No Such Thing As A Fish: 474: No Such Thing As A Remote Controlled Cabbie

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Before we get going, I just want to let you know a couple of things.

Firstly, the episode you're about to hear is the last ever episode to be recorded at the QI offices in Covent Garden,

as we pack up shop and move on to our new offices in Hoburn.

So, we thought, you know, if we're gonna go out, we should go out strong, so we reached out to Nerd Royalty,

and fortunately, she said, yes, it's Hannah Fry. My goodness, we are such huge fans of her at the QI office.

I think every elf has probably read her books. Hello World, if you've not read that, by the way, is an incredible book.

I'm sure you've all seen her TV series, which was out November of last year on BBC Two, called The Secret Genius of Modern Life.

It was absolutely phenomenal. She makes incredible TV, she writes incredible books, and she is such a good guest on this week's episode.

You have to, by the way, check out her latest show. You can find it on Bloomberg.com, and it's called The Future with Hannah Fry.

It is a look into the world of scientists and inventors who are changing the way the world is gonna be over the next century.

These are people who are looking into seeing if we can live a life beyond 150 years old,

who are working out whether or not computers will be able to read our emotions,

and trying to find out if they can make a planet that will be utterly transformed by unlimited clean energy.

So do check that out. It's on Bloomberg.com, or you can find the entire series on YouTube as well.

And otherwise, you know, next time you happen to be in Covent Garden, do take a walk down Maiden Lane,

and if you look above the barbershop that's called Ruffians, you'll see a window there. That's where we were.

For nine years, James Andy, Anna and I just sat there dorking out, and we're gonna miss the place,

but we're looking forward to the next chapter, and that will be next week's episode.

But for now, let's give a good old goodbye with Hannah Frye to the QI offices in Covent Garden. On with the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden.

My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Hannah Frye,

and once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days,

and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Hannah.

Oh, me. My turn. Okay, here's my fact. The Malyard reaction, so the thing that makes your bread turn brown when you toast it,

is actually the same thing that makes fake tan work.

Interesting. Okay.

I mean, do you want more? Do you want more?

Yeah, so you're being...

You're under-impressed.

You are being toasted. No, it's just so weird. I'm trying to make the connection between you being toasted effectively.

You would think, like, if you had a normal suntan, like you're laying in the sun, you would think that's being toasted.

That's toasted, exactly. But this is a spray-on, or this is a cream, right? So there's no toasty.

What if you put fake tan on bread? That's what I wanted to know. Good question.

This is a great question. Someone needs to experiment.

Yeah, perfect toast every time.

Okay, so the best thing about this, my favorite thing about this, is this was discovered completely by accident,

so there was a researcher called Ava Wittgenstein, and she was looking into, there were some children

who were having problems, their bodies were having problems in breaking down glucose.

So there's a sort of simplified sugar that you find in the body, which is called dihydroxyacetone,

easy for me to say, and she was seeing if you could feed them this sugar,

whether their bodies could break down that sort of simplified sugar.

And every now and then, some of these kids would, like, accidentally dribble a little bit of medicine down their chin,

and when they did, they would have a perfectly orange stain of strip on it.

And then she was like, what's going on here?

And what she realized is that you have these amino acids in the skin,

and when that reacts with the DHA, the dihydroxyacetone,

it creates that sort of reaction that is the same thing that ends up turning your skin brown in the sun,

that is the melanin in your skin.

Anyway, this idea was picked up by copper tone and then released into fake tan.

And it's still the same thing, still the same stuff, the DHA, which is the thing.

But they've just become much better at making it less smelly and less orange.

So did Eva Wittgenstein, did she see this little bit of orange-ness and think,

what if that was my whole face?

Or she's more of a scientist than someone else picked up on the idea?

She's more of the scientist.

I mean, look, who doesn't want to have an entirely orange face?

I'm sure she had ambition.

But here's the question that I've got, I spent ages, hours trying to find anything about Eva Wittgenstein.

There is nothing that I could find.

Were you trying to find out if she was related to Ludwig?

No, I don't know.

Because I did.

Right, and did you find anything?

No, exactly.

There's nothing about it.

So she does this in the 50s, and then she kind of disappears.

And I asked a friend who knows how to go into sort of American records just to see if he could find her.

And he searched the whole records.

All he could find was an Eva Wittgenstein who died age 97 in North Carolina.

We don't know if it's her, but she showed up as being on a government watch list.

So it's kind of a cool idea that maybe Eva became, yeah.

Hey, maybe she became a spy and could like change her disguise by going orange and then back to white.

It's the original mission impossible, isn't it?

She runs into a tanning booth and comes out half an hour later completely unrecognizable.

What a disguise, yeah.

So have any of you guys ever been faked hand at all?

No.

Almost nonstop.

I'm not joking.

Do you, like, my skin is, okay, it's important for anybody who doesn't know what I look like.

I am the most ginger person that a ginger person can be, right?

Like, I am fully ginger, which means that my skin is not just white.

It's like translucent with a hint of blue.

And so I put on fake tan just to make my skin look like pasty skin.

Wow.

Do you have a dog right now?

I don't actually, but I have got bronzer on.

Can you not tell?

Well, you just, you look variously, it looks fine.

It looks normal.

Interesting though, that's okay, but you can be kind of under pale.

Like, you're not even pale.

No.

I aspire to do that.

So have you tried that, because I know there are loads of different methods you can do.

There are the beds on there and then there are the booths.

Oh no, so beds are not fake tan.

So the beds, you go in, that's a real tan.

That's very, it's looked down on.

Oh, okay.

It's not very good.

It's a bit, it's a little bit skin cancery.

Right.

So I didn't realise that these, the spray that you can put on is also a risk.

Is it?

Because, well, no, I mean not, sorry.

Okay, just for any big tanners listening or sort of like legal teams, whatever.

The point is that I, well in that track.

Big tan might be coming to get you.

It's actually good for you.

It's actually, no, it makes you look like you are protected from the sun, but you're not.

I see.

It hasn't had the actual effect.

It's reacted, produced these pigments, these melanoidins in your skin, but you are then

totally unprotected from sun.

So some people would think you, and I don't think this is even proper, but some people

think you get a little bit of a tan and that will protect you from other, you know, stronger.

From the sun.

Yeah, which it doesn't.

This definitely doesn't.

This is just, yeah.

And doesn't it, this is a bit sciency for me, but doesn't it in, sorry, doesn't it actually

kind of make you more susceptible to having the sun's harm you?

Don't know.

Big tan's coming for me now.

Okay.

I mean, I think no.

I think no.

Okay.

There was a study that was done in 2007, which showed, and this was by Katinka Jung.

I don't know if there's any relation to Carl.

I don't know if it can explain the situation.

Yeah.

And this was in Berlin, which showed that 24 hours after having the tan are on ultraviolet,

you become more susceptible to it.

Oh.

You know, 24 hour period.

According to this study in 2020.

Wow.

Interesting.

All I know is I'd never leave the Blumen House without Factor 50 on.

Really?

Oh, God, yeah.

So I was once in Cuba.

Don't like to brag.

I was wearing Factor 50 and sat in the shade all day.

And I was burnt so badly from the reflection of the sun on the sand, but I got blisters.

Right.

That's the sort of situation.

You people without ginger hair, you don't know.

You don't know that how we suffer.

I do have transparent skin as well, actually.

I like Irish skin, even though I have dark hair.

Like when I was in a similar part of the world, I put sun cream on Factor 50 every 20 minutes.

And one of the times I didn't put it on properly and I blistered in the shape of a handprint on my chest.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

I went to a pig farm in Scotland recently.

All these showbiz angles that we've got coming.

Again.

Again, don't like to brag.

What I hope you're going to say is you realise that pigs shelter from the sun by rubbing themselves in mud and you did the same?

No.

I mean, close.

Close.

It's because you said Irish skin.

And when I was going around this pig farm, I realised just, I mean, genuinely, these pigs have identical skin to me.

Identical skin.

And I was like, why do all these pigs have Irish skin?

And as you say, it makes them really susceptible to sunburn.

So that's why they have to keep them in sheds, but actually the reason for having Irish skin is a bit grim.

It's because when you are breeding them for meat, you can see if there's bad meat much easier through see-through skin.

No.

Wow.

What?

Is that true?

That is super fast.

So look, you and me, if we ever get hung up for meat.

Yeah.

Do you both have any advantage to having pale skin?

Can anyone see something?

We are vitamin D superheroes.

Okay, right.

Like, that's genuinely a superpower of pale skin people.

What does that mean?

More you synthesise it more easily.

Not enough that you can come in and extract it from me.

No, no.

Can't make a vitamin D farm out of us.

We haven't tried yet, guys.

I read an article that said the Maillard reaction is by far the most widely practised chemical reaction in the world.

Oh, that's so cool.

Hang on.

What about breathing?

Oh, stuff like that counts as a chemical reaction, yeah.

Well, this was at the 100 year anniversary of the Maillard reaction.

Right.

Which is a huge thing.

They got skin in the game.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was a chemist who said it.

Nobel Prize winner John Murray Lane who said it.

But there was a huge conference.

It was 100 years since it got discovered.

And there's a group, the Maillard reaction group.

The Maillard reaction society have conferences just about the Maillard reaction.

Yeah, as you say, James, they were established in 2005 and it's just food browning scientists meeting up.

Sounds great.

Having a while of a time, I bet.

But actually, I think James' case said it's the most practised chemical reaction on the planet.

Well, this was John Murray Lane.

He said this.

I'm supporting it, James, because not only is everyone who's ever made a slice of toast engaged in it,

but also the Maillard reaction is happening in our bodies all the time.

And so when you toast something, it happens at a very high temperature.

But generally, it's a reaction between amino acids which are building blocks of proteins,

we've all made lots of proteins, and sugars.

So that is constantly happening in the human body anyway,

but at a very slow rate, much, much more slowly than toasting or the faked anything.

Are you saying I'm orange on the inside too?

I'm afraid so.

And it's bad for you though, because when you make toast,

the Maillard reaction produces about a thousand new molecules, really complicated.

One of the chemicals it makes is acrylamide, and acrylamide is carcinogenic.

If you have just a slice of toast every day, it's not nearly enough to be a problem.

But they found that the Maillard process that they use in highly processed foods,

so if you're making some really highly processed food and you want it to last for ages,

one way to do it is to heat it up really, really quickly at a massive, massive temperature.

And that kind of Maillard reaction gives this acrylamide.

Can you talk about processed foods though?

So okay, if you're like home cooking, and you're browning off the chicken,

and then browning off this thing to try and get loads of flavour,

something I've discovered recently, don't bother doing any of that, right?

You can get MSG from the internet, right?

Buy it, right?

A little sprinkle of MSG makes everything taste amazing.

And because I am a scientific in nature, right?

I've A-B tested this stuff with guests coming around my house.

Oh, right.

Sorry, what's A-B testing?

It's where you basically have one bowl with, one bowl without, and see which one goes down quicker.

Oh, that's interesting.

Did they know they were in an experiment when they came around?

They did not tell.

Welcome to my house.

I would say it's an assumption.

If you ever go and visit Hannah, it's like you're probably in an experiment.

It's kind of this release form at the door.

You can't really explain, but it's...

What was in the bowls, do you mind me asking?

I made a chicken curry.

Look, don't get me wrong, my chicken curry is absolutely delicious.

Both bowls were finished eventually.

But the one with the Kraken.

The one with the Kraken was more enjoyed, yeah.

I grew up in Hong Kong. That's my life, MSG.

I'm very excited.

Do you have buckets of it that you like spoon from?

I do get pot noodle and I collect just the sachets so that I can use it on other things.

Are those sachets of MSG that come with pot noodles?

MSG is inside the actual powder that you get of the...

I didn't know that.

I can't remember when I last had a pot noodle, but it's been a while.

Some of us...

This is my version of I was in Cuba recently.

I haven't had a pot noodle in the last few years.

Can I tell you something about airline food specifically relating to Mayard?

You can't do the Mayard reaction on a plane.

That's interesting.

Most planes these days don't have stoves, right?

They need an open flame.

How do they heat the food? The microwave?

What's the maximum temperature microwaveable food gets up to?

It's 100 degrees because it's heating the water molecules, which get to 100.

That's part of the reason why plane food tastes bad.

I know it affects your taste buds.

If I brought a Bunsen burner onto a plane, it would be possible.

Unfortunately, it's actually on that little card at Kraken.

Have you brought a Bunsen burner for your toast?

There's a picture of a guy with a medieval toast in fork as well.

If you put it on those little plastic bags, you can get that through.

Yeah, sure.

Lots of food is pre-Mayard-ed before it's loaded onto the plane.

And then it's microwaved.

So you get a bit of the flavour still.

The Mayard reaction works on poo.

That's why we have copper lights.

A copper light is a fossilised poo.

Our listeners will know that.

Of course they will.

But basically, let's say you have a dinosaur, they do a poo.

The Mayard reaction works on the surface of the poo.

That's what crosses it over.

And then eventually, that's what helps it become a copper light.

So if I take my dog out for a walk, spray the result with fake tan.

Sprinkle a little MSG on it.

Come back millions of years later.

Leave a sign near it. Do not touch.

Experiment in progress.

One of Hammond's experiments.

You said Hong Kong, because we were talking about MSG.

Have you heard of wok hei?

It's the breath of the wok.

It's quality that if you're cooking in China and particularly in Hong Kong,

it's the perfect seared taste of the rice that's been cooked in a wok.

And it's because the rice gets tossed really fast, loads of times, a few times a second.

It uses the Mayard reaction.

And if you get the trajectory of the rice right and it's cooking at the right temperature,

it's absolutely delicious apparently.

And there's a restaurant called The Chairman in Hong Kong,

which is one of the top restaurants in Hong Kong.

And chefs there have to spend a year practising the tossing of the rice in the pan.

They're only allowed to cook for other chefs, they're not allowed to cook stir-frys for customers.

They're not allowed to cook a stir-fry for a year, so they can get the tossing right.

That's amazing.

I have heard about washing woks being a bad thing, right?

You're supposed to...

You're not supposed to wash a teapot kind of thing as well, right?

Yeah, that's just lazy people.

I seasoned a pan recently.

What does that mean?

It's where you get a new fried on your face.

It was quite the thing.

Yeah, I'm living that Fraser life now.

I really am.

That's what noddles for you.

You toss your pot noodle for a year before you eat it.

It's where you get a new cast iron pan, no nonstick stuff, just pure, lovely cast iron, whatever.

And then you put this tiny layer of oil in and you cook that very slowly.

And then it kind of bonds with the pan.

Right.

And then you do that a few times, again and again and again, do it all over the pan.

You're kind of lathering the pan and then making a tiny thing layer.

And it makes it really good at cooking, I don't know, more stuff.

Andy's usually very private. That's his personal thing as we've done that on the show.

Do you know what? I feel like I've learned a lot of things.

Can we cut that bit out?

I can't give you too much away. I feel a bit... I'm exposed.

Stop the podcast!

Stop the podcast!

I'll let you know that this week we're sponsored by Express VPN.

James, can I ask you about your bathroom habits very quickly?

Oh, please do.

When you go to the bathroom, you close the door behind you, right?

Sure.

You don't want a random passerby coming and saying, hey, how's the poo going?

Yes, I not only shut my bathroom door, I also tend to shut my front door and the front door to the building in which I live.

So the chances of a passerby seeing me in the toilet is almost nil.

But what kind of security do you take when you're out of the toilet and you're on the internet?

Oh, very little.

Ah, well, here's the problem, mate.

Not having a VPN is like keeping your door open in a toilet and allowing anyone to walk by and see what you're doing.

Why do you allow for all the things you're googling, all the places you're going,

to be absolutely open to anyone who's got basic hacking ability?

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OK, now it's definitely on with the podcast.

On with the show.

OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy.

My fact is that Japan has just found 7,000 islands that it didn't know it had.

Hmm.

Japan's doubled, basically, in one specific respect.

Not in size, just in number.

No, it's still exactly the same size.

Wait, how many didn't it have before?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it had 6,800 before.

Oh, wow.

So it's doubled.

It's more than doubled.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a good day, isn't it?

It's a great day, because it would be great if one of them was like,

Honshu or whatever the island.

Yeah.

But they're all small, right?

They're all super small.

Unfortunately.

I feel like we need more detail.

Where were they?

They were all around the main ones, you know, and offshore mostly.

Did they find them all in one day, in one go?

Well, they've been doing some digital mapping.

Japan, since 1985, has had the same set of maps, which I think are based on older maps,

whereas now you can survey much more accurately.

And so there are now 14,000 Japanese islands.

Are any of them in, like, the South China Sea and claimed by other people, do we think?

I don't know how many are totally undisputed.

Because, you know, the Kuril Islands, which is in the north of Japan, which is claimed also by Russia.

Yes.

That is a dispute that's still been going since World War II, which means that technically

World War II hasn't finished, because Japan and the Soviet Union haven't agreed on who owns these islands,

and it was part of World War II.

Seriously?

No.

Like, the last time they talked about it was like, I don't know, 10 years ago, something like that,

and they didn't agree with it then, and I can't see them agreeing with it now.

That's amazing.

What amazing tourist attraction that you can go there,

and you're in World War II.

And so one of the other things to say is that Japan's major land masses,

like the four or five islands, I think, predominantly four, are 90% of the land mass.

So that's, we're talking about the final 3% here that make up the 14,000 extra islands that they have.

Are any of them big enough to put a house on?

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah.

You might not want to put a house on them just in case of sea levels.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're a short-termist about it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're a dodgy property developer, this is a boon for you.

This is great.

But it also depends on what you call an island, right?

What's the difference between a rock and an island size,

but where does one end and the other one start, right?

And in Scotland, they had a traditional thing,

which was if you could keep a sheep on it, it's an island,

and if you can't keep a sheep on it, it's a rock.

But when you say keep a sheep, you mean can the sheep,

is there enough grass for this sheep?

Can it survive for, yeah, a few years?

I mean, because presumably you can keep a sheep on basically anywhere.

Yeah.

If you have a level of cruelty, you're willing to.

Yeah.

It's spiky, no?

Yeah.

But yeah, so like what I'm saying, I guess, is like a lot of these islands will be super

small and whether they're officially rocks or islands, we don't have a way of deciding.

That's why you can't say how many islands there are in the UK or how many there are in Canada

or even which country has the most islands because different people count them in different

ways.

I would say the circumference of the rock to give you a definition of whether it's a rock

or an island, because you know this, if you measure the circumference or the length of

a coastline, it depends on how big your measuring stick is.

Yeah.

It's to the answer that you get.

Go on.

Okay, you close.

You're about to get mapped.

Buckle up.

Okay, so if you just have a map, let's say, of the British coastline and you get like a

centimeter ruler and you go, right, how long is the coastline?

Like whatever.

But then if you've got a more accurate measuring stick, so one that you were measuring to the

millimeter, you could get in there in the nooks and crannies a little bit more and go all

around them.

And actually, you will get longer and longer and longer each time because every time you

add in a little crevice, a little nook and cranny, you're kind of adding length to it.

So in the limit of looking at an infinitely detailed ruler and the infinitesimally small

like nooks and crannies, you have an infinite coastline.

Wow.

So cool.

That's so interesting.

Can I tell you a story about my favorite island in the world?

Yes.

Okay, so there's a little place in France.

This is not my favorite island in the world.

There's a little lake and it's got a little island in it, right?

So you cross over a little bridge and then you get it.

And then when you're on the island, it's got a pond in the island.

Okay.

Right?

Or maybe sort of like a small lake, a pond to lake.

How do you know?

What really is a rock pond?

In the middle of the pond, it's a little island, right?

So you've got an island in a lake and on that island, there is a lake which also has an

island in it.

Wow.

So essentially recursive islands.

Now, there are a few of these places around the world, but the best one of all is called

Vulcan Point and it's in the Philippines and it's a tiny little island that is inside

a lake.

Okay.

Yeah.

Right?

It's a very, very small little island.

It's a very small little rock and that lake is inside a volcano, which is itself surrounded

by water, which is on an island in a lake and it's in the Philippines, which is in itself

an island.

Wow.

Now, the thing is about Vulcan Point, is that unfortunately the volcano exploded and the

Vulcan Point was destroyed, but there is nonetheless photographic evidence of the point

where there was this level of recursive filens and you know what, I think you could put a

sheep on it.

Really?

Yeah.

It had a great big spike in the middle.

Can keep a lamb kebab on it.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's so cool.

That's extraordinary.

That's so cool.

I love that.

There's a really cool island on Japan which is called Gunkanjima Island and what's amazing

about this is it was once the most densely populated place on our planet.

It was...

Wow.

It's quite small.

Does that mean there's a lot of people or is it very, very small?

There's a lot of people for a very small island.

It's a mixture of the two.

So this is the 1900s and this island, there was Mitsubishi.

They looked at it and thought there would be a lot of rich submarine coal deposit underneath.

So what they did was they built these buildings on top of the rock.

They fitted 6,000 people.

There's nothing else you could do but just be in these apartments and then drill downwards

to get it.

And they were right.

There was stuff down there.

You'll recognize it by the way possibly if you like popular movies.

It's in James Bond's Skyfall.

It's where Bond goes to this weird island where it's completely abandoned and so people

go there now.

It was Javier Bardem.

Yes, exactly.

Why was it abandoned?

Either they mined enough of it or...

No, I don't think it was that.

I think that Japan switched to petrol.

Tragically.

Tragically.

Sorry.

Give it away.

Sorry for that Hannah.

I've got substantial interests in coal.

We really are finding out.

What about you?

Wait till you hear the gun to electric down.

Oh no.

Anyway, Japan just had a big switch over.

The most populated now is Mong Kok isn't it in Hong Kong?

Is it?

Just what we were talking about before.

Really?

I think so.

That was always intensely popular in Hong Kong.

I think this island was 216,000 people per square mile which is because it was a fraction

of a square mile.

Feels like a lot.

Give us a comparison though.

What is it like in central London?

I know that the least densely populated countries are places like Mongolia which have about

four people I think per square mile.

And this was how many?

216,000.

Quite a lot more.

Yeah, quite a lot more.

I went to an island in Japan that has all the rabbits on and it's just like you walk

and there's just rabbits everywhere and you walk down and they follow you.

These naturally occurring rabbits, they've been placed there for the interest of tourists.

So the story goes that there was a chemical weapons factory and they were used as experiments

and they were let go and then they proliferated, but...

Bread like rabbits.

Well yeah, exactly.

It's not.

I can see why they went with the lizard for the Godzilla origin story.

But what we think actually happened is there are a lot of school kids nearby and they put

some rabbits on there and then the rabbits did what rabbits do and became more and more

and more rabbits and now because it's known as Rabbit Island, kids will just come and

put their rabbit on there because it's where rabbits live and it's like it's almost advertised

as this wonderful place where rabbits roam free inside of it.

Sort of like your dog's gone to the farm, it's like we're just putting your rabbit on

a rabbit island.

Yeah, a little bit like that.

Are they fed?

By tourists.

Right.

And that's the problem really because the tourist season is quite seasonal and so for some

of the year they don't really get fed at all.

Oh no, okay.

Do you think that'll be a natural population control though, wouldn't you?

I think it is, but the population is quite high still and you walk around and there's

a few rabbits there and they're chasing after you because they know the tourists feed them

and then you walk and then you turn around and there's a few more and then you walk a

bit further and there's like 20.

It's the scariest.

It's like the birds but rabbits.

Cue animals are fine but when they accumulate that turns to, there's a number where it

gets scary, isn't it, when you turn around and there's 40 rabbits.

For me it's like if there's only two and then you turn around and there's like six,

I think that's scary.

Oh yeah.

Have you ever had the work of Greg Gage?

Greg Gage.

So this is a guy, he has this amazing stuff, he can put a device on your arm that sends

a little electric sensors and moves your hands for you, right?

So he can sort of stand there with this thing on your arm and with his iPad he can like

move your arm.

Oh wow.

That's cool.

He created this thing which actually school kids around the world can do where you can

operate on a little cockroach and insert a little wire into their heads, right?

And then essentially control them using a PlayStation controller.

Oh my gosh.

Right?

It's absolutely wild.

Anyway, the thing is is that, you know, you've got this like remote control cockroach.

I always thought that he was missing a massive trick though because what he should do is

get sort of gloves which can tell where his hands are, those kind of gloves that connect

to the internet and then have an entire army of cockroaches behind him, right, like a rabbit

and then summon them by like lifting his arms off like a Marvel superhero, but cockroaches.

Wow.

Maybe next he can do rabbits.

Yeah.

I'm up for it.

The rabbits I don't think like me because I accidentally kicked one because they just

ran around.

Accidentally, here he is, getting his defence in first.

They just run around your feet the whole time.

Oh sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

That'd be a great shot.

And yet you converted it through a rugby post that was nearby and that's been shown.

So I was just looking up things that are going on in Japan at the moment and have you heard

of the Sushi Terror?

No, I don't know.

Japan is in the grip of it right now as we're recording this.

There's a huge problem because there's a craze that's developed.

It's an online craze and it's spread to offline.

You know the conveyor belt, sushi restaurants.

People have started mucking around with the stuff on the belts.

Not in Japan.

Come on.

Touching the things.

What?

Licking bowls of soy sauce.

No.

It's very bad.

It's obviously really bad, you know.

Just a little quiz for you guys.

Oh cool, great.

When did the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant open?

What year?

1990 in New York.

Very nice.

Oh no.

At the location.

Very nice.

Okay.

Wrong though.

Look at his face.

I'm not saying until we've got all...

Look at his face.

Oh please.

The first escalator came in Harrods in the UK around 1920s or something like that.

It's not really playing the game to use previous knowledge but okay, I like it.

I'm going to say it was in Harrods.

They decided to open one.

They took that technology and just put little sushi on it.

Okay.

And a year?

Probably 1927 I should think.

Right.

Dad?

Oh there's not much nowhere for me to go.

It's not happened yet.

Brilliant.

It's...

2029.

2029.

Any day now.

It's all an illusion.

They've been bad.

Well, okay.

It was interesting to me when James's lowballed it so much.

Oh sorry.

That's quite alright but it's 1958.

Okay.

I am surprised by that.

That is quite a long time ago.

It predates Cliff Richard's first album by a year.

And that is how we judge everything.

Hannah, you haven't been on the show before but that's our bar.

That's a magic show.

Okay.

That is a long...

Wow.

I'm surprised.

Yeah.

I was going to say, I don't know if we've ever mentioned it.

I don't think we have.

The first ever English teacher who was of a foreign country teaching English in the country

was a guy called Ronald McDonald.

He was the first person to teach in Japan, which would be a great, nice coincidence if

Ronald McDonald, who is a character in McDonald's in Japan, was called Ronald McDonald.

But he's not.

What?

It's called Donald McDonald.

What?

Who?

What?

Yeah.

Is it because the letter R is difficult to say?

Exactly.

And it's interesting looking at it online when people have written about it.

There's been tweets about it.

And if you go to the replies, there's a lot of Japanese people who are like, you know,

in their 30s going, he's called Ronald.

So it's like it's a genuinely amazing thing but over there, he's Donald.

Did you say you were in Japan recently?

I was in Japan.

Yeah.

Filming.

I was in Tokyo, but the good bit, I got to go inside of the exclusion zone in Fukushima,

which was wild.

The whole place is extraordinary.

There were these buildings, there was one sort of town hall that we went to, and the

doors are locked, but inside you can just see everybody's slippers.

And there was like a kid's toy on the floor and then, you know, like beer bottles, right?

They'd had a party or something the night before and there's like a crate with sort

of the empties that they hadn't got rid of, and just like everybody left in such a rush

because of the tsunami.

But one of the reasons why we were going there, we were looking at wildlife and how wildlife

has changed, and there were reports before we got there that there were radioactive bears

inside the exclusion zone, which I was obviously very excited about.

So we got there.

We started, right, right, we're literally on a bear hunt.

And we asked her.

Yeah, so many of the radiators, but you know, we went to talk to a sexist and we're like,

OK, tell us about these bears.

So we couldn't find any bears.

OK, so how much have you seen these bears?

And then it transpired that actually the bear researcher themselves had only seen one bear

once.

Right, OK.

Actually, there wasn't radioactive bears at all, it was radioactive bear, which may or

may not be there.

Wow.

Yeah.

I'd love to find that bear.

That sounds amazing.

The radioactive bear.

I didn't expect it was a bore, just, you know, on a spiny angle.

Right.

Yeah.

OK, it is time for fact number three, and that is James.

OK, and my fact this week is that if you grew up in a city, then you have a worse sense

of direction than some mombon in the countryside, though it doesn't seem to work if you're

from Hungary.

OK, again, we're going to need more data.

So this is a study published last year in Nature, and it assessed the navigational skills

of 400,000 people across 38 countries, and what they did was they asked people to memorize

a map in a video game, and then once they memorized it, they got them to get their characters

to go through this map, and they worked out how good everyone wasn't navigating, and they

found that it was very clear that people who grew up in cities tended to have a worse sense

of direction, people who were in the countryside had a better, and people in the suburbs were

always in between the two, so it was a real good correlation, and they said it was strong

in places like Argentina, the UK, and the US, but there were countries like Hungary,

for example, this is a quote, where there was no real difference, but on average, the

trend held.

So is that because Hungary has very simple cities or complicated countryside?

Well, I've been to Hungary, and like, for instance, in Budapest, I would say it's not

that different to London, because it's an old, very old city that's built up.

It's here in New York, which is in, like, a grid.

And that's what they said, people with a worse sense of direction, people who grew up in

grid cities.

Oh, yeah, I mean, well, that makes sense, right?

And they kind of speculate slightly that, you know, you don't have as much signpost

telling you which way to go, and that kind of stuff.

It's pretty amazing.

So the game that was created for them to do this is called, is it Quest?

It is.

Okay, I need to tell you about, go on, yes, keep going.

So this game, as of April 22nd, 2022, has been now played by over 4.3 million players,

not necessarily all for this exact thing that you're talking about, James.

It's just an incredible way of gathering data.

Is this a particular thing that's used in science too?

Yeah, it's like this amazing kind of game that is fun to play, but then you're also

collecting data from it.

But the reason why I love it so much is that, okay, so there are particular cells in your

brain that help you with navigation, and they found these in mice and rats.

So some of them are called play cells.

And essentially what happens, right?

If you, let's say you put a rat in a rectangular room, okay, you can put a kind of cute little

hat on the rat that will measure what's going on in the brain.

And you can work out when particular neurons are firing.

And it turns out that in, let's say the northeast corner of the room, if there's one neuron

that fires in this rat's brain while it's in that location, it will not fire anywhere

else.

It's like a specific neuron that is like, this is the northeast corner, a play cell.

And actually what you can do is you can elongate the zone in which that neuron fires by putting

a rat into an identical room that is just stretched out longer.

So it's like the northeast corner becomes bigger.

And so where this neuron fires also becomes bigger.

Anyway, the thing is, is that they have to do this while the rats are going around in

little rooms, but it's quite hard to hook up this rat to the hats that's measuring what's

going on in their brain.

You're not going to put a spike in it like the cockroach, are you?

Because I was a bit squeamish about that.

It's only tiny, the cockroach is fine, the cockroach is fine.

Okay, okay.

No, so what they do is they put the little hat on the rat, and then they put the rat

on a ball, and then the rat can like run around and the ball moves underneath them as though

they're running freely.

And then they put it in front of a computer and get it to play a quest.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So the rat's like running around playing this computer game.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

It's almost like VR for the rat, right?

Totally.

It thinks that it's in this well that I get.

I don't know.

Totally.

Probably doesn't even know it's a rat, but it's like, you know, it's like, it imagines

that it's actually going round, right?

Yeah.

And it's the screen.

It's like a little rat-sized IMAX.

Amazing.

That's amazing.

Well, one more thing about this study and why it might be important is because poor navigation

skills are sometimes used to help identify dementia in people.

And so you need to know what your base level of navigation skills would be for a normal

person.

So if you live in the city or the countryside and you have poor navigation skills, it could

be because you have dementia, but you need to know what your original thoughts are.

See, that's clever.

I read that if you follow Google Maps, if you follow the blue line, your sensor direction

gets much worse over time.

Yeah.

Well, it's like your brain's like a muscle, right?

You've got to practice it.

Yeah.

So I turned it off yesterday.

I turned off the blue line.

I had to get somewhere.

I had to walk for about half an hour across London.

And I turned it off.

I think it was only about three corners in the whole journey, so that was really...

Well, it's the blue line.

Sorry.

On Google Maps, you know, there's a blue line.

You put it in directions to somewhere and it gives you a little blue line.

Right.

You follow that line and then you get to the place you're going.

Okay.

I got lost on the way between Holburn and Concord and just now.

I mean, that's what I was like.

I've lived here for 20 years.

I used to have an A to Z in my pocket.

I used to be able to like...

I was fine now.

I just can't do it.

You know what though, there's a cabbie who I use quite a lot and I have a game that I

play with him where I'll be in a part of London and I'll just send him a photo of a jaw.

And it's unreal.

Sorry.

You've got your own personal cabbie.

No, not my...

I just...

We say chauffeur, normally.

You'll never have guessed who I had in this card.

It was you.

Yeah.

It was you.

No, he's not my personal cabbie.

He's like...

He's a tame cabbie.

I think that's still very impressive.

Like I've never...

Yeah?

I guess you give up pop noodles and then this is the next step.

Has this cabbie feels got a spike in his head and you just raise your hand and he arrives.

Wow.

Sorry, you send him photos and he just says, that's where you are.

Yeah.

That's cool.

He knows the door.

That is very cool.

Do you want to try it now?

Shall I take a first look at the window?

Yeah.

Don't put a street sign on.

That's great.

Anna's just hanging out the window of our office right now.

We could even say where we are because this is the last time we're ever in this office.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so let's see if he comes back with this, but we're on Made in Lane.

Let's see if he gets Made in Lane.

So exciting.

It's extraordinary.

I used to live on a street where, which was in the cabbie's knowledge exam.

Oh, yeah.

And that was really useful because you didn't have to give them anything.

You just say you're on that street and they'll be like, oh yeah, we know what that is.

I did too.

So I lived on Sandwich Street and they always do bacon lane to Sandwich Street.

Lovely.

Great.

What was your one?

It was Digby Crescent, but I don't know where they would have gone to.

Everud Digby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everud Road.

Digby Crescent, yeah.

Oh, he's typing.

Oh.

Okay, hold on, hold on.

That's quick.

Okay.

He's too quick.

I'm going to have to edit in a space.

Exactly.

Yeah.

He says, is it an official test?

I think yes.

Yes.

Yes.

We revoke your license if you.

Well, let's do a bit of talking and then see to give it some space.

Just very quickly, you're mentioning you got lost from Holborn to Covent Garden.

So I've discovered and made contact with a guy called Tristan Goole, who's an amazing

guy.

He writes incredible books about how you can anywhere in London orientate yourself by various

things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you're in the morning, go against the flow of people walking towards you because

predominantly that group will be coming from a tube station.

And if you need to find a tube station at the end of the day.

Not if you live in a commuter town, they're all going to the tube station.

Oh, sorry.

This is, this is London, central London, but you've, you've, you've woken up and the

kidnappers told you, you're in central London, but I'm not going to tell you where.

Yeah, yeah.

And you said which zone is like one or two and no point to say, just ask somebody where

you are.

Well, his idea is, is that you shouldn't ask someone where you are, you should make the

challenge of working out your navigation better.

If you see a tree in London, look if it has a tilt on it, because if it has a tilt, that

will be pointing to the south.

I always think in London, go downhill, you'll get to the river eventually.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

I don't know if that's true.

It's a local maxima, though, I'm not sure.

I was, I was reading a book called The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, which is by an author

called John Huff.

And he was talking about urban myths of navigation, how, you know, there's one of, it's not the

tilt on the tree, you know, the other one of the tree.

It's like moss on one side of the tree.

Moss grows on the north side of a tree because it's cooler, darker, shadier and not on the

south.

And it doesn't, it only happens in mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, so you need to

know which hemisphere you're in, so it's not a perfect test.

When you flush a tile at first, let's see which way the, what, I'm not sure.

Yeah, no, no, no, there's a toilet next to a tree, so you do know that here.

But also...

If you don't know what hemisphere you're in, though, I think you're in a lot more trouble.

You can look at the stars.

Okay.

How long was I blindfolded for?

Was it enough to do a 16-hour flight?

Shall we look at the phone?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's have a look.

Let's see.

Okay.

What's he saying?

We've got a response.

Okay, we sent this at 1237 and he replied at 1239, maiden name.

Oh my God.

I want to know how he did it, though.

What's in the photo that you can...

Can I call him and ask him?

Yeah, go check it on speaker.

Yeah, well...

It was the moss on the north side.

Yeah.

It's great.

How did you do it?

I knew roughly where you were because there's a safe door.

Oh.

Yes.

And I'm, there's, there's no traffic in that street, so I know it's somewhere annoying

like Soho or Covent Garden.

Right.

And then I just used my pales and deductions.

Wow.

Hi, so Richard, Dan Schriver here.

No such thing as a fish.

Thanks for being on the show.

What did you...

Is that genuinely the final guess?

Was a punt or did you know it?

I did recognise the street, but I did use a stage door and the fact that I could tell

there's no traffic in that street.

I'm not allowed to drive down it, so it did look familiar and I kind of worked it out

from back then.

Amazing.

I'll talk to you later on.

Amazing.

Thanks, Benny.

Oh, I wish he ended that by going, oh, gotta go.

Professor Brian Cox is calling to send a picture for me to analyse.

That is really cool.

God, that's good.

Yeah.

Wow.

He's never not got one.

It's one day.

One day.

That's so cool.

That's really cool.

We were talking about Holborn.

Yeah.

And do you remember when they changed the rules that you were allowed to stand on both sides

of the escalator?

Yeah, I do.

In Holborn, yes.

It's a very long escalator.

Really?

Yeah.

Why?

You know I'm going to tell you you're incorrect to the angle.

I know.

I do know.

Okay.

Just warning.

TFL justification for the trial.

So just to explain, sorry, in London when we go down an escalator in the underground,

you have to stand on the right-hand side and you're allowed to walk along the left-hand

side.

Yeah.

But they said from now on, everyone's standing on both sides.

Yeah.

Right.

My problem with it is, I know what you're going to say, Hannah, you're going to say

it's mathematically more efficient.

You will get more people on and through the escalator if everyone's just standing.

I will say that.

Okay.

My perspective is, as a commuter, it's less pleasant.

It's okay standing and there are people moving past you.

If you're standing with people in front behind and next to you, it's a bit of a squash.

And there's this awkward thing where you might have to make conversation with someone or

you'll make eye contact or they'll start, you know, start a fight or they'll say, what

are you doing?

Start a fight?

It's just too tight.

It's too tight.

Look, I would accept that as a response.

And I would accept that you would prefer to have a slower journey time to avoid that.

Apart from the fact that you're just about to slam yourself into a tube carriage with

50,000 other people into their armpits.

You know, it's definitely no more Sardini than when you go on the tube.

It feels impersonal and cold.

I love the freedom of just running up those escalator steps.

You know, you feel like you're really getting somewhere.

Like, oh, these slow coaches are standing on the right.

You're just putting, yeah.

Chumps on the right.

Yeah.

Chumps on the right.

Legends on the left is what I would have to find the right.

Yeah.

You know, well, basically, a lot of people felt the same way as you, Andy, but like Hannah

says, it was successful and way more people could get down the escalator.

People don't like math, James.

People don't like math.

Forget about the maths.

Just think about the gaps.

If you were looking down on it, say you were in the control room looking down on the escalator,

if people are walking down, there's much bigger gaps, which basically means you've got all

of that wasted space, right?

So you get a much higher flux.

It's not wasted space.

It's the hero's aura.

You're spotting who's a drone, who's willing to do what the system tells them, please stand

on the escalator.

The Sheepholes.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

I like standing in the fast lane when there's no one there.

Only when there's no one there.

Only when there's no one there.

Yeah, and that's because you like to play with norms.

You subvert.

You twist.

Exactly.

You kick rabbits when...

I tell you.

Really?

Really?

Is that still in place, that law in Holborn?

Which one?

The Tube Lord.

No, no, no.

I think it was a trial, the double in its own thing, and it didn't really take off.

Thanks to my letter-writing campaign.

Because, yeah, I was going to say, the QI offices, we are moving, and we're moving to

Holborn, and it just, the sadistic bit of me would love to know that that's now your

Tube station.

No, I sabotaged it by leaving small pieces of sushi, which I had licked on every other

state.

Stop the podcast!

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One word.

Tiff, dangun podcast, on with the show.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that an inventor called Yifei Chen has designed a gun which collects

tears from your face so you can shoot them back at the person who made you cry.

Tears, even if you're really upset, it's not a super solker, is it?

No, it's not, but have you seen it, have you seen the video of it, shoots out with more

force than at all?

She's built it, hasn't she?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, to the point where it would hurt?

We've got a backtrack on that.

It's got similar force to a super solker, because what it does is it collects the tears,

but then there's a sort of canister that freezes it, so it kind of turns.

What?

But what does it do, Andy?

Because it doesn't, it's still liquid, it's not ice particles, so it's not like, it's

not tear bullets, it's still the tears that are told.

Yeah, it's kind of what it is, weird.

Right, yeah.

But then, at the time it takes to freeze, are you still going to be upset at the person

who made you cry?

No, exactly, so it's not an immediate, I wouldn't bring it to an actual gunfight, I think.

Is it like your tears are best served cold?

Right, no.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And often, you know, one finds that you're actually the one who's made yourself cry.

Wow.

You know, you have control over what you're crying at this situation.

Andy goes home.

He has a little cry and then fires about himself.

This is all your fault.

That's interesting that you think you have control over whether you cry in a situation.

Yeah, I'm now thinking about my tear ducts so much.

You look like you're crying, but I know.

I definitely do not have control over crying.

It's a very important role.

It's a very important role, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I cry all the time, I try not to.

Yeah, because I'm often, I'll watch like a really, like a really heartfelt, like Oprah

Winfrey, the YouTube clip on the Tube or on the train, and it gets me every time, and

it's embarrassing because you have people next to you, right?

So hang on, is that why you don't want this escalator thing?

So then you can get on that moment of privacy.

It's really, yeah, that's the length of a Holburne escalator is about a one classic

clip of Oprah.

Like the time.

Oh, that's right.

So run.

Do you watch that Tom Cruise jumping up and down on her sofa?

No, it's not emotional.

I like the emotional stuff.

Yeah.

Do you like Dr. Phil?

No, I don't watch Dr. Phil.

I like military homecoming videos or pregnancy announcement videos.

I quite like homecoming.

Yeah.

One thing I really like when I just want a really good cry is a dog rescue.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, because sometimes you get the dogs and they're in such a little state.

Oh, I haven't done that yet.

And you know, like, they'll often have like, you know, loads of lice and loads of like

ticks and things and horrible, like scaly skin.

And then what's really nice is when they patch them all up and then they get ready

to be rescued by, you know, go to an adoptive home.

They're all fluffy again.

Oh my God.

Well, you need to do this yourself.

You do this yourself.

I do.

It's very therapeutic.

This is fucking weird.

I just want to make a background that you I'd love to introduce you to, which is military

homecoming videos, but where they come home to the dog and the dog reacts.

Whoa, that's a new level of emotion.

Whoa, there.

And you do that on the tube.

Yeah.

You just go on the tube and you just want to cry when you're on the tube.

Well, I just suddenly have a hankering to, it's the algorithm, you know, I'll be watching

something, but I've watched so much of it.

I'll, you know, it'd be like a comedy clip of someone I want to watch in an underneath.

It's like Oprah gives $16,000 to a desperate mum who lost her house in a hurricane.

Is this actually just to stop people sitting next to you on the tube?

Andy, what do you watch to make you cry on the tube?

I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think I consciously watch things that will make

me cry.

I've seen, sometimes you'll see a clip that's doing the rounds online and you find out we

are moving.

I just think about my career.

I would say for me, the only thing, the only thing really that makes me a bit like that

is sporting events when people, you know, like a classic turnaround.

Like a last minute Hail Mary, yeah, someone who's like reached the life's ambition, the

Olympics.

Oh man, Croft Fest.

I'll tell you what you'll love then, the, the, it's called the knock.

It's when the NFL players are told they've made it into the Hall of Fame and someone

goes around knocking on the door, the emotion in that, especially when there's a dog involved,

the puppy bowl.

Crofts with the Hall of Fame.

Anyway, gosh, we've learned a lot.

So, Yifei Chen, so she's actually, we say inventor.

She's actually a designer and she was at a design school.

And this was the thing where she grew up in Taiwan and you're trained not to return anger

towards authority or school teachers or your parents or so on.

That's just part of the culture a bit so much there.

Less so when she went overseas and she was studying in the Netherlands and she noticed

that she was being told off and she watched someone step up for her, but she realized

she couldn't do it for herself.

So she had a cry and she thought, I felt really weak, so I want to use my weakness and turn

it into power.

What if I invented a gun?

What if I did the most punishing literal interpretation?

It's very cool.

It's an amazing looking invention.

It's beautiful.

It has these tear collecting half moons under the eyes and a little pipe that then leads

down into the cartridge or chamber or whatever you call it.

Yeah.

And she did it as part of her course.

She designed the gun.

So on her graduation, she actually went up and she fired the gun at the head of the

department.

I know what you're thinking.

Did I cry six tears or only five?

Do you feel weepy?

Can I tell you about another inventor?

Yeah, of course.

Please, please.

Have you guys heard of the knee defender?

No.

I think we're about to.

Yeah.

If you're on a plane, you fit this to the seat in front of you, to the back of the seat

in front of you and it means the person in front of you can't recline their seat.

Oh, wow.

And then they're banned on a lot of airlines.

They're a controversial contraband thing and the inventor is six foot three and he says

that it was more to start a conversation.

I bet it does.

So basically it comes with a little card for your fellow passenger if you get one of these

and it reads, I realized that this may be an inconvenience.

If so, I hope you will complain to the airline.

Maybe working together, we can convince the airline to provide enough space between rows

so people can recline their seats without banging into other passengers.

What a dick.

What a dick.

And I guess you have got some of these, haven't you?

I mean, it's like I fundamentally agree that you, that the airlines do put them too close

together and it means that actually you can't, you have to, one person has to sacrifice their

comfort and that seems unfair, but him being like, one of us has to sacrifice their comfort

and this time it's not going to be me.

And if that's on no occasion, it's going to be me.

No.

What he needs to do is fly business like I do and you managed to do that by eating nothing

but pot noodles and saving your money.

If you fly first class like I do, then you all recline and, you know, it doesn't look

so bad that sometimes I get cabs now, does it?

I actually have my own airline pilot.

Take a photo of some sky.

Oh, that's a New Jersey, isn't it?

Lovely.

We got an email in the fish inbox about, and this is about innovation rather than about

inventions, exactly, but it's just so interesting because it was a guy called Mark Emmerton

who sent in a fact about something, a nuclear, a nuclear test.

Okay.

And he said, I have a fact from my late great uncle who actually worked on the nuclear test

program, the British nuclear test program in the fifties, and he says, this is probably

classified for all I know, but fuck it.

My kind of guy.

Yeah.

Right.

The UK and US used to share test sites in the Pacific, but each would bring their

own instruments to measure the power of nuclear tests on the ground.

The US had very sensitive state of the art pressure transducers, but they kept getting

broken or having their readings wiped by shockwaves and radiation.

Okay.

The UK, with a much smaller budget, realized that you could measure the pressure of a nuclear

blast just by getting a squeezy tube of toothpaste, taking the cap off and then placing a ruler

next to it.

The pressure of the blast would squirt out toothpaste proportionally to the blast strength,

and there were no electronics to go wrong.

They worked.

Oh, that's amazing.

Okay.

I mean, there is a story about this about about Fermi.

Do you know this story?

So Fermi, this amazing, amazing physicist, and he had Enrico, he had a reputation for

being able to do calculations in his head.

And during the first test, he decided he wanted to try and work out how strong the blast was.

And so he stood in the observation tower, which I think was some distance away from

the block.

You would assume.

And he tore up a tiny bit of paper, sheet of paper into tiny little bits, and he held

it in his hand.

And then as the blast exploded, he opened his hand and then paced out how far they'd

been blown across the room.

And then got within, I think, a factor of two of the equivalent in dynamite.

So I think, I mean, it's totally legitimate that you can do this.

You don't get like perfectly accurate results, weirdly enough.

But yeah, you can get really close.

That's really cool.

And just on classified stuff, I read the other day about a girl in America who went to her

school's show and tell with a load of classified U.S. government documents from like her dad

and mom.

No, it was even worse than that.

So there'd been someone from the government had been at something and then had lost their

briefcase, or just left it there, and their dad, this girl's dad, had found it and sort

of just picked it up and looked through it and it all said classified and stuff.

And then he just took it home and then they kept it in the attic and never did anything

with it.

And then like five or six years later, she was like, I need something for show and tell,

went up and then, oh, I'll take this and then took it down.

And it was like all stuff about Iran and Libya and stuff like that.

Was she detained?

Well, yeah.

She's in Guantanamo.

The teacher got in touch with the CIA and is that the right person or the FBI?

Yeah, the CIA.

Yeah, yeah.

They said we have this and they came and sent some people in dark glasses to retreat.

Wow.

They were quietly waiting at the back of the show and tell while blooming Tilly talked

about her conch that she's found, you know.

And I think probably the person who lost it might have killed or killed.

Yeah.

It was all a happy ending.

That's amazing.

That's so cool.

Here's another new invention.

This is from, I think, 2022, which I mentioned it to my wife and she's looking into getting

one.

It's called Motion Pillow 3.

Is it a mega hanky?

It's a YouTube Prime account.

I can get rid of all those nasty ads getting in the way.

It's a what?

Sorry.

Motion Pillow 3 it's called.

It's a pillow, right?

And it's snorra.

Is that where we're going?

Oh, yes.

I thought of it.

Does it smother you?

Yeah, my wife is very keen on getting one.

It's a weighted blanket for the face is how it's sold.

Yeah, no, is it a pillow that moves under you, undulates under you to keep you asleep?

No.

Does it massage you?

No.

That'd be nice.

Does it do what Andy said but stop you from snoring?

Exactly.

I can't believe that you didn't build on the snoring thing.

What it is is when you're laying down, if you're snoring, there are four airbags inside

and it's AI kind of generated.

So it inflates to move your head around until the position where the airwaves are opened

up properly and you stop snoring and it means that you just reduce snoring.

No way.

Yeah.

This is a motion pillow 3.

You're going to say you're not waking up when someone is, your pillow is slowly grinding

your head in the ground.

Does it make a noise?

Is there a problem?

When your neck snaps, it does.

It's a way to assassinate someone, is it?

Is that why motion pillow 1 and 2 didn't make it to 1?

Can I tell you about the Corby Trazer Press?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just while we're on game-changing inventions of the 20th century.

Please.

Yeah, yeah.

We're losing a lot of inventors now who invented really big things and I'm not saying the Corby

Trazer.

And?

But like the inventor of the kettle off switch, for example, is still alive.

Oh yeah.

Is he a professor of invention in Oxford or something like that?

John Taylor.

This is a slight tangent or a tangent to myself but it's, do you know how the kettle off switch

works?

Is it a bimetallic strip?

Yeah.

I just love bimetallic strips.

What is it?

That's interesting.

I've never thought about this before.

I do remember trying to buy a kettle which didn't have one and it was really hard.

Really?

Yeah.

Why were you trying to?

I don't remember.

But I think it was something to do with stamps and legal activity that the post office can't

find out about.

What?

So a bimetallic strip is as it sounds, it's a strip of two different metals all the way

along, right?

Yeah.

And they expand and contract at different temperatures because of the chemical composition.

So as it gets hot water on it, the strip, it will bend because one side is expanding

more than the other and you can develop those and it snaps the kettle off at a certain temperature.

Yeah.

It's a bimetallic strip.

I think that I love bimetallic strips is the most Andy sentence.

Well, we have one in the house when I was growing up and it was a very cool scientific

experiment.

What?

A kettle?

Yeah, all those pot noodles you don't have in it.

Okay.

That's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over

the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shriverland, James.

At James Harkin.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

And Hannah.

Friarsquad.

Friarsquad.

Yeah.

Nice.

Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing or our website, nosearchthingasafish.com.

Check it out.

All of our previous episodes are up there as well as merchandise, do have a look.

But most importantly, make sure to watch Hannah's latest show.

It's called The Future with Hannah Fry.

It's on Bloomberg or you can find it on YouTube.

The whole series is up now, right?

You can take it all in one go.

If you finish that and you're on YouTube, why not check out some Oprah clips?

There's really good ones to watch.

Anyway, that's it.

And that's it from us from this office.

This is where QI's office was for the last nine years of our existence.

Fish started here nine years ago.

This is the last ever episode we're doing in our HQ.

So we'll be from somewhere new next week.

So thank you for being our final guest ever, Hannah.

Thank you.

In our HQ.

And yeah, we will be back again next week in another building with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Good bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.