No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Ant On Its Gap Year

Episode Date: October 20, 2017

Andy, James, Anna and Alex discuss how to get ants drunk, the stolen cities in China, and The Sound Of Julie Andrews Being Blown Over By A Helicopter.

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 Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tijinsky and Alex Bell, and once again we have gathered around these microphones to tell you our four favorite facts from the last seven days. So, in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one and this week that is James. Okay, my fact this week. week is that when a prince in the Byzantine Empire was ready to marry, court officials would walk around the land with an imperial shoe that they used to check the foot size of potential

princesses. That is amazing. It's amazing, that isn't it? I can't really believe that. No, it sounds very much like a fairy tale. Yeah, it does. Like Snow White or something. Yeah.

A jack-in-a-beenstock. So does everyone do you think know what the Byzantine Empire was? I did not until I started researching this fact. So it is otherwise known as the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire kind of split into two towards the end, and they had the Western side and the eastern side. So this was around Turkey and around the Balkans, as they are today. Yes.

In fact, they never called themselves Byzantins, did they? Or Byzantines. They always called themselves Romans. So apparently what would happen is when the prince wanted to marry, court officials would go around not just with this shoe, but also with a painting of a perfect or ideal match what they should look like and they try and find the perfect woman for him.

This is like a manual Tinder then. I suppose so, but what if you're a terrible artist, for instance, and you're not very good at faces, for instance? You have the same problem with Tinder. You've got people with the Instagram filters that completely distort, you know. It's so nice having a young person here,

I must say, to explain this time. I'm the only single person around the table on that, yeah. And I read this in the OUP blog, so it's Oxford University Press blog, and there was a whole thing about amazing facts about Byzantine Empire. It is. I'd never heard of this. There were wife shows, weren't they?

And they would put these women on display. So it sounds like they would choose sometimes sort of a lineup of women. So the mother of the prince would dispatch, you know, some emissaries to go around the empire, measuring up these women, and then pick the favourite 13 and then bring them back. And then there'd be sort of a bride show where they'd all, you know,

they'd all be behind a podium and then they could press their buttons to, take themselves out of the game. I'm trying a very laboured way to describe the show take me out, which I've never seen. And I, I'll be honest, I'm flailing. I say it's more like an episode of The Bachelor. So the Emperor Theophilus had a golden apple, which he would then give

to the winning bride. I mean, it's literally The Bachelor. We're talking about shows that I've never heard of. How similar was it to blind date? Quite similar. Was it? Yeah. Except the man behind the screen has the power to kill you, if he doesn't like you. Okay. There's another

thing about Byzantine wife finding for royalty. This is from a book called A Cabinet of Byzantine curiosities. And the finalists, who were the potential brides, selected for the emperor, they were sometimes examined

nude in the bath by the prince's mum. Ah, so that's a bit like that other show where, what's it called where everyone's naked and you... Making attraction? Yeah. Yes, it is like that. All Channel 4 formats are taken from the Byzantine Empire. I think that was Theophano Fon.

wasn't it? I think it was just one mother who was particularly keen on getting the right woman who... So embarrassing. I know. She put the final three in the bath and then she draped a golden robe around the one whose body presumably she thought was the most beautiful. Wait a minute. Wasn't there another show where someone went on a date and their parents were watching the date and they got to choose who had the date? I think that, I think there's a BBC 3 format based on that. That's called some sex and suspicious parents. No, that's a slightly different one. I don't watch these. I just work in television. That's the one where the parents

go on holiday secretly observe their children being raucous abroad and then they confront them at the end. I kind of thought we'd be talking about a great historic civilization and empire in this podcast. We are, Channel 4. But that would be so fitting because it was always the mum

right? The son had no choice in it, it seemed like, it was always the mother who'd go out and select the right right. She was very much the executive producer of these matters. I looked into whether Byzantium was Byzantine, you know, whether the word Byzantine is, because it's complicated, Byzantine, you know, that's what it means, and they, was it an especially complicated place.

It was quite complicated, but only compared with Western Europe at the time where you just had a load of feudal lords and things. And there were a load of behavioural codes about where you could sit at royal banquets and what you could talk about and who you could talk to. But actually, compared with modern, for example, derivatives companies, then it's actually quite simple. It's complicated It's also the Facebook stages

Of most of the royal marriages Given that my stepmother picked her out of the bath for me I read that Byzantine In the way that we use it in common parlance Has negative connotations obviously And that that was partly because the empire was portrayed Not only as complicated but as quite secretive And lots of lascivious stuff was going on

And so one example of this was They were into quite a lot of sexual things That the West didn't appreciate And one of these things was recorded by a historian who wrote a very famous book at the time called The Secret History, and it was about Emperor Justinian's wife Theodora, who used to dance around naked in this huge atrium in front of lots of people in this theatre,

and she'd just have a ribbon round her waist because it was actually legal to be fully naked, ribbon around her waist, and then she would lie on the ground and have slaves drop grain on her torso and other parts from above, and then she'd have a herd of geese fly in and peck the grain of her nude body. Wow. It would be a skein of geese if it was flying in.

Sorry. Thanks for them. If they landed and they walked over. They'd become a gaggle of geese. I really think you're focusing on the wrong aspects of the story here, guys. You're a massive kill during a strip club, aren't you? So the geese are pecking at her bits, are they? I believe so, yeah.

There's some question mark over how true this account is. I think this guy has sort of fallen out with her and just sitting at this point. You know when you go to St. James's Park and you want to feed the geese and you throw bits of like bread there not bread because they don't like bread but you throw stuff at them and then always the pigeons come in and eat it don't they?

Do you reckon she was late there and the pigeons just kept nibbling at her bits instead? He doesn't record that but it can only have been the case. Is that sexy? Pigeons for anyone? No, even the geese, I would say. Geese are very aggressive. I would have thought it would be very unpleasant.

The swan would be bad. Yeah. Oh my God. Break your arm with his ones. wing. What's your arm doing down there? Here's a thing about Byzantine Empire. It was around the same time as the Norman conquest, it was happening.

And when the Norman conquest happened, a load of Anglo-Saxons from Britain became refugees and left Britain. And they travelled down into Europe and they got to the Byzantine Empire where they kind of became citizens. And they lived around the Black Sea, around Kroftain. Crimea, which it is today. And apparently they called it New England. Really?

So that's where the first New England was. That's so cool. That is amazing. It's interesting. That isn't it? Imagining basically the British becoming refugees and kind of going down to live in Crimea, given all the modern day things happen. Wow.

And it would have been a much more progressive place then than old Anglo-Saxon just conquered England, which was a nightmare. I got a couple of facts about matchmaking. Yeah. So in 1924. There was a magazine called Science and Invention, and it said that to match a couple up properly, one test that you should conduct was firing a gun in the air behind them when neither of them knew about it. And it's to test whether they're calm under pressure. Because apparently in every couple,

you want someone who can remain calm under pressure. And if they both react nervously, then they shouldn't get married. I thought it would be that they were like, oh, we're all going to die. And then they kind of jump into each other's arms kind of thing. Yeah, to see who jumps in front of them, like in friends when Joey jumps in front of his sandwich when a car backfires. Yes. Yes.

I would have thought it's quite good survival instinct to try and jump out of the way if you hear a gun being fired, though. And I would say you don't want two people in a couple who just stand there and let the bullet penetrate their bodies. That's true. Sorry, it's how they react to an extreme loud noise really close by.

It's not, you don't have to fire a gun, ask anyone for this demonstration to work. How many died in this experiment? This would be another, great channelful format. I have one fact about Cinderella's glass slippers, which was that in 2015, a scientific study was published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics,

which worked out how practical the slippers would have been. And based on a weight of 55 kilograms of Cinderella and a size four foot, she only would have been able to wear the slippers if she stood completely still, because if she tried to run away from the prints in them, they would have immediately shattered. But that's why they fell off when she ran away,

and that's why they thought of that in the story. But she wouldn't have been able to walk anyway. She would have to stand exactly still. The only way it would have worked as if their heels were 1.15 centimetres tall, which is not very high. There's a Italian version of Cinderella from the 19th century. Well, it's from earlier than that,

but it was first recorded in a book about Cinderella stories from the 1890s. And that version has Cinderella being born inside a squash, like a butternut squash. So her mother gives birth to her, but she thinks she's just given birth to a squash. And so she abandons her in the woods. And then the prince walks by,

and by that time, Cinderella inside the squash has learned to talk. So the prince walks past and says, oh, it's weird. It's a talking pumpkin. And so then he takes it home with him. And... I would argue that this is a different story.

Like, there's no detail so far that correlate. Well, there's the pumpkin thing. And then eventually she breaks out of the squash and acts as his servant. And then she goes to a ball he's holding dressed up as a princess. and he falls in love with her and they get married. And it's called, the story is called Zucatina, as in zucchini.

Oh, really? You know, related, presumably. Which one's zucchini again? Corset. Yeah. Also, is she in a corvette? No, it says she's in a but I guess they're all related, I say. Family, yeah.

Yeah, same family. Some sort of legume. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Anna. Yes, my fact this week is that China has built an exact replica of an Austrian village so that tourists don't have to fly all the way to Austria. So this is the based on the town of Halstatt in Austria and I think it's the oldest village or the oldest town in Austria. It's really beautiful. It's your ideal when you picture an Austrian village. It's kind of just really idyllic. Okay, I'm just picturing that. Oh. It's nice, isn't it?

Yeah, it is nice. Oh, sorry, I pictured a Swiss one instead. Oh, God. Mine's just full of Chinese people. I can't get that way. So this development was started in China in 2012 in Boloo County, which is sort of in the factory belt. And basically, a bunch of Chinese architects were sent to the real town of Halstadt, incognito, and they went round it, and they took lots of notes, and they did lots of sketches on what it looked like,

or took some pictures like those. Incognito, as if they're like, don't steal our town. Why they could have just gone and visited? No one's going to care. Well, they might raise suspicions. Then they went back to China And they started copying it at very high speed And it was built within about a year

And the mayor of the original town Found out about halfway through And said he was a bit annoyed at first He said they should have told us But he's actually really impressed with the town He says it is exactly the same And he went to the official welcoming ceremony there and everything So happily ever after

That's good Yeah Another fairy tale Yeah Are they twinned the towns That would be nice They are twinned yes Yes good

Why did they do this to save tourists from travelling. Well, I suppose China is quite interested in Western culture and so they have quite a lot of replicas of other Western buildings or, you know, Western like enclaves. Whole other towns. They've got a replica of Paris, they've got replica of a Swedish town. But the idea is that people can live there as well.

You can move in. So there are lots of people living in this Austrian town. Yeah. And I think a lot of them aren't that successful. And there's a... Well, the people? There's a... It's not very nice.

Well, I guess. But the one, the massive one of Paris that they built is basically a ghost town. because it didn't work out, where this Austrian was pretty successful, I think, and people actually like living there. And it's like a big gated community. Some people live there, yeah, although it's mainly touristy.

But the Paris one, I thought, yeah, they didn't quite finish, did they? Although they did build a huge rifle tower, which is the main bit. I just think if you're going to build a new town, like we do that in the UK sometimes, why not build it that looks like, you know, New Orleans or something.

Why not? Yeah, might as well. Yeah, they're tried and tested, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. And it's worked for Halstadt. This is probably one of the reasons why the mayor's okay with it, because visitors to the real Hausstadt since the town was built

have gone from 50 to 1,000 per year from China. I seem to be the only one who's not completely cool with this wholesale town plagiarism that's going on. What? Why not? Because, you know, things should be where they are and nowhere else. They haven't removed the town from Austria. Do you think maybe we should knock down Blackpool Tower

because that was just a copy of the Eiffel Tower? Oh, well, James, I had not had that brought to my attention before, and yes, I do. I think future archaeologists are going to be extremely confused when they come across, you know, the real Paris and then the fake Paris. And they're going to say, well, this seems to be the main civilization because all of the stuff was here

and then that spread out around the world. I get worried about that, actually, because you know how now, obviously, we fetishise antique stuff and historical stuff and we build houses in old style and we have antique furniture. And I worry about archaeologists a couple of thousand years in the future

about confusing them, you know, going, wait, I thought this house was from the 21st century, but there's a 16th century chair in it. And they won't know what to do. Exactly. Anyway. But this is a kind of thing which is not unique to Chinese culture, but it is more prevalent there. So there was a study which found that of the articles submitted to the science journal at Chejiang University,

30% of them were plagiarized, either partly or wholly. And that's quite a high proportion. And various people have theorized that it's about the way you learn Chinese characters. You have to learn through copying a repetition. And it's seen completely differently there. It's not seen as plagiarism to the same extent. Yeah, I read that apparently lots of theorists think that it's, as you say, because of the Chinese characters and it's because it's so difficult to learn so many

that there's not enough creative space left over in Chinese brains for creativity, which seems like the most absurd reasoning you've ever heard. First of all, they invented almost everything we had up until about the 16th century, didn't they? Yeah. And then we copied it. And then we copied it, yeah. Paper. You shouldn't be allowed to use a wheelbarrow.

because it was invented by the Chinese. That's really awkward because you're sort of now claiming that as their landmark invention which is sort of insulting to some of the other things they did invent. I think I could get by the rest of my life never using a wheelbarrow.

This podcast has taken a distinctly Brexit-y flavour. I didn't mean to. But yeah, they do and it's kind of a form of flattery in a way, isn't it? It's just that interest in designs over the rest of the world. I think it's basically imitation is the highest form of flattery.

That's the difference between wearing somewhere close to someone and then getting plastic surgery for your face looks exactly like them. I'd be flattered. Feel free, Alex. Would you be massively weighted out? Have you heard about the replica Noah's Ark? No.

No. So this was built in America in... Oh, when was it finished? It was finished a few years ago, but this decade. And lots of people keep building replica Noah's arcs, but this one is massive. It's in Kentucky.

And it cost $120 million to build. It's built by this Bible group. called Answers in Genesis. I think they're an online church. It took 700 workers. It's as long as an American football field. It's massive. How long is that?

100 yards. 100 yards. And it was built by a man called Ken Ham. Ken Ham was one of Noah's sons. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Also the first chimpanzee in space. Yeah.

I don't know which he was named after. If either. But they've got this massive plan. And no one knows what Knows Ark looked like either, but they've insisted it's a replica. We have in the Bible. It says how big it is, doesn't it? It says the number of cubits by the number of cubits.

Okay. But yeah. And Irving Finkel did that study, didn't he? So he's curated at the British Museum, and he did that study that decided it was spherical. He thinks he's a coracle. Yes. But his design is based on Babylonian tablets,

so not on the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. So clearly one's more massively reliable there. He's working on another thing, Mr. Hamm. Oh, yeah. He's now working with his partners on a 10-year plan to build a biblical walled city in Kentucky, which is also going to feature a ten plagues of Egypt ride.

Wow. That sounds good. But then did they kill your first bomb at the end? That's the bit where the camera goes off. There's another replica boat in the news at the moment, actually, which is a replica of the boat that James Cook used to sail out of Australia. So that's the endeavour, but that is moving to which. So it's been in Stockton on Tees and it's just been bought by someone for £110,000

pounds and it's going to cost them £250,000 to move it 39 miles up the road. I was going to say it's not far from Whitby to Stockton. No, it's not. It's certainly not Britain to Australia. But I think it's the land bit that's the problem. I mean, if it was, if you could sail there. Oh, is it going over land? It has to go over land a bit.

I think that's faster difficulty. It's oddly expensive to move boats across the land for some reason. Well, they're not going to get to Australia like that. No, no. They will come across water at some point. Are they going to resale it to Australia? No, he's just going to literally move it to Whitby and keep it as a tourist attraction there.

And I wonder if he was told after he'd made the initial purchase that it was going to cost other 250 grand to remove it from where it is. On other sort of replica model villages that aren't quite real places, in Gravesend, there's a whole town that's fake and it's used by police to simulate pretty much any manner of crimes. So it's got like... Financial fraud? Can they do that?

So for fighting riots, for burgers, burglaries, bank robberies, host situations, terrorist attacks. So hang on, is this the most terrifying place to accidentally get lost and wander into? Well, it's deserted most of the time, but then it'll suddenly be populated by about 300 members of the Met Police. Wow. They must have some stuff there, right? Because people are working there all the time.

So they must have like a microwave and probably a TV and some, you know, safes and stuff like that. You could just go and nick all that stuff. And then when they arrest you, you say, oh, no, no, I'm part of the team. I'm part of the team. I think the response of being crows. incredible because you're literally in their training ground. And you've got like 400 policemen really eager to impress their senior officers and prove themselves.

Actually, I've never really felt like committing crimes, but I do kind of feel like going there and trying to steal something. And apparently the one thing you want to steal is a microwave. Setting your sides high, aren't you? Lock up your microwaves, Graves, then. Podcaster James Harkin would tasered 80 times today. I want to sit a single microwave. He was found clutching the microwave.

and a steak bake Okay, it's time for fact number three And that is my fact My fact is that ants have self-control So, ants are able to Defer gratification And put in more effort to get a bigger treat later on Than a smaller treat now

You offer it one small dollop of sugar Let's say 60 centimetres from its nest And then you put a bigger dollop of sugar 120 centimetres away and then you show the aunt the one that's 120 centimetres away it will walk out of its nest and ignore the smaller dollop and go the further distance to

get the big one. Why doesn't it get both? Yeah. Well I don't know I think maybe they stop it from going back for the smaller one later on. And they explain that to it before it starts right? I think so. You better choose now Mr. Ant. They show it

to the Lahaja part. They give a little tour of the environment before it starts. Yeah, but twice as many ants deferred gratification and went to the big one than didn't. And they tested it later on to make sure the ants weren't just picking something they already knew about. They made the rewards of the same size in the experiment. And in that case, 83% chose the one that was actually closer. So given equal amounts of food, they'll pick the closer one. But anyway, I think this is a pretty amazing fact.

Yeah, it's really cool. It's incredible. Because they did a similar thing with Ravens who can understand the explaining stage, can't there? They really can. They can't understand English. According to science, Ravens are so clever. They can understand anything. I think they all understand the explaining stage.

That's why the experiment yields the results it does. Yes, yeah, yeah, they do. They don't understand the briefing document. But yeah, they obviously train them to know that they won't get the smaller bit of food if they go and eat the bigger bit of food. And when they did it to Ravens, they gave Ravens a treat that was inside a box. So they'd show them putting the treat inside a box. And it's a puzzle box, you know, like one of those Japanese puzzle boxes.

and then the ravens worked out how to open the box using a specific tool that they used to open it. And then the scientists offered them either a piece of food that had been smaller than the piece of food that was inside the box or the tool needed to open the box without showing them the box and the ravens almost all of the time

chose the tool and went to open the box. With one caveat, so the study said that one raven had to be excluded as it worked out ways to open the puzzle box without the tool modifying bits of bark instead So this is like deal or no deal? It is. Except the box just has cake in it.

Do you know that over the box and it's got a bit of sausage? It's true. But then that is kind of delayed gratification, isn't it? Because if you know there's a possible big prize you might get in the future. Yeah? Have we tried deal or no deal with ants? I don't think we have, no. And I would watch a version of deal or no deal where every box had different bits of food in it.

Would you have to eat the food at the end, though, on the show you'd have to, right? When it gets to the end, you have to eat whatever's in the box that you choose to open. And that might be something you're allergic to, but you have to eat it. Their worst box is still one P. Oh, yeah. I was reading the study, and apparently this self-control thing is supposed to be to do with the size of the brain of the animal. So the bigger the brain in relation to its body, the more self-control it has. And so I was like, okay, does that make sense?

So I went and looked at a list of, there's a really helpful. Wikipedia list of brain-to-body ratios of all the creatures in the world. And so humans have about, like, your brain is about the 50th of the size of your body. And like cats and dogs, they have even smaller, so it's like the brain is a hundredth the size of the body. Ants, the brain is one seventh of their body, which I just found insane. I imagine if your brain was a whole seventh of your body. That's basically like your whole head, isn't it?

No, it's bigger than that. Bigger than your head. I think it's like your head and your arms. Well, the clever thing that ants do, using their massive brains, is they, when given the chance, we'll use sponges to soak up liquid food. So this is really clever. Wow. Wow.

A pot of honey that was kind of mixed up as a mortar that they'd find really delicious. And then they gave them some tools that they would find in nature, like twigs and pine needles and stuff like that. And then they gave them some different tools that they wouldn't find in nature, like paper and little bits of sponge. Alan Key. And the ants very quickly learned that the best thing to do rather than take a twig and go and dip it in the honey and take it back to its mates

would pick the sponge because it realized it was more absorbent and went and dip that in the honey and then took it back to its mates and even in fact yeah so cool and then the next experiment they gave them the choice of three different types of kitchen towel and they always look for the one the flash one because they always know that is way more absorbent than the other leading brand have we talked about sir john lubbock and his 19th century ant experiments i believe not he wanted to test like ants friendship. So he put some ants in little environment, which was sort of an ant hill,

and there was some water nearby and some little other mounds of things. And first he chloroformed some of the ants. He sort of kidnapped the ants, some ants out of the nest, chloroform them, and then abandoned them a short way away from the ants for the other ants to find them,

so they sort of found their friends. How do you chloroform an ant? How do you get your arm around it from behind? Like a very, very tiny clump. Then he would observe what the ants did to either ants that were from their own colony or ants from another colony. But then he realized that ants don't recover from a chloroform. So he tried the same thing, but he got ants drunk, which he said was really difficult.

He said, I tried the same experiment, only instead of chloroform in the ants, I made him intoxicated. It was rather more difficult experiment. No ant would voluntarily degrade herself by getting drunk. It's not so easy, in all cases, to hit off the requisite degree of this compulsory intoxication. So anyway, he got these ants drunk. And all he found was that sober ants would try and pick up and help the drunk ants then the sober ants would take them back to the nest. Now, if the ant was from the same colony,

it would kind of look off to presumably be inside, like it with a bucket and a towel. Hold its antenna back. But this is the creepy bit. This is the creepy bit. If it wasn't from the same colony, the sober ant would bring the drunk back out and just quietly throw it in the water and drown it.

Wow. Which is horrendous. But, yeah, isn't that amazing? I thought that ants, for some reason, and I thought that ants chewed each other's legs off when they got drunk. I think that might be bees. Oh, you're right. Drunk bees will have their legs chewed off by their friends.

Really? What to kind of stop them going out, like kind of when I take my mum's car keys away when she's drunk. You're like, oh, it's fine, I can fly, I feel fine. It's for your own good. You'll thank me in the morning. So this thing about self-control is related to the, the really famous experiment of the marshmallow test.

Yes. She's done in the 1960s, across years of the 1960s, lots of them by the same scientist, whose name was Walter Michel. And he tested children. He said, you can have one marshmallow now, or I'll come back in 15 minutes, and you can have a second marshmallow if you haven't eaten the first one.

But if you want to be the first one, just ring the bell, and I'll come back and you can eat it. Some kids just immediately ate the marshmallow without even ringing the bell. It's just, like, wow. Yeah. But basically he found that children who were able to defer gratification ended up doing better in later life. They got in less trouble with the law.

They were healthier. They paid more, this kind of thing. See, what I would have done is when he left the room, I would have hollowed out the marshmallow and eaten the middle. So you can get the maximum out of marshmallow, but then you leave it on the table. So it looks like you're like the child who took an Oreo apart, licked the cream from the inside,

and then put the Oreo back together. That's what happened in one of the experiments. And what happened to him? He is now presidents of the United States. But actually kids are getting better at this, aren't they? There's been some work done this year or quite recently which found that the children are getting better by about six seconds per year, as in the average of how long people will wait.

And there was a guy who did this study was called John Protsko, and he asked a load of psychologists what they thought and a load of child behavioural experts, what they thought. And only 16% thought that children's self-control had improved since the experiments of the 60s and 52% was sure that children would have been much worse at it but actually they're better.

Because everyone thought now that everyone's just watching YouTube all the time. So does this mean that the intervals between are we nearly there yet are going to get six seconds longer every year? Yes, so we are more nearly there than we used to be. Do you know who's also good at it, this experiment, is a Cameroonian children.

They found out, I think this was this year in the last couple of years. So they repeated the marshmallow experiment with three to five-year-olds from Germany and then three to five-year-olds from Cameroon from the Nassau tribe. And they found that, well, 30% of the German kids managed to wait long enough to get the second treat. 70% of the Cameroonian kids did. And they're not entirely sure why they think it might be because from this particular group of people have stricter parents. And so it makes them used to being patient and waiting for stuff.

But yeah, they're really good at it. In that experiment, 10% of the Cameroonian children just fell asleep waiting. Yeah. They didn't bother them at all. And there's another theory about why it might be. You're right. It may be that they've got stricter parents and they're just told to be quiet and be patient more. But also, there's a thing about how much you trust that you're going to get the second marshmallow at the end.

Yeah, I was thinking that actually, when you first said the experiment, there were a few things like that. For instance, one, you might not be that hungry. You might think, you know what, I only really want. one marshmallow and two would be a bit much, so I'm just going to have this one. A good scientist would starve the children beforehand. Well, what do you mean by good in this respect? Yeah, or you might not like marshmallows.

Yeah. I don't bother you at all, so you might wait, not because you've got self-control. Hey, can I give you something more about ants? Sure. So scientists have cited putting bar codes on ants in order to monitor their behaviour, and they just look really cool.

So this was said in passing in an experiment as to how ants respond to loneliness, which is a bit sad actually they don't like it at all. So scientists plucked a few ants out of their colonies and they put them on their own and they fed them and everything, but they still died ten times sooner than they would have otherwise. Ten times sooner? That's terrible. They hate being on their own.

Because they don't live for long anyway, do they? They don't. I don't suppose they do, actually. I don't really know. Some ants, queen ants can live to 20 years, which I thought was quite amazing. That's incredible. It's rubbish. Queen ants are the only ants who can legally drink the alcohol in this experiment of Alexis. Anyway, to monitor ants, then scientists have started putting these tiny barcode backpacks on them, and they glue them on.

And this means they can just monitor all of their behavior. So now we can really get detailed impressions of ant movement and everything, because we've got computers locked onto every barcode. But we're only going to learn about ants that carry backpacks around. Do you think their behavior might change when you put a backpack on them? Yeah, they'll probably think they're on that gap year. They'll probably just go cleaning their chakras or whatever. We've learned that ants really find themselves. There's an ant expert called Clint Pennick, who says he can identify different ants by their pheromones, just by smelling them.

He's lying. Well, he did it successfully for his mate who had an ant infestation, and he went and sniffed them, and those ants were the ones that smelled like blue cheese. Well, what does he do? He says, oh, that one's Derek and that one's Arthur, and that one's... Look, he doesn't know all the individual ants by name. Oh, okay. But he does know different types of ants, and he says some things. smell like chocolate, but you have to crush their heads in order to smell it, so that's a bit of a

shame. Hello, I've brought my new pet aunt. I'm wondering if you can tell me which kind of this base. Yes, of course. Crush. I'm afraid your arm was not one of the ones whose head smells like chocolate when you're right there. Okay, it's time for a final fact, and that is Alex. My fact this week is that when filming the famous hill scene at the beginning of the sound of music for helicopter down draft would knock Julie Andrews over after each take. I really want to see this B-roll. That's incredible.

And she said this herself, right? Yeah, in some interview in a sort of behind the scenes documentary, or I think it was actually documentary by Sue Perkins that she made about the sound of music and the town that was filmed because it's filmed in a town in Austria and it's not a big film there. And most of the people who live there, they know it exists, but they've never seen it. and they're kind of a bit baffled by why tourists, so many tourists from the... It's actually in Germany as well.

Is it in Germany? The hill scene is filmed in Germany, which I think is a cruel irony given the plot line of the film. Well, the other cruel irony is that they only had enough budget for one day of helicopter shooting. So they hired the helicopter for one day. They filmed the very first scene of the movie

with Julie Andrews spinning around on the hill a few times. Then the helicopter immediately flew off over the mountains to film the very end of the film, the last scene, which is the von Tratt family, walking over the mountains. Yeah, spoilers. Which is someone in the film walking over the mountains. But the story is based on a real-life family.

In real life, they escape whatever it was they're running from by train. They escape the Nazis. I'm sorry, everyone has seen the sound of music. I actually haven't seen the sound of a movie. Is this much of a spoiler? I mean... No, I did know that the Nazis didn't win the war. So they escaped.

They escaped. They might have won this battle. In real life. the Vonchak family escaped the Nazis via train but in the film they had them escaping by foot over the mountains and they filmed them going over the mountains straight in the direction of Hitler's private chalet

so they would have bumped into Hitler if you carried on watching the film after the credits the post-credit scene is when they reveal the villain like in the Marvel films Was it the eagle's nest? Yes. Yes. Was the name of the private chalet? Into the eagle's nest would be a great

The sound of music too. Into the eagle's nest. So she fell over Because I was watching a Miss Busters Because they were testing exactly the strength of a helicopter down draft And they made this model head And then they made a helicopter hover above it And they tested the force that was coming down on it

And it's very small So it was like 50 grams of force And then it went up to about 100 grams Once as it accelerated upwards It's pretty windy if you go near a helicopter And it's coming down And it came down very It came down dangerously like

because it was pre-health and safety. And there was one point at which, Julianna was like, I thought I was going to lose my head. I just think she maybe was a bit weak. Well, she probably was very slight and, you know, she was a movie star. Was she wearing a big dress?

She was, big, flowy dress. And she was on her quite a steep mountain and it was probably really windy. I'm just telling you know. But apparently they did 10 takes of this and she started screaming, okay, that's enough. I've had enough now.

But the helicopter pilot couldn't hear her. So he took it to mean, yep, let's go around for another take. So he just kept going. Wow. It's weird that because, yeah, She said, the helicopter pilot thought I was just saying, yeah, fine, keep going. But you would have thought as the helicopter pilot, if you've watched yourself knock this woman flat on her face five times, you'd assume she was complaining about it by that point.

Yeah. I think the downwash is quite strong. Yeah, maybe Mythbusters didn't crack the formula for a strong downtraft. I guess it depends on the helicopter, definitely. And it depends on a load of other things. But there is amazing footage online of a helicopter taking off. And as it goes, it just knocks over an entire row of Port-a-Lews. and it sends them all over the place.

And there are huge ribbons of blue paper flying off into the sky. It's brilliant. Oh, wow. Yeah. There was a guy in Manchester who was playing golf this year, and his ball was on the side of the green, and a helicopter went past and blew his golf ball into the hole. Does that count?

It doesn't know, but his mates didn't know that at the time, but they suspected it. He said that they didn't pay up the 50p each they would have owed him for getting a birdie. He said, they accused me of colluding with a pilot. I'm now known as Chopper Henderson. Just on golf courses and helicopters, there was a really good cracked article that was written by a helicopter pilot

who was talking about the ridiculous task he's been given as one, and he was once hired by some people who wanted to play golf to fly his helicopter at a cost of about two grand an hour over the golf course to dry the greens because it had rained the night before. Farmers use that method to dry their crops. So, for example, cherry farmers fly a helicopter really low because cherries get a load of moisture on the outside, right?

It rains. Well, you can blow the water off. Yeah, because if it soaks in, then the cherries will split after a certain point they can't absorb that much water. And then if it splits, there's a much higher chance it'll rot. So you just get a chopper to fly over a few times. Dry cherries. There's a hotel in Sussex made of a converted helicopter,

and it's cool. the helicopter. Isn't that funny? Because of holiday. Yeah. I thought because it had Holly the plant on it or it was like Hollywood or... No, it's funnier when you see it written down, although it's still pretty funny when you say it out loud.

I love it. I think it's great. Do you reckon there's a person called a holicopter somewhere? Probably. No. Yes. No. Discounts on a...

Cotter isn't a surname, though, is it? Must be somewhere. Copter sounds like a medieval job. Well, the thing is copter in helicopter. is not the suffix. The suffix is pater. It's my favourite etymology of all time. Always has been.

Yeah. It's helico-petur. You should definitely call that. As purists still say it, I believe. That's what I call it. Because pater is like a teradactyl, which means... Tera's wing.

Wing, yeah. Yeah. And helico-helix, so the blade spins round. Yeah, yeah. Do you know when the helicopter, the first functioning helicopter was invented? And flown?

1920. Nice. 1784. Wow. I got the teen bit. You did very well. So in 1784 there were these two French inventors called Lornaut and Bienvenu. And they...

I mean, that's me trying to write a French character and can't think of anyone. He's called Bienvenu Pantelon. It was his real... name, he was a very welcoming man, and he made a toy helicopter, but it had a rotary wing and the, because they didn't have motors at that point, the power was provided by a spring mechanism, and they made it fly up in the air. And it was only a year after the first successful balloon flight, which feels like a big step in the right direction. So that was the first helicopter.

Wow. We talked, I think we talked about on QI this year, or in the coming series, how the BBC plan for the Cold War was to broadcast the sound of music on repeat in the event of a nuclear strike. Really? You know, because everything else would be pretty awful. Oh, and what? We wouldn't find it awful having the sound of music

on repeat for all of your own. Apparently not. This good news is me and Andy haven't seen it. Yeah. You're going to feel really guilty about that spoiler, Alex. I'm going to ask. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts.

Thank you very much indeed for listening. we will be back again next week with another podcast. We have a website which is no such thing as a fish.com. Is it? Yeah. We have a website which is no such thing as a fish.com. You go there, you can see all of our previous episodes. You can find out details for our tour.

We're off on tour around the entire country. And you can find details for our book, which is going to be published very soon in which you can pre-order now. So please do that. We'll be back again next week with another podcast. We also have... Twitter. Yeah, let me get to it, guys. See you later, goodbye.

And also, we have Twitter accounts. You can find us on Twitter. I'm on at Andrew Hunter M. James. At James Harkin. Alex. At Alex Bell. And Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com.

Or you can go to our group Twitter account, can you, Andy. No, I don't think you can. It's done back next week. I hope so. Or you can go to our group. Twitter account which is at no such thing. We will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.