed something that we've always kind of

thought. You know how cougars have all these different names and you're never sure what's

what. You're like a puma, a panther, a mountain lion, a catamount. What the hell is going on?

What are all these cats? And they're all the same thing. And it does have the Guinness World Record

for the most names for a mammal. Yeah. So there you go. And that's 40 according to them. Surely

humans have more than 40 names. I'm sorry. No. Cool dude. Awesome. No, I mean actual names like

Jeff, Jeff, like humans have more than 40 of those. If I was given enough time, I could think of more

than 40 names. Yeah. I'm just saying it's the non-human mammal with the most names. No, no,

it's not because they also have their own names. You understand there's a different meaning to the

word name, right? Some cougars are called Jeff. She's back for me. Ridiculous point. Some cougars

are called Jeff. No, the names are incredible. Like I'd never heard the name catamount, which means

cat of the mountain. But they also get called the deer tiger, the purple feather. I'm not sure how

many people are using purple feather these days. Is that really one? The purple feather? Mountain

Screamer, which I love. You wouldn't call an ambulance when you say there's a purple feather

coming at me. It's the purple feather. It feels like you'd use one of the other ones. Do you know

how you defend yourself against a cougar? We should say because it's useful. Okay. I would run. I would

try and run. Don't run. Oh, you're dead. Okay. No, you're dead. Dan and Anna have got a guess.

What? Can I have another guess? Yeah, give James a quick. Please. Let's say you've magically

been resuscitated. Play dead. Play dead? Yeah. You're dead again. Sorry. So I can't run and I

can't just stay there playing dead. No, that's right. Shotgun. Shotgun. That's the cougar Anna.

No, it's basically don't turn around and don't look away. Make yourself big. Oh, the ace of

base defence. Stand your ground. You know, like stand on a rock, bear your teeth, shout anything to

frighten them and scare it away. Basically, and I've thought of a mnemonic for this, which I

think might be helpful for listeners. Just remember, if it's a mountain lion, don't be lying down.

And that's the useful like what if it's an actual lion? I don't know.

I don't know. I thought you were going to say opera singing, sing opera at it.

Yeah, because it was on my list. There was a case of a woman who was being stalked by a cougar

and she started hiding and she didn't know what to do. And she just got up and started just singing

opera. And the cougar just went, whoa, I'm with the cougar there. Actually, cougars really hate

podcasts. Really? Yeah, this was this is quite a recent study done in California, which one's

name and shape. Yeah, is it off menu? Come on. Do you mean it makes them angry or they just

they don't want to be around it? No, it puts them off the dinner. Oh, so let's say you're a cougar

and off menu comes on. Yeah. And he's like James A. Caster. He's talking about his food and stuff.

And they would just look at their kill, their deer that they killed and just go, oh, I don't really

fancy that anymore. In actual fact, the study is to check how they react to humans more generally.

Mostly men. Yeah. Mostly men. You're saying it's not a study about whether there's an untapped podcast

market out there. You astonished me. They wanted to see how they reacted to humans talking if

humans are nearby. And what better way to do that than talk radio podcast, that kind of thing.

So they played some chatting humans, and they just left their food alone and just went off.

And the problem with this, this is really important. So if you are a cougar and you kill

something and you don't eat it, then that means you have to kill something else because you have

to eat that, right? And so this is the fact that fear really changes ecosystems. If an animal is

really scared because there's humans around, it actually affects the ecosystem in ways you don't

expect as in loads of the prey will get killed. It's not just that the cougar itself is scared.

Wait, sorry, the prey will get killed because the cougar has to go and find something else.

Yeah, because it gets put off its food. So it needs to go and find something else. And then

another podcast comes along, maybe Chris and Rosie Rams, you start chatting to it. And then it has to

go and kill another animal. Nightmare. We're putting nature off its food. Yeah. If I'm ever

attacked and just go, Hello, welcome to another episode of Can I tell you another record that

cougars have got? Oh, yeah. This is another Guinness World Record that cougars have got.

I'm going to quite directly mountain lions large hind legs have greater muscle mass than

their front legs. This enables them to jump up to 18 feet into a tree. So they could they could

leap over the statue of David. Yes. Yes. The highest jump on record for any mammal, any mammal,

they could just jump over and lick off that beeswax was recorded for a puma or a mountain lion,

which jumped seven meters, 23 feet straight up from a standstill. They could jump into the top

of an open top bus. If they were walking alongside it. This is so amazing. Like I read another claim

made by the US wildlife authorities, they could jump over a school bus the long way round,

like front to back. Wow. So what's the distance they can get long? I've just thought it's like

a load of like the distance. No, I just named a load of statistics. It's 40 feet, 40 feet.

Okay, 17 feet by long is what we're saying. Yeah. Can I just ask a quick question? Yeah.

Because this bothers me about these kind of stats. What is the difference in length between a school

bus and a bus? I wonder if it's slightly an evil Knievel thing because a lot of stunts were about

leaping over back to back. Yeah. Transport. No, but they never said school buses. They just said

buses for evil Knievel because they weren't afraid that evil Knievel was going to eat their children

inside the bus. Whereas they always say school buses. If it's a slightly threatening animal,

because it's like it will leap over it and then come in the front door, buy its ticket and eat your

kids. You don't have to buy tickets for a school bus. Yeah. There's all the faster to get on with

eating your children, my dear. Yeah. But they also save human lives. Cougars. More human lives than

they end. Probably because they don't really kill. They don't kill many people at all. Very, very rare

to get attacked by a cougar. But what they do prey on a lot is deer. And deer cause 1.2 million

car crashes in America a year and killed 200 people. And they did a study which looked at if

you were introduced cougars, how many people they'd save. And because they've eaten all the deer,

which are hitting the car. Exactly. It's a tough sell, though, isn't it? Yeah. When you've got this

animal that could jump over my school bus, come in, buy a ticket and kill all my kids. Are you

like, yeah, but he's going to eat a few deer. Yeah, it is.

All right. I need to move us on to our final fact of the show. Time for a final fact of the show.

And that is Andy. My fact is that nobody knows how large the world's largest crocodile is.

What they should do is get a cougar to jump over it. And

all right, here's Cassius. So on the screen is a very large crocodile.

He's called Cassius. He's the largest known crocodile because he's the largest crocodile

in captivity. He is approximately approximately 18 feet, which means if you stood him up right.

Yes. That is amazing. I want to see that show where you've got one cougar,

one statue of David, one enormous crocodile. God, I didn't notice that until now now.

Channel five, if you're listening, this is big buzz. Yeah. And this is the thing,

like he's been estimated that they're not sure exactly how old he is, his keepers,

because they took him in about 40 years ago or 35. And they believe he might be 80,

some keepers think he might be up to 120 years old, old crocodile. And he was last measured

in 2011 at 18 feet. But even then, when they took him in, he was missing bits of his snout

and his tail because of fights or accidents or whatever. And no one has tried to measure him

since then. And he's probably grown, but just, you know, because I think they grow their whole

lives that they crossed out. So he's probably grown, but they really don't want the like the

admin of measuring. He's really terrifying. He's so huge. And he is terrifying. I mean,

what I was thinking, what you don't want to hear about a crocodile is how his carer describes him

at the guy who looks after him, who's a guy called 2D Scott, which is a funny name. And 2D says,

he still has a lot of spark in him, which is not what you want at all. He says,

because most crocodiles are quite disinterested. You know, they just sit there like a motionless

lump. But this one, when you walk in, Cassius, he, every time he sees you, he wants to come up

and say good day in his eyes. His eyes light up. Tragically, 2D Scott was actually called 3D

Scott until an accident in the pen. He's terrifying. He's met a load of celebrities. Cassius. Yeah.

Queen Elizabeth II. No. Xi Jinping. King of Thailand. They're not so much celebrities as heads of

state. Yeah. Scott Morrison, who's not a head of state, he's the head of government. Queen

Elizabeth was the head of state at the time. But nonetheless, God, that seemed so important

when I said it. And as the words would leave my mouth, I thought, who gives a toss? Has he met

Kim Kardashian? No data. Don't know. So he hasn't been the longest for that long, has he? The longest

crocodile? Because there was another crocodile who I think died in 2013, who was called La Long.

Oh, yeah. And so long, they added an extra L and O to the beginning of his name. They're just so

astonished every time they see him. They go, he's, he's long. Anyway, he was 6.13 meters,

a little bit longer than Cassius. And he was caught in 2011. I think these are taken into

captivity when they're dangerous. So he'd eaten some fishermen and a girl, I think. And so

which a black mark against your name, I think. Yeah. And so was hunted and actually La Long,

when he was hunted, it took over 100 people to bring him onto land. He was really aggressive.

He sort of broke his restraining ropes twice. And he was named after the crocodile hunter in

the area whose nickname was La Long. Oh, okay. La Long died, didn't he? He did. La Long died.

And I imagine for the obituary, they would have gone with so long, La Long.

If you have a baby crying, let's say on a speaker, then a crocodile will run very quickly and

aggressively towards it. To change it or feed it? I'm afraid not, because then they start

biting the speaker. They're really attracted to the sound of primates crying and human babies

crying the same way that Bonobos might or chimpanzees might. And probably because they hear a, you

know, a baby crying, they think this is an easy meal. And what do these crocodiles think of

the rest is politics? Would they engage with it? I read about that study. And the most

amazing thing is that they can tell the difference between how upset a baby is more than you can.

And then they'll respond accordingly. So, and the way they tested this, which I quite like,

is by recording human babies screaming at different levels of emergency. And you can't

torture a baby for science these days. So instead, what they did was... Anna said with a faint

tang of regret in the voice. They recorded babies at bath time when sometimes they cry. And then

when they get vaccinated, when they cry in a bit more of an emergency way. Any kind of needle, yeah.

Yeah, it's a bit more of someone stabbing me, kind of cry. And the crocodiles swim more vigorously,

more fast towards the speakers that emit the vaccination cry. And they can tell a sort of

frequency difference that even we can't. Crocodiles, anti-vaxxers, that's what we're

taking from that. New I never liked them. Can I mention very quickly, we're talking about

crocodiles. Can't not mention the great Steve Irwin. Thank you for the silent respect.

Crocodile hunter. Yeah, he was a crocodile hunter. But he had his Australia Zoo, and that was his

big thing. He used to jump on a lot of massive crocodiles. And one of the things which is said

about him, and there's a tiny bit of question about it, but a lot of people say this is true,

is that he had a Galapagos tortoise inside Australia Zoo. And the previous owner of the

tortoise was Charles Darwin. Isn't that insane? Oh my God, that's so cool. So she was called Harriet.

She survived from the time of the Beagle Expeditions all the way through to Steve Irwin's zoo,

just to give you the idea of the span of time. And it's quite nice because Steve Irwin was definitely

a huge hero of mine. There is a minor planet out in the universe now named for him. So out there

somewhere is a minor planet called Crikey. Something clever that crocodiles do, which is really mean

and evil is they, well, I'll tell you what they do and you'll tell me why. They lie under water

and allocated to this as well. And they just have a little bit of their head sticking out. And then

they put sticks or branches on their head. What are they doing? They're leering human children who

like to play pick up sticks. You're very close and that could be a secondary purpose. Oh, they're

pretending to be a bird's nest. So a bird will land on them and delete them. You're basically,

between you, you're correct. A human baby flies down. And picks out one of the sticks and then

says Jenga. You've gone the wrong way. It's to trick birds into thinking that they're sort of a

tree because they look quite tree like, don't they? They look like branches and try and go and collect

their sticks to make their nest with. So then the bird will go and land on them to pick up a stick

to make a nest. Snap, you're done. Dinner. Do you know how to measure? This is for alligators.

Yeah. I hope I'm allowed a sort of slight curve. Of course. How to measure an alligator if you see

one in the wild. So it's possible to measure an alligator in the wild, but it's not possible to

measure this crocodile, which is in captivity. Good point. I suppose if you're in the wild and you

see an alligator and you think, I wonder how big that alligator is. Okay. So you want to see,

but you don't want to go up to it with a tape measure. So you see something else around it,

which you know, you throw your iPhone at it. The iPhone lands on it and you work out how many

iPhones it is. Exactly it. Actually, you have to find an old pair of its shoes in its nest.

That's what the song's about. No, it's so easy. And I just want to, like another little tip.

Yeah. You just approach it at night with a torch and then you locate the midpoint on its skull

and you estimate the distance to the end of the nostrils. Don't wake it up. And then every inch

of that distance is a foot of the alligator. Okay. So like if that distance is six inches,

you've got a six foot alligator and so on. Okay, that's clever. Crocodiles do a crazy thing where

they, you would think in any scenario where they live, they're like the dominant species, right?

And they're not. Often hippos, if they're around, are much bigger. So talking earlier about

crocodiles running to a baby monitor and hearing baby crying, one thing that hippos tend to use

them as is basically like a baby chewing toy. They'll go up and while the croc is just laying

there, they'll go and they'll start licking it, they'll start chewing it and the crocodile will

just lay there as if nothing's going on. Yeah, because if it makes any movement, it might antagonize

the hippo into eating it. So it just has to sit there and be- Is this a baby hippo though that's

chewing on it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, it just has to lay there and just be sucked on, licked on,

just take it. Well, look at everyone at the Henry Hoovey, you know, we've all got it.

What fun is that man? I need to wrap us up very soon. Just some things on big animals. Okay,

yeah. Let's see, that's what this was about. I was looking at big, small animals. So the largest ant,

the largest ant in the world is the safari ant, which is five centimeters in length,

which is the same length as David's penis if he was human-sized. If he was human-sized, okay. So

if you can imagine a human with the world's largest ant, where your penis would be- Yeah,

yes. That's David. That's really helpful. Thank you, James. The world's longest insect in total is

a stick insect. They found one in China, which was 24.6 inches in total length, which means that you

couldn't legally use her as a round as bat. So good. Anything else before we, Anna? You all

go? I've just, all I can think about now is giant house spiders, because I've had a real problem

with spiders lately. So we've been talking about big animals, but they are the biggest.

And genuinely, there was one in my room the other day, and after an hour and a half of staring at

it, I was on my own, and I eventually managed to kill it with the longest object I could find,

me at one end, it's at the other. And they don't die, obviously, so that its legs are so wriggling.

They don't die. They die, don't they? It's not possible to kill them.

They don't die. And it was two in the morning. I was on my own. This newborn baby was next door.

My newborn baby was next door and asleep. And you know how like the worst thing that can possibly

happen if you have a baby is that it wakes up. And then it's legs. There were three legs still

moving over the thing that I crushed it with, and I screamed at the top of my lungs,

no, no, no, you can't be alive. You can't be alive. Please die. And anyway, so I looked up how to

deter spiders, and you can draw lines of chalk everywhere. So apparently they don't like the

taste of chalk, and they taste with their legs. I thought you meant like drawing an outline like

a murder scene. Yeah, like a murder scene. Whoa, this person kills spiders. Now let's get out of here, man.

Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening to our 500th episode,

everybody. We can all be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland. James.

James Harkin. Andy. And Anna. I'm uncontactable. You can reach us. Oh, sorry. Yeah, podcast.qi.com

and Andy will pick it up and he'll text me and I'll ignore it. Yeah, we can get us on a group

account at no such thing. You can also find our website, no such thing as a fish.com where all of

our previous episodes are up and you can find merchandise and so on. Thank you everyone so

much for being here in the room tonight. Thank you everyone watching us from around the world.

We really appreciate it. We're going to be back again next week with episode 501. The story

continues. The facts keep going. We'll see you then. Goodbye!

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