179: No Such Thing As Stare-Boxing

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Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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

My name is Dan Schreiber, and I am sitting here with James Harkin, Alex Bell, and Anna Chacinski.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with my fact this week.

My fact is: 10% of the UFC is owned by the UAE.

That is quite surprising.

So the UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

What does UAE stand for?

United Arab Emirates.

And 10% of the UFC is owned specifically by Abu Dhabi.

It's a company called Flash Entertainment, which is owned by the government.

And in 2010, they bought 10% of this company, which last year, or perhaps even early this year, was sold again for 4 billion.

It's a huge industry now and they've retained their 10% so yeah a government is part of the ultimate hardcore fighting machine great so let's explain what UFC is for the uninitiated like me okay well

if you've been reading the news this week you will see that the biggest boxing match for a very long time has happened between a man called Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather when you say has happened it's not happened yet in our universe has it that's true we're recording this on a Monday you're hearing this from a Friday onwards so yeah it's uh let's take a pun.

I think it's really sad that Conor McGregor died within 10 seconds of entering the octagon.

Yeah, so Conor McGregor is the UFC fighter in this case.

Floyd Mayweather is the boxer.

And UFC is a collection of different disciplines of martial arts brought together in a ring known as the octagon.

And it means that when you're fighting an opponent, there are just many different ways that you'll be fighting against them, different martial arts styles.

It's no holds barred, isn't it?

That was what it was originally always marketed as well.

They used to say there are no rules, didn't they?

It says that on the Wikipedia page, and then it's immediately followed by a list of rules.

Yeah, there's a lot of rules.

Yeah, yeah.

It says there are no rules, and then actually, even in its first fight, it banned biting, eye gouging, fish hooking, head-butting, hair pulling, and groin strikes.

What's fish hooking?

Fish hooking is when you go for an already open cut.

Or it's when you do like a right hook, but with a fish, I think.

With a slap in the face, yeah.

Like a Monty Python.

But it was actually the first two of those that are banned, right?

So

biting and eye gouging, and the other two are all frowned upon.

And then often I think the fighters will agree that when there were two fighters that had ponytails, they agreed not to pull each other's hair and stuff because it would make a better fight.

But interestingly, the biting and the eye gouging are the two headline things that are banned, and that's the same two things that were banned in the ancient Greek pancration wrestling,

which was like 2,000 years ago.

Is that deliberate?

I wonder if it is.

I don't know.

It's a very intellectual sport at UFC, yeah.

Well, you know, I knew nothing about it, so I'll believe anything you tell me.

Invented by Plato, was it?

Yes.

Yeah, he was their first champion

um do you know why it's called the octagon um it's got eight sides yeah it yeah i framed this quite badly the origin of the name the octagon is a really really bad chuck norris film from the 80s so the guy who was commissioned to design the pitch are we calling it the square the ring

thank you pitch the ring in which

i will be fighting in the pitch with george forming um but yeah this guy was commissioned to design the ring.

He was called Jason Cusson, and he didn't really know anything about fighting or what he was supposed to do.

And he just heard of this Chuck Norris film that was about Noholds Bard fighting, and it was called The Octagon.

So he said, sod it, let's make it an octagon.

That's so cool.

It's quite, I mean, it's as good a shape as any, right?

In fact, you could say...

It's a simple.

Well, you could say it's better than a square because it's closer to a ring.

Like, a ring is something with infinite sides.

Yeah.

And an octagon's got more sides than a square.

Compared to infinity, though, it's like hardly more on the way to that many sides.

They They should have a dodecahedron.

They should, yeah.

Just for the visual, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, well, what's this octagon look like?

It's steel mesh all around it.

And the ring wall, as it were, the steel mesh wall, goes up taller than the, let's say, six power.

It's a pipe state building.

Yes, it's in China.

So they have to be lowered in by crane into the ring.

Yeah.

We were saying that it's quite no-holds barred.

It gets quite...

violent.

And people were kind of outraged in the 90s when ultimate fighting and mixed martial arts was invented.

And the thing that I think outraged people the most, or the thing that became the epitome of it, was the fact that it was done with bare knuckles.

So it was bare knuckle fighting.

So people were saying, this is so dangerous.

Look how barbaric it is.

And with bare knuckles, you know, that just goes to show how barbaric it is.

And so they banned the bare knuckle element of it after a few years and added gloves to make it safer.

And in fact, that made it much more dangerous.

Because the reason that bare knuckle is better than wearing gloves is that if you punch someone super hard with your bare knuckle, then you basically break your fist.

And so most people don't want to punch people too hard.

Whereas, as soon as you've got boxing gloves on, then you can punch someone much, much harder without damaging yourself.

So by adding gloves, you kind of save the hands, but instead, you give people much more severe brain damage.

That was quite aggressive, the way that you said that fact, because you had a fist the whole time and you were kind of jabbing the air.

Yeah, it felt good.

I could see the attraction actually.

There was a study done a few years ago where researchers worked out a code for how intense somebody smiles.

And then on the day prior to the fight, when the fighters have that traditional face-off, like press conferencing, I don't know what you call it.

These researchers watched 152 different UFC fighters and worked out how much they were smiling.

And then they found that the more a fighter smiles, the more likely they are to lose the fight.

And they think it's due to the link of like if you smile more, you have lower testosterone and you're less aggressive in nature.

And they worked out that whilst in the short term, it means they're more likely to lose that fight the next day, they're not more likely to lose all the fights coming up.

So it's literally how much you are smiling the day before your fight.

The day before your fight.

The day before your fight.

Well, this is interesting because Conor McGregor has been sparring against these pro-boxers to sort of get him into shape.

So, one of them has come out because he's he, that's great.

That's really cool.

Thank you for that.

I just want to say, you know, congratulations, mate.

Wish you all the luck in your love life.

No, he's he sort of was kicked out of the Conor McGregor camp, and then he revealed a lot of the process of how he's training.

And one of the things he's doing is he is doing long stare-offs with these boxers.

So he just is practicing the stare.

I just would say at his stage, I would not be focusing on that element of the game.

I don't care how important the stare is.

But isn't it true that we did say a few podcasts ago that divers, professional divers, half of their job is climbing up to the top of the division?

Yes, thank you, James.

Really, half of his job is walking to the ring.

This is high, if you are diving from a high board, half your job.

I remember it vividly.

It's ingrained in my brain.

And we use the word fact very loosely.

Yeah.

So are you saying half of a fighter's job is staring contests?

Yeah, if you were really good at not blinking, though, you could probably win the blinking competition, dry out your opponent's eyes, and then they'd be blinded.

It's not a blinking competition.

It's not like chess boxing where you play a bit of chess, then you play a bit of boxing.

It's like you fight for three minutes and then you just sit there and stare at someone.

I mean, that would watch that.

It would be amazing if he had just like a smaller

belt for a blinking champion for the contest.

But it could be that you have three minutes of fighting, then you have a staring competition, and whoever wins a staring competition gets one free punch at the start of the next round.

Yeah.

Nice.

You should invent that as a sport and put it in a nonogun or something and they've created something amazing.

And the kicking can be really damaging, can't it?

So, in, I think, have we talked about the fight between Mohammed Ali and Antonio Inoki before?

So, this is a fight that's seen as basically the precursor to MME, to mixed martial arts.

And this was when Mohamed Ali took on a Japanese wrestler called Antonio Inoki in the 70s?

In the 1970s.

Can you say MMA?

Yeah, MMA, not MME.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

This is the precursor to MME, mixed martial arts.

MMA.

Wow.

This is the precursor to mixed martial arts.

And this was when Mohamed Ali took on this Japanese wrestler called Antonio.

Muhammad Alay.

Anyway, the point was: Mohamed Ali and Antonio Inoki had this fight to see which of the disciplines was going to win.

And Inoki caused massive damage to Ali.

So basically, he spent the whole time lying on the floor, I think.

Yeah.

Almost the entirety of the time.

He lay on the floor and just kicked Mohamed Ali in the shins really hard.

And Ali got blood clots after that.

And I think his legs were permanently damaged from then on.

He had to have surgery and stuff because of it.

But it was called a draw, I think, which was good because it meant that neither of them had disgraced themselves in front of their fans.

Yeah.

And Inoki said afterwards that the reason he just kicked Muhammad Ali is because Ali had such devoted fans that he'd been warned if he laid a hand on him, then his fans would kill him.

So he decided to go at him with the feet instead.

Yeah.

Do you think when Muhammad Ali's supporters came up to him later and tried to attack him, he's like, no, no, I didn't lay a hand on him.

I think that's exactly what he said.

You've got fans.

Go back and read the small print of our threat.

I love, though, that as fans would be going up, going, hey, man, we're going to kick your ass.

Like, no, this guy just kicked Muhammad Ali's ass.

Like, yeah, you stand no chance again.

That's true.

Exactly.

And when the angry mob comes down, he can just lie on his back and kick them away.

Abu Dhabi's not the only investor in the UFC.

There are many other people.

You said they only have 10%, so I'm not surprised.

Exactly.

Other people who have a stake in the UFC are LL Cool J.

Whose name?

Do you know where LL Cool J comes from?

No.

It's short for Ladies Love, Cool James.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, that's very cool.

Has anyone ever called you that, James?

No.

Yeah, you sound like you tried to make that take off first and no one would have it.

And then you got to make your lunch.

You just got there just too quickly.

Otherwise, that's all they'd be calling me.

Also, Calvin Harris, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Trey Parker of South Park,

Maria Sharipova, the tennis star, and Sylvester Stallone and Conan O'Brien, who is the late night talk show host in America, who's been having Conor Gregor on a lot recently.

And I was like, I didn't know he had an interest.

He's got a business interest.

Yeah.

That's quite a who's who of sports stars and

technical stars.

The buy-in was $250,000.

So I think they all bought the sort of the minimum of it.

But again, this is back in 2010 and the sport exploded.

So those guys are probably making some money.

I can't believe all those people are making some money.

Finally.

Finally.

After years of poverty, LL Cool J.

Well, I mean, you pick the one name that probably does need the money.

He's the only one I could remember.

There was a fact that coincidentally was doing a round on Reddit this week about UFC, which is that there's a fighter called Rory McDonald.

And so at the end of all the fights, they have walk, no, at the beginning of all the fights, they have walkout music.

So when they introduce each fighter, and he was quite unhappy about a lot of the music he was getting and the guy that was organizing it but he didn't really say anything because he he thought that his like manager and everything were just organizing it themselves um and eventually he mentioned something and um the guy who was organizing music was like no well i thought you were requesting all of these and it turned out that he'd had his phone number changed a couple of years ago and a fan had got hold of the phone number and was requesting

stupid music like um like brianna's we found love and um emcee hammer's you can't touch this so like all these songs yeah were kind of dissing him and making fun of him a bit it was just somebody taking the piss by three years ago.

If I could think of worse songs that you could have put, I'd have sent the Telly Tubbies theme on, you know.

Someone

Bob the Builder.

I think whoever the fan was did a good job to just about find that level where they didn't, you didn't get found out for like years.

You're right.

I would have been found out the first day, wouldn't I?

When it was just you making a fart noise over the time.

Conor McGregor got in trouble quite recently for saying that he could beat Jesus in a fight.

Did he?

Yeah, this was last year.

He said, there's not a a man alive that could beat me, but Jesus isn't alive, so maybe he could and come back from the dead, but I don't know.

I'd still whoop his ass.

But that's true because you only have to lie down for like 10 seconds for your out, whereas Jesus would take three days to get up again.

Nice.

So he'd get back up, but they'd actually converted the arena into a little mix concert at that point.

Sucks.

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hosted.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is LL Cool J.

We are not making a mistake.

Okay, my fact this week is that Palau is about to pass a law meaning that every hotel in the country has to be five-star.

I will admit that I spent a good two minutes when you sent this by email looking for the footnote because I thought the star was an asterisk and I was like, five what?

I was like scrolling through all the replies.

So what this is, is a new law to try and make just high-end tourism in this country, Palau, which is in the Pacific, and they're suffering from climate change more than everyone else really, like all these Pacific countries are.

And they have problems with infrastructure when they're getting loads of tourists in.

And so they think, well, if we only have high-end tourists, that means fewer tourists, but still the same amount of money.

And they want new hotels to come in with their own water treatment system, with their own power and stuff like that.

And so Palau is a collection of islands, right?

So is this every single one of their 280-ish islands having having five-star hotels, or is there a central spot to it?

Well, it will be, if you want to put a hotel in any of those places, it'll have to be five-star.

Yeah, and I've been to Palau.

Have you?

Yeah, I do.

We went when I was a kid because I lived in Hong Kong and that's not too far away.

Quite far.

I mean, you didn't row there, did you?

No,

we got the

jet ski.

No, yeah, we holidayed there, and it was in.

I mean, this is, we're talking 15, 20 years ago, so it was in huts by the beach.

But those can be five-star, obviously.

I just know already that you're exactly the kind of person they're now working to keep out, aren't you?

You're the person this policy is aimed at.

It took us 15 years to get the laugh through, but he's definitely not coming back now.

So I've got some stuff on hotels.

Okay.

There's a really good article in The Economist about the various standards that hotels have to stick to.

And so, for instance, the Hilton chain of hotels, there's a manual that stipulates that staff have to answer the phones after three rings exactly, for instance, whereas Intercontinental, you have to wait four rings.

Is that right?

I used to work for Intercontinental Hotels.

Did you ever answer the phone before or after four rings?

I think I might have done.

Well, is that why you're working here?

I quite appreciate that rule, actually, because it is quite startling when you ring somewhere and they pick up really fast.

Yeah, totally.

They have, there's one chain which wasn't allowing itself to be named, which all of its hotels, all omelets have to match a laminated model omelette that they have there, which is cigar-shaped, and they have to model it on that.

Right.

Yeah, Intercontinental also, you might remember this rule, James, specifies that the rooms have to offer at least four pornographic films.

At least four.

At least four, yeah.

You don't want to turn up and there's only three pornographic films, do you?

Can you imagine calling up reception and be like, hi.

Could do with a couple more.

I seem to be missing one of my four.

Sorry, this is your first night.

I know, it's been a long session, and I just need one or two more to kick me over to the end.

Could you change the sheets while you're up there, please?

By the way, you picked up on the fourth ring and da-da-da-da-more.

A three-ring guy.

We didn't ask about your sexual preferences.

A hotel in Colorado downloads pictures of your family from the internet and frames them for when you arrive at the hotel.

That is either brilliant or the most creepy thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

Yeah.

I think I know which one of those it is.

There's also just one more, which is a hotel in Mexico, a luxury hotel, where they do research into you beforehand and the housekeeper matches the colour of the thread in the guest sewing kits to the clothes that you're wearing.

And again, they get that from photos on social media, do you think?

I think actually it must be from when you've arrived.

So there must be an emergency.

You arrive at the reception desk, and they're like, She's got a red dress on, quick, get the red thread in the book.

That's good, because most of the pictures of me on social media are from fancy dress parties.

So, you just get, I don't know, what kind of stuff do you wear?

You get some face paint.

Yeah, yeah.

There were a couple of um zero-star hotels in Switzerland, and the first one was in a Cold War bunker, and so there are no TVs, there are no separate bathrooms, um, there's no daylight because it's in a bunker, um, but it doesn't look too bad, like it's basically like a kind of low-end youth hostel.

The second one, um, is just like a bed and a bit of a wall, like up a mountain in Switzerland.

And then there's a butler who is actually a local farmer who comes and is responsible for giving you the weather forecast and telling you jokes.

That's great.

It's all about, it's a sort of tiresome critique on hotel culture and everything.

That's so good, though.

I reckon I'd pay for that in the hotel to have a farmer come and tell me jokes.

Yeah, me too.

Especially if they checked my social media and saw what kind of jokes I like.

Good point.

Yeah.

He'd be like, this is an easy one.

Yeah.

Or laboured tons.

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

My fact this week is that every Canadian citizen is entitled to a free government-issue portrait of the Queen.

Of our Queen.

Of our Queen.

And their Queen.

And their Queen.

They're actually entitled to five portraits of the royal family in various combinations.

Can they choose whichever members they like?

As in, if you prefer Princess Eugenie and Prince Andrew, you can have those two.

You know what?

I don't think they're on offer.

I think it's mainly like Philip and the Queen and

Prince William.

Yeah,

it's the headliners, it's the main characters.

But there are just five different ones, and you can order up to one of each, so you can get five in total.

So you'd be like Pokemon, you've got to unlock Eugenie

with your dedication.

Presumably, these are prints, not original oil paintings, every time you order your picture.

Painting huge frame delivered, yeah.

No, yeah, these are just paints.

Oh, you can download them like free, so I've downloaded mine, even though not

Canadian.

I know, but that was against the law.

So, this is part of a lot of services that you can get from the government of Canada.

If you ring 1-800-0 Canada, you get,

oh, I know, you get onto a helpline that provides information on Canadian governmental programmes and services and stuff like that.

It's really cool.

But the O, is that a zero or is it the O in the keyboard?

The letter O rather than the numbers in the keyboard.

Really?

Because when you give someone's phone number, you often use the word O to mean zero, don't you?

Like 0800.

It's really confusing.

There's a lot of Canadians getting through to some random pizza play somewhere or

demanding pictures of the queen.

What's going on?

Interestingly, when you go to the website, I looked at the pictures as well.

I couldn't see as many as five, actually.

I saw you could have the queen or Philip or the Queen with Philip.

So those are your options that I saw.

And they have lots of rules, though, for if you do download them, for what you're allowed and allowed to not do with them.

So, for example, you cannot use the images on adhesive seals.

That's one.

What's an adhesive seal?

I guess.

Like a sticker on an envelope?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, like on an envelope.

I guess a stamp is what they're saying.

I see.

Or a seal as in that holds the envelope together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're not allowed that.

You know, all the time that rather than buying a normal envelope, you just buy one and then use a sticker.

I always do that, but then I always put a sticker of the queen on, so that I'm a bit worried.

Yeah.

You've got to recall all those postcards from over the years, James.

Can you recall a postcard?

The postman just locks on your door.

Sorry, I'm just going to.

She doesn't wish you were here anymore.

Also, can I just say postcards, the one thing you don't have to put in an envelope?

As the words came out of my mouth, I thought, I hope no one notices that.

The one final thing you're not allowed to use it for, there's other things, but another thing you're not allowed to use it for is to advertise if the Queen or Philip have visited your shop.

so the example they give is for example if the royal highnesses the duke and duchess of cambridge were to visit a cheese shop that shop could not use a photograph of the occasion to advertise its goods is that like when you go into like a curry house and they've got like a signed photo of gary lineker yes

or like a laundrette but isn't it always gary lineker

so he just visits laundress and curry houses all the time it must be that gary lineker's going to a lot of curry houses with signed photos right yeah yeah or our theory i mean have you ever seen him on any linen i haven't.

So

it's the same photo of Gary Lineker.

Right, it's the same.

Yeah.

I think that he just doesn't have an oven or a washing machine, so he always constantly has to use the laundrette and eat out.

Well, he goes to the curry house, spills curry all over himself, so he has to get everything dry too.

He's a notoriously messy eater.

Something else that you can get free in Canada that's quite cool is the flag that's flown at the top of their equivalent of Big Ben, basically, which is the Ottawa Peace Tower.

So it's a huge clock that's sort of part of their Parliament buildings.

And you can write off, you can sign a form and write off and request one of those flags because every single day or about 250 days of the year, they take the flag down and they change it and put up a new one.

And then they wash that one and iron it out and they send it to whoever in Canada has requested it.

Really?

They must be massive, though, aren't they?

They are big, yes.

And so, there must be more than one person must request it.

Right, so this is what's happened.

I think you've hit upon a problem.

They've had at least 20,000 requests at this point, which means that there's now a 73-year waiting list to get your flag.

So you can have it delivered to your grandchildren.

You've got to be pretty young to make an application now, don't you?

You really do, to be successful.

But why do they keep giving away flags?

Sorry, why do they need a new one every day?

I don't think they do.

I think this was just an idea they had.

It would be an patriotic thing to do, to donate a flag each day to some, or most days of the year, to someone in the country.

So it's every day they replace the flag, not every year?

It's about, so it's every weekday, except bank holidays, or apparently when the weather's poor, they don't bother changing it.

Every Canadian citizen is entitled to three hours to vote whenever there's an election.

In the booth?

No, it doesn't.

No.

So you're allowed three hours off work to vote, basically.

What are you doing in there?

Basically, if your work schedule means that you finish work at, say, four o'clock or something,

and the the polls close at seven o'clock, then that's fine.

But if your work schedule means you don't have three hours spare, they have to give you three hours off

yeah it's good though isn't it yeah it's a lot of time to get to a polling station yeah cool probably have lunch as well yeah i had to go to the pub i might not even vote to be honest

um i got another queen canada facts

so the queen appears on the banknotes of canada as she does in Australia and all around the Commonwealth.

But interesting claim that Canada has over it is they were the first country, even beating the UK, to having the queen on a banknote before anyone else.

Was it like as soon as she became queen, they rushed it out?

No, it was pre.

This was in 1935.

She was a child.

Yeah, she was a nine-year-old.

You remember this?

I remember reading it before you just said it.

I knew it.

Time, Trevor!

I went back to order my flag.

Did you know in Australia, you can also get a portrait of the queen, but you can also request C D and D V D recordings of the national anthem if you want them.

So you if you Google Constituents Request Programme, you can just ask your local MP or a political representative for that and you can request a booklet on the flags of Australia.

You can get a booklet on Australia's national symbols and yeah, you can get a D V D of the national anthem for that.

So can someone listening to this in Australia please do that and send us a photo of you with your D V D?

Please do.

Actually, I'd quite like a photo of someone from Canada with their free portrait of the Queen.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, if you're in a Commonwealth and you have this option, if you're listening in Britain, just a picture of Gary Lineko will be great.

And please post it to us on our QI cap.

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com

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

My fact this week is that the first ever Encyclopædia Britannica said that humans were divided into five categories.

Those categories were American, European, Asiatic, African and monstrous.

Jeez.

The five types of humans.

Did they believe that there were monsters?

Is that what we're saying?

I read this in this really good book I've just started reading.

It's called You Could Look It Up by a guy called Jack Lynch.

And so what it was was that there were often, it was kind of an age of exploration and there were often a lot of rumours about the kind of people you'd find in strange places.

Maybe there were kind of mythical semi-human creatures around.

So there were reports for instance of men who had feet backwards or men who didn't have any noses.

There were reports of humans who had dogs' heads and who communicated by barking.

And so there were kind of these rumours about mythical monstrous.

So you are describing Bigfoot and werewolves and these are all still real,

real things out there today, Anna.

Right.

So this is the catchual term that they use just to cover themselves, to be like

anything we know.

It's miscellaneous, basically.

Yeah, and this went back to Linnaeus, who classified Homo sapiens 10 years earlier, so in 1758.

And he actually said that there was Homo ferrus as well, as a different species, which was wild men, and then homo monstrous, which was monsters.

And yeah, so we're not quite sure what they are, but weird-looking made-up people.

So I was reading up on the first-ever Encyclopedia Britannica, because

weirdly, you almost feel like the authors should be famous names, and I didn't know a single one.

So there were two guys who effectively brought it together.

One was called Colin MacFaker,

and that's exactly how he pronounced it with the question mark at the end.

He never knew.

The names McFarqua?

Colin.

McFarqua.

Yeah,

he also set up with a guy called Andrew Bell.

And Alex, your surname is Bell.

Find out all about him.

Yeah, well, what's interesting is for the Encyclopedia Britannica, he was the engraver.

He was the one who did all of the drawings, which on our podcast, when you're not on the microphone with us, you are our illustrator for all the things.

So you both have the same surname.

That's exciting.

I like the way that you said Belle as if there was no exclamation point at the end of it as well.

So you got mudfaqua.

Yeah, I don't know what's going to go with my pronunciations, but Belle was a very interesting guy.

He was quite small.

He was four foot six, and he had a big nose that he would sometimes try and hide by wearing a paper mache version in order to hide the bigness of his nose.

He's a little bit bigger, yeah, you would think, right?

No, I think he was a joker, and he did it whenever anyone stared at his nose, he put a bigger one on it.

He put a bigger one on it.

To say, are you looking at my nose, bitch?

I think it was like, could you just...

Go to be in my book, bitch.

It was an engraving of you.

And he also,

he used to, so as well as doing Encyclopædia Britannica, he used to engrave crests and dog collars.

And he made sure that he always rode the tallest horse that was available.

So if he was going to just rent a horse, he'd be like, the tallest one, please.

I like the idea of going to hire a horse, they've got the same options like at the car rental place.

So you've got like colour and height and compact or do you leave it fully fed or do you let someone else do that?

So the oldest known Encyclopædia Britannica is still in use, apparently, and it was only discovered in 2010.

And there's an 18-volume set that was from 1797, and it just belonged to this family in Chelmsford.

And they'd used it growing up and stuff, and they were still using it all the time.

They bought it for £15,

the full full set, which seems unbelievable for 18 volumes of encyclopedia.

But now it's worth like £9,000, right?

Yeah.

Understandably.

It seems like not very much money for the encyclopedia, oldest encyclopedia.

They just don't seem to go for anything.

Yeah, but you can get them on CD-ROM these days.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, that's way too late.

James, you are so with it.

I have no idea.

If Wikipedia was printed out on paper, it would be about 1,900 volumes worth of Britannica.

Really?

And if you're not sure.

That would be the most tedious.

I mean, encyclopedias are not exactly the greatest read of all time, are they?

But imagine Wikipedia.

All those little pages for like high schools in the middle of America and stuff.

Well, there was a project, like it was more of an art project, but this guy called Michael Mandeberg

in 2015 printed out some of it and kind of did all the math and worked out how much it would cost.

And it was called From A to Zap.

So the A was A A A A A Exclamation Mark, which is like the first Wikipedia entry he could find at the beginning, to Zap, which was ZZZAP Exclamation Mark, which was a really random kids' TV show that I remember watching.

Really?

Yeah, isn't that weird?

I remember watching.

Ah!

Classic.

My favorite encyclopedia is the four-volume Encyclopedia of Lubricants and Lubrication.

Nice.

Have you read it?

No.

It's not you couldn't pull it down, it's you couldn't pick it up.

Okay, well, anything else?

I'm happy to rap.

Yeah.

Let's hear that rap.

Hello, cool James.

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 be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland.

James.

At egg shaped.

Alex.

At alexbell underscore.

And Jaczynski.

You can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep, or you can go to our group Twitter account, which is at qi podcast.

Or you can head to no such thing as offish.com, where it has all of our previous episodes.

You can also buy tickets to our upcoming tour in October and November.

It's also got a link to buy our book, The Book of the Year, which comes out in November.

And why not join us every Monday on Facebook Live, 5:30 p.m.

British time,

which apparently is not a thing, but London time.

And we'll be there to chat about this episode.

We'll see you again next week.

Goodbye.