No Such Thing As A Fish - 7: No Such Thing As The Loch Ness Monster

Episode Date: April 18, 2014

Episode 7: This week in the QI Office Dan Schreiber (@schreiberland), James Harkin (@eggshaped), Anna Ptaszynski (@nosuchthing) and Andrew Hunter Murray (@andrewhunterm) discuss parachuting dogs, a misbehaving coconut, the longest game in the world & more...

We run it on QI a few years ago. Yeah, which was there's no such thing as a fish No, seriously, it's gonna be Oxford Dictionary of underwater life. It says it right there first paragraph no such thing as a fish Hello and welcome to no such thing as a fish. This is a QIL podcast coming to you from our offices in Covent Garden My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with three other QILs James Harkin and Anna Chazinski and Andy Murray and once again We're huddled around our microphone and these are the best facts that we found out from the last seven days So in no particular order here we go Okay fact number one. We're gonna start with you James

Okay, yep My fact this week is a computer game has been invented that takes more than a lifetime to complete Is it digitized monopoly? Oh, yeah, cuz remember that thing we found there was a computer simulation of monopoly And they found that something like 12% of all games will go on indefinitely Which is not true because it's much more than that What do you mean so with monopoly? How would it go on? Everyone would own a certain portion of the bar Yeah, just keep going Terry Pratchett has a computer game in his book

Which is called journey to Alpha Centauri which takes over 3,000 years to play and Wow, it's just you know the screensaver the very old pattern screensaver with just the moving dots for a spaceship It's that with a counter counting down for 3,000 years and at the end the dot appears in the middle of the screen It says welcome to Alpha Centauri now go home and someone has actually made that that's a very rough game We're gonna find out about this Okay, I this this came from the design museum. I went there this weekend. It's the design of the year 2014 is competition for all the best design things and this was the thing that I thought was most interesting But the idea is it's kind of an art installation and they're asking questions like

What happens to digital things after you die if you die halfway through that game Can you pass it on to another person to finish off the game? Is that possible? Or maybe this game is designed for mobile phones. What happens when mobile phones and obsolete will the game carry on? So they're asking those kind of questions We're gonna be dispiriting to you know to find out that your great-uncle have bequeathed you his high score so far in this game And that you just had to keep on playing it for the rest of your lifetime To my first son I leave all the property and my second son I leave this game Hey, do you guys know?

How many hours of games are played per week on earth by humans if you tallied up over hours? I'll say a hundred million a hundred million hours. Yeah, I would say I'm gonna go for two billion Okay, I'm gonna go for just 24 hours. I've seen 24 hours. Yeah, and I think most of humanity is out on a walk The answer is three billion hours. Oh, yes. I say I'm close, but actually I'm a billion out Feels close. So gamers are supposed to be good at using Drones aren't they for war? Yeah, and also Searching yeah, if they play computer games, it's supposed to help them with keyhole surgery and stuff like this There's a lot of job opportunities coming up for gamers now, which didn't exist before

When Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic probably in your head You have an image that he was in a submersible trawling through the ocean But he what he was in a submarine But they would send down drone submarines as it were and obviously you need someone to operate them And this this is a quote from he said I would not let an adult drive my robot. They don't have enough gaming experience So with this game, did you actually play it or I I prodded at the screen a few times? But I couldn't really work out how to play it. Okay, maybe that's why it takes lifetimes the first one Just some of the other things that this design of the year

They had the first car that's been able to drive a hundred kilometers on one litre of petrol. It looks really cool It's a bit like a James Bond car. It's very sleek and in order to help their Aerodynamics, they don't have wing mirrors and instead they have tiny cameras and they have talking lamp posts. Is that useful? They were popular stop that stop that They were in Bristol last year or the year before I think and the idea is that say you had a rubbish bin And it was full then you would be able to talk to your rubbish bin and say you're a bit full and he got oh, sorry I'll make sure I sort that out and then get emptied So it's a way of the community kind of dealing with stuff like that. Yes. It's really interesting thing, isn't it?

There's this guy. Have you guys heard of Dmitri Itzkov? No, so he set up this thing called the 2045 initiative Basically, it's a Russian mogul who thinks that we he wants to remove our minds from our bodies It's actually so our minds can live forever. Well, that's never gone wrong in any films I think it seems very promising So by 2045 he really thinks that we'll have our minds decoupled from our bodies And he's gonna live forever and he's 100% certain of this and we'll have holograms and we'll be able to like shop in Department stores for the body that we want that most suits our purposes And live for eternity and he met the Dalai Lama to discuss it

He apparently was really supported according to their website. The thing is at the moment the computer capability isn't enough to simulate human brain Is it yeah 2045 seems ambitious So I have something about things that run for longer than you'd expect because of the back of the computer game One of Norway's most popular recent TV shows has been a seven-hour train journey in real time across Norway It might be quite beautiful actually. Yeah, it was and so they broadcast it in 2009 and over 20% of the population tuned in at some point to the show well in Britain

That would just be like 45 minutes of sat outside Milton Keynes I've seen shots of the Norwich one. It's gorgeous rolling countryside the snow and the furs and it's all beautiful Yeah, here it would not be so nice And they keep doing this they've done 18 hours of fishing for salmon Um, and then they had a 12 hour knitting night Um, and my favorite is national firewood night, which was in February last year Which was inspired by a norwegian book solid wood all about chopping drying and stacking wood which sold as many copies as 50 shades of gray in Norway Oh, there are different kinds of people on there

And the first four hours of national firewood night was a discussion of firewood And then the next eight hours was shot was a live fireplace being filmed for eight hours and they had 60 complaints Half were complaining that the bark had been put facing up and the other half had been complaining that it was put facing down Just picking up on this idea of things that go on for an extended amount of time There's so there's obviously the game where it takes a lifetime or more than a lifetime to play Uh, there's a lot of musical pieces that do exactly that as well. John Cage famously has a piece It's called organ squared slash asl sp. It's a musical piece. Um, which was written in 1987 for an organ Uh, the piece itself lasts 20 to 70 minutes. Um, but it's going to finish

It's going to go for about 639 years ending in the year 2640 and people, you know The next note is going to be played in a few years time and people will go and watch that note be played in this continuing piece That sounds good. Do you think use John Cage to teach like beginners piano because a lot of his pieces are very easy Technically speaking, it's like piece number one. Don't play anything. Yeah, especially four minutes. There's three That's one of the easiest things to play. There's a lot of people who accidentally play a note during that four minute No, no, you've got it. I see where you've gone wrong here. You've um classic mistake Did you guys know that this game called esp and I don't know if that actually exists anymore

I couldn't get the website to open But basically two people simultaneously like tag a picture with keywords And if you tag it with the same word, then you get a point and that's how they tied a whole bunch of google images Oh Wow, I thought what you were gaming I thought what you're going to say is that people around the world are all playing this game and they're going to see if Two people say the same thing at the same time and then see if there is actually esp going on I don't think it counts as esp if you're both showing a picture of a table and you're both writing table

Call me captain skeptic Okay, let's move on to fact number two. This one's my fact. The fact is that 2013 was the first years since 1933 that there hasn't been a sighting of the Loch Ness monster So there's huge worries in the Loch Ness monster community because they think Nessie's dead Oh, she's just learned to be a bit more surreptitious after hundreds of years of being constantly spotted She's just being like if I just stay underwater No, I think they're worried. I think because they think Nessie is a friendly animal Doesn't mind being spotted. What do people like Nessie? Very much so. It's it's not an aggressive animal

It's never in fact in in 2005. There was a triathlon in scotland Where all of the athletes took a one million pound insurance deal out in case of being attacked by the Loch Ness monster when they were swimming across the lock and The the community came out saying that's a ridiculous thing to do if anything she would join in She would she would and she would beat them because she's a great swimmer They're obviously saying that the Loch Ness monster is friendly because she hasn't killed anyone in the last 70 years But there is a slight logic flaw there, isn't there? You're saying that maybe she only needs to eat once a century No, I'm saying she doesn't exist every year William Hill the bookies. They do an actual competition

It's a photo competition where they award money to the winner who's provided the best photographic evidence of Loch Ness monster And this is the first year where they haven't given they had to disqualify all three entries the first one was obviously a duck The second one was a wave and the third one on closer inspection Just wasn't even the lock. It was just another body of water So I have a theory of what's happened to to Nessie. Oh, yeah Well, it's not my theory This is the theory by britain's high priest of white witches Kevin Carlion and he says I personally believe Nessie is a ghost of a dinosaur who has been regularly seen in the lock

But the spirit of the creature has been so exploited in recent years I decided to carry out an exorcism hence no sightings of the monster So he's saying that he has personally killed off Nessie. Yeah, he just thinks that people have been yeah people have been Metting around with this spirit of a dinosaur and he wanted to set it free I really like the mythical creatures that um that we come up with there are so many of them in britain I don't really know if other countries have them to the same extent, but um, my favorite I came across in uh I'm reading our mutual friend at the moment and I've decided to read all of the footnotes And if you're ever reading I think dickens especially but like read all the footnotes. That's so interesting

One of them made reference to the dun cow this um vicious beast That was slain by guy earl of warwick who was one of these like pre medieval british heroes Um, and yeah, it was just this cow and it produced an everlasting supply of milk and eventually got annoyed that people were like Milking it and milking it and milking it ran away from its farm in shropshire And eventually guy earl of warwick who seems like a sort of st. George of the 10th century went out and had to slay the cow Yeah, you say st. George, but slaying a cow is not quite as impressive as slaying a dragon has it although he did also slay a dragon Which was it? It must have seemed like a step down It's that difficult second monster syndrome

If you go to warwick castle certainly until the 90s I'm not sure if it's still there because I haven't seen it you can see the rib of the dun cow And that the king ordered um would should be like put in warwick castle They think that it's Yes, it is bigger. They think that it's actually an elephant tusk I mean skeptics think that it might not be the rib of the giant dun cow It might be an elephant tusk. That's even cooler though if this was found in glossature and a fear. Why is no Instead of saying oh, it's a great crazy magical cow

Why is this elephant been there? Maybe that's what they meant by a giant cow because you know that you know that the initial Photo taken in 1933 of the Loch Ness monster the very famous photo. They think that that's an elephant. No in the lake Yeah, yeah, justify that there was a circus in town at the time Elephants as we've seen in david acton bro documentaries do go swimming and when they do they use their trunks as snorkels And if you look at the photo, it looks exactly like an elephant trunk Do you guys remember that story in 2011 where police in south hampton Went on the alert because there was a tiger sighting in one of the fields

And then there was a gust of wind that blew it over and it was a cuddly toy There was a lion's scare in the 70s in britain, which turned out to be a paper bag I can't remember the details there was a lion's scare only last year that turned out to be a large cat So, um, i know you were saying you're not sure if other countries have similar kind of monsters we do So i have i have one or two here So, um, the lake ochre nagan in canada they have a monster, which is very similar to nessie And every year they give a 50 dollar prize to anyone who can shout loud enough to wake the beast up So everyone stands on the side of the lake yells wake up wake up

And if anyone can wake them up they get 50 dollars and they go home with the same 50 dollars, don't they? As yet no winners i think isn't there a fact you told me years ago I seem to remember that there was a animal similar to the Loch Ness monster that had protection policy On it in a different country. Yeah in sweden. That was uh, it was the stocio monster I think you pronounce it and um, it was classified as an endangered species in the 80s or or some time like that Yeah, because as a result of that a direct result of that, um, the thatcher government Actually put the Loch Ness monster on the animal protections. Oh really? Yeah, they were gonna do exactly the same they were gonna do what sweden did but they decided that that was one step too far

So they would they would just put in they were actually there was there was a document It was put in front of thatcher or thatcher's main people Which was they wanted to bring to blue-nosed dolphins over from america to search for the Loch Ness monster Really? Yeah, it was it never got passed, but it was this was the Tory government What would happen when the dolphins find is it like flipper? They'll come back and go Speaking of hollywood people, what about charlie sheen? He went looking for the Loch Ness monster Dude, you know what? I you know you're saying that there's this guy who exercise the ghost

Charlie sheen's getting a water stick from the um, Loch Ness monster community Is they think the Loch Ness monster doesn't like two and a half men or maybe they want to binge together He went into the Loch Ness with a fishing hook in a he attached a leg of lamb to a fishing rod And tried to catch it on an old wooden boat. You know what call me captain skeptical But I don't think that's any less sensible than trying to exercise its ghost Or look for it in the first place Okay Time for fact number three. This is your fact Anna. Yeah

Um, so my fact is that the french government forced madam to sword to make models of her friends decapitated heads Oh Yeah poor old madame. It's kind of like how her career started. They knew that during the revolution Oh, exactly. Yeah, it was during the terror and the the story goes that she actually had her head shaved and everything And they were ready to um to capitate her as well Because she was friends with the royal family and she had like various mates in high places And she'd made wax models of a lot of them and just before they they dropped the guillotine They were like actually you come in handy because we want to make these death masks of our victims

And so she writes in her memoirs about having to sift through these piles of heads decapitated heads Pick them up have them on her lap and making her making models of them Yeah, I I read an account of it and I kind of got the impression that it turned into something she really enjoyed Yeah, I mean she had no choice But you you know when you kind of just get used to something, you know, it's your job You know, you're now waxing heads for a living. It was like a treasure hunt effectively She was going my god. Look, this is this is the bloke who was in the paper last week. Isn't he? Mary Antoinette's like she's coming on an easter egg hunt with you

Look if you just get used to it you're already into it She was was um, was Madame Tussaud the only wax work person at the time? I don't think so. I think she just made um, so it's been going on for hundreds of years I think she was just very much a self-made woman Well, my understanding of Madame Tussaud is that she was an apprentice to a doctor and he would make wax Bits of internal organs. Is that right? Oh, yeah Was his name courteous? Yes But there's a theory that he may have been her father

Her biological father, yes I know her mother's husband was killed two months before she were Madame Tussaud was born But there is a theory that that he was her natural father because I heard about this guy that he made most of his money making Erotic wax miniatures. Is that true? No, I didn't see that really that cast kind of a An odd light on him having this 15 year old girl making wax models for him in his little office Creepy she was obviously talented though. She was when she was 16 I think she made models of Russo and Voltaire

I love Voltaire because Voltaire Had a statistician friend who figured out that this lottery that the French government was proposing As a way of it making money Actually, um, if you bought up all the tickets of it, you were guaranteed to win more money than you'd spent buying the tickets So Voltaire bought up all the tickets offered in this French lottery and became the equivalent of a millionaire today and never had to work again I don't know if this is um completely true, but uh with Madame Tussaud's these days when they do a wax work of someone There's no contracts or anything and technically I think people could request for it to be taken away They could say i'm not I don't want to be done as a wax work

But everyone just finds it such an honor that they're fine for it to be done Yeah, I think you looked wouldn't you some people put a few clauses with it So tom cruise and mel Gibson have both said you um you can do me and it's fine and people can take photos But no press are allowed to take photos of the wax work because then they'll start using that Press shots and and so they've said you're not allowed to they're good, but they're not that good Tom Cruise spotted again in Madame Tussaud's wax work music and he just loves that thing I find it very interesting who they pick who the pool of people is because now it's almost all celebrities Although every monarch since George III has had a wax work made of themselves

Every king or queen of England off the top of my head Ian Duncan Smith is the only leader of the conservative party not to have had a Wax work. Oh, no, that's because he's the most likely isn't it well It takes a while as well to make the wax work and he wasn't leader for very long So I imagine by the time they'd booked the appointments. He was out. Do you know, uh, Jenny Ryan who yeah works on qi a few years ago? Well, and she had to ring up Madame Tussaud for another reason to find out which was the most groped wax work at Madame Tussaud and she found out that it was Brad Pitt And the way they find out is they work it out by

Which is the one that's taken in for maintenance the most of age Because presumably he would have had to have been taken in for maintenance constantly They had Hitler in a glass box, didn't they because they were worried that he was going to be repeatedly attacked and in fact And then he was beheaded in fact Yeah, someone ripped his head off Was that before or after or when was that 2008? Oh 2008 It's not lunatics who have made one during the war. I suppose I think he had his maid in the 1930s the first one Really? Yeah, I think he was made before

Gradually they moved it from you know honored place with other statesmen to the ground floor to the chamber of horrors Then actually in the loo or something like that There's there's also um, there was a rumor going around that Gary Barlow. It was melted down into Britney Spears So But it turned out that wasn't true. He was taken away He was taken out after take that had finished But he was brought back when Robbie Williams and take that got back together Um, but it meant that he's kept in a warehouse in the interim and apparently there's a warehouse with all these

Fallen wax works. Yeah, which is kind of it's like the like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark And I don't know who we're in there. That is the stuff of nightmares. I really think imagine being locked in that warehouse There's just gonna be all people from the 80s, isn't it? Yeah vanilla rice is in there and I read uh as well that Some people is so enthusiastic about being turned into a wax work that they just do as much as they can to help out with The authenticity of oh, yeah, and Boris Johnson when he was turned into a wax work He gave on the spot after they measured him the clothes that he was wearing And he left me That was his excuse for why he was found watering his boots with London naked

But if you visit Boris Johnson at Madame Two Swords, have a look at the bottom of his trousers because you'll notice that there's a um a rip and that's a rip from a bike chain From when he was riding over to be measured Yeah, so there's a little bit of PR stunt Even as I love cycling at that is the best um cockney rhyming slang I've ever heard PR stunt Boris Johnson is a complete be a stunt Apparently in the past five years 123 pairs of false teeth and one false leg have been left behind in Madame Two Swords

Who leaves their teeth? Yeah, I don't know 123 pairs five years is a lot, isn't it? One last fact yes about wax works and wax in general It's possible to fire lasers and a fly's brain and make it have sex with a ball of wax not only possible. It's great fun I suppose the fly if the fly doesn't know that it's having sex with a ball of wax so that will feel stupid afterwards. Yeah, we've all been there Okay, uh final fan for the show And we come to you Andy my fact is that during the Normandy landings the allied forces dropped dogs by parachute Why are they do that the UK deployed parachute dogs? Um in the second world war which we used to identify minefields and to keep watch and to warn of enemies

Yeah, you know when you say identify minefields does that basically mean wander over a motherfield? But there was never it's never done. Yeah, they could smell them and they so yeah There were three initially just three sent over Brian, Monty and Rene and Rene. I think was the only female Parachutist in the British army during the war and they were sent in with the 13th Lancashire Paris And then one of the articles I read it said they were called paradox brackets short for parachuting dogs Which I love But the the war office have made radio appeals in 1941 for people to give up their dogs for the war movement

And basically lots of people used it as an opportunity to just get rid of their dogs So they they have thousands sent in and lots of them weren't suitable. So were they trained to like pull the parachute cord at the right time? I think the parachutes opened automatically and they were because they were the right Shape and size they they were given the same parachutes that the parachute is used to drop bicycles over the battlefield Which they all sorry and the are you saying a dog is the same shape as a bicycle and size and you can if you pedal it right They're the same effect That's a very good point The first training was to jump out of the plane with a bit of meat in your pocket

And then I think for someone else to throw the dog out of the plane It's it's actually slightly crueler than that. They used to starve the dogs Um, and so what they would do is they would hold the meat outside the plane. So the dogs were no, yeah, yeah How else are you gonna get a dog out other than throwing it? Yes. Yeah, but they're not cruel I think eventually they got used to it though, didn't they you do get used to it though I watched them watching a really interesting documentary a while back about um I think it was 12 paratroopers from the second world war who they did their first parachute jump and they were obviously terrified As you are when you throw yourself out of a plane for the first time

Really really nervous and then obviously they did it for the subsequent five years got really used to it not to get at all Didn't parachute for 50 years and this documentary picked up on them when they were in their 70s and 80s And said johnny do a parachute jump again Let's see how it is now to 50 years not a trace of fear in them And it's like this thing where the way to get over a phobia permanently is to do it repeatedly And you're cured for life. So 50 years they didn't parachute and they all just blasé up in the plane When you're looking for illustrious decapitated heads So I have something else about people dropping stuff by parachute during the war and during musselini's invasion of Ethiopia

and they dropped Sheep and bulls by parachute and the reason was they needed food They were in the desert and what's the best way of doing it? You can drop meat down That's fair enough or you can drop live animals and then they can butcher them themselves whenever they need the meat And so that's what they did. They dropped their bulls and the sheep They um Attached them to modified harnesses and parachuted them down to the soldiers. That is amazing Yeah, that must be the biggest thing that's ever been parachuted a bull. I read that in parachutes actually during wartimes

People as well as you know, you'd look out for it because of enemy, but you would also Be looking out for it because parachutes the the material was Such a collectible. There's a thing that everyone. Yeah. Yeah, like apparently if it was a silk one That would be they come in little triangles and you would turn them into underwear through Otherwise they had no underwear. Oh, it's like a new meaning to go in commando I love have you guys seen the footage of fran's? Oh, yeah Racial yeah, were you watching that poor guy who um developed a parachute suit? I think starting in 1910 and I just love the fact that he so he made this parachute suit

Which he decided was going to be useful effective and work and it just didn't work consistently Didn't and he threw various dummies wearing it off from various heights And they all just plummeted to the ground and died a dummy death And then he tried to throw himself off there at like 10 meters height sort of levels Um fell broke his leg and so he thought well, this has gone Well, I'm gonna ask if I can throw myself off the Eiffel Tower wearing it Um, and so yeah, he did and died and you can watch it. You go watch on youtube It's an extraordinary bit of footage. That's amazing

I didn't realize that it had gone so badly before he decided to jump off the Eiffel Tower Just to just to give him the benefit of the doubt isn't did he jump off the viewing platform at the Eiffel Tower? Yeah, because yeah, and that's quite low isn't it? Yep, but I wouldn't be surprised if Maybe if he'd jumped from higher it might have worked That was what some people said some people claim that his parish it looked like his parachute So it suddenly blossomed at the last moment the last split second, but I actually can't I've watched the footage That sounds like um a wily coyote and roger on a thing He splats down and then the parachute

He had the most amazing mustache though, I wondered why the mustache didn't save him with the air resistance It's so good. One of my favorite facts about d-day Landings is that four percent of the sand on the beach today in Normandy Is made up of tiny metal particles left over from artillery explosions during the attack. No four percent That's a lot isn't it? Yeah, did you guys read it in the year 2000? Someone tried to replicate Leonardo da Vinci's who was one of the first people to design a parachute. Oh, yeah It was like a triangular one was it? Yeah, it was um, I think it was it was a bunch of triangles and anyway It definitely had wood in full so in his design it was like some sort of cloth and wooden

Things holding it together wooden planks holding it together So someone tried to recreate this in the year 2000 but using modern materials and said it worked And it was this like it was all over the news saying Leonardo da Vinci to da Vinci's design works this guy survived But he used cloth and modern materials I feel like if you built a parachute out of wood it would never have worked would it don't think it would work Yeah I'd the official I guess first parachute jump as far as we know the first public one So it was done by Louis Sebastian Lennemonde in Montpellier in France

And his very first jump was off a tree holding two umbrellas. Cool. That was the very first parachute jump So do we not count um the Malmsbury Monk Islema of Malmsbury? Um, who was the 11th century monk who flew 200 meters when he jumped off the top of Malmsbury Abbey He was airborne for 15 seconds They've worked out because they know where he landed and where he took off from and how high it was And he just made a bunch of wings for himself on his feet and his hands And he said if he'd remember to make himself a tail then he would have

He would have been unharmed and that actually seems to be true because it like gives you an equilibrium and means that You're giving me a really Always I think that sounds very true And people would have thought him a fool when he did that and yet a few hundred years later We are throwing dogs out of planes to help identify mines still doing it 2010 German shepherds were being flown in and dropped over taliban regions. Yeah, good. It's fine on the taliban It's a spy. Yeah, can they have little cameras on them? Wow. Yeah, yeah German shepherds

I I like the idea. I like the fact that in the war it was german shepherds that the british were dropping on germany That reminded me that there's always um countries that Find an animal and then arrest it for spying that happens all the time, isn't it? Yes Was it saudi arabia? I'm making this up saudi arabia that um arrested a coconut for spying I remember that I don't know I find you guilty of spying you have to be broken up and put it in cocktails There was a bounty on his head

Oh Okay, that's all that there is for this week. Those are our facts Thanks so much for listening everyone if you want to get in contact with us You can do so by going to our twitter handles. I'm on at shriverland andy at andrew hunter m james I am at egg shaped Anna is still not on twitter, but do you know what? Let's get you on this week Otherwise you can get anna in the meantime on at quickopedia Please do go if you enjoyed this podcast to our qi.com slash podcast page

Anna and alex have been putting together these amazing pages They have all the links to the stuff that we're talking about videos that go with what we're talking about It's a great page goes away. Um, and we'll see you again next week. So thanks everyone for listening and we'll catch you again. Bye You