No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Rat Multiborg

Episode Date: July 17, 2015

Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss the age old debate of ‘Nike’ versus ‘Nikey’, telepathic rats, and 90 super-gripping babies.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covert Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andy 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 you, Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that babies practice their first words before saying them out loud. Which is very sweet. I love that.

Wait, how do we know? Well, this is from a study at the University of Washington where scientists scan babies' brains and observed what happened when they were being spoken to. And bits of their brains light up, different parts of the brain light up. And some of the bits are associated just with listening and taking in information.

And other bits are associated with actually planning the motor movements that you need to say words. So even when they are listening, they are trying to figure out how to make that sound, basically. So that's what it is. It suggests that they're figuring out how to make sounds. But don't they all finally reach the same word? Isn't it all mama?

No. Is it not? No. I thought that was the first word. George Orwell's first word was supposedly beastly. Yeah. That says more about his mother than about him, I think. That's true.

Considering you wrote Animal Farm, though, that is quite true. Dada is the most common. 15% of babies apparently. Ah. We have Dada. Followed by Daddy, 13%. Mama, 10%. Dad, 10%, mummy, 8%, mum, 7%, cat 2%, dog, 1%.

Ah, I found a survey from 2014 where more than 1 in 8 parents claimed their child's first word was tablet, as in a tablet computer. Yeah. Although this was a technology firm who make device protection cases, who sponsored the research. And it also found that babies break tablets a lot. So they sponsored the research, and by coincidence, that's the word that comes out. babies, I think, might be a lot cleverer than we give them credit for. There was a study done where they tested with a hundred hour old babies, so a bunch of babies who are only a few days old, could count,

and they'd show them a series of images with a certain number of shapes on them. So they'd show them, like, a bunch of circles, and one picture would have three circles in it, one picture would have four circles, one would have five circles, etc. And then at the same time, they would play them recordings with a certain number of bleeps on them. Right. And when they played a recording of, let's say, three bleeps,

then the babies would look towards the picture with three circles on it. And it was like they were connecting the, you know, they were counting the number of bleeps. And then associating it with the vision. Isn't that incredible? Like four days old. They can count up to 27 iPads, though. I read a thing about swearing in children.

And it took children from 1 to 12. And it just measured a host of different swear words. So how frequently they used them. And so for one and two, year olds, the most frequent swear word that they use is poopy. Is this pre-curfew? Because if so, I don't think we're allowed to say that. That falls off very rapidly by the age of seven or eight.

Jerk is big around for three and four-year-olds. Then tails off has a huge dip in the graph. Do you know that newborn babies recognize the theme song from their mom's favorite soap opera? Do they? They tested this. An old study in 1988. Yeah, they tested it. They also tested them on made-up words.

Oh, yeah. So they made up a word like, I don't know, Titu or something. And they played it to them more than 25,000 times while the mother was pregnant. Oh, God. And after birth, unsurprisingly, the baby recognized the word and its variations. And other babies didn't recognize it. Have you heard about the way babies grip, newborn babies, the strength of their grip? They can grip strongly enough to support their own weight.

Wow. Yeah. And they think this is a hangover from... I was just going to say from being a chimp and having to pull yourself up the hairs or something. So does that mean if you put your finger in a baby's hand and they grab hold of it, you could lift it up? Yeah. Do you know how I know that with such confidence? In 1891, back in the good old days, a researcher dangled 60 newborns from a walking stick to see how long they could last.

Wow. And the longest lasted 2 minutes 35. Right. And the shortest lasted 10 seconds. Oh, wow. Two minutes 35. Yeah. How long was this stick then?

He could get the 16 infants dangling. That is incredible. 60. 60. 60. There must have been one at a time. I think it was, sadly, I think it was one at a time. Another thing babies can do, which I think is quite exciting, is they seem to have an innate awareness of organs and how bodies work.

So there was a study done where there were like moving toys given to a bunch of toddlers. And then they split the dolls in half. And they showed them to the babies, and they made it so the dolls were completely hollow on the inside. And the babies were really confused. So when they split a doll in half and there was nothing on the inside, the babies would, like, show obvious signs of bewilderment and, like, look inside properly, as if to say, where the hell are his organs? It's alive.

I don't think that shows detailed knowledge of human and natural. I wouldn't trust them to do an operation. I'd still go for Dr. A, the adult doctor. It's not Dr. B, the baby in the coat. Yeah. Do you know that babies can't taste salt until they're four months old? They can also taste with their cheeks, which we can't do. Isn't that cool?

As in if they could just hold the things to their cheeks. Oh, that is delicious. It needs more basil. More salt. I mean, I don't know, actually. It has to be the inside of their cheeks, sadly. But even so, quite cool. There's a taste buds all over their cheeks.

They've got taste buds on their cheeks. That would be really fun. It's a weird idea of being able to taste with your cheeks. We could once do it. So I was reading a story in the British newspaper archive in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough in 1887. And a man has written this letter into the newspaper. This man got on a train in 1887. A man in his early 20s got on the train carriage with him and was holding a baby,

even though the man looked very young to be engaged in such a manner. So, you know, early 20s, bit young to have a baby. the baby started crying and the man pinched the baby quite hard and it started crying a lot more and so a couple of women nearby said oh if you keep doing that you shouldn't do that to a baby if you keep doing that we're going to call security and the young man said

I'll do what I like and taking the baby by its long robe began to swing it around and around so that its head came into contact with the doorframe after each revolution and the shrieking became terrific and then bang the train stops the man gets out leaving on the seat a broken Yankee rubber baby which is a prank doll they used to have in the 1880s that apparently young men would take on to trains

in order to terrify the living shit out of everyone else there. I think you mean the living poopie. Isn't that weird? It sounded like it was going to be a really traumatic story. That's awful. And then it was just a doll, though, Andy. It's still awful, though. It's still traumatic.

I haven't recovered from the awfulness. Which I guess is the whole point of the prank. Yeah. What a good prank that it's still affecting people Even just hearing about it. 130 years later, I'm upset. You're upset. This man should be so happy.

My God, he must be happy in his grave right now. Isn't that cool? I'm glad he's dead. Okay, time for fact number two, and that is Chazzynski. My fact is the first pair of Nike trainers were made in a waffle iron. Who's going to quibble with my pronunciation of Nike? Nobody. Okay, no, ma'am.

Nobody. And I reckon you're asking for a reason, right? I mean, technically, I guess we should say Nika, because that's how you pronounce it in ancient Greek. Well, that's how you pronounce the ancient Greek. I always say Nike. You definitely shouldn't say Nike. No, we have got some very exciting news. Two people wrote to the founder, the co-founder of Nike, to ask, and he wrote back to them, it's Nike.

They wrote to Philip Knight. He's the chairman, and I believe he's the co-founder of... He should change his name. Philip Knight? To Nike. To Nike? Or should change it to Knightie. But they sent him.

And they wrote the phonetic pronunciation of both. All he did was just circle and send it back to them. And he circled nai-hyphen key, as in a key opening a door. Yeah. So it's Nike. It was named. Nike was named by the first ever Nike employee who was called Jeff Johnson. But it means victory in Greek, which you would pronounce in ancient Greek,

Nika. Oh, right. So, I mean, maybe they're wrong about the pronunciation of their own brand. But Nike was the goddess, or Nika, it was the goddess of victory. Yeah. But I read that the thing. did was to fly around the battlefield, lifting people up and bestowing honors on them and things like that. So she wouldn't ever have needed shoes.

No way. Sorry, Waffle Iron. Yeah, sorry, so we should go back to the... So the first pair of Nike trainers were made by Bill Bowerman, who was the Nike co-founder, and he'd worked for this company making shoes for a few years, but in 1971, they released the first line of, like, completely Nike trainers with the Nike label on them. And the way he designed them was, so they had a special way of gripping. the ground. He wanted to design like a better pair of running shoes, revolutionized running shoes that could work on a whole bunch of surfaces and design them with better grip, but not with like spikes,

like football spikes, which would dig into the ground. And he was discussing this conundrum, like how to develop trainers with good grip with his wife over breakfast. And she got some waffles out of the oven. And she was brainstorming at the time and saying, why didn't you try attaching some bits of jewelry or something to the bottom of shoes and seeing if that works or something like that? He was like, Yeah, you know that waffle you're holding? What if we turned that upside down and put it on the bottom of a trainer? And then he disappeared, went back to his lab, got two cans of like this liquid plastic that you used to make trainers, came back, seized the waffle iron off his wife, poured the liquid plastic into the waffle iron.

And there was born the first soul of Nike trainers, which is that waffle soul. So I think this resurfaced recently because they found the waffle iron. Yeah, they did. And I read that when they found this old Waffle line, which had just been in a rubbish tip at the back of the founder's garden for ages and ages. Do you know why it was in a rubbish tip? No. It was because he, so it wasn't even in a rubbish tip.

It was buried because Bill Bowman in the place that he lived in America, it was like up a hill or something, and it was too far for, like, rubbish truck drivers to come. And so he'd just bury it all in the garden. And his granddaughter or daughter, I think it was his daughter, wasn't it? It was just, like, found this a few years ago. It was like, there's this huge pile of stuff buried in our garden. just rubbish.

He didn't live on a hill at first. He just kept on burying all of his horse-sword waste, and eventually he did. But when they discovered this thing, I read this line. It truly is the headwaters of our innovation. Nike historian Scott Ream said, from a historian's standpoint, it's like finding the Titanic. Which, it's not. And also, historians do kind of like the Titanic as well, don't they?

Yeah, exactly. It's not like the history equivalent of finding the Titanic. Because the Titanic is the history equivalent of the final... But Nike has a historian. Yeah, that makes sense. It must be a really easy job up until the mid-20th century. 1875. Still nothing. I don't know. Like 400 BC, goddess of victory.

1912, Titanic sinks. Don't really give a shit about that. From a historian's point of view, this would be like finding the first ever... Nike shoe. The waffle iron that was used to make this first pair of trainers had been in use in the barren of family since 1936. It was quite impressive. Oh, they must be pissed off when he broke it, right?

Yeah, it's so casual, just ruining it. He doesn't think he broke it, did he? He broke it. It was not usable after that. Oh. Yeah, I think it tasted of, like, hot plastic. Do you know where waffles come from? They're actually derived from religious wafers.

Oh, really? For communion, as well as just to make food. But you used to have wafer irons, which in French were called mule a ublee, and they had biblical scenes on them. That was the first waffle design. And communion wafer normally had a picture of Jesus and it's crucifixion on them because they were for holy use. Interesting thing about communion wafers is Catholics at least do this. You would go up and they would put the wafer directly into your mouth. And the reason that they did that is to stop people from stealing them,

because people used to get them in their hands, pretend to put them in their mouths and then take them home. and they would do like magic incantations with them or sprinkle them on the crops to make them grow better or if someone's sick. Or pour golden syrup and bacon over them and enjoy Canadian breakfast. Well, speaking of untrustworthiness, which I guess that speaks to, waferers, which are people who sold waffles or wafers in the 16th, 17th century, were apparently notoriously untrustworthy.

So they were described in literature at the time as designing persons, thieves, etc., who took up wafering as a cloak for dishonest practices. and they appear in various literature in the 15th, 16th centuries, like Chaucer as typically bad people. And they had to be abolished in 1826, the practice of being a waferer, because they were so untrustworthy. Also, I like this quote. I can't remember where I read this in some history magazine,

but it was Charles the 9th who enacted the first ever waffle legislation in 1560. So as well as being untrustworthy, I think they were quite violent, waferers, or ubliers, as they were, as you said, they were called in France. they kept on getting into fights with each other when they were selling too close to one another. So the first waffle legislation was to say exactly how much space there had to be between two wafer sellers, because otherwise they couldn't be trusted not to beat the crap out of each other. That's why they had a picture of the crucifixion on them. It was Jesus saying, you have to be this far apart, guys.

No fighting. You were saying about how waffle guys were untrustworthy. Well, these days they're quite trustworthy. The Waffle House in America, they are famous for staying open. no matter what. If there's a disaster, they'll stay open and they pride themselves on you always be able to go there and get a waffle if there's a problem. And that means that the federal emergency management agency, if ever they see that a waffle house is closed, they know that that's the kind of place they need to go and give aid to because that must be the worst. If the

waffle house closed, then it must be pretty bad. No way. Then that's the apocalypse. That's amazing. So they always, so when disaster strikes, they still... When disaster strikes, if there's loads of different counties that are obviously all kind of in trouble. If the waffle house is closed in one of them, they'll go... Wow. It's quite a good tip, though, actually, if you own a waffle house in a disaster-struck area to close it, and that's going to bring help. Yeah.

Or if you're the mayor of it is after-shock area, blow up the waffle house. Yes. Yeah. Also a good tip. There are 60,000 Nikes, which fell off a ship. And they are followed by meteorologists and oceanographers to see the... the currents of the oceans in the same way

that those rubber ducks were that time. So they say things like, we've been running some experiments. No? I would have thought they would say that all the time. I would love it if you went into that office. You said that and it was the first time they heard that. And you were the hero of the office.

Andy's amazing. Hi, I'm here for my training. Are there any trainers about? I don't want to. a waffle. Oh no, it's too far. It's too far. They won't get that one. In the corner, the Nike historian's pissing himself. These shoes that fell off the ship, they're still wearable.

If you find them on a beach, you can still wear them, which means that people collect them, and they have impromptu swap meats where people who have two lefts, like swap one for a right, or if they have two different sizes, they try and swap them. That's amazing. really incredible. There's a charity called Because International, which has developed a shoe that grows with your foot. Because it's a one major problem in developing countries is that people can't afford shoes and so they're bare for all the time. They grow out of their shoes. And it can grow up to seven sizes, I think. So it grows by sort of curving outwards as your foot grows.

So as a kid, you can have it when you're, you know, four and still have it when you're 12. Isn't that so cool? That is cool. So there's a theory that shoes emerged 40,000 years ago, which is way earlier than our original estimate. We thought that we'd had them for maybe 5 or 10,000 years. Okay. But there's a scientist from Washington University called Eric Trinkus, and he found the time in history where toe bones began to get smaller. Because for most of our history, we've had really, really big toe bones,

because we were doing lots of walking and climbing and carrying things around. But then 40,000 years ago, we kept our big leg bones. They stayed the same size, but our toe bones started getting smaller. So we all used to have, like, big clown feet. Yes. Let's say that. Yeah. And he was trying to look at what would remove stress on toes, but not on legs.

And he says, that's shoes. Yeah. But they couldn't just make bigger shoes to fit our toe bones in. I'm not sure how much our toes shrank. In my imagination, they shrunk quite a lot. This conundrum, what are we going to do? Our feet won't fit into these tiny shoes we keep making. I guess we'll just have to wait for our feet to evolve into smaller feet.

Okay, time for fact number three. and that is my fact. My fact is rats dream of places they want to visit. Well, like the Taj Mahalah. Yeah. Maybe if they'd basically, whenever a rat gets shown something while they're conscious, they found this in mazes

and they'd see somewhere that they couldn't go to. Then when they went for a nap, rats have naps. The scientists found that they were dreaming about what it'd be like to actually get into that place and then get the thing that they think might be in there. So they start dreaming about all these unattained places that they'd like to visit

because either they've seen a bit of cheese in it or... Yeah. And we know that by because they look at inside their brains which neurons are firing when they go around the maze, when they're awake, don't they? And then when they fall asleep, you look at the same neurons of firing. So they're obviously reliving going around the maze.

And it's really sad that we've decided that means the only place a rat wants to visit above and beyond anything else is the bit of food in the maze that we planted there in the experiment they did yesterday. The interesting thing here is that we can tell what rats are dreaming about. extraordinary, isn't it? From what I've read, and I do find it very hard to break through scientific jargon sometimes. But it sounds like, as Anna was saying, they look at these neurons that are firing off and they can see that they're making similar connections.

I think there was a tiny thing about their actual physical movements of their body as well, kind of suggesting, I'm going left, I'm going right, I think, but I might be wrong about that. 80% of dreams are about normal things like doing the washing up or being at work. Yeah, that makes sense. 100% of mine. But then again, 5.2% of men have kissed a monster in their dreams. 3.4% have had foreplay with an animal. And 1.7% have had sex with an object, plant or rock.

An object. Because plants and rocks are objects. Kissed a monster. Do you think a monster as in like a mermaid or a... Is a mermaid a monster? I think it'd be classified as a monster, yes. A monster truck would come under objects. What about some monster munch?

Objects. There's actually a term for people who study dreams in science, and it's o'neurology. And it's not what the interpretation is. It's why we dream. And so it's not, you know, or if your teeth fall out, you're stressed, that kind of stuff. There's a really good book by Richard Wiseman called Night School, which has a lot of stuff about dreaming. It says the guy who came up with the term rapid eye movement.

I think his name was Assyrinsky or Assyrinkie. He nearly called it jerky eye movement. Oh, yeah. Which is quite nice thing. But then I had negative connotations the word jerk. Because a lot of three and four-year-olds were using it. Slag each other off. Yeah.

Yeah, but it could have been called that. So humans get erections in dreams. Male ones, that is. Male humans. And it's during Riem's sleep, which is usually where dreams happen. A lot of other animals, rats as well, they get. them, get erections during REM sleep, but apparently the armadillo is the only animal to get erections in non-R-E-M sleep.

Wow. What? It's just a fact. That is so weird. That's a great fact. Is it embarrassing for a rat when it gets an erection, do you think? The rat. Yeah, because it's never wearing a jacket, so it can't cover it up.

I always wonder why you always came into work in a jacket. Summer here, and Andy has got this long trench coat. I've got another jacket under this one You know rats feel regret after they make a poor choice in life Do they? Yep They didn't experiment Well they gave them the chance to eat food now

After waiting for a bit Or just move on to the next thing And if they chose to move on Then the next food offering was worse And they paused And they looked at the good reward that they now couldn't have And then later on they changed their decision When they were run through it again

so they think that that is them showing regret. And they didn't do it when they encountered bad food without having chosen accidentally the bad food. We do seem to anthropomorphise rats a lot, or science does at the moment. Like there are a lot of studies that come out saying, yeah, rats feel regret. There's one that claims rats feel empathy, which is also very plausible. So this study got two rats to live together for two weeks or something. So they bonded, learn to be mates.

And then research has locked one of them in a cage, which could only be opened by the other rat from the outside. and they found that the other rat would always open the cage even when there was no apparent benefit for the other rat. So even if opening the cage released the rat into a separate room, so there wasn't even the social advantage of having that rat hang out with you now, the rat would still go and open the cage first thing. I think they even put food in there,

and the rat would open the cage before it went and ate the food because they wanted to free its mate. Apparently, that's what we've decided. Oh, that's nice. Isn't it? That's good. They also, they also, they piss on food that they want to mark as edible. Nothing wrong with that?

Have you seen the fridge recently in the office? I think they're marking it as formally edible really. You had some cake at my last birthday, didn't you? Everyone complained, but it was edible cake. Very moist, this cake. It's urinal cake. Is it irony that in the act of signposting something that's edible, you make it no longer edible?

Like, that's like a cash-22, isn't it? All I know is that... one came to my following birthday. So on rats' brains, we've managed to get rats to communicate with each other mentally across oceans. So scientists, again, experimenting on rats, willy-nilly to their heart's content. But they've connected the brains of a pair of rats. And so one rat can be in the US, one rat can be in Britain.

And they've connected their brains up so they can share sensory information with each other. And they've trained the rats so that if they press a least, lever in a certain box that they're in, then they'll get some food. But they've trained them to communicate mentally with each other. So let's say there's the rat in the US has got a lever, but the rat in the UK has not got a lever. And the rat in the UK will send a sensory signal to the rat in the US saying, press that lever now and we'll both get food.

And then the rat in the US presses the lever based on signals it's receiving in its brain from the rat in the UK. And then they both get the food reward. Isn't that insane? And the scientists who did this, one of the scientists said, apropos of nothing, this was written up on in new scientists or something, and the scientist in charge said, I don't think there's any risk of super smart rats from this.

I'm not worried about an imminent invasion of rat multiborgs. Neither was I until then. What, rat multi-borgs? He's coined a word, he's worried. Okay, time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that humans used milk as paint for 40,000 years before anyone thought to drink it. It's amazing.

Yeah, so very basically, the first use of milk-based paint is about 49,000 years ago. And the first use of milk as a drink, as in the first time humans could even digest cow's milk, was around 7 or 8,000 years ago. That is so weird. I like the idea that 40,000 years from now, somebody will be doing a podcast saying, Did you know that humans used to use paint as paint for thousands of years before it works how we could drink it? That's true. It's very optimistic for the medium of podcast as well as it.

It's a young medium. There is a woman who paints with milk at the moment. She's called Millie Brown. She drinks coloured milk and then she regurgitates it onto canvas. I read an article about her and it said, and I quote, she has mastered the art of regurgitation. Right. The art of regurgitation.

All babies also are sort of novices in the art of regurgitation, but she has got it down. There are a few artists who use bodily fluids for painting. So one is Rose Lynn Fisher, who made a series of landscapes using 100 different varieties of tier. Varieties? Yeah, so I think the way she sees it is you could have a really, really upset tier, or you could have a cutting onions tier, or 90s. eight other types of tears. That's why you fall down, isn't it?

That's the only two examples she ever has to use before someone interrupts and goes, oh, we get the idea. And she thinks, few, because I did not have a third. Oh, there are loads. Okay, we don't need to go through the various different ways in which you cry, Andy. When Anna says hurtful things like that. No one eats his urine cake. Here's something.

Before World War II, skimmed milk was just thrown away. It was just discarded. Nobody drank skimmed milk. Why did they make it? It was fed to pigs. Because you cream off the top stuff. And so much of it was just poured into rivers.

Wow. Yeah. It was only sold when marketers realized, because a lot of it's creamed off to make butter, the top bit. And loads of it was just chucked away. And then marketers realized, A, that people were getting really annoyed saying this stream is full of discarded milk. And secondly, they realized it could be marketed as a,

weight loss device. Wow, that's really interesting. Another thing that they did during the war with milk was make plastic out of it. Oh. You can, the casein, casein, is a protein which you get in milk, and that can be somehow, by adding acid, can be turned into a very brittle but still usable plastic. And apparently they used it even for airplanes. I read it was to glue them together. Oh, was it?

Yeah. Oh, my God, I don't trust that. Really? The wings are glued on with milk? Yeah. Yeah, basically. Hang on, the wings are glued on at all. I'm definitely not going to get a plane.

You've made a model plane, haven't you? Just think bigger. St. Cuthbert chopped his own leg off in remorse after speaking angrily to his parents. And it was then repaired with a cast made of milk. Oh. Story of St. Cuthbert. I just want to say this.

There is a really fantastic book called Milk, a Local and Global History by Deborah Valenzay, which is where I got lots of my stuff from. Oh, no. It's really good. If you like milk, it's an absolutely. rip-roaring treats. Do you know what animal

exclusively drinks milk? The only thing they ever drink? Yeah. Dolphins. Yes. No, yeah. Because they don't drink when they're adults. They don't drink.

The only thing they drink is their mother's milk. All they've ever known is the sweet taste of milk. I was reading something about dolphins today. It was someone's done some research on dolphin vaginas. Some pervert. has hastily come up with a reason why they're in the lab with squeaky. With squeaky. He certainly was after that experiment.

Anyway, part of that article, one of the things they said is that if a female dolphin doesn't want to have sex, then one of the ways that she does it is by putting her vagina out of the water, so the male can't get out of it. Presumably, some people have gone dolphin watching that they've just spotted a load of females poking the vaginas out of the water. It's not exactly jaws with the dolphin, is it? It's not exactly flipper either. I think it's the same person who did the famous work on duck vaginas,

duck penises, how they don't kind of fit together. Oh, yeah, right. So you got just sort of vagina scientists. Yeah, amazing. Dolphin milk is almost 50% fat And cows milk is 4% by way of comparison So it is really really thick And it's isn't we've said I think before

It's like toothpaste, it's so thick Also, it's really hard for baby dolphins To drink While they are in fluid themselves They can roll their tongues up so they're like straws And their tongues form this watertight seal Which keeps the milk in and keeps salt water out So they don't drink any of the salt water

So it has to be you know fluid transfer within another liquid. It's very, very, very difficult. Right. Another milk that used to be very popular is ass milk in the 18th century. Dompy milk, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, just checking. Why you're laughing at? That's rude.

Call it poopy milk, please. Ass milk was so popular in the 18th century that there was even a Mrs. Dawkins of Bolsover Street, who was the ass milk provider for the... I'm just wondering if I can change the job time. title. Just a donkey milk actually. We've had the name label printed now.

She was the ass milk salesperson to the roll family. Wow, they had, because was it expensive? It was expensive. It was used as like a cure roll for anything that was wrong with you, you would take ass milk. It was even used as a face wash

and to shine shoes. So it was used for everything. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. Was it expensive because donkeys are fewer than cows? That is true, and also they produce a lot less milk. So in ancient Greek times, one remedy for women who had trouble conceiving was to pour milk into their vagina. Oh, yeah. Did it work?

I don't think so. No. What was the logic behind that? Did they have logic back then? Did anyone ask for logic back then? They just said that. Well, they supposedly invented logic, didn't they, the ancient Greeks? Okay.

Well, it sounds like they had to. because eventually questions started being asked. Sorry, why are we putting the milk in my vagina? What do you mean, why? So you guys could try producing milk, and I would like one of you to do this. Okay. So you, because you obviously have the glands,

which allow you to produce milk, but you just don't have enough prolactin, but apparently if men massage their nipples, you can stimulate, you can get a spike of prolactin, which means that you're able to produce milk from your nipples. How long do you have to massage? I'd just try it and tell me Oh okay

I've been unwittingly preparing for the experiment for years So I've got the holes in my raincoat Okay that's it That's all of our facts Thank you so much for listening If you want to get in contact with any of us About the things that we've said

Over the course of this show We can be found on Twitter I'm on at Shreiberland James at egg-shaped Andy At Andrew Hunter M Anna You can email a podcast at joy.com

Yep Or you can go to our group account on Twitter, which is at QI Podcast. Also, no such thing as a fish.com, where we have all of our previous episodes. Also links to the live shows that we're doing. We'll be back again next week with another show. We'll see you then. Goodbye.