167: No Such Thing As Milk From A Yak

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Your ring your way.

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

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 you, Czezinski.

My fact this week is that Tibet is suffering from a shortage of butter sculptors.

Are they?

Yeah, this is people who make sculptures out of butter.

When you say shortage, it means they must have some of them still.

They do have some.

But they must need a lot of them.

I'm not sure that's the case, because if you had none, you could still have a shortage.

It would just be an extremely severe shortage.

I I think that's when it starts being called an absence.

Yes, yeah.

So, butter sculpting in Tibet is very popular, and it goes back a really long way, and it's part of their Buddhist celebrations.

And so, in the biggest Tibetan Buddhist festival, which is called the Mon Lam Festival, then the largest day of it is like the day when they light all these butter lamps and they make all these butter sculptures, and it's a way of celebrating Buddha and Buddha's victories.

Yeah, because he sounds a bit like butter.

It's exactly because of that.

I can't believe it's not Buddha.

Yeah.

I wanted to laugh, but I was laughing really hard inside there.

It's got all the form of a.

It's got everything.

It's got

everything.

The reason I didn't laugh at it is because there is no such thing as I can't believe it's not butter anymore.

That's true, they changed the name!

Yeah, they changed the name to I can't believe it's so good for everything.

What?

I'm not sure it is good for everything, is it?

No.

No, it's not as versatile as they're claiming.

But they might for building houses.

But it's good for building statues.

Yeah.

Well, I can't believe it's not salt butter.

Yeah, maybe.

I don't think that's the reason you didn't laugh.

No.

It's a supplementary fact about a funny joke.

Actually, I think it is because when you said it, that was what was going through my brain, rather than what a great joke.

So they specifically use yak butter as opposed to cow milk.

Is that different?

Is it more like mussel?

It's yes, exactly.

It's a solid substance.

Yeah, it's a lot thicker.

Is it?

Yak butter generally is used for most things in Tibet.

I was talking to my auntie, Bettina.

She lived in Tibet.

And I and I, as a child, I went to Tibet in 1994.

And it was my friend's birthday up there, and we had a yak cheesecake.

It was made from yak butter and yak cheese.

We couldn't get the knife into it.

It was so hard.

The chef was experimenting with new uses of yak for these southern Western meals.

So they also had yak pizza that they were trying to work on as well, which was using yak butter as well.

But yeah, so when you say it's used for most things, I think that is a bit like, I can't believe it's not butter, saying it can be used for everything.

Slightly.

I mean, do you ride on yak butter?

Well, according to Bettina, my auntie, she said that it would be used in place of, say, blue tack.

So I guess like yak tack.

What?

And

blue yak.

Blue yak.

Do they use it medicinally?

They use it as moisturizer.

Okay.

Yep.

And they also, my auntie said people used to use it, and she did as well, as a barrier because the winds would be so painfully cold as they were hitting your face that it was a sort of sort of like masking device to stop the cold wind from something like a zabala clava yeah exactly it's like a moisturizer balaclava sometimes though a lot of a slice of bread will blow into your face and it'll stick there and then if another one hits you

you turn it into a sandwich with a real risk that you'll be picked up and eaten

they use it for their main tea as well yak butter tea is a traditional drink is it nice i didn't i didn't have it when i was up there i think i've had butter tea haven't Is it fermenting?

I'm sure there's some fermenting process that goes on.

It's a little bit rancid or a bit.

Well, they put yak poo in it because the way.

Because the way they get the tea is off a block of tea.

What do they do?

They give you some yak buttered tea and they go, would you like poo with that?

Oh, just a half a poo.

No, but we're the same.

Because I always, when I have a cup of tea, I put a bit of cow manure in there.

What it says is that to bind the tea particles together because they will be chopping, scraping the tea off a compressed block of tea and it would be all bitty and too much.

It feels like your auntie is setting you up for a really good practical joke when you go there.

Yeah, that's true, yeah.

She gave me so much information and she said as well, by the way, her name, Bettina, is an anagram of Tibetan.

which is quite cool.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, and she said just yesterday they've moved house.

They have a folding table that they had in Tibet when they were living there and they haven't unpacked it for many years.

It still smells of yak butter.

Wow.

Because they used to just have blobs of it on there.

I don't know why.

So butter has been used medicinally in the past, hasn't it?

And they used to think.

I was reading this in a book called A History of Food and it didn't give a specific date, it just said until quite recently it was thought that if you put a pat of butter next to a sick person it would absorb their disease and they would recover.

You do get people putting butter on bruises, that's a thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

The ancient Egyptians used it.

Okay.

They would put a bit of butter on a bruise with some powdered mummy.

Really?

Yeah.

Why were they using using powdered mummy?

I think they just had a lot of mummy to use up.

Right, it's like, oh, we've got so much rosemary, well we'll have rosemary and everything.

I was reading an article

that interviewed Elaine Kosrova, who's a historian of butter, and she thinks that it was like a magical holy thing because no one really knew how it was made.

Do you know what I mean?

So you would get some milk and you'd put it in some animal skin or something like that, and then the right kind of bacteria would have to be there for it to churn and turn into butter.

But quite often it wouldn't work, and people wouldn't know why it wasn't working.

And so, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, and they thought it was magical for that reason.

Oh, really?

Oh, well, that's so in

Iceland, I think they Icelandic people used to pray to the god of blacksmiths for better butter because, in a similar way, they didn't know how it was made and they thought it was like gold because it just had that gold goldy shine.

And so, they thought, let's pray to the guy who's responsible for metal because he'll sort out our butter shortages.

I can't believe it's not better.

Yeah, you're really pushing this joke, aren't you?

You'll be a surprised one of these moments.

Do you know where else they have that a big butter

statuary industry?

It's massive in America.

Yeah, I didn't know about this.

I didn't know about this and everyone in America watching this will know absolutely about it.

Butters are huge.

Butter statues, state statues.

Oh, butter statues, sorry.

Right.

State farms and state fairs and things.

And they always have massive butter sculptures.

And they had, there's one woman who has recently retired she did it for 50 years in Iowa every year she just made a cow out of butter cool and they reuse the butter as well really

to eat or for more statues for more statues

in between so they don't have to use another you know

hundred kilos of butter to make a cow

this started in the 1800s in America where they would make things not just out of butter but out of lots of foodstuffs so they were making loads and loads of foods because the land was so good for growing and there was one where they had this thing called cereal architecture, where someone made a palace out of corn and grass and stuff like that.

They made a Liberty Bell out of oranges and they made a life-size knight out of prunes.

It's like a weird childhood fantasy world.

I think it's to kind of show off that they've got all this amazing

juice.

Yeah.

It's like we've got so many prunes.

We can waste some of them by making them into a knight.

Yeah, because the person who started it, I think, was a woman called Caroline Short Brooks who was this really famous sculptor in America and so she displayed her sculptures at the World Fair.

She has this one called Dreaming Iolanthe which if you look it up it's really beautiful.

How did she get them to the World Fair?

Would she sculpt them there or she sculpted them there and the problem was

she wanted to use her kind of butter and she had to get it all the way to Europe because the World Fair was in Paris I think.

But the problem was she couldn't keep it cool so she needed to find a boat with enough ice in it.

Yeah, so she eventually found one.

It took her ages.

She got it onto this boat, got all the butter over at like a hundred kilos of butter, got there, and the World Fair had already finished.

No, wow.

But I thought you said she showed it at the World Fair.

Well, it must have been a number of it.

It was a different one.

It was off or something.

Did it go off?

Yeah.

The fair?

No, the butter that she had once she.

Well, I don't know what they did with it once she got there.

I can't believe it's not bitter.

Anyway.

You know, yak milk should actually be called knack milk.

Because the yak is a male?

Yeah.

The knack is the female.

You can't milk a yak.

Can't milk a yak.

No, you can't.

No, you can't.

If you think you've milked a yak, that's not milk.

You're in French.

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Time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that you can email any one of the 70,000 trees in Melbourne, Australia.

Okay, cool.

An individual email to any one of their 70,000 trees.

Have you done so?

I have not, no.

I rather think you should have done.

Well, a lot of people have, though.

So, what happens is, this was a project that was set up in 2013.

The idea was that every single tree got its own ID number because they wanted to, if you lived near this tree and you saw it being vandalised or you saw that it was in any way dying, you could report this tree by sending an email to the tree and then someone would pick it up.

Report the tree.

It just sounds like the tree's in trouble.

My tree is in trouble.

Well, yeah, do they call it tree mail?

They should do, yeah, but they, as far as I know, they don't.

No.

And this is a project called the Urban Forest Visual Project.

And they set this up back in 2013.

Instead of calling it Tree Mail, they called it what?

The Urban Forest Visual Project.

I think they need some help with branding.

They set it up.

It was set up back in, I believe, 2013.

So it's been around for a long time.

And what ends up happening is very occasionally, someone from a big newspaper or a big online magazine finds out about this and then they write an article and then people start flooding the trees with emails.

But how do they deliver the emails to the trees?

Yeah they print them out.

That's pretty messed up.

Can you imagine?

That's like sending to the tree, yeah.

That's like sending like getting a ransom and sending someone their friend's body part and writing the ransom note on it.

It's like getting a flap of skin saying hello, I think you're great written on it.

Yeah.

It's your skin.

Well but then that's isn't it like trying to heal a bruise by dropping some powdered yew on it?

Yeah, like for mummies.

Yeah, you're right.

No, we don't get away with real.

No.

But yeah, so the idea is they each have this individual ID number and people do send them emails.

There's one that was that says, my dearest Olmus, as I was leaving St.

Mary's College today, I was struck not by a branch, but by your radiant beauty.

You must get these messages all the time.

You're such an attractive

creepy though, isn't it?

That's a bit odd, yeah.

Like if I got that email and they substituted tree for human, I think I'd be pretty creeped out, actually.

And imagine how creeped out you'd be if you were literally rooted into the ground so you can't even run away.

That's a good question.

Can you get a restraining order as a tree?

Because I think they should invest in some of those.

Well, maybe they do.

Or maybe

the restraining order is against someone who's graffited the tree.

Yeah.

Imagine if someone came up and wrote a love letter on your body when you've never even met them.

Imagine if someone tattooed into you that they liked somebody else.

That'd be amazing.

Yeah.

I've got a tattoo on my shoulder saying, Danny, forever, forever.

But then also, you could go even further and say imagine if someone took your body, pulped it up, added water, squashed it down and then got a pen and wrote a love letter on you and then sent it through the post.

Yeah, that'd be pretty screwed up, wouldn't it?

I'd be happy that I'd had a new life as a different form.

It's like being reincarnated, isn't it?

Every tree is reincarnated as a book.

As a book.

Yeah.

You can look at it that way.

That's like saying that you get reincarnated as a corpse.

No, but I don't get used as a corpse.

I think you you need to be used in order for it to be reincarnation, don't you?

If you were used to this.

I thought it was that you come back to life.

I thought that's the whole point of reincarnation.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

Not that there is a use applied to the body.

Because if you donate your skeleton to medical science and they use it in classrooms and universities.

Yeah, I've been reincarnated as a teaching assistant.

But they have been, these trees have been mainly getting non-helpful environmental emails and just love letters from people, haven't they?

They have, yeah.

Or really self-involved letters.

So there is one that

sings are supposed to be about the trees, but someone wrote, Dear Greenleaf Elm, I have exams coming up and I should be busy studying.

You do not have exams because you are a tree.

I don't think there's much more to talk about as we don't have a lot in common, you being a tree and such, but I'm glad we're in this together.

Cheers, F.

She signed off, and then a few days later, another email came through.

Oh, sorry, when she did F, do you think that's what she actually got in her exams?

Because she was

emails to trees the whole time.

Sorry.

She hadn't got the exam results yet, obviously, because she was still taking the exams.

But she did then send a follow-up saying, hello, Greenleaf Elm, it's me again, brackets, F.

I just got my marks for last semester back on a definitely completely unrelated note, how do you deal with the constant, relentlessly, soul-crushing pain of disappointment after disappointment that characterises our life on Earth?

You must be very old, right?

So I thought you might know.

So I think maybe she did get an F.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like it.

Sounds like it.

The thing is,

well, I just think she's got a very high opinion of herself if she thinks she's the only person in the world with an F as an initial.

You remember me, F.

I'm probably the only person who's ever emailed me with that initial.

You're right.

These trees are popular.

They do.

No, they're poplar.

Oh,

come on.

That was strong.

They do write back sometimes.

Do they?

Yeah.

So someone wrote, well, I'll refer you to The Guardian.

The Guardian wrote to Ginkgo Maidenhair Tree in Fitzroy Gardens, and it replied saying, Dear Oliver, thank you for your lovely words.

I am very well.

Enjoy your day.

Yours sincerely, TRIE1441724.

Well, that is going against council regulations, actually, because the guy called Mr.

Woods, who's running this campaign,

Mr.

Woods?

Yeah, that's true.

He's called Mr.

Woods.

That's great.

Have you got a problem with that?

No.

That's astonishing.

I wrote that down and didn't know.

The thing is, whenever you try and visit him in his office, you can't see him for all the trees.

So, Mr.

Woods

said that while these emails are highly amusing, the team remains vigilant in making sure they only reply to authentic requests.

Which sounds like that wasn't, because as you said, the whole point of this project was that it would be no cost to the council, so they can't be wasting taxpayers' money spending their entire time replying to these mails.

Well, that's true.

I've got an example here where someone wrote to a willow leaf peppermint tree, ID 1357982, said, hello, Mr.

Willow Leaf Peppermint, or should I say, Mrs.

Willowleaf Peppermint.

Do trees have genders?

Regards.

The tree wrote back saying, hello, I am not a Mr.

or Mrs.

as I have what is called perfect flowers that include both genders in my flower structure.

Kind regard, Mr.

and Mrs.

Willow, leaf, peppermint, brackets, same tree.

So they do send back stuff about education.

Is that the whole point of this then?

Is it an educational tool?

No, I think maybe the replies will be, but it's genuinely for the fact that they want to use citizen reporters for the maintenance of their

trees.

Lots of the trees in Melbourne are going to die of old age over the next 20 years or so, about 40%.

And so they need to replace them and maintain them on the ones they've got quite carefully.

So, what you do is they have a map and it shows all the trees in Melbourne.

So, if you're walking through Melbourne and you see a tree that's damaged, and you click on the icon, all it does is it sends an email to the council, and the subject line is information about tree XYZ.

And all the little icons are either red, amber, or green, aren't they?

And the red ones are the ones that are going to die soon.

Oh, really?

Because the Atlantic article I read about this story said that this is obviously ways for people to sort of get you invested in things

in your country or in your city that have problems.

In Hawaii, they have tsunami sirens and they have an adopt a siren thing.

So you go through a map, you see where you live next to one.

Do you get sent a photo of it every Christmas?

Exactly the same.

Doing so well, still flashing.

Yeah, but you test it and stuff.

You have to sort of be responsible to make sure that the maintenance of it is still okay.

I thought you didn't have to.

I looked on the website, it said if you choose to, it's called adopt a thing.

Right.

Thing.

And they say, if you choose to adopt a thing, you're under no obligation and have no responsibility to actually report problems with the thing.

Wait, so what are you doing for it?

I think you just give a bit of money.

You just give money, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, you get to say in parties, I adopted a tsunami warning.

Yeah.

Which is pretty cool.

But the thing is,

not if the place gets hit and you didn't

give a warning.

That's true.

Yeah.

Then you're kind of.

Well, it's not that you has to give the warning.

I guess you're relying on the siren.

It's not like a job swap where you go and stand on the coast looking worried and the siren goes to the

What's your name?

So, on inanimate objects

and sort of personifying them and getting into contact with them, there has been a study done recently which shows that if you are lonely, you are more likely to see inanimate objects as being human-like.

Oh, so you'll start carrying hello, Mr.

Cushion, or whatever.

But these microphones really do very closely resemble a beautiful man, I think, don't you think?

Sure.

A beautiful man, yeah.

Is it that you're lonely so you make inanimate objects more human or is it that you're the kind of person who makes inanimate objects human and so you're automatically a loner?

Well I was asking my fridge about this the other day.

No, I think it's that if you don't have human relationships you're more likely to name your mugs.

But what I'm saying is it's possible that it's the other way around.

Well that it's just self-perpetuating I guess.

So once you do that you get stuck in a cycle don't you?

Because you've got your mug mates you don't need people anymore.

I mean, it is obviously a thing, isn't it?

It's a Been Castaway with Wilson, the volleyball.

Oh, yeah.

Remember?

Yeah.

Yes.

It's exactly like that.

If he had been there with 50 or 60 other people, he probably wouldn't have done the volleyball thing.

And then he would have been a real weirdo in that film if he had paid a fair to the volleyball, despite having a thriving society.

But then, weirdly, he probably would have been outcast from the society.

And then he would have needed to personify the volleyball.

Yeah, you're right.

I wonder what Teddy's for, because I'm very close to my teddies.

Maybe closer than I am to most people, but I don't think that counts me as like a person.

Well, you wouldn't think that, would you?

But then people like me would think, yes, that is weird.

Well, I think you're weird

for liking women.

Okay, so I guess

we all have our own weird predilections.

I need to get judgmental.

My wife is definitely a real person.

Oh, you've thought that for years, haven't you?

It's time we broke the news to you.

She's just a coat rack, is she?

Yeah.

I mean, she does wear coats very well.

Did you know that in the 1800s then a lot of Americans lived in trees?

Did they?

Yeah, some Americans.

Some trees are.

No, inside trees.

Inside trees or houses.

Yeah.

I'd say that's technically still a treehouse.

Oh, yeah, it's true.

I suppose it is, but they need to rebrand themselves, actually.

Well, they did, and they call themselves stump houses.

Well, the houses didn't call themselves that, they didn't call themselves anything, they're just stumps.

Well, I I actually think they have a bit of humanity to them.

Actually, they had because they've turned them into houses.

So, you know, houses look like a face because the windows at the top, and then

I've never seen that, but then I'm not lonely.

Okay.

You've got your clothes right, haven't you?

I'm really sorry about that, Colina.

She doesn't listen.

She's not real.

So, in the 19th century there was a lot of logging in America,

up in the northwest, up in Oregon and Washington and then into Canada and people would leave the stumps of the trees that they were logging because they're not that useful because the grain's really uneven in the stumps I think.

And then a lot of people were immigrating to these places at the same time and they would kind of turn the stumps into homes because it was very cheap.

So some people lived inside tree stumps or they turned them into storage sheds so they became chicken houses or pig pens.

Sometimes they'd modify them and make them into dance floors apparently apparently and they'd have stump dances.

Yeah, because if you get a big tree stump they'd flatten it out.

They are absolutely massive aren't they?

Yeah.

Which trees are these?

They'll be like redwoods and

clias, they'll be really big.

Yeah yeah.

You know ants farm in trees and have been doing so for many thousands of years.

What do they farm?

But proper farming.

Proper cows,

tractors and stuff.

Wow.

So they plant,

they farm fruit crops.

So they farm different kinds of fruit and they basically they plant the seeds, so there'll be like a fungus or a fruit crop growing out of the slits in trees or the slits in bark, and they'll take that and they'll plant it and insert it up further up the tree, and then they'll poo on it to fertilise it, and then it grows and it's fruits.

Like farmers do always pooing on their crops.

And as the plants grow, they form these big hollow structures that the ants live in.

So they're kind of turning their farm also into their farm house, and they can eat it as well.

And then when it creates more seeds then they take these seeds and they go and plant them further up the tree and they have this permanently self self-fulfilling farm that they run up trees.

It's very cool.

I do know a fact about farmers bottoms.

Yeah go on.

There used to be a thing where to test whether the ground was ready for you to plant your seeds you'd take down your trousers and you'd put your bum on the ground and if it was too cold

then you wouldn't plant the seeds.

But if it was warm enough then the ground was soft enough and you could plant seeds.

If only other bits of the body could sense temperature

it's a bit like kind of gauging the temperature of a child's bath by putting your elbow on it.

It's exactly like that.

It's not exactly like that.

No, because you wouldn't gauge the temperature of a child's bath.

Yeah.

It's like when I dip my ass in my tea to see if it's warm enough.

Oh no, yak dung for me.

I brought my own dung.

I've just got one thing on emails.

So there were a team of scientists in South Carolina who did a test.

They went through 2 million emails in people's Yahoo inboxes.

Don't know how they got access to it.

You can imagine.

But they looked at the number of words that people sent through their emails per year, and it equates to basically writing a book.

Everyone, if they use it.

It's not a good book, though, is it?

It's a terrible book.

But yeah, roughly 41,368 words is what they said.

That's a short book.

It's a short short book.

It's a short book, but it's a Mr.

Men book it's not a mr men it's a bit longer than a mr man book it's a mr verbose so if you've not read that

okay it is time for fact number three and that is james okay my fact this week is that the world's hottest chili is not meant to be eaten it's meant to be used as an anesthetic

is it like a one of those fable things where it's like oh my arm really hurts and then someone stamps on your foot and you're like so distracted by that.

Actual

numb you, basically.

It's incredibly, incredibly strong.

The idea is: if you're allergic to normal anesthetics, then you could maybe able to use this kind of thing.

If you went to the dentist, it would only anesthetize the small amount around your tooth, so it wouldn't hit the muscles, it would only be the pain receptors.

So it means that you wouldn't have that kind of thing where you can't talk properly.

Do they turn it into a gas or a, or is that what they're working on otherwise?

Yeah, they're still working on it.

Right.

It It would be a chemical, so I suppose they would inject it.

Yes.

So how is it?

Because obviously usually what Chili does is it ignites your pain receptors.

It's not even a taste.

Capsaicin is something which makes you feel pain, but yet this is numbing pain.

Yes.

So it's...

Explain that, James.

I don't know exactly how that works, but the way that capsaicin works is there's a channel called TRPV1,

and that normally is a heat channel.

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

Not a TV channel.

Not a TV channel.

It's normally a heat channel, and the body is tricked into thinking that it's hot when actually it's kind of spicy and

it's so weird.

It's not hot at all.

It's not hot at all, no.

So this

chili pepper is called Dragon's Breath.

It's called Dragon's Breath, yeah.

And on this scale that they have, called the Scoville scale, it scores 2.48 million, which is extremely high.

So what that means is, because

they do the scale by how much diluting it needs.

So if it's got 40 on the Scoville scale, if you dilute it 40 times, you will no longer be able to detect it.

If you've got one drop of this stuff and 40 drops of water, you can't taste anymore.

So this would need 2.48 million drops, and even then, you could still just about taste it.

Wow.

And

so I worked out how much that is in actual water.

It's half a bathtub full of water.

Wow.

Oh, really?

If you put one drop.

Put one drop into half a bathtub of water, you can

only just stop noticing that.

That means we're effectively we're like sharks.

Wow, yes!

It does.

If there was an animal that had chili sauce instead of blood,

and it was bleeding and we were swimming in the water, we'd be able to detect them and then attack them.

Does that mean if you drank one cup, let's say you put the chili into the water,

does it go across the body of the water?

As in, if I got a cupful away from the bath and I drank drank it?

I think so, yeah.

I mean, maybe the molecules would have to.

You'd have to stir it around a bit.

Yeah, if you stir it.

If you just put it in at that end and then you quickly split it up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a bit like homeopathic chili, this, isn't it?

Yeah.

This is amazing.

So it was a guy called Wilbur Scoville who developed that.

Yes,

who developed the scale.

The scale, but not the chili pepper.

So this is now officially, according to Guinness World Records, the hottest chili in the world.

And it's taken it away from the previous world record holder, which was called the Carolina Reaper.

And the Carolina Reaper held it for quite a long time.

It was developed and bred, so I think some of these hottest chilies are all part of a breeding plan.

And so the Carolina Reaper was made by a guy called Ed Curry.

No, no.

Yeah, Ed Curry developed it.

And they did a thing, he did an anniversary eating of one, like they threw a celebration for it.

So he just ate one raw.

And his quote, as he was eating it sort of started normal and then he started uh going bright red his face they say was blood red his eyes were watering he he was his quote has a lot of dot dot dots because he's doing that

so he goes

i'm losing the ability to talk

that's his official quote from uh his anniversary of the carolina repo it can um make you loosen it can't it yeah well it did there was a guy called ian rothwell who in 2013 became the first person to eat a whole plate of the world's hottest curry that's called the widower.

The reason he did it, he's a doctor, so maybe he should have known better, but the reason he did it was that his daughter.

He hated all of his underpants.

He didn't wear all of his underpants in one day.

I think I would.

Do you not take your underpants down when you go to the toilet then?

Absolutely not, don't be disgusting.

Do you want to ruin that toilet?

So, this guy, no, his motivation was that his daughter, Alice, brought a boyfriend home, and the boyfriend told, was saying, was relating this story about him and his friends who tried this curry and they couldn't get through more than a couple of bites.

And the dad was obviously trying to impress this boyfriend, so it was like, I bet I can do the whole curry.

And he did it, and he actually said it was okay.

So he said he had to take a short break halfway through because he felt really sweaty and he did start hallucinating.

And people told him he started hallucinating because he obviously can't remember it.

But But aside from a few tears in his eyes and a short period of hallucinating, he was cool and collected and seemed to cope very well.

I thought, was this not the guy who went for a walk halfway through and started weeping and stuff like that?

Is that him?

He went for a walk halfway through because his eyes were watering.

But I don't think he was crying with sadness.

He was just crying with me.

He was probably crying with joy about how impressed his daughter's friend was going to be.

I can kind of understand that because when I first met my father-in-law, who's Russian, we basically

ended up drinking a lot of vodka, which was almost like competitive vodka.

Right, but did you say, I bet I could drink those three bottles of vodka?

No, but you just wait, Sonny.

There was an implication there, I think, which was because in like Russia and probably everywhere, if you have a shot of vodka and you're doing it in a social way, it's basically I'm down in mine, you're down in yours kind of thing, and then it's another one, and then it's another one, and then it's another one.

And then, next thing I knew, I was invading Ukraine.

You get so drunk you must stuck Paulina for a hat stand.

So the weird thing, right, is that birds don't have any problems eating chilies, right?

They eat loads of chilies, often take really hot ones, they're fine.

They don't panic, they don't lose pants, they don't hallucinate.

My guy's son-in-law must be really impressed by

a bird watcher.

So birds hate it, birds are fine, but mammals hate them, right?

Most mammals.

Including, and obviously humans have developed the ability to think, oh, actually, I do quite like this.

But the theory is that the plants are using birds because the birds, the seeds go through them really fast, and the birds poo them out, and they spread the seed, and it spreads the plant.

Whereas mammals have digestive juices which destroy the seeds.

So the plant has developed seeds and you know, little fibers and things which

mammals hate, but birds don't.

I love it.

And maybe humans, they do it so humans like it, so that humans cultivate them.

Yeah.

I found a couple of spiciest foods and drinks that use chili in them.

I found a bottle of vodka.

So they use a chili which is the Naga Yolokia chilies.

Have you heard of those?

I've heard of the Naga ones because that's from Nagar in India, isn't it?

Right.

I think are they the ones that yes, I think they're from Assam and they were the hottest chili until 2007.

And they're a genuine hottest chili like they've been used in cooking for hundreds of years.

Yes exactly.

Yeah, so they use that in a vodka and they on the Scoville scale are 250,000.

So they're quite far down from your hottest, hottest ones these days, which were in the millions, I believe.

You said earlier?

It's quite interesting that chili because it's been really good for Indian farmers because it got that booth from the Guinness World Records, and so suddenly lots of people were ordering it, and it's quite expensive.

And also now they're using it in crowd control, so they've started making the chili into a spray.

And they also farmers use it to repel elephants because elephants aren't birds, they're mammals, so they don't like it.

And so, actually, a lot of Assam's farmers

have been Dumbo.

Oh, yeah.

I was wondering if he might like chili.

God, who knows?

He's really on the cusp, isn't he?

Because if you think about it, he could probably pollinate quite a lot of

or he could spread seeds, couldn't he?

Very effectively.

Because they poo a lot, don't they?

Yeah, they do.

Oh, yeah.

Is that what Dumbo was about, him spreading chili seeds?

I've not seen it, but yeah.

Have you not?

No.

Have you not seen Dumbo?

Dumbo.

Great.

Anyway, that's very cool.

So, yemp being used by the police.

Wow.

Yeah, because Peppa Stray is effectively chili, isn't it?

That bloke.

That doctor trying to impress his daughter's boyfriend.

Just wait till you see.

Flies to India, gets involved in a riot.

Simon, are you watching?

Maybe if he got shot by an arrow by the Aztecs, because they used to put chili on the end of their arrows.

I read that the Aztecs used to throw chilies at their enemies and I thought that can't possibly be right.

Apparently Japanese ninjas did.

Throw chilies.

Not chilies, but chili powder.

Yes, okay.

Chili powder, if you're close up, might be a good one.

Yeah, but because I thought it would be impossible to get the chili into someone's mouth from a distance.

Yeah, it is impossible to throw a Maltese into someone's mouth from a distance.

But don't they have to be compliant?

So you have to say to your enemy, it's just a Maltese.

Before the battle, can we take part in a traditional ritual and see if you can get the Maltese into the enemy's mouth?

Let's be real.

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Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray.

My fact is that one of Napoleon's admirals lost three legs in battle.

Was he an animal?

Was he

a dog?

Yeah, a dog.

Because sometimes people give naval ranks to animals.

He was a spider.

So he was still able to lead a fulfilling career.

Barely noticed.

That's a story.

His name was Georges René Le Pelle de Le Pleville, and he was a French admiral, and he lost his right leg in a battle, and then he lost his wooden leg in another battle, and then he lost his replacement wooden leg in another battle.

So, did he lose anything else?

No, I think it was very lucky.

Imagine your luck.

That's like, that's like bowling.

Well, it's not lucky to lose your first leg.

No,

the next two are lucky.

Yeah, that's true.

And for a while, he spent his time sailing around in a ship called the Brilliant.

That's so cool.

That's awesome.

That's good.

That's very good.

I should say this fact was originally tweeted by a guy called Peter Campbell and it was sent him by Ryan Goodman.

So thank you to both of those guys.

Another person to lose their leg in the very same battle was Lord Uxbridge, quite famously lost it.

I think it's in Britain, so as I'm not, I didn't grow up here, I don't know if this is a famous encounter, but when he was talking to the Duke of Wellington, as soon as, and he lost it by cannonball as well, there's a line where he says,

By God, sir, I've lost my leg, and then the Duke of Wellington says, by God, sir, so you have.

And apparently, that's a thing that's taught in schools here.

Did you guys?

Have you heard that before?

I've heard it before, but not in school.

It's not a schools thing.

It's like a, it's just an example of great British British

restraint and stiff upper lip that blatantly didn't happen ever in history.

And he actually did something that seemed to be quite common.

He buried his leg, or his leg was buried in the garden where it was cut off in a little tombstone with the Rexus, wasn't it?

Yeah.

And that seemed to be quite a common thing.

So a few people did this.

It's said that that's where the original inspiration for one foot in the grave came from.

Yep, that's obviously not true.

Pretty sure that would be when you're in the grave, both your feet are in there, so you're almost in there.

Yes.

But why?

No, but you'd say both feet and all my body and stuff in the grave.

Right.

When you are there.

So it does make sense to say one foot in the grave.

If you've buried your leg, yeah.

Yeah.

But then why not one leg in the grave?

That's a very good point.

Yeah.

I'll have a chat with myself about the origins of that later.

But they did, there was a thing.

So they got in a big row, basically, over the leg because the family who owned the house where the leg had been left and buried made a little living from displaying it to people and showing it around.

And then 60 years later, his son visited the house.

He thought, I'll go visit my father's leg.

And he was horrified to discover, supposedly, that it was sticking out of the ground because it had been unearthed by a storm with a really bad neck.

Wow.

It was like foot up, like he was trying to climb his way up.

I can't quite believe it.

You kind of hope it is foot up, don't you?

Yeah.

Like the foot at least would be...

Yeah.

That's true.

It's close.

And that's where the phrase one foot out of the grave originated from.

He said, right, I want my father's leg back because you've really made a hash of looking after it.

And they said, no, we want compensation.

And they didn't let him have it.

And there was a, you know, there was a and passe between them.

And then eventually they just kept hold of it.

And then in 1932, supposedly, they burned it.

They burned it?

What?

Just so that he could never get hold of it out of spite?

I don't know, I don't think so, because that was even like 60 years after, even the initial row, which was 60 years after that.

But you're just burning bone, right?

Can you burn bone?

I don't know.

I don't know.

That's the story.

Do we know why they did that?

Like, as in, obviously they were, I can see what we're saying, they're doing grand gestures towards the legs, but why did people bury?

their it was I think it was partly because it was to show how important they are and this thing is so vital and also because it was quite a mark of pride in the 19th century, I think, during the Civil War and the Revolutionary Wars, if you lost a leg, that showed you're a really man.

So it was more for

veterans of war as opposed to

the legitimate thing.

It was never a big thing.

Oh, okay, it's just a hand.

It'll be a little bit more.

Because you were celebrating the end of your leg, it's where the word legend comes from, leg end.

Yeah, that is true.

Yeah.

Is it?

Yeah, well, we'll leave you to work that out.

A little bit of googling after this show, why don't we?

I so believe it.

Do you know what?

So, this is something that's very cool.

Do you know why flamingos are so stable on one leg?

Because you always see flamingos standing on one leg, don't you?

Always.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah.

So, scientists are.

Is it because they're used to it?

No.

Oh, because you would think, because they do it all the time.

I mean, they are, yeah.

I'm sure they are used to it, but that's not the reason that they're used to it.

Is it because they do it?

Are they welded onto a platform?

Yeah, they're all lol ornaments.

Yeah.

No, it's not that.

Why is it?

Okay, I'll tell you.

So a couple of biologists, they're called Young Hui Chang and Lina Ting, they've studied this just now, right?

And they were trying to work out why flamingos are so stable, or rather how they're so stable.

And they discovered this by writing to some zoos and doing experiments on flamingos.

and they would put them on a little plate, right, and they'd measure the forces that the flamingos foot would put down on the plate to see how it's adjusting.

And then they wrote to another zoo, which had just had a couple of flamingos which had died, and they said, can we have your flamingos please and then they propped the flamingo up on one leg, this dead flamingo, and they found that its leg locks perfectly, right, just on one leg and they're more stable on one leg than they are on two.

Because when a flamingo stands on one leg, somehow all of its tendons slop right into place and it can just stay like that for ages.

Why couldn't they lock both legs directly in place and then stand extract?

So what's the advantage in only standing on one leg?

Sometimes they're standing in cold water and they may not want to lose heat.

Heat through both legs.

Isn't it also that they don't want both feet to be frozen in ice?

Sometimes they get...

I've read that.

I've also read once that they said that they have it so that there's fewer legs for fish to bash into.

Yeah, and there's just no way telling which of these is more or less plausible.

They're all very plausible.

Like say if you're in a battle and there are cannonballs flying everywhere and you're standing on one leg the whole time, then you're less likely to get your legs.

Got it.

So it's not to stop the fish from hurting themselves, it's to stop their legs from hurting them.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Yeah.

I believe that one.

Okay, well, all right.

I've got one last thing on cannonball war, and so this is not about legs, it's about hands.

There's a guy who was a knight in Germany in the 1500s called Gotz, and we know him as Gotz of the Iron Hand.

Have I told you about this guy before?

Gotz of the Iron Hand was this badass knight.

He was amazing.

And during battle, when he had originally both of his hands,

there's two theories.

One that a cannonball sound freaked him out, shocked him slightly, and he lost control of his massive sword, and the sword went back and he chopped off his own hand.

The second theory is

unlikely.

The second theory is that a cannonball took it off.

More likely.

Yeah, so what happened is that they replaced his hand with a prosthetic hand, which was made out of iron, so he became Gotz of the Iron Hand.

And it had sort of joints in it so that the knuckles could hold the stirrup of the horse that he was riding and could hold around the sword.

And he was so famous that he published an autobiography and it was translated into a play by Goethe, who wrote this whole play about Gotz of the Iron Hand, which is still published in Germany, very famous.

And there's a line in it which is thought to be either real or just Goethe was inspired by his sort of badass nature, which is the most famous line in the whole play, which in English is translated as, tell him he can kiss my ass.

And that is still a slang put down in Germany today.

It's quite a fair slang put down in it.

a direct derivative of bots of the Iron Hand.

Tell me.

So, wait,

is that where we got kissed my ass from?

It doesn't feel like it.

I can't believe it's not Goethe.

Oh.

End the show.

Absolutely.

End the show.

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 account.

I'm on at Tribaland, James, at Egg Shaped, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M and Czaczynski, you can email podcast at qi.com.

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

It has all of our previous episodes on there.

It's also got a link to our book, which is coming out November 2nd, called The Book of the Year.

It's also got links to our tour, which is going through October and November in the UK.

That's all from us now.

We'll see you again next week.

Goodbye.

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