No Such Thing As A Fish - 255: No Such Thing As A Bouncy Asteroid

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss skimming meteors, snowy bacteria, and incorrectly formatted declarations of war.

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 am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Anna Chazinski, 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, Andy. My fact is that when Britain declared war in 1914, they accidentally did it in the wrong format and they had to swap the letters, otherwise Britain would not technically be

at war. Wow, what kind of format was it? I don't know, I don't know if it was in landscape or in some kind of... What they declared with a painting. Or emojis, I don't know, I have no idea. But this is from an article in the Times Literary Supplement, which is great by the way, highly recommended, and there was a British diplomat called Harold Nicholson who was working at the Foreign Office, and one day he was told, we've declared war on Germany, but we screwed

it up, and we sent the letter which doesn't quite say the right phrase, I think. I think what it was, was they thought that Germany had declared war because they intercepted some thing over the radio waves, but actually Germany hadn't declared war, and so the letter said, we accept your declaration of war, but what they actually wanted to say was, we declare war on you. Because Britain was obliged to go to the defence of Belgium, and Germany had violated Belgium territory, and so, yeah, so... That's a sort of, you can't follow me, I quit situation, isn't it?

It's very much like that. Yeah, it's like getting a text message saying, I'm having an affair too, and then you have to withdraw that. And just say, I'm having an affair. It's like getting the text message saying, I'm having an affair, and then your spouse says, I wasn't having an affair, what are you talking about? Guys, I really think you should do these kind of things face to face. But Nicholson had to go to the German embassy at night, and he went so late in the day that

the German ambassador, who was Prince Lichnovsky, he was in his pyjamas in his bedroom, and he had the letter declaring war on a tray by his bed, and Nicholson had to do the old switcheroo. Amazing. He didn't notice, the Prince didn't notice. He thought it was just a social visit to say, well, sorry, we're at war now. And was this, this was after they'd officially declared war, it was just, they were like, oh, we've got a bit of the paperwork wrong, we've got to swap that.

It was that night. It was that night. That evening, yeah. So what had happened was, Britain had given an ultimatum to Germany saying, if you don't get out of Belgium, we're going to declare war. And then it got to the evening, and they thought Germany had declared war, but they hadn't, and then when it got to midnight, that was our ultimatum had kind of hit then. It was actually 11pm.

11pm, sorry. It's very important, it is. Very important. You see, if I was in charge, we'd never go to war, would we? But poor old Leshnowski was so upset, wasn't he? So he was the ambassador, and I always think ambassadors must have such a difficult job in war, because they're friends with everyone in the country they're in. So he was mates with all the Brits.

He was very good friends with Asquith and his wife, Margo Asquith. So Margo Asquith's wife actually went to visit Leshnowski about an hour or two before war was properly declared, and just went to comfort him and say, sorry, this is rough, isn't it? And he was sobbing, saying it's all over. And he knew Nicholson as well. Yeah, I guess he would. Because when Nicholson went to visit him, he was in his nightclothes, the last thing he said to him was, give my best regards to your father, I shall not in all probability

see him before my departure. Yeah. Oh. And they hated the Germans. Oh, my God. Who did the German ambassador? Yeah. So the ambassador's wife said to Margo Asquith on just the second of August, so two days

before we went to war, to think that we should bring such sorrows to an innocent and happy people. I've always hated and loathed our Kaiser, having not said so a thousand times, he and his friends are all Brutes. Wow. So they were not pleased about it. No. And I suppose if you are an ambassador, you're going to have a more rounded worldview, aren't

you? Yeah. You know, probably, I don't know. Yeah. I've never been one. And Nicholson, oh, sorry, just on Nicholson, then he later went on, people might have heard of him because he later went on to marry writer Vita Sackville West in kind of marriage of convenience because I think he was gay and she was a lesbian or they were maybe both

bisexual, but they kind of got married so that she could inherit her ancestral home of Sissinghurst. Okay. We're sure it wasn't a phrasing mistake and he didn't mean to say, would you mind buying something else? He accidentally wrote, would you marry me? I'm sorry. I meant to say, I don't.

I've not heard of her. Is she a big also? She's a poet. She's a poet. Right. Yeah. She's quite famous. Cool.

I'm obviously know her because she has a weird name. Right. Yeah. It kind of sticks in your head, doesn't it? Yeah. So we, George V, also sort of lots of people declare war officially. George V is one of the people who sort of announced the nation that we were at war and his diary is very interesting because it's so matter of fact.

So his diary on that night, he wrote it just before he went to sleep and it was a short entry. He said, I held a council at 10.45 in the evening to declare war with Germany. It is a terrible catastrophe, but it is not our fault. And then he said, the crowds were all cheering. When they heard war had been declared, the cheering was even more terrific. Went to bed at midnight. And that's just, that's the start of the First World War for you.

Yeah. There were loads of, because they had a speech in parliament, didn't they? Was it gray or someone did a speech in parliament and everyone was outside kind of expecting that war was going to be declared. And there was a mob in London who attacked the German embassy. And at the same time, there was a mob in Germany that attacked the British embassy in Berlin, throwing stones. That is kind of a microcosm of the next four years.

Yes. There's someone else who we know where they were when war broke out and it's Adolf Hitler. And the interesting thing is, we know because there was a photograph taken of this huge crowd in Munich at a place called the Odeon Plats. And they're all celebrating as lots of people, lots of crowds all over Europe celebrated the outbreak of war. They thought it was a good thing. And you can see, if you zoom in, Hitler in the crowd with a really big, droopy moustache.

Really? Yeah. But this is the crazy thing. So the photo was taken by a photographer who later became Hitler's official photographer. And in one of the very early bits of Nazi propaganda, Hitler, they tracked down this photo. They thought you saw Hitler in the crowd and they retouched his moustache to turn it into the toothbrush moustache that Hitler later adopted. Oh, if only we all had photographers to retouch photos from our youths.

Our parents would be so thrilled. Well, apart from he kind of retouches them all to make it look like he did when he was older. It's true. It's like giving yourself a mullet in a photo from the 80s. It's really weird. Yeah. But you're always ashamed of how you dress when you were younger, whether it's a weird

moustache or you've got your stupid long hair from the 70s. Sorry. It's not like giving yourself a mullet, is it? No. It's the opposite. It's the opposite. Yeah. It's taking away the mullet.

Yes. Because the mullet's embarrassing. It's like the pope going back to his baby photos and putting a big hat on them. That's exactly what it's like. Did you read one of the other amazing pieces of protocol they had to go through that day when a Britain declared war was that the, was it the foreign office sent out loads of telegrams to all the consulates around the world that we were vaguely affiliated with, warning them we're about to go to war.

So this is sort of in the afternoon going on early evening, all these telegrams were sent out and the foreign office clerks had to send them out and all they had to do was fill in a pre-written telegram that said, just to warn you, Britain is going to war with blank. And they just wrote the word Germany because they'd had them pre-written for about ten years. It's so good. They just knew that they were going to go to war eventually.

It's like, you know, when you are a kid and you have birthday invites and it says, you are invited to blanks party, like it's exactly like that, isn't it? It is. Do you think some acts, I think they forgot to fill them in and countries were just left guessing? I would have, for a laugh, put a different country in just one telegram, just so one British territory overseas thinks we're at war with Switzerland or something. Yes.

Or do you think they sent it to Germany and it just said you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a little privilege. The most senior clerk got to do the you one. I was just reading generally about what happened as soon as war was declared and obviously a lot of soldiers had to be conscripted and that led me into just looking into conscription. And I read about this thing, which I'd not heard of, I don't know if you guys have, but

the pals of Italian, have you heard of that? This was, so obviously they had to work out what was the best way to get people sort of passionate about joining the war. And one of the ideas was the idea that if you signed up with a friend of yours, there was a promise that you would both be in the same battalion. So professional golfers were known to sign up with each other. There was the Grimsby Chums and that was former schoolboys from Winteringham secondary school in Grimsby.

It's a terrible idea, actually, because if you're going to go to war and have to see all these people around you dropping dead, I'd rather they weren't all my mates. I know, I guess it's a morale thing though, up until that point. The idea is that you might fight harder if it's to save your friends, I think. Yes. There was, in Thebes, they had a secret band of an army where they were all lovers, all gay lovers. And so they would all be in this army together and they would all be fighting.

When was this? This is in... In Thebes, in the Spartan... In 8X, wasn't it? Wow, really? It's not a modern innovation. No. Although actually the war between Sparta and Athens did go on until 1996.

What? No. Come on now. It was one of those ones, you know, where they don't sign the peace agreement. And so in 1986, they signed a symbolic agreement that Sparta and Athens were no longer at war, even though that they'd both been part of modern-day Greece for about a thousand years. So I think we may have briefly mentioned the Beric-upon-Tweed thing before. So there's this...

The town of Beric-on-Tweed, they mistakenly believed that they were at war with Russia for about 150 years after the end of the Crimean War. So that ended in 1856. And it's because there was this really complicated history with Beric-upon-Tweed, because it's right on the border of England and Scotland. And it changed hands about 13 times. And there was a 1502 agreement between England and Scotland, which said that Beric-upon-Tweed is of, but not within the Kingdom of England.

Actually it had been sorted out in 1746, it was all fine. If you didn't mention Beric-upon-Tweed, there was no problem, it was still included. But no one really knew that, it didn't sort of get through. So people kept naming it in official documents, as a kind of just in case, they couldn't remember whether it was included. So people thought that they had been left out and that they were still at war with Russia. And this is the really sweet thing, in 2006 there was a kind of exhibition about this in the town, about this interesting, you know, kink of history.

And it was Beric's war with Russia weekend. And apparently as part of it, they had a what-if re-enactment, which I think is the best. Surely the what-if involves Beric being flattened within 30 seconds, Russia going about his business. I was just looking a little bit at the declaration of the Second World War. And the Second World War was kind of declared by two Nevels. So it was obviously... Gary Enfield, was it? It wasn't Gary Enfield, no.

It was obviously, there was Chamberlain, but then there was also Neville Henderson. He was the British ambassador in Germany, so it was his job to go and actually tell the Germans that we were at war. But it might have been because of a mistake, again, a little bit like this era in 1914. So it was August the 30th in 1939. And Henderson went and met Ribbentrop, who was their Hitler's foreign secretary. And apparently things got really tense. You know, Henderson was saying, please stop invading all these countries, please don't

do the Poland thing. And they came really close to blows. They almost started punching each other. And then Ribbentrop said, OK, we're going to give you our last offer. We're going to give Poland the last offer. And Britain was obviously basically represented Poland at this point. And so Ribbentrop read over the last offer, but Henderson's really pissed off with Ribbentrop at this point.

So he didn't really listen. And Ribbentrop read over it really, really fast, sped through it apparently. And then Henderson went, OK, fine, give me the copy. And Ribbentrop said, no, not going to give you the copy. Hope you're paying attention. And so Henderson didn't know what had just happened, didn't really know what the offer was. It was kind of deliberately convoluted.

And then Ribbentrop said, you've got to respond by midnight. And this confused everything. And within a couple of days, there was war. Wow. Yeah, so always pay attention. Yeah. I don't think that's a message. Sorry, who was Ribbentrop?

I could see you all switch off then, and we've gone to war. OK, it is time for fact number two. That is James. OK, my fact this week is that there's a bacterium that can freeze water just by touching it. And these bacteria are used to make artificial snow in ski resorts. That was crazy. It's amazing. It's like how fast can I drop one of these bacteria into my glass of water?

Is it frozen straight away? No. So it tends to do it with plants. It goes into the plant cells and it freezes the water in the plant cells so it can access the nutrients inside the plants. But the way that it does it is it has a protein on the outside of the bacterium and they can shift the molecules around of the water. And the water then kind of gets into a lattice, into a template, which is what ice is really.

And then it can also remove heat from the water in the same way that a refrigerator removes heat from the inside of it. So it gets hotter, but it removes heat from the water itself to make it into ice. And the plants don't like that, presumably. The plants do not like being killed, no. Because actually any frost damage that you see is usually down to this bacterium. Wow. Really?

Yeah. So if you have a plant at say minus four degrees, minus three or four degrees, it should be fine because the water inside it can super cool. It won't turn to ice until a little bit later than that. But if it has this bacterium in it, then the bacteria will turn the water which would have been liquid into ice and it can kill the plants. Bastard. Bastard.

Bastard. Sorry. What I find amazing is that this is being used in artificial snow making. As in, you must have to have so many hundreds and hundreds of millions and billions of these bacteria to make lots of artificial snow. How do you breed? I guess they just reproduce. They just breed so quick.

They breed so quick. You just leave one alone for 20 hours and then you come back with a video. Well, that's the thing. I read a single cell bacteria in a 12 hour period, they can produce 70 billion bacteria from a single cell bacteria. It's good that it's so small, isn't it? Because if they were like human size, overcrowding of the world would have happened in a second. It's true.

Definitely. And that, think of all those generations, that's one great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather who has 70 billion children. Oh, God. Who do you think you are? As an institution of bacteria. The thing is with these guys in particular who can turn this water into ice, they can do it even after they're dead.

So the company, Snowmax, who make this artificial snow, they get dead bacteria because the bacteria still have the protein on their outside, which can make the water turn into ice, even though they're not alive anymore. Wow. It's not great PR line though, is it, using the dead corpses of billions of bacteria? Well, the thing is, real rain probably has these guys in it as well. So most real rain or snow has to have some kind of nucleus, which the water goes around and they think that generally speaking, it's this particular bacteria that's most common

in rain around the world. Really? What so, it's because all rain starts sort of frozen up there, but then how is the bacteria not able to freeze it as well once it's in rain form down with us? Yes, because it'll be too warm at that stage. The bacteria only really works around the zero mark. Got it. Things are kind of freezing anyway, but you know.

And that's why you don't get many ski slopes in places like Barbados because bacteria can't do it in the heat. So you got sort of the British gut project? No. So I was looking at microbiomes and how there's a theory that your bacteria in your stomach can affect your mood. So they've done experiments on mice where mice with no microbes in them got twice as stressed when scientists freaked them out as normal mice did with normal microbiomes.

So there's a theory there. But the British gut project is this enterprise which is trying to map the whole gut microbiome of the British population. And they're basically crowdsourcing poo in the post. Yeah. But you do have to pay. You can't just send them poo in the post. So they...

How much do I have to pay to put poo in the post? It's 75 quid. But they are trying to build up this whole picture of the nation's microbiome health. It's been done or tried in America already. And it's really interesting seeing a whole population's general health. So they're trying to sequence the DNA. So they will send you a breakdown of your own DNA. But it's not going to be a good method of finding out the population's health because

you're only going to get the weirdos who are willing to shit in an envelope and send it to a scientist. OK. I'll tell you what I'll say. If you're upset with the British gut project, how do you show your displeasure? Because you can't send poo in the post. You send them an empty sample part. They're both poo. Wow.

So we're sending them your poo though because I half imagine getting a thing back going, you're 50% corn. You know? It's just anything that's... I don't think that's how sequencing DNA was. No. And they say that humans and cons share like 75% of their DNA. These guys.

Yeah. Wow. In China, it's smoggy, I read, and there are bacteria that live on the smog. So they live inside the smog and they can eat the smog. And that sounds like quite cool, doesn't it? Because maybe it gets rid of the smog. But unfortunately, they fart out even worse chemicals. So you're just replacing one pollutant with another.

Do we not have another kind of bacteria that can eat the worst chemicals? I get the feeling the Belfasts have been eating worse after that. That's really funny. OK, it is time for fact number three, and that is Chazinsky. My fact is that women who were applying to be Qing dynasty concubines had to spend a night sleeping with the emperor's mother first so that she could check they didn't snore. Wow. Yeah, so the selection process to be a concubine was so arduous, and there were so many steps

to it. This is actually in this amazing thing that's been published by the South China Morning Post, but it's in collaboration with the Forbidden Palace Museum. And I would so recommend it. They've done a series of chapters detailing life in the Forbidden City. And this is about, yeah, so there were these concubines who lived in the Forbidden City with the emperor. And to become one, you had to, well, first of all, every single Manchu woman in the

kingdom had to apply to become a concubine. So you weren't allowed to marry until you'd applied to check the emperor didn't want to marry you. This was all girls between 13 and 16, and they did this sort of call out every three years. And then they'd come, and God knows how they whittled it down from that many, but they whittled it down to about 100 who would be monitored really, really carefully by all these females already in the Forbidden City. So for things like insquired skin abnormalities, body odor, they were really strict on body

odor, and anything else that might be wrong with them. And then they were whittled down to finalists who are kind of taught like a finishing school how to behave. It's very much like the X Factor, isn't it? It really is. It's so X Factor. Yeah. Although they don't do the body odor thing.

X Factor spend a night sleeping next to Simon Carroll, but I know how they whittled it down. Go on. It was in that brilliant piece. Yeah. So in the Ming Dynasty. Which was the one just before. Yes.

We've got records of how they whittled it down. So they picked 5,000 young women, and then they eliminated 1,000 on the first day for being too short or tall or fat or thin. And the second day they got rid of another 2,000 based on their voices and general manner. You've got 2,000 left. Well, that is actually like X Factor, isn't it? On your voice. Yes.

It's true. Third day they got rid of another 1,000 because their hands or feet weren't right. I haven't seen the X Factor, but I don't think that phase is in that. So you've got 1,000 left. Yeah. Foot inspection was a massive thing. Yeah. Feet are so important.

Yeah. Then you've got 1,000 left, and then you have gynecological examinations, which apparently get rid of another 700. Wow. I do not know how. I've got to say, I kind of at this stage wish I'd been kicked out for being too tall, short or fat or thin. And then you have a month of testing for the remaining 300.

Yeah. But in that final month, is it right that they get taught sort of incredible skills that they might not have learned? Painting, reading, walking. Yeah. Walking, walking, walking. Walking, walking, walking. One of those skills that you'd never learned unless you're in the front of the palace.

You walk back into your village, you've changed. Everyone else were rolling around on the road. Oh, she thinks she's so off herself. That was, there was a book that was saying they were taught to have, they had to have dainty feet and they were taught to have a titillating walk. Yeah. Had to be titillating. But yeah, and sleeping next to the mother, the mother was the final hurdle you had to

cross and she was the most senior woman. Boss level. How many, do you know, got through to that final phase? I think the finalists, there were 10, I think, or maybe there were five at that point, but we were down to a manageable number. Because the mother doesn't have, you know, she's the, there's only one emperor's mum, so she can't spend all her time. Unless she sleeps with them all at the same time, but then how do you know who's snoring?

Yeah. Oh yeah. You just blame it on the person next to you. And it was to check for things like sleepwalking or sleep talking or body odours again. She had to be very careful with. And then you passed. But a lot of girls didn't want to pass, obviously, because it meant that you had to abandon your village and your family and all your friends and live forever in this massive forbidden

city with this creepy old man. So yeah. He might not come and see you though, because weren't there lots of concubines? Yeah. Some of them had tons, didn't they? I think. Yeah. You had different levels.

You had your base level concubine and then it went to higher rankings all the way up to your the Empress. Boss level. Exactly. And there were about 20,000 by the Qing dynasty. 20,000 concubines. Concubines, consorts. Yeah.

Blimey. Where are they? 20,000 women in the forbidden city. 20,000 women. I'm just trying to work out the timings of this. What? How? Let's say.

How many you can have sex with in that amount of time? Got it. Yeah. You know, to be frank. Well, they did have problems with that. There was one emperor called Emperor Wu, not part of the Qing, but he had 5,000 women. Too many to either remember who he actually wanted to sleep with, but he knew that they were all very pretty.

So what he used to do was go around in a cart that was carried by goats. And when the goats got tired, wherever they parked, that's who he went and had sex with that night. Yeah. Surely that's an easier way to remember who you fancy. He fancied them all, I think. The idea is the concubines, he just thought they're all very beautiful. So wherever the goats stop, that's where I'll get off.

And some of the concubines he wanted. Literally. And many of the concubines actually did want to have relations with him, because maybe you'd have children and they would become emperors. Exactly. So what they used to do was leave little bits of treats outside the door for the goats to trick them into stopping. And then there's other ones who, because they wanted to make sure that there was not too

much jealousy amongst the concubines, because if you slept with one of the concubines that raised her level and suddenly your surrounding concubines might get a bit too jealous and fights break out and so on, they used to have a rotation calendar that was done for certain emperors. So they would make sure that you never slept with the same concubine in the same week or something like that. You know. We have written records of that.

So I read on this website, Anna, that you were talking about that in the 10th century calendars were used to keep track of the sex life rather than of day to day life. It was so closely monitored. Is that right? That carburetor? You're not saying I'll meet you on the 29th of the Emperor's Shagging, Rachel? And I think we should bring it back with our royal family. Yeah.

There was a branch of the Imperial government that was set up in the 1670s called the Office of Respectful Service. And this was to formalize that really and make sure secretaries were installed to keep tabs on the sexual activities. And so every single concubine that visited the bedroom, they'd have to take note of it. They'd have to find out what actually happened in there, because again, the ranking system, what happened in there? I found this interesting.

Apparently there was only one monogamous Chinese emperor who was called Hong Xi. And he was only monogamous because he was extremely close to his mother and then his mother was murdered by a concubine. So that rather put him off the idea of concubines. Yeah. Except the one, presumably. I think he took a wife. He took a wife.

Took a wife. They could do that sometimes. Couldn't they concubines? An emperor called Jia Jing, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing wrong, but 18 of his concubines kind of ganged up on him and tried to kill him. They drove hairpins into his crotch and they wrapped a silk cord around his neck and tried to strangle him. Wow.

The guy with the clipboard in the corner saying, I don't know what I record this as. Heavy heavy petting? Well, the Empress, Empress Fang then had all the conspirators killed. They're all executed. But Jia Jing, he decided to move out of the Imperial Palace and became a Taoist magician who spent his whole life having sex with virgins and drinking magic potions made from bodily fluids. Wow.

So it affected him quite badly. Yeah. Is that, and that counts as being a magician? Because I'd be disappointed if I went to a magic show and all he did was drink blood and urine and have sex with virgins. Would you? You've clearly never been to a David Blaine show. I think the magic was other stuff.

Right. Did he stay as emperor? He did, but basically he just ignored all of his duties that he was supposed to do as emperor and did all this magic and... That must be so annoying if the emperor's got a magic show constantly trying to show you another trick. It's like, we are at war with four separate groups of people, could we have some decisions please?

Pick a card. Just on eunuchs, because they were the other group of people that were allowed in the Forbidden City. You couldn't have men with their parts because then they might impregnate the women. So there are thousands and thousands of eunuchs and it was actually a good gig because it's the only way you can work really close to the emperor and his government. But I think... There was one drawback, wasn't there?

The application process was a bit tedious. Imagine if they chopped your cuckoo off and then they said, but sorry you snore. But the way they did it was they put you on a chair with a hole in the seat and then you just whip something underneath it and it's gone. I mean, was it the testicles that were... It was the penis as well. It was the whole lot. Yes, yeah.

You've got to get rid of all of them. Yeah. And I think we've said they used to then have to carry them around in a pouch we've mentioned before. The last eunuch of China fell out with his family when they threw his genitals away. The eunuch never spoke to his family again off the back of the line. I think that's fair enough. I would be so annoyed if my mum threw away a body part of mine.

Yes. Like, his on or off. When you go back to visit your parents and they've like changed your bedroom and they turned it into a study or something, that's really upsetting. Yeah, that's true. But so the reason they threw it away is because during the Cultural Revolution there was a whole thing about you need to discard anything that was seen as old society. And if you had anything that was old society, yeah, you put your whole family at risk because

you own something from them. So they saw his genitals as part of that tradition. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so they threw it away. That's the amazing thing about his life. This guy, Sun Yat-ing, the last eunuch, he died in 1996. Yeah. Wow.

Really recent history. Yeah. Well, concubinage, I don't know how you pronounce that word, but concubinage was only banned in Hong Kong in 1972. Wow. Yeah. And it's still not uncommon, I think. It's not as frowned upon to have lots of mistresses in other parts of China.

And there's a saying in China, well, someone who's Chinese on the internet said, we've got a popular saying which explains why Chinese men need multiple women, but women are expected to just have one man. And it goes, one teapot is usually accompanied by four cups. But have you ever seen one cup with four teapots? It's similar to something I have seen on the internet, but... Two concubines, one cup is the same. Completely different, but equally profound meaning to that.

Concubinaging sounds like an old Netflix kind of... It's not concubinaging. Concubinage just sounds like you're chucking them out. Oh, well, there is a good argument for concubinaging because there's a new TV show in China which is about Yanxi Palace, and it's hugely popular. It's the most googled TV show of the year 2018, despite the fact that Google is largely banned in China. That's how hugely popular it is, all across Asia, lots of other countries as well.

It's been streamed 15 billion times, and it's about the rivalry between concubines in the Forbidden City. So concubinaging is actually a perfect word for watching the show. But 15 billion, that means everyone on Earth, on average, has watched it twice. I know. That's... Yeah. I'm just saying it's a lot.

It's a lot. But I guess there are a billion people... I haven't seen it, so someone's watched it at least three times. Yeah. I've watched it two million times. I think there are just a billion people in Asia, a billion people in China, aren't there? Yeah, 1.3. Yeah.

And more outside that, but still within Asia. Yeah. Asia's population is very high. I know. I shouldn't have been surprised at the 15 billion. It's a lot. I mean, how many people live in Asia? Is it about four billion?

It's a very large number. All of Asia. All of Asia. Including India. Oh, no. Cheating. No, I'm including India. Oh, right.

Then five. Yeah, 1.3 billion in China, 1.3 billion in India, probably about 100 million in Bangladesh or something. Right. Indonesia. It's another biggie. But they've still all seen it more than twice. That's the amazing thing.

Even all of these people, you know. How do they get anything done? Why is China so productive if they're all constantly watching this thing? Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that some meteors skim off the earth as if they were a stone skimming across the waters. That's very good.

But who is throwing them? Yes, good question. It's so profound. I know, I've made that a bit more poetic and probably scientists listening are thinking you dick. That's not what they do. But they don't skim off the earth if you count the earth as the ground that we walk on, do they?

No, exactly. That would be incredible. That would be the best fact we've ever done. If no one knew that. What this is is, this is meteor. Imagine if the meteor that came to kill the dinosaurs just went straight back into space. That would be extraordinary. Now what this is is we obviously, we have an atmosphere and the atmosphere is what burns

up. When we call a meteor, a meteorite, it's because it goes through a layer of the atmosphere, it's very cold, burns it up and then that lands on the earth. Sometimes when a meteor comes into the earth's atmosphere, it's on such an angle, almost a parallel angle to the earth's atmosphere that it just bounces off. They're called earth grazers. They don't make it down further. They literally get a lift, a boost off the atmosphere, pushing it back up, sometimes

slowing its speed, but it makes it back out and just hurdles back into space. Imagine if you could skim it off the earth and then off Mars and then off the earth. Wouldn't that be extraordinary? But yeah, we know that it happens a lot and a lot of people have seen it with the naked eye, but we haven't actually recorded too many of these. I believe in 2006 was only the fourth time that we've ever caught on camera what is known as the earth grazers, the ones that come in and skim off the atmosphere. So what does it look when you see it with the naked eye?

Does it look like a meteor, but it just doesn't burn up? No, it does burn up. So you see the flaming meteorites as it were coming in, but because of the angle, it suddenly just takes a turn and heads off. But do you see it take a turn then with the naked eye? Well, I guess what you see is the flame go out. You just see it. It's drinking across the sky and then kind of finishing.

Is it right to say then that it comes in and it goes very slightly into the earth's atmosphere and then bounces out again. So when it's in the earth's atmosphere, that's when it's burning up and that's what you see, but then it disappears. Exactly. So in 2006, there was one, it was just a bright fireball is what you would have seen in the sky and this was seen over Japan and it made it to 55 miles from the earth's surface. Wow.

So it gets really close in. And then it just looked down and thought, no, these guys look lame. Yeah. So it was there for 35 seconds that you could see it. And yeah. So then it just disappears back out into space and then the distance is crazy. This is actually related to that, not about meteors, but with spaceships, that same effect is a major concern they have when bringing spaceships back to earth.

So one of the hardest things if you're controlling a spaceship is re-entering because you have to get the angle at which you re-enter completely spot on. And if you go at too sharp an angle, then you're going too fast and there's too much friction and then you burn up. But if you're going at too shallow an angle, if it is really shallow, then again, there's this risk because the earth is a sphere that you'll sort of skim across the atmosphere, but then come back off it. Miss.

And miss it. Yeah. You just thought it's a big enough target. So one of the biggest problems with Apollo 13 as they came around from the other side of the moon was on top of everything else is that because their instruments were down, that exact thing was going to happen to them. They were not on the right trajectory to come back into earth. So they had to make a thrust basically with the naked eye, with the earth in the distance

using that as a target to get themselves back into the right position. Otherwise that might have happened to them. Although I've read a few things, and maybe James, you know more about this, about things wouldn't really bounce off the earth. You don't just bounce off into the distance. So there's no spring that you can hit. There's no solidity in the earth, but it's just the fact that the earth is circular. So if the earth was flat, which some people argue.

Here we go. I cut this out every week. It's just that it can't get through those dense layers. So it effectively goes straight, but because the earth is a curve, then it comes straight off it again. There's another kind of quite cool earth grazing thing that you can watch. A few people have been lucky to see it. It's called a meteor procession.

This is really cool. So when it does come into that zone of the atmosphere where it starts heating up, often a meteor will break into little bits. And that's sometimes when we see meteor showers and so on. It's why you see so many. So what will happen is this meteor will come in, it'll start breaking up into bits, but still enough of it is there to head back out into space and not come down. However, it will now be about 10 of them that will fly back off into space.

So you'll just see what looks like, because they're all on the same trajectory, just like an air show, a procession going over you, flying over a flaming ball. Yeah, it's kind of like a meteor shower in a way, which always fun. And I didn't realize that I think this is going to be one of those things that it's unbelievable. I didn't know, but I didn't know that meteor showers happened so regularly, like at the same time every single year. And that they're all named after the constellation they come from, which is nice.

So you've got Orionids or Geminids, and there are 112 meteor showers every year, always happen at the same time, because it's where the Earth just intersects with the comet tail at the same time. And I guess over many thousands of years, then it changes as the comet moves away. But yeah, I didn't really know that. And how do you say, is it the Perseids or the Perseids? So the Perseid meteor shower that people might have seen. That is called, I just quite like this origin of what it's called.

It's usually referred to as the tears of St. Lawrence. And that is after St. Lawrence, who is that Christian Deacon, who the Romans burnt him in AD 258. And he's the one who, you know, they put him on a, on a barbecue. Roasted him on a barbecue. And then he apparently, according to legend, was the guy that said, I'm already roasted on one side. If you would have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on to the other.

It's such a good, it's a great story. It's so lovely. So what he actually said was, ah! Well, that was that in Latin. I've got a religious connection to all this too. So there is an argument. It's only an argument and we'll never know the truth, but there's an argument that there's a bit in the Bible where St. Paul has a conversion.

He's on the road to Damascus. He's called something else for that. And then he becomes Paul. And he's called Saul. And then he, and Saul becomes Paul. So there is an argument that he just saw a meteor. Because in the account, there are, there are several different accounts of it. He sees a big flash, I think.

Exactly. He says it's brighter than the sun, tick. It can be brighter than the sun. He fell over, tick. That would happen. Why? Well, there's, it can be a shockwave if a meteor arrives. Oh, oh, really? And he also says he heard a big noise, tick.

And he was blinded, which could happen. Well, but do you know that that could also could be a truck? Couldn't it? No, I don't know. Right light, tick, falls over, tick. Loud noise, tick. That's true. And it would have been more miraculous in a way to produce a truck at that time.

Hey, just speaking of that idea, you said of it's not as crazy as a meteorite hitting the Earth's surface itself and bouncing off. Oh, yeah. There is a Mars 2.5 million years ago, a rock left the surface of Mars, shot out into space. Then in 1962, that rock finally landed on Earth as a meteorite in Nigeria in Zagami. And it's known as the Zagami meteorite. And sometime soon in the future, that very same bit of meteorite is going to

become a meteorite again, except this time back on Mars. Because in 1996, we put some of that meteorite back onto a ship. So we've relaunched it out of our planet. And it's part of the Mars global surveyor, which has been going around Mars, but we've lost contact with. So very soon, that satellite is going to go into, it's going to be sucked in by the orbit of Mars. It's going to be so pissed off.

Imagine if you're like, I've traveled for 2.5 million years to get away from that place and you've literally just put the meteorite back. Yeah, that's true. That's incredible, though. That's a very cool fact. Yeah, it's like a cool poetic justice, isn't it? I think it's amazing how these rocks get from one place to another. Like, for instance, when the dinosaur asteroid came down, it comes down,

it breaks through the atmosphere, basically pushes all the atmosphere out of the way, causes a vacuum. And so when it hits the ground, the loads of rocks come up, they all get sucked into space. Oh, wow. And so you could theoretically have some rocks from the dinosaur age that have since made it onto the moon and they could theoretically be dinosaur fossils on the moon. In theory, like probably not, but theoretically it could be.

There was an article about this recently. Yeah, it was around a little bit, didn't it? There's a piece of rock that they think maybe it's from Earth, but they need to do more testing. In fact, that one you are talking about, I think they do, like you say, they're not sure, but they're pretty sure it is from the Earth because it was the way you can tell it how it was formed. And it was formed in a way that either it's from the Earth

or they have to change the way that their history of the moon. Right. Oh, because they think it couldn't have come up to the surface of the moon in the right time. So it's a bit complicated. But yeah, it's that could be the oldest known Earth rock. And they found it on the moon. Oh, the oldest moon bit of Earth is on the moon. It's about four billion years old.

It's incredible. Except is it because they they brought it back to Earth. They must have done that. Yeah, it came on Apollo 14, I think. What are the odds of bringing back? Did you come back with some moon samples? We've got some bad news. We feel so stupid.

Probably that spaceship crossed with the Martian one and the two rocks waved at each other, going back home. Yeah, going back home. Why have we got such strict immigration laws in the universe? We keep on sending foreign rocks back where they came from. No wonder conspiracy theorists don't think we went. The only rocks we've got are fucking from here anyway. Can I just say one thing about just about the Tunguska?

So the Tunguska event was this massive explosion. It was in 1908. It was so big, it cast light over the whole world. And at the time, the night skies glowed so brightly that people in Asia, which we know is heavily populated. So probably quite a lot of people. People in Asia read their newspapers outdoors at midnight. And apparently at least one golfer got in around at 2.30

in the morning in St Andrews of Scotland. That is amazing. That's you. That's the 1908 version of you. Does it look like the world's ending here? Wow, I think I could get nine in there. So a meteor heading towards the earth, if it's a smallish size, we would call that, let's say, a meteor, a meteoroid,

meteorite in the earth. If it was bigger, it's an asteroid, right? So it's a sightseeing. So in movies, whenever we try to prevent an asteroid from hitting the earth, they always send up some kind of big nuclear device to blow it up. And there's so many plans going on with NASA and independent bodies of scientists

who are trying to work out the best way to stop potential asteroids from hitting the earth. And there's some that want to wrap it in a sail and sort of sail it in a different direction. But one thing I read is they don't ever really want to go for the nuclear option, because obviously you blow it up, and then suddenly you're sending a lot of rocks to earth.

But what I didn't realize is they're nuclear rocks now. So you've made them radioactive. So you would actually just make the whole situation doubly worse by spreading radiation everywhere where it hit. I mean, we have this ridiculous policy where we can't bring a strand of hair into space in case it infects Mars. And I can't believe they're even considering sending

radioactive rocks out into space. I think the key would be to push it, wouldn't it? That's the current best theory. Because there's a guy at NASA who's called the Planetary Protection Officer. He's an awesome guy. But he's very low key about the whole thing. So his name is Lindley Johnson,

and he's responsible for it, basically. But he's only got eight members of staff. So if we get hit by an asteroid, is it his fault? Effectively. But he was asked about it. He said, do you feel a lot of pressure being the Planetary Protection Officer? And he said, it doesn't stress me out that much.

Well, I want someone to be a bit more. Actually, because who does he answer to if we do get all annihilated by an asteroid? What is going to go into the cockroach's office? The cockroach will say, well done. You've been working for us all this time. OK, that is it. That is 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 at Shriverland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M.

And Chazinski. You can email on podcast at qi.com. Yep. Or you can go to our group account at No Such Thing. You can also go to NoSuchThingAsAfish.com. We have all of our previous episodes up there. We also have links to our tour. We're going to be touring all around the UK in March.

We're going to Ireland as well. Please get some tickets. We hope to see you there. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.