No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Jellyfish Jelly

Episode Date: October 2, 2015

Anna, James, Alex and Anne discuss glow-in-the-dark animals, Dr Seuss’s secret war films and what happens when you Google something.

Welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Anna Tosinski and I'm sitting here with Anne Miller, James Harkin and Alex Bell. 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 Anne's Facts. My fact is that Ruby, a sheep who had been genetically engineered to glow in the dark was accidentally sold to an abattoir.

So you would have thought if you've genetically engineered a sheep, you're keeping pretty close tabs on it. Apparently not. How did that happen? Well, actually, it may have been an insider job. It may have been someone with a grudge against the company. One of the other sheep? Yeah.

It's very cloak and dagger stuff. So this is the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris. And actually, it was Ruby's mother, Emerald, was given this jelly. fish gene, which makes her glow in the dark. And then Emerald had a lamb, Ruby, who had the same gene, but I'm not sure if it was active if she actually was glowing, but it was revealed this year that last year, Ruby, yeah, made it into the food chain. And they've been very close to reassure people that they won't arrest. You ate Ruby, you're all right, but somebody did buy her, someone did eat her.

We are constantly making animals glow in the dark these days. And it's always for apparently scientific purposes, but I'm so suspicious. And also, it's always bloody jellyfish, isn't it? I think sometimes an enemy's, but usually we just seize a jellyfish from the same. take its genes out inject them into something they must be so fed up with it. It's because jellyfish have this particular protein called GFP which stands for green fluorescent proteins. Yep

and this particular protein when you put it into other animals it doesn't really have any other effect on the animal or hardly anything anyway and so it's quite safe. There are other animals which have these kind of proteins but they're not quite as useful really yeah they have been used it as a marker so they can see what happens

to the cells they use it in stem cell research and that you're monitoring Well, in 2011, scientists created kittens which glow in the dark in order to help fight AIDS, because apparently, FIV, which is the feline immunodeficiency virus, it's very similar to HIV. And so it was apparently legitimate to make kittens glow in the dark. I think it's legitimate anyway just to do that. Yeah. When we say glow in the dark, it does annoy me because it's not like you turn the lights off on their glow, is it?

You actually have to put UV light on them, which is so different. Scorpions glow in the dark under UV light. Naturally. Yeah. So they'd be pretty cool to take to a nightclub. if you want more personal space on the dance floor I've got my scorpion here gin and tonic also glows in the dark

on the UV lights and I know which I'd rather happen Scorpion, yeah. Yeah. So on sheep, they recognise each other's faces don't they apparently? But not when they get sheared. Yeah, so this really confuses me. When they're sheared, they have to re-establish a different hierarchy and fight again to be leaders

because they don't recognise each other. But I would have thought if you're recognising faces. I was just relatedly, I guess, I was reading this week that in chickens are in roosters, the first chicken to go cockadoodle do in the morning is always the most dominant one. And if you get rid of the most dominant one,

then it will be the second most dominant who does the cockadoodle doing. And sheep, so they weren't much clever. Well, I guess we said it's about all animals that we think already at someone revise it. But sheep are cleverer than people give them credit for, I think. It's much cleverer than you give them credit for. It will never happen with Dan Shreiber.

The exception that proves the rule. So they are one of only two animals, I think, who can recognize shapes and remember shapes really quickly. So they're better at monkeys than doing this. So if you give them like food in different shape buckets and you put food in one bucket but not in another, then they'll remember the right shape bucket that it's been in. And then come back to the next day.

The other animals, most humans can do that. Again, with Dan, I would question it. The majority of humans. The movie Predator came out in 1987 and the blood of the predator is kind of glow in the dark. And the way they made it was mixing K.Y. Jelly with green glowstick fluid. Really?

Fun tricks the shops for that intern. Yeah. You would definitely use the self-scanner. Self-scanner, wouldn't you? Yeah. Unexpected items. The fluid is called

BIS 245 trichlorophynal 6 carbopetoxifinal oxalate. Catchy. Slappy. Sialum for short. Do you know there's an ice cream company called lickme I'm Delicious

who make a glow in the dark ice cream really? This is the same jellyfish protein which I reckon it gives off a glow when it touches your tongue

but it'll cost you about 140 quid a scoop so maybe we could share one rather than one each yeah yeah yeah how do they make it glow

do you say? They use the jellyfish oh they should have in jelly rather than ice cream shouldn't they yeah maybe that's what jelly is

it's just jellyfish with their legs pulled off that's why it always stings your mouth a bit nobody else That's why you have to urinate on your mouth whenever you've eaten jelly. Get wondering why people were always doing that to me.

Okay, time for fact number two, and that is Alex. My fact this week is that during the launch of BBC 2 in 1964, a live kangaroo got stuck in a lift at television centre. And I assume it's tiny arms couldn't reach the buttons? No, well, there was a massive power cut just before they went on air. There was a fire at Bassy Power Station, half of London lost power, and the whole night was just a massive disaster. Wait, well, what happened to the kangaroo?

It was the mascot of BBC 2, basically. So there was a big run-up to this launch, and the publicity campaign centered around a kangaroo with a Joey coming out of its pouch because it was the second channel. So the BBC decided to get a live kangaroo in as part of the opening night. It'll pop up in W-1-A.

I mean, it does sound like a W-1-A plot, isn't it? It does, yeah. I think it's a bit crazy. I mean, this is all according to the biography of Gerald Priestland, who was a BBC newsreader. the first time he delivers his news bulletin they get through like two and a half minutes and then they realise there's no sound going out

so he has to start again and then there's lots of awkward pauses that a phone is sitting on his desk and it rings and he picks it up and there's no one there Is it true that the first words that were spoken were a news story about a bus conductor who had been sacked for insulting Pakistani passengers and that it included the words that she used to insult said passengers

I read that online and the next news story was about that last news story also including the words they'd use. A second news reader has been fired for again saying. Didn't they have to scupper all their big sort of launch events? They were going to have like Kiss Me Kate songs from the musical. They were going to have the top comedian from the Soviet Union. I think all the plans went away and they had to end up.

The first thing they showed properly was play school the next day. The whole evening was just test cards on the screen and people apologising from the BBC. I think it's a great BBC program. I think more than BBC should do more of that. I didn't this. I read this thing about there was a thing on the BBC in the Odeys called the Toddler Truce where there was, so kids' TV was on from 5 till 6th and then they would have nothing from 6 till 7

so I think to say to the kids, oh look the TV's off, you've got to go to bed now and so they didn't have anything on for this hour and it ended in February 1957 when they brought in a teen show. When everyone went to bed. When they brought out a news show for teenagers called the 6-5 special and I just love this opening bit because it just sounds so 50s where I opened with this line,

welcome aboard the 6-5 special. We've got 100 cats jumping here, some real cool characters to give us the gas so just get on with it and have a ball. Great. Even then they're out of touch. these days you would think there were actual cats though wouldn't you? Jumping.

Yeah, it sounds like a precursor to the internet that program if you're taking it literally. And now our troop of dancing feline. Speaking of which, there was a channel on cable in America called the puppy channel, which was a 24-7 network showing nothing but puppies. This was, I think, in the 90s or maybe 2000s. And of course, it just went out. As soon as the internet came and you could get as many puppies as you want whenever you wanted. Oh no, the sad fate of all porn magazine.

Do you have a QI fact about the most watched channel in most countries is the weather forecast? I have read that in the government meteorology site and I haven't able to find it anywhere else but I decided I trust the government. It's the meteorology department. They do say, it does say in most countries the weather forecast is the most watch program. But it's hard to find like what the definition of the most watch program would be. Speaking of most watched, I reckon the most repeated television program ever is on BBC 2. QI. No, no, no, no, it's not.

No. Contrary to what the Guinness Book of World Records says, and what we said on QI as well. So we said in series G that it was a short film called Dinner for One, which is massive in Germany. They watch it every holiday. In that's approaching, I think, 300 repeats in total. But I was reading about this thing called trade test transmissions, which were these films broadcast in the early days of BBC 2. They were designed to fill the channel with nice, vibrant, varied colours, which TV manufacturers and retailers could use to test their televisions. But they were very popular among normal viewers as well. The most repeated one is apparently a documentary about dam building called The captive river. This is according to

the test card circle, which is a group of enthusiasts in early UK television. They're really cool, I remember. Don't laugh. Yeah, I was going to ask if you were the president to say. In the same way that I don't believe the meteorologist that the show is the most popular. I don't believe you that these guys are really cool.

You have ulterior motives, Alex. Okay. This film, according to them, was repeated almost 550 times over 12 years. Partly due to the fact that in 1963, a huge fan of the film's director, locked himself in the ops room at the BBC and blocked play the captive river

until he was rugby tackle to the ground and eventually deported. Would you like to hear some early alternatives to the word television from the 1920s which died out? Telectroscopy, visual listening, hear-seeing, radio movies. I like visual listening,

as if they didn't have the word watching in the 20s. What you do with your ears, but with your eyes. There was a big discussion as to what they were going to call people who watch television as well, wasn't it? like viewers or watchers or yeah there were loads of different official listeners um in october 1983 when the email was just starting to be a thing

um there was a two hour program on the bbc which was uh to demonstrate little known technology and it demonstrated the first email ever shown on the bc yeah i know it's so weird isn't it so weird um but before they were transmitting the program one of the tech guys shouted the password to the email account over to someone else this was overheard by two sort of coder computery guys. And so they hacked into the email and so live on TV in 1983, the first BBC email said to the presenters. Do you want a bigger cut? No, what was it? What did it say? They wrote, they were called Oz and Yug and they left them a song saying, try his first wife's maiden name. This is more than just a game. It's real fun. Questionable. But just the same, it's hacking, hacking, hacking.

Tacking, hacking. Terrible. What a waste of a hack. The first HD channel in the Philippines was called balls. Just a fact. Do you know why it was? Yeah, because it was a sports channel. London Live, the TV channel, in its first month on eight separate occasions, its morning TV show was broadcast for a full hour to no measurable audience. And in 2010, S4C, the Welsh TV channel, they got zero viewers for 196 of their 899.99. programs. Oh my God. It's not so depressing. Just think all the effort the studio being set up, everyone

doing makeup and everything. But were the actual programs? Were they your test cards on repeat? We've seen this one. I'm not watching it again. Well, yet again, we seem to have a viewership of one. A man in London. Screw you. Speaking of these kind of clubs, it just

reminds me, there was a club called, I think they're called the white dot club. I remember this from when I used to work for a pub company. And they used to go around trying to turn off TVs in pubs because they thought it was antisocial people watching football or whatever and they should be talking to each other. And they would have these like universal remote controls

and then turn off the football when people were watching it just to stop people from watching TV. My friend had one of those in school and he would turn on TVs. Turn on TVs in the classroom when no one was watching. He was the opposite of this group. I like the Alex's idea having like a gag. gang of like rivals with the chat. We're going back and putting them on with their universal remorse.

Yeah. Coming back again. Or you're watching like the World Cup semi-final on a massive screen and then suddenly someone puts on this BBC 2 documentary. Guys, the test cards back on. All right, moving on to fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that Dr. Seuss once wrote a Warner Brothers film that was banned

because it accidentally predicted the Manhattan Project. So between 1943 and 1914, the British government enlisted Warner Brothers to produce these propaganda cartoons which showed the adventures of this guy called Private Snafu, as in Snafu, which... Situation normal all effed up. All effed up, indeed. And he was just this completely cack-handed military man, Captain Snafu, who kept on letting all the military secrets spill and messing everything up.

And, yeah, there was this one film which they wrote, and it was called going home. So Snafu takes a date to the local cinema and this film shows a news flash which says US secret weapon blasts japs because you said that in those days and then Private Snafu leans over to his

girlfriend and spills all these secrets about how they were making the bomb to her and it was incredibly close it sort of completely paralleled what the Americans were working on at the time. Do you think what they were worried about is that the Japanese would see this cartoon and think, oh my God, that's what they're going to do.

Well, I don't know. It's a good point because they did prevent them from making it. But yeah, what did they fear? Were the Japanese really going to think? I bet if the US was going to attack us, they'd broadcast it in a film a year earlier. But making a cartoon of it as well, which is traditionally kind of really stupid escapades

that would never happen in real life. Could be a double bluff. But it must have been confusing for the makers who obviously had absolutely no idea why they were told their film couldn't get made. And I mean, the coincidence is bizarre when you look at the plotline of the film. But it was quite interesting this project

and it involved all the big shots of Hollywood. So the voice of Snafu was Mel Blanc, who obviously is Bugs Bunny and loads of other Warner Brothers characters. And yeah, Dr. Seuss wrote most of the film shorts so it's thought that he almost certainly wrote that one. So, Anne, one of the last times you're on the podcast, you took exception to Dr. Seuss, didn't you?

Oh, yes. Dr. Seuss. I'm further research into this actually and while he's originally Dr. Zoyce, because that's how he would have pronounced it, once it started getting bigger in America, he apparently sort of let, took on the rhyming with goose, Zeus to rhyme with goose

because it was easier for kids. Yeah, and also he kind of liked the association with mother goose because he was a children's writer. Oh, really? He wasn't even a real doctor, maybe that's bit obvious, but he wasn't... As in he didn't have a doctorate? He did the medical writer.

Amazingly, neither his doctorate. Dray, Dray, Dr. Fox. I wasn't absolutely sure. I thought maybe he is a doctor, maybe he did a physics degree or something like that. It's because I was picturing you like as a GP when you said. Going, what's on with me? I cannot tell you.

I'll tell you arrive. It'll fix it most of the time. He and a friend invented a thing which sounds pretty terrifying, called the infantic graph that they wanted to build for the world for it. They never actually built it, but it was a thing to, you would go with your boyfriend and it would show you what your child might look like. Oh. I think that sounds creepy.

Yeah, I swear the internet can probably do that kind of thing these are they do yeah you see it on facebook don't you yeah well maybe they're maybe my friends have actually had children james keeps leaving messages to his married friends going oh don't do that it'll turn out dreadfully like you tested it out first um so age 14 dr soysse he worked for the boy scouts and the boy scouts at that time were made to or were asked to sell war bonds to help the war effort and he was one of the top ten sellers in his boy scouts and he was one of the top ten sellers in his Boy Scout Battalion or whatever they come in. And this meant that he got to meet the the president. So Teddy Roosevelt gave out ten medals to the top ten sellers of war bonds. But what

happened? It's so sad. Teddy Roosevelt up on stage is calling all these boys up and Dr. Seuss was the 10th guy there waiting. Theodore had only been given nine medals. So it got to medal number 10. Theodore went up on stage in front of his parents and all these like hundreds and hundreds of people applause. And Teddy Roosevelt just went, what on earth is this boy doing here? And then the Boy Scout leader jumped on stage and dragged him off stage to save embarrassment. And he said from that point onwards, you always had a crippling fear of public appearances. I find it a bit weird that the president's reaction on saying there were nine medals and ten people dressed as Boy Scouts, they would assume the tenth person is an imposter.

Are you sure we haven't got the wrong number of medals? Yeah. That's a really good point. I read this recently. Anna, you might know this. I don't know if it's true or not, that there are two Roosevelt's, but one of them was actually pronounced the name Roosevelt. Oh, really?

Yeah. I can't remember which is which, but one of them is, let's say, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other one is Theodore Roosevelt or the other way around, I can't remember. Why? Because they're obviously, you know, they're obviously related, so why would they have changed it? I believe it's like different branches

of the family and this branch of the family called themselves Roosevelt and this branch called themselves Roosevelt. I've not looked it up, I just heard it. War of the Ruses. So this movie, this movie that you're talking about, is it true that we're not 100% sure that it definitely was Dr.

Seuss who wrote it? As in there was no credits or anything like that. Yeah, no credits. They didn't ever credit them. Top secret. But there was a whole range of them, most of which were in Redo Tse. Most of them apparently were written by him.

But the reason we think this particularly is because of the meter of the lines, because it sounds like a lot of his kind of stuff. It's called anapestic tetrameter. And it goes, ba, bab bab bam, bab bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, bab bam, Babababababab.

Green eggs and hat. Green eggs. And it rhymes. But apparently this is that kind of meter. and he always wrote in that kind of meter. Other people, apparently, according to Wikipedia, who have this meter, include Byron's Don Duon, apparently, that has it, and also Eminem in The Way I Am.

The Way I Am. Rhymes also with Green Egg of Ham. That's a nice link, isn't it? Carving a path from Byron to Dr. Seuss, 100 years later to Eminem, 100 years later. Yeah. We like that. Dr. Seuss in 1931, illustrated a book called The

pocket book of boners. Was it a pop-up? What sort of boners? Boners in those days meant like a mistake, like a blooper kind of thing. It still does, doesn't it? No. I wouldn't Google it. Okay, time for our final fact.

And that is from James. My fact is that the phrase, why is my poop green is Googled most. commonly between five and six in the morning. God. I thought I erased my history. Between five and six a.m. So this comes from an article in the New York Times by a guy called Seth Stevens Davidovich and it's just a brilliant article with loads of times when it's most likely

that people Google things. What I don't mean by that is this is when it's most often. It's more common for people to Google it at that time than it is for them to Google it any other time. So the percentage of people searching Google for the word lonely peaks at 324am. Well, they're all doing it at the same time, so we need to bring them together. Oh yeah, so you're actually the least, if you're feeling lonely, that's when you're

actually least lonely, because everyone is feeling it too. They should have an I'm feeling lonely button next to the I'm feeling lucky button. It should pay you up with a random person. That's called chat roulette. And that's lots of boners. And the phrase how to put on a condom peaks at 10.28 p.m. Yeah, I love that because that's really, sweet that people are doing that because before we had to have like really awkward lessons in year nine

with our English teachers who told us. I think it's better than you get to ask. Do Google. You should have been the sex ed teachers really. They always doubled up. They were very similar. Actually, yeah, we had our guidance teachers, I think. Yeah. And bring hockey sticks in to hockey sticks. No. Expectations are very high. I thought I did it at your skull. Yeah. And bent at the end. Yeah. Actually, this is a slightly up topic, but speaking of, you know, girl, boy differences. I was at a pub quid this week and there was a picture, Chris. And one of the pictures was, what brand is this? Joe brand or Russell brand?

All right, yeah, good one. Yeah. So you would have given the funny answer and not got a point. The brand was a picture of a Tampax packet with everything on it except the word Tampax. And I was on a team with three boys. And they were all looking at it going, I've never seen that before. Actually, I read a thing once you said that the reason why some men will go to the fridge and say, I can't find the cheese.

And you have to go and say, it's right there is because a man's brain is more like to look for, if you're looking for cheese, looking for C-H-E-E-S-E. and so if the cheese is upside down or on the side it's not what you're looking for if you want to hide from a man stand on your head if you shave men they can't recognise each other

and then they have to fight to see who's the best wow that is that is quite something also I must say of all the cheese that I buy usually is not labelled with the massive word cheese again we're not in a cartoon the first Google computer, the first database, they built a computer housing for it with fans and a calling system

out of Lego. And you can see a picture of it, so they've got, they've still got it in like, you know, a glass display case and it's all multicolored. It kind of looks like the Google logo. The word Google is nanogram for Go Lego. It coincidental. Oh my God. I had a look at other sort of clever internet things you can track. So there's this guy called Steve Worswick who has built a chatbot called the Mits, Mitsuki. So it makes a bit. But Tzuki works by you ask her a question, and then she has, every time someone talks to her, she learns appropriate responses and she can search for things,

tries to think of a good thing to say back to you. So I asked if she knew any facts, so it might be a good short cut to things. Now we're all out of a job. She told me that butterflies taste with their feet. Oh, yeah. That's been in one of our books. And this movie she's read them. And the cats can hear ultrasound,

which is quite good. Yeah. So I tried to teach her a new fact that bananas are slightly radioactive. She said, what makes you say that? I said, oh, never mind. And then we tried. a little longer. But what I like is that obviously I was using it to try and do my work

where people are probably using it as an online girlfriend, let's be honest. So I said shall we try again? Me and teaching you the fact. She said, once more, do you mean you and me? It may require an alteration in my personality. I said, no, no, I meant the fact about bananas. It is very fun. I recommend you all try out Mitsuki. Come to facts about what happens when you Google something.

So if you Google something now, that's one of 3.5 billion things that people Google every day. 20% of those things have never been Google before. That is interesting Alex, but why is my poop green? It would be 40%, but you keep asking that. Then your query takes 0.2 seconds to go 1.5,000 miles and go through 1,000 computers to get your results.

I just find that completely mind-blown. We have access to those incredible resources. These are so easy, but they are amusing. You know the old Google Auto-Phil when people send in their Google Auto-Fills for them. Just a couple of my favorite ones. So someone typed in, is it N, letter N? And the suggestion is, is it normal for my left nipple to be bigger than my other two?

Someone typed in to Google, if I and the letter A. And the suggestion, the first suggestion was, if I ate myself, would I be twice as big or completely disappear? Wow. That's good. It's really good, isn't it? Yeah. Nobody knows. Someone typed in my and then the letter B.

and the suggestion, Google, first suggestion from Google is, my balls are stuck in my Xbox. And my ex is not happy. Okay, that's all of our facts. We'll be back again next week with another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. And in the meantime, you can get these guys

on their Twitter handles, which are, Anne. At Miller underscore Amx. James. At Egg-shaped. Alex. At Alex Bell underscore. And you can email me at podcast at QI.com.

All right. week then. Goodbye.