No Such Thing As A Fish - 438: No Such Thing As A Candyfloss Blimp

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Dan, Anna, Andrew and special guest Malcolm Gladwell discuss Silicon Valley regrets, aeroplanes dangling from hooks and whether Dan should be a billionaire. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi guys, before we start this week's episode of Fish we have a few exciting announcements to make. Announcement number one is that we, no such thing as a fish, are going on tour. We are going to be going around Scotland. We've got four dates in Scotland at the end of August and start of September. We're going to Cardiff. We're also playing a gig in London. Now the London gig is sold out in the room but it's also streaming online. So effectively if you live anywhere in the world and you're listening to this you can access a fish gig, especially if you live in Scotland, to a certain extent if you live in Cardiff and also if you

live anywhere else. You can get a ticket by going to nosuchthingasafish.com slash live. All the information is up there. Yes it is. Information item number two is if anything even more exciting than that because chief gnome, our big boss, the man who created us in our current form, Mr John Lloyd, all-round comedy legend. He also has a live show. That is going to the Edinburgh Festival and it looks to be absolutely fantastic. It's called Do You Know Who I Am? If you don't know who John Lloyd is then I don't know where you've been but he is the man behind all the great comedies really of the 80s and 90s from Black Hatter,

Spitting Image, The News Quiz, Not the Nine O'Clock News, QI obviously. Episode 17 of No Such Thing as a Fish. I think that's the one he's most proud of yes. So the show format is you go, you ask him absolutely anything you want to ask him from the meaning of life to his fingernail cutting regimen. So go to the Edinburgh Fringe website and check out how to get tickets for that. It's on from the 5th to the 15th of August. And a final bit of information is that we have a special guest today on No Such Thing as a Fish. The guest is a really exciting person. He is none other than Malcolm Gladwell. We're sure you've heard of

Malcolm and if not maybe you've heard of the Time 100 Most Influential People List which he's been on which might well be a first for us. He's a brilliant writer and broadcaster. He's written fabulous books like The Tipping Point and Blink. He's got a new book out called The Bomber Mafia and if you're a podcast listener which you probably are listening to this he also hosts the fabulous revisionist history which looks at overlooked and misunderstood things in that classic Gladwellian way. This was so much fun to record we really hope you enjoy listening to it. Check out Malcolm's other things as above. Okay on

with the show. On with the podcast. 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 Anna Tyshinski, Andrew Hunter Murray and our very special guest it's Malcolm Gladwell and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one and that is Malcolm. My favorite fact is that no one has any clear idea about what growing up with a

smartphone does. So we I got into this because I was doing an episode of my podcast, Origins History, on what I called magic wand experiments. Okay. Which is the experiment you would do if you could wave a magic wand, right? Because to spend all laws of nature and yeah practical and ethical. So I called up a friend of mine and I said who is a psychologist and I said what's your magic wand? And he said oh I want to divide let's say a thousand or two thousand children of birth and one group one gets a blackberry for the first 25 years of their life. Actually he wanted to do for the first 50 years and group two gets an

iPhone. I said well why would you want to do that? And he said well because we just don't know why did an iPhone. Which I thought I found that just an astonishing fact. Wasn't that he was invested in blackberries and has been very disappointed there. So the blackberry is just your phone and email. So it's clear that doesn't affect your life in any dramatic way, right? And the iPhone is all the other stuff. Well if you go through the literature he's like you'll discover that there is no consensus or even understanding of what all that other stuff does to a child. So he gave me an example. Suppose we were all six years old and I and we're sitting

around a table and I or eight years old and I say something deeply offensive to Anna. Anna has many options. But she can express her displeasure directly to me in one form or another. Yell at me, cut me down sarcastically, punch me, ignore me. Oh very enticing. And all of these are are deeply effective ways of educating me about the consequences of my actions. Now suppose me and Anna are on our iPhones and I say the exact same thing only it's a text. Yes. So the only way Anna can respond now is with another text. So she used to have an enormous repertoire of potentially powerful and instructive responses to my provocation.

Yeah. Now all she has is a text. So let's replace the enormous repertoire of powerfully instructive responses over the course of 25 years just with texts. The question is what happens to Malcolm? Does Malcolm do I just become oblivious? Do I just keep being offensive? Do I never learn the consequences of my actions? Yes, right. If I accompany my text with some really angry emojis, I think it might be him. Nothing is as instructive as the things I have mentioned. Now it may be that it doesn't matter. It also may be that it's hugely consequential. We have no idea. Right. When will we find out? Is it going to be like a future

presidential election where they're simply on their phone texting each other for podiums? Like, is it going to be decades before any kind of research can come out about it? You have to study it. It feels like we must know a bit. We've had 10 years. Surely there's some kind of context to look into this. There's no control. I think that's the. There's no control. Yeah. And that's the problem. We do know. So we know some things that are worrisome. We know that levels of depression and mental illness are higher among adolescents now than they've ever been in measured history. So is that something to do with technology? Maybe

we don't know. It certainly is a kind of prod to think that this might be an important subject. Yeah. It's terrifying researching this fact. It is. It really is. And you know, the most telling thing, I suppose, so far is the response of Silicon Valley and basically all the people at the top of tech who now have turned against it and who discouraged their children from having screen time, you know, like. All of the schools don't have iPads. Exactly. Silicon Valley schools. Yeah, they all, so many of them regret doing what they did. I think the guy who invented infinite scroll is a Raskin, I think he says he regrets it more than

anything else in his life. He said it led to dire consequences. Right. What did he invent? Sorry. The infinite scroll. So before you got, he got annoyed when he was about 22 at the fact on Google, you have to click next page when you get to the bottom. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if you could just go on and on. And now he says he understands the importance of that stop. I've never considered that that was the pre I was thinking when you said he invented it, I was thinking what came before infinite scroll. And of course, that was it pages pages. Yeah, if you had to do it and I'm now wondering what my all time record of how many

tweets I have scrolled through at once is because I must, there must have been a day where I did more than I, yeah, more than I'd ever done before. But if I had to click at the end of 10 tweets, I'd make a conscious choice. Yes. You want to see another 10 or so tombstone that he, you know, let's make scrolling finite again. Is he just sick of talking about it? Because I think a lot of these people regret it just because everyone keeps requesting interviews about it. I spoke to a guy that can't be that many interview requests for the guy who no offense to him. I mean, that's clearly a big invention. But I bet it comes

up the inbox is how he's, it's how he's introduced. Does he own it? Does he introduce himself? Like when he meets someone in a coffee shop, he keeps talking until he stops. No, he is he compares it to he says there's a study where people are given bowls of soup and told to eat as much as they want. And then some of the bowls refill constantly from underneath. And some don't. And they have to put refills in. And the people who have the bowls that refill constantly, the magic bowls eat 70% more soup. And they don't even know that they've done it. So it's this like really subconscious addictive thing.

So he says it's like that. It's like the fairy tale, you know, with the, with the, will you have an infant? What's that one where you have an infant number of reach in the bag and as always corp gold coins. That was presented to us as children as a, as a kind of triumphant story. In fact, it's a tragic story. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it ruins you. This is the fairy tale version of infinite scroll. Yeah, that's true. Another of those go Justin Rosenstein, who helped invent the like button. And I only helped invent. I didn't have a sole inventor, but you know, as part of the team in there, he has now turned off all

notifications on his phone. Yeah, because when you install the new app, it often comes with notifications pre included, doesn't it? And you have to go into the settings and then turn it off. And that, yeah, Tim Harford wrote a column recently. He changed over his phone at some point and all the notification settings were left on and he got to live as if he had had them on, you know, all the way from buying a phone at the first place. And just a constant stream of notifications, jingles, bells, whistles, updates. Oh, what if every single one is every single app on his phone had the

notifications now on? Yeah. And it was a constant noise. Yeah. You know, it's really like the other interesting you can do is turn off the color on your phone. Have you done this? No. Yeah, black and white. Yeah. What? Yeah. It's a similar kind of detox. I've tried that. Yeah. That's great. It is. It's very good. One thing I used to get, which I don't anymore, is that thing of phantom phone vibration. Like phantom limb pain. Yeah, exactly. But it's phantom phone. Have you never heard this? I've never heard this. This is the strangest. It's really, you know, you get the buzz. You think, Oh, great. Finally. Someone

wants, someone has texted me or needs me in some way. And it's turned on every notification on his phone. It's still nothing. It's still dead. Yeah. No, it is. It's a very strange sensation. Well, if it's any consolation to anyone, there have obviously been kind of preliminary studies. It's hard to know that much at the moment. But this looked at data from 72,000 people between the ages of 10 and 80. And it asked them how much time they spent on social media. So this is like specifically about if social media makes you unhappy. And then it asked how satisfied they were with their lives,

which I don't know how 10 year olds answered that question, but they did. And it basically found that there was a Goldilocks effect. So most people, if they're using these things moderately, using social media moderately, they're pretty much okay. People who are using it way, way, way too much. They're at the far end, that end, they tend to be, you know, have much more anxiety, more unhappiness. But also people are at the other end. Same thing. You know, people aren't really using social media at all, like me. In fact, that's why I'm so chronically depressed all the time. Then they're also more likely to be

unhappy, which makes sense. If you're in your teenage years, then that's how all your friends are communicating. And then you're kind of excluded from it. There's a very good Washington post piece about parents who restrict their kids from having phones. And it's a really weird piece because I think it's meant to be about how phones are bad for teenagers and it's great to restrict them. But all the kids interviewed say, it's horrible. I don't, I can't communicate with my friends. I don't know what kind of plans they're making. There are a lot of conversations at school, which spring from things that I don't know about,

because I'm not on any of the chats. I think they're the same piece. I think they were a bit more equivocal. They said they could see a couple of advantages to it as well at the end of the piece. It rounded up with one of the girls saying, yeah, I guess it'll be okay. I won't do it, but you can't do it in isolation. Yeah. So the real question is if your entire school didn't have a phone and your entire friend's circle and your family, how would your life be different? Yeah. So you can't. But if you're turning these children who don't use their phones into pariahs, of

course. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I know. Well, we're stuck. We're trapped, aren't we? Until that's why my friend wanted to do this experiment. Yeah. He wanted to take entire towns and make them smartphone free zones and see what happens. That's a fun idea. Yeah. Okay. If you're listening and you live in a small town or a village and you think you'd all be up for it, contact us. We'll pass it on to Malcolm. We'll pass it on to his friend and we'll get it going. Okay. Well, I did find one other thing which I quite like. This is about injuries that mobile phone users

suffer. This is actual measurable physical harm suffered. Injuries experienced by mobile phone users due to their phones have soared over the last 20 years, obviously, because 20 years ago, people didn't have nearly as many phones. But between 1998 and 2017, apparently 76,000 Americans were injured in some way by their phones. 60% of younger people said they dropped their phone on their own face while lying down and looking at it. Oh yeah, that'll happen. And the other thing is sometimes children will have a phone dropped on them by their parents. You could be injured by that. Yeah. How heavy are these phones?

Well, I guess the child could be a small child, a big old 1980s style car phone. Yeah. It's a recipe for disaster. Okay, maybe not that. Yeah. But it's, you know, there's peril there. With their injuries in earlier generations from books being dropped on children's heads. I mean, I need a control here. Printing glasses. You know, big fat Grimms fairy tales. Yeah, absolutely. Dropped on a three year old's head. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that in 1931, the USA launched an aircraft carrier, which itself could fly.

Great stuff. It was it transported inside another bigger flying aircraft carrier, aircraft carrier. Wow, like a Russian doll. Sadly, it was not. No, that was a more Soviet thing, the Matroshka. Yeah. So this was an airship which the US Navy launched in 1931. It was called the USS Akron, and it was an airship. So that's a ship with a rigid frame, blimps. Like the Hindenburg, if you were picturing it slightly, right? Yeah, yeah, it's an airship. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, when you went for the description, I was just cutting out the middleman there. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I should also say

where I got this fact. I've been listening to a podcast called Black Box Down, which is great. It's all about aviation, mishaps and catastrophes and everything in between. And so the Akron was this airship, and it was enormous, and it launched in 1931, crashed in 1933. And the main selling feature of it, the thing that Navy were interested in, was that it was designed to be able to carry small fighter planes. There were these planes called sparrowhawks, which were, I think small, I think they were biplanes. But anyway, it could fit in at least three of them, and it was going to be redesigned so it could fit in five. And the idea was

that the USS Akron would fly overhead, lower a little hook from which the fighter plane is dangling, just retract the hook, plane flies off, and you know, launches three of these planes, and then they fly back, snag onto the hook once again, and are retracted into the belly of the airship. Do you think you have to be really good at those fairground games where you hook a duck onto a stick? Yeah, it was quite a precise maneuver. We did it work. So it worked that it could deploy these planes. I think the hook facility did work. But the, I mean, there's a reason we're not using all these now, basically, which is that the airships

obviously went very far out of fashion. This lasted two years before it crashed, and it killed over 70 people, including one of the main advocates for airship development and expansion. So it was the airship that didn't work. We all know, you know, the airships had a bit of a rough ride, but the actual aircraft carrier element was quite good. Yeah, that's what I mean. It worked. I'm struck by the fact that the chief proponent for airships dies in the destruction of the airship as a kind of model for dealing with bad inventors. It's the captain goes down with the ship model of us. Yeah, it really was. Yeah, yeah. But we still make ships

after he dies. So imagine there's a famous Dick Gregory joke. I'm now obsessed with Dick Gregory. Are you? I am. It's amazing. He's just an extraordinary character. He talks about when he was in the army, he lost his rifle and they charged him $85. He said, I had no idea they would have charged me. Now I know why the captain goes down with the ship. That's great. It's like the Segway guy, isn't it? Yeah, that's the modern day. You know, the guy who invented the Segway went over a cliff on his Segway. Sorry, I thought, was it the inventor or the head of one of the big Segway companies? I don't think it was the actual inventor.

No, I always thought it was. I was mishearing the word Segway. I really thought you were going to say that we had, you know, an inventor of the Segway, the conversational Segway. Shakespeare actually. He died halfway through trying to change the topic. He was impaled on a tangent. So just one other thing about the Acron, one of the other features it had, and there wasn't unique to it. This was actually a thing that had been invented a couple of decades before on other airships. It had a spy basket. I don't know if you guys read about this, but it's an observation basket that hangs beneath the body of the airship. And

the principle was, as you're flying your airship, you want to be observing the ground but discreetly. Airships are obviously huge. So the idea was you'd hide the airship in a cloud, lower the spy basket on a cable for several hundred meters in some cases, and there is someone sitting in the spy basket who watches the ground, can radio back up, tell the airship itself where to go, or whether they're nearing the target or whatever. And the Acron had one of these, and it was a disaster. It was tested once with sandbags in it instead of a person. Well, no wonder it was a disaster. What can sandbags tell you?

It was so unstable, this little observation basket, that it started swaying in the wind on this great long cable. It swayed so much that it swayed up to the equator level of the entire airship. Oh my God. So, thank God, no one was actually in it. That would be fun. That would be like that ride at theme parks or on the boat. Yeah, absolutely. It would have really, really given someone a better time. I'm more fascinated that they were hiding in clouds. I know. What is the speed of a cloud? You'd have to maintain the speed, right, so you don't pop out on the other side. You could also go with the

cloud. The cloud might not be flying towards your bombing target. Well, we had to bomb somewhere different today. Clouds again, you know. It only works in over-cloudy areas too, right? So you're limited to military operations in Northern Europe, in, you know, parts of, you know, like Manchester. You really can't do this out in England that much. Why not just disguise the blimp as a cloud? Why not just put... Oh, that's a better idea, yeah. Well, it's absolutely comfortable. Yeah, it's comfortable. Candy floss. And then there's your fairground ride. I did. It's all, it springs up, speaking of impaling

myself on a tangent, why do the internet people call the place where they store all your most valuable knowledge and data, the cloud? Yeah. Of all of the metaphors, this is the worst. Oh, you're right. Yes. A cloud is a flighty thing. Planes fly through them all the time. Clouds are routinely violated by any other thing in the air. They're totally ephemeral. They are totally ephemeral. That's the thing that we're going to call it a cloud. They're all around a table. They're saying, what's the metaphor we want for the safe place we put your data? The one that somebody says, a bank? No. Someone says, who now regrets that? Who is now among the group? Who's like,

yeah. God, I called it the cloud. He's giving it to you. I should have called it the paper bag like I wanted to, you know. Not the vault. I mean, just it's unbelievable. You're so right. They're flimsy. They've got negative connotations. They're very temporary. No one likes them. No one said, thank God it's a cloudy day. I was looking at military planes generally and sort of air squadrons. And I don't think we've talked about the Soviet night witches ever on this show. Do you guys know about these? They were a all female air squadron in World War two. And they, I think it was one woman who, you know, sort of pitched to Soviet government and said, look, lettuce, lettuce flies in planes. They flew these incredibly light planes. So

they were made to fly very, very low. So it's quite dangerous. They were made of just plywood and canvas. They had to be so light. So they couldn't have any armor. They couldn't have any parachutes, anything like that. These women literally just took a map and a compass up in these planes. And the key and the reason they had to be so light was because they could stall, I think, quite a long way from their target and sort of drift close to the target, which meant that they were very quiet. But what are they? What are they? Are they fighter planes? Are they bomber planes? Bomber planes. Yeah, couldn't be a bomber plane if they're incredibly light. Yeah. I mean, it's not letting them have a parachute, but they're also carry bombs. So there was some weight.

The parachute, I'm afraid, is just very light. Very light bombs. One bomb fewer and give me a parachute. Would that be? Bombs made of feathers and completely harmless bombs, actually. I know they dropped 23,000 tons of bombs in the war. The weird thing is, they're named the Night Witches, as far as I can tell. And all the sources, even back to the time, say this, that they were named the Night Witches by the Germans, the Naxahexen. And apparently, they named them that because of the sound they made. Because they were so quiet, they just sounded whooshing, like a broomstick. So apparently, we are to believe that they weren't actually called the Night Witches because of their gender. That's a complete coincidence. Isn't that weird? Come on.

That's like when Jay-Z said, in 99 problems that a bitch ain't one was about his dog. Like, it's Not really with that. Did he claim that? Well, you know, I got 99 problems. No, I know the line, but I just don't know that. He came out and said, no, it's not about women. It's about my dog. Sure, Jay-Z. I guess the difference between Jay-Z and the Nazis here is that it does make sense because the Nazis couldn't see into the plane. So how would they have known that there were women flying them? The Nazis call them Night Witches. Yeah, they named them. And they had to wear, they also must have been so uncomfortable. They had to wear men's clothes because they didn't have any sort of pilot clothes for women. Apparently, they tore up their

bedding and stuffed it into the shoes they wore so they would fit. Oh, wow. Yeah. Sounds like, I mean, it's hard enough driving a car in Wellington boots, but... Well, firstly, we have to ask about that because... You know, if you're trying to drive a sensitive instrument in not very comfortable shoes, I'm surprised they managed to get anything done. True. And when did you last drive your car in Wellies? Because I feel like... I love it. The one detail in this story that you're drawn to is the fact that they didn't have comfortable shoes. I would imagine in the list of problems these women have flying over enemy territory on the ground in flimsy Kenford airplanes. Chance of being killed gruesomely, first problem, big shoe, second problem. I think

I don't actually do understand that because you know when you're meant to have a bigger problem, but you can only focus on the fact you've got a stone in your shoe or something and that dominates your attention. I'm very familiar with the sense of having much bigger problems, but actually, only able to focus on the fact there's one little thing that's wrong as a distraction method. When I was doing The Barrow Murphy, the book that I'm... One of the things that I was struck by all over again is what these pilots went through in the Second World War is just, in retrospect, completely unbelievable. What we asked them to do. What do you mean the danger? The danger. But don't just say that. You take a 20-year-old kid, you put him through X number of months of training,

you fly him over to, if he's an American, fly him over to Europe, and he goes on these missions where statistically the chance of you surviving your term, your tour, is zero. They know the death rates, right? And you're up at 20,000 feet where it's freezing cold and these planes are not pressurized or heated or you're... The bombardier is sitting in this little thing that's exposed to... German fighters are coming at... I mean, it's just like that, that they all didn't have PTSD is astonishing to me. And then you do a 12-hour whatever mission over Germany. You fly back to some freezing cold, unheated air base in southern to south of England. You get four hours of sleep and then you do it again. And you keep doing it for like... I mean, it's insane to me that this...

This is what we... I mean, maybe only a 20-year-old would put up with that kind of... That was the reason. But planes, the importance that planes had particularly in World War II, it's pretty staggering. So at one point during 1939 to 1945, ally factories were building 633,000 aircraft in that time. So they were pumping them out at 288 aircraft per day. And this was a time where they were just trying to work out how do we come up with a new kind of plane that's going to just be the game changer in this war. So in this period as well, 250 new designs were all tested, built and flown just to see whether or not they could get one over on the enemy. And it was one plane in particular, which was the P-51 Mustang, which was the absolute game changer during war.

When that was designed and started flying, the Americans started flying that in over Germany, that was the moment where basically the Germans realized they were going to lose the war. Göring said himself, he said, when I saw the Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up. He never... Yeah, he said that. Göring did not say the phrase, the jig was up. He did it. He wouldn't have known the phrase, the jig is up. He did. He said, Otto Spaghetti, oh... He really did. Here we go. You have me going right and said he said that. He had a quirky turn of phrase. I'm speaking of Göring in World War II.

Once again, impaling ourselves on a tin. He had a quid for every time you'd said that. The only person I know about. One of the RAF raids in World War II was specifically for the intention of interrupting one of his speeches, so it wasn't necessary to do any bombing or anything. This is in 1943, and it was a huge speech in Berlin to commemorate 10 years of Hitler being in power, and Göring was going to make this big keynote speech, and the plan was to fly a bunch of mosquitoes through the clouds above, really, really near to their microphones, so that basically while the speech was being

broadcast, it would pick up the sound of the RAF sort of attacking the city. Oh, wow. That's kind of genius. This is clever, isn't it? And it worked. Oh, clever. Mosquitoes, unbelievable planes, we should say, they were made of plywood, and they were made largely by carpenters in England. Yeah, yeah. That's actually what pissed him off so much. When this happened, and they had to cut off his speech, because they thought this sounds really bad now. He's shouting over invasion. You know, he said something like,

I can't believe these bloody Brits have got seven carpenters, and they've pieced these planes together out of some trees, and we can't do anything like it. But yeah. Did he say anything about the jig, and where he thought it might be? Once again, the jig is up. It's like a Scooby-Doo film. Stop trying to make the jig work. I read this other thing as well, just going back to psychology of the pilots that were being used. There was a series of spy planes. This is in the 60s, this is a bit later.

The Blackbird, which we've spoken about before on the show, and the A-12, these were all like high, flying spy planes that they really, really didn't tell many people about. And there's a rumor that went around, which quite a few historians have substantiated and said was true, is that during the interview process, they would only hire pilots who were married. So that they had a reason to come back, because they had had a bunch of defectors at this point. This is a very positive attitude towards marriage. You could have easily spread it the other way. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that there is a marathon in New York that takes so long to complete, runners can go through up to 20 pairs of shoes while they're trying to run it. And they're all too big for them, aren't they? This is an amazing thing. Malcolm, you're a New Yorker, so I wonder if you had ever heard of this. I have, I have. And you're a runner, aren't you? And a runner. So the self-transcendence 3,100-mile race, it's a race that goes around a single block in New York. So in total, if you ran around this block distance, it's 0.54 miles, right? But to complete this marathon, you need to run around this block 5,649 times.

You've got 52 days in which to complete it, and runners will start at 6am, and they'll run all the way through to midnight. They'll do an average of 59 kilometers, 59 and a half kilometers per day. And if you manage to complete what is the longest certified marathon in the world, you get an amazing prize, which is usually either a DVD or a t-shirt. Sometimes a small trophy. What DVD? Depends on the movie. Yeah, this is incredible. Malcolm, have you ever been tempted to do that? Is that your question? Have you been to the Rouge? Because it's just one block in New York City. It is in Queens, I think. Yeah, that's right. A lot of strange things happen in Queens. Chief among them. It's lunacy, let's be clear. Even the normal marathon is lunacy.

Right. I've never done a marathon. Have you done a marathon before? I would never. It's nuts. I mean, there's no part of it. Some random Greek thousands of years ago completes this distance, dies at the end. And then that, so we've seized on this as the kind of ultimate running experience. Every thing about marathoning strikes me. I mean, I'm a very, very serious runner. I just find it incomprehensible that anyone other than a kind of elite runner would ever even attempt it. So when you say you're a serious runner, do you do short distance sprinting runners? Yeah, I run normal. I run, you know, if I race, I run 5Ks or 10Ks or miles. But the idea of going out there for hours on end, inevitably injuring myself while

preparing for it and sacrificing huge parts of my life so I can go for 20 mile runs on the weekend. You know, it's just like, it's very interesting because I don't really run very much, but I do think of running as a progression towards the marathon, which I have stopped at a very early point in, as in I don't, I'm not making any more progress towards a marathon in the distances I run. But you think of the marathon as the end goal? Sort of. Yeah, as you know, you do a 5K and then you do a 10K run and then eventually you'll do a marathon. Or you run 3,000 miles around a single block. It is insane. It's not like they shut it, because I've been in New York when there's a marathon on and obviously,

like anywhere else, they shut the city roads down, they have all sorts of people cheering on the sides. These people just have to do it every day around New York. Is someone checking them? I think so, yeah. But it's a very low key, there's basically a trestle table where the, you know, the race headquarters is. And I think it's just a couple of people. I don't know if they check the actual laps or if they're tagged or how long is it last? 52 days, so yeah, a couple of months. So someone has to sit there from six, from first thing in the morning to midnight. They're the real hero of the story. They feel like two days. How many pairs of trousers they go? Yeah, yeah. I bet they've watched that DVD a bunch in that time, right? I find that person

more interested in the person doing the running. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is this person who can be convinced to take that job? This is preposterous. You're right, you're right. Interview that guy. You're so right. Do they ask them whether they're happily married? This is an extension of the same. Only married men can take this job. You want to get away from the family for 52 days? It is. I think you need an ultra running CV even to enter the race. Really? They don't just take any schlub who turns up and says, I reckon I could do it. Because I can easily see if I was ever a good enough runner to even consider entering this, I can see it getting a bit later. You're like, you miss a day. You think, oh, I'll catch up later. It's fine. I've got 50 days to do it. How

far can it be to just, you know? Yeah, yeah. My running friends and I have something we call the Kipchogi number. Kipchogi being the world's greatest runner. The Kipchogi number is how long you could run with Kipchogi if Kipchogi was running at world record pace. So everyone in the world has a Kipchogi number. Your Kipchogi number may be two feet. The rule of Kipchogi numbers is they are shorter than you think. How do you know what your Kipchogi number is? My Kipchogi number is, if I'm very fit, is probably 1200 meters. That's decent. I wish I'd written this down related to this. So there's the 5k park run, which I think is 5k. It was a huge thing here. Many hundreds of thousands of people have done it now. And I think they looked at how

many people over 5k in the park run at their pace would have beaten Kipchogi running his marathon pace. So he was running that speed for 26 miles. And I think it's like fewer than a hundred people are over that amount over that distance. Seriously, you'd be very good to even keep up with Kipchogi. He's good. Because I was watching the marathon yesterday at the World Championships, you see these guys on the television and because they're all running at the same pace, there's an illusion that they're not running that fast. But you have to understand, if you actually see them in person, it is astonishing. So they're running at 445 mile pace for 26 consecutive miles. So all this is to say, I don't lack respect for the achievement. I just think

trying to do it is for if you're not a professional. I do always find it amazing how many people they get to do the marathon each year. So many thousands of people who are up for this. Very difficult career of masochism. And probably not that good for you. It's weird. Again, it's like, you know, I was talking earlier about the Goldilocks, like for social media, you know, moderate use is good. Similarly, studies seem to show that moderate exercise, very good for you, obviously. Extreme exercise like ultramarathon running doesn't seem to be that good for you. It doesn't really confirm any more health benefits if you're running extremely long distances. And people do have these unbelievable hallucinations. They often collapse. I think there's standard

marathons you're talking about usually more like ultramarathons. So there's Jasmine Paris, remember she is a champion fell runner. And she anyway, she won the 2019 Montaigne spy race, which is a big up and down kind of mountains ultramarathon. And she saw lots of hallucinations and still but still managed to win it and was expressing breast milk along the way, I think it's 268 miles. And she had a newborn baby. Where was the baby as in the baby was being run alongside her by her partner, who actually deserves more credit. We should say about this is this race is called the what is it called the self transcendence self transcendence. It does your tip off right there. Yeah. Don't don't transcend yourself.

Don't don't do it. So we should say the guy who is founded in his name. Yeah, Sri Chimnai. Yeah. So he was a guru guru guru. Yeah. There are Sri Chimnai races around the world. Yeah. Yeah. And he was extraordinary. Yeah. I said you read a bit about his life story. So he expressed self transcendence through fitness. And as a result, did all these, you know, amazing feats, he lifted extraordinary weights and planes. He lifted planes. Yeah, I can see. He was the original aircraft carrier. But it's really like the funniest thing he did was called lifting up the world with a oneness heart. Okay, that's what it was called. He went around the world bench pressing significant people who contributed to human history. So he lifted 8,000 people around

the world. He lifted Nelson Mandela. Wow, Desmond Tutu, Billy Jean King. And then I mean, it goes a bit like the list of Susan Sarandon. Oh, come on. That's Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy. Okay, well done. Ravi Shankar. Several heads of state. Richard Gere. Sting. Jesse Jackson. He's a wrestler, former wrestler. Yeah. He's a biggie. Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum got a lift. Goldblum got a lift. Wow. It just feels like a weird thing to do. What a very strange club of people to get together. But one time he lifted a Republican and a Democrat at the same time. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just to express peace. That is actually, that's cross party, cross aisle politics. Where is he from? He was from India, I want to say. I think he was. Yeah. He worked for

the Indian Consulate, certainly, when he was, and that's why he moved to America. So he moved there in 1964. And yeah, he was just an extraordinary, as you say, kind of fitness character with a huge fan base. Can I just quickly mention, I saw a photo of you, a sort of younger college version of you doing a run on your blog. And you were doing an attempt at the four minute mile, basically, or at least you were running a mile and you got a number. It was high school, early days of high school. And it was, I was running the 1500 meters. Yes. But I was nowhere close to a four minute mile, which is a grown up activity. I was, I think I ran a four or something 1500 meters. Oh, really? Very different. But not still,

you got four or something. Four or five. And the 1500 meters. Yeah, I was 14. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty quick. I peaked as a runner at 14. You know, which amazes me to this day when I think of the idea that there was something I could do at 14, which I can't do, which I could do better than at any other point in my life. If only someone had told you then, so you could appreciate it. Or stop. Or give up. Yeah. We've never mentioned Cliff Young. He must have been an Australian hero, Cliff Young. So he ran the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in its inaugural year, which was 1983. Sydney to Melbourne. Yep. It's 875 kilometers. We traveled that journey and we, we flew. So we did. Well, we had to get from one tour date

to the other quite quickly. So it wouldn't have been practical actually for us to run it. Otherwise, we would have. But anyway, so 1983, it's inaugurated. The world's top runners go and say they'll try doing this run. They've all got the training plan. They've tried running those distances before. And basically all the pros have established that you run 18 hours a day and you sleep for six hours a day. And you'll do it. And I think, you know, five, six, seven days, depending how fast you go. And so they all turn up. And this guy turns up who's a 61 year old farmer called Cliff Young. And he's wearing his Wellington boots and he's wearing like farming overalls. And just before he starts, he puts on the first ever pair of running shoes he's ever owned.

And he took out his teeth because they rattled when he ran. So, so Australian. And he put on his hat with the cork hanging down from it. And he started, no, he started shuffling along incredibly slowly and everyone like left him in their dust completely, super slowly. But he didn't sleep. And he had a different strategy. He was a sheep farmer and he had 2,000 acres of land. And he used to have to run across this land for days on end sometimes, herding the sheep, chasing the sheep. And he thought, well, I don't need to sleep when I run that three, four days. I don't sleep. I'm just going to not sleep. And eventually day two, day three, started overtaking. Are you sure? Are you sure you're not just telling us the

hair and the story? This is all eating a bit east off. This is all this whole Cliff Young, the tortoise, the pet tortoise. No, it was incredible. He wins the race. He beats the nearest competitor by 10 hours. He's way, way, way ahead. 61 years old. And now everyone does it his way by sort of sleeping maybe one hour a night and shuffling. So he's like, you know what he's like? He's like, do you remember, do you remember David Birkhoff? No. Birkhoff is the Cliff Young of the backstroke. Oh, really? So you're in the backstroke, you jump off, you dive into the water and then you surface and you go, right. Birkhoff realizes, oh, actually, it's faster to swim underwater than on top. So Birkhoff starts, drives in and he doesn't surface until

two thirds of the way down. Yeah, right. And he breaks the world record and they eventually ban it. Oh my God, it does feel like cheating. He's Cliff Young though. He realizes that there's a flaw in the way people are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hang on, can I just check about David Birkhoff? So you said that was backstroke, right? Backstroke. So are you allowed to do another stroke underwater? No, I could be wrong here. I think you do a dolphin kick. You do the dolphin kick. Yeah, arms down, dolphin kick. But you're allowed to be on your front, aren't you? But you're allowed to be on your front. You're not doing backstroke because you're on your back. No, no, backstroke, you start in the water and you go back. Right, yeah. So he just stays underwater doing a dolphin

kick. Upside down, sorry. I got it, I got it. And then just, and surfaces later, it's called the Birkhoff blast off. That's amazing. It's not quicker. I feel like I'd be really slow at that. Why is it quicker? I've never understood why it's quicker. I don't know anything about swimming. Because you can't do it with your arms, can you? The up and down manoeuvring must take a lot of the speed out of your forwards. But it's doing the dolphin kick is faster than doing the backstroke. What's the point of the backstroke? Yeah, yeah. So we do the backstroke to move more slowly through the water. Is that what we do? Well, yeah, it's like butterfly. What's the point of that? So he basically made the sport unwatchable because you're just watching.

He did. Although it's very thrilling to see where he surfaces. So you're waiting, it turns it into a suspense film, right? So you watch it and you can't see anything. It's just like the service of the water is unruffled. We just see these strange things going, all of a sudden, Birkhoff. I was, as a child, I was obsessed with Birkhoff. He is this really brilliant guy. But I just keep thinking he's going to do it again. Maybe he's an anesthesiologist and he's going to realize, wait a minute, right? We don't have to keep them under for, you know, five minutes. Keep them under for two hours. He doesn't get your prescription as a doctor until you're in the car park going back to your car. And then he says, take two of these days. Don't you want to be inside Birkhoff's brain?

Here's what I love about Birkhoff and Cliff Young. It is that thousands of people do this thing, and it never occurs to them to tinker with that particular. So on the ultramarathon, they're doing everything in their power to compete and train. It never occurs to them, oh, what if I just slept? I know, it's amazing, isn't it? They're all like in lockstep. Do they wake each other up before Cliff Young came along? It's like, ready to go now? Like, you're in a race? In a race, yeah. It just seems crazy. I know. It makes you think how many things are we taking for granted where we could be smashing it in life because there's an obvious loophole. God, what a point. What a terrifying point. I could be way better at podcasting if I never slept,

for instance. For instance, yeah. Maybe, or worse. We'll cheat in next week and find out how Anna's experiment went. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that given the choice, most people would prefer to win $10 million rather than $100 billion, right? And so let's see here, guys. I'm going to ask you all. This was a University of Bath research, and it's published in Nature, and it has 8,000 people across 33 countries, so it's quite comprehensive. And basically it said, imagine your ideal life, and then consider how much money you want to lead that ideal life. And then you've got a lottery that you can enter, and you've got a bunch of lotteries, and you're probably going to win it,

and you've either got a lottery where the jackpot is $10,000, so it's all American dollars, but they adjusted it for currencies in the countries, $10,000, and then it increased by multiples of 10. So you win $10,000, $100,000, million, $10 million, and the highest was $100 billion. What would you guys go for? $100 billion. Okay, you'll just straight up $100 bill. Yeah. I totally agree. I, $10 million. You're going to get $10 million. Really? There you go. The last thing you want to do is win $100 billion. That is like a nightmare scenario. Why? Do you understand what would happen? Listen, if I had that money, I'd sue you if you ever spoke to me like that in that time, okay? Every single part of your life gets more complicated by a thousand percent, right?

Look at yellow musk. He's having a great time accusing people of things. He can't walk down the street. That's true, but you can't do that if you're famous regardless. He's digging his own tunnel, so he won't need to go down the street. He'll be parachuted through a vacuum tube along under the street. We can say with a hundred percent certainty that you would be profoundly unhappy for a variety of reasons. One of the main ones is that the proliferation of decisions that you would have to make would overwhelm you. So with money, this is the cost of wealth, right? The hidden cost of wealth is that for most people, the decision about whether to do an activity is whether I can, would like to afford it. When you have money, all of a sudden,

cans turn into wants, right? Do I want to do that? Do I want to do that is a much more complicated decision than it can. Yeah, human choice. It's too much endless choice. So you now have every decision in your life that used to be a can has now turned into a want, right? So you are paralyzed right now. You're going to have lunch after this place, right? Yeah. You are not going to go and have lunch at Claridge's, are you? No. No. Why? Well, for a number of reasons, but one is you don't want to trek all the way over there. Two, there's no point to spending 80 pounds on lunch. And three, why do you want to hang out with those people, right? Those are your reasons. Okay, I have given you $100 billion dollars. I've removed, you have a driver now. Yeah. No, you can go to Claridge's,

you can go to the airport and get in your plane and fly to, you can have lunch in Paris if you want. Do you want to have lunch in Paris? Yeah. Do you want to? It's spiraled out of control. And then you've got to look. Sounds great. You're going to have to be really going to struggle to get then to give an inch of this. Oh wait, so are you trying to put me off there? It's a nightmare. I've picked the most kind of anodyne choice that you would have today, where to have lunch. And now I've given you an infinite set of options just because you have $100 billion. Yeah. So you can't even, lunch has now become a cognitive burden of the size. No, but we've been talking, there's a million other things that are going to happen today that

you're freezing. Every single one of them has now been multiplied times thousands. But I just want to use it specifically for eBay auctions, where I can just make sure I set the limit at $100 billion and never lose my auction. The size of the Dick Gregory memorabilia market is going to go wildly out of proportion. If you collect, say, do you like to collect things? Yes, I do. Okay. I've now removed 100% of the joy of collecting things. There's no longer any constraint. That's a pretty good point. You no longer have to make any decision. You can just buy everything. Yeah. Oh my God, you wouldn't treasure any of all that crap you have that no sane person would treasure anyway. You wouldn't because you could buy infinite quantities of it.

It is really interesting. What would you do, Andy, sorry, since we've got the others? Can I split the difference again? $100 million? That's very unusual. So interestingly, in this study, it really peaks at $10 million. So most people ask for $10 million or below. There are some countries like I think Russia and India, where the majority choose $1 million or less. But I was looking at the graph and it peaks at $10 million. And then there are quite a lot of people who still choose $100 billion, although not majority. So it ranges between 8% of people in China to 39% of people in Indonesia choose $100 billion. But between $10 million and $100 billion, it's hardly anyone. I guess because $10 million seems to me like Malcolm saying like a kind of

reasonable amount where you could live a really nice life. You have an incredible house and travel and see the world. Whereas actually $100 million is a life deforming, like a substantially deforming amount of money. You lose all of your friends at $100 billion, too. Is this appeal? Down it's unphased. I'm trying to get out of this hellhole. Feature, not a bug. What would I do, by the way? What would you do? Well, what I find is always difficult with these is that the temptation is to say, I'll have it all so that you can just give it all away. But then that's quite an arrogant, probably Western thing to think that I know better where to give money than governments or Bill Gates or whatever. But I'd be tempted to do that.

I would spend all the money traveling the world, lifting people. I chose to be significant. That's what I would do. With $100 billion, you can lift anyone in the world. Just pick at your special. I'm going to turn you into the president of East Timor or something. No, I mean, literally, like Street Shemnoi. I just travel around the world. You're just picking people up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Street Shemnoi tribute. Do 8001, yeah. Lots of studies about the psychology of wealth. And so one of them, which I quite liked, is would you go public if you won the lottery?

Yeah. And again, I think, I think I know what you're going to say Malcolm. Disaster. Yeah, disaster. Absolutely. Well, public opinion is definitely in chime with that. Only 2% of people say they would make public. Yeah. But invariably, here's the problem. You can't not go public because every one of your choices is conspicuous at $100 billion, right? So something would be idling downstairs, right, with a driver. You're not taking the 2 with $100 billion down. This is driving me nuts. You're not confronted with the lunacy of your position yet. You're

not even here. Wait, let me ask you a question. Are you enjoying this right now? I love this, yeah. You enjoy your job. Yeah. And you enjoy, you enjoy this afternoon. This taping thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this bit's going to give an intense feeling. And have you, have you enjoyed, you enjoyed a cup of coffee? I did. All of that's gone. You have $100 billion. You don't do this job anymore.

What am I doing? Dan is going to be in the, Dan is in the 59, 59% of people, right? 2% said they go public. 59% of people said they were, they would remain anonymous and not even tell their friends. And Dan thinks he's in this group of people who are going to turn, next time I turn off outside Dan's house, there's a gold-plated Maserati outside. Dan denies anything to do with him. I'm just going to save it. I would hire a replacement me to just take over this life, be the Dan Shriver,

and I would go be Mr. Billionaire. Oh, well, we should definitely do that. Yeah. Sorry. We've neglected the single biggest drawback to having $100 billion, and that is you have to hang out without a billionaires. Oh my God, you, there's nowhere you have to. Oh, that's true.

That's true. That is a nightmare. They're the only ones who understand you, I suppose. So, yeah. There's one county, I believe it's in Wyoming or Montana, which has more billionaires than any other. Oh, wow. Where they all live. Okay.

And they all have their personal offices there, which are their charities. No one else can afford to live there, right? Because they priced out everyone who serves the billionaire. So everyone who has to serve the billionaire has to drive, like, massive distance to one county. And they all have these charitable offices, but of course, who are you spending your charitable dollars on? If there's only billionaires, right? Yes.

Yeah. Right? This is sort of endless, this absurd existence that they live in this one. That's where you get it. That's where we'll find you. This is another survey, another YouGov survey, which tests a famous rap lyric. Do you think it is or is not true that the more money you have,

the more problems you have? 12% said it is true that more money, more problems. So that's not... 60% said it's false that more money, more problems. It's not a linear relationship. It's a U-shaped relationship, sorry. It's the Goldilocks thing. Studies tend to show, don't they, that after a certain amount of wealth,

then your happiness starts to decline again. I think the global average is it's about 70 grand, 70,000 US dollars for emotional well-being. And then it's 95 for... Sorry, is that income or welfare? It's income, sorry. I know that. Salary, yes.

But in terms of life satisfaction or life evaluation, it's about 95. So people feel prouder, I suppose, if they earn a little bit more, even though they'll be happy day to day with a bit less. So what do you want? Do you want to be proud of how much you earn? Or do you want to live a nice life? But either way, it's not very bad.

I know what Dad's going to ask me every single time. For the listener, Malcolm, it's just staring me down, waiting for my answer. Poor, misguided fool. There was a really fun study done by a guy called Paul Piff, who looks into the effects of wealth on people and looks into how it actually kind of makes us meaner if we get richer. He sent researchers to hide in a bush in California

and look at cars that went by and then judge how expensive they are. And then there's a researcher further up the road, I think, who is just crossing, is ever crossing back and forth. And in California, you legally have to stop people to cross is ever crossing like here. And he clocks the types of car and then whether they stopped for the pedestrians. And in the cheapest category of car, every single car stopped to let the pedestrians across,

as you're supposed to do. In the most expensive category of car, how many would you think would stop and how many would drive past? How many would stop out of the most expensive category? 60 percent. 60 percent. Do you, you're, you're close. It was 50-50.

50 percent of the most expensive cars, just drive, just break the law and drive straight over the zebra crossing. Well, we don't. And don't let the person cross the road. That's you, Dad. We now know who's in that car, yeah. I don't drive, so. In your fancy car.

You'll have a word with your chauffeur about that after the train. Mow him down. Can I give you one more survey about how people react to wealth? Yeah. I really like this one because it's a great question to ask. If you accidentally paid 300 times more than your monthly salary, what would you be most likely to do? Say something and return the money.

Say nothing but return the money if asked. Try and immediately spend or move the money. But stay on your job. Yeah. Or take the money and leave your job. So, I mean, open, open season. Well, they're going to find out. They're going to find out.

And then they're going to ask you to repay the money in three years' time when you've spent all the money and that's the worst of all worlds. I'll give you the status. It's amazing. 62 percent of people said they'd say something and return the money. 20 percent of people said they'd say nothing but return the money if asked. And then we get to the real optimists. Three percent of people would take the money and leave the job.

They said they would try and do that. Two percent of people said they would take the money, try and immediately spend or move it and also keep their job, which I just find so optimistic that that's ever going to... Two percent of people think they would get away with that. That's nice. Rosie thinking. The worst spy in American history was Aldrich Ames,

CIA agent who, intelligence officer who gave away the store to the... Everything. So, oh, will you say worst spy? You mean most effective? He did the most damage to American interests. Who was paid all this money. He worked for the Soviets for like 10 years. He's paid all this money and he starts to live it up.

And he's on a... All of his colleagues know how much he makes. And he starts showing up for... He buys a Jaguar and his wife has a Mincote and he has this fancy house. And he goes and he's like... And no one... No one said... No one...

It never... It didn't click. But that's spies. He's option four in other words. Keep... Spend the money. Keep the job. Somehow he thinks that...

He was right. No one noticed. He gets caught in the end for some other complicated reason. But the idea that he's like... Throwing around 20s. And no one notices for years. It gets ever more extravagant. He's the only one in the parking lot of the CIA.

No one has a Jaguar. They're gumbo points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the funniest thing. He started wearing these fancy European suits and like... Some of us hilarious stories. Surrealic license plate on his car. Trips into Russian accidentally all the time.

His colleagues just going, I must get better at saving. I don't understand. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd 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. Andy. I'm Drew Hunter M. Malcolm, are you on social media? I am. I'm...

What am I? I think I'm at Gladwell. Probably. At Gladwell, probably. And Ada, we've already established that you don't even know what it is. No, but I'm probably with email. You can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep, where you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website, no such thing, is of fish.com. Check out all of our previous episodes. They are up there to be listened to. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.