No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Face Mite With A Laptop

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss mites, miles, Mayflowers and mucky movies. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky, and James Harkin. Now, once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Anna. My fact this week is that it's a common. misconception that face mites don't have an anus. How common.

Oh, well, I know that I've flown it wide open for all of you guys and everyone listening if I, honestly, if I had a quid for every time I'd heard someone on the bus saying, you know that face mites don't have an anus. It's exhausting. So we did think they were anusless for a long time. We did think they were. And also, sorry, face mites. What are they?

Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. I suppose I better start from the beginning of this story. So face mites are something that almost everyone with... Face faces. If you've got a face, you've got the mites, probably, about 90% of people. And they're very small, about between one-tenth and one-third of a millimeter.

So you can't really see them. And they're living sort of like inside your paws in the daytime, so you couldn't see them anyway. But there's been this thing. And honestly, if you look up face mites and you do a website search of new scientists, of national geographic, very very very. reputable sources. They all say, interesting thing is, they don't have an anus. And so what they do is they store all their fecal waste in their bodies

until they reach death, which does only happen after a few days. And then they just explode it all out. And this is why they're bad for you because they explode feces on your face. Now, this isn't true. And what's more, we've kind of known this isn't true since the 60s. So there was an electron microscope in the 60s that did identify a face my anus. But no one. No one believed, Tim?

You did. That's amazing. I wonder, would you rather have face mites on your face that had an anus and were constantly pooing on your face or one that only pooed as a one-off at the end of its life? Well, I think there was an idea, sorry, that it's worse to have them storing up all the poo because this is where a lot of the bad rep of the face mite comes from. People will put various skin diseases down to face mite infestations. And it's partly because they'd say, oh, do you know, they build up with poo, so much poo.

And then it explodes everywhere. And it's not true. And actually, we don't really have evidence that they do any harm to us at all. Yeah. Although I found one thing that they might be doing to us. So they've got no protection from ultraviolet light, which is why they have to hide inside the pores. And they can't produce melanin, which is related to, you know, tanning and so on.

But they do have the ability to eat our melanin. So humans grins secrete melanin, and then they gobble it up. That's good. So basically they get a sun tan through eating as opposed to through sunbathing. Exactly. That's exactly what they do. Imagine if we could do that. Like a biscuit that tanned us.

They're eating our suntans. Don't you find that? Oh, they're eating away or sundance. I think they're eating our sun tans. That's so interesting. And they're using our sun tans to fuel all night sex sessions on our faces. I know.

This is the most amazing fact. This sounds like a toy party exposés. Can I ask about this massive poo? Is it like fake tan coming onto your eyes? Because it's what they've eaten, right? Yeah. There is no massive poo. It's all small poo.

Sorry. So let's just quickly mention something. you dropped in a second ago, which is the fact that every night when we go to bed, they crawl out of our little paws and they have a big old sex party on our face. And this is happening every night on our children, on our grandparents. It's happened it everywhere. It's quite a cool idea because nighttime is when humans often have sex. So the idea that when you're having sex, it's likely that loads of face minds are also having sex.

So they're not even waiting for you to sleep. It's just nighttime. I think it's just darkness. Yeah. Because they don't. Just away from the UV, isn't it? Yeah. Right.

But also they find that couples pass each other's mites. So while you're having sex, you might pass a mite that's now having sex with another you might. I think that's quite unusual for you to pass your mites onto another person actually. I think babies normally get them from their mothers. From breastfeeding. And I think any other way of me giving you one of my mites is quite unlikely. But it is weird the idea that our fate mites are basically our own. Because, as you say, mostly they come from through either child, vagina,

childbirth or breastfeeding because you get face mites hanging around sometimes in the genitals and the nipples. And then they don't really change unless you are living like face to face with someone like cheek to cheek with someone for years on end. Like my colony is totally different to your guys colonies at this stage, I guess, right? That is amazing. So you'll have got some mites from your mother from breastfeeding perhaps or vaginally. And then they obviously won't live for your whole life, you know, they'll have children and their children will have children and their children will have children. So it's a circle of life.

Oh, it's more like a straight line of life. Because by the time you die, if you live to an average human age, it will be 1,200 generations from the start. Really? Okay, so the ones that are living as you die will be the great, great, great, great, great, 12 hundred times from the ones that you got from your mother. And that's the equivalent in humans of when Roe's. was invented and ovens were invented and the pottery were invented so why aren't they achieving

more by the end of my life why haven't they got many laptops on my face and they're working on on on the sex yeah yeah face mites is quite interesting because their penis is on their back oh so the male has to sort of get underneath the female to have sex right but his sort of give her a piggyback yeah like a piggyback and it's really interesting because this is a gene which has changed in the genome called the hox gene. And you know the fact which all mammals have got nine neck bones. Even a giraffe has got the same number of bones as a shrew or whatever. That's because of the hox gene.

And the hox gene is the thing which tells you where all your body parts grow so that your arms are here and your legs are there and your necks here and all that kind of stuff. And really very, very few animals. In fact, this is the first one I've ever seen where they changed the hox gene. because it's really a hard thing to change because you need all your bits in the right place. So evolutionarily at some point their gene just changed and now their penis is on their back. Exactly.

And are you suggesting that if we harness this power, we'll be able to have penises wherever we like? We could, but then the problem would be that our other body parts would grow in weird places. Oh, okay. Is it worth it? We've got to find a way of isolating it to give each other a very sexy piggyback.

Yeah. What changed for them when their penis? went on the back. Well, actually, the mites have been in the news in the last few weeks because they've checked the genome and they found that the genome has changed quite a lot. And the reason is, because they are having sex, but they're having sex with their own cousins and brothers and sisters and stuff like that. And what they're finding is that they're changing in the way that I said, but also in a way that they're losing lots of their useful powers, if you know what I mean? So things that could save them from ultraviolet, they might have had that in the past,

but they're losing it because they don't need it because they have such. a nice environment in your face. They're basically becoming completely dependent on us. They're very clingy. It's like having a partner who suddenly they ditch their whole friendship group. They can't even cook for themselves. And they're developing a completely symbionicry. They do have a penis on the back though.

So it is worth it. I think the definition is they're currently classed as external parasites on us. But soon, if this process continues, they will be classed as internal symbionts. Yeah. And also they might be classed as extinct because if they lose all of these skin, skills to stay alive, then it makes it much more difficult when they get passed on to the next generation. They also have a seven clawed organ around their mouth, which when they do eat your sebum, they kind of latch their claws, these claws around their mouth into you. Right. Which is

quite cool to imagine. Just when I was warming to them a little bit. I love that it's called sea bum yet we have not seen bum for these years. Very good. Very good. How did I not realise that? Yeah. Yeah. So, Mike, Just mites in general. There are five million different species of mite, I believe, as in everything's got one. Humans have their own. At least one. At least one.

Every kind of beetle will have its own mite. Every plant, soil, ocean, any mammal. I have a favourite mite, which is the adactylidium. And this is so amazing. It's life cycle. It's usually found in the Middle East. And they're basically born pregnant. And they're born in order to die.

And so... Aren't we all? It's like human lifespan, but very, very fast. So basically, you've got the mother, and she only ever eats one meal in her whole life, and it is always an egg. Hard-boiled? An egg, I think it's poached, and it's specifically a poached egg of the Thunderfly. Or I think in America you call them a Thrip.

Oh, yeah, it just eats one Thunderfly egg. And then this keeps her alive, and she, inside her has... six to ten fertilised eggs ready to go and they hatch inside her so all her offspring hatch inside her and it's always one male and then all the rest of females and then inside the mother all of her offspring you know what's coming we all know what's coming obviously the one brother shags all the sisters mucky pup impregnates them all and then once he's got all the sisters pregnant they eat their way out of the mother oh for heaven's so the mother gets eaten from the inside and then the kids are born or

pregnant obviously and then I guess they just start again being eaten from the inside by the pregnant kids inside them. So there are some animals which are just too different to us for us to have anything in common. Yeah, we wouldn't get along. No. Yeah, nothing to talk about at all. If one of them gained human sentience, we just wouldn't like that person. At the dinner party they saw their children bursting through their chest. At least at the dinner party all they're eating is an egg. Are you going to have that bread? Oh great, I'll have that. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that a robot version of the Mayflower has just completed a human-free void from England to America.

It went really well, except that it took three goes, had to be towed him manually, and first it land 400 miles from where the original landed. Still cool. Still cool. Tom marks for effort. Totally disastrous. It was a disaster. So this is a ship. It was a robot ship.

It was built by IBM and an organization called ProMare. I think that's how it's pronounced because it's Marae like the sea. And it was called the Mayflower Autonomous Ship. And it was piloted by AI technology. And apparently the technology worked perfectly. But the really funny thing, I just find it funny, the original Mayflower voyage in 1620 took 10 weeks to get from England to the Americas. And this was expected to take three weeks because they said this is so fast.

It's so efficient. It's so AI, it's amazing. And it's first set off in, I think, June 2021, and it eventually landed in, I think, May or June, 22. It took about 60 weeks, basically. Many times longer than the original Mayflower. But it had come back and started again at that point, right? To be there.

Most of those 60 weeks, it was just waiting to try again. Right. For a mechanic. In fairness, it was a research thing, right? Yes. And in some ways, it's a way to prove that you, You can do this for research in the future. So the idea is that a normal boat, like the Mayflower, most of the boat you're using to keep the people alive who are on the boat. So you need to keep food.

You need to give them shell. So you need all this kind of stuff. But if it's an AI boat, you don't need any of that stuff. All you need to do is get from A to B. And so you have loads of extra space to do loads of experiments and put loads of electronics in and loads of scanners and all that kind of stuff. And in that respect, I think it was something of a success. They managed to get quite a lot of data out of it. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And the whole thing is, what a cool idea as well. Like, yeah, it took a bit longer. It landed in the wrong spot. Sure, it went back three times. Broke down a lot. Brod down a lot, cause nightmares. But the, the, but it's got... Absolute mess.

Absolutely mess. Oh, there we go. A nightmare. Yeah. But it's got a great website as well, I should say. Well, it did crash three times. You ended up on BBC.com. Yeah.

The boat itself had microphones on the Hull, part of the research capacity. So it was listening for whales as it traveled. And it also had a smart tongue. It had a tongue on the bottom. That sounds like someone's Tinder profile or... I got a smart tongue. No, that's too rude, isn't it?

No, it sounds more like a mite's penis. It sort of migrated from the wrong side to sort of under keel. It was recording the chemical composition of the ocean. Yeah. So I think in that sense, it was in the right place. Right. So before we invented this, though, there used to be sailors who would have to lay at the bottom of a boat. with their tongue out through the hole.

Still salty. We're not in the river yet. I think it seemed like the conclusion of this voyage was AI works quite well, but it turns out humans still are not able to make boats. Right? Boats break down all the time. Boats really crap.

They're always breaking. And this seems to be a problem with AI generally is that it can work very well, but if stuff goes wrong around it, it can't fix it. And it made me think next time I go on a ferry I'll have newfound respect for the people I think are doing nothing because stuff just brings it all the time.

So you'll stop telling them. Name and shame these people who you think are doing nothing. Are you talking about the people manning the kiosk for snacks? Because they're doing an important job, keeping the people like life and safety officers. They're crucial, the health and safety guys, the mechanics for unnecessary. The guys in the car parking bit who were saying, no, bring it in left, left, left, left, left. No, that far left. That's really important.

Reverse, reverse. Oh, it's in. Those are some of the most skilled people on the planet, I would say. Do you know what? The ferry where you drive into is one of my favorite smells. Oh. In the world. It's like oily and petroly and it smells like trucks.

I really like that smell anyway, but it reminds me of holidays as a child and stuff. As a result of that smell, the guys who were doing a car parking, they're as high as cars for the whole time. Like they're in an altered consciousness where they can see Tetris. The thing is, I thought I'd run over this guy. but it turned out he had his tongue through a hole in the fire. Did you guys see the picture of the robot Mayflower when it was pulling in, when it finally landed at Plymouth, which it did eventually. So it left from Plymouth, as the original Mayflower did.

England, England. And then it ended up accidentally somewhere in Canada where it Halifax. But then it did get to Plymouth in the end. But it looks so pathetic because it pulls in next to the Mayflower 2. which is the exact replica of the Mayflower that was built in the 1950s, which I didn't know about, but that's obviously stunning. It's got, like, you know, got all the rigging. It's like triple-masted.

And then it's got this crappy, it's like a catamaran, really, isn't it? It was a trimoran outrigger, tiny thing. It looks like Thunderbird 3, I thought. Yeah, they didn't make much of an effort, yeah. I think there was a suggestion before they made it that, oh, should we make another replica of the Mayflower and send it across? And then they decided, no, let's try and do something for the next few centres. You know, that's looking to the past if we did that, had another replica.

I think it is a really, it's a brilliant project and, you know, well done everyone involved. It is really cool. The Mayflower 2, when that originally went out in the 50s, they had problems as well on the way and they had to divert. And during the diversion, they went across Bermuda and they almost sank in the Bermuda Ocean. Really? So it could have been a Bermuda Triangle casualty. But they didn't, and so it's not a good story. How almost are we talking?

Oh, they just had, yeah, they had a bit of trouble. Had to bucket out a bit of water. No, there was a big storm. And so it was, you know, you could go. Oh, yes, there was. Wasn't there? Yeah. That journey, it was in, it was in 1957 they went.

And it was this entrepreneur called Warwick Chalton. It was a great name. And he was full of crazy schemes, I guess, all through his life. And he wanted to thank the Americans for their help during the Second World War. So he said, let's build another version of the Mayflower and sail it across. And they did it in quite an authentic way. So they had one radio only. That was the only concession to modern.

I guess. They had no radar. They had no supplies dropped in. They wore pilgrim outfits on Sundays. On their journey. Yeah, just on Sunday. Yeah, they didn't want to do the whole thing as a cosplay. Yeah.

And then after it was arrived, it was officially welcomed by Richard Nixon. Oh, that's it. It sounds so frustrating, re-creating, like hand-forging the individual nails with which they make it, hand-sewing the canvas sails because that's how they did it. They must have thought at some points, what the fuck is the point in this? And apparently, according to the... the Wikipedia page and this is taken from a pamphlet that's issued by the Plymouth Museum

in Massachusetts which is where it is now when they built this replica in England they employed the skills of elderly traditional workmen so that they could build a vessel that reflected the original How old were they? You look like you're alive in 1620 and you know the one difference between the

it's not the one difference there are others but a difference between the Mayflower original and Mayflower 2? Oh toilet facilities oh that's a good one yeah Would you? I bet the toilets weren't that much more up to date. Electricity? No, although that, I think there was a little bit of electricity on the...

To power the radio, which I'm going to say is the other... So there were lots of differences. One of them was, no women allowed on Mayflower 2. Oh, really? Why? That feels a bit regressive. Well, I'm... None allowed?

It wasn't. Not allowed because the captain, who's a guy called Alan Villiers. Bad luck, maybe. Because they used to be thought that women on boats was bad luck, wasn't it? Sort of. He basically... said that we won't be having any women because there's no place for, this is 1957, but there's no place for glamor pusses. And he said, look, the reason women came

was the original Mayflower absolutely stuffed with, you know, Raquel Welch in a fur bikini? Yeah, and that's why it ended up so badly when they arrived at the other end. They're all shagged out. No, he said the reason the Mayflower original works, and they had women on board and it was fine, was because that back in those days, women were chattels, you know, you just owned them. and they're not now. They talk back and you can't handle them. No, no women. Wow, Alan.

And so there were thousands of women who applied to help sail the boat over and they were not able to go on the trip. But aside from that, it was a really great mission. I found it amazing on the original Mayflower that you had three women who were pregnant and knew that they would have a baby on the boat. Yeah. Which I think that's hardcore, isn't it? Because you know how long it's going to take.

It's going to take you six months to get there. Yeah. you're less than six months pregnant or less than six months to go would you do that? I don't know. Medical facilities were so shit. I think the further away you can get from them in those days, the better.

Middle of the sea is better than anywhere else. Really interesting. Because you might, were any of the babies born on the new continent or were they all born on board? There was one that was born when the ship was anchored, I think, in Cape Cod. So they called him like the first baby in North America, ignoring thousands and thousands of years.

For them on shore. But yeah. You would have thought that they might have said to the mother, if you just hold on a little bit longer, this would be the first Pilgrim Baby War and actually on. Exactly. A bit like how we tried to have our caesarian on the 22nd of the second 2002.

Yes. And when you say we, you mean you and your wife, not you and I. I was looking at you dead at me eye when I said that, Andy. Yeah. Not me and my wife. Yeah.

Doesn't always work out, does it? I'm afraid. No. But then, much like, I think you, you know, named your child partly after the day they were born. One of the children who was born on the Mayflower was called Oceania, I think. Oh, yeah. That's a cool name.

That's a brilliant name. Yeah. Better than 14th of February that we called ours. There's been another Mayflower controversy recently. Okay. In 2019, in Devon, there was this group which announced that they were planning to build a 400th anniversary Mayflower, so 1620, 2020. And then they were going to set it on fire.

Oh yes. And it prompted a row in America. People are saying it's very disrespectful. I can see why. Yeah, yeah, you know. But it wasn't intended as a disrespectful move at all. It was this group in Devon, who I want to go and meet, they're called the Great Torrington Cavaliers. And every five years, they build a big old structure and then set fire to it.

They've done it with loads of different things. And it's just their way of raising money for charity. Yeah, I saw a photo of it. Because they did do it in the end. They did light it up. And it had knitted rats. they had a oldy one-stop knob shop on board which I'm pretty sure was an original feature of the main lab

One shop One-stop knob shop What's that mean? I don't know What kind of knobs is it, door knobs? I imagine door knobs. No, it'll be all nubs because it's only one stop So for all your knob needs

I'd like to buy a packet of hard knobs A door knob And Pierce Morgan there in the corner Anyway That's very cool. Another controversial one was the town of Horwich, which is where the Mayflower was originally constructed. So this is in Essex. They wanted to build a replica Mayflower and send it across again. So this was in 2009. They had a town meeting. They said, how do we commemorate this

big 400th anniversary? Someone said, why don't we put up some bunting? And then another person, a dentist called Tom Daly, said, why don't we rebuild the Mayflower? And we send it across. And so they all agreed to it. And they started raising money for it. And it sounds like it was quite a doomed project from the get-go. Because first off, they needed to build a shipyard, which they didn't have in order to build the ship. And so that took up a lot of funds. They raised millions and millions in order to get this done.

They hired lots of interns to come and build the ship, but they had no training. So I think they went through hundreds and hundreds of these interns that just didn't know what they were doing. Meanwhile, the guy who suggested putting up some buntings, just watching the whole thing going. I told them. I told them. So what happened? Well, they just kept trying to, they were investing the money that they kept bringing in. They kept building up more money and people were doing things like sponsoring ship bolts so that they could have their own ship bolt on the ship and so on. And eventually they just ran out of money.

So how much of the ship did they build? I think they did the keel and like the bow and then that was it. And then obviously all these people that had these plans anyway for the big anniversary couldn't do anything about it. because COVID hit. And so all these plans got put into the backseat. So even if they had their ship, it might not even even gone at that point. Oh, that's quite good. I feel like COVID conveniently disappeared a lot of doomed projects. You could just say, well, then COVID, you know. Also, it was a complete stupid idea of the first place. Okay, it is time for fact number three. That is James. Okay, my fact this week is that when the first

four-minute miler, Roger Bannister, met his future-wide. wife Moira, she knew he was a runner, but thought he'd run four miles in one minute. Many years later, their grandson bragged to his friends that his grandfather could run one mile in under four seconds. This is like the down process of telling anecdotes. It's exaggerated beyond plausibility. I should let you know, I am his grandson. Been holding that back for years.

Yeah, so this is Roger Bannister. And his very stupid wife. apparently. Come on, Moira, you've run before. Four miles in one minute. That's pretty fast. That's silly. Yeah.

So Bannister was a medic as well as a runner, wasn't he? He became Sir Roger Bannister as well because of the load of work that he did for the Sports Council. So he wasn't just a fast runner. He was an all-round guy. He was. I find it amazing that he wasn't even a fast runner after the age of, I think it was 25 when he quit.

He just gave up. He said he wouldn't be taken seriously as a doctor. He wanted to be a neurologist and that's exactly what he became. Yeah. And the running, he just completely left to one side. He said that it was only a small section of his life. And if he had to give one or the other up, he would definitely have given running up and would have carried on being a medic

because that was his main part of his life. It's amazing. Yeah, that makes sense. It's quite striking if you read any interview with Roger Bannister. Pretty much the first thing he'll say is, I hated it how everyone bangs on about my running. I don't even care about that. All I want to be known for is.

being a doctor. Yeah, I should have just run a bit slower, shouldn't he? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we wouldn't have been talking about him. Just had a few seconds on. And you'd be a complete footnote in history. So this happened in Oxford at a place called Ifley Road. And he was...

So that's his four minute mile. That's his four minute mile that he ran. And the track that he ran it on was actually built partially by him when he was at university. He helped lay that track down. Yeah, when he did it. Seems like a bit of a Swiss. It does, doesn't it?

It feels like something's going on. What do you think he's done? Made it very slippery or something. Yeah. Made it downhill part of it. Yeah. A little spring. Yes.

Lobs it forward. But yeah, so he did this and it was an amazing thing that you can actually watch footage of online, which is pretty incredible. And they talk a lot about his legs, which are very kind of weirdly spindly. And the sort of big strides that he takes are really interesting. And you could see how knackard he is coming into the end. end as he does it. In fact, there's a whole crowd waiting for him as he comes right into the end, and he basically collapses into someone's arms as if they knew that was going to happen. They're waiting there to capture him. And then they all stood around to hear had he done it.

And there was an official announcement. And he said that the announcer went, the time was three. And then there was huge eruption because that's what they needed to hear. It was in McWurter. It was. It was Norris McWhorter. The founder of the Guinness World Records, along with Hugh Beaver. Apparently were in a pantomime. suddenly. Norris McWhorter is a very Panto name as well. He nearly didn't do it. That morning he said to he spent because he was training to be a doctor at the time. I think he was a junior

doctor or medical student and he that morning was working and said it was really really windy and it was only at the last minute I think his friend about half an hour before said no you've got to do it rog come on and the wind went that was the other thing yeah so wind went went and he went let's do it but he did it in three minutes 59.4

seconds so we've really taken it to the Just under four minutes. In actual facts, I said he was the first four minute mile. I should have said under four minute miles, right? Yeah, that's right. He didn't do it in exactly four minutes. Yeah. But there was someone, a few years later, Derek Ibbotson, who in a mile race at White City

ran in exactly four minutes and zero seconds. Wow. So he became the first person to do an exact four minute mile. Would that still... Would that still have been as exciting to break the record, or is the point that it has to be under four minutes? Yeah, it just had to be under four minutes. It was this invisible barrier that people thought that humans would never be able to get under.

But yeah, we got under it. So getting four minutes, actually, if Ibbotson had done that four minute mile, arguably he wouldn't have become famous because he hadn't beaten the four minute. Yes, yeah. And it's, again, when you watch the footage, I do wonder it's the 50s here that we're talking about. What sort of accuracy are we talking about with the stopwatch? Because it was so crowded.

What did they have? It was a stopwatch, presumably. Yeah, I guess I would imagine it was a stopwatch. I think that as well. I was thinking, Quiz, we accept this so blindly. It's just old Norris sitting there, jamming his thumb. He's a doubting. Norris McWhirker.

The first woman to run a five-minute mile, Diane Leather. It was only 23 days after Bannister's record, but didn't get any of the... Diane Leather is a very good name. Ran Hell for Leather. Yeah. That is good. But in those days, basically, women weren't really supposed to run middle distance running. it was thought to be deleterous to their health.

Was long distance running allowed? Yeah, they were only allowed to run over 100 miles or under 100 meters. Yeah, the IAAF just banned them from running anything more than, I think, 800 meters. I think we might have said, did we say once in an earlier episode about there was like an 800 meter race in the 20s or something where all the women collapsed? Yeah, we talked about that. And so that put them off. Well, just because everyone collapses. They collapsed in the way that everyone at the end of a long distance.

since it's race. Like if you've ever seen Mo Farrow or someone get to the end of a race, they fall onto the nearest person. Absolutely. Very often do. And so these women kind of did some of them. The IAAAF, we should say, who they are,

the international amateur athletics. Athletics Federation. Yeah. Because they have, they did exercise quite a lot of power at the time. They still do the IATOF. So Pannister was running as an amateur. That was part of the point about, I think. And so after he'd run the four minute mile,

obviously incredibly famous, now one of the most famous people in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah. He went to the USA on a kind of diplomatic, you know, jolly, glad-handing celebrity trip. He was sent by the foreign office. But when he got there, the IAAF said that if he was on sponsored TV, that might risk his amateur status. And therefore, you know, he'd be in big trouble. And I don't know if he'd lose a record or whatever. And he was offered a trophy, which was worth 178 pounds when he was in America because they wanted to reward him somehow.

And the IAAF said, absolutely not. you can accept no gifts worth more than £12 as a result of this. Wow. Becoming the most famous. It was a big deal. You couldn't even have expenses to get to places. Really? Yeah.

Maybe a bit earlier that, but yeah, the amateurism was really important. That was why most of the people who were quite successful runners back in the 50s were quite wealthy white men in Western countries. Because you couldn't really afford to do anything like that. That's true. And actually,

there is a thought that there were people who were running sub four minute miles before him, but they weren't Oxford graduates who had all the newspapers and everything like that. So for instance, there's a guy called James Parrott, who is a costamonger, and he supposedly ran a mile under four minutes in 1770, and there was in 1796, someone called Weller, who did the same. And the reason that we think it might be true is because they were bets. So it was like, this costamonger said to his mate, I bet you 10 pounds that I can run under four minute mile,

and the other person paid up. we know that they paid up. So whether they did or not, certainly the person they did the bet with, you know, was happy. I don't know though. If we're not trusting Norris McWhorter's stopwatch,

I don't know if I'm trusting whatever grandfather clock they timed it by. But I'm so glad we're on these guys because I think they're really interesting claims. I love the James Parrot one. And there was also soon after him in 1787, there was a runner called Powell who wagered a thousand guineas, which is a lot of money. Today that's nearly £800,000. Wow.

That he could manage a four minute, mile run and he claimed to have done it in four minutes 03 when he did this time trial. It was near Hampton Court in London and it was five days before Christmas and the really interesting detail is that he was naked at the time. Most serious runners would have been naked when they... In the 1700s? It was kind of a harking back to ancient Greek athletic culture but still. And so what happened? Did he lose the money?

I actually don't know if he lost or won the money. I actually apparently didn't decide it was worth writing down whether or not he managed I did a similar thing. The current record for what the four minute mile can be run in. I've got all the other details, got the guy's name, got, you know, just haven't written down what time he did it in. So what, does anyone know the current... It's about 350? It's about 350.

It's about Algarouge. Yes, Algarouge. I don't know how much. It's not. I think it would be less than that, wouldn't it? I think it's 340 something. I know what he beat Bannister by in meters, as in if the two of them were racing against each other, how much of a lead he had on him. That's so weird for you to have collected that piece of.

Okay, well, tell us, we can work that out. Yeah, try and work it out. How many metres was it? He beat him by 100 metres. He would have crossed the line. Okay, well, if you think 10 seconds for a really fast runner to run 100 meters, they would have done it in 15 seconds, something like that. So if you take that off four minutes, then that's, you know, 345, 3.6.

You've made it a bit complicated by mixing up meters and miles, obviously, but we can work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just, uh, home, do the calculation yourself. Or just Google, Hitchamel Garouge. Yeah. And find out, 1999 it was. It seems strange that we haven't beaten the world records since then. Century.

Since 1999, a century. This century. Oh, this century. But yeah, the reason, according to Peter Weyand, who is a Southern Methodist University Professor of Applied Physiology and Biomechanics, he records that the reason it hasn't been beaten is because the next year we started testing for EPO, which is a banned steroid, which kind of gives you a load of... What year was that, sorry?

and so the Olympics knew that people were taking EPO, but they didn't have a way of testing for it until a year later. And El Grouge, I should say, is denied that he's ever taken any drugs, and he is quite vocal in the anti-drugs kind of campaign in sports. Because all the other ones go, yep, oh, it's definitely on it. But the really interesting thing I think about El Grouge is that he was going to be a football goalkeeper. And as a kid, he was really, really good. but his mum stopped him from doing it because he would dive around in the mud and all of his clothes would get really dirty and so she said oh well you know i have to clean them all the time can you not do something that's a bit less dirty and he went okay i'll be a runner instead and he became the best miler ever yeah do you know who came up with the first steroid test for athletes

is it someone will have heard of norris is it norris yeah you're really close david hoon oh he was beaver no it was banister who developed the first This is in 1973 because he was big into, you know, calling out people who took steroids in sports. And other stuff he did, other medical stuff he did, since that's all he wants us to know about him. Yes. He was into self-experimenting. He was one of those doctors. Okay. Yeah.

Sterides. Yeah, later at the age of 45, he ran a two-minute mile. He, not steroids, with pyrogens, actually, which are less fun. they are chemicals that induce fever so he wanted to study fever so he injected himself with pyrogens and then he sat naked in a hot chamber for six hours which spiked his temperature to very

dangerous levels and turned him dark green what green? Really? Do we believe that? Is that not the story of the Incredible Hulk? And he said I wouldn't perhaps recommend it. Bruce Banner stir? Oh my God! We blow this shit wide open. So long since he blew something wide open

I'm so glad about that. Wow. Yeah, you'll see in a lot of his papers, he'll refer to the study participant R.B. And it's always him, obviously. You mentioned earlier, Anna, that he was quite tricky to interview sometimes because obviously he had two very different aspects of his life. So there was an interview by The Guardian, I think in the early 2000s. So he was getting on them, but I just wanted to read you some of the...

Yeah, go for it. Okay. He was asked a few questions. Then he said, right, is there anything else you want to know? and the interview said, well, I'll be honest, sir, yes, what's your favourite biscuit? Oh, I don't answer questions about biscuits. Why not? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not into biscuits. Now, what is he hiding? That's the question. The interview says, everybody likes a nice biscuit. He says, well, I'm not sure what the purpose of that aspect of the interview is. It's quirky, game showy, odd. Great answers. Fair play to the Guardian interviewer.

He perseveres. Cheese or chocolate. No, no, no. All right, I think you've got more than enough there. What about pie fillings? Steak and kidney or chicken and mushroom? Banerty says, thank you so much. All the best. That's incredible. What year is this? I think about 2004 it was. Okay. I'm just wondering, is this like the era of like, you know, Dennis Pennis and Ali G and everyone's been primed not to answer stupid questions? I think you just hated asking.

I think that's just he thinks of pointless question. But we're journalists and that journalist, I can really imagine doing what that journalist has done, which has not be able to remember anything else that you might have asked him. Just having to keep going on. Or just quickly looking at you know, it's going, oh fuck, what's your favorite sandwich? Would you rather? No, that's not going to work either.

Have you ever, no? Well, I was, I want to say to you guys, bizarrely, my brother helped him write his last autobiography a few years ago, which came out. Wow. So cool. Some things. And he said he was extremely nice.

and actually particularly his wife, my brother absolutely loved Moira, and she'd always bring them warm beer and sort of cold cuts for lunch. Any biscuits? Well, I read through that book and there was no mention of Garibaldi's. That's or not? Every time she wore biscuits in, he flipped the table. I saw him once at a, the QI, QI used to have a building in Oxford, and he came to one of the parties in QI.

He just ran out, had a drink, ran out again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Was he like a best... No. Yeah, but it was kind of like, I don't know, in a weird way, because he's someone who's a slightly obscure famous person. It was sort of like spotting, you know, like a big foot.

It was just like, wow, like, look, a sighting of Bannister. I mean, he didn't like it, but let's say he did like it. Would you walk around even in your 80s wearing your shorts and like... Tank top thing. Carrying your record. What did he get? Medal? He must have got a medal.

He was the year before you get the Guinness World Records certificate. Yeah, poor guy. So he didn't even have the... Missed it by year. Because his record was then broken, wasn't it? 46 days later by John Landy, the Aussie. And they ended up having an amazing run together, which was part of a race, which was known as the Miracle Mile race.

So it had a few different names. And they went up against each other. I mean, how exciting two guys who had the records trying to see who could beat them. I suppose that does happen in pretty much every... race meeting in the world. Yeah, that's true because you're always trying to break a record. I guess this was too. Very M. Mow Farrow just racing a bunch of primary school children's sports day.

Do you know what? You should try racing other good runners. Yeah. But I think Bannister said his race against Landy was the thing he was really proudest of because it was watched by 40 million people. Yeah. When it was in Vancouver. And listened by 100 million on the radio apparently.

Listen to by 100 million. Bizarrely boring. Just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Is that what you hear? Why are you listen to a race? Commentary? Comentry would probably be... It's not a good commentator

if that's what they're saying the whole time. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. So in that race, they were both, you know, neck for neck the entire time and banisters behind him. That's not what neck for that. Yeah, so he was kind of like putting his neck out and touching the back of it.

Neck and neck, I think. Not neck for neck. No, I'm never... A neck for a neck and eye. That's the Bible, yeah. I think they were neck and neck. I'm sorry, too. No, no, that's true.

fine. I would not make a good commentator either. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Yep, their neck for neck. There were neck and neck in front of one in front of the other, yeah. So Bannister's right behind him, and he's coming up. And on the final corner, Landy looks over left on his shoulder. And as he looks over left, Bannister takes over on the right. And that was the famous moment where... Did he tap him on the shoulder before he didn't it? I want to put a ghost on the running track.

to redo it. So that was the big moment and this moment. Then he stole his nose. And then his thumb came off and it was like, whoa! Anyway, the prize money that Landy got was retrieved from behind his ear actually. Okay, it is time for fact number four. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that when the movie Ulysses was released in New Zealand in

1967, sensors were so worried about it that men and women weren't allowed to watch it at the same time. So they literally had to be placed in different cinemas if they wanted to go and see it. And that continued on for years. So there was a showing of it at a university in New Zealand in 1972. And even then, they still had, they allowed men and women in the same room, but they had to sit on either side of the cinema. Okay. So is it because it's so sexy? It's sexy. It's sexy. It's sweary. It's, it was, uh,

it was, uh, it was just debauch city. It was, you see, because I can see if it's sexy that you don't want men and women sat next to each other. Yeah. Right. Because they might have sex with each other. They might just straight like that.

Yeah. That's what happened when I watched. Stop on my mom. And you weren't on your own to the cinema. So that poor person next to you. I could see how if I did that sense as that was going down. Um, but then like if it was a sweary part of it,

it doesn't make sense if they're in the same. room right no exactly no it was a mixture it was a mixture of the sexiness and of the swearing and in the in the room there was a rope that went down the center of the audience and so you had the men and women still there was one row like one line down the center when men and women could have had sex with the robe well just like the rope was sort of there was no aisle between them they were literally in a seat next to someone yeah if there's just a piece of rope in between you and a person you can still have sex with it's a pretty it's a pretty weak barrier to ardor I would Yeah, I got this fact, by the way, from a brilliant book called The Land Before Avocado,

and it's by a guy called Richard Glover, who I've met in Australia when we were on tour there. He actually, I went on his radio show, so he's a big journalist and broadcasters, who's in a bunch of books. What's the title referring to? Well, Avocado is absolutely abundant in Australia as a breakfast item, and he's talking about the old Australia. So, avocado is sort of the new world of Australia. Got it. And the book is all about all the olden days and how.

things used to be and Ulysses was actually banned in Australia which is where it comes up the book as well as the movie so this is James Joyce's Ulysses I should say yeah James Joyce is just you haven't read the book now don't see the film but yeah so he mentions that it was allowed in New Zealand but then they had the segregation thing between the men and the women yeah and you said it was the film as well wasn't it yeah yeah and South Africa I think and quite a lot of places yeah it's band in Ireland yeah the band in Ireland yeah the band in Ireland was only lifted in the year 2000. Yes.

That is a long ban. And I think Ireland's Justice Secretary sent his secretary to go and see the movie and reported back that if this film was allowed, it would discredit the Irish government. So it can't be permitted. Yeah. Because the first film shown in Britain to feature the F word. Ooh. Spicy.

It's really interesting. It was made by a guy called Joseph Strick, and he was a massive fan of the book. So his initial pitch for making the movie was he wanted to do it verbatim. So it was going to be 18 hours long. He wanted every bit of dialogue that was in the book. He got talked out of it, so it eventually ended up being two hours long. But then when it came out, he was very angry about the response of all these bannings in the way that people were treating the film.

And there was one famous incident where they showed the movie in Cannes at the film festival. And this was at the 1967 one. It had French titles along the bottom. And during the film, where it got to a particularly spicy bit, they had using their hands scribbled out the translation in French subtitle of what was being said. So Strick saw this, thought, you're messing with my movie,

ran up, ran to the projection booth where he was met by the committee of the film festival who knew that he'd rush in there. And then he was forcibly ejected according to him. He said he was pushed down the steps and suffered a broken foot. And so he withdrew the film from Cannes altogether.

The reason that he loved the book is that his father had smuggled a copy into a America because it was illegal in lots of countries at the start of the 20th century. And his father smuggled this copy into America and would just keep it in the house and leave it on the table so that whenever anyone came around, they would say, oh, that's that dirty book, isn't it? Like Ulysses.

And then, like, even though no one had read it, they would still argue about it, about censorship and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was really, so I think 1920, the very early 20s, it was published, 23, I think. and it was printed. I think it was because he wrote it in 18 didn't he and it was serialised but maybe it was published in Britain in 23 do you mean?

Well 500 copies were burnt at Folkston in 1923 so I think that would attempt to import it and it didn't go well. It was published in France in 22 that was in Paris by an American woman called Sylvia Beach she opened the shop and she had these copies of Ulysses that she managed to get and she sold them for 10 times more than any other book in the shop because she knew that everyone was.

would want to get the hands on this book. But still they managed to get them. Still, they paid for them. And she removed the copy from the store window because she thought that people would start throwing bricks in a star. Oh, wow. Still, none of the buyers ever read it. I think we can guarantee all of these places, all these people.

Beach was really brave. So the book was sued in New York by the New York Society for the suppression of vice. And it was convicted for being obscene. They were fun people. Yeah. But then after that, Beach, published it in Paris. And part of the reason it was controversial was, was when it was printed in extract in the USA,

even the printers themselves, so this is outrageous, we're not working on this. And then when she was in Paris, French printers were obviously harder to offend with English filth, because they don't understand the language that they're printing in.

And they're French, like, you know, Madame Bovary. Weavit through, webbed through, you know, yeah, yeah, they're used to this. Madam Boebury's not that sexy. Are you joking? There's some shit in a carriage. Come on. It's much more subtle than what Ulysses sounds like.

It's pretty raunchy stuff, Adam Bovary. Okay. And this bar is quite different to you. I'm still lobbying to ban Madame Boe. But so Norseca was the chapter in America that was seen from Ulysses. So they were publishing these extracts. And in the chapter that suddenly raised the concern,

Leopold Bloom, one of the lead characters of the book, Ulysses. The lead, I think. He's not sharing it with many people. Maybe Mollie. Yeah, I was thinking Mollie. So it's a scene in this chapter where he's masturbating on a beach, while gazing at a 17-year-old girl called Gertie McDowell, and that's what they took exception to.

They have scenes like that in Madame Bovary? It's not quite that much, is it? Or, in fact, another scene. And this is just saving anyone the trouble of actually reading it, because we're just telling you the couple of fun bits, so you don't have to bother. But apparently there's one scene in a, I haven't read it, there's one scene in a Dublin brothel where Leopold Bloom transforms into a woman

and then gives birth to octoplettes before the, brothel madame who then turns into a man and starts auctioning off blooms like prostitution services and demonstrates so bloom's now a woman with a vagina and so the brothel madam demonstrates how good a prostitute that he'd make by shoving her arm up his vagina yeah okay also doesn't happen oh shoves her arm up the vagina and then shoves it into the bidder's face to be like look how good is that um there's another line i actually started reading ulysses at the start of the year when my daughter was born and I had a lot of time in the middle of the night sat there with nothing else to do. And I got through quite, no, not much of it, but then I started listening to the audio book,

the RTE version, which actually I got through most of, I didn't get through to the end. And it gets really racy at the end, so I'm a bit gutted that I haven't got there yet. But anyway, there was this line, and I did tweet this at the time, which is Haynes helped himself and snapped the case too. He put it back in his side pocket and took from his waistcoat pocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open to and having lit his cigarette held the flaming spunk

towards Stephen in the shell of his hands Hmm What? And so that's... Sorry, when did the spunk come in Before that move? Well, the reason is that the word spunk just doesn't mean what it means today.

Oh, really? It meant like a little bit of flame or a little bit of, you know, if you light to match, a little bit of flame sort of flies away that used to be called a spunk. Oh, I mean flaming spunk. I guess it's a little bit of flame.

It is a sort of flyaway thing. It flies off and away. Yeah. I'm sure. There's some etymological reason. Golly. Do you know the day Ulysses was set, which is famously one day, June the 16th, 1904, is the day that Blimey.

Is it? Yeah. Flumes Day. It's to commemorate that day. Really? So that's why it's to commemorate. Yeah. He said it then.

It was their first date. Is it to commemorate the first date? Is it to commemorate the hand job? Is there a difference? I don't know. But also Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes married on that day. Did they? In commemoration of Bloom's Day, not the handjob.

It was more about when the day was set. I wonder if she gave him a handjob in proper commemoration. You may now kiss the bride and you may now. Oh. The person who banned the book in the UK, this was in 1922. It was the government that banned it, but the person whose idea it was was a guy called Sir Archibald Bodkin. And he issued an official opinion saying that it was a filthy buck and it should not be allowed to be imported into the country and the government agreed.

And I was reading about Sir Archibald Bodkin. Apparently he was a man of unwavering Victorian sensibilities. This is according to an author Kevin Birmingham who was writing about Ulysses. And it said on the rare occasions that he told a bawdy joke, he drained away the humor by delivering the punchline with a disapproving glare. Why are you looking at me, James? I don't know what you're trying to say here. I love that. That's so funny.

I'd love to see his live at the Apollo set. Furious when the audience laughs. Shut up. Just on films that are banned. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The Wikipedia for which films are banned where is great. So, because it's quite nationally specific in lots of cases.

So Cuba, for example, has banned the films, Red Zone Cuba. Cuba Crossing Red Dawn Cuban love Any movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. Without Havana And finally

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Okay That's understandable There's one film Called Titanic from 1983 It's a 19443 Titanic

On the original Yeah Which was banned by the Nazi government Despite the fact that it had been made by the Nazi propaganda Department

Oh I remember that one Yeah Why was it like a practice run To check how well they banned stuff. I think Goebbels decided it would weaken morale because there was lots of bombing happening in Germany at the time and Goebel's decided that because this film featured a lot of deaths on the Titanic that it would weaken morale in Germany. So there was some test screenings outside Germany but it was never shown in Germany. It was also then obviously

banned by the Allies because it was Nazi propaganda. So there was basically nowhere this film was allowed to be shown. Yeah. Do you guys do the film too cool for Christmas? No. No. I'm not familiar with that. Do you know the film a very cool Christmas? No. Right. Well, they're both the same film. They're about a girl who wants to go skiing instead of spending Christmas with her parents. But in one of them, in a very cool Christmas,

the girl's parents are a female and male heterosexual couple. And in Too Cool for Christmas, her parents are two male gay fathers. Right. And it's exactly the same. But the films are exactly the same as each other. They just re-filmed every single scene involving the parents, which I imagine it's quite a lot of things.

And they just show them in different parts of America, Or different parts of the world? That was pretty much exactly. It was for America. It was 2004. And it's this director who is called Sam Irvin, who's a gay director who wanted to do the plot line about the gay dads. But couldn't get the budget for the LGBTQ station that he wanted to put it on. So he also sold it to Lifetime TV, a rather traditionalist TV station.

So he also got a mom. I want to go to like a traditional Orthodox American family and show them the first film that one with the heterosexual couple and then show them the other one and say you know what they've done this for all the films. It's a secret archive of every film in the world. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.

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