164: No Such Thing As A Poo Powered Plane

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

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Anna Chacinski.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphone.

Only this time, we've got a big announcement to make right at the top of this show.

We are releasing our first ever book.

I forgot to mention that to you, actually.

I'm of the last to know everything in this office.

You're not involved.

So, yeah, no such thing as a fish.

We're releasing a book.

We've signed a deal, and the book is being released in November.

If you're hearing these words, you can pre-order it now.

Go to Amazon and click the button.

It's a book that...

Click the button.

Let's go to Amazon.com and click the button.

The button, it's on the front of the page.

It's a button in the middle of the page saying buy the fish book now.

I think what you want to do is go to qi.com forward slash shop and we're going to have a link there that you click on which will take you to the page where you can pre-order the book.

And it's going to be called the book of the year

and it's going to be about the year that's happening right now and it's by us.

Go to Amazon or go to qi.com forward slash shop and you'll be able to pre-order it.

Yeah, and it's just going to be packed with all the most interesting stories that we found from 2017.

This is one that I want to get into the book.

Mafia members in Sicily have been banned from becoming godfathers.

So this is an archbishop who has said that at baptisms, if you are involved in the mafia, you are now not allowed to become a godfather.

Here's one that I've got.

When they voted for the UK general election, there was only 13 MPs that didn't vote for it, and one of them did it because it was going to interfere with his honeymoon.

Okay, this is one that I'd like to get in.

This is something that's been revealed in the the last couple of weeks, and it's that a Norwegian slow TV show that follows migrating reindeer has had to be suspended after the reindeer stopped moving altogether.

I've got a fact that I'd like to get into the book,

which is that Jeremy Corbyn has won seven elections for parliamentary beard of the year.

Wow.

Really?

Yeah, and it's practically unparalleled in modern history.

Is he the current reigning champ?

Is he the current Labour leader?

Yeah, depending on when you're listening to this.

Is that what he spends all his time campaigning for then?

Yes, he is.

He won the actual Beard of the Year quite a long time ago, I think.

As opposed to the niche parliamentary beard of the year.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's like a qualifying round.

I hope I make the regionals.

He made Global Beard of the Year.

Oh, I think it's British Beard of British Year.

British Beard of the Year.

He is the reigning champion, yes.

And he won, I think, with 64% of the vote last year, which is slightly more than he won that year's leadership contest with.

When is the next championship?

It'll be this year.

So, in time,

I meant month.

Is it in time for our book?

I think it will be in time for the book, so we'll be able to announce whether he's won it a record seventh time.

Let's hope so, because if we had a book of news of 2017 and we weren't able to get in the results of Beard of the Year, it would just be a joke.

Sorry, I think it'd be parliamentary beard of the year.

Yeah, so that's it.

The book's going to be just packed with all that sort of stuff.

And we thought we would spend this episode not telling you our most interesting fact that we've learned over the last seven days, strictly from all of history, but we would pick something that we want to go into this book and pitch it to each other.

So that's what we're going to do, starting with you, Andy.

My fact that I would like to get into the book is that ideas proposed for the U.S.

border wall include a trench full of nuclear waste, a one-way mirror, and three million hammocks next to each other.

What?

Three million hammocks?

Yeah.

That is not so much a serious proposal, but.

No, because you could just go under them.

Or over them.

Depending on how high up the tree they're tied.

Ah, so there are going to be trees along this border.

I think it's not a fixed proposal yet.

I think you could plant the trees.

You'd have to have something to attach the hammocks too.

Yeah.

It's the idea that you get to a hammock, it looks so comfortable, you lie down, have a nap, and you never make it across.

I think that's the idea, yeah.

Okay.

There is an artist whose name is Jennifer Meridian, who's proposed that one, she's proposed also, a wall of pipe organs and a wall of lighthouses, thousands and thousands of lighthouses.

So this was a big push, wasn't it, for proposals to be sent in?

So they had a little five-day window where you could submit your proposals

and then they're going to pick around 20 finalists in about a month or so and they're going to build prototypes of their sections of the.

How are they going to build a prototype of the nuclear waste one?

Just a little bit of depleted uranium.

Exactly, yeah.

I don't know.

But the one-way mirror is a very interesting idea.

You can see Mexico from the USA, but they can't see you.

Yeah.

What's the point in that?

I have no idea.

You could still see someone approaching if they were going to try and climb the mirror.

And you don't know

if you're approaching from the Mexican side, you don't know if anyone is.

If you're being looked at,

okay, I thought it was just that the Mexicans go towards and go, oh no, it's just exactly like here.

We might as well say.

And there are loads of proposals.

One of them has a monorail going all the way along the top.

Oh, yeah, like a hyperloop, they're calling it, right?

Yeah, but it's a monorail.

It's a monorail.

Okay.

What's the difference between those two things?

Oh, one sounds super futuristic and the other sounds like a monorail.

We've all seen that episode of The Simpsons.

Joe, I read the rules for the proposals, the idea of what the wall needs to withstand.

It needs to withstand attacks from, here's the quote, sledgehammer, carjack, pickaxe, chisel, battery-operated impact tools, any kind of handheld tools.

And not only does it have to sort of deal with the impact, but it should be able to deal with it for up to four hours.

So, specifically

four hours of a sledgehammer.

Meanwhile, there's some black next to you who have a chisel.

It's like, why do you need to specify the chisel when you've also got the carjacker smashing into it?

Four hours smashing cars into it.

We've made it carjack-proof, but there's a chisel weakness, unfortunately.

It's like the Death Star.

There's going to be just one

little weak smart.

So it's a very stupid idea obviously yeah and they want it ideally to be 30 foot tall and so all the proposals had so it's a 30 foot tall mirror which is quite cool

he's become more flexible on the 30 foot thing yes I think he's gone he said anything over 18 feet might be okay one of the problems is that

they obviously need to build their the wall on their side of the land on the American side of the land but there's a lot of American landowners who have houses and property that go on the other side of these rivers and bits of land generally so to build the wall he's actually going to be sealing out a lot of Americans and they're going to be stuck in Mexico unless they sell their land.

So, he's trying to buy the land back from them for the government.

He knows there's going to be problems, so he's planning to effectively go into legal war with a lot of Americans over there.

So, in 2006, they started building a load of walls at various points, and there were 442 lawsuits that were reviewed by CNN from the time, and 93 of them are still open.

Wow!

And that was for a much shorter while.

Was that?

Because also in 2006, I think George Bush approved a virtual wall.

I think we've talked about the idea of virtual walls before, but he worked on that.

The project was shelved in 2011, and it cost a billion dollars.

Sorry, is that a billion real dollars or a billion virtual dollars?

Sadly, I think it's real dollars.

Yeah.

But the thing about the virtual wall was that it worked by a system of sensors that were supposed to be able to tell when migrants were crossing the border.

But apparently, it was really ineffective in windy conditions.

it mistook trees and plants for people.

It was constantly thinking that animals crossing the border represented suspicious activity.

Right.

Yeah.

One person has proposed leaving a four inch gap at the bottom of the wall so that little animals can cross.

Oh yeah.

The one problem is that there are 111 species which cross the area currently proposed for the wall.

And so lots of them will you know struggle to mate and breed and and live live a full fulfilling life.

I wonder if all the animals will then evolve to be four inches tall,

like tiny buffaloes going over the range.

I've got an idea.

What about this?

You kind of make

a very slight incline from about two miles out, and it just gets more and more inclined, inclined, inclined, inclined.

And then on the Mexican side, it's a sheer drop.

Do you know what I mean?

Like a cliff.

So from the American side, it just looks like a normal bit of landscape.

It's like a haha in an English country garden.

Exactly like that, yeah.

Well, that's a bit like apparent border between North and South Korea, right?

Really?

Which I didn't know about.

North Korea claims there's a wall dividing it from South Korea, and that the US and South Korea built this wall a few decades ago during the Cold War.

And they say on their side, it's got like little crenellations where guns are, and it's got checkpoints along it, and it's this big wall.

And then it says on the other side, on the South Korea side, it's just covered in turf and grass, and so nobody knows that it's there from the other side.

And the US and South Korea totally deny that that they ever built this wall.

There's evidence.

Someone did a documentary, I think, where they claimed to be showing pictures.

So we've got no idea if North Korea is divided from South Korea by a wall on the wall.

You know what?

I saw a photo of, because there are doors on the border where the North Koreans and South Koreans have police, and they open up to either let people in.

And when they open up the door,

if it's a police officer opening the door on the South Korean side, the rule is that another South Korean officer has to be holding onto them because they might be pulled through by the North Koreans.

There's photos you can see online where they're like holding by the arm another South Korean police officer opening a door.

Yeah, it's amazing.

That's so funny.

Do you know the first ever demarcation between America and Mexico when they first decided to do it?

They just drew a line.

Really?

Drew it?

Just drew a line on the floor.

Really?

You know, like in old sitcoms where you would draw a line around half of the house and you were allowed only on your side and the other side.

But with a marker pen?

I don't know what it was with.

I guess it was just a line in the sand.

That's probably right.

It's a bit sandy.

Yeah.

Well, that's true.

You can't paint sand.

You can't paint sand.

Well, you can move the line, which is quite handy.

Our country looks a bit smaller today.

And then they just started making fences.

And the reason they made fences is because they didn't want Mexican animals to go into American territory because they had diseases and stuff like that.

Really?

Yeah.

So it wasn't for people.

And when they made it for people even, it wasn't to stop Mexicans from coming in.

It was to stop Chinese immigrants from coming in.

Really?

So was that like the start of the 20th century or something?

It was during the Depression, I think.

So last week Congress approved spending for replacing existing fencing, different to building a new wall.

a strong argument that this is never going to happen.

So they approved spending to replace existing fencing along 20 miles, which is 1% of the border, and to add gates to existing barriers apparently.

So it'll be, I think, slightly more porous the border than before, because it'll have gates.

But anyway, Sean Spicer got into a massive row with the press because he was saying, look at this great wall.

And everyone said, hang on, that stuff was a fence when you described it in January.

Literally exactly the same structure.

You were calling it a fence.

And he said, no, it's a wall.

It's definitely a wall.

It got really touchy about it.

That's clever, though.

It probably costs a lot less to just have a chat with the OED and bribe them to to change the definition of the word wall.

To a line of paint in the sand.

But if you just do like they did with the North and South Korea thing and just say there's a wall there when there isn't a wall there,

I don't think that's beyond Trump's.

You're right, he can do it.

It would be unbelievably cheap to do.

Yeah.

All he wants to do is say, hey guys, we did it, we made a wall.

And everyone goes, there's no wall here.

He's like, yeah, there is.

What do you want about?

You're a wall.

There was a design that someone came up with in 2009, so well before Trump was even thinking about being a candidate,

which was a barrier which is lined with burrito carts.

So it's a proper wall and barrier.

Yeah.

But along the ground, like those, you know those desks you have to meet people in prisons to visit them so you can have a bit of conversation with them.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a barrier there which is permeable.

You can see through it and you can pass things through it.

Burritos.

And you can pass burritos through.

So who's passing to who?

I imagine you're selling burritos through the business.

Probably the burrito seller to the burrito buyer.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

But it can go both ways,

yeah, because money could go the other direction.

Exactly.

And or if you wanted to sell hot dogs in the other direction, you could do that.

Yeah, okay.

So it was an American professor called Ronald Rael, and he said the burrito wall accommodates for a food cart to be inserted into the wall.

Seating is built into the wall, and food, conversation, or a binational game of footsie can occur across the border.

Wait a minute, so you can play footsie, so they must be.

Maybe that's that four-inch gap.

You can play it.

But you know, there is like there is an existing wall in various parts, of course.

And over there, they sometimes play volleyball.

No,

they have, historically, they have, yeah.

And they'll sometimes have poetry competitions like rap battles.

Wow.

But volleyball, you wouldn't be able to see which way the ball was going until it was on your side of the wall.

That's why the Americans want a one-way mirror

to win at volleyball.

No, really, it hasn't touched the ground over here.

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Okay, it is time to move on to fact number two, and that is James.

Okay,

I think we might have some North Korean stuff in this book.

Oh, yeah.

In this book of 2017, very much in the news.

And so here's my North Korea fact.

North Korea's national airline, Air Koreo, owns 10 times more taxis than it owns aeroplanes.

Taxis.

Yeah.

They only have 15 aeroplanes.

And I found that they've recently branched out into taxis.

And I found that they have about 150 taxis.

And

what we think might have happened is there's a load of of sanctions, obviously, against North Korea, so they're not allowed to fly to as many places as they used to be.

So they need to find other ways to make money.

And one of the ways they're doing it is branching out into things like soda and cigarettes and in this case, taxis.

And this is quite a famous airline, isn't it?

Because they're famously rated one star.

They're the only one-star airline in the world.

But not for danger, for

quality of service, which is important to emphasise.

I think there's only been one fatal accident on Air Correa, and that was 1983.

That was a car crash.

That was at a time when the airline was called CAC.

So

C-double-A-K, I suspect that's how you pronounce it.

But yeah, it's perfectly safe.

It's just the service is very bad.

Do they ever drag people off planes who've got a perfectly legal ticket?

But the in-flight entertainment sounds like fun.

Oh, yeah.

You get

patriotic songs sung by the band Moran Bong.

And I looked into Moran Bong a bit more.

Oh yeah, and he actually put them together.

Kim Jong-un.

Did he?

Like Simon Cowell of North Korea?

Yes.

Wow.

No, he put them together.

And

they are 20 members, and they're all young women, and they're all quite senior military ranks as well.

So sometimes they perform in uniform, and sometimes they perform in mini skirts and high heels.

Multi-talented.

Yeah.

You don't want to get the wrong costume when you're going to war, do you?

Although there was that military march in North Korea a couple of years ago which showed the female soldiers marching and they were all wearing really high heels.

Do you remember?

Oh yeah, yeah.

It's extraordinary.

You've got to appreciate because it's quite hard to walk in high heels isn't it?

If you can march in them then that they're good soldiers.

I think that's yeah, it's quite a good policy.

You're right because if you can do well in high heels then you're definitely going to do okay in your trench boots.

But

they've got songs, Sorry to be obsessed with Moranbong.

The tracks they sing include Let's Support Our Supreme Commander with Arms.

We think of the Marshal Day and Night.

The Marshal is Kim Jong-un.

They also play the theme from Rocky and My Way.

Oh,

but with the original lyrics or?

Don't know.

Hmm.

So.

Sorry, I feel like I went on an extended ring about Marambong there.

So is it a solid 20 people or are they sort of on a rotational no they're solid and then they disappeared for a while and then they came back with no explanation like take that

so a lot of the news with North Korea has been the missile tests yeah and their most advanced missile is the musu dan it's that's the musu dan not the musu comet dan

uh and they've done eight attempts and it's failed six times okay so that's a 75 failure which is a worse failure percentage than Sunderland have had this year.

Sunderland have failed to win 67% of their Premier League matches in their bottom of the league.

Wow, and I believe Donald Trump has actually dispatched a fleet to Sunderland.

If Sunderland's not doing well, should we be concerned?

I don't think that's going to happen.

So, the weapon that the US would use if they were going to launch a strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities is this thing called a MOP, which

stands for Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

It is a 30,000-pound bomb and it can smash through 200 feet of earth or 60 feet of concrete before it explodes.

God.

What?

60 feet?

Before it explodes.

60 feet of concrete.

How does it do that?

God knows.

It's what I mean.

Is it just big and it's heavy?

Or does it got a drill on the front?

It's a bit like, do you know when you're drilling underground and you get a pocket of air and it...

I know.

I don't want to say it, but listeners of a previous episode will notice a similar sounding bit of bullshit from Anna.

It's using that same technology now.

But in reverse, what it is, Turn, actually, it's got a little chisel on the front of it.

I just want to say, I've had multiple people write in and confirm that story was true about the guy being sucked through the earth.

And this one is also true.

This one's blown through the earth, not sucked, but it's the same general

event.

Does it have an explosive as it hits the earth, which is a sort of first explosive, and then as soon as it's lower, then it has a I don't actually know how the technology works.

That's a really good idea, though, for a mini explosion.

Yeah.

I thought it was more like a drill, like it dives down so hard into the earth it just penetrates it.

60 feet

of concrete.

200 feet of earth.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's not like something that's.

That's a hill.

It could get through a hill.

Yeah.

That's mad.

Remember that I said that if you cornered a badger on the street, that it could.

I don't remember this, Dan.

So hang on, you're in a street.

And you've cornered a badger.

It's a street corner.

Yeah, I guess it'd say a street corner.

You're in a cul-de-sac.

In a cul-de-sac.

The badger doesn't know where to go.

It is a concrete street.

The claws of a badger are so sharp that it can grind its way through the

concrete floor.

So you're suggesting you put a badger on the end of this bomb and then it drills down riches.

Or just badger claws, so it just slices through the ground.

There are also plants that can go through concrete, aren't there?

Like you can get weeds and you can get fungi and stuff that can actually grow through concrete.

So if you weren't bothered about how long it took, it's a true

plant on the end of your bomb, and then when it lands,

it would have to be a negative geotropic plant because it's digging downwards.

Oh, yeah, yeah, it has to be all with roots that are more than 60 feet long.

This year,

this year, a guy called Kwang Song-han became the first North Korean to ever score in Seria A in Italy, which is the top league in Italy.

So he scored against the goalkeeper who he beat was Joe Hart, the England number one goalkeeper.

Oh.

Yeah.

Not the one who was fired for eating a pie.

He's not England's goalkeeper now.

He's Sutton United's goalkeeper.

Sorry, that's confusing confusing Sutton United and England.

There's a fact that I hope makes it into the book, which James found about that goalkeeper who got fired for eating the pie.

Do you remember it?

He got a new job, didn't he?

But I can't remember what it was.

His first job after it was that he was a food taster for

Tex-Mex restaurants.

Yeah.

Post-being goalie for Sutton.

Anyway, so it's quite good that England's goalkeeper is the first

goalkeeper ever to let in a goal from a North Korean in Serie Ara.

Maybe they might spare us when they sweep the power

in gratitude for that.

They were also actually speaking of North Korean sport on the nuclear testing site, their main nuclear testing site, which is just outside Pyongyang, I think a US satellite the week before last spotted a volleyball game being played.

Really?

So that's nice that these guys are having fun in their off time, yeah, right on the site.

Are you sure that wasn't by the border wall that you were talking about between south and north?

There is no wall, though.

Oh, there is no wall.

Well, I think if volleyball's going on, there there is a fucking wall.

It's a wall on one side, and then a two-mile gradual decrease on the other.

So you hit the ball over the wall, and then it just keeps rolling and rolling and rolling, and you have to walk two miles to collect it.

I got a couple of things about just general airline news from around the world.

Singapore Airlines are

flying now, not using your classic air fuel, but cooking oil.

They're flying using cooking oil.

Yeah, they are.

So, this is a thing that they are trying to reduce aviation emissions, and they've launched this thing.

It's called the Green Package, and it's powered in part by sustainable biofuel, which is used from cooking oil.

So, if you're ever flying Singapore Airlines, there might be a moment which I never will be from now on.

Sorry to be a fossil fuel stick in the mud.

I'd do it.

Is it extra virgin or are we talking sunflower oil?

Oh, I don't know.

No, not sure.

Because you only want the high-quality stuff, I think.

That's true.

Do you remember there was that bus in, was it Bristol, that was poo-powered?

Yes.

It was going to be running on...

Would you rather travel on a poo-powered plane or extra virgin olive oil-powered plane?

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Given the choice?

As long as they both work, it doesn't really affect your flight, does it?

It might do.

Do you not think the fumes, if the fumes could seep up through the climate, you'd certainly rather the oil.

I rarely go on aeroplane to think, oh, I can just smell kerosene the whole way.

No, but you do get the smell of it on the runway, don't you?

When you're crossing from the terminal building, sometimes to go into the plane, you can smell a bit of fuel there.

Oh, yeah.

If it's stank of poo, I probably would go with the cooking oil.

Yeah, delicious cooking oil.

Yeah.

Cool.

I've got another one, which is, I'd love to get this in the book.

It's my favorite character that I discovered in the last year or so.

It's the Iraqi transport minister.

So plane, airplane news from him that happened in the last month is that while flying in a plane as a passenger with 200 other passengers on board, he went to the cockpit and said, I would like to land the plane.

And they said, okay, I guess we have to let you.

You're the Iraqi Transport Minister.

He's quite a powerful guy.

He could just do this.

Was it an Iraqi plane?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, he wasn't like on British Airways covered in.

Imagine if John Prescott during the Labour government tried to land the plane.

I've done a a poo and I'd like it to power this plane.

So apparently they let him take control of the planes to land the plane and

they said it was almost fatal but

fortunately the captain managed to get back into the controls in time in order to stop them.

Why did he let him?

I'm sorry, this whole thing is the transport minister.

He's an important guy.

You don't maybe

he's a massive deal.

So okay, this is a quote from the pilots.

When you're on a plane, you don't go, right, who's the most important person here?

Well, you know, I'm actually the mayor of Swindon.

Okay, you can find it.

You can love it.

This is a quote from the pilot post-the event.

The minister did not do a good job.

He slammed the front of the plane into the ground.

All Iraqi planes in future will have to have a fake cockpit, basically,

if the minister turns up.

Okay, it is time to move on to fact number three and that is my fact which I am pitching to get into the book and that fact is that all NASA astronauts are wearing hand-me-downs.

Now

when a bigger astronaut

when they grow up enough to fit into the suit.

Yeah, exactly.

No, this is a new story that's just come out and that's a fact that sort of emerged from it.

It's that NASA has suddenly realized that of all the functioning spacesuits that they have for their astronauts to do their,

when they go outside of the International Space Station, they're running out because they only made a batch of them and they haven't made any more.

So they're really running low on them.

And every time a new astronaut goes up, they're basically using a hand-me-down.

They're using a previously used...

astronaut suit spacesuit and um

yeah so they're they're uh they've got i think 17 more missions And let's say the backpack alone, that's part of the suit.

They've only got 11 of those that are left that are functional.

And they don't think they're going to survive in order to finish all of the missions.

And so they've got more missions than they have suits, basically, at this point.

I think if you don't have the suit, don't go on the mission.

I mean.

Well, we booked it in now.

It'd be a shame to cancel.

Last year, NASA had what they called a very tweedy, a poop challenge, which was asking for designs to go to the toilet in your spacesuit, but it had to be a hands-free in-suit toilet device,

which could work for up to six days.

The main winner, and I don't have the full details, but it was a small crotch-based airlock.

Okay?

To poo through.

Well, I don't think that's the answer.

But you could apparently stick things in through it, which I do not understand either.

I see what it is.

So it sort of hangs off your bump, and then presumably you press a button and it opens it, and you poo into it, and then you press a button.

Wait, no, it's on the crotch.

It's on the crotch.

It's not.

It's a bit like a burrito wagon.

What happens is the poo goes in one side like a burrito and then closes up and then someone eats the other side and then takes a burrito out.

Oh, okay.

Not eating at your Mexican restaurant.

Well, the Sutton United goalkeeper said it was very nice.

Anyway, yeah, I'm sorry.

I don't fully understand the designs of the winner, but there were three winners.

One was that one.

The second place was,

it's just words here, an air push urinary girdle.

I don't know.

The third place was kind of an external catheter thing.

Okay.

Actually, on airlocks, non-feces-based,

the new spacesuit that they're designing now and that they're hoping to get out before they have to cancel all these missions is going to cost $4.4 million.

And one of the most important innovations on it is that it has got what's called a suit plate interface port, which basically means that you don't have to go through an airlock anymore to leave the spaceship, because you just dock into your suit.

So the suit is like docked to the outside of the spaceship, and then you just walk into your suit,

and then you don't have to like go through, because usually you have to go through an airlock, dock onto the people, go through an airlock, and then go into the a space station or go back to the bottom of the street.

That doesn't sound like a good idea.

That's like, why don't you change into your scuba gear underwater?

It's If something goes wrong, if anything goes wrong in space and you're exposed to the vacuum of space, you're dead in seconds.

You'd have a couple of minutes.

Yeah.

Come on, Dan.

What?

Chill out.

A couple of minutes to put suits.

They're really hot.

It takes them about 45 minutes to put those suits on.

Is the space suit part of the outside of the ship, though?

No, so I don't think it's like you put it on and then there's just a big hole in the ship as you leave.

No hole.

But does a barrier close behind the suit?

I'm not sure.

So this is what the woman said who designed them.

She said it allows astronauts to enter and exit the outfit by docking with the vehicle.

So, I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I'm sure they've worked out a way of sealing the vehicle behind them.

I think that's pretty cool.

You would hope.

Doesn't sound cool.

I was reading a thing about

in the news of the last few weeks, Peggy Whitson, who is the commander of the International Space Station, she broke the record for the longest time an American has been in space.

She already holds a number of other records for being in space, and she's commanding it for the second time as well.

And she's an amazing person.

And they did a broadcast between the International Space Station and the White House, the Oval Office.

So Trump and Ivanka and another astronaut.

Why was Ivanka there?

She's everywhere.

Why?

She's pretty important.

She was going to fly the thing.

Yeah,

he so there was a chat that was going on between them and you could see both at the same time.

And there was this moment which they're a bit confused about, and they're not sure if Trump was joking.

They were talking about, he said, when are we going to get to Mars?

And Peggy said, well, you know, we're doing all these amazing bits of research up here and down on Earth.

And we think by 2030s, we could start getting to it.

And he said,

no, I think we need to do it in my first term.

It'd be disappointing if it's in my second term, but that's still okay.

And so she was like, aha.

But then people at NASA are like, was that like a JFK moment?

Did he mean that?

Do we have to get to Mars in three years?

So, yeah, I don't know.

But we've got nothing to wear.

It was a weird broadcast because at points, I watched most of it.

Trump just suddenly gets bored.

He just looks quite bored talking to astronauts in space.

And he also looks like he's thinking, I wonder what studio in Hollywood they're filming this in.

Like, I imagine he's a moon landing denier and he's just thinking, yeah, you're not there, are you?

I know about you guys.

They actually discussed the urine thing, didn't they?

He asked about how you wait.

Wait, which with the Trump urine thing or the astronaut urine thing?

He actually might have lied in his answer, given that, because they discussed the astronaut urine thing.

They avoided the Trump urine thing, actually, and about the recycling the urine.

So they drink recycled urine when they're up in space.

And she said to him, It's really not as bad as it sounds.

And he said, Well, that's good.

Glad to hear it.

Better you than me.

So, one of the problems is that

with these suits, the ones that are breaking, so one of the ones that broke not too long ago, it's started letting the water supply in, and the astronaut potentially could have drowned inside his own suit.

They had to get immediately back into the International Space Station and take all the stuff off.

So, that's one of the big problems: as soon as something goes wrong inside the suit,

taking this astronaut out of the suit in time to save them does take a super long time.

I'm really surprised it takes so long to make them.

You would think, like, okay, we need one before 2024.

It can't be beyond the realm of man to be able to do that.

That's true.

If you have a million quid, you would think you'd be able to do it.

I don't know.

From Kennedy announcing we're going to go to the moon to getting to the moon was about nine years.

We're now saying that it'll take us roughly that long to make a suit.

Well, we're going to Mars in three years, so

no one's going to have any suits on.

Mars mission ends in immediate disaster.

No one could have foreseen as they stepped out

there's nothing more satisfying than finding the perfect green paint for your living room except maybe popping open that can of valspar ultra and rolling that first smooth stroke on the wall

And there's nothing more satisfying than admiring your freshly painted wall.

Except maybe peeling off the painter's tape to see those crisp edges.

But the most satisfying part of all, Valspar Ultra's price tag, starting at $29.98 a gallon.

Affordable, durable, available at Lowe's.

Price varies by sheet.

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

Yes, my fact that I would like to get into the newsbook is that as of last week, whenever state media in Tajikistan mentions the president, they now legally have to refer to him by his full title, which is the founder of peace and national unity, leader of the nation, president of the Republic of Tajikistan, His Excellency Emamali Rahman.

And they have to do that every time they mention him.

Can they cough after it and say, wanker?

So I think this might be the only news book that comes out this year that has a full section on Tajikistan.

So get it for that.

Apparently, it takes 15 seconds for it to scroll along the screen on the news, which is like if you're trying to show a news bulletin, the president's announced.

15 seconds is a long time to have one name scrolling for.

And apparently, you're allowed to say leader of the nation.

Like, if it's really a short bulletin or something, you're allowed to code.

That's nice, that's nicely informal, isn't it?

Please just call me leader of the nation.

Well, they've speculated.

I think this is something the BBC picked up, and it was reported by Radio Azad Lik.

And it was the director of Tajik State Radio who made the announcement.

And he just said the mandatory use of the full title is required by law and didn't elaborate.

So I think, unless, I think it's still, we're still just speculating, going, I think you're probably okay if you say leader of the nation sometimes.

We'll only find out when someone tries it.

So

Emma Mali Rahman, the president of Tajikistan, has been saying his full name, sorry, the founder of peace and national unity.

He is

a very undemocratic guy.

As in in May last year, he made people vote over whether he should be president for life.

He won, remarkably.

That's not undemocratic.

No, you're right.

Free and fair voting.

94.5% of the vote.

Well, they like him.

Yeah, they better.

Because there's a lot of human rights repression, a lot of torture, and things like this.

149th out of 180 on the free press listing.

Wow.

So pretty low down.

Yeah.

And he's passed a law which gives him immunity from all criminal charges for life, which is exactly the sort of thing that you normal, honest guys always tend to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He does,

so he's banned a few things generally that I've just got to obviously he's done that if he's making news outlets call him by that full name.

One thing he's blocked is YouTube.

YouTube not allowed there anymore, mainly because of a video that went online of him dancing drunkenly at a wedding and singing karaoke really badly.

Yeah, so he said, okay, this needs to be.

So he's banned the whole website.

YouTube, yes.

Come on, we would, we all would do that.

If I had the power, there'd be no Facebook,

no YouTube, pretty much nothing.

No, it's not all banning things that he does.

We should say he has taken a lot of positive steps, too.

So police in Tajikistan have been told that they have to go to the theatre once a month, but on different days, so there isn't one incredibly large audience on one day.

I don't know how they coordinate all going on different days.

If they all go on the same day, there's going to be no police around.

That's true.

Apart from in that one theatre.

Imagine your bad luck if you go to rob that theater.

I could have literally robbed anywhere else in the country.

But it's meant to be to help their spiritual and moral awareness.

And there is a photo going with the news story of these incredibly bored-looking men in suits.

It's just because, though, the interior minister, who's called Ramazon Rahimzoda, just went to the theatre last month and said, oh my god, this is really fun, and liked it.

And so said, I think everyone should do do it.

He just went, thought it was good, thought they should do it too.

I quite like that.

Imagine if everything Theresa May didn't enjoyed, we all then had to do.

Uh, would that be good?

Oh, we're all going fox hunting.

Come on, guys.

Um, he, another thing that he has put in place as a ban is that, uh, so everywhere in Tajikistan there are pictures of him, giant billboard pictures of him, and he's ordered that in all of the smaller towns and cities, uh, any mayor or anyone who's in the position of power there has to take down the picture if they're in it with him because he doesn't want to be associated with giving them the publicity of friendship on yeah so he's he said and the way that they did it was they called up all the local officials on the phone and

they said hi are you the local official yes i am um i have a message here from uh the president and then they played a voice recording of him down the phone line to them where he says you are no longer allowed to have my photo up if you're in the photo with me and so it's an audio message that they played down the phone to each person that they called up.

It is embarrassing.

That's so weird.

It's a bit like when you split up with your ex, but you kind of like the photo, so you kind of get rid of them from the photo.

Is it like that?

Yes.

Or when you call up their best friend and you play a recording of yourself down the phone at them saying, I want my stereo back.

I want the careless whisper CD.

Wow.

Well, and it's like that.

Do you remember during the coup in Turkey?

President Erdogan appeared on TV, but it wasn't him appearing on TV, it was someone holding up a phone on the camera while they were mid-skyping him.

That's actually one other thing that will probably go in the book is Melancholy, just speaking of people appearing in weird technological ways.

Melenchon, who was voted out of the French election in the first round, but was the very left-wing candidate, was appearing by hologram, so he was appearing in seven or eight states at once.

But it wasn't even a hologram, I found out.

It was a...

What was it called?

Pepper's Ghost.

It was called Pepper's Ghost, which is a cooler name than hologram.

So he's like, um, he's like Tupac.

Yeah, exactly.

Tupac did the same thing.

And it basically means you appear in a similar way, but it's two-dimensional, whereas a hologram is three-dimensional.

But it's basically a hologram.

It's not a hologram.

Yeah, but it looks like one.

Doesn't understand what I'm saying when I say it's basically that.

Yeah, but you know, you know what I'm saying when I say monorail, but it's a hyperloop.

Yeah, I think we understand each other.

I just know it's got very tense.

I'm just just saying maybe if he used the hologram, he might have got to the second round.

Melanchon did campaign partly via computer game.

What, he wasn't.

What?

What, like, in...

He like infiltrated Diddy Kong Racing.

Like in Minecraft.

No, his supporters...

He was quite tech savvy.

It didn't do him as much good as it could have done.

But

his supporters developed a computer game called Fiscal Combat.

with the sort of K, like in Mortal Kombat.

And you played Melanchon in it, and you had to go around finding businessmen and then shaking them up and down.

And as you shook them up and down, their pocket coins flew out of their pockets, and you were taking tax from the wealthy.

It doesn't sound fun to me.

I've played it, it is quite fun.

Is it?

Yeah, because it's exactly that 2D style.

It's pretty good.

I mean, James, you're the only person left alive still playing Pokemon Go, so I don't know if you're a good arbiter of what is fun.

Well, I'm going to be trying to get some Pokemon Go facts into this book.

We were almost late, just for the listeners, listeners, we were almost late to the meeting for our book deal because we thought James was in charge of the Google Maps leading us the way to the building, when in fact we were following a man chasing down Pokemon.

Well, we got the book deal and I got an onyx.

Something about elections in Tajikistan, actually, which is quite interesting.

You can run for opposition, but there was no real proper opposition in the last election.

The closest person who came to being a proper opponent was someone called Oinohol Bobazarova, which is a cool name.

But so what you have to do to be eligible to run as a candidate for election in Tajikistan is you need to get 210,000 signatures to be eligible to run.

So let's just put this in context to remind you how the British system works.

In the UK, you need to get ten signatures to be a candidate for election.

Yeah, just 10 signatures in your constituency.

In the US, if you want to run for Senate, you need between 1 and 2,000, I think, in most places.

Sorry, between 1,000 and 2,000, or between 1 and 2,000.

It's got to be over 1,000.

Yeah, and in Tajikistan, which only has a population of 8 million, you need to get one in 40 people in the country to sign saying that you should be a candidate.

And she still managed to get 202,000.

And she was 8,000,000 short.

Oh, my God.

That is nice.

I think I'd forge a few.

Yeah.

I mean, I'd

duplicate a few.

I think it might get you in trouble with this guy.

But I'm sure he's going to check the all.

He's going to take a lenient view of it, I'm sure.

Isn't that such a slap in the face, though?

And she's a super cool woman.

Look her up.

She won an award given by Michelle Obama last year or the year before, like most influential good women in the world or something.

Oh, really?

But yeah, hard luck on her.

Yeah,

Tajikistan has the cheapest pint of beer in the world that you can buy.

Really?

How much is it?

30p per pint.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

30p.

30p.

And I think the second cheapest is 36p, which is made by Bhutanese monks.

So that's the next cheapest one.

I think so.

I've drunk beer in Bhutan and I remember it being quite expensive.

Well, you got overcharged, mate.

You funded it a whole night.

They saw you coming, don't they?

I'm pretty sure it was expensive, actually.

Maybe only one.

Six quid for a pint.

Yeah, sorry.

We have to bring it in for Tajikistan.

Another thing Tajikistan has, which is kind of cool,

is the world's most dangerous tunnel.

It does sound awesome.

It sounds kind of cool, I'd say.

I did say kind of.

In what way, and who decides that it's the most dangerous?

I think just the general public.

So it's nicknamed Death Tunnel, I think.

And the reason it was built, it was built in, I think it started being built in 2007.

And the reason it was built was because before that, you couldn't drive from north to south Tajikistan without having to cut through Uzbekistan.

And Uzbekistan is not very friendly to Tajikistan a a lot.

So it was actually quite a dangerous trip if you had to go visit your mum in the north to go there.

So they built this tunnel.

It's five kilometers long and it opened up a few years ago but it had no lighting, so it's pitch dark in there.

It's got massive potholes.

It has falling rocks all over the place and you actually have to sign a form before you go into the tunnel saying that you understand the danger of driving through this tunnel of being hit by falling rocks or something.

It's got no ventilation at all.

Oh, I think it's got maybe one fan right in the middle.

And so that means that it's filled with exhaust fumes.

So visibility is only a few feet.

And this does mean that if you break down, for instance, in the middle of it, you will get carbon monoxide poisoning within a very short amount of time.

So people who are driving through this tunnel say they get dizzy and nauseous as they do it because it's so blocked up with carbon monoxide.

But it is a great way to get from north to south to Jikestan.

How long is it, sorry?

Five kilometres.

Five kilometres.

That is quite a long way.

It's a long way.

It's long enough.

It's long enough to hold your breath.

Yeah.

I think they are improving it.

There was a thing last year where they said they had...

They've got extra fun.

Yeah, they're improving it.

You no longer have to sign the form.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of the potential facts that are going to be making it into the book.

Again, it comes out in November.

Do go to Amazon right now and click the big button on the front page or

go to Amazon and look up the book of the year by no such thing as a fish or go to qi.com forward slash shop.

That's right, and it's going to contain everything from all the scientific discoveries that have happened this year through to stuff like Tajikistan president to Trump's wall, Trump generally, North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

We're all on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland, James, at XHE, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M.

And Shazinski, you can email podcast at qi.com.

Or you can go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

We've got all of our previous episodes.

We have all of our tour tickets that are available up there.

We're going on tour in November.

We're not only going to record a show, but we're going to be bringing our book with us, the book that you can buy, the book of the year.

Go to Amazon now or our website.

We'll see you next week.

Goodbye.