77: No Such Thing As Pee-Bay

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast.

This week coming to you from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I'm joined by three other QI elves.

Please welcome to the stage.

It's Andy Murray, Anna Scaczynski, and James Horikin.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order.

Here we go.

Starting with you, James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is that dog pea makes streetlights collapse.

You always hurt the ones you love.

How does it do that?

Well, it's urea that you get in dog pea and it's corrosive.

And all over the world, street lights are falling down due to dog pee.

There was a report that came out in San Francisco.

They were just keeling over these lampposts.

The pee was really ruining them.

And this is a quote from them: We encourage people and dogs alike to do their business in other places, like a proper restroom or on one of our fire hydrants.

The idea of the fire hydrants is they're made out of cast iron, so they won't corrode.

Okay, but I didn't know that people pissing on lampposts was a thing.

I've only ever been doing it.

I don't know.

I've been clearly wasting my time.

Yeah, because dogs like to urinate on things in order to mark it as their territory, don't they?

Whereas humans don't really have that, so we could just wee anywhere.

That's a really good point.

They did some tests on dogs as well.

They tested

how they do it in terms of status.

So they took 48 labradors through a course which was full of the urine of other dogs.

You know, because that's what scientists do.

And they found out that animals with higher tail bases and tail positions, so if the tail was higher up, they did more urine marking.

So they think that that is the sign of status.

You do more urine marking, and you are higher status if your tail is higher.

Wow, that's the equivalent of a mansion.

Yeah, basically, yeah, yeah.

And there are some very submissive, low-status animals, they just fake it, they lift a leg, and then they don't spray anything.

It's doing it, but they're not.

I'm shy, I'm shy.

Or maybe they just really like street lights and they don't want to wreck them.

Well, that would be a nice thought.

They're like environmentally friendly dogs.

But so, have we, other than just encouraging people not to piss lampposts to death,

are we doing something about physically making lamps?

Oh, we are.

Okay, cool.

There's a dog urinal in the Spanish town of El Vandrell.

So they have a pole, and the pole has a grid underneath it, and the idea is that the dogs will pee on this pole.

So, is it law that in, where was it?

El Vandrelle.

Is it law there that you have to train your dog to recognise a dog urinal and only urinate into that?

It isn't, but there is a law in Piacenza in Italy which says that someone can be fined 500 euros for not cleaning up after your dog urinates.

Wow.

People have to walk around with a bottle of water and kind of wash it away.

Awesome kitchen towel and you just step on it and let it absorb.

Wow.

Good.

It's also happening to a museum in Dorset.

They're very worried about it.

It's the Bridgeport Museum and it has a really extensive archive of of the town's 800-year-old rope and netting industry.

And this museum is now being eroded by dog urine, and they've had a release statement saying

that for the entire museum.

So they just attack the wall right around.

And then.

I mean, this is a great way of taking over somewhere eventually with war.

Just weeing on it.

Just wee on it enough and it will collapse.

It's a long-term strategy, isn't it?

It's not a blitzkrieg.

Almost not worth having the place once you've weed it to death.

But

do we know why the dogs are so attracted to this rope and netting museum?

Or is it a mystery?

They're very interested in early fishing industries.

Anyway,

quite enough topic here.

Dog urine.

Dog urine.

Innovative types are using dog feces

as a solution to some problems.

So.

What possible problem could you have?

I sort of presented that quite cryptically.

So if you put your dog waste in a bin, then it goes to a site and then it gets burnt up and it releases lots of bad stuff into the the atmosphere.

But in Massachusetts, they've created a methane digester so that you put your dog feces into this methane digester and it powers electricity.

At the moment, it only powers one lamp, I think.

But which has collapsed.

But they are working on it.

Wow.

Okay, there is a feces-powered lamp in London, a street light.

A human feces-powered.

Yeah, and it's right, it's really near the QI offices in Covent Garden.

It's by by the Savoy Hotel.

How many people notice me doing that?

Embarrassing.

And they used to have them, they used to be streetlights which burned off the gas from the sewers.

So

the gases would come up these pipes and into just be burned off at the top.

And there's only one still working, but it's called the

Karting Lane Patent Sewer Ventilating Lamp.

That's what it's called.

It still works.

Wow.

So lamps in London, speaking of which,

there are 1,500 gas lamps in London that are still powered by gas.

And there's a team of five people who work for British Gas, apparently, and they are employed to go around London every night and wind up these gas lamps.

So they don't actually light the fire, they wind up a clock thing which ignites the gas lamp on the inside and they climb ladders and go up there and do that every single night.

You'll see them.

1500.

Never seen them.

You aren't looking up, James.

You start looking up.

Isn't that cool?

They call themselves the guardians of the lamps.

Nice.

British gas employees.

Yeah.

Nice.

Very cool.

I've discovered a really great place to buy urine online.

So just a quick shout-out.

And if anyone here or listening needs some,

they're called P-Mart.

P-W-E-Mart.

What's called PBA?

Oh, PBA.

Oh, my God, that would have been great.

And

it's basically, this is their sort of opening blurb.

Welcome to PMART, your best discount online source for 100% real, undiluted predator pea and animal urine.

So what they do is they sell to people who need urine in order to make a market smell so that they can fend off other predators coming towards them.

Yeah, you can get gift cards.

You can buy someone a gift card for sort of like $100 worth of pea.

My birthday's coming up, Dad.

Yeah, exactly.

They invented this thing called P.

I don't know if they invented it, but they sell it.

It's called Peagel.

And they say, this is an amazing product.

And I agree.

It's designed for indoor use, so you can have that great pea smell inside your house.

And no spilling, no mess, no fuss.

And it's just basically a gel rather than a liquid that you can just smear some urine smell of a coyote.

It stops, I guess, other coyotes maybe coming into your house.

Using your sofa, yeah.

Yeah.

My sofa at home is full of coyotes all the time.

We've got a new sponsor, by the way, for this week's podcast, guys.

It's P-Gel.

P-Mart.

Yeah, P-Gel.

But also, so you can also go down the list of all the things that they sell.

And there's lots of animals.

It's really cool.

And they bottle them in those kind of, you know, when you go past those health shops where they have up your mass, you know, all those big, huge bottles.

Up your what?

Like protein shake.

Yeah, protein shake.

Yeah.

So there's lots of different animals.

My favorite one that I saw is that you can buy one gallon of pure black bear urine.

A gallon?

A gallon.

That's what I thought.

How long must it take a bear to produce a gallon of urine?

And straight into the thing as well.

It's like,

must be a nightmare.

That could take down a building.

Yes.

Yeah.

Have you heard of white-footed sportive lemurs?

I haven't.

No, neither had I until I found this out.

So they're a kind of lemur and they're really antisocial.

In fact, they actively avoid each other and they go to great lengths to not see their mates or their family members or anyone else.

And they only communicate using their communal toilets.

That's what they do.

So they do they go, they leave a scent mark.

Do you like writing little comments on the toilet wall?

Yeah, basically, yeah, yeah.

And they just go and they say, oh, good, good, you know, mum was here or whatever.

That's what I've seen, your mum was here.

Must be nearly 80 episodes before we had our first your mum joke on air.

We stood out very well.

Yeah.

Other uses, good uses for urine,

which is backfired in this case, actually, but a family in Bristol who tried to to lure back a lost dog by leaving a trail of their own urine on the streets near their home have been criticised by the local council.

Criticised is such a nice word.

What did they?

They insist it's the best way.

They went on forums online and said, well, dog is lost.

And the people on the forum said, well, you should pee all over your town.

and it'll come back and find you.

Apparently it's quite a normal way of doing it, said the owner.

Because I would just put up a sign, silly of me.

There was a vet who was interviewed about it who said he would be pleasantly surprised if it works, but probably

it would be better if they could place jumpers and items of owner's clothing because they really recognize things that the owners smell of.

So he said the only way the urine thing would work was if the owner had an incontinence problem.

And we're going to have to move on to the next fact in a few minutes.

Okay, there was a book called Pharmacopoeia Batiana from 1706 by George Bate.

And he had a gargle for mouth ulcers which included a white dog turd.

Wow.

Yeah.

How do you gargle a solid thing?

I think you then dilute it in some water.

I want to say wine actually.

Yeah, why not take the edge off it?

Some other uses for dogs according to old medical dictionaries.

Here's one from Robert James in 1743.

He said, keeping a warm puppy next to one's upset belly will give a kindly and cherishing heat.

It's nice, isn't it?

Yeah.

And not quite as nice, dog dung being hot and acrid might treat toothache.

Might.

Might as well give it a try.

Anything else?

So there was an experiment in 1955, which I really like, where the urine of schizophrenics was fed to spiders to find out if they made webs any differently compared to when they drunk the urine of spider.

It really sounds like they're just getting words out of a hat and going schizophrenic spiders urine.

What are we going to do?

Inject!

Okay.

You can imagine that they thought, I bet they make really wacky webs with some crazy.

They didn't.

There was no marked difference in the webs of the spiders who drunk the schizophrenics urine.

The only thing they could conclude from it, the scientists said, was that urine must taste extremely unpleasant.

After taking just a sip, the spiders exhibited marked abhorrence.

If I was a spider, I would have made a web which has said, screw you in the middle of it.

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Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com.

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Okay, let's move on to our next fact.

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

My fact this week is that after the button was invented, it took more than 1,000 years for someone to invent the buttonhole.

What do we do with these?

What do we do?

Where do they go?

Who keeps making them?

And they were doing things like, well, I guess we'll just latch a bit of string around it.

That might be the way.

Just no one thought to have created the buttonhole.

And eventually, and I love that that must have been the biggest innovation of its day, just a little slit in the bit of clothing.

It's kind of, I mean, because the loops do work.

So I think the buttonhole came about in

the mid-13th century in Europe when the buttonhole came to being.

But you can understand, so if you have a loop, that works perfectly well.

I don't really see why we bother to invent the buttonhole, to be honest.

True, and they have to be reinforced as well, because you can't just cut a hole in your clothing because then that'll widen and eventually there'll be no good for a button.

So they do have to be reinforced, guys.

And that public service announcement was brought to you.

Yeah, and they were used for decoration as well, weren't they?

Because they were really ornate and whatever.

There was apparently really expensive as well.

According to Franco Giacassi, who is the world's biggest button collector.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Does he have the world's largest collection of buttons or is he the world's biggest button collector?

He has three buttons, but he's eight foot six.

He said that there was a time when the buttons were so expensive you could pay off a debt by plucking a precious button from your suit and giving it to someone.

Wow.

That's great, isn't it?

That's really cool.

Yeah.

There's a really, really good article about buttons on slate.com if you want to go there afterwards for more button stuff.

Go on.

The quote is, a button packs an extraordinary amount of information about a given time and place, its provenance, onto a crowded little canvas.

Children learn to button and unbutton early in life, and they keep doing it until they're dead.

Here's a great little thing.

Anyone in the audience here, anyone listening at home, all of us on this stage, most likely the one thing that unites us is that we all, if you have a button on you, are wearing a button that comes from the same town in China.

There is button city in China.

It's called Chao Tou, and Chiao Tou produces 15 billion buttons a year.

And it started because three, I think it was three brothers, they just found a few buttons on the ground and they started collecting buttons, and then it turned into an industry, and it became this massive.

But now they make them rather than find them, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no, no, no, that's the amazing thing.

They find 15 billion buttons a year, and nobody knows where they come from.

Yeah, but it's not, it's not every single button in the world.

But I think it's something like three out of five people, if they're wearing buttons, wear buttons from Button City.

And Button City apparently is amazing, and it's situated situated very near Toothbrush City, which produces a lot of the toothbrushes in the world.

Next to Buttonhole City.

Something else about buttons.

Lots of Birmingham is built on buttons.

So

stay with me.

So shell buttons used to be extremely popular buttons made from Mother of Pearl or Shell.

And in the 18th century,

the button town of the 18th century was Birmingham.

They made a huge amount of the world's shell buttons, and the best ones apparently required 80 different processes in order to just make a button.

And there was so much waste shell which they produced that they dug enormous pits to bury it all and lots of buildings in Birmingham today, especially in the jewellery quarter, have their foundations on Mother of Pearl.

So they're all on sort of buttons and button mouthcases.

How cool was that?

I did not know that.

That is really interesting.

Did you know that cloth buttons were illegal in 17th century France?

No, cloth buttons.

Cloth buttons were illegal in 17th century France.

Yeah, they sound totally useless.

I would ban them.

Like buttons made of cloth.

That wasn't the reason they banned them.

Basically, it was due to big button.

Yeah.

It was the handicraft industry who said that basically by making these cloth buttons it was going to make our other buttons made out of pearl or whatever.

They were going to make them obsolete.

And it was so bad that people, that officials would go to houses and search them looking for buttons.

And you could be arrested for enjoying a button in the privacy of your own home, according to this article I read.

Wow.

When we say enjoying a button, I mean, if you're enjoying a button, I think you might have to be arrested.

There was so a button alternative, since we didn't really figure out the button buttonhole thing in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, was the fibula, which was a forerunner of the safety pin.

It essentially worked exactly like a safety pin.

And they had these in ancient Greece and Rome, and that's an example of one of these things, which I love, which is an invention that vanished for about 2,000 years.

And the safety pin resurfaced in

so they had safety pins in ancient Greece.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's what they did at the tunics.

The guy who invented the modern safety pin was called Walter Hunt, I think.

And he sold his patent for $400 because he had like a gambling debt or something.

So he sold his patent so that he could pay off his debt because he thought, oh, it's a safety pin, it's nothing, it's not really important.

Oh,

that is how I feel about safety pins, to be honest.

But actually, as a commercial.

And also, he invented, I think, like a sewing machine, like similar to Elias Howe invented the actual sewing machine, but he did a precursor to it.

And he didn't patent that because he thought it would put a load of seamstresses out of work.

Oh, no,

it did the opposite of that.

Created a massive global industry.

Oh, my friend.

One thing that buttons, so when the buttonhole did come into being, one thing that they were used for in fashion between the 13th and 15th centuries was detachable sleeves.

So that was a really fashionable thing: is that you would have, you know, you could swap between outfits.

It would look like you're wearing a different outfit every time.

You had lots, you had a sleeve drawer, which was just sleeves.

And you probably, they did, I don't know, they had lots of different sleeves.

Where else are you going to keep the sleeves?

That's really cool.

That is really cool.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

But then one day you might accidentally leave the house with odd sleeves on.

Oh, disaster.

And then some people say he's just doing it on purpose to be pretentious.

So basically, before the buttonhole was invented, buttons did become very popular.

Everyone was wearing them ornamentally.

And one of the hangovers of that time, which we rarely think about, I was reading this in Bill Bryson's book at home.

If you think about a suit coat and the buttons by the cuff, they're not practical buttons.

They're just ornamental.

Three ornamental on each side.

Yeah, that is weird.

Yeah, so that's a hangover from back in the day, pre-buttonhole.

Well, so another hangover, which we are wearing every day, every female in the audience, symbols of sexism of the olden days, is the fact that buttons on women's clothes are on the opposite side to buttons on men's clothes.

So there are loads of theories about why that is.

Well, the main theory I've heard is that women were dressed by maids.

Yeah.

And so the maids who are mostly right-handed would kind of be, it would be easier for them because it was on the left-hand side, whereas men dressed themselves.

I thought it was because all women are left-handed.

I've heard so, yeah, I think that is the main theory.

Although, like, anyway, I'm talking about my one.

The other theory is the main theory, mine isn't.

No, no, the all-the-family theory.

Yeah, it's true.

But another theory is that, so men have them on the right-hand side because they would have their weapons in their right hand when they were carrying their weapons.

So when you're trying to get undressed and kill someone at the same time.

Exactly, it's much easier one-handed.

I will duel to the death, but.

Gillian Lincolns can't stand to be in the same room as friends and family who wear buttons.

Who?

She what?

She's called Gillian Lincolns, and she has something called kumpunaphobia, which is the fear of buttons.

She's had it since she was age seven, and her boyfriend, Nate Dorrington, can only wear clothes with zips.

Wow.

But her name is Lincolns, which is nicely ironic.

Oh, yeah.

The function of a button.

Do you know who else had that?

Yeah, yeah.

We must have read the same thing.

Yeah, let's say it together.

Okay, ready?

One, two, three.

Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs.

Yeah.

Steve Jobs was scared of buttons.

And

partially, there's a theory that that's that's why it led to the buttonless iPhone because he was so

yeah.

So Steve Jobs, he actually was a fear of buttons.

Yeah, he did say that in 2007 I think.

Another person who had a fear of buttons was Napoleon's, I think, great-granddaughter, Marie Bonaparte.

Oh, really?

Really?

Yep.

Wow.

That's true.

Is she the one who had a clitoris moved?

Moved?

I don't want to go to it.

Just to a holiday house at the end of the

day.

Very, very quickly.

She did some studies where she looked at the distance between the clitoris and the vagina of lots of women and found out that those where it was closer had more orgasms and she wanted to have more orgasms, so moved her clitoris surgically closer to that.

She had to move twice and it didn't work.

It's very sad.

It's extremely sad.

Yeah, yeah.

How the mighty families have fallen.

Napoleon's army actually had a situation with buttons, which was that their buttons were made out of tin.

And I've read, I don't know if this is actually a solid theory, but apparently when they were marching into Russia, it was so cold that the tin crumbled, and so their uniforms opened wide up, and suddenly they were exposed to the cold, and that's what led to a lot of deaths.

So, as they were invading, it was kind of like watching the full Monty come into the city.

I've read that theory.

I've read different things about it, though.

I've read people contradicting it and people saying, Yes, no, it's definitely it.

So, yeah, I'm not sure.

I'm going to have to move us on.

Anyone else got something?

Just that the button replacement is the zip in the modern era.

And you've got to be aware of the zip because it is by far and away the most common cause of penis injury.

So between 2002 and 2010, there were almost 18,000 people in the US alone who were hospitalised because of penile injury.

Imagine if they all arrived on the same day.

Imagine the coincidence.

It was after a big charity pull your flies up.

And also, possibly not not interestingly for men, but it is almost only ever the penis and not the testicles.

So, good news for the testicles, very hard to get them caught in the zip.

It's more like no news for the testicles and very, very bad news for the penis.

When they invented the zip, it was marketed as a better way to do up your trousers, as you are less likely to forget to do up a zipper as you were to forget to do up buttons.

But also less likely to chop your cock off with buttons.

Okay,

time for fact number three, and that is Andy Murray.

Oh, good.

Okay, my fact is that as a baby, St.

Nicholas refused to drink his mother's breast milk on fast days.

So on Wednesdays and Fridays, St.

Nicholas would refuse to suckle

because he was so holy, so young, except in the evening when it was allowed because the day was over.

So there are other saints where this happened.

So there's a biography of the fifth century Saint Candid which says that as a baby he completely refused to suckle at his mother's right breast but if she had eaten a delicious meal he also refused to suckle at her left breast.

Wow.

What?

So he wasn't allowed to enjoy it too much.

So if she's eating a delicious meal then it breast milk is more delicious.

Exactly.

It was like an abstinence thing.

Babies are so much more advanced than we give them credit for.

Absolutely.

Do you know who the patron saint of breastfeeding is?

It's not St.

Nicholas.

No it's Saint Giles.

And before he became a saint he withdrew deep into the forest near Nîmes, where he lived on his own.

And his sole companion was a deer who sustained him with her milk.

A weird person to nominate as a patron saint of breastfeeding because it is not a conventional way to breastfeed.

But he is also the patron saint of Edinburgh, St.

Giles, and the patron saint of people who are afraid of the dark.

Wow, good knowledge.

That's very good knowledge.

The patron saint of Glasgow is St.

Mungo, and St.

Mungo died of shock after getting into a very hot bath.

Guys, I think I can handle a bath.

It is really hot, St.

Mungo.

Please, why are you calling me Saint?

So,

just one more saint.

Saint Gwen the White was the mother of two young sons, and then she gave birth to a third son.

And in order to help her nursing her third infant, God miraculously gave her a third breast.

And she became known as Gwen of the Three Paps.

St.

Nicholas, about this fact is, so one of his miracles, which is particularly impressive, I think.

So, there was someone who was selling pickled ham

in a street market, and St.

Nicholas realized that he was not selling pickled ham, as the sign suggested.

He was selling the pickled, chopped-up bodies of three small children, and he pieced them together.

But it's not sad because he pieced them together and he brought the children back to life again.

So

that is impressive, isn't it?

The Gherkin triplets.

My God.

Yeah, we should clarify that stories about what saints do, we're not necessarily presenting as.

I know, I don't know what to write down as interesting because it sounded like wherever he walked, he would be in a situation and he would pray it away.

So he'd be like, oh, we're at the ocean, and we're in the ocean, and sailors are vomiting, and there's a whirlpool.

I'll just do a quick prayer.

What is true about him, actually, is that he slapped somebody once.

He slapped a fellow bishop.

Did he?

Yes, because it's the great Aryan controversy, which is the controversy about whether Jesus is actually fully divine or whether he's sort of half divine because he was also a human.

And basically, Sir Nicholas strongly believed that Jesus is God.

And someone suggested that Jesus wasn't quite either divine or human.

And he got up, it was at some synod in the year 325 AD.

And Sir Nicholas got up, crossed the room, and gave him a big slap around the face.

Wow.

And that is where we get the phrase bashing the bishop.

So, yeah, I'm not sure, like you're saying that saints didn't do these things.

Is that sacrilegious in any way?

For instance,

there are a few saints who were decapitated and carried their own heads.

You're saying that that didn't happen as well?

No, I definitely am not saying that.

Saint Gene of Lajara, who carried his own severed head and threw it into the Rhone.

Or Paul of Tarsus, who had his head chopped off and then said, Jesus Christ

50 times after it had been chopped off.

Wow.

He might not have said it in that way.

But 50 times.

50 times is amazing.

Well, the first time it would be amazing, and then the tenth time it would be, yeah, okay, we get it.

By the 50th time.

Okay, can you just shut up now?

There's actually a real problem with saints who are beheaded and then carry their heads around where to put the halo.

So I think there's some controversy as to whether you put it over their severed neck when you're painting them, or whether you put it above the head here, and there's mixed views.

You'll see both.

You'll see both of them.

You'll see both.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So everyone can have their own view on that.

Wow.

Can I bring it back to breast milk very quickly here?

Yeah.

Is this another website?

So I found a great place to buy breast milk online.

So onlythebreast.com.

And it's genuinely.

I know it should have been, right?

What?

Think out there, guys.

And

this is a genuine place where people trade breast milk online, and you have all sorts of categories, subcategories of types of breast milk that you can buy and have shipped to your house.

You can have zero to two months.

There was fresh breast milk on demand, special diet, brackets, vegan, et cetera.

And then the final one is willing to sell to men.

Yeah, pretty disgusting, right?

I have heard, I don't know if this is true, that bodybuilders like to have breast milk because their theory, and apparently this is complete rubbish, but their theory is a baby goes from really small to quite big in a really small amount of time.

So surely the same will happen to my muscles.

Do you want to combine it, marrying the two together, saints and breast milk?

Oh yeah.

Have you heard of the miracle of the lactation of Saint Bernard?

This is where Saint Bernard was praying and the

Virgin Mary, one who was praying, sprinkled some milk on his lips, as in her own breast milk.

And there are other depictions of it which are quite impressive.

So I'm quoting directly from the the Wikipedia article about the lactation of St.

Bernard.

In art, he usually kneels before a Madonna lactans, a breastfeeding Madonna, and as Jesus takes a break from feeding, the Virgin squeezes her breast and he is hit with a squirt of milk, often shown travelling an impressive distance.

It's true, it is across a room that it's depicted.

It's medieval artworks that you get this in.

Yeah.

Well men can lactate, can't they?

Because you can I think we've discussed this before, if you massage your nipples enough as a man, then you can bring it on.

Did you ever do that experiment, Andy?

Or was it Dan who was going to do it?

I did have a go, yes.

And was it successful?

Not a dribble, nothing.

Furious to spent all weeks.

Looks so weird on the train.

Research.

Just doing some research.

Yeah, no, no, not a drop.

Yeah.

Keep trying.

Oh, yeah.

I've not given up.

Do you want to hear about Saint Philip Neary, who's known as the humorous saint?

There's this like, oh, I've got a really funny mate.

Yeah.

Yeah, you've got to meet him.

Funny Mike.

It really is like that.

It's so sad.

Basically, all he did that was funny is he once shaved off half his beard as a way of poking fun at himself.

And he also liked to wear a cushion on his head.

And he's doing his debut solo hour at sea venues.

So he was sainted for that.

He must have done some other stuff.

I don't know.

It was very much easier back then, wasn't it?

We're going to have to move on very soon.

Can I just tell you very quickly about the infancy gospels of Jesus?

Because as another young, more than a saint, he was a Jesus, wasn't he?

But

there are lots of, there are some second century sources which describe what Jesus did as a very, very small boy when he was about five years old.

And they're really amazing because they're very different to the Gospels.

So when he was five years old, he gathered together separate rivers, which had all been disparate pools of water, and he gathered them into a single pond and he cleaned it up.

And then a boy ruined them by sort of sweeping them apart with a broom.

So Jesus made immediately just made the boy withered.

And then there was another time when a boy bumped into him and Jesus immediately kills him.

Wow.

Oh my god.

The parents of the boy who Jesus has killed go to Joseph saying, your son's killed our son.

So Jesus simply struck blind all of his accusers.

And then Joseph sort of boxes his ear and tells him off.

Wow.

Infancy Gospels, look them up.

They're really good.

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Okay, it's time for our final fact, and that is Jasinski.

Yeah, my fact is that when Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs.

Yeah, it's quite sweet, isn't it?

Yeah, but also, he's assuming that squirrels can read, is he?

Yeah, I mean, he wasn't the sharpest dog in the shed, but he was very fond of the squirrels.

And sadly, George Bush recounted later that it did absolutely no good because their dog Millie beat the heck out of those squirrels whenever he could.

She could.

Oh, wow.

He should have left also a sign for the dog saying, don't get the squirrels.

Why didn't he do that?

Yeah.

They currently have, and this is like hot off the press,

the White House is having squirrel issues at the moment

with Michelle Obama's garden.

Oh well they because they always dig up.

My friend spent an entire weekend planting lots of bulbs in her garden and came back and like a hundred bulbs have been dug up.

So it's probably that.

There's a silly little legal issue that the gardeners are not allowed to touch the bit of garden that she's created, but she's away so much that she's actually not able to maintain it.

They can't mow it, they can't weed it, they can't do anything to it but water it and it's just so they're not allowed to go near the First Lady's garden.

I cannot really.

So she's saying to them, please do go near it.

And they're like, we want to, but there's this clause somewhere in our legislation that says we're not allowed to touch your bit of garden.

I genuinely didn't read the article.

I have no idea why.

But they are.

So squirrels are prolific on the White House lawn and Reagan was really fond of them and it's kind of touching.

So every time he went to Camp David, he'd bring lots of acorns back from there to feed the squirrels.

I was reading a transcript.

What?

Yeah, he loved to feed the squirrels.

I was reading a transcript of an interview that he was having.

I think it was with the New York Times, where basically he

in the transcript, there's a pause at one point, and he says, Oh, sorry if I look out the window and look distracted.

I'm just seeing if the squirrels are still eating the acorns that I brought them this morning.

Oh my god.

Well, it's a good thing there wasn't anything going on at the time, like the Cold War.

Wow, come on, it's cute.

I read a thing about Reagan because Reagan was obviously, he was an actor in B-movies.

He was starred in films with amazing titles.

Accidents Will Happen, Girls on Probation, The Angels Wash Their Faces, Brother Rat and a Baby.

But his IMDb page begins with this quotation.

Ronald Reagan is arguably the most successful actor in history.

And they base that on the fact that he became president of America.

That's not a success as an actor.

I really like the pedantic nature of that comment because he is the most successful person who has also been an actor.

You can't fault it.

That's true.

That is true.

That's true.

Did you guys know that it is because of him that we have blue jelly beans?

No.

No.

Even though we have blue jelly beans, I think.

I feel the skepticism emanating from the colours.

I know.

The whole room goes, it's not true, is it?

It's true.

It was for his inauguration.

So basically, he was a massive jelly bean lover.

The reason he was a massive jelly bean lover is because he had a huge pipe smoking habit, and he hated it, and he didn't want to smoke anymore.

The only thing that would stop him from having any nicotine would be to have a jar of jelly beans.

And often, if you look at photos of Ronald Reagan, in all the meetings that he's in, there's a big jar of jelly beans next to him.

Wow.

And so he loved licorice.

That was his favorite type of jelly bean.

But for the inauguration, because jelly bean caught onto it, they thought we're going to create one.

We don't have a blue one for the red, white, and blue.

And so they created it.

And so, yeah, Ronald Reagan wow that is really interesting thank you one thing he didn't like was Brussels sprouts he once did a trip to England and he was fed so many Brussels sprouts during his trip that he swore off them for the rest of his life

they told him they were green jelly beans if they created it in his honor yeah

you know when he was an actor so I was reading he actually wrote two autobiographies but his later one after he was president he talked about when he was an actor and the fact that there was a lot of talk backstage about how small his head was.

And so he was there with this casting director who was saying, What are we going to do about Ronald's head?

You could stand the actors slightly further away from him, and then it would match the size of their heads from back there.

But then his body looks weirdly large.

So it was decided to be a successful actor, he had to have very wide collars to minimize his shoulder width and have collars that were sort of open and a little bit lower.

So it looked like his head was a bit bigger, I guess, to increase the amount of skin exposure in the head area.

that's amazing, yeah.

Poor guy, imagine, but he is the most successful actor of all time.

That is true.

Who can forget watching Brother Rat and a Baby every Christmas?

You know, he wrote his first autobiography 16 years before he became president

in 1965, saying, and it was called Where's the Rest of Me?

Does he talk about his head?

Was his next autobiography called Here It Is?

Very forward-thinking.

He was once threatened by a guy who was going to attack him.

And he was known as the cat man.

And the reason was because he would send threatening letters, but also pictures of cats

to the president.

That is the precursor to the internet, I think.

Lots of purposeless abuse and then pictures of cats.

And the other thing that Reagan started was the idea that whenever a president leaves, he always leaves a note for the next president.

And he wrote a note saying, don't let the turkeys get you down to George Bush.

Sorry, what is the relevance of the turkeys?

The turkeys is in the press, the other countries, don't let the turkeys get you down.

It's not about turkey, is it?

Because that's a very specifically racist thing to say when you're taking over the most powerful nation.

This was discovered by Brad Meltzer,

not the fact that that note was left for Bush, but that Bush then said, I left a note for Clinton.

And Brad Meltzer, he's a crime writer, political thrillers.

He then said, This is apparently, he thinks this is true.

Wherever Ronald Reagan went, he had a briefcase with him and always carried a handheld gun on him.

Okay.

What's the opposite of a handheld gun?

A foot-propelled bow and arrow.

He was, I just always think this is amazing.

His chief of staff.

Do people know what his chief of staff was called?

Ronald Reagan's.

Yeah.

No.

He was called Donald Reagan.

I don't understand why this isn't the most well-known fact on the face of the earth.

And the chief of staff who preceded him was called Baker.

So the chief of staff who preceded Donald Reagan was called Howard Baker, and the guy who came after him was called James Baker.

So people say Ronald Reagan was a bit confused in the 80s, but I definitely see where he's coming from.

Annoyingly,

we're running out of time.

In fact, we're on the time run out moment.

So any last facts?

Very quick one about squirrels.

Yeah, Guan.

It used to be illegal not to report a grey squirrel in your garden.

Really?

I think that grey squirrels were brought to the UK by Benjamin Franklin.

He brought squirrels over to the UK.

According to newsforsquirls.com, the blog.

How many hits does it get?

It's had a lot this week for me.

Male Cape ground squirrels have very big genitalia.

The penises can be 40% the length of their body, and they can and do auto-folate.

Yeah.

And according to researcher Jane Waterman, they do it to clean their genitals.

Sorry, what's unusual about any of this?

I'm sorry, only 40%.

Got it.

It is unusual.

Sorry.

Okay, that's it.

That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for being here, guys.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you at home for listening to the show.

If you want to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, please get us on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Triberland.

Andy, at Andrew Hunter M.

James, Egg Shakespeare.

Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yep, or you could.

Yep.

It's a fantastic email, Jess, to be fair.

And you can also find all of our previous episodes on no such thingasafish.com.

And we will be back again with another episode next week.

Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

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Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the Bay Area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom.

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