474: No Such Thing As A Remote Controlled Cabbie

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Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Phish.

Before we get going, I just want to let you know a couple of things.

Firstly, the episode you're about to hear is the last ever episode to be recorded at the QI offices in Covert Garden as we pack up, shop, and move on to our new offices in Hoburn.

So we thought, you know, if we're gonna go out, we should go out strong.

So we reached out to Nerd Royalty and fortunately she said, yes, it's Hannah Frye.

My goodness, we are such huge fans of her at the QI office.

I think every elf has probably read her books.

Hello World, if you've not read that, by the way, is an incredible book.

I'm sure you've all seen her TV series, which was out November of last year on BBC2 called The Secret Genius of Modern Life.

It was absolutely phenomenal.

She makes incredible TV, she writes incredible books, and she is such a good guest on this week's episode.

You have to, by the way, check out her latest show.

You can find it on bloomberg.com and it's called The Future with Hannah Frye.

It is a look into the world of scientists and inventors who are changing the way the world is going to be over the next century.

These are people who are looking into seeing if we can live a life beyond 150 years old, who are working out whether or not computers will be able to read our emotions and trying to find out if they can make a planet that will be utterly transformed by unlimited clean energy.

So do check that out.

It's on bloomberg.com or you can find the entire series on YouTube as well.

And otherwise,

you know, next time you happen to be in Covent Garden, do take a walk down Maiden Lane.

And if you look above the barbershop that's called Ruffians, you'll see a window there.

That's where we were.

For nine years, James, Andy, Anna, and I just sat there dorking out.

And we're going to miss the place, but we're looking forward to the next chapter and that will be next week's episode.

But for now, let's give a good old goodbye with Hannah Fry to the QI offices in Covert Garden.

On with the show.

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

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Hannah Fry 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 Hannah.

Oh me.

Quite her.

Okay, here's my facts.

The Malliard reaction, so the thing that makes your bread turn brown when you toast it, is actually the same thing that makes fake tan work

interesting okay

so do you want more do you want more yeah so you're being you're being you're underimpressed you are being toasted no it's just so weird as in i just i'm trying to make the connection between you've been toasted effectively you would think like if you had a normal suntan you'll like you'll lay in the sun you would think that's being toasted that's toasted exactly but this is this is a spray on or this is a cream right so there's no toasting what if you put fake town on bread that's what i wanted to know good Good question.

This is a great question.

Someone needs to experiment.

Yeah.

Perfect toast every time.

Okay, so the best thing about this, my favourite thing about this, is this was discovered completely by accident.

So there was a researcher called Ava Wittgenstein and she was looking into, there were some children who were having problems, their bodies were having problems in breaking down glucose.

There's a sort of simplified sugar that you find in the body, which is called dihydroxyacetone.

Easy for me to say.

And she was seeing if you could feed them this sugar, whether their bodies could break down that sort of simplified sugar.

And every now and then, some of these kids would like accidentally dribble a little bit of medicine down their chin.

And when they did, they would have a perfectly orange stain of dribble.

And then she was like,

what's going on here?

And what she realized is that you have these amino acids in the skin, and when that reacts with the DHA, the dihydroxyacetone, it creates that sort of reaction that is the same thing

that ends up turning your skin brown in the sun, the melanin in your skin.

Anyway, this idea was picked up by Coppertone and then released into Fake Tan.

And it's still the same thing, still the same stuff, the DHA, which is the thing that's been so far.

But they've become much better at making it less smelly and less orange.

So did either Wittgenstein, did she see this little bit of orangeness and think, what if that was my whole face?

Or she's more of a scientist and someone else picked up on the idea.

She's more of the scientist i mean you know look who doesn't want to have an entirely orange face

i'm sure she had ambition but here's the question that i've got i spent ages hours trying to find anything about eva wittgenstein there is nothing that i could find were you trying to find out if she was related to ludwig no i don't know no because i did right and did you find anything no exactly there's nothing about so she does this in the 50s and then she kind of disappears and i asked a friend who knows how to go into sort of american records just to see if he could find her.

And he searched the whole records.

All he could find was an Eva Wittgenstein who died age 97 in North Carolina.

We don't know if it's her, but she showed up as being on a government watch list.

Oh, so it's kind of a cool idea that maybe Eva

became

a spy and could like change her disguise by going orange and then back to white.

So the original mission of Possible runs into a tanning booth and comes out half an hour later completely unrecognizable.

Is that right?

What a disguise, yeah.

So have any of you guys ever been fake tanned at all?

Almost non-stop.

I'm not joking.

Do you like my skin is okay?

It's important for anybody who doesn't know what I look like.

I am the most ginger person that a ginger person can be, right?

Like, I am fully ginger, which means that my skin is not just white, it's like translucent with a hint of blue.

And so,

so I put on fake tan just to make my skin look like pasty skin.

Wow.

Do you have it on right now?

I don't, actually, but I have got bronzer on.

Can you not tell?

Well, you just, no, your skin looks fine.

It looks normal.

Interesting though, that's okay, that you can be kind of under pale.

Like, you're not even pale.

No, I aspire to do that.

So, have you tried that?

Because I know there are lots of different methods you can do.

There are the beds aren't there, and then there are the booths with the bed.

Oh, no, so beds are not fake tan.

So, the beds, you go in, that's a real tan.

That's very, it's very considered, it's looked down on.

Oh, these days, very good spots.

It's a little bit skin cancery.

Right.

So I didn't realise that these, the spray that you can put on, is also a risk.

Is it?

Because, well, no, I mean, not, sorry, okay, just for any Big Tanners listening or sort of like legal teams, whatever.

The point is that I think one of that track

big tan might be coming to get you.

It's actually good for you.

It's actually.

No, it makes you look like you are protected from the sun, but you're not.

I see.

It hasn't had the actual effect.

It's reacted, it's produced these pigments, these melanoidins in your skin, but you are then totally unprotected from so some people would think you, and I don't think this is even proper, but some people think you get a little bit of a tan and that will protect you from other, you know, stronger from the sun, from the stronger sun.

Which it doesn't.

This definitely doesn't.

This is just, yeah, and doesn't it?

I this is a bit sciencey for me, but doesn't it in in sorry, doesn't it actually kind of make you more susceptible to having the suns harm you?

Don't know.

I think tan's gone for me now.

I don't know.

I mean, I think no.

I think no.

Okay.

There was a study that was done in 2007 which showed, and this was by Katinka Jung.

I don't know if there's any relation to Carl.

Don't know if the Wittgenstein situation.

Yeah.

And this was in Berlin, which showed that 24 hours after having the tanner on, ultraviolet, you become more susceptible to it in a 24-hour period, according to this study in 2207.

Interesting.

Look, all I know is I never leave the Blooming House without Factor 50 on.

I was once.

Oh, God, yeah.

So I was once in Cuba, don't like to brag um I was wearing factor 50 and sat in the shade all day and uh I was burnt so badly from the reflection of the sun on the sand that I got blisters like that's the sort of situation

you people without ginger hair you don't know you don't know that how we suffer I do have transparent skin as well actually I like Irish skin even though I have dark hair like when I was in a similar part of the world I put sun cream on Factor 50 every 20 minutes and one of the times I didn't put it on properly and I blistered in the shape of a handprint on my chest.

Oh, God.

I went to a pig farm in Scotland recently.

Guys, all these showbiz outclothes that we've got coming on.

Again, again, don't like to brag.

What I hope you're going to say is you realise that pigs shelter from the sun by rubbing themselves in mud, and you did the same.

I mean, close, close.

It's because you said Irish skin.

And when I was going around this pig farm, I realized just, I mean, genuinely, these pigs have identical skin to me.

Identical skin.

And I was like, why do all these pigs have Irish skin?

And as you say, it makes them really susceptible to sunburn.

So that's why they have to keep them in sheds.

But actually, the reason for having Irish skin is a bit grim is because when you are breeding them for meat, you can see if there's bad meat much easier through see-through skin.

No.

Wow.

What?

Is that true?

That is super fascinating.

So look, you and me, if we ever get hung up for meat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Do you both have any advantage to having pale skin?

Can anyone see something?

We are vitamin D superheroes.

Okay, right.

Like, that's genuinely a superpower of pale skin people.

What does that mean?

We make sure you synthesize it more easily.

Yeah.

So not enough that you can come in and, you know, extract it from me.

No, no.

You can't make a vitamin D farm out of us.

We haven't tried yet.

I read an article that said the MIAD reaction is by far the most widely practiced chemical reaction in the world.

Hang on, what about breathing?

Breathing.

Oh, that counts as a chemical reaction, yeah.

Well, this was at the 100-year anniversary of the Mayad Reaction,

which was a huge conference.

They got skin in the game.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was a chemist who said it.

Nobel Prize winner, John Marie Lane, who said it.

But there was a huge conference.

It was a 100 years since it got discovered.

And there's a group, the Mayad Reaction Group.

The Mayad Reaction Society have conferences just about the Mayad reaction.

Yeah, as you say, James, they were established in 2005 and it's just food browning scientists meeting up and

having a whale of a time, I bet.

But actually, I think James's case said it's the most practiced chemical reaction on the planet.

Well, this was Jean-Marie Lenn.

I'm supporting it, James, because not only is everyone who's ever made a slice of toast engaged in it, but also the Mayad Reaction is happening in our bodies all the time.

And so when you toast something, it happens at a very high temperature.

But generally,

it's a reaction between amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, and we've all made of lots of proteins, and sugars.

So that is constantly happening in the human body anyway, but at a very slow rate, much, much more slowly than toasting all the fake anything.

Are you saying I'm orange on the inside too?

I'm afraid so.

And it's bad for you, though, because when you make toast, you know, the mid reaction produces about a thousand new molecules.

It's really complicated.

One of the chemicals it makes is acrylamide and acrylamide is carcinogenic.

You know, if you have just a slice of toast every day, it's not nearly enough to be a problem.

But they found that the myad process that they use in highly processed foods, so if you're making some really highly processed food and you want it to last for ages, one way to do it is to heat it up really, really quickly at a massive, massive temperature.

And that kind of myad reaction gives this acrylamide.

Yeah.

You know, you're talking about processed foods though.

So, okay, if you're like home cooking and you're browning off the chicken and then browning off this thing to try and get loads of flavour, something I've discovered recently, don't bother doing any of that, right?

You can get MSG from the internet, right?

Yeah.

You buy it, right?

A little sprinkle of MSG makes everything taste amazing.

Okay.

And because I am scientific in nature,

I've A-B tested this stuff with guests coming around my house.

Oh, right.

Sorry, what's A-B-testing?

It's where you basically have one bowl with, one bowl without, and see which one goes down quicker.

Oh, that's interesting.

Oh, wow.

Did they know they were in an experiment when they came round?

They did not.

Tell me.

They didn't welcome to my house.

I would say it's an assumption.

If you ever go and visit Hannah, it's like you're probably in an experiment.

You sign this release form at the door.

You couldn't really explain.

But it's.

What was in the bowls?

Do you mind me asking?

I made a chicken curry.

Look, don't get me wrong, my chicken curry is absolutely delicious.

Both bowls were finished eventually.

The kraken.

The waffles.

The one with the kraken

was more enjoyed, yeah.

I mean, MSG is my.

I grew up in Hong Kong, that's my life MSG.

I'm very excited.

Do you have buckets of it that you like spoons in?

I do get pot noodle and I collect just the sachets so that I can use it on other things.

How are there sachets of MSG that come with pot noodles?

You know the MSG is inside the actual powder that you get of the I actually know that.

I can't remember when I last had a pot noodle, but it's been a while.

Some of us are like

moved pot noodles,

sorry.

This is my version of I was in Cuba recently.

It's just having pot noodle in the last few years.

Can I tell you something about

airline food, specifically relating to myard?

So,

you can't do the myod reaction on a plane.

Okay, that's interesting.

Most planes these days don't have stoves.

Well, you'd need an open flame, hang on, or open flame.

Sure, yeah, sure.

So, how do they heat the food?

They microwave it.

Yeah, okay.

What's the maximum temperature microwavable food gets up to?

It's 100 degrees because it's heating the water molecules, which get to 100, so blah blah blah.

So, you can't, can't.

That's part of the reason why plain food tastes bad.

I know it affects your taste buds being down.

If I brought a Bunsen burner onto a plane,

it would be possible.

Yeah, unfortunately, it's actually on that little card at check-in.

They do say, have you brought a Bunsen burner for your toast?

There's a picture of a guy with a medieval toasting fork as well.

But if you put it on those little plastic bags, you can get that through.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, but lots of food is pre-myaded before it's loaded onto the plane.

And then microwaved.

And then it's microwaved, and then you get a bit of the flavour still, but yeah.

The myad reaction works on poo.

And

that's why we have coprolites.

Oh, what?

Yeah, so if you...

A coprolite is a fossilized poo.

Right.

Our listeners will know that.

Of course, they will.

Of course.

But basically, let's say you have a dinosaur, they do a poo.

The myad reaction works on the surface of the poo.

That's what crusts it over.

And then eventually that's what helps it become a coprolite.

Wow, cool.

So if I take my dog out for a walk,

spray the result with fake tan.

Yeah.

Sprinkle a little MSG on it.

Come back millions of years later.

That was a chance.

Leave a sign near it.

Do not touch.

Experiment in progress.

One of Hammer's experiments.

Yeah.

Oh, fuck it.

Let's leave it alone, all right?

Don't you said Hong Kong?

Because we were talking about MSG.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Have you heard of wok hay?

Is this a familiar concept hay?

Yeah.

It's the breath of the wok, right?

Oh, okay.

It's quality that if you're cooking in China and particularly in Hong Kong, it's like the perfect seared taste of the rice that's been cooked in a wok.

And it's because the rice gets tossed loads, you know, really fast, loads of times, a few times a second.

It uses the Myod reaction.

And if you get the trajectory of the rice right

and it's cooking at the right temperature, it's absolutely delicious, apparently.

And there's a restaurant called The Chairman in Hong Kong, which is one of the top restaurants in Hong Kong.

And chefs there have to spend a year practicing the tossing of the rice in the pan.

They're only allowed to cook for other chefs.

They're not allowed to cook stir-fries for customers.

They're not allowed to cook a stir-fry for a year so they can get the tossing rate.

That's amazing.

I have heard about you know washing woks being a

bad thing, right?

Like you're supposed to...

I bet.

You're not supposed to wash a teapot kind of thing as well, right?

Yeah, that's just lazy people, isn't it?

Yeah, I seasoned a pan recently.

What does that mean?

It's where you get a new

fried on your face.

It was quite the thing.

Well it really was.

It was kind of, yeah, I'm living that Fraser life now.

I really am.

No pot noodles for you.

You toss your pot noodle for a year before you eat it.

It's where you get a new like a cast iron pan, no non-stick stuff, just pure, you know, lovely cast iron, whatever.

And then you put this tiny layer of oil in and you cook that very slowly and then it kind of bonds with the pan.

Right.

And then you do that a few times again and again and again.

You do it all over the pan.

You're kind of lathering the pan and then making a tiny thin layer.

And it makes it really good at cooking,

I don't know, more stuff.

And it's usually very private.

That's as personal a thing as we've got a lance on.

I feel like I've learned a lot of it.

Can we cut a bit out?

Sorry, I'm giving too much away.

I've got a bit exposed.

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

My fact is that Japan has just found 7,000 islands that it didn't know it had.

Japan's doubled, basically, in one specific respect.

Not in size, just a number.

Still exactly.

Wait, how many did it have before?

It had 6,800 before that.

Oh, wow.

It's more doubled.

It's more than double size.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a good day, isn't it?

It's a great day.

Because it would be great if one of them was like

Honshu or one of the islands.

Yeah.

But they're all small, right?

They're all super small.

Unfortunately, I feel like we need more detail.

Where were they?

They were all around the main ones, you know, and

offshore mostly.

Did they find them all in one day, in one go?

Well, they've been doing some digital mapping.

Japan, since 1985, has had the same set of maps, which I think are based on older maps, whereas now you can survey much more accurately.

And so there are now 14,000 Japanese islands.

Are any of them in the South China Sea and claimed by other people?

Do we think?

I don't know how many are totally undisputed.

Because you know, the Kuril Islands, which is in the north of Japan, which is claimed also by Russia.

Yes.

That is a dispute that's still been going since World War II, and which means that technically World War II hasn't finished.

Because Japan and the Soviet Union haven't agreed on who owns these islands and it was part of World War II.

Seriously,

no, like the last time they talked about it was like, I don't know, 10 years ago, something like that, and they didn't agree with it then.

And I can't see them agreeing with it now.

That's amazing.

What amazing tourist attraction that you can go there and you're in World War II?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, one of the other things to say is that Japan's major landmasses, like the four or five islands, I think predominantly four are 90% of the landmass.

So, that's we're talking about the final 3% here that make up the 14,000 extra islands that they have.

Are any of them big enough to put a house on?

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah.

You might not want to put a house on them just in case of sea levels.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're a short-term list about it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're a dodge property developer, this is a boon for you.

This is great.

But it also depends on what you call an island, right?

What's the difference between a rock and an island?

Size.

But where does one end and the other one start, right?

And in Scotland, they had a traditional thing which was if you could keep a sheep on it, it's an island.

And if you can't keep a sheep on it, it's a rock.

But and that when you say keep a sheep, you mean can the sheep, is there enough grass for the sheep to survive?

Can it survive for a few years?

I mean, because presumably you can keep a sheep on basically any rock.

It depends on the level of cruelty you're willing to go along.

If it's spiky enough.

But yeah, so like what I'm saying, I guess, is like a lot of these islands will be super small.

And whether they are officially rocks or islands,

we don't have a way of deciding.

That's why you can't say how many islands there are in the UK or how many there are in Canada or even which country has the most islands because different people count them in different ways.

You also couldn't say the circumference of the rock to give you a definition of whether it's a rock or island or an island.

Because you know this, that if you measure the circumference or the length of a coastline, it depends on how big your measuring stick is as to the answer that you get.

Go on.

Okay, you guys.

You're about to get maxed.

Buckle up.

Okay, so if you just have a map, let's say of the British coastline and you get like a 30 centimetre ruler and you go right how long the coastline da da da da da like you know whatever but then if you've got a more accurate measuring stick right so one that you were measuring to the millimeter you could kind of get in there in the nooks and crannies a little bit more and go all around them right and actually you will get longer and longer and longer each time because every time you add in a little crevice little nook and cranny you're kind of adding length to it so in the limit of an of an of like looking at an infinitely detailed ruler and the infinitesimally small, like, nooks and crannies, you have an infinite coastline.

Wow,

and that's so interesting.

Can I tell you a story about my favorite island in the world?

Yes.

Okay, so

there's a

little place in France.

This is not my favorite island in the world.

There's a little lake and it's got a little island in it, right?

So you cross over a little bridge and then you get there.

And then when you're on the island, it's got a pond in the island.

Okay.

Right?

Or maybe sort of like a small lake, pond to lake, how to lake.

In the middle of the pond, there's a little island right so you've got an island in a lake and on that island there is a lake which also has an island in it wow so essentially recursive islands now there are a few of these places around the world okay but the best one of all is called vulcan point

and it's in the philippines and it's a tiny little island that is inside a lake Oh okay, right?

It's a very, very small little island.

It's like a little rock.

And that lake is inside a volcano,

which is

itself surrounded by water, which is on an island

in a lake.

And it's in the Philippines, which is in itself an island.

Wow.

Now, the thing is about Vulcan Point is that unfortunately the volcano exploded and Vulcan Point was destroyed.

But

there is nonetheless photographic evidence of the point where there was this level of recursive islands.

Wow.

And you know what?

I think you could put a sheep on it.

Really?

Yeah.

It had a great big spike in the middle.

You can keep a lamb kebab on it.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's so cool.

That's extraordinary.

That's so cool.

I love that.

There's a really cool island on Japan, which is called Gunkanjima Island.

And what's amazing about this is it was once the most densely populated place on our planet.

It's quite small.

Does that mean there's a lot of people or is it very, very small?

A lot of people for a very small island.

It's a mixture of the two.

So this is the 1900s.

And this island, there was Mitsubishi.

They looked at it and thought there would be a lot of rich submarine coal deposit underneath.

So what they did was they built these buildings on top of the rock.

They fitted 6,000 people.

There's nothing else you could do but just be in these apartments and then drill downwards to get it.

And they were right, there was stuff down there.

You'll recognize it, by the way, possibly, if you like popular movies.

It's in James Bond's Skyfall.

It's where Bond goes to this weird island where it's completely abandoned and so people go there now.

It's Javier Bardem.

Yes, exactly.

Why was it abandoned?

Either they mined enough of it or.

No, I don't think it was that.

I think that Japan switched to petrol.

Tragically.

Tragically.

Sorry.

Giving away.

Sorry, if you don't know, Hannah, I've got substantial interests in coal.

We really are finding out.

What about you?

Wait till you hear they've gone to electric coal.

Anyway, no, no, no.

Japan just had a big switchover.

I think the most populated now is Mong Kok, isn't it, it?

In Hong Kong, just because we were talking about that before.

I think so.

That was always intensely populated in Hong Kong.

I think this island was 216,000 people per square mile, which is because it was a fraction of a square mile.

Feels like a lot, yeah.

Give us a comparison, though.

What is it like in central London?

Ooh, I don't.

I know that the least densely populated countries are places like Mongolia, which have about four people, I think, per square mile.

And this was how many?

216,000.

But it's quite a lot more.

Quite a lot more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I went to an island in Japan that has all the rabbits on, and it's just like you walk and there's just rabbits everywhere.

And you walk down and they follow you.

Are these naturally occurring rabbits or have they been placed there for the interest of tourists?

The story goes that there was a chemical weapons factory and they were used as experiments and they were let go and then they proliferated.

But bred like rabbits.

Well, yeah, exactly.

I can see why they went with the lizard for the Godzilla Origin story.

But what we think actually happened is there are a lot of school kids nearby, and they put some rabbits on there.

And then the rabbits did what rabbits do and became more and more and more rabbits.

And now, because it's known as Rabbit Island, kids will just come and put their rabbit on there because it's where rabbits live.

And it's like, it's almost advertised as this wonderful place where rabbits roam free and far.

It's sort of like where your dog's gone to the farm.

It's like we're just...

We're putting a rabbit

like that.

Are they fed?

By tourists.

And that's the problem, really, because the tourist season is quite seasonal.

And so for some of the year, they don't really get fed at all.

Oh, okay, yeah.

You'd think that would be a natural population control, though, wouldn't you?

I think it is, but the population is quite high still.

Yeah.

And you walk around and there's a few rabbits there and they're chasing after you because they know that tourists feed them.

And then you walk and then you turn around and there's a few more.

And then you walk a bit further and there's like 20.

It's the scary.

It's like a bad thing.

It's like the birds, but rabbits.

Yeah.

Cute animals are fine, but when they accumulate, that turns to scary.

There's a number where it gets scary, isn't it?

When you turn around and there's four.

For me, it's like if there's only two and then you turn around and there's like six, I think that's scary.

Oh, yeah.

Did you, um, have you ever heard the work of Greg Gage?

Greg Gage.

So this is a guy, he has this amazing stuff.

You can put a device on your arm that sends little electric sensors and moves your hands for you, right?

So you can sort of stand there with this thing on your arm and with his eye patch, he can like move your arm.

Oh, wow.

Anyway, he created this thing, which actually school kids around the world can do, where you can operate on a little cockroach and insert a little wire into their heads, right?

And then essentially control them using a PlayStation controller.

Oh my gosh.

Right?

It's absolutely wild.

Anyway, the thing is, is that

you've got this like remote control cockroach.

I always thought that he was missing a massive trick though, because what he should do is get sort of gloves, which can tell where his hands are,

those kind of gloves that are connected to the internet, and then have an entire army of cockroaches behind him, right?

Like a rabbit.

And then summon them by like lifting his arms up.

And then the cockroaches are like a huge one.

Like a Marvel superhero for cockroaches.

Wow.

Maybe, maybe next he can do rabbits.

Yeah, I'm up for it.

The rabbits, I don't think, like me because I accidentally kicked one.

No, they were kind of they just ran around.

Accidentally, here he is, getting his defense in first.

They just run around your feet the whole time.

Sure, sure, yeah, yeah.

Wow, that'd be a great idea.

And yet, you converted it through a rugby post that was nearby.

That's insane.

So

I was just looking up things that are going on in Japan at at the moment.

Oh, yeah.

And have you heard of the sushi terror?

There's a...

Japan is in the grip of a...

Right now, as we're recording this, there's a huge problem because there's a craze that's developed.

It's an online craze and it's spread to offline.

You know, the conveyor belt sushi restaurants?

Yeah.

People have started mucking around with the stuff on the belts.

Not in Japan, kind of.

Touching the things.

What?

Licking bottles of soy sauce?

No.

It's very bad.

And filming themselves as they do it.

And this is

obviously really bad, you know.

Can you just have a little quiz for you guys?

Oh, cool, great.

When did the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant open?

What year?

1990 in New York.

Very nice.

Oh, nice.

And

very nice.

Wrong, though.

Look at its.

I'm not saying until we've got a...

Look at its base.

No, please.

I'm very good at it.

The first escalator came in Harrods in the UK around the 1920s or something like that.

Not really playing the game to use previous knowledge, but okay, I like it.

So, I'm going to say it was in Harrods.

They decided to open one.

They took that technology and

just put little sushi on it.

Okay, and a year?

Probably 1927, I should think.

Right.

Dan?

Oh, there's not much nowhere for me to go.

It's not happened yet.

Brilliant.

2029.

2029.

20 day now.

It's all an illusion.

Well, okay, it was interesting to me.

James has low-balled it so much.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No, it's quite all right, but it's 1958.

Okay.

I am surprised by that.

That is quite a long time ago.

It predates Cliff Richards' first album by a year.

And that is how we judge everything.

Just Panna, you haven't been on the show before, but that's online.

That is a long...

I'm surprised.

Yeah.

I was going to say, I don't know if we've ever mentioned it, I don't think we have.

The first ever English teacher who was of a foreign country teaching English in the country was a guy called Ranald MacDonald.

He was the first person to teach in Japan, which would be a great, nice coincidence if Ronald MacDonald, who is a character in McDonald's in Japan, was called Ronald McDonald.

But he's not.

What?

It's called Donald McDonald.

What?

Who?

What?

Yeah.

Is it because the letter R is difficult to say?

Exactly.

And it's interesting looking at it online when people have written about it.

There's been tweets about it.

And if you go to the replies, there's a lot of Japanese people who are like, you know, in their 30s going, he's called Ronald?

Like, so it's like it's a genuinely amazing thing that over there, he's Donald.

Did you say you were in Japan recently?

I was in Japan, yeah.

I was in Tokyo, but the good bit, I got to to go inside the exclusion zone in Fukushima, which was

wild.

The whole place is extraordinary.

There are these buildings, there's one sort of town hall that we went to, and the doors are locked, but inside you can just see everybody's slippers, and there was like a kid's toy on the floor, and then,

you know, like beer bottles, right?

They'd had a party or something the night before, and there's like a crate with sort of the empties that they hadn't got rid of, and just like everybody left in such a rush because of the tsunami.

But one of the reasons why we were going there, we were looking at wildlife and how wildlife has changed.

And there were reports before we got there that there were radioactive bears inside the exclusion zone,

which I was obviously very excited about.

So we got there, we started, right?

We're literally on a bear hunt.

And we are scared.

Yes,

many of the radio shows, you know,

anyway, we went and talked to a researcher, and we're like, okay, tell us about these bears.

We couldn't find any bears.

Okay, so how much have you seen these bears?

And then it transpired that actually

the bear researcher

themselves had only seen one bear once.

Right, okay.

Actually, it wasn't radioactive bears at all, it was radioactive bear, which may or may not be.

Wow, yeah, I'd love to find that bear.

That sounds amazing.

Radioactive bear.

I'd strongly suspect it was a boar, just you know,

right.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that if you grew up in a city, then you have a worse sense of direction than someone born in the countryside.

Though it doesn't seem to work if you're from Hungary.

Okay, again, we're gonna need more detail.

So this is a study published last year in Nature, and it assessed the navigational skills of 400,000 people across 38 countries.

And what they did was they asked people to memorise a map in a video game.

And then, once they memorized it, they got them to get their characters to go through this map.

And they worked out how good everyone was at navigating.

And they found that it was very clear that people who grew up in cities tended to have a worse sense of direction, people who were in the countryside had a better, and people in the suburbs were always in between the two.

So, it was a real good correlation.

And they said it was strong in places like Argentina, the UK, and the US.

But there were countries like Hungary, for example, this is a quote, where there was no real difference, but on average the trend held.

So is that because Hungary has very simple cities or complicated countryside?

Well, I've been to Hungary and like for instance in Budapest, I would say it's not that different to London because it's an old, very old city that's built up.

It's higgity-piggity.

Yeah, not like New York, which is in like a

grid.

And that's what you said.

The worst, people with the worst sense of direction were people who grew up in grid cities.

Yeah,

they tend to be the worst.

Yeah, I mean, well, that makes sense, right?

And they kind of speculate slightly that, you know, you don't have as much like signposts telling you which way to go and that kind of stuff.

It's pretty amazing.

So the game that was created for them to do this is called...

Whoops.

Is it Quest?

It is.

It's Sea Hero.

I need to tell you about Cancon.

Do you know that?

Yes, keep going.

So this game, as of April 22nd, 2022, has been now played by over 4.3 million players.

Not necessarily all for this exact thing that you're talking about, James.

It's just an incredible way of gathering data.

Is this a particular thing that's used in science to

yeah, it's like this amazing kind of game that is fun to play, but then you're also collecting data from it.

But the reason why I love it so much is that, okay, so there are particular cells in your brain that help you with navigation.

And they found these in mice and rats.

So some of them are called place cells.

And essentially what happens, right, if you, let's say you put a rat in a rectangular room, okay, you can put a kind of cute little hat on the rat that will measure what's going on in the brain.

And you can work out when particular neurons are firing.

And it turns out that in, let's say, the northeast corner of the room, if there's one neuron that fires in this rat's brain while it's in that location, it will not fire anywhere else.

It's like a specific neuron that is like, this is the northeast corner, a place cell.

And actually what you can do is you can you can elongate the zone in which that neuron fires by putting a rat into an identical room that is just stretched out longer.

So it's like the northeast corner becomes bigger and so where this neuron fires also becomes bigger.

Anyway, the thing is that they have to do this while the rats are going around in little rooms but it's quite hard to hook up this rat to the hat that's measuring what's going on in their brain.

You're not going to put a spike in it like the cockroach, are you?

I was just screaming about that and I was like.

It's only tiny.

The cockroach is fine.

The cockroach is fine.

No, so what they do is they put these, the little hat on the rat and then they put the rat on a ball and then the rat can like run around and the ball moves underneath them as though they're running freely.

freely and then they put it in front of a computer and get it to play quests

yeah

yeah so the rat's like running around playing this computer game oh god yeah it's almost like vr for the rat right totally thinks that it's in this world though i don't know totally probably doesn't even know it's a rat but it's like you know it's like it it imagines that it's actually going around right yeah and it's the screen it's like a little rat rat sized imax amazing

well one more thing about this study and why it might be important is because poor navigation skills are sometimes used to help help identify dementia in people

and so you need to know what your base level of navigation skills would be for a normal person.

So if you live in the city or the countryside and you have poor navigation skills, it could be because you have dementia, but you need to know what your original thought is.

I see, that's clever.

I read that if you follow Google Maps, if you follow the blue line, your sense of direction gets much worse over time.

Yeah, well, it's like your brain's like a muscle, right?

You've got to practice it.

So I turned it off yesterday.

I turned off the blue line.

I had to get somewhere.

I had to walk for about half an hour across London.

And I turned it off.

And it was only about three corners in the whole journey.

So it was really.

What is the blue line?

Sorry.

On Google Maps, you know, there's a blue line.

You put in directions to somewhere.

It gives you a little blue line.

Right.

And you follow that line, and then you get to the place you go.

Okay.

I got lost on the way between Holborn and Conk Garden just now.

I mean, that's what I was saying.

It was like.

I know.

I've lived here for 20 years.

I used to have an A to Z in my pocket.

I used to be able to, like, I was fine.

Now I just can't do it.

Do you know what, though?

So there's a cabby who I use quite a lot.

And and I have a game that I play with him where I'll be in a part of London and I'll just send him a photo of like a door,

and it's unreal.

Sorry, you've got your own personal cabby.

No, not my cabby.

We say chauffeur normally, but you'll never guess who I had in this.

It was you, yeah.

No, he's not my personal cabby, he's like he's a tame cabby.

I think that's still very impressive.

Like, I've never, yeah, like first you give up pop noodles, and then

this is the next step.

Has this cabby feels got a a spike in his head and you just raise your hand and he arrives.

Wow.

Sorry, you send him photos and he just says that's where you are.

Yeah, he looks cool.

That is very cool.

Do you want to try now?

Shall I take a photo?

Don't put a street sign on.

That's great.

Anna's just hanging out the window of our office right now.

We could even say where we are because this is the last time we're ever in this office.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so let's see if he comes back with this, but we're on Maiden Lane.

Let's see if he gets Maiden Lane.

So exciting.

It's extraordinary.

I used to live on a street which was in the Cavi's knowledge exam.

Oh, yeah.

That was really useful because you didn't have to give them anything.

You just say you're on that street and they'd be like, oh, yeah, we know what that is.

I did too.

So I lived on Sandwich Street.

And they always do Bacon Lane to Sandwich Street.

Lovely.

What was your one?

It was Digby Crescent, but I don't know where they would have gone to.

Everard Digby.

Everard Dick.

Everard Roads to Digby Crescent.

Yeah.

Oh, he's tight thing.

He's tight thing.

Okay, hold on, hold on.

That's quick.

Okay.

He's too quick.

I'm going to have to edit in a space.

Exactly.

He says, is it an official test?

I think yes.

Yes.

Yes.

We revoke your license if you.

Well, let's do a bit of talking and then see

to give it some space.

Just very quickly, you're mentioning you got lost from Holborn to Covering Garden.

So I've discovered and made contact with a guy called Tristan Gooley, who's an amazing guy.

He writes incredible books about how you can anywhere in London orientate yourself by various things.

If you're in the morning, go against the flow of people walking towards you because predominantly that group will be coming from a tube station.

And if you need to find a tube station at the end of the day...

Not if you live in a commuter town, they're all going to the tube station.

Sorry, this is London, central London.

But

you've woken up and the kidnapper has told you you're in central London, but I'm not going to tell you where.

Yeah, yeah.

And you say which zone is like one or two.

And at no point to this day, just ask somebody where you are.

Well, his idea is that you shouldn't ask someone where where you are.

You should make the challenge of working out your navigation better.

If you see a tree in London, look if it has a tilt on it, because if it has a tilt, that will be pointing to the south.

I always think in London, go downhill, you'll get to the river eventually.

Yeah, right, okay.

I don't know if that's true.

Feels like that.

I mean, there are local maxima, though, aren't I?

I was reading a book called The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, which is by an author called John Hough.

And he was talking about urban myths of navigation, how, you know, there's one of, it's not the tilt on the tree, you know, the the other one of the tree?

Moss on one side of the tree.

Moss grows on the north side of a tree because it's cooler, darker, shadier, and not on the south.

And it doesn't, it only happens in mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, so you need to know which hemisphere you're in.

So it's not a perfect test.

Can you flush a toilet first and see which way the what?

I know.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, there's a toilet next to a tree, so you do know that here, yeah.

If you don't know what hemisphere you're in, though, I think you're in much more trouble.

Look at the stars.

Okay,

how long was I blindfolded for?

Was it enough to do a 16-hour flight?

Should we look at the phone?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's have a look.

Let's see.

Okay.

What's he saying?

We've got a response.

Okay, we sent this at 12.37 and he replied at 12.39 Maiden Lane.

Oh my god.

I want to know how he did it though.

What's in the photo that you can see?

Should I call him and ask him?

Yeah, go first.

Put on speaker.

Yeah, well.

Hang on.

It was the moss on the north side of the restaurant.

How did you do it?

I knew roughly where you were because there's a safe door.

Oh,

yes.

And

there's no traffic in that street, so I know it's somewhere in Norway, like Soho or Covent Garden.

Right.

And then

I just used my powers of deduction.

Wow.

Hi, so, Richard, Dan Schreiber here, no such thing as a fish.

Thanks for being on the show.

What, did you...

Is that genuinely the final guess?

Was a punt, or did you know it?

I did recognise the street, but I did use the stage door.

And the fact that I can tell there's no traffic in that street anymore, I'm not allowed to drive down it.

So

it did look familiar, and I kind of worked it out from that yet.

Amazing.

All right, cheers, Rich.

I'll talk to you later on.

Amazing.

Thanks, buddy.

Oh, I wish he ended up by going, Oh, gotta go.

Professor Brian Cox has called

a picture for me to analyse.

That is your picture.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

He's never not got one.

It's one day.

One day.

That's so cool.

That's very cool.

We were talking about Holborn earlier.

And do you remember when they changed the rules that you're allowed to stand on both sides of the escalator?

Yeah, Holburn.

Yeah, did you?

It's a very long escalator.

Were you angry about it?

Yeah.

Why?

You know, I'm going to tell you, you're incorrect to be angry about it.

I know, I do know.

Okay, just warning.

TFL justification for the trial.

So just to explain, sorry, in London, when we go down an escalator in the underground, you have to stand on the right-hand side and you're allowed to walk along the left-hand side.

But they said, from now on, everyone's standing on both sides.

Yeah.

Right.

My problem with it is, I know what you're going to say, Hannah.

You're going to say it's mathematically more efficient.

You will get more people on and through the escalator

if everyone's just standing.

I will say that.

Okay, my perspective is:

as a commuter, it's less pleasant.

It's okay standing and there are people moving past you.

If you're standing with people in front, behind, and next to you, it's a bit of a squash.

And there's this awkward thing where you might have to make conversation with someone or you make eye contact or they'll start

asking, you know, they'll start a fight or they'll say, what are you saying?

Start a fight.

It's too tight.

i would accept that as a response and i would accept that you would prefer to have a slower journey time to avoid that but for the fact that you're just about to slam yourself into a tube carriage with 50 000 other people into their armpits yeah you know it's definitely no more saladini than when you get on the tube it feels impersonal and cold i love the freedom of just running up those escalator steps and you know it's just it's like it's you know you feel like you're really getting somewhere like oh these are these slow coaches standing on the right you're just putting chucks on the right yeah Chucks on the right, legends on the left is what I would have the time say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know?

Well, basically, a lot of people felt the same way as you, Andy, but like um Hannah says, it was it was successful, and way more people could get down the escalator.

People don't like maths, James.

People don't forget about the maths, just think about the gaps.

If you were like looking down on it, say you were like, you know, in the control room

looking down on the escalator,

if people are walking down, there's much bigger gaps, which basically means you've got all of that wasted space, right?

So you get a much higher flux.

It's not wasted space, it's the hero's aura.

It's

you're spotting who's a drone, who's willing to do what the system tells them.

Please stand on the escalator.

Sheebles.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I like standing in the fast lane when there's no one there.

Only when there's no one there.

How long there's no one there?

Yeah, and that's because

you like to play with norms.

You subvert, you twist.

Exactly.

You kick rabbits when

you didn't really.

Is that still in place, that law in Holborn?

Which one?

The TFO.

The tube law.

No, no, no, it was a trial, the double SO thing, and it didn't really take off.

Thanks to my letter writing because

yeah, I was going to say, the QI officers, we are moving, and we're moving to Holborn, and it just, the sadistic bit of me would love to know that that's now your tube station.

I sabotaged it by leaving small pieces of sushi, which I had left on every other state website.

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

My fact this week is that an inventor called Yi Fei Chen has designed a gun which collects tears from your face so you can shoot them back at the person who made you cry.

Tears,

even if you're really upset, it's not a super soaker, is it?

No, it's not, but have you seen it?

Have you seen the video of it?

It

shoots out with more force than a...

She's built it, hasn't she?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like to the point where it would hurt.

Do you know what?

I'm going to backtrack on that.

It's got similar force to a super soaker, because what it does is it collects the tears, but then there's a sort of canister that freezes it.

So it kind of turns.

What?

But what does it do, Andy?

Because it doesn't, it's still liquid.

It's not ice particles.

So it's not like, it's not tear bullets.

It's still

cold.

It's kind of what it is, weirdly.

But then the time it takes to freeze,

are you still going to be upset at the person who no, exactly.

So

it's not an immediate, I wouldn't bring it to an actual gunfight.

Because it's like your tears are best served cold, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And often, you know, one finds that you're actually the one who's made yourself cry.

Wow, you know, you have control over whether you're crying at this situation.

And he goes home, has has a little cry and then fires them at himself.

This is all your fault.

That's interesting that you think you have control over whether you cry in a situation.

Yeah, I'm now thinking about my tear ducks so much.

You look like you're lying a little bit, I know.

I definitely do not have control over crying.

Very involuntary tears.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I cry all the time.

I try not to.

Yeah, because I'm often, I'll watch like a really, like a really heartfelt, like Oprah Winfrey YouTube clip on the tube or on a train.

And it gets me every time.

And it's embarrassing because you have people next to you, right?

So hang on, is that why you don't want this escalator thing?

So then you can have that moment of privacy.

It's really, yeah,

length of a Holborn escalator is about one classic clip of Oprah length of time.

So random.

Do you watch the Tom Cruise jumping up and down on her side?

No, it's not emotional.

I like the emotional stuff.

Do you like Dr.

Phil?

No, I don't watch Dr.

Phil.

I like military homecoming videos or pregnancy about this video.

I quite like the homecoming.

Yeah.

The other one I really like, when I just want a really good cry, is a dog rescue.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, because sometimes you get the dogs and they're in such a little state.

Oh, I haven't done that.

And you know, like, whoa, they'll often have like, you know, loads of lice and loads of, like, ticks and things and horrible and like scaly skin.

And then what's really nice is when they patch them all up and then they're ready to be rescued by, you know, go to an adoptive home, they're all fluffy again.

Oh, my God.

Well, you need to do it.

You do this to yourself.

I do.

It's very therapeutic.

There's a Venn diagram that I'd love to introduce you to, which is military military homecoming videos, but where they come home to the dog and the dog reacts.

Whoa, that's a new level of emotion.

Whoa, there.

And you do that on the tube.

Yeah.

You just go on the tube and you just want to cry when you're on the tube.

Well, I just suddenly have a hankering to...

It's the algorithm, you know.

I'll be watching something, but I've watched so much of it.

It'll be like a comedy clip of someone I want to watch in an underneath.

It's like Oprah gives $16,000 to a desperate mum who lost her house in a hurricane.

Is this actually just to stop people sitting next to you on the tube?

Andy, what do you watch to make you cry on the tube?

I don't think I consciously watch things that will make me cry.

I've seen, sometimes you'll see a clip that's doing the rounds online and you find it very simple.

I'll just think about my career.

I would say for me,

the only thing really that makes me a bit like that is sporting events where people, you know.

Like a classic turnaround, like a last-minute Hail Mary.

Yeah, someone who's like reached their life's ambition right the Olympics oh man craft does a little bit I'll tell you what you'll love then the the it's called the knock it's when the NFL players are told they've made it into the Hall of Fame and someone goes around knocking on the door oh the emotion in that especially when there's a dog involved

the poppy bowl

of fame

anyway

gosh we've learned a lot

so how damn Yifei Chen so she's actually we say inventor she's actually a designer and she was at a design school and this was a thing where she grew up in Taiwan and you're trained not to return anger towards authority, your school teachers or your parents or so on.

That's just part of the culture a bit so much there.

Less so when she went overseas and she was studying in the Netherlands and she noticed that she was being told off and she watched someone step up for her, but she realized she couldn't do it for herself.

So she had a cry and she thought, I felt really weak.

So I want to use my weakness and turn it into power.

What if I invented a gun?

What if I did the most punishingly literal interpretation of it?

It's very cool, it's an amazing-looking invention, it's beautiful, yeah.

It has these tear-collecting half-moons under the eyes and it, and a little pipe that then leads down into the cartridge or chamber or whatever you do.

Yeah, and she did it as part of her course.

She designed the gun, so on her graduation, she actually went up and she fired the gun at the head of the department, Shan Bolton.

I know what you're thinking: did I cry six tears or only five?

Do you feel weepy

tell you about another inventor inventory

okay um have you guys heard of the knee defender no i think we're about to yeah if you're on a plane oh no you fit this to the seat in front of you to the back of the seat in front of you and it means the person in front of you can't recline their seat

oh wow

and then they're banned on a lot of airlines

they're a controversial contraband thing and the inventor is six foot three

and he says that it's it was more to start a conversation i bet bet it does.

So it's basically, it comes with a little card for your fellow passenger if you get one of these.

And it reads, I realise that this may be an inconvenience.

If so, I hope you will complain to the airline.

Maybe working together, we can convince the airline to provide enough space between rows so people can recline their seats without banging into other passengers.

What a dick.

Yeah.

And I have got some of these, haven't you?

I mean, it's like I fundamentally agree that

the airlines do put them too close together and it means that actually you can't, you have to, one person has to sacrifice their comfort, and that seems unfair.

But him being like, one of us has to sacrifice their comfort, and this time it's not going to be me.

And if that's on no occasion, it's going to be me.

No,

what he needs to do is fly business like I do, and you manage to do that by eating nothing but pot noodles and saving your money.

If you fly first class like I do, then you all recline, and you know, you don't have to do it.

It doesn't look so bad that sometimes I get cabs now, does it?

I actually have my own airline pilot

take photos from Sky.

Oh,

New Jersey, isn't it?

Lovely.

We got an email in the fish inbox about...

This is about innovation rather than about inventions exactly, but it's just so interesting because it was a guy called Mark Emerton who sent in a fact about something, nuclear, a nuclear test.

Okay.

And he said, I have a fact from my late great uncle, who actually worked on the nuclear test program, the British nuclear test programme in the 50s.

Then he says, this is probably classified for all I know, but fuck it.

My kind of guy.

Yeah.

Right.

The UK and US used to share test sites in the Pacific, but each would bring their own instruments to measure the power of nuclear tests on the ground.

The US had very sensitive state-of-the-art pressure transducers, but they kept getting broken or having their readings wiped by shock waves and radiation.

Okay.

The UK, with a much smaller budget, realized that you could measure the pressure of a nuclear blast just by getting a squeezy tube of toothpaste,

taking the cap off, and then placing a ruler next to it.

The pressure of the blast would squirt out toothpaste proportionally to the blast strength, and there were no electronics to go wrong.

They work.

Genius.

Oh, that's amazing.

Okay, I mean, there is a story about this,

about Fermi.

Do you know this story?

So, Fermi, this amazing, amazing physicist, and he had

Enrico.

He had a reputation for being able to do calculations in his head.

And during the first test, he decided he wanted to try and work out how strong the blast was.

And so he stood in the observation tower, which I think was some distance away from the blood.

I mean, you would assume some distance away from the block.

And he tore up a tiny bit of paper, a sheet of paper into tiny little bits and he held it in his hand.

And then, as the blast exploded, he opened his hand and then paced out how far they'd been blown across the room and then got within, I think, a factor of two of the equivalent in dynamite.

So, I think, I mean, it's totally legitimate that you can do this.

You don't get like perfectly accurate results, weirdly enough.

But, yeah, you can get really close.

That's really cool.

Just on

classified stuff, I read the other day about a girl in America who went to her school show and tell with a load of classified US government documents.

What, from like her dad or mom?

No, it was even worse than that.

So, there'd been someone from the government had been at something and then had lost their briefcase or just left it there.

And their dad, this girl's dad, had found it and sort of just picked it up and looked through it.

It all said classified and stuff.

And then he just took it home and then they kept it in the attic and never did anything with it.

And then, like, five or six years later, she was like, I need something for show and tell, went up, and then I'll take this, and then took it down.

And it was like all stuff about Iran and

Libya and stuff like that.

Was she detained?

Well, yeah, she's in Guantanamo,

The teacher got in touch with the CIA, and is that the right person or the FPAA?

Yeah, the people who are in the world,

and said, we have this.

And they came and sent some people in dark glasses to retrieve.

Quietly waiting at the back of the show until our blooming Tilly talks about her conch that she's found.

And I think probably the person who lost it might have got killed or killed.

It was all a happy ending in that situation.

That's amazing.

That's so cool.

Here's another new invention.

This This is from, I think, 2022, which I mentioned it to my wife, and she's looking into getting one.

It's a Motion Pillow 3.

Is it a mega hanky?

It's a YouTube Prime account.

I can get rid of all those nasty ads getting in the way.

It's a what, sorry?

Motion Pillow 3, it's called.

It's a pillow, right?

And a snorer.

Damn it.

Is that where we're going?

Ooh.

Yes.

I thought of it.

Does it smother you?

Yeah, my wife is very keen on getting one.

It's a weighted blanket for the face, is how it's solved.

No, is it a pillow that moves under you?

It undulates under you to keep you asleep.

No.

Does it massage you?

No.

Or does it do what Andy said, but to stop you from snoring?

Exactly.

I can't believe that you didn't build on the snoring thing.

What it is, is when you're laying down, if you're snoring, there are four airbags inside, and it's AI kind of generated.

So it inflates to move your head around until the position where the air waves are opened up properly and you stop snoring and it means that you just reduce snoring no way yeah that's this is a motion pillow you're gonna say you're not waking up when someone is your pillow is slowly grinding your head in the brush

does it make a noise is there a problem when your neck snaps it does

it's a way to assassinate someone

incredible

is that why motion pillow one and two didn't make it to the one

um can i tell you about the corby trouser press?

Yeah.

Just while we're on game-changing inventions of the 20th century.

Yeah, yeah.

We're losing a lot of inventors now who invented really big things.

And I'm not saying the Corbyn,

but like the inventor of the kettle off switch, for example, is still alive.

Oh, yeah.

It's a professor of invention in Oxford or something like that, Cambridge.

John Taylor.

This is a slight tangent, or I've tangented myself, but it's, do you know how the kettle off switch works?

Is it a bimetallic strip?

Yeah.

I just love bimetallic strips.

What is that?

What is it?

That's interesting.

I haven't thought about this before.

I do remember trying to buy a kettle which didn't have one and it was really hard.

Really?

Yeah.

Why were you trying to?

I don't remember, but I think it was something to do with stamps and illegal activity that the post office can't find out about.

Why?

So a bimetallic strip is

as it sounds, it's a strip of two different metals

all the way along, right?

Yeah.

And they expand and contract at different temperatures

because of the chemical composition.

So, as it gets hot water on it, the strip, it will bend because one side is expanding more than the other.

And you can develop those, and it snaps the kettle off at a certain temperature as a biometallic strip.

I think that I love biometallic strips is the most dandy sentence I've ever heard you say.

Well, we had one in the house when I was growing up, and it was a very cool scientific experiment to do.

That's all those pot noodles you were having.

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've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland, James, at James Harken, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, and Hannah, Fry Asquared.

Fry Asqued, yeah, nice.

Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website, no such thing as a fish.com.

Check it out.

All of our previous episodes are up there, as well as merchandise.

Do have a look.

But most importantly, make sure to watch Hannah's latest show it's called the future with hannah fry it's on bloomberg or you can find it on youtube it's uh the whole series is up now right you can take it all in one go if you finish that and you're on youtube why not check out some oprah clips there's really good ones uh to watch um anyway that's it and that's it from us from this office this is where qi office was for the last nine years of our existence uh fish started here nine years ago this is the last ever episode we're doing in our hq so we'll be from somewhere new next week.

So thank you for being our final guest ever, Hannah.

Thank you.

In our HQ.

And yeah, we will be back again next week in another building with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

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