No Such Thing As A Fish - 113: No Such Thing As A Flycycle

Episode Date: May 13, 2016

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss underwater tailors, the overlord of all emojis, and the alphabet of the future.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covert Garden. My name is Dan Shriver, I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andy Murray, and Anna Chazinski, 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 you, Andy Murray. My fact is that when you are 30 meters underwater, your lungs are only a quarter of their normal size.

That is incredible. Yeah. How? What's? Because there's not enough air in them? Well, there's the same number of air molecules if you just take one lung full and then you dive down, but the water pressure on them is much higher, meaning that your lungs shrink. So if you're at sea level, all the air above you, if you imagine a column of air stretching

all the way up to the edge of the atmosphere, one square inch of that column would weigh 14.7 pounds, right? So we say the air pressure at sea level is 14 pounds per square inch, 14.7. It is amazing actually to think all of that air pushing down on you whenever you're walking down the street. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. We're all super humanly strong. Well, we're all humanly strong. Yeah. So in the sea, to get another 14.7 pounds pressing down on you, you only have to go down 10 meters, right? So at that depth, if you had a balloon full of gas and you pulled it 10 meters under the water, 33 feet, it would be half the size because there are two atmospheres of pressure.

Wow. So the same thing is happening to your lungs when you go underwater. And if you go three times there, if you go 30 meters down, you would have to have four times as many gas molecules in your lungs to fill them to their original size. Now, it doesn't apply if you're breathing pressurized air, right? Because scuba divers, they breathe in air, which is at a much higher pressure than normal air. So you're breathing in a higher number of molecules, four times as many gas molecules

at that depth. So their lungs are the same. Yeah. Wow. So you're talking about freediving when you're talking about. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey. Yeah. When you get to about 300 feet under the surface of the water, there was a guy in 1996 who was called Francesco Ferraz Rodriguez. His chest shrunk from a size 50 inches to 20. Shrunk. What I'm saying is, if you need to get fitted for a suit, don't get fitted 436 feet under the water.

Unless you're planning to wear that suit at 400 feet under the water. Exclusively at that depth. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you're just going to look baggy as hell. Yeah. So I was, when you said this fact about the lungs, which is extraordinary, the idea that it can shrink down to that size, I started reading into, so James Nestor, I read this

article by him, he wrote this book called Freediving. So he talks a lot about this thing that they've been studying for about 50 years, which is called the master switch of life. That's the term for it. The idea is that when we go into the water, we slowly start turning into water-based animals, the deeper we go, as in our body adapts to in the way. So if you stay on the water for long enough, you turn into a fish. Yeah, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. So there was a really fascinating thing. So when you start diving down, you have to paddle down because gravity is trying to do a buoyancy thing of sending you back up. So you have to go down. As soon as you get to 40 feet, then the gravity shifts and it starts pulling you down. So free divers then just put their hands by their sides and they allow themselves to

be pulled down because you need to save every single bit of oxygen that you have inside your body. And your heart rate goes down to something, some people, like this is very rare, but some people seven beats a minute. That's how much your body just relaxes into a different state. Is it called the cold water reflex or the dive reflex? Yeah, the mammalian dive reflex. Yeah.

That's this master switch of life. That's the other term for it. But it happens as soon as you touch water, so I have a theory now that when you splash your face with cold water, the reason it can snap you out of like a panic attack or being anxious is because actually it gives you the dive reflex, which immediately slows your heart rate down and it hugely slows it, doesn't it? So there was an experiment where people had to exercise to synchronize something on the bottom of a deep pool or something and it really doesn't increase at all in the same

way that it would above water. I don't think we know how it is that happens. Yeah, they've been researching. Someone wrote that free diving is the only sport in which the lungs shrink and the heart slows down. Every other sport there is. Yeah. The heart rate speeds up.

Oh, talking of heart slowing down, have we ever mentioned the guy that got in touch with us? No. No, we haven't. No. A guy emailed us called Martin Brady, emailed the podcast email address a few weeks ago and he just sent me an email saying, I thought you might like to know that the world record for the lowest resting heartbeat is 27 beats a minute.

It's held by someone called Martin Brady and the condition of having a lower heart rate is Brady Cardia and the two are completely unrelated. So he's called Martin Brady and the condition is Brady Cardia, weird coincidence, really cool fact. And I looked at his email address and replied, I was like, are you Martin Brady? He was like, yes, I am. So yeah, the guy with the Guinness World Record for the lowest heartbeat has been in touch. So that'll be the lowest resting heartbeat, right?

Lowest resting. So this guy who goes underwater, who can go down to seven beats a minute is slightly different. Yes. Yeah. Have you guys heard of the Aquaman crystal? No. This is new scientific. Because it sounds like it's from the Fantastic Four or something.

Oh, it's real. This is real. So I don't fully understand it, but these are and they're in prototype stage at the moment. They're crystals that absorb oxygen. They allow the idea is that they would allow you eventually if we can work out how to use them. Have you?

OK. So yeah. So they like to do what? Well, they they take in the oxygen around them. So in a room, they can suck it, they can absorb all the oxygen into them. So if you were able to take it down into the ocean, you wouldn't need the tank anymore. You'd be able just to breathe in through these crystals. But if you're a supervillain, for instance, then you could get some of these crystals,

put them in a room and it'll just suck all the oxygen out and then you kill everyone in the room. Oh, wow. So that is a Dan Brown novel waiting to be written. I think I know people who have been using these for years, because whenever you're talking to them, it really feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Why are you looking at me? Can I ask a question about lungs?

Yeah, ask me. I'll know. I think you will know. There have been a couple of news reports over the last few years about people having plants grow in their lungs. So there was a guy who inhaled a fir tree seed and a fir tree started to grow in his lungs and there was someone else who inhaled a pea seed and I think a pea plant started to grow in his lungs.

Now, a study was done, which said, or a report was released, which said, it is not possible for any plant to grow inside someone's lungs. It needs light, et cetera. But nothing has explained to me how these people, I've seen x-rays of their lungs. I don't agree with the second thing that you said, because if you have plants in the ground, they don't have the light. Yeah. So just for them to germinate, they wouldn't need the light.

Yeah. And I assume that's what's happened. I think that like fir tree inside his lungs, it's not like a massive Christmas tree, it's just like a germination of the seeds. Although they did say the pain was caused by the little fir tree needles poking into his scabilleries. And the baubles. The angel on top really caused a choking hazard.

Imagine if one day he just found a bit of tinsel at the corner of his mouth and started pulling on it. Rather, it come out of your mouth, I think. Also in underwater news, there's someone called Jim Dyke Jr. who's testing out a new theory that you can actually age wine much better by dropping it to the bottom of, or it's certainly quite deep into an ocean. It's actually takes so long to retrieve that it's quite a lot older. Well, so he was inspired by, there was quite a few stories of shipwrecks coming up with

all sorts of alcohols, champagne being one of them. And they all tasted really good. And he has a theory that the aging process through being underwater will actually be much more efficient and much better. So it's an ongoing new theory. It's going to be unbelievably inconvenient when majestic wine is stationed on the bottom of the ocean. Cannot do home delivery.

I was actually just passing by to get my suit fitted, but I suppose I'll get some wine while I'm here. One other long thing. Do you guys remember the story of a doctor called Angus Wallace in the 1990s who was on an aeroplane and did an amazing thing? There are my clues. Oh, Tracheotomy with a biro. Yeah, and a coat hanger.

A coat hanger. Yes, biro's don't work. Do they? No, there was a study about it. They work for writing before the biro industry gets onto us. They were never designed for tracheotomies, I think would be their defence. I'm trying to bring down the biro industry. You're attacking them in the wrong place.

Yeah, but just on that, there was a study done about biro's for tracheotomies and they reckon that they're just kind of the wrong shape and they just wouldn't quite work. Oh, really? It wasn't actually quite a tracheotomy, I don't think on the plane, but it is the most incredible story. So this is one of the surgeons Angus Wallace treated Wayne Rooney at the World Cup 2006 and 10 years earlier, he'd been on a flight and a girl complained of chest pain and said she'd fallen off her bike and it turned out she'd been in a big motorbike accident.

And he realised that she had a collapsed lung and so they had to get a catheter up into her lung to stop it from completely caving inwards. And the only catheter they had in the medical equipment was too floppy because it was for a different part of the body. And so we got a coat hanger into the catheter to stiffen it up and then he fashioned a one way valve by prodding holes into the lid of an Evian bottle. And he used a bit of an oxygen mask tubing, I think, to thread it up there. This was one of the Blue Peter presenters.

Is this a MacGyver episode? Except post curfew, so non-Blue Peter, he had to sterilise all the equipment with first class cognac, even though it turned out they did have alcohol wipes in the first aid kit. He said afterwards he didn't have time to check. And then his associate held her chest open with a knife and fork while he inserted the catheter. Oh my God. The plastic knives and forks.

I think one of the plastics, yeah. Oh, this was the 90s, so maybe they were still a loud metal. Yeah. I think this explains why Wayne Rooney's always injured because he's held together with sticky back plastic. Held together with, yeah. That's amazing. This is a coat hanger.

And did she make a recovery? He said it took about 10 minutes and then she passed the rest of the flight uneventfully eating and watching in-flight entertainment. What? But the person next to her had nowhere to hang his coat. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is Jozinski. My fact this week is that online shopping was predicted in 1857. Yeah.

Amazing. Yeah. So this is... That's quite a prediction. So how close is it to modern-day online shopping? Or is it just like, you know... It's... They predicted shopping.

Yeah. I added online to make it sound better. It's... Well, I think it's quite close. So this is an essay that was written in a magazine called The Leisure Hour in 1857. And I read it on a website called publicdomainreview.org, which is my favorite place on the whole internet. It's incredible. Everyone go to it.

But, yeah, the thing that's kind of predicted was that in every district, shops would have electric wires that branched off in all directions away from them that would be attached to all the houses in the area. And when... Well, he says, no sooner did a housekeeper stand in need of any article, she could dispatch the order instantly along the wire. So just press a little button along the wire and the shop would receive that message and receive the news of what she wanted.

And then the very first railway carriage that was passing would be able to drop off the item on its way. It's amazing. I mean, that is... That's pretty close. Yeah. I read the essay and there are a lot of other predictions in it as well. Yeah.

So he predicts that the River Thames will be completely clear and full of fish. Yeah. Okay. Not quite there. I bet it's a lot more full of fish than it was in those days. True. He also predicts that there would be 20 new bridges across the Thames between 1857 and 1957.

And how many? I counted and there were 26. Not bad. Yeah. Pretty close. Yeah. No one will be wearing hats or bonnets anymore in 1957. That one wasn't quite on because hats were still pretty big then.

Although he'd said that they'd just be... I got excited by that because I thought, well done, you've finally seen the idiocy of the fact that everyone wore a hat until about 1950, but then he said they'll just be replaced by a slightly easier head garment, less showy head garment. Why didn't you realise you don't need to wear a head garment at all? Well, if you want to keep your head warm. If they're not necessary now, they weren't then, James. Right, fine.

Take your hat off inside anyway. Well, you wouldn't have got on very well in Stockpot in the early 20th century where anyone walking around without a hat would get stones thrown at them. Really? Because it was a big hatting area. This happened, I think, in Luton as well. These were two big hatting areas and it was just seemed to be your local duty to always wear a hat and if you didn't, people would just abuse you.

Really? Yeah. I actually don't think I would have gone down very well in Stockpot in the early 20th century anyway. Isn't Luton now got a big Volkswagen factory? Maybe. It's got an airport. So anyone walking around not in a plane these days gets stones thrown at them.

It's terrible. I was looking into predictions from around roughly the same period. I found a nice one that was from 1900 and it was a sort of 100 year prediction as well. And I think it's actually quite a famous one. This went around the internet quite a lot. John Elfrith Watkins. So there are a few interesting predictions there. And my favorite one, he thought that Americans would be taller by one to two inches.

That's quite exciting, which is probably true-ish. More than that, I reckon. Yeah, right. But my favorite one is the one that he got wrong, which is he thought in 100 years time there would be no more C, X or Q in the everyday alphabet. He just thought that would go, that we didn't need them. Sensible. We don't.

What do we need a C for that you can't use a K or an S? Nothing. Oh, I see. Right. So that you can't use a K and an S for. OK, but the word quixotic would really suffer for this rule. Yeah, you're right. That's going to have to go, I'm afraid.

He also predicted ready-cooked meals, but he then thought they'd be delivered through pneumatic tubes from the shops to people's homes. Who's to say that we won't have that in the future? Well, fingers crossed. Right. I saw an article in the Summit County Journal from 1909 that got posted on qi.com by a guy called Mort, and I'll just read a little bit out to you if it's OK. A hundred years from now, if you want to avoid the rush and do your Christmas shopping in

your own apartments, the scientists will probably have provided for you a telescope. And the idea is that you'll be able to see the toy department from your house. What? So you look through the telescope and then using a telephone, you'll be able to get in touch with the clerk and tell them what you want from the house. No, not that one. No, the one behind it. Well, he said, does everyone have to live directly opposite the toy shop?

Well, he almost predicted last year's John Lewis advert, didn't he? Yeah. So just on predictions, have you heard of Effie Smith? No. He was an amazing guy. He was the first Earl of Birkenhead. He was alive in the late 19th, early 20th century. He was Winston Churchill's best friend, right?

He had an enormous brain, and in 1930, he made another hundred years from now prediction. So this is 2030 he's talking about. Okay. So he's got time for some of these to come through. Yeah, yeah. But I think a lot of them may not. So some of them, he gets absolutely right. But he says that plane ownership will be common.

Like lots of people will just have their own plane. It'll be very, very normal. Yeah. Have you not got one? No. Also, he says that people will be living into the 120s, and that'll be a massive problem for people because how will youth of 20 be able to compete in the professions or business against vigorous men still in their prime at 120 with a century of experience on which to draw.

That's a really good point. But just going back to the aeroplanes thing, a lot of people think we'll have flying cars by then. Right. Fair play. Yes. Well, he also predicts that everyone will be so wealthy and affluent that we will all be able to go fox hunting all the time. Again, don't you?

I do it in my plane. This is a thing he was really, really far ahead of his time. He saw early TV, and he wanted TV to allow us to vote in the same way that the ancient Greeks would vote. And you'd have a referendum over the course of an evening, basically, electronically. So he predicted what are all those programs of Simon Cowell? Yeah, he predicted X Factor. Thank you.

Yeah. He also predicted that, which should have come true, but hasn't, that men would only have two outfits by 2030, which would save a lot of time because you'd have your casual outfit and then your non-casual outfit. You'd have your one for normal sea level and then one for 400 metres below. Something else that a guy called Jules Bois predicted in 1909 was a flying bicycle. Did he call it a flycicle? He wasn't smart enough for that.

I mean, the guy was a moron. He predicted a flying bicycle. Or the film E.T. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you can, you can relate it to every... Yeah. Basically, I can predict anything I like.

And in 100 years, I'd just say, oh yeah, it was that. That's what I meant. Yeah. You almost understood. Oh, communicating with each other's brains is something that I think most futurologists say is the most likely thing to happen. I was reading an article where two futurologists said that's 100% chance within 100 years. Or I think they said by 2050.

So that'll be, we won't have to have this podcast at all out loud. There'll be no use for our mouths. No use for our mouths. No use for... How are we going to eat? No, no. That'll be through the brain as well. Like an octopus.

People will use their mouths to keep loose-chain and other small items. Would you transfer the visuals or would it just be the words? Let's say you're picturing your house. You're like, oh, am I just hearing you say, I used to live in this house? Or can I see... Great question. I don't know. Ask the futurologists.

I don't know how to consider that. It will start off just maybe being words and then it will move on to images. And then it will move on to 3D images. Read a word that's in someone's brain. If I'm thinking the word octopus now... Octopus. Oh. That's amazing.

Octopus now. Great movie. Can't imagine the dystopia that we'll live in though, if everything you think everyone will automatically hear, that is, I'm going to kill myself. Imagine if we all knew what each other was thinking right now. Wow. It's not a world I want to live in. No.

I don't even like hearing the stuff you guys say. Yeah, you definitely don't want to be in the one where you know what we think, Andy. Okay, it is time for our next fact and that is Harkin. Okay. My fact this week is that the word pants comes from the Greek word for all compassionate. This is great. My pants are very thoughtful. In the future, we'll live in a world where everyone's pants are thoughtful.

They just write you nice messages, send them upwards. This is a bit of an etymological merry-go-round. So the word pants comes from the word pantaloon, which came from a character in the Italian comedian Del Arte called Pantalone. And he had extremely tight trousers, which is where the word pants became to mean trousers. And Pantalone's name comes from the Greek word meaning all compassionate. There you go. Like pan as in everything, right?

Yes, exactly. And Pantalone or Pantaleone was a saint, wasn't he? I think as well. And that's why he was called that in the Comedienne Del Arte. He was the patron saint of Venice. He was a patron saint of Venice. So I think around the 16th century, Venetians were referred to as pantaloons or pantaleons. Wow, so a pair of pantaloons in those days just meant two guys from Venice.

Yeah, exactly. A pair of pants, my Italian mates. That's cool. So the merchant from Venice would just be a pant. Yeah, a merchant of pants. It's a whole different story. So what is the Comedienne Del Arte theatre thing that this comes from? So this is like a Renaissance type of art.

It was an old play and a lot of the modern day kind of art comes from there. So clowns come from there. The harlequin was one of the characters and the modern day clown comes from that. Punch from Punch and Judy probably comes from there as well. And a lot of... Scaramouche. Scaramouche. Of Queen Femme, the character from the Comedienne Del Arte, isn't he?

That's right. So Andy, you wouldn't exist without it in your current guise, which would be a relief for many. My parents met at a Comedienne Del Arte reunion. No, what do you mean? It was originally called the Comedienne Del Improviso because it was turning improvisation into an art. And so people who are professional actors would do Comedienne Del Arte, would do this improvised thing. So they'd be these characters like Scaramouche or like Pantaleoni, but they would make up according to their character in each different performance what was happening.

So you could promise that every performance would be different but equally tedious. That is just modern improv. Did people do that? Shall we just say that Andy is in a very successful improv troupe called Ostentatius, which you should definitely check out. And they are extremely funny. Yeah, some of them. Andy aside.

Six out of the seven members are winners. Yeah. But yeah, it was what professional actors would do. So amateur actors would be given plays that they would just memorize and then they'd recite them. But proper professional actors would be the ones who were allowed to do this special improvising. They were allowed to live in a world where improvisers got the kudos of actors. It is totally unbelievable. So I think that trousers or pants were invented because King George IV was so fat.

Really? Do you reckon? Wait, underpants or trousers? Oh no, so this has been a matter of contention in this office, hasn't it? So I'm talking about pants, which are trousers to us. So you're talking about how people used to wear britches rather than trousers. Is that right? Yes.

So people wore britches or britches and then trousers started being worn around the turn of the 19th century. And this was at the time when George IV was about to take the throne and he was massively fat. So his favourite breakfast apparently was two roast pigeons, three beef steaks, a bottle of white wine, a glass of champagne, two glasses of port and a glass of brandy. That was just breakfast. He was fat and drunk. Yeah, that was breakfast. That was his favourite breakfast.

You might have your favourite every day. You might have that a few times a week. It's like you don't have crunchy nut cold flakes every day. No, exactly. It's when he was treating himself. So he was gigantic and he found that this new trousers that people were wearing or pantaloons people were wearing were a bit more stretchy, had a little bit more give for the 28 stone man. And so he started wearing them and then it sort of took off from there about 18, 14.

Is it true that the Duke of Wellington was once banned from a club for wearing trousers? Like he tried to go in there somewhere in London and they wouldn't let him in because he was wearing trousers. Oh, I remember that story. Were you not allowed trousers? No, because everyone wore britches rather than trousers and they were just seen as like this. It's like wearing a shell suit. Well, the ancient Romans said that the trousers were as the mark of a barbarian people. Did they?

Yeah, because trousers go way back. Sort of proto trousers if you like. Your trousers do. So they was definitely BC and it's really interesting. They basically were developed in societies which did a lot of horse riding because it's much easier to ride a horse wearing trousers than it is wearing a robe. Yes. I was reading about a bunch of different interesting underpants that are out there on the market at the moment. This one's not actually on the market.

I don't think quite just yet, but it should be. So these are four schoolchildren designed by schoolchildren. There are two boys who used to get wedged a lot. So they invented the Ripperway 1000 and it was a Velcro pair of boxers. So they'd just come off if somebody tried to give you a wedgie. I mean, that is in a way less good than just having, because at least with a wedgie, you know you still got your pants. I mean, you know more than you ever knew before. Yeah, that's true.

But Kudos for them developing something new. Yeah. Well done for being a bit imaginative kids. Yeah. Streakers have Velcro trousers, don't they? Do they? Yeah. Stripers do.

Yeah, but streakers as well. They probably get them from the same place. Maybe. I think a lot of them develop their own because you have to get out of your clothes really quickly. You can't hang around if you're a streaker and doing your buttons and stuff. You have to go for it. You have to get them all off in a few seconds and then you're away. I agree with you, Anna, that they probably get them from the same place because it'd be a bit weird to have a shop which sold this kind of thing,

but you only sold it to either streakers or strippers. No streakers. I was looking also into the most expensive underwear. So Y-fronts. They actually, they're a really interesting sort of golden ones that you can buy. So then I thought, okay, so that's Y-fronts. I'm going to look into boxers and see what the most expensive are. And I read the wrong list.

The most expensive boxer is Floyd Mayweather Jr. But that's interesting to know as well. There was a pair that was sold, these are historical pants, so they're a bit different, but there was a pair sold quite recently for £10,500. Any guesses? Napoleon's. Not right era. Queen Victoria's.

Queen Victoria's. And they dated, they dated the rough age of the pants by the waistline because they have good photographic evidence of when Queen Victoria was what size. These are 45 inches at the waist. So they know roughly what year it's from. That is so rough, isn't it? I mean, she was very big for about 20 years. She could have been 400 meters on the water.

She was, her girth was bigger than her height, wasn't it, by the end of her life. That's true. And I think those pants reflected that. Yeah. But the report on them said that they were sold to an English woman who was a private collector and did not want to be identified, but she assumed the pants would remain in England. It's good. Sometimes you have to buy a piece of art for the nation, don't you?

You really do. We're all very grateful to that person. I read a very good story in 14 times, the latest edition of 14 times. The headline being squatting in skinny jeans is dangerous. So if you squat in skinny jeans, you can actually cut off all of your circulation of blood. Oh, right. Yeah. So a lady, doctors issued a warning after a 35-year-old woman was found lying in an Adelaide street in Australia

unable to stand after spending hours emptying cupboards and lifting boxes. Her calves were so swollen, they had to cut her out of her skinny jeans, because that's how crazy. So yeah. It sounds like she had the wrong idea of her own size. I think she might have been one of those people who's buying a couple of sizes too small. Well, you do with skinny jeans because they often stretch. You can get those jeggings. Do you?

Well, you buy jeans that are too small for you. Yeah, slightly. I did wonder why you looked like that every morning. While we're in Australia, I read an article about the most popular terms for underwear in Australia. Oh, yeah. But I thought, do you want to have a quick game? Let's see if this works. Do you want to have a quick game of Australian words for underwear or Australian words for animals?

Amazing. OK. I'll read it out and you have to say whether it's an underwear or an animal. Bobblies. Animal. Animal. Underwear. Underwear.

There it is. Fudger muggies. Animal. Underwear. Animal. Oh, Annie, you are so good at this game. Underwear. Yeah, I'm smashing it.

Brogues. Animals. I'm just waiting to see what Anna says. Animals. Underwear. It's an animal. It's a type of crane. Three out of three.

And yabbies. Underwear. Animal. Animal. Yeah, Dan, you knew that. I knew that one, yeah. It's a type of inland crayfish. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the end of animal or pants. Can we put a theme tune in that afterwards? Definitely. Right. Animal or pants? You used to be able to get paper pants in news agents. Did you?

Yeah. With the news on it? No, sorry. I just mean normal paper. I don't mean newspaper. Right. Was it if you'd lost your pants or if you'd wet your pants? I think so.

Okay. Because you know when you arrive at an airport on a holiday and your suitcase doesn't turn up, then you get given paper pants by the airport. I've had that. I lived in paper pants for about five days. Really? Yeah. On my gap yard.

Wow. Five days. Was it the same pair? I think they gave me two or three. I don't think they gave me enough for the number of days I had to wear them. Wow. If you've had to get paper pants because you've wet your initial pants, paper's not the best material for someone who has a track record.

And I think you would go commando in that situation and the word go commando comes from... Commando's in the army don't wear pants. No, it's not that. It's just always being ready and it's like a, I think it's a sexual thing, like you're always ready because you're not wearing pants. So the commando's are always ready? So the commando's always ready and if you don't wear pants, you're always ready for sexual action.

It's not necessarily true. Is it not? No. And I can attest to that. I feel like these are sexual action. Most women didn't wear pants until the 19th century, did they? They not. They went commando for many hundreds of years, no.

For a reason? Well, they wanted to be always ready for sexual action apparently. It was actually pants were frowned upon really in women before that and were very rare and were thought to be mainly for sort of courtesans and such like. And I think bras were worn before pants mostly or bras were popularly worn before pants. Wow. I found out a fact about cod pieces, which is that they used to be used as pockets. Yes.

Oh, yeah. There is a paper online which examines the evidence for and against it, but it's not publicly available. So I haven't been able to get hold of it yet, but some people say it probably didn't happen and other people say yes, definitely people kept coins and other little odds and ends in their cod pieces. That from one of the armory's experts at the Tower of London told me that. That's a pretty good source.

Yeah. But a cod piece goes over everything else, right? Yes. That's fine. It's on the outside. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's a pouch. That's the pre-pouch.

But you'd be a bit worried if you saw someone next to you at the theatre, you saw them rummaging around down there and they said, oh, no, it's just my cod piece. I'm just getting out some money for an ice cream or something. Yeah. It's like a sporen, isn't it? People rummage around in their spores all their time. It's not always. But spores aren't shaped like penises.

That's the other thing, I think. That's a good point. Cod pieces. I thought they look a bit like surgical masks more than anything. What? They are sort of just like... What? So that's also what penises look like, isn't it?

Yeah, they're green and they're made of cloth and certain's wear them on their faces. Yeah. No. What? Wait, so you're saying it's shaped like... I'm saying that you can get cod pieces which are little sort of, they look like lumps, basically. They're like a life, right?

Exactly. Yeah, they look like a SARS mask. It's just like a... So when you had your appendix out, did you say to the surgeon, you take that copies off your face? I can't concentrate. Yeah, there's plenty of money in there. I want an ice cream.

OK, time for a final fact of the show and that is my fact. My fact this week is that all new emojis are approved by one 63-year-old man. That's so good. Yeah, so this is a world of the internet that I didn't know existed. I've never thought where do emojis come from. I had no idea. It turns out that there's a big council that get together and they approve on what the new emojis are going to be that we have out in the world and the reason for that is obviously

something I hadn't thought of as well, that you need to have codes that are working on any kind of gadget, be it Facebook, to an iPhone, to a Galaxy, Samsung, whatever your phone is, they all need to have the same code. So basically it's this big group that get together. They're all volunteers from big companies like Google and Facebook and so on and they all vote on what they think should be a new emoji. So it's headed up by one guy who is the co-founder and he is the president called Mark Davis and his daughter and many people online call him the shadowy emoji overlord.

She made him a shirt so that he wears that around whenever he does conferences but he effectively has high command on the approval of these emojis. My liege, we must have a flaming poo. It's amazing. So Unicode is not in and of itself a very sexy thing. It's just sort of ensuring that computers can talk to each other and that characters mean the same thing in different codes and it's only really become this really fun, crazy thing since the rise of the emoji.

It's very peculiar. But they've been going since well before emojis. I think you've, did you say that it's called the Unicode consortium? No, I hadn't, yeah. And they release about 7,000 characters a year but only about 70 of those are emojis. The rest is for language. It's how do you get Chinese and how do you get any Arabic, you know, like all the languages. So that's what they focus on.

So there's 70 new emojis every year? Roughly, yeah. Yeah. So currently there's via these guys there are 1,624 and this is from an article that appeared a few months ago. So there will be new ones approved and some people come in with really high hopes. I was reading an article which kind of most of my research has come from actually. Liat Bardugo wrote this article called Two Days with the Shadowy Emoji Overlords.

And she said that there would be people coming with ideas and hoping to get these 10 new food based emojis approved by them and it wasn't looking so good and would it happen? Wow. Do you know, have you read the list of the emojis that are up for approval at the moment? No, I want to hear them. They're actually not as exciting and hilarious as I hoped, but so a few that were approved last year were the cheese wedge, the middle finger, a mosque, a synagogue and a clown face, which I think is quite a nice reflection of our global society.

And some that are up for approval, which will come into force next year, includes avocado, a scooter, a canoe, the modern pentathlon. Whoa, how does that work? It's a lot of very intricate little characters. A shallow pan of food, a rhino, Mrs. Claus and a selfie. I don't think we need an emoji for Mrs. Claus, do we? Oh, everyday sexism. Oh, I'm guilty of it.

Apparently they've become quite political, though, which makes sense. So there was controversy about the omission of tacos and burritos from emojis because they come from Japan originally. So they were quite heavy on emojis rather than tacos. Sorry. Burritos are not from Japan. Emojis came from Japan originally, so they were quite heavy on Japanese food, and then obviously they involve lots of Western foods now, and then it was realized that there weren't

very many Mexican foods involved. So now there are tacos and burritos, but someone pointed out that there are hardly any African foods, so you haven't got an injera emoji or a goat curry emoji, which is what they're all very worried about in Zimbabwe at the moment, I think. So here's the thing, anyone can be a part of this group and vote on the new emojis. Anyone can do it. Where do I sign up? Well, you can sign up.

You've got to just apply. The one full thing is that you need to become a member properly to do it for the vote itself. Sad face. And that's $18,000 American in a year. Very sad face. But so as a result, it is the big companies, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and then also odd ones like the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman. They're also a part of deciding on emojis.

That's nice. Yeah. Good. So you don't have anyone who's alive, like Justin Bieber? Yes, but if someone like Kim Kardashian has invented her own range of emojis, which she has, and lots of celebrities are inventing their own ranges, are those not official? They're not through this group. I see.

So that's just something that... And they're not going to be working on every platform, I'm guessing. Sure. Because there is a very exciting... There's a range of Kim Jong-un emojis, which you can send to people. Is there? Yeah. It was released in response to the Kardashian ones pointing out this is not the only famous

Kim on the planet. There's another Kim who's just as cheeky and just as determined to break the internet, although in his case it's by dropping bombs on the internet. Just on Kim Jong-un very quickly, did you guys see it's going around on Twitter today? There's a lady who's published a photo of her two kneecaps. One looks like Kim Jong-un and the other looks like James Corden. Yeah. And they do.

They do. They look exactly like... Really? Yeah. It's hilarious. Can you not think? Yeah. Okay.

So you wouldn't have been able to recognise James Corden. I don't have knee blindness. So Finland apparently is the first country to create emojis out of national symbols. There are three and I bet you can guess them all. Herring. No. Buggers. Sauna.

Yes. A naked couple sitting in a sauna is one of them. Oh. A Nokia. Yep. Nokia 3310. And the third one is... Snow.

The flag of Finland. No. Because that's... A kind of fish? No. It's a headbanger making a devil horn sign with his fingers. Cool. Which apparently is a sign of Finland.

See, I would not know that. That's taught me more about the country of Finland than I actually already know. That's true. Yeah. Well, this is emojis becoming the new language as we are constantly told before they're coming. Yeah. Have you seen that Moby Dick has been translated into emojis? No.

Emoji Dick. Emoji Dick is what it's called. Oh, wow. So, it begins now instead of call me Ishmael, it begins telephone man with moustache, yacht, whale, okay sign. And I'm halfway through and it is gripping. That sounds great. That's a really fun idea.

I think that sounds awesome. I don't think anyone will ever read it. I know, but the activate is just cool to know that that exists. I read a list on... Have you guys ever read The Daily Wire? No. No. Because I didn't realize what it was.

It's actually a very right-wing publication. I didn't realize when I opened it. So, I was looking up ridiculous emojis and so I saw the heading a list of ridiculous emojis. So, I clicked on the article. The full title is a list of ridiculous emojis forced down your throat to help push the left agenda. And it's about... It's just an article railing against the climate change emoji.

They're very angry about that. Very upset about the gay marriage emoji. Very upset about the safe sex emoji. It was a really disappointing article. What's the climate change emoji? What's it look like? I'm not sure if it's actually happened yet. I think it's been suggested.

Yeah, I think it's been suggested. It's comparing pretty much the largest, most complicated system on the entire planet and compressing that into a few pixels. That's a tough emoji. That's tough. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's just like sunshine, sunshine, sad face.

Aubergine. So, we should... And that is why you are not on the board with the emoji designers. So, there is a thing. So, Apple and Samsung will have a different poo emoji. There is an emoji for pile of feces. They pick how to design it, right? So, the Apple one has a face on it, right?

But the Microsoft one doesn't smile and it doesn't have a face. It is just... Because the code for it in Unicode is just pile of feces, right? Yeah. And someone wrote to Microsoft talking about this. Whereas Apple designed... There's a Japanese thing called a lucky golden poo, which you could buy. And you've been able to buy that for years and years and years.

And it's a sort of lucky poo. So, someone wrote to Microsoft and pointed out that the pile of feces emoji looks just like the soft scoop ice cream emoji, unfortunately. And Microsoft replied saying, it is a little unfortunate that the pile ends up resembling soft serve. But we feel that people have specific intent when they use this emoji and the risk of it being confused or misused as soft serve is very low. So, the way you distinguish between ice cream and poo,

if you're with an Apple product, is the poo is the one with the face on it. Yeah. Whereas the way you distinguish between the two, if both are in Microsoft, is the ice cream is the one with the cone. Can I tell you something that I think you'll really like, Dan? Yeah. I was looking into smiley faces, you know, because the smiley face emoji is probably the most famous.

And there is a smiley face under Stonehenge. What? I think this might be the oldest known smiley face. So, they did what was the largest ever geophysical study a couple of years ago, analysing the Earth Below Stonehenge. They did this survey and they've revealed all these pits in different shapes, under Stonehenge, which were made at the same time. So, they're from about 2500 to 3000 BC.

And one of the shapes is a very distinct smiley face with the round circle for the head and then the grin for the smile and then the two dots for the nose. Really? I just learned support to the theory that it was an early centre for rave culture. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.

If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things we've said over the course of this podcast, you can get us on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. James. At Egg Shaped. Chazinski.

You can email podcast at qi.com. Yep. Well, you can go to knowsuchthingasafish.com. That's our website. We have all of our previous episodes up there. You can also go to our group Twitter account, which is at QI Podcast. We all use that. We'll answer your questions if you have any.

We will be back again next week with another episode. Thank you so much for listening. Goodbye.