No Such Thing As A Fish - 45: No Such Thing As A Travelator In Ancient Rome

Episode Date: January 31, 2015

Episode 45: Anna, James, Andy and special guest Greg Jenner discuss Von Humboldt's electrifying anal experiments, migrating limpets, and a time travelling bus service.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast brought to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name's Anna, I'm joined today by fellow QI elves James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray, and also a special guest today, historian and Horrible History's writer, Greg Jenner, who has a book to plug, correct? Yes, plug plug plug plug. It's called A Million Years in a Day and it's out, like, now. Now. And it's quite good. It's quite good. It is good. Some of us have read at least bits of it. It's amazing.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's alright. It's above average. I would say it's definitely sort of top 70 percentile, you know, like, you know, it's a two-one. A high two-one book. Buy it. OK, let's get on with the show. And for fact number one, let's go to you, Greg. OK, so my fact is from my book because I am that unimaginative. And my fact is, in the

1960s in America, there was one particular bus route that was only 35 miles long, but during that time, passengers passed through seven different time zones. Wow. That's amazing. How does that work? Right, so it's fairly complicated, so I'm going to have to give you probably a bit of context. OK. So this is all to do with daylight saving time, which is something we have here, of course,

in Britain. It's a familiar concept to all of us. But it was an idea first put forward about 100 years ago by William Willett, who was a mustachioed Englishman. He was also the ancestor of Chris Martin from Coldplay, you know, for your fans of the year. Ah. Who wrote Clocks? Exactly. There we go, see? So he put that forward in about 1909, I think, and he was arguing for trying to get more daylight into the time. So everyone went, well, this is a nice idea in principle, but

it sounds very complicated. We're not going to do it. And then in 1915, he died, and everyone was sort of mocking him, and the idea was going nowhere. And then Germany picked up with the idea and said, this is a brilliant idea. We will do this. They did it during the war, didn't they? They did it during the war. And it was like it saved them energy. Yeah, because that extra hour of daylight meant you didn't have to burn loads and loads of gas and oil, and that could then go to the war effort.

When he died, did everyone miss his funeral by an hour? So as soon as Germany adopted it, Britain very sheepishly went, yeah, maybe we should do that as well. And it became known as will it time, which is like hammer time, but will it stash, I think. And anyway, it then spread around the world, and America adopted it. And the problem with America is it's a much bigger nation than Britain. And so America has loads of time zones, and it's too big. And so the government says, all right, come on, let's be sensible here. We're a federal nation, so each state can decide if they're going to opt in or opt out. And then the problem is that each of the states then said to the

towns and cities, okay, you guys can also decide if you're going to opt in or opt out. And so 28 of the states opted in to DST, and then the various cities would then decide, oh, we can do it, we're not going to do it. And so what happened is you ended up with this incredibly chaotic system. It's the point that in Idaho, shops that were next door to each other might be on different times. So in the same building, you could literally go next door to the corner shops. This is amazing. This was in the 1950s and 1960s. Until 1966, this was happening. I just want to say, how did it work with the two shops that were next to each other? It reminds me of a place I went to called Baal-Hertog on

the border of the Netherlands and Belgium. Oh, yeah, the X-claves. Yeah, so there's loads of X-claves, and the border between the two countries is really, really complicated. They have the lines you can see on the pavements. You can see where the lines are. So you can like walk from Belgium to Netherlands, then back into Belgium, then back into Netherlands again. And it's something like the Netherlands rules on selling pornography are supposed to be so much better than Belgium. So all the pornographic shops are in Netherlands, and all the firework shops are in Belgium, even though they're in the same town, they're all put in different buildings. That's a mad idea, isn't it? But I think certainly

kids in Michigan go to Canada to go drinking. There's a Canada, I think it's 18, it's legal age in America at 21. This is, in fact, there was a golf club set up on the border of the US and Canada during prohibition as a way for Americans to be able to drink. So the drinking club within the golf club was on the Canadian side of the border. So you could enter the golf club in America, and then you kind of wander over to the side which had a pub, go drinking. It's a brilliant idea. Yeah. So I think, William Willits, one of the reasons people thought he was crazy, because his system was quite complicated. So he was suggesting going forward by 20 minutes of daylight a day, right? Yeah, he suggested.

Which is very complicated. I think he suggested, I can't remember exact details, but he suggested changing the clock something like six or seven times a year. Yeah. Which is just a bit too much faffing. And also people had only just got uniform time, because until the sort of coming of the railways, every town in Britain had its own time. I think Bath and Bristol, I think about seven or eight minutes behind London. And so when the trains arrived, that became chaotic because people missed their trains, obviously. And then William Willits turned up and went, hey, guys, what if we all changed our course loads and loads of times? You know, a really annoying date. And we'd all get an hour back. It was the railways,

which actually made the first time zone. It's called railway time. Railway time. So cool. And all the really interesting legal implications over what could happen. So if babies were born at the same time, but in different places, that, you know, a whole inheritance could be changed. Because technically, you know, the child had been born earlier, therefore, was got the willowly inheritance or whatever. So all of this happened only because of fast speed communication. So trains, telegraphs, that kind of thing. The amazing thing is, I mean, so I've gone back to my original fact, this 35 mile route, you had to change your watch, I think, every eight minutes. I mean, did people actually do that? No, I don't think so.

I mean, I think, you know, maybe if you were really into timekeeping. Yeah, I bet there was a really nerdy schoolboy. But it's just sort of this amazing idea that you'd get on a bus. And it was only 35 miles. It's between Moundsville, West Virginia and Steubenville, Ohio. And during that time, you would pass in and out of time zones back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. That's so cool. What you guys were saying about different towns having their own times. And that was in America as well. And in the 1870s, North America had 144 official times in all the different towns and stuff. 144. Yeah. And if you went from Washington to San Francisco, and you wanted to be this nerdy schoolboy who changes watch all the time, you'd

have to change it over 200 times. No way. But in fairness, it's a long journey and you need to do something to take up the time. Podcasts have not been invented to be listened to in transit. No Sudoku yet. It's just watches. But I mean, the problem with timekeeping is a really ancient one. And this is something I sort of tried to cover in the book of it is that, you know, the ancient Egyptians, you know, were trying to work out what time it was via the stars and via solar clocks. But back then, there was no standard 60 minute hour. Is it true that in the middle ages, they used to, they would have say 12 hours in a day, and that would be from sunrise to sunset. And so if it was a longer day in the summer, then the hours would just be longer. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah,

they basically, I mean, they're worth scholars who kind of went, Hey, guys, I think we should have actual equal hours, but it didn't really work. There's no point being smug if you're stumbling around in the dark. That's so interesting. So when it seemed like in the summer term, the hours were going really slowly because you're waiting for the holidays. It's because they were. Yeah, because until the invention of like gas lights and stuff when people actually could have artificial lighting, people just went to bed when it got dark. How do people know how long it was? Like, how did they know in advance? Sand timers and water timers. The ancient Chinese medieval Chinese had clocks that you could smell. So each hour was a different incense. So it burned down. And so you

were like, Oh, it must be lunchtime because I can smell ginger. What's the lunch ginger? So yeah, the history of time keeps really, really confusing. It wasn't until I think the 14th century that it was a Muslim scholar. I think it's Syria, who came up with the first equal hours clock. Before that would have played out with things like women's hour. Welcome to women's 72 minutes. It still is really complicated time zones and timekeeping and everything, isn't it? Like, some countries have the most eccentric systems. When I live in Australia, they have various bits of Australia that have it in half hour increments rather than an hour increments. And some places have it in quarter of an hour increments. I think there's a town of 200 people in Australia, which

is decided to be GMT plus eight and three quarters. Brilliant. So the town of Bloody Orchardsville, I'm trying to work out. So how many time zones do we think there are in the world? So if you just count an hour, they're divided along 15 degrees across the world since the 1880s. I think it is. So there should only be 24, I think, except there are 26 because there's a little group of islands which decided to put themselves to because they did more trading with America. Oh, really? They decided to join America's time. So if you look down the international date line, it's got a really weird kink in it. It's not a line at all because it scoops these islands in. Is that Samoa or American Samoa or Tonga? No, Samoa is different. Samoa is the one that went in 2011.

It decided to go back a day, didn't it? So it missed out the 30th of December 2011. Sorry, it went forward a day. It went forward a day. But I did get an extra day on the 4th of July, 1892. Use it wisely. Yeah. So I reckon what would happen is everyone would celebrate the day before because it's like a big event. Everyone would be hungover to hell on that day and no one would do anything on that day at all. And then the next day they go, what do you do on your extra day? Oh, I just stayed in bed. I'd love for there to be like a Doctor Who episode that's set in the lost days that don't exist. Some sort of weird quasi-universe. Yes, that's great. I don't actually watch Doctor Who, so I don't know how it would work. It's like that. In fact, that made a lot more

sense than a lot of the Doctor Who stories. Anyone else? Some things on buses. Oh, yeah, buses. As soon as we were talking about that at the start. So there is a bus driver in Moscow called Alexey Volkov, who is known as the Punisher because he deliberately rams people who cut him up. Really? Wow. When you say cut him up, do you mean people who stab him with a knife? I'm afraid not. If you're driven in Moscow, it's like that. Everyone's cutting you up all the time. That has a weirdly visceral metaphor, isn't it, for just someone driving in front of you a bit close. Yeah, gonna cut you up. I wonder if there's ever been a confusion in a police station on that. If anyone's ever got a really long prison sentence unnecessarily for just slipping in front of

someone in a car. All I did was cut him up, got that. All right, now it's time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that if a predator gets too close to a limpid, the limpid will lift up its shell and then stamp on the predator's foot. How cool is that? So how fast does it do that? Because I think of limpids as being quite slow moving. They are slow. They generally get about a meter away from their home before going back. Brilliant. And they have to get back before the tide comes in, so you know. Why do they leave their home then? If they're only going a meter, what are they looking for? They are looking for food. They are hungry for algae. They love an alga. The other thing is

that they'll stamp on your foot if you go too near them, but they only have one foot, don't they? They're just a foot, that's all a limpid. They are the foot, but they've got the shell all around them, so that's the painful bit. So the foot muscle is in the middle, and then obviously the shell crunching down between the predator and the rock. Things like starfish like to eat them. I don't think they can do it very fast, but it's called mushrooming. Why is it called mushrooming? Mushrooms don't stamp on you. I suppose when they go up on their foot and the shell is around them, they look like a mushroom if you were from the side.

Oh, I see. But that's just a theory. I don't know that's true. And so anyway, they move across, they go commuting basically for algae, and they move across very, very slowly, and they have this tongue called a radula, which they scrape over the rock, and it's got 1,920 teeth on it, hardened with iron compounds. Basically, if these things ever decide to grow bigger, we are stuffed. The compound is called girthite, I think. Is it? Named after girtha, the author.

Really? Yeah. Well, it's quite a long story, so it's named by a guy called George Lentz, who was a friend of girtha, and if you read any books, it says that it was named in his honor. Yeah. But actually, these two guys fell out quite early. He introduced Lentz to his sister, and we don't know, his sister was married, and we don't know what happened, but then a little bit later,

Lentz was kicked out of the court of Weimar, and then later on, Lentz then named this mineral after girtha, but it says it's in his honor, but these two didn't get on. And so I think that it was named against him because he didn't like him, and it's this thing which is found in the tongue of a limpid, but it's also found in mud, and I think he was like literally making his name mud. Nice. It's good theory. Good theory.

Yeah. It's a limpid, then. Limpid. Their commute sounds thrilling. Yeah, it is. But doesn't Albie come to them? No. Well, in a way, yes.

I think they filter water through their gills, but they do also definitely go across the rocks in search of food very, very slowly. They also migrate limpids. How far? Not very far, a few meters. About a meter, yeah. But in the winter, do they go south for winter? Three meters.

They move up the shore, so it depends which direction the shore is. If you ever see a flock of limpids in a V-shape, that's their migration. It's for Benarero dynamics. So when they go, they leave a trail of mucus behind them, and they go across scraping the rock with their tongue and getting all the algae up off the rock, but then the mucus they leave behind them actually encourages more algae to grow on it, but that's basically farming. They are encouraging more food to grow in the path they have been in.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So not only is it quite advanced farming, if they're rotating, are they enclosed? Well, it's not combined harvest, is it? But they do get subsidies from the EU. They have a butter mountain. An algae mountain. Right, here's a question, and you may know the answer to it.

I'm going off topic here, but how many bacteria would you have to have before you could see them in a lump? What would a mountain of bacteria look like? It would look like a lot of pus, basically. Really? How do you know that? Just before we get onto that, how do you know that it would look like a mountain of pus? It's a weird disease.

I think I might have read that in one of XKCD's things. I've read that book on their website. How do they surely it would depend on the kind of bacteria? Some of it, does it all look the same? No, it would look like a big shimmery, silvery, greenish, blueish. So like the blob from classic Hollywood movies in the 60s or whatever. But I mean, James, I think I've said this before. The blob is based on a real police report.

I might have said this before, actually. Really? Yeah. It was based on a police report in America in the 1950s about a mysterious blob. Which would turn out to be a giant cluster of bacteria. If you haven't seen the blob, it's such a good film. It's got Steve McQueen and a really, really young Steve McQueen. And the blob eats everyone.

Oh, spoiler alert. So we just swallowed things up and digested them? Yeah. There's a great bit where a farmer gets angry with it and fires a gun into it. That's not going to work. I bet it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work.

It just eats the bullets and gets the fraction bigger. Again, guys, spoiler alert. Sorry. Come on. Yeah. What we were talking about bacteria. Yeah, there's a bacteria that you can see, I think. Biggest bacterium, I think, might be nicknamed Conan the Bacterium by the newspapers.

And I think it's big enough. Is it visible to the naked eye? I think it is. Just one of them. I believe so. That's amazing. We've mentioned in one of our books that bacteria can get viruses. Viruses can get viruses.

Viruses can get viruses. Big viruses can get small ones. They found a big virus. It was in a cooling tower somewhere in the UK, I think. And it was a massive, massive virus. And then they found another one. And it was orbiting the original virus. And it's called Sputnik.

They called it. Really? Yeah. Wow. Again, it might be a newspaper nickname, I don't know. It's like a satellite virus. Yeah. Just going round and round it.

If you dropped a load of bacteria out of a plane. OK. How much are blobs worth? Yeah, blobs worth, say. Would they fall? Or would the air currents be enough to just keep them up there forever? Oh, interesting. That's what a cloud is, Andy.

It's just a load of bacteria. Well, a cloud needs something for the water droplets to nucleate around. And sometimes that would be bacteria, really. Yeah. I imagine it would usually be like dust or sand. But I bet it could work with bacteria. They've just done a trial of cloud seeding. Or they've done a study of studies of cloud seeding.

Which is where you drop a lot of dividing crystals from a plane. And then those are the tiny, tiny crystals which the water droplets form around and then you get rain or snow. And they found that it does have a small positive effect. They don't think that it's currently good enough to deliberately do anything to the water. Like you could probably make a difference, but it's not reliable enough.

Yeah, you can't just wake up and go, it's a sunny day. That was me. That was my cloud seeding. We did cloud seeding just before summer this year. And we're very proud to report it's been a barbeque summer. Can you tell we haven't done any limpid research? I've got lots of limpid research.

Okay, let's hear some. I'm keen to talk about limpids. Limpids are all, there's basically no such thing as a limpid. No way. Which is good, yeah. So limpids don't really exist. I think they do, Andrew. I think they don't because it's just a name for aquatic snails

with basically conical shells. That's all it is. It's a very informal term. Lots of different things that we call limpids come from different filer. There's a thing called a common limpid, isn't there? I think. Yes, there is.

And that'll be a specific species. And that's very informal. That's a specific species. It wears jeans. Yeah. And doesn't take its shoes off when it comes in. The way Wikipedia describes limpid. It's exactly how I've just described it.

This is where I got it. You missed off the bit that it adds. So a limpid is a common name implied to aquatic snails with shells broadly conical in shape, rather like the conical Asian hat. Which I've never, I've never seen Wikipedia open with a simile. Nor a slightly racist simile. No.

What's the conical Asian hat? You know, if you took a slightly racist picture of someone from Asia from the 1950s, and they'd be like a rice farmer with their hat. Oh, really? Yeah. A conical, a broad, like lots of shade. Because if you're working outdoors as a rice farmer,

then that's, it keeps the sun off your head. Yeah. So you'll, so starfish eat limpids, don't they? Or try to. And the way starfish sometimes eat things is they sort of make their stomach go to them, I think, rather than them going to their stomach. So I think starfish expel their stomachs out of themselves

and then swallow them up into their stomach. So I guess like a limpid, when it's trying to defend itself, might stamp on a starfish stomach. Is that what it does? I assume that happens. I assume there are starfish stuck by the stomach somewhere, by a limpid. Have you heard of starfish wasting disease?

No. Yeah, it's very sad. It's a disease which is kind of getting a bit bigger at the moment, and it basically gets starfish to waste themselves by ripping their own arms off. What? Yeah. They rip their own arms off.

Yeah. How do they rip off the last arm? The arms continue to crawl around for a while after, after they've ripped them off. It's pretty creepy. Maybe they all gang up and rip the last one off as well. Did I hear on a podcast, or maybe a episode of QI, about a plant that's so painful when you touch it,

the guy shot himself. Oh, yeah. It's a metal. Gimpy, gimpy. And it's so painful you just can't even tolerate living anymore. Yeah. Maybe that's how it works. But didn't he use it accidentally as loo paper?

He did, yeah. It was in Australia. This was a report in Australian Geographic. And yeah, it stings so much. It's like being electrocuted. He electrocuted on the bum. Yeah. It's horrible.

He picked up, wiped himself, and in so much pain, he shot himself. Wow. Well, speaking of people who've electrocuted their bums, that's reminded me of one of my favorite ever stories in history. And it was a fairly famous guy, actually. So this is Alexander von Humboldt.

Oh, yeah. Who you might have heard him. He was mega famous, wasn't he? He was like a proper famous. He was a polymath. And exactly. So Enlightenment scholar, proper Prussian chap. He has, does he have more things named off,

species named after him than anyone else? Really? I feel like maybe he does. I think he's got a lot. Darwin sounds like it would be more, but I'm not sure. He did loads of research in South America. And in his 20s, he got really obsessed with electricity. Because it was kind of, Galvani had just been

electrocuting stuff and everyone was going, electricity is the new, that's the new thing. And so one day, he and his assistant were sort of wondering, I wonder what electricity does to dead things. And they found, I think, a dead bird. And he reanimated it. And with electricity, and it came back to life for 10 minutes. And he went, oh, amazing, brilliant.

That's electricity can revive the dead. It probably died of heart disease or something. And it restarted the heart and the heart was bleeding. Oh, maybe it was asleep. Just woke it up. But having electrocuted the bird, he then thought, well, electricity is clearly amazing. I wonder what else I can electrocute.

I know myself. And so he put one electrode in his mouth. And then he inserted the other one into his anus. And then electrocuted himself. And one of my favorite ever quotes in history is his description of the outcome. He put about four inches into his rectum. And he describes it as this.

The introduction of a charge into the armatures produced nauseating cramps and discomforting stomach contractions. Then abdominal pain, the severe magnitude, followed by involuntary evacuation of the bladder. What struck me more is that by inserting the silver more deeply into the rectum. Having evacuated my mouth, I thought,

I'd stick that further in. More deeply into the rectum, a bright light appears behind both eyes. So he basically went, ow, this is really painful. And I've pissed myself. But what if I keep going? And then he just basically had to sort of blind this behind his eyes.

That is a scientist. And then what about when he went deeper? Come on, come on, you take it. I see what you mean. It's like he saw a bright light. Yeah. I was kind of picturing lasers coming out of his eyes. But I think what he's describing

is basically just like flashes of electricity behind his eyes. Like, you know, like a pure blinding. And the lovely thing is that that input him off electricity at all. He then went to South America and did various research where he came across, I think, an electric eel. And the first thing he did was shove it up his arse. He didn't, thankfully, he didn't do that. But he did pick it up and go, ah!

All right, you try. He gave it to his assistant. He went, ah! And gave it back to it. And they'd electrocute themselves all day long, just testing how painful it was to be electrocuted by it. They used to put eels up horses' bums, didn't they? So you would go to market,

and you would want to sell your horse, but you want people to think it was better than it was. You'd put either some ginger or an eel up their bums, and it would make them more lively. You should never look a gift horse in the mouth. But you should look in the anus. Just in case. I think the Romans also used electric eels as a cure for headaches.

I think memory says, I think... Did that work? I think, well, because they definitely had eels, and they were really interested in eels. They used to have man-eating eels in their ponds, and slaves used to be thrown into them. Man-eating eels? That really, really aggressive.

Well, really aggressive eels that would just eat any flesh. And if a Roman aristocrat didn't like a slave, or if a slave had broken a nice cup or something, they'd throw into the eels and eat him. Did they have cups? I suppose they must have done. They did. No, but they had an empire.

I think you're not bummed about the man-eating eels, but cups, you say. Yeah. No, I wasn't. I think they had aqueducts. Yeah. We've got all this water all the way here from the mountains. Right, everyone, get your hands together at time 30.

What I mean was... Oh, God. I don't think of them having cups with handles. I think of them having little handle-less goblets, things like that. But actually, I mean, there was one very famous Roman and aristocrat who was so in love with his eels, his pet eels, actually, that he put earrings on them

and painted their faces like a lady. Apparently, when the eel died, he cried bitterly, more so than when his own slaves or family died, but when the eels snuffed it, he was really upset. All the cute Roman Buzzfeed pictures were not of dogs in jumpers. They were of eels with makeup on, lullies. That's creepy as hell.

Yeah, really creepy. Yeah. Animal defense mechanisms. Just have we ever talked about the pygmy sperm whale? I think I'd remember. We have talked about all those three things separately, but I don't think we've talked about the combo. Okay.

So, A, it's really quite sweet. It's tiny. And B, as a defense mechanism, it's another animal that shoots, like, syrupy stuff out of its anus, which things that are trying to chase it kind of get stuck in and disoriented by. It's quite a deep-colored syrup into the water and spreads it around with its tail,

so it mixes it around like a painter. It's syrup's feces, though, isn't it, right? Is it feces? Well, if it's dark and syrupy and coming out of its anus, I always say if it looks like feces, tastes like feces, it's probably feces. I prefer to call mine syrup. And yeah, it swishes it around in the water

like a painter mixing his paints. Like a really weird painter. Like Tracey Emily mixing her paints. So, time for fact number three, and that is my fact. And my fact is that after landing on the moon, Buzz Aldrin worked in a car dealership where he failed to sell a single car. I'm not surprised if he's selling them on the moon.

Yeah, exactly. To be fair, they would have had a massive mileage on the clock as well. Yeah. And they only sell one type, which is a rover. He came home first, right? Sorry, after returning from the moon, Buzz Aldrin worked in a car dealership

and failed to sell a car. Yeah, so it was in Beverly Hills, and he worked there for six months. I think it was a Cadillac dealership. But I was reading this really interesting article about how after Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, a year later, almost no Americans knew who they were.

They completely slipped out of the public eye. Yeah, nationwide surveys done. The New York Times ran a lot of them. And yeah, one in 12 or one in 10 people would be able to name Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong. That's unbelievable. It's weird, isn't it? Yeah, that's so weird.

Yeah, and they think it's at the time. So one theory is that at the time, because it was like a race between the Soviets and America to get to the moon, once they'd got there, it was like, well, we've done that now. We've won that race. Tick box, moving on. And another theory put forward is that neither Buzz Aldrin

nor Neil Armstrong are particularly good orators. And so this guy thinks that because they weren't able to like maximize their experiences, and they just kept on saying, yeah, it was really great. How good norator do you need to be to say, I've been to the moon? Because that is an arresting opening line. Friends, Romans, countrymen.

I've been to the moon. So he didn't sell a single car. Surely like even crap salesmen sell like one car a year. He must have been really bad. Yeah, you're right. People presumably came in wanting to buy a car to go to a Cadillac dealership. That's what you're in the market for.

Yeah. Well, they just talked about the moon the whole time. And then they left, forgotten what they'd got in for. Damn it, what did I mean to get in that Cadillac dealership? I think it was an anecdote about the moon. Yes, it was. But no, I think he was quite depressed after he landed on the moon for a while, wasn't it?

Him and Neil Armstrong were both very disappointed for a while at the fact that they'd been forgotten. If you Google Buzz Aldrin Car, the first thing that comes up is Buzz Aldrin Cardboard Cutout. And there are some great reviews of it online. Oh yeah. I want to tell you about a couple of them. Great product.

I accidentally scared the wife as I set it up in the living room and was adjusting the support when she walked in. She actually thought it was a real person for a few seconds. Is this why people didn't think he was a good orator? Confusing them. Neil Armstrong, did you know that his hairdresser sold a lock of his hair and Neil Armstrong sued him for $3,000? Really?

He went back to his barber and found out his barber had just been selling locks of his hair. I would definitely sue him for that. Yeah, I think I would as well. That's a bit weird, isn't it? I think Harry Styles, in one direction, vomited out the side of a car and the vomit went on eBay for thousands of pounds. You're not allowed to sell biological stuff on eBay. Cost me a fortune in delivery.

But we've long since venerated. The Saints' bones, the finger of St. Peter or whatever, people have always wanted little bits of body from it. So it's a holy vomit. It's a secular elix, basically. Britney Spears' chewing gum has gone on eBay in the past. And Elvis' cup of water, the guy sold the water but not the cup. Genius.

So he was keeping obviously... He was from ancient Rome. There's not many of these around. Who owns the hair when you go to the hairdresser and then they cut it off and then you leave the shop? Well, where does it... I think if someone cuts your hair without your permission, that is technically assault, I believe.

Really? Yeah, I think so. I think so. But if it's your hairdresser, then that's not a stop. Well, obviously, you're giving permission. Yeah, I mean, if your hairdresser is cutting your hair without your permission, then you need to have a good odd look at your life. How is it at the back?

Are you like, I did not give you permission for that? They used to sell hair from hairdressers to wig makers. They still do. You can sell your own hair. There are nuns who sell their hair. So that implies that it belongs to the hairdresser? Yeah. I mean, in ancient Rome, blonde slaves were very fashionable.

You get German and British blonde slaves and they would be bought almost exclusively to have their hair, which you would then cut off and turn into a wig for fashionable Roman ladies who were maybe brown-haired. Wow, that's so strange. Okay, so some people who have gone on to do different things... You know the TV show Gladiators? Yes.

So I went on to... I found a website of Where Are They Now of the Gladiators. And there's a few people. One of them was Shadow and he had a bit of a bad time afterwards. His lowest point was he was arrested for attempting to use an elderly person's bus pass, despite being 43 years old. That was his lowest moment.

Yeah, he sadly had like a drug addiction, but he's got through it now and he's a rehabilitation counselor. Good. There was three members of the Gladiators team in the 2000 movie Gladiator. Really? Really? But isn't that just amazing?

Did they misunderstand the job application? They're getting the gang back together. It's only got one huge Pugel stick, so the pillows are neither end. That's amazing. Yeah. Right, it stopped demanding a traveller. It didn't exist in ancient Rome.

Yeah. Rockets, Rio and Rebel. I don't even remember those. I don't remember any of those. I remember Rebel. I don't remember Rocket. Who is Rocket? Isn't he a salad?

What? Some stuff about salesmen, because that's what Buzz became. There was a survey done in America. They took a load of unpleasant things and they asked people whether you preferred this unpleasant thing or Congress. You mean American Congress, not sexual Congress?

Yes. Okay, cool. It couldn't be the same thing in some cases, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose so, but then you would probably be fired for impropriety at work. Yeah, quite. Unless you're Bill Clinton. So, they were given used car salesmen

or people in Congress, and 32% of people preferred Congress and 57% of people preferred used car salesmen. Wow. But that's a bit of a strange thing to ask, because do you prefer them in the abstract? Yeah, it is. Would you rather have one to supper?

Exactly. I'll give you a list of some of the other things that they gave. Would you prefer it? People preferred all of these things to Congress. Okay. Root canal surgery, head lice,

the rock-banged nickelback. Oh, that was quite close. That is extreme. That is a real... Colonoscopies, traffic jams, cockroaches, Donald Trump, France, Genghis Khan and Brussels Sprouts. Genghis Khan is my favorite. That's amazing.

What do you prefer, Congress or a 13th century warlord from Mongolia? Yeah. That was quite close as well. Not many people are really hating Genghis Khan these days. It's really low. There's that Genghis Khan. You know what?

I think we should let it lie now with Genghis Khan. Did they do any combos? So did they say would you rather have Congress or a colonoscopy from Genghis Khan? Use car salesmen. Yeah, I don't know anything about them. No, they're generally unpopular. Yeah, yeah.

That's just the trope, isn't it? Because Matilda's dad is one, isn't he, in the book? Yeah, yeah. Buzz Lightyear was a used car salesman. Or they knew cars. Buzz Lightyear. I said Buzz Lightyear. He did.

That's a fantastically weird. I actually kept on Googling Buzz Lightyear. 00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:25,240 Yeah. God, that's such a strange. He was a bit annoyed about that. Was he? Yeah.

But I think he was. Buzz Lightyear was. Buzz Lightyear was furious about being associated with Buzz Lightyear. Some low-end actual afterthought. Buzz Lightyear's been to infinity and beyond. And Buzz Lightyear's just gone as far as the moon. I can totally understand.

All right, moving on to our final fact, which is from you, James. OK, my fact this week is also from Greg's book. Great. Excellent book. And it is about the Catholic sect called the Cathars. And the Cathars get their name from the fact that they are thought to be pure, like Catharsus. But during the Middle Ages, some people

thought that they got their name Cathars from the fact that they like to kiss a cat's ass. If they did like to do that, it's understandable that people assumed that was where the name came from. I don't think they did like to do it. They didn't like to do it. So just making that clear. It was said that they did, but of course, it's pretty unlikely.

Was that just rumour-mongering by a rival sect? It was rumour-mongering amongst the whole of the Catholic Church, really, because everyone hated them. Why did everyone hate them? They were very popular in the south of France at the time. But they had different views to the rest of the Catholic Church. One of the main ones being that there were two gods, one good one and one evil one, like a Satan and a normal god.

Right. And that was something that was completely thought to be a terrible thing by the Vatican. And so they tried to put them down in any way they could. And it wasn't just by killing them. It was also by saying that they like to kiss cats' asses. That was awesome. Would you rather be killed, or would you rather

I told people you like to kiss cats' asses? Would you prefer Congress, or Congress with a cat's ass? They were so... It was also spread, I think, that they were sodomites, wasn't it? Which was really unfair. That was like the most common accusation that was leveled at them, because they didn't like... I think sex from the front was how I read it described somewhere,

because they thought all sex to procreate was sinful, because I think they thought that bringing anything into a world that was so full of sin was not a good thing. So people just went, well, if you're not having sex from the front, you must be doing it from the back. And we're against that. In fact, I was wondering, because I came across this

researching your fact where the word bugger comes from. It's in Bulgaria. Yes. I think it was either the Cathals, or there was another sex that was similar in Bulgaria. The bugger mills, was it? Yeah. And they were the same.

They were like, we're so pure, we don't believe in having sex to procreate. And so everyone went, well, that must mean that you're having anal sex. And that's where we get bugger. Wow. Yeah. I did not know this.

It's an interesting time as well, because they're around the 1200s, 1300s, and so forth. And so they are kind of, they're this hot new sex that's gaining momentum. Hot sex. Hot sex. They seem to be quite an ancient sex as well. Suddenly, they gain momentum.

And I think they end up being a bit too much of a threat to the Catholic Church. And so the Catholic Church used both violence, horribly murdering all of them, and then also propaganda. Because it's the best way to destroy someone's credibility. It's to basically just... And they really did just read an advert

that said, hot new sex. And then it was next to an advert advertising, hot new sex. And they got confused between the two. And one was an anal sex ad, one was a... What kind of magazines do you read? I read and I...

So I don't know if this is true of the Cathars. There was one blog that said it was true of the Cathars. And it was definitely true of the Manichaeans, which were quite similar. Also, dualistic sex. They believed that there were good heavenly particles that were trapped in plants and trees. And they thought that the way we could get

the good heavenly particles to go back up to heaven, it was our human duty to eat plants and trees and then expel their heavenly air by farting and burping. And by every time you farted or you burped, then that was sending the good particles back up to heaven where they belong. So you were doing your godly duty. Would you fart in the direction of heaven?

Maybe you had to. Yeah, stick your bum in the air. Maybe that's where the other rumors came around. Our Farta who art in heaven. How long be that name? Wow, that sounded like an interesting bunch. Yeah, they had quite good gender roles, didn't they? They thought that you would be reincarnated all the time,

but they thought that men could be reincarnated into women and women could be reincarnated into men. So they didn't really see any difference between the two sexes. Yeah, because this is a period in history where women get a bum deal. I think it was the cats that were getting a bum deal. Yeah, exactly.

It's Eve who is responsible for the fall. Adam was just like a slightly clumsy human who was a bit taken in, but Eve is the one who gets punished. So she has a menstrual cycle given to her and pain enduring childbirth. It's a kind of a slightly misogynistic theology. We're called a flak.

But the ultimate villain in the Bible story, so yeah, Adam was okay, Eve was kind of evil, but obviously the real bad guy in Genesis was the snake. According to most people, but there was a Christian sect called the offites and they were snake worshipers and they actually believed that the snake was a good guy because God was trying to withhold from Adam and Eve

the truth and wisdom about the world. And the snake was there and offered the apple and said, look and revealed wisdom and truth to them. Their equivalent of the Eucharist was they'd arranged bread on a table and then they'd have to charm a snake and lure it to the table and then they'd kiss the snake and then they'd eat the bread. So that could be what we were doing in church.

Kissing the snake doesn't sound... Well, first of all, it sounds like a euphemism. And second of all, it doesn't sound like a very good thing to be doing. No. Something like this doesn't... Maybe that's why the sect died out and didn't make it as far. Just stick to this lovely eel wearing mascara instead. But in America at the moment,

that there are sort of... I think there are kind of cults or maybe not cults, but sort of like extreme Christian sects, where they do snake charming and snake worship, I think in the deep cell, I think. Yeah, for the same reason. I think that's where that comes from. There's definitely a similar place in Greece, if I can find it.

Yeah, it's just south of Macedonia. Hey! That again sounds like a euphemism. Yeah, exactly. There's this thing they do on the Greek island of Kefalonia, and it's to celebrate the falling asleep of the Virgin Mary, which is bringing to the death of the Virgin Mary. And there's this village where every year,

a whole bunch of snakes enter the church and slither up to the Virgin Mary, whose statue is at the front, and then slither onto her heart and the snakes, and then slither away. And apparently, it's bad luck if they don't do this every year. So before World War II broke out, the snakes didn't do it. And I've tried to find a journalist who's been there.

That was what called the war! Because that is a massive turn up for the history books. There it is. Everyone thought it was the Poland thing, but no. It was snakes and the... Things you learn on this podcast. In the Kefalonian church. But if anyone's been there and seen the snakes do this thing

every year of slithering into the church, then I want to know about it. When is it? I want to go. 15th of August. I want to go too. Oh, we've got time. Cool.

Another sect that I like is the Carpo Cretians, second century religious sects, who I just like because they thought that you would be reborn constantly. They believed that man had to experience everything that was possible to experience on earth. So had to pass through every condition of earthly life before we could go up to heaven

and didn't have to reincarnate anymore. So they decided that they had to just do as much as they could. Like commit as many sins as they could in their lives. Sleep as many people as they could. They always seem to be good stuff, actually. So they just lived this incredibly hedonistic life saying the only way I'm going to heaven... Sounds good to me, that one.

...is if I tick off. It's fun, isn't it? Well, there are a lot of things that can be done in a human life. And not all of them are fun. You know, tax return, that's quite boring. So I think they might just sort of sidestep that little bit of the argument.

I think it's just drinking and sex, actually. Well, the other thing is you have a list of everything that there is possible to do. And of course, you put the sex and the drinking at the top and the tax return at the end. It's the people who lived till 120 years old who are going, oh, shit. How much tax returns now?

That's an amazing bucket list, though, isn't it? Everything that could ever happen, ever. It was a real bucket list. Okay, kissing cats anuses. One group of things that do kiss cats anuses are other cats. Because when you have a newborn kitten, it must be stimulated to urinate and defecate. So its mother will lick its anus to stimulate that.

Really? Yeah. That's good, isn't it? I've forgotten that. That's really unusual. So they wouldn't know to urinate. If a mother forgot to lick its kitten's anus, the kitten would just explode with weight or something.

Like Tycho Brahe. That is a niche reference. That's very good. I've forgotten what that is. There'll be people that said to this who got that reference, Tico. We talked about him. He said, he's Tico Brahe.

I remember talking about him. He was a Danish astronomer. And with a silver nose. With a silver nose. He lost the tip of his nose in a duel. A pet elk that died falling downstairs drunk. Yeah. Which is amazing.

And then one other thing about kissing the anus of a cat. Kiss the anus of a black cat is the name of a band from Ghent. From Ghent? Yeah, they sound good, don't they? Wow. But that's a good name for a band. Kiss the anus of a black cat. Yeah.

Yeah. It means not signing up to your label. Maybe do you think that was a nod to the Cathars? It's a nod to witches, I think. Yeah, I was going to say because demonology and heresy at the time it was believed that Satan would take the form of a black cat. That's right. Which is why it was believed that the kissing of the bum hole

that the Cathars were alleged to have done was believed to be worshiping a Satan. I think you know that you're worshiping the wrong guy when he makes you kiss his anus. This other sect, drinking and having sex all the time. Why am I kissing the black cat's anus? I'm kissing your bum. Well, that is an obscene fact.

I'm done. Speaking of anuses, oh good. I do have a link because I want to talk about like etymology that we've got wrong and that we should start spelling things like sovereign differently. So we've added the G into sovereign wrongly because that comes from the Latin super anus which means highest one and there's no G anywhere in that.

And we've just assumed at some point that it's related to reigning and so we've called it sovereign. We should be calling the queen the super anus of the country. The super anus. Yeah, she's the super anus. That we cannot broadcast. I am in favor of free speech. Can I just say as well that sounds like the best superhero ever as well.

The super anus. I don't know what he does. Fires lasers out of his eyes. Okay, that's all our facts. Thanks very much for listening. If you want to get in touch with any of us, you can get hold of us on our Twitter feed. Some of us, Andy, yours is?

At Andrew Hunter M. James. At Egg Shaped. Your Twitter feed. At Greg underscore Jenna. And you can email me at podcast at qi.com. And Greg, what was your buck again, which is out this week? It's called a million years in a day.

Curious history of everyday life from stone age to phone age. So it's like a history of all the stuff you do in a day and where it comes from. And it's great. It's all right. Thanks very much for listening. We'll be back again next week. Goodbye.