No Such Thing As A Fish - 589: No Such Thing As Dung Beetles In Madame Tussauds

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

James, Anna, Andy and Miles Jupp discuss wandering, wondering, cricket and critics. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, naturopathy Dr. Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the rough greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coasts and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding,

improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to TryRuffGreens.com. Use promo code TRYRUFF. That's T-R-Y-R-U-F-F. Go to TryRuffGreens.com. Use promo code TRYRUFF. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of Ruff Greens. Discover the life-changing benefits of Meow Greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder

What can I do to make them better? Well, my friend add me our greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you greetings I'm naturopathic. Dr. Dennis black inventor of me our greens and I invite you to take the me our greens 90-day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion,

reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before this week's show starts, if you're enjoying No Such Thing As A Fish and you'd like bonus episodes of fish and ad-free episodes of fish, you can join our super secret special club which is called Club Fish. To find out more and to get a free trial period just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish or join on Apple. Hi everyone, I'm Frey Dan, Shriver is away today but we have an absolutely cracking guest for you.

It's someone that I've wanted to get on the show for ages and ages. Definitely one of the wittiest, funniest people working in Britain today and in fact for the last 20 years. It is the fantastic Miles Jupp. We had such a great time with him so hope you like the show. And he has just done the first tint of a tour with his live show On I Bang which was brilliantly reviewed and for those of you listening in America get excited he's coming to you. He will be going to New York in November. Do look up the dates that he's playing there.

You can go to his website milesjupp.co.uk or just look it up. It's at the Soho Playhouse in New York and I'm pretty sure more live dates are very soon to be announced both in the UK and America so keep your eyes peeled you definitely won't regret it he is so so funny and hope you enjoy this show as much as we did Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Holborn. My name is Anna Toshinsky and I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Miles Jupp. And once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. In no particular order, here we go. Miles, what's your

favourite fact? My favourite fact from the last seven days is people who get really lost usually don't travel more than a hundred meters from their starting point regardless of how long they walk for. That is insane because they're stupid? Well there's partly an element of humans have a tendency to walk in circles. There was a theory it was literally because one leg is always slightly shorter than the other. That's what I thought it was.

That sort of would happen like you know you know, like an enormous perfect... Is that really what you thought, Andy? Because I think that sounds ridiculous. I did think that. And I was told this when I was at school, that if you get lost in the wilderness to walk for five minutes in a straight line and then turn around and walk backwards for five minutes in a straight line so that your one dodgy leg is on a different side each way.

Oh, so literally walk backwards. Yeah, but... How does that work? Oh, so literally walk backwards. Yeah, no, back where you started. Yeah, that's what I thought you meant. No, walk backwards. Well, backwards. That's good. I went to quite a posh school, but we didn't have our own wilderness.

Sounds very extraordinary facility. That's what they call the graffiti covered bit of tarmac up back. But it's not that. Is that right? It's not that. It's not that, but it doesn't seem like people we really know, I mean is there an idea that it might be evolutionary because it's safer to end up back where you started and you know it's a good homing instinct to have.

Yeah that you would end up in the way that a drone now, if the battery fails it gives itself just enough time doesn't it to work back to where it was to launch from. It should do I think, but occasionally you find old ones in rivers where that technology has sadly failed. In the rivers near where I grew up you get shopping trolleys not drones. Oh yeah shopping trolleys can't find their way back to where they're from. They do go around in circles though. Yeah. This is people who I think they were blindfolded weren't they in this particular study I mean people have been documented to walk around in circles so many times, but yeah, this guy did this study in 2009,

blindfolded them, and literally they didn't travel any distance at all, not more than 100 meters, regardless. In this experiment, were they on rough terrain? Or as in, if I was blindfolded and in the woods, I probably wouldn't go more than 100 meters, as in, I would feel my way quite carefully for the duration of the experiment. What if it was a day long? And no, it's not to do with terrain. The worst place is to be on a massive open field with no landmines whatsoever,

and no sun to look at, and no moon. Because landmarks are such an important part in how we navigate. And in the same way as how we tell time, you're able to remember when things happen because you've got little signposts or the milk comes on Tuesday, and I know it was the day after that that Mike got my new trousers or whatever it might be. The milkman had a terribly traumatic day didn't he, that trouser man has been.

Leave out the old trousers don't you. But that you'd need those sort of landmarks. I read a very good book about wayfaring by a man called, he's called Michael Bond but he's not that Michael Bond, but it was about that thing where things look so similar that you can get lost incredibly easily because there's nothing to tell it apart. And there were incidents in that, say people at the Appalachian Trail, they wander off the path to go and have a piss

and then take your rucksack off. You know, presume if you wear a heavy rucksack every day and you take it off, you've got an absolutely set way of doing it, but if you're sort of quite new to it or whatever, you can't remember that I turned left as I took it off and then when you go to put it back on you think is it facing towards the path is it not and people are found dead you know just tens of yards away from where they left the path because they cannot find the way but I think the distance thing is about panic as well if you're feeling lost

and you don't find where you need to get to within a hundred meters and already you are uncertain where you were for instance that I imagine you think I better go back to where I was so I think there's a there's a fear relevant to it you've got to be very foolhardy to go I'm just going to keep going in that way. Well but I think we really can't walk straight I mean that's it's just really impossible for humans to walk straight without landmarks but I think you're right the panic thing which sets in means that we also over adjust. So you think you're walking straight, but I think instinctively you think, oh, I must have, I must have wobbled a bit there

because your brain is constantly making little mistakes of perception. It thinks you, you just wobbled a bit. You better re wobble. And then you sit down to measure your legs. There's an interesting thing about this with virtual reality. So because we can't really walk in a straight line, if you're in a VR situation, so you've got your goggles on and you're walking towards something, the VR can slightly change the horizon and change the things around you that manipulates you into walking in a circle when you think you're walking in a straight line. And what they can do is they can get someone in a VR who thinks they're walking in a straight line forever for miles and miles and miles and miles, but you can do that in a room that's just 44 meters wide

because it manipulates you to go into a 44 meter circle where you think you're going straight the whole time. That must be frightening because you know, you've seen before they put the headset on that you're in a small room that's only 44 meters wide. You blow them before they go in the room. You say, right, we're about to go on to the savannah, so good luck out there. But it is really interesting. It just means that for now you can have video games where the whole area goes on forever, but you don't need a forever room.

That's useful, it will save costs. Because of the realness, I don't have one, but a friend of mine has a VR headset and I insisted that he bought a cricket game for it. Money well spent, his money, but nevertheless well spent. And although you've just gone into the sitting room, you know where everything is, within a while you're just in this different world and it's not even very realistic because the visual cues and you've got the ones in your ears, you're so immersed in it that within seven minutes you have sort of collided with a radiator or whatever it might be. It's hard to imagine that you're not where you are and to hold in your head those things that, you know, you might signpost them before you put the goggles on. That's gone, that information.

We've played that, haven't we Anna? Oh yeah, we did play a remote virtual cricket game. Yes. Well, you think it was oval, actually it was a 44 meter circle. Yeah, in the savanna. Have you guys heard of Tristan Gooly? No, it was nice. Sounds fun. I remember that name, I think. He's terrific.

So he's the only living person to have both solo flown and solo sailed across the Atlantic. So he's a very good explorer and adventurer and navigator, but he writes a lot of books about how you can tell your surroundings from you just look at your surroundings you can tell where you are but he has these amazing tips which I just if you're out in the wilderness listening to this podcast and you're lost snails need lots of calcium carbonate to build their shells so if you see any away from a pond that's a sign that you're on a chalky landscape. Is that helpful?

I might've just saved someone's life. Do they not also need moisture snails? Yeah. So why have they gone so far away from this pond? Well, maybe some water's gathered in a leaf, a nut turned leaf or something. I don't know all the other... You've got to sort of have a geological map in your head, haven't you, for the chalky bits? You do have to remember which bits of the country you're crossing with chalk.

I don't know where I am, but gosh, it's chalky. Is that the same as we found? Yeah, it's Dorset. Dorset have lots of chalky... Hello, is that the emergency services? I couldn't tell you where it is, but it is undoubtedly chalky. I know, because there are snails. Thank you. Yes, I'll hold. Okay, fair point.

Well, he can identify a bonfire if there was a bonfire somewhere years ago based only on the foliage that's grown around it since then. Again. Okay. That's the whole country every Guy Fawkes day. I think it's terrific. I love them. Ongoing in circles, Mark Twain had a nice story in his, he wrote a travelogue called Roughing It and he had a nice story of how he went,

they headed out in a snowstorm, they had to get somewhere. And there was one man in their crew who was real cocky guy called Ollendorf, who bragged about how he had natural navigation skills, they didn't need a map, he had inbuilt sense of direction. And they were all on horseback. And they wandered for about almost an hour on horseback. And then they found some fresh tracks and thought,

brilliant, well, they'll be headed towards the place we're headed, we'll follow them. And then they kept noticing more and more people joining the party of fresh tracks every half an hour and they wanted for two or three hours before someone said, you arsehole Ollendorf, these are our bloody footprints. If you've been walking in the savanna for a long time and it's sunny then you can tell which way you're going by which side your sunburns on. Oh that's yeah in the northern hemisphere if you're more sunburned on the left side of your face or your left arms you're probably going westward because the sun

will be in the south. Yeah yeah. That's useful. You can also look at where the sun is right? You can't look at the sun of course as you go blind. Of course don't look at the south. Yeah, yeah. That's useful. You can also look at where the sun is, right? You can't look at the sun, of course, as you go blind. Of course, don't look at the sun. But I think that's how we instinctively... So which side you're blind you're on. You know, you're sort of coming at it from an angle. But it's daytime, so you can't use the North Star.

That's true. I didn't realize why the North Star is the North Star. As in why it's useful for navigation. Should it come out earliest? It's just a fixed star, so all the other stars revolve around it, and that's because it's sort of above the North Pole as it were, so it moves a tiny fraction in the sky, but really it doesn't. I just didn't know that, I mean I never did my D of E, so it's aligned with the Earth's axis, so over the course of a night it stays still, which is very helpful.

Do you know who else uses the stars to navigate? Dung beetles. Oh yeah? Yeah, and they found this out by taking them to a planetarium. This was scientists at Lund University. They took some dung beetles to a planetarium and showed them the Milky Way and saw which way they went, and then they covered up the Milky Way and saw they went in different wild directions. And when the planetarium turned into Madam to Swords, it seemed they were completely, completely lost.

I thought I was going home now I'm heading towards Dr. Crippen or Prince William or whatever it might be. Or to meet Attenborough, that's the planetarium, you know. Did you guys know you can all echolocate? Almost certainly. Most of our listeners can echol as in like bats can that's how I get here From the tube every time we record. Yeah So you're listening for the echo and that tells you how to move tells you how to navigate And where you are and this there have been a few studies into this But basically the first one was in the 1940s and it blindfolded a few people and

it told them to walk towards a wall and stop just before the wall and they did it but then when they carpeted the floor and then they walked and they weren't making footstep noises anymore they all walked into the wall and so it turns out we just naturally I've tried this myself and I think I do need a few minutes more practice. Come on let let's clear the furniture. Let's see how this goes. But isn't that amazing? And we can all do it and humans can actually be taught to be quite good, quite fast. Are you hearing things or are you sensing air pressure? You're hearing things. So you're hearing the slight difference in sound echoes, you're hearing the sound bouncing back from your footsteps off the wall. And we can tell amazing

things like in studies they found that people can tell the shape of something they're going towards. So they'll put a triangle in front of them and they'll say, you know, this is, yeah. If you imagine yourself at one end, say, of a subway and you're spun around and you've got a blindfold on, so already it's quite terrifying, but don't worry, it's an experiment you're part of.

But you imagine in a situation like that where you've got hard concrete walls or whatever, you would back yourself, wouldn't you, to work out, right left to right, which direction is the other end of the subway and where are the walls and whatever, because you'd be able to hear the echoes and where things were bouncing back from. I'm sure you'd back yourself. Well, do you not impress you'd back yourself? I mean we should be backing ourselves. I'm not sure, it depends on the stakes really. But if you've got walled say two feet either side of you and then the other wall isn't there for sort of another 40 meters Yeah

But then it's also just the ears like the eyes and the nostrils We're using the the input from each of those to sort of work out the information. Our vision isn't real is it? It's that sounds mad What I mean is what we see the image that we see is that that's constructed in our brain Isn't it from the information the two different eyes in the same way with nostrils You could view a following smell you could you could think that's more Yeah, yeah, can I tell you one more thing about getting lost? Yeah, yes in 2011 a computer scientist called Ben Kerman invented get lost bot, okay, and this was a

technology which tracks your movements every day. And if you are too predictable, it sends you somewhere new. So if you have the same lunch at the same cafe every day, it will direct you to a different cafe. That's clever. I read that like if someone had your mobile phone and got all the data off it, they'd be able to tell where you are at any time of any day to within like a 90% accuracy. Because we're doing the same route. Yeah, yeah. So exactly. And this thing was not popular, by the way. Not popular with office bosses going, where have all my staff gone? When you say if someone gets hold of your phone, I mean, they have got hold of our phones,

haven't they? No, absolutely. They know where we are and what we're doing now or whatever. It didn't work very well, Get Lost, Bob, because one user found the app and had noticed him going to church every Sunday and told him to visit a nearby mosque instead. That's right, Clem. It's not necessarily going to be open on Sunday. And other issues.

Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, naturopathy Dr. Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the rough greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system,

less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to TryRuffGreens.com.

Use promo code TRYRUFF. That's T-R-Y-R-U-F-F. Go to TryRuffGreens.com. Use promo code TRYRUFF. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of Ruff Greens.

All right, it's time for fact number two and that is Andy's fact. My fact is that one of the fiercest critics of poet Alexander Pope was a writer called Esdrasse Barnevelt. This was a secret identity and the real person criticising Alexander Pope was Alexander Pope. Wow, what a twist. The last person you'd expect. Yeah, he wrote a full thing slagging off his major work. So why, was he like being self-hating or was he trying to get ahead of his critics

maybe? I don't think he was. I think a lot of this stuff was done for fun and loads of stuff was anonymous at the time so it wasn't mad to have a lot of stuff coming out. So it was literally on the day that his epic poem which is called The Rape of the Lock, is about a society woman who has a lock of her hair grabbed. So it's based on the Iliad and the Odyssey, but it's fun. More fun. More fun, yeah, yeah. But he wrote, on the day it was published, he brought out a key to the lock under this fake name, Esdras Barnevelt,

and he wrote to Pope, he addressed Pope directly himself, and said he's writing an antidote against the poison which has been so artfully distilled through your quill. So what did he do, like say this bit's shit, or did he say it would have been better if you'd done it this way, or? I think he was advising a bit about the meaning of it, and maybe throwing in some other games

and things along the way. I mean, it was just a fun thing to do. And he did this a second time, actually. So in 1735, there was a publisher who'd brought out an edition of Pope's letters. Apparently his unauthorized letters were being published. Imagine just someone publishing your WhatsApps, like full, just nightmare.

And this publisher was called Edmund Curl, with two Ls. How many R's? It's so weird that you stress the R and not the L. But it was this was not true. Pope had collected his own letters. He'd edited them very carefully, then arranged for Curl to get hold of them. But he had instigated it. And then he had them seized. They were actually fake letters.

Then two years later, he releases his actual letters. All sorts of just horseplay going on. It's such a confusing game. Was he playing out there? And wasn't his thing that he had a plan that some of those letters contained some correspondence with various members of parliament or the nobility where it was actually illegal to expose them because they're of a certain status. So he thought, oh good Curl will be seized by the authorities. Which he sort of was, but then no one cared. But then he fell out with Curl because Curl had now thought, oh, now this is cool. I can just do all the letters I want. So he got a load of other letters, ones that he didn't want anyone to see and published those. And so Pope met him at a pub, the Swantabend,

and gave him an emetic to cause him to go into convulsions of vomiting. And that's why the toilets still blocked in that pub, isn't it? And then Pope wrote some pamphlets about that, about his vomiting. And so they really fell out, those two. But is it done for fun, or is it sinister? I think it's for fun. But it depends whether you're Edmund Carroll being given an emetic in the pub.

Yeah, yeah. Having a matic in the pub. Yeah, yeah. Having a spasm in a pub toilet sounds... you think this has gone beyond banter. This is perfectly harmless. Just lads being lads. Did we do that? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, he was a really, really funny guy. He was. Strange. He was called the Wasp of Twickenham was his nickname. I think he was quite cruel.

He used to just turn up at picnics to be. was his nickname. I think he was quite cruel. He used to just turn up at picnics didn't he? But yeah even people who liked him. I think Virginia Woolf's dad, Leslie, wrote a biography of him and even he said look I like his writing it's very funny it's very clever and mostly by the way we should say he was famous for his translation, his serious translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the time. He said I like his writing but still morally it's a bit indefensible to like this guy because he's so horrible about everyone. He called them a monkey pouring boiling oil on his victims. That's a good reason for him to criticise himself first essentially isn't it? So he's one of the people who are in the sights of this sort of mystery critic and then he goes

well it can't be me, he's had a go me. And then you can really, you know, go at people. So I suppose that's the mistake is it that more contemporaneous sock puppets have made is to not turn the gun on themselves first. Yeah. Which is, he didn't do all his other criticism. The mistake he actually made was not criticizing everyone under the pseudonym, sadly, which would have been safer.

All of his other criticism was under his own name. Was under the name of Alexander. It's very confusing because it was a big thing between Protestants and Catholics at the time. So this is the end of the 18th century. William and Mary had come in, they'd swept the Catholics away. Pope was a Catholic. And so there was a lot of criticism of his work for being too Pope-ish.

But that is quite confusing. He wasn't allowed to go to university. No. No positions of trust or power? So what do you do? The term wasp then, that would be not, he wouldn't refer to himself as that. Nowadays you might label yourself waspish, wouldn't you? Yeah. I reckon he would have labeled himself. I think he quite liked the thing.

But I think it was that other people called him that because he had an illness called Pots to Seas. He was only four foot six and he found it very difficult to do anything basically Yeah, and I think that probably is what slightly made him an angry little man He was four foot six which which made it difficult for him to do anything or he was four foot six No, he was also yeah, like he had lung problems heart problems He had problems walking and standing up for long periods and stuff like that There was a theory that his growth was restricted because of his nurses milk I believe that is true. Wow. Because it contained a bacteria called myobacterium tuberculosis, which causes...

It doesn't sound good. No, it doesn't. Yeah, which causes this thing. And he, you know, he was worried about it and he wrote to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who was someone who he really fancied for most of his life saying that he imagined a place where women best like the ugliest fellows and look upon deformities as a signature of divine favour. So he was like really he knew that he was not an attractive man. Yeah, it'd be hard not to know because you clearly aren't and then everyone's telling you you're hideous as well. But you're

also slagging them off in print. Yeah and you're slagging yourself off in print and it's very and his options will be limited, wouldn't it? Nowadays you could join an app that was basically sort of a dating app for people who are short and have had odd milk and he would be besieged with offers and opportunities. You do wonder if he might actually in this day and age be, this is a kind of very facile thing people say on radio, isn't it? Be a meninist, what are they, you know? An incel? An incel, yes. While he's small, he's got some confidence issues and he hates everyone. His podcast would have been terrific. We do know that. Slagging everyone off. The Popecast? That's really good. He would never have called himself a wasp because that

means white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Oh, of course. Yes. He was white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Oh, of course. Yes, yes. He was white Anglo-Saxon Catholic. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. The nickname, un-pickable. I've already forgotten it. The nickname. The name he gave himself for writing criticism.

Esdrasse Barneveld. Oh, yeah. Esdrasse Barneveld can contain any- Stupid idea. I don't know if it's an acronym or- Any clues or anything like that. Well, Esdrasse looks like cod Latin, doesn't it? Do you know what I mean?

It does a bit. It does a bit. Yeah. But it doesn't quite work. Right Miles. I'm gonna spend the rest of this fact No, you're right I should be an anagram or something I'm just gonna write out the I'm just gonna write a little spider map of the letters now Just while you two are doing that I was gonna mention to James You think that I'm not getting involved with this You've known me for 12 years.

I'm not going to get involved. I know you can talk to me. Thank you. I really appreciate that. This lady, Mary Montague, fancied her. She didn't fancy him. Quite an awkward moment where he made very, very passionate love to her in the old fashioned sense.

He didn't, you know, climb into bed with her. Wooing. Wooing, yes. Propositionally. And she said that it was like a very awkward moment. He'd chosen a socially stupid moment to do it. And- She was basically convulsing in a public toilet. Yes.

She said that he did it so passionately that in spite of her utmost endeavors to be angry and look grave, she had an immediate fit of laughter so she burst out laughing in his face so then they became sworn enemies because he was quite upset but the amazing thing about her is she invented the smallpox vaccine and I think we've been surprised we haven't mentioned her before actually. She was part of that wasn't she? A few people would claim Jenna was there as well at the time in the area she was

the one who first she went to Turkey because her husband was an ambassador and she noticed that the locals in Turkey visited this lady who injected them with little bits of smallpox and the children seemed not to get it and so she was the first person who said right I'm going to get my kid exposed to these weird small pox rubbings. The really fun thing about that is that he then started writing horrible poems about her, and saying, like making jokes about smallpox and the other kind of pox like venereal disease

and saying that she, you know, she had syphilis or whatever. Oh, did he? And she got really upset about it. And so what did she do? She went to Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, and asked him to have a word. Terrific. We can all do that with our enemies.

I know. But yeah, he really fancied Lady Mary. Yes. Whenever he was with her, he would start talking in over elaborate puns. Oh, Alexander, you're already fighting some considerable disadvantages in the romance game. Don't do the elaborate puns. I think it might work for some women. How do you know? James, you're... James, she married you in spite of that.

LAUGHTER OK, it is time for fact number three, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that the first person to map the functions of the brain did so by literally sticking labels to different bits of it on a living person. Sticky labels? Yeah, they look like little post-its. And I read the study and I couldn't find out

exactly what they were made of. It doesn't feel like, cause they must have glue on them. Yeah, I think. Doesn't feel very healthy for a brain. And also to have had a large chunk of their skull removed. Oh yeah. Yes, no, also. I I mean that's what struck me first. It's temporary isn't it? Temporal. They always put it back. It grows back. Yeah. It's like earthworms. You just wear a cap for the rest of your life. This was a Canadian neurosurgeon called Wilder Penfield and he was the first person

to do that thing that you might have seen in Hannibal but also in brain surgery which is safe if you do it right where you can remove someone's scalp while they're awake and perform brain surgery on them and he was trying to remove bits of brains that caused epileptic seizures on people who couldn't be cured any other way but without damaging any other bits of the brain and so he got a little electrode stimulates lots of bits of the brain. And so he got a little electrode, stimulates lots of bits of the brain, and then writes down exactly what those bits do.

So he'd poke a bit and then he'd write something like, twitching of the left arm, or numbness of right side of the tongue. And you can ask them. Evacuation of the bells. Repeated cries of help. And so he put numbered labels and lettered labels on each bit and he was basically the person who created the map, the thing that mapped the brain onto the body, the homunculus.

So he drew in his study, once he'd performed all these experiments, a picture that you've probably seen or seen variations of where you have the brain but then you draw sort of following the line of the brain, you draw the size of bits of the body depending on how much brain is allotted to them. So, you know, each section of this strip of brain he found that controlled all of our movement, there was a section devoted to each finger and the thumb and lots of big sections devoted to the face, the eyes, the nose, the ears, but then, you know, you've got a tiny torso because what does the brain need to do? So it's like a very monstrous figure with a big head, big hands, big genitals.

Exactly. The male homunculus has big genitals because men devote more of their brain to you know your conscious but the female doesn't have any genitals at all and that might be because his sample size was very small of the women he was asking about this and experimenting on. It certainly isn't that women don't have a single bit of their brain devoted to their genitals, they've got everything else. But yes, we don't really know why he missed the women off. I think it was actually a woman who drew the homunculus for him called Mrs Hortense Cantley, and I think some people have suggested she was a bit too prudish.

She said, I'm not drawing that. Certainly not at the size you suggest. Makes me look as if I think of nothing else. Exactly. This thing, this method he invented that you're describing, the, you know, your brain is exposed and being operated on, but you are awake, is called, I just love this, the Montreal Procedure. And it sounds very spy filmy, doesn't it? You know, yeah Yes, the Ottawa protocols, you know, there's just sort of it's quite cool Yeah, but if you see people playing a musical instrument during their surgery, yeah, that's the thing

Because they need to work out how to not damage your brain and the bit of you that's doing fine motor movements So if you play the violin that's really useful useful to them. If you can't play the violin, it's very bad. Yeah, yeah. And it's got to be an instrument that's sort of bearable as well within the slightly stressful environment of an operating case. Oh yeah, you don't want bagpipes. Yeah, exactly that.

There was last year. Not many space for a homonym in here. There was someone last year in Wisconsin, he developed really shaking hands and he couldn't, it got to the point he couldn't pick up his granddaughter and he really wanted to sort that out obviously and he was operated on for deep brain stimulation and they said well do you play an instrument at all? He played the trombone. Where he didn't, in the end he didn't play it, he did the fingering movements but

it turns out when you play the trombone you know it causes high pressure. You know when you just said when you do the fingering movements and then you mimed fingering. Yeah. Do you know how to play trombone? Not you will play the clarinet Yeah alto sax. Yes, why my big band failed But if it would have caused too much pressure inside his head which might have killed him So yeah, and he did that's the last thing you want when you're doing brain surgery on someone. It's very clear. I've had brain surgery in 2021 and I found myself sort of fascinated by that after you try not to think about it too much beforehand but then afterwards you think gosh I'd have

to know how that worked. I'm not saying I'd like to sort of witness it happening. I remember having knee surgery once and saying to a friend of his at physio it sounds fascinating the operation is a shame it's not a local anaesthetics. I quite like to watch it and she said you would absolutely not which I see a lot of these know you would really you would really struggle. Oh really? But the actual brain aspect of it I mean it's so you know in terms of the heavy machinery that is required and then there's sort of very sensitive work

that's done once that bit's done you know. Yeah. Well like the contrast of skills. Well that sort of bit. Then you get a thing like an old fashioned sort of 1970s ashtray basically plonked on top of your head so they can sort of lean instruments on into whatever, so you sort of turn you into a kind of giant fondue, I suppose. Yeah, so I've got a little dent in my head which is like, what's that bit from? They go, oh, that's just where the thing was attached.

You know, this tray is, they'd attach to people's car doors for their burgers and things that drive through. So sort of clip on. The clip on Onto your brain, do you know kind of wish they left it that could be useful for just for storage? Yeah We've got a house with quite a few sort of low door frames and things like that I can see it beginning to impact other members of the house on my own. Of course, I don't say you love you love it. So they sort of had to open and then Yeah, they sort of went around the side of the back for me I find it strange thinking of because what while the Penfield was doing was operating on the surface

Yeah, but not the I don't know if he got into the very deep tissues of the brain and how that's I can't understand how They get through one bit of the brain to get to the rest of it. I think that's extraordinary Well now they can use a sort of laser knife I think, so you're doing that basically, you're targeting something specifically, not just in a sort of two-dimensional way but in a three-dimensional way. Goodness knows how the science of that works. Do they use a laser on you? For me no. What I had was a fairly, within this particular field, quite a straightforward zoom.

Just a spoon? Just a spoon, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dessert spoon please. Do you wish you'd been awake during it? particular field quite a straightforward just a spoon yeah yeah yeah do you wish you'd been awake during it no I know I know I really don't but I'm I am sort of fascinated by the I just I didn't used to be sort of fascinated by sort of slightly take it for granted I suppose but the idea of then doing something so extreme and the sheer usefulness that that is now in terms of what symptoms that can be related to an asset to the brain and therefore you could have no you don't have to go in at all

You just go no this is textbook if that's happening It's because this is a specific issue and it can be got to without us even going inside you Yeah, you know a sort of piece of laser equipment can handle that. That's I mean, it's completely remarkable I feel like we always owe such a big Thank you to epileptics over the last hundred years for it because it's basically them who are always being experimented on. Like hundreds of times, if you've got epilepsy they're fascinated because you have an excuse to open the brain so they say while we're here do you mind if we do lots of twiddling around to find out how the brain works. That's what Penfield was doing quite a lot wasn't it?

That's what Penfield was doing, yes. I find him so interesting, he had a really amazing life. He's a classic friend of the podcast, I'd say, in that he served in the First World War. His ship was torpedoed and sank. His obituary was printed, despite him not being dead when that happened. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. He was a football coach before that in his homeland. He was a medical ambassador after all these big discoveries. His sister had a terrible brain cancer and he operated on her to try and save her life. Really complicated surgery and very dangerous and he had to remove an eighth of her

brain in the process. He wasn't able to save her life in the end but he did grant her years more of life that she wouldn't have had otherwise but he was really pioneering he's really just discovering new things all the time and then having to do the most difficult thing imaginable i imagine operating on a member of your family absolutely yeah try and save their life just extraordinary and i think if you give i think there's a thing a time after which it does count as saving your life if you give if someone's lived an extra five years plus i'd be like save their life yeah you can claim that it's a terrifying area in which to be a pioneer in,

isn't it? I remember some builders saying to us when we lived in Peckham, we talked to them about loft extensions. We haven't done one before, but of course you have to do a first one, don't you? And we thought, hmm, nah. Sorry guys. The idea of having that conversation

in a sort of neurology ward. Terrifying. Can I do something quickly about how the brain evolved? Because it's kind of mental, right? So you go back to the start of animals, you have something called choanoflagellates, and they're the relatives of all animals. And they are the first ones where the cells can talk to each other. So that's kind of where brain cells begin, because you've got lots of cells talking to

each other. And they have been described as a sperm wearing a skirt, because that's what they look like. Basically, they're very, very simple animals. Sounds like the sort of thing Pope would call someone that he hasn't got. Yes. And then you've got neurons, okay?

So these are actual brain cells, and they started in something called an herbalitarian, which is a hypothetical animal, but it's definitely a common ancestor of all the animals that are split in two. So like basically all mammals and lots of other animals as well. And they had the first tiny brain. They also had the first eyes and the first anuses and people usually draw them like a little slug. Okay. Okay. They're pioneers.

Absolutely. And socially they must have been very popular. You know, they're cut above the neighbors. Oh, yeah. They've got eyes. They've got, what was it? An anus. An anus and a brain. People must have been terribly bunged up till then. Very uncomfortable. Often things would come out of the same way as the mouth. Oh, dear.

Very much an Alexander Pope and Mr. Curl situation. Pop toilets are ruined across the world. And then it's really difficult for brains to evolve, right? Because you kind of need them to work all the time. So you can't just keep trying things because if you try something, probably that animal will struggle to live, right? Sort of mutations. To mutate, right?

So sometime around 500 million years ago ago two organisms had sex and their entire Genome was duplicated okay And these are relatives of all the future mammals and all the future kind of this and when you had two lots of the genome That meant that one half the genome could start practicing and start trying things out and you get loads more Mutations there and you might have an extra arm here or an extra get loads more mutations there and you might have an extra arm here or an extra bigger brain or whatever and that's really important for brains to develop and then we now think and this is really recent we think that that happened a second time about 100 million years ago where the entire genome got duplicated and that's when the brains got much much bigger and we're not sure about that

but it's called the oh no hypothesisothesis after Japanese geneticists assume Oh No Oh very good So there's no exclamation mark? There's no exclamation mark That's terrific And then you get the brain, there's a few other steps But now you've got to the punch line We'll never be able to know them

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You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's Go to TryRoughGreens.com. Use promo code TRY ROUGH. You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Okay, it is time for fact number four and that's James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1885, a Samoan king plotted to kill a rival by disguising his army as a 200-man cricket team. Was he caught out? Oh, very good.

When he slipped. Let's get those out of the way. Is it a bit sledgehammer to crack and not getting a 200-man team to kill one rival? Oh, well, the rival would have had an opposition army. Oh, he had his own men coming. 400 ping pong players. So this is 19th century Samoa. Cricket had been brought over by the British and they kind of had their own version that had lots and lots and lots of players in a team. We might get to Pacific cricket in a minute and how that's different than normal cricket.

But he was in Appia, the capital of Samoa, and he'd heard that his rival was gonna come over and try and take over, and he decided he was gonna get in there first. So he sent like a Trojan horse of cricketers, because you might have a really big cricket team in those days. They had like their cricket bats and their cricket balls

in these boats when they're going from one island to another but underneath were guns and grenades and stuff like that. So they weren't just going to use the ball in the back because this was the days before body line was banned so you could really just kill people. That's true. Sharpened stumps and things like that. Yes but the coup was was filed in the end thanks to the indiscretion of one of the players. Oh, that's very strange. She must say that's a very poor team member. Yes. Yes.

That's like Kevin Peterson texturing the opposition. I mean, what's going on? It's a very niche reference. But what specific cricket then, if you can have like, because obviously to us, like 200, that would be like, that's half the playing staff of the county championship. It would sort of stick out, stick out like a sore thumb, wouldn't it? But you could have specific cricket has complete different rules. Yeah, definitely. So Samoa wasn't really into cricket for ages.

And then it turned out that the British brought cricket to Tonga and Tonga got really into it. And they would the Tongans would go over to Samoa and say, oh, you guys can't play cricket, you idiots. So the Samoans decided that they were going to get into it as well. They're very childish, aren't they, the Samoans? Yeah, you're probably not supposed to say it. It comes across that way, doesn't it? But then it just kind of evolves that way, you know, like village against village. Even in those times, soccer and rugby and stuff was quite often much bigger teams like village against village. But in Samoa, yeah, it kind of evolved that way. And it's known as Killikitty.

It's actually pronounced cricket, but it's spelled Killikitty. So most people would say Killikitty. It's really fun. Yeah. And you would, you might have instead of one batsman at each side, you might have three batsmen at each side and you would have no sixes and fours. You would just whack the ball and then just keep running and running and quite often you would have runners which you don't

really get in cricket these days so much so if you were overweight you would just get a young person in to do all the running for you and stuff. This um killer kitty I'm gonna say that let's say the Samoan version it was so much fun that when in the year 1900 Britain ceded control of Samoa to Germany The Germans banned it. Yeah, because it was taking up so much of people's time and in Tonga In fact, they had to pass a law that you're only allowed to play it one day a week Because everyone was just bunking off the whole time to go play cricket Yeah Because also if you've that many people playing presumably you could be perhaps not very active in the game

But be quite happily absorbed if you've got 200 people on each each team then there's quite a few passengers aren't there? Absolutely. At the level of which I play you can have two or three people, I pulled a muscle the other week and I couldn't really move and that was fine. It doesn't make any difference. But where it's been doing, if you've got 200 people you really could turn up going where's the sort of quiet air, the ball doesn't seem to be going anywhere much. You're so right.

They did ban it but actually no one paid any attention to it. They carried on playing anyway. But there was a civil servant there called Philip Snow. This was just before it was ceded to Germany and he said that work, Wesleyism and women were all suffering due to cricket basically. He was saying because people were so into cricket they just were doing nothing else. They weren't going to church, they weren't looking after their family and they weren't doing any work. I mean, because cricket's more fun than all those things. So, he was CP Snow's brother. For anyone who likes to read CP Snow?

Who was, sorry? Philip Snow, this chap who went out and ditched about cricket. And CP Snow was? And CP Snow is a writer. I've actually never read any CP Snow. I've read. I've read the Two Cultures. Is it good? It's terrific. It's about the world of arts and the world of science and how...

Anyway, back to cricket. Yeah. Yeah. So. It's basically saying, I'll just say it, if you say, I don't know what an atom is, no one looks down on you in a social setting, right? Whereas if you say, I've never heard of Mozart.

I've never read Sleepy Snow. I've never heard of it. Then people will think you're a complete, irretrievable idiot. And he was saying saying this is not really a reasonable thing because actually atoms are arguably even more important than Mozart and you shouldn't have this huge divide between the two cultures. Mozart was made of atoms in many ways. And so it's mad that the absolute granular, like the most basic floor level entry thing of science, for example knowing about an atom is... We're not expected to know. We should be expected should be expected to know that you know, anyway, it's a terrific essay. It's an essay

It's not even a book. It's short. Anyway cricket we're talking about cricket. Yeah, sorry So in this um killer kitty the bowling is all throwing so, you know in cricket, you're not allowed to throw the ball You know, that's chuck. Yes, you meant i've seen it. I've seen i'm telling you that you have to keep a straight arm The whole time and sort of go over the top of your head and throw the ball like that, but you're not allowed to, if you were to throw a snowball for instance, you would bend your elbow, wouldn't you? Yes, I would. We've already said in the past that you're not great at throwing things. No, and this is taking me right back to a cricket ball throwing competition, which I lost as a boy.

We don't need to get into a back of the head mental snake pit. But there was two a nine year old, wasn't it? It was two a seven year old. So sorry, seven. And you were at what age? 14. Okay. Did they have particularly long arms? She did not.

But she was German and I think that gave her a certain athleticism, which meant that I... Anyway, look, well, actually growing up in sort of Soviet era Germany, she'd been one of these people that would be to a Throwing college from the age of three heavily drugged She's clearly never seen a cricket ball before her life. Roy Roy did up to the match. Yeah Anyway, look we're not here. It's like I have one bit of my brain removed. I think it might actually be that memory So This this is according to a writer called CHP Pridham who said about the bowling is all throwing

He also said there is no idea of defensive play So in cricket if someone bowls to you a lot of the time you're just trying to stop them from getting you out You're not trying to score runs But there was none of that and he also said barracking is not in the Australian model but consists of pious invocations of the deity So you wouldn't say, you know, why are you so fat? Because every time your wife shags me, she gives me a biscuit or whatever. You would say, as we would say, as Shane more famously said, but you would say instead, God's going to get you. You've been abandoning and neglecting your Wesleyanism. You've been abandoning and neglecting your Wesleyanism. Would you say that?

Yeah, exactly. But that really hurt in the 19th century. And they really, in Calicuti, they really sort of made it official, the barracking. So they had, this was a particularly Calicuti and Samoa, so slightly different between Pacific Islands, but they had cheerleaders called lapay, and they would dance and they would sing to support their bands. The lapay dancers. Yeah.

No, darling. No darling. No, it's not what it sounds like. It actually does sound like it. It could be that this was all just one man's excuse for something that I've read. But apparently the Lape dancers would sing around and the batsmen would get all G'd up and then once their sides bowled out then they switch over to the other group of Lape dancers would sing around and the batsmen would get all G'd up and then once their sides bowled out then they switch over to the other group of Lape's and they're the ones who Baric and Hull abuse at the opposition. It all sounds better than the 100 as a format I think.

So you play cricket Miles don't you? Yes not I should say to a very high standard. Your county days are behind you. Long, long behind and in many ways ahead, yeah. Are you a batter or a bowler? I'm bits and pieces, really. I'm there, I particularly like the bit afterwards where you sit down in a camping chair and talk about what's just happened. To me, that's what the day is building up to.

It's very important to have fun with those. James, James, you like going to really unusual places at unusual times. Sure do. Have you ever been to Bramble Bank? Give me more? I have. In the Solent?

Yes, I have. Oh, no, I haven't, in fact, if it's in the Solent. So we're talking for international listeners, just between Southampton and the Isle of Wight, basically. Yeah, sort of in the French channel. Yeah, just La Manche, if you're listening from... No, we have no French listeners. We've shaken them all off over the years.

Why does that happen? Are we really... Deliberate policy. Stuff about cricket, basically, yeah. As a group of people who have played a gig in Paris, we could definitely say we have no French listeners. Oh, really? But basically, there is the sand bar in the middle of the Solent,

which drains out twice a year for one hour or so. Yeah. And they try and play a game of cricket on it as soon as it opens up. And you've been there. Yeah. I did a thing with Stuart Broad, the England cricketer, where it was a promotional thing, but we had to get there very early, quite early in the morning.

We got on a boat called Rib, which is like a some sort of speedboat thing that they hang quite a lot of people on, and at this and they just start playing. It's very, it's not very big at all. It was quite sort of, you know, just as much you get on as can. And they do set up some stumps quickly and just play a sort of a game of knockabout cricket. I was umpiring, Stuart Broad was playing.

I'm going to say, if you're just turning up there with your mates on this sort of sandbank, and Stuart Broad turns up. Oh right, yeah. One of the greatest bowlers of all time. It was yeah, I mean the golf obviously is extraordinary but he was just whacking everything but you have to you know you're fielding you have to go and get the ball out of the sea. Yes, because it didn't all end in the water.

Yeah and it just gets to a point where you go okay it's up to our ankles we've got to go. The last bit you're playing and there was the spectators as well. Of course the longer the game goes on the closer the spectators have to. Of course, the longer the game goes on, the closer the spectators have to stand for the action. There are people playing the game who are further away from the wickets and the spectators. And all the lap dancers as well. That must be a nightmare.

Yeah, yeah. The idea of being on the South Coast after the game is over, like being a part of the immigration authorities and seeing one of these small inflatable boats coming back and looking at it thinking, is that Miles Jupp and Stuart Broad? What are they?

I hope we're not expecting a coup. Amazing. Have you heard of the Fellowship of Fairly Odd Places Cricket Club? No. So this is a Dutch team and they only play one game every year but it always has to be somewhere strange.

So the first game they played was on the borders of Belgium and Netherlands. You know, it's a really sort of funky border where you can walk from the Belgium into the Netherlands and cross the border like 10 times. The second game was against the Vatican. They thought that they were going to win that easily, but they got absolutely battered. They thought it was going to be a load of cardinals and stuff but it turned out to be a load of theology students. Oh brilliant. Who were all great at cricket it turned out. Should have called themselves the Vatican.

Carry on. Amazing. Sorry I'm trying to pull Lady Mary Waterly Montague after the show's over. Lady Mary Wartley Montague after the show's over. Oh dear. It doesn't even feel worth carrying on after that, does it? They played Iceland in the Northern Moskit. It was harder than the invention of the anus. They played Andorra and they, in 2017, the last one I could find, they played at a place called Hirszstchenge in Munich and they chose that as fairly odd because of the proximity of the nude sunbathers in the nearby garden.

Were they sort of a target? Was it like that's a four? That's a six? Six and out. Wide ball. No, it's just the way the lights show falling across it. Let me see your googly. Oh crikey.

Oh crikey. Oh dear. You went on Mastermind years ago, didn't you? I've done it twice. Oh have you? Well once your specialist subject was David Gower. Yeah, that was unsuccessful. Yes, the first time though, it was Michael Aston. Cricketer Michael Aston.

Okay. And I had no passes on that one, but I didn't really get out of the block second time around. Both times you picked a cricketer. So it's not broad interest. It's why, because they say what's your, no, not at all. He has got a broad interest. Yeah.

Well, David Gower, do you know, I was wondering if there's something that you don't know about him, but did he ever tell you? Cause did you meet, have you met him? Yeah, many times. Okay, you have. Yeah.

I was reading about him, so he's a famous English cricketer. Thank you. In the 80s. He sounds like quite a fun guy actually. In 1990 he went on holiday to St Moritz and there was a frozen lake and he was in a hire car at three in the morning. You can only imagine that if he was breathalysed it might not have gone well, but I'm not saying that I know that for sure. It was three in the morning and he thought I'll drive around on the lake and he spent an hour zooming around on the lake you know doing handbrake turns and spins and having a great time and then he saw a

patch of what he knew was thin ice he thought cool I'll try and drive towards that and brake just before I get to it. Just sensible decisions at 3am, you know. Cricket isn't exciting enough on its own. And he misjudged it and he didn't break in time and the car sort of went through the ice and got quite stuck and he tried to reverse out so it didn't sink all the way down, it just got a bit wedged in the ice, broke through. So eventually he had to climb out and walk back to the hotel, went to bed, and the next morning came down and said to the hotel manager, would you mind sort of calling your people and checking if there's still a hire car on the lake

because I need to go and pick it up. And sadly the hotel manager said no there's not. Wow, there's no longer any ice on the lake. Yes exactly, and that hireah was never seen again. But that made me think, he sounds like fun. He's jauner, yeah. Well he injured himself, I think he did the Cresta run. I think he once had to miss some matches because he'd broken his elbow doing the Cresta run. Did he? Bobsteading? No, he also did that in the Hayekah.

Hurt, yeah, it certainly does. Okay, that's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us, you can find some of these people on some of their social medias. James, you're on? My Instagram is no six things James Harkin. There you go, Andy. My Instagram is Andrew Hunter M. Miles,arkin. There you go, Andy. My Instagram is Andrewhunterm. Miles, are you contactable?

I'm not actually. I'll share Mars's phone number with you all in the credits after the show. And to get in touch with us as a group, you can email podcast.qi.com, or you can tweet at No Such Thing, or go to Instagram at No Such Thing as a Fish, or head to our website,

listen to all of our previous episodes for free or if you wanna be part of the exclusive, awesome, really cool secret club, Club Fish, then pay a teeny bit of money in order to listen to extra bonus content and add free episodes and much else besides, but mostly that. And if not, we'll see you all again next week.

Thanks for listening and bye bye.