No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Dinner On A Spider

Episode Date: June 16, 2016

This week Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss wristwatch thermometers, cheat codes for lifts, and glow-in-the-dark vomit.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, James Harkin. Okay, my fact this week is that the fear of lifts can be cured by starving the subject and forcing them to eat all of their meals in lifts. How long do you have to eat all your meals in a lift for? I think they only did it for a day or two,

but then they checked back on this person a few years later, and it worked. And this is in an old paper from 1973 that I stumbled across this week, and the paper's called A Brief Treatment of Elevator Phobia, and it's by S. Brintwick and L. Leslie so yum. So what's the idea you would sit inside an elevator and you'd be distracted so that you don't notice? What you do is you've got someone who's scared of elevators or lifts and you say to them, you're not allowed to eat for 24 hours and they go, okay, I'm not going to eat. And you say, you're not allowed to drink water either and they say, okay. And then you say to them, okay, well,

you can have something to eat now. You can have some cornflakes or whatever, but you can only have it if you're inside that lift. And so they have to go in the lift because they're so hungry. And then I reckon just because they've gone in there and they're kind of getting used to it, then they feel fine. This is insane. This is like padlock. Well, and then they're okay with being in the lift because they're enjoying the eating process. No, because what it is with phobias, one good way of getting over it is by forcing yourself to kind of go to these places or see these things or touch these things that you're scared of and slowly you kind of build up resistance and you realize they're not maybe as bad as you think

and you kind of get over it. Really, the food is genuinely just to lure them into the lift. It really is. I mean, just pick the guy up and push him in. I think that might be a bit more humane. Wouldn't that make the phobia a bit worse? Well, the thing is, they think a lot of it, is something bad has happened that you associate with this thing. And usually it happens when you're between four and seven as a child.

And then later on, you kind of, even if it's subconsciously, you put these two things together. And so you're scared. I'm scared of mushrooms. So when I was four years old, I must have been attacked by a mushroom or something. I don't know. Playing a lot of Mario. So if I'm scared of spiders, do I have to eat all my food off a spider? Is that how it's going to work?

Well, they think that one good way of stopping being scared of spiders is by to touch spiders. So you go to like a zoo and they put a tarantula on your hand and maybe it makes you feel better. They call it in vivo exposure. But the problem is that people don't really like to go to the spider house and have the spiders put on them. And I was reading an article in improbable.com. and they said that a way of doing this is by augmented reality. So say you're sat in front of a computer and you put your hand down and there's a camera looking at your hand,

the computer makes it look as if there's like cockroaches running across your hand. You'll think that they're running across your hand when they're not actually and that can maybe kind of cure you of being scared of cockroaches. Wait, why is that better than just having the cockroaches run over your hand? Because people don't like to go, if they see cockroaches, they'll just freak out. But if they put the hand down and they're just looking at a computer, then it's easier to get someone in front of a computer then in front of a cockroach house.

Okay, clever. Because there are more computers than cockroach houses, for one. Way more. There's quite an interesting theory about where phobia's come from that scientists have just come up with. So you were saying that it's probably a memory that you have, maybe a memory that you have from childhood. Yeah, maybe.

But in 2013, there was some new research done that showed you could sort of inherit memories from your ancestors. No. And so, yeah, so what happens is if one of your ancestors, has had a horrible experience, like they've been bitten by a spider a long, long time ago, then their response to that makes a chemical imprint on your DNA. And that chemical imprint can then be passed down. So then you'll have this phobia.

So this is new research that was done in 2013. Wow. Is this why I'm scared of Nazis? That explains your totally rational phobia of the Nazi class. Just because my grandparents had to, you know, go and sort of a lot of deprivation and misery. I think that's definitely true in mice, isn't it? They showed that that was true in mice. Yes.

I'm not sure it's true in humans. Yeah, it's weird that that can be imprinted into DNA. Yeah, so it is quite a new thing. Into my sperm, the fact that I was attacked by a dog, my sperm will have that knowledge as it goes across. Yeah, I mean, not the fact. You're not going to have a grandchild who's like, hey, I remember this weird time in the QI office is when a dog bit my testicles.

But is the response to that makes a chemical imprint. Yeah, on your DNA. Yeah, that's cool. It's mad. Fear of clowns. That's a big thing. Coolerophobia? Yes, exactly.

Sorry, I thought you were saying it was a cool phobia. Coolerphobia. I thought you were saying it was a fear of coolers. Well, everyone's confused. So what they do now, circuses are starting to do this. They have sessions before the circus starts, where if you're afraid of clowns, you can go and watch the clown do their makeup, start from a normal person and do their makeup.

So by the time the circus starts, you feel comfortable with them. And they call it clownsilling. Oh, my God, say. This is true. You do clownsling and you can watch clowns get their makeup done and it's meant to help you massively to see the transformation happen. But it's quite obvious that the name preceded the actual idea. A good method is to starve someone for a day and then they can only eat custard pies. I read a report that for people who are afraid of elevators, in some cases they will opt for a job that pays less if it's in a lower floor of a building. Wow.

So, this is the thing. Otis, the elevator company, they estimate that every five days, the equivalent of the entire population of the planet uses a lift. So seven billion journeys are made in lift every five days. I think it was even in their lifts. Exactly, yes. Yeah, so just the brand Otis, not even a Schindler.

I read about an amazing lift that maybe the three of you've heard of, but I hint of. And I discovered it. I discovered a great website called Elevatorpedia, which is just the Wikipedia of Elevators. It's got 492 articles, 9 million registered users over 9 million. But yeah, active users was about 22. Right.

But 9 million registered users. They're just spam bots, aren't they? Probably, yeah, but they're proud. So, yeah, so I started reading about, I pressed random page and just brought up different random pages. And the first one that came up was the double-decker elevator. Have you heard of that? No.

No. I like the idea of pressing random article in it, you'd have to wait 30 seconds for it actually to arrive. Yeah, so a double-deck elevator stops at two floors at a time. So you're able to cut the journey in half effectively. It's impossible to go from the very bottom floor to the very top floor because you're... Yes. And vice versa.

Unless they've got a little thing on the roof where it just pops out. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure that you're either in a lift that goes into a sort of attic that has no door to let you out when the lift below you is trying to go. And there's a basement for the below lift to not... So yeah, you can still go to the top floor and the bike floor. It's very unsatisfying to get to a floor where you're not allowed to get out. Yeah. This sounds like almost as terrible as what I imagined you were describing then

when I imagined that they would just stop at the same floor on both levels and either the lift would open and you'd have a six foot drop as you stepped out or it would open and you'd just be faced with the wall because you're on the lower level. I think what I was saying is that this isn't a particularly good idea. They're using it in so many different countries. Are they? Yeah, yeah. It's extremely popular. The Birch Khalif has it and so do a lot of times.

Taiwan and Hong Kong and Japan skyscrapers have it as well. Wow. The thing about that is about Birch Alcalaifa and that, is it not the case that lifts can only go a certain number of flaws because after that the cable gets too heavy or something? Well, exciting times in Lyft news because they've got a new technology, which means that lifts might be able to go twice as far. They've got a new kind of rope.

It's called ultra rope, and it's made of carbon fibre. And the maximum used to be about 500 metres. But now it's much bigger. and they reckon that this is the only thing preventing us from building 2,000 metre high skyscrapers. I've been reading loads of reviews of this book called Lifted, a Cultural History of the Elevator by Andreas Bernard. I haven't read the book yet, but I found one review which started off just from a member of the public. It said, this book had its ups and downs.

And then it went on, now that the joke is out of the way, this is a very interesting point. So they did have kind of. of elevators type things, didn't they? But then the first modern elevators, they came in the 19th century. And I read that the first elevator shaft preceded the first elevator by four years. What?

Wow. This is in the Wikipedia, actually, but I think it does stack up. Just normal Wikipedia. Yeah, it wasn't a Livedapedia. No, elevator media. Yeah, it wasn't in that one. So this was in the Cooper Union Foundation building

in New York in 1853. And they built it with a lift shaft because the guy who built it was sure that lifts would be invented quite soon. Wow! He was so confident that he did that. And sure enough, four years later, they did invent them. But his shaft was circular and all lifts aren't circular. And so they couldn't fit the lifts in. They couldn't fit a square lift in a round hole.

That's interesting. Why could they not just make a circular lift? Well, a bit later, Otis designed a special lift just for that building. Right. So cool. Do you know the secret override for a lift? If you press... Up down, left, right.

Some lifts, which use particular... There's a system called logic controller, which is the sort of the brain of the lift, basically. If the lift uses logic controller, if you press your floor and the closed door button at the same time, you can go to whatever floor you like in a lift immediately and bypass all the others, right? What?

So, this is according to someone on the internet, who I read, who said he works in a building, with loads of lifts. So he didn't think like... How many... He worked on a lift system. He was sort of part of the lift team for the building. He said that if the list uses this system, that does work.

But obviously you can't tell. That sounds very much like an urban myth. Give it a go. Give it a go listening to this. If you're doing this... If you're doing this... If you're the guy who walks in it tries to do it... You've now stuck in a lift with someone who's going,

you dickhead. It doesn't work, but you tried to ruin my lift ride by going past my floor. If you're already in the lift, you can just press a button. It's for people on the outside who've requested the lift. That's an extremely selfish thing to do though. Yeah. Well, you might be in a hurry.

I don't care. You might need a pee. We're not advocating it. I am. I am. It's a very selfish man. The rest of us would advise against it. I want to know if this is a myth.

And I imagine it is. People say that pressing the close button doesn't actually do it. There's no consensus on this. I swear to God that no one's properly refuted it. No people on the internet who work in Andy's Lyft company. We film QI in a building with a lot of lifts. And so I... You can realize we had an expert.

And I press the closed door and I reckon they do work. But maybe not. They never do in thrillers and in horror movies. They're always in there pressing it like crazy and the lift is just chilled. It's definitely true that there are some road crossings where the button doesn't really work. Yeah, because they're just on timers, especially busy crossings. I think that the closed door button is likely to work on all the lifts before health and safety. safety was invented and you want to just cut people up in lifts.

You know, lifts in Singapore have urine detector devices in them. And I can't work out whether this is because Singaporean authorities are really paranoid about this or because there was a spate of urinating. Because it did say in the 90s there was, in a year, there was something like 40 incidents of lifts opening in there being a puddle of urine left in them. Right. And so now if you urinate in a lift in Singapore that has one of these devices in it, then an alarm gets set off.

The lift stops. So you're stuck in the elevator. police are called and they come around and then start the lift so that you can get out and be arrested by the police for weighing in an elevator. Wow. So don't do that. How can it tell that it's urine, these urine detectors? What if I spilt my bottle of water, for example? And it had like a lot of kind of yurrier in it.

Yeah. Yeah, like all my water does. I just think buy water from different outlets for a start. Yeah, it's my question. You can just tell people that you've got urine detection devices. And I think that will deal with the majority of cases. That's true. It's like that stuff they don't put in swimming pools, isn't it? It's like an ink that turns colour when you pee in the pool.

Is that not actually in there? No, it doesn't exist. Oh my God, I always get so worried when I actually do have a piss and waiting for a colour to emerge. And then I wonder, is there something wrong with my piss? Go to the doctor. I'm really worried my piss isn't blue. Okay, it is time for fact number two.

And that is my fact. My fact this week is that the Russian Space Agency light their rockets using giant wooden matchsticks. So, this is to me, Unbelievable. Yeah, to me too. But it's real. This is from popular mechanics, so it's been verified.

And the idea is that there's Soyuz rockets when they're going up. So this is not for every single rocket that they launch. However, it's been used hundreds of times. And the idea is that you need a consistency. There's so many booster rockets. You need a consistency of all of them to go to be lit at the same time, and something needs to light them. So what they've created are these giant bits of birch wood,

all put together, created into effectively a giant-looking match. They're sat underneath the boosters. They all have little wiring that goes right to the top. And the problem is, as obviously, as the fire picks up, the wiring gets cut off. So the idea of using the wood is to keep it lit like a match, to have the wood just flaming up. And so they can light all these rockets at the same time. And then that's how it goes into space. Giant matchsticks.

It's nuts. It's very cool. It's so old-fashioned. They've been doing that for 60 years. Wow. Yeah. I read that it's the only part of a modern rocket launch system that's made of wood. Oh really?

Yeah. Unsurprisingly, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reassuringly. Did you guys know that the first lighters were guns? So they were flintlock guns and they were converted to the purpose of becoming lighters in the 16th century. So flintlock guns are any firearm that uses flint to strike up and create a flame which would propel the bullets out of it. And people realise that you could turn this ignition mechanism into a lighter and that was the world's first lighters.

Wow. How cool is that? big, hardcore looking guns. It is cool because then you get the actual lighters today that look like guns but aren't really guns. Exactly. This was the original one of those for the real cowboys. There were novelty lighters before there were lighters, basically.

That's what we're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. I found one of the earliest references to matchsticks from ancient China, and they were originally in their translation described as light bringing slaves. That was their name. And they were from a book called the Records of Unworldly and the Strange, which is a great title for a book. And I've never heard of that before.

It's an old ancient Chinese book. And that's where it comes from. Yeah, the old Chinese ones, they had sulfur on the end of them, didn't they? But you had to light them from another light, basically. You needed another fire source in order to light them. So I don't know if that counts as matches. Oh, okay, yeah. Cheating.

Definitely cheating. Sulfur was used for 19th century matches as well. and that was where matches really took off. And that's when you got match factories and match girls and things like this. Yeah. The problem with matches in the first place was that they would, they were very easy to light, and so they would set fires and things like this. But in 1844, the safety match was invented.

It was by a Swedish professor called Pash. And what he did was he just split up the chemicals that you needed to set the matchaflame. So the phosphorus that you did need, he just put on, that's what's on the surface of the box. So you have to combine the two elements, which had originally been both in the matchhead together. Oh, wow. And that was why it ignited so easily is because it's all there ready for you, whereas this

is guaranteed. So it could, because before that, I think, because it was all together, if you just sort of accidentally rubbed your match up against any surface, what it could ignite? So you get people sort of striking it on, you know, jeans or stella, or a wall or whatever, yeah. So these dodgy ones were the ones invented by the guy from Stockton called John Walker. And they were banned in France and Germany because they were so dangerous. And they were giant matches as well.

So the first proper matches were giant matches. They were a yard long. What? Yes. And to light them, you had to pull, you got a fold of sandpaper, put the match in between there, pulled it out. And they were so dangerous, though, because often a flaming ball of material would fall off the end of the match and set fire to the ground or the carpet or wherever you

or someone's dress. He was a good guy, though, John Walker, because he refused to patent his matches. He had a decent amount of money. So he really did invent the lighting match, even though it was a little bit. dodgy to start with. It was based on what he did that everyone else built their match technology and he, yeah, had enough money and

said he didn't want to patent the invention at all. Michael Faraday and other people like that said that he should get money out of it. He never made a penny and he never got the credit for it until after he died. There was actually a Frenchman called Chansell who came up with one 20 years before him. Oh, was there?

Yeah, and that one had an end tipped with potassium chlorate and sulfur and you had to put acid on it. To set that one outside. Even more dangerous. And there was another Frenchman, Charles Soria, who invented one very shortly after John Walker, and it relied on phosphorus.

And they kept using the phosphorus in this country, so it sounds like they banned it in other countries. But in this country, they kept using phosphorus in matches until 1906, and it was incredibly poisonous. So everyone who worked in those factories got this thing called fossey jaw, which was where your teeth would rot, and your whole face would swell up, and your jaw bones would rot,

because the phosphorus was so toxic, your hair would fall out. So anyone who, like, used regularly or worked with making these matches would just, they'd fall apart. Wow. And I read that it would make you vomit. Even a tiny amount breathing it in would make you vomit. And you could see the way people walked home from the fosterous factory because there

would be like pools of fluorescent vomit on the way. Wow. Do you know the world matchstick model record? Uh, what are we going for size or number of matchsticks? Let's say a number of matches. A million. $280,000. I do know, so I'm going to be cheating for me to say.

The answer is, it's a model of an oil rig. It's made by a man called David Reynolds, who used to work on oil rigs, and it contains 4,000,75,000 matches. Wow. It's huge. That's amazing. It's really good. It took him over 15 years to make, I think.

Yeah. What a great use of a life, though. No, there's other people watch telly in the evenings, and he just does this. this, you know, it's quite cool. But we are not suggesting you build the world's biggest matchstick thing instead of watching our show on Fridays. Good point. Casual little plug there.

Yeah, I feel really sorry for his son because he said that it was just that one Christmas his son bought him a matchstick kit of a train to build a train out of matchsticks. And that feels really like the son doesn't know what to get his dad or just get him to this. Who cares? He can put it in a corner, forget about it. And I bet he really regrets that 20 years later when all his dad's done or talked about is the fact that he's built 100,000 matchstick. Or he's forever been trying to make up for this shit present that he got by going,

no, I really love it. Look, I'm making my next thing. Look, I'm going to make my. You're right. He hates it. So, there are, and the Guinness has two other matchstick related world records. Okay, let's hear them. Most matchsticks stacked into a tower in one minute.

Yeah, great. Let's say, one a second, 60. Very close. 59. Not bad. Four million. It's 74. It's 74.

Wow. Yeah. The other one, this is the one which I think is most beatable, possibly, is the largest collection of musical instruments made from magic. Okay. It's about 10. I know what I'm getting you for your next birthday. 11 kits.

Yeah. I've just got a couple of things on, I've been looking into odd ways things are lit. I suddenly thought, how do you light the Olympic torch? What's the process there? And so probably we all know it's lit in Olympia. It's got a classic kind of, it actually is a flame that goes there. But I had no idea how much. much backup flame that they have should it go out. Have you heard about this? I thought it pretty much

went out all the time. Yes, it does. They have backup flame that they've brought with them from Olympia, from the very same fire, and they relight it using that exact flame. So the flame is broken up into all different little compartments so that it can be relit with the original flame. Wait, so what are they storing the flame on? And there's lots of other people holding backup Olympic torches. They're in buses and stuff that travel with them. Yeah, there's extra bits of fire. Yeah, you can see a photo. So when they leave Olympia, they take live flame on the planes over to where they're going. So you can see, there's a photo of British Airways where two seats have live flames, four capsules of live flames. They're obviously got a lid on them. And they carry that by, I think that's the only

live flame that you're allowed to take on a plane. I just think that it's backup Olympic flame thing is the stupidest thing. It's so, it doesn't matter. It's a flame. It's symbolic. I guess that's what they're going for. It's symbolic and invented by that. the Nazis as well. Was it? I think so. Fire. No, I think they invented the idea of like an Olympic flame relay. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I've got such a cool thing about fire, making fire. Just do you guys know about the new fire ceremony that the Aztecs had? No. This was this, so that the Aztec calendar cycle was every 52 years. And at the end of every 52 years, the Aztecs ordered that all fires in the whole Aztec Empire were extinguers.

and they had to start again. So every single person, after 52 years, had to put out their fire, and then they go on top of this mountain, and a priest would light the first fire for the new calendar cycle in what was called the new fire ceremony. And what he did was he'd light it inside the chest cavity of a sacrificed person.

So they'd sacrifice someone, they'd take them up to the top of this mountain, they open up their chest, and then the Aztec priest lights a fire inside his chest, and then a bunch of people would be allowed to come forward and dip their sticks in the fire. With marshmallows on them. Oh my God.

Weirdest tasting barbecue I ever had. Wow. And then the fire would be distributed throughout the empire again, and that marked the start of their new calendar. Wow. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on a true story. Okay.

The heartwarming story of a rabbit. No, so it's loosely based, but it is based on an actual story of something that happened in America, in the early 20th century. So can you explain to me what happens in Who Frame Rocha Rabbit? Because I haven't seen it. It's very complicated. But basically, there's a transport conspiracy.

You don't want to give away all the spoilers of the film. And it's about, you know, the car and about... And there's a giant rabbit, isn't there? He's not a giant rabbit. Oh, is he not? I'm thinking of Donnie Darko. No, he is bigger than a normal rabbit thing about it now. But he's not taller than Bob Hoskins.

Well, I still think that that's large. He's in between the size of a rabbit and Bob Hoskins. If you can imagine such a thing. And he's got a bow tie on. How tall would you say he is? taller than four feet. Yeah. I think that counts as a very big rabbit.

With his upright, he's probably taller than Bob Hoskins, isn't it? No, I don't think he is. No, no, he's not. He never is taller than Bob Hoskins. Even he is poised. Really? And Bob Hoskins was a very short man. Exactly.

So, actually, perhaps it is normal rabbit size. Anyway, I think this isn't the true element of the story. Sounds like a great film, actually. It is a really good film. Watch it. But the story that it's based on is the thing that actually happened. It's a group of car and oil companies. They were called National City Lines, right?

And it was controlled by General Motors. And the thing they did in the early years of the 20th century, they bought up loads of streetcar lines. So these streetcars with rails, trolley buses, things like this. All across America, they bought these up, and they dismantled them and shut them off. And they also ran a lot of buses. So as an automobile bus is running on roads as opposed to running on rails.

and they were eventually fined a huge amount for kind of monopolizing, attempting to monopolize the market for transport equipment. Right. So some people think that this was a huge conspiracy designed to create the age of the car and to shut down public transport in favor of cars. Because it was oil and car companies that were doing this. Yeah. It's a bit more complicated than that because the streetcar industry was already in decline and it's also a lot easier to run a bus, which doesn't need a rail. than it is to run a street car. Well, I'm glad you debunk that popular misconstruction.

No, this was absolutely huge, and loads of people still believe it. I think in America it's a really big, it's a really big idea that the age of the car was stitched up by a load of these companies. I've got to say, Roger Rabbit didn't really do justice to the seriousness of the topic. I am something to understand why they felt they need to add cartoon characters to liven up the story.

Just to give a... quick, proper background on Roger Rabbit as a movie. It was Robert Zemeckis who directed it, which was the Back to the Future director. It came out in 1988, and the technology of the animation mixed with real-life footage was so advanced, so new, that the very same year that was made, or let's say the Oscars that happened post the movie's release, recognized its animator Richard Williams as an innovator and gave him a special Oscar, like just a completely separate special Oscar to say, this movie has changed everything for filmmaking with animation. So it's a really important movie in the history of cinema.

Also, it's the only film where Looney Tunes characters and Disney cartoon characters appear in the same films. That was very rare to see, for example, Mickey Mouse and Boogie Pig. And they insisted, both companies insisted that their characters have exactly equal amount of screen time as the other company's characters, didn't they? And that was why. And like I I say, I haven't seen it. But apparently, Boggs Bunny, so wherever you see Warner Brothers character, that's accompanied by a Disney character. So I think there are two pairings of characters in the film? And the pairings are always a Warner Brothers character and a Disney character

because both companies said, if your guy's getting screen time, my guy's going to get screen time. Yeah, because Roger Rabbit was Looney Tunes, and Bob Hoskins is, of course, a Disney cartoon character, yeah. So one thing that's interesting about this is that it mustn't necessarily be the movie that was based on real life stuff because Roger Rabbit was based off a novel called Who C. Rabbit, which was written by Gary K. Wolf, very dark and very different to the

had no Looney Tune characters, for example. So I'm wondering if that's where the original political message about what you were so interestingly talking about. That's beyond the pale. Did you see that Bill Murray was the first choice to play the Bob Hoskins character?

He was too tall. He was just that bit bigger than a rabbit. You make the rabbit look like a rabbit. No, they couldn't get hold of him Because you know Bill Murray has that famous thing Where he refuses to have an agent Oh really? And so he was Robert Zemeckis

And Steven Spielgutberg's first choice They couldn't get hold of him And Bill Murray said afterwards It was a real regret And he wished he could have done it And it does make you think Well, get a sotting agent then, mate But yeah, he said they went for Bob Hoskins instead

Right I did read reviews for who censored Roger Rabbit The first one And it's got my favourite Opening line of a review here This person said This would have been a decent airplane book but I wasn't flying anywhere.

And there's a lot of differences. Like in the book, Roger Rabbit actually is killed. And they have a really interesting literary device where cartoon characters are able to create a doppelganger of themselves immediately to do stunt double work in movies. So in the novel, Roger Rabbit is killed, but he creates a doppelganger who can last a few days, the longest doppelganger of any of them,

who helps the story. The rules of cartoons are very different to the rules of real life, aren't they? What? Yeah. I don't get my plans for jumping off that building. later. This, I haven't seen Who Frame Roger Rabbit, but I think they kind of explore this in the film, don't they?

There's a thing called the O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion, which was in Esquire. There are a few, like, rules that happen in cartoons, which don't happen in real life. So anybody suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Yeah, yeah, kind of thing. Everything falls faster than an anvil is another one. Okay. And the idea being that if you're from... falling down and so is an anvil.

You'll hit the floor and then the anvil will hit your head. And there was a guy called Art Babbitt who was an animator from Walt Disney Studios and he said animation follows a laws of physics unless it's funnier otherwise. And I think they mentioned that in the movie as well, don't they? Something similar to that. Yeah, and they've got things like, you know, tunnels that you throw onto walls and then you can run into the tunnel.

But, you know, if you can't follow them, you sort of, if you follow as a human, you hit the wall. Yeah. It's kind of thing. Yeah. So Bob Hoskin's son didn't speak to him for a while after he made Who Frame Roger Rabbit. Do you know why? It was because, so his son, Jack, was three at the time.

And Hoskins said in an interview a few years ago that when his son Jack found out what he'd been working on, he wouldn't speak to him for a long time. And Hoskins was really upset. And after about two weeks, his son admitted that the reason he wasn't speaking to him was because he'd been working with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck the whole time and hadn't even introduced him to them. Oh, amazing. That's great.

That's sweet. Okay, it is time for a final fact of the show, and that is Chisinski. My fact is that the first ever wristwatch doubled up as a thermometer. Yeah, I just really like this. It's like a modern day gadget. What sort of thermometer? As in oral... Or as James says, rectal. It was a wristle, a wristle thermometer.

Just a little thermometer on the... You had to shove your wrist up, your bum. It was designed for it. very flexible people. So this was a watch that was designed by Abraham Louis Breguet, who was known as the father of modern horology. He was sort of the leading person in watchmaking, in clockmaking and watchmaking at the turn of the 19th century. And one of the things he did work out how to do was to stop changes in the temperature altering a clock mechanism. So watches at the time, pocket watches, because risk watches didn't exist yet, watches at the time if the temperature changed would

be a bit disrupted by that. So you could only guarantee that your watch would be correct within about two hours at the end of the 18th century. And he created a little thing like a thermostat inside watches, which would work out when the temperature had got to a certain point and adjust the watch accordingly. And so he thought, well, I'll just add a little thermometer in things I'm sensing the temperature anyway. And so he made this watch. And it was for Napoleon's sister, actually, the Queen of Naples. She was called Caroline Murat. And he made it in 1810, started making it in 1810. and he delivered her in 1812. And yeah, it was the first ever wristwatch.

And the bracelet was made of a thread of hair and a little bit of gold thread. A thread of hair. A few threads of hair. Yeah. It was made of some hair. Like lots of threads of hair. More than one thread.

She had a thick hair. Oh, my God. Wow. I find it amazing how wristwatchers was seen as really sort of effeminate and not suitable for proper men was the basic implication for loads of their history. It was only in the first. First were war that they really took off because it was very important for officers to be able to consult the same time and also pocket watches are pretty impractical in the trenches.

I read an article in the Atlantic about the history of the wristwatch and they said that someone at the time when they first became popular after the war, someone said vaudeville artists and moving picture actors have utilised it as a fun maker as a silly ass fad. Yeah. Siliass fad, the worst watch. Fools. Did you guys know about repeaters on watches? Because I didn't really understand what they were until I was reading up on this. No. So this was a technology that was found on watches at the turn of the 19th century.

It was on this watch that Brege gave to the Queen of Naples. And what it was was it was a way of telling the time in the dark. If you wanted to tell the time but it was dark so you couldn't see a watch, you would press a little button on it and an alarm would go off that would tell you the hour and then how many quarters past the hour you'd pass. So you could tell the time to within a quarter of an hour. So if it was, let's say, 5.30, it would give five chimes in a certain deep tone, and then it would give two chimes in a lighter tone, which would show you it was 5 o'clock,

and then two quarter hours had passed. That's really clever. And all watches at this time had this, this quarter-repeater thing. Or a half-repeater, which would give it to, obviously, within half an hour. That's amazing. Yeah, really cool. Yeah. I was at the Design Museum last year, and they had a watch, a wristwatch for blind people,

which was, if I remember rightly, it just kind of looked like a normal face, but it had these little marbles on it, and they were magnetic, and they moved around depending on the time, so you could kind of feel... I like a braille, a braille watch. That's amazing.

It did look really cool. That's awesome. That's really incredible. I was reading about what we used to do before we had watches and clocks, because obviously I know about the sun dial, but I was just thinking, like, what if you just didn't,

if you went further back? And what people used to do, and spots of Africa used to do this, You would just, you would know the arc of the sun throughout the day. You'd know where it would pass. And so what you would do is you would point to a bit of the sky and say, let's meet when the sun's there in the sky, when it's reached that bit of the sky. And because they know the mapping of how the sun goes across so well, they would just know to look up and go, oh yeah, it's effectively four o'clock. I better go and meet Mike now.

That's how it works. Yeah. Was it not confusing, though, because if you point and you say, let's meet there, and you point it. it somewhere. People go, do you mean then at that time or there in that place? You're pointing to the sky. Unless it was a really mountainous region. Yeah, I guess you were...

So you just turned to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. You're like, where is Mike? Oh no, he must have meant four o'clock. I'm so embarrassed. So this reminds me of something that we've covered on QI, which is about how it was hard actually to

know the exact time in the 19th century, even most people didn't have watches. and there was one family in London who for 100 years made a living out of letting people look at their watches, which is so cool. That's amazing. This is this woman called Ruth Belleville and her parents, and her father started the company in 1836. They worked in Greenwich, and so he'd set his watch to Greenwich time at the start of the day. And then he'd get what's described as a buggy, which I'm not sure what that was in 1836, and he'd drive around London, and he'd have people on contracts who would pay him in exchange for him telling them the time. And she kept doing that.

She did it up until 1940. Yeah. I think you could kind of get season tickets from them as well, couldn't you? Like it'd be a bit cheaper and they'd come every week or something. Oh, could you? There was a guy called Mr. St. John Wynne, who in 1908 wrote to the Times saying that her methods were completely out of date and it was ridiculous. And he suggested that she was using her femininity to gain business. Maybe she kept the watcher in a cleavage or something like that.

Something a bit saucy. Did the letter to the Times say, Dear the Times, you of all newspapers, should know that... This guy, sorry, this guy said John Wynn, he was the director of Standard Time Company, who happened to be one of her, like, biggest kind of competitors. Did they make watches?

They were the people who were supposedly in charge of Standard Time in London. Yeah, okay, makes sense. But it gave her massive publicity, is what they said off the back of it. So actually business boomed for her. So in your face, Mr. St. John, what's you called? Win.

So it was St. John lost. So in 1936, there was a big moment for her business in a bad way, which was the telephone speaking clock that really stopped a lot of business. But weirdly, then, it was voiced by a lady. And her name was Ethel Cain. And Ethel Cain lived in the exact same town as Ruth. They were virtually. next door neighbours. Oh, but I bet they never spoke to each other. What a sitcom. What a sitcom there is

to be written there. Outskirts of Croydon is where they both lived. Wow. Yeah. God, attention. The tension in that neighbourhood must have been palpable. I do think it's amazing that sort of, just to go back to wristwatches very, very briefly. The sort of, it was basically homophobia was what it was going on was people were saying that people who wear wristwatches are effeminate and not sort of, not the right sort of people. So if you had a wristwatch, you would be called a wristwatch boy, and people would say this about you. And really in an insulting way. Yeah. And there was, so here's something from the Albuquerque Journal in May 1914. The fellow who wears a wristwatch, it's frequently suspected of having lace on his lingerie and of braiding his hair at night.

I mean, it's pretty plain. And in New Orleans, there was a theater with, there was a play on. And they said the main character is not portrayed by a wristwatch screen actor dude, but by a man's man. I'm not surprised of dude being used in that sense. Dude is very yeah, yeah, dude is 19th century. I think it's a cattle ranching word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically it took the First World War to shift that perception. Should we wrap up soonish? Yeah, there's a really cool story. It relates to wristwatches and the original guy in this fact.

And this is about the Mariantoinette watch, which was another watch that Abraham Louis Breguet made. So this was commissioned by a guy who fancied Marianneut in 1782. and it was completed by Brege's son in 1827, 44 years after it had been ordered, 34 years after Marie Antoinette had died and four years after he'd actually died. But it was unbelievably complicated, so it's still the fifth, consider the fifth most complicated watch ever made. It was really, really beautiful. And it was handed down various generations,

and it ended up in the Maya Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem in 1983, where it got stolen in that year. And so there was a big police hunt, no one could find where it was, this original watch made for Mary Antoinette. And then this guy called Nicholas Hayek, who was the CEO of the Swatch Group, which had taken over the Bregey company, said in 1999 that he was the term that they'd make a replica. And so he went about making this replica, and that even took a few years. So that was commissioned in 2004. And just before the replica was about to be depleted and displayed, then a lawyer in America got a letter from a woman who said that she had to return. a bunch of objects that her husband had left in his will

saying that he'd stolen them decades earlier. And one of those objects was the Marie Antoinette watch. And so just as this replica was about to reappear, the watch itself surfaced. Wow. How great is that? Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, James. At Egg Shapes. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M.

And Chisinski. You can email a podcast at QI.com. Yep. Or you can go to at QI Podcast. That's our group Twitter account. Or no such thing as a fish.com where we have all of our previous episodes. We'll see you again next week. Goodbye.