No Such Thing As A Fish - 95: No Such Thing As A Millipede Embassy

Episode Date: January 8, 2016

Anna, James, Andy and Alex discuss Roman pig-dragons, cross-border sex and walking worms.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, coming to you from the QI Elves in Covent Garden. My name's Anna Tyshinski, I'm sitting here with Andy Murray, Alex Bell, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. In no particular order, here they are. And that's starting with you, Andy. My fact this week is that Czech deer still avoid crossing the Iron Curtain between Germany and the Czech Republic. So they used to be the Iron Curtain, which was a very, very long

electrified fence in between the two countries during the Cold War. And at the end of the Cold War, the Czech and the German authorities, they established a nature reserve going across the country. They thought this is a really nice idea. It will have this huge habitat. All sorts of species will have lots of room to play in, and there will be more animals as a result, and it will all be good for biodiversity. And it turns out 20 years later that deer on the Czech side just will not cross that border. So what you're saying is that all deer are communists? These are red deer, very nicely. And the headline from the Wall Street Journal, when this study

was reported, was, Deep in the Forest, Bamboo Remains the Cold War's Last Prisoner. She's a good headline. There's a strip through Germany, which was called the Death Strip, I think, because it was that strip. It was sort of like a five-kilometer area between East and West Germany where you weren't allowed to cross, and it was cordoned off with lots of barbed wire and walls and you know, men with guns and high towers and stuff. And because no one touched it, no humans touched it for about 50 years, it's now got like more, it's the most biodiverse area in Germany. It's got more wildlife than anywhere in Germany.

Is that supposedly true of Chernobyl as well? It is, yes, isn't it? Plus, leading to that old joke, why shouldn't you go wildlife spotting in Ukraine? Why? Because Chernobyl's biodiversity is very high and we can't run the risk of damaging it. Also, Chernobyl fall off. Just going back to the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, did you know, maybe everyone knows this, but the Berlin Wall came down by accident, kind of.

Yeah, sort of. Yeah, so they were negotiations and there was going to be a change of how easily people were allowed to cross. And they had a live television press conference, which was a bit of a rarity then, it was a bit of a novelty. And the guy announcing it mixed his words up, got a bit carried away, said there's lots of changes happening, they're all happening immediately and then people masked outside the wall. Yeah, there's footage of him when he's asked directly, so when are people going to be able to cross freely between East and West Berlin? And he sort of grapples with a bit

of a press release and looks at the back of it and goes, immediately. Yeah. And then they go for it. And I read a theory that the checkpoint guard who was in charge that day was a guy called Harold Jaeger. And he sort of caved into all these protesters who came flooding towards him saying, let us through. And one of the ideas of why he would cave in is that he was waiting on the results of a cancer test, I read in one article, and he was nervous and worried about that. And he just sort of thought, oh, bugger this, I'll let them get through.

He was fine, by the way. This needs to be a movie. That's amazing. Yeah. Just on that, there was a thing in the, I think it was the Second World War, where shortly after the horrible defeat at Dunkirk and things were looking really, really bad for Britain, I think it was about this time. And there was a sort of offer from Germany, an offer of a negotiated settlement. And the BBC newsreader who was announcing the terms of this said, well, obviously we're not

going to accept that way before anyone in government revives. And, and, you know, true enough, they did decline. But he said afterwards, yeah, I realised that was a bit, that was a bit strong, slightly biased. Yeah. Do you know who invented the phrase Iron Curtain? Winston Churchill. Everyone says it was Churchill. It wasn't at all.

Everyone says it in that stupid voice. It's almost as if they know it's the wrong answer. Goebbels used it before Churchill did. And before that, it was used by an author called Ethel Snowden in 1920. But Goebbels wrote it way before Churchill did. And he wrote an article called The Year 2000, where he was predicting exactly what was going to happen in the year 2000. And he said that our children's children will also have had children.

And the events of this war will have sunk into myth. The first bit of that prediction actually isn't that impressive. No, it's true. But he also said, one will fly from Berlin to Paris for breakfast in 15 minutes. It takes longer than that, though, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, even getting through security takes longer than that. Yeah. So Goebbels was wrong about loads of things.

Sorry. So there are two species of millipede in Tasmania that never meet each other. OK. There's like an invisible line that they never cross. But the interesting thing about it is it doesn't follow any kind of rivers or hills or natural contours. It's just like an invisible line and no one knows why. Bob Mezeboff, who is a millipede specialist, he said, it has got nothing to do

with the environment. It's like a political thing between these two species. Oh, wow. Could it be? Is it a leg dispute? It feels like it's going to be a leg dispute, isn't it? That's just stereotyping. You think that everything that millipedes do is to do with their legs? Yeah, 98 legs good, 99 legs bad.

But there might be, I mean, you might, the thing is, you're so long as a millipede that you might end up in enemy territory without realising it. What, you're back off? Yeah, if you're like backing up somewhere. Can millipedes walk backwards if they want to? I think they probably can. I think they probably can't. Why really?

Why wouldn't they be able to any more than anyone else? I think because it's a really tough job to coordinate that many legs, surely. OK, OK. OK, if there are any millipede experts listening, if you could tweet me at Eggshapes and Andy at Andrew Hunter M and let us know which of us is correct here. I think there's a pint riding on it. Or any millipedes obviously wouldn't want to exclude the millipedes themselves from tweeting in.

I think these, the Tasmanian ones have exclaves as well. So, you know, you get little exclaves in of like someone else's nation in another country and there are a couple of instances where the millipedes that belong to one side have ended up in a little blob on the other side. And they think maybe they were taken over accidentally on a truck and then, but they still aren't mingling. Maybe they're embassies. Oh, yeah, the millipede embassy, that's what it is.

So this is quite cool. I think it's called parapatric speciation and it's where I think there are like two populations of an animal that don't mingle. And usually it's because like there's a ditch in between them or there's some kind of topographical or geographical reason for it. Or millipede racism. Or millipede racism. Or we put a great big wall up for years and years and years.

But yeah, and it means that populations tend not to mingle with each other at all. They'll rub up against each other. They'll occasionally have a chat, but they'll only really make with the people on their side. And eventually that creates and that means they split up into two different species. And it also happens with velvet walking worms in Tasmania. That's another mystery. So maybe Tasmanians are just unbelievably anti-social.

Sorry, this is a walking worm. Yeah, that sounds amazing. That's right, a velvet walking worm. I didn't look into the explanation for the name. What I imagine is that the worm, it doesn't have any legs, but it kind of squeezes itself up into two halves and walks like a pair of legs. Let's just go on believing it's that and never Google it, anyone. Nobody Google it.

Another thing is that there is a species of shark called Mako sharks. And there's a line underneath the sea where if you catch a shark from one side of it, then it'll be male. And if you catch one from the other side of it, it'll always be female. And no one knows why that is either. Do they only have sex on either side of the line? They must just come together for one part of the year, I guess. Speaking of sex on borders, I think it's in Switzerland.

That's the last time you're invited to that bookshop. I think it's in Switzerland, on the border of Switzerland and maybe France or another country. There's a hotel with a penthouse in it and the penthouse bed is on the border. Oh, cool. So you can tick off two countries in one go. I don't know if you need passports or anything. Are you ticking off all the countries? Yeah, and it's so irritating because I don't enjoy sex. So the idea of taking off multiple countries in one attempt, it's a dream come true.

Um, dear. Yes, dear. Oh, dear. Dear aren't always herbivores. Really? They've been caught eating birds out straight out the nest and other meats and stuff like that. And so apparently there are several species or quite a lot of species that will eat meat if it's available.

Oh, really? And on a related note, cows. I've watched a video today of a cow eating a live chicken just off the ground. Like, you're a sick puppy, Alex. The internet is a dark place. Also, deer don't have gallbladders. That's the only other thing I have about them. How do they bladder their gallbladders?

Awful. I know, wait. OK, time for fact number two, and that is James's facts. My fact this week is that if every car in Monaco decided to go for a drive at the same time, they wouldn't fit on the roads. How much time have you spent working that out? Not so much. So this comes from the Economist World in Figures, I think it's called,

which is a yearly book that has loads of statistics in it. And the length of the Monaco road system, if you divide it by the number of cars, is less than the average length of a car, according to my calculations. Which if they're wrong, please don't write it. But I reckon that those each car had about, you know, just around two meters of space and definitely cars are longer than that on average. Yeah. Wow. Shall we do a test and ask everyone in Monaco to get in their cars and go out onto the roads

now, if you're listening, to prove this fact wrong or right? Because this is a podcast people listen at different times. Oh yeah, no, you're right. We need to arrange that. And we need the entire population of Monaco to be listeners. I'm fairly sure they are. I think that's all the policies. Obviously also forgetting that's an incredibly irresponsible thing to do as well,

because multiple deaths. Look, no one said this is a perfect plan, guys. So does Monaco have more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world? I think it does. And if not, it's in the top two. I read that they've got, and these figures are a couple of years old, 771 cars per thousand citizens. Yeah, it's a bit more than that, though.

OK, so that sounds like a lot. It's a lot. Considering how many citizens there are or how few citizens there are. And it's the second most populated country on Earth, I think. Most sorry. It's the second most populated country on Earth, I think. It's China. It's amazing considering Monaco is only two square kilometers.

It's got just shy of a billion people living in it. Order, order. Sorry. Alex, what are you saying? Because apparently Monaco is also the second most densely populated country on Earth, after some place in China, I think. Macau? Oh, could be, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, it's the second most densely populated country on Earth. Wow. And they have more cars than any other people on Earth as well. And one whole third of them are millionaires. Yeah. 30% of the population of Monaco. 300 million billion. I promise that's the last one.

No, it's true. There are 30,000 people living in two square kilometers. So it is. It's incredibly densely populated. It really skews the statistics, doesn't it? Because they have like 100% literacy rate. And the life expectancy is like 98 or something ridiculous. Yeah.

In fact, it's also the oldest country in terms of the proportion of the population who are aged over 65. So there it's 27.8% of the population. So in the UK, it's about 17%, 18%. So as a result of that, in 2009, Monaco spent 1.2% of its GDP on education. Essentially, there are no children. When you were saying the size of it is two square kilometers, I like to say that it's almost exactly the same size as Chipping Sodbury Quarry.

Because when I googled things that were two square kilometers in size, that was the first thing that came to mind. That's very cool. I think your Google results may be personalized. There's another thing which is two square kilometers in size, which is the largest building in the world, which is in China. This single shopping center is 1.76 million square meters. And that is the total area of Monaco, basically.

Wow. Because they say that a lot of the biggest buildings are aircraft hangars, aren't they? Oh, yeah. It's amazing seeing aircraft factories and how big they are as well, because those are the same as really, really massive aircraft hangars. I was watching a video of a German factory that makes houses, basically like entire houses that are flat back. And the whole factory is sort of this big white sterile place,

and nothing touches the floor. Everything is suspended from the ceiling. Wow. Why is that? Just in the interest of tidiness and cleanliness and you can't lose anything, all the bits are always kind of hanging and going from rails and stuff. Oh, that is a brilliant... I've got some DIY to do this weekend at my place. Is that why they call it an aircraft hangar?

Because they hang things. No. It's hangar, isn't it? Yeah. Isn't it? What on earth? Is that that's not a word? No, but it's like a coat hanger. But it's spelt wrong.

It's not a coat hanger. I actually have a coat hanger, which is for all my coats. I've just got so many millions of coats. Because you're such a loser. Actually, speaking of planes, so your fact is about all the cars not fitting on the road. Is the same true for all the planes fitting in the sky? Yes. No, the opposite.

I know what you're going to say. All the planes fitting on the ground. Yeah, I have heard that, that that's why there's always planes in the air, because they wouldn't fit all fit in the airports. And they used to say during the millennium when the millennium was coming, everyone said, oh, gosh, what are we going to do?

We're going to have to ground all the planes, but they won't fit in the airports. But I've slightly looked into it, and it's definitely not true. I think the only thing is they wouldn't all be able to fit in an airport whilst being connected to an airport so passengers could board them.

Because, I mean, airports are huge. Aeroplanes only take up about a 20th of them. The rest is just tarmac. So I think they could all fit. I mean, again, if you're a pilot or a millipede, do write in if you think that's not right. It would be an act of confidence to build in deliberate under capacity

in all the airports in the world. Like Ryanair booking more people onto a flight than actually some people won't turn up. I think they probably built the airports and then made more planes. Rather than thought, well, this is the maximum number of planes we're ever going to build.

Now let's start on the airport. So your fact is about lots of people going out and doing something at the same time. Yes, it is. So I was looking at a couple of things all humans could do at the same time that might make a big difference to the world. So Carton Driver magazine worked out

in the course of a really quite long article, a lot of maths, that if everyone in the world got in their cars at once and put their foot on the accelerator all at once, pointing in the same direction, then the opposing force that that would create from the earth would cause the rotation of the earth to speed up by 0.000001 miles per hour.

Which means you make the day longer so you get there faster. Yeah, it's a pervy way to stop yourself being late. But the traffic would be really bad because everyone is out on the road. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a flawed plan, again. So Monaco is famous for its grand prix.

Yep. And this fact is about Monaco and cars. Actually, the second ever grand prix was held in Monaco. The race was marred after a large pile-up on the first lap when an enormous wave from the harbour flooded the course. Oh my God. I know. Isn't that amazing?

So were they all just going in and then they all just left there covered in seaweed? Oh, that would be amazing. A mermaid in a squid in the car next to them. Yeah, it's very like Wacky Races, isn't it? Was that the one? So there was a guy called William Grover Williams who was the winner of the first Monaco Grand Prix.

Was it in 1929? Or anyway, I think the first Monaco Grand Prix was in 1929 and the winner was this guy called William Grover Williams. And he went on to become a spy because I think he was employed for the French resistance in World War II as a driver. And it turned out he had quite a lot of other talents. What was his name?

William Grover Williams. It feels like he's a spy and they've gone, what's your name? And he goes, William Williams. It sounds also, it scans exactly the same as Bond James Bond. So to be fair, you know. The name's William. Grover Williams.

Anyway, apparently, so he was allegedly the Nazis claimed captured and executed but there were a lot of sightings of him afterwards and rumor had it that he became a grocer in Surrey. The name's William Grocer Williams. Just going back to the Monaco Grand Prix in 2004, when Oceans 12 came out, they did a publicity stunt where the Jaguar cars in the race

were fitted with a new nose cone, each of which had a diamond worth in excess of $300,000 inside the nose cone. During the first lap, Jaguar driver, Christian Klein, crashed his diamond-encrusted car. They weren't allowed to go straight to sort out the car because they had to do it after the race finished and by the time they got there, they couldn't find the diamond.

And no one knows where the diamond is to this day. I bet one person knows. OK, time for fact number three and that is My Facts. My fact this week is that the town of Centrelia in Pennsylvania has been on fire since 1962. So people aren't entirely sure how the fire started, but it's thought that people were burning trash. So there's just a heap of trash or garbage in Centrelia

and they set fire to it. And the thing about Centrelia is that it had a huge network of mines sort of underneath it and largely towards the outskirts of it. And the fire kind of fell down into one of the mines and they're coal mines. And so obviously coal sets fire quite easily, quite well. Pretty well, I heard.

Yeah. And so the coal just caught fire and it's been going ever since and they keep trying to put it out or they kept trying to put it out up until the 80s and then they just gave up. And yeah, you used to have a population of over a thousand and now its population is 11, I think. Oh, I've heard seven.

Has it gone down? In 2010, there were 10. I'm probably somebody moved there. Come to Centrelia, it's on fire. It's an incredible story. It's so weird and it's not unusual these things across America. There are hundreds of, or across the world in fact.

So I think there are over 200 other mine fires in America. There are thousands in China where there are lots of coal mines, obviously. Apparently in total, these coal fires account for 3% of the world's CO2 emissions. Wow. Which just is insane. And so they're not all people chucking stuff down.

I think sometimes it's natural and there are all sorts of other occurrences of underground fires made, but mainly coal produced at CO2, 3%. I read that the ones in China alone are 1% of the world's CO2, yeah. Wow. A couple of years ago, the Chinese government said

that they'd been putting them out and they were just lying and all these journalists went around saying, I can still see the fire down there, it's not out. But the main one is the one in Australia. You guys must have all seen that one, right? Yeah. It's the biggest one, right?

Burning mountain, which has been going for 5,500 years. Yeah, it's mad. I don't think we can blame that on us. That wasn't trash burning. No. I read about the possible explanations for burning mountain and apparently, scientists think it may have been caused

by a lightning strike or spontaneous combustion, which is very much science speak for, we don't know. Also in Pennsylvania and Texas and some other places, you can get flammable water. So... Petrol. Yes. I want me some of that flammable water for my car.

This water, it can even be drinking water that's just got high levels of methane trapped inside it. And if you put a match to it, it will go in flames a bit. Really? And if you've got sort of level water, you can sort of set fire to the surface of it, a bit like when you set fire to brandy on your Christmas pudding.

And there are videos online, you can watch this woman just setting fire to the water coming out of her kitchen taps. It's very interesting. You do watch some odd stuff on the internet. You do, yeah. You're watching a lot of weird videos. That must be really dangerous though,

because surely if the fire travels along the pipe. It never really catches that much because there's not enough methane in the water. And it needs water as well. Oh yeah, true. Here's the thing about coal fires. When the Titanic set sail out of Southampton, she was on fire.

In the coal bunker, because that was what the Titanic's fuel was, huge, huge bunkers of coal, there was a fire in there, which had been burning possibly since the 2nd of April, which was eight days before she set sail. A fire that wasn't supposed to be burning, that wasn't being used to fuel the...

Exactly, yeah, yeah. Just in the coal bunkers, there was a fire happening. And the crew took a day to put it out. I can't believe they didn't spot it for a week. The whole sinking thing is starting to make sense. It was a very slapdash. A mountain negligent crew. Maybe what they were thinking is,

what we need is an enormous amount of very, very cold water. Be careful what you wish for, Frank. Fires are really important in nature, aren't they? Especially in America. Some of their big trees, like the sequoias, they rely on forest fires to kind of keep them healthy and keep them re-growing. But because in America,

everywhere, really, they have this kind of anti-forest fire thing, which is essentially to stop people from throwing cigarette butts around, but actually kind of says that all fire is bad. Whenever there's a fire, they try and put it out really, really quickly, which actually can be quite bad for the ecosystem, because you do need these fires for things like sequoias to grow. Yeah, you do, because they have pine cones, isn't it? There are certain pine cones which are held together really tightly

by resin that relies on fire to get hot enough that the resin melts and it seeds. I'm not saying we should set fire to every forest, but the odd little fire is quite important. The occasional tree wouldn't hurt, guys. Are there forests where they have managed fires sometimes? Yes. They burn sometimes. It's amazing that they need fires.

The idea that there's a type of pine cone that has fire is part of it's natural. I find it incredible, it's so cool. But there are controlled fires. You see them a lot, I can't remember where. I think you see them in Spain, but I think it's often to prevent other fires from actually happening. It's to pre-empt the fire. Don't show that fire.

It is literally fighting fire with fire. I've got one more thing about fire, which is the record for the longest distance run while on fire, which is 200 metres, which is pretty good. How on fire was this person? At the beginning, he is so on fire. I mean, he's really, really, really a flame. By the end of it, it's just his back which is on fire,

because I think a lot of it is put out over the course of the run, but he's an Austrian stuntman called Joe Tudling, and he already had the record for the longest time on fire. And then he broke this one, and then they said, what are you going to do next? And he said, well, I've got three more records to break, which is the furthest distance being pulled by a horse while on fire, and then the furthest distance being pulled by a quad bike while on fire,

and then a small motor vehicle while on fire. So he's found his knees. Take some time off, get married, while on fire. Maybe retire, do some gardening, while on fire. OK, time for our final fact, and that is Alex. My fact this week is that the first recorded traffic casualty was a Roman pig who was run over by a chariot carrying an ornamental phallus. OK, let's start with the chariot.

Why was it carrying a massive phallus? Well, because it was probably part of the Dionysiac Festival, which was basically just this big festival where they had loads of phalluses. It was also to do with kind of fertility and generally being a bit raucous. So we're sure it wasn't a metaphor, and that it wasn't just being driven by the Roman Piers Morgan. This fact is from the pig's Delia Videsa, which is basically a headstone, a tombstone,

which has a little poem on it in Greek. It's Roman, but the poems are written in Greek, and also an engraving, a picture of the pig being run over by a cart, which has a huge dick on it. And it's basically like a sort of satirical, slightly funny headstone, because it's eulogising a pig rather than a person. But the pig was supposedly on his way on the Via Ignatia, which is the road he was on,

and was kind of all very excited about having a great life, and then got run over by a chariot. It's very sad. And pigs were symbols of fertility, I think, as well at the time. Everything was a symbol of fertility. Oh, no, in ancient Greece, I think ancient Greeks swore oaths over the testicles of pigs, because I don't know why they would do that, actually,

just because it's a symbol of fertility. It's always like that at the time. Yeah. Is that right? They always say that the word testimony comes from putting your hands over your genitals, which I'm pretty sure isn't true. Yeah, I think that's right.

But it'd be nice if instead it was the pig testicles where it came from. It would. It's not true either, is it? No. But it would be nice. I was kind of just looking at generally Roman pigs, and what they got up to. There's accounts of the Magarians, apparently,

dipping pigs in oil and setting fire to them, and then driving towards elephants. And then the elephants would trample them, and get very scared and trample everyone, and there would just be general chaos. I was going to ask about that, because I half remember reading a thing about setting fire to pigs and thinking they were dragons or something,

because they were screaming, and there was fire, and stuff like that. I think it's the noise that made them so scary to elephants. Yeah, definitely. And then the enemy elephants trample their own people to death, don't they? You have the elephants at the front of your army, is that the idea? So when they see the pigs coming, they turn around and trample the enemy army. Yeah.

This is something really, really 100% completely not related at all. But I was reading this yesterday. In Covent Garden, and around here, they had some riots when they changed the prices of theaters, and they're called the op riots. And people shouted, op, op, and op meant old price, or it could have been OP or op. But one of the things that they did was,

as soon as a play had started, everyone would turn their backs to their play, and then start doing these chants and stuff like this. And another thing, apparently, they did was kind of prod pigs to make them squeal at, like, inopportune times to put off the actors. I just like the idea of, I don't know, kind of sneaking a pig into the theater. Do you dress it up as like a white? I like the idea that it wouldn't be distracting enough for an actor if just a person in the audience started shrieking.

You actually had to go to the trouble of smuggling a pig in. Someone else who prodded pigs was Louis XI. I think when, apparently, when he was depressed, he liked to get pigs dressed up and have them poked so that they danced for him. And he constantly kept with him a dancing troupe of pigs to entertain him. Is that Louis XI, King of France? Yes.

Okay, cool, just checking. Yes. I think there's such a thing as too much power. You're doing that for entertainment. Yeah, you would think he would sit back at one point and go, oh my gosh, what have I become? Yeah, what am I doing with my life? But on the other hand, look at these great pigs.

You know, we've talked about cat pianos on QI. So you have like 12 different cats and they all make a different tone and you press a key and it hits the cat and they squeal at a different tone. And it was invented by a guy called Anastasius Keercher or something. Yes. There is also a pigonino. There was a pigonino, which is the pig equivalent. Oh, I thought it was a sandwich with a pig in it, but just one sandwich might.

It wasn't. It was a piano with a pig in it. It was a musical instrument. I think this might have been conceived by Louis XI as well of France because he liked the idea of torturing pigs for his own entertainment. And the idea was conceived, I'm not sure if they ever made one, but he challenged someone to make one. And the idea is that, yeah, you pour a high load of pigs in a piano

and then you bash them with keys, which is a pretty big piano. Yeah. It's a grand. I mean, it depends on the size of the keyboard, I suppose. If it's an 88 key piano, then yeah, massively. Does it hit them or does it pull the tails? I just make them squeal. However way you want to make them squeal is the idea.

I don't know. You could do a number of things, I guess. Pig Olympics. Yeah. There's Pig Olympics. It's organised by the Sport Pig Federation. And there's pig running, pig swimming, pig hurdles, pig jumping. Pig hurdles.

Pig football. I'd pay to watch Pig Hurdles. 00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,520 Yeah, no, it's just, you know, pig jumping over little hurdles. None of these sports, you watch them and it's actually just pigs running around. The football works, but they cover the football and fish oil. So they run around looking at the ball. I've seen pigs playing football.

Are you not supposed to give pigs balls and stuff to play with because they get bored otherwise? 00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:29,400 It's the law, the EU law. You have to give, the farmers have to stimulate pigs. Okay. Farmers have to give pigs stimulation. Yeah. I've done a bit of research on penis festivals.

Of course you have. To go on from ornamental fallacies. So there are some which still exist all over the world today. Where's the closest one to here, do you think? Oh, the closest one to here. Is it in 10 minutes time? I think that's in Greece. Okay.

In a place called Tirnavos. But in the Japanese city of Kawasaki, they have an annual festival of the steel phallus. Do they? And they parade an enormous pink statue of a penis through the streets. And you can ride a battering ram, which is shaped like a penis. You can buy sweets, which are shaped like penises. You can dress as penises.

You can just take any normal activity and replace the main noun with a penis. You can dress as penis while on fire. Also, the massive effigy that they carry through the streets is called Elizabeth, for no discernible reason. The in 2003 cabinet magazine held the world's most phallic building competition. The winner was the Ypsilanti Water Tower in Michigan, which is nicknamed the Brick Dick. There's a lot of contenders for that prize, like every skyscraper. So just about phallic-looking buildings,

do you all remember seeing that picture on Google Earth of a church that looked like a penis? No. It was in Dixon, Illinois, and it kind of did the rounds a few years ago. And it really, it does, you know, you can see where they're coming from, really. But a spokesman for the church said, the church was not designed to be seen from above. And hang on, when they say the building wasn't designed to be seen from above, all buildings have architectural plans, which you will be able to see.

That's so true. That's a really good point. One more thing on penises. I found a cabaret event that was held in March of this year, which was specifically for men with small penises. Oh. It was established by a fellow called Ant Smith, who says he has a small penis. He'll be very glad you name checked it, I'm sure.

But he was in all the papers at the time. I mean, he was trying to publicize this. He was trying to get the word out there saying, this is something that really worries a lot of men and just comes to terms with it. And it was to help men come to terms with it. And the entry fee was that you had to pay 50p per inch of declared penis. That's really good. I'm glad he's doing that.

Yeah. And it is kind of ridiculous that we make fun of that and, you know, keep on stoking this ridiculous fire. I think we're celebrating it. Small penises. Well, this kind of event. Yeah, we are. I think we're all saying well done, Ant Smith.

Yeah, definitely. But if I got along, I would have had to pay six quid. No, I'd have paid £1.50. I'll just round it down. OK, that's all our facts for this week. Thanks very much for listening. If you want to get in touch with anyone on Twitter from this podcast, you can contact James on...

At Eggshyte. Alex on... At Alex Bell Under School. Andy on... At Andrew Hunter M. And you can email me on podcast at qi.com. And we'll be back again next week with another episode of Know Such a Thing as a Fish. Thanks very much for listening.

Goodbye.