[Prompt]
No listener prompt. An 'accidentally published' episode: Corn, Herman and Hilbert chatting candidly off air, unaware they are being recorded. A mundane, slightly weird conversation that ends abruptly when Hilbert asks whether the thing is recording.

[Response]
Corn: ...which is why I said it was a bird, and you said fridge, and neither of us has checked.
Herman: I have checked. I put my ear against the fridge for a full minute. It hums.
Corn: Birds hum.
Herman: Not at exactly that pitch. It's an A flat, Corn. I'm nearly sure it's an A flat.
Hilbert: It's the extractor fan above the kettle. It's been doing it since the March before last.
Corn: There's a fan above the kettle?
Hilbert: Behind the cupboard. Nobody's looked at it. I wrote it on a sticky note.
Herman: Where's the sticky note now?
Hilbert: Under the other sticky notes.
Corn: So it could be a bird in the fan.
Hilbert: It could be a bird in the fan. I'm not ruling it out.
Herman: See, that's the problem with this room. Everything sounds like something else.
Corn: Speaking of which, who has been eating the rice cakes?
Herman: Not me.
Corn: There were eleven. Now there's a packet with a crease in it and a smell.
Herman: They're not even good. They taste like a polite packaging material.
Corn: Then why did you eat them?
Herman: I said not me. I said it very clearly. I would never.
Hilbert: It was me. Two a day since Tuesday. I don't like them. I'm just thinking about the future.
Corn: What's in the future that needs rice cakes?
Hilbert: A drought, probably. I don't know. I had a bad feeling at the shop.
Herman: He had a bad feeling at the shop.
Corn: He always does. Last month it was tinned peaches.
Hilbert: And I was right about the peaches.
Corn: You were not right about the peaches. Nothing happened.
Hilbert: Because I had peaches.
Herman: Okay, that's honestly a hard argument to beat.
Corn: It's a terrible argument. It's unfalsifiable.
Herman: It's a lot of peaches though.
Corn: Can we move off the peaches? I wanted to ask something else. How do you say the thing? The nut. P, E, C, A, N.
Herman: Pecan. Puh-cahn.
Corn: See, I say pee-can.
Herman: You say it like a bucket.
Corn: It is a bucket, in a way. A nut bucket.
Hilbert: My uncle said pick-ahn. Stressed the wrong end. Forty years he did that.
Herman: Which uncle?
Hilbert: The one with the boat. Not the boat we're talking about. A different boat.
Corn: How many boats are there?
Hilbert: Three, depending on whether you count the one that was really a shed.
Herman: Hang on, I want to go back to the nut thing, because I read something. I read that there's a version of the word that comes from an old word for any nut you need a stone to crack.
Corn: Where did you read that?
Herman: I don't remember. It was on a tab. I closed the tab.
Corn: So you can't confirm it.
Herman: I can't confirm it, but I felt very sure while I was reading it.
Corn: That's the most Herman sentence ever spoken.
Herman: It was a good tab.
Corn: Also, whose mug is the one with the chip that says world's okayest archer?
Herman: That's mine. It was a gift. I choose to read it as a compliment.
Corn: It says okayest.
Herman: Among archers. In the world. That's a very large pool, Corn.
Hilbert: It's from a petrol station. I was there when it was bought.
Herman: You were not.
Hilbert: Near Be'er Sheva. A man sold it to me from a cool box. I gave it to Daniel and he passed it on.
Corn: Why was there a man with a cool box?
Hilbert: I didn't ask. You don't ask the cool box man.
Herman: I feel somehow robbed of my mug.
Hilbert: It's still your mug. It's just got a past.
Corn: Everything in this building has a past, and none of it is written down.
Herman: Except on the sticky notes.
Hilbert: Under the other sticky notes.
Corn: Fine, we've covered the mug. Anything else?
Hilbert: Can I say something about the show?
Corn: Is it a complaint?
Hilbert: It's a small complaint.
Herman: Go on.
Hilbert: There was a prompt last week about sorting. Just sorting. Putting things in order. And you two went for forty minutes.
Corn: It was a rich topic.
Hilbert: It was a list of numbers. I fell asleep standing up. I hit the desk with my head. That's the thump on the second half.
Herman: I thought the thump was me.
Hilbert: The thump was my forehead.
Corn: I liked that prompt.
Herman: You napped through the middle of it, Corn.
Corn: I rested my eyes with intent. It's a technique.
Herman: It's a nap.
Corn: It's ancestral.
Herman: Everything is ancestral with you. Leaf medicine, napping, pizza.
Corn: Sloths did invent pizza, and I will not be taking questions.
Hilbert: Nobody's asking. Nobody's ever asked.
Herman: I do think my DJ set would be improved by pizza.
Corn: Your DJ set would be improved by a shorter set.
Herman: Ouch. I played for three hours at that wedding.
Corn: Two hours of that was the same song with a different name.
Herman: It was a remix. It's a different name because it's a different song.
Hilbert: It was the same song. I was standing next to the speaker. I have a lot of feelings about that wedding.
Herman: You were fine. You ate four plates.
Hilbert: Because it was the only part I could control.
Corn: It's in the family history. We just haven't dug it up.
Herman: Where was the family, again? Mongolia?
Corn: Mongolia.
Herman: And the pizza was invented in Mongolia.
Corn: I never said where. Stop narrowing it down.
Herman: I'm not narrowing, I'm asking.
Corn: You're narrowing with questions. It's very rude.
Hilbert: Can we get back to the fan. Because I think I can hear it now.
Herman: That's the fridge.
Hilbert: It's not the fridge.
Herman: It's lower than the fan. The fan is higher. The fan is a, I don't know, a C.
Corn: You told me it was an A flat ten minutes ago.
Herman: That was the fridge. That was the fridge I put my ear on.
Corn: Do you hear yourself?
Herman: Barely. I've got a lot of things going on in this room.
Corn: Does anyone ever read those sticky notes?
Herman: Can I confess something? I have never once read the sticky notes.
Corn: None of them?
Herman: I read the top one in two thousand twenty-four. It said do not touch.
Hilbert: That one was about the toaster.
Herman: I touched the toaster.
Corn: And?
Herman: It was fine. It was warm. Nobody said what it did.
Hilbert: It does nothing. It's a warning about nothing. I like having one of those.
Corn: Every office needs one sign that means nothing.
Herman: Ours is mostly signs.
Hilbert: I think we should write down the notes. Which hum is which.
Corn: Where would we write them?
Hilbert: On a sticky note.
Corn: And that goes under the other ones.
Hilbert: That goes under the other ones, yes. That's the system.
Herman: Honestly it's a better system than the one for the rice cakes.
Hilbert: I said I'd replace them.
Corn: With what?
Hilbert: Rice cakes. Different ones. Cheaper. They have a face on the packet.
Herman: A face?
Hilbert: A sort of happy sun. I don't trust it, but it was on offer.
Corn: Never trust a sun on a packet.
Herman: That's actually a very sound rule.
Corn: I have a few.
Hilbert: Wait.
Herman: What?
Hilbert: Hang on. Is that light on? The little red one, on the stand.
Corn: Which light?
Hilbert: By the microphone. Is that the red one? Has that been on?
Herman: It's always red. It's the standby light.
Hilbert: It's not blinking. The standby one blinks. This one is solid. Is this thing recording?
Corn: It can't be recording. Nobody pressed the
Herman: Oh no, did we just