Little Fish: Checking the Mark Hoppus

No Such Thing As A Fish

The episode explores a series of bizarre historical and scientific trivia, ranging from Albania's failed transition to capitalism via pyrami

Key takeaways

• Albania's transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s led to widespread pyramid schemes that caused massive economic collapse and rebellion.
• Blink-182 had to remove a Red Cross symbol from their 'Enema of the State' cover to avoid violating the Geneva Convention.

Main topics

• Albanian pyramid schemes
• US County names

Notable quotes

I thought that was how normal banking works.

Conclusion

A fast-paced and humorous deep dive into the coincidences and oddities

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello. Speaker 2 (0:12) Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name's Andrew Hunter-Murray. I'm here in the QI offices with Dan Schreiber and Anna Tijinsky and we've brought some of your best facts. Hey guys. Speaker 3 (0:24) Hi Andy. Hey Speaker 2 (0:25) buddy. Who's got a fact? Speaker 3 (0:27) I've got a fact. That's a weird hello, Dan. You can't just be laughing from the outset. I'm Speaker 2 (0:31) a funny guy, Anna. Get with the program. I Speaker 3 (0:34) was Speaker 2 (0:34) laughing at your hello. Speaker 3 (0:35) Ouch. Okay. I'll work on that. Speaker 2 (0:37) Order. Order. I want a fact. You Speaker 3 (0:39) want a fact? I've got a fact from Jack Poupart. When Albania, this is actually an incredible fact and I want to do a whole podcast on it. Oh, okay. When Albania transitioned from communism to capitalism, the result was that almost two thirds of the country ended up involved in pyramid schemes. Now, Speaker 1 (0:55) this Speaker 3 (0:56) is the most incredible story I can't believe I didn't know about. So Albania, you know, Soviet bloc fell and they'd never done capitalism before. Most people didn't really know how it works. They'd never had private banking before. They didn't really understand interest rates. All of these pyramid companies started up. Two thirds of the country invested all their savings in them. Speaker 1 (1:16) And Speaker 3 (1:16) basically it was where you took a deposit out and then the interest was paid by the next person's deposit. And then that interest was paid by the next person's deposit. Do Speaker 2 (1:24) you know exactly how a pyramid scheme works? I thought that was how normal banking works. But I've Speaker 1 (1:29) lost all my money to a pyramid scheme. Speaker 3 (1:33) Do not join the Murray Bank. Speaker 1 (1:35) Do they, by the way, when you said they went from communism to capitalism? capitalism is that a one day is it like you know Speaker 2 (1:42) when countries change side of the roads For the driving side? They normally phase it in, I think. So all eggs are still communist, but if you're buying cereal, then you have to pay. Very confusing. Speaker 3 (1:53) Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. A lot of crashes happen. This was incredible, though. So genuinely, the IMF said to Albania, this is fucked up. It's Speaker 2 (2:02) a Speaker 3 (2:02) pyramid scheme. We in the capitalist world have known about this for ages. No one believed it. And anyway, it all collapsed in the late 90s. And there was this massive rebellion. And 2,000 people, in fact, died in the end of the 90s in these huge rebellions. and Albania was looted. State armies were looted. It's Speaker 2 (2:18) a Speaker 1 (2:18) classic Anna fact which gets us all excited. There's going to be some great comic twist coming up like a Mr. Bean episode. Thousands died. Last Speaker 3 (2:27) episode of Mr. Bean everyone died. Speaker 1 (2:31) Wow. That sounds Speaker 3 (2:32) extraordinary. That's an incredible Speaker 2 (2:33) story. Yeah. All right. I've got one now. This is a great fact. It comes in from Igor Ferreira. One fact I think is quite amusing says Igor is that Georgia that's the state in the USA, not the Eastern European country, has two counties which share a border and they're named Bacon County and Coffee County. Speaker 1 (2:54) Quite a breakfast pair. Speaker 2 (2:55) Unfortunately, Coffee County does not have a strong coffee production culture. Neither does Bacon County have prominent swine farms. And it turns out that Bacon County Speaker 1 (3:05) was named Speaker 2 (3:07) after Senator Augustus Bacon. And Coffey County was named after Congressman John E. Coffey. Speaker 1 (3:16) Oh, man. Isn't that good? It is good. It's good. Speaker 2 (3:19) It's really good. Coffey County, John E. Coffey, really interesting guy. He is often confused with John Coffey, his cousin, of course, who is the namesake of Tennessee's Coffey County. Speaker 3 (3:32) Of course. This is stunning. Speaker 2 (3:34) And I went a bit harking on this. Yeah. And I read through a list of 3,000 counties in America. Wow. Cool. And I just thought I'd see if there were any more amusing food named counties. Yeah. Crisp County, Georgia. Congressman Charles Crisp. Lamb County, Texas. George Lamb. Orange County, Indiana. Named after the Quakers. from a different Orange County. And there's also Letcher County, Governor Robert Letcher, Cumming County, Nebraska, Thomas Cumming, and Cock County, Tennessee, named after Senator William Cock. Who had a huge Speaker 3 (4:06) penis. Huge penis. Speaker 2 (4:08) Willie Cock. Willie Cock, yes. And there's also Bighorn County in Montana, but that is named after the local sheep. Speaker 3 (4:15) Okay. Really good stuff. Speaker 1 (4:17) Anyway, there you go. Counties. Lovely work. Very cool. I got a fact here. This has been sent in by Mark Hoppus. The fact is, is that punk band Blink-182 are the only band to have broken the Geneva Convention. So the email continues. Basically, the cover of their 1999 album, Enema of the State, features a nurse with a red cross on her hat. As Blink-182 aren't a medical organization, they were told by the American Red Cross that they would be breaking the Geneva Convention. And so subsequent pressings of the album remove the Red Cross from the cover. Really? But no one would have tried to get medical attention from the album. I think it's just something in place to mean that you can't, yeah, that you can't use it. Would they Speaker 3 (5:03) have been on trial in The Hague were it not for that removal? I Speaker 1 (5:06) think so. Right Speaker 3 (5:07) now, next to Slobodan? Yeah, I Speaker 1 (5:09) think that's exactly why they had to remove it. Interesting little thing that I can hear, even though it's a pre-recorded show, I can hear thousands of people yelling out right now. I Speaker 2 (5:18) think I might be about to yell it out. Did Speaker 1 (5:20) you just say that that email was sent in by someone called Mark Hoppus? Oh, okay. Mark Hoppus is one of the members of the band. Now... Either, Andy, you've misread the name of the person sending in this email. Always possible. Or it's possible, though, that Blink-182 listened to our show and sent in this fact. But that's Mark. He's the bassist in Blink-182. Should I write back? Don't. No, Speaker 2 (5:45) what I was going to shout out, Dan, is you keep saying Blink-182. I know, weird. And everyone I know says Blink-182. Ah. But I think their full name, of course, is Blink 182. Yeah, Speaker 1 (5:57) I actually don't know. I've always called them Blink 182. I call Speaker 3 (6:01) them Blink 9 score and 2. Speaker 2 (6:03) Well, in French, of course, they're Blink sans cachavande. Speaker 3 (6:09) It's got to be a big fan of his who's pretending to be him in his email. Well, Speaker 1 (6:13) yeah, because then it says, source this interview by bassist Mark Hoppus. So why would you source yourself Speaker 2 (6:18) rather than just saying, hey, it's Mark Hoppus? I must have just copied out the email wrong. That must be wrong. I'll check that later. Unless, of course, Mark Hoppus just happens to have the same name as the bassist from Blink-182 and therefore Speaker 1 (6:30) has interest in them, has Speaker 2 (6:31) read up on Speaker 1 (6:32) them. Spent his Speaker 2 (6:32) whole life reading about them and knows all about them. That's possible too. But didn't think it Speaker 1 (6:36) worth... putting in the email itself just so you know I'm not that Mark Hoppus. Speaker 2 (6:40) Yeah because he would have assumed that no one in their right minds would assume that the bassist would write in citing an interview with himself. I Speaker 3 (6:47) think he's testing you to see if you spot it and it bypassed some people but it stopped at you the buck stopped at you Dan. I Speaker 1 (6:55) love him. I think they're amazing. The album cover, by the way, this wasn't the only change that it went through. So the Red Cross was taken away. But also there was a capital B for Blink on the album initially, and their logo was a lowercase b. So then that got changed as they did the repressing of it as well. It's Speaker 2 (7:14) almost like a reverse typo, isn't it? Someone's correctly ascertained that that's the first word of the sentence, so it should have a nice capital letter. And they've had to deliberately get it wrong. They're punk. Speaker 3 (7:25) Do we know why? So they looked at the capital B on the first pressing and thought, not punk enough? No, Speaker 1 (7:29) no, it's they have a logo and they have a typeface and they have a style of writing. Sometimes when people write no such thing as a fish and it's