No Such Thing As A Fish - 135: No Such Thing As Queen Of Clean, The Sausage Machine

Episode Date: October 14, 2016

Dan, Anna, Andy and Alex discuss animal babysitters, supermarket laser tag, and the best party in the history of the world.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Alex Bell, Andy Murray, and Anna Chesinski. 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.

My fact is that scientists have developed barcodes for zebras. Not zebras. They've also developed a separate and identical system for zebras. Not zebras. They've also developed a separate and identical system for zebras. We'll get on to how to say the name of the thing in a bit. But this is a team of scientists at Princeton, and

what they've done is, this is a particular species of zebra called the Grevy's zebra, and it's the rarest of the species of zebra. And they've persuaded volunteers to take 40,000 photos of different animals. And the scientists have then used this software on them because they've all got completely unique stripe patterns. And it combines barcode technology

and facial recognition software. And so you can now identify an individual animal from it. Leven Skyra, who's been on as a guest, he has a show in Belgium and one of the games, because when you go to a supermarket in Belgium, they give you a scanning gun to take around now. So you can just scan as you go along the items and then you hand the scan gun in at the end and then they tally up what you have to hand in your badge as well. So he convinced the supermarket in allowing him to have him and his friends have barcodes

printed up on t-shirts and they ran around the supermarket like laser quest and we're trying to scan each other's shirts and they had to collect all the kills as it were very yeah very cool game at the end they're like well i got three zebras it's it's really i had no idea this is how it works but each gap and space combo is a number and so each digit is a combination of seven black and white bars. So to say one in a barcode, it's white, white, black, black, white, white, black

You put those all together so it's slightly thicker white and black bits and that is number one. It's kind of like Morse code. Did you read about the guy who invented it and how he came up with it? Well it was several people who kind of developed it but one of the people in charge of developing the idea was a guy called norman joseph woodland and he was thinking about it when he was at the beach and he uh drew a sort of morse code pattern in the sand sort of by doing dots and dashes uh poking them in the sand

and then pulled down those dots and dashes into bars and came up with a barcode but then the developers turned it into the shape of a bullseye so the first barcodes were actually bullseyes oh yeah they took up loads of space didn't it so it's actually much more efficient to just go with the long line yeah um you know that guy joe woodland who you just mentioned yeah it's one of the pioneers supposedly he came up with the idea indirectly because of the atlantic city mafia go on Okay, so he got the idea when he was at Drexel University in Philadelphia and he was doing a master's degree there. And he hadn't originally wanted to do a master's. He wanted to start a business where he made a music system for Lyfts.

And he wanted to set up this whole firm. And his father said, no, the mob control the music at Lyfts. You in Atlantic City or on the east coast of the USA, you're not allowed to go into that because they'll get you. So instead he went off and did a master's and came up with a barcode instead. What a weird industry to decide to control if you're the mafia. I think they had a whole range. It wasn't just lift music that they controlled.

That feels like it was really like the mobster's baby brother. They needed to give him something. Have you seen that in Venezuelan supermarkets since last year? You've had to scan in your fingerprints to get to buy anything. Because, you know, Venezuela is going through a very horrible time at the moment and there's a lot of food shortages. And so the government's had to ration stuff and people have been panic buying things. Like they'll just buy in loads of grain or loads of cigarettes or whatever it is they think the country is going to run out

of um and so in order to stop them doing that supermarkets have installed fingerprint scanners and when you buy something you have to get provide id you have to give your name your address your date of birth and you have to scan in your fingerprint so they can make sure that you haven't been over buying whoa if you just want a loaf of bread um i was looking into other animals with codes on so uh in um 2010 farmers in summer be painted qr codes onto their cows um so that to try and raise awareness of their website uh this is dairy farming.com well it's worked oh my god best website ever i spent all afternoon on it it's really good there's videos of new dairy farm technology there's a there's a farmer's dairy diary, which I quite like.

Did you read it? Yeah, I did. Yeah, there's a cow of the month as well, a little profile on the cow of the month. That's really good. And there's also what it's like to live as a cow, and you can follow the journey of milk. It's a really good site, genuinely.

I'd recommend it. So the cows are writing the diary? No, the cows make the videos. They put cameras on the cows, and then the cows go around and make videos. Really? When you say make videos, what, the cows then go and... They don't edit or do anything like that.

They just gave a cow a video camera. They did that recently. Did you see, there's a small island. I can't remember where it is, but Google Street View has not got to them yet. And they're quite furious because they've learned that Google Street View is a fantastic way about getting tourism because a lot of people just go, wow, this place looks amazing, we should go. So they've attached cameras, their own cameras, to the heads of sheep and goats

and they just have them walk through and they've been taking photos. So this whole island's being mapped by sheep now. But all sheep do is eat grass. So presumably all you're seeing is this place is full of grass. That's true. Full of real close-ups of grass. And also sheep follow each other.

So you're just going to get a lot of the same pictures. Just a lot of sheep's bottoms in grass. That's true. Full of real close-ups of grass. And also sheep follow each other, so you're just going to get a lot of the same pictures. Just a lot of sheep's bottoms of grass. Tourism has plummeted. And also unnaturally low down as well. Yeah. It's not practical. Also on barcodes, embryos are going to get them.

They're developing these at the moment, and this is to stop baby swap disasters, because there are always a few news stories every year where people end up with the wrong baby. are going to get them. They're developing these at the moment and this is to stop baby swap disasters because, you know, there are always a few news stories every year where people end up with the wrong baby. The barcode doesn't go on the embryo.

It goes on the egg. It goes on the egg or on the sperm. On the actual... Wow. On the sperm. Oh, barcode of sperm. Well, they're on it.

It'd be a nine-meter scan apart from anything else. It kind of goes off 500 million times. Not anyone at one. Here's the thing about barcodes. When they were introduced in the 70s, I think the first item bought with the UPC, which stands for Universal Product Code System, was a bit of chewing gum. But it was really hard to introduce because obviously you need hundreds of products to have barcodes in order for it to be worth anyone's while.

And also they didn't used to come on the packaging. So you used to get the food into the shop and then you would have to stick on the barcodes. The shopkeepers had to glue them onto the boxes and then you could scan them. I mean, that's not really that weird because a lot of reduced foods in supermarkets come with a fresh barcode. That's a good point. But people were frightened of them initially. because a lot of reduced foods in supermarkets come with a fresh barcode for the reduced price. That's a good point. I'm sure of that. But people were frightened of them initially.

In the 70s, people thought that they'd be blinded because there are lasers involved. Oh, yeah. Blinded by the scanners. By the scanners, not by the barcodes. Yeah, if you scan a barcode, that's a bit... Yeah, but it is quite alien, isn't it? If you're used to someone just ringing up goods at the till

or a label which says 50p, this weird... I'm not frightened of them. I'd like to make that very clear. It was the 70s. We'd landed on the moon. I don't think witchcraft. People running out of supermarket screaming. The devil's in there. No, we'd landed on the moon before we had the barcode.

That's weird. That is odd. It feels like the moon landing is the last thing that we should do. I'm not sure we should have landed there yet, even. Funny that you mentioned the devil, because the universal product code is part of a big devil conspiracy. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It begins and ends with some sort of easy identifying lines so that the lasers kind of know where the code begins and ends. And that resembles a 666 on either side. No, there is. There's a 6 and a 6. There are three 6s throughout the barcode. They're not quite 6s. There are 6s as well in the barcode, obviously. But at the beginning, they're just markers that look like 6s.

They're not quite 6s. And the guy who developed the product code, George Joseph Lara, has got a section on his website where he addresses this constant accusation. He says, there's nothing sinister about this. They resemble sixes. It's simply a coincidence, like the fact that my first, middle, and last name all have six letters. If you'd like to ask me anything more about this, sacrifice a lamb on your lawn at midnight. He does say, I will not be answering any questions of this as of

October 2000 or something. There's a section on his website. Like the video that, do you remember Ringo Starr? Peace and love. Peace and love. Peace and love. I'm not answering any more fan mail as of this date. Peace and love. Peace and love. The thing is, I genuinely believe that Ringo Starr gets quite a lot of fan mail, whereas I really struggle

to believe that this man is just inundated. Or if he is, it's the same two mad people and he can just block their addresses um i was trying to look into how zookeepers identify different species of animals say they have a bunch in the cage and what do they do to do that sometimes they have training to teach them the difference between say a rabbit and a giraffe exactly it need the better resourced zoos, though. And I didn't find anything. But this is the only reason I wanted to mention this, is that there's a great hashtag that you can find on Twitter, which is hashtag ZookeepersProblems.

And it's just really fun because zookeepers around the world just put up their problems. So a few I have here. From Yummy Tease, at Yummy Tease. I have way too much lemur pee in my hair right now. From Jillian Erzar, at Jillian Erzar. Punched in the vag by a tortoise. Hashtag zookeeper problems. How slow is Jillian?

Zebras cause the most injuries to US zookeepers zookeepers more than any other animal are those injuries caused when the zookeepers mispronounce their name so egregiously just like andy did earlier yeah because i think that's fair what did i say hey zebra that's gonna be the only kind of the only kind of feedback we'll get about this episode is people saying why on earth does andy say zebra yeah is it a problem it's going to be. Believe you me. Potato, potato, zebra, zebra. Yeah. Zebra?

No. No, doesn't sound right. So why are they injuring? Because they're wild animals, but people think they're like horses. So I think that it's just you're more likely to be injured. So have we not domesticated the zebra? It's impossible to domesticate a zebra. They're really...

In fact, there's only one person I found who managed to even slightly domesticate a zebra. They're really... In fact, there's only one person I found who managed to even slightly domesticate them, and that was Walter Rothschild. Have you heard of him? Yes. He is an amazing man. He was late 19th century, early 20th century. He was a zoologist, naturalist.

He had the most amazing collections of animals. He collected tens of thousands of butterflies. He was a Rothschild from the banking dynasty, the Rothschilds, so he was seriously wealthy. He didn't care about any of the banking stuff. All he wanted was to collect animals. And he had a carriage harnessed with four zebras,

and he rode it along Piccadilly and into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. Oh, I think I've seen a photo of that. Yeah, it's one of these historical photos that gets trotted out a lot i'm surprised that um we still haven't it seems to be one of those evolution questions that we haven't solved yet of why they have the black and white my favorite theory i just can't believe this is that it cools the zebra down because air might move more quickly over the black uh bits of skin which absorb light and then more slowly over the white stripes which reflect it which might make little convection

currents around the zebra to cool down i cannot i cannot believe that's true well i i mean first of all i think that god slash darwin is looking down on the zebra debate and going you guys are overthinking this so i just thought it would be fun. The theory that God slash Darwin is looking down right now. Only one of them will be looking down right now, if they're right. In fact, it's either both of them or neither. Oh, that's right.

Sorry. So you are right. Yeah. Okay, it's time for fact number two and that is Alex. My fact this week is that Agatha Christie was once turned away from a party held in her honour. Nice. I think we've all had that. Yeah.

Was she too drunk? No, she was too shy, actually. That was the problem. So this is in April in 1958. The Mousetrap, which is the play in London that is based on the book that she wrote, became the longest-running production in the history of British theatre, so most performances ever.

2,239 performances. And there was a big party in the Savoy Hotel, and so she turned up, all dressed up, and went to the party room, and the guy at the door didn't recognise her. And she was so shy that she just got very embarrassed and went and sat in the lounge and had a drink by herself for most of the evening. She'd been asked to turn up early, hadn't she, by Peter Saunders, who was the producer of Mousetrap, who said, avoid the press by turning up early and you can sneak in early.

And I think when she did that, she couldn't get in until the party actually started oh so she did make it into the party she did get into the party yeah because i read an account in the british newspaper archive from the stage newspaper in 1958 and it was an account of the speech that she made and richard attenborough actually gave this interview about what she'd said and she just stood up it was one of the shortest speeches in theater history she said well darlings i think we'll get a few months out of it so yeah which is weird because at that point she'd already got 10 years out of it um in 1972 to exacerbate her shyness there was another party held in her honor because there seemed to be constant parties held in honor of someone who was very shy it's like a form of torture um but in 1972 uh she turned up to the

party and she forgot her false teeth because she was in her 80s at that point and so none of the guests were allowed to speak to her except her very closest friends because she didn't want to open her mouth. And did that cure her shyness? Does it cure your shyness if nobody speaks to you? I suppose it might do because then you have to go and speak to other people. Can you imagine? You're a shy type.

You've plucked up the courage to go to your party. You know everyone's going to want to talk to you and you haven't brought your fucking tea oh man yeah it's a tough moment it's a tough moment so um i was reading this mousetrap um uh play when she died the rights went over to her grandson matthew pritchard and there's been this big thing where he's been in a bit of a fight with Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia often, whenever they put a novel or anything, they'll often do a really detailed plot analysis of what goes on. And Mousetrap famously has a plot twist right at the end. And it's up there.

And so he's been trying to get them to take it down. And it's very funny because even on the Wikipedia, they now acknowledge that he's trying to do it. But so he hasn't won. Wikipedia says this is just information. It stays up there. But it's interesting

this plot twist because the plot twist Hang on, wait. I'm not going to say it. But the plot twist has become famous for being a plot twist. And so I for one

know what the plot twist is because of people saying oh there's this famous plot twist where this happens. I've never actually experienced the actual twist. And I reckon the majority of people know, oh, there's this famous plot to where this happens. I've never actually experienced the actual twist. And I reckon the majority of people know what the twist is without ever having actually had the twist happen to them, which is a shame.

I don't know what the twist is, so I'm not going to go on the Wikipedia page. I kind of feel like it would be sporting of them to take it down. Well, there is, surprisingly, or rather unsurprisingly, on Wikipedia, there's a page you can go to with huge discussions from all the Wikipedians about

the attitude they're taking towards spoilers. That sounds like a really fun reading on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Yeah, I mean, it depends on the role of an encyclopedia, doesn't it? Is the role of an encyclopedia to tell you everything about the ending of all plots? Or is the role of an encyclopedia

to pique your interest so you want to know more? No, I think it's the first one. To find out what zebras really are, you'll have to come and see the stage show. Do you know how she described herself? She said she was a sausage machine. Sausage machine?

Why? Not a sausage party vital difference no she was this was at a time of her life when she was writing two books a year

she said I'm a sausage machine a perfect sausage machine there was one year where I think she wrote seven books plays collections of short stories

right yeah insane so if anything she's a mystery novel machine rather than a sausage machine I think but I think it was a metaphor rather than her actually just describing what she is a writer and that was what made her so

brilliant as an author is she never you know she sometimes would not literally describe the things she was what i love about her novels all those sausage similes yeah all the time is that the plot twist in the manuscript yeah the lead character is a sausage all along it was in the drawing room with a sausage i like the idea of her at the press conference where she's giving the interview saying, the thing about me is I'm just a sausage machine, a perfect sausage machine, and every single journalist trying to suppress that snigger

as they wrote it down. Especially saying it without any teeth in as well. Do you know where she did a lot of her writing? On paper? On paper? On paper and in Iraq I didn't know this Her second husband was an archaeologist And a really eminent archaeologist

And she went out And did a load of digs with him So there are loads of stories happening Exotic archaeology dig sites and that kind of thing Or there are a fair few at least Which do and that's why She was a very keen archaeologist wasn't she in the second part like she herself got into it as well as her husband yeah she said to her she said to her husband there's a sort of famous anecdote where she says i just wish i knew a bit more about this kind of pottery stuff and he

says do you realize you know more about this ancient pottery than any other woman alive in the world today because it wasn't really studied by women at the time. Right. It was quite a closed shop. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. If you go to the British Museum,

you can see a bunch of artifacts that he uncovered. I think he made a particularly important find in Nimrud, which is an ancient Iraqi city. He found a bunch of sort of 3,000-year-old artifacts, and they're in the British Museum because she cleaned all his artifacts. You can go and see stuff that's been cleaned by Agatha Christie. That is so cool!

Isn't that cool? So the British Museum says the reason these have probably been preserved so well over the last 100 years is because they were perfectly cleaned by Christie. They called her the Queen of Clean. They called her the Sausage Machine. Queen of Clean, the Sausage Machine. I was looking into other people who've been turned away or kicked out from their parties

Nirvana kicked out of their own Nevermind release party what did they say as they walked away it's really odd though because you read what they did when they got there basically they started tossing around a watermelon and they effectively started a food fight and they were told to leave the release of their album.

That's a pretty hardcore food fight to start throwing an entire watermelon. Yeah, that's true. I can understand if it was lobbed at someone's face that that might be. Start with mashed potatoes or something. I've got a fact about parties. Yeah? There are schools in Japan for how to have a party. Oh, no.

Yeah. Oh, cool. Because it's not really the done thing, because most people live in very small homes, so you don't really have parties where you have loads of people around very much. So there is this group which has been set up called the Home Party Association,

which teaches you how, and there are three levels of certification. First one, you just have to send them about 22 quid and pictures of a party that you have thrown. Second one, level two, you have to attend five hours of lectures in how to throw a party and you have to write an essay

and that costs about 200 quid. The third one costs about 450 quid for all the training and you have to successfully host a party attended by the examiners of the school. Oh my god. Get this, get this. The failure rate is 90%. Whoa. No shit.

Any party attended by examiners is gonna be crap. By definition, inviting your teachers to a party ruins it. Oh my god. What they should have taken tips from is the party of the century in the 20th century and I'd never heard of this but it's this party that apparently is the party of the century it was in 1951 it was thrown by

someone who was known as charlie who was heir to some great mexican silver fortune and it sounds incredible and it's been remembered in great party history great party law um as the greatest party ever thrown. And so... You said a bunch of stuff there that doesn't exist. Great party law. The great party law. The big book of famous parties. Mentioned at every party.

It's a great encyclopedia of party legend. I never throw a party without reminding all my guests of the greatest party of the century in 1951. If you guys had attended these Japanese lectures, you'd be highly familiar. What was it like? What happened at this great party? So this is what happened. It took place in the Palazzo Labia in Venice.

Oh no, okay, it sounded good. You weren't wrong. It was called the Bal Orientale, or the Bal Oriental, depending on which pronunciation is correct. So sorry, an oriental ball inside a labia yeah that's correct yeah the host wore 16 inch platform shoes so uh he was six foot ten so he towered above all of his guests he changed his costume 16 times throughout the evening um and the roof of the place had a garden designed by dali and dali actually did attend dali attended and christian diali attended and Christian Dior attended,

and they came dressed up as each other. That was just a fun little trick. It was a costume ball, but Orson Welles' costume didn't arrive on time, so he had to wear just a normal suit, which is very embarrassing for Orson. He came as himself. That's quite a good costume for a party.

Yeah, he should have just claimed he wasn't Orson Welles. Daisy Fellows was there he was a very famous uh i think journalist um or socialite at the time and she it was the first time anyone had ever worn leopard print so she started the trend for wearing first leopard print in the in the west it was the first time you know a western person had worn leopard print this party is sounding better and better yeah isn't it so many people threatened to be clear patcher that it had to be up to the host to settle who was going to come as a clear patcher anonymous phone calls someone going to be clear patcher at your party um americans who hadn't been invited because it was so famous it was happening uh they sailed over and arrived in the lido nearby in their yachts just in the desperate

hope of getting an invitation so there were all these wealthy people's yachts parked in nearby coastline and Lido's just in the hope that they get it. Doesn't it sound incredible? I've never heard of it. But who's Charlie? Just a super rich guy. No one really knows anything more about him.

That's amazing. It sounds kind of Great Gatsby-esque. So Great Gatsby. Was the period of... Gatsby-esque so great gatsby what was the period of is that 20s really um truman capote threw a party as well which uh was to tie in with the publication of in cold blood and that apparently uh in america was the big party uh of 1966 um yeah so um it was dubbed the night capote made 500 Friends and 15,000 Enemies because the invitations were so coveted.

The idea that he was saying no to people to come to this party created more enemies than the people who ended up coming, liking him. And everyone wore masks, so it was, you know, no one who knew who anyone was there. Frank Sinatra was there, apparently. Lauren Bacall, apparently. No one knows. They had a mask on.

The only person without a mask was Andy Warhol, who just decided not to wear a mask because he's so arty. And yeah. That's like when Bryan Cranston went to Comic-Con and he wore a plastic mask with his own face on and no one recognised him. That's really good. It's funny.

Are we sure Jim and Capote didn't just invite a few thousand randomers off the street, put masks on them, take photos, and then point at the various photos going, that's Frank Sinatra there? Skepticism from the woman who told us this cock and bull story about the greatest party in 1951 ever told. I just don't like being faced with this Capote competition. Salvador Dali once said,

I am never alone. I am used to being with Salvador Dali always, and that, for me, is a permanent party. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Chudzinski. My fact this week is that different species of dolphins babysit each

other's children. So this is some research that was done a while back and reported in the marine mammal science journal and it's about bottlenose dolphins and spotted dolphins and how they work together and they do loads of stuff together and one of the things they do together is leave their children with each other so when dolphins dive deep to hunt squid for instance their kids young dolphins can't dive that deep so they leave them with someone to care for them and these two species it's the first instance of species um properly cooperating in this way it would be great if you could get an animal babysitter just for your kids

what kind of animal would you pick to babysit presumably not dolphin not ever either but yeah well dolphins are very well qualified if you give the kids armbands and drop them in the sea, then get a spotted dolphin to look after them. No, I don't... They're a bit sexy towards any human they come into contact with, aren't they? Dan speaks from personal experience. I don't know.

Anytime I've read about people with dolphins, there always is a sort of weird humping going on. I feel like you want to tell a sexy dolphin story. No, no, no. I just, anytime

I've read about dolphins... Oh, okay. But then maybe I shouldn't be Googling those particular keywords. Yeah, I think you're hanging out in the wrong section of the library. Do you know that dolphin nipples are secret? Even they don't know about them. They're hidden.

They have these abdominal slits, and the nipples are kind of inside the slits, the mammary slits and the the nipples are kind of inside the slits are the the mammary mammary slits they're called and also the penis of the male dolphin is the same it's in a slit and it sort of it can poke out but it can retract within the slit as well so it's not how convenient external yeah i read an article title that was called dolphins have scary hand-like penises and did you read that as well well i, but I've read a debunking of it. But you say, what have you... No, I just, they have a retractable penis.

And the idea was that they use it to find things. If they're near a sort of a surface area, they'll use it like humans in the dark use hands to find their way around things. Oh, so it's not... I'm afraid that's not quite true. I've read a thing by a science writer called Justin Gregg, who's a bit of an expert on these masses.

And there's a myth that dolphins have prehensile penises, and that doesn't really make any sense, because prehensile, like prehensile tails, which can be used to grip and grab things and wrap around things, they can extend it and they can retract it, and they can bend it in different directions to help with mating. But they probably can't pick up keys, for example. That's enough if you give someone directions with that kind of...

You could give someone directions with it if you really tried hard, yeah. Oh, so that's not too far off. It's not too far off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is an interesting thing. They have such control because dolphins, like whales, they have pelvises because they evolved from land animals

which got bored of being on land and went back into the sea, right? So all the muscles which attach to their penis and give them this control so left, right, in, out, that kind of thing they are directly attached to the pelvic bone. And one scientist said it's like operating a trick kite where you pull two strings

and pulling left and right makes it go in a loop-de-loop. But I don't think... That's quite a specialised... I don't think dolphin makes it go in a loop-de-loop but i don't think wow that's quite a specialized i don't think dolphin penises can do a loop-de-loop you're talking about the secret nipples it's really interesting how the babies drink the mother's milk so they have a tongue that they can turn into like a little straw you know when you kind of like loop your tongue over and some people do that yeah oh yeah like that they do that and their tongue has little fingery things on the end that kind of go into the nipple and act a bit like a zip, like they kind of latch on

to make it a little bit of a seal. Because it is difficult, because they're drinking milk underwater, so it's liquid and liquid. Oh yeah, otherwise it would seep out. Yeah, exactly. And it's got the consistency of milkshake, apparently, the milk. And yeah, it lasts about 5-10 seconds. But it smells of fish. Imagine a milkshake that smells of fish.

I imagine everything smells of fish in the ocean. But can't they only taste salt? Ooh, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I think that is true. They lost all their other taste buds to that. And they lost the sense of smell. They used to have it when they were on land. And then, obviously, in water, you don't need to smell the air.

And then their nostrils moved above their head to become the blowhole. I want to know about the middle of that process where the nostrils were moving north. The orphan adolescent stage where they had their nostrils in their forehead. The unicorn look. It's bizarre, isn't it? It's so bizarre. You know, dolphins' grandmothers sometimes feed them. And they employ wet nurses, I think.

It's underwater. They're all wet nurses. I think it's underwater they're all wetness there's a theory that male dolphins can tell when female dolphins are pregnant they take we know they take a special interest in females when they're pregnant and there's a theory that's because they have capability to use ultrasound so that they can do without make an appointment at a sonogram. Do they see them and go, oh, it's a boy. Don't tell me. I was trying not to look.

I feel like we quite, in dolphin-esque, that would be quite rude actually to look at someone else's baby. Don't look inside my wife's stomach. It's like having x-ray specs all the time. Yeah, but just for babies. Imagine taking your wife to the ultrasound and it's just a dolphin. You'd be like, oh great, we're in good hands except they're not

we have this impression that dolphins are really nice but some dolphins some male bottlenose dolphins kill newborn calves which is not nice why do they do that? they do it, it's really grim actually they do it because it frees up the females for mating.

Because if a female has a newborn calf, she will be looking after the calf for some years. She won't be interested in having any more offspring. Whereas if the males have killed off the calf and within a few months she might be ready to mate again. Do they have to, I don't know if we would know this, but do they have to do it sort of behind, while the mother's away on a trip?

No, on a trip. On a holiday. Well, babysitting's going on, presumably. They just kind of mob the mother, and so the mother will try and protect her calf, and often will succeed

in protecting her calf from the males and get away with them. Yeah. And then the mother's fine just to mate with that dolphin again. They get over it, don't they?

Pretty fast in the animal world. They've got to procreate. It's not a healthy family situation. It's not. I think, actually, I think bottlenose dolphins might be the bastards of the dolphin world. Because, actually, this initial fact was about bottlenose and spotted dolphins looking after each other's children.

But the only instance they found is of spotted dolphins looking after bottlenose dolphins' children, not the other way around. And, actually, there's quite a lot of instances as well as them cooperating with each other species wise, bottlenose dolphins will just force their way into a group of spotted dolphins and start shagging the women in them

and there's nothing that the spotted can do because they're half the size. Yes. Yeah. They just take their women. So actually they're kind of bullies. Bottlenose bullies. There's evidence in marine research centres that kind of bullies. Bottlenose bullies. There's evidence in marine research centres that kind of manage large areas of water with lots of species in

that when dolphins get bored of all the human toys and things that they use baby sharks as volleyballs, which is definitely bullying. Well, that's how dolphins kill baby dolphin calves. They toss them out of the water or they will hold them under the water too because dolphins need to come up for it. Have you guys heard of a wolfin?

It's a whale dolphin. Half whale, half dolphin. It's amazing. How big is it? Is it a massive dolphin? It was in between the size of the two. Because it was a false killer whale there. I think they're slightly smaller than killer whales.

It must have been so bad for it though. It's just so awkward. Like, who do you hang out with? You're way too small for the whales and you're way too big for the dolphins Sell it to Pixar Sell it to Pixar, Alex Okay, time for our final fact of the show

and that's my fact My fact this week is that Sylvester Stallone's mum is a bum reader That's a bit harsh That's no way to speak of her. This is something she is very proud about, according to her website, which she has taken down, and we had to search very hard to verify.

This is the kind of fact you get when James Harkin is away for a week for the podcast. It's what slips through the net. I know. This is my only chance. This is called Rumpology. Why didn't they call it astrology? Oh, nice.

Yeah. Okay. So for anyone who hasn't heard of rumpology or astrology, the newly coined. If indeed those people exist, surely everyone's familiar with the art. What they do is rumpologists look at people's bums and they make predictions off the back of the creases,

off the back of any there's one i don't do you have do you have to spread like how much detail is this well depends how much how far into the future you want to see your future is very dark but yeah so i was reading about this i i actually found out about this because um i was emailing an author called David Bramwell, who wrote an incredible book called Number Nine Bus to Utopia. And he's also the maker of a podcast

and a live show called The Auditorium. And so he puts on these nights and he had a rumpologist speak at one of his events. And I thought, what the hell is a rumpologist? Googled it, found out that Jackie Stallone, Sylvester Stallone's mom has done it and um she's done it to the point where even on her website again this is quite hard to verify because it's been taken down um but suggestions sort of little echoes of a past website through

reading on reddit and so on suggests this that she used to charge six hundred dollars and you would send a printed copy of your bum to her, and she would read your bum digitally, as it were. I love a printed copy of your bum. How does one print one's bum? Now, with 3D printing, you probably can print your bum. You probably can. Oh, I think that was the perfect excuse for all the office parties, whenever someone was caught sitting on the copy machine.

No, no, no, I want to know about my business prospect for the next year. But according to Wikipedia, Jackie Stallone has claimed to predict the outcome of presidential elections and the Oscar winners by reading the bottoms of her two pet Doberman pincers.

So it doesn't, it works on animals as well. Yeah, she's reading, she's reading animal bums. And it doesn't seem, it doesn't, so it's one thing to send your picture of your own bum

and get your own future. But for some reason, these two dogs have the future presidential elections in them instead. How does that work? Sometimes they're just born lucky. What are the odds of her having those dogs as well? Yeah, amazing. Dan, you briefly read out from the Wikipedia on rumpology just there, which is surprisingly restrained, actually,

in what it says about this ancient art. But I did want to read out one paragraph from it. The American astrologer Jackie Stallone claims that rumpology is known to have been practiced in ancient times by the Babylonians, the Indians, and the ancient Greeks and Romans, although she provides no evidence for this claim. Stallone has been largely responsible

for the supposed quote marks revival of Rumpology in modern times. It's the most sceptical paragraph I've ever read about anything. It's going in and out of vogue as well. Yeah. I wonder if the ancient Romans would have spent their time on it. Just to clarify how you print a

bum, because I just feel like people are going to have been wondering, and she does tell you, did you see what she said you can do? No. You can henna your bum and then you sit on a piece of papyrus she says because i guess she's trying to enhance the ancient origins of this practice so you sit your henna newly wet hennaed ass on a bit of papyrus and then you blow it dry or whatever and send that off to her and she can read the imprints doesn't even need the physical that is fantastic. It's like potato prints but with your arm.

It's very skilled of her not to need the original bum. It's amazing. Isn't it incredible? Yeah, I guess that's what you pay your $600 for, don't you? Where do you get papyrus these days? Is that in Ryman's? Is that readily available? Yeah, you're right. It's hard. It's next to the 80 GSM.

Papyrus. Papyrus is really good, though. I mean, it lasts a lot longer than our paper. That means all the paper from our time, this current bit of history, is going to go, except for these bits of papyrus that just have ass prints on them. Little is known of the civilization of the early 21st century, but they accurately predicted every single thing that has come to pass.

So here's the thing. The ancient Babylon uh also believed that you could predict the future um and they believed it was by the liver that was the part of the body they thought was really significant and but how do you know which bit of the liver means what and they had a model liver so you would kill a sheep get out get a special priest get uh the liver out and you would kill a sheep, get out get a special priest, get the liver out and he had a special wooden liver or there were even some special bronze livers and it says look if this bit is discoloured this way then

you're an alcoholic. Yeah, it's hepatology. No, sorry, not hepatology. I'm sorry, that is the medical study of the liver. It's not hepatology. I think that's going to be the thing that gets most feedback, not my zebra pronunciation earlier. I'm not getting liver surgery in the next 10 years.

I'm going to correct it right now. It's hepatoscopy, and it's a branch of haruspicy, which was the Babylonian and Etruscan study of various organs, which spelt out your future in some way. But yeah, it was really popular, wasn't it? A common way of telling the future. And in fact, a very famous example of Haruspacy was in Caesar, Julius Caesar. So do you know the way the Ides of March was predicted was because of this practice?

Beware the Ides of March, famously, that Julius Caesar was told to do, and he was told this by a Haruspacist, who is someone who looks at the entrails of animals to tell the future. So I think it was the entrails of a sheep which informed the Haruspacist to tell Caesar to beware the Ides of March.

And that was recorded by, I think, Suetonius. So here's the thing. Isaac Newton himself did a lot of future predicting. Yes. And he was very interested in learning about the nature of God. It's so contrary to the modern image of him. He devised a chronology of all the great events before his life and then he did a chronology of the future as well.

So he predicted a thing called the Tribulation of the Jews, and he predicted a thousand years of peace are going to begin in 2370. And part of it was based on the life cycle of the locust. I mean, it was seriously out there. No, but that's also quite scientific in a way, the idea of taking a load of data and trying to find trends

based on kind of things that happen. No, that's the kind of thing that conspiracy theorists do. It's not scientific. It's taking a load of data and making it find the trends that you want it to find, I think, or find... There is a scientific edge

to making future predictions on, say, you know, what's going to happen with climate change based on past data. Like, that is science also. There's good ways and bad ways to do it, but it's two sides of the same coin.

Yeah. I was reading about one of Thailand's leading fortune tellers whose name is Luck Rakanithes, and he says that the tellers whose name is Luck Rakanithes. And he says that the fact that his name is Luck, which means luck in English, is complete coincidence. There was an interview with him recently where he runs this system now, which is more like a call center, where people just literally ring in and they get their horoscopes or they get told what lottery numbers to choose or whatever.

He's a multi-multi-millionaire, so hundreds of thousands of people call him every month. And the way he did it was he just memorized a bunch of astrology books when he was a child and then regurgitates it. But he spoke to Channel 4, I think, in the last couple of years, and Channel 4 asked him how he finds it, just reading people's futures and telling them what's going to happen to them.

And he said, i want to change my life i'm not kidding i'm so bored of going places with people shouting teacher look at my palm tell me my fortune he's basically completely well i don't think he ever believed it but he's now gone these people are all idiots who are asking me what's going to happen to them and he acknowledges there's no point in asking me if you're going to get rich you need to get rich using your own brains i can't tell you what's going to happen to you. You actually have to just go out there and make it happen for yourself. You should sell that device over the phone to people.

Perhaps he is, yeah. I don't think he'd make much money. Press one for an angry rant. Press two. 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 that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on Shriverland. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Alex. At Alex Bell underscore.

And Chazinsky. You can email podcast at qi.com. Yep. Or you can go to at QI podcast. That's our group account. Or you can go to nosuchthingasafish.com where we have all of our previous episodes. We'll see you again next week. Goodbye.