The NASA Twin Study

Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com. Relax as AI does the manual work while your teams are aligned on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless. Limitless. Limitless now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally breathe. Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe . Hi everyone, well to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, uh, I have some very exciting news for you, especially if you're the kind of person who likes live podcasts. Because that's right, we're gonna do some live podcasts. Uh, they will be on the 21st, 22nd, 23 rd, and 25th of July at the Royal Institution in London. We'll be performing at the Lecture Theatre, which is the home of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. It's an extremely venerable place. N suotre quite why they're letting us go there, but they are, and the shows will be a whole lot of fun, I am sure. Now the reason I'm telling you today is because exclusive pre-sale has begun for clubfish members. So if you want to guarantee your tickets uh you will have to go to patreon.com slash clubfish and join now that will get you access to the pre-sale for the next seven days and if there are any tickets left they will go on sale on Friday the, 5th of June. It's not a very big theater. It's a lot smaller than the venues we normally play. So it's up to you if you want to push your luck or not. But one more good thing to say is that on the 21st of July show, there will be online livestream tickets available. So if you don't get tickets, or if you live somewhere that is way too far from London for you to get tickets, then you will be able to get tickets there. So anyway, all the information for this is available now for Patreon members at patreon.com slash clubfish and the information will be available for everyone else next Friday. So listen up there. Now before we get on with the podcast, I do believe Dan and Anna wanted to tell you something very exciting that has been happening at QIHQ. That's right, so QI has created self-guided walking tours of London, not just any walking tours, walking tours full of amazing, weird, Q I facts, and narrated by none other than an up-and-coming talent, Stephen Fry . That's right. Stephen will be taking you on a tour around Westminster, and that tour begins at Big Ben. There's the tour of the city in Bankside, which starts at St. Paul's Cathedral, and it is just rampact with the kind of facts that QI is the best and only place really to go to for. That's right, so if you want to find out why Londoners used to take baths with geese or how John Cleese pranked Michael Palin at the Globe Theatre. Then look up Voice Map on the App Store. It's a GPS activated app that lets you explore at your own pace and accompanies you with these facts.. That's right And also it will take in your phone's location. So if you happen to be in a spot that's relevant to the tour, Steven will just start talking to you from your phone. It's absolutely brilliant. Who doesn't want that? Injections of fry into your daily life. Get it now . As Anna says, it's on the app store or go to voicemap. me slash qi . Okay. On with the show Do you know that who don't walk back a bit back to the hood ? Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Hunter, Murray, and James Horkin, and once again we have gathered round 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 Anna. My fact this week is that the reason chefs started wearing hair nets around food was to keep the hairnet industry going. It's amazing. I don't think of it as being an industry even. I thought it was someone has to make them. Exactly someone's gonna make them. I just exactly someone's gonna make 'em. I just never just never th thought about that. You never think about the hairnet makers, do you? I imagined it would be like a cottage industry, some kind of village in the north of England where they're all made. Yeah. Maybe in the fifteen hundreds, perhaps, but I think now, like everything else, some giant city in China where they're all made. Um so hairnets, nothing to do with hygiene, it turns out. This is because bobs happened in the nineteen uh fifteens, nineteen twenties. That is, women had had long hair, suddenly the bob became fashionable, uh short hair, and they didn't hairnets anymore. So for hundreds of years, women had worn hairnet s to sort of keep their hair tidy, they lie in hairnets to stop like messing up on their pillows, they have it so that it keeps the curlers in. The bob meant none of that's necessary. The hairnet industry plummets and the hairnet maker Vanida, the biggest hair net maker around in the US, hired marketing bloke, Edward Bernays. Oh , we've talked about before, haven't we? I think we have mentioned him before. I think he invented did he invent egg and chips or something? It was Bacon and Eggs. Bacon and eggs. He made that the American breakfast. He was the one, he was that PR spin master. He's the one who made it so that women became a massive market for the cigarette industry. Um sticks of joy or liberty, torches of liberty Um so he was hired by the hairnet makers and he 'cause he was a PR genius, he did two main things. He got in touch with loads of celebs and said, Hey, start talking about how great long hair is, 'cause we need to get hairnets going again. And then B, he thought, I'm gonna sort of spread this rumour that it's really unhygienic to have hair fall into your food. So in restaurants and stuff, if hair gets in the food, that's very bad. So he spread this rumour that um you know you'll get all sorts of diseases from that. And within a couple of years it was state law throughout the US to have hair nets in restaurants if you were working around the room. So people didn't used to care if you got hair in the food. They liked it. It was it actively sought after. You know that joke, wait a way till there's a hair in my soup, don't say it too loud, or everyone will want one. That was based on real life. Yeah, it wasn't a joke. Yeah, that was just what you'd say. You you used apparently it used to be more that you would say, Oh, you're you're you're around like a hair in a soup. It sounds like that's annoying though. But you would never send it back. Whereas it was just yeah, it was annoying. Yeah, exactly. It's just something that's inevitable. I mean it is gross finding a hair anywhere that's not on someone's head, let's be real. Um so Fahrenre anheit eye' I think Or another part of their body like another but yeah You can eat hair. Yeah you can eat hair I think the point for me is if you see a hair in the soup it means that they're not necessarily paying attention to the other parts of hygiene. It's brown M M. There you go. It's the brown M M. Yeah, if I see a brown M in my soup, then first of all I think it's probably something else. Yes. What was the band? Van Halen. Van Halen. Van Halen, that was it. But nay, single-handedly probably is responsible for the reason the hairnet industry is back. But the reason it almost toppled was because of one person as well, which was Irene Castle, who was this big dancer. She did the foxtrot, she was very famous for it , and nineteen fifteen she got her haircut into a bob, and by nineteen eighteen it was being reported that twenty thousand women weekly were adopting this new hairstyle. Yeah, and it was called the castle bob initially, bobs were and it was a very liberating thing for women. This is why and people society was afraid 'cause women loved it. Bernays said of that her net makers are in a state of panic. Herpin manufacturers are laying off workers and the hair comb industry is in disarray. Right. The entire economy was about to plummet. I found the most valuable hair net ever. Oh yeah. Well this is the most valuable one I've been able to find. Of course. Okay. Any guesses as to the value in pounds sterling? What's you're gonna have to tell us more about it? Is it like Marilyn Monroe's hairnet? I it's war it's a celebrity's hair net. It was sold at auction in two thousand and three. I'm not gonna say who wore it though. You I just want a bit of a flying punch. I want a blind punt on this of the value. Beyonce and it went for four hundred thousand. But I'm not gonna specify yet which currency. Okay. Bruce Willis, four hundred quid. Bruce Willis. That's right. Okay. An ironic thing he did. Yeah . I'm gonna say Elsie Tanner from Coronacea Street and two of the six . That's very can I change my James has already won it. This was one worn by Ina Sharples on Coronation Street. Kidding. And it was sold at a close a Cornish auction house for fifty quid. Fifty quid? The buyer wished to remain anonymous. Did you dad? Was it signed? Bits of it where the the holes get in the way. That's the only person I can think of who wears hairnets. Exactly. And it's the only I think it's the only hairnet that's ever been auctioned, I suspect. I can't believe that if you know of a more expensive hairnet podcast at QI.com. What am I doing? You know when I was in China there was um a fashion among trendy young women to you know those like sort of big hair curlers that you get to make a perm? Yeah. They would get one of those, the biggest one you could possibly find, and then attach it to the fringe and just wear it all the time. That's a cool fashion, isn't it? It's cool look. Because that's a bit Coronation Street, isn't it? Yeah. Being seen in your curlers. The first I thought was Coronation Street, but in China it's the height of fashion. In Cori, is it a bad thing to be seen out in your curlers? Is it like oh she's got no self respect? Yeah, what would happen is like some ruckus would happen in Weatherfield and then one of the women who's inside doing the perm would sort of have to run outside in the dressing gown dressing gown and stuff and the curlers and they'd be like, Ah, what you doing, Jack? We've all been there. That's good. It's good. That's basically all episodes of Coronation Street for the last sixty years. Love it. Love it. Well on China, China kept the hairnet industry going. Oh. So people decided they wanted hairnets made of human hair round the turn of the twentieth century. Really? Yeah, yeah, made them out of human hair 'cause then they're sort of invisible, they disappear into your hair. That's just a wig. Yeah. It's a wig but without mo with most of the hair missing. Oh. So a net just made out of woven hair. So that it looks realistic. Or so that it sort of disappears into your hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um anyway, they Americans imported them from Germany for ages, early 1900s, and then someone opening their hair net from Germany found a little cut newspaper cutting in Chinese and they went and investigated the German factories and they'd been importing them from China where a million women were employed making hair nets out of men's hair. So it was the time in the Manchu dynasty where men had those long plaits at the back. So there was a lot of long hair to be cut off. Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah. A million women. That's correct. I know that China's got a big population. It does. But at the time it would have been it was smaller. Two hundred million, three hundred million like two hundred million jobs. And I want to correct myself it if was only half a million women. Oh well. Oh that's completely wonderful then. But there was a big mirror at the side of the factory. There was a shortage of nurses in China as a result. I'm not surprised. And what was the controversy with this? Because that does sound above board. It's guys cutting off their hair, it was being made into hair nets. Was it that Germany was palming it off as if they were making it? Yeah, Germany was claiming they were making it, but they were actually exploiting cheap Chinese labour, which thank God we don't do anymore. Yeah. Um in order to import. Agreed. When I say what's the problem, that wasn't part of what I meant. It's just capitalism, guys. I'll give you a hair neck controversy just while we're still on those. Um in 2000, a British celebrity did not wear one. Wow. And it led to led to controversy. I'm gonna say enemy of the podcast. Who's that? Greg Wallace? Not Greg Wallace. Another I thought it might be a uh an unheard suit man who doesn't really need one, but they wanted them to wear it. I'd say this man didn't really need one. Even in two thousand when he was a younger man. He's not with us anymore. Oh Dan does an incredible impression of him. Oh, that could be any one. Oh, Prince Philip. Prince Philip. Prince Philip was visiting a factory in an Australian place called Wagga. Yeah. Which we've talked about before because it's spelt wagga wagga but it's pronounced wagger once. Just that. Yeah. And then we only say one wagger. Yeah. That's wagger. It's got a silent wagger. It's got a silent wagga . That's extraordinary. If you've ever been to Wagga Mama, that's where it's from. It's misconception that that's a bit anyway. Um Prince Philip was in Wagga and uh he was visiting a cheese factory, but there were shots of him released uh to the public that showed him surrounded by people wearing hairnets and he was leaning over a big vat of cheese. But they they said they were considering saving the twenty four cubic feet of cheese, which they might have to destroy, and releasing a batch of Prince Philip cheese. I think that's not a nice product. I don't think so, no. Dan would pay a lot for that. You know me. And that was two thousand. Yeah. And just to think, just three years later, the most expensive hairnet will be sold at auction. It was a big era for hair nuts, wasn't it? I did a deep dive on BBC news stories that involved the word hair bet. That's where those both came from. Right. A deep dive. How deeply talking I went back a quarter of a century. What do you want? You know, around the same time as this hairnet debacle that I mentioned, not your Prince Philip debacle, um, America's first female self-made millionaire happened, made herself, and she made it in the hair product industry. Really? Yeah. America's first female self-made industry was a woman called Madame C.J. Walker. And she specialized in hair care products for African American women. And she made herself a millionaire. She was literally she was the first member of her family born out of slavery, could born into complete poverty, orphaned, married at fourteen, widowed at twenty with two kids, became a million aire. She used to sell sulphur and she was a very good marketer because I don't know if it worked to actually do it much good to her. It just stank like sulphur. But she made herself a millionaire from it. Cool. Um hygiene in kitchens, yeah.ah, ye Probab ly we can say Carem did it a little bit, but a scoffier is the main one. We mentioned Escoffier a little bit in the past. He's like a big famous old chef who works at the Savo y in the late 19th century, I think. But he basically got into the Savoy kitchen and other ones and just saw that they were really horrible places to work. You know, lots of smoke, people weren't really doing any hygiene, any sanitation , anything like that. If you had any hydration at all, it came in the form of wine. You just drink a load of wine. So he kind of invented the idea of the tall hat that they wear, uh, the neckerchief that you have to kind of keep all the sweat in. Uh and he also commissioned a French doctor to develop a special barley drink uh that he would give to all of his chefs so that they could keep hydrated without drinking any wine. Sounds like it was just beer. Um barley water. It could be barley water like you have at Wimbledon. Yes. I do like I like a bit of barley water. You do surprise me Andy We've been to the pub enough times. Okay, a glass of wine, pint of ruddles for Dan and Andy. Oh, another barley water. Okay. Yeah, small. Yeah, yeah. I love that I d I hadn't clocked that the chef's outfit would largely be to keep you out of the fo Yeah, kind of. And the white bit was from Karem who came before him and that was to show off if there's any stains and stuff so you can see. And if they're stains, is it good or bad? Like it's good because it shows that you've been near the food? No, it's bad. And it shows that once there's so many stains that your shirt is no longer white, you probably need to swap it for a white one. Gotcha. Yeah, fair enough. No, just checking, because it might be suspicious that you're not the real cook. Oh, like never trust a skinny cook, that kind of thing. Same with same with your bedsheets, for instance. You you know or white bedsheets because they're suspicious. No one's ever slept to them. Exactly. They need to be tried and tested. I want to be the tenth or the eleventh user. Whenever you visit a travel lodge, you're like there'd have to be a few stains on this at least. Yeah. And you do the quick the hand test to make sure it's a bit damp. Yeah. I've signed up to Food Safety Magazine off the back of this research. Right. They haven't asked me for any money, but I am willing to pay. It's an American publication and they do a they well as it sounds, it's Food Safety Magazine. Yeah. They've got their own podcast. Do they? Right. Yeah. Any nuggets from them? I only got as far as the initial sponsorship advert, which is by they're sponsored by IFC chlorine dioxide treatments. Okay. Guys, we're we're available to advertise glory dioxide treatments. It's all your research time now taken up with memberships forms and memberships mostly . Is it because you have so much fun doing uh um inbox that you just want more and more emails to go into your personal inbox. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. It's a it's becoming a bit overwhelming. The heritage crafts industry, the lighthouse people, the what's oh the wallpaper history society . The earthweb society they still haven't got in touch. They've got five pounds of my money. I've heard nothing from them. They've gone underground. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. Just wanted to let you know that this week we're sponsored by TV licensing. Yes, TV licensing. Do you have your TV license? It covers you to watch over 400 TV channels ever,ything on the BBC iPlayer. I spent a lot of time on the BBC iPlayer watching one of my favorite shows of all time, live at the Apollo. Stand-up show. It's good stuff. It's all the best comedians there are. On one stage. That's the thing. Like, you know, unless you go to live comedy, you're not really seeing comedians do their stuff. They're always in TV shows with challenges. But here, you know, if you want to see Tom Davis, one of my favorite stand-ups, uh do his set, this is the place to go. You got Ivor Graham, Desiree Birch, you got Doro Breen, Josh Whitakam. You know, you'll be seeing him on Strictly Come Dancing, but this is where he does. This is pure. This is pure. Unfiltered their own stuff without all those other distractions. Yes. And I have also been watching a com edy myself, not just you who can watch comedy. I've been watching Amandoland, the latest series, which is absolutely hilarious. I'm sure you guys have heard of it. Written by Holly Walsh. Brilliant show about a snobbish mom. So yes, as Dan says, the TV license covers you for over 400 channels. It's not just BBC, it's ITV, it's Channel 4, it's Dave, and it's for paid TV services like Sky or Virgin Media and live TV streaming services. So if you're watching live stuff on YouTube. Yeah, so get your TV license now, and all you need to do to find out more is go to TVL.co.uk slash pod . Okay, on with the show. On with the pod cast. Close your eyes. Focus . Listen to work getting done with Monday.com . Relax as AI does the manual work. While your teams are aligned on a single source of truth, feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless. Limitless limitless now. Open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe . Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that the fourth US president, James Madison, liked to get piggybacks off his wife . It's really sweet. We all would, wouldn't we? Yeah. If it was possible. Yeah. Would you? 'Cause I think it probably is . I reckon Belina could go a coup couple of yards. I'm afraid I don't think so. Okay. I think I'm a bit heavy for her, as much as she has been to the gym recently. Suspicious amount in fact. But never mind, let's read So I read this on the website of James Madison's Montpellier, which is a plantation house of the Madison family. And the anecdote comes from someone who was talking about the guided tour that they'd been on and all the facts that they learned there. And I think we've said before on this podcast that James Madison was five foot four. Yes. So he's very small, he's about the same height as Helen Mirren, Kevin Hart, and the official cutoff for Height to join the US Air Force. Uh huh. Um but he was very small man and it meant that his wife could carry him. And the the anecdote goes that he and some of his friends are in the gardens and they were messing around and joshing around and they would have races and during these races sometimes uh Dolly Madison, his wife, would carry him. Lovely. I didn't realise that the thing that was holding other presidents back from piggybacking on their wives was the fact that they were too big for their wives to carry them. What did you think was holding them back? Dignity or or Maybe dignity why would you? There are other modes of transport that are faster and more convenient. It's been such a long time since anyone gave me a piggy bag. What's been holding you back? I don't I I haven't asked. Yeah. I would love one actually. Would you? I really would. It's it's just nice to get a piggyback from someone, isn't it? Yeah, I agree. I think like if you go to gigs, sometimes people might carry you on their shoulders. It's a completely different cat. You can't, it's like comparing chalk and cheese. Well also the kind of gigs I'm going to are are are mostly like the barbecue or uh maybe Junior Gleinborn, but the very few people riding on each other's shoulders. So just Andy Chalk and Cheese both begin with CH of course, which makes them a little bit similar in the same way that piggybacks and shoulder rides are quite similar. Really good point. Um so Madison had, as we've said, the shortest presidency? Yeah. Uh no. Well, he he was only five foot. He was only five foot four, so he had the shortest. Yeah. Yep, yep. Um who's the shortest prime minister? Liz Trust must be there or thereabouts. What a good question. I think Thatcher was pretty short, wasn't she? Wasn't she? Come on, guys, you can't just pick the women. Women on average are shorter than men. On average they are, I know. I was surprised that Helen Mirren's five foot four. Yeah. That has taken me by surprise. Yes, yes. That's a good that's a good fact. Um but prime ministers. Uh shortest PM. I feel like Disraeli would have been quite diminutive. Um it'll probably be one of the eighteenth century people who hasn't fed well enough as a child. I wouldn't pit the shorter. It was pit the shorter. Yes. I wanna say churchill, but I think that's just 'cause he looks like a baby. So I'm um yeah, you're projecting projecting his height. Yeah. Anyway. Um Is this what the podcast has become? You guys just speculate about something no one knows the answer to that would be quite boring . It's more like a shitty quiz show now, yeah. Um Madison, James Madison. Yeah, here's a big deal. Uh one of the early ones, so like one of the founding fathers, uh friends with all the big guys that you've heard of, but probably of those first four or five the least famous, I would say, maybe John Adams a little bit, but uh he was president during the War of eighteen twelve when the British burned down the uh White House and he was the one who had to leg it with Dolly in fact. Yeah. Yes. Uh and there's a story that Dolly grabbed the portrait of um George Washington before they left because she was so patriotic. She was like, We definitely need to keep this, forget about all the cutlery and stuff, I'm gonna take this. But I think it's Well she she certainly said it. Um so she claimed it and we should say when we say she grabbed it, there's no claim that she grabbed it, as with all these things in that age. She stood by ord ering people who were enslaved to her to grab it. But yes, she got she got some people to take the portrait off the wall, she claims, and roll it up. who was born into slavery, but he's a very interesting guy. He's so he and two other servants helped to pull this portrait off the wall and and haul it out. He later on, I think he gained his freedom. He planned the largest ever mass escape from Washington, DC, uh, in history in eighteen forty-eight, of those who were still slaves, and he wrote the first White House memoir ever. Did he? It was called A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison. So he was a big deal. Yeah.. Wow Fascinating life. And 'cause this has happened at the age of fifteen, you know. Yeah. And he lived, I think, to a ripe old age. Yeah, right. Madison was a great writer as well. So for example, George Washington gave an address to Congress April thirtieth, seventeen eighty nine. It was the first presidential inaugural address that was drafted by James Madison. There was a response from the House of Representatives to what he had said in this speech, and that was written by James Madison. So James Madison wrote the reply to the speech that he wrote. The president wrote back to the reply, and that was also written by James Madison. So he was playing as the writer. It's wild. Keir Starmer wishes this is how politics was still done. And Kenny, I will now write your reply to me, and I'll write my response to that. One biography reported he was a miserable public speaker who tended to lapse into inaudible mumbling. He had very poor health, and I don't think I think he was very impressive as an intellectual powerhouse, but he was not physically imposing or you know, a brilliant speaker or anything like that. Well thankfully America never got any more presidents who just mumbled incoherently. Yep. Fine. Um so he dead of these health problems and he had these attacks in quote marks, which were sort of similar to epilepsy, but it's not certain whether you know, 'cause diagnosis from that from now to then is quite tricky. But apparently he refused to travel to Europe in case he had an attack and fell into the sea. Okay. He was also really important in the Louisiana Purchase. Oh yeah. Which I had not properly understood. I thought, big deal, it's Louisiana. It's actually fifteen modern states, part of all of them. It doubled the size of America and it was owned by um France. That's right. Yeah, he was really key in the purchase. Uh that was under a previous president I think, but he was he was very instrumental in it. And that blocked Spain and France from further colonization. Yeah. I think that was what King Charles made a joke about in his uh speech. He said you'd all be speaking French if it wasn't for us. Yeah. Right. And he made a joke about burning down the White House in eighteen twelve, didn't he? He made a lot of Madison centric jokes. Now I'm wondering if Madison might have written that speech at all. Yeah. Do not open till year twenty twenty-six. Um Where would you guys say he sits in the sort of list of influential presidents? Because it sounds like he kind of shaped the country, but it's not a name that I would say as a non-American that you would put up there as the Rush the Rushmore, right? My only list of American presidents goes in chronological order. Yep. So I have him fourth. That's pretty high. That's pretty good. But it's kind of like how your early birthdays are more significant than later ones. Yeah. Like turning twelve, turning seventeen, turning twenty four. Yeah. Turning four, that's a big deal. Yeah, sure. You learn to walk and you learn to speak and you learn to do all this between second and third birthdays. Yeah. But just 'cause it's all that stuff happens nice and early. Yeah. So Madison he did do the Constitution and he did do all of Washington's speeches and stuff. But yeah, there was lots of that stuff happening at Madison. He once had his hat stolen and it meant that he couldn't leave the house for days. Uh why were you not allowed to leave the house without your hat? Well you could, but it was a bit embarrassing socially, wasn't it? It was like leaving leaving the house without your trousers. Um and this is an anecdote he told to a pal in his older age. So I think he was dryly witty. He's a very understated president. There's not that much like flashy stuff about him, but I think he said funny things. And he once said to his friend in old age, Did I ever tell you about the time my hat was stolen? He said he I was staying in Williamsburg and my hat was stolen out of a window that I'd left it on. It was nabbed, and I was about a mile uh from the palace that I had to go and visit people in, but I was kept from going there for two days by the impossibility of getting a hat of any kind. And he said at last I obtained one from a little Frenchman who sold snuff. Very coarse. Uh an extremely small crown and broadcast. I believe the snuff was very coarse. I felt it necessary. The French one wasn't saying, fuck up, it's my hat. But yeah, I like the idea. You lose your hat, then you're imprisoned. What is a stupid place to leave your hat if that's the most important thing. On a window side. Yeah. On an open window. Yeah. Glue it to your head. Back to Dolly for a second. Yes. She popularized ice cream in America. Did she? Yeah. She used to do these sort of parties on Wednesday nights where everyone was allowed to have ice creams. And the interesting thing about that, because we mentioned another African American self-made millionaire, the person who made her ice cream was someone called Augustus Jackson. And he uh kind of came up with the idea of adding salt to the mixture, which helps. I think we said before, that's kind of the best way to make ice cream because you add salt to it and it does an endothermic reaction, which makes it cool down quicker. But his that was his idea. And then from being the White House ice cream person, he started some uh ice cream shops in Philadelphia and became one of the wealthiest men in Philadelphia because he was the ice cream maker to the president and then he did his own shops. Very cool. She was very interesting though, Dolly, because she she was born a Quaker and her father, who's called John Payne, had been kicked out of the Quakers uh because his starch business had failed. And apparently the Quakers were really h like down on that sort of thing. As if you failed in your starch business, no sorry, you're out. Really? I know, I'm surprised by that, because they've got such a great rep. Yeah, but they're very into hardworking business people, aren't they? Yes, that's a good point. Well, anyway, then she she had an early marriage uh and she was widowed. And then I think Madison saw her in the street and said, Who's that widow? And uh did he was she wearing a big W? I don't know, I don't know. I mean but did you check that he didn't leave his hat next to his widow? Amazing. Um and then he intervened with Aaron Burr, who's a friend of his at Aaron Burr of of like co-star of Hamilton fame. Yeah. Um and then but anyway, so she'd been widowed and then she and Madison get together and then they get married and then when they got married she was kicked out of the Quakers. So she and her father alike had both been kicked out of the Quakers, but for different reasons. So she got kicked out for marrying For marrying out out of the faith, basically. She was um she was very popular, wasn't she? And her funeral, it's the largest funeral that Washington DC had ever seen at that point. Um yeah, she was a very big public figure. Congress adjourned, and so did the Supreme Court, and they all joined President Zachary Taylor escorting the coffin, and then she became a sort of merchandise uh item. Kind of if you imagine after her death, kinda like her Diana, you know, you'd see her on plates and posters. Merchandise and ice cream. Yeah, exactly. She became a product. Is that a brand? Yeah, it was a brand that went until the 1980s, I think. Wow. And it was spelled differently. Yeah, they spelled it wrong, didn't they? Everyone spelled it without an E. Until there was a New York Times article in like the nineteen fifties. It was like Dolly Madison spelled with an E. Yeah, we should say we haven't said yet her name is spelled with an E. But I think that was implied by my story, wasn't it? No, it's true. But anyone listening will have probably been thinking Dolly like Parton all this time. Um I think she was one of the very few women ever to be first lady for more than one president. Because when Madison became president, she had already been first lady de facto for Thomas Jefferson. As in like organizing his parties and stuff. Organising shagging him, right? I Yeah, I d I 've got no comment. Definitely organising parties. I'm not sure Shagging the President is part of First Lady duties, certainly at the moment . But basically before before you know she was involved, there were like it was quite fraught relationships between the as it w it was the Democrat Republicans, wasn't it, as one party, and the Federalists as the other. And relations were very fraught and they would easily turn to quarrels and violence and basically these mixes that she held enforced pleasant hanging out and basically allowed a more of a political culture to emerge that would not be based on violence. And then Madison became president later on and she she helped him throw throw his balls. That was very important The phrase enforced pleasant hanging out is quite awellian, isn't it well we're doing now Andy's parties are like I am enforcing some pleasant hanging out for ten minutes. Get your bali water . Dolly was the first person to send a telegraph. The first normal person, not professional person, whose job it was, like Samuel North to invent the telegraph. Wow. Okay. Yeah. What did he say? It was one of those really, really boring ones. Um so Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph, had laid a line of wire between Washington and Baltimore. And really tragically for President Tyler, who was the president at the time, Morse said, Right, shall we get the president to send the first telegraph? And the whole crowd went, Boo, no, he's shit, because they all hated him. And everyone said, Get Dolly, Madison's widow. Everyone loves her, she's a laugh. So she was called for and she was asked what she wanted to say and when you're put on the on the spot like that, you can't think of anything. So she just said, Okay, send it to my friend Mrs. Weathered, who lives there, saying Dolly Madison sends her love to Mrs. Weathered. Yeah, and everyone was like, Dolly, this is going to arrive in fifteen minutes, she'll be able to reply. And actually, um Mrs. Weather didn't for another six days because there was no means of getting the telegraph from the station to her house at the other end. Lovely. And then she replied by letter saying, I went to the station but the the equipment had broken and so they couldn't send a reply. So it took about three weeks to um transmit the message and get a response. Wow. Bit harsh on Tyler, I think, who in my list is probably the tenth president. Yeah, but back then that was the last. That's true. Piggy backs are nothing to do with pigs. Is that true? So what are they? It comes from originally from pick pack, which just meant carrying something on your back. And then that became pick back. And pick back dates from seventeen thirty six. But um pigs don't do piggy backs, of course. Like it's a silly it's a silly thing. If a pig looks like it's giving another one a piggyback, they're probably having sex. Well exactly. I'm not giving you a piggyback anymore. Okay, it is time for fact number three, that is Andy. My fact is that the world's oceans contain thirty-eight thousand billion tons of baking soda. What a thought. Well they're big, aren't they oceans? They're big, but 38,000 billion tons? To me, honestly, that could be one part in a quintrillion, or it could be half of all the water. I just can't judge it. And is that are those in like deposits underneath the I'm so glad you asked. No. So this is um this is mostly in the form of dissolved bicarbonate. Okay, so the thing we're talking about now get excited, guys, is sodium bicarbonate. And this uh I found in a report in The Guardian, which is all about a new plan, basically, it's an idea, a propos al to lock up carbon and carbon dioxide in the ocean by adding alkaline chemicals, right? So the ocean is becoming more acidic because of all the carbon that we're adding to the atmosphere. That's a problem. It leads to big problems for fish and it leads to big problems for all sorts of marine life. So you could theoretically do a thing called ocean alkalinity enhancement. You add alkaline chemicals to the ocean. That helps the ocean absorb more carbon. You know, it slows down global warming. Can I just say we've said over the years so many times that these great ideas tend to sometimes fuck up to a massive extent. Is there a chance that this might happen here? Always a chance. Um but there's been a recent experiment, a small scale one, uh called Loch Ness, which took place where? That's right? The Gulf of Maine? You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered your factors about the locking ocean carbon in the northeast sh elf and slope project. But they they tried it, they released sixty five thousand litres, which is not a tiny amount of this alkaline chemical to see what happened, and the alkalinity went back to pre industrial levels in the area and it didn't harm any creatures that they've been able to tell. So as you say, there is always a risk it'll be done wrong or that it can't be done at scale. But it's a it's a proposal. So sorry, but can I ask about the thirty eight thousand billion tons of baking soda in the oceans? Sure. What's that about? Well it's that's just evidence that it already some of it's there or a lot of it's there. There's naturally occurring bicarbonates, um and sodium ions, which I guess together are bicarbonate of soda. Yeah, HCO three. Uh so that's hydrogen, carbon and a f and a few oxygen molecules. Um is uh baking s baking without the soda. Yes, because then you need to add salt to make it to make it baking s oda. But basically this is the boring technical bit. When carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater it forms carbonic acid and then that breaks down into hydrogen and bicarbonate. So follow-up question. Thirtyight-e thousand billion. Yep. I'm sure there must be a numerical word for what that is without the billion, right? Pass over to my colleague with a math degree. Thirty-eight trillion. There we go. And every bit deserved I'd say that master green. Well this is quite a problematic headline, isn't it? The numbers wrong. It's got nothing to do with the Loch Ness Monster and it might fuck up our oceans. I don't it's not going to any worse than they've already been, I promise that. Basically, this is about this stuff baking soda, which I did not realize exists naturally in the world. I thought bicarbon soda, the stuff everyone has in their cupboard when they're trying to bake a cake, I thought that was made rather than some places you can mine it out of the ground. Yeah. It's just rock, isn't it? Yeah. There are massive deposits in Wyoming and Colorado. There's Wyoming's Green River Basin contains a hundred and twenty seven billion tons How is it not rising all the time whenever it gets hot ? Do we know if the amount of bicarbonate of soda which I think it is fair to say is in the ocean because just in case there are real pedants out there, it does require sodium, but there are lots of sodium ions in the ocean as well. Yeah, it's not in the for it's not just by car. It's not like there's a pile of it at the base of the ocean, exactly. I think this is this is the scientist who was talking about it saying this is how much you could get out of the ocean Do we know if it's the right proportion of that compared to the ocean to make a giant cake? Like is it an ocean cake? What a good question. How much flour would we have to dump into the Atlantic? A lot. I live next door to a mill actually. I could see if they've got any going to bear. Um and the other good thing about bicarbonate, which is in the ocean, is if it gets near any calcium, then it can turn into calcium carbonate, which is the shells of clams and mussels and crabs and stuff like that. So that can get locked up inside the animals, which is a really good way of uh sequestering chemicals. This is how some things like oysters are sort of technically carbon negative. They just grow in the sea, they form this shell, which as long as you're not burning the shell, which most people don't do, then it's just the carbon is staying locked up in there. I love wow, that is very interesting. Bicarbon's cool stuff. Everyone's got it, but I didn't know anything about it. I've got some in my cupboard that when I first got married and started making cakes for my wife, I bought and have not opened it since. And what I learned is it goes off, right? I thought it probably didn't, but I think it stops working as well because um oxygen gets in and it natures it. It does. I've I've never started baking a cake without realising that my bicarb won't work because it's too off to be functional anymore. It's so annoying. Really? I go through it quite fast. But it's I think it's crazy that it lasts fifty million years from when it formed under this lake in Wyoming and then once you get into your cupboard it's like two years I'm sorry. That's done. Yeah. Baking soda though, it's used in the medical industry as an injectable product. Uh it helps for people who are undergoing cardiac arrest, people who are having heart surgery, chemotherapy, they often use it for. There's been huge problems because there's been shortages of it and it's so essential that they've had to put off surgeries or send patients to other hospitals because it's such an essential item. Is it that they get to the cabinet and say, oh it's gone off. I should have done more surgeries And it's basically this have this it's basically this quality of it to make something alkaline, isn't it? So if you have acidification of your blood or um if you have been poisoned and your kidneys have stopped working so they can't um keep the blood pH good anymore. You just like eat a bunch of cake or have bicarb injected into you. Yeah, you got bicarb in your stomach all the time, whether you've eaten some or not, because the mucus lining of your stomach has got bicarbonate in it and that's what stops the acid from eating away at your stomach lining. And yet when I leave it out of my cake recipe and just tell my guests, look, it's in your stomach already, so can you just eat this completely flat dough and just let your stomach do it. It's actually B E Y O on the uh B Y O B where the B stands for bike up. Brilliant. True baking powder. There was another thing called Pearl Ash, which was a kind of baking soda, but true baking powder was invented by someone we've come across before, a man called Alfred Byrd. Uh and Alfred Byrd created Byrd's custard powder because his wife was allergic to eggs . So he thought, Well, I'm gonna make this powder that will make you custard but you don't need the eggs in it. But his wife, who was called Lady Bird later. So good. Um she was also allergic to yeast. So he developed baking powder because she couldn't put yeast in her bread. Then he gave it to troops in the Crimean War and they became huge. What a great husband though. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Good guy. You don't get a lot of those around that time, you know? It's important to call them out when you do. Yeah. Other businesses uh that are to do with baking powder that were interesting from the early days, eighteen ninety-one . William Wrigley started a soap company. And as part of trying to shift the soap, he gave baking powder alongside it. It proved so popular that he then became a baking powder company because it was way more popular than the soap. So he thought, okay, how are we now going to get baking powder shifting? So he added two packs of gum that you would get along with the baking powder. And then everyone was like, this gum is amazing. And so that became the business. And that's where it finally ended. Wrigley's uh gum, as we know it, is that that. That's the journey it made to get there. Yeah. That's great. Wow. Baking powder, of course, not the same as baking soda, we should say. So baking powder is when you've added the acid to the alkaline, and then you add the thing that stops them reacting with each other straight away. So you add like a buffer. So that's how that Yes. If you add baking soda, you then need to add an acid in your recipe, something like buttermilk or whatever. Here's something you could make with baking soda. Get your dried marrow fat peas, put them in water , add baking soda, rinse them, and you get the northern delicacy. Mushy peas. Oh. I didn't know mushy peas are made with baking soda. Uh but the problem is , apparently, according to what I've read now, by adding that baking soda, it basically removes all of the vitamins. Okay. All of the vitamin . And there was an American writer with the brilliant name Tabitha Tickletooth in eighteen sixty who wrote, Never under any circumstances unless you wish entirely to destroy all flavor and reduce your peas to pulp, boil them with soda. This favourite atrocity of the English kitchen cannot be too strongly condemned . Wow. That's great. So moshi peas is just a way of making peas really unhealthy. I'm afraid it appears that it might be. That's devastating, because whenever I get fish and chips I think, well this is all pr this is all like batter and chips, but at least at least there's a small green pile of mushy peas. Wow . Wow. Tabitha Tickletooth. I know. That is sitcom Um it's used for everything though. Oh , yeah. Every problem you have that you Google they recommend basically. It's in some fireworks. It's a disinfectant. It can be a fire extinguisher. Um it prevents sheep bloat. It's in mouthwash, it polishes silver, it deodorizes furniture. It does feel like what is your luxury item to Desert Island Is such a good shout. It feels like that's what it should be. I've tried for all that cleaning bullshit. They always say, oh biking soda vinegar, you try it and then you think oh fuck it, I'm getting some bleach. No, you 're fucked fuck it and buy a new pan. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. Just wanted to let you know that this week we're sponsored by TV licensing. Yes, TV licensing. Do you have your TV license? It covers you to watch over 400 TV channels, everything on the BBC iPlayer. I spent a lot of time on the BBC I player watching. One of my favorite shows of all time, live at the Apollo. Stand up show. Good stuff. It's all the best comedians there are on one stage. That's the thing. Like, you know, unless you go to live comedy, you're not really seeing comedians do their stuff'.re They always in TV shows with challenges. But here, you know, if you want to see Tom Davis, one of my favorite stand-ups, uh do his set, this is the place to go. You got Ivor Graham, Desiree Birch, you got Doro Breen, Josh Whitakum, you know, you'll be seeing him on Strictly Come Dancing, but this is where he does. This is pure. This is pure. Unfiltered. Exactly. Their own stuff without all those other distractions. Yes. And I have also been watching a comedy myself, not just you who can watch comedy. I've been watching Amandeland, the latest series, which is absolutely hilarious. I'm sure you guys have heard of it. Written by Holly Walsh, brilliant show about a snobbish mom. So yes, as Dan says, the TV license covers you for over four hundred channels. It's not just BBC, it's ITV, it's Channel 4, it's Dave, and it's for pay TV services like Sky or Virgin Media and live TV streaming services. So if you're watching live stuff on YouTube. Yeah, so get your TV license now, and all you need to do to find out more is go to tv l. co.uk slash pod . Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast. Close your eyes. Focus. Listen to work getting done with Monday.com . Relax as AI does the manual work while your teams are reliant on a single source of truth. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Notice you're limitless. Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com start for free and finally breathe okay it is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact my fact this week is that identical twins often don't know who is who when looking at photos of themselves. It's crazy. Idiots. This was a paper. It actually won an Ig Nobel Prize a few years ago. The paper was called Is That Me or My Twin So if you see someone that looks like me in a photo and you say, Dan, this looks like you, and I say, I don't I don't think so. It's because I have such good self-face recognition that I I'm so good at identifying myself. So whenever we get photos sent in the inbox of hot dan, yeah. You always go, it doesn't really look I see what they're saying. It's got glasses and stuff, but it doesn't really look like me. Yeah. Exactly. It looks like someone more attractive than that. It looks like someone really hot, yeah. Is this a new is this? Yeah, hot hot dan is a people spot at peop hot dan's out and about. Yeah, okay, I would put a put a stop to that. Hot Dan, not Dan. Hot Dan is not down. Hot Dan is not Dan. That's a t shirt. Um so what they what they wanted to know was if you're an identical twin, what happens there? Do you do you mistake your twin or do you have such great self-face recognition that you can just instantly tell? So that was the point of the test. And so they got a group of twins to sit down and they were shown pictures uh of either them or their twin, and they had to make quick responses to tell. As part of a control group, they got a friend or a relative of someone close to the twins to make the decisions as well. Uh and they discovered that yeah, identical twins aren't actually very good at identifying them selves. Um they showed them a few permutations. You would see the photo the right way up, then upside down. They were less good obviously when it was upside down. But they still weren't great when it was the right way up. I mean they are identical. But it's not that line They're not identical. Well they're they do look quite similar to each other usually, don't they? They do. But think of all the sets of twins that you know who are identical twins. They are all slightly different from each other, right? No, I don't know. But to be fair, they were show you say they had to have quick responses, it was naught point naught three seconds they had. Oh in the study. Okay. Considering like reaction time of a human is naught. Yeah, so it's really a test to show that even if you barely see something, you instantly have to be. Have we not checked that maybe all twins have very poor reaction times? That could be what we've seen. I actually slightly tested this because my mum is over from Australia. She's a twin and we had a birthday, so her sister Rosie was over, and uh we have a book that was done for them of a lot of photos of them as kids and and teenagers. So I showed it to them upside down to see if they could guess. And they were quite good actually at guessing if your mum and your mum's identical twin sister had married identical twin brothers, then you genetically, understandably if you work out how the math works, because identical twins are genetically identical to each other. Genetically your, cousins would be your siblings, right? Genetically, yeah, okay. Yes. And there is an actual word for that. It's called quaternary twins. It's happened enough that people have got a word for it. There are about 300 cases in the world where identical twins marry identical twins and their kids are called quaternary siblings. Here is something wild, which I don't think we've talked about. Okay. Some twins can have different fathers to each other. Uh-huh. You said this? This is a thing called heteropaternal superfecundation. Okay. Catch it. Yeah. There are not many cases worldwide. There are fewer than twenty, I think, that have been recorded. And it's where a woman releases more than one egg. Um she then will have more than one partner during her fertile window. Those two eggs are fertilized with sperm from two different men, but they are twins. Mm-hmm. Because they are both implanted into the womb at the time. So you could be you can have a twin who is also a half sibling. Yeah. You have to have shagged in a very short window, uh don't you? 'Cause only about fifty eight hours that your eggs last. It was a very short window, but you need to do some careful diary planning, but yeah, it can happen. We talked recently about this idea of um siblings being born a very long time apart. Yeah. Because of twin cup. Okay, jump you jumping the gun on me, but yeah . Because you can have embryos that stay frozen for a long time and then a f you know and then are implanted many years later. And Anna Andy has been trying to push quite a lot of cop dramas on us and one of them is twin cops, but the twins are born fifty years apart and so one of them's about to retire and the other one's a new rookie to the boss. Yeah nice. But they're twins. Yeah, that's brilliant. I love it. I love it. Why aren't you guys millionaires from this already? I forgot there is a TV series starring David Mitchell called Ludw ig, where his twin brother has gone missing, who was a cop. Oh, is that and he has to pretend to be his cop twin brother to solve the mystery of where his twin has gone. And actually, there's the one with Mike Bobbinson where he gets frozen and then comes back and he's the same age as his daughter. Yes, that's very good. Mammoth , yeah. So the two if you put those two together, this is how we're gonna sell it to the commissioners. Obvious. Commission ed now. But there are cases of twin cops, amazingly. Is it? Yeah, there is a there weirdly there are two sets of twin cops in Wales at the moment. Coppering about. I don't find that that surprisingly. Identical or non-identical. Uh one is identical and I think one is non-identic. Okay. Yeah. As in one pair is identical. Yes. Jack and Tom Herbert both became officers nine weeks apart in different forces. I think they're non-identical. But Ellen and Lisa Jones , identical twins. But also like police families is a thing, I think. Like if members of your family are in the police, you're way more likely to become a police person. Jack and Tom's dad is a police officer officer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's cool though, we've got twin cops. So that's that's another strut for the pitch document. Yeah, because I can already imagine when the sit com gets made that you can have in the sun that'll be we're the real life twin cups. Lovely. The PR campaign is already halfway there . Is it not cooler that we've got twin astronauts? And that I don't think we've mentioned the NASA twin study, which must be the smallest sample size of any study. It's a sample size one that NASA did because Scott Kelly, who went into space, his brother Mark is his identical twin. And weirdly both are astronauts, even though for the study, they didn't both need to be astronauts. In fact it would have been better if Mark wasn't one really, because basically NASA wanted to study if other variables are the same, i.e., if you're genetically identical and one of you goes to space and then comes back, we can tell the effect that space has had on you. Um but they both went. No, one went. No. So so Scott went, Mark didn't they must have had to draw straws. And they're both astronauts. So Anna was saying it was pointless that one of them did all the training to become an astronaut at . You can be an astronaut and not go into space. Well can you you kind of you're usually on the waiting list. Yeah. Okay. Technically a pteronaut, I guess. Yeah. Do you think as soon as you come back to Earth you stop being an astronaut again? No. Because someone says what do you do? You just say unemployed There we go. But yeah, that would have been a fight, right? I think usually with NASA when you've got two people going for the job they don't have a fight. It's just like WWF. Yeah, that's isn't that I thought that's how they do it. That's the videos I've seen. If you are an astronaut and a twin though, presumably you're better at recognizing yourself up Yeah. Because you're floating about in space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good . Didn't one of them become a big deal politician? Yes he did. The other the one who wasn't an astronaut according to you . Yeah, he did senator and his wife was a congresswoman who was almost killed in fact in an assassination attempt. What did they find in the end? Did they find Very little Oh he didn't have alien DNA or anything? I think it was a bit of a PR stunt, to be honest. I mean it because also they do not start. No, they they barely find anything because basically they couldn't force the guy who was on Earth to live the same life as um Scott in the sky. Like for as they said, we couldn't force Mark to eat space food for a year and like sit on his own to get the control. Um so they found bad news, you're not going to space. Good news, you could do all the really annoying stuff that you'd have to do if you were in space . Who win this bag? Yay . Felt like his eyeball shape changed a bit, a little bit of cognitive decline, but they do conclude that it all recovers after six months. Okay The telomeres was interesting. The telomeres. The telomeres are those are the protective ends of chromosomes and they think they shorten as our life goes on and that means that we can get certain diseases as we get older. They do shorten, don't they? Yeah,ah. ye They shorten and they think it leads to a higher likelihood of getting a disease like cancer and so on. Um when Scott was in space, his telomeres grew. So space might be an interesting place for us to have longer lives. Here's the thing. Twins are more likely to survive into the sixties , according to a study by David Sherrow and James Anderson. Why would that be? They looked at the lives of Danish twins born between eighteen seventy and nineteen hundred. So a lot big old sample size. Okay. Um where you've got someone to be a donor if you need a a donation.