No Such Thing As A Hedgehog In A Lifeboat

Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. hey everyone welcome to another episode of fish dan here hope you're doing well just wanted to let you know before we get into the show about our guest joining us today it's one of our favorites someone who's joined us a number of times over the last few years it is new zealand comedian melanie bracewell so mel if you haven't heard her on the show before is someone whose work you may have seen in other places her stand-up clips are always popping up online for any doom scrollers out there. If you're an Aussie, you'll know her from the TV show she co-hosts called The Cheap Seats. If you're a fan of Taskmaster and have consumed all the international formats, you will have seen Mel on series four of the New Zealand Taskmaster. And if you're a general connoisseur of comedy, it's good to know that she has had a hand in the writing of such shows as the rebooted Time Bandits and also the absolutely brilliant Wellington Paranormal, of which she starred in two episodes as well. But this is all stuff that's on the screen over on the other side of the planet. What about us in the UK? Well, good news. Mel is in the country right now on a stand-up tour, literally happening as I speak. So the good news is you can see her in person doing the thing she does best, which is stand-up with her new show called A Little Treat. And if you want to find all the details for that, go to her Instagram. It's at Melanie Bracewell, or just Google her name and a little treat UK tour. It'll all come up. But basically, as of March 1st, she's going to be in Norwich. Then she's going to be going to Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff. So it's a limited run, but the tickets are selling fast. So quickly get in now before she heads back over to Oz, where just a heads up for the Aussies and New Zealanders, she's going to be on tour with this show from May. All the details are online. But for now, enjoy her here, dorking out with me, Andy and James on No Such Thing as a Fish. On with the show. 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'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter-Murray and Mel Bracewell. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Mel. My fact this week is that the New Zealand government is stopping invasive species by using Selena Gomez Oreos. It's huge. It's specifically possum. So there's a huge possum problem in New Zealand. There's no natural predators for possums. Basically, they were trying to lure out the really persistent possums that weren't able to be trapped by other means. They say what happens often is that they will go and have a little bit of bait, get a bit sick, and then go, I'm never going to eat that bait ever again. Or they get almost stuck in a trap, and then they don't ever go towards traps again. So they were trying to find something that would lure these possums that are very afraid of the traps in. And what worked specifically was Oreos, but not just any Oreos. They had to be the Selena Gomez Oreos. So why did they like them so much? So they have like a combination of chocolate and cinnamon that the possums just love. What a review. What a review for the Oreos. I reckon I would be straight in those traps. Yeah, really. They do sound very nice. This is not an advert for Selena Gomez or for Oreos. But, you know, she's put a lot of work into the Flavor profile, I think. Oh, yeah, it was like years. She really wanted to be able to. She was in the lab, wasn't she? She wanted to be an Oreo person. That's why there hasn't been a new album from her in quite some time. Is she a singer? I didn't know that. Sorry, who do you think Selena Gomez is? I don't know. I was asking. A scientist? This was an article on the spin-off, which is a New Zealand website. And that was one of my favorite parts of the article, is that the scientist does not know who Selena Gomez is. He said, I don't know who she is. I just know she makes a good Oreo. She has made no comment. They have asked repeatedly, what do you think that your Oreos are being used to wipe out possums in New Zealand? She's a busy woman. She's a busy woman. Well, it's a tough gig as well, because it is being used for what is getting rid of a pest. It's being used to protect native New Zealand birds. But at a cost of killing an animal. If you're against that, that's a big issue. Like if you sent her an email this week, I don't know if you did or not, but if you sent her an email saying, dear Miss Gomez, have you been killing animals in New Zealand? She's not going to respond to that. P.S. What do you do? What's your line of work? The line she's used as the strap line is great for movie night and make wonderful birthday treats and music award watch party snacks. She didn't include an exterminating and invasive species. The initial experiment that they had toyed with, what they would do is they'd leave these things outside of traps so that the possums would get a taste for them. And what they were toying up was actually using drugs, like addictive drugs. And then they read a study about chocolate and cinnamon having similar properties and similar properties of addiction. And so they would leave them out and not trap them and then get them addicted to these Oreos. That's really interesting. Well, they're going to stop making these things. This is a limited edition Oreo That's the issue They're going to run out And they're going to need something else To lure in the possums into the traps No six things of fish Kit Kats Yes What do you think? I don't want to be part of Perfect for podcast listening parties Are we saying fish flavoured Kit Kat? No, cinnamon and chocolate No, the possums aren't going to eat that Fish flavoured Kit Kat I think I would Yum Fish ringer It's not a legally protected term let's say Very true So these guys have come over to New Zealand from Australia. Is that right? That's where they're invasive from. Yeah, Australia. And then there's some pests that have been introduced from England as well. And sorry, guys. Sorry to bring it up. But look, we were booked for that, Tom. We were asked to come. So the reason that they're not a problem as much in Australia is because they do have predators. And one of them is the powerful owl. Oh. And the powerful owl is Australia's largest owl, and it is able to disembowel a possum in less than 20 seconds. Wow. That's impressive when you say it like that, but I've no metric of how long it should take me to disembowel a possum. Do you know what I mean? Bring it in! Yeah, I know what you mean, but interestingly, the reason they disembowel it is because they're meat eaters, and they're not interested in eating vegetables, but the possums eat vegetables. And so they don't want to eat their insides because they're just full of useless green stuff. They want to eat their meat. That is insane. What is the equivalent of a kid picking the peas out of their food? Nice. Do you know why possums were brought over to New Zealand in the first place? They were brought over for the fur trade. Oh, yeah. And it didn't work for fur, but then the numbers exploded. And I think there are now 47 million, give or take, which ironically would be plenty for a thriving. That's a lot of fur. Thriving fur trade That's what the fur trade then said Like maybe about 15-20 years ago They were like Hey why don't we turn these guys into lovely pelts And everyone That's a really good idea Wait a minute Weren't you the guys who brought them over in the first place I'm not trying to say I'm on the side of big fur But then As you say You've got loads of invasive things You've got weasels And stoats And rabbits The really annoying thing The stoats were brought in to control the rabbits Which had been brought in Yeah I don't know It's the old lady who swallowed a fly Yeah, yeah. It's mad. The other thing they're doing with them is it's become a bit of a delicacy over in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan and China and so on. And so they're sold over there and they're sold under the name Kiwi Bear. So that's the meal that you have. You have a Kiwi Bear, doesn't it? Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Yeah. One pest that really ravages New Zealand and it's more difficult to get rid of are hedgehogs. And what people think is because hedgehogs are quite cute, is that they're cuter. And they're diabolical. They'll eat birds, eggs and things like that. But because people think they're cute, they're less likely to want to poison them. Can I give you a tip to get rid of them? Build bonfires. Because when we were a kid, we were told that if you build a bonfire, a hedgehog will always go inside it. So you have to check it before you set it on fire for hedgehogs. That's true. So I think they're attracted to them or something. They hibernate in them, don't they? Do they? They go and they think, oh, lovely, nice pile of leaves. I've read about this. I love that your response is, make it look like an accident. Yeah. It's called the Beatrix Potter effect It's too cute Apparently there are more in New Zealand than in Britain They're obviously native to Britain They're not native to New Zealand And it's been proposed that we put all the hedgehogs on a big ship And sail it over But I don't think it's practical It's not been proposed by anyone What they had said was that the reason they introduced it Was to remind settlers of gardens in the UK Is the reason that you put them on a big ship And send them back Because if you put them on a small dinghy they're just going to pop the thing. Yep. So I'm just thinking if it did hit something and they had to do an escape. Quick everyone into the emergence. Oh shit. Women and children first. Hedgehogs definitely last. Is it controversial because I know that you've got this whole brilliant national scheme. I love it. Predator free New Zealand. Yes. I'm a fan of all those individual elements right? You guys are trying it here very slowly. We're starting at the top. No, it's a Prince Andrew joke I was trying to get there But I didn't want to say We've just all had a buzz on our phones That he's been arrested Yeah, yeah Have you tried arresting the possum? Sorry But it seems like it's a very Sort of big community effort You know, people are setting up Traps in their gardens There was this school in 2022 On a place called Is it Rakiura? Or Stewart Island? Oh, yeah And they had a 100 day challenge for the children to kill as many rodents as possible. And the 40 students who were taking part, they caught 600 rats between them. One five-year-old did in 60 rats over three months. That's the thing that they say, if a kid is trying to harm animals, that's like the sign of a psychopath. But we're trying to sort of get them to get to that point. It's a controversial thing to an extent because about a decade before that, in 2010, a school got questioned because they did this. They did this kind of hunt for possums and for rats. But then they got the kids to play a game of possum tossing Where who could throw the possum the furthest And we did a lot of surveys to see how people felt about that I gotta say, in 20 years time You guys are gonna have an enormous prison population Or some incredible sports teams with just a killer instinct The New Zealand empire begins to spread across the world It can go the other way So New Zealand has bush ticks as do Australia but they've recently been introduced to America with quite a lot of problems and so much so the first one they found was a couple of years ago in New Jersey and a woman had been shearing her sheep and she came in with these ticks over her and said I think there's a problem here and it turned out to be these invasive ones and she had so many on her she had over a thousand on her pants alone. Wow. She was just head to toe in these ticks. In ticks? Wait, is this a person or a sheep? It was a person. Got it. And she survived. She survived, yeah. Because tick bites, if you don't pull them out and leave the head in, particularly Aussie ones, you get Lyme disease. Yeah, I assume they just sprayed her with something not very nice and the ticks fell off. Oh, what a pickle to be in. That's what it is, isn't it? It is. What's the pickle? Like, as in, what's the good side? I'm covering a thousand ticks. There's no good side. Oh, I thought a pickle means like, what a pickle I found myself in. Do you think that there's two sides to a pickle? Yeah. I think being in a pickle is bad overall. Is it? What about that saying there's two sides to every pickle? That's the name of my autobiography. Oh, I guess in a pickle you think of someone who's trying to make a decision, right? Yeah, what a pickle I find myself in. No, you're in trouble. But in a pickle it's kind of both sides are still bad, right? Yeah. You're on the horns of a dilemma You're in a nightmare What Mel say Unbelievable You can't rely on guests just to hoof you out of problems Mel have you ever seen a peacock wild in New Zealand? I haven't seen them wild in New Zealand I think I may have seen them wild in Australia Oh okay Because they're a big problem in New Zealand as well Which I didn't know about And it's partly because The possums have been successfully trapped and hunted in various areas No one's eating those delicious, delicious peacock eggs They're all so invasive and they're feral and they're very hard to catch because they're very wary of humans. They flee they do lots of damage to crops and things like that Obviously they also very beautiful and majestic You have picked kind of the best animals to get over there really Yeah But it is for the amazing birds of New Zealand which are beautiful and in the areas where they've managed to fence it off they've done various islands the birds have all come back and it's now a cacophony of incredible birds nesting there and it is pretty amazing. It is beautiful. Yeah. And if it takes a million possum skulls to crush under our heels we'll do it. Fish Kit Kats are now available in your local stores. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. 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Okay, it is time for fact number two And that is my fact My fact this week is that one of the reasons Married couples slept in twin beds In Victorian England Is because doctors claimed that the weak sleepers Stole their partner's vitality During the night I think that's true Yeah Interesting What do you say, like, if I'm snoring all night And my wife's just gonna wake up tired Yes, yeah, absolutely I think though it could be the weak sleeper is also the one who wakes easily So you would be asleep It's a hell of a pickle But this is a situation And what's the good part of it? This isn't about snoring and waking up This is just about someone being an energy drain Is that what it is? Yeah, it's sapping the vital essence It went more in it, didn't it? It was like electromagnetic energy was being sucked from me Okay, in that case Who the hell is saying this shit? Well, this is Victorian England So Oh right, okay Yeah, all of it All of Victorian England We're currently looking into getting twin beds in our house And as happens with you guys You start googling stuff And you go, what do I know about twin beds? And fortunately But the thing is with you This is getting more intimate Because previously you were in bunk beds Yeah, exactly Yeah, I'm currently sleeping in a The bottom bunk bed of my son's room While my wife's in bed with our three kids Okay Are you looking into getting twin beds? Yeah, but not for me and my wife For our two youngest kids Okay, thank you, context Now you know that your vitality is being drained. It may change. Fortunately, someone had the same question about the history of twin beds, and that was Lancaster University professor Hilary Hines, and she wrote A Cultural History of Twin Beds. As she was looking into it, she discovered that it was believed in around 1860s that it would literally be taking away your energy. The quotes are so extreme. This was one of my favorites. Each sleeper should have a single bed and a large, clean light room so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure, fresh air. And those who fail in this will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain and will die while their days are not all told. Oh, wow. It's like, you should do this. And then it's going, no, you'll die. You will die. It's very powerful. You know, it's quite persuasive. There's like quite a long standing history of people sleeping in separate rooms, even in the British aristocracy. And that is because, well, for lots of different reasons. One reason, because you're just going to have a better night's sleep quite often. But secondly, because they thought that it was unhealthy to sleep in the same bed because germ theory had just come out and they didn't really know how the germs would work. and the other thing is like if you wanted a bit of romance you could go to your partner's room rather than sort of like nudging them with a cold foot and saying do you fancy a bit you actually have to knock on the door and say you know let me in your seduction techniques in real time interesting that you assume that was my technique and that my wife's technique we seem to be in a pickle There's also the other thing of this So the Edwardians, so early 20th century A big bit of the reason that they had separate rooms Was to allow adultery Because upper class Edwardian society Was absolutely rife with adultery And it was kind of expected That a husband and wife would get married They'd have some children And then once the children are out It's free play Out of the house or the womb? Out of the womb Ideally they'll be at school or off on a trip No, no, no, but it's not when they've grown up and moved out It's literally in the family home It's literally, well, it's especially Not just in the family home, but in grand houses Where you might go visiting, you might go for a weekend party So you'd have single rooms And some of these rooms have little brass brackets Outside with a little name label Saying exactly who's in where And supposedly it was to help the butler Identify who was who But it had a very useful second purpose Of allowing a bit of hanky-panky So you're not knocking on the wrong door In the middle of the night And ending up in a real, you know, tangle Even more than that There was a house called Wentworth Woodhouse In South Yorkshire Which was the biggest house in England, basically And they, when they had all the Tufts coming to visit They gave everyone a map to all the bedrooms Brilliant So you could kind of look at the map and go Oh, I want to go to Mrs Jones' room So I need to go up here, down there, round there This Wentworth Woodhouse was the biggest private house in the whole of England Right In the Victorian era How many bedrooms do you think it had? Ooh Riddle me this I'll say I mean bedrooms I'll say high double figures Yeah I mean it can't have more than about 50 or 60 bedrooms I would assume Oh I was going way more Oh wow I mean, it has to be a shocking amount. I feel like the other times I've been on this podcast, Dad, you always ruin the guessing game because you guess so high. And so then the real fact feels kind of lame in comparison. You're meant to be backing me up. What's going on? Don't listen to Andy. Oh, sorry, sorry. Well, no, I think because I was thinking that I know George Harrison has a house, which is absolutely monstrous. Like, it's huge. And I thought that that had in the hundreds, I thought that had close to like 400. So I'm going to say 400 rooms. Okay, I'm going to say, well, maybe I'll lowball it. I'll say 42. Okay, okay. I said 50 or 60, 42, 400. George Harris has kind of had 400. My sweet lord, Dan is the closest. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry for doubting you. There we go. 300 rooms. Wow. Really close. And basically they would have big hunting parties Where everyone would come and shoot guns But interestingly It was only two bathrooms Because of the plumbing arrangements of the time And that was fine Twin beds were quite modern This is the interesting thing Because of the association with greater hygiene And not having your energy sapped away from you They were seen from the late 19th century and early 20th To be the modern thing Now we think of them as being quite old fashioned But they were really kind of modern and quite cool. They were, but again, it was for the richer people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And normal people, like forever normal people would share beds. And then what happened was around the 50s, there were a few different reasons, but one of the reasons is television started to be more realistic and television shows would show married couples and also the Hays Code had finished, so people were allowed to show men and women in bed together. So people started showing men and women in bed together and everyone thought, well, now that's the modern thing. That's the fashionable thing. Ah, is that what changed it? Yeah, there's a few different things. The Hays Code was fascinating because in Hollywood, you had a guideline saying don'ts and be carefuls within movies. So the don'ts were explicitly do not do this. The be carefuls were, this is the guideline if you're going to do this kind of scene. And if someone who is watching it finds that offensive, they will not allow for that to be in the movie. So one of the things... That's very useful in the bedroom too, to have don'ts and be carefuls. Yes. you know yeah absolutely he's got a sign on the side of his bed no heavy petting no bombing no running no cold foot nudging me yeah um this this was a big problem for hollywood so there's a specific example of a movie where the marital bed was one mattress and it was a lucille ball movie and they had to reshoot the scenes so it cost thirty thousand dollars for them to go and reshoot this and it was simply that they just had to have it something like um 12 inches apart that was like the expected length of how far the beds needed to be enough distance for me am i right oh my god okay so some opinions about whether you prefer to sleep in bed with a partner or not okay this is a recent poll by yougov um five percent say their dream arrangement is different beds in the same room so that is twin beds okay 10 say different beds in different rooms is the dream 76 say same bed in same room interesting nobody says same bed but different wow what are the chances just my preference there were some studies that that um determine that often when people sleep with their partner their subjective view of how well they slept was higher but the truth is that they've had a worse sleep. Oh, interesting. Which I feel like is what sleep trackers do to my brain where I feel like I've had a great sleep and I'll wake up and I'll say, you've had a horrendous sleep and then I'll be in a bad mood. I'll go, well, it told me I've had a bad sleep so I'll spend the rest of my day feeling bad. But then the opposite, I'll feel like I've had a terrible sleep and then my phone will say, it was a great one. I'll go, you know what? Let's really put a peep in my step. Yeah. I think for a lot of people, if you have a partner, there's a sense of safety. Yes. So you sort of turn around, they're there everything's okay so it doesn't matter that you woke up you did it so you could check and you feel a lot more safe did you read the marie stopes line yeah so she marie stopes who was very very famous for writing a book called married love and uh she was a campaigner for birth control yes yes big campaigner for that that kind of thing she wrote that the the twin bed set was an invention of the devil jealous of married bliss and she proposed that you shouldn't have twin beds instead the wife should have a room with a double bed and the husband should have a bedroom to himself for general use keeping the wife's bedroom a romantic place i think and then the husband can like have a bed that's in the shape of a race car exactly yes i would kill for that verse right now. On an unusual bed-sharing story, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin shared a bed once. It's an excerpt from his diary. President John Adams of America. Yes. Okay. In 1776, he described the time he had to share a tiny bed with Benjamin Franklin, and instead of sleeping, they had an argument about whether to keep the windows open or closed. Franklin eventually won the argument when Adams got too tired and fell asleep. Nice. Who really wins because Adams has fallen asleep first. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's true. And also, Adams became president and Franklin never did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Double win. Double win for Adams. You too, Franklin. Nice. I mentioned before that snoring's a problem. There's been a new study that gives you a way out of snoring. And that is, before you go to bed, you have to blow on a conch shell. Oh, no way. You might have seen this study before that if you blow on didgeridoos that supposed to help because it helps your breathing You have to do circular breathing Well apparently conch shells are even better because if you learn properly how to blow a conch shell you have to do very deep breathing, you have to do very strong exhalations, and also the spiral shape of the shell gives like a unique kind of type of blow. That means you won't snore. No way. I do snore. Well, I've got a conch. Do you? Wow. Oh my gosh. Sleepover party. Absolutely. That's how Andy manages his household, isn't it? You're only allowed to speak if you're holding it. I never get a hold of it. I'm so annoying. Yeah, no, I've got a big blowable. It makes an incredible note when you blow it. It's really good. Where did you get it from? A long way away. Under the sea. Yeah, it was an island, a holiday in, I think, somewhere in the Caribbean. It was many years ago. But it makes a great noise. Was it not when your school crashed on that desert island that time? I'd rather not talk about that weekend If you were the only survivor How weak were the rest? I was king of that island, Mel Wow Wearing my possum skull armour Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is, it's eight degrees warmer inside a daffodil than outside. Brilliant. So, yeah, if you're feeling chilly and you're listening to this, there's a daffodil nearby, spring is coming. Just get in there. You could put, at most, a little pinky. Are you about to open up what I think you're about to open up yet? No. No, okay. Because when I saw the list of facts, I saw a daffodil while I was going for a walk, And so I put my finger in the daffodil and I sent the photo to Dan and he did not reply to the photo. I'm sorry, but. So it was such an ominous thing to send. It was uncomfortable when I was sitting next to my wife and Mel slipped into my DMs with a picture of her fingering a daffodil. I said doing some research for the show. Very funny. Yeah, that's the photo there. Amazing. Was it what? Yeah. I can't tell. I can't tell. It was such a cold day that I don't know. Because it's up to eight degrees, right? That requires probably a bit of sunshine. You probably also need to keep it in there for a certain amount of time. And you can't just stand there with your finger in a daffodil for a couple of hours. The park keeper will pop over. But basically, the daffodils are really interesting. They're not like a normal flower because they've got this trumpet thing, which most flowers don't have. And they want to get bees in and pollinating insects in general. and often dafts are some of the first flowers of spring so it's quite cold still when they're up and the cone acts as a windbreak and the petals are directing sunlight inwards and third thing, the stem is turning the trumpet away from cold breezes so basically they're making it a lovely, as warm as possible environment to lure in any pollinating insects that are up and about at this time of year I love it It's like a restaurant with a fireplace Yeah, that's very nice So it's very charming Because I think there aren't any bees around at this time of year, are there really? No, probably not. So I think they'll be pollinated by flies. Yes. And this is the thing, the flies that are around this time of year, they tend to be colourblind. And so that's why the flowers that you see this time of year, like snowdrops and daffodils, are white and yellow. Because they stand out against the green. Contrast is the main thing, yeah, yeah. And then later in the year, you get more colourful ones. So good. Does the heat in the daffodil sort of warm up the pollen so it's like... Like a hot meal? Is there any? Yeah, I like it. Yes, I'm going to say yes. It absolutely does. Anyone have your daffs out already? Yes. We're recording this on the 19th of February. I've got a couple in my garden. I do. They started coming up a few days ago, yeah. How are they looking? They're looking yellow. Yeah. Is the head like bent a little bit? It is. It's bending down. Oh, dear. Because according to English folklore, that means you're going to die this year. Oh, damn. Dear me. Oh, no. Now that is a pickle. Beautiful flowers or death. That's very funny. If you dream of them, any maiden who dreams of daffodils is warned not to go into a wood with her lover. And if you see the first daffodil of the year out of all your friends and stuff, it means you will have more gold than silver for the rest of the year. Although silver is doing quite well, isn't it? Both are overpriced at the moment. doesn't say anything about bitcoin but even more gold than silver doesn't necessarily mean like more money if you had like a million silver coins and two gold coins you still have more wealth and also they're both good things it's like a reverse pickle yeah um the daffodil bending over though yeah i mean that's that's quite um sort of daffodilish to do I would say. I would say it's a classic daffodil move. In fact, the name daffodil, when it goes back to Narcissus, which is the family it's from, is it? Yeah. That was obviously because when Narcissus was looking down into the water, he couldn't stop staring at his reflection in the mythology. And they say that daffodils do the same. They look down at the water, they're looking at themselves. But do you know that that Narcissus is actually Narcissus poeticus, it seems, which is a different it's not the daffodil that you know it's a related daffodil which is white and so the and that's the one that Linnaeus called the Narcissus because he based it on that bit of mythology and the one that we have is just a related flower we just have a related flower, that's so interesting this is the really weird thing, there are 36 different species of daffodil right, but they became very popular for breeding and crossbreeding and making your own variety, so different to species is varieties right so there are 36 species of daff but there are 27 000 varieties yes it's crazy and there's there's actually but loads and loads of them are not attractive to insects right because they've been bred by plant breeders for their looks they've not been breeding them for their you know their pollen qualities or anything or their attractiveness to insects uh so they've taken over the process so that selection process has has meant that lots of daffs that you get these days are not actually especially delicious. So humans have to go in and propagate them, do they? Yeah, yeah. If you look carefully, if you have a garden or some daffodils in your garden, just keep an eye out because you'll often find a creepy old man with a finger in a daffodil. I'll send the photo to all of you guys so you can have that. But there's lots of, if you go online, there's lots of missing daffodils in the UK now of these crossbreeds that they're really hoping are still out there. So you can find a list of people saying, if you live in this area, So, for example, Lewis in the UK, in Sussex, there is a daffodil that's known as the Sussex Bonfire. So they have a big bonfire night celebration there and a local... And so many dead headshots. Yeah, there's a local plant breeder called Noel Burrow who created this thing. And it hasn't been seen for the last 20 years, but they think it must still be in someone's garden. They just haven't identified it. So they sort of say, please look around, see if you can find it. But they look so similar. It's like a Wears Wally. because it's like do they look like a ordinary daffodil well i think no i think they do have different qualities yeah yeah there's the uh the mrs ro backhouse daffodil as well that's missing they're desperately hoping to find the mrs william copeland daffodil there's all these amazing little crossbreeds that become famous your new show dan daffodil hunters yes i feel like going around looking for interesting daffodils yes it's like you know um what's his name bob martimer like his show where he just fishes and you know people love it because it's like nice and relaxing you see lots of countryside but you also get a great comedian yeah I think that's a really good idea just me crawling through people's gardens just looking for a rare daffodil but I'm doing it with rummish so lovely yeah have you guys heard of Peter Barr the daffodil king no no so daffodils originally came from Spain and Portugal and then they were brought here by the Romans. And that means that in Spain and Portugal, you have lots of different varieties of daffodils. And in order to make the new ones, you need to get some of the old ones and then cross them. So he rode through Spain and Portugal, sleeping under rocks with only a single blanket for comfort and was once mistaken for a famous bandit by police as he went around looking for daffodils. And he made thousands and thousands of these. That sounds like something someone says to say that they're tough. Like I just sleep under rocks every day Under rocks is a weird Sounds like something from the manosphere My wife has her own bed And of course I just sleep under rocks I read a newspaper clipping About this guy Peter Barr The Daffodil King And the clipping said that the only other man Close to claiming the title was Dorian Smith But that gentleman is too content With his ownership of the Sealy Isles to enter in a vain rivalry. You owned the city isles. These are little islands off the coast of Cornwall, is it? They're really... Cornwall is king of daffodils. Is it? Yeah. That's the biggest producer of daffodils in the world. Well, Britain is the biggest country. We're world leaders in daff production. It's not nothing. It's not nothing. 30 million tons of bulbs are produced there. 30 million tons of bulbs? Yeah, yeah. That doesn't sound plausible. that could be a number that's over 100 years I'm not sure if that's an annual produce oh right, no of course it is interesting that's just extraordinary and it's why I just cut flowers people buy them because they look nice yeah exactly but we have mentioned this before but I forgot it they're very poisonous like cats or dogs and things can't eat and humans I'll pull off brunch well no but this this is a problem because often when you go into a local supermarket the flowers will be positioned right next to the fruit and veg right and there's been people that are saying you've got to stop leaving the daffodils near the chinese vegetables near the onions because they can be mistaken for them and people have been hospitalized uh quite a few times if you have a like mistaken for so they're often sold they're not open yet yeah so they look a little bit like spring onions and there are also some other like spring greens that you get in china that look quite a lot like them right i was reading an article by john robertson who works at the poison garden in annick oh yeah that's like a garden with all poisonous plants in it and he's found lots of examples of people being poisoned by daffodils he said there was some parents who are not very well and they had a couple of children who were just old enough to make a stew and they went and picked out what they thought were onions and put them in and they were daffodil bulbs. What is the right age to make a stew? It's a really good question. Normally you have to get your license in the UK. I don't know if that's a thing in the UK. On bees and heat, a study from North Carolina State University found that bumblebees carrying pollen, their bodies heat up depending on how much pollen they have. It's a workout. So the weight of the pollen that they're carrying around makes their bodies warmer. And so they're afraid that global warming, the workout of carrying pollen will be too much for them and they'll overheat. I know, it's very good. You know what happens if, sorry to interrupt, but you know what happens if a bee overheats? We've mentioned this on our show before. It ejaculates itself to death. Really? Yeah. Really, it just can't stop. It can't stop, yeah. I can't remember the exact details, but I remember that sentence very clearly. Sticks in the mind. just on the thing that Mel said they are now flowering two or three weeks earlier than in the past. This is a climaty thing this is a world getting warmer thing so if Wordsworth went for his famous walk with his sister today there might be nothing there at all because although they'd have already flowered a couple of weeks ago he'd have had to write about something else Right. It doesn't seem like the biggest problem with This is not the biggest effect of climate change that you can think of but it is bad But that is the thing about it, is he says, I wandered lonely as a cloud. But he wasn't lonely. He was with his sister the whole time. But if he'd said, I wandered out there with my sister, what's the rhyme? Blister, I suppose. I feel like, I mean, I've spent a few days in here. I don't think the clouds are that lonely. There's quite a few hanging out together. That's true. I wandered in a thick mass across the countryside. Yeah, you're right. So maybe he meant it in an ironic way. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. okay it time for our final fact of the show and that is james okay my fact this week is that you may be able to cure chronically blocked noses with a snot transplant Oh, wow. Lovely. It's future, guys. Yeah. Incredible. It does sound good. Yeah. Reading about it, I thought, yeah, sign me up. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know if you suffer from this kind of thing. I do, definitely. Chronic rhinocitis. In fact, I had surgery for it a few years ago, and that was kind of the best way to deal with it. and it kind of still is. But I read about a new study in New Scientist this week and they've come up with this idea of basically siphoning snot out of someone and shoving it right up there. It's as simple as that, really. But surely the people that don't have blocked noses don't have a lot of snot to offer. So they could probably only be a donor for one person. That's what you mean. Their noses are way too clear. That's what you mean. That's what you mean. Well, basically everyone has some kind of microbiome in their sinuses. And what you're trying to do is get those bacteria and viruses out of a healthy person's nose and put them into an unhealthy person's nose. It's really cool. I think it just sounds like a great idea. So it was one of the pioneers of it, a scientist called Amy Monge. Yeah, Amy Monge from Vancouver and another guy called Anders Mortensen from Helsingborg. Yes. And so she was inspired by fecal transplants, which we've talked about before as being very useful. You don't want to get those two mixed up. Absolutely not. Absolutely. You've just put snot up this person's bum. Wait a minute, that means... So, yeah, it gets referred to as a sinus probiotic. Because you've got, you know, this... You're fighting snot with snot, basically. And this thing, chronic sinus condition or chronic rhinosinusitis, it sounds awful. It's a shocker. So you've had it. I still kind of have it, but the surgery helped quite a lot. You've mentioned your sinuses in the past, but I've always thought, yeah, I've got a cold too. And I'm so sorry, James. But basically, I often can't breathe. Yes, yes, yes. Which is kind of vital for living. Absolutely. That's priority one. But it gets dismissed by lots of doctors as a minor inconvenience. But people living with it, which might be up to 10%, I read, approaching this number, your face hurts, you're always bunged up, you lose your sense of smell, headaches, bad breath. Try getting on an aeroplane. Oh, really? Of course. As soon as you, You know when your ears sort of, when your ears pop? Yeah, yeah. When that happens for you, I just get this incredible pain in my sinuses. I've heard that if you get on a flight and you've got a bit of a cold, that can happen, can't it? I have that all the time. Well, allegedly, people with it seem to be 77% likelier to have depression than those without, because it's just such a chronically debilitating thing. There's a research team. This is a game. You guys guess what? The name of the research team trying to work out. they're using like AI to work out the cause of this rhinocitis in people. Okay. What is the name of this research team? Like the acronym, you mean? It's not an acronym. It's just like a fun bit of wordplay. And it's like when you read it, you go, of course. Okay. Blow. Who knows how to fix this? I mean, you've got the right pun. Have I? Well, in terms of it is it's got nose in it, but it's medical. and it's about figuring out. Do nose harm? No, it's so much simpler than that. It's literally just a word in the medical field that you would use a lot. A doctor. What does a doctor do to you? Diagnose. Yes. Lovely. Lovely. Too good, too good. That's pretty good. Because Dan, you talked about acronyms. There is the way to measure whether you have chronic sinusitis is the sinonasal outcome test or SNOT. beautiful lovely they basically give you 22 things do you need to blow your nose do you sneeze a lot do you have a runny nose and you put how often does it happen all the time or does it happen never what's interesting is how much mucus and snot we produce per day buckets it's buckets it's 1.5 liters per day is what the body produces that's like a large bottle of coca-cola isn't it Yeah, and it's used for various different things that I didn't realise it was used for. It lubricates poo, so then it makes it easier to exit our body. Yeah, you're saying it with a slightly disgusted look on your face, but you try going without. You'll be crying out for that mucus to come back. I don't know how I try going without. You try going without mucus. I don't know what things were like. It's too good for mucus to you. How dare you. I don't know how bad it got for you on the Lord of the Flies Island, but we keep our poos lubricated. The thing is that people obviously would find the idea of eating snot disgusting, but we are swallowing our snot all the time. Most of those liters, we're just swallowing it. Yeah, because it traps, you know, like bacterias or tiny hairs or whatever that are all landing in your body. And it can be in the lining to your lungs and things like that. Then you bring that up, you know, that's all trapped, gets full of the pollutants. You bring it up, you swallow it, out it goes. Easy. One interesting thing about picking your nose and eating it is that according to some scientists, they think that might be a good thing because the pathogens that get stuck in your nose are the weaker ones because they haven't managed to get all the way up. So if you take those ones out and eat them, then that's like... It's like a vaccine. Like a vaccine, exactly. I should say not all scientists think this. That's good to know. Before this podcast recording, actually Mel sent me a photo of her with her finger jammed up her nose. I didn't understand it until now. Yeah. It's so much warmer up here You can get terrible sinusitis If you're a tortoise There was a tortoise Sorry to any tortoises listening There's a tortoise in Bristol Zoo In 2014 Called Helen Who had a terrible nasal infection And they gave them a course of antibiotics And lots of sinus rinses and stuff And the reason is that tortoises can't cough And so if you get the infection, they can't get it out of their body. But the reason I mainly bring it up is that this tortoise called Helen has a underfloor heated sandpit. No way. And it's a bit of a sore point on this show now that Andy hasn't got underfloor heating in his house. That makes me sound like an insane diva. I'm just saying the Romans had it 2000 years ago. Why don't we all have it? It's not just me. Why does Helen have it? Genuinely, what the hell? There are humans out there you could do with underfloor heating. Some of them around this table. Wow. Well, congratulations, Helen. I hope you're very happy. I hope your sinusitis never gets better. Cold medicine in the UK is substantially worse than it used to be. Is that right? Yeah. Is this pseudoephedrine or no? This is not to do with the actual... Certainly is. Oh, it is. Right. Okay. Is it because they outlawed pseudoephedrine in New Zealand for a bit and they've brought it back? Oh, did they? Because it's very easy to turn that cold medication into drugs. Yes. Is it? Is it? A key ingredient of crystal meth is pseudoephedrine. And pseudoephedrine is where Pseudofed gets its name from. Pseudofedrine. Do you hear it? Pseudofedrine. It's in the beginning bit, right? It was used for decades. Banned in 2008 And replaced with something much less effective Called phenylephrine And I mean it's good news if you don't like crystal meth Being a big part of your community Bad news if you have chronic sinusitis Can't you get it? Can I get it under the counter somewhere? I think there are very specific The problem is I can't get my head under the counter Because it all goes into my eyes There are very specific circumstances I think Under which a doctor will give it to you But it's not just ladled out now because it's too easy to use it to make crystal meth. I've written a new script called Blowing Bad and I think it's going to be really successful. I'm really excited. A German doctor called Wilhelm Fleiss was a friend of Freud and he thought that your nose got more swollen once a month and it kind of had its own menstrual cycle. And he thought that the swelling of the nose caused some kind of sexual disorders. Yes And What's that done? Yes Explains my disorder Bridge Okay And now I sit back And allow Dan to explain What the hell he was thinking With that interjection Well I just know that Take the tampon out your nose Before you talk to us Dan I've always thought That the nose Was very similar To a vagina You've always thought that? Yeah As a young boy As a young boy I just always thought, no, because we share very similar, we, my nose and vaginas, share very similar tissues on the inside, right? They have erectile tissues in their nose. Oh. Exactly. Yeah. And it is true that if you get excited down there, it can give you a blocked nose sometimes. That's called honeymoon rhinitis. And it's because the blood rushes to the erectile tissue in both places. Whoa. But this guy, Wilhelm Fleiss, he thought that the best way to deal with it is to take cocaine. and he thought that if you took cocaine then it would stop your nose from going through this menstrual cycle and that it would stop your sexual disorders and surprise surprise Sigmund Freud absolutely agreed yeah and was the one who would prescribe him this cocaine so that he would his patients would feel better well give it a go it was a big cold and flu remedy wasn't it yeah cocaine was just a standard thing again cocaine crystal meth all these drugs before we really understood. And heroin was good for cuffs, wasn't it? I was trying to think of a pun that whole time and the only thing I could think of was you've got a stiffy and a stuffy. Literally. It's all I could get. Can I tell you one more weird transplant thing? Yes, please. Oh yeah, that's not transplants. So there is a belief among some doctors that we might within the next 10 years get the first ever head transplant. Oh. Okay. It's pretty interesting. So this is a surgeon called Bruce Matthew, who's a former NHS neurosurgeon, so qualified. And basically, it's really a body transplant, actually. Yeah. Because... Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, true. The head is the person. The head is the person. No, it's not the same thing. Because if they say we're giving you a head transplant, that means they're going to take off your head and put someone else's head on. But what happens to your head? The key thing, apparently, is that your head and your spinal column have to be kept together. There's no way of just taking off a head and putting it on another body. It has to be head and spinal column. And then I found myself looking into What other transplants we can do So shoulder replacement surgery Absolutely happens, that's fine Knee surgery, again very cool by now Knee replacement But we don't seem, as far as I know, to do toe transplants Toes onto your fingers I've seen that Toe becomes thumb That is the gold standard for letting you pinch things again But I don't think they ever say We're going to take a toe Is it because you can manage without one of your toes? I have a broken toe and the doctors go, well, we're not going to put your toe in a cast. So then I just have a toe that just doesn't bend. Oh, okay. Like you can't live your life without working kidneys, right? Yeah. But if you lose one of your toes, it's not great, but you can still live your life. You're not going to be able to get many people to sign up to like donating their body if they find out they're just donating their toes. Your toe could save someone's awkward conversation at the pool. Yeah, yeah. It's not top of the list of things to solve, for sure. For absolutely sure. Yeah, that's true. Wait, so, okay, so we're doing heads. Yep. Shoulders. Yeah. Is that what's going on here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Oh my God, I can't believe it. No, I knew the second you said it, I could see in your face. You didn't just mention toes for no reason. There's no waist with Andy. He's not. I don't know. Wow. 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 Tribaland on Instagram. James? My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. And Mel? At Melanie Bracewell. Nice. And you are in the UK right now? I'm in the UK. I'm touring around. So come see my show if you'd like. Yeah. All the dates are on your Instagram, right? So you can, it's a pinned post. Yes, you can check it out. And also, if you can't come, I'll be releasing it as a special sometime during the year. Amazing. Yeah, you can catch it on it. Great. Okay, cool. Well, also, if you want to get to us as a group, podcast at QI.com is the place to send your emails. If you've got any amazing facts that you want to let us know about, we do our show Little Fish, where we gather together all the best of those facts and we read them out. That's every Monday. Or if you want to give us some feedback about things we've talked about in main episodes that you think we need to know about, we have another show, which is part of our secret members club, Club Fish, which you can get by going to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. and Andy goes through all those emails. He picks the best of them out and we do that show, Drop Us a Line, where we discuss them all. So check that out. Otherwise, why not just come back next week because we're going to have another episode. Thanks as ever to Ling Li and Ethan Ruperalia as well as the larger Fishbuster team here at the offices in Hoburn and we'll see you next week. Goodbye. you