No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Half-Ape Vampire

Episode Date: June 30, 2017

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss the man behind human chess, Agatha Christie's untranslatable book and deceitful camemberts.

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, and I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray, and once again we have gathered around 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, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the Icelandic version of Agatha Christie's Lord Edgeware died, took over 10 years to complete because the translator couldn't work out how to translate two words. Firstly, spoiler alert in Lord Edgeware Dies.

You know, I don't think you understand crime fiction, Andy. It's not like you have to wait until the end for the big reveal about who dies. What were the two words, Dan, do you know? I don't know. So the reason I don't know is I read this in an article on The Guardian by the author, the translator of these books, called Ragnar Yonison. And I think for the reasons of not wanting to do the ultimate spoiler alert, he's not included the two words. Because they're like the ultimate words in the whole story. Yeah.

So this is the thing. These two words are, it's a bit of wordplay that Agatha Christie used in the book. It's the clue, basically, to solving the murder. And in Icelandic, he just couldn't work out how to do it. And he's been translating Agatha Christie book since he was 17 years old. And he started with Endless Night. The reason he picked it was because it was the slimmest volume. But he convinced the publishing house that that was a really good one to start.

with, but it was actually, it was just really short. He's quite a famous author in Iceland, I think. He is, yeah. Ragnar Yonison, was it? Yes. And his books have been translated into English by a guy called Quentin Bates, who's also a writer, but I couldn't see if any of his books have been translated into other languages.

According to him, the hardest thing about translating from Icelandic into English is punctuation because a full stop in Icelandic isn't necessarily the same as a full stop. in English. And I think that's really interesting because you think it's all about the words that you have to translate. But if you have to translate the punctuation as well, that's pretty hard, right? Yeah. Do you know what a full stop is? I think sometimes it can be a comma or even a semicolon. My peep, is people who put commas instead of full stops. And the Icelandics are just doing it all over the shop. Well, I think it's part of their actual language. I'll allow it. I can't believe we're not finding out these two words. Is the reason you didn't look into what they were that you didn't

want the spoiler? I thought we couldn't actually mention it on the podcast. I thought, other words, Edgeware's dead. Is that it? No, I think that's translatable. Maybe it's Edgeware Road and the pun is that he's on a horse, but it also sounds like a tube stop. Because that would be quite hard to translate into Icelandic. That would be really hard to translate to translate away. Well, this is the interesting thing about translating though, or simultaneous interpreters, sometimes if they have a speaker who makes loads of jokes, they find it really hard to do. because puns obviously are a nightmare for them and they hate it. And one interpreter wrote in an academic article about interpreting,

puns based on a single word with multiple meanings in the source language should generally not be attempted by interpreters. At the result will probably not be funny. I think often puns in your own language, you should not attempt them because the result won't be funny. I'm not targeting anyone specifically, but it's worth. Well, in that case, I'm not going to say anything for the rest of the podcast. One of my favorite translations is the Asterix books, and they're full of puns, aren't they?

Yes, yeah. So they were full of puns in the original French, and then they were translated into English, and all the puns kind of still work. They all have names that are puns, basically. Like get a fix. Getta fix is the druid, so it's like getting his fix from him. Anyway, what I didn't know is that that was translated by two people, Derek Hockridge and Anthea Bell. And Anthea Bell is the sister of...

Martin Bell, the politician and broadcaster, and also the daughter of Adrian Bell, who was the first times cryptic crossword setter. Wow. Isn't that cool? And you can see the wordplay really working in that family. Yeah. That's amazing. So, guess what the most translated work is?

The Bible. The Bible. You're absolutely right. Guess what the next most translated work is. Or who it's by? Little Prince by Santek Supari. Oh, that's really close. Okay, that one is in the top ten.

Ah! Okay. I read recently that that got translated into its 300th language. That's why I say that. You're absolutely right. Yeah, it did. Okay. The next three books after the Bible that are most translated in the world are all by the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower Society. Oh, they don't care.

Seven out of ten of the books are by the Jehovah's Witnesses in the top ten. The only secular ones are the Little Prince and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Great read. Which is a zinger. I don't count it if they're selling them the Jehovah's Witnesses or do they just thrust them on people? Look, they're translating them into different languages and that's what counts. I don't think people are buying those. But there's not sales, it's just physical translations.

No, no, I know. You get a free Bible every time you get a church. Yeah, that's true. The Bible should be disqualified as well. Wait a minute. No, the church roofs are all falling down. On translators, I read in an article I was reading that, when Obama was president, the US State Department received a message for him from the King of Bhutan,

and it was in the language Zongka, which I think is how you say it. And they needed it translated, and so they went to their Zonga translator and said, this isn't the king of Bhutan, can you translate? Well, this message says to Obama, we need to know what the message is. And the translator says, no, I can't possibly translate that because it's in the royal version of the language, and my eyes are not worthy to see it. Oh, that's cool. They had to look far and wide for another translator.

it turned out the message was to wish him a happy new year. But it could have been a major diplomatic incident. I think Thai has a royal language as well, don't they? But they tend to be not that different from the actual language. I can't remember if it's like that in Bhutan. But even if it was only one tiny bit of difference, it's the fact of setting your eyes on it, there would be a crime.

It sounds like he could have read it, right? Yeah, he totally could have read it. His eyeballs weren't worthy enough. They would have exploded. Do you know, Happy New Year by Abba? I wonder if they have a special version for the royal family in Bhutan. that only they're allowed to hear. Does anyone know about the Icelandic translation of Dracula?

No. So it was translated into Icelandic in 1900 by Vladimir Asmanson, and it's a completely different book than the actual Dracula. Ah. And it sounds ten times better. Yeah. How is it different? Well, they have secret half-ape vampires.

Amazing. Who sacrifice young maidens in the basement with lascivious glee. Yeah, apparently it's much sex. year. We only discovered this really recently in 2014, I think. But the Icelandic people have known it for ages. They've had the book. But they haven't been reading the original, Jack.

No, yeah, yeah. So this was only when someone went back to check something in 2014, this Dutch historian. And he was like, this is completely different. He said, I want to check something in the original text. So are we saying that no one Icelandic and English had ever had a conversation in the last 115 years where they both said,

I've read Dracula, what do you think? Well, I like the half-eight vampires sacrificing maid in the basement. I guess not. You know when you're a bit ashamed that you've forgotten most of a book that you've read? You're going to look like an idiot when you go, oh no.

Oh yeah, yeah, I love those. Yeah, I thought it was my best bit, actually. But yeah, apparently sexier and much less tedious and punchier. No, Dracula is quite sexy already. This is sexier. Yeah. I mean, I had to read the original

with a cushion in my lap. But what's interesting about it, is that they're trying to work out how much involvement Bram Stoker had in the translation of the book. And I think the implication is this translator, I couldn't have written something this good. It must have been an early Bram Stoker version. It was the alternative that the translator made it up. Yeah. Inserted these pieces.

Yeah. Pretty much that he took the original story and thought, I can make this better. Wow. But this guy's saying, no, no one except Bram Stoker could have the imagination to come up with a half ape vampire. It must have been him. I think you should read it, Andy. I will. Just think all the cushions you'll need.

So Iceland books generally, really interesting. They supposedly read more books and more books that publish their per head than any country in the world. So one in ten Icelanders are going to write a book in their lifetime. Yeah, I've read that loads of times. And everyone says it's true. And lots of really proper places say it's true. And it almost certainly is true. don't believe it. I know, it's hard to believe, isn't it?

One in ten. Well, there are only 300,000 of them. Yeah, I think it's quite plausible. And you can get some real crap published these days, don't it if you checked out the Sunday Times bestseller list. Well, the BBC, they did a feature about Iceland's book world, and they interviewed one novelist called Kristen Eirikskedatir,

and she said, it is difficult, especially as I live with my mother and partner, who are also full-time writers. But we try to publish an alternate years, so we do not compete too much. but they're in a constantly stressful household with people up against publishing deadlines so I guess they hate each other anyway

yeah that's where we're going to be when we publish our book in two months' time at the hating each other stage so it makes sense slightly of this Icelandic publisher which I'm sure we all know about tunglio so tunglio these are the ones that they publish

their books only on a full moon the night of a full moon they publish in batches of 69 and if there are copies that are left over at the end of the night they burn the copy So it's this odd publisher where it allows for people to sort of get their book out, but also not crowd the market. They say they take a lot of care and respect with the burning of the books. They fuel the flames with French cognac, and it's all done very classily.

Or wastefully, depending on your perspective. They also hate cognac as much as they hate books. Did you know George Orwell when Animal Farmers translated into French? It was called Les Animo Pactout, which is Animals Everywhere, but he wanted it to be called Union de Republic Socialist Animal which is what it sounds like I guess the Republic of Socialist Animals

that's because it would be shortened to U.R.S.A which is French for bear and of course that would be a nice another reference to the Russians but they didn't go with it they went with animals everywhere exclamation mark which sounds like a fun romp it sounds like a kid's book

where there's a mistake at the zoo and animals get everywhere Yeah, is there a bear in animal farm? No, it's mostly farm animals. Is there a half ape vampire? Lots of those, yeah. In the Icelandic version, you can't move for. I have one final thing about translation.

It's really tangential, though. But there is a thing called the crew and equipment translation aids, which is on the International Space Station. It's a miniature train. There's a miniature train on the outside of the International Space Station. Yeah. I know. And it's also called the mobile transporter. And NASA say that it is simultaneously the fastest and slowest train in the universe.

Wow. Fastest because it's spinning around the earth. Exactly. And slowest because it takes 10 days to get to the next person. Yeah, it moves at one inch per second top speed. Wow. Wow. Well, have they not heard of Southern Rail?

Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is out of the 360-minute... million camemberts made every year, less than 1% are actually camembert. That's not the fact I've got down here. No? For what you sent to? What few got? Out of the 360 million wheels of camemberar produced every year, only four are actually

camembert. Well, that would be less than 1%. But it would be a lot less than 1%. So that was my original fact, admittedly. And I read it in the Independent. and I think when they said just four are true Camembert I think they meant four million. Yes. The disappointing discovery we all made this morning as we started researching.

I would have four unbelievably expensive cheeses on the market every year. Yeah. If you just have four small wheels of Camembert produced. So what it is is the French have a protected designation of origin label which they put on real Camembert. And in order to be a real Camembert, you have to have used unfiltered raw milk. your cows can only be fed grass and hay from local pastures. You're not allowed to move the milk more than a couple of fields before you make the cheese. You need to ladle it by hand and the milk has to have a fat content of at least 38%.

And if you don't follow any of those rules, you can still sell Camember like cheese, but it's not the official camembert stuff. And I thought when I first read it, that only four cheeses managed to do that, but actually it seems about four million, which is still only 1%, which means more often than not, if you're buying a random camembera cheese, it's likely to not be the real deal. So would it's somewhere on the package subtly say that? So the stuff which doesn't have that label is usually labeled

Camembert Fabric on Normandy. But it is like a lot of places, you know, you can't use the actual name of something unless it's made in the place it was made or in a certain way. But it is Camembert, all this other stuff. It's just not made the Normandy way that Camember makers in France. Yes. I think Camembert should be made the proper way, right?

It's not the real deal. It's not the real deal. I can't believe cheese generally in shops isn't the real deal. I had no idea until I started looking into this. What do you mean? It's all ham. It's all ham. The sort of regulations of what can be labeled as cheese means that only 51% of the product needs to be cheese.

The rest of it can be something else. But if 51% of it is cheese, then you can call it a cheese. So what do you know? People just sell smaller blocks of cheese just next to some wood. Because people wouldn't buy that, would they? guess they wouldn't. That's why my little shop closed down. There was a kind of

cheese war over the Camembert thing in 2007. When I say a war, I mean a minor legal dispute. But all the big producers wanted to say proper Camembert is the stuff we're making, even though the milk is pasteurized and the cows actually have come from elsewhere and they're eating grass from somewhere else still and, you know, all of their stuff

and it's not 38% fat. It was a big legal dispute. and the courts came down on the side of the little guy who's only making 1% of the cheese. Good for the courts. They're always the good guy, the courts. Yep. Do you know there's only one family making Camembert until around the 1870s?

And they were the direct descendants of the lady who invented it, supposedly Marie Harrell. They were good PR people. So I think her grandson or maybe grandson in law met Napoleon III and brought a big wheel of cheese. to a show him. So then he became the imperial supplier. So then Camembert was a big deal there.

And they also made it in 1813. They made it an honorary citizen of the city of Cayenne. The cheese? Yeah. So Camember became an honorary citizen. The pepper must have been pretty pissed off if that hadn't been made. Does they give it the cheese to the city? Very good.

Nice. Yeah. I'm strong. Guys, have you heard of the Mondial du Fremage? No. Okay. Strap in. This is the world's.

greatest cheese mongering competition. Oh, yeah. To be the best cheese monger, okay? It happens in France, and this year, the first ever American got a medal. I think an American came third in the competition. But it's held every other year, and it is so hard. It starts with a 20-question written exam. Then there's a blind taste test.

You have to get the name, how it was made, the region, the milk used, and how long it was aged. Wow. Then you have to cut four identical 25 grand pieces of cheese by hand with no measuring. tools you have to cut four identical size pieces of cheese. Then there's a five minute speech where you have to present a cheese to the judges and say why it's good. Then there's a swimsuit round. That's the first morning. Then there's more in the afternoon. And one 2015 competitor said the afternoon is the four hardest hours of cheese you can imagine. You have to make a cheese plate for the judges and then do a carving out of cheese and then do

a large cheese board and you have to justify all your decisions. And what do you get at the end when you've done all this? I don't think it's a lot of. I don't think it's. Yeah, there's probably a small medal or a cash prize or not a big cash prize, but you just get the honour of being the greatest cheesmongers in the world. That's great. Yeah. Sounds really fun. They do take it very seriously, don't they?

They've got a brotherhood of the Knights of Camembert tasting, which is like a Mason Society for Camembertasters. And they all have this huge fancy dress festival once a year where they dress up like Masons and they have this like really solemn. Come on. Yeah, you would think of... You go as a bit of cheese, isn't you? Yeah, of course you would.

You can't go as a bit. serious festival. Fancy dress. It's fancy like Mason's dress. Fancy like Mason's dress. Fancy dress brackets, but be a mason. I'm not inviting you to our fancy dress party. Oh, she's come as a Mason again. Which cheese would you go as James?

I think I'd go as a baby bell. That's a good one. What would the wrapper on or off? Half on, actually. In hot wax. I would paint my face red, half of it. And then I'd shave my hair. And the top of it would like be the open bit of the baby bell and the bottom bit

would be the closed bit. So it's just your head that's the baby bell. Yeah, and then the rest of my body I'll shape like a plate. Oh, that's a good idea. This is one of the rounds

in the Mondialdi frommel. I think I'd go as a Swiss cheese. Would you? Yeah. How would you make the holes? I'd fill a sheet with holes and I wear the sheet. A yellow sheet, obviously.

Would you wear anything under the sheet? No. You'd be careful where you put the holes. What would you go, Asana? I don't know I can't think of any A cheese string maybe A cheese string

Yeah Peel bits off myself As the evening went on That's great You could put all your hair up straight And then slowly Like take the strands off Slowly take it down

Yes Because I was actually thinking Of having to peel off my entire skin Which would have been a real hassle A sacrifice Dan's gonna get a lump of cheese Which is 51% bigger than him Just stand next to it

Yeah I was gonna go as a leg of ham Just really Charles de Gaulle once said How do you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? What was the answer? It was a rhetorical question. But the answer is you sought out a massive competition

to work out who's the best cheesemonger. Actually, you just reduced the numbers of cheese. So they've got far fewer cheeses than when he would have said that. I think they've lost 50 cheeses in the last 30 years. And there's something called the Slow Food Organisation, which is trying to save endangered cheese. and other endangered food stuffs actually but yeah it's like lots of artisan cheeses

have disappeared Britain has more cheeses than france now don't we yes and they're better well are they not I don't like any of them god so are they actually extinct cheeses or can we reproduce them as in have the recipes been lost or the recipes will be there it's just like how everything when it starts being done on a large scale you know the little artisan producers get lost

but the other thing is a lot of these rely on certain strains of bacteria so it could be that those strains have gone. Oh, yeah, they might have gone extinct. You're right. And even if you get it back, you don't know whether you've got exactly the right one anymore. Unless there's like a super old guy in the village who remembers the taste of the extinct cheese. You bring it to him and you let him sample.

I think there is one of those in every French village, actually. They just keep one old guy. Yeah, yeah. The cheese taster. Do you guys know about the world's most dangerous cheese? Oh, no. Is it the cheese rolling people because they're all? always injuring themselves, aren't they? In Gloucestershire, they always run down a hill after some cheese.

Oh yeah, and you're saying that cheese is the world's most dangerous. The one they're chasing. After, yeah. It's not the cheese's fault, admittedly. That's like saying foxes are really dangerous because a lot of people get injured on fox hunts. You know, it's not actually the fox's fault, is it? No. Anyway, it's not that. Is it something that's not pasteurized and might make you sick? Oh, is it the one that's full of maggots? It is the one that's, yeah, Kasu Mazu. Have we talked about that before? Oh, I think so. It's great. So it's from Sardinia. It's actually illegal. I think the EU banned it a few years ago, but you can still get it on the black market. And yeah, the way you make it is you infest pecorino cheese with maggots with these cheese

fly maggots. And they eat the cheese and then they excrete it while they're inside. And that's what adds the flavour. So apparently it's really kind of creamy because their excretion of the cheese and the way they processed it is tangy and aromatic. Do you have to eat the maggots? You do eat the maggots, yeah, because they're inside. But it's quite a hassle picking them out, I think. They jump out at you, if I remember rightly. That's what people say. How lively are these maggots?

I don't know. You've got to be careful of not getting hit in the face. So why is it dangerous to people die? On the EU decided on hygiene grounds. I don't think there have been any deaths related to it. So it's probably just health and safety gone mad. I would be the fuss pot sitting there picking out every single maggot. You could just eat around the maggots.

Yeah. I just want to eat the maggot excrement. Thank you very much. I think I'd go for a slightly less flavour some cheese, but without the maggots in it. I'm willing to put up with a slightly less flavour. I think that's a good idea. I like cheddar.

I'll just have chatter. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that Norway's coastline is so long that if you took a piece of string along it and then stretched it out, it would run around the whole planet two and a half times. Okay, so it needs to be quite a long piece of string. Yeah, you don't get balls of string that big, I don't think,

in your local hardware store. You have to buy a few and then tie them together. Yeah. I was dreaming about this last night, actually. weirdly it was genuinely in my dream I thought what if you had a long enough string that could go around the world which would be shorter than the string you need for Norway

right? Because you need yeah you need two and a half two and a half of those if you managed to get that kind of string and you tied it to the coast of let's say England and you just set off could you wrap the world in that string if you went completely around

I suppose in theory you could but here's something for you imagine you added three feet of string to that one that's going all the way around the world and then you made it tight how much above the surface of the earth would it be? Oh. Do you know what I mean by that?

Yeah, yeah. Hold on so you could lift it a bit looser if you add a three feet. Dan's holding a piece of string. Yeah. I carry it all the way around the world and then give him the other end. Yeah.

And then we add an extra three feet of string to it. Yeah. How much higher would it go? I would say it will basically not be higher at all. Yeah, like a fraction of a millimeter. what you think the actual answer is 5.7 inches about six inches and it's basically maths and the circumference of a circle and this six inch difference is the same whether it's the size of the earth or whether you just put it around your stomach for instance no if you add the three feet it would

just move out by that amount wow that is amazing that is really cool that is an old paradox which was originally the earliest i found of it was 1702 book by William Wittston I don't really understand that but I'm very impressed yeah super cool so just on Norway quickly this was sent to me actually by a guy on Twitter called at YPLAC

he used to work for a ferry company in Norway for a string company he's got shares in them and he said that he learned if you took a piece of string and ran it along Norway's coastline you could run it from London to Bangkok and back again but that might have been before there was a recalculation of the coast of Norway by some

geographers in 2011. And the basic point is that Norway is one of the most complicated coastlines on the planet because it has all these fjords where instead of going straight north to south, it goes in for 100 miles and then out for 100 miles again. So you've added 200

miles to the coast even though you're only 50 metres further along it. So Norway is unbelievably crinkly. Yeah, I think they added if you leave out the fjords, it's 1573 and if you include them it's 18,000 miles of coastline. Wow. It is unbelievable.

But that's, I was looking into the biggest coastlines in the world by numbers. And Canada is number one. Yeah. So Canada, you'd be able to go around the earth five times. Yes. Yeah. And what kind of shocked me was that Japan is ahead of Australia, which doesn't make sense when you think about it.

Because if you look at the sizes of the two places, Australia's got way more coast. But what Japan has is all these tiny islands, which constitute being Japan. So when you add all of them up, they're ahead of Australia. Really, it's nuts. Yeah. This is why this fact is strange, right? Because actually, every list could be different, right,

in terms of the longest coastline, depending on the way that you're measuring it. So a coastline can be infinitely long. So imagine you've got a meter-long ruler, then you're only measuring contour every meter. And so it's going to be much, much shorter than if you go around with a one centimeter measure, and you'll measure much more lumps and bumps.

It's like if you've got a 30-centimeter ruler with some lumps and bumps in it, and then you actually ran a string all the way in and out of the lumps and bumps, that piece of string would be much longer than 30 centimetres. So actually, Norway's coastline could theoretically go to the end of the universe and back. Well, it's not quite infinite because there's a minimum length that you can have, which is a plank length. You can't measure anything smaller than the plaque length

but that is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really small. It's mini. So if we measured the coastline of me, for example, just around my body, if we went super close, if we worked our way around all of your individual hairs. Yeah. And then all of your cells and all of your pores. Yeah. You could, you could wrap around the world. That's awesome.

But you know that that's, you know, that's just logic if you think about it, isn't it? Stop trying to talk it down there. This is an amazing fact that everything is nearly infinite. No one really knew this until the 20th century, the mid-20th century, and the first person to really work it out was a guy called Louis Frye Richardson, who wanted to work out whether the likelihood of two countries going to war depended on the length of their border. Okay. So he looked at a load of different borders. And for instance, when he looked at the Spain-Portugal border, he found that Spain thought it was 987 kilometers, but Portugal thought it was 1,14 kilometers. They immediately went to war over the border.

stolen 300 kilometers of our border, bastards. Yeah. And then it was picked up by Mandelbrot and all the mathematicians who did all this fractal stuff. Yeah, he was amazing. Mandelbrot, so I hadn't really heard of him before this, but he was a mathematician, and he wrote an academic paper which was called How Long is the Coast of Britain?

And he said, it's impossible. For the same reason that the closer you look, the more crinkly something gets. But Norway is special. So Norway has a larger, what they call, a fractal dimension than other. countries. Really?

Just is more crinkly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on the fjords, the fjords, the deepest fjord, this one was actually also said to me by white black. The deepest fj fjord is so deep that if you got to the deepest point of the deepest one, right? You know the Birch Khalifa, the tallest building in the world?

Yeah. You could strap the Empire State Building to the top of the Burj Khalifa and drop the whole thing into the deepest fj fjord. And it would still be more than 100 meters. from the surface. It's a lot of effort just to prove that point, isn't it? And also, you won't be able to see it because it's underwater, so I don't know. I think I just believe it. Yeah. And also, the vertical leaf is very pointy at the top and actually, probably, you should probably put the Empire State Building at the bottom and then the vertical leaf on top. No, because you've got a very pointy bit at the top of the Empire State Building as well. They're both pointy at the top.

It's not going to work. Are you counting the pointy bit at the top of the Empire State Building? You know the bit that they used to attach blimps to? All right. It's probably 96 meters from the top. If you don't count the bit they attached blimps to But you could, if you put the Empire State Building at the bottom, then you could use the spike to impale the other one on top of, and that would be how you welded them together. You could do the same the other way around, though. You could impale the bottom of the Empire State.

Yeah, no, you're right. Thank you for coming up with a solution. Yeah, I think it's a good idea, Andy. I think we should do it. I reckon just like normal measuring equipment, like sonar might be better. Yeah. I'm so sorry for reading out a fact that someone sent me, which is a very, I think, visually creative means

of telling you the depth of... a fjord. Imagine if we did measure stuff using skyscrapers. Every time we had to measure something new, we had to take down a skyscraper and drop it in an ocean. If we measured the coastline of Norway with the Birch Al-Khalifa, it would be a lot shorter. Yeah. That's a very good point. So we should do it. Just one more thing on Norway's amazing engineering feats. There's a little town called Rukken. So R-J-U-K-A-N, how would I say that? Ryuken. Ryuken.

Oh, my God. Yeah, there's a little town called Ryuken. And it's got 3,400 people there. And the problem that this town has had forever, really, is that it's in amongst the mountain range, and it's constantly in shade. So for a lot of the year, they just don't see sun. They can see sun at the top of the mountain hitting the mountain, but they're just covered in shade. It's been a massive problem. And there's been tiny things to sort of try and fix it.

a service, a cable car service was started, so you could pay a small amount, go up the cable car and just experience some sun and then come back down again as a little ride. So they've recently fixed it. This is a few years ago now. An engineer came up with an idea of creating three massive solar powered mirrors that now reflect the sun into the valley. And now they live in sunlight again. And it tracks where the sun is going throughout the day. So the mirror moves towards it to make sure the sunlight is always pushing down. So this town that was in permanent shade is now sunny all the time. It's now being constantly fried by trying to beams of heat.

If you want to kill an ant, go to Ryuk. That is amazing. It's cool, eh? I mean, what a solution. But then you also think, why build a town there in the first place? Yes, exactly. I guess it's easier than moving the town to the top of the mountain. Yeah, but it's not like 50 years ago that town would have been in sunshine.

No, you're right. Maybe the mountain's grown. You know how Everest has grown a bit or shrunk a bit? Perhaps the mountain's grown by 100 metres or so. Everest has shrunk by one inch. Yes. So perhaps the exact same thing has happened except in reverse and to a much greater faster extent. Also, my lawn is growing at the moment and a bit of it isn't growing very well because it's in the shade a lot because it's next to the vents.

So where can I get these mirrors? A mirror store? I'm guessing. Oh, you want the solar powered ones? Yeah, really. I mean, that's going to be better, isn't it? I need to go to Ryukin and steal one. The village has been left in darkness due to one Englishman's whim.

Okay, it is time for our final... We say fact. And that is Anna Tzitsky. My facts this week is that... Now, prepare yourselves for this. You've got to focus. Beef Stroganov is named after the great-grandson of the person who brought human chess to Russia

it's a great fact is it it's a Strugganoff part of Beef Struganoff we're talking about or was it Not Mr. Beef He was constantly getting into fights with people His crest was a big cow

In the words What's your beef? It wasn't beef It was a Strugganov family So this was a big Noble family in Russia From I've been thinking about the 16th century But certainly well into the 19th and early 20th century

and so there was Count Alexander Stroganov who in the very early 19th century decided to turn his townhouse lawn into a chessboard, a giant chessboard for fun and he had his servants beat all the pieces and he dressed them all up as a different pieces and then he had the game be orchestrated by chess players so there was one that was there were two grandmasters of the time

or I don't know if they had grandmasters but players of the time called Count Ivan Osterman and Lev Nalyshkin and they told the servants where to move and they moved and that was introducing chess to Russia. Human chess. Human chess. And then, fast forward a hundred years,

his great-grandson is called Pavel Sergeyevich Stroganov. And he apparently had a chef who came up with Stroganov the dish and named it after this family. And now there are some stories that say that it was his grandfather Pavel who initially inspired it and had been in the family for years. So maybe it was named after the family. the chess guy's son. But our first mention of Stroganov that we have is from the 1880s, 1890s, and named after

Pavel. I think we think that probably isn't named after him, right? It's probably named after the family, right? Yeah, it'll be named after the family, yeah. Anyway, I just love this connection. Also, I just spent a long time reading about the Stroganov family. It is a connection between two things that you wouldn't say a household items, really, would you? It's not like the guy who invented the fork is the grandson of the guy who invented dogs.

I play human chair. The fork came before the dog. I'm saying it's not that. It's the other way around. The grandson of the guy who invented the dog, invented the fork. Wow. I have a couple of human chess pieces in my house. Do you mean humans?

Yeah, I do. So actually, you know, I have to call that a household item. That's a good point. Human chess, I didn't really think much about it until starting researching this fact. I didn't realize that it was a big thing in, for example, Russia and there's a festival in Italy every two. It's not a big thing. It's not a big thing, no. Actually, I don't think you'll continue thinking about it after we've researched this fact. But it is a thing that happens sometimes. So there is a place in Italy which has one massive match

every two years and they dress up in historical costume. And I think they actually act out a particular chess game. Oh yeah. Yes, they do. It's one that was written about in a novel. This is in Marostika, isn't it? Yes, it is. Isn't it the story of a famous match played between two nights? knights who were both wanting to court a princess and the winner was allowed to court the princess. Yeah, I think that's the story behind. Neither of them could get to her because they could only move two steps forward and one step to the side. Wait, hang on, that's the story of how we got a human chess.

No, the story of the game that's played every two years, the exact game. In Marostica, that's what they're celebrating. Supposedly the original game that they are following the moves of were played by two knights. Who played a game of normal chess? Normal chess. It's in a story. It's written about in a fictional story in the early 20th century.

None of it's real. Have you heard of Chess City? It's in Russia? No. Okay. It's in one of the southern provinces. It's southwest Russia. And it's in a town called Elista.

And there's an enclave in that town, which is a mini chess city. And it was built by our old friend, Kiyosan Ilunginov, who until 2010 was the leader of this province. and he is also the head of the International Chess Federation. He's the one who claims to have been abducted by aliens. And he thinks that Sweet Corn and Chess are from outer space or something.

Exactly. And in 1998 to host the 33rd Chess Olympiad, he built Chess City, which has a chess museum, a large open-air chess board, and a museum of Buddhist art. Wow. Because there are a lot of Buddhists living in Elista. Mars, Inc. are one of the biggest pet food companies in America. They might be the biggest, actually.

And they make beef Strugganoff for pets, for dogs, specifically. Why didn't they call it beef doggenoff? Because that would be like cannibalism. Yeah, that's confusing. You don't want to eat like an Andy lasagna, do you? But these... Tigreen Murray. Anyway, these kind of things, they make $100 million in annual sales.

these kind of human-like pet foods. Wow, that's so weird. I really want to verify this. There are books on chess history that say that Charles Martel, who is Charlemagne's grandfather, is the person who invented human chess originally in the world. And they claim that he played a game of living chess, I think, in the 8th century, when he was at war with Arab forces and they introduced chess to them, and he had his servants play it.

If anyone has any first-hand evidence of that happened, I'd really enjoy reading it. First-hand evidence. Charles Mont tells exact words. There's actually one really old guy in every French village who was part of that game. My grandfather was a pawn. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, James. At egg-shaped. Andy. At Andrew Hunter. M. Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com. Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is at QI podcast. We can also be found on our website, no such thing as a fish.com. It's got all of our previous episodes up there. It's got all of our tour dates up there. And it's also got a link to our book coming out in November, the book of the year. We'll be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then. Goodbye.