No Such Thing As A Fish - 167: No Such Thing As Milk From A Yak

Episode Date: June 2, 2017

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss the growing Tibetan butter sculpting crisis, how to email a tree, and what to do with the world's hottest chilli (hint: don't eat it).

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 and I am sitting here with Anna Czazinski, Andrew Hunter Murray and James Harkin and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting with you, Czazinski. My fact this week is that Tibet is suffering from a shortage of butter sculptors. Are they?

Yeah, this is people who make sculptures out of butter. When you say shortage it means they must have some of them still. They do have some. But they must need a lot of them. I'm not sure that's the case because if you had none you could still have a shortage. It would have just been extremely severe shortage. I think that's when it starts being called an absence. Yes.

Yeah. So buttersculpting in Tibet is very popular and it goes back a really long way and it's part of their Buddhist celebrations and so in the biggest Tibetan Buddhist festival which is called the Mon Lam Festival then the largest day of it is like the day when they light all these butter lamps and they make all these butter sculptures and it's a way of celebrating Buddha and Buddha's victories. Yeah. Because he sounds a bit like butter.

It's exactly because of that. I can't believe it's not butter. Yeah. I wanted to laugh but I was laughing really hard inside there. It's got all the form of it. It's got everything. It's got everything. The reason I didn't laugh at it is because there is no such thing as I can't believe

it's not butter anymore. That's true. They changed their name. What? Yeah, they changed their name to I can't believe it's so good for everything. What? I'm not sure it is good for everything is it? No.

It's as versatile as they're claiming. But they might have been building houses. It's good for building statues. Yeah. Well, I can't believe it's not butter. Yeah, maybe. I don't think that's the reason you didn't laugh. No.

It's a supplementary fact. Actually, I think it is because when you said it, that was what was going through my brain rather than what a great joke. So they specifically use yak butter as opposed to cow milk. Is that different? Is it more like model? It's yes, exactly. It's a solid substance.

Yeah. It's a lot thicker. Is it? Yak butter generally is used for most things in Tibet. I was talking to my auntie Bettina. She lived in Tibet. And I, as a child, I went to Tibet in 1994 and it was my friend's birthday up there and we had a yak cheesecake.

It was made from yak butter and yak cheese. We couldn't get the knife into it. It was so hard. The chef was experimenting with new uses of yak for these southern Western meals. So they also had yak pizza that they were trying to work on as well, which was using yak butter as well. Although, when you say it's used for most things, I think that is a bit like, I can't believe it's not butter, saying it can be used for everything.

Yeah, slightly butter. I mean, do you ride on yak butter? Well, according to Bettina, my auntie, she said that it would be used in place of, say, blue tack. So I guess like yak tack. Wow. A blue yak. Blue yak, sorry.

Do they use it medicinally? They use it as moisturizer. Okay. Yep. And they also, my auntie said people used to use it and she did as well as a barrier because the winds would be so painfully cold as they were hitting your face that it was a sort of, sort of like masking device to stop the cold wind from. So it's like as a balaclava.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a moisturiser balaclava. Sometimes though, a lot of it, a slice of bread will blow into your face and I'll just stick there and then if another one hits you the other way, you turn into a sabbath. It's a real risk that you'll be picked up and eaten. They use it for their main tea as well. Yak butter tea is a traditional drink. Is it nice?

I didn't, I didn't have it when I was up there. I think I've had butter tea. Have you? Is it for, I'm sure there's some fermenting process that goes on. Yeah. Does it have an alcoholic? Well, they put yak poo in it because the way, they do, they do, because the way they get the tea is off a block of tea and it's sort of...

What do they do? They give you some yak butter tea and they go, would you like poo with that? Just half a poo. No, but we're the same because I always, when I have a cup of tea, I put a bit of cow manure in there. What it says is that to bind the tea particles together because they will be chopping, scraping the tea off a compressed block of tea and it would be all bitty and too much. It feels like your auntie is setting you up for a really good practical joke when you

go there. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. She gave me so much information and she said as well, by the way, her name, Bettina, is an anagram of Tibetan, which is quite cool. Oh. Yeah. And she said just yesterday, they moved house.

They have a folding table that they had in Tibet when they were living there and they haven't unpacked it for many years. It still smells of yak butter because they used to just have blobs of it on there. I don't know why. So butter has been used medicinally in the past, hasn't it? And they used to think. I was reading this in a book called A History of Food and it didn't give a specific date. It just said, until quite recently, it was thought that if you put a pot of butter next

to a sick person, it would absorb their disease and they would recover. You do get people putting butter on bruises, that's a thing, is it? No. Yeah. The ancient Egyptians used it. Okay. They would put a bit of butter on a bruise with some powdered mummy. Really?

Yeah. Why were they using powdered mummy? I think they just had a lot of mummy to use up. Right. It's like, oh, we've got so much rosemary, we'll have rosemary and everything. I was reading an article that interviewed Elaine Kosrova who's a historian of butter and she thinks that it was like a magical, holy thing because no one really knew how it was made.

Sure. I mean, so you would get some milk and you'd put it in some animal skin or something like that and then the right kind of bacteria would have to be there for it to churn and turn into butter. But quite often it wouldn't work and people wouldn't know why it wasn't working. And so sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and they thought it was magical for that reason. Oh, really? Oh, well, that's so in Iceland, I think they, Icelandic people used to pray to the God of

blacksmiths for better butter because in a similar way they didn't know how it was made and they thought it was like gold because it just had that goldy shine and so they thought let's pray to the guy who's responsible for metal because he'll sort out our butter shortages. I can't believe it's not better. You're really pushing this joke out. You'll be a surprise to one of these moments. Do you know where else they have the big butter statuary industry is? Massive in America.

Yeah, I didn't know about this. No, I didn't know about this and everyone in America watching us will know absolutely about it. Butter statues. Oh, butter statues, sorry, right. State farms and state fairs and things and they always have massive butter sculptures and they had, well, there's one woman who just recently retired. She did it for 50 years in Iowa.

Every year she just made a cow out of butter and they reused the butter as well. Really? What to eat or for more statues? No, for more statues. Oh, really? They put it on ice in between so they don't have to use another 100 kilos of butter to make a cow. Wow.

This started in the 1800s in America where they would make things not just out of butter but out of lots of foodstuffs so they were making loads and loads of foods because the land was so good for growing and there was one where they had this thing called Serial Architecture where someone made a palace out of corn and grass and stuff like that. They made a Liberty Bell out of oranges and they made a life-size knight out of prunes. It's like a weird childhood fantasy world. I think it's to kind of show off that they've got all this amazing, all this juice and we've got so many prunes we can waste some of them by making them into a knight.

Yeah, because the person who started it I think was a woman called Caroline Short Brooks who was this really famous sculptor in America and so she displayed her sculptures at the World Fair, she has this one called Dreaming Iolance which if you look it up it's really beautiful. How did she get them to the World Fair? Would she sculpt them there or...? Yeah, she sculpted them there and the problem was she wanted to use her kind of butter and she had to get it all the way to Europe because the World Fair was in Paris I think.

But the problem was she couldn't keep it cool so she needs to find a boat with enough ice in it so she eventually found one and took her ages. She got it onto this boat, got all the butter over, like 100 kilos of butter, got there and the World Fair had already finished. No! Why? I thought you said she showed it at the World Fair. It must have been a different one.

It was a different one. So did it go off or something? Did it go off? Yeah. The fair? No, the butter that she had once she... Well I don't know what they did with it once she got there. I can't believe it's not better.

Um, anyway. You know, yak milk should actually be called neck milk. Hmm. Why not? Because the yak is a male. Yeah. The neck is the female. Really?

You can't milk a yak. Can't milk a yak? No you can't. No you can't. If you think you've milked a yak, that's not milk. You're going to be pranked. Time for fact number two and that was my fact. My fact this week is that you can email any one of the 70,000 trees in Melbourne, Australia.

Okay. Cool. An individual email to any one of their 70,000 trees. Have you done so? I have not. No. I'd rather think you should have done so. Well what have people had though?

So what happens is this was a project that was set up in 2013. The idea was that every single tree got its own ID number because they wanted to if you lived near this tree and you saw it being vandalized or you saw that it was in any way dying, you could report this tree by sending an email to the tree and then someone would pick it up. Report the tree. It just sounds like the tree is in trouble. The tree is in trouble.

It's not in trouble. Well yeah. Do they call it tree mail or? They should do yeah but as far as I know they don't know and this is a project called the Urban Forest Visual Project and they set this up back in 2013. So instead of calling it tree mail, they called it what? The Urban Forest Visual Project. I think they need some help with that.

It was set up back in I believe 2013 so it's been around for a long time and what ends up happening is very occasionally someone from a big newspaper or a big online magazine finds out about this and then they write an article and then people start flooding the trees with emails. But how do they deliver the emails to the trees? They print them out. That's pretty messed up. Can you imagine?

That's like sending to the tree. Yeah. That's like sending like getting a ransom and sending someone their friend's body part and writing the ransom note on that body part. It's like getting a flat of skin saying hello I think you're great written on it. Yeah. It's your skin. Well but then that's isn't it like trying to heal a bruise by dropping some powdered

you on it. Yeah. Like mummies. Yeah you're right. No we don't get away scot-free on it. But yeah so the idea is they each have this individual ID number and people do send them emails. There's one that says my dearest Olmas.

As I was leaving St. Mary's College today I was struck not by a branch but by your radiant beauty. I always get these messages all the time. You're such an attractive tree. That's a bit creepy though. That's a bit odd. Yeah. Like if I got that email and they substituted tree for human I think I'd be pretty creeped

out actually. And imagine how pretty that would be if you were literally rooted into the ground so you can't even run away. That's a good point. Can you get a restraining order as a tree because I think they should invest in some of those. Well maybe they do. Maybe the restraining order is against someone who's graffiti the tree.

Yeah. Imagine if someone came up and wrote a love letter on your body when you've never even met them. Imagine if someone tattooed into you that they liked somebody else. It basically what happens. Yeah. I've got on tattoo on my shoulder saying Danny for Emma for Emma. But then also you could go even further and say imagine if someone took your body, pulped

it up, added water, squashed it down and then got a pen and wrote a love letter on you and then sent it through the post. Yeah. That'd be pretty screwed up. I'd be happy that I'd had a new life as a different form. It's like being reincarnated, isn't it? Every tree is reincarnated as a book. As a book.

Yeah. You can look at it that way. It's like saying that you get reincarnated as a corpse. I can do. But I don't get used as a corpse. I think you need to be used in order for it to be reincarnated, don't you? If you were used to me. I thought it was that you come back to life.

I thought that was the whole point of reincarnation. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Not that there is a use applied to the body. Yeah, because if you donate your skeleton to medical science and they use it in classrooms and universities. Yeah, I've been reincarnated as a teaching assistant. Teaching assistant.

But these trees have been mainly getting non-helpful environmental emails and just love letters from people, haven't they? They have, yeah. Or really self-involved letters. So there was one that, seeing as it's supposed to be about the trees, but someone wrote, Dear Greenleaf Elm, I have exams coming up and I should be busy studying. You do not have exams because you are a tree. I don't think there's much more to talk about as we don't have a lot in common, you being

a tree and such. But I'm glad we're in this together. Chiz, F, she signed off and then a few days later another email came through. Well, sorry, when she did F, do you think that's what she actually got in her exams? Well, she was sending emails to trees that whole time. Sorry. She hadn't got the exam results yet, obviously because she was still taking the exams, but she did then send a follow-up saying, Hello Greenleaf Elm, it's me again, brackets F.

I just got my marks for last semester back on a definitely completely unrelated note. How do you deal with the constant relentlessly, soul-crushing pain of disappointment after disappointment that characterizes our life on earth? You must be very old, right? So I thought you might know. Yeah. So I think maybe she did get an F? Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like it. Sounds like it. The figure. Sorry, go. Well, I just think she's got a very high opinion of herself if she thinks she's the only person in the world with an F as an initial. Do you remember me? F.

Yeah. The person who's ever emailed you with that initial. You're right. These trees are popular. They do. They're not popular. Oh. Come on.

Mmm. That was strong. They do write back sometimes. Do they? Yeah. So someone wrote, Well, I'll refer you to The Guardian. The Guardian wrote to Ginko Maiden Headtree in Fitzroy Gardens and it replied saying, Dear Oliver, thank you for your lovely words.

I am very well. Enjoy your day. I feel sincerely. Tree 1441724. Well, that is going against council regulations actually because the guy called Mr Woods who's running this cafe. Mr Woods? Yeah.

That's true. He's called Mr Woods. That's great. Have you got a problem with that? No. That's astonishing. I wrote that down. Didn't notice that.

Thank you. Whenever you try and visit him in his office, you can't see him. For all the trees. So Mr Woods said that while these emails are highly amusing, the team remains vigilant in making sure they only reply to authentic requests, which sounds like that wasn't because as he said, the whole point of this project was that it would be no cost to the council. So they can't be wasting taxpayers' money spending their entire time replying to these mails.

Well, that's true. I've got an example here where someone wrote a willow leaf peppermint tree ID 1357982. It said, hello, Mr Willow Leaf Peppermint, or should I say Mrs Willow Leaf Peppermint, do trees have genders? Regards. The tree wrote back, saying, hello, I am not a mister or missus, as I have what's called perfect flowers that include both genders in my flower structure. Kind regard, mister and missus, willow, leaf, peppermint, bracket, same tree.

So they do send back stuff about education. Is that the whole point of this then? Is it an educational tool? No. I think maybe the replies will be, but it's genuinely for the fact that they want to use citizen reporters for the maintenance of their tools for resigning. So actually all is resigning. Lots of the trees in Melbourne are going to die of old age over the next 20 years or so,

about 40%. And so they need to replace them and maintain them on the ones they've got quite carefully. So what you do is they have a map and it shows all the trees in Melbourne. So if you're walking through Melbourne and you see a tree that's damaged and you click on the icon, all it does is it sends an email to the council and the subject line is information about tree XYZ. And all the little icons are either red amber or green, aren't they? And the red ones are the ones that are going to die soon.

Oh, really? Yeah. Because the Atlantic article I read about this story said that this is obviously ways for people to sort of get you invested in things in your country or in your city that have problems in Hawaii. They have tsunami sirens and they have an adopter siren thing. So you go to a map, you see where you live next to one. Do you get sent a photo of it every Christmas?

Exactly the same. Doing so well. Still flashing. You go, you test it and stuff. You have to sort of be responsible to make sure that the maintenance of it is still okay. I thought you didn't have to. I looked on the website and it said if you choose to, it's called adopt a thing. And they say if you choose to adopt a thing, you're under no obligation and have no responsibility

to actually report problems with the thing. Wait, so what are you doing? For it. I think you just give a bit of money. Just give money. Right. And you get to say in parties I adopted a tsunami warning. Yeah.

Which is pretty cool. Not if the place gets hit and you didn't give a warning. That's true. Yeah. And you're kind of... Well, it's not that you have to give the warning. I guess you're relying on the sirens. Yeah.

It's not like a jobs one where you go and stand on the coast looking worried. The siren goes to the party. What's your name? So on an element of objects and sort of personifying them and getting into contact with them. There has been a study done recently which shows that if you are lonely, you are more likely to see inanimate objects as being human-like. Oh. So you'll start carrying a hello, Mr. Cushion or whatever.

Yeah, right. But these microphones really do very close to resemble a beautiful man, I think. Don't you think? Sure. A beautiful man, yeah. Is it that you're lonely so you make inanimate objects more human or is it that you're the kind of person who makes inanimate objects human and so you're automatically a loner? Well, I was asking my fridge about this the other day.

No, I think it's that if you don't have human relationships, you're more likely to name your mugs. But what I'm saying is it's possible that it's the other way around. Or that it's just self-perpetuating, I guess. So once you do that, you get stuck in a cycle, don't you? It's got your mugs mates. You don't need people anymore. Yeah.

I mean, it is obviously a thing, isn't it? It's like being cast away with Wilson, the volleyball, remember? Yes. It's exactly like that. If he had been there with 50 or 60 other people, he probably wouldn't have done the volleyball thing. That would have been, and then he would have been a real weirdo in that film if he had painted his face on the volleyball despite having a thriving society.

But then weirdly, he probably would have been outcast from the society and then he would need it to personify the volleyball. Yeah. You're right. I wonder what Teddy's for, because I'm very close to my Teddy's. Maybe you're close to the name to most people, but I don't think that counts me as like a person. Well, you wouldn't think that, would you?

But then people like me would think, yes, that is weird. Well, I think you're weird for liking women, okay? So I guess we all have our own weird thread elections. There's no need to get judgmental. But my wife is definitely a real person. Oh, you've thought that for years, haven't you? It's time we broke the news to you. She's just a coat rack, is she?

Yeah. I mean, she does wear coats very well. Did you know that in 1800s, then a lot of Americans lived in trees? Did they? Yeah, some Americans. Tree houses. No, inside trees. Oh, inside trees.

Yeah. I'd say that's technically still a tree house. Oh yeah, it's true. I suppose it is, but they need to rebrand themselves actually. Well, they did and they call themselves stump houses. Well, the houses didn't call themselves that. They didn't call themselves anything. They're just stumps.

Well, I actually think they have a bit of humanity to them. Actually, they had, because they turned them into houses. So, you know, houses look like a face because the window is at the top. I don't know. I've never seen that, but then I'm not lonely. You've got your clothes right, haven't you? I'm really sorry about that, Polina. She doesn't listen.

She's not real. So, in the 19th century, there was a lot of logging in America, up in the Northwest, up in Oregon, and Washington, and then into Canada. And people would leave the stumps of the trees that they were logging, because they're not that useful, because the grain's really uneven in the stumps, I think. And then a lot of people were immigrating to these places at the same time. And they would kind of turn the stumps into homes, because it was very cheap.

So, some people lived inside tree stumps, or they turned them into storage sheds. So, they became chicken houses, or pig pens. Sometimes they'd modify them and make them into dance floors, apparently. And they'd have stomp dances. Dance floors? That's pretty cool. Yeah, because if you get a big tree stump, they'd flatten it out. Because they are absolutely massive, aren't they?

Yeah. Which trees are these? They'll be like redwoods. Yeah, right. They'll be really big. Yeah, yeah. You know, ants farm in trees, and have been doing so for many thousands of years.

What do they farm? But proper farming. Proper cows. Tractors and stuff. Yeah. So, they plant... They farm fruit crops. So, they farm different kinds of fruit.

And basically, they plant the seeds. So, they'll be like a fungus, or a fruit crop, growing out of the slits in trees, or the slits in bark. And they'll take that, and they'll plant it, and insert it up further out the tree. And then they'll poo on it to fertilize it. And then it grows, and it fruits...

Like farmers, do you? Like farmers. They always poo on their crops. And as the plants grow, they form these big hollow structures that the ants live in. So, they're kind of turning their farm also into their farm house. And they can eat it as well. And then when it creates more seeds,

and they take these seeds, and they go and plant them further up the tree, and they have this permanently self-fulfilling farm that they run up trees. It's very cool. I do know a fact about farmers' bottoms. Yeah, go on. There used to be a thing where to test

whether the ground was ready for you to plant your seeds, you'd take down your trousers, and you'd put your bum on the ground. And if it was too cold, then you wouldn't plant the seeds. But if it was warm enough, then the ground was soft enough, and you could plant the seeds.

If only other bits of the body could sense temperature. I wouldn't have to do this. It's a bit like kind of gauging the temperature of a child's bath by putting your elbow on it. It's exactly like that. It's not exactly like that. No, because you wouldn't gaze the temperature of a child's bath.

Yeah. It's like when I dip my arse in my tea to see if it's warm enough. Oh, no. Yack dung for me. I brought my own dung. I've just got one thing on emails. So there were a team of scientists in South Carolina

who did a test. They went through two million emails in people's Yahoo inboxes. Don't know how they got access to it. Can imagine. Yeah, but they looked at the number of words that people sent through their emails per year. And it equates to basically writing a book,

everyone, if they're using it. It's not a good book. That is it. It's a terrible book. But yeah, roughly 41,368 words is what they said that we all... That's a short book. It's a short book.

It's a short book. It's a Mr. Men book. That's not a Mr. Men book. It's a Mr. Men book. It's a bit block, a Mr. Men book. It's a Mr. Verbeau. So if you're not recognise it...

It is a Mr. Men book. Okay. It is a book. Okay. It is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay. My fact this week

is that the world's hottest chili is not meant to be eaten. It's meant to be used as an anaesthetic. Mmm. Mmm. Is it like one of those fable things where it's like, oh, my arm really hurts

and then someone stamps on your foot and you're like, so distracted by the... It's actual... It can numb you, basically. Right. It's incredibly, incredibly strong. The idea is,

if you're allergic to normal anaesthetics, then you may be able to use this kind of thing. If you were to dentist, it would only anaesthetise the small amount around your tooth. Oh, wow. So it wouldn't hit the muscles. It would only be the pain receptors.

So it means that you wouldn't have that kind of thing where you can't talk properly. Yeah, yeah. Do they turn it into a gas or is that what they're working on? They're still working on that. Right.

It would be a chemical. So I suppose they would inject it. Yes. So how is it? Because obviously, usually what Charlie does is it ignites your pain receptors. It's not even a taste.

Capsicin is something which makes you feel pain. But yet this is numbing pain. Yes. So it's... Explain that, James. I don't know exactly how that works. But the way that capsaicin works

is there's a channel called TRPV1. And that normally is a heat channel. Oh, sorry. Okay. A lot of TV channels. A lot of TV channels. Not TV channels.

It's normally a heat channel and the body is tricked into thinking that it's hot when actually it's kind of spicy. Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird. Yeah.

It's not hot at all. It's not hot at all. No. So this, chili pepper. Yes. It's called Dragon's Breath. It's called Dragon's Breath, yeah.

And on this scale that they have, called the Scoville scale, it scores 2.48 million, which is extremely high. Yeah. So what that means is, because they've done it,

but they do the scale by how much diluting it needs. So if it's got 40 on the Scoville scale, if you dilute it 40 times, you will no longer be able to detect it. If you've got one drop of this stuff and 40 drops of water, you can't taste any more.

So this would need 2.48 million drops. And even then, you could still just about taste it. Wow. So I worked out how much that is in actual water. That's half a bathtub full of water. Really?

That's one drop. That's one drop. One drop into half a bathtub of water. That's how much you... You would only just stop noticing it. That means we're effectively, we're like sharks. Wow.

Yes. It does. If there was an animal that had chili sauce instead of blood. Yeah. And it was bleeding and we would swim in the water and we'd be able to detect them.

Wow. And then attack them. Does that mean if you drank one cup, let's say you put the chili into the water, does it go across the body of the water, as in if I got a cup full away from the bath and I drank it? I think so, yeah.

I mean, maybe... Maybe the molecules would have to... You'd have to stir it around a bit. Yeah, if you stirred it. If you just put it into that end and then you quickly... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bit like homeopathic chili,

this, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. This is amazing. So this is amazing. It's a guy called Wilbur Scoville who developed that. Yes, yeah.

He developed the scale. The scale. Not the chili pepper. Yeah. So this is now officially, according to Guinness World Records, the hottest chili in the world. And it's taken it away

from the previous world record holder, which was called the Carolina Reaper. And the Carolina Reaper held it for quite a long time. It was developed and bred. So I think some of these hottest chilies are all part of a breeding plan. And so, yeah,

Carolina Reaper was made by a guy called Ed Curry. No way. Yeah, Curry developed it. And they did a thing. He did an anniversary eating of one. They threw a celebration for it. So he just ate one raw.

And his quote, as he was eating it, sort of started normal. And then he started going bright red. His face, they say, was blood red. His eyes were watering. His quote has a lot of dot, dot, dots. So he goes, ah, I'm losing the ability to talk. Wow.

That's his official quote from his anniversary of the Carolina Reaper. It can make you lose, can't it? Yeah. Or it did. There was a guy called Ian Rockwell who in 2013 became the first person to eat a whole plate of the world's hottest curry.

It's called the widower. The reason he did it, he's a doctor. So maybe he should have known better. But the reason he did it was that his daughter... Because he hated all of his underpants. He didn't wear all of his underpants in one go. I bet I would. Do you not take your underpants down

when you go to the toilet then? Absolutely not, Dan. Don't be disgusting. Do you want to ruin that toilet? So this guy... Now, his motivation was that his daughter, Alice, brought a boyfriend home. And the boyfriend told, was saying,

was relating this story about him and his friends had tried this curry and they couldn't get through more than a couple of bites. And the dad was obviously trying to impress this boyfriend. So it was like, I bet I can do that all day. And he did it. And he actually said it was okay. So he said, he had to take a short break halfway through

because he felt really sweaty and he did start hallucinating. And people told him he started hallucinating because he obviously can't remember it. But aside from a few tears in his eyes and a short period of hallucinating, he was cool and collected and seemed to cope very well. I thought, was this not the guy who went for a walk halfway through

and started weeping and stuff like that? Was that him? He went for a walk halfway through because his eyes were watering. But I don't think he was crying with sadness. He was just crying. I was probably crying with joy about how impressed his daughter was with what he felt was kind of mean.

I can kind of understand that because when I first met my father-in-law who's Russian, we basically, we ended up drinking a lot of vodka which was almost like competitive vodka drinking. Did you say, I bet I can drink those three bottles of vodka. You just wait, Sunny. There was an implication there, I think, which was because in like, Russia and probably everywhere,

if you have a shot of vodka and you're doing it in a social way, it's basically I'm down in mine, you're down in yours kind of thing. And then it's another one. And then it's another one. And then it's another one. And then the next thing I knew I was invading Ukraine. Did you get so drunk that you stuck Polina for a hat stand?

So the weird thing, right, is that birds don't have any problems eating chilies, right? The loads of chilies often think really hot ones. They're fine. They don't panic. They don't lose pants. They don't really say. They don't cry.

That guy's son-in-law must be really impressed by it. He's probably a bird watcher. So birds hate it. Birds are fine. But mammals hate them, right? Most mammals. And obviously humans have developed the ability to think, oh, actually, I do quite like this.

But the theory is that the plants are using birds because the birds, the seeds go through them really fast and the birds poo them out and they spread the seed and it spreads the plant. Whereas mammals have digestive juices which destroy the seeds. So the plant has developed seeds and little fibres and things which mammals hate but birds don't. Maybe they do it so humans like it so that humans cultivate them.

I found a couple of spiciest foods and drinks that use chili in them. I found a bowl of vodka. So they use a chili which is the Naga Yolokia chilies. Have you heard of those? I've heard of the Naga ones because that's from Naga in India, isn't it? Right. I think they're the ones that, yes, I think they're from Assam and they were the hottest chili until 2007.

And they're a genuine hottest chili like they've been using cooking for hundreds of years. Yes, exactly. So they use that in a vodka and they on the Scoville scale are 250,000. So they're quite far down from your hottest, hottest ones these days which were in the millions, I believe you said earlier. It's quite interesting that chili because it's been really good for Indian farmers because it got that boost from the Guinness World Records. So suddenly lots of people were ordering in.

It's quite expensive and also now they're using it in crowd control. So they've started making the chili into a spray and they also farmers use it to repel elephants because elephants aren't birds, they're mammals, so they don't like it. Right. And so actually a lot of Assam's farmers... Hang on, sorry, not elephants. Dumbbell.

Oh, yeah. I was wondering if he might like chili. God, who knows? He's really on the cusp, isn't he? Because if you think about it, he could probably pollinate quite a lot of... Or he could spread seeds, couldn't he? Very effectively. Because they poo a lot, don't they?

Yeah, they do. Is that what Dumbbell was about, him spreading chili seeds? I've not seen it, but yeah. You've not? You've not seen Dumbbell? Dumbbell, great. Anyway, that's very cool. So yeah, being used by the police.

Wow. Yeah, because pepper stray is effectively chili, isn't it? Yeah. That dog that's trying to impress his daughter's boyfriend just waits till you see he flies to India, gets involved in a riot. Simon, are you watching? Maybe if he got shot by an arrow by the Aztecs because they used to put chili on the end of their arrows.

I read that the Aztecs used to throw chilies at their enemies and I thought that can't possibly be right. Apparently Japanese ninjas did. Throw chilies? Not chilies, but chili powder. Yes, okay, that makes sense. Chili powder, if you're close up, might be the trick. Yeah, because I thought it wouldn't be impossible

to get the chili into someone's mouth from a distance. It's impossible to throw a Malteser into someone's mouth from a distance. But don't they have to be compliant. So you have to say to your enemy, it's just a Malteser. Before the battle, can we take part in a traditional ritual and see if you can get the Malteser into the enemy's mouth? Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show

and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that one of Napoleon's admirals lost three legs in battle. Was he an animal? Was he an animal? Yeah, because sometimes people give naval ranks to animals. He was a spider. So he was still able to lead a fulfilling career.

Fairly noticed. What's his story? His name was Georges René Lapléville and he was a French admiral and he lost his right leg in a battle and then he lost his wooden leg in another battle and then he lost his replacement wooden leg in another battle. So did you lose anything else?

No, I think it was very lucky. Imagine your luck. That's like bowling. Well, it's not lucky to lose your first leg. No, the next two are lucky. For a while he spent his time sailing around in a ship called the Brilliant. That's so cool. That's awesome.

Very good. I should say this fact was originally tweeted by a guy called Peter Campbell and it was sent in by Ryan Goodman. So thank you to both of those guys. Another person to lose their leg in the very same battle was Lord Uxbridge. Quite famously lost it. I think it's in Britain, so as I'm not, I didn't grow up here.

I don't know if this is a famous encounter but when he was talking to the Duke of Wellington as soon as, and he lost it by cannibal as well, there's a line where he says, by God, sir, I've lost my leg and then the Duke of Wellington says, by God, sir, so you have. And apparently that's a thing that's taught in schools here.

Have you heard that before? I've heard it before, but not in schools. It's just an example of great British restraint and stiff upper lip that blatantly didn't happen ever in history. He actually did something that seemed to be quite common. He buried his leg, or his leg was buried in the garden where it was cut off

and a little tombstone was erected, wasn't it? And that seemed to be quite a common thing, so a few people did this. It's said that that's where the original inspiration for One Foot in the Grave came from. Yep, that's obviously not true. Pretty sure that would be when you're in the grave, both your feet are in there,

so you're almost in there. Yes. No, but you'd say both feet are in all my body and stuff in the grave when you are there. So it does make sense to say One Foot in the Grave. If you buried your leg, yeah. But then why not one leg in the grave? That's a very good point.

Yeah, I'll have a chat with myself about the origins of that later. But they did, there was a thing, so they got in a big row basically over the leg because the family who owned the house where the leg had been left and buried made a little living from displaying it to people and showing it around.

And then, 60 years later, his son visited the house. He thought, I'm going to visit my father's leg and he was horrified to discover, supposedly, that it was sticking out of the ground because it had been unearthed by a stalk. It was a really bad neck. Like, foot up. You were trying to climb his way up.

I can't quite believe it. You kind of hope it is foot up, don't you? Like, the foot at least would be... That's true, isn't it? It's closed. And that's where the phrase One Foot out of the grave originated. He said, right, I want my father's leg back because he really made a hash of looking after it.

And they said, no, we want compensation and they didn't let him have it and there was a, you know, there was an impasse between them and then, eventually, they just kept hold of it and then in 1932, supposedly, they burned it. They burned it? What? Just so that he could never get hold of it out of spite?

I don't know. I don't think so because that was even, like, 60 years after even the initial row, which was 60 years after the battle. But you were just burning bone, right? Can you burn bone? I don't know. I don't know. That's the story. Do we know why they did that? Like, as in, obviously, they were,

I can see what we're saying. They're doing grand gestures towards the legs, but why did people bury their... I think it was partly because it was to show how important they are and this thing is so vital and also because it was quite a mark of pride in the 19th century, I think,

during the Civil War and the Revolutionary Wars. If you lost a leg, that showed you were really manly. So it was more for veterans of war as opposed to... It was never a big thing. Yeah, because you were celebrating the end of your leg. It's where the word legend comes from, leg end.

Yeah. That is true. Yeah. Is it? Yeah, well, we'll leave you to work that out. Just have a little bit of Googling after this show, why don't we? I so believe it. Do you know what... Sorry, this is something that's very cool.

Do you know why flamingos are so stable on one leg? Because you always see flamingos standing on one leg, don't you? Always. Yeah, you do? Yeah, you do. Yeah. Is it because they're used to it? No. Oh, because you would think, because they do it all the time. Yeah, I'm sure they are used to it. That's not the reason that they can't.

Is it because they welded onto a platform? Yeah, they're all law-law elements. Yeah. No, it's not that. Okay, I'll tell you. So a couple of biologists, they're called Yang Huichang and Lena Ting. They've studied this just now, right?

And they were trying to work out why flamingos are so stable because they know they're so stable. And they discovered this by writing to some zoos and doing experiments on flamingos. And they would put them on a little plate, and they'd measure the forces that the flamingos would put down on the plate

to see how it's adjusting. And then they wrote to another zoo, which had just had a couple of flamingos which had died, and they said, can we have your flamingos, please? And then they propped the flamingo up on one leg, this dead flamingo, and they found that its leg locks perfectly just on one leg,

and they're more stable on one leg than they are on two. What? Because when a flamingo stands on one leg, somehow all of its tendons slot right into place, and it can just stay like that for ages. Why couldn't they lock both legs directly in place and then stand

at the same time? So what's the advantage in only standing on one leg? Sometimes they're standing in cold water and they may not want to lose heat through both legs. Sometimes they get frozen in ice. I've read that, I've also read once that they said that they have it

so that there's fewer legs for fish to bash into. Yeah, there's just no one telling which of these is more or less plausible. They're all very plausible. Like say if you're in a battle and there are cannonballs flying everywhere and you're standing on one leg the whole time, then you're less likely to get your leg

locked up. So it's not to stop the fish from hurting themselves, it's to stop their legs from getting hurt. Okay, well, alright. I've got one last thing on cannonball war and so this is not about legs, it's about hands. There's a guy who was a knight in Germany

in the 1500s called Gotz and we know him as Gotz of the Iron Hand. Have I told you about this guy before? Gotz of the Iron Hand was this badass knight, he was amazing and during battle when he had originally both of his hands there's two theories.

One that a cannonball sound freaked him out, chopped him slightly and he lost control of his massive sword and the sword went back and he chopped off his own hand. The second theory the second theory is that a cannonball took it off. More likely. What happened is that they replaced his hand

with a prosthetic hand which was made out of iron so he became Gotz of the Iron Hand and it had sort of joints in it so that the knuckles could hold the stirrup of the horse that he was riding then could hold around the sword and he was so famous that he published an autobiography

and it was translated into a play by Goethe who wrote this whole play about Gotz of the Iron Hand which is still published in Germany, very famous and there's a line in it which is thought to be either real or just Goethe was inspired by his badass nature

which is the most famous line in the whole play which in English is translated as tell him he can kiss my ass and that is still a slang put down in Germany today but as a direct derivative of Gotz of the Iron Hand

So wait, is that where we got kiss my ass from? It doesn't feel like it I can't believe it's not Goethe Ohhhh There we go End the show Okay, that's it, that's all of our facts Thank you so much for listening

If you want to contact with any of us about the things that we have set over the course of this podcast we can be found on our Twitter account I'm on at Shriverland, James at Eggshaped, Andy at Andrew Hunter M and Chazinski You can email our podcast at qi.com

Yep, or you can go to our group account which is at qipodcast or you can go to knowsuchthingasafish.com which is our website, it has all of our previous episodes on there, it's also got a link to our book which is coming out November 2nd going through October and November in the UK That's all from us now

We'll see you again next week, goodbye