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1:57

On with the show. Hello

2:04

and welcome to another episode

2:06

of No Touch Thing as

2:08

a Fish, a weekly podcast

2:10

coming to

2:21

you from the QI offices in Hobern.

2:23

My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting

2:25

here with James Harkin, Anna Tyshinski and

2:27

Alex Bell and once again we have

2:29

gathered around the microphones with our four

2:31

favourite facts from the last seven days

2:33

and in no particular order, here we

2:35

go. Starting with fact number

2:37

one, that is James. Okay, my fact

2:40

this week is the artist Goya, who

2:42

was famously a deaf man, lived

2:44

in a house called the House of the Deaf Man.

2:47

It was actually named after a different deaf man

2:49

who lived in that house.

2:51

First of all, what

2:53

is Goya's full name? Because

2:55

I think you were practicing... Oh, I thought

2:57

you were calling back to the dead before

2:59

the... I was. Yeah,

3:01

and his full name was

3:04

Francisco Jose De Goya Elucientes.

3:06

Lovely. And that is

3:08

a lot less Spanish than I went in

3:10

the pre-show show. And

3:13

he is a very famous artist, he's around in

3:15

the early 19th century and he's kind

3:17

of the link between

3:19

the old masters like Rem Branson, whoever, and

3:22

the modern artists because he was doing lots

3:24

of satires and lots of incredible stuff. He

3:26

is an absolutely incredible artist, he's probably my

3:28

favourite artist. Did he? Yeah, I think so.

3:31

I can actually see why, I can connect

3:33

those two things. Oh yeah, go on. Yeah, well

3:35

we'll get into it, sort of like start the

3:37

stuff, the painting. But can you please tell us about this? Okay,

3:41

I want to know, did this

3:43

deaf man name the house after himself,

3:45

the deaf man? No, it was named

3:47

by locals as that because this deaf man

3:49

had lived there and then later Goya moved

3:51

in there. Did he move in there

3:54

because he was only looking for houses called House

3:56

for a Deaf? Yeah, he actually Googled House for

3:58

a Deaf man and this is what came up.

4:00

There was nothing special about the house that made it

4:02

like accessible for people. No, it was a really nice

4:04

house. He was a former

4:06

court artist, so he had money and had

4:08

a pension from the monarchy and stuff like

4:11

that. It was also sort of a way

4:13

from the politics. He sort of wanted a

4:15

place to retreat and sort of get away

4:17

because he was heavily involved. His art would

4:19

often, you know, either take satire or make

4:22

political statements. Yeah, exactly. He thought if he

4:24

hangs around where the Spanish Inquisition are, there's

4:26

a decent chance he might get in.

4:29

So he wanted to get away. But

4:31

one interesting thing about this building is

4:33

his most famous work for

4:36

people at home, perhaps, is

4:38

called Saturn Devouring His Son. You might know

4:40

it. It's like a real devilish face. And

4:42

he seems to be biting the head off

4:44

what could be a chicken or could be

4:46

his son or something like that. It's a

4:49

really sort of dark painting. It's harrowing. It's

4:51

like really quite scary. Yeah, if you google

4:53

it, you'll probably recognise it from memes and

4:55

stuff. But it was on his wall

4:57

in this

5:02

house. And actually he painted a

5:04

load of these kind of satirical paintings on the

5:06

wall of his house. And actually they

5:08

ended up being chipped off because he didn't intend

5:11

to sell them or anything. They were just murals

5:13

in his house. They're known as the black paintings

5:15

now. Because his whole first period of his life

5:17

was much more involved in politics like you say

5:20

painting on commission for royal courts and there was

5:22

an awful lot more of a positive vibe to

5:24

his painting. And then he got really sick and

5:26

he went deaf as a result of

5:28

one of his illnesses. And then he became

5:30

very depressed and obsessed with illness and

5:33

obsessed with death and kind of neurotic.

5:35

And these paintings we think reflect this

5:38

dark state that he was in. But they're all

5:40

really weird and mysterious as well. We

5:42

don't actually know that the painting is called Saturn Devouring.

5:44

We don't know anything about the paintings really. We don't

5:46

know nothing about them. Because like you say, they were

5:48

all painted on the walls and then the wallpaper had

5:50

to kind of be chipped away from the wall and

5:53

then put onto canvas. But a lot of art historians

5:55

think that they had to be very significantly altered when

5:57

that happened. There's a lot of painting and restoration. You

5:59

can spot little bits of it that really

6:01

they think again it's almost theory is that

6:03

damage or is that what he intended there's

6:05

one called the dog it's basically

6:07

a landscape where you see a dog's head

6:09

sticking up at the bottom of the painting

6:12

and you know is he coming over a sort of horizon

6:14

is he coming over a bump in a hill is he

6:16

drowning in quicksand a lot of people say he's drowning I

6:18

look at him so oh it's like he's like kind of

6:20

begging like you get a dog at a table begging but

6:22

a lot of people have been told he's drowning yeah but

6:24

we have no idea right so he never intended anyone to

6:26

see these these were private kind of

6:29

things that he did on his wall at home

6:31

you know the kid drill in the wall again

6:33

trouble didn't they

6:36

you got to own your own house in order to then

6:38

make decisions right he was renting how

6:42

you're not getting your deposit back yeah

6:44

so he gave it he gave the house

6:46

to his grandson and then his grandson sold

6:49

it to I don't know what baron and

6:51

and then the guy who went let's let's

6:53

take this off put this on canvas donated

6:55

to the museum the dog in particular in

6:57

the museum where it is the curator of

6:59

that museum says that there's not a single

7:01

contemporary painter in the world who does not

7:03

pray in front of the dog that important

7:05

I know I've got to say the dog doesn't impress

7:07

me as a guy like I think some of the

7:09

others are better really apart amazing

7:12

out it's like it's a massive portrait shape vertical

7:14

painting the dogs right in the bottom and most

7:17

of it's just brown I love 95% of it's

7:19

just brown what you learn about Maliev it's by

7:21

the way okay whose painting is just black it's

7:23

like literally just a black square right if

7:26

you don't like something that's 90% brown I

7:30

think the only reason people like the dog is

7:32

because you've filed through these witches and decapitated bloody

7:34

people parry treasure shreds and then you've got a

7:36

little black dog people love an animal

7:39

he knew the tick-tock generation yeah

7:41

he knew memes are on the

7:43

way it's actually doge isn't it

7:45

so there's so much written

7:47

about his art and the interpretations of

7:50

it but what do we know about Goya the man

7:52

you think we know you're on the South back show

7:54

like I was Melvin Braggle and

8:00

I thought it's the smell of orange.

8:02

Love the smell of orange. Oh yeah?

8:04

Yeah. The smell of a girl's armpit.

8:06

Loved it. As long as it had an orange bit. You

8:10

get this from like a dating

8:12

profile. The whiff of tobacco, the

8:14

aftertaste of wine, and the

8:16

twanging rhythms of a street dance. This is

8:18

all according to a biography that was written

8:20

about him. Is it according to him

8:23

himself? Because it feels like, okay, he wrote

8:25

this down somewhere. Wasn't someone going, he seems

8:27

like the kind of guy who loves sniffing

8:29

girls armpits. Let's put that in. Yeah. I

8:32

love the smell of an orange. Like, who didn't? Like,

8:34

orange is generally pleasant. Why would you like note that

8:36

down? Well, maybe he chucked the orange thing in there

8:38

to make up for the weirdness of the girls' armpits

8:41

so that there was no, I'm not totally crazy. I

8:43

like normal things too. He was

8:46

the first major artist to paint a

8:48

woman entirely nude in a profane style.

8:50

As in the, well, this is the one that he

8:52

got summoned by the Inquisition before, right? So

8:55

profane means not religious. And

8:58

this was the naked Maha. Yeah.

9:01

And he was deemed, I think, indecent and

9:03

prejudicial to the common good. So yeah, and

9:05

I didn't know what a Maha was, but

9:07

Mahos and Mahas were, according to the New

9:10

Yorker, this is how New Yorker describes them,

9:12

flamboyantly cheeky lower class dandies. And

9:14

I didn't know that. Not that I've got on my dating

9:16

profile. Lower

9:19

class please. You know the way you talk,

9:21

Alex. But

9:24

yeah, I've got summoned by the Inquisition and

9:26

I just find his tangles with the Inquisition

9:28

quite bizarre. Yeah, so do we. Well, who

9:30

knew the Inquisition was still bloody happening this

9:32

start of the 19th century? They lasted for

9:34

ages, didn't they? It lasted ridiculously long. It's

9:36

practically going since late medieval times. And still,

9:38

they're struggling on, clinging on. I think they

9:40

were quite toothless by then. Python sketch was

9:43

topical. Yeah. But he did. He

9:45

got away with it with the naked painting,

9:47

I believe by saying, well, if you think

9:50

this was gross, then you're condemning your former

9:52

king because he said he was emulating a

9:54

Velazquez painting that Philip IV of

9:56

Spain had loved. So he was going, well,

9:59

your king loved. this basically, your

10:01

dead king. So what are you gonna do?

10:03

Well the interesting thing I think about the naked

10:05

maha is that he gave it or sold

10:07

it I should say to Godoy who was the

10:09

Prime Minister of Spain at the time and

10:12

the story goes that we know that

10:15

Goya made two versions the naked maha

10:17

and the not naked maha the clothed

10:19

maha you might call it and

10:22

the Prime Minister supposedly kept the

10:24

clothed one on display and

10:27

whenever his friends would come around after a few

10:29

whiskeys he would say look at this

10:31

and he would pull like a secret lever and the

10:33

wall would spin round and the naked maha would come

10:35

out. That's like one of those pens where you turn

10:37

it upside down. It's like, is

10:39

that actually so tacky? Well that's

10:42

the story and that's supposedly what happened

10:44

but for sure the reason that he

10:46

got brought in front of the Inquisition

10:48

Goya is because Godoy was actually really

10:50

controversial because he was the Prime Minister

10:52

and this was one of the really

10:54

controversial things that he did having this

10:56

terrible painting and it was Goya

10:58

kind of got pulled into the Inquisition because

11:00

they were going after Godoy. Really? That's

11:02

amazing. It's a painting that

11:04

has caused controversy for not just his

11:06

period but well long after his death.

11:08

155 years. Well long

11:13

man. He used to say people used

11:15

to go to Godoy's house and go

11:17

that is a bad good painting. He

11:24

um so many many years later

11:26

it's issued in Spain as a stamp

11:29

and this is suddenly the first stamp where

11:31

there's a naked woman on a stamp and

11:33

in American this is 1959 they banned it.

11:35

So any letters that came into America they

11:38

said we will not forward them on. There

11:40

are a few cases where at the post

11:42

office they would actually just you know they'd

11:44

scrawl it over and stuff like that and

11:46

then send it on but it was a

11:48

huge huge problem. That's amazing. You never have

11:51

the letters returned. Yeah. Because of yeah it

11:53

says that a Time magazine wrote an indecent

11:55

picture is bad enough but a postage stamp

11:57

whose backside must be licked. millions

12:00

of innocent children collect stamps and so yeah

12:02

and there were certain places that kind of

12:04

allowed it but eventually they did have a

12:07

picture of her bum on the

12:09

back that you could lick you know so

12:11

we don't know who the woman is in that painting

12:14

there's a pretty good chance that it's at

12:16

least partly based on the duchess of Alba

12:19

who was supposedly Gaius mistress they were definitely

12:21

very good friends we're not sure if they

12:23

were but

12:26

they were definitely good mates like

12:35

an actual sensor on our show now then whistled

12:37

over I thought now that we're

12:40

possibly going on BBC sounds that I

12:42

should not be saying fucking yeah true

12:45

anyway this is a valve as

12:47

our full name actually was donja

12:49

Maria del Pila Teresa Kaitana de

12:52

Silva Alvarez de Toledo he silver

12:54

buzz on decimal test Sarah to

12:56

raise that Alba the Thomas decimal

12:58

premier at the ways at the

13:00

hosta sex that the ways that the

13:03

Montero Octavia come days that the quays

13:05

are the Alvarez decimal primera my please

13:07

I don't talk to you decimal takes

13:09

Sarah my crazy decoria none of our

13:12

November I won't do them all it's

13:15

754 letters in total

13:17

her full name was either

13:19

we have to say this fact or we have to say all

13:21

the other fact yeah and her descendant who died in

13:24

2014 who is

13:28

actually a quite famous Duchess of Alba the one

13:30

who was in the painting was a 13th and

13:32

the one who died in 2014 was in the

13:35

Guinness World Records as the aristocrat with most titles

13:38

she's a bit of an eccentric yeah and

13:41

the Duchess of Alba who's in the

13:43

painting there's interesting thing about her is

13:45

she was one the most powerful people

13:47

because she was also supposedly the mistress

13:49

of Godot the Prime Minister but

13:52

she had a bit of a beef with

13:54

Maria Louisa who is the Queen consort who

13:56

was married to Charles the fourth these were

13:59

the two most powerful women and they really

14:01

really hated each other and one

14:03

day the Queen consort was going to go

14:05

to a party and the Duchess

14:07

of Elba found out what she was going

14:09

to wear and got all of her maids

14:11

to wear exactly the same clothes as the

14:13

Countess and go to the party so suddenly

14:16

there were like 20 women all wearing exactly

14:18

the same clothes. That could be seen as

14:20

flattery. It wasn't. It was seen as a

14:22

massively woman haver. It was seen

14:25

as a massive massive slam. What

14:27

do you think? Women you say? They don't like

14:29

that. It

14:32

was seen as a massive massive slam so

14:34

much so that we think that the Queen

14:36

consort had the Duchess of Elba murdered. Oh

14:38

wow. For getting her maids to wear the

14:40

same clothes as her. That is a magical

14:43

joke on her own. Yeah. I'm now terrified

14:45

because sometimes me and Anne come into the office wearing

14:47

the same jumper with a cuddly animal featured on the

14:49

front. I think she's crossing my demise. I feel

14:51

like she might be. Actually they

14:53

exhumed her body in 1945 and they think

14:55

she might be murdered. She

15:00

probably died of meningitis we think. But

15:02

that was the story for hundreds of

15:04

years and that's what happened. The number

15:07

of paintings by Goya is going down

15:09

and down by the day. Right. It's

15:11

a real... I'd be more surprised if it was going up. You're

15:16

going to fight. I

15:19

suppose sometimes you fine paint no. You

15:21

do just go a lot of painting. He might have

15:23

had a shed or something that he painted all over

15:25

that we haven't discovered yet. Absolutely. He might have had

15:27

a second home that he rented out as an Airbnb

15:29

but then it turns out that it had paints in

15:31

some... But none of these things are true. I

15:35

think what we're saying is we don't know. We

15:37

just don't know. If you're staying in an Airbnb

15:39

with disturbing paintings on the wall... Not

15:42

every Airbnb. I'm not saying it like

15:44

a tastefully decorated Airbnb. You need to

15:46

up your budget very quickly. He's a

15:48

lower class dumby. So

15:54

this is because basically lots of paintings that we thought

15:56

would buy him turn out not to be by him.

16:00

when modern analysis is done, it looks very

16:02

closely at brush strokes and the type of

16:04

materials that were used and they make

16:06

certain deductions. I'm always skeptical, so there's actually

16:08

one of his most famous paintings, Colossus, they

16:11

now think was not painted by him and

16:13

there's one expert called Manuela Mena and she

16:15

says that the brush strokes are inferior to

16:17

what he would have done. You can tell

16:20

that the confidence with which they were made

16:22

is not an expert and you think he

16:24

could just be having a bad day. Yeah.

16:26

Can I just say, if people in like 200

16:28

years, they listened to episode

16:30

183 of the podcast, they weren't very funny

16:33

in that one, so I don't think it

16:35

was them. Not them. That's

16:37

that AI thing. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody, we

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trial box Okay

19:53

back to the podcast Okay,

20:00

it is time for fact number two and

20:03

that is my fact. My fact this week

20:05

is that before governments experienced cyber attacks They

20:07

had to deal with facts attacks What

20:10

a great name So

20:16

this is a thing that's called a black

20:18

facts and people would do this as pranks

20:21

But they would do it to companies that

20:23

they hated they would do it to governments

20:25

where they would basically send over Black paper

20:27

from their side and often they would do

20:29

it. They would loop it round So their

20:31

fax machine was just sort of eternally sending

20:34

a bully black page like conveyor belt Like

20:36

conveyor belt exactly and so the people receiving

20:38

it if they were not near their fax

20:40

machine Suddenly they would be using all the

20:42

ink up or they might even

20:44

heat the machine up so much because so much

20:46

of it was Overload

20:49

and it would sort of just I suppose

20:51

also means you can't use the facts while

20:53

that's happening Exactly, we should say because people

20:55

write in probably not ink so much as

20:57

thermal paper. Yes. Sorry Yes, but I love

20:59

already the people who would have written in

21:02

to complain about that. I'm sorry we correct

21:10

So yeah, it's a method that was done and it

21:13

was done, you know before cybercrime

21:16

if if we're being Sort of

21:18

talking about it loosely because there are always examples

21:20

of like the 1700s a version of cyber like

21:24

1834 Well,

21:27

it was it was in France and it was obviously

21:30

before the internet was invented and it was In

21:38

those days financial market data

21:41

was Like trading was happening

21:43

but it was sort of done via like letter So

21:45

if you were in a different town like the information

21:48

would travel quite slowly And people always trying to find

21:50

a way to beat that information and people trying like

21:52

carry a pigeon No stuff like this and but one

21:54

way it wasn't communicated with the telegraph system which was

21:56

used for other things But these two

21:58

brothers the Blanc brothers they set

22:00

up a ruse with some

22:03

of the telegraph operators where they smuggled little information

22:05

indicators in other messages but the way the hack

22:08

worked was that the information would be like single

22:10

character like I suppose U for up or D

22:12

for down or something like that to indicate something

22:14

to do with the stock market but

22:16

then if you followed that with a backspace character it meant

22:18

that it wouldn't get written down because it would be regarded

22:20

as a mistake but the telegraph operator would see it all

22:23

so if they were in on it they could write down

22:25

and be like okay it's just sent over as a mistake

22:27

and we're not writing it down but this is the information

22:29

so and the idea being that you know if the

22:32

price of gold has gone down you can't

22:34

inform anyone else yeah exactly yeah yeah Do

22:37

you think obviously if, who was the modern artist we

22:39

mentioned earlier? Was it Roscoe who did all the black

22:41

paintings? Oh Malievich It's Malievich, oh good when he tries

22:43

to fax the photos of him You are, I keep

22:45

trying to send it to you, stop pranking us It's

22:51

quite worth so much, it's just the ink You

22:54

know it's not black, it's the duchess of Alders

22:56

name is very small Do

23:01

you know who as of 2017 so I don't know if it's

23:03

changed but the last report that I saw 2017 was the biggest

23:06

purchasers of fax machines in the

23:09

UK The NHS? The

23:11

NHS, yeah Yeah,

23:13

so interesting They've really phased it out

23:16

since then I think haven't they there was a

23:18

big scandal a couple years ago Yeah it was controversial,

23:20

I don't remember Stop Yeah

23:22

and pages as well wasn't it Yeah I think

23:25

they decided they wanted to get rid of them

23:27

all Also the NHS still have a big dictaphone

23:29

tradition where a lot of the older doctors still

23:31

instead of Why don't they just use their fingers?

23:39

Sorry as you were saying No

23:42

just loads of doctors still will be able to log into

23:44

the United account and when you go to the doctor They'll

23:46

make your medical notes and just put them into the system

23:49

A lot of older doctors still prefer

23:51

to use dictaphones i.e. manual dictaphones with

23:53

like actual take cassette tapes inside Dictate

23:56

the notes and then they're sent away

23:58

to a third-party transcription service and then

24:00

the notes are sent back and then the doctors then

24:02

check them like the written note and then they're in

24:04

purchase of the system where someone else and it's an

24:06

insanely inefficient system. You've got to feel bad

24:08

about that. I know, it's

24:11

ridiculous. Miley Cyrus uses fax machines.

24:13

Okay. Is this for

24:15

communicating? Everything, really. No, only with

24:17

one person. She

24:20

uses them to communicate with her godmother,

24:22

Dolly Parton, because Dolly Parton actually does

24:25

use them for everything. She

24:27

refuses to use text messaging and instead

24:29

uses a fax machine for everything. Really?

24:32

You really buried the lead there but you were trying

24:34

to get the kids in by saying, Miley Cyrus uses

24:36

a these sausages of the fax machine for Dolly Parton.

24:38

That's amazing. Dolly said, I don't want to talk to everyone

24:41

that wants to talk to me. I don't

24:43

text because I don't want to have to answer. So

24:45

she thinks if people text her she'd have to reply

24:47

all the time but with a fax machine she can

24:50

just like get the messages and then... Yeah, very indirect.

24:52

You can't do the three dots thing or you don't get seen

24:55

on a fax. But then

24:57

it's still indirect this way because Miley

24:59

Cyrus says that she doesn't really fax.

25:02

She has a phone. What happens is

25:04

Dolly Parton sends a fax, then somebody at

25:06

the other end scans the fax to see

25:08

what it says and then writes it in

25:10

a text message that gets sent to Miley

25:12

Cyrus. Actually the real

25:14

lead of this fax is that somebody's job is

25:17

sort of communications between Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton

25:19

exclusively. Are you sure you don't want that job?

25:22

Of course I want that job. It must have

25:24

been a lot. I mentioned years ago on the

25:26

podcast that that's how Brian Blessed would do his

25:28

tweets. So yeah, the exact same thing. He

25:31

would be sent the tweets to reply to his

25:33

agent, fax it to him, he would fax back.

25:35

There was a whole fax... Did he write out

25:37

the replies by hand which were then faxed back

25:39

and then they would be typed up? I

25:42

can't remember. There

25:44

was a lot but maybe that's more... It

25:46

can't just be Dolly and Broughton. Brian Blessed

25:48

once tweet Miley Cyrus saying, can you tell

25:51

Dolly Parton? I think it was

25:53

good to be MHS. Have

25:58

you heard of the fax number of the beast? Okay,

26:01

666 something? It's 667. Oh.

26:04

And it's quite just a little nice nugget

26:07

for phone numbers of faxes. Oh, because of

26:09

course your fax number used to be your

26:11

phone number, but with one digit at the

26:13

end gone one up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

26:16

So 667 is the fax number of the

26:18

piece. Oh, sorry. According to people

26:20

who... I think it's a joke, right? It's a little joke. It's

26:22

a joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

26:24

a joke, yeah. Yeah, no, nice. I

26:27

like jokes. I like jokes. I'm

26:29

a big joke guy. Before

26:32

we had cyber, let's say urban

26:34

legends being sent through email and

26:36

Facebook and stuff like that. They

26:39

were all done on fax machines.

26:41

Yeah. And in 1993

26:43

there was a big scare in Memphis,

26:45

Tennessee because there was a load of

26:47

faxes going round about gangs

26:50

would drive around with the lights off in their cars

26:52

and if anyone flashed them to tell them their

26:54

lights were off then they would chase

26:56

them, stop them and kill them. Oh my God,

26:58

was this not true because I heard this rumor

27:00

quite recently. It just got to Anna's fax. That

27:03

still goes around that rumor, right? But it is

27:06

fake. But it was called fax

27:08

law, the culture of sending faxes around. It was

27:10

the old meme culture, I think. Yeah, exactly. And

27:12

when emails came along it just

27:14

went from fax to email directly from there

27:16

to there. So fax law

27:18

was the name for the rumors, the lies

27:21

that were started. Yeah, like Falklar. Oh, wow.

27:23

Thank you. Again, I now get that

27:25

that's a joke, fax law. It's a play

27:27

on words. She likes jokes. She loves jokes.

27:29

She loves jokes. I'm joking. The

27:31

last time I came on this podcast. Do

27:35

you know who else used to fax each

27:38

other in the 80s? Well loads of people.

27:40

Give it a call. I framed that question badly.

27:43

I've got a better way of framing it. Yeah.

27:46

What was the, and pretend that I didn't ask that previous

27:48

question because otherwise it will give it away. What

27:50

was the hotline between the White House and

27:53

the Kremlin? Was it a fax machine?

27:56

I know you cheated. I see you

27:58

using previous. I always thought it

28:00

was a red telephone. It wasn't a phone.

28:04

That's Batman you're thinking of. I

28:08

think that was part of where the rumor came from that the

28:10

hotline was a phone, because I think it was in one of

28:12

the Batman films who speaks to the White House. Anyway,

28:15

the hotline between the White House and the

28:17

Kremlin, famously started by Kennedy and Khrushchev in

28:19

the 60s, was never

28:21

a telephone between them, but it was in

28:24

the 80s a fax machine. So

28:26

it started with type, so it was teletype,

28:28

so it was basically like an old version

28:30

of text, where you'd type a message, if

28:32

you're in the White House, or in fact

28:34

in the Pentagon, where it was, you'd type

28:36

a message, it would be encrypted by people,

28:38

sent to the Kremlin, and then

28:40

translated by someone at the other end into Russian.

28:43

And it was quite sweet. At the

28:45

start of the Cold War, they swapped machines

28:47

for this teletype thing, so the Kremlin posted

28:49

to the US four of their teletype machines

28:52

that could print stuff out in Cyrillic, and

28:54

the US posted back the Kremlin four of

28:56

their machines, and they upgraded to fax machines

28:59

in the 80s. So in the 1980s, if

29:01

there was an emergency between Reagan

29:03

and Gorbachev, then they faxed each

29:06

other. There's many ways that people

29:08

have to protect themselves against cyberattacks these days. What

29:11

do you reckon, this is now turning just into a quiz, the

29:13

answer is not fax machine. What

29:16

do you reckon, so like for the

29:18

Navy, how they get by if they

29:21

get cyberattacked for, let's say, their GPS

29:23

system is hit with malware from an

29:25

unknown enemy, and that's not a scramble.

29:29

So you need to know which way to go, but your GPS is broken

29:31

because you've been hit by cyber. You

29:33

pop up and look at the stars in your periscope. That's what it is.

29:36

Sorry, sorry. Celestial navigation. They're all

29:38

taught celestial navigation, yeah. Which is such a

29:40

great submarine captain, because that was my first

29:42

thought, and I was like, I wouldn't know

29:44

how to do it. Somebody's

29:47

a celestial navigator. Thank you, Alex. That's why the captain's

29:49

there. I'm in charge. I'm not actually doing anything. I'm

29:51

just telling you what to do, right, am I? Think

29:54

about how quickly I made that decision and who's the

29:56

right one. Go on. No,

29:58

no, it wasn't funny. coin

32:00

out of a slot. Yeah I think if it's just inside you

32:02

can kind of try to get it. Maybe use

32:05

your tongue to just wiggle it. Yeah. You

32:07

could take a hoover, take a vacuum cleaner

32:09

to the station. Like a dicer. I think that

32:11

would impact the tension. But they used to do some

32:13

of the subway station attendants would put

32:15

chilli powder in the slot so there's a deterrent. Oh

32:18

yeah that's nice. If you get half a tennis ball

32:20

and stick it on and then wham it and that

32:22

creates a vacuum and then when you pull it

32:24

off it would suck it. Really? Well

32:27

yeah any plunger I guess. Plunger would do the

32:29

same job. Okay

32:39

it is time for fact number three and

32:41

that is Anna. My fact this week

32:43

is that for 200 years

32:46

humans made wire by soaking

32:48

steel in urine before realising

32:50

that water works just as well. We're

32:53

so stupid. I love

32:55

it. How recent was this? It's like

32:57

last year we worked the same. Someone

33:00

squashing down to urinate on the steel again saying

33:02

we'd definitely not just put it under the

33:04

towel. What was the thought behind

33:06

it? Well I read this in

33:08

a great book actually called How to Invent Everything and

33:11

the thought I think was that urine was

33:13

used for various things in historically wasn't it?

33:16

You know the tanning industry springs to mind

33:18

but close to the podcast archive it was

33:20

used for millions of other things. And

33:23

so this was in Altana in

33:25

Germany and it was in 1650 and

33:28

at that point to make wire out

33:32

of steel you had to pull a steel rod,

33:34

so like a thicker rod of steel, through

33:37

a funnel of decreasing diameter. So you know like

33:39

when you did filtration and so you had those

33:41

funnels and so you'd put steel in the wide

33:43

end and you'd drag it through until it gets

33:45

thinner and thinner and then you get a thin

33:48

wire coming out the other end. And to stop

33:50

there being too much friction because you're pulling it

33:52

through really hard you use grease or oil and

33:54

then in this place called Altana in Germany someone

33:57

according to reports from the time accidentally sort

34:00

of urinated all over it and

34:02

then tried it and found that

34:05

it works just as well as the grease and

34:07

oil and so thought oh it must have something

34:09

special about the weed. I believe I

34:11

found something from quite near

34:13

the time that said that

34:15

this guy who's called Johann

34:17

Geddes, he had been so

34:19

annoyed that he couldn't draw

34:22

it well enough that he'd

34:24

thrown his material of all

34:26

Yedemann Sien Vasa Abschlage, which

34:28

is where everyone casts their waters so he

34:30

didn't urinate on it he got annoyed and

34:33

threw it in the corner into the toilet.

34:35

Yeah exactly so he tossed it into the

34:37

loo and then he thought I threw a

34:39

strop there that was silly wasn't I but I'll

34:41

go and get it back and so then he

34:43

went and got my elbow deep, climbed

34:45

down into the vat of

34:47

weed, got it back out

34:50

and then found that it

34:52

works better. And when you

34:54

say it works better is it softer and more malleable?

34:56

Yeah so what it seemed to do, what it

34:58

did do is make a set coating around the

35:00

mistle which reduces the friction when you pull

35:03

it through. Now we now do know that water

35:05

also does that but for 200 years people

35:07

who worked in this factory would provide urine to

35:10

it and actually their wives and children would also

35:12

donate their urine to this factory. I like

35:14

the fact that they in between the

35:16

weed and the water they worked out

35:18

the beer work really like they

35:21

did it with the weed for ages and then after about

35:23

100 years someone tried beer they went oh this works just

35:25

as well. That's so good. Stop trying, try like 100 different

35:27

things. Maybe they did. I don't know what else would work

35:33

that we haven't thought of yet. It's better than

35:35

water. I think once you've got to water, okay

35:37

good this is the simplest. I'd so love to

35:39

have been there on the day that the person

35:41

who came into town and said you know you

35:43

can just use water. Can you? Or like getting

35:46

in hand. What?

35:54

You've been so embarrassed. How long have you been doing

35:56

this? 200 years? It's

35:58

not important, doesn't matter. It's

36:03

also interesting that you make spaghetti,

36:06

you just squeeze it in a...

36:08

I mean, I don't have to have my spaghetti, I

36:10

mean squeezing it through, squeezing it through a thing. Actually,

36:13

if you cook it in water it seems to be

36:15

better. Yeah, I don't do. You

36:18

know that smell that Iron and Steel has, like,

36:20

doorknobs and stuff, you know that smell? Oh yeah,

36:22

yeah. The mental smell. So,

36:24

you actually don't, because it turns out

36:26

that it doesn't smell, and you know

36:28

what that actually is, is the oils

36:30

and chemicals excreted by you reacting

36:32

with the surface of the metal. Very similarly,

36:34

and every kitchen should have this, I don't

36:37

have this, you can get

36:39

stainless steel soap. And I've

36:41

never heard of that before. Yeah. Well, because stainless

36:43

steel is like antibacterial, right, which is why a lot

36:45

of doorknobs are made out of it, and especially when

36:47

you go into public toilets and stuff, everything's metal.

36:51

Yeah. And bacteria can't last very long enough.

36:53

So you don't need to wash your hands when you're leaving the lute,

36:55

you just turn the metal door knob, and you say, as long as

36:57

you don't have it on. You're not made of metal, Adam. No,

37:01

this is specifically for, if you're cutting up onions

37:03

or you're cutting up garlic, and the smell gets

37:05

stuck to your fingers, and you're like, oh, I've

37:07

got to fell of this. Rubbing

37:09

your hands against stainless steel creates a reaction

37:11

that knocks out the smell from it. I've

37:14

tried this. I don't think it's scientifically

37:16

proven at all, but they do sell

37:18

as it were bars of stainless steel soap.

37:20

I actually think it is scientifically proven. What? But

37:23

it doesn't really work. That's exactly it. It's not

37:25

too practical. But it's like, nah,

37:27

I'm definitely rubbing my garlicky fingers up and

37:30

down stainless steel stuff to no avail. And

37:32

does real soap not work at all for garlic? No,

37:35

I don't think anything works for it except

37:37

using garlic in a jar, which I've resorted

37:39

to now in order to sustain my marriage.

37:41

I think just being happy with smells of

37:43

garlic. All that. James, I wish

37:45

life was that simple. What

37:48

a weird cryptic sentence about your marriage that just slipped

37:50

in. But

37:52

Anna's husband is a vampire. Can

37:57

I give you a QI question? but

38:00

you've got to pretend you're in ancient Rome and then it works.

38:02

Sure, do we have to do it in Latin? Yeah,

38:05

that's okay, I'm sure the listeners at home

38:07

are fluent. Right. So. That

38:09

way. Sorry. Oh no, Alex actually can

38:11

do it. Oh no, I'm

38:13

studying Latin. Yeah, all right. You

38:15

only need to know one word and that's the

38:17

Latin word for steel and astonishingly they had a

38:19

version of steel as far back as then, invented

38:22

in India about 400 BC but

38:24

it wasn't able to be mass produced until

38:26

the 19th century. But they did have it,

38:28

made it to ancient Rome. The Latin word

38:30

for steel is chalibe and

38:33

it was named after the chalibe's people who

38:35

lived on the Black Sea. Okay,

38:37

so you're in Latin QI. Yep. What

38:40

did the chalibe's people invent? The

38:43

chalibe people, they made metal. I

38:46

mean the Latin for steel is chalibe. I'm just gonna

38:48

say that. Oh, okay. Your word is

38:50

this. Is it the word caliber? X

38:54

caliber, swords. I feel

38:56

like you're the one who gives the more obvious stupid answer. I'm

38:59

so busy trying to picture myself. What

39:02

character I am, what do I know? What

39:04

do I not know? Chalibe and what there's

39:06

supposed to be an obvious answer to this. They

39:08

invented steel. Oh, they invented steel.

39:10

Did they invent steel? And then you get a

39:13

klaxon. Right. What

39:16

on earth going on? Thank God, Anadine's pitch QI

39:18

for the BBC initially. Script editor.

39:20

I don't know how you've made the rest of

39:22

this. I've written all the scripts in Latin. It's

39:24

so awkward. I'm saying to

39:26

a Latin audience, what did the chalibe

39:28

people invent? You know, speaking Latin now,

39:31

chalibe is Latin for steel. Okay,

39:33

steel. Steel. Woo woo woo.

39:35

Okay, okay. Yeah, let's see. And

39:37

they didn't, they just invented another kind of hybrid iron.

39:39

They had the kind of iron. You

39:43

wanna hear about the barbed wire was? Yes. Yeah.

39:47

Okay, so barbed wire invented in 1873 in America

39:51

by Joseph Glidden and

39:53

used by farmers to protect their

39:55

farms who was not happy about

39:57

it. The blunt wire manufacturer. Yeah,

40:00

fence makers. Yeah, that's true.

40:04

Ramblers. Lots of

40:06

ramblers. Golfers. Yeah,

40:08

these are all great answers. But

40:11

all wrong. I actually feel like

40:13

ramblers, because I think I

40:15

may know the answer, but ramblers might be a vaguely

40:18

correct-ish. People who wanted to ramble, right?

40:20

I think it's true. I mean, not many people like

40:22

barbed wire today, but... The answer

40:24

is cowboys. Because

40:26

if you had a

40:29

farm and you didn't have fences, your

40:31

cows and sheep could run anywhere, you'd get

40:33

them in the right place by employing cowboys.

40:35

But as soon as you had barbed wire,

40:37

you didn't need to employ cowboys anymore. Who

40:41

ramble freely, which is why I've given Alex half a

40:43

point. Ramble... there are horses. Yeah,

40:47

I think if rambling is just sort of roaming free, but

40:49

you think it has to be on foot. I think what

40:51

we're doing now is rambling. But

40:54

the other thing, the other people didn't like it

40:56

were small ranchers. Because if you had a big

40:58

ranch and you could afford loads of barbed wire,

41:00

you could put loads of barbed wire around your

41:03

farm. But actually, in those days, people weren't really

41:05

sure where one farm stopped and another farm started.

41:07

So if you were a small rancher, you would

41:09

often find that you would turn up to your

41:11

ranch and there's a load of barbed wire and

41:13

you couldn't get to your stuff anymore. And

41:16

so there was a huge amount of

41:18

violence and tension between these kind of small

41:20

ranches and the big ranchers. And

41:22

there were wire cutting groups that would go

41:24

out and cut all the wires. And actually,

41:27

Grover Cleveland, the president, had to send in

41:29

the army to remove any unlawful barbed wire

41:31

fences. Didn't they? They

41:33

formed sort of gangs, didn't they? With really

41:35

fun names. They were called the Blue Devils,

41:38

the Owls. They supported Iron Maiden,

41:40

didn't they? Sorry, you're

41:42

right. Native

41:45

Americans as well didn't like it

41:47

because it stopped buffaloes rambling. I'm

41:52

going to make ramble happen. And

41:55

they depended so much on their livelihood for buffaloes.

41:57

It's one of the reasons that buffaloes basically went extinct by the end of the day.

42:00

the end of the century is that they

42:02

couldn't roam free anymore, they were fenced in.

42:04

And it was all kind of Lincoln's fault,

42:06

wasn't it? Because he signed this act which

42:08

said everyone can have a bunch of

42:10

free land in the Wild West if you

42:12

agree to farm it. So all these farmers

42:14

moved there and then we're like, how do

42:16

we stop these buffalo from trampling all over

42:18

our crops? Yeah. I'm thinking

42:20

electric wire right after the barb

42:22

wire. Yeah. I'm just trying

42:24

to think, I wonder how many people died in that

42:26

small town who were having a nostalgic piss on a

42:29

bit of wire. I

42:33

think that's a myth of making piss

42:35

on electric, since you get electrocuted, don't

42:37

try it at home. Don't try to,

42:39

who's got electric piss on? Get

42:43

out of my room, mum, I did warn

42:45

you. I think

42:47

the myth that I remember, and again I'm not

42:49

sure that this is true so people shouldn't try

42:52

it at someone else's home, but

42:55

your urine stream isn't usually a complete stream,

42:57

it's usually got gaps in it enough that

42:59

the electricity can't travel up there. Did

43:02

anyone come across this Guardian Notes and Queries

43:04

section? So you know the Guardian Notes and

43:06

Queries and someone asked a question, often

43:09

people who have inside knowledge answer underneath. And

43:13

there's one that's When Was Wire Invented? Okay. Did

43:16

any of you see this? No. It's

43:18

just very confusing. So there's When Was

43:20

Wire Invented and then various people underneath

43:22

give their answers. And one of the

43:24

answers is fierce

43:27

controversy surrounded the invention of wire. And

43:29

it goes on to explain that Thomas

43:32

Malham certainly invented wire in 1830 at

43:34

his foundry in Sheffield. But a Frenchman,

43:36

Jean-Francois Martin, also said he'd invented wire

43:38

at the same time. There was this

43:40

legal action contesting the right to the

43:42

patent. It was never resolved

43:44

because Thomas Malham died of an inflamed liver.

43:47

And then it said, it's extraordinary fact, Thomas

43:50

Malham's memorial is in Abney Park Cemetery, very

43:52

near where I used to live, which has lots of amazing gravestones on it.

43:55

And it's now rusted away, but it used

43:58

to be constructed entirely of wire. in

44:00

the shape of an anvil topped with a falcon. And

44:03

the source was a book called

44:05

Wire, its history and application, by

44:07

Dr A. Stone. And... LAUGHTER

44:11

Sorry. LAUGHTER It's

44:13

a different material. Well, it

44:16

is a different material. But there's nothing obvious in

44:18

this to give away that it's completely made up.

44:20

It's completely made up! Oh, it's completely made up!

44:22

Oh, OK, fine. This person gives this extraordinary story

44:24

of the history of the founding of Wire, and

44:27

I was like, brilliant, something fascinating. God, how many

44:29

Parker can't believe I never saw that? Completely

44:32

false. So this is the story of you reading

44:34

a comment section, finding the information not to be true,

44:36

and then... A comment section? It's a Guardian note

44:38

from queries, OK? You get highbrow experts

44:40

replying to people about... And then...

44:43

But the jokers can slip in, that's the problem. Yeah,

44:46

it's not a very good joke, though, is it? I

44:48

don't know, A. Stone. A. Stone? I

44:50

did laugh really hard at it. That's

44:52

not a joke! I know jokes! LAUGHTER

44:56

Just on other things you can use urine for, virgin

44:58

boy eggs? Oh, yeah. Do

45:01

you remember this? Virgin boy, yeah. Like,

45:03

so they are a traditional dish from China, from

45:05

Dong Yang, and basically, it is exactly what it

45:08

sounds like. They boil eggs in the urine of

45:10

young boys. They're like 10

45:12

or younger. And it's not what

45:14

virgin boy eggs sounds like it's going to

45:16

be. It translates with boy eggs, like, again,

45:18

urine boy eggs. You're absolutely right,

45:20

yeah. Urine boy eggs, got it. You're trying to...

45:22

No, sorry. They are... They translate as virgin boy

45:25

eggs. Virgin boy being, like, small boy eggs. And,

45:27

yeah, they all through the town, the kids are

45:29

encouraged to... When they go to the living schools,

45:31

they either can go to the normal toilet or

45:34

they can go and pee in, like, a collection

45:36

bucket in the corridor. And then

45:38

all of this urine gets taken and

45:42

then eggs are boiled in them. It's a whole

45:44

process where, like, they're double boiled in this urine

45:46

and people eat them and it's, like, a delicacy.

45:48

Yeah, urine's been used like that for a lot,

45:50

hasn't it? Yeah, it's interesting. There is definitely, like,

45:52

a legit ick factor there where I'm like, it's

45:54

somebody else's urine that this has been cooked in.

45:56

Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting. I

45:58

had 100 years eggs. 100

46:01

years eggs. Yeah, they're like supposed to be a

46:03

hundred years old. They're not really a hundred years

46:05

old But they're quite old. Yeah, yeah, and they

46:07

just taste really sulfurous But

46:09

they haven't been made the new enough. They know that Kind

46:13

of weird the year anything I don't like

46:15

yeah, I can talk about weird eggs that I've

46:17

eaten I have a loot, you know that

46:19

has the baby chickens the embryo of the

46:21

chicken. Oh, yeah All right, that's a

46:23

bit of your spin-off weird egg They've

46:28

actually poached me poach me the

46:32

rest is weird eggs Is

46:38

me and Delia Smith talking about weird eggs

46:48

Stop the podcast stop the podcast

46:51

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48:26

it's time for our final fact of

48:28

the show and that is Alex. My

48:30

fact this week is that dragonfly wings

48:33

are equipped with tiny knives that physically

48:35

rip bacteria apart. What? It's amazing.

48:37

Oh my god. It's just the property they have

48:39

that keeps their wings clean and it keeps them

48:41

safe. Can I ask a question, Alex, straight off

48:44

the bat? I've currently

48:46

got a chest infection and I'm on

48:48

antibiotics. Could I instead chuck

48:50

some dragonfly wings? That's

48:52

such a great question. I don't

48:55

want to answer that in

48:57

case you die. I

48:59

thought you were going to say should I strap a series of knives

49:01

to my arms and flap them around? Also

49:05

an option. I think probably not. I think

49:07

dragonflies are amazing and humans use them as

49:09

inspiration for scientific innovation so much but one

49:11

of the things that we are doing

49:13

is trying to emulate this what's

49:15

called nanopillars. These tiny, tiny blunt

49:18

pillars that are so, so small. They're one

49:20

hundred thousandth of the width of a human

49:22

hair. I mean so, so tiny. So bacteria

49:24

literally lands on them, gets caught between two

49:27

and gets ripped apart. I mean it's absolutely

49:29

astonishing how small it is. There's more than

49:31

10 billion of them per wing basically. And

49:35

they're really, really good at destroying almost all

49:37

bacteria that lands on them. So the University

49:40

in Melbourne, Australia, will have successfully

49:42

made a sort of plastic version. So that

49:44

could be the new stainless steel. Next

49:47

time you go into your public bathroom

49:49

there'll be a plastic handle. So scientists

49:51

have managed to make stuff that small? Yeah.

49:53

Well done. Well you can do novels on rice now.

50:00

I know that that's quite different to having

50:02

a thing that says 10 billion of them

50:04

on a wave. I don't think they'd be manually sharpening

50:06

each one with a tiny, tiny sense of

50:08

carving knives or anything. I once pushed

50:10

an electron with a scanning tunnelling microscope.

50:12

Wow. And it took

50:15

me about an hour and a half. Really?

50:18

It was quite a long time ago. No, just like

50:21

to slightly other place to where it already was. Like

50:23

I just moved it. Can you just blow it? No,

50:25

because it's an electron. It's so small. So

50:27

you have this little sort of... it's like

50:30

a needle, but it's some kind of quantum effect. I

50:32

don't know. I did study it, but I don't really

50:34

understand it. But I had the machine and then it

50:36

was like a computer game thing and you would kind

50:38

of push this one electron. And the idea was I

50:40

used to... As I mentioned to you, it

50:42

wasn't like OCD. You didn't just... it's like walking in

50:44

and seeing a painting slightly as you. You're like, oh,

50:46

I'm really uncomfortable with that. I'm already a princess in

50:48

a bee. He's blazed with

50:50

such a mess. But yeah,

50:53

dragonflies are actually astonishing.

50:58

They're incredible. They are amazing. Every

51:00

fact I learn about them is that you are

51:02

the most metal insane. They are the most efficient

51:04

killers in nature. They are the

51:07

most efficient predators. They kill over

51:09

95% of the prey that they chase.

51:11

Yeah. Like that's unbelievable. We're so lucky they're

51:13

so small and they don't eat us. Yeah. I

51:16

love you call them the most metal. They've opened for Iron Maiden. Yeah.

51:20

When they're lava, they're like little

51:22

worm things. They kind of live

51:24

underwater. And then they shed

51:26

the larval skin and start to become

51:29

a dragonfly. And they create

51:31

these wings. But the wings are

51:33

like made of jelly. They're not like the wings that they

51:35

have when they're older. So they need to dry

51:37

them out. And so they

51:39

produce sodium bicarbonate in their

51:42

rectum. And they fart it

51:44

out and it reacts with the water and it

51:46

creates CO2. And it

51:48

dries out their wings. Wow. It means that they

51:50

become proper wings. Incredible. They are

51:52

their own hair dryer. That's amazing. Their hair dryer,

51:54

yeah. But also when they're lava, they eat through

51:57

their anus as well. And they also

51:59

spend most of their lives. as lava so they can

52:01

some species live up to five years but they spend

52:03

nearly all of it as a lava and then they

52:05

become a dragonfly for just a couple of months and

52:07

flying around. I always think it's weird with, it's not

52:09

weird at all but it's unfair to these animals that

52:12

we think of them as dragonflies when they actually for

52:14

almost all their life they're not dragonflies at all. I

52:16

think they want to be thought of as dragonflies rather

52:18

than these weird underwater insects. They're a bit creepy. Yeah,

52:20

yeah. It must be, I watched a

52:22

great, I watched a couple of great documentaries

52:24

actually about them. One of them was talking

52:26

about the extraordinary moment when they're climbing up

52:28

a blade of grass which they would do

52:31

when they're emerging from nymph phase into dragonfly phase.

52:33

Climb a blade of grass out of

52:35

the water and that first time that you

52:37

feel the weight of gravity on you they've

52:39

been floating in water all of their life

52:42

and suddenly they slow down massively because it

52:44

suddenly has to wrench their body weight. And

52:46

then if you watch videos of them emerging

52:48

from the exoskeleton it's very cool. So their

52:51

abdomen as a dragonfly is concertinaed

52:53

just like a telescope inside of

52:56

their larval cells. So when they

52:58

burst out suddenly it's like pulling

53:00

a telescope out to its full

53:02

extension and when they climb

53:04

up they can retreat at any point so

53:06

they're not dragonfly yet until their massive googly

53:09

eyes, you know they've got these big eyes,

53:11

until their eyes turn cloudy and white and

53:13

then once the eyes have gone milky there's

53:15

no going back. Oh my god that's

53:17

incredible. That's awesome. That's how you can tell.

53:20

Wow. You know they can't walk, they've got

53:22

six legs and they can climb with them

53:24

but they can't walk on them but they

53:26

mostly use them to like grab their prey

53:28

in mid-air and like stab it and like

53:31

they're not called dragon walks Alex. That's true.

53:34

I thought it's weird having like and then

53:36

most most flies and insects land can also

53:38

walk on there. They use it to like

53:40

stand and walk whereas dragonflies specifically use it

53:43

to grab and hunt they're more like pincers.

53:45

They're so awesome that the US decided

53:47

to create a spying dragonfly

53:49

drone which

53:51

was based on all these amazing things that dragonflies

53:53

could do so it had tiny beads

53:55

that could reflect light and could check for

53:57

oscillations so you could work out what was

54:00

saying from a massive distance away it could flap

54:02

its wings 1800 times per minute using

54:05

lithium nitrate crystals controlled by

54:07

lasers. It cost about two

54:09

million dollars for each one

54:12

but they only ever tested it in lab conditions and

54:14

then when they took it out they realised it couldn't

54:16

cope with wind. I

54:20

found a documentary by David Attenborough which was

54:22

called Dragons and Damsels. He made it in

54:24

2019, it was a TV special and I

54:27

really wanted to watch it and so I

54:29

was Googling Dragons and Damsels to see where

54:31

you could get it. Sadly the closest I

54:33

could get was a documentary of similar length,

54:36

about 45 minutes, called Dragons

54:38

and Damsels released on YouTube by

54:40

Buxton Civic Association during

54:42

the pandemic and hosted by a

54:44

chap called Richard Neisley Marpole which

54:47

was really good as well. I'm going

54:49

to tell you some things I've learned

54:52

from the production quality

54:54

slightly lower. There were interruptions like, can

54:56

you see my cursor as I'm moving

54:58

it out there?

55:01

Can everyone see me on the screen or can you see the

55:03

thing I'm showing you? Burning! I've never heard Attenborough

55:06

doing that or flying him out to the

55:08

art and being like, why can't I see

55:10

them? But

55:12

I would love to see Attenborough doing a new narration

55:14

of this documentary. Here we

55:17

see the human attempt the first time.

55:19

Yes, the thumbnails have confused

55:21

me. Jesus, that was him. Was

55:24

it good though? It was really good. So

55:26

he said, sweetly he said the

55:28

Southern Hawker Dragonfly, they're the only

55:30

dragonflies that will fly up to you

55:32

and look you straight in the eye. That's

55:34

scary. He said it's quite frightening. Sounds

55:37

like a US drone, doesn't it really? Maybe

55:39

that's what they are. They always have been. He

55:42

said the way to tell the difference between

55:44

damsels and dragonflies are there in many ways.

55:46

One of them is, and you have to

55:48

look quite closely, but during mating they both

55:50

grabbed the female from behind, but dragonflies grabbed

55:52

the female on the back of

55:55

the head, whereas damsels grabbed the female on the

55:57

back of the neck. So you do

55:59

have to be quite close. And

56:03

also I really enjoyed a metaphor he used which

56:05

actually referenced a fact that we mentioned before which

56:07

is that ancient dragonflies millions of years ago were

56:10

up to a metre wide and

56:12

as he said you can imagine what sort of a mess that would

56:14

make if it hit your windscreen. I

56:17

actually laughed out loud at that and I've never

56:19

laughed out loud at David Attenborough. Or any

56:21

of our jokes on the talk I've got yet.

56:23

She knows jokes. She does, anyone knows jokes. The

56:27

female dragonflies also they fake their deaths to avoid

56:29

having sex sometimes. Yeah they do do that don't

56:31

they. And the other thing I know about dragonfly

56:33

sex is that the males have spoon shaped penises

56:35

so that they can scoop out sperm of the

56:38

previous guy if he finds any inside. Ah

56:41

that is clever, a bit gross. Well

56:44

no but necessary right? Well yeah

56:46

I suppose so. Arguably humans have that as well.

56:49

The idea is that the bellend shape

56:51

at the top of a penis could

56:53

possibly be used to scrape out a

56:55

lot of people's semen. Or

56:58

just get a half cut tennis ball and you

57:01

can plunge that

57:03

out. I'm

57:05

actually starting to question your fact now Alex

57:07

having just looked at my notes because Anna

57:09

previously gave us a fake fact from a

57:12

stone and your fact about

57:14

an insect comes from someone called a

57:16

wolf. Really? Yeah.

57:19

It's Dr. Anna Lena Wolf.

57:22

She does make this amazing point that's

57:24

made inside this article which you touched

57:26

on earlier which is basically all the

57:28

things that we're looking for from modern

57:31

invention, evolution

57:33

has worked out somewhere on our planet. You

57:35

just need to look around for 4 billion

57:37

years worth of evolution and you

57:39

eventually find something that can be then

57:41

taken into the lab to try and

57:43

mimic which is pretty awesome. It's

57:45

a mimicking that's hard I think sometimes. We actually

57:47

don't have 4 billion years to make it. We've

57:49

got about a week before the funding dries up. They've

57:54

been around 300 million years. Dinosaurs

57:56

were walking the planet. I mean that's always because

57:59

in my head. romanticism of the dinosaurs

58:01

being just because of how old they were

58:03

and alive and we forget what these animals,

58:05

dragonflies were there, it's a different version. In

58:07

fairness to people who make cartoons and

58:09

dinosaur movies they do often have dragonflies

58:12

flying around. Yeah that's true. One

58:17

of the incredible things about them you wouldn't

58:19

expect is how far they can fly and

58:21

that's another thing that we're looking into, can

58:24

we replicate it? The globe

58:26

skimmer dragonfly has the record for the

58:28

longest insect migration and it

58:30

does a round trip of 18,000 kilometers. It's insane.

58:34

It's always one of these things where

58:36

I think, does it count if it's

58:38

multi-generational? Yeah, absolutely not. It

58:40

is one of these things where

58:42

this dragonfly lays its eggs and lives and mates

58:46

in shallow pools because the pools are warmer,

58:48

they're shallow and so it can grow faster

58:50

so it follows the rain so it can

58:52

follow shallow pools so it flies from India

58:55

to Africa and then

58:57

the next generation slides back. If

58:59

I went on a gap here and then like I came back and

59:01

it was my son, like you wouldn't be

59:03

like how was Africa? How is your dad?

59:05

Alex and Alex Junior together. Okay

59:18

that is it, that is all of our facts,

59:20

thank you so much for listening. If you'd like

59:22

to get in contact with any of us about

59:24

the things that we have said over the course

59:27

of this podcast we can be found at various

59:29

places on the internet. I'm on Instagram on at

59:31

Shribaland, James. My Instagram is no such thing as

59:33

James Harkin. Alex? I don't have

59:36

any socials at the moment. Yeah? Ooh, look

59:38

at me. You're a copycat. Living my life.

59:40

And Anna, how can they get in touch

59:42

with all of us? And you

59:44

can get in touch with all of us by

59:46

emailing podcast at qi.com or by tweeting at no

59:48

such thing. That's right. Or you can go

59:50

to our website, no such thing as a fish

59:53

dot com. All of the previous episodes are up

59:55

there. Do check them out. Also

59:57

check out Club Fish which is our behind

59:59

the scenes. Special fun place where we have

1:00:01

lots of bonus material little fun extra shows

1:00:03

like drop us a lines lots of great

1:00:05

stuff there But otherwise just come

1:00:07

back next week for another episode and we'll see

1:00:10

you then for goodbye