John Williams and Film Music

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Drink differently and get some arc for the match at arcbeverages. com Boys onn the pitch, AK is redefining what alcohol free can taste like. AK has been distilling alcohol free spirits since twenty eleven, and they deliver all that familiar burn without the alcohol or the hangover. Drink differently and get some RK for the match at arKbeverages dot comot Howi everybody, just before we start this week's show, we have a little announcement. Yes, we do. I'm announcing that undera you need to just close your ears for a quick moment, I don't need to mention something privately to listeners.. Obviously, I don't want Andy to hear, but I'm reading a new book at the moment called Bad Deeds by one Andrew Hunter Murray. and it is so annoying because it's kept me up extremely late every night for the last seven days. It's so gripping. It's this new novel. It's a sequel to the last one that many of you might have read breaking and entering. Do doesn't matter if you haven't read it is also a brilliant standalone book And it's an absolute page turner, thrilling stauff, obviously with a lot of the trademark Andrew Hunter Murray wit. I feel like I was watching an action film for parts of it. It's amazing. G it now and now pretend I never said anything. Andy, you can open your ears again. Hello. Hi, I was just having a private chat, but you've got a book out. Yes, it's called Bad Deeds. It's out today. We're recording this on the Day of publication It's a thriller set between London's Dodgey property market and the wilds of rural Scotland. There's all sorts of skullduggery and mayhem and bad deeds. And the only other thing I'll say is if you're an audiobook sort of person, you might like to know that the person who reads the audiobook is friend of the parish and former guest on this show it's Phil Dunster. And he does an absolutely terrific job. So if you like audiobooks, maybe give that a go. And where can people buy at grocery stores or? Well, I would say your local independent bookshop, but I will accept any sale is terrific. Thank you very much. So whether you're buying it offline or on, but no, do pop down to your local bookshop and ask them for ten to twelve copies is a good start. There you go, ten to twelve copies of bad deeds. Seriously do it now, you will not regret it Okay, on with the show. O with the bookg You know that Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Th as a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tosinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order here we Starting with fact number one and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in seventeenth century Sweden Sammy Saymans had to work in secret. Unfortunately, most of their work involved constant drumming. Sammy Samans sounds like an end of the peer kind of magician. Yeah psychic. That's true. Hi, it's Sammy Shamans and here is my magical drum because they did have magical drums, the Sammy They are a group of people who live in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Northern Russia. And they still live there today, but they started off as hunter gatherers went into reindeer herding and they move around with the reindeer But one of the most important people in the community was the shaman who is known as a noidi. And the no ID would communicate between the worlds by using this drum And he would kind of bang bang bang and get into such a rhythm that he would get into some kind of weird sort of transance and Id say he because it was always a he and they felt like they could transform into other creatures, transform into the wind, all this kind of stuff. and they were persecuted by Christian missionaries And the Christian missionaries just basically said we're having that drum they took the drums off them. Confiscated them. Confiscated them, destroyed most of them. There's not many of them left, but there is one in the British Museum which is where I read about this whole story. They are engraved or painted with pictures and I think there's a way you can Divination as in the Sammy Shayan Wood, strike the drum with a hammer that is made of an engraved reindeer antler. H reindeer' a very big deal U and then that makes a little brass ring that you've got danceced across the surface of the drum and how far it goes or what it lands on tells you O tell tells him It' always a hymn woke to rub it in. hasn't yet come for the Sammyhaman worldld basically. And that tells you the future, you know. Or I did read an account from sixteen seventy four, which I think is the earliest account we have of more southern people by a guy called John Scheffer who said they also sometimes use the drums to decide what animal to sacrifice to their gods. So he said each drum would be covered in lots of pictures of animals and birds and fish and stuff And then there was a kind of a pole attached to the drum, then at the top of it, a little brass frog and you bang the drum and when the brass frog fell off Whatever animal it landed on, whatever animal the frog chose was the one that you had to kill. It's like a wheel of fortune kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah Yes. You're not proposing taking this anent sacred ritual and putting it on ITV at primeime. I'm afraid I have. these celebrities will we sacrifice Th images that you said and the The Sami sort of would once they started getting persecuted by the missionaries, they would like say, o, this isn't a reindeer, this is a cross And they would slightly sort of change all the drawings to make them more Christian in the hope that they wouldn't get But they did pretty much all get taken. There's not that many of them left. I haven't heard much of the Sami, but I realize a kind of classic fact is to do with the Sammi, which is the word Poron cuma, which is the distance a reindeer can travel before it needs to stop and urinate. That's kind of a classic thing that you see online. Suzie Dent tweets about that word quite often' as a reindeer ages that distance will shake You know, Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah. manyany of your Middle Aed male reindeer will ' stop just in case. It's nice to have stop when you can. Also like your reindeer will walk for a long time and then once they break the seal, then that's going be a mo. And when I say breaking the seal, I don't mean like with a clover The missionaries really didn't like the way the Siberians used their own urine to guide the reindeer because what they would do is they would urinate into a seal skin carry it around with them And then if the reindeer wandered off pour a bit of your urine on the floor and then the reindeer would come back because they like the salt and the minerals and stuff like that. And so yeah, the fact that they were doing this uriny stuff, the missionaries were like, that's not really in our buck What I mean, where does the Bible say donon't piss into a bag and then spill it on the floor when your reindeer runs away I didn't think it says any it's a c. Yeah. They want to have red all sorts of stuff. So the radio do eat the yellows no Yeah, they do. they like to look the That's do a lot of animals for. It'd a good way to attract the old man in the coat. Be heard of him No. I mean It sounds like Dan with his creepy coat. I'm pushing my new business. Do you need a kid's birthday party? Absolutely ruined. Well, you need the old man in the coat. All you need to do is piss out the front of your house and I'll come in lookick at. And once they know you as in Hampsteered Heath. Just the old man in the coat It's what they call polar bears, the Sammy O God's dog the other name Taboo. It's a taboo. They don't want to give it its real name. So it's got a good code name. God's dog is very good. God's dog is wonderful. ye. Yeah, there's definitely a belief that that polar bears can speak English, but not very well, kind of as well as a toddler. So the belief is that they don't understand metaphors. So when you're talking about how you're going to hunt a bear That's why you have to use metaphors like the fur clad one. Do you also say, Oh it looks like over there they're selling IC E C I? I was reading just another thing on how the Christian missionaries dealt with them. In this earlily account from sixteen seventy four, John Scheffer. He was Christian, so he had lots of comments about the Sammy and how They weren't very good at being Christians, and he said they stick at several points of Christianity, namely the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul And I just likek that immediately afterward he said, and they worship the sun chiefly for its light and its heat, believing all things are made by its means. such a brilliant tone of patronizing disdain. I don't know why they can't get the whole resurrection of the dead thing. Also, they think the sun's really important. That's really funny Yeah So Lidus was a big fun. The su Linaeus the guy who named all the animals basically is to say God creates and Linnaeus puts into categories but he went to visit them And they had a big effect on him. So after that he decided to just walk around in saammy clothing all the time even when he was back home. Yeah, yeah. love. Did't he? Like it obviously was a different time If I have just been to China and then I come back dressed like a Chinese person, Y. It's not going to work, is it I think to be fair, he basically wore he basically thought this whole reindeer coats for coats works and wore a lot of reindeer head toe, didn't he? And he did carry the drum, which to be fair would seem a bit appropriatory. Yeah. I think we all know somebody who's had a gap here and got a bit too into it Yeah. A are you looking at me like I've never had a gap y. I just have a gap two weeks every year. Yeah. you're the guy dressed in a Kimona today Andrew. And done, by the way, that papua New Guinea gaord that you're wearing. Thank you I know it's hidden by that thin coat. Oh yeah, Lineus, one thing that he really liked about them is that the men carry around a sweet smelling fungus to attract women. just in the same way that I might spray Lynx Africa on myself. They would do this with a fungus and he said In other parts of the world you must be wooed with coffee and chocolate, preserves and sweets, wines and dainties, jewels and pearls Here you are satisfied with a little withered fungus. Well it is very cold Just to think about drumming and drums as we're on the Sami and their drums I found this absolutely wild Drums are many thousands of years old, right? Yeah. ven we' found ancient ancient drums from civilizations all over the world. But the drum kit wasn't invented until the twentieth century. Are you telling me no one had ever thought of I can use my other hand for this as well when are the first drum solos that you can think of? They're all quite recent. I just think maybe people did them and didn't manage to record them onto cassette tape back in the day. Maybe. It's interesteresting. It's wild, isn't it? Yeah maybe. I think the jury's out on that one I would say see. You can speak in drum if you're a certain type of person. yeah from a certain type of place with a certain type of language In West Africa, drum languages were quite common, probably less so now, but this is in languages specifically which they're very tonal. so you can make a drum that can play lots of different tones. And so I think the Bulu dialect of the Bantu language is a very good example of this where they'd have a drum where if you bang it at a different place along it it makes a different tone and therefore you can transmit messages Up to twenty miles apparently And everyone would have a drum name. so you'd give someone their drum name, you'd bang on the drum, their drum name. so you know they're talking it's like having a special knock on the door Like I always knock on the door the say like Yeah. I mean, it's not like a lot of people would do a similar thing, but If you heard that knock, there's a good chance it's going interesting. And if you don't hear a knock at all, that's down in a big coat outside fr. But you're then knocking to yourself. If I were a Bantu person, I'd use that knock for you, then. That would be my way of saying Boy James. If we werere on university challenge, I would buzz in and theyd go And they'd know it was me to answer them Yes, exactly. Harkking fish Why have we never done university Chelb as a team? We've never been asked andy and also they don't do podcast teams. We're not at university. University teams.. Yeah, but what the hell? And we'd be very bad. There's broader truth, I think, which is that it would be soad fun. And our insistence on being addressed by our drum names, I think is aw Podcast challenge on the other hand, seems like a good idea. Edit this out of the podcast Were We're going to do Podiversity Challenge. University Pod Challenge. We're going to do it. We'll think of a name ye. Yeah. don't edit this out. I don't want to do that. Pe it in so someone else steals the idea. One thing I read about these drumming languages in Africa is you you drum phrase or a song or something that everyone knows what it means and everyone knows the context of it rather than just doing individual words. Yeah, I'.sery weird because it already seems difficult to convey stuff via drum rather than words. and the fact that they've over comppllicated it by then saying you can use these metaphorical phrases. but For instance, like let's say I wanted a cake could that And you would know like maybe a little simpler. okay. Or you'd be like, local comics here, that would be a good drum name for a local comedian. Here come Sammy Shayaman. One of my close friends is a drummer, professionally. one of the big things about drummers is that they have a bad reputation. Yeah. Not a bad reputation, but just a reputation maybe for being not stupid. Not the brightest member of the band. I'm not saying they are. I'm saying that's what their reputation is. Im sides they won't be listening to this podcast. It's way too high So I asked him for some drummer jokes. Oh yeah. I just thought you might like some of those. Yeah call them then. What do you call somebody who hangs around musicians T never for trouble How can you tell if the stage is level U The drummer is dribbling out of both sides of his mouth How do you know when there's a drummer at the do? I don't know. The knock gets faster and they don't know when to come in What's the difference between a drummer and a savings bond? I don't know. One of them will mature and make money. I think what this needs is a pedptish Save more on what you need to get the job done right. Right now, at Lowe's. Get fifteen percent off, select custom entry and interior doors. Plus, save eighty dollars on the D Walt twenty Volt Max two tool combo kit, now just one hundred sixty nine dollars. And at the Lowe's Pro desesk, bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo, or even a sticky note is all you need. Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget At lows. Valid through seven eight while supplies last. Selection er is by location Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Everyone, we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by Babble. Yeah Babel. You know Babel, we all use Babel. We're learning languages. We want to find out the best way to get the most up to date vocabulary using the best tools available to get that stuff in our brains. Babel's worked it out for you. Absolutely. They let you practice real life conversation step by step with no stress and it just gives you confidence. like I've been learning my language of choice, which is Russian for many, many years. but just doing Babel, it just really helps you get up to date. If you've not done it for a little while, you go into Babel, you do it for a little while and suddenly you're an expert again Exactly, And it's not like the old school day of just buying a book and having to deal with it that way. They've worked out many different ways in which you can consume all of these language learning exercises. There's podcasts, there's interactive dialogues, and it's all curated by more than two hundred language experts worldwide. So this really is the place to learn your language. Yeah, Don't buy a book like a big old nerd. G to Babble. There's a special limited time deal for our listeners Right now, you can get sixty percent off your Babble subscription at babble dot com forward slash fish. That's BaBbLot com forward slash fish. sixty percent. No book's gonna to give you sixty percent off its sale price. is it? So do exactly what Jade says, Babble dot com slash fish and you'll get sixty percent off rules and restrictions may apply And there are some quite good books out there. Oh yeah, I mean, certainly the theory of everything else. Anyway, love with the podcast Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is Andy. My fact is, from nineteen ninety to twenty eighteen, there was an award given out every year for the most human. human You sounded so robotic. This was a prize that was given out. It's a subsection of a bigger prize, right? And it's all to do with the taring test So for anyone who hasn't heard of that before, that's the idea that Alan Tering brilliant computer scientist proposed in the fifties that The way you would be able to tell when we had artificial intelligence is if a human is conversing with someone who's unseen and they are unable to tell whether they're talking to a person or a computer That's when we'll have true artificial intelligence. Yeah, which I would say is now, right? Oh yeah, people are falling in love with AI's, left right and center we've way passed the Taruring test. So by that metric.. So when we started this podcast, it wasn't true. Absolutely. Asolutely. Yeah. So that's the idea of the Turing test. And there was an annual prize during those years starting in nineteen ninety called the Lerbna Prize where people would bring along their own chatbots and they would be training them and improving them every year. And if your chatbot managed to fool a human judge, you would win a prize. There would be several thousand dollars for the most human computer. As part of that, you obviously had to have some humans being behind the screen chatting back for the judges to have any ss like, are you talkking to a computer or a human? Sometimes you'd be talking to one, sometimes the other And as a separate prize, the judges would pick the human chatter who was most convincingly human and give them a hundred dollars or some small pze. I think this is a problem with the experiment because If the human is then changing their attitude and the way that they respond because they're trying to get a prize. Yeah then that changes the experiment,? Well And that is what happened, right? Brian Christian, who won the Most human human prize, he wrote a whole book about it. and part of the book was telling how he prepared to be human as part of the test. And so he did study to be human to win it. That feels like it's kind of cheating Isn't the whole point that you've got to be yourself. Avising for an exam is not cheating. And if the exam is, are you a human? it's completely reasonable to We're testing the computers, right? Yeah. If the whole point of the exam is to test the marking system and you change your answers to make them completely wrong or completely right, then that's not a very good way of testing the marking system. I think he was just practising being himself and being authentic in conversation and being truly human. How would you do it? I prep several hours a day for all of my conversations. You You use the same person as Kirst Aarmaday If you wanted to pretend to be human, what would you do? Becauseuse I feel like you would just do something really dumb, right? Yeah. That's a greation, James, I'm so glad you asked me. But what do you think? Here's the issue though. If you've got very specific loves and so on as a person and you bring them to the exam, you might lose. So one person was outed as a robot when they were a human because they knew far too much about Shakespeare They said no human could possibly know this much about Shakespeare. It just so happens it was a Shakespeare expert on the other side who was a human. Really the way to do it now. and this is my optimistic theory about where the world's going. The only way to convince people you're human is to actually see them because the only place that robots haven't managed to achieve anything like human resemblance is in the physical world, right? They still can barely move I mean, I know there's all sorts of claims every year. I mean, they play football, they fold laundry and whatever, but if you watch them trying to even run marathons, they still don't look very human. But they just wn't the marathon. I know, but they didn't look like humans when they did. So I would say Pop a big coat on that guy who run the marathon. People think Dan's achieved a recog. I would say if you put that robot Be it was all over the news when I was in China. was the top story in the news that day robot next to Phoebe from France running. You would not be able to distinguish the term them. It's a real slam on Phoebe. But this is a thing about robot technology, right? is that they've managed to mimic our brains unbelievably well. But physically actually it turns out that it's very, very difficult still. And so I think people are going to be driven off their computers real worldice optimistic idea. Ofullly not by driverless cars because there was a situation in Atlanta earlier this year where fifty Wayo driverless taxis drove through the same area between six and seven o'clock Because someone had put a children at play sign in the road, which wasn't supposed to be there and they would drive into the road and then they'd try and get out and they'd see that side and they'd go back in the other direction again and they'd just be driving in circles and circles and circles. So it kind of work as they can see a children at play sign and know that that's something. But it's like you can kind of hack it to kind of make them drive around in circles and get lost because they're not thinking Can I tell you just a quick thing about this guy Lerbner who set up the priz? Yeah. Beuse I don't know if you read into him, but he was very eccentric. Yeah. So it was treated like serious AI people said this is just a stunt. you know, he gave out a medal with Altururing on one side and him on the other. you know, he was there was this amazing he sadly died about ten years ago now. He was a very interesting cookie, so there was this piece about him in twenty eleven. He had made his living in portable crowd control fencing and roll up disco dance floors. That was his main line of work. Cool. I know, cool, right That is ye And he wanted to sponsor the prize because his idea was true artificial intelligence will free the world from work. you know, very optimistic that there won't be any work anymore But his other speech after the competition was all about his plans to revolutionize public transport using roller coasters. He says a roller coaster is the ideal transport system. It could work and it would solve many of society's problems, whether it could be implemented as another matter. I agree. What's the driver ofess car, except a kind of slightly shit roller coaster. It's a tube apart. What's the underground apart from a roller coasterally? Yeah, the keu difference with a roller coaster is that you always end up where you started. So that feels like the tube is a bit better than a roller coaster. Well the circle line functionsion if like every time you came into work you could buy a photo of yourself on the way to work. That would be great. Worth it. Yeah I interviewed Lebna. I met him. Did you? Yeah it was online. I met him. I inter sure it was him? Yeah, that it could have very well have been a chat buub but it was him who I interviewed alongside Mitsuku who was the chatbot that had won the Lomna Prize or got first place in the Lermner Prize five times. And is the final champion because it stopped in twenty nineteen, I think. But yeah, very eccentric character even to look at. you know, like a Daliesque mustache. and he had two big passions. It was roller coasters and it was making prostitution seen as something as a normal day to day thing that you would just go within your marriage and go, I'm just gonna go to the brothel. You' in this toll to go on this ride.. Don't take a photo of me halfway through. I know we'm moing on the b. Scream if you want to go faster I know you want to carry on Anna, but we've got a few more of these. Oh not good. I was sick twice and my hat fell off. You must keep your arms inside at all times Just let them get it out of their system Here's an interesting look at that hot dog just before Here's an interesting thing with talking about love and talking about AI. There was a guy called Robert Epstein. in two thousand six He was looking online for love And he found and fell in love with a Russian woman. They exchanged love letters and so on. And for about four months it was going back and forth until he finally realized, hang on Is this a real person? And it wasn't. It was an AI bot that he was an expert in the field of He is the co founder of the Lugner Prize Robert Epstein. This is a good sixteen years after this prize had been set up. He fell in love with an AI bot online. Yeah. Basically almost anyone's susceptible to it, I think Yeah On telling the difference between humans and roobots, how good are you at proving you're a human online with the recatures Oh, you mean like which of these is a boat kind of thing? Exactly. how many traffic lights in this? a traffic light? You know what I think I reckon I've got it wrong before and it's let me pass That's because robots are better at it. Really? Yeah, the constant problem they have is trying to get ahead of the AI because AI works out how to hack it over and over again. And basically by twenty fourteen, ninety nine percent of bots could solve the distorted letter ones where they said, you know type the letters you see. And in twenty twenty three, there was a study that found that bots are better than people at the picture ones. by some degree, so when you're showing the image seventy eight percent of the time people got it right, one hundred percent of the time the bots got it right. I thought the point was that they're getting you to do this, but while you're doing it, they're checking your browser history to make sure you've not been going on the same website five hundred thousand times. Usually the reason Well I thought it was, but sometimes usually the reason you get a capture is because your browser history isn't human enough So the only way to get around it now really is to allow cookies, browse the internet for five minutes and then go onto the website that you want to go on, becausecause then they see that you've browsed the internet like someone. Becauseuse used to be that they could tell if you were too slow clicking the mououse. you' a human. I'd like deliberately wobble my mouth a little bit so it looks b humor. None of that works anymore. The robots have learned to act like an idiot like a human. I thought we were just training it. I mean I know thought was lying to them. The idea was we were teaching the AI traffic lights look like in everyer as well. So that's still happening? We're still training them. Right? o. Is this sometimes why when I get to the end of page eighteen or a Google search for Moss, let's say, it says Are you a human Do you ever forget that? you get to the end of really? BeCcauseuse nobody clicks through eighteen pages of Moss results. I think that will be why Yes. Remember there was the big thing where Watson, the IBM AI computer, went on Jeopardy, and there was a whole thing about Jeopardy There was a big complaint from the makers of Watson who said they rewrote the questions so that it didn't allow for it to do it. So for example, an example given is in two thousand two, M andM signed this wrapper to a seven figure deal, obviously worth a lot more than his name implies ty fifty cents. Whats is fifty cent? Damn it. And Watson would be able to figure that out, but they rewrote it to lose two thousand two and M andem in there. So it relied on you to make a connection of a pun. I see from the second half of the. Surely, the quiz question is basically, do you know that fifty ccent is one of M andem's stable of rappers, isn't it No, I think any name, any musician with money in their name a low denomination't I didn't know about the stable of rappers, but I did know that fifty cents. I suppose yeah, the thing is with those questions is they give you two different ways of getting to the answer, right? Yes. either with the pun or with the knowledge. Yeah. And that's why they complained. But it's interesting. I put it into Chat GPT this morning just to see what it would give if I gave the question without two thousand into two an MMM Of course, immediately came up. probablybably fifty cents a seven figure deal is worth far more than fifty cents. Was it logical hand. so it can do that. So it overexposes the jokes. Yes. Oh dear. Maybe I too have an AI. I gave AI a laterural thinking puzzle And it couldn't crack it.am satisfying. This was triggered by the fact that I was wondering if Roldarl was a vegetarian because I just read a book of his that was very anti hunting. So I said is Rolddl a vegetarian. And Google AI said There are many clues in his book that suggest he's a vegetarian. For instance, fantastic Mr. Fox is vegetarian. and obviously I thought Well, the whole plot of fantastic because of fox are like youre eating meat. There's a where he breaks into a barm and just kills two chickens instantly. And a flexatary chicken b It's a real meat, isn it Obviously the carbon footprint of chicken is a lot better than beef Yeah So I thought that's faulty. So I tried Claude, the anthrobica AI on this riddle which I always just love. so it's and you have to write it down, but imagine you have one, three and five in a row. and then directly beneath it, write to four The words. No the new numbers has to be numerical two and four. and then a question mark directly beneath the five. Okay. And it's like, what's the question mark? Six So youd think it's six. So obviously, that's what AI says to me first But you can see Claude tells you it's working. so it's like it says sussing out lateral thinking options. No, is it six? And you say, no, it's not six. I think it's five again. I gave it so many clues. stillill didn't get it. I'll give you guys a clue.. It's not a number and it's related to cars And this is kind of an example of I too. It's an R for reverse. It's an R And that's ' robots don't drive cars. But they don't know the anual. In fairness, I think six is a legitimate answer though. Completely, but it's when you tell it's not six. couldn't And ke the thing about AI is it's over conffidident. So at one point it said, I've got it. it's F Right. You know, when AI's really, I've done it now. Sorry, AI's overconfident. Maybe I too am an AI. Isn't Dahl a vegetarian curry Oh yes. Yes, I rolled all If not a vegetarian at least It' a vegetarian curry. Yeah. veryer good. And AI can't make proper jokes. Maybe you today are an AI Okay, it is time for fact number three, that is Anna My fact this week is that the only ride at France's second most popular theme park is a two euro carousel Yeah, I've just taken my daughter to Disneyland in Shanghai ten hour flight However much money it costs, trains, all that stuff, and all she wanted to do was go on the carousel. No. We went on the carousel four times. Right, now back on the plane. So this sounds perfect. Yeah. There you go would' have been a slightly cheaper carousel than the one you went to. Well done. And that's all it is. No why is this such a shit that It's Puis de Fous and it's the second best after Disneyland, Paris, obviously, which trumps everything. But this is a theme park that was set up in the nineteen seventies. It gets over three million visitors a year. It's the eighth most popular in Europe and it's basically a place where they do historical reenactments And it began in the seventies when this guy Philippe de Villier, who I'm sure we'll come on to talk about, found a ruin castle as you do stumble upon a lot in France. And he thought I'm going to stage a reenactment of this thing called the Vone Rebellion, which was a counter revolutionary rebellion aroundound about the French well at the time of the French Revolution. So he staged a re enenactment, it got bigger and bigger. and now it's sixty shows that act out historical events from all across history and all across geography. It's got these four period villages. So when you stay there, you stay in a period village It It sounds amazing. It sounds absolutely incredible. I' desperate to go. I went to stay somewhere recently that didn't have any of this, but it was faintly medievally themed. And the restaurants were things like the Night Taarn. And that wet your appetite, did it? Yeah What are you saying? I'm not saying I could see myself. This sounds better is what you're saying? I'm saying this sounds better. ye. ye. Even than there is plenty available for people like you in the UK right now if you want to get involved in the medieval scene Yeah There's all sorts of reenactments going on. Really? I'll put you in touch with something. Thank you. But none of them are this level though. And this I suppose is less like you reenact it as you watch other people. So there's shows that You' just watching. Did anyone else watch an hour long YouTube video of someone going from each of the reenactments? Okay, I did. And to begin with I like the way you're reenacting the reenactments I would I thought you would get a bit fatigued with the amount of reenactment that you're watching if you decided C on. Yeah, I think it loses. About thirty five minutes in, I sort of regretted my decision to watch That's cararousel is for. It's like a palte cleanser. Surely live, it's more exciting and you know, you're caught up in the sweep of French history. Kind of I love it. you're quite far away. so it's sort of like watching a very like well produced panto at a distance. I mean it's epic Th Three million people a year can't be wrong, dough Oh have you read the Trip Advisor Reviews?? They're very strong. Oh very strong. They're gonna to build one in the UK. They arerently Bistter. In Bistter. And we're gonna have hotels, three hotels each themed around different periods in British history. justust wondering if you had any favorites. I was thinking COVID era Yeah. No toilet paper. Also general Strike. General Strike three days for the price of five. Lovely. Yeah I mean, there'll be a tudor one, might't there? because it's Brish It's English history Yeah Eish history. It's so weird that people obsessed with the tudors when the revolution happened the next century. and it's ourgo revolution. Yeah. Yeah, everyone shaved their heads. Which revolution do you mean? The round head of Civil war Yeah, ye So half of the people shave their heads. Sorry, yeah, if it's everyone, there's no war is there? Everyone just agreeing all the time. Swinging sixties are. Oh yeah. I think that'd be a cool one I bet they would do that, wouldn't they? Like have a little soho. Yeah vibe. outrageously the French one, Pou defou has the King Arthur stuff I have no idea how they've managed to swing gettinging the rights to King Arthur He's not very ligious. The Eestate must be trading, surely. I just think what state king Arthur, I'moking. It feels like I could be who feels I like I can't tell. I think like there was quite a bit of Frenchy stuff going on in those Arthurian talesn that. Yeah and the M Dartha is written half in French and all of this. Yeah, yeah the Okay, yeah. And it's famously a historical this place, to be fair. The makers tend to say we're just trying to entertain Are they trying to entertain? Well there's the big question it's quite controversial. Are they trying to sneak in right wing propaganda to families? because that's what some people say. It's what some people claim and the fact that it was founded quite an extreme right wing politician is neither here nor there, I don't think. Well, he's not there anymore because it's run by another guy, his son, I think, called Nicla who described Vladimir Putin as having sweet eyes and sweet words Oh C c c. I saw byy coincidence because we've been planning to do this for a week or two. There was an article in Harpper's magazine this week author Nat Segnit went to this place and he said it was a bit like hanging out with an exceptionally charismatic and entertaining friend whose opinions only strike you as objectionable in retrospect.. So what is the idea? Is it that it's presenting a particular slant on history It's very pro Catholic, it's very pro French monarchy. It's very sort of like looking back at the past and wasn't France great in the past? and shouldn't we go back to France being great again? Yeah. It's very into old school France R un And that's how the right wing get you make it fun. The craziest thing about this theme park in my opinion, is when you get there, you get a little booklet, you know, the free booklet that tells you the map of everyere that you're gonna to go. And it's in multiple languages. and at the top of each one of them has the date of the day that you're going on, which means they print them every single day. for the day that you're visiting the thing. To you, that's the craziest thing about this insane. How Is it has deep weird like political How much ink we are we wasting here? How much How many trees have been chopped down so that we can go Yeah, but they probably are quite good at knowing how many people have popked in for that day. so they just now know how many to press on the printer. That view is the weirdest thing That's the weirdest thing. Also they could. Surely they can print all of them And then just print the date separately. I think it's like an additional stamp as well. There can be a little little man in a booth who just stamps on the date. It doesn't look. it looks very printed I think it's I think this implies you think whenever you scrunch up a brocer and throw it away, you think someone's going around all the bins, taking them all out, ironing them and reus them the next day. Oh, I'm thinking they've got a big batch in the warehouse. They don't have to go. Where's the guy with the printing for today? We've got ten thousand people in today How many guys should we print do you think? Should do about ten thousand? Yes. Oh yeah, let's print ten thousand every day. Ps down, this is the amazing thing about time. They know which date is coming. So today is the nth. What if it's still last? There's huge cancellations because it's raining too much or something. What if COVID happened, then they've got suddenly hundred sixty five days worth For twenty twenty six they twenty six or just twenty six because if it's just twenty six, they can reuse it in a hundred years. See. Okay, now we're talking. Okay Maybe it's not so weird. By what time the great French government will have risen taken over the world again. The Bob and monarchy will be restored again I mean, yeah, it's very interesting and strange. And I think the reason that it's not very well known about certainly in the UK is that eighty five percent of the visitors are French You know, loads of French people holiday within France. And it's and obviously it's so about France that it's naturally appealing to the French people,. Yeah I think so. And I think there is one in Spain as well, isn't there? Yes is. Well, they've done one in Spain, they've done one in France. they're going to do one in the UK Yes it is. Apparently the Spanish one is quite politically conservativeative on just how good a thing the colonization of the Americas was. Oh is it depicts the Europeans saying, Well, we'll only go ahead and colonize if you guys really want us to and as long as we're going to treat you really, really nicely. That's sort of written into the really show. Yeah. It's like the weerspoons of theme parks They're all, you know, you get your cheap ruddles, but you've got a political agenda. you got a well that this sif through we I can't believe about weatherpoons again, I can't believe it. But the weatherpoons often they dish out magazines. Yeah have the proprietor's views in them whichich is quite rare for a pub. you know, you don't normally get like a strongly angled magazine you w wasn't that your point? Yeah. I'm overre explaining I just think people won't know that there's a Weatherpo's newspaper. Sorry, got it yes. International listensers for internationalist By now everyone internationally knows about Weerspons.' sorry to keep talking about it, but You know what they don't do. They don't stamp the date on every single newspaper because they're not notutcases. you know who does? Newspapers stad? It's a weekly newspaper. It's not a daily newspaper just quickly on the one in the UK, which should be fine because we don't have an awkward colonial history. so Ioubt would be anything controversial in that. But it's planned forah Bucknell, which is near Bista and there are obviously residents who are very against it and residents were very pro it and I like the fact that It is in Oxfordshire and the residents are led on the pro side by a woman called Caroline Chipperfield Twiddy and on the anti side by Flu van Demen Van Thor M showhs how really Oxfordshire spepeak for England flow ye. ye, that's very interesting you. On reenactments in twenty fourteen, there was a World War two reenactment that we were going to do in Barnsley in Yorkshire But it had to get cancelled because people would be wearing Nazi insignia. And so the council stopped it but said that they would be able to reschedule if they did a World War two reenactment with no Nazi elements whatsoever. Right. That's very funny. very good. I think reenactments really interesting. like for example, civil warar reenactments, quite often that as they're sort of digging holes in the ground, they'll actually find the bones of fallen solder from the Civil War. This is in America. and that will then be brought back to a museum and so on. and so they're digging up artifacts as they are doing reenactments of. Why are they digging holes as part of civil warar reenactments? was there a of tunneling in the Civil War? I'm not sure S some of them maybe just dig a hole, mayaybe the pooing, I don't know, you know. I don't know what the outdoor litan situation is. Itsusic That Portalou, they did not have that in the Civil War. Oh my Godd, I have a fact about Portalou' in war enactments. Yeah then. You know how in the American Civil War? And in fact, in loads of wars, some women have donned men's clothes and they've gone into Oh ye. You know that's the thing that happens. And some women in the American Civil War dressed as men and fought in battles, right In nineteen eighty nine, there was an American woman called Lauren Cooook Birdress, and she had to fight a discrimination lawsuit because she had been banned from taking part in a US Civil War reenactment She had dressed as a male soldier to try and sneak into The reenactment of the war And then she was caught coming out of a women's Loo and was told off and told to go and put a dress on because there were no female soldiers in the war. She said, yes, there were female soldiers dressed as men in the war. I'm doing that.. And she had to fight a four year court battle and won the case. She eventually won and and was allowed officially to be It is a bit mad that they're saying you can only do it if it's really to what happened in the past, but she is coming out of a portal.. Exactly. ye, I know. Civil War enactments are obviously a big deal, but there's one particularly moving one I read about, which was in nineteen thirteen, an early one. This is in a Ken Burns documentary. and two armies, restaged the Picket Chge, which was when Confederates tried to break through Union ranks. the Unionist descended on them and defeated them. Anyway, it was reenacted by veterans from the Civil War And what year? nineteen thirteen. So that's fif fiftiet anniversary. And they came. and it's an amazing moment. So they all knew how to do it. There was no arguments about accuracy. So it was veterans from both sides. Veterans from both sides. and the ones who were on the Union side were there waiting behind trees and stuff, ready to ambush and the ones on the Confederate side charged through the fields and were descended upon, but as they descended, when they met rather than killing each other, they all hugged each other and burst into tears. Oh Was it much of a chat how old were these men It was a fifty years ler yeah Yeah, it wasn't as fast as they had once been. Yeah gosh That's coolent unless you were there on the sidelines to watch the reenactment That would have sucked What just was was this? mushy shit? You at an hour of that at on YouTube. Imagine fifty seven minutes into your YouTube video, you're like finally they're gonna kill you No this is w' gone mad. The first fifty seven minutes is the charge. Here we go so good Save more on what you need to get the job done right. Right now, add Lowe's. Get fifteen percent off, select custom entry and interior doors. Plus, save eighty dollars on the DWal twenty Volt Max two tool combo kit, now just one hundred sixty nine dollars. And at the Lowe's Pro desk, bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo, or even a sticky note is all you need. Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget At lows. Valid through seven eight while supplies last. Selectioner is by location Critics have spoken. World War two with Tom Hanks is a must watch. It is on a scale no one's ever seen before. An enormous accomplishment. The world turned upside down It's global history on the grandest scale. All wars changed the world, but none of them like the Second World War did, unlike any World War two docum series before. War two with Tom Hanks, new episode Toned eightight, Only On History, Next day on the A Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact. My fact this week is that John Williams, the composer of soundtracks like Jaws, Star Wars and Indiana Jones actually like film music. doesnn't like it This is probably the finest, certainly the most decorated person in the world of Hollywood soundtracking. And he says, I never liked film music very much He said, it can be good, but it usually isn't, other than maybe an eight minute stretch here and there. I think that the music just isn't there That what we think of as this precious gift film music is, we're remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way. Well, he's like a proper composer of non film music as well as film music, right? Yeah, that right? His main his main Well his main hobby from the dayjob of the film music is composing concertos and symphonies. And I think he sees the film music as just a job, but the concertos is the main thing that he likes to do that. He does see it as just a job. Yeah. But he's very good at his job. He's had fifty four Oscar nominations. That's more than any other living person.. I think he's only won five though. so that's a lot of losses,? Not that good job. Yeah So the only other person who's had more is Walt Disney who had fifty nine. Right. But like Walt Disney', a lot of them were for cartoons. And they were all like, for instance, in nineteen thirty eight, he was nominated four times in the same best cartoon category So like he boosted up his numbers basically by just being the only person who is making good cartoons. So they c to like a sh four different shots on the screen of Walt Disney from different angles and when it's announced three of them look really pissed off and' thrilled. in that nineteen thirty eight there were only five nominations for Best cartoon and he got four of them and the only one he didn't make was Paramount's Hunky and sppunky Right. That's my favorite. Yeah. He is right, John William, isn't he? Like it's always so annoying when Classic FM, if anyone who works there res a syct, does Classic FM at the movies. Because the point is film music is only good when you're watching the film because it's meant to be background to the thing that's happening. I'm not sureone I'm sure everyone agrees with you Anna I really. I disagree. Well sometimes I will sometimes pop on the score of Mission Imossible. I say I agree with you. But I think a lot of our listeners might not And listen if you're hearing this and you don't agree with Anna A lot of people are like you, you don't need to write it Right to Andy, feel free. It's a growing thing. lots of concerts are put on of exclusively film music. And I mean the ones John Williams has come up with, when you think of the themeune of Draws or Jurassic Park, they're so memorable and they're so easily called to mind. And people like music They've heard lots of times. a lot of people do. Yeah It's some kind of effect, isn't it? Like the exposure effect the more you hear something then you like it. And so if people hear a lot of film Yeah. a lot of times they're going to like them. Yeah He doesn't like films very much, John Williams. He says, I was never a movie buff or movie fan, then as now Yeah. He says he's never se through any of the Star Wars films. At least not through But like in fairness to him, he says In the interview I read, he said he' not watched them I'm not particularly proud of that, I have to say. So he's not like one of these people's like, oh, I'm just too smart to watch Star Wars. I've never seen Star Wars. Yeah like because there are a lot people like that, right? But he's like, well, you know, I feel a bit embarrassed I haven't watched it. I think it's quite a nice stance. Yeah, I think it's more common as well than we realize that directors and people who have to watch the footage so much because he does compose to the footage He's watched it probably more than anyone else, just not in the final package, right? Yes. He was a session musician, by the way, before he properly got into composing his own stuff. And there's one iconic song that I just didn't know he played a part in. He was the piano on the song Peter Gun by Henry Mancini, Do do do do, do, do, do do. That's him on the piano. I know what that is sir No, neither. even with your It's an amazing rendition. It's used as the themeune all the kind of motif in the film the Blues Brothers It props up again and again and again and that so that'ss that's interesting. know Well, maybe it's my sing it, but it's ye, it's used in a lot of adverts. To be honest, it sounded like one of those drum names. D Yes off. I guess somewhere out there a Samy person just went, Yes I said that his son, Joseph, is the lead singer in the band Toto Oh is it? Although not when they did the only song that Toto is known for. That's really. He wasn't there when they released Africa. but he was the singing voice of Simba in the Lion King And he has also scored some films like his father. so he scored Embrace the vampire U The leegend of Gator Force, soccer dog Re estate suuperman. and Fat beach Which is considered one of one of the best hip hop beach movies of all time, according to Wikipedia. Yeah. Dance noting. Daning, why aren't we talking about this guy? He's the real legend. Finally, real estate suuperman is getting some air on our podcast. Real Eestate suuperman sounds just like one I've had these ideas for a c show Now hear me out guys. He goes into a modest two better with potential and he comes out as Superman and spins around. The first person to produce a record from a film scar was someone called Anne Runell with a film called Ladies in Retirement And we have slightly come across her before almost because she wrote additional lyrics to the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf But arguably the first female person who did a score of a movie was Friend of the podcast Oh o oh Alice Guy. A Gy. A Gy. Yeah. no way. So A Gy, she made some sound films and the hers were more like soundscapes than the music But she would like there's one that she did called cananned Harmony where a guy comes in and tries to persuade the father of a girl that he wants to marry that he should be allowed to marry her. And he pretends to play the violin while someone underneath the table is actually playing the violin. And that was a guy who came up with that. good. And really early days Was that really early days? Well, she was the first female director. Yeah that's. I think you talked about her last time I was away, but yeah, she was like almost the first director, wasn't she? Yeah, she's come up on the podcast a few times. Yeah. so let's if we're talking early film, there is a theory that goes that the reason soundtracks happened at all was to distract the audience from getting annoyed by the amazing amount of ruckus being caused by the projector. So it gave you something to focus your attention away and cover up that noise. It's a theory that other people say that no it It's also you're trying to reflect what the world is like in a film.. That's the other theory. It's quiteool The original soundtracks were sheet music that was handed to the local the in house musician who had just played the tune. Would they have the data God Oh They tended not to play it, right? It was always women. this is in the old Nickelodeans And they'd beiven sheet music and generally they ignored it and they would improvise. So you got to see the film and improvise along. So you didn't know what kind of a film you were getting. One day you might get a horror, the next day it might be a comedy. because basically with the genre of a film is Almost dictated by the music, isn't it? If you put funny music over a horror film, it's no longer a horror film And the lady at the piano in the Nickelodeon could just shit the power. That's really cool. The power Yeah. I've got a fact about another very big soundtrack film guy. Vangeelus. B name within the world. He did Blade Runner, chariots of Fire, stuff like that. His music's very sought out. L he's just loved as a musician, did a lot of stuff separate to soundtracking. But there's one piece that he did, which was roughly twelve hours long that fans have been trying to find because it's quite scarce And it was when he did a straight to VHS thing. it was three VHSs that the music was spread over, called Microneurosurgery with Votapes, Spinal space occupying Lesions by Dr. Surgios Tegos medical publications. And it was a friend of his who was a spinal surgeon who wanted to show all of his techniques. And so he got Vangegelous to make a soundtrack because it b it. Yeah, because it's incredibly boring watching him just do it. That's what he figured And so this has only ever been released on these VHSs, but obviously it wasn't a big print run of the videos. But have you managed to buy one? The is I'm gonna have to finish soon because the auction's about to end That like that um Turretss a fire tune even as a skeptic of movie soundtrack sana that is pretty it's a top one, isn't it? Yeah Hold on, giveive it to me do do do Yeah It starts with the dumb So I think the problem just to cut just a circle back around to the start, the problem with this is that everyone knows the little hook, right? So everyone knows the bit they like. And I agree that was fun to hear, but the rest of the tune is often a bit crap background And you have to listen to all of it when they do classic eents at the music. but all the great composers have probably has one bit of the symphony, they think I've really nailed that bit. If you've ever been to the opera, everyone sits there through four hours of the fucy thing and then they get to the bit that goes Yeah. And then everyone in the crowd just sits up because they got to a bit that they recognize and then just leave after d d d d This podcast is like that, Anna. It's an hour long. There'll be one bit where Dan's explaining something. Okay. And you're saying that was the highlight. I'm saying that's what people are tuning in for. That's when they setit up. Can I tell you one of my favorite scoring stories times? So we all know the Snowman course ye walking in the air. Beautiful. Thank you. Totally. Totally beloved in the UK. I don't know if it's famous around the whole world, but it's a really iconic, beautiful story about a boy who makes a snowman and the snowman comes to life and they go walking in the air, they fly through the air. Yeah It was scored by a guy called Howard Blake. he came up with the idea because He been seriously overworked, right? He was composing so much and working so hard. He went down to Cornwall and he lived for three months in a single hut with just a bed and a one bar fire, living a really rustic, much slower pace of life of u And One of the last jobs he was offered before it before he decided to do this was a comedy called Percy about a man with a fourteen inch penis And he just thought maybe I need a break from work. wasas Alex Jones also in that one? No. I thought it was written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones. that? I think. Oh wow. ing from knowledge Python knowledge. Yeahre amazing knowledge. I mean, who knows that much about Python? You must be AI. Ironically, massive Python.. And he wrote it literally was walking al on the beach when he thought of walking in the air and he jotted it down on an envelope Really? Because there's not many snowmen in No, no, no. But I was thinking You know, we talked a little while ago about the Bailey Bridge, that kind of bridge called the Bailey Bridge. It might have been on a little fish. Yeah becausecause the guy who came up with that was an amazing prefab bridge that was incredible in the Second World War. He jotted his design down on the back of an envelope. Oh yeah. So my pitch is It's maybe a museum of all the envelopes Oh, it's a book of the envelopes. Right Right? Like all the things that have been drawn on an envelope, you get those envelopes. Specifically envelopes. What napkins? Like peopleople drawn on napkins as well that's a rival museum Dag packets.