No Such Thing As A Fish: 475: No Such Thing As The Three Little Pigs of Wall Street

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming

to you for the first time from the new QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin,

here to cut the red ribbon and officially open the new Fish podcasting headquarters is the founder

of QI himself, John Lloyd, 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 that is Andy. My fact is that there was a job in medieval times called the municipal

swine herd who was effectively a professional pig walker for city dwellers who didn't want to

walk their own pigs. Right. So it's just a job that you used to be able to get. Before we go any

further actually I should say this fact was sent in to us at podcast at qi.com by a listener sent

in by Andrew Salamone. So thank you very much indeed for it Andrew. Were they on leashes?

No, I don't think they were. That's a more difficult job then I reckon because you're

corraling the pigs as well as walking them. It's difficult in that way but it's also very hard

I matter to keep a pig on a leash if it doesn't want to be. Is it? Really? The pigs are very strong

but they're also very intelligent and can be trained. You know you can teach a pig to dance.

No you're right. Well yeah I don't think they were. This was in the middle ages.

Sorry John, can I just pick you up on you can teach a pig to dance? Yeah well they're very

intelligent. They're right at the top of the animal league smarter than dogs, sheep and horses.

They can be house trained, taught to fetch, come to heal, they can pull carts, they can sniff out

landmines. But can I bring you back to the dancing? Yeah pigs can dance. Apparently they can yes.

Were they sort of like vaudeville lacks or? It's mainly flamenco dance. They click their little

heels together like castanets you know. They like watching television, they have their own

favorite programs pep pigs. Peppa Pig? I don't know if Peppa Pig can watch television. No I was

wondering if Peppa Pig was one of their favorite TV shows. I'm sorry to be late to this but the

Fox Trotter would be an example of a dancer Pig could do. And South Park would be a TV show they

might like. There we go. Should we stragg us away from these pigs? Oh yeah sorry yeah back into the

middle ages we go hooray. So these are the first professional pig husbands I guess you would

call them in Europe. They were these village swine herds and it was in a time when everyone had

their own pig. A pig was an amazingly useful thing to have. It was a waste disposal unit

but it was a waste disposal unit made of pork. What a delicious. Go into that a bit more because

you feed it leftovers and scraps from the household and then when winter comes you eat the pig. It's

like if you can eat your whirly bin. Yeah yeah because no in the Flintstones that's what they

the the trash is a dinosaur that eats the trash sitting in a drawer so it's kind of like that.

It's probably based on these academic studies of medieval municipal swine herds yeah and there

would be there was a pig daycare thing though because you didn't you know you didn't want to

look after your own pig all day being a busy middle class peasant in the middle ages and you

would have a village swine herd who was rewarded with a sucking pig each year and the entrails of

any animal which have been slaughtered. So what did the sucking pig actually do or is that a vulgar

question? You said they could be trained to do anything John is that? But they they are party

animals pigs. Some pig farmers keep lights on in the sky at night and when the farmers go

home at the end of the day the pigs don't settle down they start eating drinking and having fun

for small hours. That's actually their favorite show the sky at night. Actually I read one cool

thing about lights in pigsties and that is to get rid of the smell in pigsties you can paint it

with titanium oxide paint and then fire UV light at the paint and that will somehow break down the

chemicals which will stop it from smelling and it's even better if you put a disco ball in the

middle of the pigsty it will fire the UV light out in all different directions and it will make it

smell better more quickly. And you know why the disco ball's there because of the dancing? Yes

Exactly. Medieval pigs don't look like our modern day pig and this is something that has led to a

lot of annoyance in the world of academia because a lot of medieval scholars are constantly finding

themselves I say constantly it's one guy as far as I can find being pissed off by their representation

within video games these days. So there's a lot of video games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla

there's Medieval Dynasty Foundation where they represent pigs as a modern day pig. It's pink

and it's hairless it looks nothing like the pig is today. Minecraft? Maybe in Minecraft. There are

pigs in Minecraft. Yeah. And so actually of the time if we want to picture an old pig it's a long

legged they're quite small long snouts very lean figure they had arch crusted backs and they had

long curved tusks as well according to this academic. I suppose if you made them look like that in

the video game people might not realize they were pigs. Yeah and what you've described as a stalk

basically as far as I can tell. But you mentioned you mentioned Leeds did you know the thing about

Gérard de Neval the 19th century French poet who had a pet lobster called Thibault which used to

walk around Paris on a blue silk ribbon so he did have a lead for the lobster. So you could walk on

he was asked why he had a lobster as a pet and he said they are peaceful serious creatures they

know the secrets of the sea and they don't bark and it was a very you know the secrets of the sea.

It was a very sedate job because I check this out in lab tests the maximum recorded walking speed of

a lobster is 2.5 meters per minute or 144 meters an hour. That's a good easy job a professional

lobster walker. It feels like at some stage you would end up dragging the lobster more than walking

maybe you've got to get back for lobster dragging. I did the other day in a big railway

station I saw someone who had a ferret on a lead that was nice. Did you? Yeah which you do see

occasionally you know because they do need to pull it out of your trousers. I got sent a picture

from my friend Emmy in Hong Kong of someone walking a lizard on a lead like one of those big

big lizards. What like a commuter dragon? Yeah exactly but not a commuter dragon. No no no but like

sizable. Is it a real lizard or a shape-shifting lizard? It was yeah it was one of the members of

the royal family in Hong Kong. Monitor I guess. Yeah it could be yeah. I went into my local sorry

we're just bragging about animals we've seen lately but I went into an aquarium shop the other

day. I was trying to buy some fish. Springtails actually you know springtails there's tiny insects.

Yes why do you buy those? I needed to fertilize some soil because um I did a terrarium workshop

and I made a terrarium. Anyway I went in there to get my springtails which was very cheap three

quid for a big box of springtails. Anyway they had an axolotl in there and I was staggered because

I thought you know they're very rare. Did you not buy it because uh really interesting. I didn't have

anywhere to put it and the guy who ran the aquarium shop was quite annoyed because he said when he

doesn't have an axolotl in people only ever say well do you not have any axolotls and then

when he does they just come in and look at the axolotl and then don't buy it you know they treat

like a zoo. That does feel like one person is going in there every week as a joke and asking for

axolotls. Is an axolotl an amphibian? Yeah I think it is yeah because they're extinct in the wild

apparently. Yes they are only in two canals in Mexico City now yeah apart from zoos and the

because I ask amphibians because another great medieval job was a frog stoner they used to

hire people to throw pebbles into ponds to shut the frogs up at night. Partying as well.

That's so great. The animal king was all parties but I did think it's a bit of a boring job for a

pig walker in the middle ages a municipal swine herd and I thought we should come up with a better

name so there's some great walking words. Plutch to flap the feet while walking like a seabird

from Shetland. Prol a short enjoyable walk that's from Kent proper stroll I should think it stands

for. Sholve to saunter with extreme laziness from East Anglia. To spandle to leave wet footprints

on a floor another kentish dallow. So do you think swine spandler? I think it's actually a hog

plutcher you know. There was this thing later on after the medieval pig thing. Urban pigs were

a big deal. Basically in Manchester everyone had their own pig and we know this partly because

of Friedrich Engels who was writing about the conditions of the working class in England in

the 1840s 1845 and he wrote that that was the case and another writer was describing North

Kensington and in the mid 19th century in North Kensington pigs outnumbered people three to one.

Really? There's quite a lot. There's more pigs in Spain now than humans.

Really? Yeah. Pigs in Spain. In the 1820s there were more pigs in Manhattan than there are cars in

New York today. Wow. Well you know the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. No there was previously

going to be called The Three Little Pigs of Wall Street. It should have been called that as a prequel.

The prequel would have been that. Exactly that because the wall of Wall Street initially was a

wall right? This is when the Dutch were there and they built yeah they built this wall and this was

during the 1600s so 1653 to 1699 as they were building the wall there was a picket fence that

was there before. A picket fence. Yeah and it kept getting knocked down by pigs so it was a huge

problem and they brought in municipal swine herds to try and curb it and that didn't happen so then

they had to decree that you had to keep your pigs at home until the construction of Wall Street

was built. So the Dutch thing, New Amsterdam, I happen to know that there's a Dutch word

udwein which means to take a bracing walk in the wind. Isn't that a lovely thing to have a word for

this guy? And then the Dutch for pig is big. Is it really big? Yeah big. That's great. You're

learning Dutch at the moment right? I am yes. What was the phrase you gave us just before the

show started? How do we know if the animals in the zoo are happy? Great. They're philosophical people.

Do you know truffle pigs? You've heard of truffle pigs that hunt for truffles and in the middle

ages they didn't they did hunt for truffles but they ate them because nobody in the middle ages

ate truffles. They thought that was weird. I agree. Foxes, badgers, wolves, wild boar, pigs and rats

ate truffles and they only came back into favour in the Renaissance so I got interested in truffles

and Rossini the composer called the truffle the Mozart of Fungi which is rather nice isn't it?

And he claimed to have only cried three times in his life Rossini. Once when his first opera was

booed once when he had Paganini play the violin and once when he was picnic on a boat and the

truffle turkey fell overboard. Okay it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact

this week is that the comedian Bob Hope was so reliant on his writers to come up with jokes for him

he even had them provide bespoke one-liners for his social life so we all know Bob Hope.

A lot of people don't these days. Just in case. It fell on Stony Grande and let's move on to the third fact.

So Bob Hope. So you said comedian. Yeah Bob Hope was possibly the biggest comedian in the world.

He was huge. He was huge. He lived to 100 years old. He hosted the Oscars 19 times. He was a box

office hit during the 40s. Number one movie at one point in the 40s was a Bob Hope movie.

He received its estimated 38,000 fan letters per week during the 1940s. This is how loved he was

but he's the person who effectively created the idea of the modern stand-up monologue

where he incorporated himself the audience the situation around him the topical news of the day

and he used to hire so many writers he was he was the first person to acknowledge he had writers

as well properly. He would he would mention hold the cue cards up higher you know during his act

to be quicker on that you wouldn't say that if my writers were here those kind of lines and

yeah and so so much was he reliant on it that as I say even if he was going on like a golf game

and he knew that he had some powerful CEOs there that he wanted to impress they would write these

jokes for him and he would memorize them and bust them out as if they were ad libs great idea yeah

I'd love that. He'd gotten a lot of stick from other comedians the Lenny Bruce's and the the growing

world of comedians who were auteur and wrote their own material because they saw him as an actor

as opposed to a comedian but I I'm a big fan of the way that he led his life I think and his

comedy life particularly I think that he innovated so many things so if he was going to play in a

town he would send his writers ahead days ahead and they would scope around the whole town they

would look at the local shops they would meet the local people and they would base the material they

wrote for him on that. It would have been weird though if he's doing a joke about the local

hardware shop. No I think that's well do you remember like when we went on tour we would do

facts about the local town. Oh yeah but that that was good that was great that was you know

local feet different. John did you ever meet Bob Hope? No but I spoke to him really yeah one

Christmas Eve I used to produce a live radio two show called Late Night Extra when I was very very

young sort of 24 or something like that 23 even and and I was producing one on Christmas Eve

and I had the best address book in the world probably it was amazing and everybody's singing

for some reason I had Bob Hope's phone number so I phoned him up in California on Christmas Eve and

said hey Bob how's it going? He goes who is this? Who is this? I said it's the BBC in London Mr Hope

and he goes oh hi there hi guy how are you? He's great and he's still got the number let's call it

down. But he was interesting that his attitude to write he paid them very well he didn't

acknowledge them but he didn't think the writing was the big deal he said creating the character

was the thing and the lines were just something that the character said. Yeah weirdly a lot of

people in recent biographies say that he was terrible at paying his writers that was sort of a

idea that he was really good. Jack Benny would pay two writers the same amount Jack Benny being

another giant comedian of the day the same amount that Bob would pay 20 writers and what he'd do

is he'd find the young writers. Didn't you say that Jack Benny hated him because he had writers?

Not Jack Benny no. Oh I thought you said people like Jack Benny. Lenny Bruce. Yeah yeah. Jack

Benny and Lenny Bruce are both double first neighbors. Yeah. Like Craig David or David Cameron.

Anyway do you know who Bob Hope's most famous writer was the least the one I'd heard of? No.

Larry Gelbart. Oh yeah who was that? When he was very young he was the guy who wrote MASH. Oh wow okay.

And he hit Bob Hope one of the things he used to do was tour he was basically not only as you say

Dan did he sort of invent stand-up comedy but the touring American forces in the 40s and 50s was

also a thing that was really nobody'd ever thought of doing that before and he did a lot and he did.

Larry Gelbart worked for him as a very young man and he was inspired by a tour of the Far East

to write MASH. Yeah Bob Hope famously used to do a Christmas show that he would do from the front

lines of wherever a war might be going and after a war while people were still stationed out there

so most comedians and acts would go out while it was wartime and he kind of continued on. So he

died aged a hundred he did 48 Christmases out on the road so 48 of his Christmases were spent

in a different country performing to troops. And one of them speaking to John Lloyd. And one of

them speaking to Lloyd. Yeah but this is in a way like being in a war zone you know. But you're sorry.

Hope you Christmas should have been the name of the show. Hope you Christmas. Does it ever was?

God he had 48 goes to get that and you didn't. Never got that. Never got that.

Exactly. Hope is a first name by the way. Is it? Yeah it's a woman's name. Bob Hope joins the ranks of

I was reading that about the wartime thing. Oh sorry. Jerry Lewis two first names. Jerry Lewis.

Dean Martin two first names. Yeah. Did they all have first names? That's extraordinary.

Frank Sinatra no. But he's not a comedian. Great point. All right on we go. The thing about his war

show. Andy Murray. Oh that's good. Yeah yeah. So it's not always comedians. John Lloyd.

Yeah fair enough John Lloyd. Yeah I think John Lloyd and Andy Murray are in those weird

category of like Lloyd and Murray are kind of first names and kind of so and you know they can

be both. Yeah. It's not the pure simplicity of a Craig David. Agreed. Okay. Did you have something?

I did. Yeah good. Well no I was just going to say what was particularly touching about the war

shows is that for a lot of parents brothers and sisters whatever friends at home this was the

only time that they were able to see possibly one of their family members who was off at war

on camera during Christmas time. So a lot of the 38,000 letters that came to Bob Hope was from

people saying I got to see my boy sitting there in the crowd laughing at your jokes and he didn't

make it. He's he lost his life to the war. Thank you for giving me that moment where I could connect

with him. So they were really important shows to America at the time. His last military gig

was in 1990 when he went to the Gulf at the age of 87. 87 yeah and lots of the troops in the crowd

for his final gig they had fathers who had seen him in Vietnam and they some of them had grandfathers

who had seen Bob Hope in the Second World War performing. It's just it's mad the idea that

you go to a gig and your grandfather saw the same comedian. Yeah I mean lucky that he managed to get

two generations that they didn't die in the past. While reading about this I found my favorite

new human. Yeah just like it's an exciting character so this is to do with the writers

and so on. It's a guy called Barney McNulty. Bob Hope used to bring him everywhere with him.

What do you think he did? He was part of that team. So not a writer. He's not a writer. Was he a boxer

because Bob Hope was a boxer before he was a comedian. He was but no he wasn't a boxer. Did he

point out whenever he met anyone who had two first names? No this is good. I could do with

one of those guys James. Yeah I'd love that. I feel like you could be one of those guys Andy. Oh I

dream you know. Um what's uh somewhat like a just a personal you know assistant. So what Barney

McNulty was was the cue card guy and everything was written on cue cards and Barney McNulty is

acknowledged with having invented cue cards basically. No one ever delivered monologues on

TV before with cue cards and Barney McNulty was the guy to do this. He said doing it was like

it was like a like handling snakes. You had to work with the rhythm of the comedian. You had to

have the font big enough and you're writing like a snake. Yeah because he said the comedians are

wriggling around. They're they're improvising. They're changing. You don't know where they're

gonna go. It's like an auto cue person. Yeah like a modern day auto cue person. Because sometimes

the auto cue can be done too fast or too slow and the presenter gets in a tangle and then yeah yeah

auto cues are boring them. It should be called a McNulty. So McNulty was so important to him.

Steve Allen who's another comedian at the time said that he was once at a barbecue. Steve Allen.

Yeah Steve Allen. Oh yeah. This is you've uncovered a scene.

One of the problems once you start seeing them you can't stop. Yeah I've been this way for years.

Yeah. So he was at him. He was at a party at barbecue with Bob Hope and Bob came out and

suddenly just did an improvised speech to all the people. It's night time. He's yeah thank you for

coming and he's doing all these jokes. Steve said he's hearing these jokes and he's thinking

this is a pretty worked out monologue but it's pretty topical. Turns around he says he notices

sitting in the bushes with a flashlight and some cue cards is McNulty hiding away giving him the

cue cards to do it. So I haven't really said very much in this part because I don't really know

anything about comedy but I do know a lot about golf and Bob Hope used to love golf and that's

really kind of all I knew about him is that he was a golfer. I read that you know Alan Shepard the

the astronaut yeah he hit a golf ball on the moon and according to Bob Hope it was his idea.

No. Yeah he said that he was once speaking to Alan Shepard and he used to kind of always carry

his golf clubs around him kind of just that was his thing he would yeah and he reckoned that Alan

Shepard got the inspiration by watching him swing in his golf club. He was on the Mike Douglas show

when Tiger Woods first appeared on television when he was two years old. So Tiger Woods was a little

dot and he was kind of hitting golf balls and everyone was like look how amazing this little

kid is at playing golf and Bob Hope was on the show when that happened. So he's there for the

start of Tiger Woods and apparently on his first date he was so nervous he would just sit and draw

golf holes on the tablecloth and he did it so much that they made him pay for the tablecloth

because he'd drawn all these golf holes on it. Oh that's so great. I'm certainly claim they were

golf holes later on. These oh they're an Alan Shepard with of course a job in the Middle Ages.

I thought that was your job on QI John.

Okay it is time for fact number three and that is James. Okay my fact this week is that the unarmed

stick insect has an infinite number of arms.

Okay so what? I'm not saying anything else. That's it. Does it play golf?

Infinite is a big word. Yeah that's a big word. It's a long word yeah it's a full eight letters.

It's no the thing is I would say stick insects can regrow their limbs theoretically theoretically

possibly forever you know if you if you keep chopping them off they'll keep growing them.

The main body doesn't live forever does it or does it? No no no I think probably we would reach a

time limit. Like about a week? Well because they would die but the other problem is they can only

do it when they're young but they could keep doing it and doing it and doing it if you kept chopping

off all their limbs. Yeah hell of a shock to your juvenile stick insect the first time it

chops an arm off and it doesn't grow back it thinks oh no now I'm officially no longer a

juvenile. You must get used to operating with complete impunity. It's a real coming of age

moments isn't it? So they can keep regrowing their their arms. Another question is do they

have arms or are they legs? It's called unarmed. Is there a reason why it's called unarmed?

Yeah because it doesn't have defences. Yes it's unarmed as in weapons. Yeah to be honest it's

just a silly thing because I noticed it was called unarmed and I remembered they could keep

me growing their arms so but I just thought let's talk about stick insects because stick insects

are awesome. Yeah these ones these unarmed stick insects are the most common stick insects found

in Britain. Are they? Oh yes they are because we have no native stick insects in this country

but one of them accidentally got brought in some timber from New Zealand in the 20s right and they

reproduce pathogenically so they don't need more than one of them to create more and more and more

of them. It's really pleasing that it came over in some timber disguised as a smaller stick in a

load of larger sticks. That's brilliant. There was probably a guy at the park just counting all of

these sticks and go we've got one too many. So these were discovered in New Zealand in 1955

by a man who also like this misnamed animal is called John Salmon not a fish but he is responsible

for discovering so there's a Wikipedia list of stick insects of New Zealand of which there are

23. John Salmon discovered nine of the stick insects of New Zealand. You do find the same people

come up again and again when you look at all the different species of stick insects

tends to be the same people it's almost if no one else is looking for stick insects right

or maybe they're specialized because they're quite hard to see. They're so hard so I was reading about

leaf insects which are similar you know they look and they are unbelievably realistic leaf

insects as in they attach to a tree where they look exactly like that leaf and they have little

bitten out edges so it looks like an insect. So amazing. But lots of experts on leaf and stick

insects have never seen them in the wild it's quite tragic really so there's a guy called Royce

coming who's a world expert on leaf insects he's never seen one in the wild

because what you know I mean because you can't just check every leaf

that's exactly it yeah it's a nightmare if you want to get on yourself they should have gone for

like elephants. Stick insects feature in Maori myth yes right quite a few times and just something

I just happen to know about Maori the language which is the Maori for nuclear warfare is umu

pongi pongi. Right. You didn't think they would have a word for it but they do. Your Duolingo is very

bold. This is a dictionary. This is not Duolingo. Other language apps are available memorize etc.

When stick insects feel under threat they will play dead or be more like a stick than usual

basically and I found an insect owning website which had a problem page and the problem was

is my stick insect playing dead or has it died? Or is it in fact a twig? We used to have stick

insects when I was a kid. Did you? Yeah yeah and it is I mean they did die I'm sorry to say

quite regularly um they didn't live very long I hope that wasn't due to our bad husbandry but

or did they die very frequently yeah maybe they were just trying to get themselves thrown out.

We usually check I don't know what your FAQs will say but for us it was usually when there

weren't many poos for a few days that was good. What's a poo look like from a stick insect? It's

just like a black dot. Right nice yeah well this this is basically if they're threatened they fold

their legs up and they paralyze themselves and they often fall off the branch to the foliage

but that happens if they get surprised if they face any surprise until they're played dead.

So you either wait to see if the color has changed because that is a sign that they can't do that

by themselves. Can the leaf insects change color in the autumn? I don't think so okay and the other

thing you can do this is just a bit of advice is to stimulate the insect's mouth palps which

these small organs near the mouth which are incredibly sensitive and if you stimulate those

it will it will make a sudden movement because it hates that and if not it has died. I'm slightly

moved by all these you know pets and things dying because yeah I was my dad was in the

navy we never had pets so when the kids were small we um won a goldfish at a fair in Chippin

Norton who was called Chippy the fish I love this little fish and it got something wrong with it

swim bladder and I was really heartbroken I was very sort of you know anxious about it and so I

used to take it to the local vet in a bucket in Hammersmith and so I was sitting there in a bucket

you know this little goldfish in a tiny little thing fair goldfish was that on a lead no

no and all these people would be there with salukis and parakeets and you know horses and

things like that and the vets assistant would come out and say um Mrs Campbell Rouse and

Montmorency the third I'll suddenly get up with an antelope or something and came to me and she

go Mr Lloyd and fish and after about four visits and what he used to do the vet was inject this

goldfish with something wrong with the swim bladder with the tiniest little hypodermics

had shown you've ever seen about two inches long and after the fourth time he said Mr Lloyd I'm afraid

there's nothing more I can do for fish he's going to take his chances oh because that is a problem

with goldfish isn't it they get these swim bladder problems and they'll kind of float to the surface

and sometimes go upside down and people think that they're dead but actually they're not dead they

can be you know they can have their swim bladder pricked and so people flush the fish down the

toilet but they're not actually dead they probably don't flush very well either because they are

quite buoyant that stage oh yeah it's public service yeah I was just thinking Mr Lloyd of

fish is basically this episode isn't it very good did you know that some children human children

can regenerate fingertips did you I was astounded yeah yeah I had heard that and many doctors don't

know that so that they just grow back their fingertips if you cut them off yeah up to a

certain it's kind of much like the stick insects you don't want to there's a there's a cut off

point isn't it and it's under it's a certain amount of the finger I think it's not it's not at the

base but it's the top joint yeah well the fingernail if there's only a tiny bit of the

fingernail left the whole rest of it can grow back well so human children have infinite fingers

yes and it's a it's another don't try this at home isn't it speaking of children have you

guys heard of john george children no he was a famous entomologist of the early 19th century

and there's a stick insect called children's stick insect which is named after him no yeah

he was a as well as an entomologist he was a biologist and one amazing thing he did in 1815

he traveled to the battlefield of waterloo just after the battle and he purchased a tree under which

the juke of wellington had made his headquarters and so he basically what had happened was the

what the battle had happened and everyone had gone away and loads of souvenir hunters were

going in and sort of chopping bits off this tree but he actually went and bought the entire tree

and had it made into furniture by by chippendale thomas chippendale wow isn't that amazing was it

called a waterloo tree was that what is that it was called the elm waterloo elm waterloo elm that

is wow and i thought i'd see if john george children had any children and he did he had the

daughter called anna atkins and she was the first person we think possibly to publish a book

illustrated with photographic images oh she was a friend of fox talbert who made one of the first

cameras and she made a book in 1843 which had photos in it can you guess what the book was about

first have a book with photos in it insects the battle of waterloo

something slow moving tortoises twigs children children children no it's like it was something

very slow moving oh rivers rivers very leisurely rivers meandering river yeah um something slow

moving slugs smaller the big book of slow photos smaller than the slug lobsters no no they're bigger

the slugs smaller than the slugs yeah they're our things is that smaller that's about the same size

yeah come on i mean much smaller than a slug oh uh we're we're tiny worms smaller smaller

um parasitic wasps they're tiny tiny tiny i think a bit bigger than that i'll tell you there's

water bears there's like my tardigrades tardigrades the big book of tardigrade photos that was the

first ever photograph was of a tardigrade no it was of algae it was um her book was called photographs

of british algae cyanotype impressions and it came out in october 1843 and that was the first

ever book illustrated with photographic images it's very nice i'm still looking at my heart rate

still recovering from that i was about to look great how these quizzes really get you feeling

like you're doing exercise they pump me up these things are always so when you do these dives into

things like regeneration for example it's so miraculous isn't and all the all the creatures

that can axolotls and salamanders and sharks regenerate teeth all the time and um cockroaches

can grow uh new legs did you know that no um and cockroaches have got a bigger genome than people

okay and they taste the inside the innards of a cockroach it tastes like blue cheese

really amazing and axolotls they've got 30 billion base pairs in their genome that's 10 times as

much as we have why isn't do you think that guy who was selling axolotls in your shop only had one

of them and he kept selling it but keeping a leg so it would regenerate to a new one

what a brilliant business model that's i'm thinking they're also the axolotl gets its name from the

name of quetzalcoatl's dog does it yeah quetzalcoatl had a dog called axolotl did you think when he

went to the vet it was quetzalcoatl and axolotl unarmed stick insects obviously a badly named

insect oh yeah and i just wanted to mention one i found the other day which is the so-called

whispering bat the so-called whispering bats call it's as loud as a chainsaw or a leaf blower

but the reason really it's called the whispering bat is because it's too high pitch for us to

hear oh thank god that makes sense other bats find it deafening yeah right that's funny there's so

many classic animals that are completely misnamed so like a few that i found electric eel

yes not an eel no it's a knife fish uh the horny toad yeah lizard uh it's a lizard doesn't have

much sex doesn't have much sex very sad king cobra's not not royals uh not cobras no really wow

skip jack tuner not a tuner really is that really that's the one that's always on all the tins isn't

there's not a tuner it's a completely different genus really huh mountain goat not a mountain no

not a goat what no the list goes on yeah it does actually mantis shrimp neither a shrimp nor a mantis

american buffalo is not a buffalo with a bison do you know the difference between a buffalo and a

bison no i don't mr. hope you can't wash your hands in a buffalo

okay it is time for our final fact of the show and that is loyty so i i still decide which

fact to give to you and i just want to give you some that i didn't choose in the end

um because i don't want to waste them uh to keep warm in the 16th and 17th centuries boys at

british public schools burned the furniture it's horrible a bit like my school john denver's wife

annie claimed to have fallen in love with him despite his songs not because of them that's very

sad and toad sark arkansas recently won a survey to find america's most unfortunate place name

beating belcherton massachusetts climax georgia hooker oklahoma and roachtown illinois well i'm

glad that you didn't do that lowbrow on john what is your actual fact this week my fact is 45

percent of britains do not know where their rectum is now this uh was according to a poll of

2000 british idiots adults commissioned by pal mal medical private health care in january 2023

only 55 percent of men and women in britain can confidently state where their rectum is

and only 50 percent know where their reproductive organs are no that is impossible now i can sort

of understand why this might be because they don't know what the words mean rectum and reproductive

organs but according to the survey also an astonishing 37 percent of brits cannot say

where either their heart or their brain is i mean well my brain isn't my reproductive system

um is that because there's that saying isn't there he couldn't find his ass with both hands

yes and what we're saying is that 45 percent of british people i don't think we're saying that

because to find your rectum with your hands is quite an invasive thing well i did look it up

because i thought okay well that how ridiculous that is but i didn't know until yesterday which

part of the rectum is you but you know you've all looked that up so it's not actually what you think

it's not the not the anus yeah it's it's in there's the anal canal with the anus on one end and the

other end of the rectum which is basically the poo park where the stuff that comes down the colon

is being digested all the way and then it goes into the rectum which is exactly it's the storage

thing right is that a medical term the poo park um yeah same with um same with vagina i think as

well like people think it's the opening but it's the yes it's the tube so that's interesting i thought

the rectum was connected from sort of the bottom of the intestine right to the opening i thought that

whole thing okay what is this we've we've covered them count me as one of the 55 the the interesting

thing about this survey was it wasn't testing can you find this it was saying no are you confident

that you could locate where yes organ x is that's interesting and so an eight percent eight percent

of people said they could confidently identify none of them none of them they were really they just

said no i couldn't identify any but surely the brain the brain everybody must know it's you would think

so yeah that's just people with no confidence right yeah it's confidence although we have said

before um that there is this thing in uh is it called lizardman's constant or something like that

where in any survey you will get a percent who will just give a ridiculous right well i did wonder

whether people because it was an online this survey it wasn't a person asking my two eyes so

you wonder people had a bit too much to drink they think i'll just put yeah but there was another

thing at the other end of the spectrum on this survey because i you know people not identifying

where their brain is sounds mad i also would like to call a slight doubt over the 24 percent of people

quite high who claimed they could confidently identify where their pancreas was oh and i think

come on like i know it's in the middle section but yeah but where but where we're like the spleen

that was the one 20 percent claimed to know where their spleen was i wouldn't have any idea would give

me a break yeah 20 percent are not spleen doctors what's the term i don't know splinologists what's

a speleologist oh no this is a terrible mistake don't worry he's going to carry out the operation

anyway uh he says it'll be just like a cave probably he's never been in an anal canal before

i tend to do a lot of these things now when i'm trying to get access to a news article

online they often a lot of websites will have like just fill this quick survey and quickly

and fill away your rectum yeah kind of websites you're trying to get onto then please turn on your

webcam show us your rectum i find it interesting that don't knows in surveys as well and you so

you go've always include their their don't knows and there was an article about this in wired a few

years ago uh by a writer called amit katwala and it's a it's a great point because you gov did

a survey about surfing right have you ever been surfing up or not in which three percent of people

said i don't know and it's a big thing to to not know yeah if you tried surfing um two percent

don't know if they've lived in london they could be on the outskirts possible yeah i guess yeah

we're born in london but left straight away oh i don't know if we've lived there for a couple

months okay here's one from 2023 do you and your romantic partner each have your own side of the

bed that you sleep on okay and if you don't have currently have a partner please think about the

last partner you had 77 percent we each have our own side four percent chaotic we sleep on

whichever side absolutely insane but six percent don't know yeah how do you not know i would say

it would be different depending on which bed you're sleeping in like in our home bed we sleep

on the same size but if you go to a hotel then it's anything goes completely exactly well it's

not it's whatever my wife wants to do in 2017 a survey found that half of british gardeners

cannot name a single shrub and the next year in 2018 a poll found that 80 percent of britains

couldn't pick out their own neighbors and a police line-up i thought that was quite strong

that's interesting and how did they test that did they do some line-ups i'd like to know that yes

that'd be great it wasn't a daily mail though so maybe um can you name a shrub

because i think shrub is that like a specific type of plant is a shrub yes i agree i mean i garden

and you know what's is it i have something that looks like a shrub which is nasalia is that a shrub

i don't know is a little leilandi bush a shrub a bush is a part of the body isn't it i think

most people don't know why that is i don't know where their bush is well let's think of a shrub

it must be a shrub is a laurel is that it was a tree i think that's a shrub is it i think it's a

size thing isn't it over a certain size a shrub becomes a tree i think we've shown that this is

a very difficult thing to know we always always jump when you're on the show we get into the deep

questions can i do one more survey just this is a silly survey it's not really that much on topic

but um there was a poll quite recently about what britain's aged 18 to 29 so this is young people

according to the survey uh what is the least cool hand gesture a person can make

oh that's great yeah okay cool okay can i have a punch yeah yeah yeah um i think the peace sign

is not cool oh do you know i do that all the time i do it all the time but i just don't i don't

think it's cool oh okay i think possibly the horns the uh the rock horns oh that's like a cook hold

in southern europe oh yeah yeah uh no careful at southern european metallica gigs which i know

you love to go to um the thumbs up thumbs up thumbs up that was in the poll it wasn't the worst

but a lot of people thought it was quite cringe a okay that was cringe but not the worst in fact the

double a okay is is one of the most cringe worthy signs oh air quotes are they the most now i actually

think if anyone had thought of that they would have gone for it uh john do you want to have a guess or

wanking sorry philippa perry she basically answered word wank for every question we asked

um it is and this is 38 percent of people said this it's playing an air guitar

like uh wild stallions of billiam's head thing that is pretty embarrassing oh come on it's cool

okay how old are you dad the right age to know that's cool uh rectum okay let's talk rectums

the u.s consumer product safety commission every year do a list of things that have been found in

people's orifices really yeah the 2022 list include a monopoly piece um a reusable ice pack

a fishing pole no it can't have been the entire poll well they're collapsible aren't they they

collapse yeah yeah yeah yeah okay well it could have been that uh and in other orifices a golf ball

in the vagina an expensive coin from a coin collection in someone's throat and a usb card

in someone's penis oh usb yeah it's brilliant you've got to make sure you put it in the right way

exactly wow that's brilliant yeah there was a guy also a 68 year old man um with hemorrhoids in

hubei province in china uh who had to have a 10 inch chopstick uh pulled out of his anus which

he put up there he said out of curiosity i haven't listened to the museum of curiosity this series

john is that i'd like to donate this chopstick and just while i was talking about um emergency

visits in 2022 i found a list of quite a few here are some um this is in the us

pain after rubbing penis too hard with a luffa playing with pocket knife accidentally stabbed

penis closed penis in fridge door and watched football got excited when team scored and

accidentally punched self in penis they were all er visits in the us last year 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 have 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 ebb and john oh uh

john loyd qi at instagram oh yeah of course i don't know i didn't have a petition account

yeah yeah or at quikipedia i guess for like the total hub um but yeah find find loydy on instagram

but we do instagrams yeah yeah i've done that before that's a good point well i'm on at shriverland

i'm on no such thing as james harkin mine is private you'll never find it

and mine is at john loyd qi all right and uh we don't have a fish instagram but we do have a fish

twitter account which is at no such thing or you can go to our website which is no such thing as a

fish dot com do check it out all the previous episodes are up there and that's it for now we'll

be back again next week with another episode thank you john for officially opening the new

qi offices and podcasting headquarter and uh yeah we'll be back again next week with another episode

we'll see you then goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.