0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of

0:02

Fish. Before we get going, I just want

0:05

to let you know we have a very

0:07

exciting comedian joining us on the show today.

0:09

So Anna's away for this ep, but in

0:11

her place, we are joined by the brilliant

0:13

Olga Kock. Olga is the perfect

0:15

fish guest. Not only is she incredibly funny,

0:18

but she's also an absolute thunderdork.

0:21

She studied computer sciences, she speaks three different

0:23

languages, she has a very confused and unplaceable

0:25

accent like I do, and

0:27

she is absolutely blitzing the comedy scene at the

0:29

moment. You will have seen her, no doubt, on

0:31

shows like Live at the Apollo. She's

0:33

done pointless celebrities, and of course, she's been on

0:35

QI. But the best place, the

0:38

absolute best place to see Olga is live

0:40

in person at one of her stand-up shows,

0:42

and she is currently on tour with her

0:44

new show, which is called Prawn Cocktail. She's

0:46

traveling the UK, and then, for any Aussie

0:48

listeners out there, she's heading down under. So,

0:50

Aussies, go and see her. She's absolutely brilliant

0:52

live, and if you want to get a

0:54

taste of what a full show by Olga

0:56

is like, she's actually got a few specials

0:58

up online. So, if you go to YouTube,

1:00

you're going to be able to see her 2022 show, Just Friends. The

1:03

full show is there. Check it out. And

1:05

then, on Amazon Prime, she has another special

1:07

called Homecoming. Go to her website generally,

1:10

rocknrollga.com. It has a list of all the things

1:12

that she's done, from podcasts to other bits and

1:14

pieces. But for now, here she is on No

1:16

Such Thing as a Fish. On with the

1:18

show. Hello,

1:36

and welcome to another episode of No Such

1:38

Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming

1:40

to you from the QI offices in Hobern.

1:42

My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here

1:45

with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Olga

1:47

Koch. And once again, we have gathered around

1:49

the microphones with our four favorite facts from

1:51

the last seven days, and in a particular

1:54

order, here we go. Starting with fact number

1:56

one, and that is Olga. either

2:00

practices his technique with budget

2:03

meatballs. Wow. I

2:06

would say that a prawn is different

2:09

to a meatball. Different enough that I

2:11

wouldn't think it was useful for my training

2:13

montage. I accept what you've just

2:15

said and I challenge you to

2:17

a better replacement to a prawn. A

2:20

better budgeted replacement to a prawn. Yeah. Can

2:22

I give you a better replacement to a prawn? Please. There

2:25

was a guy called Stephen Gates who wrote

2:27

a book about eating insects and

2:30

he said if you don't have any prawns,

2:32

let's say you don't live near the sea,

2:34

then wood louse is a good replacement. Oh,

2:36

lovely. A little taste about

2:38

the same. And budget too. I mean all over the

2:40

garden. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I don't

2:42

think I can even picture a wood louse. Is that like a caterpillar? Like a

2:44

pill bug? No. I

2:46

want, no, I regret having that. Insect

2:48

armadillo. So they're the little grey guys. Okay,

2:51

so then if you de-shell it, it is still soft on

2:54

the back. It would be very fiddly

2:56

to de-shell. I imagine. For the number that

2:58

you need as well for this challenge. No, I

3:00

think maybe I'm going back and saying meatballs fine.

3:02

Then that probably is the best. Maybe grab stick?

3:05

Yeah. This guy probably knows what he's,

3:07

what do we know his name? Yes, his name

3:09

is Jeff Esper. Okay, okay. Also, a

3:11

very interesting thing about his technique is that

3:13

he tries to mimic a prawn cocktail as

3:15

much as he can. So he does eat

3:17

them cold and he eats them

3:19

tossed in cocktail sauce as opposed to

3:22

like marinara or whatever you'd have your

3:24

meatballs with. Yeah. There's this

3:26

amazing video of him online where you see the practice

3:28

run where he uses the meatballs and it's so

3:31

weird. He's just on his own in his laundry

3:33

with a camera running and he's about to eat

3:35

eight minutes worth of like meatball in his face.

3:38

He says things like, so exactly, I'm going to use the

3:40

same sauce. He's going 90% of the video. So

3:43

I'm going 100%. He's giving it 90%. No, I need to

3:45

throw you two. Exactly.

3:48

So he's going 90 and then he says, really,

3:50

I should be doing this outside because I think

3:52

the competition is outside and I need to acclimatise.

3:54

Sorry, which geographical location is this happening in? If

3:56

it's not the equator or the Antarctic, I don't

3:59

think... Well that's the thing, so

4:01

it was too cold for him to do

4:03

it that day, so he didn't. But that

4:05

factors into it. I guess it messes with your

4:07

capacity to swallow, your speed. Can

4:09

I explain one more reason why the meatballs were

4:12

fine as a substitute? Because the

4:14

sauce is the most important part of

4:16

this particular competition. Because

4:18

it is seafood sauce but it's really

4:20

spicy. It's supposed to be the spiciest

4:22

seafood sauce you can get. Someone who

4:24

had it said it's like being electrocuted when you

4:26

eat it. So really he's more

4:29

about getting through all the spicy sauce than

4:31

it is about getting through the process. Oh his

4:33

face almost melted right at the end of the

4:35

video. I watched all eight minutes and the final

4:38

mouthful he's on the brink of vomiting. And you

4:40

watch for about 30 seconds. Which

4:42

drink is it gonna go? Yeah, it's really close.

4:44

Can I give you a few of his records?

4:46

Is that the record? Because Jeff Esper he's a

4:48

big, big player in what is known as the

4:51

MLE, the Major League of Eating. It's

4:54

an official body like you'd have the

4:56

baseball league or the NBA, the MLE

4:58

exists. So he's the record holder at

5:00

certain points. May have been broken since he

5:02

set them. For spam, eating 9.75 pounds of

5:04

spam. Chicken

5:07

wings, fortune bait, Indian

5:09

tacos, pretzels, pizzas,

5:11

Jack's donut holes. Donut

5:14

holes. Yeah, those are a thing aren't they?

5:16

Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

5:19

the bit that used to be in the donut. He's

5:21

eating them all. That's why they're not there. Yeah,

5:25

that's a sausage. For me it seems like, you

5:27

know in Olympic swimming how people get loads of

5:29

medals because you get a medal for 100 meters,

5:32

for 50 meters, for 200 meters, it's all

5:34

basically the same thing. It feels

5:36

to me like once you can eat a load of

5:38

shrimp, then you could probably eat a load

5:40

of donuts and you could probably eat a load of

5:43

everything. It's like he's only got one skill and he's

5:45

getting all these records. I think it's all to do

5:47

with training, right? Well, I think in Major League Eating,

5:49

if you are some plucky kid out of nowhere, the

5:52

best things to go for are things where you

5:54

can innovate. Because there are some which are volume

5:56

based. I see. We just have to drink as

5:58

much honey as you can. Whatever and

6:00

that depends on how big your stomach is exactly. I

6:02

just that is just about you Do you have to

6:04

do that competition in just a top? No pants pool?

6:10

But if you're If

6:12

you're some some like, you know upstart what

6:15

you might be able to develop a new tech

6:17

I see so before we started today you just

6:19

had a cheese and what was it salary sandwich?

6:21

Yeah, you might come up with a new way

6:23

of eating that like taking the celery out first

6:26

exactly improving the sandwich by taking out I've

6:29

already had a lot of flanking off about this sandwich But

6:32

you might have exactly a new way to eat corn on the

6:35

cob faster You can attach it to like a black and decker

6:37

so it spins round So

6:40

that those are the ones where if you're trying to get into

6:42

this game and why would you Arriving

6:45

in New York City on a great home

6:47

bus with just a corn in your bed

6:51

And do you think that you start by going

6:53

to like breakfast restaurants that have those like breakfast

6:55

challenges that put you on the Your

6:58

photo on the wall and then there's like a

7:00

Tom Hanks in Elvis like agent in the corner

7:06

Went to a breakfast place the other day that

7:08

had a breakfast challenge You had to eat this

7:11

entire this huge list of like 40 sausages 20

7:13

eggs It wasn't as big as that but it was it

7:15

looked doable You had 20 minutes to do it And if you

7:17

managed it you got the meal for free or you had to

7:19

pay for the whole thing and there's a leaderboard Right

7:21

that had the current champion Pete Dokkati of

7:24

the Liberty No, yeah, yeah, is that the

7:26

breakfast that was in the newspapers? Yeah, you

7:28

had that big break. Yeah. Yeah, exactly No

7:30

one's beat it since no one's beat it

7:33

since no Wow, I once went to it

7:35

one of these restaurants for like burgers and

7:37

stuff and my sister ordered the huge sort

7:39

of challenge thing She's quite small my sister

7:42

and she was really getting through it and their waiters

7:44

are all looking at her going bloody hell She's

7:47

doing good and I just ordered one hamburger and

7:49

it was really small I ate it really quickly

7:51

and I was like I'm gonna get another hamburger

7:53

and then I got my sister to order it

7:55

So she's wolfing down all this thing and she

7:57

went I have another hamburger I

8:01

read an interview with Jeff Esper. Oh,

8:03

yeah, his favorite movie is called Han

8:05

Luke Oh, I haven't seen that well

8:07

in it. There's a guy who has to eat 50 eggs

8:10

in an hour And

8:12

that's I think why he likes it. Yeah, Paul

8:14

Newman Paul Newman. Yeah Paul

8:17

Newman then opened a very successful line of

8:19

mayonnaise is valid To

8:21

eat with the eggs. Yeah film viral

8:23

marketing Paul Newman ranch first

8:25

ever yeah, cuz that fastest way to eat 50

8:27

eggs actually whipped them up on the mail and

8:30

moles them Really? He doesn't do

8:32

that in the movie. He just numbs on

8:34

them. But in the TV ads he would yeah

8:36

He would be walking saying I like my 50

8:38

eggs 50 eggs

8:40

per bottle. Come on Anyway,

8:43

this interview then asked Jeff Esper what a movie

8:45

of his life would be called and he said

8:47

cool hands Jeff So that's a good

8:49

you know, he's quite a witchy guy, yeah But then in

8:52

2023 the second and third place

8:54

in this shrimp eating competition Where

9:00

Mickey pseudo and Nick wary and they're

9:02

married to each other cool. I did

9:04

they meet oh Did

9:07

they meet doing the lady in the tramp? They

9:13

met in the compressive eating sphere

9:17

We locked eyes as we were both throwing up 100,000

9:20

marshmallows And

9:24

they said they have a child the two of them

9:26

and they said the child can do anything They won't

9:28

when they grow up except become a competitive eater. Why

9:30

I think they're just in it and they don't feel

9:32

like it's a Good job to have feels like you're

9:34

worried. It's gonna be a Darth Vader situation What

9:39

I will want to say about Mickey pseudo

9:41

is that she is I believe the reigning

9:43

champion of the Nathan's hot dog eating competitions

9:45

woman's category and Nathan's the

9:48

Nathan's Coney Island a hot dog eating

9:50

competition is really the biggest competition in

9:52

the Competitive eating league and the

9:54

one that put competitive eating on the map major league

9:56

eating it was born out of nature. There you go But

9:59

it's only been split by gender, I

10:01

believe since 2011, before that women

10:03

used to compete with men together and they

10:05

used to place in the top three routinely.

10:07

And then they split them, and I know

10:10

all this from a book called Rod Dogg by Jamie Loftus,

10:12

it's an incredible book, I recommend it to everybody. And

10:14

basically they were like, it's going to be the same, it's going to

10:16

be the same, but the men's one is televising

10:18

the woman's isn't and women get less

10:20

prize money. What? Oh, that's, the men's

10:22

is televising the woman's isn't. That surprises

10:24

me. You think they would give the

10:27

other way round. Because they did a lot of

10:29

perverts, like nothing more than the woman eating 75

10:31

pop balls. You either not televised or televised on

10:33

like ESPN3 as opposed to ESPN1, like it's something

10:35

like that. It sucks. And it is the only

10:38

competitive eating which is gender split, sausage eating. Right.

10:40

The only one. Oh really? Yeah,

10:42

yeah. All the others are mixed. Oh, I was like, is that an

10:45

innuendo? You're like, no. That's up to the

10:47

audience to make the innuendo there. I'm

10:49

just trying to picture you pitching why it should

10:51

be back on TV and really, I was really

10:54

isolating the pervert market. I would make a big bucks. I

10:57

would do an incredibly subtle pitch, which made it

10:59

very, very clear who's tuning in. Joey

11:02

Chestnut. Yeah. So he's managed

11:04

76 hot dogs

11:06

in one go. And I think I think

11:08

we may have even mentioned before the thing to do is

11:10

to dip the bun in the water so it gets all

11:12

slides down. But I love

11:15

this. The 1984 competition, I think this was Nathan's.

11:17

I'm not sure it might have been a different

11:19

league one. It was won by someone. She was

11:21

a 17 year old West German dude. Oh, what

11:24

do you do? Do you know, artists? You don't cut. Do you don't

11:26

cut. And she had never had a

11:28

hot dog before the competition. No, but that's incredible.

11:30

And you're like, oh my God, this stuff is

11:32

incredible. I could eat a million. That was incredible.

11:34

Was it like she looked at it and she'd

11:37

never seen one. She didn't know

11:41

how to eat it. And she's like, maybe I just took 10

11:43

of them in my mouth. What if they

11:45

find a German who's never had a soft. Yeah,

11:52

apparently chestnuts, Joey Chestnut was

11:54

saying once you have that

11:57

many hot dogs, you immediately need the

11:59

toilets. and the problem,

12:01

they don't really digest fully.

12:04

So you kind of shit, no. No, no,

12:06

no, no, no. Cleaning out. That's

12:08

what he said. How can you tell

12:10

the difference, realistically? I think when you feel a

12:12

solid hot dog coming out your butt. He's

12:15

already fine. The bun also comes out. This

12:17

shit is inside the bun. Let

12:22

me tell you a little something about corn. Also,

12:26

basically, Nathan's hot

12:28

dog eating contest was put on the

12:30

map in the mid-2000s by a Japanese

12:32

competitive eater called Takero Kobayashi.

12:34

Takero Tsunami Kobayashi. And then

12:36

he basically made it super popular

12:38

in America. And then Joey Chestnut was introduced to

12:40

him as like the American down-home alternative.

12:43

And so, again, Nathan's

12:46

hot dog eating competition is a story of sexism

12:48

and racism. And hot dogs.

12:52

In the advertising, they mostly stress the hot dog

12:54

part of it, don't they? Fine friends, fine friends.

12:57

If only we could get pervert into that

12:59

fantastic strapline. Oh, dear. Do

13:01

you know what chipmunking is? You might

13:03

have seen this in your journey. Oh, okay.

13:06

Oh, you know why I hadn't thought of it and

13:08

then Dan just did an action. It's

13:11

storing in your teeth. That's it. That's it.

13:14

Now, were you going to say it was like getting naked at Dad's seat? I

13:17

just think he's faking in a very high-pitched voice.

13:22

As you might expect, given what we're talking about, it's absolutely

13:24

dancing. The press conferences

13:26

would be great though in the leading up front. You were

13:28

going down. No,

13:31

it has to be in your mouth, right? The food before

13:33

the count ends, right? So if you're counting

13:35

down, you've got 10 minutes to eat this many whatever's. The

13:38

food has to be in your mouth and then

13:40

you get 30 seconds to swallow it. So often

13:42

the photo-finished bit is just right to get

13:44

all of this in your mouth. Yeah, yeah. And

13:46

as long as you get 30 seconds after the

13:48

cocktail. There used to be, all you had to

13:50

do was swallow it in a timely manner, that's

13:52

all it said. And it didn't say

13:55

it was exactly 30 seconds. And then there was

13:57

a guy called Crazy Legs Conti who

13:59

lost the competition. Because he couldn't eat it

14:01

in a timely manner and they thought we're

14:03

gonna have to make it proper I think

14:05

that's right. It's like I started so finish

14:07

or the bell Yeah, the quiz bell goes

14:09

this makes sense of the final few seconds

14:11

of Jeff Esper's Practice for the prom cocktail

14:14

because he goes over eight minutes He stops

14:16

the clock and he has a mouth that

14:18

is absolutely and I'm going spit it out

14:20

and he's so that's what it is

14:22

He's using his 30 seconds Clever

14:24

and crazy legs just while you mentioned

14:26

him James. He I read an article.

14:28

It's his legal name crazy legs conti

14:32

He compares I'm quoting here from the

14:34

article compares professional eaters to musicians He

14:37

says the way eaters move and shake is

14:39

an effort to get breath out of the

14:41

esophagus stomach and lower intestine I'm comfortable with

14:43

their instrument. That's interesting You know circular breathing

14:45

where you can play like a didgeridoo without

14:47

breathing Yeah, breathe through your nose and out

14:49

of your mouth. Yeah, can they try that

14:51

that could be a new innovation Yeah, the

14:53

breath sausage in this. I

14:55

mean you just show this much sausage in your mouth

14:58

while breathing through your nose But

15:01

like maybe the sausage in the nose is the Fosbury's

15:03

lot moment No hero

15:06

has managed to achieve. Yeah, right. You found

15:08

two more entry points. Yeah, right interesting the

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pervert They're tuning

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with the show. On with the

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vodka. On with the vodka. On with the

16:36

vodka. On with the vodka. On with the vodka.

16:38

On with the vodka. Okay, it is time

16:40

for fact number two, and that is James.

16:42

Okay, my fact this week is in the

16:45

Archie language of Southern Russia, a single verb

16:47

can have 1,502,839 possible forms. Is

16:54

that normal for most languages? It

16:57

is not normal. I would say

16:59

four seconds. So if you

17:01

think that in English, like to

17:03

podcasts, right? So you podcast, she

17:05

podcasts. I was podcasting,

17:08

I podcasted, and there's not much else because there

17:10

were all just- I would have been podcasting? Yeah,

17:12

I guess, but then that's kind of the same

17:14

ending. Now this is tenses as well. So

17:17

in Russian, obviously you would have I,

17:19

you, she, they, all

17:21

that kind of stuff, but also you have the past tense,

17:24

which would be different from masculine and feminine.

17:26

You would have the future tense, you

17:29

have gerunds, you have participles, you have all

17:31

sorts of stuff in Russian, but it's manageable

17:33

because I've studied it, it is manageable. But

17:35

in Archie, it just goes

17:37

crazy. You have, as well as masculine

17:39

and feminine, you have different terms for

17:41

domestic animals, for wild animals, for

17:44

young animals, old animals. So if you say the

17:46

pig podcasted, you would need to know if it

17:48

was a wild pig or a domestic pig to

17:50

know how to- Which is always my number one

17:53

point. You

17:55

have a different, if it's insects,

17:57

it's a different ending. beings,

18:00

musical instruments, serials,

18:02

abstract concepts, they all have different endings.

18:05

Everybody's got a podcast these days. How

18:11

does anyone learn it? Or

18:13

get anything done? I think

18:15

mostly you just naturally pick up these

18:17

kind of things if you live in it.

18:20

But also- Before you get to that word,

18:22

you'd have to stop and investigate. All right,

18:24

Wilder, investigate. Alive

18:26

or dead. But also the number of things.

18:30

So if it's one thing

18:32

or two things or many

18:34

things, it's different. Imagine solving

18:36

a crime based on a phone call because you know

18:38

that the verb was referring to a thing and you

18:40

could investigate what that thing was. We

18:42

know that they have a wild insect. That's

18:46

a podcast. And

18:49

also it's different depending on how you know

18:51

it's being done. So if you know it's

18:53

happened, it's different. If you're speculating it's happened,

18:56

it's different. If you're admiring something that's happening,

18:58

it's different. If something's forbidden, it's different. And

19:00

you can mix and match all of these

19:02

different things to get to 1.5 million. I

19:06

admired the forbidden tame young

19:08

locust podcast. Podcasting,

19:11

whatever. But you think about that. You had to use

19:13

so many words to say that, right? But they would

19:15

be able to say it in one word because they

19:17

would know all of the endings. They'd be like, well,

19:19

that's implied by the way. Locust stays the same. All

19:22

of that stuff. You could just say the

19:24

locust podcasted. So you just verb and a

19:26

noun and you would get all of that

19:28

information by all the different endings. It's like

19:31

anti-German. It's the most effective. Yeah, yeah. As

19:33

a result, how has this language become hugely

19:35

popular and spoken by tens of millions? It's

19:37

spoken by very, very few people in

19:39

Dagestan in Russia. And it's about 20

19:41

kilometres away from the village of Sovkra

19:43

Adnayah. Who do you remember? It was

19:45

the place where everyone knows how to

19:47

tightrope. Oh, no way. Yeah. There's a

19:49

village in Russia where everyone knows how

19:51

to tightrope and it's just over the

19:53

mountain from there. What an amazing pocket

19:56

of the planet. This

19:59

is incredible. And I should also say

20:01

that Andy, once you've learned all of these

20:03

one million different forms of standard verbs, that

20:05

helps you with about 170 of

20:08

the most common verbs, but there are more than

20:10

a thousand exceptions. We don't have

20:12

to learn on top of that. Oh, and the

20:14

language can be written in Latin script or in

20:16

Cyrillic, and in either way, the language has got

20:18

74 letters. So

20:20

you need to learn 148 letters. I'm

20:25

not going to ask how many letters can there be for there to

20:27

be this many endings, because you would just run out of letters for

20:29

even combinations. This is why I

20:31

failed my Archie GCSE oral.

20:34

That's so annoying. So

20:36

yeah, it's just a very, very complicated

20:38

language from the excess. Have you heard

20:40

of the Foreign Service Institute? I think

20:42

they're an American outfit. Basically, they sort

20:44

of rate languages on how hard they

20:46

are to learn. Oh yeah. So, like,

20:48

for English speakers. Sorry. Native English speakers.

20:50

So, like, French is category

20:53

one. You know, like, Romance languages, because

20:56

English borrows a lot from there. We derive a lot. Yeah, and you

20:58

already know. That's easy for English people to learn. Completely,

21:01

yeah. And then category three is

21:03

various Indian languages and Swahili. Category

21:05

four, it takes 44 weeks

21:07

to learn. It's sort of going up in the number

21:09

of weeks. The Russian, Hindi, Tamil. How many weeks is

21:11

it supposed to have taken me to learn? Don't

21:14

worry about it. Well, it's taken

21:17

me five years that I'm intermediate. Yeah, that's

21:19

about right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry.

21:22

Category five is Mandarin,

21:24

Japanese, Korean, Arabic. Category

21:26

two only contains German. Oh.

21:28

Completely. English is a Germanic

21:30

language. I know. I

21:33

think they decided it's a bit harder than French,

21:35

but it's the only one. It's just there on

21:37

its own in their category. Actually, German does have

21:39

quite a lot of conjugation, doesn't it? Because you

21:41

speak German a little bit. It's got four basic

21:43

cases. Yeah. Like, it's not... It's all right. It's

21:45

a bit... Because French and

21:47

Spanish and Italian, they're all kind of

21:49

debased Latin, if you like, because they

21:51

just cut out all the complicated endings

21:53

and... And it's because

21:55

as Latin's French... Yeah, I guess it's like

21:57

how to speak it correctly, because I speak... in

22:00

German but I can't conjugate shit. I'm just

22:02

I'm always like you know what I'm saying.

22:05

But do you get it right? Even though you... Sometimes

22:08

I'm like I'll know a noun but I won't

22:10

remember its article so I'll like gender it just

22:12

on a guess alone and I'm sure that... I'm

22:14

sure whoever I'm speaking to will kind of guess.

22:17

But I always get worried about that because if I get

22:19

the gender of a noun wrong they won't

22:21

know if I say das table or whatever. I know

22:23

it's not table. I can't remember if it's table either. But like I

22:26

think people... And you're just like das

22:28

ist? Dass ist, das ist, das ist, das ist. It

22:30

doesn't change the fact that it's a tis. Relax.

22:34

Because I read an article where

22:36

they interviewed 56 native

22:38

French speakers and they asked them to

22:40

assign the gender of 93 masculine words

22:42

and they agreed on only 17 of them. And

22:46

they were asked to assign the gender of 50

22:48

feminine words and they agreed on only one. Wow.

22:52

It's just vibes. I love

22:54

that. You fixed German basically. I

22:59

think that's a good thing in all languages

23:01

really is that if you just try people

23:03

will accept it. Yeah. The Russian language has

23:05

three genders for any noun but if you

23:07

get it wrong I'll still know what you're

23:09

talking about. Sorry

23:11

maybe I'm making a lot of German and

23:13

Russian people really angry. Where

23:16

is Archie on the list? Archie

23:18

is not on this list. I think there's

23:20

a secret category in the lock off. But

23:22

Russian is difficult because the stress can matter

23:24

right in words and that can make a

23:26

big difference. So you can see it written

23:28

down and you wouldn't know necessarily the difference

23:31

between say mukha and mukha.

23:33

Right. Where one of them

23:35

means flower and the other one means torture. Oh. So

23:39

if you just see that written down and they don't

23:41

have the stress... Well if you have celiac. That kind

23:43

of flower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking

23:45

that kind of flower. Again, oh

23:47

my god. Oh flower, flower. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:49

I don't think... is there any way of

23:51

telling verbally flower, flower. No, context only I

23:53

think. Flower. Maybe Irish accent. I

23:57

always say floor. Yeah. mistake

24:00

it for this. Valentine's Day is always very disappointing

24:02

though for your wife isn't it? There

24:06

was a woman, oh I wish I could remember this now,

24:08

oh god, there was a

24:10

woman in America who was arrested for

24:13

throwing a pancake at an American president

24:16

and I can't remember which president it was but

24:18

when she was arrested they asked her about it

24:20

and she said she couldn't find any flowers but

24:22

this contained flour and she thought it would be

24:24

just the same. Was it really? No,

24:27

like a hundred years ago,

24:29

easy. Do you remember when I made

24:31

a karate magazine news article for spitting on

24:33

someone and that was a misunderstanding

24:35

of word as well. What? Yeah, I don't remember this.

24:37

This is in Hong Kong, I was in karate monthly.

24:40

That's a news story rather than a

24:42

speech. That's where I know you from.

24:44

What? Is this real? Yeah, I was

24:47

studying kempo

24:49

at the time which is a former martial art

24:51

and I was sparring with a kid and my,

24:53

the guy who's training me, he just

24:56

called me Danny and he had a bit of

24:58

a lisp and he was yelling spin on him

25:00

Danny, spin on him to spin kick him but

25:02

I heard spin on him Danny and I literally

25:05

just spat on his face. No. Yeah, they paused the

25:07

fight and they were like what was that? Is

25:10

this true? Yeah, yeah. How

25:12

old were you? 10, 11. I can't believe,

25:14

like honestly Dan, I've known you for 20

25:16

years. Every week,

25:18

same thing as that. It

25:21

was yeah, it was in

25:23

Hong Kong you were

25:25

in a karate based newspaper. In magazine.

25:27

Yeah, sorry. I guess it's

25:29

one of those like the funny stories kind of

25:31

bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't like international karate

25:33

news. It was headway. No, I like, yeah.

25:35

What's the easiest word on the planet? The

25:38

easiest word. Yeah. So the most universal.

25:41

Not bad. Hey, hey. Nearly

25:45

closer. Oh, good. Bingo.

25:47

Oh, I knew it. Oh, I know. It'd

25:52

be incredible if you would just, you genuinely haven't

25:54

heard the question because you aren't listening. Yeah, we

25:56

can edit it. Fix it in post. Huh?

25:59

Yeah, huh? Every language has a

26:01

version for, can you please quickly clarify? And in

26:03

every language it's, huh? Because it would be very

26:05

annoying if you had to say a sentence to

26:07

say, can you quickly clarify? So that's

26:10

it. And it means that, you know, it

26:12

can de-escalate tension between you and someone else,

26:14

even if you don't speak the same language. But

26:16

also, does that also mean that

26:18

the inflection of a question is

26:20

the same in every language? No idea. Because

26:23

it's not really a sound, it's much more,

26:25

it's literally, in my mind, it's just the

26:27

sound of a question mark. I think actually

26:29

that's not true because some languages have question

26:31

words, don't they? Like English and

26:33

Russian do, like who, what, when, all that

26:35

kind of stuff. But some languages, it

26:38

depends on the inflection about whether it's a question or

26:40

not a question. But English has that a bit, dude,

26:42

doesn't it? You could say, I live here. And

26:45

that's a question. Yeah. Whereas... Yeah, yeah.

26:47

Well, that's an Aussie inflection as well.

26:49

That's true. I live here? In Australia?

26:51

Yeah. We

26:53

had that thing, David Crystal, the linguist said that

26:55

the Aussie inflection at the end was a useful

26:57

thing because it was both a, I

27:00

understand the statement, but I also am

27:02

asking you, it's up to you. You don't need to pick it up

27:04

as a question, but it works as a question. You can, if you

27:06

like. Yeah. With the inflection. That feels like a mind game you'd play

27:08

in like a corporate interview. Yeah, exactly.

27:11

You got the job? We

27:19

find them guilty? I

27:24

need to get something

27:26

off my chest. So the closest so far,

27:28

so far I've ever been to getting canceled

27:31

is thanks to a joke that I

27:33

wrote about the word empathy in Russian. And so

27:35

the setup of the joke is the Russian language

27:37

doesn't have the word for empathy. Can

27:39

you imagine what that feels like? I couldn't. And

27:42

so I posted this joke online

27:44

and the avalanche of Russian

27:46

people going to correct me to say that

27:49

there is actually a word in Russian for

27:51

empathy and you're actually stupid and dumb

27:53

and not a patriot. But

27:56

I would say 90% of

27:58

the corrections were the word for. sympathy, obviously,

28:00

that is very easily checked through

28:02

Google Translate. So basically, the word

28:05

that they keep suggesting is sympathy,

28:07

which is sympathy, which

28:09

is close to empathy, but not white. Then

28:11

they'd say sostradania, which is compassion,

28:13

which again, is close, but not

28:15

quite. And then very rarely they

28:17

will say impatiya, which is essentially

28:19

the same sort of like, I guess,

28:21

Greek root for it, empathy, impatiya, which is

28:23

a word that has not been widely used

28:25

in Russia up until I want to say

28:28

two years ago. And I know this because

28:30

there's loads of articles in Russia that are

28:32

essentially titled, what is this word, impatiya? And

28:34

what does it mean? And the joke, the

28:36

setup of the joke, I feel like I'm,

28:38

I'm in court right now. This is funny. I don't even know

28:40

where I'm going with this, but

28:46

I just think that it's really funny because

28:48

they think that I'm sort of trying

28:50

to smite the Russian people or say that Russians

28:52

don't understand what empathy is. And surely that's something

28:54

that you can explain in more than just one

28:56

word. And to

28:58

sort of, I guess, make right with

29:01

the Russians, I'll, I'll share a Russian

29:03

word that we have that you don't

29:05

in English. Okay. And that's lista part,

29:08

which is the word for falling leaves. So

29:10

it's like rainfall. We have leaf fall. And

29:13

you don't say that we can actually have

29:15

some feelings. If

29:23

you're speaking to a Russian, you can

29:25

tell whether they're a virologist or not

29:27

by the way they talk. And

29:30

that is because in Russian

29:33

you have anima and inanimate nouns, right?

29:35

The endings can change up whether something's

29:37

alive. And so virus virus

29:39

in Russian is most

29:42

people would say it's inanimate, but virologists

29:44

always think it's alive, a virus because

29:46

virus is it alive? Is it not

29:49

alive? Actually, nobody really knows. But virologists

29:51

think it's alive and normal people tend

29:53

to not say it's alive. So

29:56

if you say, um, on

29:59

Dalman year. Corona virus Then

30:01

that would mean he gave me coronavirus, but

30:04

that would be a person who's not a

30:06

viral He's just saying it but if you

30:08

said on Del Meneer Corona virusa that would

30:10

be animate and it would be a Virologist

30:13

saying it because they think virus alive and how

30:15

useful have you found this change in your life?

30:18

I think that you can use that to solve a crime.

30:21

Yeah Who was the murderer?

30:23

It was it was it was a virologist in the

30:25

library Do you want to know a fun fact? Yeah

30:39

Did you know how like French kiss is

30:41

making out oh yeah, like Irish goodbyes leading

30:43

about saying Or French exit

30:46

as well. Yeah, but in Russian a

30:48

buffet is a Swedish table and

30:50

a Family of three which is like

30:53

two women in a man or whatever whatever combination

30:55

of genders in a in a throuplet is a

30:57

Swedish family So

31:00

men are taught which is what we would call it. I don't

31:02

know cuz like three people living together It's not a

31:05

three-semit. It's like yeah, it is a Throuple

31:08

I'm the only one still say manage our twat

31:20

Six Love

31:24

ESPN nostril Either

31:31

this is for Olga and James P. Hold

31:33

Androff Saturday don't speak I'm not native Russians

31:35

speak but you love dirty words Yeah,

31:38

I've never heard I

31:40

went on a side where it was sort of

31:42

like weird rude words from Russia and and

31:45

you say in Russia this bottom Have

31:47

you ever heard of that word before I have

31:49

never seen this in my life I didn't move from Russian

31:51

when I was 14. So maybe like it's a sort of

31:53

high school work That's yes, that word is a

31:56

15 certificate I

32:00

don't think it's a real word, but it

32:02

was on a site. What does it mean?

32:04

Yeah. It kind of doesn't really mean anything.

32:06

It's just a beautiful word for when the

32:08

pollen falls in the street. I

32:12

can't believe we don't have this word in

32:14

English. Amber Pollard. Do

32:17

you know the Bicol language of the

32:19

Philippines doesn't have... It has

32:21

swear words, but people don't really use

32:23

them because it has a complete other

32:26

vocabulary if you're angry. So

32:28

you speak normal Bicol, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

32:30

but as soon as you're angry, you just change

32:32

all the words that you use so that people

32:34

can tell you're angry. Oh, that's great. I

32:36

think it is good. So you're saying the same stuff, but it's

32:38

different using different words for it. Using different words, yeah.

32:40

So it's a bit like with my daughter when she

32:43

does something bad. I normally call her jelly, but if

32:45

she does something bad, I go, ajel. Yeah.

32:48

Like, you know, angry. But it's a completely different

32:50

vocabulary. I hate to bring

32:52

it up, but again, such beautiful evidence in a court

32:55

case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like,

32:57

was it a crime of passion? I don't know. OK,

33:06

it is time for fact number three. That

33:09

is Andy. My fact is, if cars had

33:11

improved at the same rate as computers since

33:13

1971, they would now be

33:16

able to travel at nearly the speed of light.

33:19

Wouldn't that be cool? And if my grandmother had wheel.

33:23

She would also be traveling. They

33:26

would also be smaller, the cars, right? Yes, they

33:28

would be about half an inch longer, unfortunately. And

33:32

this is based on something that Gordon

33:35

Moore, who was a co-founder of

33:37

Intel, a huge computer company, said in

33:39

1965. He noticed

33:41

that the number of transistors you can fit

33:43

on a chip, a computer chip, had been

33:45

roughly doubling every year for the previous 10

33:47

years. And he said, this is amazing. And

33:50

he thought it would keep going. He thought the principal would apply.

33:52

Maybe it would be every two years the number you could fit

33:54

on a chip doubled. But he said, I

33:57

think it was good for at least 10 more years.

34:00

And it actually has stayed true for about 50 years at least

34:03

since he wrote that and it's slowing down

34:05

a bit now, but cars would be able to travel at the

34:07

speed of light because the number of Transistors you

34:09

can fit on a computer chip now is so huge

34:12

The numbers are just mind-boggling of how much things

34:14

have improved I suppose the thing was that we

34:17

got to a speed with cars where we thought

34:19

there's no point going much faster Is that right

34:21

because of safety reasons and stuff like that?

34:24

I suppose obviously we move the

34:26

speed of light that we'd also go infinite mass

34:28

and And oh that'll slow you

34:30

down I

34:38

saw an interview with Lewis Hamilton the other day

34:40

and he was talking about how when you're driving

34:42

a Formula One car Yeah, everything about your structure

34:44

of your body needs to be as string as

34:46

possible because when you take a turn at 180

34:48

miles an hour Yeah,

34:50

your body does not go with the car have strong

34:52

next and they yeah Yeah, I mean like

34:54

there's no point getting faster than you know You get

34:56

cars that can go 200 miles an hour

34:59

or faster, but there's no point having them because you

35:01

can't go faster No, you're right. They ship so

35:03

you saw that. Yeah, it's just it's really just

35:05

about transistors. I completely

35:07

but am I correct in understanding

35:09

that like I remember this distinctly

35:11

as an example in a textbook that

35:14

at some point it becomes imperceptible

35:16

to Humans so

35:18

like they tried doubling the amount of pixels

35:20

in like computer graphics But at some point

35:22

once you double it your human eye can't see

35:24

that it's double. That's really good. Yeah I

35:27

think a computer screen now can show more

35:29

colors than the human eye can perceive. Yes

35:33

Yeah, if you were traveling at near speed of

35:35

light, this is kind of a physics question really

35:38

and you had to take a left

35:40

Right. Yeah, you're in space if

35:42

you needed an exit sign, but I'm traveling at

35:44

close to the speed of light Yeah, how would

35:47

you how would you do that? I think you

35:49

won't be able to see it At what point

35:51

how big and how far away would have to

35:53

be that's a really good point leave

35:56

it with me Right

35:58

to ride on Monroev Oh, yeah,

36:00

he is way more qualified than me to do that.

36:02

Alright, you want to hear something about transistors? Sure.

36:05

No, genuinely. Yeah. They're

36:07

unbelievably interesting transistors. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And the

36:10

light would still come to you. Oh, God.

36:13

Yeah, sorry. Sorry, Andy. Because you're

36:15

going in the opposite direction to the sign, right? Yeah. So

36:17

you're going towards the sign. Going towards the sign. So the

36:19

light will still get to you just as quickly. Ah,

36:21

so just as fast. Faster, if anything? No. Well,

36:24

to the point where you're at at any moment, it would just

36:26

get to you at the same speed. I think

36:28

it still needs to be a big sign from that distance. Yeah.

36:32

Saying left here. I think there's always

36:34

got to be a big sign in space. Sorry, it's got to be a

36:36

big sign in space. Happy with that, then? Yeah, that

36:38

was great. Back to you, Trenton. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

36:42

Okay. I just, here's the

36:44

thing. Right, 1971, Intel released their first ever

36:46

microprocessor, alright? I know, absolutely not. It's not

36:48

too difficult. No, no, no. The

36:52

chip was 12 square millimeters, right?

36:54

Picture that. 12 square millimeters. Really not very big

36:56

at all. 12 millimeters, 12 square millimeters. They had

36:59

2,300 transistors onto that space. It's

37:02

pretty good, right? The

37:05

gap between each transistor was 10,000 nanometers, which is

37:07

the size of a red blood cell. Just

37:10

to give you an idea of what's in it.

37:12

Today, the most advanced chips can fit into that

37:14

space, not 2,300 transistors, but 130 million.

37:20

What does that mean? What does it mean? It's

37:24

insane. The gap is 14 nanometers

37:26

between them. Very

37:28

very very small. I think the

37:30

transistors are so

37:32

tiny, they're so impossibly

37:34

small. Basically in the transistors, we should

37:36

say, they're like the taps. They're either on

37:38

or they're off. They make up the ones and

37:41

zeros. They're little switches which change the state depending

37:43

on whether an electric current is flowing through them

37:45

or not. And your phone has millions of them

37:47

in it. Your phone will have so many millions.

37:49

And it's quite, it's obviously really hard to get

37:51

your head around because the numbers are just so

37:53

mind-boggling. Like in 2015, I mean

37:56

nearly a decade ago, the world created

37:58

13 trillion transistors every single day. second.

38:00

Wow. We're

38:03

more trans... this is basically a transistor

38:05

planet now, isn't it? Pretty much. Yeah.

38:07

And they're now kind of printed directly onto

38:10

the chips. It's not like there's a big

38:12

pile of... Yes, someone's not. I dropped it.

38:14

Nobody... just one old man

38:20

in a cave in Turkey who's just

38:22

pulling each one together. It's just mind

38:24

blowing. And this stuff is what the

38:26

entire world is made of. Everything you're

38:28

listening to this podcast through is transistor

38:30

based. It's all based on this stuff.

38:32

And it's so far beyond most people's

38:34

comprehension. Yeah. Unless you spend years on it,

38:37

you know. It's insane. I guess

38:39

it's just so big, aren't they? It's hard to really

38:41

get your head around any of the numbers. Yeah. Like

38:43

for instance, the new Google computer, the quantum one that

38:45

they're supposed to have made and no one's sure if

38:47

they've made it or not. If they

38:49

have, then... That's so

38:52

funny for a quantum computer. Yeah. It can

38:54

do as many calculations as possible. Transistors

38:59

in two seconds as if

39:01

you've got the entire population of India

39:03

to do a sum every

39:05

second since the beginning of the universe.

39:07

That would be the same as this

39:09

computer can do in two seconds. And

39:12

again, that's... It's so hard to understand.

39:14

It's amazing. Wow. And the

39:16

reason the transistors have been getting somewhat smaller is

39:18

partly... is a really good thing, partly because when

39:21

they get smaller, you get less electricity wasted

39:23

and less heat wasted. Obviously the process

39:25

generates a lot of heat.

39:27

So actually making them smaller means you save huge amounts

39:29

of energy, which is part of the reason they can

39:31

do it and that it's a good thing. Because I

39:33

think more said at the very start, he said, one

39:35

of the problems is going to be we're going to

39:37

get more and more transistors, but everything's just going to

39:40

get hotter and hotter and hotter. Yeah. And if you've

39:42

got a million transistors in your phone, you just won't

39:44

be able to pick it up. It'll just set fire

39:46

to the table as soon as you put it on

39:48

the table. Right. But then they found that ways to

39:50

counteract that. Yeah. But now they are so small. Again,

39:52

this is mad that quantum effects

39:55

are starting to come into play and the gates

39:58

are no longer functioning properly because they're so small. small that

40:00

you get some electrons leaking through even

40:02

when it's supposed to be off because

40:04

they're now down to kind of electron

40:06

size right the barrier of the gate

40:08

so they're having to work out new

40:10

shapes of transistor to re exert some

40:12

control over this gate because it's too

40:14

leaky for individual electrons. I've got a

40:16

question for that. Oh, yeah, you're traveling

40:18

on an electron. Yeah, there's a neutron

40:20

on your left hand side. How big

40:22

would the sign have to be in

40:24

order for you to for me to

40:27

well, I'm glad you brought that up. I didn't

40:29

have a additional question I wanted to ask

40:31

earlier, which is how if you saw the sign

40:34

saying take a left you're traveling near to the speed

40:36

of light, you're going to have to slow down how

40:38

far away does the sign need to be for you

40:41

to de accelerate, decelerate, decelerate where you go slow enough

40:43

that you can take a left. I

40:45

mean, it depends how fast you're going because you said

40:47

close to the speed of light is it 99% the

40:49

speed of light? Yeah, 98% is

40:51

it 97%? That's a

40:54

classic follow up question of a person who

40:56

does not know the answer. I've

40:59

just suddenly remembered this has to do

41:01

with cars, but also to do with transistors.

41:03

And I remember that there was a guy

41:05

the co creator of the transistor won a

41:07

Nobel Prize for it. I'm going off

41:10

the top of my head here, but he's one of the

41:12

only few people to win two Nobel prizes. Right. So

41:14

the second time that he got announced as

41:16

the Nobel Prize winner, there was a party

41:18

that was going to because you know, they

41:21

kind of know that yeah, coming up was

41:23

being thrown for him. And he almost didn't

41:25

make it to the party because he couldn't

41:27

open his electric garage because the transistor broke

41:29

in that allowed for it to switch over.

41:31

Lovely. And someone had to come and pick

41:33

him up and take him to the party.

41:35

More Gordon Moore, he was a very cool

41:37

guy. Very interesting guy co founded Intel. He

41:39

I mean, gave, he became incredibly rich, obviously,

41:41

and gave loads and loads of his money

41:43

away to protect the Amazon protecting salmon rivers

41:45

because he's very keen fishermen. But

41:48

he founded Intel with

41:50

Robert noise was his colleague. And

41:52

they wanted to call the Company

41:57

more noise. More

42:00

noise than anything are undecided. I thought it

42:02

would be right for known for his company

42:04

would be appropriate for something so they got

42:06

to know it's computers in either. Yeah yeah

42:08

but. I. Also love that has sort of.

42:11

Contribution. To managing is

42:13

just coming to Steam every year

42:15

and saying. Doubling. The

42:18

other at this if if I wonder if is

42:20

actually quite a lot of it with Muslim became

42:22

like a self fulfilling prophecy. They knew that it

42:24

was gonna have to double in a year or

42:26

two years and so that's what they did. They

42:29

could have gone faster but they rely on know

42:31

it has to do this right. Eads. Is

42:33

still holding up. I think that's dependency. speak

42:35

to people have been predicting that is gonna

42:37

do. We can't possibly keep on doubling every

42:39

to a maybe is now sides to every

42:42

three or something but is is what he

42:44

had a Bremen limit. Know Bemelmans, Minnesota

42:46

Geico of hands Bremen and he said that

42:48

there was a limit on the maximum rate

42:50

of computation that can be achieved in a

42:53

self contained system in the material universe. said

42:55

we would get to a limit of how

42:57

much I see could be and he used

42:59

a i don't understand the mathematics of Every

43:01

uses Einstein's equations in order to make sense

43:04

of it. Said Bremen

43:06

who was born in Bremen in

43:08

term and an effort to bernard

43:10

Bremen and now and forth at

43:12

Bremen And ah, my office. Yeah

43:15

I. Can also add you know

43:17

what the fastest supercomputer in England is

43:19

called? In. In most areas

43:21

that a classic. English.

43:23

Name like Nigel? Yeah it

43:25

is. The think. Less.

43:28

Patriarchal. Have any.

43:30

Fancy my that he is the four hundred

43:33

and fifty seventh most powerful computer. And the

43:35

well, how about a less like a reasonable

43:37

and four hundred fifty five other girls x

43:39

five hundred I'll say Elizabeth know. Oh okay,

43:42

I mean it's almost impossible to have fun.

43:44

Okay, well as a woman's name is a

43:46

woman, say wouldn't say it's like Lionel Fashion

43:48

One his name Apologies to any of people

43:51

with his name. Oh, I'm Margaret Aggie Mod.

43:54

Agatha.e da see now it's

43:56

dull on. Do. A lot

43:58

on his the faster. supercomputer in

44:01

England and

44:03

other supercomputers. Robert is the

44:05

103rd, Alex is the 187th,

44:07

Gene is the

44:09

288th and Henry is the

44:11

293rd. Some

44:13

of the most uninspiring names. It feels that way,

44:15

doesn't it? Dorn is really good because you can

44:18

say the Dorn of a new age, but you

44:20

can't say this is the Robert of a new

44:22

age. When do supercomputers stop being

44:24

super? Like surely supercomputers from 20

44:26

years ago are no longer super. Great point.

44:28

It's all the number of calculations per second,

44:30

isn't it? Yeah. And surely the bar keeps

44:33

rising, right? Yeah. We had using old computers

44:35

a very big problem a couple of years

44:37

ago, four years ago. So while the pandemic

44:39

was breaking out, one thing that went a

44:41

bit unnoticed is that hundreds of

44:43

places got hit by the millennium bug Y2K.

44:45

In 2020? In 2020. Yeah. Why? Because what

44:50

happened was at the time, so Y2K was a big

44:52

problem, right? The problem was is that when we hit

44:54

2000, the computers thought it was 1900. So

44:57

it was jumping backwards and that was the chaos. So you would go 1997, 1998, 1999, 1900.

44:59

Exactly. And that was going to

45:04

mess up everything. That's the best setup for a

45:06

rom-com I have ever heard in my life. A

45:09

singleton in 1999 at a New Year's party travels

45:11

back in time and falls in love with someone

45:13

from 1900. Oh yeah. That's very nice. With

45:15

a few tutors and glitches and

45:17

get some. Yes.

45:19

But yeah, so what ended up happening was

45:21

in that period where everyone was desperately trying

45:23

to fix the Y2K bug, they changed the

45:25

coding so that was 2020 and they thought

45:27

what would

45:29

happen is, so 2-0 became the number, right? And

45:32

they thought in the 20 years subsequent, they're going

45:34

to become obsolete. We'll have new computers. This is

45:36

not going to be an issue. I see. So

45:38

computers thought it was 2020, but actually it was

45:40

2007. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

45:45

So, um, so then we got to 2020

45:47

and everyone went like Brexit.

45:49

We've been kicking it down the road. We kicked

45:51

it down the road. Now a lot of places

45:53

had changed their systems, but a bunch hadn't. So

45:55

there was, and it was weird things. Like there

45:57

was a version of a game of WWF, which

46:00

crashed because it was an online download. Oh

46:02

my god. What did he think?

46:05

Because I thought planes are going to fall from

46:08

the sky and stuff. Not people will be able

46:10

to play WWF on the plane. We now work

46:12

out how Dan knows about this problem. His

46:16

plans for lockdown were completely wrecked. Huge

46:18

issue. We could download WWF. Also

46:21

other things, I imagine. Oh

46:26

yeah, and 5,000 players fell out of the sky. And

46:29

it was things like grocery stores that had

46:31

till systems that were automated. Suddenly those were

46:33

crashing worldwide. So you couldn't buy the game

46:35

in the first place? Exactly. It was a

46:38

nightmare. It was horrible. There was a website

46:40

called Splunk, which suffered from it. Not Splunk!

46:45

Splunk is a website that looks for errors in

46:47

computing. How did you accidentally end up on that

46:49

website? I'll

46:51

tell you one more thing. OK, this is

46:54

about how your phone CPU is made. It's

46:56

sort of one of that central processing unit.

46:59

This is from an interview with a guy called Chris Miller, who's written

47:01

a book called Chip War. I'm quoting

47:03

him directly. This is what gets into your modern

47:06

phones, right? A ball of tin falls

47:08

at a rate of several hundred miles an

47:10

hour through a vacuum. It's

47:12

only about 30 millionths of a meter across.

47:15

Small ball of tin. It is pulverized

47:17

by two shots from one of the

47:19

most powerful lasers ever deployed and explodes

47:21

into a plasma measuring several times hotter

47:23

than the surface of the sun. This

47:26

plasma emits extreme

47:28

ultraviolet light at exactly the right

47:30

wavelength of 13.5 nanometers, which is

47:32

then collected via a dozen mirrors,

47:34

which are themselves the flattest mirrors

47:37

humans have ever produced. The

47:39

mirrors reflect the light at just the right

47:41

angle, so it hits the silicon wafer and

47:43

carves the circuits onto the chips that make

47:45

your iPhone possible. What? And

47:48

that's so that Dan can play WWF games on

47:50

it. It's the biggest step

47:52

down for this system. Isn't

47:54

that nuts? I don't think I

47:56

understood any of that. I'll be honest. I'm clinging on.

47:59

I mean, it's incredible. Oh, we should say Kenny

48:01

Stoltz, a listener, sent that in a little while ago. That

48:03

interview with Chris Miller. It's just, hey,

48:05

it's nuts, isn't it? And these machines, they're

48:07

so accurate that it's like shooting a laser

48:09

from the moon and hitting an individual coin

48:12

on Earth. Apple. Apple is not every penny

48:14

they get, don't they? Especially

48:16

the podcasting team. Okay,

48:26

it is time for our final fact of

48:28

the show, and that is my fact. My

48:30

fact this week is that on the same

48:33

day that Joni Mitchell released the greatest hits

48:35

album, she also released a greatest Mrs album.

48:38

Brilliant. That was so good.

48:40

I know. Is it terrible?

48:44

Awful bad song. Yeah, it's-

48:46

A Case of You is on it. What's that? So

48:48

good. Most popular song. Okay, yeah. But I

48:50

mean, it's a collection from other albums, right?

48:52

Yeah, exactly folks. It's her favourite ones that

48:55

weren't commercially successful. Exactly, that's right. Okay.

48:57

And she was so happy with it, she tried

48:59

to release Mrs 2, but the record label rejected

49:01

that. The only reason it came out, the record

49:03

label didn't want to do it, but it was

49:05

like a compromise, it was a bargaining. She said,

49:07

you can do the greatest hits if I can

49:09

do the greatest Mrs. Yeah, I don't know much

49:11

about Joni Mitchell. She's an incredible artist.

49:15

She had a really nice moment a few weeks ago at

49:18

the Grammys. She performed for the

49:20

first time. She's 80 years old. She

49:22

sang a song- Not for the first time. Yeah,

49:24

for the first time ever. How's she ever- Yes,

49:26

she's won, I think, 10 Grammys, but she's never

49:29

performed at the Grammys. At the Grammys? Yeah, sorry,

49:31

you said she performed for the first time. I

49:33

think I said where she performed at the first

49:35

time. Right, right, okay. Regardless, she's

49:37

80 and she sits in a chair, she sings

49:39

this beautiful song. She wins a Grammy for best

49:41

folk album, for a live album that she did,

49:43

which is a bit annoying, I think, for the

49:45

other folk artists, I would say. Okay.

49:49

Controversial? Okay. And

49:52

yeah, she's someone who was a part

49:54

of the whole scene with Dylan, Bob

49:56

Dylan, And Leonard Cohen and all that

49:58

for listeners that don't know her. You. Won't

50:00

find much for stuff on spotify. She's

50:02

one of those artists where you'd probably

50:04

have to get a you tube or

50:06

as hook it off because of the

50:08

Joe Rogan right? Did see a little

50:10

a millennia. Joe Rogan was spotted by

50:13

yeah exclusive exclusive fry and was say

50:15

some things that people didn't agree with

50:17

either. Sam takes on a spotter fires

50:19

I am with Apple an old podcast

50:21

provide know whether the I had relenza

50:23

that's entities wasn't Joe. Santa

50:25

Sam a big fan Ever a load of people

50:27

took their stuff of spots five because of as

50:30

yes. One out of you to do we know it

50:32

was because of us because we are of fortify. Yeah.

50:34

But when an exclusive spots by maybe

50:36

was parenting hell with just with had

50:39

that the I got that. Not a

50:41

fantastic flounder. Yeah, she's amazing. Sees an

50:43

outdoorsy had polio when she was nine

50:45

years old. Yeah, And

50:48

interesting, the globe eyes. I was reading

50:50

about other people who have polio around

50:52

the time Mere Thorough had polio when

50:54

she was nine see wrote that she

50:56

was taken to an isolation unit because

50:58

it's catching polio obviously here and she's

51:00

taken away from all of her family

51:02

for months and all of her belongings.

51:04

With burned is is it merely early on it

51:07

by me is now maison like he basically at

51:09

nine years old he got this disease they take

51:11

you away and they burn victim that you out

51:13

and is that is that the case of polio

51:15

that if your toy had if you touch a

51:17

toy you could get it from that will without

51:19

a big we weren't sure what it was a

51:22

know it can it can go through bodily fluids

51:24

and stuff like that. Obviously we have taxis for

51:26

it now Joe Rogan tell me to say that

51:28

the guys. Are

51:32

now we have faculties are analyses not

51:34

as. Much from a prime yeah yeah

51:36

I'm yeah, can go through feces set

51:38

while speed with which we went from

51:40

Joni Mitchell to feces how assess assess

51:42

a flower if I saw pipeline I'm

51:44

not either and rise to clear up.

51:47

I fly the i have no injury

51:49

have endured the bucket had polio as

51:51

the as a child does he. oh

51:53

yes a lot of positions. Yeah.

51:56

Oh interesting. They supposedly gave her the edge

51:58

to house he'd seen her. guitar in

52:00

her polio because she

52:03

got into guitarring about 15 years old

52:05

at school and she was recovering

52:07

from polio and it just meant that it must have

52:09

been harder to tune the guitar for her. Yeah,

52:11

it kind of changes the way that your bone structure

52:14

works and stuff like that. There was a footballer called

52:16

Grinch who had polio as a child and it made

52:18

his legs bandy but it meant that he

52:20

kind of ran in a way that no one else ran

52:22

and it kind of helped him to play football supposedly. Right.

52:26

So she started smoking at the age of

52:28

nine and she started singing

52:30

because she wanted to get smoking money.

52:33

So she was in a cafe in

52:35

Calgary in Canada and she was the

52:37

resident artist. She was drawing people and

52:40

pictures would go up on the walls

52:42

and then she needed a bit more money so

52:44

she started singing and everyone said, you're

52:46

a pretty good singer. And so she

52:49

went home and asked her mum if her mum would

52:51

buy her a ukulele and

52:53

her mum said, who do you think you are? Kitty Wells.

52:56

A good one. I think it was a different time. That

52:59

was probably a really thick burn. Kitty

53:03

Wells. She was

53:05

the first female country singer to get to the

53:07

top of the US charts with

53:09

her song, It Wasn't God Who Made

53:11

Hunky Tonk Angels. This

53:14

is the kind of song I'd like to listen to actually.

53:16

So was it that she started singing at the age of

53:18

nine and then people thought, you know what would make this

53:20

nine year old voice even better? And

53:22

then she got into it that way. It

53:26

wasn't that. She

53:28

started smoking at the age of nine and then at

53:30

the age of like 14 or 15 she was like,

53:34

I need money for cigarettes. Let me

53:36

write a masterpiece. Calgary,

53:39

Alberta, Canada. That's where Bret the Hitman Hart is

53:41

from as you would know if you had the

53:43

WWE wrestling game. Or you would

53:45

also know that if you spent any time with Dan over the

53:47

last 20 years. And

53:50

then she started dating David Crosby

53:52

from Crosby Still Than That. And

53:55

Crosby sort of invited Eric Claptom

53:58

over to kind of check out.

54:00

this Joni Mitchell and he said

54:02

that Clapton sat mesmerised by her

54:04

playing and her different tunings of

54:06

her guitar although he also said

54:08

that it might have been slightly due to the fact of

54:10

all the weed that he'd smoked. She

54:13

said I mean she's no Kitty Wells. She

54:17

is I mean to watch footage of

54:19

her in that period is spectacular her

54:21

music is extraordinary the songwriting is incredible

54:23

and Blue is just consistently voted as

54:25

one of the greatest albums. Yeah it's

54:27

one of her albums which is always

54:30

you know very near the top of greatest albums

54:32

of all time. If you're a millennial you know

54:34

Joni Mitchell from the

54:36

heartbreaking scene in the film Love

54:39

Actually where Emma Thompson receives a

54:41

gift from her husband Alan Rickman

54:44

and she thinks it's a necklace but it's really just a

54:47

Joni Mitchell CD. Oh

54:49

yes. And are you saying that actually

54:52

that's quite a good present to give because

54:54

she's an incredible content. Yeah better than a

54:56

necklace. Yeah. But then it turns out he

54:58

gave the necklace to his mistress. That's the

55:00

thing but if you find out that your

55:02

husband's taken on a mistress that's a good

55:04

present to receive. Oh yeah Joni Mitchell is

55:06

a great soundtrack for our friends. And

55:08

did they split up because of that moment? I

55:10

don't remember. I don't think they don't. No

55:14

he takes her back. Amazingly. He very

55:16

generously takes her back. She

55:19

takes him back she says oh he's just been a bit

55:21

silly and you know it's all fine. She doesn't quite

55:23

like that. Well it's not far off. Joni

55:26

Mitchell split up with David Crosby by singing

55:28

him a song at a party. Oh really?

55:31

He had been cheating on her and she wrote

55:33

this song which based I don't I haven't heard

55:35

the song but I imagine in the middle it

55:37

goes your fucking dumps mate. Yeah. Whatever. But she

55:39

played it once and then he was like oh

55:41

that's really good and she went and

55:44

played it again because he didn't get it. Do

55:48

we know what it's called? Do we have lyrics? It's

55:51

called The Song About the Midway but I haven't

55:53

seen the lyrics. I would have called it something

55:55

like Nick is on the back seat or something

55:57

something that really you know makes him worried even

55:59

with your stuff. to hear the song.

56:01

Oh I see. When you overdo it on

56:03

the metaphor so much people can't quite... The

56:05

Midway, sorry. Is that

56:08

the riff of the coast of Chillingham? You're

56:10

talking about the Battle of Midway. People

56:15

who've never done their greatest hits album. OK. ACDC.

56:19

You know the reason why? Because they're all greatest

56:21

hits albums. Yeah. Thank you. Is

56:23

that what they said or are you saying that? I

56:26

think we agree. I and ACDC

56:28

agree on this. Yeah. No

56:30

I think a lot of artists fear the slight

56:33

kind of creative death of, you know, here

56:35

are your best songs and have it. But

56:37

you can just do another. You know

56:39

Aaron Carter. His most requested hit

56:41

too. Aaron Carter. Aaron Carter. Aaron

56:44

Carter. Aaron Carter. Yeah. Like

56:46

the American Backstreet Boys. He was the younger

56:48

brother. He passed on very sadly. Not too

56:50

long ago. Did he? Yeah. I didn't know

56:52

that. Because I was looking up a

56:54

huge list of greatest hits albums. Yeah. Long list.

56:56

They're almost all called greatest hits. Which I think

56:58

is quite valid. You were looking at this list and

57:01

then you stopped at A.A. Rins. Yeah.

57:03

Yeah. Anything about ZZ Pop.

57:11

Well you keep coming up with crime things all

57:13

great. It's like I've been busted by the alphabet,

57:15

the English alphabet. I'm

57:17

gutted. But his is called most

57:20

requested hits which I think is a nice slight twist

57:22

on the formula. And then the second one is called

57:24

Come Get It, the very best of Aaron Carter. Okay.

57:26

That's one of his songs or something. Followed by Too

57:28

Good, Too Be True. So I just think he's good.

57:30

Oh they're all greatest hits. Every single one of them.

57:32

He's got three albums of greatest hits. So I think

57:35

they're his. Wow. According to Reddit

57:37

and it does seem to be true when

57:39

I checked it. Yeah. Kiss have had more

57:41

greatest hit compilations than they have studio albums.

57:45

Okay. They've had plenty of studio albums

57:47

and as far as I can see

57:49

they've either had 21 or

57:51

I counted 23 greatest hits. Oh wow.

57:53

They did a farewell tour in 2000 and 2001 and since then they've done

57:55

13 tours. Hell

58:00

yeah, yeah, dude biggest selling album

58:02

in America of all time. I'm

58:05

greatest hits. I'm gonna guess Abba

58:08

gold well, that's cuz you've only got to a B

58:10

in the alphabet It's

58:15

the Eagles isn't it that's correct Eagles

58:18

now, so this is the greatest hits album

58:21

who here can name a song by the California? That's

58:25

not on the greatest. No Yeah,

58:27

isn't that incredible this is from a period

58:29

where they hadn't yet written that song Then

58:32

I felt like chums coming up with that song

58:34

after they've done it. We've already done a greatest

58:36

album Cannon

58:40

this is not a greatest hit honestly. I've listened

58:42

to a few Eagles albums. It's a great The

58:47

best-selling album in the UK. Oh,

58:49

yeah, great. It's hit Oh Queen

58:51

Queen You got it at the

58:53

same time. They released greatest flicks,

58:56

which was a video of all that

58:58

Song very cool and greatest pics, which

59:01

was photographed Who

59:05

here owns Queen's greatest hits yeah So

59:11

I own it and down owns it and that

59:13

is it makes sense because one in four British

59:15

households owns Queen's greatest hits really Still

59:18

really I think probably still there probably

59:20

is some generational turn happening But in

59:22

2021 ABBA gold which is the other

59:25

huge greatest hits album. Yeah after Queen's

59:28

They got to a thousand weeks in

59:30

the top hundred chart Weeks,

59:32

it's a perfect perfect album. Yeah,

59:35

perfect band. Well, it's no highway

59:38

to hell, but it's The

59:42

way a a b I

59:51

There was an album that was released in

59:53

1977 by the BBC called death and horror

59:55

basically, you know how you can

59:57

just buy incidental sounds You

1:00:00

know, sorry, sorry, the BBC would

1:00:02

have like an archive of incidental

1:00:04

sounds. So this was all sounds

1:00:06

of horrific things. Tracks included head

1:00:08

chopped off, sorted

1:00:11

creepy creeks, red hot poker in the

1:00:13

eye. And it was a top 100

1:00:16

charting album. Gasp, what

1:00:18

crazy. Exactly. And

1:00:21

then this is this is the one I'd love

1:00:23

to get. But I don't think it necessarily would

1:00:25

have charted. But there was an album called Recorded

1:00:27

Delivery by a guy called Yannick Shafer. So

1:00:30

basically what he did was he put a

1:00:32

dictaphone inside a package and he put it

1:00:34

through the Royal Mail and he

1:00:36

recorded the entire journey that this dictaphone

1:00:39

went on as it was travelling through

1:00:41

the parcel, going through the mailbox,

1:00:43

being picked up, put in the van. And

1:00:45

so what you hear is whistling postmen

1:00:47

just sort of walking along. You get

1:00:49

sliding van doors. There's lots of clunks.

1:00:51

You get early morning mail workers talking

1:00:53

about their dirty sex lives. There's a

1:00:56

sudden unexpected shout of anus. And

1:01:00

that was me. And

1:01:04

500 of them were were printed.

1:01:07

Brian Eno said he wished he thought of it first.

1:01:09

It was a very, you know, isn't it? It is

1:01:12

very, very, you know. Yeah. The first

1:01:14

greatest hits album ever. Johnny

1:01:17

Maffis. In

1:01:19

fact, if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary,

1:01:21

it's the first use of the phrase Gracest Hits.

1:01:24

He wrote a singer song called Chances Are,

1:01:26

which was in Mad Men. Well,

1:01:28

chances are he did if you remember it.

1:01:30

He was late fifties, wasn't he? So

1:01:33

perfect timing for Mad Men. He was. I

1:01:35

looked him up. He's still alive, Johnny Maffis. Yeah.

1:01:37

He's sort of mid 90s, I

1:01:39

think. He's old, but he's still kicking around. He

1:01:42

was a high jumper for the US Olympic team

1:01:45

before he became a singer, but he was

1:01:47

kind of singing in the clubs and stuff.

1:01:50

And the head of popular music

1:01:52

at Columbia was on holiday in

1:01:54

San Francisco and heard him singing

1:01:57

and sent a telegram to the company

1:01:59

saying. have found phenomenal 19 year old

1:02:02

boy who could go all the way,

1:02:04

send blank contracts. Oh,

1:02:06

that's great. And he was an Olympian at

1:02:08

that time? He'd

1:02:11

been trying out. He got the call to

1:02:13

go to the trials. This is a cool thing. In 1956 he

1:02:15

got the call to go to the Olympic trials, but

1:02:17

he had just got his recording contract. He said to

1:02:19

his dad, should I become a high jumper or should

1:02:21

I become a musician? It's annoying, isn't it, when people

1:02:23

are world class, not

1:02:26

one thing but two. You could do both Vanilla Ice as

1:02:28

a rapper and a real estate agent. You

1:02:30

could do both. Well,

1:02:32

Cody Simpson, the Australian singer

1:02:35

actor, also swam for their Olympic team.

1:02:38

Oh yeah. And also is it Gina Davis who almost

1:02:40

qualified for archery for the US? Oh, that's right. There

1:02:42

you go. You could do both. Okay, you can do

1:02:45

both. And find that I've done neither. Johnny

1:02:48

Massis, it wasn't actually any great as

1:02:50

this. It was just something they rushed out

1:02:52

because he was about to go on tour in the UK. He

1:02:55

didn't have time to record any new tracks, so they

1:02:57

just bundled together his first four recordings. Called

1:03:00

them Johnny's Greatest Hits. It was in the

1:03:02

charts for nine years. So they

1:03:04

manifested it? Pretty much, yeah. The Greatest

1:03:06

Hits? Australian and fucking Great Hits. And

1:03:11

there's a reason why you'd love him, James. He used to play golf 300 times

1:03:13

a year. Oh, he sounds great.

1:03:15

He's a great guy. And he has a

1:03:17

cookbook library. He loves cookbooks

1:03:20

so much. He bought thousands of them. He

1:03:22

had Office Kitchen, his own library of cookbooks.

1:03:24

And in 1982, he wrote his own cookbook

1:03:26

called Cooking for You Alone, which is all

1:03:28

about meals for one and how you can

1:03:31

make them delicious and lovely. I

1:03:34

just think he's like a really nice, sweet guy. Oh,

1:03:37

sweet. I know. That does

1:03:39

sound nice, but if you think that you're

1:03:41

going to get a necklace for Valentine's Day

1:03:43

and you get the meals for one book.

1:03:47

That's how Johnny Mitchell dumped her next boyfriend. Okay,

1:03:55

that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so

1:03:57

much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact... with

1:04:00

any of us about the things that we've

1:04:02

said over the course of this podcast. We

1:04:04

can be found on our various social media

1:04:06

accounts. I'm on Instagram using the name Shribaland,

1:04:09

Andy. I'm at Andrew Hunter M on Twitter.

1:04:11

James. My Twitter is at James Harken.

1:04:13

Yep, and Olga. I'm at Colga 300

1:04:16

on Instagram. Nice. And also do make sure

1:04:18

to go and see Olga live Prawn Cocktail.

1:04:20

You're on tour right now. Prawn Cocktail is

1:04:23

the name of my show. You're just eating

1:04:25

it. And

1:04:28

I promise it's going to be 100% high quality

1:04:30

prawns and never a cheap meatball. Yeah.

1:04:33

Or if you want to get in contact with us as

1:04:35

a group, by the way, you can go to at no

1:04:38

such thing on Twitter. You can email us on podcast at

1:04:40

qi.com or you can just go to our website no such

1:04:42

thing as a fish. If you want to check out

1:04:44

all the previous episodes, because they're all up there to

1:04:46

do that. Otherwise, just come back next week. We'll be

1:04:48

back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.

1:05:01

Lovely Easter egg.