Famed QI trivia podcast No Such Thing As A Fish celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.
In that timeframe, the podcast has recorded over 600 episodes and amassed half a billion listens - averaging a million downloads a week.
Two of the hosts, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray says they've always enjoyed what they do, and they look forward to sharing unusual facts with listeners.
"Every day, you wake up and it's like - today I have to research zebras or I have to research stars or I have to research whatever, and you wake up looking forward to that. And then when we come in to the show and we tell each other what we found, that's such a joyous thing to do."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb q I.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Trivia podcast No Such Thing as a Fish is one
of the most popular global podcasts. Twenty twenty four celebrates
ten years since their first episode. They've recorded over six
hundred episodes, with half a billion listens and averaging a
million downloads a week. It's impressive, right. The podcast is
hosted by four very smart and funny people, James, Dan,
(00:35):
Anna and Andrew and it is based around them sharing
the most interesting facts they've found that week. Two of
the hosts are here with me today, James Hacken and
Andrew Hunter Murray. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They're quite incredible statistics, right, six hundred episodes, half a
billion listens, a million downloads a week. Why is it
so popular this podcast?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Great question.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I think people like nerdy information, and I think we
have fun with each other when we're recording it, and
we sort of it grew out of conversations, and I
think everyone likes conversation. And you know, when you listen
to the podcast, the other fifth seat at the table
and you're part of the club. And I think that's all.
Any podcast that's successful, I think has that thing.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You know, it's one of those podcasts you listen to
and you suddenly realize that there was all this information
you didn't know you needed to know, you know what
I mean, the joy of it.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I feel like we think you don't need to know
any of this stuff, right, But it's just the love
of finding that out and the love of learning new
things and just being excited about the world and curious
about the world. That's what we're interested in really absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The title why no such thing as a fish?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
That was a question that we ran on QI. So
it grew out of we all will work or used
to work on QI, and it was a question about
the the sort of biological tree of fish. And it
turns out that if you look at the ocean, it
just there are a lot of sort of long, pointy
things in there that we call fish. Actually they're very
distantly related from each other. It doesn't really make any
(02:05):
sense in scientific terms to gribe them all as fish,
as a mad made up term for things that It's
like calling everything that looks on land a crab. It
just doesn't make sense. So that's where it came from
and we just like the title.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, so like a salmon is more closely related to
us than it is to a hagfish. So if a
salmon and a hagfish are both fish, then that means
we must be fish as well.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So you ask one simple question, you walk away with
more knowledge. What do you think is key to longevity
in the podcast world, because you know, it's sort of
it's really taking off, but it takes something to kind
of hang in there for as long as.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, that's a really good question. I suppose lack of
ambition for.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Us, that's it. That's the one. Know your limits and
stick within them, stay in your lane. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, I think what it is is we really enjoy
what we do, Isn't it really like every day you
wake up and it's like, okay, today, I have to
research Zebras, or I have to research stars, or I
have to research whatever. And you wake up looking forward
to that. And then and when we come into the
show and we tell each other what we found, that's
just such a joyous thing to do, to tell your
(03:12):
friends what you've been reading that week, that we just
every week, we just love doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
In a way, what you see there is is stay
in your lane. But clearly you picked a sort of
an idea that is endless.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
It's a very big line.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's a big lane.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Yeah, it's about everything.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It worked out what works, so you can keep doing that.
But because knowledge is just it's demless. There's so many
effects to discover. Yeah, I wonder if that clearly plies
a past. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Well, we thought for a while we were going to
run out. You know, there must be there must we
must run out of concrete now to talk about Well,
last week we talked about pandas, and we talked about Russo,
and we talked about Marley. We you know, eventually that
will run right, It hasn't yet, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So every now and then we'll do a subject like
beetles or ants. We did ants last week, didn't we
And we must have done ants five times. But even
in the time, even in the three years since we
last talked, but adds the number of things that have
been discovered, means that we're never going to run out
because scientists are always finding new things, and you know,
the world's moving on.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So if somebody hasn't heard this podcast yet, just quickly
explain to us what they should expect when they come
into a no such thing as a fish podcast.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, so there are four of us, is James and I,
but also Dan Treiber and Anath Tajensky that we're the
four regular hosts. Each of us each week brings a fact.
So it might be the fact that if you blow
out the candles on a birthday cake, you increase the
number of bacteria on it by fourteen hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I really hate that.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
I don't worry. It's very benignspine. You don't need to
buy a cakeshield or anything. But so one of us
will bring that fact. All of us will have done
a little bit of extra reading around that, so we
know a bit more about bacteria or about you know,
who bake the first ever birthday cake, or whatever it
might be. We all come to the table and we
all have stuff that the others have never found out
because we all have gone off in different directions. So
(05:02):
we come back and we have this chat which is,
you know, full of new information, it's new to the others,
and then we make fun of each other about effects
and make jokes about them, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
So look, when you come in to do the podcast,
are you allowed to find what if effect do you
want or do you have a genre or a topic
that you say, well, let's look at this or let's
look at that, or do some of them literally go,
I've just found out something fascinating.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's whatever we want. Really, So okay, maybe three
or four days before we will come in with a
list of three or four facts and say to the
other guys, these are my favorite things. Choose one of them,
and then we choose for a kind of sympatico between
those that kind of fit together nicely, and then yeah,
and then we can go on from there. But actually
it could be literally anything. Yeah, you know, that's we
(05:44):
have no rules about what we'll talk about. It could
be any subjects at all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So what topics do you get most excited about?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Well, James James is a mathematician and a physicist, and
he comes up with he sort of makes new facts
by sort of extrapolating from known stuff, which is very cool.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah. So, for instance, I worked out that if every
ant on Earth had a small bag of flower and
dumped it into Lake Superior, then the resulting mixture could
theoretically be turned into bread.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
That's a good fact, and that's new, that's news said.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's kind of fun. What keeps you going? Have been
able to?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I just like doing it. I just think it's a
different way of look. It just tells you. I mean,
that doesn't tell you particularly much about the world. A
lot of it tells you like superior is huge, Yes, exactly,
and that there's a lot of ants.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
But Andy, by the way, on the other side of it,
Andy has much more directed obsessions, so he has subjects
that he absolutely loves, like moss and thatched roofs and
funicular railways.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yeah, and I will torment these guys by bringing along
eighteen facts about moss in a single week. Could say,
I don't mind which of these we talk about, but
I think you'll agree this is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Stuff, if you like. I've probably got about four hundred
photos of moss on my mos. You have to get
into the alpine regions and New Zealand, and it is.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Very interesting, is stunning. This is great.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
It's so nice to make someone else disaster. Okay, so
tell me where do you how do you do your research?
So if you stumble across something, how do you progress
their resource? What that effect? What kind of resources do
you use how do you I suppose fact check it
because we're quite obsessed with fact chicking these days, aren't we.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, it will be different with QI the TV show.
We have lots of different things that we do. So
we do a TV show and we do books, and
we do podcasts and we do radio shows. And it
always depends on how much time you have to do it.
So the TV show we have six months to research.
We have a big old team of researchers. Everyone can
go to museums, we can read hefty tones about muscle
(07:48):
or whatever, and we can do lots like that. But
with a podcast because we do it every week, where
really we don't have much time and we have false
objects to research, and so mostly it is internet, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah it is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
But we also have a background knowledge that from all
the stuff we've done on QI over the years, so
that helps.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
And we like going. We do like getting our facts
from interesting places. Again, the thing James is very good.
We will go to a museum and he'll see it.
You know, you found a fact about it was that
in the First World All Australia invented a boomerang shaped
grenade and then James went to find.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, actually I think it was last time I was
in Auckland. I saw that I was in a museum
in Auckland. I think that that that that grenade was there. Yeah,
and just kind of shuffled away.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And into an unusual effect of about Australia here in
New Zealand.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That's what I came out with.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
But then we also found that in America they had
grenade shaped like baseballs or American footballs as well, because
they're easier for Americans to throw. And in Britain we
had them shaped like cricket balls.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Which is a disaster because it turns out even the
national team and not terribly good often at throwing cricket balls,
so well, good.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Figures, we're not very good at catching them.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Who's the beast fick finder?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
That's an impossible question. Who's that's was your favorite child?
It's like, isn't it fans on the.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Day, we're all the children. No, we all have amazing methods,
and we all go off in different directions and we
will come up with We all come back to the
table with different things. You know, Dan is obsessed with
cryptids and the Mongolian death Worm and the Lockness Monster
and things like that.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So his facts are.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Often from the world of the weird and the esoteric. Yeah,
so we all just have different roots.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I love the fact that you describe yourselves as deliciously dorky,
and you know, you repeatedly describe yourself as nuds. Obviously
the recent shows here in New Zealand. In Australia it
was called the Thundernuds. Are you having some fun there
or are you?
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Are we nerdy?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, what do you think after the last fifteen minutes
of chat? Yeah, we're pretty nerdy, I think. But then
there's so many different levels of nerdiness, you know, like
I don't I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, I don't
play video games, but I'm extremely interested in lots of
other parts of nerd culture.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, we don't go I should say, we don't call
it a deliciously dor kit parties or anything.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
We don't do that.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
We don't get invited to many.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
But it's yeah, it's I think there's been.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
You know, the last fifteen years, probably starting with q
I actually going you know, or they've really pushed it along.
Is the fact that it's so it's such a wonderful world,
so full of amazing, interesting things. That's the core ethos
of the show. You know, we're not topical. We don't
talk about really depressing things unless we can find a
way of making them interesting and fascinating and fun. So, so
that's kind of our ethos is the world is full
(10:37):
of amazing stuff, and I think there's a growing recognition
among everyone else that that it is.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, and you see it all around the world as well,
don't you Like when we travel to Australia and New Zealand,
been to America, We've been to Europe, and you see
these kind of pockets of nerdy culture happening everywhere. And
I really think it's there's a lot of us out there.
There's a lot of nerds out there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You don't think there's anything nerdy about being curious about
the world around you. I think it's a fantastic thing.
And I think it's something that you know, it's something
we talk about when we talk about, you know, educating
our kids. We want them to be curious.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
You know, it's it's well, we get a lot of.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, we got lots of kids coming to the show,
which is not always ideal because we do we go
a little bit blue from type Yeah, but yeah, you
will always get like twelve thirteen, fourteen year olds who
just their parents say they're just obsessed. They just want
to learn things.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I've got a fifteen year old who's obsised about learning
everything about everything. Great, it's great going, you know in
there asking a million increasings to go. Just have a
listened to this podcast. Okay, what is one of the
most interesting facts that you've learned about New Zealand?
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
About New Zealand. That is just such a good question.
You know what I liked. I just remembered this that
the first man, because he wasn't the first person, but
the first man to go over Niagara Falls was he
called Leech, who was something like that, and then he
came to New Zealand and he slipped on an orange
peel and died. So I don't know what that says
(12:09):
about the world.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Does that say nothing funny?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, yeah, funny, it's a funny world. That's brilliant. That's
the first thing that comes to mind. I'd forgotten that
anything else about New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I've got in big trouble last time I was here
because we were in We were doing showing Wellington at
the Opera House and it was really lovely and fun.
And then I said something about the sheep industry. I
was talking about the special chalk that farmers rub on
their lambs or on their sheep and got in a
huge barney with the crowd about it. Some of them
were saying, no, we've never heard of that, another saying
yes we do. And so so my mine is a
(12:44):
traumatic memory of getting involved in the New Zealand livestock scene.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
But then also must be I noticed with the shows
that you do, you do travel and off and you
make them very topical about where you are, You've been
in the UK recently and talking about, you know, the
history of maybe the theater that you're performing and things
like that. So that's sort of broadens topics for you
as well.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it gives us something to talk about, doesn't it.
We like to. We do like to talk about the
town that we're in because we really love it when
the audience has its own knowledge, like we have the
best hecklers in the world, because we will come in
and we will do a fact about some obscure type
of insect and there'll be someone in the audience who
is a world expert in that insects and say, oh no,
(13:25):
actually you said that they mate on top of the leaf,
but actually they do it under and leaf, and we're like, oh, right, okay.
And I remember once we did a show in was
it Oxford or Cambridge? I think it was Cambridge, and
we had a fact about maths and then someone heckled
us in the audience saying that's not right, that math
thing that you just said. And then another person said, well,
I'm a professor of math and it is true. And
(13:47):
those two they started doing their own little podcast together.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Isn't it crazy? How can just add these conversations?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I love it. Can I ask why you're wearing two watchers? Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, one of them is UK times, so I know
when to FaceTime my daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Oh that is so sweet because just using it, you
do watch it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
We could, but we've got through so many time zones
it's really confusing. And my phone I don't trust at
the moment because my calendar is all over the place
because it doesn't know what time zone we're in. So yeah,
and the other ones my fit bit.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I love it. James and Andrew, thank you so much
for your time, Thank you for popping in and chatting.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
To us, Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That was James Hacken and Andrew Hunter, one half of
the q I podcast No such Thing as
Speaker 1 (14:31):
A For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin,
listen live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb q I.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Trivia podcast No Such Thing as a Fish is one
of the most popular global podcasts. Twenty twenty four celebrates
ten years since their first episode. They've recorded over six
hundred episodes, with half a billion listens and averaging a
million downloads a week. It's impressive, right. The podcast is
hosted by four very smart and funny people, James, Dan,
(00:35):
Anna and Andrew and it is based around them sharing
the most interesting facts they've found that week. Two of
the hosts are here with me today, James Hacken and
Andrew Hunter Murray. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They're quite incredible statistics, right, six hundred episodes, half a
billion listens, a million downloads a week. Why is it
so popular this podcast?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Great question.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I think people like nerdy information, and I think we
have fun with each other when we're recording it, and
we sort of it grew out of conversations, and I
think everyone likes conversation. And you know, when you listen
to the podcast, the other fifth seat at the table
and you're part of the club. And I think that's all.
Any podcast that's successful, I think has that thing.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You know, it's one of those podcasts you listen to
and you suddenly realize that there was all this information
you didn't know you needed to know, you know what
I mean, the joy of it.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I feel like we think you don't need to know
any of this stuff, right, But it's just the love
of finding that out and the love of learning new
things and just being excited about the world and curious
about the world. That's what we're interested in really absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The title why no such thing as a fish?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
That was a question that we ran on QI. So
it grew out of we all will work or used
to work on QI, and it was a question about
the the sort of biological tree of fish. And it
turns out that if you look at the ocean, it
just there are a lot of sort of long, pointy
things in there that we call fish. Actually they're very
distantly related from each other. It doesn't really make any
(02:05):
sense in scientific terms to gribe them all as fish,
as a mad made up term for things that It's
like calling everything that looks on land a crab. It
just doesn't make sense. So that's where it came from
and we just like the title.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, so like a salmon is more closely related to
us than it is to a hagfish. So if a
salmon and a hagfish are both fish, then that means
we must be fish as well.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
So you ask one simple question, you walk away with
more knowledge. What do you think is key to longevity
in the podcast world, because you know, it's sort of
it's really taking off, but it takes something to kind
of hang in there for as long as.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, that's a really good question. I suppose lack of
ambition for.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Us, that's it. That's the one. Know your limits and
stick within them, stay in your lane. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, I think what it is is we really enjoy
what we do, Isn't it really like every day you
wake up and it's like, okay, today, I have to
research Zebras, or I have to research stars, or I
have to research whatever. And you wake up looking forward
to that. And then and when we come into the
show and we tell each other what we found, that's
just such a joyous thing to do, to tell your
(03:12):
friends what you've been reading that week, that we just
every week, we just love doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
In a way, what you see there is is stay
in your lane. But clearly you picked a sort of
an idea that is endless.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
It's a very big line.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's a big lane.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Yeah, it's about everything.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It worked out what works, so you can keep doing that.
But because knowledge is just it's demless. There's so many
effects to discover. Yeah, I wonder if that clearly plies
a past. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Well, we thought for a while we were going to
run out. You know, there must be there must we
must run out of concrete now to talk about Well,
last week we talked about pandas, and we talked about Russo,
and we talked about Marley. We you know, eventually that
will run right, It hasn't yet, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So every now and then we'll do a subject like
beetles or ants. We did ants last week, didn't we
And we must have done ants five times. But even
in the time, even in the three years since we
last talked, but adds the number of things that have
been discovered, means that we're never going to run out
because scientists are always finding new things, and you know,
the world's moving on.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So if somebody hasn't heard this podcast yet, just quickly
explain to us what they should expect when they come
into a no such thing as a fish podcast.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, so there are four of us, is James and I,
but also Dan Treiber and Anath Tajensky that we're the
four regular hosts. Each of us each week brings a fact.
So it might be the fact that if you blow
out the candles on a birthday cake, you increase the
number of bacteria on it by fourteen hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I really hate that.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
I don't worry. It's very benignspine. You don't need to
buy a cakeshield or anything. But so one of us
will bring that fact. All of us will have done
a little bit of extra reading around that, so we
know a bit more about bacteria or about you know,
who bake the first ever birthday cake, or whatever it
might be. We all come to the table and we
all have stuff that the others have never found out
because we all have gone off in different directions. So
(05:02):
we come back and we have this chat which is,
you know, full of new information, it's new to the others,
and then we make fun of each other about effects
and make jokes about them, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
So look, when you come in to do the podcast,
are you allowed to find what if effect do you
want or do you have a genre or a topic
that you say, well, let's look at this or let's
look at that, or do some of them literally go,
I've just found out something fascinating.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's whatever we want. Really, So okay, maybe three
or four days before we will come in with a
list of three or four facts and say to the
other guys, these are my favorite things. Choose one of them,
and then we choose for a kind of sympatico between
those that kind of fit together nicely, and then yeah,
and then we can go on from there. But actually
it could be literally anything. Yeah, you know, that's we
(05:44):
have no rules about what we'll talk about. It could
be any subjects at all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So what topics do you get most excited about?
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Well, James James is a mathematician and a physicist, and
he comes up with he sort of makes new facts
by sort of extrapolating from known stuff, which is very cool.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah. So, for instance, I worked out that if every
ant on Earth had a small bag of flower and
dumped it into Lake Superior, then the resulting mixture could
theoretically be turned into bread.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
That's a good fact, and that's new, that's news said.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's kind of fun. What keeps you going? Have been
able to?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I just like doing it. I just think it's a
different way of look. It just tells you. I mean,
that doesn't tell you particularly much about the world. A
lot of it tells you like superior is huge, Yes, exactly,
and that there's a lot of ants.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
But Andy, by the way, on the other side of it,
Andy has much more directed obsessions, so he has subjects
that he absolutely loves, like moss and thatched roofs and
funicular railways.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yeah, and I will torment these guys by bringing along
eighteen facts about moss in a single week. Could say,
I don't mind which of these we talk about, but
I think you'll agree this is pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Stuff, if you like. I've probably got about four hundred
photos of moss on my mos. You have to get
into the alpine regions and New Zealand, and it is.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Very interesting, is stunning. This is great.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
It's so nice to make someone else disaster. Okay, so
tell me where do you how do you do your research?
So if you stumble across something, how do you progress
their resource? What that effect? What kind of resources do
you use how do you I suppose fact check it
because we're quite obsessed with fact chicking these days, aren't we.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, it will be different with QI the TV show.
We have lots of different things that we do. So
we do a TV show and we do books, and
we do podcasts and we do radio shows. And it
always depends on how much time you have to do it.
So the TV show we have six months to research.
We have a big old team of researchers. Everyone can
go to museums, we can read hefty tones about muscle
(07:48):
or whatever, and we can do lots like that. But
with a podcast because we do it every week, where
really we don't have much time and we have false
objects to research, and so mostly it is internet, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah it is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
But we also have a background knowledge that from all
the stuff we've done on QI over the years, so
that helps.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
And we like going. We do like getting our facts
from interesting places. Again, the thing James is very good.
We will go to a museum and he'll see it.
You know, you found a fact about it was that
in the First World All Australia invented a boomerang shaped
grenade and then James went to find.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, actually I think it was last time I was
in Auckland. I saw that I was in a museum
in Auckland. I think that that that that grenade was there. Yeah,
and just kind of shuffled away.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And into an unusual effect of about Australia here in
New Zealand.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That's what I came out with.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
But then we also found that in America they had
grenade shaped like baseballs or American footballs as well, because
they're easier for Americans to throw. And in Britain we
had them shaped like cricket balls.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Which is a disaster because it turns out even the
national team and not terribly good often at throwing cricket balls,
so well, good.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Figures, we're not very good at catching them.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Who's the beast fick finder?
Speaker 5 (09:02):
That's an impossible question. Who's that's was your favorite child?
It's like, isn't it fans on the.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Day, we're all the children. No, we all have amazing methods,
and we all go off in different directions and we
will come up with We all come back to the
table with different things. You know, Dan is obsessed with
cryptids and the Mongolian death Worm and the Lockness Monster
and things like that.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So his facts are.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Often from the world of the weird and the esoteric. Yeah,
so we all just have different roots.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I love the fact that you describe yourselves as deliciously dorky,
and you know, you repeatedly describe yourself as nuds. Obviously
the recent shows here in New Zealand. In Australia it
was called the Thundernuds. Are you having some fun there
or are you?
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Are we nerdy?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, what do you think after the last fifteen minutes
of chat? Yeah, we're pretty nerdy, I think. But then
there's so many different levels of nerdiness, you know, like
I don't I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, I don't
play video games, but I'm extremely interested in lots of
other parts of nerd culture.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yeah, we don't go I should say, we don't call
it a deliciously dor kit parties or anything.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
We don't do that.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
We don't get invited to many.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
But it's yeah, it's I think there's been.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
You know, the last fifteen years, probably starting with q
I actually going you know, or they've really pushed it along.
Is the fact that it's so it's such a wonderful world,
so full of amazing, interesting things. That's the core ethos
of the show. You know, we're not topical. We don't
talk about really depressing things unless we can find a
way of making them interesting and fascinating and fun. So, so
that's kind of our ethos is the world is full
(10:37):
of amazing stuff, and I think there's a growing recognition
among everyone else that that it is.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, and you see it all around the world as well,
don't you Like when we travel to Australia and New Zealand,
been to America, We've been to Europe, and you see
these kind of pockets of nerdy culture happening everywhere. And
I really think it's there's a lot of us out there.
There's a lot of nerds out there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
You don't think there's anything nerdy about being curious about
the world around you. I think it's a fantastic thing.
And I think it's something that you know, it's something
we talk about when we talk about, you know, educating
our kids. We want them to be curious.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
You know, it's it's well, we get a lot of.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, we got lots of kids coming to the show,
which is not always ideal because we do we go
a little bit blue from type Yeah, but yeah, you
will always get like twelve thirteen, fourteen year olds who
just their parents say they're just obsessed. They just want
to learn things.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I've got a fifteen year old who's obsised about learning
everything about everything. Great, it's great going, you know in
there asking a million increasings to go. Just have a
listened to this podcast. Okay, what is one of the
most interesting facts that you've learned about New Zealand?
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
About New Zealand. That is just such a good question.
You know what I liked. I just remembered this that
the first man, because he wasn't the first person, but
the first man to go over Niagara Falls was he
called Leech, who was something like that, and then he
came to New Zealand and he slipped on an orange
peel and died. So I don't know what that says
(12:09):
about the world.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Does that say nothing funny?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, yeah, funny, it's a funny world. That's brilliant. That's
the first thing that comes to mind. I'd forgotten that
anything else about New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I've got in big trouble last time I was here
because we were in We were doing showing Wellington at
the Opera House and it was really lovely and fun.
And then I said something about the sheep industry. I
was talking about the special chalk that farmers rub on
their lambs or on their sheep and got in a
huge barney with the crowd about it. Some of them
were saying, no, we've never heard of that, another saying
yes we do. And so so my mine is a
(12:44):
traumatic memory of getting involved in the New Zealand livestock scene.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
But then also must be I noticed with the shows
that you do, you do travel and off and you
make them very topical about where you are, You've been
in the UK recently and talking about, you know, the
history of maybe the theater that you're performing and things
like that. So that's sort of broadens topics for you
as well.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it gives us something to talk about, doesn't it.
We like to. We do like to talk about the
town that we're in because we really love it when
the audience has its own knowledge, like we have the
best hecklers in the world, because we will come in
and we will do a fact about some obscure type
of insect and there'll be someone in the audience who
is a world expert in that insects and say, oh no,
(13:25):
actually you said that they mate on top of the leaf,
but actually they do it under and leaf, and we're like, oh, right, okay.
And I remember once we did a show in was
it Oxford or Cambridge? I think it was Cambridge, and
we had a fact about maths and then someone heckled
us in the audience saying that's not right, that math
thing that you just said. And then another person said, well,
I'm a professor of math and it is true. And
(13:47):
those two they started doing their own little podcast together.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Isn't it crazy? How can just add these conversations?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I love it. Can I ask why you're wearing two watchers? Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, one of them is UK times, so I know
when to FaceTime my daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Oh that is so sweet because just using it, you
do watch it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
We could, but we've got through so many time zones
it's really confusing. And my phone I don't trust at
the moment because my calendar is all over the place
because it doesn't know what time zone we're in. So yeah,
and the other ones my fit bit.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I love it. James and Andrew, thank you so much
for your time, Thank you for popping in and chatting.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
To us, Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That was James Hacken and Andrew Hunter, one half of
the q I podcast No such Thing as
Speaker 1 (14:31):
A For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin,
listen live to news Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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