0:00

Hi everyone,

0:03

welcome to

0:05

this week's episode of

0:08

No Such Thing as a Fish. Before

0:10

we start, a little bit of news

0:13

that is very important to Anna and

0:15

I, and that is that our new

0:17

book is finally out in paperback.

0:19

Woo hoo! I know that

0:21

might not seem like a big deal

0:23

to you, but honestly, this is a

0:25

real chance for us to get more

0:27

people reading this book. One very

0:29

interesting thing to say is that the book

0:32

has had a name change. What

0:34

used to be called Everything to Play

0:36

for is now called A Load of

0:39

Old Balls, the QI History of Sport

0:41

by James Harkin and Anna Tyshinsky. A

0:43

lot of people have said to us, why did you

0:46

not call it that in the first place? I'm not

0:48

sure if they're being rude, I hope not, because it

0:50

is a book full of the most interesting facts

0:52

and stories about sport that you

0:54

can possibly imagine. Even

0:56

if you're not into sport, probably this

0:59

summer you will notice that everyone's off

1:01

watching the Euros, everyone's off watching the

1:03

Olympics, perhaps you don't really have much

1:05

to say to those people when it

1:07

comes up at a dinner party, will

1:09

read our book and you will be the

1:11

pinnacle of all sporting knowledge and all

1:13

quite interesting sporting knowledge at that. As

1:15

you imagine from me and Anna, it's just full of silly

1:18

stories, fun facts. We

1:20

spent so much time doing loads of in-depth research

1:22

in there that even if you are the kind

1:24

of person who's watching every single sporting event this

1:27

summer, there will be loads of stuff in there

1:29

that you didn't know. So

1:31

if you go to anywhere where you would

1:33

normally buy your books, then look for A

1:35

Load of Old Balls, the QI History of

1:38

Sport or search for our names, James Harkin

1:40

and Anna Tyshinsky and you will

1:42

find that book. Please do buy

1:44

it, it would mean the world to us if you did.

1:46

Of course we're going on tour, don't

1:48

forget that. All in Scotland,

1:51

Wales, England, Ireland, New

1:53

Zealand, Australia. Do get your

1:55

tickets very, very soon. A lot of them

1:57

are sold out. I know we've got quite

1:59

a few tickets left for... the Scottish dates

2:02

in Edinburgh and Glasgow and I think quite

2:04

a few for the show in Cardiff. So

2:06

if you're in any of those cities then

2:08

do get your tickets but actually

2:10

you know go to nosuchthingsoffish.com/live and you

2:12

will see all of the dates where

2:14

we're playing and hopefully one of them

2:16

will be near you. Okay

2:19

not much more to say apart from

2:21

on with the podcast! Hello

2:43

and welcome to another episode of No

2:45

Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly

2:47

podcast coming to you from the QI

2:49

offices in Holborn. My name is Dan

2:51

Shriver and sitting here with Andrew Hunter-Murray,

2:54

Anna Tyshinski and James Harkin and once

2:56

again we have gathered around the microphones

2:58

with our four favourite facts from the

3:00

last seven days and in no particular

3:02

order here we go! Starting

3:04

with fact number one and that is my fact. My

3:07

fact this week is that snooker

3:09

games on cruise ships are sometimes

3:11

played with flat balls. Are

3:15

we talking about the balls on the table are

3:17

they? The men playing um yeah

3:20

this is this is obvious when you think

3:22

about it. Oh it's so obvious. It's so

3:24

obvious when you don't really know how you

3:26

could play snooker on a cruise ship with

3:28

a ball shaped ball actually. Well on a

3:30

rough cruise ship. We'll get to that in

3:32

a sec because you can and there's a

3:34

pretty awesome way that you do that but

3:36

this I got from a book that's written

3:39

by an Australian comedian called Hung Lee it's

3:41

called The Crappiest Refugee. He tells the story

3:43

of from immigrant boat to cruise ship comedian.

3:45

Anyway he wrote this book and inside the

3:47

book uh he mentions that he's

3:49

seeing a bunch of guys playing on a

3:51

pool table or snooker table and they are

3:53

hitting with puck like objects because obviously in

3:55

the rough seas the balls are going to

3:57

be rolling around and so there will be

3:59

cruise ships out there that are... have these

4:01

tables on them. And the idea I think

4:03

is like, you know, air hockey. Yeah. It's

4:05

those kind of like puck things. Isn't it?

4:07

Exactly. Now to your point, Anna, a modern

4:09

day cruise ship does have pool tables or

4:11

snooker tables, billiards, but they

4:13

use gyroscopic technology. What? So it's amazing.

4:15

It's honestly, I've watched videos of it

4:17

online. It's so cool because basically while

4:20

the rest of the ship is moving,

4:22

the pool table isn't. That's insane. Just

4:24

the top of the pool table. High

4:26

end. Yeah. High end cruise ship. It's

4:28

insane. It is incredible. I've read stories

4:30

of people finding it so fascinating that

4:32

like staring to fire, sometimes people will

4:34

just go and sit and watch it

4:36

as it doesn't sway. There's even stories

4:38

of crew members that when they get

4:40

particularly sick, they'll go and sleep on

4:42

the pool table. No, because the seasickness is getting

4:44

to them. It's not moving so you

4:46

can have a restful night. That's a question. Why

4:48

isn't every bed on a boat? Probably

4:52

price cost. Yeah. How good

4:54

is the correction mechanism? Like if you have a

4:56

Titanic situation, how long can you continue with your

4:58

game of snooker? So it goes vertical.

5:02

I met someone who was a dancer on cruise ships.

5:05

Oh yeah. This sounds like a good addict though. She

5:08

did the musicals because they

5:10

often have a theater on board, sometimes a

5:12

show. And she said that the most

5:14

difficult one she'd ever done was Starlight Express where you're

5:16

on roller skates. She

5:19

said in rough weather, you would set off across

5:21

the stage and you didn't know how soon you

5:23

were going to arrive because it might be that

5:25

you caught the ship moved with you and suddenly

5:27

you're there thinking half a second or you're going

5:29

against it and you just roll backwards. So

5:32

yes, snooker. It's a good sport.

5:34

Mostly not played at sea. Largely

5:37

it's a land-based game, isn't it?

5:39

A land lover's game. I did watch a TikTok

5:41

yesterday just coincidentally of people playing on the

5:43

beach. That looked really cool. Snooker. It was

5:45

poor actually, but they kind of dug holes

5:48

for the pockets and then we just hit the

5:50

balls. Oh, so they played on

5:52

actual sand. Yeah. There's no facts to this, but

5:54

it did look pretty cool. I'm amazed that snooker in any

5:58

form has made it to TikTok because snooker is famous. Quite

6:00

a long game to watch. TikTok is not

6:02

a long format. Andy, honestly, if you could

6:04

see my TikTok, it's just snooker, golf, cricket.

6:07

It's the dullest TikTok, because it just suggests

6:09

things that you like, doesn't it? And it

6:11

just works out what you like. I reckon

6:13

if you were on TikTok, which I bet

6:15

you're not, but you would just get Moss

6:17

video after Moss video. Yeah, that sounds very

6:19

kind of me. It's amazing how it works.

6:21

But it is very slow, isn't it? Or

6:24

rather, it takes a long time. You play lots of frames in

6:26

the course of a match. And it's

6:29

interesting, because for anyone who doesn't follow snooker, only

6:31

one person is playing at a time. That's

6:33

weird. Well, you play a frame,

6:35

right? Well, no, but you play until

6:38

you mess up. And then the other guy gets to

6:40

have a go. But whoever your opponent

6:42

is, they have to stay in their chair. They

6:45

just stay in their chair watching you, and you could be

6:47

playing for hours if you don't make a mistake. It's

6:49

just psychological torture. Are there any other games which

6:51

are like that, where I know tennis, you're only

6:53

playing when your opponent is not playing. Well,

6:56

usually it's quite soon before you're playing again, isn't

6:58

it? I don't know, actually.

7:00

But that is one of the main things about

7:02

snooker is the psychological angle of it. Yeah, although,

7:05

Ronio Sullivan said he likes it, obviously, because he's always

7:07

going to be... Who? Ronio

7:09

Sullivan. Who's Ronio Sullivan? I think he's a famous snooker

7:11

player. I would say Ronio Sullivan and Don Bradman

7:14

are the only two people, I don't know what

7:16

James thinks about this, but who have excelled everyone

7:18

else so much in their sport that it's like,

7:20

whoa. So Ronio Sullivan is the

7:22

best snooker player ever. And

7:24

he hates the fact that it's so slow,

7:27

for instance, because he's this mercurial, crazy character

7:29

with an amazing history. And he likes snookers

7:31

to be super fast. So I think he's

7:33

got pretty much all the records for fastest

7:36

break. But yeah, he's amazing. And he's got

7:38

such an interesting history. His dad

7:40

went to prison for murder when I think Ronnie

7:42

was about 16. Yeah, he

7:44

was a millionaire though. Was he?

7:46

Even though his dad went to prison

7:48

for murder, he was from a very

7:51

affluent background. Interesting. His dad ran a

7:53

lingerie shop or something like that? I believe

7:55

he may have called them lingerie shops in the newspaper

7:57

ads, but I think they were sex shops. I

8:00

mean, Pate's a patata. Sure. You

8:03

say, Pate, I say, vibrator. Yeah,

8:08

so I think some of the other Snook players

8:10

who came from less affluent backgrounds kind

8:12

of point to that and say, you know, we're

8:14

working class, but Ronnie actually was quite rich when

8:16

he was growing up. Interesting, because it

8:19

was heavily embedded probably in that gang culture a

8:21

bit. It was one of the Cray brothers, the

8:23

third Cray brothers' driver, who he murdered in a

8:25

nightclub, I think. Sorry, the third Cray brother. Yeah, the... I

8:27

don't know if there was a third Cray, but do you hear about

8:29

the Cray twins? I know. He was very much the... It's

8:32

like the third chuckle brother. Yeah. He and the

8:34

third Cray brother must have, like, given each other a ride

8:36

look sometimes across the Eastern clubs.

8:38

They both have that picture of Bramwell Bronte

8:40

in their house. That's so neat. Imagine

8:45

a joke that has the Crays, the chuckle

8:47

brothers, and Bramwell Bronte in it. We've got

8:49

the Jonas brothers as well. They've got the

8:51

extra brother who's called Bonus Jonas, who is

8:53

the one that just isn't in the band

8:56

and does his own thing at the time.

8:58

Yeah, Bonus Jonas. Snook

9:00

has got fairly sort of poshish sort

9:03

of foundations, doesn't it? Because it was

9:06

invented by, supposedly, this is the big

9:08

story, by Neville Chamberlain, not the Prime

9:10

Minister, but apparently a cousin. The

9:13

reports are a bit dodgy, but apparently he was

9:15

in India in the 1800s and

9:17

he basically incorporated two existing games. There was

9:19

one called Blackpool and there was another which

9:21

was called Pyramid. And so one was played

9:24

entirely with red balls and that was in

9:26

a pyramid shape. So he was like, I

9:28

love the pyramid shape. And then the other

9:30

one had all the other color balls in

9:32

it. And he brought that over, smashed them into

9:34

one big game with the pyramid, and then just

9:36

kept yelling snooker at people as they were playing.

9:38

And by the end of the game, he'd called

9:40

everyone snooker. And so it stuck. Why did you

9:42

call someone? What did it mean? Did it mean ticket?

9:44

I think it was a sort of term

9:46

for an idiot, someone who was incompetent at whatever

9:49

task they were doing, a rookie.

9:51

I see. It is weird though, because he said

9:53

he invented it in 1875. He

9:55

only said that in 1938, which is

9:58

a substantial amount of time later. as

10:01

what? 63 years later. 63 years later and

10:03

he was an army officer already when he

10:05

invented this so he must have been knocking

10:07

on. But the claim was accepted and I

10:09

think it's sort of widely accepted

10:11

that that's that's where that is where it comes from. But

10:14

also the other weird thing about Snooker, that name thing

10:16

you were saying Dan, is so if you snooker someone

10:18

is it that I need to hit a red next

10:20

but I'm behind the yellow or whatever? Precisely. So that

10:23

is unusual as well because it's

10:26

a move in the game where you've messed things

10:28

up for someone else. Yeah. Which is, is that

10:30

in croquet like that? It's a bit

10:32

like that. Yeah, you can croquet someone. Croquet

10:34

and croquet someone. I think there is a

10:36

connection between croquet and snooker really. I think

10:38

snooker kind of grew out of croquet like

10:40

games. Yeah. And that's why the table's green

10:44

because it was like originally played

10:46

on grass. The bays. Which has

10:48

to have, do you know the difference

10:52

between the bays in snooker and pool? I

10:54

got a bit too into table makeup actually.

10:56

Oh, wow. Is it the nap? Yeah,

10:59

I'm just gonna almost disqualify you from answering

11:01

this question James. Full

11:03

disclosure, I am very much into

11:05

snooker. Yeah, you're not allowed to answer any

11:07

more quiz questions in this section. What's the nap?

11:10

So the nap is the way that the

11:12

kind of hairs on the substance that the

11:14

table is made of bend. So basically in

11:16

snooker you have to have a nap. And

11:19

that means that it's a little bit like if you

11:21

imagine a velvet surface. In fact, if you look at

11:23

those cushions over there. I'm having a nap listening to this. Andy,

11:29

this is fascinating stuff. Sorry, go on, go on. Okay, if you

11:31

look at those cushions over there, they're velvety. You stroke

11:33

them one way and they look smooth. You stroke them the

11:35

other way and they look rough. Oh, okay. Yeah. And that's

11:37

like a snooker table. It has to have that effect

11:39

and it really affects how the ball travels because you

11:41

can imagine if the little hairs, fibers are standing up

11:43

a certain way and depending on the angle at which

11:45

it's hitting them, you really have to work with the

11:47

nap. So if you aim for a shot in

11:49

the middle pocket, you have to aim slightly outside

11:51

the pocket because the nap will make it naturally

11:54

bend towards the pocket. So interesting. So part of

11:56

the gameplay is literally getting your face close to

11:58

the table and seeing how the nap. No,

12:00

it's always the same. It's always the

12:02

same. Well, I actually read in a

12:04

really furious blog that a man who has

12:06

heard of people who install their own tables

12:09

putting the nap on back to front, which

12:11

is obviously an absolute disaster. Doesn't it just go the

12:13

other way then? Or do you mean upside down? No,

12:15

I think he means it goes the other way. So it will

12:17

go slow and it should go fast. But you would be

12:19

used to it. Like you would be very much

12:21

used to it being one way. I got a

12:23

question. Are you allowed to comb the table before

12:25

your pot? So

12:27

before every frame, yeah,

12:30

probably someone will come on and give the table a

12:32

quick comb. And also you

12:34

are allowed to kind of flatten. If you see a

12:37

bit, you are as flat. Mid

12:39

game. Yeah, mid shot like not mid shot. But

12:41

just before your shot, you're allowed to. A bit

12:43

of the rugs rocked up. Yeah, you are. You

12:45

are smoothing it out. Well, it would be like

12:47

curling, wouldn't it? That

12:50

would be a game. So

12:52

actually, Snooker isn't played on a Snooker table.

12:54

He's played on a Billiards table. What?

12:57

Because Billiards was invented before it. And then Snooker

12:59

was played on the Billiards table. And we still

13:01

call it a Billiards table rather than a Snooker

13:03

table officially. So what gets played on a Snooker

13:05

table? There's no such thing as a Snooker table.

13:08

Well, it's just another word for a Billiards table,

13:10

I guess. Right. That's great. And what's Billiards? So

13:13

Billiards is a game where you have three balls

13:15

only on the table. And the rules say you

13:17

get a point by either potting one of the

13:19

balls or by hitting one ball onto

13:21

the other. Right. And then if you get a point,

13:23

you get another go and you get another go and

13:25

another go and another go until you stop getting points

13:27

and then your opponent comes on the table. OK,

13:30

so a bit like Snooker, your opponent sat there

13:32

for quite a long time just watching you play.

13:35

But in 1907, a new technique was

13:37

discovered where, you know, the pockets in

13:40

Snooker where the ball goes into. Yeah.

13:42

What this guy called Walter Lovejoy managed

13:44

to do was to get two balls

13:47

stuck in the pocket. And so

13:49

he could just tap these two balls every time.

13:51

And they would always hit the cushion or hit

13:53

each other. And you could do that again and

13:55

again and again and again. And there

13:58

was a game a bit later between. Tom

14:00

Chapman and Tom Rees, where Tom

14:02

Rees managed to score 499,135 points by using this technique over

14:08

85 hours and 49 minutes

14:10

of play. Wow. Oh, what a tedious

14:12

person. Is

14:15

it illegal now as a technique? It's illegal

14:18

as a technique. And also, like, this record

14:20

was never in the record books because all

14:22

of the fans went home, the referee went

14:24

home and even as a pony. Wow. That's

14:28

so good. I worry about this guy's home life.

14:30

It sounds like you didn't have much to go back to. I

14:32

think it's great. I didn't know that Pocket Billions

14:34

was real. I thought it was a vulgar

14:36

euphemism all my life and actually it's a proper game.

14:39

And what is it? It's just a smaller version of Billions.

14:41

Oh. Or it's slang for messing

14:43

around with yourself. I would stop playing

14:45

Pocket Billions is what you'd say to someone. Yeah. If

14:48

they were masturbating in public. Yeah, right.

14:51

Okay. Just

14:53

don't get them mixed up. That's how I saw it. I

14:55

was getting away with it all the time. Stop

15:12

the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi,

15:15

Daniel Schreiber. Do you like wine? James

15:17

Harkin. I love wine. Oh, well, have

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I got the deal for you? What's

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your favorite kind of wine? Oh, I

15:24

love a white or a red

15:26

or that pink, you know, the pink one into

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that. Yeah. But the thing is you like me,

15:31

probably know that you like wine, but you don't

15:33

know specifically the kind of wines that you like.

15:35

Oh, maybe there's one that you get all the

15:37

time, but you'd like to open up your world

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of wine. And the way to do that, let

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me tell you, is to go to Naked

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less than six pounds of

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bottle. All right. On with

16:50

the show. On with the podcast. Okay,

16:57

it is time for fact number two, and that

16:59

is Anna. My fact this week

17:01

is that one of the major battles in

17:03

the Cold War was to see who was

17:05

better at squashing metal. Was

17:09

it to get rid of the Iron Curtain?

17:11

Brilliant. Oh, my god. Oh, my god.

17:13

Lovely. This is the heavy press

17:15

program, which sounds kind of like

17:17

a raunchy sexual program, but it

17:19

wasn't. You get turned on by very different things to

17:22

me, Anna. No, I'm without it. But

17:24

she's coming around to my place for a heavy press. No,

17:29

I'm just going to say how do some pocket billions. The

17:35

heavy press program was launched by the US in response

17:37

to the fact that the USSR in the 1950s, it

17:41

believed had got very good at squashing

17:43

metal. And the good thing about squashing

17:45

metal is that it was a much

17:47

better way of making airplanes. So meant

17:49

that you could put a huge ingot into a

17:52

machine and squash it into the shape you wanted

17:54

for a big bit of wing or something. And

17:56

that would mean that it would be a lighter

17:58

aircraft that if you just. nailed together lots

18:00

and lots of little bits, which is why you were making

18:02

the plane. I've seen images of this thing and

18:04

it's so impressive. It's a ginormous structure, the one

18:06

in America that we're gonna get onto, which

18:09

is a very famous one called the 50. You

18:11

say it's very famous, but I think it's only known

18:13

because there's this one guy who's just written a series

18:15

of amazing articles about it. It's one in the Atlantic

18:17

and other New York Times, who's just really into it.

18:20

And that was in Cleveland, Ohio. It still

18:22

exists today. So I think they made 10

18:25

machines in the US and they made

18:27

four pressing machines, whether you squash metal

18:30

and six extrusion machines, where you squeeze

18:32

it like toothpaste. And

18:34

I think eight of them are still going today.

18:36

It's nuts. At the moment, every single

18:38

US military aircraft contains bits made by this 50

18:41

machine. By this one machine, yeah. I mean, these were built in the

18:43

50s. They're still

18:45

going today. The engineers of the 50 think it's gonna be going

18:47

in total for about 110 years. Wow,

18:50

completely. Can I ask why it's called the 50? I

18:52

think it was because it would exert 50,000 tons of

18:54

compressive force, which is the equivalent of being

18:57

able to lift up 500 blue whales. Wow.

19:00

And it's massive. It's 87 meters high,

19:03

so it looks huge. It's

19:05

so cool. Honestly, there's

19:07

really a work something in me, this machine that's

19:09

really like brought my inner

19:11

Clarkson to the fore. It's just really

19:13

the most amazing machine in the world.

19:15

It's just so cool. It is. I

19:18

think it's the size and the majesty of them. And there are lots of them.

19:20

So there are those in the US. And then, well,

19:22

as I said, in the Cold War, the reason

19:24

it became a fight was because Germany was actually

19:26

the best at making them. So Germany had all

19:29

this technology in the Second World War for pressing

19:31

metal that no one else had. And as part

19:33

of the agreement after the Second World War, we

19:36

divided things up and the USSR got

19:38

their biggest heavy press. So they got

19:40

the 30,000 pressing machine, 30,000

19:43

ton pressing machine. Whereas I think America only

19:45

got about 10,000 ton one. And

19:47

I ended up reading all of these CIA documents

19:50

spying on how Russia was using them and saying,

19:52

oh, what are they doing with this thing? They're

19:54

incredibly boring. Aside from the word secret at the

19:56

top. But yeah, they had

19:58

to transport it back in four specially. made train

20:00

carriages from Germany to the USSR. But yeah,

20:02

America were like, oh no, they've got this

20:04

now. We'll have to make a big one.

20:07

But it's all, and it's partly, it partly relates back to

20:09

the First World War, right? So in the

20:11

First World War, again, lots of post-war

20:14

reparations, Treaty of Versailles took a lot of things away from

20:16

Germany. And there was a shortage

20:18

of various key materials for the German economy and

20:20

for the armaments and all this. So they developed

20:23

the technique of press forging, which is where you

20:25

press down on the, just because it's more efficient.

20:28

And the one thing they'd been allowed to keep,

20:30

or one of the things they were allowed to

20:32

keep was their magnesium, right? The

20:34

Allied powers said, we're not interested in your

20:36

magnesium, so you can have that. But the

20:39

problem is that the previous method of forging

20:41

things is basically big hammer, smashes down, smashes

20:43

off. Does it not explode if you hit

20:45

magnesium now? It's, well, if you put, I

20:47

think you put water on it, isn't it?

20:49

But it does crack. It doesn't forge well

20:52

under the current forging conditions. That's why Germany

20:54

invented the technique of press forging because they

20:56

were working with the materials they had. And

20:58

also they had to be as efficient as

21:01

possible. So- Once again, shot yourselves in

21:03

the foot with Versailles, didn't you, allies? But

21:05

then actually, playing the long game,

21:08

you got the technology back. So

21:10

sort of a nice go draw for the Treaty of Versailles.

21:13

I think that's right, yeah. I think the Treaty of Versailles

21:16

is a foe of the podcast because we give it a

21:18

right kick, you have this show, don't we? True. The

21:21

highest pressure ever achieved is

21:24

770 gigapascals, which

21:27

is more than twice the pressure in the inner core

21:29

of the earth. Okay. Yeah.

21:32

What did we do it for? Well, it's just scientists, isn't it? Ah,

21:35

thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanted to

21:37

see what happens if you squash osmium,

21:39

really, really, really a lot. And who's he? Richard

21:42

Osmium. He's the Roman

21:45

Richard Os- Yeah. It's

21:47

the chemical element osmium and they really, really

21:49

squashed it with all this pressure. And they

21:52

found out that it does not change its

21:54

crystal structure. Huh. Wow. Yeah, sometimes you're gonna

21:56

go through that experiment to find out. You're

21:59

fancy to find out. As in- It's important to find out

22:01

nothing, to find out something. I wonder

22:03

if it's especially tough, Osmium, or it has a

22:05

special... Is it especially dense? OK, that's cool. Surely,

22:07

otherwise it seems silly if it's just... They

22:11

didn't like, we'll start off by squashing a flam. Let's

22:13

see. The

22:15

biggest press now, I don't think gets much

22:18

press. Mm. It's in

22:20

Vienna, and it's made by an Italian

22:22

company, who would have thought? I

22:25

think... Not me. I

22:27

think it's something nothing. I don't see any reason

22:29

why the Italians wouldn't be good at pressing. I

22:31

suppose most industrial things like that are Russia and

22:34

China, sometimes America, and they do have the other

22:36

big ones. But an Italian company have made it

22:38

in Vienna, and it's called Tyson. Is it

22:40

to make lasagna sheets? It

22:43

is. They can make a meatball that is as dense as

22:45

the sun. And,

22:49

yeah, that exerts 100,000 tonnes of force, which

22:52

is the equivalent of being able to lift up

22:54

100 Eiffel Towers. Wow.

22:57

Wow. Which is impressive. That is a lot of... It

23:00

is amazing. Is it used for the same, just making

23:02

sheets of metal for airplanes and stuff? Yeah,

23:04

they do lots of stuff with oil and

23:06

gas industry, and wind turbines, and nuclear and...

23:08

Yeah, right. ...little things you would imagine need

23:10

loads of metal. I was reading

23:12

into humans crushing metal. Oh, yeah. Because that is...

23:15

Yeah, it's a thing, and it turns out there's

23:17

a lot of Guinness World Records for people who

23:19

have done that in the past. So one

23:22

of the records I found was

23:24

the most cans crushed with shoulder

23:26

blades in one minute. OK.

23:28

Now, this is your back shoulder blades. Yeah.

23:30

So you're sort of moving them together to

23:32

create the crush. What do you reckon in

23:34

one minute? Well, OK, question.

23:37

Yeah. Is someone putting the

23:39

cans in your shoulders after you have

23:41

to place them there yourself? Because

23:43

that feels tough. So the records

23:45

held by Fabrizio Melito. And

23:48

another one for the Italians, sounds like. Exactly,

23:50

yeah. Crushing metal is just their forte. And

23:52

it was his brother Frank who would replenish

23:54

the can in between the shoulder blades to

23:56

be crushed. Yeah. 84. far

24:00

off 68 68 that's

24:02

10 more than someone managed to do it with their

24:04

head in one minute 58

24:06

achieved with their head. It's interesting because if

24:08

you ever crush a can these days, it's

24:10

really easy. It's very and that used to

24:12

be seen as like a Popeye or a

24:14

manly raw kind of thing. It turns out

24:16

that that did used to be that because

24:18

cans were 40% stronger back in

24:21

the day in terms of the material and the strength

24:23

and the thickness. This really shows how old I am.

24:25

I remember when aluminium cans came in and

24:28

that they were much easier to crush. It used to

24:30

be that you could buy cans of pop and some

24:32

of them will be aluminium and some of them wouldn't

24:35

be. The aluminium ones were way easier to crush. Were

24:37

the previous ones steel? I suppose

24:39

they must have been. I'm not really sure

24:41

but I just remember Blue Peter had a

24:43

thing where everyone had to crush cans and

24:45

send them for recycling in their 80s. Nice.

24:47

And so we were all into can crushing

24:50

back then. Before Tamagotchis that was what it

24:53

was. Can I read an

24:55

introductory sentence to you? Yeah. Is it

24:57

from your new novel? No,

25:00

it's from a piece about another kind of forging which is a

25:02

thing called drop forging. And it's in

25:05

Kudahy. I'm sorry I'm sure I'm pronouncing

25:07

it wrong Milwaukee. It begins

25:09

like this. Tucked away in a Kudahy warehouse.

25:11

Something big has been pounding away since 1959.

25:16

But this is a huge great hammer. And

25:18

this is the kind of thing where you

25:21

just have a giant hammer to smash down

25:23

on your metal and get it into the

25:25

shape you want. And this one it weighs

25:27

one million pounds and it

25:29

goes five floors above ground and

25:31

also five floors below ground. So

25:34

it's called a counter blow hammer which is

25:36

meaning that you are whacking above sides.

25:38

Oh right. Yeah. That cool. At the

25:41

same time. Like a crocodile. It's so

25:43

cool. It's just like flames and fire

25:45

inside it and it's just mashing away

25:47

at these other things. Right. Basically that

25:50

hammer, that gigantic hammer has been in

25:52

operation so long that you've got multiple

25:54

generations of the same family who've been

25:56

operating that hammer. It's been going since

25:59

1959. So

26:01

there was a guy interview for this article saying, yeah, my

26:03

grandfather worked on this hammer. I know.

26:05

What would happen if you put just a person in there? Oh,

26:07

they'd be in trouble. They'd be in

26:09

such trouble. They get just squished. They get. But

26:11

I'd love to see what that like, does it

26:14

look like a little bit too. It's not like

26:16

when you frame Roger Rabbit. It's not that bad.

26:18

You would not love to see that. I can

26:20

say. It's become a perfect two dimensional

26:22

human. It's a shame that's

26:24

not on the list of options for like, you

26:26

know, you've got classic burial cremation, obliterated

26:29

fine, mashed hammer. The

26:31

flattening. Can I tell you

26:33

one thing about a cool destruction engine from the

26:35

19th century? This is great. This

26:37

is, there was a great new

26:39

scientist piece about it. And it was, it was called

26:42

the Victorian Monster Destruction Engine, not its official name. But

26:45

it was made by an engineer called David Kerkolde,

26:47

who was Scottish. And he

26:51

was the chief engineer behind

26:53

this machine, which existed to

26:56

smash metal, to tear

26:58

it, to twist it, to crunch

27:00

it, to bop it, you know, to do all

27:02

of this. And

27:05

it was, it was because before his

27:07

work, you could not test the components

27:09

of a bridge, say. So, you know,

27:12

you just have to trust that the bridge you were

27:14

building was strong enough. Yeah, you've got some rivets. You

27:16

need to know whether they're gonna hold. If you put

27:18

a load of pressure on it, how do you do

27:21

that? Exactly that. And he built this gigantic machine. It

27:23

was 116 tonnes, which at the time was huge. And

27:25

its entire job was to tear things apart. And it

27:27

could measure the tonnage at which, or the force that

27:29

needed to be applied before things broke. And this

27:32

changed engineering because, you know,

27:34

there was the Tay Bridge disaster in Scotland.

27:36

Yeah. And they went down to

27:38

the riverbed after this awful disaster had happened. Lots

27:40

of people died. And it was a really tragic

27:42

event. A really bad bit of poetry was written

27:45

about it famously by Lekonigal. That's right. The

27:48

Tay Bridge disaster disaster, it became

27:50

known. And they went down and they

27:52

got some of the lugs that had attached the bridge

27:54

rods to the supporting columns. And it was found that

27:56

they broke at 20 tonnes of pressure rather than the

27:58

60 that they should have done. done. So

28:00

that, you know, ruined the career of

28:03

the engineer who had said, no,

28:05

these are fine and these are strong enough

28:07

to support the bridge. So I feel like

28:09

they should have used buttresses as many a

28:11

wise man confesses. It's a line from

28:13

the poem. It's genuinely a line from the poem. That's good.

28:15

Of all the poems you could have memorised. But

28:20

yeah, he made loads of bridges as well, didn't

28:22

he? Like, and they were shipped all over the

28:24

world because he was the first person ever to

28:26

test these things. So the Sydney Harbour Bridge was

28:28

all tested. But in his one machine, various

28:32

bridges in London, Hammersmith Bridge. The

28:34

family thing, like the Generations Festival of Britain in

28:36

the 1950s, some of their structures

28:38

were tested by his grandson. And I

28:41

love this. It was certainly

28:43

in 2014 there in a museum in Southwark.

28:47

And they used to be on

28:49

the top floor, a museum of fractures, which was

28:51

a collection of broken pieces of metal. But

28:53

tragically, during the Second World War, a bomb fell on

28:56

it. And

28:58

all the pieces came back together. What

29:01

am I supposed to do with these? I'm

29:03

going to find a pristine Spitfire. OK,

29:12

it is time for fact number three,

29:14

and that is James. OK, my fact

29:16

this week is that in 18th century

29:18

America, you could tell a merchant from

29:21

a lawyer just by looking at their

29:23

handwriting. So

29:25

the lawyer would put little hearts over the

29:27

eyes. This is

29:30

insane. The merchant was dollar signs. Yeah,

29:33

it's crazy, isn't it? I just didn't know this.

29:35

It was in an article in The Atlantic. I

29:37

read it, an article by Rachel Gutman Way. And

29:41

she wrote that there were different font types for

29:43

different jobs. The

29:46

handwriting of the merchants apparently was supposed to reflect the efficiency

29:48

and speed with which they worked. And

29:50

lawyers would have different scripts. Aristocrats would have different

29:52

scripts. And what would happen is it was you'd

29:54

be in your guild or whatever, or you know,

29:57

you'd be in your guild. you

30:00

would be taught to do this job. And when

30:02

you were being taught it, they would teach you

30:04

particular ways of writing. So as the years went

30:06

on, it would kind of get more and more

30:08

enforced this style of writing. Because

30:11

doctors are the only people today who've reputedly

30:13

got a particular kind of handwriting, which is

30:15

terrible. Yeah. I don't think that's

30:17

a font, is it? It's a band script. I

30:20

feel like journalists, I've seen journalists doing fast writing.

30:23

Short hand. Yeah, shorthand, which feels very them.

30:25

And that's a sort of separate language. Yeah.

30:28

It's a no take. But the English language written in.

30:30

Yeah, so you would write the same words, but you'd

30:32

be able to read them and you'd be able to

30:34

say, this person is a merchant, this person is a...

30:36

Could you masquerade? If I was a merchant, wanting to

30:38

pretend to be a lawyer. I suppose you could, but

30:40

it's a bit like forging signatures. Is

30:43

I guess it's difficult, right? Because your

30:45

signature you do naturally without thinking, whereas

30:47

to forge it, it takes time. And

30:49

sometimes it's not very easy to do

30:51

it exactly. And you probably need other proofs

30:54

that you're a lawyer. It probably wasn't that

30:56

people would hire a lawyer by saying, can you just

30:58

write your name? It looks like

31:00

a lawyer's handwriting to me. I'm in a Mrs. Doubtfire

31:02

scenario in my head. I'm like, I'm the aristocrat and

31:04

the nanny in this, what

31:06

I'm trying to do. Right. Well, one

31:09

thing that might work there is that

31:11

men and women had different handwriting as

31:13

well. Yeah, so interesting. So men had

31:15

more masculine handwriting, they were taught, or

31:17

muscular handwriting. What does that even mean?

31:19

Well, muscular handwriting, according to someone called

31:21

Carla Peterson, who is a professor of

31:24

English at the University of Maryland, they

31:26

used more pressure on the pen. Just

31:29

holes in the paper. 50,000 tons

31:31

of force on every letter. And

31:34

women had more like an italic

31:36

cursive handwriting. What I thought was

31:38

so interesting about this fact is that I

31:41

hadn't really considered until now the fact

31:43

that we were all taught a font.

31:45

So basically the handwriting equivalent of font is

31:47

script. And we were all taught a script. And

31:49

of course we were. And when you see, you

31:51

know when you see writing from the olden days,

31:53

like if I look at collections

31:56

of letters written by, like my grandparents had old

31:58

letters written by their grandparents from the... the

32:00

handwriting is so different. And

32:03

that's because official styles changed.

32:06

And so there was this thing called Spencerian

32:08

scripts in the 1900s, which President Garfield called

32:11

the pride of our country. It's that big.

32:15

America's done so much stuff. That's the

32:17

biggest one. It's not the biggie. That's the

32:19

biggest Spencerian. The guy who came up

32:21

with this, Platt Rogers Spencer, said he was inspired

32:23

by pebbles on a beach and is sloping. It's

32:26

got to be at an exact angle of 52 degrees.

32:30

Sloping forwards and slightly

32:32

rounded. Okay. And was that

32:34

like basically Americans would write like

32:37

that? Yes. Because I know

32:39

like for instance, my wife writes in a Russian

32:41

font, which is different than an English font for

32:43

sure. Yes. Yeah, yeah. There's

32:45

lots of chat about the different ways that different

32:47

European countries still write. So Platt Rogers Spencer

32:49

spent so much time trying to get it

32:51

to be the standard writing style they were

32:53

teaching in schools and so on. To the

32:55

point where it feels very missionary. When he

32:57

died, his sons then took textbooks of it

32:59

and they sort of went out and campaigned

33:01

for it to be changed. Have you tried

33:03

this font? Style. And go to schools and

33:05

hand them. And then sort of people start

33:08

reading the books. No, don't read the words.

33:10

Just look at the letters. Yeah, exactly. So

33:12

weird. Yeah, and then it did get taken

33:14

over by a thing called Zainablozo method. And

33:16

then that eventually got taken over by another.

33:18

So we've got generational changes within how we write.

33:20

You can tell when texts come from, right? Because

33:22

you can, I like, there's a thing called paleography.

33:25

Is that it? It's old writing and it's the

33:27

study of old writing. You do courses in it.

33:29

Because if you look at a text from hundreds

33:32

of years ago, even if it's

33:34

in English, it's gonna be really hard to

33:36

decipher. It's hard to recognize time travelers, I

33:38

suppose. Is that they have different handwriting to

33:40

the rest of them. Yes, it'd be so

33:42

obvious if someone suddenly started writing in that

33:44

Gothic script that as you say, you can

33:46

barely read it. It looks so different, doesn't

33:48

it? So hard to distinguish. I was thinking

33:50

people from the future might write, like for

33:52

instance, in capitals or something. Hello.

33:56

Busted. And

34:00

just very quickly before we wrap up

34:02

on that, that did go out and

34:04

these other fonts took over, but it

34:06

did embed itself in society and we

34:08

see it virtually every day. So it

34:10

was a win for Platt and Roger.

34:12

Disguessable. Oh yeah, should be.

34:14

Think of ingredients lists on packets of

34:16

food. Oh, they're always in handwriting, aren't

34:18

they? Okay, okay, okay. I was just

34:21

warming up. Something

34:24

that's in handwriting. Yeah. Okay, that we

34:26

see something on a bank note,

34:28

like the... I promised to pay the bearer.

34:30

No, it's a logo. It's

34:33

a logo in the handwriting. Tabries.

34:36

That's a great call. It is a food and

34:38

drink product and it is not anything that you've

34:40

said. It's a drink. Cocoa. Cocoa

34:43

cola. Cocoa cola. That

34:45

lovely... You're right, that rounded cursive.

34:47

That rounded cursive. I forgot what the question was. So

34:50

it was basically phased out, Spencerian,

34:53

but he managed to have an

34:55

impact saying, Ford Cars is also

34:57

the way that Ford is written,

34:59

is based on Spencerian. That is

35:01

great. What a legacy. That's a... Great

35:04

legacy. That's kind of time travel, but the

35:06

normal way round, you know, like a survivor. It's like

35:08

those animals that you find, which, oh, we thought you

35:10

went extinct 130 million years ago, but

35:12

here you are swimming around. I can see the

35:14

count of handwriting. Yeah, it's a coca cola count.

35:17

Did you set me up

35:20

for that joke on that?

35:22

No. Because you felt

35:24

like it. Like I walked straight into a bird trap there.

35:27

We should probably say that handwriting evolves for

35:29

practical reasons. So it was all about these

35:31

people saying, this is a quicker way to

35:33

write. And this is an easier way to

35:36

write. This is an easier way to teach.

35:38

Or the reason that Gothic, which was invented

35:40

in the 12th century-ish, that was quite squashed

35:42

up. And it was because

35:44

there was parchment shortages. And so you could fit

35:46

much more on the page. So

35:48

it's all practicalities, which feels relevant when

35:50

it's enforced today, because people say, isn't

35:53

it sad that no one learns the proper cursive

35:55

anymore? There are a number of American states that

35:58

enforce it legally. And there isn't. really

36:00

evidence that there's particularly a purpose.

36:02

Because it is just joined up handwriting, right? Yes. I

36:05

can tell you a lot about someone, their

36:07

handwriting. Well, no, it can't really.

36:09

But it can tell you how drunk they are. Well,

36:11

that's good. Of all

36:13

these kind of graphology things, which is

36:16

you're supposed to be able to tell

36:18

people's personality or whatever from their handwriting,

36:20

most of it does seem to be

36:22

made yuppie, but definitely for sure. The

36:24

height of ascending letters, height of descending

36:27

letters, spacing between words, tremors.

36:30

A bit of sick on the page. The

36:34

height of the upper and lower case letters, all

36:36

changes, depending on how much alcohol you've had. That's

36:38

good. That's very good. That's got

36:40

to be one of the most pointless studies

36:43

ever done to conclude handwriting declines with alcoholism.

36:45

Did you find the BIG? No.

36:48

Notorious? Notorious British Institute of

36:50

Graphologists. They're real. They're

36:56

pretty hardcore on them. They are. That's

36:58

really funny. And their claim, and I think I'm not,

37:01

I don't think it's backed up by solid

37:03

evidence, is that it's better than therapy. Because

37:05

actually with therapy, you can only know what the

37:08

client has told you. Okay. Whereas

37:10

with graphology, you just look at the writing and

37:12

you say, well, that's disgusting. I can't believe you

37:14

had that dream. Or whatever. You're not a merchant.

37:16

You're a lawyer. We

37:19

did a debunk of graphology on QI

37:21

once and got very angry emails. And

37:24

letters, didn't we? We

37:28

got one letter from a graphologist saying

37:31

that some of the evidence

37:33

is if you get a pen and put it in

37:35

your mouth and try and write something on a piece

37:37

of paper, you'll use the same

37:39

movements as if you were to do it with

37:41

your hand. Like so Andy would write

37:43

it with his same sort of spidery handwriting with his

37:45

mouth as he would with his hand. And

37:48

that's evidence that it's coming directly from

37:50

your brain as opposed to being something

37:52

in your hands or whatever. And it's

37:55

inherent in yourself, the shape of your

37:57

letters. Is that claim true?

38:00

in either sense. Like, is it true that there's any

38:02

correlation between mouth and hand, or that you could draw

38:04

that conclusion? All I'm giving is both sides of the

38:06

story, like I'm on the BBC. Good

38:08

on you mate. But no, that's what they claim. But

38:11

of course, you know, I think these days we think

38:13

that it's nonsense. Unless you're listening to this podcast on

38:15

BBC sounds, in which case the jury's out. I

38:20

do wonder if we were able to bring

38:22

back certain people from history and just say,

38:24

oh, I love your book, or that, and

38:26

they go, that's not what that's called. And

38:28

it's because they're bad handwriting. There's a few

38:31

cases where people claim this is a thing.

38:33

So apparently, Beethoven's piece for Elise, apparently

38:35

that's not the title. What?

38:37

It's called Furry Leaves. Yeah,

38:40

it's got a pallet for Therese. No.

38:42

Yeah, it's Theresa. It's either that. No

38:44

way. Yeah, but his handwriting is so

38:46

dodgy that it just, it's, well,

38:48

we'll just go with Elise. Are

38:51

all the notes different as well? That's

38:55

so funny. Well, if you're worried

38:57

about bad handwriting, which I always was in exams,

38:59

because I have quite a legible, small handwriting, and

39:02

I always thought they're never going to read this

39:04

gold. I happened to be

39:06

on the OCR, which is one of

39:08

the famous exam boards, OCR exam board

39:10

page, FAQs page, and they clarified examiners

39:12

are experienced at reading a wide range

39:14

of handwriting. And if one examiner can't

39:16

read it, it gets passed to another

39:18

one. And so on. So I think

39:20

if your handwriting's bad, it just goes,

39:22

gets passed to 20 different examiners. So funny.

39:25

I know where it would end up. Where?

39:27

At the very end, there is a lady

39:29

on the Isle of Man who runs a

39:31

firm called Transcription Services, and almost no one

39:33

does what she does. She

39:35

is just phenomenal at reading handwriting.

39:37

Really? Specifically old writing, like

39:40

the work by William Weiswirth, the Bronte's

39:42

John Dunn, it's all passed to her

39:44

in the Isle of Man. And she's,

39:46

she's just amazing at it. And that

39:49

is paleography. Yeah, one person

39:51

who was really difficult to decipher

39:53

was Catherine Mansfield. I was reading

39:55

about the New Zealand short story

39:58

person. Her handwriting was so

40:00

bad that when she died

40:02

and left 53 handwritten notebooks,

40:04

it took decades to decipher

40:06

them. And the person

40:08

who was doing it once spent an entire

40:11

week trying to decipher a single word. Oh,

40:13

no. No. So

40:16

the way you write can kind of show where you're from.

40:18

I saw this is really interesting. So the way you write

40:20

a T, for instance, which bit do you write first? The

40:24

width. Don't even know. I go the top. I

40:26

don't do the cross, basically. You don't cross your

40:28

Ds? No, I do that first. I'll

40:31

cross your T's, imagine that.

40:33

I'll see you tomorrow. See

40:38

you, Layla. So

40:40

presumably, oh, Dan, actually, what do you write first?

40:43

Well, you write all in capital. No, no,

40:45

but who writes the cross bit first? Well,

40:47

what's the cross bit? Do you mean the

40:49

cross your T's? What the bit that goes

40:51

across? I do. I do. You write the

40:53

cross first. Okay, if I was writing that

40:55

in lower case, I go, Guys,

40:58

do you know what's so fascinating about this? Right?

41:01

Do it again. What can Dan also write that none

41:03

of the rest of us can? Brilliant books

41:06

about weird beliefs. I

41:09

don't think he can write this. What can he speak and

41:11

where was he brought up? Oh, Mandarin.

41:14

Australian slang. Mandarin. Australian

41:16

slang, yes. Mandarin writers

41:19

write in lots of little short

41:21

dashes. And so it makes sense for

41:23

them to write when they learn English. They tend to

41:25

write the cross of the T first, because

41:27

it's lots of little figures. How interesting. We would always

41:29

write. And there's lots of little stuff like that. In

41:32

Koreans, they write nine backwards. Do you write your lines

41:34

backwards, Dan? No, I, well, I don't know. You might

41:37

tell me now that I do. I write it like that.

41:39

No, that's like everyone writes a nine. That's normal.

41:41

I wonder if I've got a cultural mesh going

41:44

on, because I will start that like that, but

41:46

then I'll do that to end it. Wow. Yeah.

41:48

Mmm. Gosh. It's interesting, because

41:51

I've never seen you write in lower case before. Yeah.

41:53

I didn't know you could. I

41:55

am capable. Wow.

42:00

I'm so sorry. What

42:03

do you think the school I went to taught? Well,

42:06

let's not go there. Okay,

42:14

it is time for our final fact of the

42:16

show and that is Andy. My

42:18

fact is that the sun is surrounded by a

42:21

layer of moss. Oh. Hey.

42:24

Is it? No, I mean,

42:26

it obviously isn't happening. So

42:28

this is a thing which industry

42:31

experts, sun

42:33

experts, astronomers, big science

42:35

brains, they

42:38

call moss. I love this. So this

42:40

is in the sun's corona. We're outside the

42:42

sun itself. And there are areas

42:44

where the sun's magnetic field bursts out and

42:47

the gas that makes up the sun

42:49

flows around these huge loops and then

42:52

spears back down into the thing. It's

42:54

all really, it's awesome. Anyway, and the

42:56

moss is these sort of lacy patterns

42:59

around the corona and around those coronal

43:02

loops, around the feet of them, if you like. It's

43:04

a term that NASA uses and lots of other astronomers

43:06

use it. Coronal moss. I love the

43:08

sexy words you can use for lace-like structures to

43:10

use moss, I feel like. Yeah.

43:14

Yeah, what would you have gone for? Well, lace. Lingerie.

43:17

Lace. Yeah, negligent. That's

43:19

quite a cool, yeah. I

43:21

do think of it when I was reading about it.

43:24

Yeah, you've described it pretty well there. It looks like

43:26

a rainbow if you look at these coronal

43:28

loops. And the moss is sort of at the bottom

43:31

of them, so it's like the gold at the bottom

43:33

of a rainbow. Very nice. Lovely.

43:35

What's really weird is I read

43:38

that this is the case. There may be other

43:40

reasons for it, but the reason those loops come

43:42

out at all is largely to do with the

43:44

rotation of the sun. Right. Yeah,

43:47

so you've got basically, it takes 25 days

43:49

at the equator to rotate, but at the

43:51

poles it takes 33 days. So

43:54

you have this bit overtaking the outside

43:56

and it sort of snaps and it

43:58

creates these big loops. of running

44:00

past itself in a, it's

44:02

the weird rotation, the double rotation of the

44:04

planet. Yeah, well, because it's all gas, so

44:08

it can, it kind of feels

44:10

natural, right, that it would rotate at different

44:12

levels. But yeah, that chaos that's generated. Yeah.

44:15

But it seems like we still don't know

44:17

a lot about the sun, which is quite

44:19

exciting. And they're still discovering stuff about it,

44:21

aren't they? I mean, this is all linked

44:23

to that eternal mystery, that why is the

44:25

sun's atmosphere, the bit just above the surface

44:27

of the sun, so hot? I think we

44:29

might have mentioned before. It's hotter than the surface

44:31

or even the core. It's the hottest there, is that what

44:33

you're saying? It's hotter than the surface, definitely. I'm not

44:35

sure if it's hotter than the very core. Yeah, it's

44:37

so much hotter. So the surface of the sun

44:39

is about 6000 degrees Celsius, I think

44:42

we can all agree, very hot. Yeah. But

44:45

the corona, the atmosphere

44:47

is 1 million and

44:49

6000 degrees Celsius. It's a million degrees hotter. And

44:52

do you know, they've even NASA says that there are flares,

44:54

which they think might be between 10 and 40

44:56

million degrees Celsius. World's million

44:59

degrees. So the sun's rotating, producing magnetic

45:01

field, right? Yeah. And then these

45:03

lines of magnetic force, they get tangled, and they

45:05

build up pressure and they snap. And most of

45:07

the energy goes outwards. But some of it goes

45:10

back inwards, into

45:12

the sun. And the particles

45:14

in the sun's lower atmosphere, they build up

45:16

this pressure wave, and it penetrates deep into

45:18

the sun. And it becomes a

45:21

sun quake. Just everything starts sounding like

45:23

a cool title for a metal album.

45:26

Sun quake. I've

45:28

been going around singing sun quake. There's a

45:31

group called the solar wind sherpas, who also

45:33

sound pretty cool. Sorry, they're banned. No, they're

45:35

a group of scientists, but just anything sun

45:38

related, like coronal moss, or whatever. That one

45:40

doesn't quite work. No matter how much you

45:42

put that voice on. Okay, okay, okay. Quite

45:47

similarly, you get solar rain, which

45:50

is actually lumps of plasma that fall down

45:52

from these coronal rainbow loops. And when they

45:54

splash into the chromosphere, the bit in between

45:57

the atmosphere and the surface, they make a

45:59

big splash. and they send up

46:01

loads more plasma. We are Chromosphere.

46:03

This is our album, Solar Rain.

46:05

You see? We are

46:07

the solar hedgerow. What about that?

46:11

That's a bit rural. Bit rustic, but

46:13

nice. Yeah, maybe like the rehearsals. I

46:15

mean, it's not that interesting. It's just

46:17

like filaments of mossy-like stuff from the

46:19

sun that create loops that go in

46:21

like a line, like a hedgerow mic.

46:24

But it is an official term, apparently. That's cool.

46:26

Do you know who is the first person to

46:28

take a photo of these filaments on the sun?

46:30

Ooh. Oh,

46:33

it's someone we've heard of. Oh, no. OK.

46:35

OK. That narrows it

46:38

down. That narrows it down. You're right. Sarah.

46:40

You might have come across her name. Annie

46:42

Maunder, she was called. And

46:45

she was married to Edward Walter Maunder.

46:48

And she was probably the last of what was

46:50

called the lady computers. So

46:53

towards the end of the 19th century, this

46:56

is obviously there were computers for the

46:58

space race and stuff like that. But these

47:00

were women who would do the calculations when

47:02

astronomers would come up with loads of data.

47:04

They would give them to the women. And

47:06

the women would work them out and work

47:08

out what was going on. Amazing. And

47:11

also the Maunder minimum is named after her,

47:13

which you might have heard, which was a

47:15

time in the 17th century when old sunspots

47:17

disappeared. Was that when it got

47:19

very cold? Yeah, the little ice age. Exactly.

47:21

Was that the Maunder minimum? That's the name

47:23

after that. And her husband as well. Yeah.

47:25

Yeah. Nice. That's awesome. So she's coming through

47:27

data to find all this stuff. So amateur

47:29

photographer on the side. She was also a

47:32

photographer on the side. Yeah, yeah. And

47:34

she and her husband did photographs of the

47:36

sun. And we're doing it all the time.

47:38

Basically, whenever there was a clear day, they would go out

47:41

and photograph the sun. How do you photograph

47:43

the sun with that? You need a special filter to stop

47:46

hurting your eyes. There are lots of different ways of doing it.

47:49

Like for instance, you can do it with a pinhole

47:51

camera. I

47:53

think you could largely just point it in the

47:55

direction and press your snap, can't you? I think

47:57

if you do that, if you send the photo.

47:59

those taboots, you're going to get a sticker on them. In

48:04

Britain, you can photograph the sun pretty easily. There's

48:06

a sort of vague white dot on the

48:08

screen by cloud. That reminds me of

48:11

the warnings when there are eclipses about what they can

48:13

do to your eyes. Have been sort of mad to

48:15

varying extents over the years, but I was reading about

48:17

the eclipse in Melbourne in 1976. I

48:20

think it was when there was this

48:22

doctor who sort of spread panic around the city

48:24

saying there could be an epidemic of thousands of

48:27

kids being completely blind, because all you need to

48:29

do is look at that for a couple of

48:31

seconds and you can go blind. Now, it's not,

48:34

it is exaggerated, this scaremongering, but it

48:36

scared Melbourne into watching it from inside.

48:38

So 2 million of the 2.5 million

48:41

people there watched it on their tellies.

48:43

It is a problem, I think, with

48:45

the eclipse, which is it is bad for

48:47

you, and you can't say it's not bad

48:49

for you, but pretty much all the time,

48:51

everyone says it's worse for you than it

48:54

actually is. Okay. I think that's the problem.

48:56

So when Trump famously looked at

48:58

the sun, that wouldn't have done... It depends how long

49:00

you do it for. I think you

49:02

can tell if it's doing damage. Bloody left-wing media spinning

49:04

these stories to make him look bad. We're

49:07

not saying you should go and look at the sun. That's

49:09

the problem, is you can't say that. You can't say, go

49:11

out and look at the sun. It's brilliant, I did never

49:13

look at the sun. I'm just saying, give Trump a break,

49:15

that's what I'm saying. But, yeah, it's

49:17

like you've looked at the sun every now and then, by

49:19

accident for a second or so, right? And you're like, oh,

49:22

that hurt my eyes, but you didn't go blind at any

49:24

stage. No, because it's the eclipse. Isn't there a risk that

49:26

people are going to try and look for longer than... The

49:29

tiny, tiny glimpse that... There is, but

49:31

it feels so much common sense that the only

49:33

people who do get in trouble, and I think this was true

49:36

in Britain when we had it in 1999, are

49:38

people who are on lots of drugs. So there was a

49:41

girl who'd taken lots of speed, who stared at the eclipse

49:43

for half an hour, and she did have some permanent eye

49:45

damage. Isaac Newton, there was a story that he

49:47

stared at the sun and that sent him partially blind. That

49:49

was deliberately for an experiment to see what would happen if

49:51

he stared at the sun. So you can be very, very

49:53

clever and also very, very stupid. So I think it's just

49:55

good to worry on the side of the course and say,

49:57

never look anywhere. I think that's fair. I

50:00

think one bit of good news is if

50:02

you do go blind for staring at the

50:04

sun for too long, is that there's a

50:07

new invention that allows blind people to enjoy

50:09

eclipses. Ooh, that's cool. Really? Yeah, it's called

50:11

light sound, and it sort of measures and

50:13

translates the sky's brightness and turns it into

50:15

music. And so you can like

50:18

put your headphones in and apparently it gives a

50:20

really good impression of the change of the sun

50:22

and the change of the brightness that's happening. How

50:25

interesting. That's so cool. That's amazing.

50:27

That's awesome. Milosevic scared

50:30

his people underground.

50:32

Slobodan? Or that's the one

50:34

you're... Or Aston Villa Stryker Savo Milosevic. I

50:37

think it was Slobodan though, of course I haven't written

50:39

it down, but whichever one was ruling Serbia in the

50:41

90s. Yeah,

50:43

he said that it would make you

50:46

urinate really frequently and get heart palpitations.

50:48

And everyone literally went inside, pulled

50:50

all their curtains down. They were calling helpline saying,

50:52

is it safe to watch it on tele? Wow.

50:55

That like no one went outside public transport

50:57

all stopped. So the whole of the rest

50:59

of Europe flooded outside to watch the eclipse

51:01

and all of Serbia retreated underground and indoors.

51:04

Did he have motives that we know now?

51:06

Was that a weird, the urination thing? Well

51:09

what was, where did that come from? No, I agree, I

51:11

don't know. I don't know why. There was

51:13

actually a paper saying what were his motivations

51:15

and I couldn't download the full thing. So

51:17

we'll never know. No

51:20

one, apart from people who can afford 24.99, we'll

51:23

never know. But

51:26

I can tell you that he, animal rights activists sent

51:28

sunglasses to the chimps in the zoo. So scared, were

51:30

they? Golly. I

51:33

think one of the coolest things I read as part of this

51:35

research is that you got the sun, we're

51:38

just staring at it. We're trying to work out what's going on

51:40

with it. We got nothing to compare it to. Don't stare at it.

51:44

But we got nothing to compare it to. And that's

51:46

not true anymore. It's not been true for a while

51:48

because the Kepler space telescope back when it was operating

51:53

monitored 150,000 stars in the Milky Way and

51:56

they found 369 suns that are... incredibly

52:00

similar to ours. And so now we

52:02

can look at other case studies, as

52:04

it were, and go, oh, this

52:07

is interesting. That sun is very active at the

52:09

moment. And it wasn't 10, 11 years ago. That

52:12

must mean that it's running in phases. And

52:14

so we can learn via these suns that

52:16

are billions of miles away about our own

52:18

suns. Yeah, because there are a lot of

52:21

scientists that look at our sun as a

52:23

curiosity compared to other suns in that they

52:25

say it's spectacularly boring in comparison to all

52:27

the other suns that we're seeing in the

52:29

universe. And they partially wonder if that's

52:31

why we're here at all. Yeah, that must be

52:34

right. Because if it starts spitting out stuff at

52:36

us every two or three years, we're going to

52:38

die. Exactly. So our sun is just not that

52:40

active. And that's been incredible for us. It

52:43

has. And I think actually with the election

52:45

coming up, sometimes you want a boring centre

52:47

of your universe, don't you? Because it can

52:49

be relied upon to not

52:52

destroy you. And that is a party political

52:54

broadcast for Keir Starmer. I

52:57

don't know what you're talking about. We actually had

52:59

someone right in who was a space weather forecaster.

53:01

Oh, I know. The fish inbox. Really? This is

53:03

cool. It's called Gavin Medley. What? Dark

53:06

with no weather again. He

53:10

works at the LASP, which is the

53:12

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the

53:14

University of Colorado. And he

53:16

was writing about the, you know, the sun emits

53:18

a giant electromagnetic storm. We won't get

53:21

warning before it hits us. Yeah.

53:23

There are space weather instruments that

53:25

sit on spacecraft at

53:27

Lagrange points and they just sit there

53:29

in gravitational equilibrium. And one of

53:31

their goals is to collect data to predict and

53:33

wall about solar storms and flares, which can take

53:35

down our electrical structure. And that's how we knew

53:38

like a few weeks ago when they had that

53:40

big solar storm that people in London couldn't see,

53:42

but everyone else in the country could see. Yeah.

53:44

The aurora. The aurora. We know about that because

53:46

of those. Yeah. By the way, we're in the most exciting year

53:48

for the sun in 11 years. Loads of

53:51

sunspots. The sun switches poles every 11 years.

53:53

Yeah. So the most boring year was 2019. And

53:57

that was hardly any sunspots because the poles were just

53:59

like perfect. perfectly aligned north and south. And now we're

54:01

in the most feisty it, which I think might be

54:03

why they've discovered this thing that your main fact was

54:05

about. It's because it feels like as a scientist, it's

54:08

the most thrilling time to look at the sun because

54:10

so much mad shit's going on there. So

54:13

if one of these big coronal mass ejections

54:15

hits us, we're kind of buggered

54:17

a little bit, right? All of our electronics

54:19

are gonna fry and until they fix it,

54:21

it's gonna be pretty tough. And

54:23

we knew that this big one was coming a few

54:25

weeks ago and I was in Wales in the middle

54:27

of nowhere. And so I got a load of cash

54:29

out of the cash machine just in case. No, no,

54:32

no. And all of our machines got

54:34

back genuinely. Just subtle prepper. I love it. Your

54:36

cash is no good in the after times. But

54:39

it'll get me home. Like all I had to do was

54:41

get home. I have an electric car, right? So

54:43

if I'm stuck in Wales with an electric

54:45

car and all the electrics are fried, I

54:47

am kind of buggered. You're not necessarily buggered

54:49

if you have to stay in Wales, James, come on. Good people

54:51

of Wales. Great place to be stranded for a while.

54:53

No, it's a great place to be, but it's not

54:55

ideal for the rest of my family if I'm in

54:57

Wales. James's electric tin opener is in London. That's what

54:59

he's getting back to. Oh,

55:02

he brings that one in. I keep that in

55:05

a lead-like case, in case of a coronal mass

55:07

ejection. But

55:10

there's a theory, right? So we

55:12

could fire out a big loop of

55:14

wire into space. So the

55:16

entire earth is covered by one wire.

55:19

And then when the coronal

55:21

mass ejection comes in, which is basically charged

55:23

particles, then the wire can kind of ground

55:26

it and it won't fry all of our

55:28

electric. Wow, that's interesting. It's a really good

55:30

idea. No one's really taken the idea seriously,

55:33

but they reckon that the loop would

55:35

cost about a hundred billion dollars to

55:37

make. But if we did

55:39

get hit by one of those coronal mass

55:41

ejections, which will happen sometime, the cost will

55:43

be way more than that. Yeah. It'll

55:46

be way, way, it'll be in the trillions. It'll fuck

55:48

up our economy for years. Actually, a

55:50

hundred billion sounds a lot, but actually,

55:53

you know, a lot of things, when you read about it in

55:55

the paper, it's like 600 billion. You're

55:57

like, okay, yeah. We club together. Well,

56:00

how much did you get out of the cash point the other

56:02

day? There's a big

56:04

queue behind Jake. The

56:09

limit's 200 a time. It's

56:11

only 20 million a time they let me take out. Okay,

56:20

that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank

56:22

you so much for listening. If you'd like to

56:25

get in contact with any of us about the

56:27

things that we've said over the course of this

56:29

podcast, we can all be found on our various

56:31

social media accounts. I'm on at Shribaland on Instagram,

56:34

Andy at Andrew Hunter M on X. James,

56:38

no such thing as James Harkin on

56:40

the TikToks. And

56:43

Anna, you can get in touch with

56:45

all of us by going to at no such

56:47

thing on Twitter slash X or going to add

56:50

no such thing as a fish on Instagram, or

56:52

you can email podcast at qi.com. Yep,

56:55

or you can go to our website, no such thing as a

56:57

fish.com. All of the previous

56:59

episodes are up there. There's a link

57:01

to the portal to the gateway of

57:03

club fish, our secret private members club.

57:06

And there are also links to our upcoming tour,

57:08

Thunder Nerds. We're heading around Europe. We're going to

57:10

Ireland. We are going to Australia. We are going

57:13

to New Zealand. There are all the links up

57:15

there. We put on a couple of extra shows,

57:17

one in Sydney, one in London. If you missed

57:19

out on tickets for those, do check it out.

57:21

It's all up there. Otherwise, just come back here

57:24

next week. We'll have another episode waiting for you.

57:26

We'll see you then.