No Such Thing As A Fish - 518: No Such Thing As Andrew Marvell's Cinematic Universe
Episode Date: February 15, 2024Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Trollope, tantra, chameleon die-offs and Crimean send-offs. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fis...h for ad-free 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 Hoburn.
My name is Dan Shriver, I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray,
James Harkin and Anna Tyshinski.
And once again, we have gathered around the microphones
with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.
And in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, and that is Anna.
My fact this week is that shortly after writing an essay
on why writers shouldn't publish anonymously, Anthony
Trollope published a book anonymously.
Oh, it's called out a mere 130 years from later.
Not a moment too soon.
So, I've just sort of inherited from a friend who decided he was never going to read them
the complete works of Anthony Trollope.
And he's giving them to me in bits and he seems to have given me the three least known Anthony Trollope. Oh, great. And he's giving them to me in bits, and he seems to have given me the three least known
Anthony Trollope.
So this is an introduction to Nina Bellatka, which was...
If you want to get into Trollope, I would say probably don't start with that one.
It's not an entry level.
No, no.
Anyway, this fact, Nina Bellatka in the introduction, it just mentioned that he wrote an essay in
1865, and he said, a man should always dare to be responsible for the work which he does and should be ready
to accept the shame, rebuffs, ridicule or the indifference which will attend bad work. And
it's all about how, you know, put your name to something and then he didn't put his name
to Niener-Balakar. And...
I do have some sympathy, but if your name is A Trollup that you don't want to put it
on everything
Who here's read problem I've read the start of barchester towers. Okay. Did you read it in preparation for this book?
Read the first 50 pages I've done quite a lot of books over the years just because of this podcast
Yeah, just kind of started reading got an idea and gone. Well, I think I got an idea of this guy's entire earth red now. How are you getting? How do you know about the robots in it?
What? So Anna's read some Trollope. Andy, you must have done. I'm actually a Trollope virgin.
Honestly, I said to my wife last night that if anyone likes Anthony Trollope, Andy would like
Anthony Trollope. Is it because he writes about ecclesiastical matters in the 19th century?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I will.
It's right up your street.
I don't know if it is.
I think that's a missed call on Andy.
You think?
Yeah, I do.
I think I slightly prefer that kind of literature.
It feels like it's in between what you would like.
It feels to me like it's halfway between Dickens
and Jane Austen.
It is, but the thing about Cancel the Trollope,
he's not as widely read as I think he
should be. He's frowned on in lot of circles because he was just a machine of output. Wasn't he?
47 novels, loads of stories. His routine was getting up every morning, 5.30 writing for three solid
hours. He put a watch in front of him, made himself write 250 words every 15 minutes,
and he didn't have word counts that time.
So I don't, he must have incorporated counting the words.
He must have counted the pages because he just had so much stuff.
I love it.
I think that's exactly how I would write if I was writing novels.
I actually thought reading about him and this is not a negative thing at all.
I thought there's quite a lot of you in him.
He's quite annoying.
As we all write books, as someone who, you know, footles around a bit, toys with the margins.
And you just see, like, in the time you've spent foodling around with the margins, Anthony
Trollup will have written 16 pages.
And he had a portable deskmaid.
I love this, so he could write on trains.
And if he was going on board a ship, he would meet up with the ship's carpenter to arrange proper writing conditions.
Really?
That's pretty ritzy.
Wow.
But the reason he had to do it was because he was, and I'm simplifying here, postman.
You are simplifying.
But he wrote in the morning because he had a full-time job at the post office for about what, how long was it? Decades.
Yeah, he was quite 60s.
He was really senior. He was really senior in the post office. Yeah, what if you work there that long?
And it's a really cool fact, which is the only thing I knew about him, which is that he's
basically responsible for the reason that we have post boxes all over the UK. Possibly he's
spotted it in France. I don't think he ever claimed that he invented it, but he certainly
recommended it to the government. And they used to be green, but now they're red.
That's the thing though. Like he is responsible for that, I suppose, but they did exist in France.
They did exist in Belgium.
The stamp had been invented about 30 or 40 years earlier.
It feels like we might have got there anyway, even without him.
Totally, but he's the one who did.
Yeah.
Hey, here's a cool quote just to sort of really hammer home what a workaholic he was.
He said, there is no human bliss equal to 12 hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.
He was a bit like Bankers in 1990s in the UK because his motto was no day without a line.
Can we talk a little about Fanny Trollope?
Sure.
Yeah.
His mum.
Yeah.
Yes, please.
So his parents were very interesting people.
Just briefly, his dad was a complete failure in life.
Sounds harsh, but it is true.
Gosh.
Imagine someone in a podcast in 200 years saying that.
I know, I know.
And they will.
I dream of them doing that, you know.
But his father had law work which had failed and a farm which had failed.
And he decided finally to write a thing called the Encyclopedia Ecclesiastica, which would define all the ecclesiastical terms that had ever existed. And by the time he
died, he was still only on the letter D.
To be honest, church is quite a long one.
Yeah, there's R-men, there's another biggy, we're at the top, Chassable. I mean, you
can see why he struggled. Christian, Catholic.
Baby Jesus, starting with David.
Yeah.
Anyway, that was his dad.
Yeah.
Tricky time.
But his mum was a successful author and mega successful.
And she made her name by writing a book called
The Domestic Manners of the Americans.
Because she'd gone to America, set up this business venture,
which had completely collapsed and been a disaster. But then she
wrote this book, which was basically just incredibly rude about everyone in the USA.
It was very, very, very snobbish. And it became a massive success.
She said of people living in New York, that they were bullying, struggling, crafty, enterprising,
industrious, swaggering, drinking, boasting, and money getting.
But then enemy of the podcast, Mark Twain.
Thank you.
He really loved her.
And he was basically saying, well,
you know, she's telling the truth.
That's what we're like.
Fair enough.
Fair play.
So he liked her, so I now don't like her.
Great.
OK, thank you for keeping my beef going throughout the century.
One thing I noticed from reading the first 50 pages by Chester Towers is how
hackish he is with names. Oh really? I don't know if you notice this, I don't know if you've read
it before. I've only read the way we live now. Well, like the first two, a couple of the first
characters are, I think, the policemen and they're called Landon Muneau and Omicron Pie,
where he's basically just taken Greek letters
and turned them into names.
Right.
But what he used to do quite a lot is do that thing
where I suppose Dickens did it a bit,
where you just take whatever attribute
your character has and just call them that.
Oh yeah, Dickens is, yeah.
Right, yeah.
So in his novel Miss Mackenzie,
it's about a young woman who's pursued by three men who are called Handcock, Rub and Ball
What?
And there was another man. Handcock? Handcock?
And there's another man in it where he's not a suitable suitor for this woman and he's called Mr. Frigidae
They're so on the note.
It takes a bit of the suspense out of it, doesn't it?
Yeah, I think so.
I wonder if I can give you some names of characters
and you can tell me what they did in the novel.
Oh, OK, yeah, great.
So Dick Rabbit.
Ended up in prison.
So I can rabbit holes.
I had lots of kids, Breedid a lot. No, he was Rabbit, obviously. Yeah. Had lots of kids, breed it a lot.
No, he was the leader of a hunt.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, good.
Samuel Nickham.
Policeman.
Police, yeah, yeah.
Kind of.
He wasn't a policeman, but he found evidence against some people
who've been poisoning animals.
OK.
I was going to say shoplifter, and I've only just realized
that nicking him is something that shoplifters do.
And policemen do.
I nick him.
No, I nick him, no I nick him.
Or an opposite side, how confusing.
Gosh yeah, food for thought.
So Oliver Crumblewit.
Stand up, stand up comedian.
Yeah, someone who thinks they're funny.
So like a dad joke to call back to the previous episode,
character.
No, he was a phrenologist.
Crumble.
So just like witless person, I guess. He was slug was a phrenologist. Crumble. So just like, whittless person.
I guess he was slugging off phrenology.
And Joe Thurabung.
Thurabung?
Proctologist.
No, he was a brewer.
Oh, very nice.
I was going to say the bunghole in the sherry, that's right.
Did you, sorry, just while we're quickly on Barchester Towers,
have you ever got to a bit in the book where he injects himself as a narrator,
because that's something he apparently loves to do.
So he does it twice.
He pops in.
He pops in.
So for example, there's a sentence that comes in that book where it says,
how easily she would have forgiven and forgotten the Archdeacon's suspicions
had she heard the whole truth from Mr. Arabin,
but then where would have been my novel? So he sort of just says...
I've written notes of stuff. I love it.
And then right at the end, he says,
the end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner party,
must be filled with sweet meats and sugar plums.
Obviously alluding maybe to a nice happy ending.
Yes, followed by tears, someone being sick,
people being dragged home screaming,
nits being spread.
Yeah, he does do that self-consciously a little bit.
Yeah, sometimes we'll be like, she's my favourite actually,
she's lovely.
I mean, Jane Austen does that all the time, just sort of pops her head
around the curtain and says, hello, and then pops back.
I like it.
Have you heard of his novel, The Fixed Period?
No.
This is very weird.
So this was his, I think, only venture into sci-fi
where it's set in 1980 on a fictional island in the southern hemisphere called Britannula. And the main point of the story is that it has compulsory euthanasia for anyone between the
age of 67 and 68. That's the idea. It also features a futuristic cricket match.
Bit harsh. You can't get to the best age.
Right. Yeah.
Maybe he was sick of all the innuendo. Right.
There's a steam tricycle which can go at 25 miles an hour.
So it's still rooted in the 19th century.
But get this, Trollope died at the age of 67 and a half.
He didn't do much on the sci-fi, but basically I think his novels were essentially a Marvell Marvel. Marvel? Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun Is that him? Yeah, very good. Had they, then they would have written a Marvel comic because he basically did that. He created a universe.
So lovely.
Yeah.
And I think this kind of explains why he was able to churn things out so much,
as well as the fact that when you read them, there are a lot of extra words.
But like the passage of chronicles.
You can lose a lot.
Have you ever read? Sorry to this is a digression,
but have you ever read the Womble books?
No, I was reading the Wumble books to my daughter.
And all the way through it's like,
and then the Wumble went to the park
and picked up some litter.
They picked up an umbrella, a bag of crisps,
and they just fill up all the sentences
with just lists of nonsense.
That's your word count for the day.
That's Trollup thinking, right, I put in 16 adjectives
to describe this table.
That's fine, I can knock off for the next five minutes
Can't believe you're reading the Wombl books. I thought it was just a TV show you're the guy who's like
You know the books are actually
The novelizations of the Wombl are actually really yeah
I think the books came before the TV show
Oh sure they did yeah
Anyway, so the Trollope cinematic universe. The cinematic universe. So it embosses shit
It's really fun So I've only read one and actually it's the Trollope cinematic universe. The cinematic universe. So it embosses shit. It's really fun.
So I've only read one, and actually it's
the way we live now, which isn't the universe.
But my husband happens to have read quite a few more.
And he says it's fun because characters pop in from other places.
Lovely.
And that matured quite a lot.
So that Vick who was quite annoying when he was 25 is now 40.
And he's a bit wiser.
I reckon that he had hyper-fantasia.
Oh yeah.
Which is, so I have a-fantasia, which means I can't imagine things. But some people have hyper-fantasia, which is so I have a fantasia, which means I can't imagine things.
But some people have hyper-fantasia where you really can
imagine anything. It's like just an incredible story going on
in your head. And sometimes you don't even realize that it's
in your head. And he used to say that his main work that he
did was when he was daydreaming. So, you know, he
would churn out these words. But actually the rest of the day,
he just be thinking, oh, I wonder what my characters would be doing now. When
he came to write them down, it was pretty easy for him because he was just, this is
what I remember them doing.
I think he almost says that the plot is kind of not even really important. It's just, it's
about the characters exactly as you say.
I want to know what his legs were like, because I think you might have had a fantastic pair
of legs.
Okay, go on.
Well, he was all over the UK for his work for the post office. It was sent to Ireland,
first of all, which is where he started writing. And basically, he had to work out the routes for
postmen. And he rode across the countryside. He did about 40 miles a day riding across the countryside.
It feels like the horse would have a good leg.
No, you're right. Sorry, he'd have a great bum. But he was a member of a thing called the Tramp Society, which was a rambler's club
across Southeast England.
They just walked huge distances every time they met up.
Yeah.
So I think, I think his lower half might have been incredibly fit.
Well, in support, I think of that.
Do you know what the hardest day's work he ever did in his life was?
And that's a high bar for Triller.
Oh, no.
It was walking.
And it was when he was posted to Glasgow
and he wanted to review Postman's jobs basically.
And Postman and Glasgow were having to go
up and down tenement blocks,
sometimes to just post a letter to one person.
And he walked the full Glasgow Postman's route
up and downstairs on his beat
and came back to the post office and none of them was like,
hey, those guys have it really rough.
We need to sort it out.
Yes.
His second ever novel sort of 140 copies. Okay, those guys have it really rough. We need to sort it out. Yes. His second ever novel sold 140 copies.
Okay.
Yeah, it did not sell.
And the, they were both set in Ireland, his first two.
I think he saw it in Publisher Novel.
And Publisher Novel, oh, I don't know.
But the publisher had a resort to advert saying,
do you know who this guy's mum is?
This guy's mum is Fanny Trollen.
Can you, that was the, which is so embarrassing
as a young debut novelist, you know. What a quote for the front of the book.
I don't know who his mom is.
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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is My Fact.
My Fact this week is that in 2008, a TV channel spent the day rescheduling shows so that millions
of people in India could continue to watch a live broadcast of a man trying to kill another
man using nothing but his mind.
Okay.
And it took longer than expected.
Is it like when a football match goes into extra time
and you have to cancel the news afterwards?
It's like that tennis, do you remember it was it Mahu-
Mahu-isn't it?
Which went on, it was a Wimbledon several,
like 10 years ago now and it went on,
they played like 70 games each.
Yeah, it was something like that.
It was something like crackers.
Yeah, it was kind of that.
So basically-
And Mahu and Isn't I imagine got closer to death
than the person that was trying to kill him.
Well, not quite actually. So, okay, at that time, there was a politician who said out loud
that she thought that someone was attacking her mentally using Tantric powers, which is,
you know, when we talk about Tantric sex and all that, there's a side of it which is to do with
the mind, and you can supposedly attack people if you're using the dark practices of it, right?
So, as a result,
there was a TV show where skeptics and Tantra practitioners were brought together. On the
show it was called Tantric Power vs Science. And while on the show, this guy who was called Pandit
Srintheshama claimed that he could kill someone within minutes using nothing but his mind.
Now the person who was sitting on the panel with him was a guy called Senal Edamaruq.
Is he representing science in this?
He is the president of the Rational International
Group. Okay. Yeah.
He says, you can't do that. You think you can do that?
Do it to me now. And the guy says,
okay, fine, I'll do it to you now.
That's annoying when they call your bluff like that, isn't it?
Exactly. So, he says, do it now.
So, they say, all right, let's do this.
The host of the show is going, all right, let's do this.
Legally very tricky water for the channel and the program to be in.
Exactly.
Because I'm thinking about all the forms we have to fill in on QI if you just, you know, strike a match.
You very rarely use dark tantrum on QI.
So basically what happens is, is this guy, Sharma gets up and he starts focusing his mind on
him.
It's clearly not working.
The rational guy is sort of giving laps and so on.
So Sharma comes over, he starts sprinkling water on him as an intimidation tactic.
He starts ruffling his hair like, oh, the big guns are coming out now.
He covers his eyes.
It was all that stuff.
But then, and this is where it gets a bit desperate,
he suddenly presses his fingers down onto his forehead
and steadily really pushes and pushes.
And he has to be called out because basically,
you will kill me because you're trying
to crush my skull basically.
So he has to go back to his seat
and he has to do it with his mind.
Now at this point, the show's meant to be ending.
But they say it's not done yet.
So the show continues and the next show is cancelled.
And at this point word is getting around.
So people are tuning in and tuning in.
After a couple of hours the guy's exhausted,
Sharma's exhausted and he says,
but I'm not done yet.
Let's meet again this evening.
And this evening I will do the ultimate destruction ceremony
and kill you.
What is going through his mind?
He's saying I'm going to do that. I'm sure I can think of the ultimate destruction ceremony and kill you. What is going through his mind when he's saying I'm going to do that?
I'm sure I can think of an ultimate destruction ceremony in the two hours between the broadcast.
Like, what is it? What is his plan?
But then I think his plan probably is to not turn up and then go,
oh, sorry, I was killing some other person.
They go to another school. You wouldn't know that.
Yeah. So they do it at night.
There's it's performed under an altar in an open night sky.
They've got all the cameras there and he tries and tries and tries. So they do it at night. It's performed under an altar in an open night sky.
They've got all the cameras there and he tries and tries and tries.
And obviously the guy who's the rational guy is laughing his ass off the whole time.
So it didn't work out.
But this, you know, just to remind you is 2008 and this was broadcast live.
And according to many reports, some say hundreds of millions,
obviously a huge population in India, but you know,
millions tuned in to see a man killed live on TV, probably
knowing he wasn't going to be, but wanted to see what happened.
I have a question for you guys. If you were on that TV show, and
you were next to a tantric master, and they said, I could kill
someone with my mind, would you have the courage to say, no, you
can't do it to me? Yeah, you definitely would. Yeah, there
wouldn't be a tiny bit of doubt that like, I'm pretty sure you can't.
Once he started, I'd shit my pants, but yeah, I would probably...
I would feel fairly confident that that wouldn't happen.
No, but you can't be fairly confident.
Okay, I would be 100% certain that that wouldn't happen.
You'd be up for it, okay.
I would be pretty confident, but I would think to myself,
I'd be so annoyed if I have a heart attack and die unrelatedly. When I went to, I was in Bhutan and I went to the Tiger's Nest Monastery and
there's a little bit where you have to jump from one bit to the other and you're going over a sheer
drop of thousands of feet and the step is basically just a step, you know, it's a step that you do
every single day and it's no problem but all all the way through, I was thinking, if I fall now, what a fucking idiot.
Yeah. You know, what an idiot I am doing that. Yeah. And I suppose it's that kind of. Exactly.
Yeah. And the pressure of the TV cameras will make you think, you know, this is a very public
forum. I can understand. I'm very impressed by the skeptic. You feel embarrassed for him.
You'd start wanting to die. Yeah, yeah.
I hope you're trying to have a look.
Do you think you'd fake it, Danny?
Fake it.
You'd clap.
Well, it would be really fun to draw the death Tantra
dude out by pretending to die and then like,
ah!
That would be great.
That's a good point.
No, I've never heard of this, I think of Tantra
as primarily a sexual thing.
No, I'm thinking about Sting.
Yes.
Who, for claim,
I think in the 90s that he could have sex for five hours
because of Tantra, his Tantric skills.
He says he never said that.
I don't know if he does now, but that's...
Right.
Yeah.
So it's Bob Geldoff spread that rumor.
Right.
Yeah.
And then he said, oh, I said five hours,
but that includes dinner and a movie followed by some begging. You know, he's got some very funny jokes about it. Yeah.
But that was a movie is a lot of the rings.
No, but that's I don't know anything about Tantra really, although the idea of time, I gather
it's more of a philosophy or a set of philosophies. And it's from lots of different
religions have elements of Tantra or definitely, yeah.
So it's sort of spread across all these different schools of thoughts.
There's no one thing.
And you know, when I say, you know, the dark side or whatever, you know, that's so rare.
It's like a, it's not really even a thing.
We'll get letters, people saying, that's not a thing.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
Well, the space in Hinduism, yeah, I mean, say lots of different religions and it's not
its own belief system within Hinduism.
As far as I can tell, it's like a series of practices
which seem to exist in lots of strands of Hinduism.
Yeah, it's almost like non-Orphodox Hinduism, isn't it?
In fact, I did read things saying the whole point of it
was to subvert Hinduism and encourage lots of things
that Hinduism does not.
Like, I think there's one where you're encouraged
to have the special tantric five-some,
which is like eating meat, drinking wine.
Right, so.
Oh.
We ever had a five-some?
Yeah, we had a bit of meat and a drink of little wine, yeah.
Coming to the party to make it go wine.
It's everyone in the shed.
God, that looks delicious.
I've had a foursome.
I didn't have the sherry at the end, which would have been,
you know.
To be fair, sex is the last one.
Oh, OK. Oh, OK.
So it's like a date.
Without describing a date.
Without describing a date.
What are the previous four?
Is there an order?
Netflix.
Sorry.
It's drinking, eating, movie, begging.
So the five are alcohol, meat, fish, grain and sex.
You're very full at that point, so it's not very pleasant. We do that five are alcohol, meat, fish, grain and sex. Okay.
You're very full at that point, so it's not very pleasant.
We do that five at home, but the fifth one is always headache.
It's really annoying.
But the idea is violating all these Hindu taboos.
I see.
And I think that's called left-handed tantra.
So there's left-handed tantra and right-handed tantra,
and left-handed tantra is the sex one.
I'm left-handed.
Well, that doesn't surprise me, I do.
No, no, no. It's all starting to come together.
I always do left-handed tantra because it feels like someone else is doing that.
There's no thousand-year-old tradition we can be trusted with.
Other things that are done in tantra traditions that are non-sexual for the
right-handeds, living in cemeteries if you want that,
and smearing cremation ashes on your body. So these are all agori rituals.
And do you say agori? Yeah. Because it sounds quite gory.
Oh yeah. Agori tradition. Yeah. I was just miss hearing.
No that's very good
Maybe that it's a fun play on words because it is very dark
They smoke a lot of marijuana not too dark
They drink a lot of alcohol and they meditate on top of corpses. I got some good news for you Dan. Yeah
So the meditating on a corpse there are quite a lot of rules about the kind of corpse that you can meditate on
Ideally it would be someone who died from drowning, lightning
strikes, snake bites, something like that.
You are allowed to kill the person before you
meditate on top of them, but you shouldn't really
meditate on top of a man with a beard or on top of a wife guy.
Anyone who's head-packed, you shouldn't be doing.
Wow.
Dan, you're in the clear.
Safe and sound, girls.
Wow.
But what about a clean shave and bad boy like me, James?
Am I in the firing line for getting meditated on?
Oh dear.
That's amazing.
I read an amazing way of if someone, if so, let's say we are on that show and we have
said yes, consenting to Sharma trying to kill us with his mind.
One way of getting him out of your mind and shaking off the bad juju that's inside there
is something that was practiced by a guy called Victor Kortchinoi, who's a chess player. Yeah.
Now we spoke many episodes ago
about a very famous chess championship in 1978.
And there were two Russian grandmaster chess players,
Karpov against Kortchinoi.
And basically, Kortchinoi, as he was sitting there,
had a guy in the audience who was mentally trying
to ruin his game, get into his head. It was the weirdest chess game ever, right?
Courtenay eventually brings in two people who practice the idea of all this mind power stuff,
and he genuinely did this during the course of the game, to get rid of all the bad thoughts that
are in his head. You do a handstand so that you can shake it out using the gravity that's pulling
down to the earth all the bad vibes.
So, if ever you're in a space where you think you're being infiltrated in your mind, do
a handstand.
If you believe though, yeah.
I mean, that's the, we're sort of sketching out the psychosomatic thing.
If you believe that someone is in the crowd getting into your head.
Which he did.
Then they're already in there.
Yeah.
And he was.
It's too late.
Like, that's exactly it.
He believed that I was in there. Did he win? He lost.
Well, that's just.
But when he was down and then he did the handstand thing and he came back for like a few games.
And then he lost the final game.
It didn't shake that last bit out to me.
This just reminded me of another interesting Hindu sect, which I've been fond of for a while, the Naga Sadhus.
Okay.
Which we've talked about the Naked Sadhus,
which who just naked all the time?
Sadhus.
Uh, Naked Sadhus, yeah.
So a lot of this is about asceticism and renouncing everything.
And they have very strict exercise routines.
So they're very fit, but they have long beards,
but they have no clothes.
They also smear themselves in ashes.
I think there seems to be a thing.
Yeah.
But they were great fighters back in the day. They also smear themselves in ashes. I think there seems to be a thing.
But they were great fighters back in the day.
So they've been around for many hundreds,
for thousands of years.
And they were military men.
So in 19th century reports,
they wore nothing but a belt
and they'd have like ammunition and flints and guns
hanging off their belt.
Wow, like Batman.
Yeah, but nude Batman.
Yeah, so is he,
because he normally is wearing the full Batman outfit.
He's in fact a bit too covered up really.
Yeah, yeah, but I'm just mean like the utility belt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
They've got the utility belt.
And that's all you need really.
And they were great military leaders.
And in fact, there was one in the 18th century
who commanded over 20,000 men.
In fact, quite a few of them commanded that many.
And in the battles that the British East India Company had when they were trying to colonize India, they played a huge role. And bizarrely,
they were often mercenaries. So they often fought for different sides, which is weird,
given that they renounce all possessions. So I don't know what you're using, all that
money you're getting paid.
Well, you gotta, you know, there are, there are incidental expenditures and you, you
know, you want to have something for a rainy day.
You want a really nice belt.
That beard oil's very pricey.
Okay it is time for fact number three and that is James.
Okay my fact this week is that the last thing that British soldiers going to the Crimean
War saw was Queen Victoria throwing a shoe at them.
And stay out.
No, this is a good luck thing.
It's been a good luck thing since the 16th century at least and Queen Victoria, when
she got married she had shoes thrown after her. So she obviously had this idea that it was good luck and there is an 1854 sketch
from Punch Magazine that shows her throwing a shoe at her soldiers as they go off for
the Crimean War.
It's very, I'd never heard this tradition at all, shoe-trucking for luck. I've just
never, ever heard it. But she did it a lot, she did it in 1855, she'd chuck shoes into
Balmoral Castle
again for luck and that was a...
And is it she takes one of her own shoes off or does she take an extra shoe in her handbag?
Great question. Good question.
Don't know.
Yeah, so the first one she's throwing it off from where is she? She's standing on a balcony.
So okay, so she's at home. She's probably in slippers anyway, so she could do that with a shoe.
And you don't want to chuck a really heavy shoe because it hits someone.
Yeah, well that one was... No, someone yeah, well my balcony seems quite risky
It'd be my question. Do we know where the shoe is because I couldn't I couldn't find it the shoe yeah the shoe
I don't know how many yeah, I would be tourist. Yeah shoes are fine
Yeah, but the shoe lots of shoe traditions hiding shoes in the walls of your building that was not the big one wasn't it?
Yeah
Is that for good luck or yes, it is rainy day? Yes, it is. It's to ward off evil.
Ah, evil hate too.
Evil, yes.
The Northampton made all, basically all the shoes made in the UK
came from Northampton for centuries.
Yeah, it was, it was a chew town.
That's why the football team is called the Cobblers.
Oh, is it?
Oh.
I didn't know they were.
But they've got a thing called the Hidden Shoe Index
at the Northampton Museum.
I read it was called the Concealed Shoe Index,
which made me wonder what CSI Northampton Museum. I read it was called the Concealed Shoe Index, which made me wonder what CSI Northampton
would be like.
Very strong.
I don't know which is the true name.
It goes back to the 50s though, but the oldest shoe they've got or found in a building dates
back to 1308.
Wow.
Concealed in a building.
Yeah.
That's not going to be wearable, is it?
No.
Is this related to, because we only mentioned cats being found in buildings.
That's the thing isn't it?
People would bury their dead cats.
Yeah, warlock cats.
Warlock cats as well.
Warlock cats.
And frogs, yes.
I'm assuming that was for good luck.
I think it's to also attract or distract or deter witches.
We're back to the evil thing.
Distract.
Is that one cat?
What was it doing?
Maybe one of the most famous shoe throwing incidents is when George Bush had two shoes thrown at him, in fact,
in 2008 by an Iraqi reporter.
And actually, I was rereading what George Bush said
when he was asked about it afterwards.
And I thought, you know, there was a lot of criticism
of George Bush at the time, understandably,
but he said, I know I wasn't offended,
we're in a democracy. This
is freedom for you. You're allowed to do this kind of thing, which is very mature of him.
Well done.
The guy was then imprisoned and I think beaten very badly.
He asked a lot of tea, I think.
I think it was by the Iraqi authorities rather than by anyone else. But yes, it was a sentiment.
Bang on.
They did a massive shoe statue, didn't they? Statue.
Yeah, nice.
Wait, who's in Iraq?
In Iraq, yeah, but it was done,
I think it was done at a university or something
and they had to take it down
because it was seen as being political.
When they tore it down, did they run over
and beat it with miniature statues of 7%?
I love the museum in America
that has as one of its exhibits, a replica of the shoe.
Oh really?
Not even the shoe?
No, the shoes were destroyed by the CIA.
Right.
Sorry, I've never sounded more conspiracist when you're not whacked off.
Sorry, but they actually were.
Because I think they didn't want the shoes to become martyrs.
Do the CIA need to be drafted in to destroy shoes?
I reckon you get the intern.
Maybe it was the FBI.
Or the Secret Service, maybe Maybe it was the secret service.
Definitely. It was the secret service.
But it became big business as well.
All these rival cobalas in the area started claiming,
oh yes, that's our shoe.
Oh really?
Yeah.
And the thrower, Munder Al-Zaidi,
he was offered a couple of hands in marriage
by various people who said,
I'd like you to marry my daughter.
And then in 2009, he was doing an event,
the year after he did the thing, guess what happened?
He got a shoe thrown at him.
He got a shoe thrown at him.
Yeah, it was a real circle of life thing.
Come up and buy Bush or...
Not buy Bush.
But Bush has had more shoes thrown at him since.
There's a whole, I mean,
it became a thing post that event generally.
So there's a whole Wikipedia page where, it became a thing post that event generally.
So there's a whole Wikipedia page where it's a shoe throwing incident.
It's called and gives you a big timeline and it really picks up after
his old mate Bush was, yeah, was attacked.
There's a famous incident as well.
Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen in Australia.
Yeah, she threw a shoe at Philip when they were in Australia. It was one of the only moments where a fight, I think in fact the only incident in which a fight was
seen between Philip and the Queen, she threw a tennis racket at him as well.
A tennis racket?
Yeah. And the Aussies were filming from a distance and they were like, geez, what did we just
see? Because we've never seen anything like that before. And so one of the PR people had
to come out for the Queen and say, what are you guys doing with the British accent?
And then the Queen came out and she apologised and she said,
where do you want me as if to say, please don't use that.
I'm here now as an embarrassing apology for you witnessing that.
But possibly she was wishing him good luck.
Oh, whatever effect.
Lucky tennis racket.
All of your lucky clothes are out on the lawn.
That's so funny.
James, have you ever seen, I'm asking James specifically this for a reason,
have you ever seen a panty tree?
We know the reason, a panty tree.
No, but I think I can guess what it is.
Is it a tree where people leave their pants?
That's right. Why would I have seen it?
Why would you specifically have seen it?
Is it commons in Bolton?
It's not a Bolton thing.
That's a golf thing.
Oh, it's a sporting thing.
I thought it was because James makes a habit of visiting all the weird places in the world.
And it sounds weird.
And is a pervert.
Or maybe I'm like Tom Jones and wherever I walk people just throw pants at me
whenever I'm walking in the forest.
You are the panty tree actually.
No, the reason I asked is because I know James has been on a skiing holiday.
But I think probably all of you guys, metropolitan elites, are always skiing.
But no, apparently it's a thing for a ski lift because your ski lift goes very high, doesn't it? And it passes over some
trees. And in some ski resorts, there are trees where people chuck their panties onto
the tree. I've seen that. And I thought it was a Mardi Gras thing. But there were loads.
And there was lots of sparkly, bras-y, panty. Oh my God, and that's a thing.
That's a thing. And I think they don't love it, Pantsy. Oh my God. And that's a thing. That's a thing. And it's, I think, um, they don't love it, the skiing authorities.
Why do they care?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Sorry, I don't know.
What's their problem?
It must be hard to get your neck.
Littering.
Littering. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah.
It must be hard to get your knickers off on a ski lift though.
Like, that's a tough...
I don't think they're doing that, Andy.
Because you're wearing like your ski suit.
Exactly.
And you've got to pull them off and then pull them all over the ski.
Exactly. I don't think it's possible.
And your skis as well.
You have to take your skis off, they're going to fall.
Yeah.
No, I reckon there's a spare pair of pants situation in the pocket, isn't it?
That probably is it.
Very interesting.
Occasionally have dropped a ski pole when going up on a ski lift, as I'm sure many people have.
And obviously we hire our skis and then we went back
and we said, we dropped our ski pole,
can we pay for this ski pole?
And we said, oh no, don't worry about it,
because at the end of the season,
when all the snow melts,
someone goes up and collects all of the ski poles off
and then they just distribute them between all the shops.
So, that's amazing.
That's true.
That's what they said.
That's amazing.
This was in Italy.
It was fine, just give us your panties. Give us your panties, mate. No way! That's true. That's what he said. That's true. Wow.
It was fine. Just give us your panties.
Give us your panties, mate.
In 2016, MPs in the Egyptian parliament attacked each other with shoes.
One attacked another with a shoe.
Which I think is quite a sorry.
It's a big drop down from a mass shoe wall.
No, it wasn't. The other one wasn't quick enough off the mark taking his shoe off.
He was actually suspended.
Which I don't know why I sound surprised.
I suppose you probably would be from our parliament as well.
Did they run with the headline,
S open brackets, C closed brackets,
Andal.
Sandal, sandal.
Sandal, right.
Oh yeah, scandal, sandal.
Gosh, that took us all a long time, didn't it?
Yeah.
No, because I suppose it would have been written in Turkish.
So.
But yeah, it sounds like a very exciting moment.
Tulfik O'Kasha was the MP who got attacked by a shoe
because he'd had the Israeli envoy round
and one of his fellow MPs objected to that
and got angry and hit him with a shoe
and had to be escorted from the house waving a shoe.
I just thought that's a fun addition to parliamentary goings on
if we want to try it out.
Yeah.
There's a bit of an irony about Queen Victoria
throwing the shoes at the Crimean War soldiers.
Yeah.
Which is that they had very bad shoe situations when they got to the war.
Wow, I phrase that badly.
They should have kept that one shoe.
Well, yeah.
They had awful boots and they got trench foot, their feet swelled up in the cold.
The clothing was completely awful.
Sometimes the sole of their shoe would just stick to the mud as they lifted their foot up.
And the rest of the shoe came and the sole was left behind
because the mud was so thick and sticky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Really bad, yeah, yeah.
They had a horrible time.
Yeah, it was a tough one.
It was a tough war.
Many of them are.
What were the years, the Crummian War?
1853 to six.
Yeah, as Anna said.
1853 to six. Three to six. I'm going to say year threean War? 1853 to six. Yeah, as Anna said. 1853 to six.
Three to six.
Three to six.
Three to six, yeah.
1853 to six.
Sorry.
Right.
And it was a very complicated war.
Yeah, it was basically a plus-à-change
about the West trying to limit Russian expansionism,
wasn't it?
It's basically the Ottomans coming up to the north,
the Russians coming out to the west,
Britain and France having colonial things that they didn't want to lose, trying to keep Russia
as quiet as possible and decided to get on the side of the Ottomans and then attack the underbelly
which is Crimea. Yeah and also there were a lot of Ottomans living in Crimea at the time so it was
a bit of a powder keg anyway. It was a very, very complicated situation. Anyway, it started over rights of access to
the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which I think we talked about. Isn't that
the one where they have the disagreement over the ladder?
It is, yeah.
And this was the same thing, basically. The Ottoman Sultan gave the Catholic priests
a key to the church in 1852, and from that point on, you know, it was like, well, we
have to have a war over this. Basically, things escalated from from there and then suddenly you have got the charge of the light brigade happening
And it's all going disastrous be wrong. Yeah, Florence nightingales having to organize a lot of stuff
I mean lots of famous things came from it
I suppose Florence nightingale Mary Seacull charge of the light brigade three items of clothing but the clover the
Cardigan cardigan Earl of cardigan very heavily involved in the lyprogate.
It's got to be a boot.
You're not going to get it.
Go on, what is it?
The Sebastopol hat.
It's the Raglan sleeve shirt.
What's that?
It's got a different colour of, the torso is a different colour to the sleeves.
It's a baseball jersey.
But General Fitzroy Somerset, the first Baron Raglan, was not wearing a baseball jersey, but he did wear Raglan's leach out named after him.
And he was the one who was responsible for the charge of the library gate going so badly wrong.
Right.
He was very old and he was half deaf and he was not really with it.
And he said, oh, the Russians are taking some guns over there.
Can you go and stop them taking away the guns?
And the order was then carried to someone else, the Earl of Cardigan,
who could not see the guns because he was somewhere completely different.
And he said, well, those guns, and pointed at this incredibly well-defended gun in placement
at the end of a long, narrow valley, just a disastrous place to attack.
Yeah, right.
And he said, okay, this isn't going to go well, but fine.
Don Yacardi's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here's the exact words where here goes the last of the Brudenells because he thought he was just
riding straight to certain death as a lot of the people
in that charge were.
Yeah.
There's another thing that wasn't invented,
but someone tried to invent for the crime area.
Oh yeah.
Which was a entire city destroying cannon.
This is a massive cannon.
It was 10 meters wide.
The shot is 10 meters wide.
No.
And it would weigh 550 tons.
And the idea is that once it landed,
it would demolish an entire city
and it was to be called the Saxo Cannon.
How are they going to transport that anywhere?
Yeah, sort of wacky racers,
Acme, Roadrunner style cannon they're making.
The inventor was a solid inventor.
Was not adult sex.
It was, the inventor of the saxophone came up
with a city destroying cannon,
which he really wanted to build.
He was such a weird guy.
He would just invent these things
and then just call it the sax something.
Exactly.
So never, it didn't take off.
No, didn't get past the planning stages.
No.
That's what we wanted to do.
Take off, very nice.
Something else the Chromium War gave us is,
I think the earliest war photography,
or some of the earliest war photography,
very famous photo of the Valley of the Shadow of Death by Roger Fenton in 1855, I think
is one of the earliest pictures of warfare. Basically, there are two photos of the Valley
of the Shadow of Death. And they're both of this extremely barren landscape, very near
where the Charger of the Library was, gravel, little valley slopes on each side.
One of them has some cannonballs on the floor,
one of them doesn't, and the famous one
is the one with the cannonballs.
And it's the, you know, sort of tragedy of war
and the emptiness of the landscape with these war weapons.
But there's been so much debate over the last 150 years
over whether he faked it.
Like, where did the cannonballs come from?
Well, Sax, I think, prototype.
He's marbles, weren't they?
And we don't know, because it might be that the second photo
is from after they'd cleared it up.
So then they took another one of it clean.
Or he might have deposited.
Ooh, tricky.
The thing was, because he took a lot of photos, right?
He had a horse and carriage with him,
which was like a portable photo developing booth
that he had with him.
He had lots of glass slides that he had
with him, multiple cameras.
And everyone's saying, oh, he staged a lot of photos.
I think it's more than just the cannonball one.
And the problem is, of course, they were staged.
Everything had to be staged.
Because you needed a long exposure time.
The exposure was like 30 seconds.
It's actually why the charge of the labricade was such a disastrous
because they had to wait for half a minute for the photo.
The team photo at the start.
Someone was blinking.
Stop the podcast.
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Okay, on with the podcast.
On with the show.
Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.
My fact is, there is a chameleon in Madagascar, which is effectively extinct for several months
every year.
This fact is incredible.
It's insane.
Yeah, it's really cool.
I think it's not true.
I think if you're extinct, you come back three months later, you're not extinct.
Let's debate the case.
And first of all, thanks to Kate Wood, who sent this in, in the email, the fish in the
box.
Sorry, Kate, if I knew it was from you, as opposed to Andy, I wouldn't have poo-pooed
it.
No, no, no.
This is the Le Borde's chameleon, and it is crazy.
Right, so, in November, the chameleon hatches out in Madagascar, in the forest.
Then they grow to sexual maturity very fast.
In about two months, they are grown up ready to breed.
They breed, the females lay some eggs in the ground.
Then in March, they all die.
Not the eggs, the adults.
All the adults die.
Yeah.
There are then, the entire species exists in egg form, basically most of the year in November eggs hatch out on they go
It's so weird. It's so weird. They're enough for most of the year
Yeah, they're not extinct exactly but for most of the year they are not the species lives in must be weird for the first person to come
Out of the egg. Yeah every year. Yeah
They learn nothing from the their elders. I just think these are bizarre. These were discovered in 2008.
I think their life cycle was first reported.
I think since then they have found that if you keep some in captivity or maybe under
very specific conditions, one might make it through a year.
But it's really, really rare.
So it's-
What a year 2008 was.
Over in India, you had someone being killed on TV with mind power.
Or not.
Or not.
In Iraq.
You had chameleon being extinct. Or not. In Iraq. You had chameleon being extinct or not.
In Iraq, George Bush is getting a tooth run at him.
Wow.
What?
What was Anthony Trollope doing that year?
No, they're amazing.
And I think it's because they die to avoid the dry season, which is very harsh and very,
very hot.
All right.
In Madagascar and they just, some species hibernate, they just decide to die.
And lots of chameleons on Madagascar,
I think they've got about...
They've got almost half, haven't they?
They've got about 40 to 45% or something.
Yeah, and extraordinary variety of estimates
as to the number of chameleon species.
Given that it feels like a very small, countable number,
I read anywhere, and all from very reputable sources,
anywhere between 134 and more than 217 species of comedian.
What are the different colors, aren't they? It's very hard to
tell.
This was a green one before.
They're great.
Yeah, they don't change their color to match their background. I
actually didn't know that until reading it for this podcast.
Right.
They match their emotions.
Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. An amazing misconception is
one of the biggest ones we've debunked on
QI. You know, sometimes we debunk things that you think, yeah, Camel, that's a bit.
No, we never do that. No, we never do that. We never do that.
It's an amazing thing. If you were watching the UFC of chameleon battles, right?
Two competitors enter the ring. If you were betting, you could probably bet
in the last few seconds, if that was allowed, on who was going to win.
Hmm.
Do they change colour based on whether they think they're going to win or lose?
When they pass each other in the street, two males were often changed colours to sort of be like, kind of like if you're walking poolside and you tuck your tummy in and walk in that kind of thing.
Yeah. So yeah, so they found when they were studying it that the chameleon that was brighter and
changed more rapidly was the one who was going to win, and that they just found that that
on average was the way that it happened.
Yeah, or above average.
So what a useful way, if only we could tell them that, then they never have to fight,
right?
Exactly.
They can always just go up to each other and go, oh, okay.
Throw the towel in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Wow. If you were a chameleon in a boxing ring or something, because you normally wear a little dressing gown, don't you, into the
ring? Yeah. And as soon as you take your dressing gown off, you look down, you were confident
until you saw how bright and stripey the other guy is. I should just quickly say it was this
was in 2013, it was a guy called Russell Ligon and Kevin McGrew, and they did 45 encounters
that they monitored. And that's what they've discovered from it. Very cool. Yeah. They've
got amazing anatomy.
I didn't know about the shape of their feet at all.
And they are bizarre.
They are described often as looking like salad tongs.
And they do.
So there are two pads opposite each other.
And in fact, they're the only animals who aren't birds,
who are zygodactylists, which basically means that they have three
fingers opposite two fingers in certain way. And they're not the same kind of zygodactylists
really as birds. They're their own special thing. And essentially it's to grip trees.
I don't know why more things don't have this. So it looks like a sideways claw that just
clamps onto trees. It's very clever. But I did find out that you can also get pamperodactyly, anisodactyly and schizo-dactylies as well, which are in
primate schizo-dactylies grasped with their second and third digits.
Like doing scissors for a rock paper scissors.
Exactly. Does that free you up to hold something? Like food?
Or to give a thumbs up at the same time as holding onto the tree?
I think that's the idea, yeah.
And you can hold a can of paper between fingers four and five.
Yeah, perfect.
No, they are, they're great.
I know someone who's got a pet comedian.
Do you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And...
Is that the end of the Alec Dope?
I think it is.
I'm rummaging for more, but that really is about it.
It's called Roy.
Oh, there was more.
No, and that's the end of the end.
Yeah.
If you were sitting on a chameleon's tongue when it ate something,
food for thought, you would die so badly.
No, no, it would just not be able to eat anything,
because you're way bigger than a chameleon.
If you're sitting on its tongue, it's not going to be eating anything.
Sorry, you're right. You have to imagine that you're the size of a borrower or maybe even smaller.
Oh, okay.
Of an ant. Oh, yes.
Sorry, well, if you sit on a chameleon, it will just crush its tongue because you're human size.
No, but like, you know, if something bites you, a bite could have venom and I thought the reveal
was going to be the tongue would.
Sorry, it wasn't. It was the acceleration of their tongues. I should have made clear that you have you've been shrunken like honey, I
thought the kids in this big central bit of that story.
It was. Yeah, I know you've clasped this one.
Should I? So if you were really, really small, yeah, and you were sitting on a
chameleon's tongue and it stuck it out, then you would definitely die.
The acceleration of their tongues are amazing.
They're actually the highest acceleration and power output,
like amount of power generated for any movement of a reptile,
bird or mammal.
It is the same.
Yeah.
The power output is 14,000 watts per kilogram.
Incredible.
Now, Yonis Fingard or Tani Pagaccia, who are the best
cyclists in the world, in the Tour de France, say,
if they're going up a mountain, they can max out at about seven watts per kilogram.
And these guys are doing 14,000 watts per kilogram.
It's a lot for us.
I almost can't compute that.
That's amazing.
So the G-force is, I think,
the maximum G-force we can survive
is maybe nine or 10 for a few seconds by the pilots.
And the G-force on their tongue would be 264 G.
Oh, okay.
Your face is being distorted by that.
That is so cool.
I read a bit about what's inside their tongue because they have these things called intralingual
sheaths, right?
So the tongue has bones running along the core of it, which is weird in itself.
I guess they don't, not very big bones, but those are covered by these intra-lingual sheets and those are covered by an accelerator muscle.
And what the chameleon does is the chameleon spring loads the sheets and packs them into
each other like a telescope.
That's like, there was a toy that used to do that, that you flicked it when you were
younger and it was telescopic and it expanded out, wasn't there? I've got a real memory
of that.
I don't remember that.
A telescope.
I was just playing with the chame a comedian's tongue when I was younger.
You would get like those pointers that teachers had and they would go like that, wouldn't they?
Yes.
I got one of those last year.
For Christmas.
For myself at a non-holiday time and god they're good.
Yeah.
The pointers.
What did you do?
You got one of what?
Did you just point at stuff?
Yeah.
Just walked down the street going there's a panty tree.
It really gives you a kind of authority that is extraordinary, you know. You never dared use it. No, no,
no. But if I'm in the supermarket and I want to put it something on the conveyor belt,
say make sure you apply the discount on that radish, my good man. Bleep this one next. I'm so confused because all of this sounds so plausible.
We're just missing the one detail.
We're sort of playing what I like you now, aren't we?
No, I think it was a couple of years ago.
I bought it for a show.
But I cannot remember the context in which I have,
and I just ended up with a pointer,
which I'd love to get out occasionally.
So, Chameleon saliva.
This was another fact in the inbox, actually. So, not out occasionally. That's right. So Chameleon's saliva, this was another fact
in the inbox actually.
So not only did Kate Wood send the original fact,
but Robert Harding writes,
Chameleon's saliva is the opposite of custard.
It's disgusting on Tricolta.
Is that because it's non-Newtonian, but in a different way?
Bingo!
Yes.
So custard, if you run across custard,
as you apply force to it, it gets harder.
Very good.
That's it.
It thickens on impact.
A chameleon saliva is thick in the mouth, but when the tongue strikes the insect it's
trying to eat or whatever, that blob becomes very malleable for an instant.
That's clever.
And then hardens right again.
Right.
So the prey is then glued to the tongue, and then it gets pulled right back into the chameleon's clever. And then hardens right again. Right. So the prey is then glued to the tongue.
And then it gets pulled right back into the chameleon's mouth.
That's clever.
Isn't that amazing?
I found a chameleon who was a chameleon before chameleons were chameleons.
What?
Keep talking.
Keep talking.
I got a headache.
You know I got a headache and this is not helping.
There used to be a philosopher called chameleon.
Really?
He was a disciple of Aristotle.
Was he the guy who came up with the idea of karma?
We don't know anything about him.
You're just going to go straight over there.
You're ill, you don't know what you're saying.
Just helping you out here.
Yeah, no, he is a disciple.
We know virtually nothing about him, I guess, with us, as with a lot of people then, but
he did write a lot of pieces that we do know of his names attached to, like a piece called
On Drunkenness, a piece called On Pleasure, but virtually nothing is known.
But so he lived, he would have died in 281 BC, and the word chameleon came about in roughly
the 14th century, mid 14th century.
Okay, wait, so to century. Okay, interesting.
To describe the lizard, presumably.
To describe the lizard, and what's interesting is,
Aristotle wrote about chameleons,
but we just didn't have the word,
and he wasn't writing about his mate.
So did he always have to say,
you know that thing that kind of changes color,
looks a bit like a echo?
Looks like my mate, my disciples, yeah.
Can I give you some animals
that were thought to be extinct, but then aren't?
Yes.
The Canterbury, Nobdweevil.
Okay.
I might just stop there actually.
No, more, more.
The cloaked bee, the dinosaur ant, the terrace skink, the Batman River Loach, the painted
frog and the Machu Picchu arboreal chinchilla, which was found in a tree near Machu Picchu.
Right.
When they un-extincted it.
Wow.
So these just all things, was there one big find,
one day out, where they're just all hanging out
in the same playing cards for a while?
It's some sort of like support group
for the extinct who aren't extinct.
Yeah.
There's also the Confusing Rocket Frog.
That's a great name. And they found it in 2019 and it's called confusing because it looks a lot like other frogs
But it's the confusing rocket frog and the interesting thing about this is it was thought to be extinct in 1985
They found it in 2019
But luckily it was in a place where they were about to do loads of mining and logging and stuff like that and it meant that
They couldn't do any of it.
Brilliant.
I think it's in that window.
Well done, little rocket frog.
The painted frog? Was that one that you said?
Painted frog, yeah.
Yeah.
Which just sounds like someone forcing chameleonism onto an animal, isn't it?
That's very interesting.
There's a type of fish that was thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago,
and then it was found in 1938 and it's the
Silicanth and do you know the story of how it was rediscovered?
Is it a military 38? Was it found by a submarine?
No, just found by a normal fisherman in South Africa, caught a weird fish, got back,
gave it to this woman who ran the museum who thought that's weird so she
sketched it. Oh no, I remember you. It weird. So she sketched it. Oh, I remember you.
It's amazing.
So she sketched it and she sent it to Professor Smith,
who she knew would be able to tell her what it was.
Professor Smith received her sketch,
no straight away.
This is the seal account.
It's been six, six million years we thought it was gone.
And he goes and he visits it,
but it's kind of disintegrated by that point.
So he can't confirm really that lots about it or where it came from. And he devoted the next 14 years to
finding a second specimen.
Wow.
He was desperate. And eventually there was a guy on the, one of the Comoros Islands off
Mozambique in 1952, who found one. And Smith was managed to convince the South African
government to get a military plane
to fly him off the coast of Mozambique.
He had to have a conversation with the Mozambique authorities saying, hey, we're flying military
planes over your airspace.
Really sorry.
They were like, why are you doing that?
They said, we're just going to pick up a fish.
I remember reading that story and I think the woman who found it in the first place
and knew there was something up, I think it was either Smith or someone else said it was evidence of women's intuition.
The greatest evidence we ever had of women's intuition.
Really? Marjorie Courtney LaSmo really?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, just because she sensed that it was weird.
There was something going on.
Yeah. Wow.
Wow. That's proving two things with one fish.
That's pretty cool.
Not only do we have the fish, we now know about women's intuition.
I love it if it's paper, which eventually came out, was about women's intuition, not
about the fish.
OK, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.
If you would like to get in contact with any of us
about the things that we've said
over the course of this podcast,
we can all be found on our social media accounts.
I'm on Instagram, just use Shribeland.
James.
I'm on Twitter, just use at James Harkin.
Andy.
I'm on X at Andrew Hunter M.
Oh.
Yeah, sorry. Sorry.
And Anna, how can they get through to us as a group?
You can just use the email address podcast
at qi.com or the Twitter handle at no such thing.
That's right.
Or you can head to our website, which is no such thing
as a fish.com.
All of the previous episodes are up there,
so do check them out.
Otherwise, come back next week, because we'll
be here with another episode.
And we'll see you then. Goodbye