No Such Thing As A Fish - 521: No Such Thing As A Human-Sized Peanut
Episode Date: March 7, 2024Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss waging war, protesting pictures, subatomic shows and migrating moss. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join C...lub Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
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Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming
to you from multiple undisclosed locations across the globe.
My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinski, Andrew Hunter Murray
and James Harkin and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite
facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go.
Starting with fact number one, that is Anna.
My fact this week is that in 1950 a ballet was performed at the Waldorf Hotel where
the main characters were protons, electrons, neutrons and a Geiger counter.
Lovely.
I have a question.
I reckon it's hard to see an electron even if you're on the front row.
You're going to struggle to see an electron doing a plie.
Have you seen those ballet sort of little telecopies
sometimes get at the ballet where you like put a coin in the slot.
Oh yeah.
You can get a thing out.
It's like that, but everyone gets a...
Electron microscope.
15 million times magnifying.
Yeah.
Got it.
Yeah, everyone had that.
It was a very expensive place put on.
No, this sits on one of those things and they were human sized,
played by humans.
And this was reported in Time Magazine
and it was a story that the founder of the Atomic Energy Association of Great Britain,
who was a woman called Muriel Howarth, was putting on Isotopia, which was a ballet. And the
article goes on to describe or review it saying it was 13 buzzer me women gyrating gracefully an ample electron in black
lace wound her way around two matrons labeled proton and
neutron. I see because like an electron is like 2000 times
smaller than a neutron. So they didn't get like a very small
person or a child to be the electron. And it wasn't to scale.
No.
I'm not sure the casting process was as scientific as you would like, James, for this.
I'm just getting a vibe that you would have some notes if you were sitting in as director.
I would have notes and they would say, James, you can be the electron because you can so
negative.
It sounds amazing.
I can't tell even from the review whether it was good or not because
the person who wrote the review... Can't you?
Well, the person says the... I'm about to stab.
250 wrapped ladies, that means it's good so far, and a dozen faintly bored gentlemen.
Faintly bored is a stupid thing to add in a review.
Sorry, can I also add what you said there didn't quite make sense unless you know that the word wrapped was spelt R-A-P-T
So it wasn't 250 women who are wrapped in like
Burst out of their gift wrapping as the grand finale. Yeah, and sorry Dan when Dan said faintly bored gentlemen
He meant bored B. O. R. E. D. And not that they were made out of plywood
Yeah, you see what I mean? It's a confusing review.
It's hard. It's very hard. I don't think it's been restaged many times.
No.
She wanted it after its debut to play at the Albert Hall, which I don't think it did.
No.
And she said, she's a brilliant woman, Murill Howard. I'm sure we're going to talk more about
her now. She said she wanted it to be at the Albert Hall so they would have room for all the 92 transmutations of the atom.
Oh, so ambitious.
It's like the director's cut version. So ambitious. And she set up loads of atomic bodies, Muriel
Howarth. And this might have been when she was at the Institute for Atomic Information,
or it might have been its previous guys, the Ladies' Atomic Energy Club. Which just sounds
like such a...
It sounds like a Richard Usman book.
It does. It sounds like a cute novel. It just sounds like such a... It sounds like a Richard Usman book. It does.
It sounds like a cute novel.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you guys know she did a follow-up to this?
That there was a musical piece, a piano concerto that she did as a follow-up to
Isotopia. Yeah, it was called Atomica. And the review of it says it chiefly
consisted of loud heavy chords which indicated atomic bombs and springing
tinkling passages
which reflected the extreme surprise and alarm of the human race.
Sounds like what the response would be, but not a great advert because the whole point of it was
that she was trying to tell the public how great atomic energy was. So she was employed by atomic
energy to be its PR man. And her, the aim of this society was to lead women
out of the kitchen and into the atomic age.
So she particularly wanted to target women,
which is why there were all these wrapped women
and they're mildly bored husbands apparently.
But she was amazing.
A self-sort completely.
She was inspired by reading this Nobel Prize winners book,
guy called Frederick Soddy.
And she was inspired by his statement
that we could transform a desert continent,
thaw the frozen poles, and make the world
one smiling garden of Eden using atomic energy.
Which weirdly we have now done, and it's not that good.
But yeah, and she taught herself all about the atom
and then tried to spread the good word.
Yeah, yeah.
And atomic gardening was the big thing,
which is probably why isotopia was so much about food.
It's like early GM, but it's incredibly unscientific ways of doing GM.
Basically, you plant a load of crops in a circle, you put a radioactive source in the middle.
When you say radioactive source, sorry, we're spelling that.
Yes.
Because that's genuine possible confusion, isn't it?
I think.
Yeah, I suppose so.
Yeah, a source of radiation. Does that clear it up? Not much. Anyway, there's
some radioactive stuff in the middle of the pie chart and then all the plants near it
get actually...
Was this a physical pie or was this like a...
Gee, was...
Sorry, go on, Andy.
Yeah, no one else got any amusing homophones. They want to bust out.
When you say homo-fuck now.
Oh my God. So you put your gamma radiation right in the middle, right?
And the plants that are nearest to the seedlings get completely blasted and they just die, right?
And then the ones further out get tumors.
And the ones further out than that on the outer edge of the upi chart get a load of mutations.
And those mutations might be useful in some ways.
So they might make the plant stronger,
or they might make it more resistant
to particular kinds of blight,
and you just do thousands of experiments.
And they produce thousands of new varieties of plants,
some of which I think are still in use today.
The mutations actually worked for agriculture.
Like the peppermint oil, any peppermint oil
which you have today, which you might think,
well, I don't really have much peppermint oil,
but actually it's in loads of foods that you get as like a very minor ingredient
that was invented by Atomic Gardening. It's in toothpaste and stuff like that, for instance.
But she became famous for inventing the world's first Atomic Peanut, didn't she?
She made this radioactive peanut which germinated in four days and grew two feet
tall which apparently is quite big for a peanut.
That's a peanut plant, not the peanuts.
Yeah, because the peanut itself, disappointingly, as I read in the reviews, was the size of
an almond.
Yes, which is like...
Oh, that's a mega bed.
That's a huge peanut in the peanut world.
Isn't that huge?
That's big.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's double or triple a normal peanut.
It is quite good. But you do get jumbo peanuts these days, which I don't think are
irradiated.
I want a peanut the size of a person, but sorry, ruined it.
If you look at all the pictures in the newspapers at the time, she's there, a picture of her
with her peanut, which looks a bit like an almond, because obviously the pictures aren't
great either, so you can't really see what she's doing
But that was when she first really got in the newspapers and became big and then she started trying to do all of these
publicity stunts of which the ballet was one and one of them was she cooked a
Roast dinner English roast dinner of beef vegetables Yorkshire pudding potatoes and onions
But the potatoes and onions were
three years old. So they'd been irradiated and they were absolutely fine after three
years. That was brilliant.
It's so good. That must have been revolutionary. Like time travel cuisine.
Yeah.
It must have been amazing, but apparently it didn't taste of anything.
Right.
Because once you'd irradiated them and kept them for three years, any kind of taste in
this potato or onion had just disappeared completely.
If you're cooking with onions,
and they've often been in the back of your pantry
for a bit of time,
I mean, do you need to irradiate it
to serve three-year-old onions?
I reckon I've probably tried to cook myself
an onion ferging on that.
You know, and you get the soft bits off,
and sometimes there's a bit salvageable.
I'm not sure you needed to go to
all of that trouble. Do you know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean having known you for
15 years. And never come for dinner at my house despite multiple invitations.
Another cool thing that she did is that she put a message out saying,
I need people to help me with this. And if you want to get involved, get in contact. And if
anyone did get in contact,
she sent them seeds through the post.
And to encourage it, she launched the Muriel Ho worth
peanut prize to the best mutant things each year.
But we don't actually know whether or not
anyone was awarded it, because again,
it was so hard to find these mutants.
Really? Yeah.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
Either that or someone created a mutant plant so vicious
it ate all of them.
Yeah, yeah.
The evidence was destroyed.
She used to carry a potato around in her pocket.
That wasn't just any potato.
It was an irradiated potato.
Did she?
And then-
What?
That was a publicity stunt.
And I-
It's not very good publicity if it's in your pocket,
unless you have a transparent pocket.
Well, she had it very obvious and she used to open with a chat up line, you know, I am
not just pleased to see you, it's actually an irradiated potato in my pocket.
So, good protection.
Have I ever said that in the old days of crown green bowling in Lancashire, this was at the
turn of the 20th century, the bowlers would often keep her jacket potato in their pockets. Like a hot water bottle? Exactly, yeah. So it would be to keep your hands
warm. So you'd have a jacket potato in your pocket and whenever your hands got cold, because it's
always cold in Lancashire, you would put your hands in your pocket, warm them up, that would be good
for the game. And then when there was a break in the game, you could eat the jacket potato. Wow.
There must have been a lot of either A. amusing mishaps where people accidentally threw the
potato along the pitch.
Or B. a lot of arrests for suspected masturbation.
No, we know the potato's in your other pocket.
Can we say on how there is a fantastic source?
If you do want to read more about atomic gardening there's a website called atomicgardening.com.
I think it's run by someone called Paige Johnson.
Yes.
Who is kind of the, I don't know if she's the official or unofficial, but she is the
historian on this subject.
It's so interesting.
Definitely.
She's just kind of found everything about Howarth over the years.
And yeah, it's very cool.
Yeah.
And in fact, one thing she found that I couldn't find where she got it from,
she wrote that Muriel Howarth also patented an early picture and sound recording device
called the Torquifone.
Did she?
Yeah, she did.
She was extraordinary.
She was a science fiction writer as well.
She was putting these concertos together.
She was an all-rounder.
And I thought the story was going to end and this is part of the bad branding of nuclear power,
that, oh, she would have got really ill
off the back of this and eventually died,
and that's why we don't do it anymore,
but that didn't happen, this was safe.
This was safe for her.
I was wondering, Dan, do you think that she was so prolific
because she'd had a bit of radiation in her body?
Maybe there was a big circle of Muriel Howarth's with a radioactive source in the middle.
And she was just at the right position where she got the right blast of radiation.
And it made her a superhero.
That's so exciting.
I hadn't considered that.
And that's all I'm going to take away from this show now.
So what's happened to all the other Muriel Howarths who are kind of weird, mutant, formed, gigantic,
or minuscule, green?
She's eating them as something to provide flavor
next to these awful potatoes and onions.
They are the bad guys in the Muriel Howarth comic book.
Oh, that's such a good idea.
Wait, and it's called, sorry,
the comic book is called The Ladies' Atomic Energy Club. And it's about all the ladies are Muriel Howarth, who've
been replicated.
Yes.
They've got different skills. One of them's got 19 legs.
One writes piano concertos, the other writes science fiction novels.
Can I just say, it seems like quite often we come up with these brilliant ideas, but
no one at Hollywood has gotten in touch with us yet. So maybe they're getting our email wrong or something, but it's podcast at qi.com. If anyone wants to
give us a million quid to make that.
I think that's true. I think maybe they assume that we've got them in development through
our own obviously massive production company. And they just think, Oh, well, those guys
are thought of whatever, whatever stupid thing we've come up with this week. This was all
kind of the pro atomic energy movement, wasn't it?
Saying, actually, this thing was invented for war.
It's very, very powerful, but it can be used for peace.
It can provide electricity and power that's much cleaner,
doesn't cause carbon emissions, all that.
And I just find it interesting.
I had no idea how big the early movement was.
So I read a great interview with her.
She's a poet actually called Deborah Greger,
and she grew up in a place called Hanford, Washington
Which is where the Manhattan Project was partly based. It was where the first plutonium reactor in the world was cited, right?
And it was such a culture of pro-atomic energy like the high school football team was called the Richland Bombers.
The cheerleaders for the football team had a four-foot high nuclear bomb painted in the school colors
Which they would dance around at half-time.
And this is so cool. Once a month, her dad came back from work with a case, right?
Special suitcase. And it had two glass bottles in it.
And his job was to fill the bottles with urine and leave them out on the front doorstep.
Oh, really?
And it was so he could be tested for any, if he'd had too much radiation exposure,
at his job at the power plant
So was there a postman specifically his job was to come and collect two
Maybe milkman though. Yeah, because you've got the space on if you've dropped two bottles of milk off
You've got a space for two urine bottles. Yeah, that's it. It's like the milk fairy the urine fairy comes around
Yeah, you don't want to mix up comes around. Yeah. You don't...
You don't want to mix up those orders.
Yeah, you don't want to...
Hang on, I've submitted the full fat milk to the testing facility.
That wants on my complex!
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Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is Andy.
My fact is that in 1340, at the beginning of the Hundred Years War, Edward III challenged
King Philip VI of France to settle who was the rifle heir to the French throne by exposing
themselves to hungry lions.
Now, let's go through these words.
Exposing yourself.
Can you define that, please?
What a good point. What a good point. Sorry. You would basically put yourself in a room
with a hungry lion or a cage or whatever and the idea obviously a lion will never attack
a true king. So this was like just a great acid test for who's the real king.
Has anyone told the lioness?
Well exactly. It's so weird.
That is amazing.
What I wonder at this stage, it's a little bit like the Cold War, where you've got like two people who could mutually kill each other.
You know, if Philip calls his bluff, then they're both dead because they both have to go and stand in front of lions.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
And it is lion's plural.
So that it feels like there's going to be one lion for each of them.
Maybe they believe.
I know, I think maybe they both go in with one lion.
Yeah. And then the lion will have to attack one of them first.
And then the other one just runs for the right.
Right, it's me. I'm the king. I'm the king.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not going to be...
Like your servants will try and sneakily rub him with meat before you go in.
So that's the game as well.
Yeah.
Do you think they did that thing where boys used to hide
their willy in their bum crack so that the lion couldn't see it?
I don't think the lion is going for the penis, per se.
Anna, what do you think the costume choices are for this?
Why are you?
Oh my god, is that?
They're exposing themselves to the lion's.
Wait, I'm sorry. Wait, sorry.
I'm sorry.
I don't think that's traditionally how you put it, where you hide it in your bum crotch.
I'm sorry.
This is when you're pretending, well, I don't know because I'm not a man, but when you're
pretending to have a vagina, don't you hide it in your bum crotch?
Between your legs.
Yeah, I would say, between your legs was a normal traditional phrase.
You'd rather than, Anna.
You don't actually tuck it in inside your anus.
Can we please get back to the 100 years old?
I'm going to just imagine Philip going,
all right, Edward, fine, we're going to do it.
Fine, we're going to do it.
Where's the lion?
It's in that room.
Fine, OK.
And then Edward goes, OK, pants off.
Penis and bum crack.
Imagine if we had BBC live news coverage back then.
Well, they're both in the room.
King Edward appears to be doing the most curious thing.
He's kind of like tucking his...
Pushing his penis into his anus.
Anna.
I don't know what I've done and I'm so sorry.
This is horrible.
Can we get back to the horrific conflict which killed thousands, you know,
last of the century?
I just got a quick question.
Did anyone find where this was an idea that came from, the idea that...
Yes, sorry.
Well, it's just a traditional belief of Kingly, you know, you're chosen by God.
So this, I should say, this fact came in.
It was based on a fact that was sent by Daniel Parrish, because he heard us talking about
scroffula.
And he has done a lot of research into that.
And there's an academic trait is called the royal touch
in early modern England by Stephen Brogan.
And both of them did touching for scroffula.
Right?
Both Edward III and Philip VI touched people who had scroffula.
And hopefully they'd be cured.
You know, that was the idea of monarchs had the power to do that.
And that was another of the elements of the challenge
was that Edward also challenged Philip the Sixth.
He said, look, we can either have trial by combat,
we can expose ourselves to lions,
or we can have a touch off.
And we'll just touch as many people
as we can for scoffula and whoever wins,
whoever cures the most people,
they're the true king of France.
So it's a way of avoiding this whole war.
You know, we've got a big dispute
about who should be in charge of France.
Let's find out.
And these were the methods that were proposed.
And did Philip VI turn them all down and say, I'd rather do more than 100 years more?
He didn't go for it, which implies that he sort of knew maybe actually
he shouldn't be King of France.
Yeah, well, maybe they should have a King of France who doesn't think that lions are just going to randomly not attack you because you're a king.
Yeah. Yeah, 100 years war. England be France. More than 100 years. I think that's a classic QI thing,
right? 116 we're talking roughly. But basically, England owned loads of bits of France. And there
was a big old fight about how much they should own and how much they shouldn't own. Is that right? A lot of people in France thought none, and a lot of people in England thought some.
Who actually is England and who is France here? You know,
lots of the sort of French dukes sided with the English crown. It's all very, it's very confusing.
In a lot of ways France wasn't really a, you know, a coalesced nation until it was over. And my
theory is that the whole of the Hundred Years' War was just about wine,
because it was triggered when Philip VI confiscated aquitaine,
which is region that was owned by the English, confiscated it from Edward III.
So it was in Gaskony, and Gaskony was crucial to England because it contained
Bordeaux and it made Claret. And England imported
so much Claret. So by the 14th century, I think Bordeaux was sending Britain enough
wine for every single person in Britain, including children, to have six bottles each a year.
And suddenly Philip VI said, you can't have that region anymore. And the English said,
well, what we're going to do about our wine. And that's what caused it. And I think that's the most
justified cause for war. Because the Gascons, they were like, oh, well, we're kind of happy being
like friends with the English, because they're quite a long way away. And you have to get past
the Bay of Biscay and over the channel, and they're not going to to come and bother us and we don't really want to be friends with these French people
who are right next door who might start taxing us more or might start invading us and whatever.
I didn't realise and I'm saying this more as someone who doesn't have a good grasp of
English history and you know, 100 years of war and stuff like that, but I didn't realise
that in this period.
French was basically the language of the upper class in the UK,
and English was the working class language.
And so that's why there was, as you say, Anna, it was sort of a bit confusing.
And there was also the inheritance of the crown in France anyway, it wasn't there with
Philip becoming king, but he wasn't a direct descendant of the king.
And Charles thought he had a closer
connection and should be the rightful heir so there was that as well as the wine.
Edward thought he had a rightful connection.
Sorry, that's what I meant.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's true actually.
If you just go straight off whoever's related the most closely,
Edward was definitely the most closely related.
Yeah.
But the French barons, they wanted Philip because he was one of them really, that was the thing.
But Edward's lineage came through his mother
who was Isabella the She-Wolf of France.
She's incredible.
Why would you not want someone who's called
Isabella the She-Wolf to be the mother of the king?
Or you know.
Well, Isabella was the one who, she was Edward's mother,
but she had overthrown his father, Well, Isabella was the one who, she was Edward's mother,
but she had overthrown his father, her husband, Edward II, possibly thanks to shoving
a red hot poker up his arse.
That probably not really.
Probably not, but definitely due to her picking up
a lover, Roger Mortimer, and deciding to take over England.
Was the red hot poker up the arse,
that was an aggressive thing and not a enjoyable thing.
It might have been enjoyable
at the very beginning of the situation,
but certainly by the end, he wasn't enjoying it.
Right, thank you.
It's like, isn't that a bit of,
it's sort of a bit of later homophobic propaganda,
isn't it, that thing of,
because I think so.
Because I took a male lover who was,
I can't remember his name now, but he was, I've just finished David Mitchell's book, which goes into great detail about the, you
know,
Dispenser, Hugh Dispenser, is he called?
Hugh Dispenser.
I think so.
That's a funny name.
Oh no, Piers Gaviston.
Piers Gaviston?
He had terrible reflux, didn't he?
They were both, God, I think they were both rumoured, certainly rumoured to be, basically the problem was that Edward II was a big at choosing favourites and was very
bad at distributing favours in a kind of equitable manner, so lots of people got very
aggrieved about that, and clearly then Isabella enters the scene.
And the other thing about putting a red hot poker up the bum is that it doesn't leave
any obvious scars unless you take a good old look at the bum. So you can kill someone theoretically and they might think that they died of something
and illness.
I was probably seeing it.
Until you look at the look on their face in death.
I suppose you're a poker truth or on this, James.
What?
I think it's not.
I think it didn't happen.
I think it was bummed off.
Oh, sorry.
I'm not saying it happened.
I'm just saying that that is part of the propaganda
is that they say this is why.
Yeah.
So it seems to be a through line of arses in the Hundred Years War, because there was
that, which fair enough is in the lead up to it. There was obviously the original fact.
And then there was the fact that in 1346, so very early on, on the way to the Battle of
Klesi, which was one of the sort of biggest, most important battles
of the Hundred Years War, the Norman soldiers exposed their backsides to Edward the Third's
archers. And according to reports, this pissed off the English so much that they basically
launched an ill-advised attack.
They decided to win the battle instead of...
No, they launched an ill-advised attack which they lost because they were so offended by
the bear arses.
That's interesting.
Sorry, Anna, can I just quickly check?
When you say there's a lot of arses and you say the original fact, are you including your
new theory that they were shoving their penises up their angels?
No, this is too much.
She said the original fact.
I know, it's nothing to do with the original fact.
This is out of first-law protection.
It's not, sorry, it's my reading of the original fact where they expose themselves in a flashing kind of way.
Yes.
One person in the Battle of Cressy was blind King John of Bohemia.
He was there to support...
So he wouldn't have been affected by the mooning, to be fair.
He was the one person who was immune to it.
No, he was, he was actually on the side of the mooners.
He was on Philip's side, but he'd had a bout of ophthalmia, which meant
that at the time he couldn't really see anything. So he asked two of his knights to be on either
side of him while he was sort of strapped to his horse. And the two knights went towards
the battle while he was in between them so that he knew exactly that he was going in
the right direction.
Good Lord. That is very brave.
King John, you are allowed to sit this one out.
It's fine. No one will think any less of you if you don't fight.
No, no, I'm here now.
No, please, no.
Well, obviously the English won it.
Did the English win the Battle of Cressy?
Yeah, they did.
James, of course the English won the battle.
I'm sorry.
Auntie, your outrage there is embarrassing.
You're Scottish anyway, Auntie.
You should be on the French side.
England only won about three battles in the Hundred Years' War, and they were definitely
tilted towards the start.
Yeah.
It was Agincourt, Cressy, Sleuths.
Sleuths.
Yeah.
Where the French fleet was sunk.
No, if Britain had just, Britain, England had just kind of sued for peace after the
first 30 years, they'd had a completely cracking first 30 years to the war.
Right. And then after that, it was kind of gradually all downhill for the next sort of 70, 80 years.
It didn't go well for them after that.
It is classic.
But Agincourt was a pretty good ending.
That was like towards the end.
It was like a late goal.
And I think the French would object to you calling Agincourt an ending,
given that when it did end, it was very much on the 30 years after the Battle
of Agincourt.
And the French won the whole war.
Yeah.
The Battle of Sluce was interesting because this was a naval battle and the English fleet
came up and there was, they were kind of maneuvering to get to the best angle because
of the wind and stuff like that.
And when they were maneuvering, the French got entangled with each other, all the different
boats because they were maneuvering, the French got entangled with each other, all the different boats, because they were ready. But then because it didn't start straight away, they kind of all
sort of bumped into each other and all got really entangled.
The French actually chained their boats together. Sometimes this seemed to be a tactic that worked,
but it certainly wasn't in this instance, because as you say, it meant they got entangled. So
basically a ship couldn't go to the aid of another ship because they were literally
attached together.
It was like doing a three-legged race, but with 100 people all attached to each other
in the race.
It's a bit like playing foosball.
It's like, it's fine.
As long as the ball is right next to one of your players, you can spin around and kick
it, but as soon as the ball goes anywhere, not near your players, you're fucked.
Yeah.
And that's why football teams tend to not chain themselves together, isn't that right?
I don't watch a lot, but that is...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like this theory, okay?
There's a theory that actually the Hundred Years' War really lasted from 1066 until 1904.
Just a millennium of Anglo-French conflict happened basically,
kicking off obviously with the Battle of Hastings,
and then the 1904 was when the Entente Cordillel agreements were signed between England and France, which really bonded them very closely together.
Yeah.
There was so much conflict, you know.
Do you think, Andy, like, obviously we are allies now, but there were peace treaties
signed all over those thousand years, and there's no reason to think that in 500 years
there won't be another battle between England and France.
So in that case, with the Hundred Years War, go on for the test.
You think this might be a long lull?
That's what I was thinking, yeah.
I hope, oh gosh, I do hope not, because I love France.
Yeah, me too.
But look, it's possible.
I actually like it a little bit too much.
And I'm thinking that that area around Bordeaux is very nice.
Do you think maybe James, you might actually
have a claim to Gascony?
I just, I do drink a lot of wine.
You might, you know.
Just give it a try.
A little foray, never hurt anyone.
OK, it is time for fact number three.
And that is my fact.
My fact this week is that Buzz Aldrin's dad once got so angry that his son wasn't
featured on a US post stamp commemorating the moon landing that he went and stood
outside the White House holding a placard that read, my son was first two.
So it's the ultimate embarrassing dad move.
It's just demented.
If this is such a weird thing to do.
Why? I just think take the win.
Your son has been the second man to walk on the moon.
He's not on the stamp.
Who cares?
It's odd, but I actually think so.
Buzz Aldrin's dad, Edwin Aldrin Sr.
The buzzer's real name is Edwin.
He's a junior.
I have a bit of sympathy for him
because I think basically he is one
of the most extraordinary characters that we've had in relation to airplanes and rockets and so
on. This is a guy who was literally buddies with Orville Wright, knew the Wright brother. He
marries a woman. The Wright brother. You can't say the right brother. It's either the right brothers or a right brother.
He is a right brother.
The other was the wrong brother.
So he's, yeah, he's buddies with Orville right of the right brothers. He happens to be flying
with a guy who's surname is Moon. He marries a woman who's called Marion Moon. His son
then goes on to stand on the moon. But really, he's also kind of the reason that we got to the moon. It's because he was very good friends with a rocket engineer called Goddard,
right? Goddard is the one who basically got us to the moon. He's the one who was so key to inventing
the rocket power that we needed to get there, and he didn't have funding, and that was a huge
problem. So Edwin Aldrin Sr. is, he knows him because he studied under Goddard and
he's also an influential guy in that world.
He sets up a meeting with Lindbergh, first to fly the Atlantic, in which he
basically says, are you able to get Goddard the funding that he needs in
order to go on?
He goes to the Guggenheim Foundation and manages to get the money.
So Edwin Aldrin Sr. literally made the funding happen in order for us to get to the moon.
So I can see why he's pissed off, because he's literally the lynchpin to all these elements.
I know what you mean, Dan, but you've introduced him in this section as the guy
who stood with a placard as an embarrassing dad.
Yeah, it's definitely an embarrassing dad move, no matter what, but I can see his reasoning.
No, come up with something better better like my son was there too,
or my son also went to the moon.
He said my son was first too.
It's the only thing that's not true.
And his son was second.
Can I just say, this is in 1969, right?
The stamp is issued.
Aldrin himself clearly was a bit marked about it
because he had to go to the unveiling of the stamp.
Aldrin Road and his memoir, I smiled rather weekly when I first saw the stamp,
though it was a bit of sweet honor.
I mean, come on. Michael Collins' thoughts about this are not registered. Michael Collins is nowhere even near this stamp.
Didn't kick up half the fuss.
Also, it's not Neil Armstrong on the stamp.
Uh-huh. What?
Right.
You are not allowed to commemorate the living on stamps.
So logically, it can't be Neil Armstrong on this stamp.
So is it not that, is it not like a famous image of him?
I think it's a drawing of a photo.
It's a drawing of the photo.
A drawing.
At some point between the photo and the drawing,
Neil Armstrong has been replaced by a generic man.
And this got controversial when they released
an anniversary stamp some years later, because many thought that it portrayed Armstrong and
Aldrin, who were alive at the time. And that has two astronauts on it facing the camera.
But they've got the helmets up with the visor, so you can't see. And the US Postal Service never
admitted to breaking the law forbidding the portrayal of living people. They just said these
are generic astronauts to commemorate these two people
who were real, who landed on the moon. It's such a fudge.
It's definitely a fudge when you've literally drawn a picture of a specific person. Yeah,
I would say that Edwin's at least justified in that.
I read an article that was in the newspaper archives that came out the weekend after they
landed on the moon where they spoke to all the families and stuff like that and
We've said before that Buzz had communion on the moon
Yeah, but I didn't know this at the same time as he was taking communion on the moon
There in his church back home. They were taking the same communion with the same bit of bread
No, so their priest had gotten this big bit of bread and broken a bit off and given
one piece of it to Buzz. And at the exact same time-ish- they did their own communion and the
priest said this loaf is not complete now we shall commune with him he is one of us and they're
referring to Buzz and they had to get extra seats in the church because so many people wanted to
come to this communion and they all had bibles donated
by Buzz that were inscribed with his mother's name because actually Buzz's mother died before he got
to the moon. It was the year before, wasn't it? Yeah, it was May 1968 and she took her own life
and according to Buzz the reason that she did that is because she couldn't handle the stress of the
fame and notoriety that he was gaining
from being an astronaut that was going to the moon.
He says it was mixed with other stuff, but that was a big factor.
What a weird thing to take with you as you're about to go off to the moon, that you lost
your home for the reason of the mission.
Yeah, Marian Gladys Moon was her name, and it was because he'd done the Gemini mission,
so he was actually super famous before he went to the moon off the back of that. And sweetly, Buzz Aldrin did, I realized, kind of looking into him,
he's always mentioning the fact that his mother's maiden name was Moon. I suppose you would,
because it's an incredible fact, but he does in any autobiography or interview or anything like that,
he will say or he'll tweet it and say, yep, mother's maiden name was Moon.
Who would have thought?
Yeah. And he was in this newspaper article that I read, he was called the World Spacewalking Champion. They said, and the other person on the Moon is Buzz Aldrin,
the World Spacewalking Champion.
Not the first though, was he?
He wasn't the first on the Moon.
He'd spent five hours outside Gemini 12, which meant that he'd been out in space on his own for longer than any other person.
I think Leonov was the first, wasn't he?
Just back to the moon and families for a second, there was a lot of stuff that was left on the moon,
which was related to the family members of the astronauts.
Some initials were sort of put into the moon dust that will be sitting there for many, many, many, many years,
unless they're disturbed by future missions or meteorite hits or whatever.
There was a photo that was left of one of the families.
So all these little beautiful little mementos.
And there's actually, and I hadn't heard of this before, but there is a mystery about
Neil Armstrong and the moon.
And that is a missing 10 minutes where Neil went off-combs and stood by a crater just
for 10 minutes on his own.
And there's a lot of conjecture about what he did in that ten minutes.
I reckon he put his penis into his butt.
Stop, I've walked around and said, I'm the first woman on the moon.
I think he just felt the hot jacket potato he brought with him in his space suit and
warmed his hands up on that cold landscape.
I think he stared into outer space and surveyed the enormity of what he was achieving in representing.
Okay?
And stuck his penis in his bum crack.
My God.
Yeah, no.
So there's a, it's to do with family is one of the biggest theories, which is the fact
that he very tragically lost a daughter who was two years old at the time.
And there was a bracelet that he had with her name on it.
And the thought is, is that he left that on the moon.
He chucked that into the crater.
And James Hansen, who is the official biographer of Neil Armstrong, desperately
tried to prove this, and he could never get it out of Neil, whether or not it happened.
His family sort of said, I hope it happened, but they weren't quite sure themselves. And
so it's remained an unanswered question.
When the moon landing happened, there was a protest in America at the same time, not by Buzz Aldrin's father, but by 25 families,
African American families who walked to Kennedy Space Center because they said it was a distorted
sense of national priorities that America was going to the moon. Because at the time,
the poverty rate for African Americans was 31%. And for black people living on farms, it was 62%.
And so they said, well, why are you spending all this money on the space race
when you have people living in poverty in your own country?
And the Victoria Maris, who was the head of the poverty program in Michigan,
she said that the Apollo project was akin to a man
who has a large family, they have no shoes, no clothing, no food and the rent is overdue,
but when he gets paid he runs out and buys himself another set of electric trains.
Oh, slam on people who just enjoy some nice train. I got to say, I sympathise with that guy getting his trains.
But you've got to stop keeping your wife in poverty, Andy. There's no reason.
And the New York Amsterdam news, which was one of the leading black newspapers at the time,
had the headline, Yesterday the Moon, Tomorrow Maybe Us.
So it wasn't, and actually the space program.
Oh, what, isn't there'll be spending money on us?
Yeah, precisely. And actually until 1969, pretty much the space program wasn't and actually the space What, they'll be spending money on us? Yeah, precisely. Oh, wow.
And actually until 1969, pretty much the space program wasn't universally liked.
In fact, possibly not even 50% liked in America, because a lot of people were like,
well, why are we wasting money on this when there's problems at home?
And it was really only when everyone, when they walked on the moon,
that the kind of opinion changed in America.
Yeah, there's a really nice description.
One of the best books ever, I think, about the Apollo missions is a book called
Moon Dust, if anyone is interested in this subject listening by Andrew Smith.
And he talks about all these protests and sort of the reaction literally as the
rocket was going into space, the mood changed.
Everyone suddenly was on board in support of it.
Not everyone, but large groups that were protesting.
Suddenly just couldn't help but see the majesty of what we were doing as humanity.
So yeah, it's pretty amazing.
So we know on the side of your falling on Dan,
you think send money to the moon missions rather than people in poverty.
Okay.
I think send poor people to the moon.
That's how we just put them off Earth and we'll be fine.
Interesting, oh, I see.
I was gonna say, interesting that that was kind of how
the Soviets chose their cosmonauts
is that they tried to find people who were born
into poor backgrounds.
Because obviously it was very, yeah,
it was very good with their narrative,
which was, you know, we're all together.
And if you grew up on a communal farm, then you're just as good as anyone else in the country.
I thought you were going to say, obviously, it was very easy, which it would have been in the
Soviet Union at that time to find people with poor backgrounds, but...
Certainly was true. Gagarin was born, Yuri Gagarin, who was the first man in space, was born in a town called Gagarin. Oh. But it was named after him after his death.
But yeah, he was brought up on a collective farm and his mother had been a factory worker in World War
Two, and this was like a perfect sort of background for a cosmonaut.
Toreshkova, Valentina Toreshkova, who was the first woman in space.
She was born in a town which has a population of nine.
Wow.
We call it in that town.
Wow.
Yeah, it's officially a town.
Wow.
She was working in a textile mill.
Really?
And eventually did some correspondence courses and then became a cosmonaut.
So they really wanted to get people from other backgrounds into space.
I'm really interested that you said that because it certainly is interesting.
Researching cosmonauts and astronauts is striking how all the astronauts from America at the time
had quite similar upbringings.
Very successful parents, often in the aeronautical industry.
All Soviet cosmonauts were quite gritty upbringings.
I mean, Gugarin and his family lived in a three-meter square mud hut
during the war because their property was taken over by Nazis. On the one hand, Gugarin rebelled
against the Nazis who were occupying his land and he used to pour soil in the Nazi soldiers' tank
batteries and kind of mix up their chemicals to foil their plans. And then I was reading that later on when he was famous, a famous cosmonaut,
he got a scar on his forehead, which you can see in later pictures. And it's from 1961
when he was on holiday with his wife and a bunch of other people. And they were playing
cards and he said, I'm going to bed, his wife said, I'm just going to finish this hand,
you know, I'll be there in a sec.
He used this spare time to go into the hotel room of one of the other women who was a nurse
who was staying in the hotel, tried to check her.
And then his wife walked down the corridor having finished her hand a couple of minutes
later saying, where are you, Yuri?
And so he legged it off the balcony of this nurse's room to escape split his head open on the tarmac
And that's the glorious story of the first Russian in spaces scar
I get those fighting Nazis actually
Would you like to talk to an alien
Assuming that the alien can speak your language and your safety is guaranteed
Yes, you like to meet an alien. I would say yes. Yeah. Is this an offer handy? It's not an offer
It's a survey from you gov. This is done last year 21% of people said no, I would not thank you very much
Well, even if we can speak the same language and I'm safe 14% don't know. Yeah, I don't know
14% don't know. I don't know.
But I more can't understand the nose.
Are they too busy?
Did we get the reasons?
Maybe if you're religious, you don't want the answers
that are going to ruin things for you.
Maybe.
Well, there was that.
I won't say who it was, Dan, but a very famous person
who we offered to come on the Museum of Curiosity when
Buzz was on.
When Buzz Aldrin came on and Dan emailed them and said, would you like to come on the Museum of Curiosity when buzzers on. When Buzz Aldrin came on and Dan emailed them and said,
would you like to come on?
You can meet the second person who walks on the moon.
And that person wrote back saying, no, I don't really like space.
Yeah, not really into space.
Can you bleep out and say who it was now?
Get out. Yeah.
You're going back going, I'm just doing a space, not really my thing.
But thanks for the offer. I'm staggered. I'm staggered.
Yeah, it was incredible.
That's shocking.
So that person, I reckon probably would be one of the 20%.
Yeah, agreed.
Dairy like aliens, not my thing, I'm interested.
Yeah, no thank you.
I'm interested. No, thank you.
OK, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.
OK, my fact this week is if you go to the Arctic at the right time, you can view huge
herds of moss balls migrating across the plains.
Magnificent. Now, if you do go there to see the migrating moss balls, we should say migrating at a
speed that you would expect is probably a bit of a misleading idea.
If your trip is for seven years, you might see it move a good foot or maybe...
If you're really eagle-eyed, they move about an inch a day. Yeah. It's not the
quickest migration ever, but you know, it's not bad for a moss. It is astonishing as well.
It is astonishing when you see photos of these things and the fact that they herd together
and they turn left together and they move forward together. It's insane. So this is
researched by a couple of researchers, one of whom I was reading about called Tim Bartholomus. And he described them as bright green in a world of white. In the 1950s,
when they were first described, there was a nice landed guy who called them Glacier mice.
So that gives you kind of an idea of what they look like, but they're bright green. And if you
look at them, they seem like they're not moving, but actually they're very very slowly moving and they all move in the same direction
And they don't all move with the wind. They don't all move because sunlight is melting bits of ice and it's moving them
They don't move. There's various different
There's no slopes. Yeah, they don't go downhill
We don't know why they do it and we don't know how they do it and every time we come up with a theory someone disproves it.
So, aliens?
Has anyone talked about the aliens?
No, actually these are part of the 20% that don't really like aliens.
And the other brilliant thing is this scientist, one of the ones, Tim Bothellum, I think it's
Tim Bothellum Mouse and these are Glacier mice.
No, that's true.
It is actually quite confusing when you read about them,
because they're very commonly referred to in the few things that have been written about them as mice.
And so you keep having to remind yourself halfway through whatever the New York Times article when it says,
and within the mice it's extremely warm and lots of insects live.
They're not actually mice. They're not actually mice.
It was the plural of moss. Plural of moss is mice. That's the other thing.
Of course.
Yeah.
The guy who discovered these in the 50s, Jön Aetherson, he pointed out that rolling stones
can gather moss because in the middle of all, at the heart of all of these mice, there might
be a tiny bit of gravel or a bit of something that it's formed around and the moss has grown
around.
And it's more like you get moss that gathers and rolls over stones.
Actually really.
But either way, it's gorgeous. They're kind of like little mossy tumbleweed in a
way.
I love the idea, the imagery of the pedestals that they sit on. If you catch them at the
right time, let's say you come across a herd, they might all be perched up as if they're
on plinths because they're covering a very specific bit of the ice with the mossy ball
itself. The ice will remain because they're insulating it or rather keeping it cold.
So you end up seeing what looks genuinely, I think, Anna, to your point,
like you'd be like, is this aliens?
What is going on here?
Has some like weird artist come out here and just carved around these balls and left them for just to find?
And one of the thoughts is that then it rolls down the hill for what it's created off this pedestal,
and they all roll at the same time.
Yeah.
And so that was one of the theories.
But again, this quite recent study where they put trackers inside the mice kind of disproved this theory of the pedestals.
Not that they exist because they definitely do, but there's something else happening because it's not like they're staying in one place and then moving. Yeah
They're kind of they're kind of every day on average moving about an inch
And I love as well that this guy Bartholomew's
He's the way they tracked is they just put little bits of like small wire around the moss balls in different colors
So they could see which one was which and he's been going back occasionally to see them
but now he doesn't
know where they are.
He's lost his moss balls.
And that's extraordinary that whole herd has gone missing on him.
If that moss ball can outrun you, then you need to take more exercise.
Bartholomews.
Can I read you a bit of romantic, just a brief romantic passage about these things?
Did you write it?
No, I thankfully, don't worry, I didn't.
Okay, then yeah.
This is about the other scientists in this recent paper who studied these things.
Sophie Gilbert, she's a biologist.
And the University of Alaska website says, they met in 2006 studying at the Wrangel Mountains
Centre, right?
And this is it.
In this expansive setting of a gorgeous ice plateau between high mountains,
the pair noticed more than just tufts of moss.
She saw a handsome young leader
who wanted to solve glacier problems.
He saw an attractive, worldly biologist
who loved being outside,
powered by flirty energy.
They started thinking about how to study these moss balls,
and they're married now.
They start to think it was the balls that made them horny?
I don't know what prompted the spark to the romance, but I love the idea of proposing with
the little moss ball that you open up and the ring is in there. That would be nice.
And there's also another guy called Hotterling about whom Little is related, but he's the third
scientist involved.
There's a woman called Robin Wall Kimmerer, who I suspect some of you have come across,
who seems to have written this brilliant book about moss. I've only read reviews of it, but she's
sort of the moss pro. And she looked a lot at moss traditions in the Arctic in this area and how
people have used it. And it's had so many purposes. So people would make pillows out of moss.
There's a specific type of moss that was very good for pillows
called hypnum moss.
And the reason it's called that is because it was used as a pillow
and it was thought if you slept on it,
it gives you special dreams.
So it's hypnum, like, you know, hypnotizing dreams.
Do you think that if you got one of these moss balls,
then, you know, when your pillow gets too warm, it can turn itself over.
Oh, lovely.
So slowly though, you'd have to sit up for five minutes probably.
They were used as nappies and sanitary towels, which does make sense because we've talked
about sphagnum moss before, which can absorb 40 times its body weight in water.
It's pretty good.
Yeah. And you could leave that nappy on for a week.
It's the dream.
Speak to someone who's a mother.
You're fine.
You're fine.
I can't smell anything.
You're fine.
I got a quiz question for you guys very quickly.
Okay.
Here's the question.
What color is Oscar the Grouch?
Green.
Oh yeah, I'd say green.
Brrr.
Yeah.
That's the QI klaxon going there. Oscar the grouch is orange.
Is he? So why is he green?
Because he's moss living in his fur.
It's because he's been living in a bin so long, he's entirely
covered in moss and mold.
That's very good. Is that why he's so grouchy?
Yeah. So he's officially explained, he said, the first year I show myself in my true colours, which is orange,
actually I'm still orange. If I ever took a bath, you'd see that.
This is Maldon Moss. It makes me happy.
Oh, okay. That's so funny.
When's a good time for me to ask you Oscar the Grouches?
After the show.
Yeah.
Sesame Street. Sesame Street. He lives in the bin.
I thought so. Okay.
Have you guys heard of Emmanuel de Grouchy?
Ooh, nice.
He was one of Napoleon's marshals at the Battle of Waterloo.
I only remember this because we talked about Waterloo a few weeks ago.
Yes.
And one of the main guys there was Emmanuel de Grouchy.
And Napoleon made him like the Marshal of All France or something like that.
Well, there were six other marshals, weren't there?
There was Happy, sleepy, dopy.
Okay, giant moss.
Most moss is tiny obviously, isn't it?
It's close to the ground, it's low, it's not, you don't get moss trees.
The gigantic moss, the biggest moss on the planet is called Dorsonia Superba.
And it gets up to 60 centimetres tall. And that is mega.
For a moss, that's insane.
That's big.
That's big.
And it's because mosses don't have internal fluid systems
to carry water to their tissues.
So they can dry out really easily.
So they have to stay close to the ground.
But Dorsonia has, it's so weird.
It's done convergent evolution.
So you know how trees have a xylem and a flow,
and they have the system of porting water all the way
up to the leaves.
But Dorsonia has evolved a completely separate conduction system that functions in the same
way. And so as a result, they can reach for the sky and they grow much bigger as a result.
But that's very unusual.
How big are we talking?
I said 60 centimetres.
60 and centimetres.
It's not 60.
No, 60.
Imagine two school rulers.
Yeah.
Down on top of the other.
Yeah.
That's how tall we're Imagine two school rulers. Yeah.
Yeah.
Going on top of the other.
Yeah.
That's how tall we're talking here.
Yeah.
And they are.
Yeah.
It's a similar reveal for the peanut to the almond size,
I would say.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
No.
This must be like, it must be a thousand times taller
than your average mass.
No, it's incredible.
Hundreds.
Incredible of ties.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
I don't think we've ever mentioned
that sort of the individual leaves are so tiny.
They're only one cell thick.
Isn't it so odd that we're looking at stuff that we can see and it looks, you know, thick and it covers rocks and tarmac and roofs and whatever.
Each leaf is one cell thick, which means 100th of a millimeter, basically.
It's small.
It's small, yeah.
Some of them deliberately make themselves smell like poo
or cobbles.
So this is.
Why is that?
Because like plants do it so that insects come
and they get pollinated, right?
But that can't be because they don't have pollen.
No, no, same thing.
Same thing.
So they get so dispersing their seeds.
So most of them disperse via spores
that get taken by the wind
and they can get taken amazing distances across continents.
But there are certain moss
and one of the species is called splachnum sphyrachum,
which is also known as pink stick dung moss.
And it lives on droppings.
And in fact, all of dung moss
lives on very specific and in fact all of Dung Moss lives on very specific
types of dung so Pink Stick Dung Moss lives only on the droppings of white
tailed deer about a month after they've been pooed out and it grows on these
droppings and then it uses these droppings to make this amazing poo scent
which it emits which attracts all of these flies, which come to lay their
eggs. And as they lay their eggs all over the moss, they pick up these clusters of spores
on their legs. And so they disseminate them.
Wow. That's amazing.
Yeah.
I think I've got a different impression of what moss is to maybe other people, because
it's so mad that there's the idea that moss has basically sperm and an egg, and that the
sperm needs to find its way to an egg.
I thought moss just happened.
I didn't think the...
Did you?
Yeah, I did.
Absolutely.
I didn't realise it was...
Are you an ancient Greek naturalist?
He's a middle-aged, spontaneous, generationalist.
But I agree with Dan.
The idea of sperm and moss reproduction generally in moss sex is so hard to get your head around. And they sort of come to phases of life.
But the way that the sperm find the egg seems to be that certain male moths will
produce sperm in like a cup on top of them often and then get splashed by raindrops.
All sort of finds a way to swim to an egg of a female moss and sex it up.
And that makes another m moss that makes spores.
And understandably, I think they often don't do this very often at all because it's a lot of effort.
So I read an article featuring a biologist called Kirsten Fisher,
who studies the sex lives of a moss called
centricia canine nervous and she said they have sex about every 30 years.
So she's been in the female long time.
Well, you know, you're tired, you've been at work. It's easy to just...
Darling, it's been 29 years and 11 months.
That's so funny. Oh my goodness. What an amazing thing to study.
What a hero in a way to study the sex life of a very particular
master that only has sex every 30 years.
Here's one thing, you've been in World War II, it's been a pretty tough time, you've been living in Europe.
Why would it be good to be a moss enthusiast?
So there's lots of moss suddenly growing in areas which have been abandoned due to the war?
That's very good.
Lots of dead people?
Lots of dead people are kind of moss that grows on porches?
Oh, there might be.
No, this is more practical.
Okay.
There's a very famous moss scientist in America
who named lots of mosses called Geneva Seer.
And at the end of the war,
she organized the sending of food, clothes, and money
to distressed
bryologists in Europe.
So like if you were a moss scientist in Europe, you could expect a nice little
package of money and clothes to come.
I love that.
I've seen moss people stick together.
That's great.
Why are they particularly distressed?
Were they particularly distressed?
And bryologists are moss studyers, I think.
Yeah.
Well, it's not that they're particularly distressed.
It's just that the industry is, she's looking out for people who share her line of work,
I guess.
That's exactly it.
Basically, the entirety of Europe was distressed after World War II.
And the Brio-logists were no exception.
And she thought, well, I'm going to send some money over, but I want to send it to fellow
Moss, Moss-lovers.
Someone gets in touch.
I studied Lycan, and I am, I really am quite distraught.
No, no, no, no, get out.
OK, that's it.
That is all of our facts.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said
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I'm on TikTok. I haven't ticked any talks. And I mentioned it a few weeks ago, and I
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Right. So that's when not to get in contact with James, Andy.
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Check it out.
If not, just come back here next week.
We'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then.
Goodbye.