506: No Such Thing As Jenga Cop

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Hi, everyone.

Just before we started this show, we wanted to remind you of something that you should already be well aware of: which is that our esteemed colleagues and co-podcasters, Dan Schreiber and Andrew Hunter Murray, have both written books, and they are truly fantastic books.

So, if you have anyone in your life who is a fish fan, who, God forbid, thinks that Dan and Andy are the superior half of fish, perhaps that person is you.

Then, why not get them for Christmas?

A book by Dan and a book by Andy.

Dan has written The Theory of Everything Else, and honestly, when I read it on every page, I thought, how have you been hogging these facts for this book rather than sharing them on the podcast?

It is so selfish.

But it's made for a brilliant book, stunning revelations on every page.

Andy has written The Last Day and The Sanctuary.

They're both thrillers, they're real page turners, there are fantastic twists and turns, and of course, they're making some very intelligent intelligent points about society today.

So get both of those for anyone you know who's a big fan of Dan and Andy.

But Anna, what if the people listening to this preferred this half of the podcast, the James and Anna half of the podcast?

What are those people going to do?

Oh, you mean the 95 other percent of our listeners?

Oh,

I don't know, James.

Have we done anything interesting lately?

We have indeed.

I don't know if you recall because it was before you went on maternity leave, but we wrote a book called Everything to Play For, The QI Book of Sports, and it is another book that is jammed full of facts.

Do you know why ancient Egyptian athletes remove their spleens?

Why pool balls no longer explode on impact?

How bum slapping improves team performance?

All that and more you can learn in our book, which is called Everything to Play For, The QI Book of Sport.

But the truth is, if you or anyone you know is a big fish fan, these are the perfect things to get them for Christmas.

Who doesn't love opening a present at Christmas and getting a good old book that they can

read?

Read

if you too like to do this strange reading thing that Anna does, then go to no suchthingasafish.com forward slash books, and you'll be able to find all the details of those three books.

But they're available wherever you buy your books.

Get them all, get them for everyone you know for Christmas.

Get them now.

On with the show,

on with the podcast.

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

My name is Dad Shriver.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Anna Toshinski.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite 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 your brain contains a tender mother, a tough mother and a spider mother.

Ooh is that just Dan we're talking about here?

Yeah and it explains everything.

It does.

Are these like multiple personality traits of like i have a tough mother that comes is that the idea of oh i love that idea what would the spider mother be well i assume assume there's something that they do in the wild where they make webs.

I hope they like eat their children.

Yeah, they eat each other.

The spider mother actually eats the tough mother and the tender mother.

It's actually neither of these things.

They're just fun names for things in the brain.

So these are meninges.

They're in your brain and spinal cord, and they're basically a three-layered envelope that protects your brain and spinal cord.

And there's a delicate inner layer, which is called the pia mater, which means sort of tender mother or soft mother, or pious mother.

And so that wraps around the brain and spinal cord a bit like cling film.

And then there's a really tough outer layer, which is just under the bone of your skull, and that's the dura mater, the hard mother, the tough mother.

And then there's a middle layer, the arachnoid mater, and that's like a network of tissues, and the tissue sort of spread out like a spider's web.

So really, it should be called a spider web mother, but it's not.

It's called a spider web.

The meninges is, you know, a baby at the top of their head, they have like a gap where the skull hasn't covered them up.

Oh, yeah.

The meninges is the kind of tough stuff stuff that covers their brain, which means that at least the brain isn't sticking out of the head.

That's interesting.

I didn't know that.

And also that little hole there, that is what the company Baby Gap is named after.

I was just looking at the sort of things that happen in the brain, unusual processes and things like that.

I really like this.

Your brain is so fast that you can judge whether someone is trustworthy or not, even if you haven't seen them consciously.

So they tried this thing where they showed people images for like a fraction of it, like a millisecond, a couple of of milliseconds, right?

Too fast for people to consciously register they had seen a face.

They were either faces that were untrustworthy looking or trustworthy looking or whatever.

I don't know what the criteria were.

What is that?

Is it like one person, they've got a fag out the corner of their mouth and a big overcoat on?

And a bag tang swag.

No, I have no idea.

Maybe they had to assess from people what they found trustworthy or untrustworthy first.

Some people might only trust people who look like sort of comedy burglars from the 1980s.

But when they they showed them those images, even for a fraction of a second, they didn't consciously see them.

But the bit of their brain, the amygdala, which processes strong emotions, particularly in relation to whether you trust them or not, fired up.

Wow.

Isn't that weird?

Wow, it's weird, yeah.

Do you know what the amygdala means?

Almond.

Yeah.

Wow.

The brain is just full of weirdly named stuff because it's like a structure and people could look at it hundreds of years ago if they took out someone's brain after they died and like name the bits of the structure.

It's just got all really old-fashioned odd names.

Like Almond, seahorse, indeed.

famous one.

Oh, yeah, the sea.

Seahorse.

It's because, like, if you, if you are looking at someone's brain and you're like, which bit do I need to take out?

And they say, well, it's the blah, blah, blah, or whatever, you wouldn't know what it was.

But if you say the seahorse, you can look at it and go, oh, that looks a bit like a seahorse.

I'll take that bit out.

And take that bit out, yeah.

That makes sense.

The martyr, the Pia Mata and the other martyrs, they're named after the fact that they kind of cover things like a mother might hold her baby.

They come from the Arabic.

Wow.

I wonder with the speed that you were talking about a second ago, Andy, the, like I was just thinking, a quiz show, right?

How quickly does the answer come to you prior to your finger, the information getting to your finger and you pressing a buzzer, right?

If you were able to hook up your brain to the bit that lights up that says you know the answer, how quick could it be?

Are you pitching a quiz where no one actually asks the questions and people just buzz in and say,

no, you need the question.

Are you thinking that like you'll go on university challenge and everyone else is using their fingers like absolute noobs yeah and you've got something attached to your actual pattern of advantage you've got your head on the button exactly that's it i i look like i'm keeled over but no

driver australia

the only flaw in your plan yeah is that you actually wouldn't know any of the answers anyway so it doesn't matter how you're pressing the button that's true i've genuinely never got an answer right on a university challenge no i think that's good but they show you the question for a millisecond and the part of your brain associated with Turkmenistan fires, then it's actually a team of neuroscientists who answer the question for you.

But like several days later after doing the analysis.

But it is the kind of thing your brain does.

And mostly I associate this sort of thing with

that, you know, there's that split brain operation that used to be done on epileptic people.

It was a revolutionary operation.

And you basically cut the brain in half down the corpus callosum, which is the bit that splits the left side from the right side of the brain.

And it was amazing because it stopped people having epileptic fits when nothing else would work.

They did loads of experiments on these people whose two brains were working fine, but they couldn't communicate with each other.

And so the reason I thought, for instance, of that university challenge thing was that someone who'd had that operation, they would be shown a picture of a face to their right eye, which goes into the left hemisphere, and they're asked what they've seen, and they can say face.

But if it goes into the other eye and into the opposite hemisphere, because it's going to the wrong hemisphere that doesn't process language, once they're asked what they've seen, they can't say face, but they can draw a face.

I mean, their language is still completely fine, but they'll just say, I've got no idea what I've seen, but their hand will draw a face.

Here's my pitch.

Yeah.

It's a cop drama, right?

And it's a witness to a crime, but he only saw it with one eye, the eye which doesn't know what, but he can draw it.

And you've got a cup, but he's only got the other eye.

Yes.

And it's basically Pictionary.

Pictionary cop.

That's actually really good.

And that gave me a sequel to Dictionary Cop, which...

Oh, right.

I thought you were going to be like Buckaroo cop,

mousetrap cop.

Jenga cop.

He's got two hours to stop this building falling over.

It's not got any mortar.

It's just bricks.

But, you know, fine.

It's a dry stone building.

And one of the bricks has got a bomb in it, but he doesn't know which one.

So he has to keep removing the bricks to find the bomb

without the building falling down.

But it's in a very congested area, so he can only put the bricks on top of the building at the top

this is quite good drystone wall is probably set at the cotswolds so you'd have some lovely location filming before the yeah yeah this is bloody good genuine cop there is just sorry one one other possible spy film follow-up

where you can basically get people to say things that they don't know they've said i guess because there was another guy who'd had his brain cut in half um and they asked him the question to one side of his brain they flashed the question who's your favorite girlfriend?

He was a boy.

Who's your favourite girlfriend?

And then he was asked, Do you know what question we've asked you?

And he was shrugged and was like, No, I haven't seen anything.

I didn't see anything.

But then he spelled out, he giggled, said no, and then spelled out Liz in Scrabble tiles with his other hand.

How awful is that?

You're just giving stuff away.

10 points as well for the Zed.

Yeah.

Yeah, you put on a triple word score as well.

Well, and that's your follow-up.

So the

Scrabble cut.

Scrabble cut.

That's good.

Have you guys heard of Hemi-neglect, which is kind of in the same sphere here?

Hemi-neglect.

Hemi-neglect is when this is people who have had a stroke.

There's a bit of brain damage that goes on whereby they only experience basically one side of their visual field.

So if they've gone to shave, they'll shave off half their face, but leave the other side because it's just not part of their field anymore, right?

If they're eating on a plate, they'll eat the right side or left side of the plate.

They'll eat just one side of the plate.

So it's not just that you can't see, presumably, it's that your brain refuses to acknowledge that the body is.

Your brain is refusing to acknowledge that it's there.

Yeah.

But this is what's amazing.

They started looking into hemi-neglect within memory as well.

So they managed to find a group of people where all of them had been to Milan.

So they asked them the exact same thing.

You're standing in the major plaza in Milan.

Recall as many stores and streets around you as possible in the square.

And they could only remember the stores and the streets that were on the right side and not the left side.

Pretty good memories, though.

He asked me to name a shop

on a square I'd lived on for about 20 years.

I probably couldn't do it.

I could name a shop in Milan, in the central square pit.

Yeah, Yeah, because they recently got their first Starbucks.

And it was some controversy.

Because obviously, Milan, the home of coffee, good coffee.

Yeah.

And there was a Starbucks there.

It was a very nice Starbucks, too.

So that prompted a bit of local discussion.

Or according to these people, there was a Bucks.

Yeah.

All of our brains are smaller than they would have been 3,000 years ago if we'd been born then.

We've lost about four ping pong balls worth of brain.

Whoa, that's a lot.

It is quite a lot.

And it's not exactly clear what caused it because we invented agriculture 10,000 years ago as a species.

It's not that.

Like writing dates back several thousand years, so and it might be something to do with that.

It might be that I keep part of my brain in all of your brains.

I wonder what that means.

No, but like if you have lots of division of labor and you have a complicated system, you sort of divide up the cognitive tasks and you need a bit less brain space.

Yeah.

I think there is a theory that domestication makes your brain smaller because it works with animals for sure.

So am I domesticated?

Well, I think humans are domesticated, aren't we?

Well, no, we're the domesticators.

But who's domesticated us aside from cat, according to some interpretations?

Who domesticated us?

The man.

The man.

Society has domesticated us.

To be fair, I don't think I would thrive in the wild.

I don't think you would either.

I think I concur.

Dan, anything to

contradict that statement?

No, I think, well, I'm going off getting some berries and Anna's going off killing a wild cat, and you're trying to think of some cop dramas.

I know which of us is going to be the the most useful in the group.

In the future, we will need cop dramas to survive.

We'll need that hope that comes from knowing, like, will he find the bomb?

Yeah.

Okay, brain fart.

Yeah.

Like when you have a moment, you can't remember something, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, this podcast has been a 10-year-long one, for instance.

Sure.

Yeah.

What about a brain squirrel?

What is that?

Brain squirrel.

Squid time.

It's where you try and think of one thing and it just shoves out tons of different things.

It's like someone says, what's the capital of Malawi?

And all you can think of is every other capital in Africa.

Oh, good.

Yes, no, I was thinking, yeah, that's probably closer than to mine, which you would be saying things that sounded right as a ramble.

So like a quiz question like that, but you genuinely went.

It's Michael's.

No, Sarah.

Joey, Chandler.

Like mums do when they're trying to remember your name.

Yeah.

They always run through, don't they?

John, Katie, Claire, Hannah.

James, James, come over here.

It's just a feeble or abortive attempt at reasoning, but it dates back to the 1650s.

Isn't that cool?

Really?

Why I was having a brain squirt.

It was also, this dates back to Old English, your brain locker.

What is that?

Say it again.

Brain locker.

Brain locker.

It's someone who looks at a brain in South Africa.

It's my brain locker.

It's just your head.

Is that what I'm going to say?

It's your skull.

Okay, cool.

My brain locker.

My brain locker?

It's crazy that we had a word for that.

Here's one little hack.

I was reading a lot of neuroscientists saying how you can hack your brain to make sure that, so if you're someone who forgets things a lot or you have something important that you need to remember and you just don't, you can't write it down or anything, take something, take an object, and just place it somewhere it shouldn't be.

So if you're leaving the house, for example, and you're like, oh, why is this, you know,

flute here?

Yeah.

It'll make you go, ah, yes, I've been meaning to do that thing.

It's a way of associating with a physical object.

So that's just a great hack.

I feel like, you know, I do that with my my hairbands.

I put one hairband on the other wrist if I need to remember something.

I put the second one on the other wrist if I need to remember a second thing.

And then I put one back on the first wrist if I need to remember a third thing.

Oh, shit.

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

My fact this week is that at the 1984 US Grand Prix, it was thought that Ayrton Senna crashed into a wall on the 47th lap.

lap, but it turns out it was actually the wall that crashed into him.

This is another case for Jenga Koff, I feel.

This is an amazing story.

So Senna is one of the greatest Formula One drivers ever.

His career was cut short because sadly 10 years later he did have a crash in a Grand Prix which he died.

So it basically

he was in this Grand Prix and he's heading on cutting a corner very tight to the wall as he had done on previous laps.

He nicks it.

So afterwards, they're talking about it and he says, there's no way I hit that wall.

I'm a precision driver.

And he was very cocky, Senna.

I'm a precision driver.

That wall came into me.

So they went out just because, I guess, you know, they thought, well, maybe he's right.

Let's check it out.

And they noticed that the wall had moved.

And the reason was, is because a car...

It was a human dressed at the wall, wasn't it?

He was hiding from the jungle cops.

And it was also saying anti-Catholic propaganda at the time, wasn't it?

Call back to last episode, everyone.

So basically, these walls were giant concrete blocks.

And on a previous lap, a car had also hit this wall.

And what they'd noticed was that it hit it with such force that it had knocked the back of it.

And so the front bits jutted out a tiny bit, but only by 10 millimeters.

One millimeter.

It's one.

And we're saying that that was, he was so precise.

He was so precise that that was enough.

He knew exactly where he needed to take it, and so he nicked the wall.

And this is how he is sort of known.

He's known as this guy who...

Yeah.

He was the best.

I believe so.

Right.

I mean, there's countless arguments in Formula One fans, but for me, he was the best.

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There you go.

You heard it here first.

So tragically, because he was cut off in his prime, we don't know where he would have taken it to.

He won three world championships.

He's been, you know, surpassed by Schumacher and others, but that's because of the longevity of a career.

So, yeah, hard to know where he would have gone.

I didn't know why it's got Formula One.

And it's just the whole, it's the whole point of Formula One is that there is a formula and it's this set of rules that you have to adhere to.

And they change the rules every, I don't know, every year or every couple of years.

And, you know, then everyone has to build entirely new cars and it's a nightmare.

And that is the formula that everyone's complying with.

And it's all about the weight and the aerodynamics and the blah, blah, blah.

And I used to know, well, I do know someone.

A friend of mine used to work on Formula One

doing the kind of modelling, the computer modelling

of the aerodynamics of the cars.

Basically you just do that hundreds of thousands of times and modeling the airflow over a car to work out what's going to be best.

And then they change the rules and then you have to

adjust everything in the fraction of a millimeter and all of this.

It's amazing.

And it's amazing.

It's just slightly further than everyone else is pushing it.

Yeah, and because there must be one perfect car theoretically

that would have the perfect aerodynamics for these rules.

I don't know.

I mean, we don't all cross the line at the same time

that's when you have to bring in some variables like mario cart

red shells the bananas regular row yeah

a bubble that you drive into because blob blob blob

strictly slows you down i mean it would all liven up what is sometimes quite a dry sport to watch it is very this is i think true of quite a lot of sports which is if you're not really into them and you watch them they seem quite boring on the outside And then, as soon as you start reading about them, it's like, oh my god, this is incredible!

Yeah, that was definitely true of everyone, isn't it?

Otherwise, it is just people going round and round a thing.

But yeah, you can't make the cars too good.

And obviously, there are rules to stop you doing that, partly for safety, because if you go too fast, it's very bad, and safety is massively cracked down the last sort of 30 years.

But there have been great cars made in the past that they've had to change the rules to stop happening again, like the six-wheeled car.

Oh, yeah, the six-wheeled car, yeah, that's so cool, it's amazing.

That was it designed by Herbert Simpson.

Yes, it was.

No, this was in the 1970s, and it was Tyrrell, one of the teams, raced a six-wheeled car.

Realised that there would be an advantage to it because if you have four smaller wheels at the front rather than two big wheels, then I think you increase the amount of contact with the ground so you've got more grip.

on the road.

That is because you get more traction on the corners.

Honestly, that is like they've got someone in from the outside who's never worked in Formula One before and said, look at this, how can we improve this car?

And they've gone, more wheels?

More wheels on it.

Imagine being in that meeting though, where like they were looking through it, like we've looked through the manual 30 times now.

There's nothing which says the maximum number of wheels is

we can do it.

There must be something in the rules handy.

There must be.

Every other car ever.

No, it's not.

They didn't think of putting it in the rules.

It's like saying you can't have a crocodile driving.

They didn't think about it.

There is no rule about the number of wheels.

Largely because they did this.

And at the time, there were very slight problems with it because they hadn't perfected the technology yet because they'd only just invented the six-wheel car.

They did get a few podium finishes, I think, for that car, but the FIA banned it in the end because they worried that we'd just get to a place where people were putting more and more wheels on cars.

You just have 100 wheels on a car.

I think they did win.

They won one Grand Prix with it, the Swedish Grand Prix.

What a vindication that must have been.

What a moment.

Are the cars longer?

Because that's an advantage as well, right?

For tight finishes.

If your car is suddenly 10 meters long.

I can think of one problem is like when you go into the pit stop to change your tyres, if you have to change 200 tyres, it's going to take ages.

Yeah.

Oh, those are...

I love the pit stops.

Yeah.

I do.

Because that's a bit of a variation in a race, isn't it?

And they used to have a lollipop man.

Yeah.

It's so sweet, really.

It's really sad that they don't anymore.

I think.

Well, because they always build the tracks next to primary speeds.

But I do wonder, like...

We've just got a little old lady in a smart car and she's chatting to some of the mums and all the drivers like, oh, can I cross, can I cross?

This pit stop has now lasted 18 minutes.

So their job basically was to know when everyone had finished their jobs, and then they lifted the lollipop and they could drive off.

But now everyone just has a button.

When you've done your job, you finish your things, and then the lights change.

Just rubbish.

And that's, oh, that must be stressful as well.

Because I can readily imagine fitting the wheel in 0.4 seconds and then forgetting to press my button.

Well, if you had your hair bagged on your left, Chris, you might remember.

Here's a crazy pit stop thing that you're not allowed to do anymore, which is, and do you guys remember ages ago, Lewis Hamilton, there was a bit of controversy about one of the races where you have your teams.

So he's, he's, what's his team again?

He's with

Mercedes.

So

he'd be on the track with another Mercedes rider, part of the same team.

It made more sense for Lewis to win.

So there was this big controversy that the guy in the lead slowed down and let Lewis take the win for the points for the team, basically.

It is fine, but it's seen as it's not sport, basically.

They should be trying.

Yeah.

But they do the same in cycling, don't they?

I thought they were having all this stuff.

In cycling, it's basically the whole sport.

Yeah.

I think in Formula One, it's obviously taboo because it was a big controversy at the time when Lewis did it.

Yeah.

But so what you used to be able to do in a pit stop is, let's say you have damaged your car.

Yeah.

You could come in and they've called over the number two because you're the lead driver and they would just give you his car.

Wicked.

So he would be out of the race.

Yeah.

So would your number two driver, you would want them to be pretty much exactly the same as you, right?

If you're six foot three with very spindly arms you need another six foot three with spindly arms also you don't have to fat around and sort of adjusting the seats and then

changing the air confidential

but that is the thing isn't it because they all get weighed after the race you the driver and the car are weighed because if you're too light it might be dangerous and um and drivers lose about three kilos during a race of water of hydration of water weight it's so sweaty right it's so sweaty it apparently gets so hot in there as well like that's what's you know it's sweaty, it's hot, it's boiling.

And Damon Hill, there's a story.

I couldn't find a good source for it, but it's claimed in a bunch of places that he brings in, for some reason, a thermos of cold black tea, and the heat of the car makes it a nice piping hot tea for him to drink.

I heard that.

I did that.

That's very funny.

The safety stuff is just nuts in the cars these days.

It's so impressive.

So these days, every single driver has a monocock.

It was when they used to have two cocks.

There was so many deaths.

They were tripping over a lot.

It's getting in the way of the levers.

No, it's a cocoon, basically.

It surrounds the driver and it's sort of the core of the car.

Oh.

And it's like the,

I want to say a very hard bag.

Like it surrounds the driver and it keeps them safe,

even if they crash.

So they get into a bag.

No, I missold it dramatically.

It's just like the sort of central command pod of the car, which actually encases the driver.

If you can imagine the meninges of the brace, it's almost like the meninges of the driver.

Exactly, it was like the very toughest mother.

And if they'd called it that, I would have known it straight away.

Yeah.

And

the helmets are amazing.

They have to be subjected.

The helmets have to be subjected to 800-degree heat for 45 seconds in case there's a fire.

Or

hot tea.

Or hot tea.

David Hills.

Thermos has really taken a pattern.

Every time you blink, you lose 20 meters of road.

If you're going in a fast Formula One car.

So you have to be careful when you blink.

They've measured it, and drivers always blink at the same part of the course.

It's really interesting.

Really?

Yeah.

I read that one thing that if you play the sounds of the cars on a Formula One track to a Formula One driver, they'll be able to tell which track it is just from the sounds that the cars make.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing?

That's incredible.

You need a special driver's license?

Oh, really?

Perhaps unsurprisingly.

You need a super license.

That's what it's called.

Really?

Yeah.

Really?

Is that right?

So, does that mean if I took part in the Las Vegas Grand Prix starts this weekend?

Yeah.

If I flew over to Las Vegas and took part in it, I'd get points for not having the right license.

I think you probably will get points.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Do it anyway.

I'll try it.

Shall I try it?

In your electric car as well.

They accelerate.

They do accelerate well, but I'm not sure I could get around all the laps without recharging them.

He's now had a lovely coffee at Supercharger.

I wonder if

psychopaths is that idea that they don't blink.

I wonder if that would make you a better...

There's one way, apparently, of spotting a psychopath, according to people who look into it, is they blink much less than a regular person.

That's why they're forced to kill and kill again, because they're so annoyed about their dry eyes.

Just wonder if you blink less, are you a better driver?

Are they all psychopaths?

Is that what you're saying?

All these F1 drivers.

Well, Senna, just back to him very quickly, sounded a bit sort of like he was in an odd mental place a lot of the time.

Well, as in, like, he never, whenever he arrived, his friends said he never said hi.

Like, if he was coming to a race, he was just in a zone.

He was just always kind of like Andy.

It just sounds like rude.

I'm just say hi, God.

I said hi to you this morning, and it was an effort, frankly, but I said it.

I think that's really normal.

Like, I would say, if you're racing, I can imagine not saying hello to anyone.

Like, you've got to be so in the zone.

Yeah, how many people are you having to say hi to?

Because if it's just one or two people who are welcoming you, you're like, oh, yeah, great, you have a nice chat.

But if it's like all the 50 members of the team are saying, hello, like the big mascot in the silly suit,

all the please, yeah.

This is according to someone who works for the catering operation,

Lindy Redding.

She said he would never say hi if he was in the zone, but when he did say hello, it was very genuine.

He used to kiss us and hold our faces, which was hugely intense, but absolutely lovely.

You know what?

Let's do the not hello next time.

That's the greeting equivalent of doing the washing up so badly that they never asked me who he was.

He never says hi.

Don't say hi.

Speaking of motor racing drivers, have you guys heard of Helen?

Hella Nice.

Helenice.

It's Helen Nice.

Hella Nice driver.

Helence, yeah.

It was a person from the 1920s.

Real name Mariette Hélène Delange.

She was an exotic dancer who danced at the Ritz in Paris.

And then she had a skiing accident and couldn't dance anymore and so became a racing driver.

And she raced in five major Grand Prix in France.

And she was in an accident.

This is why I was reading about her because we were talking about safety.

She She was in an accident where she was in an Alpha Romeo and she somersaulted through the air and she wasn't wearing a seatbelt because she didn't have to in those days.

Her car went into the crowd, killed four people

but she survived because she landed on a soldier who absorbed the full impact of her body saving her life.

Oh god, did he die?

No, he didn't die.

What?

Sorry, did she fly through the air?

Did her carriage?

Her car did.

Her car went one direction.

Right.

Killed some people.

She went in the other direction and luckily landed on this very pliant soldier.

Wow.

And they later married.

I don't think they did, no.

That's amazing.

It's incredible what you can survive.

I mean, now they really survive extraordinary crashes because of the safety.

But even when you look back in the day, I mean, in 1993, have you seen the quite a famous crash?

Two teammates, actually, who were called Fitipaldi and Martini.

They were quite near the back.

But one of their cars was like just behind the other.

And I think the left wheel, front wheel of one car nicked the back right wheel of another car, and it sent the front one into a full in-the-air backflip.

Oh, yes, yeah.

Just does a backflip, happily lands, skates over the finish line.

It's absolutely stunning.

It really is.

Didn't they have the headline, Martini Shaken, not stirred?

It should have done.

Here's a little quiz moment for you all.

Okay.

Who?

Is the guy who I think has done more Formula One races than anyone else?

I'm 90% sure.

He's done more Formula One races than anyone else on the planet.

More Grand Prix.

Grands Prix.

Okay, so

someone we must know of.

No.

Is it the Michelin man?

It's not the Michelin man.

Anna, I feel like you might have the answer.

I've got my hand up.

I'm bursting.

No, are you talking about the safety guy?

The guy who drives the safety car.

Yeah.

He's been doing it for nearly 25 years.

He's done more than 450 Grand Prix.

I can't believe it's the same guy.

I just couldn't believe it's just one.

Hello's not doing every single Grand Prix.

So what does he do, sorry?

When there's an incident on the track,

there's an accident or like there's a horse runs out of the track, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, whatever.

The school day finishes,

the receptions run out, lady club, ladies already.

The safety car drives out onto the track and kind of regulates the service.

Everyone has to drive.

Yeah, he drives around at 20 miles an hour and everyone has to just slowly go behind him.

Are you not allowed to walk?

Yes, of course.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know that feeling when you're driving and someone's kind of coming up your ass?

Imagine that, like, times a million.

This is what that guy's going through every single single day.

Someone coming up his ass times a million.

That is a tough job.

How was work today, darling?

Well,

I had 20 men coming up my ass.

Want to sit down?

No, it's all right.

It's all right.

After 25 years, you're kind of

hard into it.

Okay, does that count as he's a professional racing driver?

He's called Burnt Mail Ender.

and he's um Burnt Mail Ender.

That's great though, that's really cool.

I mean, I guess he's not had any accidents himself over all that time, so

he does say it's quite stressful.

And he says the most can you guess the most stressful person to have behind you

as in which racing driver is

because I he said they're quite aggressive sometimes.

Shoey, it must be Schumacher.

It's actually Lewis Hamilton, he says.

Lewis Hamilton's really up in your face or up your bum, like zigzagging everywhere, like really pushing, going up towards you.

You have to stay behind.

You keep your tires one by zigzag.

Just get out.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's the most precise sport in the world.

You guys have just written a book about sports.

It wasn't.

Yeah, it's called

The Big Book of Sports, isn't it?

Everything's playful.

But surely this is the most...

This is where the most thought has gone into the most tiny differences of, like.

Yeah, it is amazing.

It must be technologically for sure.

I was right yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah like even there in the formula there are even limits on the amount of data you're allowed to use to simulate the car aerodynamics you're limited to 25 teraflops of computing power when you're running the computer simulations of air flowing over a car you haven't even built yet and then after all that stuff like literally last night in the warm-up for the Las Vegas Grand Prix someone hadn't nailed down one of the manhole covers properly

just smashed into the car oh Oh my god, I heard about that.

They get sucked up, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Why do they keep building manhole covers on the F1 tracks?

Well, because

it's in the actual streets of Las Vegas.

And they have to nail down every single manhole cover.

I think they might not even use nails.

They might use like concrete or something.

God, you don't want to be sort of a sewerage worker who pops up at the wrong one.

Oh, fuck!

An escaped convict.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sounds like, isn't it?

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

My fact is, there is such a thing as a ghost pond.

Woo!

Woo!

Splash!

Yeah.

This is a...

So, we're all familiar with ponds.

Maybe just give us a...

Just for the people not from the UK.

Well, no, actually, Den, because, you know, what is a pond and what is a lake?

So it's a very large

hill with just matter on it.

Oh, no, it's the opposite of that.

It's a small indentation with water in it.

That's right.

Sorry, I always get those mixed up.

Oh, you got me there.

You have me going.

But basically, there are these things all over, particularly the UK, but I'm sure in other countries too.

In fact, all over Europe, they do know that.

And they, like, all the farms in England used to have ponds, like fields would have a pond here or there in them, and they would either provide water for cattle, or they would, you know, they're just useful things to have.

But then over the years, they got abandoned, and lots of them dried up, or maybe they got choked by fallen leaves, you know, and all these ponds are now missing from the UK.

There used to be twice as many ponds as there are today in the 1970s.

Double the ponds.

I know.

Like, why is no one marching?

Why is no one supergluing themselves to Heathrow Airport to bring the ponds back?

Well, I think it's important that ponds are great, because so many animals and plants just.

they want to

form once you're going to

buy.

Yeah.

I've got a pond.

Have you got a pond?

Anyone else got a pond?

I want to.

It's on my list of things I'd love to do, is to dig a pond.

It's very easy.

Just dig a pond and pop some lining in it.

Sorry, can you just tell us what these ghost ponds are?

Okay, so ghost ponds.

No one wants to hear about my pond.

Just tell us anything.

We must have been around.

But no, basically, they're huge biodiversity hotspots.

You know, you get plants and species and dragonflies and beetles and all sorts of stuff, where before you just have a field.

And, you know, they're really important for that.

And basically, the mud remembers.

It's really weird.

So all of these ancient seeds might be left in the indentation that used to be a pond.

And they can survive for over a century.

And all you have to do, if you have that little dip in the ground, you refill it, expose it to sunlight, and these old species just spring up and they come back with a vengeance.

And it's kind of staggering.

There's a team at UCL, the Pond Restoration Research Group, led by Carl Sayer, and they've been going around Norfolk restoring these ghost ponds.

And suddenly, bang, life, biodiversity, really important stuff, which is really under threat at the moment.

They reckon there's 600,000 that are hidden, still waiting to be restored

in the UK alone.

It's amazing.

And it's longer than that, isn't it, for seeds?

I'm sure we've mentioned, and I can't remember the exact number, but like the oldest seed ever found that can still be, you know, watered and sunlit and grow is many thousands of years old.

And so, yeah, these can be many hundreds.

And what I really like is that you can sort of see a ghostly evidence of them, can't you?

Like from above, you can see it as like a slightly damp depression, or it's a bit where crops don't grow as well because it's always been a bit too wet, the soil's never dried out.

And I think often farmers, when they're expanding their land, rather than drain them, because that's a hassle draining a pond, they just dump a load of earth in them, wouldn't they?

Or a load of plant matter, which doesn't stop them being being wet so they are they have left their little pond prints so of course but also I think ponds they kind of have like a life duration don't they okay it's like if you have a pond like a pond forms you dig out a pond right because you're a farmer if you just leave it after about 100 years it'll just cease to be oh really yeah they just kind of they they slowly silt up and silt up and silt up and then they die and it could be just like one really heavy rainstorm a load of silt comes down they're not a pond anymore they're just like these ephemeral things that kind of come and go.

They have to be kind of maintained, don't they?

A little bit.

They do.

You clear out the leaves, and you know, if they've got trees over them, that's a nightmare for a pond, apparently.

Sure is.

Can I tell you about the leaves that have fallen into my pond?

Yes, yeah.

How big is your pond?

Like the table that we're recording.

Okay, the one that no one could see.

Yeah, it's about half the size of that.

Oh, nice.

Okay, James would describe something the size of a basin.

It's small.

It's a small pond, but you know, it's just for...

It's just for animals to come and drink stuff.

You're not going to get a deer, are you?

You're not.

Or a lion kneeling in the pond.

I don't think there will be wildebeest of lion sipping at my pond in North London.

You're not that far from the zoo.

That's true.

A catastrophic breakout, and suddenly the stage looks out, a watering hole.

Humans make ponds.

What else makes ponds?

Aliens.

Sorry, is he just going on?

Yes, the equivalent of crop circles.

Pond circles.

Yeah, no.

Non-human animals.

Non-human animals, yes.

I reckon, like, if you're a hippo and you sit down in some mud, then create a pond.

Good point.

Whether or not that would be intentional, I guess would be debated.

I'm saying deliberate pond makers.

Oh, beavers, maybe?

I guess they're damning things up.

It's not really a pond.

It's not quite, no.

So, Andy, if you want to get a pond in your backyard, but you can't be bothered digging, buy yourself a goliath frog.

Oh, crazy.

So goliath frogs do this.

It's a really interesting thing where they move rocks, giant rocks, basically their own weight, weight and they get it so that they cut off water and they build their own pond so that the eggs are more safe in there they can keep attention to them make sure the tadpoles and so on are all in the middle they're the biggest frogs aren't they the dark frog if for the people at home who can't see it there's a glass of water in front of them they're probably about two or three times bigger than mine yeah they're massive

and they think one of the you know there's always theories but one of the theories is that their size is to do with mating, to do with the best rock movers and you know that's partially why they may be that big specifically because they build ponds.

Do you know what else makes ponds?

So, this is a subset of humans.

Oh, okay, I was about to say elephants.

And schoolgirls.

Subset of humans.

That wasn't what I was thinking of.

Does that count as a subset, though?

That's a subset of humans.

Are you questioning whether or not they're humans?

I wasn't sure what subset meant.

I thought it meant it had to be like people from the southern hemisphere.

I thought it was bigger than just saying,

you know, slip-knot fans.

Yeah, just a group of humans.

A group of humans who make make pawn girls.

You used to be a schoolgirl, I was trying to think of what a subset of humans would be.

Okay, I was just wondering if when you were a schoolgirl, you dug pons and that you had inside knowledge.

Why wouldn't I have that?

No, we got taken to pons, so we got told about newts.

So not schoolgirls.

Not schoolgirls.

A subset of humans who make puns girls.

Is it a profession?

No, it's more of an ideology.

Zen gardeners.

Oh, okay.

That is true, undoubtedly, but not who I was thinking of.

Communists.

Oh, the opposite.

Oh, Fascists.

Nazis.

Yes, you've got it.

Nazis.

So there's quite a lot of bomb craters around Europe.

And if you drop a bomb, it makes a big indentation.

And that indentation can then collect water and become a pond.

Wow, that's so that feels like a silver lining.

It is, really, and possibly a reason to start more wars.

No.

I mean, just the Nazis were pond making, right?

The Allies were pond making as well.

We were all pond making.

A lot of ponds in Dresden.

Right.

Probably.

Wow.

But yeah, a lot of ponds made by both sides.

And the thing is that they've done some studies on it.

And they did this in Hungary in particular.

And they found that they found 274 species in ponds made by bombs.

And they included, like, for instance, an algae, which had previously only been found in Chilean salt lakes.

Wow.

And a furry shrimp that had only been recorded twice in the last 25 years in Hungary.

And they were in these ponds made by ghosts.

I mean, this is what they find with these ghost ponds when they rejuvenate them.

You get species that you haven't seen for many, many years.

And it's such a mystery, I think, how stuff turns up, how nature knows.

And particularly, I think, in slightly bigger ponds than maybe James's garden pond.

But you'll find, no offense.

I can't even imagine a pond bigger than James's garden pond.

Please don't write in for me taking the piss out of James having a small pond, okay?

You get.

Okay, here we are.

New name for this podcast.

Don't write in.

I'm thinking eels would be like next.

James Harkins podcast.

Do you reckon?

Yeah.

Come on, give us the.

You would need a bit more detail, but I'm interested.

Okay, first episode: guess what leaves are falling in my pond?

Are you having a guest to your pond each week?

Yeah, but there'll be an animal, so they can't talk.

First episode, a dragonfly, and they just go

Monaco.

We have to guess what animal is at your pond chat that week.

Yeah.

It's almost always a snail.

It's never the wildebeest, guys.

So I always...

I always love eels in ponds because how did they get there?

Oh, yeah.

And what we know is that eels can move across sort of not dry land, but across land that's moist, because they can breathe through their skin, not just gills.

So gills require some pressure for the water to be forced in, but they can actually breathe through their skin.

So they must just flop out of a river.

But then how do do they find their way to some of the pond?

Everyone's looking at me just to say no eels in my pond.

That'll be a big, big episode.

All in my hovercraft.

Yeah.

Like, I think, is there not an idea that sometimes things get in ponds because they're dropped by birds and stuff like that?

There's an idea of that, yeah.

Yeah, there could be that.

Can I tell you about one of the most interesting ponds in the world?

Please.

This is called Don Juan Pond in Antarctica.

And it's really weird.

It's quite...

It's very big.

That's not the weird thing.

It's full of water.

That's not the weird thing either.

Well, it's in Antarctica, so being full of water is unusual.

Exactly.

That is the weird thing.

And it's because what this water is like, it's really dense and really syrupy, and it's full of calcium chloride.

It's kind of salt, right?

And the water remains liquid even 50 degrees below freezing.

Even 50 Celsius below zero.

What's that all about?

Well,

it's because it's the most salty body of water in the world.

Exactly.

And they don't know where the water comes from.

I read an interview with a scientist who said, we've been studying it for 60 years.

We're pretty sure it's fed from beneath, beneath, but we're not totally certain.

And what does it

mean?

What does the cold feel like if it's gone beyond the point of where it freezes into a block?

Oh, I imagine very cold.

I bet, right?

Yeah.

You need a wetsuit.

Well, what it means is: let's say you're swimming in regular water.

It freezes, right?

So you can't dive into it.

It's an ice block.

You can't get in there.

I know what you mean, but you will have been outside in the air temperature's lower than zero.

Yeah, but

no, I'm just curious what, like, water, just the feeling, the sensation of the water.

Yeah, but it's really, really cold, I think, is just the only way anyone can have it.

I don't think anyone.

But no one must have ever jumped into this pond because they would have died.

There we go.

Here's what's interesting about that thing: is you would be able to lie down in it and read a newspaper like in the Dead Sea because it's so salty, I guess.

Oh, because you float right on top of it.

Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't sink.

Could you concentrate on what you were reading for how fucking cold it is?

It depends on the paper, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Some trickier Guardian articles might be a bit of a stretch, like the long read you wouldn't get through.

Some quick bites in the sun, you'd probably be fine.

You know, um, Vespasian, uh, the Roman emperor, uh, he heard about the Dead Sea and he heard that people just float in it, but he didn't believe it and he didn't want to try it himself, so he just got prisoners thrown into it to see what would happen.

Oh, wow.

And they floated, they floated, yeah, how?

I will say, in case you're just gonna book a trip, um, that probably don't A right now, um, but B, in case you were gonna book a trip to the Dead Sea to float, disappointing.

And sank.

It was quite sinky.

You'd had a big lunch.

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Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that in 1912, the woman with the most perfect feet in America was divorced because her husband was jealous of all the attention she was getting.

Brilliant.

It's relatable.

James, can I just say?

Is that because you've got such amazing feet or because you want to divorce your wife?

Can I just say, James, this was an impossible fact to research.

When you Google Nice Feet or Perfect Feet in America, oh my goodness.

There's a lot of stuff to get through first before you find out about

this woman.

Well, she just had really nice feet.

It was a stunt by the chiropodists of the USA to find the perfect foot.

And they eventually managed to find it on the end of a leg

of a woman called Miss Clara Smith Houston, who coincidentally was also a chiropodist.

Yeah.

Anyway,

suspect feels a bit rigged to me, doesn't it?

It does feel a bit rigged.

I don't know.

You might get into an industry because your feet are so nice.

People have complimented you your whole life, you thought.

Well, anyway,

this story made it into some newspapers, just as the chiropodists had hoped.

But the husband of Miss Smith Houston was not impressed, and he sent her a telegram, like really divorce by text, saying, friend, wife, not a great start.

Congratulations on putting your best foot forward.

Nice pun.

Nothing like notoriety no matter how cheap.

Send your picture to the pink journals and call on me for cash with which to advertise yourself further.

Full stop, your husband, full stop.

And then Clara was later quoted in another newspaper saying that she decided if a man was so jealous he would not even allow me to boast of a perfect foot, then I best give him up and all the luxuries with which he provided me except the one thing, happiness.

Here here.

Here here, Clara Kilston.

Can I just so his message when he's saying advertise yourself in a newspaper is he's saying because you're single now?

What's that second?

What's that luxury?

Oh, you're now a foot person, are you?

You know, you're now just sort of like trading on your feet.

I think he was also implying that she was living off his money.

And he was like, well, if you want more money just to advertise yourself to the world for your awesome feet, then fine.

Full stop.

Your husband, full stop.

So the question here is, what is the perfect foot?

What did Clara have?

And she had...

Seven toes.

She had seven toes.

I can't having seven toes.

So she had nine inches.

They were nine inches long.

Do you know what size that is, though?

I just know.

I've just read it from this.

So you've just written written down nine inches, but you don't know how big or small that is, presumably.

Well, if you're a woman's foot, because actually Dan goes into the shoe shop and he says,

I reject your sizing system.

I'm going to give it you an inches.

You can work it out.

256 barley corns, my good bank.

I'd like a shoe that's about the size of a glass, which I drank from the other day.

I want a shoe that doesn't fit in James's pond.

Well, for the listener,

it's size 3.5, which is very small.

And what is the...

Why does it say in 10 inches around the instep?

The circumference, I suppose.

Yes.

Okay, nice.

So very small feet, 3.5.

I mean, not freakishly small.

No, but that is small.

It's exactly one-seventh her height, in accordance with the Greek rule of sculpture.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is from the day book, where this was all published.

And it's an amazing blog, by the way, that you found, James.

Yes.

Second glance history.

Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant.

And it was really nice because they had the cuttings of all the newspapers and stuff like that.

Yeah.

So I didn't have to go digging for them myself.

And then they found that there was a new perfect foot found in 1916, which belonged to a nine-year-old girl called Mary Boca.

This was found in Chicago, and Mary's mum said, Mary had very pretty feet when she was a baby.

I felt nature's gift must not be marred.

I began massaging her feet with cold cream to make them strong and smooth and rubbed them carefully to preserve the natural outline.

And so her mum realised when she was really young that she had really nice feet and then put special stockings on her so that she didn't damage the feet and all that kind of stuff.

It's like the Williams sisters' dad, isn't it?

I bet they made a Hollywood film about her in the 30s.

I just don't, I don't get the whole feet thing.

I know lots of people really like feet.

20% of men, I believe, but only 3% of them.

And 20% of straight men.

I think it was that.

Maybe it was 10%.

What do you mean, really?

I feel like I...

Fetishize.

Right, okay.

So really?

Because there I know there there's a website called Wiki Feet,

which features a great number of feet.

Features greatly in your search history after this week.

Now.

Oh dear.

Are there only three rules on WikiFeet?

Only five toes.

Yeah, that's right.

The rules change constantly.

Yeah, dating their feet.

No, so it's it's you have to be it's normally um people posting pictures of women's feet.

I don't don't think the men's section on WikiFeet is enormous.

Um it's sort of women over 17 who are listed on IMDb.

So you have to be in the public eye somehow.

Um no copyright breaches and no adult content.

But there are people who complain a lot.

Um they get in rows with each other on Wikifeet.

They'll post on a photo NFS, which means no feet showing, which is a point on the story.

That is weird.

But I think if it's if someone's wearing like maybe if you've got a welly on.

This is pointless to me.

I think if you've got a welly on you're on the right side.

My friend has a page.

It's a mutual friend.

I won't say her name, though, because it is a bit of a weird site.

But she has a page on there, and it has like ratings.

So she has three out of five.

Three.

Yeah, which is okay.

She's got okay for you.

You wouldn't get in the Uber, would you, if it had a three out of five?

I think it's a bit, I mean, obviously it's pretty odd stuff.

And it's, I think you can, if you say, take my pictures off this website, they do.

Yeah, okay, that was.

Yeah, they seem quite nice.

There was a journalist who writes for the, well, I read an article in the cut anyway, so she writes for the cut among other things.

And she was going out with someone who said, Hey, do you know you're on Wikifeed?

And she said, no, I don't.

And so saw that she had indeed been uploaded.

Her feet had been uploaded because they get it off like public Instagram pages, for instance.

So there were pictures of her on the beach on Instagram and someone's taking her feet.

And she, I mean, she said, okay, I'll get in touch.

So she got in touch with the person.

And so she interviewed this guy who posted her feet.

And she was very fair.

I have to say.

And I thought he did seem a bit odd.

and she did say at one point, I've noticed that sometimes within 10 minutes of me posting an Instagram story that shows my feet, the screenshot is up on WikiFeet.

How does that happen?

And he said, Look, I don't just sit there looking for it.

If I happen to see it and I like it, I'll put it on there, but I'm not sitting there all day and staring.

It's like it sort of started off quite nice, and then he obviously fat, you know, he kept on saying what beautiful feet she had.

I read an article that said that the incidence of foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases in history.

Interesting.

This was a guy called Dr.

James Giannini and his colleagues who did the study.

And they looked back as far back as the 12th century and they found that when there was a spike in STIs, people preferred feet, and it might have been that they were just less interested in penetrative sex because they might get...

Oh, so

your feet are a bit safer to fancy.

I guess so.

Yeah.

Because

what's the worst you can get?

Athletes' foot on your cock.

Athletes can't.

I think they went all the way up to the 80s and they found, even in the AIDS epidemic, that when that happened, then the numbers of foot-oriented and foot-fetish pictures in kind of porn magazines and stuff shot up there because, yeah, self-preservation, I guess.

People are thinking, well, where else can I go?

Can I tell you about Hogan Fukunaga?

Yeah.

He was arrested in the year 2000.

I know.

Along with 11 acolytes.

That's a bad start, isn't it?

When you and your acolytes have been picked up.

up.

So he was the head of a cult in Japan which offered followers analysis of their spiritual and mental health entirely based on their toes.

Right.

So followers would pay 600 quid to have their feet stroked and then looked at by Mr.

Fukanaga.

Consenting adults?

Consenting adults, consenting adults with more money than sense.

And no, consenting adults with maybe too much money on their hands and who fell for the story that, oh, I can can predict your future through your toes.

It's like a pedicure cum fortune teller, right?

Yeah, it's like

cross my foot with silver.

The predictions were all very

suffering-based.

They predicted, oh, you'll die of a horrible disease, or you'll fall into debt.

So that wasn't nice.

But you can avert your problems if you sign up for one of our lecture courses or if you buy a pinch of Buddha's ashes at a mere £120,000.

Okay.

They were running this cult for about 15 years.

They made 500 million quid out of it.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then he claimed later on that he had been simply obeying the voice of heaven, but that he had since forgotten what the voice had said.

Rip a load of people off, maybe.

I think so.

It feels like in this cult being called the head of the operation is the wrong title.

That should be the junior role.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, he was the big toe.

When you have an enormous interest in feet, I believe it's called podophilia, which

means there is a word that should be coined for people who have an abnormal interest in podcasts.

So

when I have Hakin's podcast, you might have Andy's podophile cast.

Would all your acolytes be called podophiles?

You can get badges made.

I'm a podophile.

I shout in the mob house.

I'm my house.

No, but there should be a word for people who like podcasts lots.

Because podophile is taken by the feet people.

Let's call them fetophiles.

Yes.

We'll take their word back.

But, you know, there should be something.

Audiophile.

Audiophile?

That's good, but it's quite confusing because it's also an audiophile.

Yeah.

That's what makes it so

funny.

Sorry, it's actually better than a confusing.

Yeah, yeah.

That's right.

So,

famous names who love a foot include Elvis.

Are we really doing that?

Are we really doing?

There's a lot of people who have admitted to loving feet and having better feet.

It's just quite a turn for us, isn't it?

Like celebrity toe suckers, is what we're apparently this podcast is now about.

It was a story, but apparently Elvis really loved it.

What's interesting is there is obviously quite a lot of famous stories about, you know, his henchmen would go out into a crowd after a gig.

Henchman and cut off people's feet.

And they would bring them back to the volcano lair that Elvis had, his Graceland.

His foot soldiers, yeah.

They would go and

they would, so they would, you know, go, you, you, do you want to come meet Elvis?

And obviously it was, you know, to bring women backstage.

And apparently they screen their feet

They're crawling around on the floor in the gig, just looking for feet.

Exactly.

I dropped an airing.

Presumably, most women went to the gigs wearing shoes.

How are they doing that?

It's just a rumor.

What?

It's just a rumour.

We know that you love feet.

And the story is that that was part of what the screening is what would go on.

The story is.

Can I steer us back towards Karma Waters?

Sure, look.

I think about corns.

You know, you get corns on your feed.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Can you

transfer to your paint?

I don't believe so.

Cop corn.

But you used to have street corn cutters, right?

That was the thing.

Oh, God, really?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, it's sort of pretty.

And it's, it's, obviously, if you have corns, they're really painful in.

What would you do?

Would it be like filing a nail?

Like that kind of mental procedures, basically.

But the weird thing is, I just like this.

I was on the blog Foot Talk, which is another great foot-based blog.

I really recommend it.

But there used to be jingles.

They would advertise themselves by singing jingles in the streets.

And the weird thing about this is that sometimes celebrity composers would write jingles for corn cutters.

That's alright.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, how celebrity are we talking?

Mozart's got his...

Well, Irving Berlin.

I'm going to say the name Orlando Gibbons.

Oh, my God.

Not Orlando.

No way.

I mean,

so he...

Wow.

He was famous at the time.

He was the the organist at Westminster Abbey he was eventually named virginalist to the king

that was a stall he was coming

a virginal being a kind of piano obviously

do we know how the song went the jingles i sadly i don't think we do they're pretty sure that he came up with jingles for corn cutters as well as a kind of sideline i don't know if it was lucrative or fun thing to do you got you guys have just reminded me my uh wolf my son um he uh used to love corn on the cob but he always used to call it corn on the cock that was the phrase that he used um can i tell you something about horses feet yeah which i love is that horses feet are always giving you a middle finger one big middle finger every horse's hoof is what we call a horse's foot um it's just a big middle finger and this is because they once had five toes on their feet many many millions of years ago um there are actually kind of three of them still visible because you've got two little vestigial ones if you know horses legs they're kind of a bit up the leg um but the hoof is just the middle finger.

And there's actually a biologist called Catherine Cavanaugh who recently was sorting through preserved horse embryos for reasons she didn't go into.

And she saw that in the very, very early days of horse gestation, they have five fingers on each foot.

And then you see it in the cells, and it's like they're about to grow, and then they decide not to grow because they've evolved out of it.

So let me ask you this: if a horse with five toes rocks up to the Grand National, are there regulations to say?

No, no, no, against it?

No rules against it.

No rules, and it's five times faster.

Yeah, ridden by a crocodile.

You know that the women of Chicago have been famous throughout America for abnormally sized feet.

Big or small?

Big.

Oh, okay.

In the early 20th century.

So this perfect foot, the second one, was in Chicago.

And everyone was surprised because people in Chicago usually have massive feet.

What a wild a cliche.

It's so amazing.

And I looked in the newspaper archives, and sure enough, if you look like before, you know, the 20s and search for Big Feet Chicago, there's all these articles that go, yeah, they all got big feet.

And then you get people in Chicago saying, yeah, we do have big feet, but actually, that also means we have big intellect.

Wow.

Yeah, sure, it does.

And is it just the women, or is it the people?

It's just the women of Chicago.

Is it so that they can, like, walk out over the Great Lakes and distribute their weight better?

Oh, that would be good.

Yeah.

I thought maybe because it's the windy city, isn't it?

And it would help you not to get blown over.

Great showers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's got all these uses.

That's evolution.

That is such funny.

Is there any evidence behind it?

Is it true?

It can't be true.

I mean, I'll be honest, I haven't gone to Chicago and measured all the women's feet, but it can't be true.

Get Elvis's henchmen together.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our social media accounts.

I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland.

James?

My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin.

Andy.

I'm on Twitter and now Blue Sky.

Andrew Hunter M.

Yeah.

And if you want to get in contact with us as a group, Anna, where do they go?

You can go to at no such thing on Twitter or you can email podcast at qi.com.

That's right.

You can also go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

If you'd like to check them out, there's also some merch and lots of other fun things.

Do check it out.

But otherwise just come back here we'll be back again with another episode and we'll see you then goodbye

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