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Little Fish: You've Been Harkin'd

November 16, 2025·33 min·3 clips

James correctly guesses the ISS urine tank is 38% full, beating Andy's 37% in a tense fact showdown.

This episode of the Little Fish series features hosts James Harkin, Andy Murray, and Dan Schreiber sharing facts submitted by their audience. They examine and often humorously fact-check these listener contributions. The first fact details an unofficial Blue Sky account called ISS Piss Tracker, which publicly reports the fill level of the urine recycling tank on the International Space Station. James Harkin correctly guesses the tank is 38% full during the recording. The hosts recount a 1984 space mission where a frozen urine icicle posed a risk to a shuttle's heat shield, leading astronauts to use bags for waste. Listener Lauren Kramer claims Oklahoma has more shoreline than the combined Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but the hosts question its accuracy after comparing it to Alaska's shoreline data. Kramer also learned in school that Oklahoma had the world's largest salt flats and a parakeet farm, which the hosts clarify are incorrect or defunct. Tracy Thiexton's fact reveals the historical textile job of a "willy man" operating a "shake-willy" machine to clean wool, which gave rise to the term "shoddy." Jackie Gemmel's fact explains that airplane windows are round to evenly distribute pressure, citing past crashes linked to square windows. Mark Logie shares that the first Earl Harcourt demolished and relocated an entire village to expand his garden in the 18th century. Jude Caffrooney's fact states the Tyrannosaurus rex is closer in time to humans than to the Stegosaurus. Ron Layback notes that Case Western Reserve University tests Galileo's gravity theorem annually by dropping pumpkins of different weights. The hosts reference a 2024 survey finding 37% of UK pumpkins are now eaten, an improvement from older waste statistics. Federico Sanna proposes that ancient Romans used pet weasels for pest control, a theory the hosts trace back to an 18th-century writer named Andreas E. Weasel. A surprising insight is that the ISS urine tank data is publicly accessible, allowing for a real-time tracking game. The hosts debunk several listener facts, like Oklahoma's shoreline claim and the state's historical parakeet farm, which closed after a fire. They connect the modern pumpkin waste percentage directly to the ISS tank level for a humorous comparison. The discussion reveals that airplane window shapes are now a design choice rather than a strict engineering necessity due to stronger materials. The village relocation for a garden highlights historical aristocratic power, though the hosts note the earl did rebuild the homes. The dinosaur timing fact leads to a tangential debate about whether a T-Rex would find a Stegosaurus or a human more surprising. The annual pumpkin drop experiment serves as a playful but genuine verification of fundamental physics. The Roman weasel theory is intriguingly linked to a potential bias from a researcher literally named Weasel. The tone is consistently lighthearted, conversational, and comedic, filled with banter and playful disagreements. The style is educational but informal, focusing on communal fact-checking and humorous tangents. Listeners who enjoy quirky historical anecdotes, myth-busting, and spontaneous comedic detours will love this episode. Those preferring tightly structured, single-topic educational content might find the rapid shifts and insider jokes less engaging.

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