58: No Such Thing As Van Gogh The Elephant

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Speaker 4 Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

Speaker 5 We demand to be home.

Speaker 6 Winner, best score.

Speaker 4 We demand to be seen.

Speaker 7 Winner, best book. We demand to be quality.

Speaker 8 It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Speaker 10 Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Speaker 7 Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Speaker 11 Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Coburn Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber.

Speaker 11 I'm sitting here with Anna Czaczynski, James Harkin, and Andy Murray.

Speaker 11 And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Czaczynski.

Speaker 12 My fact is that Kaiser Wilhelm once lost a valuable arms contract for Germany because he slapped the King of Bulgaria on the bottom.

Speaker 12 This was a thing he did. He liked to slap people on the ass.
And so the King of Bulgaria was Ferdinand at the time, and he visited.

Speaker 12 And apparently, he was wearing his colonel's uniform, which had been made when he was a bit slimmer.

Speaker 12 So he'd put on some extra weight, and he was leaning out of the palace window in Germany, and Kaiser Wilhelm noticed that his unmentionables were tight, and so he slapped him on the arm.

Speaker 11 So his unmentionables are another word for trousers, are they?

Speaker 12 Well, I think it was.

Speaker 12 So the historian says he noticed that his unmentionables were tight, so when he leaned out of the window, he presented a mark so tempting that the Emperor administered a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the king.

Speaker 12 Anyway, he was very, very angry, and he then awarded an arms contract to someone else that had been going to go to Germany as a a result.

Speaker 11 So Prank kind of backfired. Yeah, but he did, so he was a big bottom slapper, wasn't he?

Speaker 12 He loved to slap bottoms. He is.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I read that he had a secret society, the White Stag Dining Club.

Speaker 11 So the idea behind that is that when you were trying to gain admission, you'd have to tell a vulgar joke and then present your butt to the Kaiser, who would then slap it.

Speaker 11 And then you were allowed in. I read he smacked you on the bum with the flat of his sword.
Oh, yeah. Oh, which is a bit important to get the flat.
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 11 Another death tonight of the White Stag Dining Club, where the king cut yet another man into

Speaker 11 was with Ferdinand? Was that with his hand, or was it? That was with his hand.

Speaker 12 So the flat of the sword was the white stag dining club, but just casually with acquaintances, it was the flat of the hand.

Speaker 11 So just explain, Anna, who Kaiser Wilhelm was.

Speaker 12 So Kaiser Wilhelm, as you correctly pronounce it. Kaiser Wilhelm II

Speaker 12 was Kaiser of Germany, was king of Germany until 1918,

Speaker 12 when there was a revolution that

Speaker 12 eventually led to the rise of the Nazis, etc.

Speaker 11 Kaiser Wilhelm II was also the colonel-in-chief of the Royal Dragoons at the start of the First World War and didn't turn up, obviously, for duty because he was the Kaiser of Germany. So

Speaker 11 there were lots of things like that, because the royal families were so mixed up. So he was the cousin of George V, the king.
Wasn't he the cousin of this guy who he slapped on the ass as well?

Speaker 11 Or they were related.

Speaker 11 Yeah, he was a king. Well, Ferdinand.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 He was the cousin of Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia. It was this incredible time when everyone was related to each other.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 Well, that's always been royal families in Europe, hasn't it?

Speaker 11 True.

Speaker 12 They love the old incest. He was.

Speaker 12 He kept some weird company and he was into some quite camp activities. There was quite a famous incident when he was being entertained, so he liked to dress up.

Speaker 12 He had like 400 different military uniforms that he liked to dress up, and he changed outfits four or five times a day. He redesigned the German military uniform something like 37 times in 17 years.

Speaker 11 He was just obsessed with it. Love dressing up.
I love that idea that you know you get armies who don't really know if they're all on the same side

Speaker 11 because they've had a redesign. Yeah.
Wait, are we supposed to be killing you?

Speaker 11 Why are you wearing marches collection? We're now in June.

Speaker 11 Apparently,

Speaker 11 whenever he ate plum pudding, he always wore the uniform of a British admiral. He was insane.
He was totally insane. And he hit other people as well in public.

Speaker 11 So he hit the Grand Duke Vladimir, who was a Russian Grand Duke, on the back with a field marshal's baton in 1904. Wow.
I mean, he was quite wild. He didn't really respect anything.

Speaker 12 On bum slapping, so for Chinese lunar new year, then Taoists visit this temple where they go to get ritually slapped or whipped.

Speaker 12 So men are slapped and women are whipped by the temple staff, and that means good luck all year round. And thousands of people go to this temple to get slapped every year.

Speaker 11 Wow. On the bum? On the bottom.

Speaker 11 According to the church, it is an okay thing to slap your child's bot. Is it? Bop? As long as you've got a bot.

Speaker 11 Come here. Give us your bop.

Speaker 11 Wait, is this. This was the Pope.

Speaker 11 But the Pope has also said, if you make fun of my mum, I'll punch you in the face.

Speaker 11 What? Yeah, he did. Didn't you see that? No.
He said this was after the Charlie Hebler thing. He said, if you make fun of my mum, you can expect a bunch.

Speaker 11 And then he sort of joshed with the cardinal standing next to him, sort of miming, hitting him on the face. Oh, okay.
Was it a metaphor for if you make fun of religion, then people will attack you?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 Asda's buttock slap has been copyrighted, no trademarked. So you know the adverts where they go they have a little jingle and then someone slaps it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, like that, yeah.

Speaker 11 So for the purposes of advertising meat, fish, poultry, game, coffee, tea, bread, agricultural, horticultural, and forestry products and other items,

Speaker 11 you can't use a buttock slap unless you're Asda. Did you say forestry? Forestry products.
You can't sell a tree with that.

Speaker 11 You can have a bit of a tree. We all know that's the best way to sell a tree.
Please buy a tree.

Speaker 12 You can feel it right in your back pocket.

Speaker 11 Is the slap suggesting you're hitting your wallet? Yeah, it's like

Speaker 11 I've spent not that much money, so I still have some money left in my back pocket, and now I'm going to slap it. But also, I don't keep my money safely in a purse or wallet.

Speaker 11 I keep it in loose change in my pocket.

Speaker 11 That's the other implication. So it implies you're a bit fun as well.

Speaker 12 And you've got. See, I never read into that second meaning.
I have to say, I thought Dan asking about the first meaning was quite obvious.

Speaker 11 I thought it was like a dance.

Speaker 11 Everyone at Asda has a fun arse.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I don't know. I just thought it was everyone needs a thing.
You can't explain it sometimes. You know, you ask a band why they called their band name that, they don't know.

Speaker 11 I thought maybe Asda were like, we don't know why we're hitting.

Speaker 11 But it's working. Get complete rights on that.
Those dickheads trying to sell trees, get them away. This is ours.

Speaker 12 Got to stop buying woodland from Asta.

Speaker 11 Okay, here's the thing about the Kaiser. So he had like an intimate circle of friends and confidants, and apparently, one count

Speaker 11 they were quite sycophantic. And so one count allowed himself to be led before the Kaiser, imitating a poodle with a marked rectal opening.

Speaker 11 I don't know what that means. What does that mean? I don't really know, and actually, I don't really want to know.

Speaker 12 Is that that he's imitating the marked rectal opening of a poodle? Or is the rectal opening separate to the poodle imitation?

Speaker 11 There are some dogs where

Speaker 11 you can see their bums. Yes, you know.
Is that what it is? I think so. The ones with their tails up.
Yes.

Speaker 11 But I wouldn't build that into a fancy dress costume.

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 11 Just in case someone else comes as a poodle with a marked rectal opening. Also, there wasn't really a mention of a costume, was there? It never says he was imitating.

Speaker 11 And that's a very broad spectrum of maybe.

Speaker 11 He also liked to sit sit on his horse behind his desk'cause it made him feel like

Speaker 11 a warrior when he was doing his

Speaker 11 his homework or his tax return or whatever he did.

Speaker 11 Yeah, did he have a high desk? Or did he have a tiny horse?

Speaker 11 Shell and pony. Or did he just have a long pen?

Speaker 11 Those are the only options I can think of.

Speaker 11 He um he led military exercises, so he you know, which is just training exercises for the whole army.

Speaker 11 But obviously whenever he did that, he was was so hyper-masculine and so in charge that the commander on the other side had to basically throw the military exercise and say, oh, you've won again, Kaiser Wilhelm.

Speaker 11 Well done.

Speaker 11 You know that

Speaker 11 really awesome character from history, Annie Oakley. Do you know the story about Annie Oakley? So she was part of the Buffalo Bill touring group and she had the amazing shot.

Speaker 11 And she was asked to shoot off the ash of a cigarette that was being held in the hands of Kaiser Wilhelm. And she did it.

Speaker 11 So, from a distance, she took a shot and she managed to knock the cigarette in half in his hands. And people say that had she killed him, that may have prevented World War I.

Speaker 11 And she actually wrote to him much later requesting a second shot when she found that out.

Speaker 11 But he didn't respond. When did this guy die?

Speaker 11 1941, I think.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's kind of amazing that he got away, he managed to live through the rise of fascism. And he lived in, what country did he live in?

Speaker 11 He lived in the Netherlands in exile for a while.

Speaker 12 And he kept writing to Hitler.

Speaker 12 At first, he started writing to Hitler, congratulating him on winning various battles with my armies in a sort of, look, we're on the same team, you're using my military.

Speaker 12 And Hitler was kind of like, what are you talking about? You've been missing for 20 years. I overthrew you.
And eventually he got quite angry.

Speaker 11 So it's a bit like I loosened the top of this jam jar lid and all you had to do was just

Speaker 11 hating Hitler and the Nazis. He did.

Speaker 11 And there was a thing about his funeral in which he wanted no swastikas at his funeral, but apparently his funeral was just completely surrounded surrounded by the funeral.

Speaker 11 I think I might ask for that at my funeral

Speaker 11 that box you can tick when you're.

Speaker 11 But surely that's a surefire way of ensuring your funeral is stuffed with swastikas. So you wouldn't ask for no swastikas unless you wanted them, Chase.

Speaker 11 What are you doing?

Speaker 11 Guys, no birthday this year. I don't want a birthday.

Speaker 11 No birthday presents, please. Okay, especially no swastika wrapping paper.

Speaker 3 Sucks.

Speaker 4 The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

Speaker 6 We demand to be home. Winner, best score.

Speaker 4 We demand to be seen.

Speaker 7 Winner, best book. We demand to be quality.

Speaker 8 It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Speaker 10 Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Speaker 7 Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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Speaker 11 Okay, time for fact number two and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that beware of pickpocket signs attract pickpockets.
They shouldn't make them so pretty.

Speaker 11 They shouldn't festoon them with wallets and burses.

Speaker 11 So why would that happen? This is because they have them in public places.

Speaker 11 You've probably seen them wherever you live, is that they have big signs saying beware thieves operate in this area, or beware there are pickpockets nearby.

Speaker 11 And pickpockets like to hang out near those signs because as soon as someone sees that sign, they will immediately pat their pocket or their trousers or wherever they're keeping their personality.

Speaker 12 Is that because they're just filming Aztec adverts?

Speaker 11 Don't steal my stuff.

Speaker 11 And so then the thief knows exactly where your stuff is and he can follow you.

Speaker 11 And so if you see one of those signs, the thing to do is not go, hey, let me just check my wallet, it's still where it was.

Speaker 11 Yeah, so the pickpockets, one of the things they do is this has been studied by a neuroscientist who says basically what they do is totally overload you with information.

Speaker 11 It's not just about where their hands are.

Speaker 11 They're up close to you and they're distracting you, they're talking loudly to you, they're arguing with you, they're touching bits of your body,

Speaker 11 slapping a bum.

Speaker 11 They just completely overload you. This is particularly with stage pickpockets, but the same principle applies.
And it's basically because our brains can't do more than one thing at once.

Speaker 11 So they, yeah.

Speaker 11 So if they're like touching your bum, you're like, why is he touching my bomb? And when you turn around, they've taken your hat off. Yeah, well, he's already in your jacket pocket or something.

Speaker 12 In 2009, a Russian bank employee gave over $80,000 of cash to a woman who had hypnotised her in the bank.

Speaker 11 Wow. I think that I am not sure about that.
It feels like she might be the accomplice, do you think?

Speaker 11 No, I just think that I was hypnotized is often a very easy excuse for mistakes that one has made. So women

Speaker 12 in the pub at the time.

Speaker 11 I left the whole bank unattended.

Speaker 11 She hypnotized me to go to the pub and stay there all day. No, I don't know how she did it either.

Speaker 11 I read a great robbery story that was in the news, I think, a couple of days ago, which was a guy, he robbed a local grocery outlet and managed to get away.

Speaker 11 They kind of knew who he was, though, straight away. So they were chasing him.

Speaker 11 But when he was caught, the kind of defenser going, it wasn't me, was totally knocked out by the fact that he was carrying carrying the money that he stole in a canvas bag that he drawn a massive dollar bill from.

Speaker 11 The huge classic, like, what are you, the riddler from 1960s Batman

Speaker 11 who carries bags like that? It's like a double bluff.

Speaker 11 This is the last place the police will think to look.

Speaker 11 I hope in prison that they gave him a special outfit with arrows all over it.

Speaker 12 There's apparently a school of the seven bells. Have you guys heard of this? No.

Speaker 12 For which there's no actual verification because people don't admit to attending it, but it's rumoured to exist in Colombia.

Speaker 12 And the final, it's called the School of the Seven Bells because the final exam tests the ability to noiselessly remove items from the pockets of a jacket rigged with bells to make sure that you can do it without distracting anyone's attention.

Speaker 11 How do they know when it's time for another lesson at the School of the Seven Bells?

Speaker 11 Can I tell you briefly about this guy called Apollo Robbins? Yeah, go on.

Speaker 11 Okay, so he was the subject of this New Yorker piece, and I'll put it up on my Twitter, which is Andrew Hunter M, which is it's and he is a stage pickpocket, and he can steal anything, basically.

Speaker 11 So he met Penn of Pen and Teller, and Pen said, okay, go on, steal something from me.

Speaker 11 And he wasn't wearing, at the time, Penn was wearing a sort of sleeveless outfit and some shorts, so that's quite hard, obviously. There's

Speaker 11 less clothing to steal from, so we're fewer pockets. So he asked Penn, okay, take off your wedding ring, put it on a bit of paper, and trace the outline with it.

Speaker 11 So Penn takes off his ring, he puts it on the paper, he gets his pen out of his pocket, and it won't write anything. The reason being, Apollo Robbins is holding the cartridge from inside the pen.
Wow.

Speaker 11 Yeah. Okay, I have an even better pickpocket than that guy.
Go on. Are you ready? So this guy is called Wang Hong Bo,

Speaker 11 and he's from Zhengzhu. And he has been caught, well, he's been caught, so not that good, but he's been caught using chopsticks to pickpocket people.

Speaker 11 Okay?

Speaker 11 And he was photographed lifting the phone from a woman's woman's pocket with chopsticks while she was cycling through Shakesham.

Speaker 11 That is skillful, isn't it? Wow. Do you know cool pickpocket flang? No.
So they have a whole range of terms and exciting ways to describe it.

Speaker 11 And some of that's mentioned in this New Yorker piece, actually.

Speaker 11 So kissing the dog, which is making a mistake, not in a Kaiser Wilhelm Poodle way.

Speaker 11 That's a mistake where you're letting the victims see yourself. It's always a mistake, and the guys will have a way.

Speaker 11 And there's skinning the poke, which is taking all the cash out of a wallet you've nicked, and then you get rid of the fingerprints and you throw it away.

Speaker 11 And teams are called whizmobs, a team of pickpockets. It's called a whiz mob.
A whiz mob. Yeah.
That sounds like a whisper. Sounds like something out of Sonic the Hedgehog or something.

Speaker 11 It doesn't sound like a serious criminal organisation. Yeah.
It's all quite Victorian, though.

Speaker 11 There were some old Victorian or maybe Edwardian names for criminals.

Speaker 11 Remember those?

Speaker 11 Swaddlers was one, which was people who were Methodist preachers whose accomplices pickpocketed the congregation. They were known as swaddlers.
What?

Speaker 11 A few others.

Speaker 11 Bully huffs would hang around brothels, surprising and threatening the customers by claiming that the woman they were in bed with was their wife. That's very clever.

Speaker 11 And then extract money from them that way. Tatmongers were card sharps.

Speaker 11 And body baskets were women posing as sellers of pornographic books to disguise their real game, which was stealing linen off washing lines.

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 it's an obvious disguise, isn't it?

Speaker 11 You come to the door, would you like to buy some erotic literature? No.

Speaker 11 Okay, do you mind if I leave through your garden?

Speaker 12 In the 15th century, Ambrose Paré, who was a famous doctor in the 15th century, saw a beggar in Paris who was begging him for money and who did so by, I don't actually know if I can put this out, it's so gross.

Speaker 11 Who did so by,

Speaker 12 she begged by lifting her skirts to reveal a prolapsed rectum it was a horrid sight he says it was over half a foot long leaking pustlite fluid over her legs and garments but his companion then attacked the woman and said you're a big faker you don't look sick enough to have a prolapse rectum you have to be pretty confident that you're right in that situation don't you I know prolax rectums and that madame

Speaker 12 beat this woman to the ground and eventually she was forced to reveal that it was actually the prolapse rectum of an ox that she put inside her eyes.

Speaker 11 So it was actually a prolapse rectum. It was and it wasn't prolapse rectum.
Well I bet he felt pretty silly then didn't he?

Speaker 11 That's not a human prolapse rectum.

Speaker 11 It was the prolapse rectum of an ox. Yeah, that she'd put up her own bomb though.
I think if you've gone to trouble.

Speaker 12 If you've gone to the trouble of doing that, I really think you've earned your 50 cents or whatever.

Speaker 11 Definitely.

Speaker 11 But the lifting of her skirts as well.

Speaker 11 She could just have a sign saying Prolax Director, please help.

Speaker 11 Wait, so if you saw someone with a significant direction, that's probably how she started.

Speaker 11 She's like, no one is buying this at all.

Speaker 11 Except Andy. I can show it to you.
No need.

Speaker 11 Absolutely believe you.

Speaker 11 The thing is, though,

Speaker 11 I would pay 50p

Speaker 11 not to see a prolax pronounced director. That is a fair point.

Speaker 11 She should have done that.

Speaker 11 We should move on. I've just got a couple of police things.

Speaker 11 Policemen in Grenada are now wearing their Twitter handles on their uniforms now.

Speaker 12 That's not very good protection if that's...

Speaker 11 Weirdly, it's a kind of way of saying to the community that you are not going to allow us to get away with anything as much as we're not going to allow you to do that.

Speaker 11 So it's like a policeman having their own name or their number on a badge or something like that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, so you can tweet them and you can tweet because everyone in the town now, the police cars now have their Twitter handles.

Speaker 11 They're starting to do this in America now, police cars with Twitter handles, so that people can make direct contacts and just let it be such a big thing. It's not all on Twitter, though.

Speaker 11 Like, maybe there's like get Constable Harris on Twitter campaigns.

Speaker 11 Maybe. That's true.
And you can add them in so you can say, I'm currently being beaten up by Constable Harris.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Is there like a really old school cop called Nigel or something who has his fax number on his arm?

Speaker 11 One other thing is that Scotland's police force have had to ban a lot of words from their Facebook page. So this is where social media has gone against them slightly.

Speaker 11 So they have over 139 words that they don't appear now on their page. They swear words mostly.
A lot of swear words, but then they include pigs.

Speaker 11 So if you have an issue with a pig, that actually won't make it onto the page.

Speaker 11 Someone stolen my bacon.

Speaker 11 If your name is Fanny, you can't write to them.

Speaker 11 Yeah, because Fanny is now a banned word. Teabag.
Banned word. Is this in Scotland? Yeah.
Lots of people are called Fanny in Scotland. I know, it's a big issue.

Speaker 11 So basically, the way to be a criminal in Scotland is to steal pigs off people called Fanny.

Speaker 11 There's nothing they can do.

Speaker 11 Acab is also banned. Sorry.
Because all cops are bastards.

Speaker 11 And so is Bacon fucker

Speaker 11 god they're so sensitive aren't they what about mr john bacon fucker though what about his wife fanny bacon

Speaker 11 and their son tea bag

Speaker 11 okay time for fact number three and that's my fact my fact this week is that no one is quite sure how to say the name Louis Armstrong or Louis Armstrong. No one knows.
Oh, right.

Speaker 11 So it's either Louis or Lewis. Yeah, Sean Armstrong, though, right? Was Sean Armstrong.
Yeah, but I mean, it's an insane thing that we don't know.

Speaker 11 I only found this out because I was on Louis slash LewisArmstrong's house.org. It's like a major website for him.
And someone asked, how do you pronounce the name Louis or Lewis?

Speaker 11 And they go into this whole reasoning where they say that he in songs used to say Lewis. In interviews, they would say Louis.
His friends would claim that he was called Louis.

Speaker 11 But then his wife used to call him Louis. And then things got really confused because he then got called Satchmo and popped.
No one knows. There's no agreed opinion.

Speaker 11 Despite the fact that we have so much footage of this guy, we have so many audio recordings. No one knows.
But he never says, it never breaks off from a solo, does he?

Speaker 11 By the way, it's Louie.

Speaker 11 Exactly. But there's a famous song called Hello Dolly, and he sings the line, this is Lewis.
So everyone was like, oh, so it's Lewis, that makes sense.

Speaker 11 But then later in the song, a waiter says, this is Lewis. So suddenly everyone's Lewis in the song.

Speaker 11 So, that was the one bit that suddenly in America, you would normally pronounce it Lewis, wouldn't you? Like St. Louis, the town, and stuff like that.
So, it feels like it should be Lewis to me.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 12 I think one of his biographers said that he told him that only white people call him Louis.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 11 And that.

Speaker 11 Well, his wife, his wife called him Louis.

Speaker 12 Was she white?

Speaker 11 Don't think so, no.

Speaker 12 Oh, well. Was this the wife he married a prostitute, didn't he?

Speaker 11 He did, yes. Well, because he had a marriage.
He had a couple of wives, I think. Yeah, he had four.
Oh, right. Yeah, but he had a couple of wives.
Twice.

Speaker 11 There's another thing, just with his name not being decided on. They also later found out that he wasn't born when he thought he was born.
And so he thought he was born on the 14th.

Speaker 11 Wait a minute, wait a minute. He thought he'd been born.
He'd just come out of the womb. Yeah, and he was born.
And they were like, no, you've not been born. He's not been born, you know.

Speaker 11 Because he thought he was born on the 4th of July, 1900. But it turns out he was born August 4th, 1901.
Oh, wow. Now all of his kind of big fan groups celebrate both birthdays.

Speaker 11 So he's a bit like the queen now. He's got more than one birthday per year.

Speaker 12 Are they just two different people?

Speaker 11 One of them is Lewis, one of them is Louis. One is August Louis.
They were both fantastic jazz players.

Speaker 11 So he did only get married a couple of times. It's just the other guy got married a couple of times as well.

Speaker 11 He was obsessed with a particular laxative, Louis Armstrong.

Speaker 11 It's called Swiss Chris.

Speaker 11 And it got sold by this American dietitian called Gaylord Hauser. And Louis Armstrong would give whole interviews about his diet and about how fantastic this laxative was.

Speaker 11 And he said the first time I tried it, it sounded like applause.

Speaker 11 He said I had to crawl back to bed.

Speaker 11 He would know what applause sounds like as well, wouldn't he?

Speaker 11 And he would post fans

Speaker 11 cards.

Speaker 11 He had his diet device printed on cards to post back to any fans who wrote to him asking about it. And then he had specially printed cards which had him on a toilet on the front of it.

Speaker 11 A picture of him on the toilet and then

Speaker 11 holding the bottle of Swiss Chris in his hand. He would send it back with a free sample of Swiss Chris.
This is how devoted to it.

Speaker 12 And then I think there was a slogan on the cards, wasn't there? And he had this slogan printed saying, Satch says, Leave it all behind you.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's right. And he never accepted a penny from endorsing them ever.
Really? He was never paid. He just loved it.
He loved it so much.

Speaker 11 He took a lot of diarrhea. Yeah, every day.
He took it every day. Okay, so

Speaker 11 the Voyager probes, which they sent up with a record on, which contains sounds and images about Earth. That includes Louis Armstrong music.
Does it?

Speaker 11 Yeah, it also has some Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and it has a Peruvian wedding song, which sounds good. An address by UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldhelm

Speaker 11 and a recording of the Azerbaijani Bagpipe Orchestra.

Speaker 11 I hope they start with the Bach and the Beethoven.

Speaker 12 Hey, you haven't heard the Azerbaijani thing, have you?

Speaker 11 I've heard bagpipes.

Speaker 11 It was meant to as well have a Beatles song, and all the Beatles said yes to it going on, but the record label said no.

Speaker 11 And the rumour is they said no because they thought if suddenly there is life out there, we don't have rights to these planets that will then be using the song, which is it nuts.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I've signed contracts that say, like, in all universes and resort rights.

Speaker 11 Do you think maybe when the aliens come down to invade, the first thing they're going to do is go, yeah, can you take us to your bagpipe orchestra, please?

Speaker 11 We are massive fans.

Speaker 11 So, on mispronunciation of names,

Speaker 11 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a great poet, obviously,

Speaker 11 he said the following of his name.

Speaker 11 And I can't tell whether he was taking the mickey or not, I'm not sure, but he said, I think that the word Coleridge, and he brackets amphimacron, long on both sides, has a noble verbal physiognomy.

Speaker 11 It is one of the vilest Beelzebub cries of detraction to pronounce it Coleridge or Coluridge or even Coleridge.

Speaker 11 And in his own poems, he rhymes it with Polar Ridge, Scholar Ridge, and The Whole Ridge.

Speaker 11 The Whole Ridge. That's a great nickname.
It sounds like his wrestling name, doesn't it?

Speaker 11 So he's saying anything.

Speaker 12 Yeah, but he rhymes it with everything. Anything goes, but.

Speaker 11 He rhymed it with anything, but he also said to say

Speaker 11 long on both sides, which are Coleridge? No, but that's the third way he said don't pronounce it.

Speaker 11 Coleridge. I've no idea how he wanted it.
Can I just say as well, why is he putting his own name in his own poems? Oh, you know, for fun. Yes, it's like a rap artist now.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, that's what he was doing.

Speaker 11 So, you know, the word ask, or you might say ask,

Speaker 11 and then

Speaker 11 some people in London say aux. Yeah, why is you ax me? Apparently, people have been making that mispronunciation for more than a thousand years.
What? It's not a modern thing at all. That's fantastic.

Speaker 11 What was there to ask people about back then? What was there to arcs?

Speaker 11 Would be like...

Speaker 11 Can I borrow your arcs?

Speaker 11 That was arcs.

Speaker 11 Can I mention something about trumpets very quickly? Please do. Okay, so obviously Louis Armstrong, just to wrap it back around, played trumpet very famously.

Speaker 11 They found a trumpet in Toot and Carmen's grave. Did they? So not only just his socks, that we've got to say that.
That's where he's got the word Toot in his name.

Speaker 11 But yeah, they found a trumpet in Toot and Carbo's grave. I really like that.

Speaker 12 Was it from that age, or was it just something that was left there by the original ex-Howards?

Speaker 11 I was charged when he broke in.

Speaker 11 Oh, we've got to go back. I left my trumpet.
Why'd you bring a trumpet?

Speaker 11 I was actually just coming to do a gig. I went to the wrong venue.
It turned out. You thought he was on the pyramid stage at Glasgow.

Speaker 11 Oh, my God.

Speaker 11 You know who else was a jazz star?

Speaker 11 Romano Mussolini, which I think we might have mentioned on the show. Mussolini's son, that is, right?

Speaker 11 Yeah, he was a jazz pianist, and he started under an assumed name, as you would, because it's such a drag that your dad's the square fascist dictator.

Speaker 11 But then in the 1960s, his ensemble got acclaim and he reverted to his real name. And he brought it popular.

Speaker 12 Well, because the Mussolini name had been rehabilitated by them.

Speaker 11 That's a terrible time to thrust that on your band members as well. You'll notice on the banner I've brought a little tweaking I've done.

Speaker 11 The article I read about him, I mean, he played with Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, and the article I read said, although he shied away from his heritage,

Speaker 11 he wrote a memoir called in 2004 called Il Duce, My Father.

Speaker 11 Yeah. He says that Mussolini was a caring father.
Oh, really? Not that that makes a difference, I'd like to stress.

Speaker 11 I don't know, it's changed my opinion about him.

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Speaker 10 Suffs! Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

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Speaker 11 Okay, time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

Speaker 11 Okay, my fact this week is: the man who holds the Guinness World Record for the lowest voice can hit notes that are so low, only elephants can hear them.

Speaker 11 How do we know? How do we know that? We can, well, computers can hear them

Speaker 11 as well as elephants. But yeah, actually, other large animals would be able to hear them as well.
But yeah, below human hearing range.

Speaker 11 He can hit a note which is eight octaves below the lowest G on a piano. Oh my god.
Oh my god. I know.
And he did he say that he can't really hear them? He would he can kind of...

Speaker 11 He can't hear them at all, can he? No, he can't, but he can kind of feel a vibration through his body when he when he does them. That's amazing.
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 11 How how can he sing so low?

Speaker 11 He has vocal cords which are about twice as long as a normal person.

Speaker 11 As a normal person?

Speaker 11 Sort Sort of like 12 feet long

Speaker 11 dangling behind him or something. Like prolapse rent.

Speaker 11 No, sorry, those are my vocal cards.

Speaker 11 And he takes his money back.

Speaker 11 Yeah, so yeah,

Speaker 11 he can feel it coming through his body. Which is actually, you will get that with astronauts in space.

Speaker 11 We can pick up sounds from people people on the moon, but it's usually the vibrations going through the body of the astronaut because there's not enough atmosphere for the waves to propagate. Oh,

Speaker 11 yeah, so the vibration of the helmet brings the sound through. Wow.
So they talk by touching helmets if they couldn't talk to each other via...

Speaker 11 I don't know if they do that, but I guess they could do that, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't think they have done that, but I think

Speaker 11 they could.

Speaker 11 Well, it's the other thing is why you hear your voice differently from a recording to what you hear in real life. Because you hear it through your body.

Speaker 11 You're not hearing it as other people hear it, which is through the air. You're hearing it through your face.
So, does it sound deeper to you?

Speaker 11 It does sound a bit deeper to you, yeah. Because it's the vibration, I think so.

Speaker 12 Yeah, yeah, because we do fancy, um, like we're attracted to people with deeper voices, aren't we?

Speaker 12 Well, women are attracted to men with deeper voices, apparently because it signifies a larger body size.

Speaker 12 And apparently, a study has shown men are attracted to women with higher voices, but I'm very skeptical about that.

Speaker 11 Well, there are a lot of women with very husky voices. Yeah, and people love that.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 Well there was a study that found that people men with lower pitched voices had higher numbers of sexual partners

Speaker 11 but people with more attractive voices actually also have lower sperm quality.

Speaker 11 Is that because they're putting all their effort into their voice?

Speaker 11 Inside the body there's a guy going, Yeah, don't worry about the sperm, let's turn all our attention to the voice.

Speaker 12 Did you just do a like slight Italian accent for the thing inside your body?

Speaker 11 That controls you, which is an Italian guy. He feels like he has an Italian inside breaking out.

Speaker 11 I like to stress it's not a Mussolini.

Speaker 11 So elephants can tell the difference between different human languages.

Speaker 11 So they could tell which language this guy was singing in at his incredibly low

Speaker 11 income.

Speaker 11 How do we know they can tell?

Speaker 11 They've tested two different African ethnic groups on elephants, and those are the Camba, who are basically farmers, they don't really hunt elephants, and the Maasai, who often hunt elephants.

Speaker 11 And they're afraid of

Speaker 11 um and they were recorded saying the same phrase, uh look, look over there, a group of elephants is coming, and then that was played to elephants.

Speaker 11 And when the Maasai said it in their language, the elephants got spooked, um but only

Speaker 11 uh Maasai men who are the guys who do the hunting, because women and children of either group it could be the way that they're saying it though, right?

Speaker 11 Because if you're a hunter of elephants, you're going to say, Look over there, there's some elephants, we can hunt them, whereas if you're a farmer, you're like, Oh my god, look, there's some elephants coming.

Speaker 11 They're going to trample our crops. Look, there's some elephants coming.
Xron.

Speaker 11 I hadn't thought of that.

Speaker 11 I think it's evidence, though. It sounds like a pretty good study.
But that is a good point. But that also suggests that they understand the words that are being said as opposed to the tone, right?

Speaker 11 What? They heard the word elephants and go, oop, that's us.

Speaker 11 Sorry, guys.

Speaker 11 My ears are burning.

Speaker 12 They can also, elephants they've recently discovered can point, can't they? And they're the first

Speaker 12 animal that's not a top.

Speaker 12 They can recognise pointing of humans.

Speaker 12 So if a human points to a bucket that has food in it, then they'll go to that one rather than the other one. And they're the only animal who aren't apes who can do it, and lots of apes can't.

Speaker 12 But they think elephants might point with their trunks. So they thought that their moving their trunks around is just, you know, for gags, shits, and giggles.

Speaker 12 But actually, it's thought that they might be pointing t at each other with their trunks.

Speaker 11 Fantastic. That's cool.

Speaker 12 Elephants can also recognise themselves in the mirror, can't they? And in fact, I think, sorry, this is what we don't think anything else can do that's not from the ape family.

Speaker 12 So I retract the last ape thing, but they can recognise themselves in a mirror, and if you put a dot on their forehead, then they will, and they see themselves in the mirror, their reflection, they will try and get the dot off their own forehead rather than like an idiot, like all other animals, trying to get the dot off the forehead of the reflection in the mirror.

Speaker 11 Oh, okay. So, well done them.
Yeah, that's quite cool. Also, do you remember that

Speaker 11 because they paint, don't they?

Speaker 11 And that was an incredible thing. Incredible that he was an elephant.
Is that right?

Speaker 11 No,

Speaker 11 that's why he sold so few paintings of his own in his lifetime.

Speaker 11 Negotiating. It was very messy when he cut off his ear.

Speaker 11 Sent in that huge package.

Speaker 11 There was this amazing footage that came out years ago of an elephant using a paintbrush, painting an elephant. And basically, everyone was going, what the hell is this?

Speaker 11 And it turns out that they were being trained in very cruel ways to be able to do it. But they can do it and they can memorize every single movement that they need to do in order to paint this thing.

Speaker 11 Everyone thought this was a hoax, and I think it was Richard Dawkins who went out to find out about it because he thought this is impossible. And it's absolutely true.

Speaker 11 They've trained these elephants to hold a paintbrush and paint canvas drawings. And you can buy elephant paintings online now that they do.

Speaker 11 They're extraordinary.

Speaker 12 Don't buy them. Sounds like you've been doing it.

Speaker 11 It's cruelty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's massive cruelty, but like the video footage is extraordinary to watch an elephant doing something with such precision as well. Amazing.

Speaker 11 I've got something about voices.

Speaker 11 So, you know that the biggest hearing range of any creature

Speaker 11 is not a bat.

Speaker 11 It's a bat's prey creature, though.

Speaker 11 It's a moth. Is it the greater wax moth? It is the greater wax moth.
How on earth did you know that?

Speaker 11 I just know stuff like that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's like it can hear something really, really a noise that bats can't make or something. That's it.
In the course of evolution, it has evolved a greater hearing range than the noises bats make.

Speaker 11 So most of bats' prey creatures can't hear them because

Speaker 11 they just get eaten out of the air and they have no defence against it. But the moth has evolved such a massive hearing range that

Speaker 11 it

Speaker 11 does. Not only can it hear everything the bat does, it can talk to other wax moths in higher than a bats' range.
It's very cool.

Speaker 12 That's so good.

Speaker 11 That also

Speaker 12 feels like quite a good insult for some reason, saying, I can hear noises you can't even make.

Speaker 11 It's true in humans that your hearing of high noises decreases as you get older,

Speaker 11 which is why they had those mosquito sounds outside shops, which were to disperse teenagers, very, very high-pitched sounds.

Speaker 11 But people of my age wouldn't be able to hear them because my little sillier in my ears have died out.

Speaker 12 It's also useful if you want to talk about sex in front of your grandparents.

Speaker 11 You could just do it like this.

Speaker 11 How cloud would you like to go for a quick shake right now?

Speaker 11 It's already gone here.

Speaker 12 Koala voices are really low, aren't they? They're 20 times lower than you'd expect from their body size. They're about as low as an elephant's voice.

Speaker 12 And that's because the organs that make the sound is an organ that no other animals have. It's got,

Speaker 12 I think they've got two vocal pouches instead of one, which most creatures have, two vocal folds.

Speaker 11 They're weird, aren't they, koalas? They're just

Speaker 11 talked about. They're just weird.
Like, they have the longest cecum of any animal, which is the small intestine, I think, or the large intestine. And their brain is really tiny.

Speaker 11 Well, the brain is not

Speaker 11 incredibly small, but it is very unfolded. So it doesn't have much intricacy in it.
And as a result, it's got a very, very low surface area. They are so stupid, Cornelius.

Speaker 11 It feels like they were made by a kind of trainee.

Speaker 12 Yeah, because I think it sounds like the brain and the vocal cords got confused because the vocal cords are very folded and the brain is very unfolded.

Speaker 12 So he obviously thought one was the brain in its neck.

Speaker 11 The little Italian inside the koalas

Speaker 11 was drunk when he made them.

Speaker 11 Mama Mambia, what have you done?

Speaker 11 There is a black hole which does the deepest noise of anything in nature.

Speaker 11 And it does a B-flat, which is 57 octaves below middle C. So this guy that we were talking about before was eight octaves, and the black hole is 57 octaves.

Speaker 11 And if you wanted to play that on a keyboard, you'd need a keyboard more than 15 meters long.

Speaker 11 And it's only for that one note as well.

Speaker 11 Can elephants even hear that? Who are you playing that? Elephants cannot hear that. Wow.

Speaker 12 Yeah, who is the black hole playing to?

Speaker 11 Yeah. And you wouldn't, you would need something to reach it with, like Kaiser Wilhelm's pencil.

Speaker 11 Oh, an elephant's trunk. Maybe that's why

Speaker 11 they have such long trunks. It's so that they can play the wider pianos that are necessary.

Speaker 12 Do you guys know about, or do any of you do, this vocal fry? Do you engage in vocal fry?

Speaker 11 No, I've not even heard of it, not knowingly.

Speaker 12 Well, you might do. So vocal fry is the lowest human register.
So, the guy with the highest pitched voice on earth, for instance, is singing in his whistle register, which is the highest register.

Speaker 12 Which, actually, the person who has the highest pitch of singing in the world goes much higher than the highest whistle in the world.

Speaker 12 And anyway, the vocal fry register is your lowest register, but it's become really fashionable and people have started doing vocal fry. And it's that thing, 66% of college women do it, for instance.

Speaker 12 And it's this thing where people talk like this, you know, like American girls started talking like the Paris. Yeah, exactly.
Paris Hilton does it, I think, and Keisha with a dollar sign in her name.

Speaker 12 And apparently, it's really bad for your vocal cords.

Speaker 11 It sounds like a strain.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's bad for your vocal cords, and also it's bad for you in job interviews, something like 85%.

Speaker 11 No kidding.

Speaker 11 I just thought you had some kind of horrible disease or something.

Speaker 11 I wanted job. I don't understand it.
Wait, so it's not a low. Because it doesn't sound lower.

Speaker 12 It is lower, yeah.

Speaker 11 I don't understand lower.

Speaker 12 And apparently, this is everyone's doing now in America. Yeah, interviewers Interviewers are saying, we don't like this.

Speaker 11 Stop. Stop it.

Speaker 11 Stupid.

Speaker 11 Mid-interview. I do not like this.

Speaker 11 But that's how I took it. Just stop.

Speaker 11 Mr. Spielberg, just stop.

Speaker 11 Okay, we're coming to the end of the interview now. Is there anything you'd like to ask me?

Speaker 11 Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts.
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said, you can get us on our Twitter handles.

Speaker 11 I'm on at Shriverland,

Speaker 11 James, at Egg Shapes, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M. And Anna, you can email a podcast at QI.com.
And we will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then.
Goodbye.

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