Blowing Up Earth With Imaginary Lasers

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where you send us a load of amazing facts and then we marvel at how great they are. We give a little bit of extra material and then we do a little bit of extra stuff at the end where we give away custodianship of some of our old facts. There's so much to get through that I think we should just get going. Andrew Hunter Murray, Dan Schreiber, which of you will go first? I'll go first. Um this is a fact that has sent into us by James Udell, and it is the artist behind the famous Dogs Playing Poker paintings also once wrote a comic opera about an anthropomorphic giant mosquito. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I wish I could remember his name. Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. It's Cassius Marcellus something, but I can't remember the surname. I know it's the same as a president. It'll come to me. It'll come to me. He's he's a fascinating guy. Um I can't remember if we've spoken about him on the show before. I don't think we've ever discussed the dogs playing poker pictures. They're probably parodied more than you see the originals, would you reckon? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yes. Something tells me of this guy. Did he invent those um sort of cardboard cutouts that you get at the fairground that you put your head through? I feel like he's amazing. Yes. He is he is certainly the person that is credited with popularizing it to the point where it became a big thing. Um if you go to the seaside and it's missing its head and you stand behind it, that's the man behind the dog poker playing. I love those things. Yeah. James, that is stunning knowledge, I've got to say. That's really, really impressive. Isn't that extraordinary? Two seminal things that we sort of don't know the names of but we all know. Yeah. I just think it's like it's like there being someone who invented benches. You just think there's there's no way that a a a technology like bits the the beach where you put your head through the hole and get someone to take a funny foot. There's no way that has a named inventor. I can imagine you would go to like the Lascaux caves in southern France, and you would walk into the cave and there would be a little bit of a hole, and if you put your head through it, then it looks like you're spearing some buffaloes. You feel like it must be as old as that, right? Exactly. Exactly. Can we get one of those for the office? Um well what you think well what do you mean? Like as in it will be our bodies that other people can put their heads in or are we gonna get some bodies of other famous podcasters that we put our heads in or something? I okay, I was thinking it's our bodies and we put our heads through but we put them through the wrong heads. No, wa waitit, . We put them through the wrong heads. And that's a funny image for a tour poster or something. Okay. Yeah, unfortunately, I would say that our bodies are not distinguishable enough. You know, it's not like one of us is a farmer and one of us is a motorbiker and one of us is a builder. Yeah, so that one would work, but then the others I see just three middle aged men with like bodies that are feasible. Yeah, and we can't have one where three of us have put our head through the Anna headhole and Anna's put her head through the three holes of the feasible middle aged men bodies. Wow, middle aged that's the first time anyone's called me middle-age. Really? Come on , really. You've had the brain of a middle-aged man for at least 20 years. Yeah, my spirit, but that's different to my body. I've had the body of a like a a yo youngung Paul Newman for a long time, I thought. And again showing the mind. I thought, who's a beefcake? Who's a hunk? Paul New man . Shall we do another fact? Yeah, I've got one here. Uh, this is from Veronica Alfano from Sydney, Australia. Pretty cool. Um, and Veronica writes, I thought you might be interested in a little fish fact about an amazing nineteenth century figure. And Veronica presents it as a riddle. Okay. So there is a poet named Michael Field who is neither a man nor a woman nor a non-binary person. How can this be? Is it a field? An actual field? It's not a field. the right way though. Someone wandered over me like a cloud . Well it must be an animal I would say. Is it not? Not an animal. Oh do you remember that um we've actually done this on the show, so I doubt it's this, but do you remember the person who created a poetry machine or a haiku machine? Oh yeah. Like it but it was a steampunky one that it was before computers. The Latin hexameter poem with the Merry Beard episode. That was so good. Um no, it's not like that. Okay, I'll I'll say, I'll just give you one clue. It's two names. Michael Field, therefore two people. Very good. It's two people. But it's Michael Field is a very interesting poet because uh he, quote unquote, was two women, Catherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. AKA Bradley Cooper. Interesting. Um they lived in the second half of the nineteenth century. Okay, Veronica says they were lovers and life partners. They were also aunt and niece. Mmm. Wow. Quite striking. That is I would say. They wrote a lot of extremely sexy um poems about love and and you know female female romance and sexuality that were very enthusiastically reviewed. And then when it came out that they were not Michael Field, but they were actually an aunt and a niece, everyone was a bit a bit surprised, and I think was a bit of negative pushback against that. Um I can kind of understand that. It's it's unorthodox. Um they were ploughing their own Michael Field, you could say. Um they also wrote a book of poems to their dog, Wim Chow, who died in nineteen oh six, and they were so sad that their dog had died that they converted to Catholicism in the hope that they would meet him in heaven. Oh wow and they wrote a book of poems called Wim Chow Flame of Love, which I've been reading and it is sounds great. It's not good. Oh no. Really? What? It's not great. With that premise? Oh what? That's right. Okay, um here is another fact. This one comes from Jakob Forkin . Uh and actually Jak ob gives us two facts. So the first one is that Rold Admondson's polar thrust was so well planned that all five in his group had gained weight upon returning to base camp. Oh my gosh. Wow. That is devastating for the Brits who starved and and died of exposure and all that. I'm afraid so. I think um Abmundson's lot ate the dogs, didn't they? Well it's very nutritious stuff, clearly. Yeah. I can't believe that. Oh I'm feeling a bit oh my my cloth my polar clothes are feeling a bit tighter this morning. I'm so healthy and gaining weight. That's the way more than I did at the end of last year and I feel like I'm not losing that much weight. So I can kind of empathize with these guys. Sometimes like muscle is heavier than fat, that's what they say, isn't it? Yes. And you're eating a lot of dog at the moment. You gotta start. You gotta stop. Okay, uh Jak ob's second fact uh is is that there a Norwegian cross country skier named Caroline Stavus Ski Stad , and her name translates into English as Caroline Pole Hill Ski Place. No . Isn't that amazing? Nominative determinism ever. Pole Hill Ski Place. It sounds like you just made it up, doesn't it? And like look at the I need a name, I'm just gonna name it after things I can see. Yeah. Um damn it, Michael Field has taken. Okay . Um I've got um a fact about winter Olympic names. Oh yeah. So the Winter Olympics has just been uh and there is a shop called the Corona Sierra Stress Plants Shop. And they decided to do a thing where they would give plants to the athletes and let them look after them while they were in the Olympic village. And the athletes had to name their plants. So James Hernandez, the uh British figure skater, his plant was called Gary . Okay. Um Marjorie LaJoie called hers Olympia. Lithuania's Saulius Ambr avisius called their dude. And Canada's Madeline Shizas named her plant, Ilya Rosinov . That's a good name. It's a good name for a plant that, isn't it? It's a very good name. Does that name mean anything to you guys? Ilya Rosanov. No. So you haven't been watching the TV show Heated Rivalry , then. Oh my god, is this the hockey sex show? It's the hockey hockey guy. Um and the Madeline decided to name her plant Ilya Rosinov in the hope that the actor Connor Story would see this and say, Hey, I heard you got a plant named after the character that I play at this show. Maybe we could get together. Fancy a puck. Surely that's the tagline for the whole show. Surely. Do you guys have a plant that you've given a name to? I do. I'm literally looking at it in my room. Really? Yeah, it's called Baxter. Oh yeah? Baxter what's the story behind that? So named after Cleve Baxter, who was the CIA polygraph expert who believed that he could communicate with plants uh by hooking it up to a lie detector machine. Do you remember there was that story where he had six people come in randomly and stamp a plant dead in a room and pull it out, and only one of the six people had done it? He tested whether or not the other plant in the room could pick out the guilty person in a lineup. And according to everyone involved, the plant successfully picked out the killer. How did it identify the killer? Uh by cause it was hooked up to a polygraph so the readings when the killer walked in just woo woo right. Yeah. Woo woo is exactly the phrase I would use at the end of this anecdo te . Wow, Dan, what a fact. I mean no that that's a very good reason to name a plant Baxter. Yeah. I don't have any I don't have any named plants. No? No. Well mine are mostly mosses, which have a different different structure. So You don't give a moss a name, do you I think the um I think the is it the Latin or Greek for moss is Brian? Yes. Which is why they're bryophytes now, yeah yeah yeah. So you should just call them all Brian. That's a really nice ide a. Uh okay, let's uh let's do a fact here from Hazel Dixon. And Hazel writes that the first pre-execution last meal was in 1772 of Susan Brandt, who died by decapitation by sword. Brandt was offered a feast consisting of three pounds of bratwurst, ten pounds of beef, six pounds of baked carp, twelve pounds of lamb roast, soup, cabbage, bread, and an unspecified dessert , and eight liters of wine. She rejected this all and just had a glass of water. Wow. Still unsparkling? Unspecified. Um what was the sparkling situation in seventeen seventy-two? I'm not sure when San Pilogino was established. It's saying that this is the first pre-execution last meal, 1772. I think it existed a long time before that. There's examples in medieval Europe of there being this kind of thing. Really? Yeah. But the idea was that you would make sure that the criminal who was being put to death had a really good meal just before dying, so that they didn't come back to haunt the executioners, so that they left on good terms. What would be your final meal then? Uh probably a um bowl of fried rice. As a kind of you know, fried and then I'm fried. So sort of Oh, okay. Are you picking the method of execution? Oh sorry, do I only get to pick my meal, not the method of execution? Okay. I I was gonna say I might have some pulled pork and then be pulled apart by horses. There we go . Um I suppose I'll just I'll just go for um a nice bacon sandwich where the pickers died by firing squ ad. Um I'm not that feels mean, doesn't it, saying I want a pig to be shot by firing squad. I mean it's probably no worse than happens to normal uh in normal animal processing. Yeah, but in this hypothetical situation you have done a crime, so you're not a nice guy. Yeah. I guess I'm finding it hard to get into the head of someone who's not a nice guy. It's just so alien to me. What if you did the crime with the pig? So you were both up for execution. They kill your accomplice. You be the aunt, I'll be the niece. Um no I don't know. I pro I'd probably just have something um something vegetarian. Yeah trying to do my nice guy credentials, you see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And these last words. Did I tell you I'm a vegan ? Okay, here is another fact. This one is from Lucas Chyong Smith. Uh Lucas obviously knows the show well because they say a fact for you in the form of a little quizlet for Andy, and because Dan loves mundane sci-fi, James loves numbers, and Anna loves to blow shit wide open. Here goes. Wow . How many laser pens would it take to blow up the earth? Ooh . So we're fir ing laser pens at the earth, let's say from space. Yeah. Like imagine it's like imagine you have a Death Star. Yeah. Uh and you need to make a laser, but you're like, uh like that's gonna be tough to make from scratch. But we have this laser pen making factory, so let's just make a load of them and use that as a laser. Can I ask? I've never equated the laser of a laser pen as being just a very unharmful diluted version of a killer death ray. If you amplif ied the amount that you had, can that become harmful or is it just really bright? Yeah, it's what you were saying. Light really bright, yeah. Um so yeah, laser is uh amplified light basically so it's energy and so if you fire enough energy at anything it will it will break it up. I love the idea that the Death Star was basically a presentation gone wrong. It was saying if you'll just observe the planet all the round here. Oh my god ! Oh no ! We wanted to highlight their grade exports! Oh no! That's what lightsabers are. They were just a slightly larger laser pointer as well. The whole thing is a stationary club . I d it feels like it's gonna be a sort of an impossibly big number of laser pedals to blow up the earth. Think of the biggest number you can think of, like as in the biggest number you can name. A trillion. Bigger. Bigger than a trillion. Gazillion. Let's try real numbers. Um two trillion. I can't go higher than two trillion. That's really big for me. Is it? Okay. No, it is, according to Lucas' calculations, it is one point four two two octilli on. What? Uh, and an octillion is one with twenty-seven zeros. So um like a a million has got six zeros and a billion has got nine and a trillion has got twelve, but this one's got twenty seven. What? Uh and for context, according to Lucas, this is ten thousand times fewer than the number of bacterial phages on Earth. Oh, thanks for that context. That's really helpful. Um okay, so I read a fact recently which was really cool, it's new science, that peacocks have got lasers in their tails. Okay. So those little eyes in a peacocks tail, they amplify the light, uh and we don't really know why they do that, possibly to attract females or or whatever, but we do know that they work like lasers. And so I have worked out how many peacocks you would need to blow up the earth. Incredible. Incredible. Would you like to guess? Uh I feel like a peacocks less powerful than a laser . I'm afraid it is. So if you're if the highest number you could think of before was a trillion, you I'm not going to three trillion. No, I'll say two are we saying octilion? Octillion was the other one. Yeah. It's just fantasy football at this stage, isn't it? Dan, do you want to advance on that? I think the best way to get close to this is to make up a number and hope that scientists have also made up that number. Yeah, bajillion. Bajillion is not a number. Squinillion? Squamil ion, no, sorry. No, squinium . Squinillion. Oh, sorry, squinillion. No, no, you got it. Absolutely. Uh no, it is approximately three hundred and fifty five point five non illion peacocks it would take to blow up the earth. So that would be about thirty five peacocks for every virus that there is currently on Earth. Right. Get them together in one big death Star fire lighter. You'd have to you need a light source as well. But you know, we'll deal with that later. Let's get the peacocks first . Yeah, you're gonna need to start breeding peacocks quite sharpish if you're trying to get up to however many non ilian Well I feel really educated by that. Thank you, James. No, thank you, Lucas. Yeah thank you . Thank you, Lucas. And then James for the the peacock calculation. All I'm picturing is James at home and his little daughter coming up to him saying, Daddy, can we play? And he's saying, I'm working on something important here. Calculations of peacocks on the wall. Are you joking? You think I do this by myself now that I have a helper? The teachers going her math is um interesting, Mr. Horkog. Um she she doesn't yet know how to do three times four, but she does seem to be able to do three hundred and fifty-five point five nonillion divided by the number of viruses on Earth Her non illion timetable is fantastic. We're not knocking that. We're not knocking that. It's wonderful. Okay, well that is enough of your facts. Absolutely brilliant facts as ever this week. Thank you so much to everyone who sent a fact in to podcast at QI.com. But now it is time to go through our old archive of facts. Andy has spent many, many years typing these up, and we have got them here to give away to friends of the podcast on Patreon. So if you join Patreon at the very top level, then not only will you get a shout out on this show, you will get a digital certificate and forever and a day, your facts will belong to you. So who is gonna be the first person to give out one of our facts? I'll dish one out. This one goes out to Matt Ray. Congratulations, Matt. Your fact is that morgue refrigerators in Turkey are fitted with alarms, motion sensors, and handles to open them from the inside in case people wake up. So good. It's thoughtful, it's sensible. And do you remember we did this whole big thing about the nineteenth century where it was really unclear what dying meant and it was actually really hard to work out what the biological signal for death was. Yes. You know, because there's there's the heart, there's the brain, there's I mean, there's all sorts, and people had to come up with these mad methods and there were these hospitals of doubtful life where people were put when maybe they would wake up. There's got to be a point though when you're walking into that room and your relative is half eaten by maggots and flies all around them going, I'll give it a few more days. Yeah. I feel like there's a there's a point. There is a point, but it's just what is that point, right? Yeah. I think maggots eating through your eye holes. Okay, that's that's what we'll do. That's what we'll say. Okay, from now on, we have an official international standard. It's the muggets eating through the eyeballs Schreiber standard . Not the thing I thought I'd be known for after my death. Well congrats, Matt Ray. That's yours. Here's another one for Will Davidson. As a baby, Henry VIII had two official cradle rockers, paid three pounds a year to rock him. Very good. I don't know what three pounds would have got you in late fifteenth century. Not really a long term job as well either. How l how long's the post? Not long. Well maybe he continued into his like adulthood, he was still being rocked. Oh yes. Yes. Wouldn't wouldn't you love to like just have someone you've had a stressful day, you've just been doing podcasts, and like you can just lie down in a crib and someone's gonna rock you for a half an hour? That's gonna calm you right down. Yeah? No, you're look- you're both looking at me like I've gone insane . Okay, this next fact is now under the custodianship of Josh Pearson. Josh, your fact is that from eight hundred AD to thirteen forty nine, the Colosseum in Rome was used as an apartment block.. Brilliant Oh. And this this was not there were not active gladiatorial fights going on at the time, right? Like it wasn't like oh god, my bloody my bloody neighbours again. You remember we stayed in that hotel while we were on tour where if you got a certain hotel room, your window looked into the stadium of a football ground. Oh yeah. I've been to a few of those. The one we went to was in Norwich. Yes. They also have one in Field, which I've been to, which overlooks the football. I think Bolton has one as well. So there's a few hotels like that. But yeah, absolutely. That would be great, wouldn't it? Yeah. Just open your curtains and there's some Christians being eaten by lions? No . Okay, this one goes out to Stacey Pew . And uh Stacy, this might be relevant, I don't know where you live, but your fact for for now and forever is that in Australia you can be fined for swearing. This was quite a surprising one to us because we we think of Australia as being quite sweary . But it's not allowed and you better watch watch your mouth. People do swear and not get fined. Um but they're working on it. Um I think it's Northern Territory is Northern Territory was a place definitely we covered in the show that that people have been fined a fair bit for swearing. So if I just stand in the street in Darwin or whatever and say I'm so hungry I could bite the arse off a pigeon the Australians say. What am I gonna get arrested ? I don't know if you'll serve any time . I think it might be an on the spot fine, maybe a marshmallow cash point. I think this was ten years ago. Yeah, you could be fined for swearing in the UK if you do it in the wrong place and time and with aggressive intent. That's absolutely right. Yeah, I think that probably is to cover events like this, as opposed to people saying, um I'm so hungry I could eat eat the house of a pigeon. Right, yeah. Which that is a phrase I think should come with some kind of legal sanction, but I don't think they just don't have the enforcement, I think. Um okay, uh I got one here. This is now for Emma Banton. And your fact is that when the first transatlantic cable was laid in eighteen fifty eight. Reception was so bad that it took seventeen hours to send the first message across. I feel like it was to Queen Victoria. I'm sure everything was to Queen Victoria like officially at the time. Um I thought it would be like the hot girls in your area. Want to rock you to sleep . Okay Okay, here is another fact. This is also to another Emma. This is going out to Emma Culthurst. And Emma, your fact is that to celebrate World Vegan Day in 2013, Peter asked a town called Fryup in Yorkshire to change its name to Vegan Fryup for the day. They refused . Yeah. There you go. So Peter, the people people for ethical treatment of animals or something like that. The people who like to get a lot of publicity by doing slightly weird things uh in order to further their cause. And this was one of those. And it's because Britain has so many amazing place names that are all, you know, like big old dead horse village. That doesn't sound British, that sounds more American. But you know what I mean. There are lots of Yeah, we have so many place names like Canyon Ranch Alright. Alright . That was a bad example. But this was the village there's fry up and then there's great fry up and then there's little fry up, isn't there? Isn't it? I think so. And basically there are there are a few places like this knocking around and Peter thought they'd they'd try and make some hay with it. I think they don't mind being refused, do they? 'Cause, Oh, the village of Fryup has refused to rename itself just for one day. Like for them, they get the publicity no matter what, don't they? Yes, you're right. Here is another one, and this goes out to Katie Surname withheld. But you'll have had your certificate already, and your fact is that in nineteen sixties America on one 35-mile bus route you passed through seven time zones . Nightmare. Nightmare. And it's because American states just they had, you know, there were borders and there were all sorts of different time zones knocking around and they took a long time to resolve it all. And in fact they still haven't got their act together and got all in the same time zone. Which is crazy. Yeah, they really should get like China, don't you think Andy? Come on guys. We had our own time zones in the UK as well. Like if if you lived in Bristol, you would be on different times than if you lived in London, for instance. And then it was the transport that changed all that because once you had trains going from one town to another you needed to everyone needed to be on the same time otherwise you wouldn't know what time your train was gonna arrive. Yeah yes yeah yeah yeah that's right. Okay Dan give us the last fact for the day. Yeah, this is for John Harris, and that is if a predator gets too close to a limpet, the limpet lifts its shell and stamps on the predator's foot. Gorgeous. Interesting facts about this. I don't know if we said this on the day, but the word limp it comes from the fact that when they stamp on your toe you limp away. No . Of course not. Oh I was so proud that I didn't go for it this time. I'm so proud. Well done, Dan. You're learning. I'm gutted . I was gonna suggest putting that in the book of things you think are named after one thing, but actually they're they're named after someone else. Okay, well, um, on that note, I think we should say thank you again to our new custodians. They are John, Katie, Emma, Emma, Stacy, Josh, Will, and Matt. And thank you, everyone, who sent in some facts for the first half of this show. And thank you indeed for listening. If you're listening to this and you're not yet a friend of the podcast on Patreon, then why not go to patreon.com and find out more there? Uh, there's all sorts of levels. You don't have to go on the top level. In fact, you don't have to pay at all. If you sign up on Patreon, there are little bits of extra stuff you can get there as well. So do go over to Patreon. And if you have any facts that you'd like to send to us for this show or, in fact you've heard us say something wrong and you'd like to tell us about it or you want to give us more information, then send all of your correspondence to podcast at QI.com and it might well get into some of our output. We will see you again on Friday for a big fish. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from these guys. Bye. So long. Farewell. I'll be the same. Bye .