585: No Such Thing As The Paula Radcliffe Of F1 Racing

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

It is a three-person podcast this week.

While James is away on holiday, I am sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and once again, we 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 fact number one and that is anna my fact this week is that essex police has a team of six officers trained to grow cannabis what and that's yeah that's what you're funding with your team spare money taxes funding the old wacky baky yeah apps that have been grown by the police by the police outrageous it's ridiculous they don't even send you any.

I mean, what's the deal?

Well, this is an interesting bit of British law, anyway, which means that when the police make a big drug seizure,

then they can work out what the value of the drugs would have been and then claim that value back from the drug dealer's assets as like a disincentive.

So it's like, hey, you've got 100 grand worth of drugs.

I'll take your 100 grand car or whatever.

But they need to work out the value of the drugs.

The problem is, when they come to a cannabis farm and it's not fully grown yet, then they haven't matured yet.

They don't have that concentrated THC that's what gives cannabis its potency.

Then the dealers can claim, you know, it was never going to be very valuable or it's actually all moldy.

It wasn't going to work.

So in court, the cheeky lawyers will jump in and say, this was never going to grow into anything, so you can't take anything away.

And it's actually discount November, so you have to take half off of that.

Yeah, yeah.

You've got a voucher.

If you've got the cannabis club card, just use the offer code fish at checkout.

So they grow it themselves, basically, right, to prove how much it's going going to be worth.

Do they finish growing the whole crop?

Yes, so at the moment, and this is just Essex Police, but I think other police forces are experimenting with it.

They bust the farm and they take the plants and they put them in a special facility they have and they nurture, grow and dry the plants properly.

And they've learned how to make it maximally profitable, just like the drug dealers would, assuming they're skilled cannabis growers.

And then they work out how much it's worth and then they burn it all.

Yeah.

Okay, okay, good.

Not bit by bit, not joint by joint.

Hey, in a series of small fires.

You've got a thing they siphon a tiny bit off.

Write into podcast.qi.com and we won't tell anyone.

Oh, I'll grasp you off.

If you're a bent copper, just look out.

Don't tell Andy.

Fine.

So they've recovered over £300 million

worth of what would be the trade for the cannabis over the last six years.

And so they'll like grow it and they'll be like, okay, that on the street is worth £53,000.

That's what you owe now.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because street value is a tricky thing, isn't it?

Because obviously there's no price list you can look up.

Yeah.

Which is why I don't partake.

Yeah.

Because it's just too messy.

I want to know, you know, that you don't have any consumer rights.

You'll get a text message with a picture of the price list.

Oh, okay.

Your dealers are going to have laminated menus.

You're going to have.

And which wines would you recommend with this skunk?

I love what I love about this fact is that it's the sort of like lateral thinking way of policing, which I find so interesting.

There's so many methods that are going on now that we just don't even necessarily know about.

Like, for example, the police have been collaborating over the last 10 years with the national grid.

So, the frequency of the electricity that is being sent out to every home in England, Scotland, Wales, it's typically about 50 Hertz.

And that's the frequency that is being picked up in the background of every audio recording.

If you're near a power source, that's going to be there as a low buzz.

So, in this room right now, we have electrical sockets.

Every recording, like this recording, is picking up the Hertz noise very softly in the background.

Now, it's not always 50 Hertz.

There's fluctuations, and that is because of the nature of supply and demand.

Like when people are watching TV and it gets to the ad breaks and lots of kettles go on, there are small fluctuations that go on on the national grid.

And when that happens, it happens everywhere, which means if you're recording all of the national grid, you're going to have time stamps on all of these fluctuations.

So often now, police, if they're in court and there's a recording of criminals that is being used, audio recording, and they say that never happened at this place at this time.

They listen to the frequency in the background, and they can match it to the exact time at the National Grid.

Isn't that insane?

Wow.

Isn't that nuts?

And that's been used in court, and that has busted people who have claimed that the recordings were manufactured and it didn't happen when it was said to happen.

Oh my God.

So, cover up your plug sockets is what you're saying.

Do all your mugging by the trees.

Just be away from it.

And don't record it.

Why are you recording it?

Just don't record it.

Oh, yeah, good point.

That's got to stun it.

Isn't that stunning?

So that's called electric network frequency, and they've been doing it for 10 years now.

God, this makes my clever cop workaround thing look much less impressive.

No, of course.

But this is one I quite liked recently.

Did you see the two undercover policemen who dressed up as Batman and Robin?

Okay.

No, no.

It's not as high-tech, but it works.

It was Inspector Darren Watson and Police Constable Abdi Osman, and they were patrolling around London, and they're looking for scammers who were playing illegal rigged gambling games with tourists and getting loads of money off them.

But people knew their faces by then.

And so one of them said, I just remembered I had Batman and Robin costumes in my house, which could come in useful.

And they dressed up and they're so bad.

So there's pictures of them arresting these guys that they've come up to.

And like the guy dressed as Robin is wearing a beige bucket hat with his

Robin costume.

And the bucket hat is the only thing that's concealing his face, actually.

So I don't know why he's wearing the full Robin gear.

He's wearing Robin Garth.

Because I think if he was wearing a a police officer's outfit but a babe fucking hat, the Rongins might still spot that.

But that's effective, isn't it?

It works.

I think that's really good.

I mean, you don't know how many people are undercover officers.

Look around you.

Like all those living statues.

Come on.

Yeah.

Trying to tell me that not one of them is a Fed.

Or who is a fake police officer?

The other way around.

Someone pretending to be a police officer.

So there was a thing, remember the TV show, The Bill?

2010 that ended?

The police force basically had to buy all of the costumes off of the bill because they were real police costumes

and burned them.

Weirdly, they handed them out and they were being worn by actual policemen.

So

they reused the clothing of the bill, the TV show.

It's so exciting for those clothes because that's like a promotion, isn't it?

Yeah.

They also have this, now I've seen it in my head as quite nice relationship, and I think no one else sees that.

But basically, very famously over the last few years, drill music has become associated with gang crime.

And the lyrics of drill songs will reference people who've been murdered on the street and like say I'm going to get you to a rival gang.

I'm going to say that kind of even that kind of foul language is used.

I don't know if they go that far.

Which one of us is going to just buckle and actually ask what drill is?

Not me.

Okay, me either.

Continue.

Hang on.

You guys don't listen to drill music in your spare time.

Is that like heavy rap, right?

In terms of like lyrically.

I listen to Roadworks, but that's because I'm really interested in infrastructure.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

You go on believing believing that that's what I'm referencing.

Oh, yeah, Silvertown Tunnel Classics.

Yeah, great.

Thames Tideway Tunnel.

Yeah, I'm digging it.

Well, you, I really like the idea that you would join the police and misunderstand this because in Manchester, basically, the police have been recruited to, and it's called the Excalibur Task Force, which is trying to stop knife crime, recruited to get lots of intelligence from drill music.

So, if you were employed by them, I guess you would go and eavesdrop on building sites.

What you're meant to do is watch loads of YouTube videos and then pick up the names that are being dropped and figure out who's pissed off about what because it's referencing real things.

Oh, right.

Okay.

It's like pre-crime, but the pre-crimes have maybe been turned into songs.

Exactly.

And then just, yeah, so you know where to keep a watch out, but then the drill artists know the police are watching them.

So then they'll reference the police in return.

So it's almost they'll be like, oh, you Excalibur naughty boys spying on us.

Do they put out fake news as well?

Do they,

shouldn't they?

Yeah, we're going to get like mr banana tonight down by the old co-op and actually there is no mr banana so good i mean that kind of you if you said that just a bit faster you would have been a mighty drill artist

um can i tell you an example of uh maybe the coolest detective ever oh okay have you ever heard of the roman emperor tiberius yes he once solved a crime by like he turned detective in ancient rome okay i just love this so much there was this woman called Apronia who was murdered.

Well, she fell from a high window and died.

And she was the wife of a praetor, a very senior official called Silvanus.

She was the daughter of a really senior general in ancient Rome called Apronius.

She was Apronia.

So she was a very, you know, significant young woman and like very powerfully connected.

And her father thought, I don't believe she fell out of this window and died.

I think she might have been pushed or thrown out of the window.

And he took the matter to the Emperor Tiberius.

And Tiberius said, I'm on the case.

And then investigated,

went to the crime scene, questioned people.

This is a TV series begging to be made.

Yeah.

Stop pitching TV series.

He's a cop, but he's also the Emperor of Rome.

Yeah.

I mean, did he put on a Batman costume to conceal the fact that he was in fact the Emperor?

I just think this has hit written all over it.

Like it's halfway through fingerprinting somewhere and someone comes up like, someone's invaded Gaul.

What do we do?

And he's got, oh, he's got trouble at home as well.

I just feel like this is a good series.

How did he solve it?

Well, I think he just decreed that the guy was guilty.

You're always going to get your end in every episode.

How's he going to solve this one?

He hasn't.

Okay, no worries.

If anyone else is waiting for the ingenious reveal there.

What's one more guy?

Yeah, exactly.

Supposedly he did things like this.

Like he crops up in plenty a lot.

Supposedly he investigated things like searches for sea monsters and things like this.

He was interested in evidence.

But

he decided that on the balance of probabilities, Silvanus was guilty.

The husband, that is, and Silvanus then had someone cut his wrists and he died.

Nice.

Well done, Tiberius.

Credits.

Can I just quickly, I know we're talking about the police now, can I tell you one more of these cannabis related scams?

Oh, yes.

Because the scams are developing that cannabis growers are using,

and I just find some of them unbelievable.

So last year, this happened, a guy from North London, he was called Charles Reeves.

He'd been working abroad for a bit and he'd let his flat out, his family home, because he was going to be working overseas for some months, I think.

He got back, he found in his flat, can you guess?

A cannabis farm.

10 tons of soil.

Whoa.

They had literally moved in 10 tons of soil to grow cannabis in, three feet deep on the floors.

Wow.

Imagine getting back to your home and it's three feet deep in soil.

A flat.

You'd be so confused.

Is this a weird

earthquake or something?

Yeah.

And there was obviously there was cannabis growing everywhere and it had been abandoned because he'd been coming back to it.

But they'd hacked into the electricity system to bypass the meter because that's one of the other ways you catch.

cannabis farmers is they use a huge amount of electricity

and so you spot unusual uses of electricity basically right right that's so funny.

What did he do with it?

Did he siphon a bit off the top?

I don't believe so.

People have got to start siphoning.

I hate waste.

Yeah.

What do you want to do after you've smoked a joint?

You want to...

Report yourself immediately to the police is what I would do.

But what?

Is there something else you want to do?

People want to eat a lot of food.

You want to binge on some cakes.

Cake, okay.

And this is just my way of segueing, because have you guys heard of cake finds?

No.

This is a thing in the police force, and they're huge.

So these are, if you do something wrong in the police and it's big, like massive corruption or whatever, you get in real trouble.

If you do something wrong and it's small, you get a cake fine.

So examples of something that, as it's a cake fine, is spraying a colleague in the face with incapacitant spray.

Wow.

Filing a deceased report and putting your own name on it by accident.

Someone did that.

Cake fine.

Falling through a roof while searching a suspect's house.

These are all things that have caused cake fines to be issues.

You should be fined for that.

No, because you could die, right?

That feels.

Yeah, how soon is the fine levied on the person?

Is it while you're waiting for the ambulance to pick them up?

It's once they're out of the coma, I think.

You come up and gently say...

Is there a grenadiation of cake fines?

Is it like we want something with three tiers?

We want icing in between all the tiers and we want some ruffles on the top.

Maybe.

But it's all decided on by the cake legislator who's consulted on social media by any police force.

If you go to the cake legislator on Twitter, Twitter, then they'll have policemen saying, look, my colleague dropped the police car keys in the drain.

What does he get?

And the cake legislator will say, that's a Krispy Kreme tray.

Sorry, this is an account on Twitter, which is...

Is it a real police officer behind this?

Yeah, no one knows who it is, but I think it was the Telegraph who interviewed them by email.

But we believe they're a real police officer.

God,

is it just a kid pissing about and the whole police officer?

Oh, who knows?

Is it just asking?

I like that.

I like the mystery.

Can I say one more thing?

Just one last thing before we move on.

This definitely would have resulted in a lot of cake being brought to the police station.

This happened last year.

The UK's police and crime minister, Dame Diana Johnson, had her purse stolen.

Her purse was stolen at an annual conference for senior police officers where she was giving a speech on the current epidemic of theft and shoplifting in the UK.

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Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that in France, there are some cars that are so tiny that you don't even need a driver's license to drive them.

Is this because we all know you've had trouble getting a driving license?

I think that's the answer.

I honestly was trying to look at shortcuts of how do you get a license quicker.

Is that how you felt that?

Yeah, this is how this came up.

It was in France.

You can get it as quick as seven hours.

Now, this this is not technically a real driving license because it's not a license at all.

What this is, is if you don't mind not being in a real car going at a real speed, but instead are happy to sit in a two-seater tiny car going at a really slow pace, then this is what you can do.

They're called voitiers san-permi, aren't they?

Literally a car without a license.

Exactly.

And they're amazing to look at.

They're not...

tiny tiny

clown cars but yeah they are they are slow slow though 28 miles an hour max it's I can run faster than that.

Yeah.

They're also known as voiturettes, literally little cars.

Yeah.

But they're everywhere in France, and people have them and drive them around, and they change hands as well.

So if someone loses their license, they will get a VSP, as they call it, voita san permi.

And then as soon as they get their license back, maybe they'll pass that car on to someone else.

Well, this is it.

I mean, this is the amazing thing.

You could lose your license because you've been drink driving or whatever reason, and you can literally get out of that car, go down to a dealership, buy a smaller car, and be back on the road instantly.

You're meant to do a few extra layers, aren't you?

But I think in practice, often unofficially, they're just bought and sold.

Exactly.

Like in the back roads of rural France, no one's really checking that.

That's true.

Do you know you don't need a driving license to be an F1 driver?

Get out.

Yeah, they changed the rules last year, actually.

They liberalised that.

That's very against the grain of modern life, isn't it?

Normally they're tightening things up, saying, well, we've got to stop all this.

They thought we've gone too far demanding people have a normal driving license to drive an F1 car.

Wasn't there a kid in Belgium?

He was an F1 driver?

So Kimmy Antonelli was the person for whom I think they might have changed the rules.

That's last year.

And he was 17 at the time, didn't have a driving license, but they wanted him to replace Lewis Hamilton, which he now has done because Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes to go to Ferrari.

So this guy, this 17-year-old guy, didn't have a license.

And yeah, you now don't need one.

You need to do other things like prove you're amazing at winning driving races and be very good at karting or motorsports and things like that.

But he, I mean, he did in fact end up passing his driving test at the start of this year six weeks before competing in his first f1 race wow but isn't that amazing that is amazing i suppose they're kind of different skills as in you're not as worried about traffic when you're doing formula one like there's no indicating no you do a three-point turn rarely roundabouts

you're going really off course would they have do they have a thing where they can just we anytime they like i think you can do that in your own car anyway that's a good point what am i thinking?

I do that all the time on my driver.

Is that part of the test?

Is that why I failed my last test?

No, only visit number two.

Is it?

There's no, surely there's no rule.

Like no one's thought of making that a rule in the driving test.

I don't know why you've said it.

Yeah, where I think, I think I assumed that Formula One drivers have to have a bottle to weed or something.

Do you think a Formula One driver, going at the speeds they're going at, are going to pull out a Coke bottle and try and piss into it mid-drive?

That's what they have to do when they pit stop don't they that's why sometimes they take away the lollipop and the guy doesn't immediately drive off it's because he's just shaking his hammer now

i never knew how actually skilled these guys were that they could manage to drive that while pissing into a lot of the crashes are because they put their hand on the wrong thing

no but surely drivers normally mid-race don't they think it's a good question because they are quite a long um racing they're really long and they have to drink they have to take in fluids but we don't know the answer i think the truth is we don't know the answer here yeah i think you yeah i don't think it'd be illegal I can tell you that if you're...

Very few racers are lost because someone's having a shit in the footwell.

I think that's fair.

Almost never.

There's no Paula Radcliffe Formula One racing.

Is the person you were talking about, was his name Max Verstapen?

No, that's no.

So, no, I was talking about Kimmy Antonelli.

Max Vestapen is the greatest driver ever of the last 10 years.

Belgian.

Yeah, who's won everything.

But he's Dutch.

Sorry, I've never heard of him before.

He's a bunch bunch of years ago, he was a 17-year-old kid.

Years ago, he was 17, yes.

Racing for the F1.

Didn't have an actual driver's license back in Belgium, so he could race the F1, but when he got back home, he needed an adult with a license sitting with him in the car while he was on his learners in order to drive.

Yeah, so that was his two worlds.

That's so funny.

Yeah, I can imagine it would be very hard to transfer between the two.

Yeah, and you do get in trouble if you drive like you're a Formula One driver on in through a town.

Exactly.

And rally driving, you can be banned.

There was a rally driver called Colin McRae who was banned in the 90s, but he actually could get a license.

And

if you lose your license here, you can get a license to compete in competitive sports racing in another country.

So he got a license in Monaco, even though he was banned for drink driving or speeding here.

And then he came back, competed in rally driving races in Wales in 2002 without a license.

But rally driving is half public roads and half private roads, isn't it?

Even though they shut them all on the public roads, he had to swap with his co-driver because he didn't have a license to drive on public roads in the UK.

Wow.

Do they have to stop and get out?

I can't find this out.

If anyone watched it, I can't find out if they stop and they...

Because that would slow you down enough to lose the race, I'm sure.

Every time.

It's a Batman-style chair swap that can happen internally in the car.

One of those driving instructor cars which have dual controls.

Yeah, but then you're driving on the wrong side of the car.

You're suddenly in an English car in Europe.

Oh, that doesn't matter, like a left and right-hand drive.

That's not going to make a big difference.

If you're a good driver, you'd have thought you could handle that.

You'll find all this out when you you have your first lesson, Dan.

Don't worry about it.

You know, Norway, it is very, very, very electric in its cars, right?

99% of new car sales are electric.

The reason this has happened is, in part, thanks to the band Aha.

Uh-huh.

No, uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

We could dance this dance all day.

I find this absolutely mad.

This is an amazing story, right?

They bought, I think, the first electric car in Norway back in the 80s when electric cars were really not a thing they bought it at a conference in switzerland it was a converted fiat panda which had been converted to run on batteries and the like two of the guys from aha they just thought it was very cool they drove it from the conference back to norway and when they got it back they found there was no way of legally registering it because like norway's traffic ministry or whatever couldn't compute an electric car and norway has loads of toll roads right so uh they would drive it through the tolls they would be fined because they hadn't registered their car but they couldn't register their car.

So they'd get the fine.

They wouldn't pay the fine.

They kept driving through the toll roads.

Eventually, the car was confiscated.

It went to a police auction where they bought the car back because no one else wanted a converted electric fiat panda.

They did this for like several goes round on the car being confiscated, fined, rebought, all of that.

And eventually the authorities just said, oh, fine, we'll just abolish road tolls for electric cars.

And that was a big incentive to lots of people to go electric because you then don't pay the road tolls.

Yeah.

Great.

That's unbelievable.

Aha.

Clever.

That's stunning.

Clever band.

And was that their plan all along?

That was the plan.

To solve the climate crisis.

Yeah.

How many points do you need on your license to lose your license?

12.

12, exactly.

Okay.

That's the case.

If you get 12 points, you lose your license.

Except there are some people who have more points than that and still haven't lost their license because you can get exemptions if, for example, you really need to drive to look after someone, you know, if you're a carer, you know, all that kind of thing.

Or there's another urgent reason why you definitely need and you can persuade the authorities that you need to keep driving.

And I find this stunning.

There are 10,000 people in the UK who have more than 12 points on their license and still have their license.

There is one 26-year-old from North Wales who has on his license 229 points.

No, there's not.

Yes.

And can still drive.

No.

And still has a license.

I can't work it out fully, but for example, if you speed, let's say your speed limit's been changed from thirty to twenty

which happened in Wales and some bits of Wales recently and you drive through several cameras in one day you're technically speeding through all of them and let's say because the postal system's a bit slow you're doing that for two weeks before the first thing catches up with you

what a terrible thing to jump on your doorstep suddenly when you know

so like two weeks later after commuting let's say twenty miles each way and going thirty when you know you the limit's suddenly twenty you're doing a hundred and fifty percent of the speed limit yeah so that's for whatever reason.

That's a slow post, though, if he's cracked up 220 points before he got the first letter.

Yeah.

But if every camera that you speed through is three points,

I can see it working out.

Yeah.

Some of my rack up my mum drove with 14 points on her license for a couple of years.

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

The way she got away with it was when she should have lost her license, and I'm not saying this wasn't justified.

Her lawyer argued that the school run was a very important time to bond with her children.

Oh my god.

She was

on very important parent-child bond

series.

Yes, she was then banned properly two years later when she was caught again.

But

we got that extra two years of parent-child bonding, and I thought that was very important.

She gets your names mixed up all the time.

That's not true, Judith.

Wow, huge fan of yours.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.

My fact is that under their main tongue, lemurs have another tongue.

Sexy.

Lemas have two tongues.

Yes.

Sexy.

Yeah.

That's cool.

And this second tongue is just for kissing.

No, it's sadly not.

It's a cleaning structure.

But it's still a second tongue.

It's called a sublingua.

So they have the thing called a tooth comb, which is this structure.

I mean, it's exactly as it sounds.

It's a group of teeth that look like a comb.

Fine.

And they use that for grooming.

So they run that tooth comb across their fur and it helps to pick out all the

mouths.

This is in their mouth.

But this tooth comb, like a normal comb, gets full of hair.

Yep.

So how do you clean the comb?

You do it with your second tongue.

The sublingua, which is an undertongue, and it's specifically for cleaning out the tooth comb.

I don't know what they use to clean the tongue.

Well, yeah.

Hang on, does this mean that do they have to get the undertongue up and over the first tongue to clean it?

No.

So they swivel around the top tongue.

No, they just sort of stick out their tongue, and it's just, it doesn't, it doesn't look as much like a tongue as you and I are hoping.

Yeah.

it's a small and slightly harder like more pointy structure okay but it is a sublingua it is

are there many sublinguas in the natural world I couldn't really find many animals that have more than one tongue I'd be surprised just because lemurs are so weird because there are Madagascar and Madagascar is evolutionarily really quite separate because it's split off from Africa and then from the Asian subcontinent 90 million years ago 180 million years it split from Africa then 90 million years later India left and it's just Madagascar's just left there hanging out for weird stuff to evolve.

So that's amazing because there's something like 80% of the animals that live there are just there, nowhere else in the world, right?

Yeah.

So lemurs, they all live in Madagascar.

Well, they're all from Madagascar anyway.

They're from, yeah.

Yeah.

I was recently on a visit to an animal park in Kent, which was not in Madagascar, but they did have lemurs and it was amazing.

Cool.

They're so cool.

There are more than 100 species and they're all native to Madagascar.

And, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it.

They're really endangered because of mostly habitat loss with a bit of of climate change and also human hunting thrown in.

So many of them are really threatened, but they're absolutely unbelievable.

creatures.

They're so cool.

They are.

And every single one of them seems to have their own unique thing that's interesting about them.

We've spoken about this before on the podcast, but a few of them are quite solitary animals.

So even within their family, they will barely see each other.

And the only way they have any kind of communication with each other is by having a pissing tree.

So they will go down at different times.

It's like if you live in a big house with a lot of siblings and there's one toilet, you know, you know, it's like, all right, 8.15 in the morning, that's my slot.

So they go at different times and they will pee and they have a unique fingerprint, as it were, with their urine, which means that if I was going, I'd be like, Andy's been.

Okay.

And what does that,

what does that tell you about what you're going to do next?

Is that like, oh, he must be nearby, I'll go and see him?

Or it means they're okay.

It's like a checking in.

It's just like sending a WhatsApp to say, hey, hope you're well.

It's like, oh, I know they're doing okay.

But they just never want to pee at the same time together.

No,

they don't want to see each other.

That's fair enough.

Yeah.

I personally like to have the bathroom to myself as well.

I'm, you know, I'm funny and old-fashioned like that.

I invite the family.

Lemurs, yeah, lemurs are very weird.

Ring-tailed lemurs, the sort of big ones, the famous ones, and they make their own perfume.

So it's not just about secreting one scent, they secrete apparently a strong but short-lived scent in their wrists.

So, you know, eau de toilette doesn't last very long.

Okay.

So there's like an eau de toilette in their wrists.

And then they secrete a very long-lasting, different scent from their shoulder glands, like an eau de par fum.

And then they get their tails and they dab their shoulders and they dab their wrists to mix the scents together in what's known as a wrist-to-pit move

in zoology.

And then they've got a perfume and then they waft it in the air.

The tail?

They waft their tail in the air.

Now they've mixed it with perfume.

And that's their mating ritual or is that just general day-to-day?

It's mating, and it's so clever because it's telling.

I mean, I can't believe someone's wondering if I'm making this up, but it's telling females their genetic makeup.

And the females smell it and they know if the male is too similar to them.

Because obviously, you want maximum genetic diversity for your kids.

So you sniff their perfume, and if it's like,

I also use Chanel, get out, then you'll go and shag someone else.

I don't suppose at any point you read about the northern giant mouse Lima.

No.

Okay.

This is another standout in the Lemur tribe.

Yeah.

They've got testicles, which are the largest, I believe, of any primate relative to body size.

Okay.

As a percentage, Dan, what would you say your testicles are of your body weight?

That's a very personal question, isn't it?

We've just unmasked.

Of my weight.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not asking you to give away your weight.

I'm saying what portion of your body weight is testicles.

We're talking talking 15%.

Yeah, you don't need to do that.

Dream on, mate.

For them, it's.

What are yours to put into context?

Sorry?

What are yours?

I don't.

I think for humans, it's kind of 0.2%.

No, it's less.

That is

much less than 1%.

But for these guys, it's 5% of their body weight is testicles.

Wow.

It's the equivalent of me, and here's a fun home maths challenge.

You can work out how much I weigh.

It's the equivalent of me having testicles that are 3.8 kilos between them.

Right.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

It's a lot.

And they were only discovered in 2005 these things.

And often as they swing through the trees, they will bump and bruise their testicles.

It's a noble surprise.

Oh, I've seen my friend used to have a sausage dog called Dave.

And Dave lived upstairs in a flat and he had the longest dangling balls.

And this poor dog, we used to walk behind him on the stairs.

They would wallop the top of each step as they were going on.

You just see these dangling bells.

Does he mind it?

Is it like every time he's going, ah?

So, so Blue, who owned Dave, would show people because he would say, it's okay.

And he would flip Dave upside down and say, look how hardened and leathery they've become.

They're okay.

He doesn't feel it anymore.

It's like a real hard boxing bag now.

That's what you want.

But that's like, so I can empathise.

But maybe they've got very leathery, hardened males.

Maybe.

Maybe, let's hope.

But it's because they have a system where everyone has multiple partners, male and female, and there's no mating season.

Well, so they just need as much sperm as possible.

Have to produce a lot of sperm and frequently mate, and that's the way they pass their genes on.

You know, it's a very very competitive field.

See, this is so.

I guess a few of the lemurs have this kind of problem where there's just one feature of them that is just oddly grown so that it suits the environment.

The II, which is probably the most famous of the lemurs.

That Norwegian band.

Yeah,

they're a tribute band to aha.

They're a nautically themed aha tribute band.

So the aye has a tremendously long finger.

It uses the finger to get into trees and pick out grubs.

So like how hummingbirds will have a long nose to suck like a straw.

The II uses its finger.

Its finger, though, is so long, it has the same thing as it's walking along.

It has to raise it up.

Otherwise, it basically trips on its own finger as it's going along.

And it's very delicate.

So, you know, it could sprain the finger or it could do major damage to it.

I hadn't thought about that because it is, it looks like ET, the II, with that ridiculously long middle finger.

So it's about the size of a house cat, but its middle finger is eight centimeters long.

So imagine a house cat, but with an eight centimetre long middle finger.

And

yeah, because when you see people who've got really good manicures, I always think, how on earth do you get anything done?

But they, the whole time, must struggle.

But what's amazing about them is they're the only primates that echolocate.

And the way they do it is by tapping on trees.

I kind of think this is cheating.

Basically, they tap on trees like woodpeckers until they find a hollow bit, and then the hollow bit tells them that that's the place where bugs are probably living.

Is that cheating?

Yeah.

Well, it's easier to tap on a wall until you find a hollow bit run

and go,

that kind of thing.

I thought you meant like just like, anyone, anyone in?

Ngong,

like the wolf at the little pig's door.

Let me in, little bugs.

I just think it's not as impressive as bats who can navigate all around the world and they're just tapping on a tree to find a bug.

To learn that, though, is pretty.

If they're the only ones that do that as well.

I think that's the thing about lemurs is that they're all very well adapted to the areas they find themselves in and they have also filled all the ecological niches that might be filled by other animals.

So you were saying the aye I fills a role that might be taken by a hummingbird.

Or, you know,

so like on Madagascar, every biological function that might

fit into a food web, a lot of them are filled by different species of lemur who are really, really well adapted to do that.

But obviously when the environment changes or when the habitat is lost, they really struggle because they they're adapted for one specific environment yeah yeah it is wild lemurs what does that mean lemur

um limiur i think i know the answer it's latin oh for ghost okay hear me out emperor tiberius says it's toughest case yet

it's a ghost something's been tapping my trees so he just hangs a bunch of lemurs we move on next episode

yeah they called ghosts and then linnaeus is is the one who applied it to the lemurs because he thought their faces looked so ghostly.

And so

they are the ghosts of Madagascar.

Do you know what else means ghosts in the animal world, weirdly?

It's larvae, which I didn't know.

Larvae.

So lemurs and larvae are basically the same cluster of things in Latin.

In ancient Rome, they were the two types of evil ghosts you'd get.

Isn't that weird?

Yeah.

We do a bit of vilifying humans for hunting them, or I find in some of the naturalists' writing, there's some vilifying humans for hunting them, which I think is completely insane because 40 to 50% of people in Madagascar are malnourished, which is pretty extraordinary.

And so it's.

And also the early humans did not know they were doing this.

I know.

They didn't know that, but yeah, but today, like they're still hunted and eaten a lot today.

And that's one of the things that's putting them in danger.

And it's because over half of households in Madagascar have understandably eaten lemur meat in the last year because that's the meat that's available.

And half of them are malnourished.

But there is this cool project, which is the bacon bug project, which is to farm secondrie, which are these still very cute little bugs that have long pink trunk things on their noses and like little furry backsides.

But they are delicious, tastes like bacon when fried.

And they've started farming them.

And in the pilot community, where they've started farming them, over the last three years, they've reduced lemur hunting by 50%.

Wow.

Oh, very good.

Yeah.

Can I give you one last lemur?

Yeah.

This is the red-fronted lemur, and it does something pretty relatable.

It chews up poisonous millipedes.

That's not the relatable bit.

It actually, none of this is relatable.

It rubs the resulting goo on its genitals.

I said it wasn't relatable.

No, keep going.

This is my weekend.

But it's so cool.

It's because they have lots of parasites, and these millipedes have toxic goo in them if you chew them right.

So they chew the millipedes up just enough that they release this really toxic orange slime, and then they slather it all over their genitals, their perianal region and their tail and that kills off the parasites that have been preying on the lemur and then they swallow the millipede whole.

So it's a tasty snack as well as a lovely perfume snack.

Perianal cream.

They need to work on the marketing for that snack, don't they?

It just sounds like something from Nando's.

Periperianal.

Well, this is not lemon and herb.

This is spicy hot.

And it also seems to create a little bit of a euphoria or a narcotic sensation among them.

They've been seen chilling out after they've partaken.

Does it?

Well, you put periperi up your ass, then you will sometimes get a bit of a hit.

Oh, it's hard when you have that flag sticking out, isn't it?

Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show.

And despite him being on holiday, James has still sent in one for us to discuss.

So here it is, James.

My fact this week is is if you built a house in a certain point of Italy, you can live in 10 different towns at the same time.

Unfortunately, that point is in the middle of a volcano.

And I am currently at that volcano.

Thanks, James.

Amazing stuff.

We've never had an on-location fact.

No.

James recorded this at the place that the fact is about.

Yeah, as well.

Yeah, because I think he just mentioned that recording.

Just wanted to hammer it home.

James is on a mountain now.

He's not on a mountain.

He's on an active volcano.

No, not right now, because this isn't live.

Sorry to ruin the illusion.

Anna, where is your tradecraft?

Where is your stage ship?

Sorry.

This is very cool, though, isn't it?

So this is that the Italian province of Catania, which is where Etna is,

is divided into municipalities, and there are 10 municipalities, and they all meet at the top of Etna.

And in fact, I think it's actually split at that peak into 11 sections because one of the municipalities, Bronte, scoops around and nicks two portions of it.

Yeah, but basically it's 10.

Basically, it's 10.

No, no, no, but Bronte gets two bites of the cherry, and I think it's worth saying.

Yeah, Mount Etna.

I had never really read anything about Mount Etna before.

I assumed it was a standard commonal garden small volcano.

It's a big volcano.

It's a big

two miles high from sea level.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's tall.

And it's the original.

It's the OG volcano.

What do you mean?

Well, Etna is where Vulcan lived.

So the god of the forge and iron smelting and all that stuff.

Vulcan lived in Aetna, and that's why volcanoes are called volcanoes.

It is the volcano.

Oh, my goodness.

And just quickly, we should say about these 10 points that meet.

I mean, I've got to say, James, I don't understand this fact.

I don't know why you'd want to live in 10 different towns at the same time.

Who are you paying your council tax to?

And so on.

I mean, I get that these 10 provinces or principalities or towns, they all meet at the same same point.

But Aetna is a really confusing place because it sounds like it's, you know, it sounds like your child's drawing of a volcano, which is two slopes on either side and a crater in the middle.

And Etna isn't really like that.

There are dozens of craters, you know, and so like new ones open up all the time because it keeps on exploding and erupting.

So I find that really interesting.

There are more than 200 craters on Etna.

God, it's a lot, isn't it?

I know.

It's many, many miles around.

But these places are so cool.

So Randazzo was trilingual until the 16th century, which was Greek in one area, Latin in another, and Lombard in a third.

Is that

one of the 10 areas?

That's one of the 10 areas.

There is Bronte, as you mentioned, Anna, which is, as we've said before, is where Nelson was created Duke of.

Admiral Horatio Nelson was made Duke of Bronte.

And we think it's where the Bronte sisters, their dad, he used to be called Bronte.

and he renamed himself Bronte,

maybe after Nelson, or maybe after this area.

Which in itself is named after a Cyclops, isn't it?

Who lived there?

So the Bronte's dad is named after the Cyclops.

And Charlotte, yeah, like Charlotte Bronte being named after a Cyclops is just so cool.

It's weird.

It's very cool.

Yeah.

But what's amazing is it is an active volcano.

So like James, you know, just very happily took his family up there on an active volcano.

But it's not like it's just people going up.

at their own risk.

The whole area is a tourist destination.

You've got vineyards at the bottom of it where if there was an eruption, absolutely would be taken out by it.

You've got to pick those grapes fast, haven't you?

As the lava rolls towards you.

Just pick the big ones.

Just pick the big ones.

There's between November and March.

I think those are the months.

There's two ski resorts that open up.

You can go skiing on an active volcano.

Crazy.

It's wild.

Yeah.

Sometimes people ski alongside the lava.

when it's erupted.

Cool.

That's really racing it down.

Kind of, yeah.

And people do.

People are quite annoying.

And I think they've introduced legislation now because they do go much too close.

You're supposed to only be a certain distance from the lava flow, and you do have people who kind of cook their sausages on it and stuff.

But this is Italy, hey, it's the land of romance.

People will cook their sausages on lava, you know?

And it's and it doesn't kill, it's incredible.

Given how famous it is, and it's the OG, it's only killed 77 people confirmed in its entire history.

Confirmed kills.

It's not James Bond.

It's got a tally inside its craters.

Are you sure about that?

Yeah, I think so.

There's this insane account from the big 1669 eruption where reports of it that came out much later said that 10 to 20,000 people had been killed.

And still you see it on places like history.com, Sky History channel, get your facts right, saying 20,000 people were killed.

We're turning into a name and shame podcast now.

I'm afraid so.

Because zero people die.

You can't accuse someone of killing 20,000 people.

Tiberius could.

Tiberius could and would.

And in fact, he would probably be on the scene of this.

You're absolutely right.

Have them all killed.

Blame the volcano.

Can I check on it?

Did you say why it didn't actually kill 20,000 people in 1669?

I think it's slow.

I actually don't know, but I think it's mostly slow moving and

people just leave.

It absolutely destroyed the area.

It ruined it economically for hundreds of years.

And still, it's much, much less fertile because of that eruption.

Because it didn't get off scot-free.

Because I assumed that it always made the land more fertile.

Because it sometimes does with things like,

you know, the reason there are vineyards there is because the soil is so rich and volcanic.

But I guess sometimes also it's just a deadened wasteland that it leaves behind.

So a lot of the time it is good for the...

It's a fine balance, isn't it?

You know, you don't want to overdo the lava.

Exactly.

That one, that explosion, by the way, is also, as far as we can tell, the first historical recorded attempt to divert the lava stream as it's coming down.

So there was a town, Catania, one of the ten, and they dug trenches above the village in order to divert the stream of lava as it was coming down.

Yeah, I mean, but as far back as that,

I think, I believe

the neighboring town was quite pissed off, wasn't it?

Because it went into them.

Well, they re-diverted it.

They put the blockage up and it went back to Catania.

It's like that, guys.

Classic, classic neighbor behavior.

Yeah.

It does sound amazing because to deal with a flow of lava is pretty challenging, even with modern technology.

And when you're dealing with it with shovels and pickaxes,

making a trench like that is just incredibly impressive they were wrapped in wet sheepskins to protect themselves from the heat it's just it's really impressive it's crazy we give the past a hard time sometimes but sometimes people are impressive you know no they were hardcore yeah also if you were if you were going to say how tall is mount etna the answer changes over the years i find that wild with volcanoes but basically off the back of certain eruptions so if you asked that question in 1865 it was 170 feet higher than it is now because with the eruptions comes collapses internally and it sort of re-goes up and down in size.

Yeah.

But sometimes the act of erupting means that it leaves lava around the rim, which hardens and then makes it taller.

Exactly.

But sometimes it just blows the whole top off and then gets shorter again.

Yeah.

That'd be cool to solve a crime, like with your national grid thing, Dan.

But what height was Aetna at the time of the offense?

Yes.

Yes.

As we say, Aetna has erupted loads of times, 200 times in the last 3,500 years.

Once every 17 years.

It's a really good score.

I think the most recent was 2021 when it threw up 12,000 tons of ash onto a local town.

And so what happens in that moment?

You're in a surrounding town.

Do you evacuate immediately?

You get help.

It's not like Vesuvius back in the day where you had to guess.

These days, officials are there, aren't they?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big government has taken over the previously charming, like small government, libertarian pastime of surviving volcanoes.

But the big thing they're scared of, or the most terrifying prospect, is a flank eruption, apparently.

So if there's a lava fountain that just goes up from the top, again, classic volcano, that is sometimes really bad obviously but the worst thing is where the side just blows off right and that's when you get a big river of lava flowing down the side towards your town

possibly right okay

um i found what i think is probably the greatest photo of mount etna erupting taken by a local okay okay it was taken in 2013 november 8th and it was taken by a man called lukka barmatana lukka barmatana took it while he was in space on board the International Space Station.

Yes.

Headed over it.

It was erupting and he managed to get a photo.

And he's from Sicily.

So it's a perfect

local to the area manages to get a space photo of it.

Luca Parmitana, he was the astronaut who was almost the first person ever to drown in space.

If you remember.

Oh, yeah.

If you remember, he was out on a spacewalk and within his helmet, the water supply got loose and the water started going into his helmet and droplets went up his nostrils.

That's Luca Parmatina.

A little bit less time adjusting your lens and a little bit more time making sure your hood's done up.

Maybe Luca.

There's always a critic, isn't there?

That's an episode of Tiberius International.

Astronaut drowns in space.

Tricky.

But did anyone hear...

It doesn't matter.

Hang these six people for the crime.

See you next week.

Of course, we're referring to it as a volcano.

And

it's not definitely a volcano.

Oh, no.

Are you kidding?

This is according to a geologist.

And he's called Carmelo Ferlito.

Sounds legit.

Exactly.

So he lives near it.

And so there's this confusion about Etna because it's always burping very, very gassy.

It belches out more than 7 million tons of steam and CO2 and sulfur every year.

And everyone says that's because of gas bubbles that are released from the magma.

But Ferlito says that you'd need about 10 times more lava to be coming out of it to justify all those gas bubbles.

So, where are they coming from?

So, some people say, ah, no, what's happening is a lot of the lava is coming out and then going back into Aetna.

And he says, if it was doing that, Etna would be inflating like a child's balloon every time it erupted, the lava sinking back.

Which it's not, I presume.

It is not inflating like a balloon.

So,

it's not a volcano?

It's a hot spring.

and he says

i would be so pissed off with my real estate agent if i was sold a house next to a hot spring only to find out it was an active volcano you've already drawn up your star plan they photographed it from the other side so you didn't see etna in the background it was very clever and on the viewing they kept on cunningly misdirecting you i say just come and have a look around here at the garage

i would say on that occasion dan caveat mTOR, you know?

This guy says that it can only be justified by it being mostly water and CO2 and sulfur, which makes up 70% of the volume that it's spewing out.

I'm sorry, I'm sure he's really well qualified, but it is a volcano, isn't it?

Because I've literally seen photos of it vomiting lava over a wide area.

You know, take it up with Carmelo.

Carmelo, please.

You've got to make a name for yourself somehow in this life.

The town was completely demolished by a local hot spring, was it?

But everyone's skin was very smooth at the end of it.

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 various social media accounts.

I'm on Instagram at Schreiboland.

Andy?

I'm on Blue Sky at Andrew Honduran.

James?

It's about Etna.

If you want to get to us as a group, Anna.

You can email our podcast at QI.com or go to at no such thing as a fish on Instagram or at no such thing on Twitter.

That's right.

And if you want to check out more of our stuff, go to no such thingasafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

There's bits of merchandise.

There is a portal, the gateway to our special secret club, Club Fish.

And you can get tickets to our live shows.

So we're playing Sheffield in July, but in June, we're going to be in Belgium.

We are playing the the Nerdland Festival.

We've done it twice now.

It's very exciting.

We're going to be back again.

Levin Skier, who runs the whole festival, has invited us back.

And so if you live near the area, check out our site for tickets.

We're going to be there June 7th.

It's going to be great.

Come along.

Otherwise, just come back here.

We will have another episode for you and we will see you then.

Goodbye.