Little Fish: See You In The Charts

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And according to Ryan, in 1998, there was a Cincinnati Reds baseball team with the players Dimitri Young in left field, Mike Frank in centre field, and Chris Steins in right field, thereby giving the world the Young Frank and Steins outfield. Incredible. Young Frank and Steins. And then he says, it's alive, which I think must be from the film. Yes, it is. I used to love the film Young Frank and Steins. I haven't seen Young Frank and Steins. It's so good. It's Gene Wilder. Mel Brooks. In his pomp. Marty Feldman. Yes. With weird eyes poking out. Well, those were just his eyes, yeah. Yeah, but they were weird. Okay. That was his main... He made a living out of those eyes. He's a brilliant comedian. Anyway, it's such a good film. It's so good. Anyway, what is an outfield? Is it like long leg in cricket? It's more like your midfield in soccer. Oh, dear. Or your defence in soccer. It's like people who are playing next to each other. They must have done that. They must have thought. I don't think so. It's such an expensive thing to just do for a name. You know, like you need a good team. I've got a baseball fact that I found yesterday. Oh, great. So I thought I would throw it in, pitch it into the mix. Very nice. And it is that in 1957, there was a woman watching the Philadelphia Phillies in a baseball match. And she was sat in the crowd, sort of on the side, but quite near the front. And there was a stray ball hit into the crowd and it broke her nose. Oh, OK. And then people kind of came to help her. And then the very next pitch was also hit into the crowd. And it hit the same woman and broke her knee. Isn't that amazing? That's incredible. Have you, James, you've been to a lot of sports games. Has a ball ever made its way to you? Have you ever caught an object? No, I haven't. I always dream of it. Like if I watch cricket, for instance, especially if you go and watch like a one day cricket match where they're hitting it into the crowd. You always dream that that's going to happen. But also, James' hands are normally full because he's throwing coins at the ref. So that's, you know, that's... The closest I got, I reckon, is a hockey puck. Oh, that's pretty good. But like, as in hit, they have like a perspex screen in front of you and like it hit right in front of you. Oh, okay. That was at the World Hockey Championships. It's probably good they've got those screens because I can imagine that a puck would really sting. That's going to destroy. I think it could kill you. Really? I would say so. Gosh. I once had an odd moment at a Red Hot Chili Peppers gig. Oh, yeah. So I was really far into the crowd in the mosh pit, quite far back. Let's say there's like 30 humans in front of me if you were doing a line. And Flea, the bass player, is drinking from a water bottle, chucks it into the crowd. I stick my hand up and catch it. Wow. Yeah, still got water in it and I drink it. About 20, 30 minutes later. Did you get a jab afterwards? No, I got... Lyme disease. That's tics Otherwise a brilliant joke Thank you What happened? You started feeling strange? No His drugs were the water No Okay No 30 minutes later The drummer Chad Smith Has a tall plastic red cup You know those You used to get at venues He's drinking from it He chucks it into the crowd And with my left hand I catch that It lands at the exact same spot And so I'm standing there With a bottle from Flea and a cup from Chad, about 30 people back. And I kept them for years. My mum threw them away when I moved to the UK. That was a good call. They were really mouldy. She threw them out the window and you just happened to be visiting. Put your hand in the air. What's this? That sounds like a dream. No, but it happened. Yeah. Yeah. I believe you. Proof. Just a dream anecdote. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. Thank you. I've never caught any object Let's move on That was from Ryan I've got a Ryan fact here so why don't we jump into that This is sent in by Keith Moser Who writes that in 2010 Ryan Bingham won the Oscar For best original song for co-writing The Weary Kind for the movie Crazy Heart That same year George Clooney was nominated for best actor For the film Up in the Air In which he plays a character called Ryan Bingham So the same name So I did a tiny bit of extra diving into it to see whether or not there were more connections between George Clooney and Ryan Bingham. And what I found is that Ryan Bingham got commercial success for the first time when a song of his was used on the TV show ER, which was the TV show that really launched George Clooney as well. That's good. Yeah. That's really the only one, except for the fact that Ryan Bingham's, Ryan is not really his first name. His real first name is George. Whoa. Freaky. But doesn't that mean that the original fact is wrong? I mean, he goes under the name Ryan Bingham as his artist name. Like, George Clooney's character was called Ryan Bingham. Yeah. His name is George Bingham. Well, I haven't seen the movie. Maybe when he hands his passport over as he's getting on the plane, it says, George Ryan Bingham, yep, you're on board. Is that what it's about up in the air? He just gets in a plane. I think he's a frequent flyer, yeah. It is genuinely what the film's about. And it's really good. Is it? Yeah. It's George Clooney and Anna Kendrick. Yes. And he flies around the world, I think, firing people. Oh. But professionally, it's quite you, James, because you're a frequent flyer. I'm always firing people. Frequent fire. Brilliant. That's what they should have called a film. Yeah. But his life is a bit up in the air, so I can see why they went with that instead of frequent fire. It's a job that I think probably doesn't exist anymore thanks to Zoom. Very sad. We've lost so many of our traditions. Yeah. People who fly around the country firing people. incredibly handsome man like the most handsome person you've seen in your life flies in fires you then flies off again yeah it would be so insulting would you prefer to be fired by someone hideous looking i think i probably would yeah yeah but it take the edge off a bit yeah oh interesting i go the opposite just for to sweeten it like to be fired by someone handsome Yeah Well Dan I need to have a chat with you after the show Here's another fact. This is a great one. It's from Soam Mukherjee. And Soam writes that a plane has recently been found after being lost for 13 years. Okay. It was an Air India flight that went missing in a parking bay at the Kolkata airport. Okay. They forgot they owned it. And it was just there. So they just left it in the parking bay? They just left it in the parking bay. Air India just simply forgot. It owed £83,000 in parking fees. It was just covered in tickets. That's it. It would be lost beneath all the parking tickets. If you're going to hide the plane, that's a good place to hide it. You're absolutely right. And it's been there since 2012. Anyway, it's a happy ending. Because it's now been taken out. and it's going to be used to train engineers. Oh, great. So it's having a successful afterlife. It probably was wondering what's happened to it, you know. Yeah. It wants to be up in the air, like in that film. Yeah. Okay, here is another fact from Russell Langer. And Russell says, I don't think I've heard this one on the podcast. Well, you haven't, Russell. It is that the Outer Bridge Crossing, the southernmost bridge between New York and New Jersey, is named after a man called Eugenius Harvey Outer Bridge. Nice. So good. We love these, don't we? Where you would hear something and assume that it's an adjective and it turns out to be named after someone. Do we think we've got enough for a book? No. Okay. Like a till book. No. Okay. I think we've got German chocolate cake. Yeah. We've got French's mustard, maybe. How long are your books, Andy? How many words is there in one of your books? Like 80,000, 90,000? We'll do a long padding introduction. The Children's Python, we did that on a Drop Us a Line recently. Oh, yeah. That's four we've got. So I'll ring the publishers and say, just hold fire. It's enough for a pitch. It's enough for a pitch, that's it. One thousand things you would think are called the thing for the clearly obvious reason, but actually they're named after a person. It's a good name. It's a good name. Didn't we, what was the one, James, that I think we almost ran on the show, which was like the roly-poly was named after someone called michael roly-poly is it the blanket was it maybe thomas blanket in the 13th century so there was a person called thomas blanket and i think so anna and i have argued over this for many years when we get drunk this is all we talk about but i think that probably what happened was there was already a blanket from the french blanquet meaning white or okay from the french meaning white and then this guy thomas blanket who definitely existed came along and popularized the name but i don't think it's named after him god i'm suddenly having flashbacks of like 2 a.m in some hotel lobby drinking and you and anna absolutely going for it hammer and tongs yeah um yeah so outer bridge eugenius harvey outer bridge his sister mary ewing outer bridge was the person who brought lawn tennis to america oh that's good So it had been taken to Bermuda from the British, and then the Americans brought it over. In fact, Mary Ewing Outerbridge brought it from Bermuda to America. And when they started doing it, everyone argued about everything about it. So the size of the court, the size of the net, the size of the racket, and the size of the ball was different wherever you played. So they had to bring it all together. And it was actually Eugenius Alterbridge, after whom the crossing is named, who came up with the idea of forming the US Tennis Association. Oh, wow. To sort of bring everything together. Was he called Eugenius? Eugenius. Eugenius. Yeah, so how's the spelling? Like Eugene and then... Yeah, Eugene without the E at the end and then I-U-S. Because there must have been a moment in his life where he did something stupid and someone got to say, you idiot, Eugenius. it's it's like eu genius yeah it's like the reverse nigel farage yeah that's brilliant um i got a fact that was sent in by mimi there is an unknown animal in the burmese zodiac okay the burmese zodiac is quite interesting is there's a few elements to it one of the main things is that to know what your zodiac animal is is based on not the year that you were born but the day of the week that you were born on okay and um so there are eight animals in this zodiac eight days a week how does that work right they split wednesday up into two days so you've got wednesday morning and wednesday evening and the animal associated with that is an elephant with tusks and then in the evening it's an elephant without tusks okay yeah um because eight is a is a very lucky number out there an elephant who's been to the dentist at 2 30 yes and so the uh sometimes i wonder why i bother we all do i think we all do you've just knocked a zero off your settlement payment when i fire you after this i don't mind because you're so good looking it's fine so anyway um there is a mysterious animal on there so i looked into it i was born on a saturday andy you were born on a saturday yes So we are a dragon, according to it. James, you were born on a Friday. So was Anna, and you were both the mysterious animal, which is a guinea pig. Wait a minute, you said it was something that didn't exist. Well, it shouldn't have existed in the area when they were doing the Zodiac. It's very confusing. They're not sure why it's on there. It's had huge debates because this is very old, this Zodiac. And yet a guinea pig statue is everywhere in their temples. Pigs are from South America And there was no way you could get from South America To Myanmar at that time I don't suppose Exactly And so there is lots of questions about what it is So a lot of people have looked into it And they found similar animals that are in the area That it could be like the bamboo rat And so on But it's known Any nice animals? I feel bad James That we got dragon And you've got the bamboo rat Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. here's another one yep this is from edmund galaski and edmund writes i came across this news tidbit about a new proposal and i recall you discussing past proposals for something similar in 21 or 2022 edmund's catching up so edmund if you're listening to this in 2033 hello um but basically it's about a snow tunnel okay you know how you have indoor ski slopes sometimes oh yeah but they're a real pain in the bum because they huge and they very land hungry and energy intensive and all of this and it just like it a big pain well what if you just had a massive hamster wheel of snow and the barrel will be spun to about 31 miles an hour And if you're a skier, you can just get in and start skiing and ski the hamster wheel down all the time. You're constantly skiing down, you see? Yes. And if you're new, you can latch onto a built-in stability apparatus, which is like it couldn't possibly go wrong and lead you to be dragged around this circle. upside down it is a nice idea it's a proposal but the interesting thing this email came in from edmund golaski gola ski he has ski in his name right very common ending yeah so there's literally a member of our podcast who has it oh yeah and she would be quite good in the hamster wheel because she's a guinea pig beautiful beautiful right should we have one or two more yeah yeah go on then um this one is from paul fuller and paul says the program mcdonald's used to run their electronic menu display at their drive-thrus is called chips.exe very nice um is that because is that because they do chips no because they do fries they don't even know it's funny yeah that's true i think it's not that's not why they use it and also i don't think it's quite true oh what was that a correspondent's name uh paul fuller oh paul it's hard to tell because this is like corporate secrets and stuff like that it's hard to tell exactly what's going on but i think what it is is there is a payroll software called clearing house interbank payment system or chips and i think they put this software on a lot of their computers and then they use those computers to put the electronic programs on but the electronic programs are something else but every now and then this program fails and then you get an error message and it says chips.exe has failed and people see the chips.exe and they take a photo of it and put it on social media and everyone goes ah ha ha look that's the name of the executing program but actually i think it's just a background program i think that's very that's a very thorough hearkening i love it the truth is i don't know for sure but that's what my research points to well don't we have an in with zoe hamburger friend of the podcast who like episode one of little fish yeah senior mcdonald's executive she'll pick up a call from us won't sure she won't pick up a call from you because she'll fear that she's being fired absolutely that's great research james lovely yeah don't you have one last one uh yeah this was sent in to us by ian flower from seattle who says this fact is from the same body of water where we employ anti-espionage dolphins so you know we spoke about these off the coast of seattle yeah yeah yeah he's written we've just had historic flooding and apparently the local ferries are using spy goggles to dodge dislodge debris and so you heard this from a local npr station i had a look into it and it seems correct basically there are a bunch of floating logs that are going towards all of these ships if they get hit they're going to get really damage okay um so the debris in the water has a different heat signature than the water itself so what they do is they have a member of the team who stands at the front with infrared goggles on and then yells to the captain move to the left we've got a log directly in front of us the captain's log brilliant um well he'd probably say um uh port i suspect rather than move to the left You never know Maybe it's his first day Sorry I always forget Is left port or is left starboard It's the same number of letters Left is port That's how you remember it Oh that's really good I always remember oh there's no port left Like if you're having a decanter of port Oh yeah But it's confusing because you say there's no port left I should say there's some port left Dan how do you remember the port and starboards I don't Which is why so many boats have crashed When I'm yelling out Stop putting me on lookout guys Jesus There's a starboard Who is it clearly Oh Ryan Bingham's here I think if you say There's a star on board Yeah And Dan thinks Who's the biggest star Ryan Bingham What does Ryan Bingham's name begin with R What side is the starboard The right That's how you remember it There we go Yeah As long as it's not a real emergency we've got time to go through that every time right should we do some friend of the podcast custodian fact dishing out everyone listening if you join our Patreon you can go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and you join you get all sorts of stuff you get ad free episodes you get bonus content and if you join at the very top tier you can become a friend of the podcast and we will dedicate one of our headline facts to you. So let's dish out a few of those now. I'll kick off. This is a fact going out to Karen McMillan. The 17th century prophet Dorothy Harling would cure you of your sins by urinating on the afflicted part of your body, but would also whip you first. It's a nice PG fact to start off. Congratulations, Karen. That's yours forever now. She was known as the perpetual spring. for urinating on her followers so so congratulations karen i'm no taking backsies that's your fact forever now um okay here's the next one homosexuality is illegal in sudan but a woman can have a female husband and a child can have a female father And that fact now belongs to Soul Tramp S-O-L-E-T-R-A-M-P Presumably an internet name Don't know Could be a relation with the band Supertramp Could be Yes If you get bitten by Soul Tramp You turn into a Supertramp So I've just looked this up in the archive And basically there's a tribe called the Nuair And if you're a woman and you can't have children But you have a father who wants to pass on their property, you marry a woman who then has a child herself, and that child technically, sort of legally, becomes your child. Okay. So that is enshrined in law and society. And this was all about legal structures that people used to get around sort of sex-based problems or difficulties. So we talked about the sworn virgins of Albania. Oh, yeah. Do you remember them? They were women, but under the Albanian sort of sacred law, they had the status of men, and they lived as men. Okay. And this was a really common thing for centuries. So it was all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Here's a fact now for Anna Wilson. The man responsible for the first computer, Colossus, worked out that the way to stop crashes was to not turn it off and back on again. Basically, if you turned it off, you were risking damage for when you turned it back on for things to burn out and so on. So the best way to have it functioning was just to leave it. Turn it on and just leave it. That's great. And let it work itself out I'm glad I've been doing that for years With my computers That's fine Should we have another one? This one goes out to Kellen With two exclamation marks I don think you sold it Honestly I could have when you said that I could possibly hear the first exclamation mark But I definitely couldn't hear two I'm going to do it again This one goes out to Kellen And it's the fact that in 2014 Two botanists from Kew Gardens Checked a £1.29 packet of supermarket mushrooms And found three species Previously unknown to science Wow That's incredible It's so good, I think it might have been Waitrose Oh well, of course That's the Waitrose guarantee actually Isn't that weird? Because you would think those mushrooms If you don't know what the species is Could conceivably be poisonous Quite a high proportion of mushrooms are poisonous It's not the greatest food To discover new species of in a pack Okay, I've got one more here This fact is now Under the custodianship of Mark Vent, who was in a recent episode and Dan said, I know Mark Vent. I know Mark, yeah. Yeah. Yes. So friend of Dan Schreiber, if not the entire podcast. Does Mark also know Ash Gardner? He does. Yeah. Well, very good news for you, Mark, because Ash Gardner was the originator of this fact in episode 32. And it was that in 1060 BC, the entire Egyptian city of Pyramises was moved 20 kilometers north. so basically it was by the nile and the nile dried up and they had to move the whole city and ash i think wrote a song about it he did and he also for those who aren't familiar with his name he wrote the theme tune for fish as well um and that's why he was on the show um he also used to slip me the occasional fact famously when sparkling water was being transported across from country to country on boats they would take the bubbles out and then reinsert the exact same bubbles back into the water when they got there we still haven't checked to see if he's wrong i think you guys assumed uh nice great fact let's do another one here this is for k sutton and the fact is in 1864 one of charles dickens's friends gave him a flat pack swiss chalet as a christmas present very nice yeah this is now in rochester i've seen it i've been there a few times it came in 58 different boxes and he had to create this beautiful swiss chalet where he wrote a lot of novels he wrote so many yeah that's so cool 100 someone else did that for him did the building yeah yeah probably yeah but yeah his later novels i think it was his later novels were largely written in that swiss chalet well this is one of my favorite facts about charles dickens because rochester is in kent this is where the chalet is and i do want to go visit it actually um but rochester is also where there's a house which was the inspiration for miss havisham's house in great expectations and it's a house that was later lived in by rod hull it wasn't the the roof that he fell off and that's the one he fell off no rod hull famous british entertainer who had an emu on his arm he was very very famous in the what 70s and 80s he went up onto the roof to fix the tv aerial yeah he wanted to watch a football match apparently because giles brandress told him don't think that's true okay okay i've heard a couple of different entertainers saying that they told him that could have been brucey could have been wogan but someone someone foolish told rod hell to go up and fix the tv aerial on his roof and he fell off and died yeah miss havisham's house i can't believe it's miss havisham's house i know i didn't know that that should be a little footnote in all future editions of the great expectations just as you're reading by the way I wonder who lives there now Yeah I'd love to live there That's such a historical house Timmy Mallet lives there now Does he? Yeah The guy who invented the mallet Sorry to all the international listeners Let's have another fact This one goes out to Johanna Kuyvunen I hope I've pronounced your name right And it's that Neuroscientists can tell if you are a musician Simply by looking at your brain And I imagine this is the brain activity Rather than opening up your skull And having a look at the tissue And this is all about neuroscience And how musicians' brainwaves synchronise When they have a duet together And all sorts of stuff And it turns out it's in the brain The music Do you think our brains synchronise When we're doing this show? 100%. I do! Do you? Yeah What about when I'm saying an anecdote and you're just completely glazing over and not paying attention? And I'm doing my emails on my phone. Yeah. I have to be in sync because I know when the anecdote ends. So we're apart, but together. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Where did they say that that does happen with heartbeats with strangers? Is it during watching a movie? Watching a cinema? Yeah. You blink in sync? That might be a fact that comes up later. Yeah, yeah. So I can actually believe that our most intimate rhythms would be united during a show recording. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Exciting. I haven't had a period since Anna left. Too much? No. I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm sure you're not pregnant though. Okay. Here's another one. This one is for Richard M. During the Second World War, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, realized his studios were indistinguishable from a nearby aircraft factory, so painted a huge sign on the roof saying, Lockheed, that way. That's very funny. Yeah. That's very good. Yeah. I love anyone who paints on the top of a roof, because it's often used. I just love those guys. Unless it's Ruddhall. You love people who paint on the top of buildings. That was such a... I love walks in the countryside, champagne, and people who paint on the top of buildings. When is your book coming out, Dad, of a thousand great people who paint on the top of buildings? I think it's not long after your book on people whose names are what the thing is. It's hitting the shots. I'll see you in the charts. I remember there was one where someone had painted on the top of a roof as people are landing into LA. Welcome to San Francisco. You know, things like that. Yeah, that's fun. That is fun. You know, it's great. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The guy from Warner Brothers, he could have like painted a fake tunnel on the side and there had been a clip or something. Right, that's your lot for this week. Thank you so much to all those who've joined at the friend of the podcast here. that is Richard, Johanna, Kay, Mark, Kellen, Anna, Soltramp and Karen. We're going to be doing another batch of these in a week. We hope you've enjoyed it. If you'd like to see more things that are available on the Patreon on Clubfish, just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. Thanks very much and keep the emails and the facts coming in. They're absolutely brilliant and we love them. Podcast at qr.com. That's it for this time. Bye for now. Bye.