transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, where we were joined by our very good friend, who we've known for many, many years, Cariad Lloyd. Now, before I remind you about Cariad, I want to tell you that she has a potty, potty mouth. We have bleeped out some things in this show, but if you want to hear everything that was said, it's a bit of a joke, I'll tell you that, then you have to go to patreon.com/clubfish and join our Plenty More Fish tier, where you get an XL episode of every single show, and in this one, it is the full, unbleeped, unedited version. So really hope you enjoy that. But either way, Cariad Lloyd, what can I say about her? She is in the improv group Ostentatious. She has got her own podcast. She's got the Weirdos Book Club with friend of the podcast, Sarah Pascoe. She also has the Grief Cast and she has written lots of books, including her most recent kids book. It is called Where Did She Go? Now, this is a book very important. This will teach your kids about death in a nice way, in a friendly way, in a storybook way. But it's absolutely brilliant. It's such a clever book. It's so well done. It works brilliantly as a story. It works brilliant as a kids book, but it has a message behind it. Highly recommend if you have children that you get that. We all have a copy. Cariad brought some in for us, so we're very, very blessed to have got those. But yeah, Cariad is an absolutely brilliant performer. You will have seen her on absolutely everything in the UK. And no wonder, because she is amazing. Really hope you enjoy this week's show. No more to say apart from, on with the podcast.
Speaker 2:
[01:55] 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 Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Cariad Lloyd. 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 my fact. My fact this week is that the idea to bleep and censor words during live TV and radio broadcasts began over a hundred years ago and was all because of one woman and her nursery rhymes. Yeah. So this is Olga Petrova. This was an actor who has a very interesting story, but why don't we talk about the censorship thing first? Cause that's a real hot topic these days. It's been in the news very recently, the BAFTAs, when there was- What about that?
Speaker 3:
[02:49] What happened?
Speaker 1:
[02:50] They had a guy with Tourette's.
Speaker 2:
[02:52] Oh, yes. John Davidson, who a movie was made on him.
Speaker 3:
[02:57] Things weren't bleeped as I understand it.
Speaker 2:
[02:58] Exactly.
Speaker 4:
[02:59] They bleeped other things and they left that word in.
Speaker 3:
[03:02] Oh, Lordy Lord.
Speaker 4:
[03:03] Controversy that-
Speaker 1:
[03:04] Great movie though.
Speaker 4:
[03:05] I swear.
Speaker 1:
[03:06] It's stunning, so good. It's really heart-wrenching.
Speaker 2:
[03:10] Yeah, and it was a complicated moment at the BAFTAs, but it shows that this is a thing that's constantly in the news because on live TV, how do you stop that?
Speaker 3:
[03:19] So when this woman read out these nursery rhymes in 1921, what was the word that was bleeped out?
Speaker 1:
[03:24] Was it?
Speaker 3:
[03:24] Was it? Or was it? And then James, I'm happy-
Speaker 1:
[03:29] I'm happy you bleeped those out.
Speaker 3:
[03:30] Because I don't want people hearing it, I've said those words on it.
Speaker 1:
[03:33] I think it was worse. I think it was s***.
Speaker 3:
[03:35] No. 1921?
Speaker 2:
[03:38] S*** was a fine word back then.
Speaker 1:
[03:40] I know you say s*** all the time, Dan, but we're not allowed to say s***.
Speaker 3:
[03:45] Not anymore.
Speaker 4:
[03:45] If you say s***, s***, s***, s***.
Speaker 2:
[03:48] Ah.
Speaker 4:
[03:49] That's a shocker.
Speaker 2:
[03:50] That's interesting. Well, anyway, so this was 1921. It was on Newark radio station and Olga Petrova had come on to read this nursery rhyme. And the rhyme went something like this. There was an old lady who lived in a shoe. She had so many children because she didn't know what to do. Now, this was a very sneaky reference to birth control. She was very good friends with Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of the American Birth Control League. And they all freaked out when she said this, because it was a sort of blink-and-you-miss-it moment. But they certainly got it.
Speaker 3:
[04:19] So the normal rhyme is, there was no woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children. She didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1:
[04:24] But adding the word because really changes the meaning.
Speaker 3:
[04:27] Yeah, she had so many children because she didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2:
[04:31] Yeah. And so they freaked out because they thought if the networks heard this, they would shut down their radio station.
Speaker 1:
[04:39] And another thing is that they just had World War I and there'd be loads of restrictions about what you're allowed to say on radio. And they just lifted all the restrictions and said, okay, you're allowed to say, **** and **** if you like.
Speaker 4:
[04:51] They shouldn't have called that sitcom **** and ****. That was their first mistake.
Speaker 1:
[04:56] So they were really worried that if she said anything that was really dodgy, then they would just go back to the old ways.
Speaker 2:
[05:02] Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:
[05:04] I do love the story of Olga Petrova. Dan, you mentioned briefly that Olga Petrova was actually a stage name and her original name was Muriel Harding. She was from Hampshire. She pretended she'd been born in Warsaw. It's all complete rubbish. She also did the accent her whole professional life.
Speaker 4:
[05:23] She pretended to be like...
Speaker 3:
[05:24] She was put on an Eastern European accent.
Speaker 2:
[05:26] Yeah. But pretty amazing that, isn't it? That she did. No one knew that. It wasn't like she wasn't Dame Edna Everidge, you know. It wasn't a character that people knew about. She really claimed to be this. And she was a big actor in her time, both in the theater where she was also a playwright and in movies. She was she actually starred in a movie that was directed by friend of the podcast, A Guy. Remember A Guy? Alice Guy, who is the first female director ever. She did The Tigress, which was a movie by A Guy. Yeah. So a fascinating character who is responsible for all the bleeping, who then has this extraordinary background story.
Speaker 1:
[06:06] So just to go back to the original thing that happened when she said she had so many children because she didn't know what to do, they didn't bleep that. What they did was they put some music on really loud so you couldn't hear her microphone anymore, basically.
Speaker 2:
[06:20] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[06:20] So like at the end of Oscars, like get off, they swell the orchestra.
Speaker 1:
[06:24] Exactly like that. And then it was a bit later down the line that they came up with a bleep idea.
Speaker 2:
[06:28] What I couldn't work out with radio was, there was another engineer who was playing classical music. Now in 1921, is that recorded music or is that someone literally live on a violin just waiting?
Speaker 3:
[06:39] I think it would be someone playing a desk or like recording. But no, they had classical music playing constantly on another line. And if someone said anything controversial, they just press the button and go to the other line.
Speaker 4:
[06:51] So they were prepared for something controversial then? They knew that something-
Speaker 3:
[06:54] They were constantly playing classical music on another line. It's so weird.
Speaker 4:
[06:57] It's so weird.
Speaker 1:
[06:57] Actually, on Classic FM, they're just effing and jeffing all the time.
Speaker 4:
[07:02] Get to the tunes. I'm swearing. Come on.
Speaker 2:
[07:06] It's so funny. I think, so I think that was the innovation after this very first time.
Speaker 4:
[07:12] They thought, right, we need a constant blackout, a safety net ready to go.
Speaker 2:
[07:15] Yeah. And then slowly that evolved to become the modern day bleep or how sometimes if you're just watching a broadcast, it will just go to silence because that's another version.
Speaker 3:
[07:24] But they mute it now, don't they? Or it's more common to mute it because a bleep is quite a funny sound and it also draws attention to what's just been said. If you weren't really paying attention, a bleep really draws your attention.
Speaker 2:
[07:34] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[07:34] And so shows like Jerry Springer used it to great effect because they noticed that when they were getting lots of bleeps in a show, the ratings were higher and people enjoyed watching this.
Speaker 1:
[07:46] On QI, we've been told in the past, we can't just bleep things. If they're offensive enough, you just can't put them out.
Speaker 3:
[07:52] Because people still know.
Speaker 1:
[07:54] People still know, really. I think the rules are a little bit like case by case basis.
Speaker 4:
[07:58] Yeah, depends on the context.
Speaker 2:
[07:59] My favorite things about this whole territory, and we kind of touched on this when we had Michael Palin on ages ago talking about censorship because Monty Python had that a lot, was that comedy writers in particular actively tried to sneak stuff past the censors back in the day. And I was reading in America, this was a big thing on Mork and Mindy.
Speaker 3:
[08:18] What's that, Robin Williams?
Speaker 2:
[08:20] It's a Robin Williams sitcom.
Speaker 1:
[08:21] Spin off from Happy Days.
Speaker 2:
[08:22] Yeah, he's an alien who's arrived on Earth, and it's a sitcom about him being on Earth. Did you never watch it?
Speaker 3:
[08:26] No.
Speaker 4:
[08:26] Oh, so good.
Speaker 2:
[08:27] Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah. So he himself, this wasn't the story I was going to tell, but he himself used to sneak in foreign language swear words. And so they used to have a censor who had to have a grasp of multiple languages in order to understand what he was sneaking through, much like in tennis, you know how the officials often have to learn those multiple languages. But the writing team, it's very hard.
Speaker 3:
[08:48] Polyglot, you know, what's Robin Williams been reading this week? Which I've seen dictionary has he been reading.
Speaker 2:
[08:54] Exactly. Well, that's the thing. They obviously didn't have too much of a grasp because the Mork and Mindy team actually managed to get a character onto the show. I think it was just for one episode, but he was called Arnold Wanker. And Arnold Wanker.
Speaker 1:
[09:05] What language is that, Rudin?
Speaker 2:
[09:08] So when that episode played in the UK, they did censor it, but it got away in America. That's so funny.
Speaker 3:
[09:14] What we've done before, there was an American sci-fi magazine called Servants of the Wank, wasn't there?
Speaker 2:
[09:19] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[09:21] That was with an H at the end.
Speaker 2:
[09:22] It was. It was really Servants of the Wank. What was the other one? The Knobheads.
Speaker 3:
[09:27] Planet of the Knobheads.
Speaker 2:
[09:28] Planet of the Knobheads.
Speaker 4:
[09:30] See the little meeting where they just did, no, they're just, yeah, oh.
Speaker 3:
[09:33] I know.
Speaker 2:
[09:34] The guy, by the way, who played Arnold Wanker was called Logan Ramsey, and his dad was in the military, and he's the man who sounded the alarm for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Just a random connection.
Speaker 3:
[09:46] That's an incredible fact.
Speaker 2:
[09:47] He sent-
Speaker 3:
[09:48] Was it a big bleep that he did?
Speaker 2:
[09:50] It was a giant bleep. Yeah. He's the one who wrote what apparently is the most famous messages from that signal saying, Air Raid, Pearl Harbor, this is no drill. That was from Arnold Wanker's dad.
Speaker 3:
[10:01] He didn't invent this is not a drill though, did he?
Speaker 2:
[10:04] Not sure.
Speaker 3:
[10:04] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[10:05] I think that was Renee McGreet, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:
[10:07] Very, very nice.
Speaker 4:
[10:08] Just when you're talking about swear words, and because I am in ostentatious as Andy used to be, would you like some Regency swear words? Oh, yes. I think the other thing that's funny about swear words, a lot of English ones have been around a long time. Some of them have gone. If I give you adventurous, what do you think an adventurous is?
Speaker 3:
[10:28] I feel like that's someone who hunts for rich, elderly men and hopes they die.
Speaker 4:
[10:35] No, it's just a euphemism for a prostitute or a wild woman. But adventurous is nice, isn't it? Oh, don't go down that area, there's a couple of adventurists.
Speaker 1:
[10:43] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[10:43] Maggot pie.
Speaker 3:
[10:45] Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:
[10:46] Maggot pie.
Speaker 1:
[10:47] Is that a part of the anatomy?
Speaker 4:
[10:49] No.
Speaker 1:
[10:50] Oh, good.
Speaker 4:
[10:50] Oh, it's not?
Speaker 3:
[10:51] Magpie?
Speaker 1:
[10:51] A turd?
Speaker 4:
[10:52] No. It's just lowest of the low, yeah, maggot pie. Like you're a scum, you're a maggot pie.
Speaker 3:
[10:56] That's nice. I think magpies were once maggoty pies.
Speaker 4:
[10:58] Oh, maybe.
Speaker 3:
[10:59] Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4:
[11:01] When do you think Kiss My Ass came in?
Speaker 1:
[11:03] Kiss My Ass, 1980s.
Speaker 4:
[11:06] 1705.
Speaker 3:
[11:07] Wow.
Speaker 1:
[11:08] 1705.
Speaker 3:
[11:09] Kiss My Ass.
Speaker 4:
[11:09] Kiss My Ass. I think it's interesting that some of these have been around a very long time.
Speaker 3:
[11:14] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[11:14] Because they do the job so well, they haven't changed.
Speaker 3:
[11:17] Yeah. Can I tell you a thing about nursery rhymes?
Speaker 1:
[11:19] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[11:20] There was a lot of concern that nursery rhymes were too horrible for children.
Speaker 4:
[11:26] A lot of them are awful, most of them are awful. I'd say 90% are awful.
Speaker 1:
[11:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[11:30] There was an outfit that set up, I think, in various sources say, it's either Victorian or 20th century. It was definitely trading in the 1940s, but it was the British Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform.
Speaker 1:
[11:43] They became reform.
Speaker 4:
[11:47] It starts with nursery rhymes.
Speaker 3:
[11:49] What's all this about a Bar Bar Black Sheep? I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1:
[11:52] Basically, the owl and the pussycat came to see in a tiny boat.
Speaker 3:
[11:58] It was set up by two Jefferies, Jeffrey Hall and Jeffrey Handley Taylor. I can only find two works that were written by them, New Rhymes for Old, which was basically a new version of nursery rhymes. Things like-
Speaker 4:
[12:11] They're the original Woke Brigade, is that what we're saying?
Speaker 3:
[12:13] They kind of were, yeah. Three Kind Mice was one of them.
Speaker 1:
[12:17] Oh, very good. I mean, that one is really bad.
Speaker 4:
[12:20] Isn't it? Yeah, Three Blind Mice.
Speaker 2:
[12:21] I can't remember. Three Blind Mice, Three Blind Mice, they all-
Speaker 3:
[12:24] See how they run.
Speaker 2:
[12:24] See how they run.
Speaker 3:
[12:25] They all ran after the farmer's wife. She cut off some cheese with a carving knife.
Speaker 4:
[12:28] Off their tails with a carving knife.
Speaker 3:
[12:30] I think it's fine. Anyway, Jeffrey Hall was reported as saying about his work, I don't like children very much, you know. I really hate the nasty little brutes, but I've got to live with them when they grow up. So it's kind of better to reform children so they don't turn into little brutes.
Speaker 4:
[12:45] Public service, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[12:45] Interesting. This carried on in the 20th century in America. And in 1959, Senator Thomas C. Desmond found research that said 60% of young people thought that old people were too old fashioned, sick and slow to catch on to new ideas. And he blamed this on nursery rhymes. And he said, like, for instance, the old woman who lived in the shoe, at the end she whips her children and he thought that this nursery rhyme in particular and some of the others were making people think that old people were witches or evil or cut tails off blind mice or whatever.
Speaker 4:
[13:19] So it was demonizing old people. There wasn't enough positive representation of old people.
Speaker 1:
[13:24] Exactly. Where is the positive?
Speaker 4:
[13:25] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[13:26] Old King Cole was a merry old soul. I'll give you that.
Speaker 3:
[13:28] Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4:
[13:29] Merry old soul was he.
Speaker 2:
[13:31] Lazy nursery rhyme, merry old soul, merry old soul was he. I'd send that back if I was the editor.
Speaker 4:
[13:35] There's more to it.
Speaker 2:
[13:36] So you've said it already. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is Cariad.
Speaker 4:
[13:47] Yes. Contrary to what maybe you were taught at school or you know, Samuel Pepys' diary was ignored for hundreds of years. And when they did finally translate it, it turned out to be extremely racy and problematic. Samuel Pepys, guys.
Speaker 2:
[14:02] Samuel Pepys.
Speaker 3:
[14:03] Can we just quickly say for international listeners who may not know Samuel Pepys. So big deal in the 17th century helped run Britain's Navy administrator. But the main reason he's famous is that he kept this diary for just 10 years of his life, which covers a very eventful bit of English history, which is the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, war against the Dutch, which was a big national hobby back then, and the restoration of the monarchy because Britain was coming out of a civil war, executing the last king. So it's an amazingly interesting time in English history.
Speaker 2:
[14:35] And when you say translated, it's not that he was writing in a different language.
Speaker 4:
[14:37] He was writing in a coded kind of shorthand. So if you've ever seen that, it's like a series of squiggles that stand in for letters or full words, like there. So it was a very common language. And the Pepys wrote in a type of shorthand, which was called tachygraphy, which was quite common at the time for Clarks.
Speaker 1:
[14:56] Tachy means fast, doesn't it?
Speaker 4:
[14:59] I wonder how linked it is to like 20th century shorthand, you know, but it looks very similar. So he wrote in a kind of shorthand. So for a long time, people didn't know what was in Pepys' diaries. They just sat. In 1818, another diary is published from a similar time, right, by this guy called John Evelyn. And it's extremely boring. One of his quotes includes, a rich gentleman visited me. That's the kind of diary this man was publishing. But it was a huge sensation, because people were obviously desperate for information about that time, how people were living. And so the master of the library at that time is like, oh, we've got Pepys' diary. So he lends a copy of it, one copy to his uncle, who lends it to another uncle, who says basically we need to translate this. So they get this guy who's an undergraduate called John Smith, and they pay him 200 pounds to translate the complete everything in Pepys' library.
Speaker 1:
[15:50] Okay.
Speaker 4:
[15:50] Which is more words than Shakespeare.
Speaker 1:
[15:52] What era is this now?
Speaker 4:
[15:54] So now we are into around 1820, I think this is what we're talking. And as he starts translating it, I said around 1820, he discovers that basically a lot of stuff in this diary is not, I'm watching The Great Fire London, a lot of this stuff is about sex. There's loads of stuff about sex. When they first published it, they keep some of the sex in, they change the whores to mistresses. So they say that he has mistresses, because that's fine. Adventureesses, indeed. And they keep some of it, but apparently there's constant edits on the book saying OBJ, objectionable. So they were like worried about, they knew, they basically tried to, it's a cover up, it's a whitewash. They wanted him to seem like a moral figure. And when you're in primary school in this country, you study The Great Fire of London. And still to this day, my kids have had to study Samuel Peepsey. Like a very big thing because he wrote this diary. He's famous for burying his wine and his parmesan in his garden.
Speaker 2:
[16:49] That's what my boys have said to me. Cheese barrier.
Speaker 4:
[16:52] It's like an interesting fact. And he's sold to you, I would say, as a kid in this country, as like, oh, you know, there's like Charles Dickens, there's Jane Austen, there's Shakespeare, there's Samuel Peepsey. He's like one of our figures, you know, really important. But yeah, he has a lot of sex. He assaults a lot of teenage girls.
Speaker 3:
[17:11] His poor wife is having to cope with all this. When he married her, I think she was about 15, 14.
Speaker 4:
[17:17] Which even at the time was young. I know we sometimes forget like, but at that time he was 22, she was 14.
Speaker 3:
[17:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:
[17:23] She finds out about one of his affairs and refuses to wash or eat for quite a while, which really pisses him off. But his favorite thing to do is to sleep with men in the Navy's wives.
Speaker 3:
[17:35] Oh, right.
Speaker 4:
[17:35] So the men are away, he's sent them away, he's in charge of Naval administration. He knows where they are. He knows when they come in back. And then he sleeps with the wives.
Speaker 3:
[17:43] It's also a bit extortative sometimes. He's saying, I won't put your husband in the Navy. Your husband won't have to go with the press gang and be away for years if you sleep with me.
Speaker 4:
[17:52] So it's very horrible. And he does also have an entry where he talks about masturbating in church while thinking of his friend's daughter. God forgive me, he writes.
Speaker 2:
[18:00] I can't tell if Andy's disgusted or that's a we've all done it smile.
Speaker 4:
[18:05] We've all masturbated in church about our friend's daughter.
Speaker 1:
[18:08] Regardless, he is like saving time because he's in church already and he's asking for forgiveness at the same time.
Speaker 2:
[18:13] That's true.
Speaker 4:
[18:15] And it's very problematic, although other people argue this amazing new book called The Strange History of Samuel Pepys' Diary by Kate Loveman. She argues that the way he's writing about it is it's unclear how assault based it is, but obviously he's not.
Speaker 1:
[18:31] Because he didn't write in his diary how much consent was involved.
Speaker 4:
[18:33] Well, yeah, obviously it's deeply difficult for us to put that on the past.
Speaker 3:
[18:38] Well, I'm saying it's more like Samuel Creeps.
Speaker 2:
[18:40] Yep. Very nice.
Speaker 4:
[18:41] You've been waiting. That was worth it.
Speaker 2:
[18:43] I'll tell you one person he definitely didn't get consent from was the queen he kissed, which was Queen Catherine of France, unable to give consent because she died something like nearly 200 years before. So he was in Westminster Abbey on Shrove Tuesday in 1669.
Speaker 4:
[18:58] He was the right one, put it this way.
Speaker 1:
[18:59] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[19:00] Basically he was visiting, her coffin was there and the lid had cracked and it became exposed and the top half of her body was there. He wrote in his diary, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it, I did kiss a queen and this my birthday and I 36 year old and I did kiss a queen.
Speaker 1:
[19:17] Oh my God. Did he ask forgiveness for that as well? No.
Speaker 4:
[19:21] And it's the thing, it's like the first said it comes in 1825 and they really tidied him up. They wanted him to appear morally serious. We don't get the full translation of all nine volumes till 1971. So people don't really know what he's been up to until the 20th century. But he's again, a bit like Dickens who also has problematic behavior. I find it weird that we teach children about this man.
Speaker 1:
[19:44] I think it, but if you're not going to teach children about any problematic people from history, there's going to be a short lesson as well.
Speaker 4:
[19:51] Let's see to those short lessons James. Dancing and reading of nursery rhymes.
Speaker 1:
[19:56] But not those nursery rhymes.
Speaker 4:
[19:57] Those kind of eyes.
Speaker 1:
[19:59] But you just have to teach both, I mean, to really young children.
Speaker 4:
[20:02] But it's weird to do it at primary school. I guess that's what I think that you could definitely say, oh, we have this diary. There must be other things from the great fire of London. He's so important in that section of primary school.
Speaker 3:
[20:11] I think it's because the sourcing is, we don't have as much. And it's just, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[20:16] I think one thing that's interesting about him is the only thing we really know about him is this diary.
Speaker 4:
[20:21] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[20:21] So he must be one of the only people in history where the entire understanding of his character comes from his own words.
Speaker 4:
[20:27] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[20:28] He could have made all that stuff up.
Speaker 4:
[20:29] Well, also, they say in the diary, it's very clear he didn't, he wasn't writing it for posterity. It's not one of those diaries. He used to keep things in there that he couldn't keep in like his household ledger. So it's like, who's bribing, who owes him a dinner. So it's like, it's very personal record.
Speaker 3:
[20:44] He also ducks into other languages. Even within his shorthand, he will, if he's describing something especially outrageous, I did make her tenor mcosa in her mano. So that's hold thing and hand. But it's not a very sophisticated. This is not the enigma code we're talking about.
Speaker 4:
[21:07] Yeah. He does change languages, but he's also writing as said in a code anyway, and then putting it in another code.
Speaker 1:
[21:13] He also writes in euphemisms quite a lot. So which of these do you think is about sexy stuff? Did do as much as was safe.
Speaker 3:
[21:22] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[21:24] Toss and tumble, and take a boat to Greenwich with Captain Cox.
Speaker 4:
[21:30] Never take a boat to Greenwich, sir. I would never do something like that.
Speaker 3:
[21:33] Captain Cox. Captain Cox.
Speaker 1:
[21:36] Of the three things that I said, the last one is the only one that wasn't a euphemism.
Speaker 3:
[21:40] Oh, really? Toss and tumble and what was the first one?
Speaker 1:
[21:42] Did as much as was safe.
Speaker 4:
[21:44] They also think he was infertile because he actually had a huge gallstone removed and survived that operation, which he kept it as the size of a tennis ball. And they think that maybe because he worried about pregnancies, but he doesn't seem to have had any children. He died with his wife dead and no children.
Speaker 2:
[21:59] He used to throw a party every year to commemorate.
Speaker 4:
[22:03] Gallstone coming out. What a weird guy.
Speaker 2:
[22:05] It's the painful procedure.
Speaker 3:
[22:08] Lots of people died.
Speaker 2:
[22:09] They had to cut it down.
Speaker 3:
[22:10] It just sounds so unpleasant.
Speaker 4:
[22:12] His first entry is saying, I feel exultant. It is out. That's when he starts writing. He only stops because of his eyesight. That's the only reason he stops.
Speaker 3:
[22:21] Yes. Why was he worried about his eyesight? Too much time in church.
Speaker 2:
[22:25] Too much time in church.
Speaker 3:
[22:27] His wife had one portrait done of her. It's a really nice portrait. I've seen it. She was Elizabeth, wasn't she?
Speaker 4:
[22:34] Elizabeth St. Michelle.
Speaker 3:
[22:35] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[22:36] She was French.
Speaker 3:
[22:37] Yeah. It was a really nice portrait. It was destroyed in 1830 by a Scottish nurse who thought it showed too much cleavage. Wow. I've seen it and it does not. I'm not saying how much is too much, but I'm just saying it is for the 1830s. That's true.
Speaker 4:
[22:55] I'm sorry. In the Regency period, there was a fashion to have tops that came down to the top of your nipples. Like that was quite a ladies fashion.
Speaker 3:
[23:01] So Queen Elizabeth was sometimes wabs out at court.
Speaker 4:
[23:04] But that's even earlier.
Speaker 3:
[23:05] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[23:07] Regency was like top of nipples, was a bit of a trend at one point.
Speaker 2:
[23:10] I think we did a fact on the show once about the fact that on a make up table, a woman would have nipple make up as well, because it was such a thing that you would be seeing on a day to day occurrence. Yeah. Gosh.
Speaker 1:
[23:21] Interesting.
Speaker 4:
[23:22] The other window to the soul.
Speaker 1:
[23:23] And then she found him indecently engaged with his maid.
Speaker 4:
[23:28] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[23:28] And I read the diary from that day when it happened. He says, my wife was struck mute and grew angry about two in the morning, waked me and cried and fell to tell me a great secret she was a Roman Catholic and had received the Holy Sacrament.
Speaker 3:
[23:44] So it's actually her fault. What's the implication?
Speaker 4:
[23:48] Apparently she was constantly threatening to return to Catholicism.
Speaker 1:
[23:50] So yeah, basically.
Speaker 4:
[23:52] He was always stressed about it. He's like, you can't be, you'll get in trouble.
Speaker 1:
[23:55] But then the next two or three days, he's basically like, my wife's still upset. Yeah, my wife's still quite upset.
Speaker 4:
[24:01] Yeah. And he only calls her my wife. He's just referred to constantly, never even names her in the diary.
Speaker 3:
[24:05] I think it's a bit dubious.
Speaker 1:
[24:06] What?
Speaker 3:
[24:07] I just think if you only ever refer to your wife as my wife, that's not a very loving sign.
Speaker 4:
[24:10] Yes, I agree.
Speaker 1:
[24:11] Especially if you do it in a Northern accent like my wife.
Speaker 3:
[24:15] It's either Northern and Borat are the two my wives. You shouldn't do it unless you're from the North.
Speaker 2:
[24:20] Is that the clue for you? In a book where he sleeps with so many women per day, he can't even remember the number.
Speaker 3:
[24:27] I'm saying there are plenty. I'm saying there are signs all over.
Speaker 4:
[24:28] There's a lot of red flags in this diary. At one point, I think he's described in a biography as prowling like an animal around Westminster to find girls to sleep with.
Speaker 2:
[24:36] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[24:37] All the animals I've seen prowling around Westminster are foxes. So is he going around bins as well?
Speaker 3:
[24:42] He's basically a bin fox of the 17th century.
Speaker 2:
[24:45] It is interesting. A lot of historians, despite all of this information, I read an article by Max Hastings who says, a lot of people do read Pepys as a person of his time. This was largely happening. A lot of men were going away to war, people were sleeping with wives and so on.
Speaker 3:
[25:01] If there was a diary of Henry VIII, it would be very interesting to read it.
Speaker 2:
[25:03] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[25:04] Gosh, it would be fascinating, wouldn't it? I also think it's interesting about Pepys is he didn't come from a great family situation. His mother was a laundry maid. He was one of 10 children. He's number five and he's the only one who survived the oldest into adulthood. He worked his way up through the system. So he's a very interesting character. I suppose I think what is so interesting is I was taught him so much at primary school. I feel like he might be a secondary school thing too.
Speaker 3:
[25:32] But it came in handy in your career because you were in, of course, Peep Show.
Speaker 2:
[25:42] Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Andy.
Speaker 3:
[25:45] My fact is one of the first fiber optic networks in London was built in tubes that used to do the safety curtains in London's theaters. So you know the old iron curtain that goes down for the interval and up?
Speaker 2:
[25:57] Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:
[25:58] Big heavy things, safety curtains to prevent fires in theaters.
Speaker 2:
[26:02] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[26:03] They were all operated by hydraulics, right? Flash forward to the 1980s when...
Speaker 1:
[26:09] Where were we the first time?
Speaker 3:
[26:11] We were, let's say, the 1880s.
Speaker 1:
[26:13] Okay, that's a hell of a flash.
Speaker 3:
[26:15] Yeah, it was actually.
Speaker 1:
[26:16] But that's okay.
Speaker 2:
[26:17] Thanks.
Speaker 3:
[26:17] All right.
Speaker 1:
[26:17] You don't need to tell us about that intervene in 100 years.
Speaker 2:
[26:20] No.
Speaker 3:
[26:22] But basically in the 1980s, fiber optic networks were all setting up shop, right? There was BT, which had their own network, and they had all their own tunnels. They had the old post office tunnels and all their ducts under the city. So if they wanted to put in telecommunications stuff, they had their own network. But other companies were being allowed in on the act, and one of them was Mercury, which was setting up another network.
Speaker 4:
[26:42] I remember Mercury Communications.
Speaker 3:
[26:44] Mercury Communications, right. It was privatized like just private firm. They needed some network of channels under London that they could use, and they didn't have any. Then they had this realization. There was this thing called the London Hydraulic Power Company, which had operated this massive network under London in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it used huge amounts of hydraulic power to operate massive machinery. So like cranes down at the docks, all the safety curtains in theaters, car hoists in garages, all of it was operated by hydraulic power.
Speaker 1:
[27:17] Cool.
Speaker 3:
[27:17] It's just so cool. Weird, but amazing.
Speaker 4:
[27:21] Where does it come?
Speaker 1:
[27:22] Where's the power spit?
Speaker 3:
[27:23] They draw the water out of the river and they heat it up a bit, and they use the water pressure to operate massive machines.
Speaker 4:
[27:31] You can just plug in. You're like, I'm just going to use that hydraulic network.
Speaker 3:
[27:35] It's crazy.
Speaker 1:
[27:36] The hydraulics just means if I push some water here and there's a big old tube, then it'll push it at the end of the tube as well.
Speaker 3:
[27:43] It's just so weird. Basically, this system had gone out of business in, it lasted a surprisingly long time, until like the 70s or something insane like that. But this network was available and so they just shoved all the fiber optics through these hydraulics tubes. Crafty.
Speaker 1:
[28:01] These are not like the wires that send the fiber optic stuff. The wires go inside the tubes, I think, because fiber optics are basically made of glass. They're like glass wires and the light bounces off it. Instead of in hydraulics where water goes through it, you've got light going through it and then you fire pulses of light and then your computer can read the pulses.
Speaker 2:
[28:22] It's insane.
Speaker 4:
[28:23] Underground instead of the water power, no, the light is bouncing off the glass.
Speaker 3:
[28:27] It's mad, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
[28:29] It's insane.
Speaker 3:
[28:29] The whole world works on this basis now.
Speaker 4:
[28:32] Arnold Wanker would not believe how the world has changed.
Speaker 2:
[28:36] It's amazing, this technology, when you read into it, it seems so wizardly, like it just doesn't seem real. And a new record, speed record, was recently set for data transmission using commercially installed fiber optic cables. They transferred 450 terabytes per second. What that translates is roughly 50 million movies could be streamed simultaneously with this amount of data.
Speaker 3:
[29:01] Now you see me too, 50 million times at the same time.
Speaker 1:
[29:05] But that's basically all the tabs that I've got open on my computer at home.
Speaker 2:
[29:12] What are the big names in this? Because weirdly you'd think that the inventor of fiber optics would be a household name, given how much this is changing the world. But Narenda Singh Kapani, born in 1926, he lived in an Indian city very near the Himalayas. And his science teacher, when he was a kid, told him that light only travels in straight lines. And he said, I don't think that's right. And he spent the rest of his life looking into that. Effectively, it was to get back at his teacher that he became interested in this territory. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[29:45] It's such a personal deep vendetta to take. And how we benefited from that kind of absolute stubbornness is wonderful.
Speaker 2:
[29:52] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[29:52] I think in fairness to him, unless you've got an enormous gravitational pull, light does go in a straight line.
Speaker 2:
[29:57] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[29:58] In fairness to his teacher.
Speaker 2:
[29:59] Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:
[30:00] His teacher's in the corner weeping, it was true in context.
Speaker 2:
[30:04] What he became obsessed with, which is what is fiber optic, is, as you said, James, the bouncing of the light and how do you manage to do that so that it doesn't stop, that it finds any angle.
Speaker 1:
[30:15] You can bounce it around the corner basically, can't you?
Speaker 2:
[30:17] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[30:19] It's really cool. And you know who is a household name who was quite important in this? Alexander Graham Bell.
Speaker 4:
[30:25] He always turns up, doesn't he? It's communications.
Speaker 3:
[30:29] What did he do?
Speaker 1:
[30:29] Well, he invented something called the photophone and that transmitted voice signals on a beam of light. So you would speak and then your voice waves would hit a mirror. They would create vibrations and then the light would vibrate and then it would go to another place which would work out what the vibrations are and turn it back into sound again. And he thought it was the best invention of all his inventions.
Speaker 3:
[30:51] But that specifically didn't take off, right?
Speaker 1:
[30:53] No, because basically it would just be so garbled, you would hardly be able to hear it. You'd like the amount of data you would lose from that signal is just way too much. It would just really wouldn't work.
Speaker 3:
[31:03] That was the thing that had to be conquered basically. So the problem was you had copper phone lines for communication, which didn't have nearly enough capacity. And then you had microwave towers. Like we talked about the BT tower ages ago, that's what kind of they used. And then they thought, what about lasers? Could that work? And basically what medium does the light travel through best? And someone suggested optical fibers, but you would lose 90 percent of the power every 10 meters. It just wouldn't work. And then a scientist called Charles Kao in the 60s, he was working at a really stodgy British research outfit called Standard Telecommunications Laboratories. And he and a colleague called George Hockham, they worked out how to reduce the light loss and make the glass purer. And suddenly you could transmit signals a long way along glass. And everyone else thought, no, this isn't the future at the time. And Charles Kao insisted, no, fused silica is the way. It is the way we're going to communicate. And he was absolutely right. And he won the Nobel Prize for it.
Speaker 2:
[32:06] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[32:06] Decades later.
Speaker 4:
[32:07] Oh, OK. He got his flowers.
Speaker 3:
[32:09] Yeah, he absolutely did. But like, you know, it's...
Speaker 1:
[32:13] And now we got these things underneath all the oceans. Yeah. And that's how we can do Zoom to America.
Speaker 2:
[32:19] It's extraordinary.
Speaker 1:
[32:20] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[32:20] They've just laid these cables all over the planet.
Speaker 4:
[32:23] It's not right, is it? It doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2:
[32:27] They're covered in Kevlar as well.
Speaker 4:
[32:29] Oh, I don't like it.
Speaker 3:
[32:30] Why are you worried about it?
Speaker 4:
[32:31] Three blind voices killed my fibre optics. No, it just sounds... It's one of those things that modern technology does all the time that you don't really understand it. And when someone explains it to you, your head explodes a bit of like, oh shit, that's what's happening. But you're just like, yeah, yeah, I'm zooming someone from San Francisco. Yeah. I don't know how that works. I assume it's like a phone.
Speaker 1:
[32:51] So you've got these cables under the water, right? What do you think damages them?
Speaker 4:
[32:55] Fish.
Speaker 1:
[32:56] Specifically large fish?
Speaker 4:
[32:57] Large angry fish, large angry fish, large angry fish.
Speaker 3:
[33:01] I'll say sharks.
Speaker 1:
[33:02] Well, that's what I would call a large angry fish as well. In actual fact, it's always said that that's true, but that is not true.
Speaker 4:
[33:09] I literally felt if I said shark, it's going to go eee.
Speaker 3:
[33:13] We don't do that on there, Shag.
Speaker 4:
[33:14] Thank God. It's very distressing.
Speaker 1:
[33:16] When you're on QI next year, look out for that one.
Speaker 3:
[33:18] It's not all bleeps.
Speaker 1:
[33:21] This is an article in Wired by someone called Jane Ruffino. It's basically sharks do not eat wires. I guess why would they?
Speaker 4:
[33:29] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[33:30] We thought because there's electricity going through them maybe, and they have electroreceptors, maybe they would do that. But not only does it not really happen, we know where the myth comes from. It was someone about 40 years ago who had a new cable that was going between Canary Islands. They were testing it out and it wasn't really working, and they weren't sure what was causing the problem. This person, this woman called Elaine Stafford, had to go to Paris to do a presentation about it, and she was like, well, what am I going to say about the stuff that doesn't really work? And her boss said, well, we've noticed that there's some shark teeth marks on there, so just say it's sharks. And she said it was sharks, and then the myth took hold there, but since then they've tested it. They've literally got sharks and given them wires and said, chew on this.
Speaker 4:
[34:16] Excuse me, my diet is actually very special.
Speaker 1:
[34:19] They're just not interested in them. Like it turns out that sometimes sharks might bite them, but it's just an accident.
Speaker 2:
[34:25] Sharks are such a fool guy to the humans.
Speaker 3:
[34:28] But if I saw a fiber optic cable advertised, and I was in the market for like a 5,000 mile cable, and I saw, now, shark proof, I would absolutely go for it. I would not consider that it might not need to be shark proof.
Speaker 2:
[34:38] Well, it kind of is pitched like that, because they do put Kevlar over it for reasons of being bitten or ripped apart under the ocean. So the cables under the ocean have Kevlar on them.
Speaker 1:
[34:46] But they do that because of this myth.
Speaker 2:
[34:48] Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:
[34:49] So interesting.
Speaker 4:
[34:49] So they don't really need to do that.
Speaker 3:
[34:51] Nope.
Speaker 4:
[34:51] So is there a danger? Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[34:52] I mean, the biggest danger would be if you were trying to take down the Western world, right?
Speaker 1:
[34:56] You would you would see the Eastern world, then all the Eastern world.
Speaker 2:
[34:59] Oh, no, I just don't like the Western world. I'm very happy with these.
Speaker 1:
[35:03] As in like, don't tell your plots on the show.
Speaker 4:
[35:06] It's really obvious.
Speaker 1:
[35:07] It's definitely a thing that in warfare, people will try and snap each other's cables.
Speaker 3:
[35:11] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[35:12] That is something that's currently happening in the Ukraine and Russia war, which is that soldiers always carry on them a pair of scissors, because drones now use fiber optics. So if they get a drone, they break into it and cut through the fiber optics in it, so it can't send back messages and details of where it's being held.
Speaker 4:
[35:28] But they're not carrying sharks with them to do that job.
Speaker 3:
[35:31] These cables that are running all around the world under the sea, obviously there are a lot of them out there now, and some of them are falling out of use. So this year, the first ever fiber optic cable has been hauled back out of the ocean. It entered service in 1988. Within 18 months, it was completely full to bursting, the capacity was used up. It's crazy. Transatlantic Telephone 8 is the name. There are now companies which are setting up shop saying, well, we're going to recycle this stuff. It's got loads of copper in it, it's really useful. There are, I think, three companies in the world which do subsea cable recovery. But if you're one of those three companies, there's loads of stuff out there that's not being used anymore.
Speaker 4:
[36:09] It's a bit sad that something born in 1988 now has to be taken out and put to sleep because it's not working and it's too full.
Speaker 3:
[36:15] I'm roughly ready for that.
Speaker 4:
[36:16] I was like, oh no.
Speaker 2:
[36:20] Can I ask a question about the tech? Because this is one of those, talk to me like I'm an idiot, okay?
Speaker 1:
[36:26] I'll do my best.
Speaker 3:
[36:27] Never.
Speaker 4:
[36:28] Dan, you don't have to tell them, it's fine. I've noticed they're really cool with it. They're really fine.
Speaker 3:
[36:32] It whizzes along. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[36:34] So it's light bringing information, right?
Speaker 1:
[36:36] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[36:37] The light converts the information into ones and zeros as it bounces along the tube. What we receive on the other side, are we receiving a reconstructed version of that image?
Speaker 1:
[36:48] We're getting zeros and ones. Yeah. Basically. Then your computer knows how to turn zeros and ones into everything else.
Speaker 2:
[36:55] It's extraordinary because basically that means everyone's got a unique version that's being recreated on their end. So it's rebuilding on every single different device. Yes. I mean, that's pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 3:
[37:05] It's crazy.
Speaker 2:
[37:06] It's a unique creation.
Speaker 3:
[37:07] There is a set of zeros and ones that equates to Jesse Eisenberg's face. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[37:11] But how's it getting through the Wi-Fi?
Speaker 2:
[37:14] There you go.
Speaker 4:
[37:15] That's the next bit. Because I've got fiber optic, but my computer is not plugged into it.
Speaker 1:
[37:21] So then it's sending waves through the air.
Speaker 4:
[37:23] From your router to the computer.
Speaker 1:
[37:26] Radio waves.
Speaker 4:
[37:27] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[37:28] Then those waves that go up and down, up and down.
Speaker 4:
[37:31] This is like the fun. This is like your comedy podcast. I think I just felt my brain leave my body.
Speaker 3:
[37:36] Well, we specialize in that too.
Speaker 1:
[37:38] I think the good thing is that you don't have to understand it.
Speaker 3:
[37:41] Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:
[37:41] That's the great thing about the modern world.
Speaker 2:
[37:43] I just have a recurring anxiety that I will be the one that goes back in time and have to explain all this stuff to people of the past.
Speaker 3:
[37:50] Oh, you know that wonderful T-shirt of a modern guy surrounded by ancient people and they're saying, but how do these antibiotics work? And he's saying, I don't know.
Speaker 2:
[37:59] Exactly.
Speaker 1:
[38:00] Theatre invention. In the 5th century BC, Aeschylus comes along and makes an incredible invention of theatre. He introduces a second actor on stage.
Speaker 3:
[38:15] The producer's saying, we don't have the budget for Aeschylus.
Speaker 1:
[38:17] Isn't that amazing? So then you would only have one person erating the story. He brings a second actor on. 100 years later, Sophocles comes along and introduces the third actor.
Speaker 2:
[38:29] It'll never work.
Speaker 4:
[38:31] This Sophocles is crazy. It's just for two people, Max. I want to see a duologue.
Speaker 3:
[38:37] We call it a love line, not a love triangle.
Speaker 4:
[38:40] Was the third person a butler?
Speaker 1:
[38:42] The third person was a way that you could interact between two different people without one of them knowing everything.
Speaker 4:
[38:49] May I ask a question? Where does the Greek chorus come in?
Speaker 1:
[38:52] Sorry. So you had the chorus and you would have one actor.
Speaker 4:
[38:54] I see. Oh yeah. And they would often, the chorus would often talk to one actor. And they wouldn't talk to it. And the messenger would come and deliver a monologue about what's happened. They wouldn't often deliver it to the person. They'd be like, I'm a messenger. I've just told so-and-so, just told Zeus this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[39:09] Yeah. Oh, wow. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:
[39:11] Now that would be a fun time travel. Bring him back now to the future and he'd be like, no, this has got way out of hand. What have I done?
Speaker 1:
[39:19] Just show him Game of Thrones. He's like, who's that guy? We don't know.
Speaker 4:
[39:24] We don't know. You don't need to worry about it. Just forget it. Season 6 explains everything.
Speaker 2:
[39:35] Okay. It is time for our final fact of the show and that is James.
Speaker 1:
[39:39] Okay. My fact this week is that embryos are more muscly than you.
Speaker 3:
[39:43] Very funny. James was pointing at me for the listener at home. I'll take on any embryo in a fight.
Speaker 4:
[39:50] They should put that on Netflix. I'd pay to watch that.
Speaker 3:
[39:54] One man against 100 embryos, who will win?
Speaker 1:
[39:58] This is a fairly recent study from Howard University in Washington, DC and they made some 3D images of human fetuses and found that we get extra muscles in our hands and feet when we're embryos and when we're fetuses and they disappear before we're born.
Speaker 4:
[40:16] Amazing.
Speaker 1:
[40:16] And they're kind of muscles that you get in other animals like lizards have them and chimpanzees have them in their feet, which makes them more flexible. Yeah, they can grab things.
Speaker 3:
[40:28] Even after... Oh, so as adult chimpanzees, they'll have these muscles.
Speaker 1:
[40:32] They absolutely do.
Speaker 3:
[40:32] I didn't realize because I thought they were... I thought it was a thing that no mammals had these. Maybe it's the hand ones that have completely passed out.
Speaker 2:
[40:39] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[40:40] That's a famous fact, isn't it? You don't have muscles in your fingers. That's a very old QI fact.
Speaker 2:
[40:44] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[40:44] The muscles that move your fingers are in your wrist.
Speaker 3:
[40:46] Yes. But you used to have muscles in your fingers when you were in the womb.
Speaker 1:
[40:50] Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
[40:50] Yes. Right. It's a shame that this doesn't come up on the first shots, the ultrasounds that you get. So these bodybuilder poses from your growing child.
Speaker 1:
[41:00] Is it a boy?
Speaker 4:
[41:01] How much is he lifting?
Speaker 1:
[41:04] So unfortunately, these are just muscles in your hands and your feet. It's not like big arm muscles and stuff.
Speaker 2:
[41:11] Massive biceps, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[41:12] There are apparently a few adults that have this. They found one or two people that still have them that they didn't naturally, but it doesn't really happen often. Also, it's quite a small sample size. We don't know for sure that it happens in all human embryos. Could have been these lizardy muscles were just found in members of the royal family or...
Speaker 3:
[41:33] Lovely. I didn't see for the longest time where you were going with that.
Speaker 1:
[41:37] But yeah, it does seem likely that most, if not all, foetuses have these extra muscles.
Speaker 3:
[41:42] So cool. And is the idea it's a hangover from when lizards were becoming mammals?
Speaker 1:
[41:47] That is what they're saying because they're found in lizards, they're found in fish as well, these muscles in the fins, but they're not found in mammals.
Speaker 2:
[41:55] And we have a little tail as well, which sort of shows. So like between the fourth and six weeks of growth.
Speaker 4:
[42:00] Some of us still do.
Speaker 2:
[42:01] Yeah. A little swishy thing there. Like little tadpoles when you look at a very early fetus.
Speaker 3:
[42:07] Does it get absorbed back in?
Speaker 1:
[42:09] I think it becomes your coccyx.
Speaker 4:
[42:10] Yeah, that's what I've always heard that tail, that it just kind of becomes part of your spine.
Speaker 1:
[42:14] All these things are called developmental atavisms.
Speaker 3:
[42:18] So mysterious.
Speaker 4:
[42:20] It's weird that the body goes to the effort to make them and then merges them into something else, like rather than like, why waste your time guys? It must be doing something that is there for a bit of time.
Speaker 1:
[42:32] Yeah, quite often with these things, it's different genes that make all the different stuff. So if you did turn that gene off, it might stop this from happening, but it might stop other stuff from growing at the same time.
Speaker 3:
[42:41] Yes. I was looking at what happens at the very earliest moments of you being you. So literally just after the fertilization of an egg. One of the very first initial phases of your life is showing a bit of cleavage.
Speaker 4:
[42:57] Well, I'll take that. That sounds more like me than you.
Speaker 3:
[43:01] That's what the process is called. When the single cell zygote, the fertilized cell, first thing it does is it divides itself into two and then into four, and that process is called cleavage.
Speaker 4:
[43:10] Who named it that? What male doctor said that looks like showing a bit of cleavage, and it's basically about to be an embryo.
Speaker 3:
[43:21] Look at our discovery.
Speaker 1:
[43:23] So cleavage just means cutting, right?
Speaker 3:
[43:25] Exactly.
Speaker 1:
[43:26] So the way I usually use the word cleavage is in stonework.
Speaker 4:
[43:31] I just didn't expect the end of that sentence to be that James.
Speaker 1:
[43:34] If you get a piece of slate, the cleavage of it is how easily it cuts, and actually the cleavage in your-
Speaker 4:
[43:40] James, whatever turns you on, that's fine. No one is shaming you here. No kink shaming here. If it's slate, if it's clay, it's up to you.
Speaker 1:
[43:47] So the cleavage in your chest is a euphemism because people didn't want to use any other words for it, so they used the stonework word. Yes.
Speaker 3:
[43:56] This is way older, isn't it?
Speaker 1:
[43:57] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[43:58] Cleavage for stonework is way older.
Speaker 1:
[44:00] Much older, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[44:00] So interesting.
Speaker 4:
[44:01] What about décolletage?
Speaker 3:
[44:03] Yeah, that feels like an oldie, but actually that might be a 40s one or something.
Speaker 4:
[44:08] But it's the French word for it, isn't it?
Speaker 1:
[44:09] Yeah, but it's also a euphemism like peeps did using foreign words.
Speaker 3:
[44:13] Right. All the terms are so cool. I just didn't understand plenty of them when I was reading these very detailed genetic descriptions of what individual cells are doing. But the primitive streak is something that shows.
Speaker 4:
[44:27] That's a great band. They're really good.
Speaker 3:
[44:30] Again, you're a handful of cells at this point, and the primitive streak is the structure that forms. Look, a line up and down. Imagine a pear shape. That's you at this stage, and again, you're a few cells. The primitive streak is this little line that goes up and down, and it establishes bilateral symmetry. So symmetry top to bottom. That's what happens then. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[44:49] Symmetry top to bottom is the first album, I think.
Speaker 1:
[44:52] Would you not say more symmetry side to side in the human body rather than top to bottom? Otherwise, that sounds like you've got a head at the top and a head at the bottom.
Speaker 3:
[45:00] You're absolutely right. It's the opposite of what I said. Some of us do. It's the opposite. It's left and right symmetry. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:
[45:06] I like the term. This is for a bit later in a pregnancy, but the quickening.
Speaker 4:
[45:10] Oh, the quickening.
Speaker 3:
[45:10] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[45:11] It's a cool term, old English term. The feeling around 16 weeks of pregnancy, when you get the flutters of movement of a baby.
Speaker 4:
[45:18] They still call it that.
Speaker 2:
[45:19] Do they?
Speaker 4:
[45:19] Yeah. They still some midwives still say, oh yeah, it's a quickening.
Speaker 2:
[45:22] It's a quickening.
Speaker 4:
[45:23] Not all midwives, but I have heard that phrase behind having been pregnant twice.
Speaker 2:
[45:27] But that used to be the way that you would.
Speaker 4:
[45:30] Because you wouldn't have pregnancy tests.
Speaker 2:
[45:31] Exactly. We didn't have ultrasound.
Speaker 4:
[45:32] Also, you can miss periods and not be pregnant. So yeah, you'd need to wait for your quickening to know.
Speaker 3:
[45:36] But you're feeling rough well before that.
Speaker 4:
[45:39] Well, not everyone does. Some people have no, it's called morning sickness, but let me tell you, it's 24-hour sickness. Some people don't have it at all. So you could, and that's how some people don't know they're pregnant.
Speaker 3:
[45:50] Yes.
Speaker 4:
[45:50] People have no symptoms.
Speaker 3:
[45:51] Well, that's the best magazine article ever written, was headlined, My Dodgy Kebab Was A Baby. I read that in Love It magazine many years ago and it stayed with me.
Speaker 1:
[46:00] He's later became Luke Littler, the dance player.
Speaker 4:
[46:06] It's funny the pieces of prose that stay with you, isn't it? It's weird.
Speaker 3:
[46:09] Everyone's head has the stuff in it.
Speaker 4:
[46:11] We all knew Andy so well and I want to read out one of his favorite pieces. I thought it was a kebab, but it was a baby from Love It.
Speaker 2:
[46:22] I must say, I was blown away by fiber optics and I think even more blown away by the lifespan of an embryo and the fact that they can be frozen and the fact that there was a child born in 2020 who was born from an embryo that was frozen in 1992, a 27-year distance between the two and it's really remarkable. You can have multiple embryos from the same person, which means that you, 27 years later, can have siblings born by using the embryos that are connected.
Speaker 3:
[46:55] That's a buddy comedy, that's a buddy comedy, sorry. They're siblings, but they're 30 years apart in age.
Speaker 1:
[46:59] And they're also cops.
Speaker 3:
[47:02] Funny coincidence. They're cops.
Speaker 4:
[47:07] I have friends who've had IVF and the eggs were fertilized at the same time, but there's an age gap between the siblings, but really they were created at the same time.
Speaker 2:
[47:16] Quite often they talk about themselves as twins, despite the fact that one's got a three-year head start on them. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:
[47:22] And they were there together at the same, like so they were there in the same thing.
Speaker 3:
[47:26] Can I just say that obviously you start off with a blaster paw, which becomes Uranus, and Uranus tunnels its way through the rest of you to become your mouth.
Speaker 2:
[47:35] I would argue blaster paw is a better name for an anus. Certainly in my experience on some nights.
Speaker 1:
[47:42] That was a kebab that night, wasn't it?
Speaker 4:
[47:44] I'm sorry, it tunnels its way through you. Yeah, because you're making it sound very sentient. Like it's like, come on guys, let's go, go, go.
Speaker 1:
[47:52] But some animals start with the mouth and it tunnels backwards to become the anus.
Speaker 4:
[47:55] That seems like the civilized way to do it.
Speaker 1:
[47:56] Well, we unfortunately are the anus first.
Speaker 4:
[47:59] We go blaster paw first.
Speaker 3:
[48:00] Is it all mammals?
Speaker 1:
[48:00] I think so.
Speaker 3:
[48:01] There can't be a division between mammals.
Speaker 1:
[48:03] And the other one is called deuterophores or something.
Speaker 3:
[48:05] Yes, that's right. Yeah, I know. And part of you, again, when the one cell, then two cells, then four cells, at the four cell stage is the last point where we are all the same and all the cells are identical. Even at that point, like the next cell division to eight cells, the cells have worked out. I'm anthropomorphizing there, but like they've, I suppose they are humans. But they've, the cells.
Speaker 1:
[48:32] This is what a one person dialogue is like.
Speaker 4:
[48:34] Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[48:35] When is the chorus coming on?
Speaker 3:
[48:38] I've sat in the chorus to give us our full daytime, I'm afraid. So, even after those two divisions, the cells have their genetic signature sorted out and they know whether they're going to be likely to come part of the fetus or part of the placenta. So half of those cells go off to be placenta cells.
Speaker 4:
[48:58] Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:
[48:59] It's wild. It is wild.
Speaker 1:
[49:01] And then fetuses can send stuff through the placenta that can become part of the mother, right? That was one of the most amazing things I learned when we had kids.
Speaker 4:
[49:11] The embryo is a part of you, there is a part of that baby in you. And this is used a lot when you talk about miscarriage or baby loss. So a lot of women feel like when they have a baby loss, they feel like that baby is still with them. That's kind of a euphemistic way. And then they now have discovered there literally is a part that embryo would have gone into the bloodstream and remained with the mother.
Speaker 1:
[49:30] The fetus can send stem cells through the placenta into the mother. So let's say you get an injury, the baby can send stem cells into your body that can then turn into any part of tissue and then can make you feel better. And if you have a C-section, then your body needs to repair itself, right? So it needs skin cells. There's still stem cells in the placenta from the baby that can come into your body and become part of that scar from the C-section.
Speaker 4:
[49:56] Yeah, so it's like they're still, which is why we use phrases like, it feels like you're with me. It feels like your heart's been ripped out. Also if you have recessed negative blood, O-negative blood, and your embryo doesn't have that, the first time you have a baby, that's fine. But their blood goes into your blood, your body goes, that's a foreign type of blood and it starts attacking it. So this is what they used to cause. Someone would have a healthy pregnancy and then they'd have lots of miscarriages afterwards and they would never understand why and it's because the mother had O-negative blood, the baby's blood wasn't O-negative. So every time they got pregnant again, the body, her body would start attacking it going, this is like bad, we should get rid of it. And now, if you're a recent negative like I am, you have to have two special injections. You have an injection while you're pregnant and an injection afterwards if your baby is not the same blood type. Otherwise your next pregnancy, your body will literally go attack it because they don't know what it is. Whereas if your baby is the same blood type, you're sharing the blood type, it's fine. Both my kids do not have the same blood type as me, so I had to have this huge, it's called anti-D injection. And let me tell you, it's a fucking huge needle.
Speaker 2:
[50:59] Really? That's insane that you created a thing that's wild. I know that's probably just basic science, but it does sound wild when you spell it out.
Speaker 4:
[51:09] It is wild. It's also annoying.
Speaker 2:
[51:11] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[51:11] You know the best way of testing an egg?
Speaker 4:
[51:14] For what? Soft or hard-boiled.
Speaker 1:
[51:17] You put it in water and if it floats, that's enough.
Speaker 4:
[51:20] You need four minutes boiling and then 30 seconds in cold, I think.
Speaker 3:
[51:23] So this is if you're doing IVF and you want a way of testing a fertilized egg. You've got the eggs fertilized and you want to see how viable they might be. The best method or a really useful method is to just give it a squeeze with your fingers?
Speaker 1:
[51:38] They're too small to squeeze.
Speaker 3:
[51:39] They're too small to squeeze with your fingers, but I think you have special little pincers. Yeah, special little pincers. It just has to be just right, basically. Not too firm, not too soft. And that those like an avocado, like an avocado. And those eggs which squeeze back, which push back a bit, you know, when pushed are likelier to become to produce healthier embryos, basically. So that's only been known for about 10 years. That method.
Speaker 1:
[52:01] Wow. One more developmental atavism. You have things called pharyngeal arches in your face and they kind of help you to chew and help you to smile. Little sort of muscles or kind of swellings of tissue in your face. They originally were the gills.
Speaker 4:
[52:18] What the hell?
Speaker 1:
[52:20] When we were all fishes, we used them to breathe and we don't need them anymore. So they've turned into things that help you express yourself with your face.
Speaker 4:
[52:29] So did gills do that for fish? Like other fish looking going, oh, you look sad. I wonder if they're expressing themselves in a way we don't recognize. They're like, God, Dan's a bit grumpy. Look at his gills. Down in the gills.
Speaker 2:
[52:46] Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd 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 online. I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram, Andy.
Speaker 3:
[52:57] At Andrew Hunter M. James.
Speaker 1:
[52:59] My Instagram is No Such Thing as James Harkin.
Speaker 2:
[53:01] And Cariad.
Speaker 4:
[53:02] Cariad Lloyd.
Speaker 2:
[53:04] Yeah. Cariad's got a new book out at the moment. Very exciting. It is a kids book. It's called Where Did She Go? It's illustrated. It's really beautiful. You've got a few kids books out.
Speaker 4:
[53:14] So The Lydia Marmalade is a middle grade book set in Jane Austen times. This is a kids picture book to talk to children about grief and death. So it's like a way of having a story that helps you explain to a child perhaps what happens. And this one's called Where Did She Go? And it's illustrated by Tom Percival. I'm also on tour with Ossentatious and you can listen to my Weirdos Book Podcast with friend of the show, Sarah Pascoe.
Speaker 2:
[53:35] Yes. Yeah. Huge back catalog online. Go check that out now. But yeah, also if you want to get through to us as a group, podcast.qi.com is our email. You can send us your favorite facts. If you send those to that email, we will cherry pick the best of them and bring them to our Monday bonus show which is called Little Fish. So you could hear your own fact read out on the show. Or if you just want to send us general feedback about things that we've said, little adventures you've had related to the topics that we've discussed, you can send them in and they'll be used on Jewel. Drop us a line, which is our mailbag episode. And that's a sort of secret private members episode. It's part of Club Fish. Club Fish lives on Patreon. patreon.com/clubfish. Go check it out because there's lots of really fun things there. There's an Excel version of the episode that you've just heard. There is a video version of Jewel on various different tiers. There's also your online quizzes. Go check it out. It's all lots of fun. But otherwise, just come back here next week because we're going to be back with another episode. A quick thank you as ever to the larger Fishbusters team. That's Liying Li and Ethan Ruparelia, as well as the other gang that are involved in making this show. And we'll see you again next week. Goodbye.