No Such Thing As A Fish - 514: No Such Thing As A Computer Tower
Episode Date: January 18, 2024Dan, Anna, Andy and James discuss mangroves, make-up, French waters and Swiss goitres. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-f...ree episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
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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 Hobern.
My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anatishinsky, and James Harkin, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with
our four favorite facts from the last seven days in a no particular order here we go. Starting
with fact number one, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that everyone in the French
town of Evian is allowed unlimited free Evian. Are they allowed it from like do they have to go up and put their mouth to the spring?
Well, I don't know how it comes out. They've not come through the taps, right?
No, no, and he's closest, but he is wrong. So this is the town of Evian Debat
on the banks of the Lake Geneva and it's in France. And they have this
special spring of water and this is where we get the Evian today. But the people of the town
can go to the spring, it has a special sort of spout and you can go and get unlimited
Evian from there. You don't have to go with your mouth on the spout.
When I went there,
that ruins the spout for every,
ruins the entire company's operations,
actually millions of people, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I went there recently on my holidays
because you guys have had some guests on the last few weeks.
I was going from a ski resort to Geneva
where I fly it was going from
and saw that Evian was,
I won't say on the way,
we had to take quite a long diversion,
but I said to my wife, why don't we go to this place, Evian,
because it's kind of an interesting place that I've heard of.
Baby was sick, but it was fine.
Thanks for bad water or something.
But we went there, and I drank some of the Evian water
with my cup tank, so I learned it's going
to my cup tank and I drank it.
But just as we're leaving, actually,
there was a guy who turned up in his car, opened his boot.
And he must have had about 50 glass bottles
where he went to the spring and he filled up all of his bottles.
So he had as much Evian as he could drink.
And that apparently is a common thing
that the people of Evian do.
You're so lucky.
You're so lucky that you got there before him. Yes, yes.
Oh yeah.
I'm just trying to fill up my two cup.
I want to, no, sorry, I've only got 47 bottles to go.
What I'm imagining is like a municipal water,
not a water cooler, you know,
a thing like in a school gym where you put your mouth to it.
Yeah, it's not quite like, press the button
and it squirts up a bit, but not very much.
No, it's not that. It's button and it squirts up a bit, but not very much. No, it's not that it's something where it is always
flowing out. So it is kind of a mosaic of a nice sort of like flowers and stuff like that and then there's a little bowl
underneath made of stone and the water just keeps going into the bowl and then drains away presumably to the every other factory work.
They go into your bottles. No, I don't have that.
If you're a rival company, could you just go
and bottle your own?
Brilliant idea.
Bottle, brilliant.
You could, but I imagine it's probably not efficient.
Probably the cost is not the water.
It's the bottling factory.
If your buckston springs, say, and your entire factory
is in Bucksdon in Derbyshire, probably it's not worth it
to drive all the way down to Geneva.
It's free water.
I mean, you could just get it out of the tap. If you were trying to get
more like water, which some bottle companies did, didn't they?
Yeah, Desanee, I think Desanee, which was Coke owned and it just turned out to be tap water
that played. Yeah. Yeah.
I think sort of run that water under the tap. I didn't know how they'd done it, but they
basically like fill the tap. I think that's a slightly misleading, but if it was what it
still is now, which is that it's tap water, as is more than two thirds of bottled water in America.
And lots of it here.
Basically, it's filtered tap water,
so they've taken tap water, filtered it.
But the great thing about these big soft drinks companies
is they're already filtering the water
to put in their phanta and their coke or whatever.
So they've got this big water filtration system set up,
all they need to do is turn the tap on a bit more.
So yeah, just tap water.
There it is, yeah. But what do they they need to do is turn the tap on a bit more. So yeah, it's clever.
There it is, yeah.
But what do they drink then in Avion through the tap?
Is it the same source of water coming through?
Was it a great question?
One of the good questions.
So no, because they will have, I don't know if it's for sure, but they must have reservoirs
where the water comes from, because this is just a small spring, and certainly wouldn't
be enough to fill what is an averagely sized French
town.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
I heard that they only take about 10% of the avian water to turn into avian from the spring
and type that.
And it filters down through the rock and then it takes about 15 years and it goes into an
underground aquifer and then once the aquifer is full the water gets forced up back up
to the surface and then it emerges that spring.
That whole thing takes 15 years to do.
I believe.
That's what they say on the website.
15 years is that's what I got it from.
Yeah.
Why would they lie about that?
It's actually 19 years, 50 years around number one.
There is an interesting thing on the website
which talks about the history.
I don't know if you saw this.
They said that 1789 was a very important year
in every underwater water history.
And as soon as they were in France, it feels like 1789,
probably was quite a...
I thought that.
Pretty much for everyone, because actually,
their water source was discovered by a French nobleman.
Right. Do you feel like...
I probably had other things on his mind.
I was the last thing he ever did, wasn't it?
I have looked for the Marquis de Lecceur,
who I'm sure was not top of the list when the revolution came.
But I searched his name.
There's no other, he doesn't crop up anywhere else.
No, he does that.
I think there is some suggestion that a bit of this origin story
might not be 100% true, but it is certainly,
it was on this guy's land in Avian,
and supposedly this nobleman had kidney stones or something
drank some of this water and his kidney stones disappeared and he was like this is great stuff and then the guy who on the land
Started to sell the water. Yeah, it was a perfect origin story like the ones they always make up
It would be he was out for a walk on date
He fell over some of the water fell into his mouth
And then he felt his kidney stones carrying up so weird
Yeah, bottle water the idea comes to the fact that it was give your health doesn't it? some of the water fell into his mouth and then he fell, this kidney stones carry up, so we're... Yeah.
Bottle water, the idea comes to the fact that it was
give to your health, doesn't it?
It was a medicine for ages.
And that's the reason we drink it today, really,
is because of all these bath places or bath places,
like Bath or Lemington or Boxden.
And in the 19th century, in your Jane Aust.
Sorry, I just...
Bath is named after Bath. Is that like having a bath?
It would be so weird if we said I'm just going to go and have a quick lemmington.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, have you given the baby his lemmington tonight?
Although, we should make clear for the email writers that we do know that Bath
are not named after the place Bath.
I didn't know that.
And I don't mind getting any email about it.
I'm pleased that it's not now.
You know, isn't redundant. Are they not? That's a great answer to the round. It out about it. I'm bleak, don't know what now. You wasn't redundant.
Are they not?
That's a great little way around.
That's going to be the other way around, isn't it?
What?
You just do work on that, not even from a moment.
No, no, it could have been where someone had the first birth.
It could have been.
It was like a Roman walking bife trip.
It's a hell.
It's in the hot water, loved it. A loofah-loved it on his head.
And a duck floated by. He squeezed it and went, whack! That's amazing.
Anyway, the way the bottling began actually was people used to go somewhere like
bath and they'd take the waters for their health like in Jane Austen, you'd drink
the waters, you'd bathe in the waters, you get rid of your,
whatever, poolsy you had or spots or whatever.
But some people were too busy or too poor
to be able to afford this constant water treatment
and traveling to these spartans.
So they subscribed instead, much like you might subscribe to,
I don't know, Hello, Fresh or...
Right, we're at the clock, Anna.
What? What? What? You don't have to? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? 1806, they had a thermal sparr that opened, the bottling happened in 1826. But you would think then that as a result, this is just like, you'd go there,
it'd be this majestical, like kind of mindfulness place and really nice.
But we have an account of what it was like from someone traveling through there
in the 1810s roughly, and that was Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley.
He said, the appearance of the inhabitants is more wretched, diseased, and poor
than I ever recollect to have seen.
So not a great trip advisor review there?
No, no, no.
It does appear in Frankenstein as well, by the way, Evian.
He will go as soon as honeymoon there, I think.
That's right, yeah.
Wait, Dr. Frankenstein.
Yeah, yeah.
Really?
He goes to Evian, yeah, so Mary Shelley literally puts the town
into the book.
Phil Collins has a house on the banks of Lake Geneva.
Get out.
Does he?
What is that? That's surprising.
I just, I'm happy I know it.
OK.
It looks up people who live near Lake Geneva.
It's quite posh, isn't it?
That area has got my stuff.
It's like posh.
Yeah, it became posh after they found the water, really.
They built massive hotels there and a casino.
Oh, yeah.
The casino was interesting because after World War II
and Hitler killed himself, there were rumours that Hitler was still alive and there was a rumour that he was working as a crew
PA in there beyond the big casino.
Yeah, yeah.
There were two people who went down there trying to find Hitler and they were like, that's
just a guy who looks like Hitler.
How long were you there for, by the way, we just...
Oh, like, just until the baby got started crying. So about 45 minutes.
Oh, okay.
So just to have it.
Yeah, we just, we needed somewhere to go for lunch.
So I just went there.
Not long enough to find Hitler.
No, Hitler, no, we don't see.
And you guys are found a baby on, drinking at home.
Yeah, I drink heavier.
Do you?
Yeah, yeah.
Anyone else in your household drink?
Yeah.
Yeah, everyone in my house drinks heavier, yeah.
Who are the members of your household again?
It's myself and my wife.
Yeah.
And my daughter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyone else?
Well, no humans.
Look, we've got to come out and say this.
For the record, James has got a cat.
And sometimes his cat drinks heavier.
And when we talk sometimes, only when he're thirsty every single day, James gives his cat
every hour.
I have to say before we started, these guys already knew this and I do think of all the
things in my life, this is the only thing that really can spoil my man of the people.
This is your mial too moment as a bitch, for real.
And I kind of want you to keep hold of it because it's's not because of the vitality. It's your fault, yes.
It's an ass fault.
And just dear listener, this is what happened.
Anna told me that cats have special taste buds
on their tongues that can taste water.
And so for us, water doesn't taste of anything,
but for cats, it's really important.
And they can taste the difference.
And London water is disgusting.
True.
And we happen to have quite a lot of everyone in the house because I'd stop how the load for disgusting. True. And we happen to have quite a lot of every
time in the house because I'd stop how the load for Covid. And I just started
giving it to my cat and she liked it and she still likes it.
Yeah, since you left Bolton J. We live by our farts. I think the listeners would
appreciate that we live and we die and our cats live and die by our farts.
And that's fair enough and it's true cats can taste water, they were as we can't.
But then there's this big question over,
given the water taste of nothing,
how do we know we're drinking water
and not some poisonous substance all the time?
Well, you can't, well,
that's interesting,
because it doesn't taste,
because it's,
but there are some tasteless things,
like arsenic doesn't taste of anything, does it?
Indeed.
But you can't, like if I,
if I give you a pint of arsenic,
you wouldn't necessarily know it was not water.
No, that's true, but I would just think the odds are you struggle to get hold of a pint of arsenic.
You'd have to re- I'd have to have really annoyed you.
And keep going.
Right, resourceful fan.
No, I just sort of think it's probably...
It's probably going to be water.
And I've been right every time so far. I don't like to brag.
You don't have to be wrong once.
No, that's true. I'll keep spinning that wheel. But there is a reason you haven't been wrong,
which is that you can tell that it's water and they've only just found this and it's that it doesn't
taste sour but it registers on our sour taste buds and it's related to a fact that a guest shared
actually one of those other guests we had in when we kicked James off the show. I think basically
when you drink water it washes away your saliva, and then our mouths,
in the process of replacing saliva, produce protons,
and Steve Mold when he came on, his fact was,
protons taste sour.
Oh yeah.
So it drinks our sour taste buds.
It is mad how much bottled water we drink now.
I had no idea how much people are drinking bottled water,
and I don't get it.
So obviously, in developing countries, it's really important because you can't get, in a lot water, and I don't get it. So obviously in developing countries,
it's really important because you can't get,
in a lot of countries, you can't get clean tap water,
but that is...
I can't get tasty water in London, of course.
You can't get delicious water in London,
same problem.
But it's not developing countries.
I'm not helping it.
You're fast-tracking to cancellation.
It's not developing countries that are consuming it all.
So in Singapore
How many litres do you reckon per person per annum?
Per annum? Oh my god. That's how many I mean half liter a day a liter a day 300 liters
300 liters per person per annum of tab water
1,129 liters per per liter. Three liters of water a day.
Bottle water per person per day. That is what it's going to be. Some outliers
aren't there. There's going to be some people who don't have any of that. Australia is a
second worst offender. Australians are drinking 504 litres of bottled water a person.
Yeah. It's not insane. It's really hot. The water's good. The tap water is fine.
That's like you're not in Australia are just saying.
By the beach, you can't drink the salt water.
You need to have a good one.
No, and it's proposing you drink salt water.
There is such a gap in your lodging.
No, there's not.
There's not a bottle of water at the sea.
No, the lodging is you're down by the sea for a lot of the day
where you cannot get access to tap water.
Fill up a bottle and take it down.
Oh, yeah.
I do think that's probably that argument is persuaded me, not that it's right, but that's
where we why it is.
It's convenient.
Isn't it people are out there forgotten?
They're bottled.
Exactly.
Remember your bottle Australians.
Is everyone at the beach always Australian?
I know that's the myth that we read, but like I don't believe they are.
They do live next to the beach, don't they?
I mean, no one lives in the middle.
I can't.
Where you'd also need bottled water. I found a thing about water pipes.
Oh yeah.
This was, because I was looking up, you know, tap water and how it, you know, just how it works and what the pipes are like blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, this is from a website called Best Life Online.
Oh yeah.
Right.
And the headline is,
8 surprising places you're letting snakes into your home.
I'd be surprised living in Central London if they're getting it anywhere.
Yeah, and actually the terrible thing about this article was I wasn't especially surprised
by any of the places.
Well, what toilet?
They could up through your toilet.
Toilet, water pipes, plumbing gaps, didn't have window.
Cut, cut door.
No.
That's much, I would be a bit surprised by that because you're expecting the cat, aren't
you?
Shows, cracks in the foundation, basement basement access points and the only one I find
Madly surprising shoes you might have left outside. Yeah, that's a nice take of your shoes outside, you know
What would be a surprising entry though?
Out of your computer tower like just spiraling out of the computer tower
I just do my work on my computer my office in my house
Do you come all the way to your computer house, everybody?
This is very hard to touch.
I have a tower.
And maybe you won't put a vacation, but I do my computer work.
It's annoying, because you can't get Wi-Fi in there.
But you still go over there.
I'm going to get a bit if you stand there. One of the arrows, let's see.
You feel it's way easier.
One of the hot ones.
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[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.
My fact this week is that there's a mangrove forest in Indonesia
that's actually a womangrove.
Oh, yeah.
A little roundabout.
Yeah, it's not. It's not really a fact that you can tell your friends woman grove. Riddle round about.
Yeah, it's not really a fact that you can tell your friends is it without me explaining
it a bit further, but it's really cool.
So this is in Papua and it's a forest called Hutan Parampuan and it's a forest where
only women are allowed to go.
The oldest women who go there say it's been happening for as long as they can remember
and their grandmotherothers did it. And mangroves are basically forests that are underwater partly.
So no, no, sorry, it's bad description. I'm back track.
I'm back. Mangroves are trees. The mangrove, there are about a few dozen species of mangrove
tree and they're the only trees which can grow in salt water. They're amazing things for all
sorts of reasons. You tend to get them in bracket
sharia where it's like right on the coast so it's where the saltwater hits the
fresh water. All along the shoreline. Yeah and where it's basically they exist
between high and low tide so they spend a lot of their life in water and a
lot of their life out of water and it's very swampy and the gross and a
mangrove but these swampy it's gross if you don't like swampy, but these women like it.
Because they get to gossip, essentially. So these are specifically people from the
engross and tabati tribes on the Indonesian side of the Papua island. And they weighed in,
they collect these shellfish from the mud, they sell them at market, you have to go in naked,
which is kind of the reason why men aren't allowed. And because then they see the ladies naked. And they essentially use it as a way to swap stories, do some female
bonding, bitch about the men, the past down on a lot of ancient wisdom. It's just a really
great women of the same age.
It's like gossiping, slaying off the men, occasionally a bit of ancient wisdom.
I like those because I subscribe to one of those
gossip magazines, but then on the last page
there's always a little bit of ancient wisdom.
But they also, they're encouraged to just yell out
whatever's there in a voices,
so just random statements that no one will understand.
Oh really?
Yeah, you get it out, you do that, that's fine.
Yeah, that's clever.
The inner voice yell.
Yeah.
I read that men are allowed in the forest,
but only when there are no women there, is that right?
That is correct.
So there are times that men are allowed in to collect wood,
but they've got to make sure that there are no ladies in there.
Question, it feels to me like it would be quite hard
to work out when there are no ladies in a forest.
As far as a big, is there like one of those in-out stickers
or labels we just slide it over?
No, you just got to listen to the gossiping
that's going on, which is basically what they say.
That's so they can just talk and talk.
So if you can't hear any ladies, they're probably not there
because they use it as their time literally to just
ask for a chance.
Or quote, quote, mox or really a nickname.
No, yeah.
And if you do enter as a man when you're not allowed to,
you are taken to tribal court, and you have to pair fine
in polished stones.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, so they take their coal coal, it's called, it's like they're boat, they have a sort
of group of them that go out with a singular boat and they make a pack not to leave each other,
and then they go clam hunting, fish hunting as well.
And big problems in modern day mangrove, womangrove situations, is the fact that people like Evian bottles
are getting into their areas. It's full of plastic now, and so the clams have gone,
weighed out sorry to knock Evian. I do, I recycle my Evian bottles,
the catch rings. I don't go all the way to Papua New Guinea to throw them away.
But there's a big problem now.
It's really affecting them.
Mangroves are so great.
And it's quite sad researching though, because you read about all the threats to them, predominantly
from climate change and habitat loss, habitat destruction, but if people are using a strip
of coastline for things like shrimp farming, which is a big industry in lots of these countries,
then they tear out the mangroves basically.
But they are incredible.
They're among the only few plants
which can tolerate salt water
out of 400,000 species of plant
in the world, 1,500 can tolerate salt water.
And mangroves are among them.
It's amazing.
They live for a really long time.
It's so alien.
When I hear it, like just all the things
that they can do that other trees can't do.
So yeah, they filter out 90% of the salt that comes in.
But the ones that don't do that, they've got these special leaves.
I mean, the leaves are like waxy substances
where they leak out the salt.
They can also sweat out crystallized salt on their leaves.
They're so good.
But then there's other ones where they will basically send the salt
to the old leaves and the old bark.
So it's not touching the new bit of the...
That's so intelligent.
I'm using the word intelligent. It's not touching the new bit of the... That's so intelligent, I'm using the word intelligent.
It's not using the word quite wrongly.
It is.
It seems like if you look around the world that lots of groups of women are in
a mangrove forest working, it seems.
Not really.
In Mexico, they have last Chila Meras,
who are a man women who work in a certain area of mangroves,
protecting the ecosystem in Kenya. who are a Mayan women who are working a certain area of mangroves protecting
the ecosystem in Kenya. You have the mangrove mothers who work on Pate Island.
Pate Island is that? You live big footprints in Pate Island, don't you?
It might be Pate Island, but I prefer Pate Island, don't you? And in India, in
Maharashtra, you have a collective of women who kind of work
in the mangroves, they do safaris,
but they also help protect the forest.
So it just seems like everywhere you look around the world,
wherever there's mangroves,
it seems to be women working there.
We need to rename them.
Sounds like they need to rebrand.
Yeah, they mop up tsunamis.
Yeah, that's incredible.
Actually, just to absorb the energy of incoming waves when they're coastal.
So the wave can lose two thirds of its energy, right? Yeah, you know, and that's really,
really useful. There was a study in China which found they reduced flood water level in
a tropical storm by about three meters. Wow, which is very useful.
Annoying for a surfer, don't surf in a mangrove. You'll be a brilliant wave coming out
of you. I would have disappeared by the time. But very few of the beach boys,
big hits are about mangroves.
The great stuff.
Yeah, but the nice thing I do is they store
huge amounts of carbon because they build up
these big peak deposits beneath them.
Some of them are up to six meters deep.
Wow.
And they did a study in 2001.
So quite a while ago, but they found that the loss
of mangroves is 35%, which is worse than tropical
forests or coral reefs.
I really don't like that fact at all.
The world's biggest bacterium ever was found at a mangrove forest.
I think we mentioned this one.
I think it was a her, otherwise that bacterium would have been arrested and forced to hand
in polished rocks.
Can I say, if you eat mangrogrove it contains a sparigusa
acid which is the stuff that makes your urine smell. Get away.
Eating asparagus. Does it make your wee smell the same as as
asparagus does? No the same. Asparagus acid also kills parasitic
nematodes which is why it's evolved into these two places. So it protects the asparagus plant and the mangroves against these nematode worms.
That's good. Interesting thing about that. They need we, mangroves.
Yeah, to say. They love fish we. It turned out, because they,
apart from the way they survive, is through consuming lots of nitrogen. They make great use of nitrogen,
and that is produced by fish we. And they did a study of a mangrove forest in the Bahamas
And they found that there were just two species of fish two types of snapper that doubled the amount of nitrogen in the water and made it possible to survive
Wow, hey, here's a little mini quiz. Yeah, which of these is not a nickname for mangroves?
Okay, walking trees
Dead man's fingers
The kidneys of the coast.
Well, you would think kidneys are the coast because they effectively are doing what kidneys do,
which is a very interesting stuff, so I'm going to say it's definitely not that.
That's not the nickname.
It's not the nickname.
No, that is the nickname.
That is the nickname.
It is. Your question is which is not the nickname.
Yeah, I so right, you're doing the long way round.
Yeah.
Double negative. I'm going to say they look like they walk because their roots are so Your question is which is not the nickname. Yeah, right. You're doing the long way round. Yeah.
Double negative.
I'm going to say they look like they walk
because their roots are so huge
and they come out of the ground.
I've actually always found them really creed
because they look like giant spiders, don't they?
Fields of spiders.
So I think they're probably called walking trees.
Is that what you say?
Well, I think that bananas are walking trees.
Yeah.
Like bananas walk as in they move.
I think bananas are.
Banana trees. I saw it from in Bajanas. Yeah, banana trees they move. Banana trees.
I saw it from in Bajanas.
Banana trees walk.
They move.
As in they'll propagate another banana tree maybe a few meters away from them.
And if you go back two years later, it looks like the trees moved.
I think this was one of the famous moments on QI where Sean Locke said
the trees they walk and Stephen was like no, they don't and then it came through
Well, we were literally on the computers going yes, they do Stephen. Yes, they do Stephen
Stephen this is Andy coming to you from my computer tower
I'm gonna say that I think you kind of danced around the idea of the dead man fingers when you said spiders
It looks like dead man fingers are coming out with these big pots.
I say yes to that, yes to that.
And I think you're tricking us, I think, all three.
Oh, Dan's got it.
They're all nicknames.
Oh, that's what.
Warpie trees.
You could be asked to come up with a fourth fake hint.
Deadman Fingers.
It can be said, oh, come up with another one now.
Oh, god.
Like, um, uh, well, stop staring at me, old baby.
I'll be tied. You can do it later and edit go on. Like, um, uh, well, stop staring at me, I'll be
tired. You can do it later and edit it in. Yeah, yeah, salty, creepy boys. Oh, okay.
Now I see the cool one. Can I quickly talk about a place where women are not allowed?
Yeah, the Yorky factory.
This is Mount Athos in Greece, which was known as a place of 6,000 beards because there were monasteries on there and monks were allowed, but women were not allowed in there.
And they had a law called the Avaton at which prohibited women from entering. And the idea is that the monastery started
when the Virgin Mary was sailing across the coast
or something and they stopped at this place
and the voice of God said,
let no other woman come here
because the Virgin Mary's been here
and no other women are allowed.
So we're gonna put a stop to that.
What is it like?
We didn't like her.
Yeah.
So even when the British Royal Family went to Prince Philip was allowed on the island and
the Queen at Queen Elizabeth the Civil War.
Yeah, that was it.
Helena of Bulgaria, she in the 40th century had the plague and she was brought there to
try and help her, but she was carried so that her feet never touched the ground.
And there's a brilliant writer, a French writer called
Marie Choisy, and she had written a book called Inouier-Sheilet-Fille, which was a month
with the girls where she was in a brothel, and then she wrote a second book called Inouier-Sheilet's
Home, which was a month with the men, which was about going to this place. And she had a double radial mastectomy.
That's commitment to that.
I know what?
And wore a false mustache.
Wow.
And she posed as a man and went to this place.
And she spoke to all the monks and stuff and asked them what was going on.
And she asked one monk, she said, what's this deal like?
Is it true that you're not even allowed female animals
in this place?
And the monk said, we must draw the line somewhere.
The day we possessed ahead,
some brothers would argue that we should also accept
to she-cat, a you or even a she-ass.
And there is but a short step from a she-ass to a woman.
What do you mean are you?
Not me?
I'm not. What's the name of that?
This is a stash.
But yeah, isn't that amazing?
Wow.
I've never heard of this Marie Choisie.
Wow.
She's Choisie, pretty weirdly, I would say,
having both your breasts locked off.
Yeah.
Just to go on this journalistic expedition?
Yeah, she was like a feminist reporter
of an crazy sort of Louis
the Roo of her time. Yeah, but you won't see Louis chopping his dick off to get into this
mangrove, will you? Like, that is... I don't know Louis, if you're listening.
I'm in a ladies' mangrove. Oh, I'm Louis! Louis! I'm from the BBC. Okay.
I'm from the BBC. You okay?
Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.
My fact is that until the early 20th century, Swiss people were routinely being injured by
the last ice age.
The film?
That's right.
I said it. Just a squirrel with a nut. I don't know. right. I hate it.
Just a squirrel with a nut.
I don't know.
I haven't seen it.
Is that what happens?
That's what it's about.
There is not under the eyes.
Can't find it very long.
Really?
All four movies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's padding.
Hasn't found it yet.
Look, let's press on.
This is a fact.
It came from a list of facts. Every year there's a guy called Tom Wittwell who does a list of 52 things.
I've mentioned one of this facts before. I have to limit myself because it's such a great list of facts.
But he mentioned this fact which came from a brilliant London review of books article by Janna Goodman and it's all about Swiss people who until the early 20th century, loads of them had goiters, right? And that is a
bulge of flesh that comes out at the front of your neck. And they can be really big. They
can really limit your life if you have one. They make you wheeze. They weigh on your windpipe.
They're really unpleasant to have, you know, and they're harmful. And everyone in Switzerland
had them. Not everyone, but a lot of people had them.
80% of the country.
It was crazy.
And it was only on the sort of Swiss alpine plateau.
We're quite no like Geneva actually,
for this fact as well.
And there were dozens of theories doing the rounds.
Is it the landscape, the air, the high altitude sunlight?
Is it the incest, someone said?
Is it moral failure?
Incest, probably a category of that.
Anyway, like all these theories are doing rounds.
And basically it turned out it was thanks to the last ice age
because during the last ice age,
Switzerland very high up was covered by an ice sheet
that was about a thousand meters thick
and it melted and then refroze loads and loads of times,
right? And it just absolutely ripped off
the top 250 meters of rock and soil from
the Swiss plateau. And wherever the ice sheet was, the soil was stripped of a chemical,
which was iodine. And the lack of iodine is what causes goaters.
And everyone was like, thank God it wasn't the incest.
We can keep going, huh?
Oh, dear. And it was lack of iodine. And it just did a complete number on half the population
of Switzerland. It's centuries. It was a chaos.
I can't believe I've never heard of this. Had you guys heard of this before?
No. It's astonishing because this isn't like, you know, the 1700s. This is up until
the 1920s. That 30% of like military personnel in Switzerland had giant,
like when we talk about fashion as we're gonna do in the next fact,
you know, you do stuff to, yeah, no.
We rarely throw forward.
Wow.
But like, you know, clothing was designed largely,
you know, for them to hide these giant throbbing lumps on their neck,
which is, yeah, you can see photos.
Can I do something a bit more classic and throw back to the last fact? Yeah, good, yeah, you can see photos. Can I do something a bit more classic
and throw back to the Latsfax?
Yeah, good, yeah, safe ground.
And they used to have these things in the mangroves,
in the biggest mangrove in the world,
which is on the board of In-Year and Bangladesh, I think.
And they would also have these big sort of colors
which covered your entire neck,
but it wasn't to stop you from being able to see your glitter.
Can you guess what it was for?
Fan pose, anti-vampower device.
Close.
Get away.
Yeah, very close.
Um, anti-vampower.
Think something more real.
Well, no.
It's not that close.
Spider.
Oh, spider.
Spider.
And no, it's because tigers live there and people working in the mangroves, they would
be caught by tigers and so on.
I don't know if a little rough around the legs
could be that safe.
They were quite solid colors,
but they would stop the tigers from being able to bite you.
Grabby brothers, grab for the neck.
Yeah, sorry anyway, we were talking about Gaiters.
Gaiters, yeah.
And I find it incredible that the ice age was this specific,
just affected this one's place so specifically.
The world was kind of okay,
but it stripped away the iodine.
It must, I mean, I think maybe it was moral failing.
Um, it was just a very targeted approach.
I don't know, it's good to really let
it get these things, it's a disaster theory.
But it was quite hard for them to know exactly
how many people had it because everyone was hiding it.
People were embarrassed by it.
So the census, if they did any kind of survey,
wouldn't really truly show it.
So when conscription was happening for the armies, you had to have your medical and there was no way of hiding it. So in 1921,
nearly 30% of 19-year-old conscripts had a goiter on their neck.
If you buy one of those Swiss army knives, there is a special goiter implement.
People always say it's for taking stones out of horses, but actually it's for popping the goiter.
it's for taking stones out of horseshoes but actually it's for popping the glider. Oh god. There was Mark Twain when he visited in 1880. Oh he had something typically kind
and understanding to say about it. Wow. If you have views on Twain Cliff, I don't like
him. He said, this isn't going to indeed do him actually. He wrote, I have seen the
principal features of Swiss scenery, Mont Blanc and the Goiter.
Lovely, thank you Mark, another.
I'm a very human and wise officer.
Sorry, I just don't like Mark's road.
Anyway, listen, we've all...
It's because he was incredibly rude about Jane Austen once.
Oh my god!
He was famously...
No, no, he famously wrote,
Oh, I'd like to dig her up and beat her over the head with her own shinbone.
And I just think, it's give me a break, give me a break, Mark.
Yeah.
Next time you write something as good as Emma, you can have it's give me a break, give me a break mark. Yeah.
Next time you write something as good as Emma,
you can have a pop at Big Dog Jane,
but you never did.
And you never will, because you're dead.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
Okay.
So it affected not just goiters.
So there was this other medical condition called,
it was known at the time as creatinism, right?
Where people had very serious development.
Mental problems, they grew much shorter than normal.
Their features didn't grow properly.
A lot of them were deaf and mute.
And there was a Swiss Goiter Commission.
There were schools across the country for deaf mute children.
As in, it really wasn't like a national health disaster.
That's what I mean, I can't believe we haven't heard of this.
Exactly.
The word Cretin comes from this for French Alps
because of this.
And do you know the origin of the word Cretin?
I thought it was really interesting
because obviously it became an extremely offensive word,
but originally it came from an Alpine dialect word
because it was so common in the Alps.
It came from an Alpine dialect word for Christian.
Cretin.
Cretin.
And it was to remind people that these people
who looked often, you know, so inhuman away, a lot of deformities, to remind people that these people who looked often, you know, so inhuman
away, a lot of deformities, to remind people that they were still human, Christian people
who were equally loved by God, which would be very important to them.
That's amazing.
That's very humane term.
Because Bertrand Russell, he thought that iodine might have been evidence that humans
don't have a soul.
Because what he saw was that when you gave this chemical to people, suddenly they became
more human as he saw it.
Perhaps it's all about chemistry and it's not about the soul and Christianity and whatever.
That's interesting.
Yeah, that kind of, you can see the kind of where chemical driven machines, when you throw
something new into us and it changes the court.
And it's kind of what happened right. So when the all the theories that we're
talking about earlier, moral compasses and all that sort of stuff, bad beer, when the
original list, that was on there, that was on there. Where do you wake up in bed with
Lizard Cousin or a North American? Sorry, it's the bad beer. Of course, the incest.
There was four main players, I believe, when it comes down to how this eventually
got solved. One was called Otto Bayard, and they were pushing this theory that, yeah,
we need more iodine. And he actually went to sort of little communities, and he upped
the iodine in all the things that they were consuming. So he went to the cows, and he
made sure that it was in the salt that they were licking, it was in the things that they were consuming. So he went to the cows and he made sure that it was in the salt that they were licking,
it was in the milk that they were producing,
there was tiny amounts that were being put
into the food of this family.
And he did it over a term of a school course
in the winter and he came back
and they had gotten better and suddenly he went Jesus.
This is what it is, they're missing their iodine.
And that's why we have it now
that people put iodine in salt, isn't it?
Yeah, because people around the world eat salt.
Everyone eats a bit of salt.
Iadine actually works quite well with salt, so they put it in there and that's kind of
what did it.
This already called the Andy said.
So it's 88% of salt is now iodine.
Is salt is not the UK, really?
Really?
No, we get our iodine in other ways.
I mean, it's in a lot of milk, because cows are given iodine.
And so it sort of happened that way.
That's just so it hadn't no idea I thought it wasn't iodized.
Really?
I believe the vast majority is not.
That's right, right?
It's usually, isn't it?
Yeah, like sea salt and rock salt are not,
because they're made differently.
But even table salt in the UK is not standardly iodized.
The doctor who found it was called hyenrychunsica,
great name.
And it was because it all goes through your thyroid gland, which is at the front of your neck.
And if you don't get enough, it swells up, because it's desperately trying to find more iodine from your bloodstream.
So it swells and swells and swells. That's what causes it.
And it's like all of it, the brain fog and the muscle ache and the goiters,
all of it is due to your body just desperately hunting.
But the problem that took them a long time to work out, why it was just a little bit of iodine was required is that if you give people too much iodine, at least
to catastrophic health consequences in the other realm. So you need one 15,000 of one
gram of iodine a day. It's very small. And they were trying to give people a gram of
iodine. And they were going to terribly ill. So, well, the iodine is a disaster. Look
at that. So it took a long time to work out.
It was almost frustrating things.
It's a little bit like hand-washing
where people were saying it for over a hundred years.
People kept saying, do you know what?
I think I did the answer to this and everyone,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
it's just gonna kill you.
And one of the key people, another one of the key people
who'd changed things was a guy called Hans Eganberger.
He sounds like a McDonald's offering.
He had it.
He had it.
It was actually very very important man.
Do you want to tell someone said to him one day, do you want salt on your egg and burger?
And he will.
Tell us a moment.
Good old egg and burger.
He was a very charismatic guy.
He was the male.
He was in charge of a specific Swiss canton.
And he realised that Idyn, a little bit of Idyn was the answer.
And so he decided to add to his town cinema,
this is in the 1920s, his town cinema's program
of light entertainment.
So the cinema was showing loads of really fun films.
He added a lecture on iodized salt
in amongst the light entertainment,
but for some reason, because it was so charismatic
and popular, everyone flooded into watch it,
and he put lots of jokes in, he did this lecture,
lots of tricks and jokes and
Fun words like he called it whole salt. No, that's not fun
But you know it was on the at the time anyway
He it's straight after everyone went to see this great film of his there was a petition a couple thousands of signatures and
I'd I saw it was introduced really wow
And then Gandhi hated it didn't he?
Brilliant. Wow. And then Gandhi hated it. Gandhi. Did he? What the iodization of salt? Yeah, he did lots of good stuff of
course, Gandhi, but we have to say for balance.
Probably, I mean, the problem was that it was the British who were
taxing local salt and then kind of replacing it with these iodized salt and
he kind of started anti salt riots.
Did he walk to the sea protesting about the salt?
He did the long walk, yeah.
To try and get proper just salt from the sea.
I think it was right to go in, obviously.
Obviously, the tax thing was real,
but the iodide thing was kind of just a sign,
hustle that he thought was colonial.
See, a remiss fire from Gandhi there.
I'm not trying to cancel Gandhi,
like you are trying to cancel Mark Twain, just to say.
No, no, I'll definitely keep going on the train thing.
Goiter used to be nicknamed Darbyshire Neck.
In the UK.
In the UK, right.
Yeah, supposedly because people in Bucksden got it.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Well, lots of bits of Darbyshire are quite far from the sea
and see food could take that. All of Well, lots of bits of Derbyshire are quite far from the sea and sea food could taste like
that.
All of that, in fact.
Yeah, but some bits are close to the valley.
That's what it is.
You're right, because the exact centre of Derbyshire is a long way from the sea.
Yeah, and the sea food contains lots of iodine.
Oh, yeah.
Maybe people living in the less see adjacent
Which obviously doesn't touch the sea we're getting a bit less just on iodine
It's very useful in other ways. I actually remember this is just personal But I'm in behind to drink iodine water if you guys ever drunk that because it purifies water
No, I went to Malawi when I was a teenager for like two months and yeah
With iodine tablets. Yeah, we can drop an iodine tab in and you taste it for the first time you go I can't drink teenager for like two months and yeah Would they had in tablets? Yeah, we'd do a top and ironing tab in and you taste it for the first time and you go,
I can't drink this shit for two months.
So what does it do?
It purifies the water.
Just purifies the water.
Yeah, it's very useful for that.
I feel like I've had that, yeah.
That's why Andy's the only one with a gaiter around there, take it.
I really thought my polo neck was good feeling that, but
apparently it was.
It's a savior of that tiger in fact,
to you, I think.
But something else it does,
you can detect counterfeit money.
And if you remember your school chemistry,
you might be able to work out why.
So real money is on cotton or linen, usually paper.
So we shouldn't go with paper money.
Counterfeit money, often just made of actual paper,
wood based paper, and wood-based
paper contains starch. And do you remember when you're detecting starch in science?
Iodine is the thing that reacts to starch and shows up if starch is in something. So
if you rub an iodine pen on paper and it reacts to it, then it means that it's made of wood.
But this has been used to catch people, and there was a story in 2016 where a 14 year old girl caused the police to descend on her school lunch and she was put in handcuffs.
Oh my god. Because she paid with a $2 bill, bizarrely, that an iodine pen that the school had
showed up as fake. The police came. The police came and she put in handcuffs. She wasn't
allowed to eat lunch that day. She went hungry. She said, I promise that my grandma gave me the money.
Was her grandmother doing the forgery?
It turns out her grandmother's not a criminal either.
This method doesn't work on money that was made before about 1955.
And her grandma had given her, obviously a note they've been singing her, will it?
Oh, very long time.
So she went free in the end. She is not still...
I'm not sure she was still a coser.
It's not hard. You've got to keep her in just in case.
Pardon by Biden, if the years later.
Her and the Turkey.
Gosh, I've got an audience fact about ice sheets.
Oh yeah.
It's from Percy Fullford.
And I just love the way this email begins, right?
Percy writes, admittedly, this one sounds a bit like a James Harkin quote,
fact, but bear with me.
What? I think Percy has confused James and Dan here as an off-perse.
Oh, thank you Percy for your email.
Percy, what is the dress on?
I'm not giving you it.
I'm sure he just means a Dan Shriver fact.
Well, no one's wearing that.
I'm taking a fact from that.
You know, because Dan likes his crypto stuff.
Yeah, okay. Anyway, we'll purse him. Are you going to tell us that? I'm taking a fact from that. You know, Stan likes his crypto stuff.
Yeah, okay.
Anyway, we'll person you.
Are you going to tell us that?
I've got to say, this fact is falling on very stony ground.
In the last ice age, much of Canada was covered in massive
several kilometer thick glaciers which have now melted.
Those glaciers were immensely heavy, but now the weight has been lifted.
The crust is springing back up at about 12 million metres a year,
like a memory foam mattress.
Yeah.
However, until the crust... 12imetres a year, like a memory phone mattress. Yeah. However, until the cross...
12 million metres a year. Mill-mill-mill-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m I'm not underwhelmed. However, until the cross fully rebounds from the weight of these glaciers,
Canada's landscape is missing the immense mass that caused its shape.
So for the time being, moving to Canada, particularly to somewhere near Hudson Bay,
remains an effective weight loss method.
Oh, yeah.
Good to know.
That's true of the UK as well, actually.
Is it?
Yeah.
We had a nice sheet that went as far down as pretty much where stone hinges.
And then it's not there anymore.
And that's why the UK is slightly slanted,
and that's why you get big cliffs where Dover is,
but if you've got to mock them, for instance,
it's a really long sandy beach.
Because it's just been crushed down, yeah.
Right, it's amazing.
And now it's bound to bound to back, right?
Over millions of years, it will do, yeah.
You can't bound to castle on it, but. I should say should say this is from memory but there's another thing about our sheets
you just reminded me of which is there's a restaurant in that was in Italy
and I think due to climate change it was on a glacier and the glacier is very
very slowly moving but moving more than you thought and they now think that
the restaurant might be in Switzerland, because it was kind near the border and it's kind of slowly moving towards the direction.
We should say it's what I stupidly didn't write this bit down, but one of the big moments
in this whole story of this main fact about the last ice age being responsible is there
was one person who stood up in front of the academic community and said, I think it's
the melting ice sheet.
I think that's what's done.
Yeah. Like it was a proper, he put it forward as the idea community and said, I think it's the melting ice sheet. I think that's what's done.
Like it was a proper, he put it forward as the idea,
and everyone just went, you are nuts.
That's worse than the incest idea.
That's like, it was it.
Hans met muffin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact.
My fact this week is that during the reign of Charles II, women's dressing tables tended
to include both face and nipple makeup.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah, so when you make up your face, yeah, I'm no expert, but you're putting on foundation
and you're putting on the stuff on top of that
Yeah, maybe some lipstick. They call it nipstick nice
How are you making up the nipple basically? Yeah, it's a more of a lipstick or a foundation
I think that's a great question. Yeah, feels like it could be a foundation. Yeah, more like a foundation
I do it as eyeliner. I do it as eyeliner paint some little eyelashes around it
So you're kind of winking with your nip. So it looks like a little sunshine. Yeah nice. I do lipstick make it a big red blob. Wow. Yeah. But why did they need it? Well they
needed it because this came in a period where Charles the second basically lowered the cleavage line.
He was sorry. Sorry. Can King Charles do that? Now that he's the king. Oh yeah. That's why he picked
the name Charles. He's going gonna start where he left off.
He's been using us all in gently,
but he will gently start lowering those lines.
The other thing is just a lure is in, isn't it?
And then he whips away our tops.
Wow. Yeah, no, he was a sort of like,
you know, he came in, he was very liberal.
Was the Mary Monarch, was he?
Yeah, Mary Monarch.
Yeah, that was his name, that was his name.
He was very libidenous, saucy, Mary Monock. Yeah, that was his name. He was very libidness, saucy,
profite, just after the Cromwellian times. Exactly, anyone would have seen Mary on
the whole program. Not a high bar, but he genuinely didn't seem like a bit of a goa.
Yeah, and they're just screw this trend whereby if you're wearing corsets and
your nipple happened to peak over, that was not a bad thing and then suddenly everyone thought, well, let's lower the corset a bit, let's get the boobs out,
let's get it. And it was, you know, seeing a knuckle was far more scandalous and titillating
to a pervert than seeing...
Yeah, it's a duet of body. You don't have to be a pervert.
The word used to be ankylating, didn't it?
Oh, very nice.
There you go.
I mean, it was still very raunchy.
We should say it wasn't like people were going around to the shop flashing a boob to
get free loaf of bread.
It was still, you know, there were paintings we have of people exposing breasts, but they
were generally prostitutes or actresses.
Same thing.
They were meant to. And those days.
Indeed.
I am very good caveat.
Yeah.
Yeah, the famous Nell Gwynn picture.
This is why I was never allowed to host the Oscars the second time.
She was amazing by the way, just before we disappear on Nell Gwynn.
I've never read about Nell Gwynn before.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, so Charles II basically stipulated that when you're at the theatre and men who were
in all the plays playing women, that should no longer be the case.
It should be women now playing women.
There was Margaret Hughes who was the first woman to step on stage and play a woman in a play.
And then Nell Gwyn, who became very famous, they met.
She was working in...
Oh, and Charles met, right?
Her and Charles met, sorry.
So basically, she was working outside of theatre, which was the King's theatre.
And then she met this guy who was called Charles Hart, who became known as Charles I to her.
And then she... Not to be confused with the headless one.
Yes, that was just what she named him.
What she named him to.
Retroactually after she got together with Charles II.
Well, because then she had to Charles II, which was Charles Saxoel.
So actually Charles II together with Charles II. Or because then she had a Charles II which was Charles Saxoel.
So actually Charles II was her Charles III.
Oh, no.
This is a sort of baudy fast developing.
They're all behind a different door, all on stage.
She was, why I know about Mel Guin is her mother was a prostitute.
She was an ohorin cellar, I think.
That's right.
And then became an actor slash prostitute.
Right. I always think it's very
Pigmalion, isn't it? Don't you think? It's a much bigger. She's very witty. There's all these anecdotes
have made it through the year. So like the one time she was going in a carriage through the streets
of her city and and the people were furious because they thought that she was a different mistress.
They thought that she was the Duchess of Portsmouth, and so they were yelling at her,
going, you Catholic whore, you Catholic whore, and she leaned out of the carriage and she said,
pray, good people be civil, I am the Protestant whore, not the Catholic.
That's clever.
This is really witty at the time.
Roll around laughing.
Yeah.
At the time, yes.
But anyway, so she was one of the people who got that whaps out.
And we still have paintings of it from the time.
We do. And yeah, it was a time, it was kind of like the roaring 20s, wasn't it?
Because it was post just for international listeners, it was just after we'd had this like unpleasant interregnum uptight.
Following an unpleasant civil war.
Yeah, yeah, everyone was a bit tired of the unpleasantness.
They weren't allowed to have fun, The Puritans were all over them. And then this period came in and everyone
loosened right up and people got really into fashion and makeup. So women haven't worn
that much makeup. They'd worn very thick lead paint on their faces, often as famously
Queen Elizabeth did and may have killed her. But other than that, didn't really wear that
much until now. And it was the
century of the massive hoop skirt when you see women in these giant skirts they couldn't
fit through doors. That was then, and I didn't realise what the hoop skirts, people took
the piss out of them the moment they appeared, and men kind of hated them, men just laughed
at women for wearing them. You couldn't see the ankles, could you? If you're a pervert.
Yeah, they're very upset about that. But yeah, women stuck to them and actually they were,
when you look at how they were made, you had much more motion in them. Because basically, they involved this big whale bone kind of giant umbrella sticking out from your waist.
But underneath you were just fully naked and free,
so it used to be that you'd be covering heavy peticoats all over your legs and stuff.
You can be doing river dance under there.
You can be doing under there.
You can be smuggling houses under there, but they were quite sexy because if you bent
over you did expose a bit of ankle.
Oh right.
Oh really?
If you really bent over you could expose everything.
You were perverts, we probably think that was a bit much
The waistcoat was invented by Charles II on the 14th of October 1666
It's not amazing that we know whether the idea of wearing a suit and a waistcoat on that exact date
Did he think of it or did someone help him his tight?
Or you know what I mean he got the credit in fairness,
but there will have been other people
who did a lot of the hardy hards.
But there was accusations that England
was being dictated to by France in lots of different ways.
And they were saying that basically not only that,
everyone in court is just copying French clothes.
And Charles II was not very happy about this
and wanted to make
a statement and said, okay, we're going to invent a new thing, we're going to all wear
trousers, all wear jackets, all wear waist coats and they're going to be made by English
wool. And you're not allowed to wear your French fashion anymore, you have to wear the
English fashion and we know about it because peeps rights about it. So it definitely did
happen. What year was that, sorry? 66, just after the fire.
And...
When, again, you'd think,
like a king with his head,
you know, a king with his head screwed on,
sorry, Charles II, that's probably been intense.
LAUGHTER
Would have his mind on other matters,
like covering from the plague of the fire, then.
Yeah. Yeah.
You need to strengthen the waistcoat.
Is that...
Political distractions. Yeah, you need to stretch the waistcoat. It's political distractions. Yeah, yeah,
it's true. Peeps wrote that the King banned Pinking and the waistcoats because he said that
it made his people in his court look like magpies. What's Pinking? Pinking is where you get some cloth
and you make like tiny holes in it to make a pattern. Oh yeah, it's very fashionable at the time,
but then the King banned it. It's probably bad for your insulation as well. Having small holes. All over your clothes,
it probably doesn't do you know. Well weirdly if you were like a string vest, that's just holes,
but actually it's supposed to be very warm because it traps the air. Yes.
I mean it's just, if it was just holes it would be nothing, wouldn't it? That's amperus new
thing. No, it's mostly holes. It's definitely mostly hills. No, I get that.
I've never worn a string vest.
You would've made me.
You can't believe it.
No, no, no.
I can only imagine you, on your Christmas holidays,
going down to Margate Beach with a hanker-chef out your head.
I go home, I climb up into the computer tower.
I take my clothes, I get my string vest on.
Weirdly, even though women were uncovering their boobies,
they were covering their faces at this time.
And this one, in and out of fashion,
throughout the 1600s and 1700s, masks,
but masks that cover your whole face.
And they'd often have a little bead sewn into the way
your mouth was, so the way you held them on was by keeping
the speed for your team.
You bit them on, which added, apparently, an an extra air of mystery because you couldn't speak.
So you were like, hello!
That was a very sexy way of speaking in those things.
Oh yeah!
It's not weird though, it's called Vizards.
Was it to stop the sunshine from like, as I've seen that in modern days, sometimes people would wear like balaclavas,
which stops the great plague,
which is probably knocking about a bit.
Are you people wearing balaclavas?
Are you sure you haven't been robbed a number of times?
He's just trying to avoid it.
I think I've seen it in some countries
they'll wear like,
I've seen that.
Yeah, balaclavas.
Yeah.
I think more veils than balaclavas.
I think like, you know, like,
pussy right at war, those things. Oh, yeah. I think I've seen than Balaclava. I think like you know like Pussy Riot War, those things.
Oh yeah, I think I've seen them.
That might be wrong.
Well it was for some protection a lot of the time and initially,
but then it became a fashion which was unrelated to some protection
and it was to have this virtue or high quality, high breeding.
But would you have your boobs out at the same time?
Oh yeah, yeah, nicked from the neck down.
Oh, but you're unrecognizable.
No, you might do, you know, because most people are recognizable by their faces, not by their boobs.
Yeah, and you're not going to admit to being the man who recognizes the woman just by her boobs, are you?
No. Not when you've gone to the theatre with your wife.
You're not selling over there.
What is that story I'm going to really butt-trip? Can you tell it, Andy?
It's really good. It's in Oxford.
It's a men-only area in Oxford. It's a bit of the river, a swimming area,
called Parsons Pleasure, I think, where only male dons or maybe undergraduates would swim,
but they would swim naked. And one day, there were three dons there, and some ladies happened by,
they were, you know, they were surprised. And the dons are all naked. And two, they're all very
bare-assed quickly, you know, two of the dons grab their,
I don't know, flannel or whatever,
cover their genitals.
And the third don, very calmly,
doesn't cover his genitals, he covers his face.
And they say, what have you done that for, Charles,
if it's a name of Charles?
And he says, well, I'm not recognizable by my genitals.
So, I'm not going to...
Unfortunately, they all heard a big call chance. Yeah.
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you