No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Handshake Police

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Anna, James, Dan and special guest Ella Al-Shamahi discuss unhealthy handshakes, pioneering pilots and Seattle's favourite shrink.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Before we begin, just to let you know that we have a special guest on this week. Andy is away looking at thatched roofs around the UK. And so in his place, we have got the brilliant Ella al-Shemahi. Ella is a National Geographic Explorer. She's a paleo-anthropologist, an evolutionary biologist, a stand-up comedian. She's extraordinary. And she's written this new book, which is called The Handshake, A Gripping History.

It's all about, as it says on the tin, The Handshake. You know, where did it come from? how long have we had it? Is it dead after this pandemic? It really is an awesome book. It's got amazing chapters. I mean, take this as a chapter headline. Chapter number three, finger snaps and penis shakes. Who doesn't want this book? So do go out and get it. It's available online. You can go back into physical bookshops as well to pick one up and do follow her adventures online as well. She can be found on Twitter on at Ella underscore al-Shimahi. Do that because she is packed with facts. That's right. And you'll be getting a bit of a taster of those in the upcoming episode.

but sadly, of course, Andy is going to be back next week, and he's also going to be joining us for our upcoming tour. We couldn't convince Ella to come on that instead. But yeah, we've got a tour coming up. Please join us. We are going to lots of fun places, Belfast, Birmingham, Nottingham, Peterborough, Richmond, Dublin, and then loads more. Go to no such thing as a fish.com to get tickets right now.

Okay, on with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from four undisclosed locations in the UK. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with James Markin, Anna Tashinsky, and our special guest, it is paleo-anthropologist Ella Al-Shemahi. And once again, we have gathered round our microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Ella. My fact is that an anti-handshake society was formed in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1894, because of a cholera outbreak. You paid six roubles as membership, you wore a pin to identify yourself.

And just in case you did slip up and shake hands, you had to pay three roubles as a fine. You're volunteering to be fined. If you didn't join the society, you didn't have to be fined. Yeah, I mean, there's a question about the money there, isn't it? as membership and then three every single time you shake hands. Yeah, but if you're signing up, you're fairly confident that you're not going to be doing any handshaking, right? Like, that's...

It's like instituting the swear box or something. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But I love the pin that, you know, it's basically declaring that you're really not involved at all. You're not having any part of it. Do you think that pin is so that people can see you

and think that guy is not to be handshuck? I think so. I think it's not to identify yourself, but I do have questions about how many people were actually wearing these pins? Is it just you and Mike down the street or was it actually a lot of people wearing it? You're talking about it like it was a police badge. I don't think anyone was staring at the badge anyway. It was probably a badge that was like, I love Ninja Turtles that I would wear. Like, yeah, it's on me, but no one's no one's paying attention, right? I mean, who knows? This is way back.

This is over 100 years ago. But the thing that I love about this bit is that the Lancet of all things, which is obviously a really respectable medical journal, absolutely blasted them for this and just blasted them for not refusing to shake hands during an epidemic, which is hilarious, obviously, today. And they're basically like, all these Russians, they've taken everything too seriously. They've completely lost it. And obviously, that has not aged well, has it? So they knew that shaking hands was going to be bad for the spread of cholera.

This is why they did it. So, yes, this society knew it. Obviously, generally, the people in that area didn't. And more importantly, the whole of the Western medical establishment thought they were lunatics. So this is a story that just kept getting repeated everywhere, kind of in that period, just people going, what is going on with these Russians? I mean, the Azabanii, but at the time it was, you know, they were declared as Russians. Yeah, that was a really bad cholera outbreak in Baku.

It started in 1992. And when it first got into the town, they didn't have a single microscope in the entire city. and everyone realized that there was this problem with cholera and everyone just fled. The city had 120,000 people at the start of June, and by the end of June there were only 20,000 people left in Baku. And so basically people had fled out of Baku, but it meant that they'd taken color with them on the trains and the boats to the whole rest of Russia. And then there was a cholera outbreak for two more years in the whole of Russia. and in Baku they had four doctors who were in charge of all the different sanitary sections of the town and they were called Arkangelski, Akundov, Lockerman and Dr. Corona.

He believed that. It's Russian for Crown, but he was called Dr. Corona. That's amazing. How come they spread it? Because cholera is pretty hard to spread person to person. You've got to be drinking their poo. Well, it can be... This is like a misconception, right, in the olden days.

And actually, avoiding handshaking probably wasn't fully necessary unless someone had just wiped their bomb. It can go on clothing and on bedding and stuff like that. So I think that was one way it went. So I actually think that's why the Lancet were having a go at them, because the Lancet rather racially were like, oh, the Russians have terrible sanitation, and their solution is just not to shake hands.

They're being absolutely ludicrous as opposed to, you know. But it's an interesting one, yeah, because they do say that it's not really touch that gives you cholera. Although actually refugee camps, all workers there are told not to shake hands and to have distance if there's a cholera outbreak. So presumably it's a little bit transmitted. It's feces getting in your mouth. And if you have feces on your hands, then, you know, if you got pewy hands, you could have traces.

I mean, it's easy to get traces, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I think it's just, it's only just the point that people often thought that it was really bad to be around people who had cholera in the olden days. And people would try and keep them in a different room. But actually, largely, it's just from drinking. drinking infected water. And it's so horrible when you read these tales of people being so terrified and fleeing. It's so easy to treat. It must be the easiest disease on earth to treat, right?

You die of dehydration. You can die within two hours of getting it. But if you just drink and if you drink rehydration salts, if you're super dehydrated or if you just neck water constantly, you're basically fine. Okay, so we're saying that it is water and there might be traces, but do you guys know that only 90% of people globally actually wash their hands after a number two. Did they? Really? Only 19%.

I suppose you can take out all the men, so it's, you know, 19% of the 50% of the women. You know, everyone knows that no men wash their hands after they go to the toilet. What? Is that a thing? Yeah, I heard that they actually did a study of, what's I call it, thingy stations, service stations, the men's toilets. And it was not a good site. Oh, okay. Well, that's a whole different world, a men's toys.

toilet in a service station. No, not in that way, Dan. I mean, just in terms of washing your hands afterwards. Well, no, you don't want to touch anything, even the, even the washing of the hands, you know, pressing the tap down, I feel like I'm going to get a disease in a place like that. So that's a place where you touch nothing except yourself and then go out. I don't mean. Oh, that is, that does happen a lot of service stations. Yeah, let's say. But you do wash your hands though, Dan, right? Not in service stations. I'll happily admit that. I don't touch anything. I do think men's toilets are worse because they get clean less often. I think that's a thing.

Or perhaps this is just a thing that husband's always... No, I think they're just not very clean. You are? You think they're just not clean. Like, do you think any woman would just admit to what Dan just admitted to? I think the problem is not admitting to it is really what we're saying here. We're just liars. Just on their handshakes, one more thing in Russia. This carried on for a while.

And in 1918 in St. Petersburg, there was quite a common slogan called Down with the Handshake. And you could, again, buy little badges, which had down with the handshake on because people thought the handshaking was bad. And there was a union of simplifying greetings in the 1920s, which not only banned handshakes, it also banned hugs and kisses. And Bulgarcoff writes about it in one of his early stories called Devildom. My problem with all of this is whenever we kind of talk about the handshake, you know, just how gross it is, how many people weren't shaking hands, et cetera, et cetera, at various times

because of things. I always just think once upon a time on our planet there were penis handshakes and we're mortified. Dan still does that in the welcome break every weekend, don't you? What is a penis handshake? Does that two penis is shaking or one hand and one penis? No, it's

one hand shakes the penis and this was by one tribe in Australia and you know it's only recently extinct I think it became extinct to the 1950s so what it is is one village, one group of people from one village comes to another group. The visitors, they offer their penises to the people who are home, you know, who are at home, basically.

It's like bringing a bottle of wine to a party. Exactly. Exactly. If the men at home, if one of them refuses to shake it, that's akin to a declaration of war. So then the panicked visitor offers it to all the other guys and the hopes that one of them shakes it. because if one of them shakes it, it's basically, we vouch for you, mate. He's probably all right. Fascinating, absolutely amazing. Oh, my God. How long did this last for? You said it ended in, what, the 50s? Yeah, so the last reference, so the reference we have of it, kind of a really detailed anthropological study, was in the 1950s. And then we don't really know anything after that. And it's just really hard to know what really went down, if that makes sense.

Also, because I've got to be honest, as an anthropologist, sometimes I feel like anthropologists turn up someone. where and tribes just do whatever they want. There's always a bit of me that's like... So you think this tribe is like, yeah, we do this every day, mate. Yeah, of course you do. They're behind the corner, they're just giggling to themselves, going, I believe you swallowed it, not literally swallowed it. I found it really fascinating reading about handshakes,

both historical and modern ones. And some of my favorite ones that I've discovered, probably my favorite, whenever Prince Charles used to participate in a tree planting ceremony. He'd always give one of the branches a handshake and wish it well before leaving. Was that the penis handshake or your standard, just hand on twig, right? Just hand on twig. Oh God, yeah. Trolls knob out, just waiting. For the win to brush a branch against it. If he doesn't accept, he goes to the other trees. Please, one of you.

What I found really interesting about this fact, what I liked about it. The initial fact is just the idea that we've been doing some of the same stuff for so long. You know, we say there's a disease spreading, don't handshake today. The same back then. And I hadn't quite realised how widespread that advice was around pandemic time. So there was, like it went out of fashion basically always when there was an illness around, didn't it, in the early 20th century. You're right. You keep seeing it time and time again. So Prescott, Arizona actually banned the handshake during the Spanish flu. They just made it illegal. And you do see stuff like that during different pandemics and epidemics, people either shun it or they actually completely ban it.

So it's not the first time at all. You know, if they had handshake police sort of going down the street, throwing people apart. I suppose they must have. I'd love to have that. I'm not really sure how they would have policed it. I guess it's like everything. How on earth do you police any of this stuff? I guess you would just grass on your neighbours doing their handshakes, wouldn't you?

That's what usually happens. It's probably like today. You can't police any. It's like diversion. I was in, like, Yemeni is a very, very, very, I'm Yemeni originally, Yemeni is very famous for polygamy. Like, it's a really big thing. Men tend to have loads of wives.

I was in a cab. There's a Yemeni taxi driver. And I was like, how's your dad handling lockdown? He was like, oh, he's been a bit naughty. He went out and visited his second wife. It's just like, first of all, that's so typically Yemeni. Secondly, how do you police that? Like, I'm going to go see my second wife.

Like, how are the police going to get involved with any of this stuff? Yeah. Yeah. That's just an extended. bubble, isn't it? Ella, there's a thing that you say in the book, which I found quite surprising. I think when you read facts about handshakes, a lot of a sort of very classic fact that's out there, which turns out to be wrong, is that the handshake was sort of, came about during

medieval times to show you didn't have a weapon in your hand and that you were presenting an open palm to show you. But that turns out, that's, well, according to your book, completely wrong, right? Yes, yes. my research very much is against this. But I love that I've now become the authority on the handshake in this country. I just don't know how this happened, but I'm completely loving it of all the random things. I think the sport was open.

There wasn't an established handshake authority. All right, Anna. All right. All right. You haven't toppled. No, but yeah. So I kind of looked into it and it just never made any sense. And my argument is that the handshake is biological.

And I've got two arguments for this to support it rather. One is the chimps shake hands. So chimps and bonobos shake hands. Dr. Kat Hobater showed that the chimp handshake actually has a very similar meaning to our own. So she's got like, for example, videos of two chimps, kind of really going at each other in a fight and then kind of sheepishly walking up to each other and shaking hands to make up, which is adorable. So if you think about it, our closest living relatives are the chimps and bonobos. It kind of makes sense that, you know, that's by dissent.

So I'm arguing that the handshake is seven million years old. But the coolest bit that kind of supports this is that we actually transfer chemo signals, chemical signals, via handshakes, and there's data to show that we actually sniff our hands afterwards. I know that sounds absolutely mad, but chemo signals are something a lot of us don't really realize are actually going on. So I think we accept that, you know, the animals and the animal kingdom communicate with each other chemically, but we like to think that our communications are all via like sonnets and, you know, language and what have you. but it's absolute bull because we do communicate with each other chemically. So they did these crazy experiments where they got gauze. They put it under people's armpits. They got them to watch, you know, stressful films or happy films.

And then they took that gauze to a different group of participants. And they go, point to the bottle that has gauze in it that is like, it smells like happiness. And they were getting it right more than you'd expect by chance. So when we shake hands, you're saying we're trying to tell someone, I'm really happy. or I'm freaking out. And we're hoping that you smile your hands afterwards and you go, oh God, are you okay? Yeah, yeah.

There's one institute, the Wiseman Institute, they actually put hidden cameras on people and they showed that people were more likely to put their hand to their nose and take a sniff after they shake hands than if they greet in a different way. So we're just animals, basically. Whenever I close a Zoom call, I always sniff my computer afterwards.

That's why, just in case. I can gain some information. Anything is your computer sad? No, but I've had colourer quite badly this whole time. Right. So we do know it's covered in your own features. I think most people could have worked that out anyway. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is the 2013 recipient of the Amelia Earhart pioneering achievement award,

who later successfully completed Amelia Earhart's fatal circumnavigation of the world is called Amelia Earhart. What? Did she change her name for it? She did not change her name. She was born. Amelia Rose Earhart. She was named that by her parents because they wanted to inspire her by pairing her up as a namesake to one of the great aviators of all time. And I don't believe that there's any kind of aviation history in her family. She tried to find out if she was actually descended from Amelia O'Hart in any way if she was a relative

because they lived fairly close to each other and it turns out there's nothing that connects them. She hired a genealogist who looked into it and said that she was connected as far back as the 1700s and then she found a sort of second advanced team who said there's absolutely no traceable connection. So weird. Yeah.

My brother is having a kid and we're like names aren't important and now I'm like, no, names are definitely, definitely important. They're so random. I think if you want someone to win a prize and you actually give them the name of that prize, like if your brother decides to call his child the Nobel Prize for chemistry or something, and he might have a chance.

I mean, he won't have a chance in school. But you know, having friends, it just detracts from all that time you can spend doing chemistry, doesn't it? That's the thing. Hold on. So she was the first, she couldn't have been the first. person to then redo it? No, no, she wasn't the first person to redo it.

She's the second youngest ever to do it, though, which is a pretty amazing feat in itself. No, it was done solo by another person a few years beforehand. The media reported that she had done it because I think it felt like a better story. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, when you say, because I couldn't help noticing that in your wording, you said she successfully completed Amelia Earhart's fatal circumnavigation. So she didn't complete the fatal bit, right?

She decided to remain alive throughout. Is that correct? Yes. She survived. It was a cheat. That would be really sticking to the cause, wouldn't it, to think, well, I've really got to follow her into her potstapes and disappear as well. Yeah. Especially not knowing where she disappeared. Like, that's quite a feat.

Well, the thing is, though, so we don't know the exact spot where Amelia Earhart disappeared, but we know roughly the area. It's Howland Island is the general area. This is a place that is in the Pacific Ocean. It's halfway between Hawaii and Australia. There were ships in the immediate area that were on radio contact with Amelia Earhart trying to help guide her there. So it was her, it was her co-pilot who really doesn't feature much in this story. You know, don't die next to someone famous, you know, don't feel like to someone famous. This really is the great example of that.

Because most people didn't even know there was another dude there. I just think it was her. I always thought she tried it alone And I couldn't believe I found myself researching this and thinking We've really got to rejuvenate the reputation of the man in this story Because he's getting way too much kudos for it Fred Noonan

And he was a navigator He was brought on to be able to navigate Using the Stars and help them find Where she was going She was going to do a lot of it solo But I think he was so good at what he did That he sort of hitched the ride For much more of it than he was meant to

And he's a guy who was known for surviving stuff He used to work on ammunition ships during wars, and he was on three separate vessels that were all sunk by U-boats, and he survived. So, you know, this is a guy with a good survival rate. I would think of that as a bad omen, because that certainly implies that my plane's going to go down and crash, and I'm going to die, but he'll walk away, Scott three.

Possibly. This is like I went through a five-year period every time I turn up on an expedition somewhere that was coming out of war, suddenly would go straight back into war the minute I would turn up. And it was like, my brother was like, do you think your curse? I was like, maybe. Is it true that Amelia Earhart got ripped apart by crabs?

That's what I always read at the end. Well, this is one of the latest theories. So Howland Island is the island that she was meant to be landing on. There's another island next to it, which is Gardner Island. And it's thought that that is where she turned and landed on a reef, survived, and then was eventually killed by giant crabs, which ate her, carried her bones to the holes that they dig and left her down there. So that is a theory.

And one of the last expeditions, which I believe happened in about 2017, 2018, they had bone-sniffing dogs to try and find her. And bone-sniffing dogs can smell quite far down. And so the hope was that they were going to find her. And I think they found some bones, but I don't think it was hers. That is a dog's dream job, isn't it? I'm going to literally employ you to find bones. Yeah, that is amazing.

The only better job is chasing post-med, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I think they did an experiment where they tested how well she could have been consumed by these crabs. And it was coconut hermit crabs, which we must have mentioned before, and they are giant crabs. So the largest land crab, they're like three feet wide. They can kill birds and climb trees and stuff. And their claws produce double the force of a tiger's bite. so they can just crunch through bones.

And I think the scientist took a pig carcass to the beach where they found these sort of remnants that could be Amelia Earhart. I think they found like lipstick remnants and stuff, so they thought she'd been there. So they brought a pig carcass to the beach and they left it there and there's a time lapse that I believe you can watch which shows the crabs just destroying this thing, turning it to nothing within a week.

It's really cool. But she wasn't killed by them, which should be clear. Although that would have been an awesome way to go. Well, we don't know. We don't know anything. We don't know when she might have been murdered by the coconut crab. There's so many theories, aren't there, that have come out about this over the last 70-odd years about her disappearance. And everything from alien abduction through to she was captured by Japanese soldiers and was broadcasting as Tokyo Rose to, you know, all stuff like that.

It's pretty exciting when you go through the big list. Yeah. I know you guys deal with facts, but in terms of feelings, do you think? that, you know, if she was in any way kind of aware of what was going on, there's a bit of her that's like, damn, I didn't succeed, but they're still obsessed with me. Do you know what I mean? Like, the world is still like, what happened to Amelia Earhart? Yeah, I hope she's, yeah, she's up there going, thank God they've forgotten all about that Noonan guy. She was really pro kind of getting as many women to fly airplanes as possible, wasn't she? She was the first president of the 99s, which was a group of

women who basically were dedicated to ice creams, weren't they? That was it. That was all they used to do, just eat ice creams all day. They had 99 problems, but a flake wasn't one. Oh, God. But they really, basically, the first licenses you could get in America were in 1927, and within two years were 9,000 men with licenses and only 117 women. And so they started this club to try and encourage more women to fly. and there were some amazing people who were part of it.

There was one woman called Opal Cuntz, who was part of the 99s. And she was one of the first women to, sorry what? No, no, let's not brush over that. Can you just say the name once more? Opal Cunts. Opal Cunts was one of the first people to fly against men in races. And she used to win them as well. She was a really, really good racing pilot.

And there was a thing in 1929. where it was the first women's air derby where they went all the way across America from Santa Monica to Cleveland, Ohio. And the newspapers called it the powder puff derby because it was all women taking part. There were 40 people who took part and she would have won it,

but they said that her aircraft must have a horsepower appropriate for a woman. In other words, her plane was too fast. They wouldn't let her fly it, so she had to fly in a slower aeroplane and she came seven. I want to use, her surname to describe them. Is that bad? No, you're quite right. And then the other thing about

the 99s is Amelia Earhart had a thing called the Hat of the Month program and she would give it to whichever member of the club flew to the most airports wearing Estetson hat that she'd designed herself. Oh, cool. That is so weird because she initially preferred hats to planes. What? This is her origin story. Amelia Earhart. It's really great. She wrote a diary that's quite detailed. So we know lots about what she thought. And she saw her very first aeroplane when she was at the Iowa State Fair and there were planes there. And so she was 10 years old. She saw this plane and was like, I wasn't interested at all. It was just a bunch of kind of wood and wire. And someone said, look, dear, it flies. And she said, I was much more interested in an absurd

hat made from an inverted peach basket that I just bought. And so that was her first love. So maybe she was all about the hats. The whole plane thing. was so that she could get this Dexham Hat competition going. You're right. She had her own fashion label, didn't she? I think. Yeah. Back then it was really hard to fund all of these projects.

And she wrote some books and she used to go on lecture tours. But one of the other things she did was become one of the first for the modern era celebrity fashion designers. And she had her own line, this Amelia Earhart fashion line, where she would incorporate bits of airplane onto the clothing as well. So she would have wing bolts and she would have, you know, sort of little... Did she invent that? You know, that hat that people wear with a, like, a rotor on the top of it?

Did she invent that? Oh, God, I wish you did. No, I don't think so. I'm going to speak to my expedition buddies, because right now we're trying to approach, like, Dell to give us, like, funding. And I'm like, no, no, guys, let's just go, you know, design a fashion line to fund our expeditions. It kind of pioneered fashion a bit as well, didn't it? Because up until then, women were wearing one piece. suits or dress or it was always one thing. And she, with this fashion line, created the idea,

or at least popularized it quite nicely, separates, the idea of matching this with this, this skirt, with this jacket, with this shirt. You know, you buy in different pieces. And that really wasn't a thing back then. And she kind of pushed it to be as part of her line. Wow. Ella, what was the name of that company that you want to give you some money for your next exhibition? Was it Dell, the makers of amazing computers that everyone should go and buy computers from? Dell, but I'll take IBM. I'll take anyone.

I will take anyone and then I will... I can't need to stop actually. Because I actually didn't need funding. I will take anyone. Yeah, Dell were all ready to sign off on that, you know, until you've picked yourself out to all of their competitors. Oops. Oh well. Do you know, she did have one successful.

fundraising thing, which is what did fund her trips, and that was carrying letters. No. She wasn't a carrier pigeon. She was a postwoman. Okay? This is actually her career. No, she was, she had this idea of basically crowdfunding by saying that she would take letters that people had written with commemorative stamps that said, like, I went all the way

around the world with Amelia Earhart, or I went over the Atlantic with Amelia Earhart. So I think across the Atlantic, she had 100. or so commemorative stamps and she'd sign them. And on her round-the-world trip, that plane, when we find it, we'll have 5,000 stamped letters in. And she said that she's... It must have been such a hassle on every stop along the way. She had to postmark every single one of those letters.

She had to just to sack 5,000 letters down to the local post office in wherever, Hawaii. I wonder if they told the bone-snipping dogs, you know, she used to be a postwoman, just to give them that extra bit of incentive. You know what? This makes me feel better that even Amelia Earhart struggled with financing her expeditions. This is just information I needed, Anna.

Bless you, thank you. That's offered to deliver mail as part of them. Where are you next going? I'm sure there are people who have less... Somaliland? Perfect. If anyone's got a friend in Somaliland, you need to write a letter.

LFU woman. She charges a grander letter. Thank you. So Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. But she was actually the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane where she wasn't a solo flyer. And that was when she was a guest in the plane of Wilma Stultz and a guy called Slim Gordon. And she spent the flight crouched in between the fuel tanks of the plane. So she went as a passenger over.

but she said that she was no more useful than a sack of potatoes. When you can eat potatoes. Yes, they are useful, actually. She was less useful. You can make them into loads of different things, potatoes. They're probably one of the most useful of all the vegetables, aren't they? They're more edible than Amelia Earhart unless you're a coconut crab. They're less good at flying a plane, are they in emergency situations?

That's true. You wouldn't call on, you might call on Mr. Potato Head if you're really desperate, but he's probably the only potato you want. Yeah, that was actually what launched her flying career guesting. No, it wasn't what launched it, sorry, but that really propelled her to stratospheric heights, as it were, career-wise, because she was put up to it by another woman called Amy Phipps guest, who was actually this millionaire, and this woman, Amy Phipps wanted to make the crossing. She was like, women can do just as much as men can do.

I want to cross the Atlantic with these two chaps. And her family just begged her not to go. We're like, we love you too much. You're too rich. Come on, stay. So she said, okay, well, find me a suitable woman. And she hired a guy called George Putnam to find a woman who she wanted to be adventurous, but actually in Amelia's diary by the time they tracked her down,

they were looking for someone with social graces, education, charm and pulchritude. So the men had obviously slightly changed the advert on the way. G.S.O.H. Yeah. But George Putnam found her and ended up marrying her as well as getting her on the flight. And when do we ever hear about George Polkman? Exactly. More airtime for George.

So she had a wealthy benefactor to start off with? She did. This podcast is quickly becoming a how-to fund my next expedition girl. Find a rich woman. I hear Mrs. Melinda Gates comes to money. I don't know what the people at Dell are going to think about that. I'll take any of them. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that scientists have started putting fossilised poos in particle accelerators. Why, Anna? Cool is that? Well, A, it's fun. And B, you can learn loads about the poo. And so these are... A minute. So, Anna, so a particle accelerator, you get like an electron and you fire it round a great big tunnel

and they smash into each other. Are they firing poos around this tunnel and smashing into each other or are? The poos are not taking the place of the electrons. No, although that would be such an awesome way to find the gold particle. No. It's gross.

You don't want to be the cleaner in the lab that day. Oh, guys. It's not messy. Don't panic. It's in like a little test tube. So this is this really amazing new way that they found of studying coprolites. So coprolites are fossilized feces, and you can learn a lot about the thing that pooed out millions and millions of years ago, because it's preserved the stuff that they were eating inside it.

And we said years ago on this podcast that the only way to study a coprolite is to cut it in half, or to cut it into slices. Now, not true anymore, because you can put it in these very specific particle accelerators called synchrotrons. And so there's one called the European synchrotron radiation facility. And basically, you put the poo in there. and the electrons are being fired round and round around super, super fast. And if you just slightly change the electrons direction along the way, they let out x-rays, but incredibly powerful x-rays. So their x-rays are 100 billion times brighter

than the ones that you'd use in a hospital. So they see straight into the coprolite, and they have lots of other purposes as well. But coprolite is one thing they do. It does feel cheaper, though, just to cut it in half with a knife, doesn't it? Yeah, if you don't have the budget. But also then you've destroyed your coprolite. Then you've got two half coprolites, don't you?

This way you can keep the integrity of it. That's true, yeah. Although as you just sort of trod on your own point, James, because then you do have two coprolites, which does seem like it's twice as good as having one, isn't it? In some ways. That's true. I've got a pizza to sell you,

which is eight slices as opposed to six slices. Damn it. But one person we haven't mentioned is Mary Anning, who was one of the first people to work out what a coprolite was. Right? So she is these days a famous fossil collector from the south of England. Some people think that it's where we get she sells seashells on the seashore.

It was supposedly named after her, whether it was, we don't know. But when you say these days, you mean she's famous these days, not that she's a fossil collector these days, right? She is herself quite close to being a fossil by now. She is quite dead. She is quite a dead person. It's what she would have wanted. It's fine. I know, I know.

She was perhaps not really appreciated her time, although a little bit more than you would expect because she worked with a guy called William Buckland, who was a very famous paleontologist. And when he wrote his paper, when he gave his paper to the Geological Society in London in 1829, he did recognize her by name. So, you know, she was kind of known in her time, but she wasn't allowed to be part of the Geological Society because they didn't allow women in those days. There was the director of the Lyme Regis Museum called David Tucker. He says that if she was born in 1970, she'd beheading up the paleontology department at

Imperial or Cambridge by now. But as it was, she was just someone who collected fossils and learned about them and kind of wrote to this guy, William Buckland. But it was in the correspondence between these two people that the word coprolite first came into use and the idea that these rocks with little bits of bone and stuff might be fossilized poos. It does feel like Buckland could have done a bit more to sort of give her a bit more cred because he did clearly get on with her really well and took her seriously, took her ideas seriously as well. But when these ideas were being presented to other scientists, they even

used her drawings of the dinosaurs that she sketched out that she found, would no mention of her name. That was what was shown, and she got nothing. It's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, what was going through their heads? Did they look at those drawings you wonder and think, maybe I did draw that. Maybe I did find that fossil, actually. I don't remember everything I've done. Because she sort of invented, I think this is right, she invented the idea of drawing our imaginings of what these things that we found the fossils of would look like. So, the reason that we now can picture like a T-Rex or a diplodocus or whatever, is because she came up with, look, we've got to draw these things so people don't understand how they appeared.

But there's a really cool thing about the drawings that she did, which is that she drew fossils with fossils. So she had a friend called Elizabeth Philpott, who was another great fossil collector at the time. And they found this bellumite fossil, which I think is an extinct kind of squid. And they found that it contained fossilized ink sacks. So you have squid ink, squid ink sax. And her friend, Elizabeth Fulpuk, realized that you can grind it up and still make ink. So Mary Anning then used that process to grind it up.

And with this 100 million year old squid ink, she drew some of her pictures. That is amazing. I have questions about this. How rare are those fossils? Because I just feel like today, I wouldn't get away with that. Yeah, it's right. Just filling up your lammy pen with some 100 million-year-old fossils.

You're right. But aside from that, she was very cool. She was very attached to her dog, which very sadly died when she was out on a fossil collecting trip. And she wrote a sweet letter saying that... She writes in the dog's blood? Yeah, she was out fossil collecting and this cliff collapsed and nearly killed her. Basically, this huge cliff fell down, inches away from her and crushed her little dog.

Oh, no. Just one last thing on Mary Anning. I said about David Tucker at the Lime Regis Museum. The Lyme Regis Museum, you can go and learn some stuff about Mary Anning, and it is in the place where she was born. That's where the museum is, but it's a complete coincidence that it's in that same building. No. Yeah, they bought this place and they didn't realize that that was where she was born. And it turned out that the actual area where the family lived has since fallen into the sea,

but it was a bit of the building that was attached to where they lived, which is now where the museum is. Wow. Is that the bit that squashed the dog? Wouldn't that be a thing if that was true? Oh my goodness. It sort of swings aroundabouts, you know. We lost the dog. We've now got a seafront view. It's so dark. The oldest human coprolite we have in existence is a Neanderthal one from 50,000 years ago in a Spanish site. And what I love most about it is it was on top of a hearth. So you've got to imagine there was a fire. They put the fire out.

And the guy was like, just give me a second, give me a second, lads. I'm just going to do a number two. Probably didn't wash his hands. You might know him, Dan. And then went about his business. I mean, it's descended. But yeah, it's just, it's kind of wonderful. Wow.

Pooing in the fireplace. No manners than Neanderthals. That's why they died out. What did we learn about that? Do we learn anything about that Neanderthal poo? Like what they ate and stuff like that? Yes. So it turns out they, um, they obviously,

they ate meat, that's not surprising, but they did eat veggies, which some people still find surprising. I don't know why. Why would that be weird? But they also found a whole pile of parasites, so pinworms and a whole pile of other stuff that I think if they'd have found them in a modern human, they would say that person would be very, very sick. So either they were really hardy, basically, or the poor guy was really, or woman, was really sick. But also, I just, I kind of, I love human poop, like coprolites because, sorry, I probably shouldn't say, it like that. But it's just that, you know, when people talk about the paleo diet, for me, kind of people that really into the paleo diet, there's always a bit of boogeiness

about it. Don't get me wrong. I'm quite bougie as well, but there's an element of like, oh, you know, there's this like, blah, blah, blah. And it's actually like, well, the real paleo diet. These guys all had worms and they're all dead by 30. And, you know. And shitting on the fire. Exactly. Exactly. Like, I got a kick out. And there was this one paleo diet restaurant. And I was trying to explain to the lady in the paleo diet restaurant, as you do as an academic, you know, just completely obnoxious. Actually, the real paleo diet wouldn't have been the chicken breasts. It would have been all parts of the chicken.

So are you serving chicken eyes? And how do you do with the animals? Are you so the poor girl? Oh, no. Speaking of technology being used for studying Neanderthals, I was reading this in BBC Future, and they said that in 2013, they discovered that the genetic code for penis spines is lacking from Neanderthals,

which means that we know in theory that they didn't have spines on their penises. And what that apparently shows us is that they were more monogamous than we might have thought they were in the past because usually the animals with penis spines are more like people from Yemen. They tend to have.

Oh my God. You're not so dad, you're telling. I won't point somebody turned around and was like, why don't you marry a second wife, Dr. Alshamahe? And my dad was like, oh, one's enough for me. My mom's reaction was, ah, no, hold on, that's an insult. But I love that they can look at the genomes of these, like, ancient, like, long, long, dead species of humans and can tell you something as kind of weird as that, how many sexual

partners they might have had. That's extraordinary. So do you mean kind of like a penis bone is what you're talking about when you're No, so like animals would have spikes on their penises, a lot of them do. Spike. Sorry, I heard spine. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, I did say spine, I suppose.

Yeah, it was all spines like spines. And the spikes were basically clearing out previous gentleman's stuff that was in there using these. Exactly. And so it's more necessary for a polyamorous species because you're more likely to have stuff to clean out from there, so to speak. Oh, interesting. So Neanderthals were all romantic, monogamous romance. That's what we're going to do. Yeah, let's go with that.

There were romantic. And I read another study. This is from the University of California, San Diego Laboratory. And they made some tiny brains. They're not conscious brains, but they're kind of brain cells. And using CRISPR, which is like the gene editing thing, they made some that were human and some that had Neanderthal genes in them. And the Neanderthal ones matured much quicker than the human ones did.

And what they inferred from that is that perhaps younger Neanderthals would be more capable than younger humans, but then perhaps the Homo sapiens, as they got older, would have gotten better or smarter. I don't know. If any of this is true, Ella, Emma. No, it's completely, completely true, as I would expect from you, James. But no, yeah, they're called organoids. That's what they made, these kind of little brain things. And it's really interesting because it plays into this theory.

Anna, what you're saying, you know, why did they die out? Well, there's this one theory that suggests that because we, we as in modern humans, homo sapiens, have an extended juvenile period, basically we don't become adults very quickly at all, that that's given us a competitive advantage because it means we play and play is really good for creativity, imagination, invention, blah, blah, blah. And obviously it's absolutely, it's not impossible to prove it, but it's, I mean, it is kind of, I guess. but it's just really interesting to think that the Neanderthals kind of growing up so quickly

might be one of the reasons why they became extinct but you are right as well when you say that we kind of know we kind of know a certain amount about Neanderthal Neanderthals from their DNA we know a lot about them from their DNA including obviously that all of us have about 2% Neanderthal

DNA in us so all a wee bit Neanderthal which is you know I think is really cute because it means they're not completely gone they're still with us a little bit Yeah If you have more you know how Dan is like a particularly hairy man? Does that mean that he's more likely to have more Neanderthal in him?

Or does it not kind of, can you not see from the outside how Neanderthal someone is? You have to go into the jeans. Yeah, you have to go into the jeans. Because as hairy as Neanderth as Harry as Neanderthal might be, as hairy as Dan might be. Sorry, Dan. We actually, we don't actually know that Neanderthals were hairy. That's kind of just something that got into public imagination. But no.

Okay. There's no real, you know what I mean? How do you even prove that? We don't know. How about the fact that I keep ruining parties by having a shit on the fireplace? You can't blame that on your jeans. So gross. Okay, it is time for fact number four, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that Frasier Crane was an early investor in Microsoft. How? Because one of them's real. One of them is real. Which one? How did they cross this weird space of time? And why did he not go with Dell, which is a far superior company? So Frasier Crane, obviously fictional character from the incredibly popular American sitcom Frasier. Microsoft, obviously, a real company.

And this is a made-up backstory, which we found out about because our old friend Richard Osman tweeted that he didn't understand how Frasia could possibly afford to live in such a nice apartment in Seattle on his wages. And then one of the writers, Joe Keenan, replied and said that they'd kind of talked about it in the writers' room on occasion, and they said that they decided that he must have invested his money from his Boston practice very wisely, perhaps in a friend's Seattle software startup. And we can only infer from that that the Seattle software startup must be Microsoft because apart from anything else, Bill Gates was on Frazier as a character. And in that episode, he did say he was a fan of Frazier. So he didn't mention that Frazier had invested in his company beforehand. But, you know, that's what I mean. That's a bit goge, isn't it? You don't say that in public. Exactly. That's, yeah. There is an episode where one of his, I think it's his nephew or someone who's coming into town and he desperately wants to get a tour of the Microsoft offices. And Frazier's desperately looking for any. contact that he has. It's just curious that as an investor, he didn't have an inn.

I think what happened is that he'd sold all his shares at that point and people had got a bit upset because it had forced the price down and they, I'm just making stuff up there. I totally believe. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you're right, because there was that, it was Freddie, so it was his son and he was trying to find somebody that knew anyone at Microsoft and then he convinced Ros to get in contact with an ex-boyfriend. And even when, because this is like a mega fan talking here, even when Bill Gates comes in, he calls him, it's very clear that they don't know each other very well at all.

And he calls him Sir. And I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I think these writers. It might be a cover-up, like how probably Boris Johnson would call James Dyson, sir, if he walked in. You know, sometimes you don't want to be open about quite how tight you are to power. Yeah. Never know. I mean, also, I'm not part of the investor class.

So I also just don't know if you even need to know Bill Gates to invest in Microsoft. I'm assuming maybe you don't. Yeah, that's true, actually. If you were to buy some stocks in Tesla, you don't have to have an interview with Elon Musk beforehand to make sure that he likes you. He's a friend of me. Probably a good thing. You know, they're rebooting.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know I feel like I'm going to have to go back and watch it all from the start because I've just seen it very sporadically. Well, you should actually start from Cheers and properly. watch his character development. It's like delicious. Well, that's, so we should say this is the most interesting thing about Frasier is that it's a spin-off series of one of the other most

most popular American sitcoms of all time. Cheers. And he was a character who just came in and sat at the bar. He was only meant to be in for a few episodes, but he proved to be so popular with audiences that they wrote him into the series more and more. And eventually, when they ended, they thought, what are we going to do next as a team? And Frazier was this spinoff. You know, That's happened a couple of times. It even used to annoy me when I was younger that it felt like there was a disconnect between his character there

and then his character in Frasier or it was like kind of confusing to my young head. I was like, how is that the same person? And he seems a bit different. And there is lots of inconsistency as a super fan which must stress you out, Ella, surely. Like, I think his, it's mentioned that he has a horrible relationship

with his dad or something in Cheers. Still does, though. Actually, I think he still does. I think in Cheers, they said that his father was dead. Yes. And then when another character from Cheers came to visit him in the second sitcom, he said, I thought you said your father was dead.

And he said, oh, we were fighting. So that's how they taught that. I see, clever. Good little work around there. They do a few things like that, yeah. So the Cheers was set in Boston. And they wanted to have this new sitcom, but they didn't want it to be too close to Boston

because then you would have to deal with all the previous characters. and you would have to explain why they're not there, etc. But if you move to the other side of the country, you can get away with it. So they're going to move to Denver, Colorado. But then in 1992, there was a group called Colorado for Family Values that pushed an amendment, which was described by the writers of Chairs as an egregious anti-gay amendment,

which was basically stopping any gay rights in Colorado. And if you read the newspapers from the time, it was a huge, huge, huge deal. A load of films stopped being filmed there. They were going to do a Stephen King movie there and they didn't do it in Colorado. And then David Lee, who was one of the show's creators, said that they were going to do, they were going to put Frazier in Colorado in Denver, but they had to move it away from there because they didn't want to be associated with this anti-gay amendment.

And then in 1996, four years later, the US Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional, so it got kicked out anyway, but they lost all of this kind of investment and all of these shows and stuff just refuse to go to Colorado. In your face, Colorado. That's what you get. Because I feel like I know the space needle now because of, because of Frasier. Yes. Yeah.

But they all did cameo in Frasier at times, didn't they? Except one main Chir's character who was Rebecca, who actually is probably maybe the most annoying Chir's character anyway, I think, from what I vaguely remember. But she never guessed it in Frasier and it was, an actress is called Kirstie Alley. and she said that she turned it down because as a Scientologist, her beliefs forbid things like psychiatry. So Scientologists are very anti-psychiatry, which I didn't realize. How interesting.

Yeah. Although she did give an interview saying this, and then the show creator, David Lee, said, I don't remember asking her. Or I think I don't remember asking you so. Oh, I mean, she was a big deal. She would have been asked at some point. She would have been asked, yeah.

You know, Kelsey Grammer in that show, quite a fascinating story of how he went from being this character that was just a normal actor. And it happens in these sitcoms where the actor becomes the biggest part of the show generally. They become an exact producer. They start directing. His power grew so great as he was going on that he could start pulling these power moves, which felt really bizarre. So one of the things was he employed an acting method that he called requisite disrespect.

And the thing was, is that he said he would rehearse each scene, only once and he would not learn his lines until moments before the scene was shot. And in some case, he would go, okay, I'll do it better, and not even use the lines. He said he'd played the role so long that he could now embody any kind of remark that would come out of Frazier better than a scriptwriter and just became Fraser Crane himself. I'll just say whatever I want to say in this show now. That's kind of, you know, it works. The best actor in Fraser, of course, was Moose, who played the dog Eddie.

and he retired at the end of season 7 and his son Enzo took over the role but what I find interesting about that is Moose had been deliberately bred to create a new child which would look enough like him that they would be able to bring him in when he retired which I think is just a really interesting idea of imagine that happened with humans that you're an actor in a show and they're like okay we're going to find someone for you to mate with who looks the right kind of person that when you have kids they'll be able to come up and take your place.

Well, and they cocked it up a bit, didn't they? Because they had to paint Enzo's fur to match his dad. Didn't quite nail the patterns. Yeah. And also they hated each other. What the father and son? Father and son. The creator, Peter Casey, called their relationship

a classic parent-child Hollywood rivalry. And by all accounts, Moose was horrible. So Eddie, quite lovable on the show. Moose was like, bitey. Everyone hated him. Like the train. didn't like anyone else on set and really hated his son, Enzo. They had to be kept apart.

Do you think they were basically mirroring the Frazier and his father's relationship? I hope there's a behind-the-scenes documentary where it's from their perspective, bickering at each other, and you've just got Frazier and the dad in the background. Well, didn't the dad actually adopt? Didn't he adopt? I think Ros did. The actor who played Ross, Perry Gilpin. Yeah.

Right. My favorite fact about Frazier is that the pilot was six minutes too long. And they chopped and chopped and chopped. And finally, they had a pilot that ended up a 60 seconds longer than it should have been for the slot. So they handed it in and they said, we're sorry, we just can't do anything. It's 60 seconds too long. And amazingly, the network went, okay. So NBC agreed with it.

And they found extra time by taking 15 seconds of four other shows that were airing that night. That's how you know you're the favourite of the night. You say like if you remember that one episode of like party of five where it ends really abruptly, that was probably the night that Frasier went out. You remember that game of basketball where it was all tied up with 15 seconds left and they just turned it up? Lisa Kudrow, who plays Phoebe in Friends, actually had the job of Ross initially and got fired before they even really started. Oh no. And you're saying, Ros, not Ross, aren't you?

because for Lisa Cudrow to be cast as Ross would be a very long. Also, what a random fact to suddenly throw away that like. We're talking about pressure here, come on. Sorry, Rose, that was supposed to be Lisa Cudrow. It was Lisa Cudrae and then she got fired and you can imagine, like, well, she has

stories about how people were so shocked that she got fired from this massive show that they were like looking at her like, oh, we are so sorry. Like she just wanted to just die basically. She fell on feet in the Right. She probably, she went to a fortune teller who was like, it's okay, I see big things for you. And I was like, it's absolutely bullshit, Lisa.

Your career is over. Well, she said that she was so depressed. I think that day or that kind of, in those few days, she went to a party and she was just like, oh, this is so, I'm so past it. I've got nothing else. And she sees this cute guy and she just goes, why not? Nothing else. Who cares? I'm just going to go hit on him.

And she ended up marrying him. So it's kind of a woman who's just managed to make it all work for her from being, you know, fired. It's amazing what Scientology can do, isn't it? No, no, no, no. Lisa Goodrow is like a nice Jewish girl. Hey, question, which actor in Frazier is from Manchester? Oh, well, Jane leaves? Jane leaves? The British one.

Incorrect. So, it's devastated to learn this. She's not. I think she grew up in East Grinstead, which is very much the south of England. And I'm a Scientology, so, Christi Allie. Guys, stop making everyone on Fraser a Scientologist.

This is like really upsetting me. It's a broad church. No, so she was asked to do that accent. That wasn't a real accent, and she's from there. But John Mahoney, who plays Martin, the dad, is from Manchester. So he was born in Blackpool, but his family were from Manchester. and he was schooled, schooled and raised in Manchester. Isn't that weird?

Yeah. Do you know how we all used to really kind of laugh at her accent being a Mancunian accent? Because it was just really weird accent. I caught a clip of her once kind of where somebody very politely on one of the English morning shows was like, your accent's not really. Like it was, you know, it was a dig, but, you know, it was morning television, so they were trying to be polite. And you could tell that she was very aware of it and kind of a bit, like, stressed about it. And she kind of said, well, you know, I was told that the, the, the, the actual accent that I had was too, it was too strong and the Americans wouldn't, you know,

understand it. So the actual Mancunian accent was, you know, considered to be inappropriate or something. Oh, yes. I read that. She was trained to do a relatable to the Americans Mancunian version. Or that's what she's claiming. I thought I'd read that she, her character was living in America for so long at that point, that she had a kind of transatlantic drool that had seeped into the Mancunian. union accent and it distorted it. She's all sorts of excuses, isn't she? It's like worse than your accent.

Like it's like there's like... I mean, I assume you're talking to me. Sorry, David. Well, actually, for any Americans listening, like, I'm from just outside Manchester, so she should have an accent that's a bit like mine. Instead, it's a bit Yorkshire and then just weird. It's a bit, God knows. It's a bit jam.

It's just too many things. It's lovable, which is a bit. is all that matters. A lovable accent. I read a quote from David Hyde Pierce, who plays Niles, who said, to me, Jane, as in Jane, Jane leaves. To me, Jane and Daphne were identical, exquisite and charming, with fragrant hair

that smelled like puppies, springtime, and sex. Wow. Which is gay. Yeah, exactly. It's okay, because he is gay, but otherwise, it wouldn't be. I have to say, that's the show that's aged really well. You know, a lot of, I have to, like, a lot of the shows, from that period on a lot of kind of issues that you just jokes that you just wouldn't be

able to get away with now that's one of those shows that's aged really well because the joke is always on whoever is being you know the ass basically it's never on it so it's unlike a lot of the other shows of its time yeah take that Lisa Cadro might have made the wrong choice that Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, James. At James Harkin. Ella. At Ella, Al-Shemahi. And Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing, or you can go to our website. No Such Thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there, so do check them out. Also, do check out Ella's book. It's called The Handshake, A Gripping History. It is absolutely awesome. You've got a bit of a hint of the stuff that's in there in this episode. There is so much more. It really is a brilliant book. We will be back again next week with another episode, and we will see you then. Goodbye.