No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Captain Trousers

Episode Date: December 19, 2014

Episode 40 - Dan, James, Andy and Anna discuss military make-up, dinosaur erotica, Obama's honey ale and history's greatest farter.

We run it on QI a few years ago. Yeah. Which was, there's no such thing as a fish. No, no such thing as a fish. No, seriously. It's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life. He says it right there. First paragraph, No Such Thing is a Fish.

And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Shriver. I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, Anne Miller and Andy Murray. And once again, we have gathered around the microcontractors. with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Andy. My fact is that in 18th century France,

tooth pullers were entertainers who performed in front of cheering crowds. So one of them had the party trick of pulling teeth out of a patient with one hand while firing a pistol with the other, and all the while he had his head in a sack. Why was he shooting? I don't get the gun shooting bit. It's a touch of flamboyance at showbiz. Yeah.

It was entertainment. Yeah. I've got a really painful tooth. Great. Well, I've got a show on at 8 p.m. You can make it. There was one guy who did that in the late 1800s who was called Edgar Parker. He might be the person you're talking about.

Okay. Edgar Parker and he changed his name by deed poll to Painless Parker. That's really cool. Clever. Yeah. James the 4th of Scotland was a keen amateur dentist. A keen amateur sounds a bit like he wasn't good at being. even an amateur.

He was like, just tried really hard. Don't give up, son. Don't give up. One day you will. One day you could make amateur. Glorious day. Well, Peter the Great did that as well. He practiced it on his noble's dentistry.

So if you had a toothache and Peter the Great was around, you had to keep it to yourself. Otherwise, he'd say, come on, get in the chair. No anesthesia. Yeah. What was that? You got a sore tooth? No, no, it's headache. Yeah.

Headic, I have something for that. I'll just get my hammer. Just get my brain sore. And he kept all the extracted teeth in a little bag. He was very proud of it. And it's now in the Kunst Camera at the museum in St. Petersburg. There's a bunch of fairies planning a heist. Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a dentist,

and his website advertises or used to advertise, we cater for cowards, and he specifically targets people who have dentists. That's a really good idea. Because they usually are quite anti-entithicizing you who don't need it, but some people get so freaked out by the dentist. His website should say, we pull teeth out of your Facebook. So I read that the Egyptians used to use toothpaste way before toothbrushes were invented.

Yes. But it doesn't sound very nice. It was things like ox hoops, ashes, burnt eggshells and pumice. Oh yeah, lovely. And penis. Pemus. Pemus. Worst chattelabind ever.

Or excuse for infidelity. I lost my toothbrush, darling. The plumber happened to be here. So the Egyptian used a gross tooth paste 5,000 years before the toothbrush was invented First toothbrush was made with the bristles from a pig's neck Bristles from a pig's neck Damn, it's like better than the penis is the ancient Egyptian's

It's true, it's definitely an improvement In 2013, a man escaped from prison in Sweden to go to the dentist, he went to the dentist He had the affected tooth pulled out And then he reported himself to the police And they took him back to prison He got a day added to his sentence as punishment That's fantastic

Did he book? Uh, I don't, you've got one phone call. They should have known really when he was going, yeah, on the 27th. Next one. Yeah, that's fine. 3pm, okay, cool. I might be a bit sweaty and disheveled one hour, right. I just want you to know that.

Just work around it, work around it. While I'm here, do you have large sums of cash on the premises? Just because your fact was about, obviously, uh, funny sort of entertainment in, um, centuries past and freak shows, there was a guy Joseph Pujon, or Puyon, who in the 19th century made his living by farting. And his... Made his living?

Yeah, yeah. What standard of living? Was he in Lepetermaine? Was he what? Yes, he was Le Petitamein. There's a whole film about him. He was incredible. Yes, there is.

The man who could fart. Yeah, he could suck air in through his bottom and then do tunes. He retired from his farting career to become a baker after the first of all... Oh, no, I wouldn't eat his pies. I do wonder how successful... he was in that. So he went from breaking winter breaking bread.

Oh, very nice. Just a joke for you all. He claimed that the farts also did not smell. He memorably said, my parents ruined themselves scenting my rectum. What?

Who is this man? What does that mean? He was a French cabaret entertainer. Cambrates really improved. His parents have spent an enormous amount of money making sure that his farts

did not smell bad. Like a scented candle. Could he have used himself as an air freshener, do you think? Hive himself out to people's baths. Every 15 minutes, he just releases another waft of lavender into the room. Okay, time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in the First World War, the Romanian army issued an order that only officers above the rank of major

had the right to wear eye shadow in battle. That's the fair thing. I've heard of ages. Funny. There are so many elements in that. The rank of major, then wearing eyeshadow, and then in battle. So presumably outside battle, all bets were off. Yeah, yeah, outside battle, you can do what you are. You wear socks on your nose. That's the army, isn't it? Outside battle, we don't care what you do. Have a good time. Nilvarnish still are right? I think nail varnish is okay. But again, in the US Army new regulations, there's recently been a ban on men wearing nail polish. Who's doing that? In China and Japan, a few thousand years ago, everyone painted the nails.

just the thing you did. Maybe that's a niche little kind of tribute group to ancient China that exists in the US army that we need to crack down on. The Romans used to paint the nails with blood. It'd go weird brown almost immediately, wouldn't it? They'd keep reapplying the fresh supply. Yeah.

That's the only reason they were so murderers, actually. What? Because they can tell who was murdering because everyone had blood on their hands. In those days, you've got blood on your hands. It wasn't a bad thing. It was just a statement of fact about everyone. Ooh, look at you, blood on your hands.

Yeah. Yeah, been down super drug, two for three pounds. Smudged a little bit, actually. It's also on your knife. But that's where we get cosmetics from, is Roman times. They had cosmetai, who were slaves, whose job was to apply makeup and perfume to their mistresses and help out with the twilette.

So that's where we get the word from, cosmeti. Oh, really? Do you know where we got the word makeup from? He's seen those adverts for Max Factor, the makeup of makeup artists. He was an actual guy called Max Factor. Yes. So his name was Maximilian and Factoritz.

He's from Poland. and he coined makeup as a noun from to make up your face as a verb and he was the first one to turn it into a noun. He was the first person. And that is why it's extremely hard to research makeup if you're looking for what people were wearing in the olden times because there's a very new bloody word

and there's no real old equivalent for it. Except blood on your hands. Turns out some of history's biggest murderers were actually just height of fashion. Ancient Romans who were bold would disguise it by painting their heads. Weirdly when it rains, It sort of seems to...

It grows. It's like... It grows. Yeah. My favourite fact that I've read about the whole thing of, like, just what you're allowed to wear in war and so on, is that hygiene and clothing was quite a big thing. They always wanted the soldiers to have clean clothes. So apparently, any time you saw a battlefield, there would always be huge clothing lines just behind

where they were stationed of people drying their clothes for them and getting them clean. Yeah, so anywhere that an army moved behind them was almost a laundromat. Yeah. that came along. Where were you in the war? Were you on the front line? No, I was really on the washing line. Speaking of a feminine,

did you see those pictures of North Korean soldiers, female soldiers who wear stilettos when they're on parade? Yeah, just trying to look taller. Like cats, you're making themselves look pig. Maybe. Well, that's why we have the bearskins, isn't it? It's to even talk. It's to fool incredibly stupid enemies of the crown.

You're thinking that bears are cutting. God. These British have really long heads. They've got massive skulls. So I find the bear skin is quite weird that they still exist. Do you know how many bears it takes to make one of those hats? Or how many hats per bear? You can probably get ten hats from a bear?

You can probably get ten hats from a bear? The hats are quite big. One hat from a bear. Does the hat include the head of the bear or is it just the skin? Yeah, that's what they've got underneath the hat is this roaring head. That's the last line of defence. Yeah. Is the bear.

Take off the hat. You unleash the bear at the right moment. So one bear, one hat per bear. Yep. And so every year we need 100 new ones. And so 100 bears we're killing a year in order to... That's terrible. You can imagine the guy.

Just cut a tiny square out of this bear skin. No, throw the rest away. Be sure we can make nine or ten more hats out of this single bear's skin. No, no, no. We want only the finest back hair from the bear. That's just the small of the back. That's it. Do you remember because I went bear trekking in Greece a few months ago?

Yeah. Did you see any bears? Of course not. They're all in Buckingham Palace. They're all in that. Just go watch the changing of the guards. We saw lots of tracks but we didn't see any in the wild. One of the really cool makeup fact. Did you know that Dave Myers, when the Harry Bikers,

started his career as a makeup artist. Did he? Yeah, specialised in aesthetics. He watched at BBC. That's where he met Sye King, the other Harry Biker. He was a location's manager in First AD on films, including Harry Potter. And they met on the induction of Catherine Cookson drama. Can you guess what Samuel Peeps bought his wife? to improve her looks.

Was it his cheese? No. Was your guess? It's not nice, I'll tell you that much. Oh, a snake. No? It was puppy urine. Why is get her a puppy?

You'll get plenty of urine. He wrote, that's true. Up with some little discontent with my wife upon her, saying that she had got and used some puppy dog water. Oh, being put upon it by a great desire of my aunt White, who hath a mind to get some for her ugly face. Oh, he's a charmer. It's your anniversary, darling, LeQuil.

I've got you. So ugly, puppy urine will improve your face right now. I'm not going near until you've covered yourself in dogweed. It's quite possibly the worst. So looking into military dress, drab is a colour. So drab comes from in the 19th century, when the British army stopped being colour and we started wearing camouflage, we started wearing a dull brown colour.

It was drab and everyone dressed up in drab. That is fantastic. I can legitimately say to my girlfriend, you're looking very drab tonight here and she can't be offended by that. Would you say to her you're looking very red tonight or very red tonight? It's a very blue. You're going to say your outfit is very great. I'm sorry.

That's what I mean. There you go, I think. Okay, time to move on to fact number three, and that is Anne. My fact is that the most borrowed children's author from British libraries doesn't exist. How does she not exist? She's not a real person. Okay. What?

What's her name? Daisy Meadows. Is she a syndicate? Sort of. She's a front for this group. So it's a series of books called Rainbow Magic. They're crazy popular. there are over 150 of them.

They saw there were 20 million copies, and it's a company called Working Partners who created the book. They make it by committee. Nobody owns any of the ideas, any of the characters. They have a bunch of writers who write the books. They're basically a mini-series. You get the pets series or the school fairies.

There was one I read about called the Pop Star Fairies, and they all have names that kids will recognize. There's Jesse, Presumely Jay, Adele, the Singing Fairy, Miley, the Stylus Fairy. But there are seven in the series, and four of them are, I don't know this band. So think of a band I have a Vanessa, a Frankie, a Rochelle and an Una.

There's Saturdays. Right. There are five people in the Saturdays. Molly's the other one. Molly's the other one. So she's not in the pop stage. Let's just take a moment, shall we? Yep.

And see what just happen there. I just know there's a Molly in the Saturdays. There is a Molly in the Saturdays. Because you read that phrase, don't you? Molly from the Saturdays. Yes. But it's very pop culture. Are they directly doing that?

Yeah. Do the characters look very similar? I don't know what it looked like, because I haven't actually read the full series myself. Uh-huh. But I did notice they... Do your research, Jim. I'm really sorry, I didn't read all 200 books.

But, so they have things, like they brought out Elizabeth the Jubilee Ferry. Okay. They have Kate's the Royal Wedding Fairy. More cynically, they brought out Alexandra, the Royal Baby Fairy, in May 2013. Prince George was born in July 2013. And I'm pretty sure Alexander was the running favorite if it had been a girl. So it's like an alternative timeline now. Maybe fairies have different pregnancy, gestation periods.

Yeah, maybe they only go for six months. I don't think it's ever been documented. So these have become quite popular, collaborative writing. It's a thing now. There's another one called Erin Hunter. And the reason she's called Erin Hunter is because so the series is pitched at the same kind of people who like the Brian Jack Redwall series. And the reason she's called that is because Hunter would be close to Jacques in libraries so that people who are browsing Redwall. But this happens again.

I think Lee Child, who does very well with his books, he picked his, it's a pen name. And he picked it because Child is between Christy and Chandler. So you thought people would be browsing that section and then we'd be like, hey, who's this new guy? We should check out. Oh, okay, right. There's a new app called Inkvite. Have you guys heard of this?

No. Because my phone doesn't do apps, but it's where you can do collaborative fiction yourself. So it's kind of like a more pretentious game of consequences, I think, where you can invite up to four people and you're allowed to write, I think, 280 words of your novel, and then you pass it on to the next person and they write, and then you pass it around around.

I think you mean more fun rather than more pretentious. Yeah, no, it does sound actually quite fun. A set of collaborative books that I really really like. I've been obsessed with them since I've arrived in this country. I haven't read one yet. Was it Sweet Valley High? No, but Sweet Valley High also obviously fits into this category. So, no, this is not one single author, but Mills and Boone books. You love Mills and Boone. I love the concept of them. I just love the turnaround.

No, I really, I'd love to write one one day. I'd love to write a science fiction one, and I know that they don't have, or I thought they didn't have their own science fiction arm. What? They do. There's a science fiction paranormal arm. There's amazing titles. They do this thing, by the way, where they, if someone in a paranormal, one one visits a dinosaur and has an erotic moment with a dinosaur. They don't consider it bestiality because all the animals and crypto animals in it are intelligent. So they're just like us. Yeah.

So taken by T-Rex? Hang on. It's still, hang on. Oh. Hang on, I remember everything these book covers. It did rounds a while ago, like Dinosaur erotica.

Was that Mills and Boone all along? That was Dan emailing the rest. You put up all around the office. That's my novel. I've got a birthday coming up, hint, hint. Go on, taken by a T-Rex. Rest are too rude. Frankenstein's bitch.

That's not rude. That's lazy. That's lazy, lazy writing. Milked by aliens. That's what they're not. That's not even a sexy thing. I know. That's just farming.

This one's the oddest. Come for Bigfoot. But here's the thing. So, Mills and Boone, why I'm fascinated by it is that no same book stays on the shelf for longer than three months. They pulp it straight after. Wow. So they have a huge turnaround.

And in 2008, they were saying every 6.6 seconds, someone bought a Mills and Boone book. The same guy? They were dad. Well, who's the thing that? Standing at the till with a bigger and bigger pile next to him. You know, I've got to have another one. I've finished this one already. You can read them very quickly, to be fair.

Yeah. Six seconds. And they equate for three quarters of all romance novels that are bought into this country. I like I'm calling these romance, taken by a T-Rex. No, no, no. I've headed back to... The romance, are we? Much by MX Disney movie.

Did you mean that brilliant thing about what they do with Paltmose and Bins? Yeah, this was a QI question. Yeah, it was it. The M6 or the M8 toll road is made up for Pult Mills and Boone. So when you drive down, you're driving over all those taken by T-Rex. They use the foundations in the foundations to stabilize it. That's why it's always a bit of a turn-on when you're driving, driving down the M-6. Only for down.

Yeah, turn then turn on. Very good. So I was looking at libraries, and the Tarzan books were banned from some libraries in America in the 1950s because Tarzan and Jane were living in sin. Wow. Yeah. What was the great fact you told me about Tarzan, Anna? It's that, oh, yeah, the guy who wrote Tarzan is the great-grandfather of Wes Anderson.

Oh, yeah, true. Edgar Rice Burrows. Yes. So I was just looking at other, or I stumbled upon other stuff that's been banned for amusing reasons. And do you guys remember a couple of years ago when dictionaries were removed from classrooms in California? No. No. No.

A parent complained that a child stumbled across in the Mary and My Bible. to dictionary, the phrase oral sex. So the district spokeswoman Betty Cadmus told a newspaper that the books were immediately pulled off the shelves and temporarily housed off location to make sure that children didn't get their hands on it. And I really like, and it wasn't me that spotted this stunning irony. It was a blogger who's Dennis Barron,

who's a professor of linguistics, pointed out that her name was Betty Cadmus, who was issuing the statements. Cadmus was the Phoenician who brought writing to the ancient Greeks. Wow. And she's taken it away. Right. It's nice, isn't it?

So good. In the 1960s, in public libraries, you used to have things which were called block books, which were wooden blocks on the shelves, and that was in place of any books that the librarians thought were risque or obscene or, you know. Like top shelf? Well, what you had to do, basically,

you had to take the block to the counter, and then they would get the book out from under the desk and give it to you. Was it to shame people? Because you feel really dodgy when someone has to go beneath the counter to get something for you. I mentioned arriving at the front desk with just an armful of wooden blocks,

I'd like all these, please. Granny behind you giving you a really disapproving stare. It's Tarzan, come on. Do you guys know what the most banned book in 2013 was? I think this was in America. What was I'm trying to ban to kill a mockingbird again? I don't know. That was banned, though. I was famously banned.

Was it atheism for sexy people? Was it Billy Goat, this is just another excuse to slip into fact, but Billy Goat's gruff was banned in Oregon because it was deemed too violent for children to be in a children's library? Oh. But I take it it wasn't that. It was Captain Underpants by Dan Pilky. That's an outrage.

It's one of the great works of literature of the 20th century. Fantastic kids' books. God, I've never heard of them. Oh, you know, they're very popular. They're about a headmaster who gets hypnotized into thinking that he's Captain Underpants. And any time a certain key word goes off, he suddenly becomes Captain Underpants and runs around with a cape and his underpants and does adventures and it's all in his head. I really thought you were going to say any time a certain key word goes on

he whips his underpants off as he was a head teacher I can sort of see why these books were banned If he's Captain Underpants Does he wear his trousers over his underpants Like the opposite of Superman Who famously wears his underpants over his trousers But Superman's not called Captain Trousers

That's where my clever analogy breaks down Unfortunately Also another band book I was very surprised by this Where's Wolly Got banned for quite a long time Why is it's so frustrating? Because it's too hard.

Yeah. It's called Where's Waldo? But someone noticed, so in America it's Where's Waldo? Someone noticed that in one of the drawings, that on a beach, there was a topless lady laying on the beach. I remember that one. And you could, I mean, she was laying on her stomach lifting up, so it was kind of more side boob.

Well, it's obscene and I'm disgusted. Well, I reckon the person that found her is probably a genius at finding Wally. You can find boobs on a page. Yeah, well, I'm sure he's fantastic at finding oral sex in the dictionary as well. Some people are just desperate to be offended. I really like this.

In the Second World War, some authorities, some local authorities established... They put collections of books in air raid shelters. So there was a tube station at Bethelagreen, and it had 4,000 books in it, and 6,000 people would turn up every night in the shelters, and they'd have a library available to them. And they were really, really sort of intellectual books as well, like Bertram Russell and Schopenhauer and, you know, all kinds of...

Oh, I see. The people with low brown taste don't deserve to be entertained in an air raid. I'm just saying that. I'm just saying it's, you know, very impressive thinking of people sheltering from air raids and also reading some of the great works. But I'd be so pissed off. You're terrified. You just need something easy to distract you and all you've got is great works of philosophy. Exactly. I would have preferred books with the titles like How to Survive an Air Raid and How to Survive Being Trapped in a small tunnel with a group of other very, very scared humans. It's not very escapist though, is it? No, making more a fan. It's more sort of in the brutal realism tradition. Okay, well, when we're fighting over the last rat in the tunnel and you're quoting deep philosophy to me.

And Dan's munching away on his rodent. Who's having the better time? Because I read 101 ways to cook a rodent. The first of a mobile library was horse-drawn. That's really nice. Which I think is so cool. And they still have in bits of, I think, North Africa, they have a camel mobile library. They travel around from town to town, and they have school books and they have all kinds of educational things.

I just think that's incredible. Wow. And then when they stay for a few days and then they go off across the desert again. Seeking out the next air raid shelter. That would have been cool if you'd got into an air raid shelter and there were just loads of camels there waiting for you. They'd be trying to eat them.

Yeah. There are some places where I may be in the UK where you can get books in the National Health Service if you're depressed. Oh, I thought you meant books about the National Health. You actually mean you can get them prescribed. Yeah, you can get prescribed books. Well, kind of like Bertrand Russell.

I'm not sure what kind of life. Wound quarterizing for dummies. That kind of thing. Okay, time for the final fact of this show, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that it would cost $850 quadrillion to build the Death Star. And you're probably wondering how I know this. I discovered this fact. There's a website that you can go online called We the People, which is set up by the White House,

specifically for people who want to ask a question to Barack Obama. And the idea is that you put it up as a petition, and if enough people sign it, the White House has to officially reply. And one of the questions was a response to secure resources and funding and begin construction of a death star by 2016. And the response, it was a fantastic response, they said, we can't do this. We agree that we share your desire for job creation, a strong national defense, but it's just not on the horizon. One, being that it would cost $850 quadrillion.

$2. The administration does not support blowing up planets. Wait, wait. So the White House administration calculated how much it would cost them to build a desk. Actually, no, it was someone else. They've provided a link. If you just find out, if it's under 100, we can do it. These guys have a point. Is this feasible? Yeah. I mean, NASA. It's not. No, and also, it would take years and years to gather all the material that you would need.

I think it said it would take 833,3,315 years to make. Well, I'll be dead. To get enough steel. To get enough steel to actually make it. On petitions. You know this recent innovation in the British government, which is that the government has an e-petitions website, and anything that gets 100,000 signatures

is passed to a business committee in the House of Commons for possible debate. This has generated quite a lot of amazing petitions, like ban bald football players from Liverpool Football Club. Okay. Royal baby to be given Lion King welcome. Isn't that good? Yeah. What is that held up on the edge of the cliff?

Yeah. By Rafiki. Do you know what's really cool is this We the People site? It's actually, in terms of research, really a fantastic place to find stuff out. So one of the petitions was asking the White House if they could release the recipe for the honey ale homebrewed at the White House. I'll just quickly, just very quickly tell you about it, which is, so President Obama bought a home brewing kit for his kitchen in the White House. and then they had the chefs and they had all the people who work there who do brew their own beer come and sort of create this ultimate kind of recipe that they could then use and now they stick

to this one recipe and it's the White House's official honey ale brewing beer that they all it's a drink they all drink there it's the first as well I've learned from this article it's the first evidence that there's been beer brewed in the White House so they have in the past have known that George Washington used to do whiskey but that wasn't in the White House that Jefferson used to make wine, but again, that was, maybe that was in the White House, but this is definitely the first beer in the White House. So President Obama's given the White House a beer. Oh, at least he brought them something here.

It's nice, isn't it? I don't mean that I quite like him. And lastly, what's really nice is the ingredients for the beer is all unique, but honey particularly because they use honey that they tap from the first ever beehive that the White House has had, which is on the South Lawn. Their own honey, their own beer. So it's their own beehive to create the honey for their own home-brewed honey-o. A bunch of rural hippies, really, aren't they?

Yeah, and if it takes off, they might leave this old government nonsense. They might just go into beer brewing. That is what the Republicans want them to do. You want smaller government, and we want more home-brewed honey ale. Obama, don't get us wrong. We like your beer. Do you want them my favourite Star Wars fact? Go on.

It's that InSink, the band, just in Timberlake's band, made a cameo. Star Wars episode two, Attack of the Clones, but they were cut out the final version. Yeah, thank God. Another thing I love about Star Wars is Dave Proust, who was Darth Vader's body. Dave Proust is also the Green Cross Clubman. He gave an interview a few days ago where he said that that was his best rule of his life, was not being Vader, being the goodie

and saving lives. He just ruined Darth Vader for a lot of captivated and terrified children. I'm worried he filmed. Now I think he's a little goody two shoes car safety. Darth Vader never never crossed the road between two cars. You'll notice that in all the films. All the films. No matter what he might do.

He did cross the road safety. Never does it once. David Prowse has the best title of an autobiography. For me, I think. It's called Straight from the Forces' mouth. That is very good. Kind of, he doesn't talk in Star Wars. Well, I think he thought he was going to have the voice of Darth Vader.

He did think he was going to have the voice. He was convinced that he was going to have it. He revealed that actually we don't really want a West Country accent for this Master of the Universe. But there is a video kicking about him doing the voice. I've seen it. It's brilliant. I actually came up with what I thought was a better title for his book. Go on.

which is the Empire Strikes Hardback. That is very good. They'll just change it for paperback. Star Trek invented the touchscreen. Did it? Did it? Did it? So Star Trek had, yeah, yes.

Captain Kirk used to write with his little touchscreen pen thing on a touchscreen. I mean, it's not like on set they had this new touchscreen thing that they've invented. Guys, should we patent this now? Or should we continue with the series? That is true. It is substantially harder to invent an iPad than it is to say, I've got a magic device that lets me do it. Talk to anyone. Like JK Rowling invented the invisibility cloak.

I think we should invent something right now. Invisibility cloak does exist now, doesn't it? It does kind of. It's like reflective stuff. Yeah, you can see it. It's the only issue. I thought you couldn't. It doesn't, you can put it over your hand or your head.

They've tried it, and it doesn't tamper with anything around it. Oh. And you can't, you can see the background behind it. Anyway, that's been invented. A hoverboard's been invented, which is apparently a thing from Back to the Future, which is another thing I haven't seen. I saw footage of it the other day. It looks amazing.

It does look fun. It does look really cool. I mean, it looks very beta. It looks very early stages, but it is working. That's fantastic. There's a great blog about Star Trek inventions. Years ago it came out, so I'm sure most people, if they know Star Trek, know this. But someone did a list of all the things that Star Trek didn't invent,

including cup holders on the ship. Always out a cup in the head. Seat belts. You think a seatbelt. They're always flying around the Starship when they're attacked. On Star Trek inventing touch screens. The first touchscreen in real life was invented in 1888, and it was invented by this person called Alicia Gray,

and it was like a kind of fax machine, so it used this electric pen to transmit an electric signal across wires, and it meant you could draw a picture, and then someone at the other end, in 1888 could see the picture that you'd drawn, and this was used for things that needed signatures. So it was used quite commonly in hospitals and banks and stuff. You'd be like, oh, you need me to sign that.

I'm sorry, I'm not here, but I'll just sign that over the phone. That's amazing. That is amazing. Yeah. We still can't do that. Well, we don't anymore. Do we lose it? We obviously...

So we've lost technology. I mean, I don't know. I've never been able to sign over the telephone. Me neither. But you can't key in your payroll. They can't do that in 1800. We've forgotten that. It's faxing, isn't it?

No, no, no, no. It's like draw something. I don't believe that. Me either. That's amazing. It's a real thing. I suppose it sends an electric signal of a device moving over paper, doesn't it? Yeah.

But we just... We don't have that. Don't we? Using a, like, sure, I've gone somewhere. Google Docs. Look at the asset. Check your draw Alex has probably got on in the stationery cupboard

He's been telling us to use it for years Can I tell you my favourite Star Trek fact This will be my last Star Trek fact It's that Spock was originally going to be Martian, he was going to be from Mars Wow Yeah but he didn't end up being Martian Because the other writers kind of laugh

The idea out of the room Because they said by the time the series Was nearing the end of its first series Or a few series we would be on Mars And no one would mean it would just not be believable. That's so funny. That's great. So they made him from... I made a point. That's the bit they thought wouldn't be believable with the whole of Star Trek. Yeah.

Everything else to sleep. Something about space that I learned recently. I'm reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book at the moment. Former Captain of the International Space Station, he, when he was out on his first ever spacewalk, and he was trying to fix something on the International Space Station, had a huge pain in his eye, which forced tears out of his eye. And he was saying that it ended up sending him blind because tears don't function. like normal tears in space. They don't fall. They instead build up as a huge blob

over your eye. So he was suddenly blind completely in one of his eyes because this huge body of water was sitting in front of it. And it got so big that it eventually passed over the bridge of his nose

to his other eye. So suddenly he's out in space and he's trying to fix the International Space Station and he completely blind. Literally blinded by his tears. But he has made a double bubble, right? Which is something you're always trying

to do when you're blowing bubbles. So part of his pleas, And part of him is like, this is very inconvenient. Bad news, NASA, and some good news. Good news for eight-year-old me. But apparently what would happen is naturally the tears would get so big that it couldn't hold it anymore and it would flood space. It would flood.

All of space would be flooded. But you'd still have to be seeing through a kind of, as if you were looking through goggles, I guess. So I was looking at other things that people have valued fictional things. They valued Mr. Burns' manner, which is worth 120. million dollars and but that has to include things like a bottomless pit which he has so a symptoms fan let's see how many references a simpson's fan listening can get bottomless pit a room

containing a thousand monkeys banging on a thousand typewriters and a robotic richard simmons uh wayne mann would be a hundred and five million but also is that it yeah no it's affordable without a fact but they made a real simpsons house in 1997 they ran a competition for someone to win the simpsons house and the winner had a choice of either taking home $75,000 or getting to live in the Simpsons house, which have been totally recreated to look exactly like it inside and out. But if they chose the house option, they were contractually obliged as soon as they took their prize to repaint it so it looked like a normal house again. Oh. So the person who won it took the 75 grand instead. I thought you were going to

say the contract was every day when they got home. They had to recreate the intro title sequence, which would eventually get very annoying. They had to paint themselves yellow permanently. three children, boy or girl, girl. Yes. Do they do that? Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry. Sorry.

Did they do that? That famous opening sequence of the Simpsons. Well, they all cut off their last finger, yeah. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thanks 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 episode, you can get us all on Twitter at either at QI podcast or on our individual Twitter accounts.

I'm on Shriverland. Andy? at Andrew Hunter M. Anne. At Miller underscore M. And Jozinski. You can email podcast at QI.com. And you can also head to No Such Thing as a Fish.com for all of our previous episodes.

And we will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Good night.