No Such Thing As Alfred Hedgehog

No Such Thing As A Fish

The episode opens with the hosts discovering Chinese micro dramas, a short-form vertical video genre that is booming in Asia and increasingly being reshaped by AI-generated content. They then pivot to toy invention

Key takeaways

• Micro dramas are described as one- or two-minute vertical episodes with cliffhangers every 60 seconds, often monetized through credit-based micropayments on apps like Pocket FM.
• The hosts note that AI is now taking over parts of the micro drama industry, including prompt-driven scene generation and even interactive versions where viewers direct the story.

Main topics

• Chinese micro dramas and vertical short-form content
• AI's impact on entertainment production and creative jobs

Notable quotes

half of China... watches TV dramas that are one minute long.

Conclusion

The episode delivers a mix of media-industry observation, invention history, medical

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:11) Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter-Murray. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy. My fact is, half Speaker 3 (0:37) of China... watches TV dramas that are one minute long. These are things called micro dramas and I hadn't really heard about them until I read an article saying they're all going out of business. So I feel like these have arrived and they're now leaving in the time Speaker 2 (0:52) it's taken me to notice them. It's really weird to research something you've never heard of and then just see that they're one of the most ubiquitous things in the world. What Speaker 3 (0:59) else are we missing? Speaker 2 (1:00) It's like there might be new large Speaker 3 (1:02) mammals that I have never heard of before. Like huge mammals. You know what I mean? Yes. In fact, for all of us, there will be a largest animal that we've never heard of, right? It won't be the same animal. Never heard of. Yeah. Oh, right. There are millions of animals, right? So there will be a largest one that you don't know Speaker 2 (1:16) about. Speaker 3 (1:16) Actually, there's quite Speaker 2 (1:16) a lot of like quite weird bovines and deer that live in various parts of the world that you won't have heard of. Yeah. They won't Speaker 1 (1:24) be exciting. There's not going to be a big cat. That is just bigger than a lion. It actually Speaker 3 (1:29) turns out. I found out about a kind of Mexican dog the other day. Chihuahua. No. If anyone could go bigger than a chihuahua. But Speaker 4 (1:42) that's easy because they're not in the news all the time. I'm surprised. If you think pop stars, I ain't heard of. Macklemore, who's in the news right now. Really? I just hadn't heard of him. I just don't listen to radio at the moment, you know. Well, he was on the radio Speaker 2 (1:55) at least 10 years ago. Speaker 4 (1:56) Probably more like 15 Speaker 2 (1:57) years ago. I've Speaker 1 (1:59) never heard of him either, but as you know, that's no sign of anything. We're Speaker 3 (2:02) not Speaker 2 (2:02) saying that Macklemore's the largest animal you've never heard of. He's a good guy. When he wears that big coat thing, he's enormous. He looks like a bit of charismatic megafauna. He looks like a yak. Yeah, he does. Speaker 4 (2:12) Hear the macklemore walks through Speaker 2 (2:15) the tundra. Yacklemore, more like. He's definitely bigger than the mackle-less. Lovely. So, Microtubbers. Speaker 1 (2:24) These are, yeah, I can't believe we never heard of them. It makes me feel like we might be out of touch and every listener will be going, wow, I watch this all the time. Speaker 3 (2:30) Well, we're not in China. That's the thing. So they're big in China, Southeast Asia, Japan. They're not as big in the West. They've been tried over here a couple of times, but they haven't made a huge breakthrough yet. And basically, they're dramas where there might be 50 or 100 episodes in a series, but they're only one or two minutes long. They're tiny. And the business model is get people watching on their phones, film 100 episodes. There's a cliffhanger every 60 seconds. So the plots are quite out there. And you get the first five or ten for free. And then they start walloping you. But you have to know by that point. You have to find out how it's going to end. It might be the most expensive way of consuming incredibly often low quality. No. Yeah. Yeah, don't say that. Melodrama. Don't say low quality. I've Speaker 1 (3:15) watched a bunch of these and I think they are fine art. They're absolutely hilarious. And it does make you wonder if this is the downfall of humanity doing this. I don't know if you guys watched. I watched a few of the Chinese ones, which have subtitles, which are very amusing. And then The Guardian did an article about them, of course, a few years ago. And it name checked Loving My Brother's Best Friend as one of the English language ones that was hoping to make it big. So did any of you guys watch that? No. Speaker 1 (3:43) This one is meant to be like, this is going to be a proper drama that people in the West are going to enjoy. The two characters in it are naked within the first minute, which is such an impressive achievement. After 59 seconds, I reckon. Speaker 2 (3:52) Yeah, yes. Surely. Or just that 59 seconds, they start to take off their tops. It is like that. Yeah, we said about how much it costs. I think this was in The Economist, but it might have been The Guardian, but they said that you basically pay more to watch. tricked into having my ex-husband's baby, then you were paid to watch, you know, The Odyssey and IMAX. Right. By the end of it, once you've added up all the different amounts, which is... Speaker 4 (4:18) It's very, I mean, yeah, it's very clever, the micropayment thing. Well, in 2024, they worked out that it generated 6.9... billion American dollars, right? And in America, it was 8.7 billion for the cinema box office. So it was encroaching on that. It's a big business. Speaker 2 (4:34) And they trick you, don't they? When you go on these apps, you buy... credits but you don't buy it each time you buy like a hundred thousand credits for 500 quid or whatever it is and then it says do you want the next one for 724 credits so you've got no Speaker 3 (4:49) idea and Speaker 2 (4:50) then suddenly all your credits have gone and they still haven't got their tops off it's Speaker 3 (4:56) the longest one i've found you guys might have found a longer one than this this one is on pocket fm Just to give the boys and girls at Pocket FM a bit of a shout out. It's called My Vampire System. I think this one's audio only, but it is 4,192 episodes long. Speaker 2 (5:15) Wow. If you do all the Speaker 3 (5:16) like, I think there are some side quests and extra bits and all of that. Speaker 2 (5:19) Yeah, but I mean, how many episodes have we had? And our episodes are an hour long. If you add all of the side quests. Speaker 3 (5:25) That's true. We've gone on Speaker 1 (5:27) much longer than them. We should have charged Speaker 3 (5:28) people 20p per episode of Fish. Because you might pay several hundred dollars just to listen to the whole of my vampire system. Speaker 2 (5:35) But do you really think that people are going to pay like 50p when Andy says, hey guys, I've got a great idea for a new cop drama. And that's our click banger. Do you reckon people are going to click on that? The thing is, you Speaker 3 (5:45) pay to skip. Sorry, I didn't make it yet. The show is free, but you can pay to get me to the end of this bit. Speaker 2 (5:51) Now that is a good business Speaker 1 (5:53) model. So your interjections are the equivalent of adverts on anything else? Speaker 2 (5:57) Yeah, they're adverts for things that don't exist. People Speaker 1 (5:59) will say, Speaker 2 (5:59) oh, Speaker 1 (5:59) do you skip the Andes? Do you know, I actually quite enjoy the Andes sometimes. Speaker 2 (6:04) That's what people said to me when I visited South America. Speaker 4 (6:09) There are big Western actors, because this is massive in Asia. But as you said, Andy, it sort of did make its way over. There's one guy called Joseph Purcell. He was in movies called The Bad Boy Wants Me, Club of Desire, Falling for My Bodyguard. He's big online, but you may not have heard of him. He's Miley Cyrus's stepbrother. Speaker 2 (6:28) He's Speaker 4 (6:29) super famous, but he's not really done any major TV or anything but online. Is Billy Ray Cyrus Speaker 2 (6:34) his father? Speaker 4 (6:35) No. No, he's not. Speaker 1 (6:37) What do we mean super famous? Well, I think, okay, if you... Write in if you haven't heard of him. What Speaker 4 (6:45) if you're... Speaker 1 (6:46) Okay, yeah, it's hard. Speaker 2 (6:47) I think in fairness, like the way that the world is now is people can be very, very, very famous in a sub-genre. Yeah. Like, for instance, podcasters. Yeah. And you can walk down the street and no one has any idea who you are, but then a lot of people do know who you are, but they're all spread around the world. Yeah, or pop music. If Macklemore came in right now, I honestly Speaker 4 (7:04) would be like, I'm sorry, sir, we're recording. Speaker 1 (7:08) How did you get into the building? To be Speaker 2 (7:11) fair, everyone working here is much younger than us and they would all know who Macklemore was. Absolutely. Speaker 4 (7:16) That's why he's here. He's been invited by them. Can I give you a few of my fave Speaker 3 (7:20) titles? Oh, yeah. Because these are good. I actually had a flash marriage with an abstinent male god. What's Speaker 2 (7:27) a flash marriage? Is it where loads of people turn up to the marriage at once? Speaker 3 (7:30) That's it. Yes. You end up married to 250 people. My blind husband is a billionaire. Speaker 4 (7:36) Okay. Speaker 2 (7:37) Okay. All right. That's fair enough. What's Speaker 4 (7:39) that Speaker 3 (7:39) doing? What's that title trying to get you in with? I think there are a lot of secret billionaires in these things. Yeah, there are. Ms. CEO's baby daddy is the merchant of death. Speaker 2 (7:48) Oh, I thought you were going to say merchant of Venice. That would have been good. That's Speaker 3 (7:54) a great idea. Shylock's complicated domestic arrangements. What is the Speaker 1 (7:59) deal with the titles? It is like they're just owning the fact that they're shit. Like I went, go on real short. That's an English language one where you can watch them if you want. Spoiled by my four sea monster husbands. I Speaker 4 (8:11) think that's good. I think the draw of it is not dissimilar to Mills and Boone. And also, there was a big publishing boom a while ago. And when I say big, it made people very rich. Do Speaker 3 (8:23) you Speaker 4 (8:23) remember Bigfoot's Bitch? And all those... Speaker 3 (8:25) Through you. Yeah, but all those Speaker 4 (8:27) weird monster erotica, they got massive online. It's just this quick hit of romance. And in Mills and Boone, they kept saying you had to change it from millionaire to billionaire. And now it's trillionaire within Mills and Boone. Yeah, you just want a richer and richer millionaire. The fact Speaker 2 (8:41) that there's only been one trillionaire in... world history. And thankfully at time of recording, he's no longer a trillionaire. But when you say I met my trillionaire husband, surely he can sue. The only trillionaire in history. Because he knows it must be referring to him. He writes the books. That's how he became a trillionaire. That's how he's rich. Hello. So the big story in micro dramas now is they're all going out of business. Speaker 3 (9:06) They're not going out of business, but AI is taking over. Speaker 2 (9:09) Everyone's being fired. Everyone's being fired. Apart from the card pullers. And the card pullers, they use prompts and they keep putting prompts into AI and then they get a scene and then they go, is this going to fit in one of our stories? If not, they get rid of it and put another prompt in and they keep doing that until they get a prompt that they think is good enough to fit into the narrative. Right. Speaker 3 (9:29) Add another sea monster husband. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Speaker 2 (9:35) And then the problem is now that AI is able to do their job. So they're being kicked out as well. These card pushers are not being asked to do the job anyway. So not only is this thing we haven't heard of, it's also been taken over by AI. And also the people who've been taken over by AI themselves. Wow. And Speaker 4 (9:53) that vertical drama. vein of ai is insane because not only is it all just generated on its own but there's versions where you tell the prompt where you want the story to go next and it generates in front of you so you are the director and there's even ones where i've read you can put your own face onto the lead character and be the hero of this ai adventure you don't have to Speaker 2 (10:16) be the hero like If you have a very low self-esteem, you might accidentally make yourself like the fifth sea Speaker 1 (10:22) monster. The rejected Speaker 3 (10:25) sea monster. That's Speaker 4 (10:26) a Speaker 3 (10:26) good... I'm sorry, that's a good spinoff from that. Speaker 4 (10:29) Rejected trillionaire sea monster is my boss. Let's back on AI for one sec. This is obviously taking over all industries in various different ways. And did anyone see the TV show that went out on Channel 4 as part of Dispatches? So this is their major investigation arm of Channel 4. And they released a show last year called Will AI Take My Job? And went around to all various different industries and showed how it was hit. So it was the media, you know, but it was also music, fashion, law, supermarkets. And it was a pretty amazing documentary. It got really well received. The ending of it ends with the presenter going, AI is going to touch everyone's lives in the next few years. Call center workers, customer service agents, maybe even TV presenters like me, because I'm not real. in a British TV first, I am an AI presenter. And the entire show was presented by AI. Wow. And you don't get that reveal right until the end, just to show you how scary and far it has come. Could Speaker 3 (11:27) you tell when the presenter was walking around? Did they have all the fingers? Yeah, I Speaker 4 (11:32) don't know, actually. I didn't think they were leaving clues in. She was called Aisha, AI. Shah. So they were seeding little things in there. I've got to say, Speaker 1 (11:41) and this just goes to show how AI just doesn't have that creative zing. Saw that ending coming as soon as you started the anecdote. That's Dan though, that's Speaker 3 (11:50) how Speaker 1 (11:50) Dan tells stories. That's Speaker 3 (11:52) Dan's Speaker 1 (11:52) telling, you're right. He gives the reveal away. Speaker 1 (11:56) Did anyone... Speaker 4 (11:57) I am AI, Anna. That does not Speaker 1 (11:59) surprise me. Speaker 4 (12:01) The I bit's pretty surprising. Speaker 1 (12:03) You're Speaker 4 (12:04) a Speaker 1 (12:04) very early one, though, aren't you? Speaker 4 (12:06) Artificial idiot. Speaker 1 (12:10) Did anyone read about Tattle TV, which is the British microdrama platform? It sounds brilliant. It's Speaker 3 (12:16) going to be terrific. Speaker 1 (12:17) Again, owning up to what it is, I think it is terrific. One of the things is they've turned Hitchcock's The Lodger, which was one of Hitchcock's first films, made in 1927. Sorry, you keep saying Hitchcock. I heard Hedgehog. I'm trying to make this child-friendly, so I don't want to say the word cock. It sounded more like Hedgehog. Speaker 3 (12:36) Alfred Hedgehog, very child friendly. I mean, that is a kids book Speaker 2 (12:39) rated to be written, isn't it? That's Speaker 4 (12:41) so good. Right, okay, Speaker 3 (12:42) no one, Speaker 2 (12:42) don't put this out. Alfred Hedgehog? Psy-cow. Brilliant. Oh my god, we have something here, guys. Verti-cow. Speaker 1 (12:55) Hang on. Rear-wind-cow. But Speaker 2 (12:59) it's just farting cows. North by north. cow you see sometimes the creativity needs that ai input bring Speaker 1 (13:12) on the ai jesus you were saying oh yeah thanks so it wasn't alfred hedgehog this was Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 drama, The Lodger, silent film, The Lodger, a story of the London fog. And it's been remade for the two minute long vertical format. And I did, I read the reviews of it. There aren't that many, but one of them says, first time I've seen Hitchcock in vertical format. Speaker 2 (13:44) Yeah. No Speaker 1 (13:44) shit. They should Speaker 2 (13:47) have done Vertigo, Vertical. Yeah. They should have done that. Yeah. And that's Speaker 1 (13:52) probably why it hasn't taken off. Yeah. Anyway, you can watch the whole film on YouTube and if you want, you can pause it every two minutes to recreate the experience. Speaker 4 (14:04) Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the inventor of the chattering teeth and Kerplunk, as well as 800 other joke toys, is still inventing new products at age 105. Speaker 2 (14:19) That's so cool. Yeah. Amazing. Speaker 4 (14:21) Eddie Goldfarb. At time of recording, he is 105 years