This programme contains some strong language
APPLAUSE
CHEERING
Hello! Welcome to QI
where, today, I'm sifting through an oubliette
of ologies, ographies and odoxies.
I'm joined on this ontological outing today by an ologist.
It's Bill Bailey. CHEERING
An ographer, it's Phill Jupitus.
CHEERING
An osopher, it's Claudia Winkleman.
CHEERING
And oggy, oggy, oggy.
AUDIENCE: Oi, oi, oi!
It's Alan Davies.
CHEERING
And their buzzers are, oh, so logical.
Bill goes...
♪ Oh, oh, oh, it's magic! ♪
PHILL: # You know... #
And Phill goes...
♪ Oh, Carol. ♪
You are a mover.
And Claudia goes...
♪ Oh, what a night. ♪
- This is good. - And Alan goes...
- "Oh, no!" - LAUGHTER
OK. Let us start with this.
How might the CIA win the Cold War with this?
OK, so I've got one for each of you.
- You should have one sitting there. - Yes, yes, yes.
It's like the old arcade game.
One of you presses the thing to try and fox the other.
That's it, and one of you has to grab.
That's it. Grab the thing.
Oh, Bill, very good. Have you got that?
CLATTERING
That's it. Harder, harder.
Oh!
- LAUGHTER - Are you regretting giving - us these? I am now. Yes.
It's not like Kazak lottery or something...?
No, it's not a lottery. What other bits of the game
might you use if it wasn't the balls for the lottery?
- The grabber. - The grabber, yes.
The CIA. What would they use it for?
- ALAN: Torture. - Grabbing the balls of a spy.
- Oh! - Torture. Torture.
No, it's not that at all.
We're going to head to an "O" area.
- We're going to go to oceanography... - Oceanography.
..OK? And using...
Getting submarines.
Yes.
Shut up! Yes! Yes!
Absolutely right. LAUGHTER
Yes. That is absolutely right!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The CIA used the biggest claw grab ever constructed
to get hold of a Soviet strategic ballistic missile submarine
which had sunk in the Pacific.
So, 1968, they began Project Azorian
and the aim was to recover the Soviet sub K-129
and they got a ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer
and, from the outside, it looked just like any other ship -
but, in the middle,
the major portion of the hull could be opened up underwater
to reveal a vast... ALAN CACKLES
- Oh, my God. - It really is like a movie.
- Look at that. - Wow! - To reveal a vast internal...
They called it a moon pool.
Does the boat not sink at that point?
LAUGHTER
Apparently not. They put down the largest...
Exactly like you've got in the game. The largest grabbing claw...
- Like one of these? - Yep. Nicknamed Clementine.
And they put it right over the wreck,
but what always happens in these arcade games
- when you grab something? - There's no grip. - Yeah.
Then it's immediately released and you get the bunny you didn't want.
Yes. That is exactly what happened.
They got a bunny? Well...
an underwater rabbit.
"Oh, thank God!
"I thought no-one was going to come!"
I thought you were going to say that nobody on the boat had any change.
- They were like... - LAUGHTER
- "Oh!" - No, halfway up, they dropped it.
Two-thirds of it actually broke away,
so they did manage to get a third of it,
which, fortunately, had two nuclear torpedoes on it.
Oh! They nearly dropped those, then.
That would have been... That would have been bad. Yeah.
- Where was this? - In the North Pacific.
Wait a minute, is this true?
Yes, it's absolutely true, happened in 1968. Yes.
This is an amazing show.
LAUGHTER
The thing is, now, this show, in the days we live today,
it's...it's...oh, totally plausible because real life is so mixed up.
You're thinking a big claw grabber for a submarine? Yeah.
And then there was another experiment
where they had both nuclear silos
and they kept popping...
They didn't know which missile the silo was going to come out of,
so they got a giant hammer and they just tried to...
- LAUGHTER - Tried to whack it,
and it was called the Whack-A-Nuke.
LAUGHTER
Talking about amusement arcades,
the claw machines, why is it that we don't win?
- We just drop it halfway. What is the reason? - They don't want you to win.
I hate to tell you this - they're rigged.
- Rigged? - They're not!
- Yeah. - No, it's because the animals all want to stay together.
No, the animals cover each other in oil.
- LAUGHTER - In March 2017,
a three-year-old Irish boy called Jamie Bracken-Murphy,
he SO wanted a furry dinosaur
that he climbed up the dispensing shoot and into the machine.
LAUGHTER
IRISH ACCENT: "They got a child."
"There's a child there! There's a child!"
They'll have to grab him out. LAUGHTER
He wouldn't come out without the dinosaurs.
He'd got two furry dinosaurs.
So, in the end, he was rescued by a passing fireman
and he was allowed to keep the dinosaurs,
but I think... So he should be.
I think they should replace the current adoption system with this.
LAUGHTER
The toys are always a little bit rubbish, aren't they?
- They're always a little bit cheap. - Yeah.
Did you know that there are sort of disposable submarines now?
80% of the cocaine which leaves Colombia
does so in something called a "narco sub"
and it is a cheaply made submarine that's made out of fibreglass.
And what they do is they take the submarine as far as the US coast
where they get rid of the cocaine and just dump the submarine.
Apparently the coast is absolutely littered with...
- No! - Yeah. - Did you know this?
- I did know this, yeah. - How do you know this?
- I don't know, I just... - He owns one.
- I've got one. - LAUGHTER
Bill uses it to smuggle hummus out of Morocco.
I've just... I've got an interest in the...
- in the Mexican drug trade. - Right.
LAUGHTER
- When you say an "interest"... - Not financial interest.
A lot of cocaine gets put into these pallets and, if the police turn up,
they just dump it over the side.
And a massive pallet of cocaine washed up on a beach in North Devon
and a local dog walker found it.
- Yeah. - And the dog, you know, sniffed at it and went,
"Oh, there's something up here."
Dog wanted a 48-mile walk and then...
LAUGHTER
- In terms of... - Cocaine Coast, they call it. - ..extraordinary thefts,
one of my absolute favourites is, 2012, a 10-tonne railway bridge
- was stolen in broad daylight in the Czech Republic... - What?! - Yes.
The thieves told railway officials that they'd been hired
to remove the bridge and 650 feet of railway track
in order to make way for a new cycle path.
In 2008, thieves made off with an entire beach in Jamaica.
The whole thing. 400-metre stretch of white sand,
so about 500 truckloads were removed
and nobody noticed until it was too late.
Where were they selling it?
They did forensic tests on beaches all along the seafront
and they discovered some rival hotel developers
had just thought they could do with a beach and they took the beach
and put it in front of their hotel.
I was imagining some lucky toddler with a 600-foot sandpit.
But it's surprising, in southern India, beach theft is so commonplace
they now have a word for it in the Tamil language - manarkollai.
And that means beach theft.
- Is that your beach? No. - It might look similar.
- Right, games away, please. - CLAUDIA: Sorry!
Thank you very much.
So, that was, of course, oceanography,
but I have some more ologies here for you.
What do these mean?
Anyone want to pick one? Enterology. You want to do enterology?
It's the science of going in... Indoors.
LAUGHTER
I like that. Enterology, what do we think it is?
Entero? Isn't it something up your guts?
Absolutely right, it's the study of your intestines,
but it's also something else.
So, the guts are sort of twisted, so it's to do with twisting.
It's an actual...
It's a study of Chubby Checker.
Yes.
It is a Vaudeville act usually.
- Balloon modelling? - No, I like that, though.
Balloon modelling with your intestines!
- LAUGHTER - Yes, of course! Of course!
- Imagine that if you were having your guts operated on. - Like a giraffe.
Yes, no. It's making yourself into a balloon animal.
Oh, a contortionist. A contortionist is exactly right.
It is the act of squeezing yourself
into a tiny little space, like a box, that kind of thing.
ALAN: Someone turned it on when they got in it?
OK, this is an American enterologist called Rick Maisel
and he combines enterology with escapology,
so what he does is he climbs into a washing machine
wearing five pairs of handcuffs and two pairs of leg irons.
He gets somebody to switch the machine on
and then he escapes while being tumbled in soapy water.
- And I hope he cleans the filter out after. - LAUGHTER
So, the two girls in their underwear next to him,
they put their clothes in with him?
While he's got a cycle on, he might as well.
Apparently contortionists tend to specialise in different things.
So, frontbenders have...
LAUGHTER
Settle down, people.
They've got spines which flex forward,
so backbenders have the opposite.
Splitters have got flexible hips,
and dislocators can dislocate joints at will.
CLAUDIA SHUDDERS
- I've seen a dislocator. Have you? - Have you? - Don't like it.
- He can get through a tennis racket. - No!
- The head of a racket? - I've seen it.
- Yeah, horrible. - Not a... one of those big ones, either.
A normal-sized one.
Table tennis.
LAUGHTER
- I like oology, whatever that is. - Oology. What do we reckon?
That is the study of
how much nans think you've grown.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
"Ooh!"
- "Ooh!" - "I say!"
"Come here, I've got a hanky." SANDI MIMICS SPITTING
It's watching fireworks. Ooh!
It's something to do with stones. Is it stones?
No, it's something that comes out of birds' bottoms.
- Is it? - It's the study or collection of eggs.
ALL: Oh!
Yeah. They come out of the anus, the eggs? Yeah. Oology.
Don't they have their own tube, eggs? You know about birds.
I don't do that bit of it.
- LAUGHTER - Disgusting. I'm the beak end, I'm at the beak end.
- PHILL: "I'm the beak end"? - Plumage.
Worst ornithologist ever!
"No, not that nasty business."
Anyway, oology is the study or collection of eggs.
It's, of course, been illegal to possess a wild bird's egg
in the UK since 1954, so it's not a thing, really.
OK, eggs - oology. Anybody? Agnoiology.
- Top right. - Sheep, lambs.
- Sheep and lambs? I like that. - BILL: Study of sheep. - No.
- Study of... - A word that sounds a bit...
- The study of agnosticism. - Yes, same route. - Agnostic?
- From the Greek agnosis. - So, it's the study of...
not really knowing one way or the other.
- Yes, it's the study of things we don't know. - Ah!
That's it. LAUGHTER
So, the term was coined by James Fraser,
he was a professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews,
1808 to 1864,
and it's the theory of ignorance.
Basically, he said there is more ignorance than knowledge.
So, he said, "The fact of our extreme ignorance is undeniable.
"It is therefore necessary to examine and fix what ignorance is,
"what we are and can be ignorant of."
- So it's the study of... - I love that. - I like that a lot. - Yes.
Right, any more? Let's see. Let's go back to our list.
- Posology. - Posology. - Posology.
The study of Instagram?
- Posing? - It's medical.
So, posos is Greek - how much?
It is the study of medical dosages.
So, how much to give. There you are,
just how many pills, how many teaspoons.
- OK, heterology. - Heterology.
It's one of a pair, which do you think it goes with?
- Autology. - Autology. Absolutely right.
- Heterology and autology. - It's basically men and motors.
LAUGHTER
- They go together. - Yeah.
They're a Greek double act, they used to open for Plato.
Bill Autology and Jack Heterology.
Jack Heterology. And give it up for them.
A word is autological if it is self-descriptive.
So, polysyllabic is autological
because it is, itself, polysyllabic.
But conversely, heterology is the attribute of a word
not being self-descriptive.
So, for example, if you regard "misspelt" with a T
as British English
as opposed to the American English "misspelled" -
which is spelt with a D -
then "misspelt" with a T would be autological in America,
because it is misspelt, and heterological in the UK...
- cos it is...not misspelt. - Right, my head's just exploded.
APPLAUSE
OK, let's try the last one on the list - Piphilology.
Piphilology...
All the pies that Phill likes. LAUGHTER
So, the important bit is pi.
- What is that in science? Pi? - The number. - The number.
Yes, the number. So, it is the use of mnemonic sentences
to record the digits of pi.
So what you do is, you use words with the same number of letters,
so this would be a review, for example, of an episode of QI.
"Now I need a think,
"knowledge of clever ideas was aptly conveyed,
"including General Ignorance." If you remember that sentence,
you will remember what the very first bits of pi are.
The easiest one to do for the first nine.
"How I wish I could recollect pi easily today."
Is this a proper thing?
- It is a proper thing. It's how... - So, people go and they could do...
They study... This is what they do.
Well, here is the really worrying thing about it, Claudia.
OK, somebody wrote a 10,000-word novel using piphilology.
All right?
It's called Not Awake, and I think you aren't by the end.
LAUGHTER
It was written by, surprise-surprise,
a software engineer called Michael Keith.
- Really? - Is Michael here?
- No, sadly. - I want to mount him. - Do you know what I love?
LAUGHTER
I'm proud of him.
So, that's your ologies and here's another - ophthalmology.
What has a U, two Ts and three eyes?
And here we are in its habitat.
- This is not Borehamwood, is it? - No, it's not.
What I'd like, just before we continue,
is some sort of deal
that you're not going to make the klaxon noise.
- You don't like that? - I think I'll jump and it will be nerve-racking.
I'll jump and you won't like it.
- None of it's good. - All right, so what I'll do...
LAUGHTER
KLAXON BLARES
LAUGHTER
OK, I am looking for something...
with a U, two Ts and three eyes.
BILL: Is it a creature with three eyes?
It is a creature. There it is at the beginning.
- A tuatara. - A tuatara. Yes. Very well done.
APPLAUSE
It does have three eyes.
Do you know anything more about it? Have you seen one or...?
- I have held one, yes. - At gunpoint.
LAUGHTER
It does have a sort of... a third...eye.
Yes, it does, at the very top of its head.
It's what's called a parietal eye,
or possibly a pineal eye.
But it can't actually see particularly well out of it.
Mostly it can distinguish light, darkness. Phill.
There is a red circle around nothing on that lizard.
LAUGHTER
- This is a classic... - That's his eye. - ..QI Trump-like ruse.
- LAUGHTER - It's there. - Where? - You can see it there.
- That's a freckle! - No, it's not! - LAUGHTER
Fight, fight, fight!
If that's an eye, is that its old fella?
LAUGHTER
It doesn't have six penises, if that's what you're saying.
- LAUGHTER - Do you know what - the weird thing is? What?
That's his arse.
LAUGHTER
It's got... It's got eight arses.
Ignore the third eye if he won't go for it.
What it can do with its two eyes that we are going to agree on
is it can use them independently.
The thing I like about them
is they continue to give each other the eye very late in life.
There's a mail tuatara called Henry at the Southland Museum
in New Zealand, and there is Henry, and he became a father, possibly,
we don't know, for the first time, in 2009 at the age of 111.
- GASPS - Classic six penises.
At least his wife said it was his. Yes.
Bill here, as a lizard expert,
is that the standard lizard grip that they're using there, Bill?
- Yeah, there's a slight... - One under, one over.
And if you do that like that, you get...
If you release it, does it fling into the face of logic?
It's going to upset you, Phill,
but most lizards have a third eye to a greater or lesser extent.
Come on, you know that...
As do lampreys, a lot of frogs.
Oh, I see!
- Can you see? - That is an eye. - See? There.
That's it there. There it is.
- There is an eye right there. - There's another one there.
PHILL: Look, I've got one!
LAUGHTER
On my arm, there. Unbelievable!
The eyes are really a conduit to the pineal gland
All vertebrates, whether they have a third eye or not, have a pineal gland.
- Of course they do. - It's in the centre of our brain.
It controls the production of melatonin,
which helps us work out whether we need to sleep.
Here's a quite interesting fact that I learned about melatonin.
Go on, then. You know mobile phones? Yeah.
If you put one next to your head while you're asleep,
it stops your brain from producing melatonin.
So you can't sleep, then?
No, what it does, it creates the same fuzziness in your bread...
your head, your bread, your head.
It creates the same fuzziness in your head...
- You need a pipe, they'll take you more seriously. - OK.
Melaton... Oh, sorry, yes.
When it's dark, the brain registers it being dark.
But when you put a mobile phone next your head,
it still thinks it's light. So the brain doesn't have proper sleep.
Define close to your head. If you're sleeping on top of it...
Gaffering it to your face.
This is fascinating.
- No, you're like an old bloke just before closing time. - What?
I don't think it's just before closing time, I think
- it's like an old bloke, middle afternoon, in the pub. - Oh, yes.
You know when you go in the pub, there's that bloke there going on about...
- Put your phones down the end of the bar. - It's true.
I'll have another pint of best. Oh, has everyone gone? Oh, just me.
- How dare you? An old bloke at closing time. - Where's my phone?
- Down the end of the bar. - Yeah. I keep it in Swindon.
I keep it up the road.
Those new-fangled things are terrible things.
The government's watching! The government's watching you!
- Throw your phone! - You don't need a phone, just shout. - Just shout, yeah.
Who needs phones anyway? Stupid, innit?
It's a glimpse of the future. Him just talking to his chameleon.
Well, if you've got one, it doesn't do anything else, does it?
What are you going to do with it? You can't take it for a walk.
It's like the first 10 minutes you have with your chameleon.
Barry! Barry! Barry!
He's just there. Oh, shit, it's there.
It went on a two-tone suit once, nearly had a heart attack.
Do you have this on Strictly? All you want to do is talk about
the foxtrot, people are going, "I want to talk about rumba."
No, and I never want to talk about the foxtrot.
- I was asked to go on it. - I wish you would.
You could dance with the pipe, chatting.
I said I wanted to do it in character.
They said, "Who do you want to be?" I said, "Abu Hamza."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right, moving on.
Here's one of my favourite creatures of all time,
the unfortunately named cockeyed squid.
This, I am very, very fond of.
It's got an eye on its cock.
- That's living the dream, that is. - I can't believe that.
That's where you want your third eye, no mistake.
So, the cockeyed squid, can you see? It's got a huge eye.
Can you see at the top, the massive eye?
One points upwards towards the light and then it's got a smaller one
and that's looking down searching for prey, basically.
So bioluminescent prey, things like shrimp and so on.
And it's the only known bilaterally symmetrical animal
with differently shaped eyes.
It sort of swims along at an angle like that
so it can look up and down at the same time.
I quite like the idea of it going to the opticians.
"Cover your left one."
"Ohh! Bloody hell!
"Everything.
"Nothing.
"No, nothing. I can't even see you."
What kind of glasses would it have, do you think?
It would have one monocle and one Hubble space telescope.
Anyway, back to the end of the pier.
Next to you, you have a game.
It's called cover the spot.
So, you've got these discs
and I want you to entirely cover the red, please,
- so we can't see any red at all. - All right.
- So you've got five discs, there we go. - OK.
And there. Oh, hello.
Oh, come on.
- Oh, for God's sake. - No, we have to overlap.
We've done it, look. I can see red in the middle.
There's red in the middle there.
There must be a way, there must be a way.
- Oh! - Oh!
You'd think it would be easy to do.
But there is actually only one way of doing it.
Which is that you have to lay the first ones quite carefully
like that and then it overlaps and you entirely cover it like that.
But it's just a trick. A little carnival game.
While we're in this area, I want to ask you
why are manhole covers circular?
This is when the noise is going to happen.
- No, it's OK, cos Phill's ready to catch. - Right.
I like an element of risk.
If it's Len, I'm going to be furious.
Don't do it, Claudia. Ahh!
LAUGHTER
Hang on.
Wow!
- You got me in the eye. - Winkleman by name.
Wow. Right, manhole covers, why are they circular?
- Because it just makes more sense. - Because it makes more sense.
When humanity evolves to a giant size, we can use them as money.
- Claudia is the closest. - Is it easier to get it in the hole?
There must be some reason that makes them
easier to operate or something, just something logical?
One of the reasons that's often given is that it's impossible
to drop it down into the manhole.
Ohh! Shall I help you out?
Oh, no!
- It makes it impossible for it to fall through. - Yeah.
So, that's not it...
- It wasn't so bad. - Are you over it now? - Yeah. - OK, very good.
It is one of the reasons often given, and was used as a test
in Microsoft and Google when they were testing employees,
but there are two problems with that explanation.
One is that given a sufficient lip, you can stop any shape falling into the manhole.
And in fact, in the UK, most manhole covers are not round.
They are in fact a rectangle split into two pieces like that.
They are two triangles, and it is the nature of a triangle
to be inherently stable, so it won't wobble.
If it was made of a single rectangular piece
and a lorry hit it, you could possibly bend it out of shape.
But if it's made of two triangles, you won't.
But you were the closest, Claudia.
The real reason it seems a lot of manhole covers are round
is because they are covering round holes.
LAUGHTER
That will do it.
OK, a quick run through some other arcade games.
Here's one of my absolute favourites. Korean arcade game
called bunga bunga, which translates as spank 'em.
And what happens is the controller has a probing finger...
- What? - ..which they insert into the game's fake bottom.
- That is the game. - What? - Yes, this is an arcade game in Korea. - A finger?
- Yeah. - Of course, if that game was in Westminster,
it would just be called public school. Yes.
Apparently it's a computer version of a Japanese childhood prank
called kancho, in which what you do is you clasp your hands together
in the shape of an imaginary gun and you attempt to poke
your friend's anus whilst shouting kancho!
Which is Japanese for enema. I don't know why that would be funny.
The Japanese have some marvellous games.
They have a game
where a player is one half of a comedy duo,
so there's a gentleman on the left and a dummy partner and you hit him
on various body parts and you get points for comedy timing.
- No. - Yes, that's the arcade game. I know.
Beaten only, I think, by a Soviet arcade game called Repka Silomer.
Literally, the turnip strengthometer.
You have to test your strength by pulling turnips
out of a vegetable patch.
It's a game, it's not an actual turnip.
You start at mouse level, which is pathetic, through cat, dog,
daughter and grandma.
I think it's quite telling that the Japanese game,
- it's all like technology and electronics. - And anal probing.
And fake comedians. And in Russia it's...you pick turnip.
Next week, you play potato invaders.
So, enough children's games. Let's play one for grown-ups.
Oenology. Blindfolds on, please.
Ring-a-ding-ding. Here we go.
Everybody got blindfolds on?
- Yes. - So, we're going to place something in front of you.
It's nothing dangerous at all.
- It's actually rather pleasant. - Is it a kitten?
It is even nicer than a kitten.
So, we're just going to put your hands...
- There we go. - Thank you.
Right, so, we're going to do one at a time, please.
So, Bill, I would like you to taste
what you have in front of you and tell me what it is.
OK. All right, then. OK.
What do you think that is?
Oh, it's a wine.
Yes, what kind of wine?
- A red or white? - Yes, please.
- Red. - You're going to go red, are you?
KLAXON BLARES
OK, Phill. Phill, have a glass, have a sip.
It's right in front of you.
What? I'm looking for the cheese.
LAUGHTER
- OK, all right. - What have you got?
- Red or white? - That's a red.
Red, OK. And, Claudia?
What do you reckon it is?
We've had white and red, what else could it be?
- I've given you a clue. - Rose! - Yes.
Rose? KLAXON BLARES
LAUGHTER
OK, Alan.
What do you reckon yours is?
Disgusting.
LAUGHTER
It's a low budget.
- What do you reckon it is? Don't look, don't look! - Red.
Red, you're going to go with red. KLAXON BLARES
This is to do with our inability, actually, mostly,
to taste what it is.
So, Bill, yours is a room-temperature white.
So, most people would think it was red
- because it is at room temperature. - It's confusing.
- Phill, you had a chilled red. - A chilled red.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell and, I have to say, Claudia,
yours is the most complicated because it's a mix of white and red.
So when you said rose, I actually think you got it the nearest.
And, Alan, yours is a white wine
with red food colouring because we thought you might cheat.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
But there was a Californian wine grower called Robert Hodgson
and he was upset by how inconsistently
his wine fared in competitions
and he thought that maybe the experts
don't really know what they're doing.
So, he did an experiment in which he served the same wines
to the same experts at different times,
and the findings,
they were absolutely stunning as far as the wine industry was concerned.
Only 10% of the judges were consistent in any given year
and none of those were consistently consistent.
So, if you made a good judgment one year,
maybe you didn't make a good judgment the next year.
And he found that, in California,
all the medals given out for wine
were effectively distributed at random...
- No! - ..because really even the experts weren't sure.
It can even be difficult to tell red from white in a blindfold test.
But most people can't distinguish, so they did a test in 2011,
a psychologist called Richard Wiseman, he tested 578 people.
And most people can't tell, if wines cost between £5 and above £10,
they can't really tell the difference.
That doesn't mean that all the experts are...it's all nonsense.
Because it is very difficult,
there are hundreds of different taste receptors involved.
But the thing you shouldn't do
is drink very expensive wine on a plane.
Does anyone know why that might be?
Because it makes you angry? Grumpy? Makes you throw things?
Have you had that happen?
The last time I had wine was at my own wedding.
I was so tired, I had to have a nap.
Wine makes me feel... I'd be asleep in about a second.
- Is it just not your thing? - Also, it was quite a boring wedding.
Oh, OK.
My favourite flight beverage is flaming Sambuca during turbulence.
People often have - and I do this - I'll have a bloody Mary on a plane.
- Yes, only on a plane. - Yeah.
The savoury taste is said to be enhanced by cabin noise.
They now know that a loud noise like an aeroplane can also
affect taste and make some flavours more intense. The savoury taste
is improved and so people love to have tomato juice on a flight.
Now, time for a bit of optology.
Look at this picture of a fire engine, tell me what colour it is.
♪ Oh-oh-oh! ♪
- Yes, Bill? - Red!
KLAXON BLARES
No. If you hide the rest of the picture
so that only the red bit can be seen,
what you'll see is that the whole...
There's the colour spectrum. In fact, the whole thing
is actually grey-green.
- No! - So it's called retinex effect or the land effect.
It's named after Edwin Land,
the man who invented Polaroid cameras and such.
The colour we see isn't just dependent
on the wavelength of light entering the eye,
it is also to do with all the adjacent areas
and the brain takes the information and decides what colour it is.
Basically, it is an optical illusion
and the thing we are actually looking at is grey-green.
And there are lots of other optical illusions.
Have a look at this. I love this.
This is the same effect, the one we've just been having a look at.
It's called the splitting colour illusion.
So, have a look. We've got two identical
flickering coloured stripes.
These are not going to change throughout the demonstration.
You can see that they are identical.
We're going to bring in colours on both the top and bottom,
different colours, and as they go across,
keep your eye on those flickering stripes
and you see that they totally change colour.
What?!
So that the colour of something is dependent on its surroundings.
- That's what we learned from that. - That is brilliant. - Isn't it?
But the fire engine is red.
A real fire engine is red, your brain knows it's red,
but the one you were looking at was grey-green.
It's an optical illusion. Have a look at this,
it's also an optical illusion. The Fraser spiral illusion.
First described by James Fraser in 1908.
He was a British psychologist.
So, the overlapping black arcs
appear to form a spiral,
but they are, in fact, a series of concentric circles.
So, if we bring in some coloured lines and put them over the top,
you can see these are just circles.
You can see that, actually, what we were looking at was just circles,
but it became... Cor! Our brain made it into a spiral.
It's a famous optical illusion.
PHILL CACKLES
- These are good. - They are good.
Now it's time to go straight over to the wordy shambles
that is General Ignorance.
Is this a sardine or a pilchard?
♪ Oh-oh-oh! ♪ Bill.
Pilchard.
KLAXON BLARES
Try again. Yes.
♪ Oh, what a night! ♪
- Sardine. - Sardine. Yes!
KLAXON BLARES
♪ Oh, Carol! ♪
- Yes? - Dolphin!
LAUGHTER
If it were an optical illusion, it would be red.
It would therefore be a red...
Snapper!
LAUGHTER
Easy, easy, easy.
- I want that as a ringtone. - "Snapper!" - "Snapper!"
Or a text. LAUGHTER
I am aroused.
That is fantastic.
- Wow. - We need that as a gif.
- Whoa, Nelly! - Snapper!
Again, again, again,
- but right in my face. - Can we do it one more time?
LAUGHTER
Right in my face. Come on.
- Ready? - I am ready.
Yeah. Go on.
If it was an optical illusion, it was red, it would be a red...
- Snapper! - SHE LAUGHS
Sorry.
What I was actually looking for was herring.
It would be a red herring. LAUGHTER
That makes more sense.
- Now you've said it. - Now I've said it.
So, the terms sardine and pilchard
do not relate to specific species.
They are describing ways of packing fish.
So, the UN and the World Health Organization
cites 21 different species
that could be classed as sardines.
There's a thing called Fish Base, which if you haven't looked it up,
it's a comprehensive database of information about fish.
Seriously, knock yourselves out.
So it's not a massive shop on the outskirts of town full of fish?
No. They say there are at least six species that are pilchards
and over a dozen that are sardines.
Basically, they are fish from the herring family.
Fish shorter in length than six inches are called sardines
and the larger ones are pilchards.
But we do lots of renaming of fish.
So in Britain there's a thing called the witch flatfish,
very popular on the Continent, not in the UK.
It's a bit more popular now, it's called the Torbay sole.
So then we think that sounds nice.
I thought that was Bill's favourite disco.
- The Torbay Soul. - Cut the rug down at the Torbay Soul.
- Red snapper is actually rockfish. - Is it?
And my most favourite, slimeheads,
understandably sold as orange roughy.
But who doesn't want a fillet of slimehead?
And hedgehog, they call it pavement chicken.
The fact is, nobody knows for sure
how to separate the sardines from the pilchards.
OK, in theory,
how fast can this boat sail?
OK. Oh, the jib's broken.
Oh, hang on a minute. Wait, wait, wait.
- There we are. OK. - Is it dependent on the wind?
Yes, one moment, hold that thought.
I'll do it again. OK.
Nobody knows for sure how to separate the sardines
from the pilchards.
In theory, how fast...
Something about wind!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Oh, how unusual, a boy who came before I was ready.
LAUGHTER
Come on!
- Sorry! Sorry! - Sorry! - Sorry!
LAUGHTER
- Put your glasses on... - Sorry, it's happened again. Sorry.
I'll see you tomorrow, same time.
LAUGHTER
I'm going to do it again.
OK, baby!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
You know what to do.
I'm ready, I'm ready, come on.
All right, then. I'm ready, I'm ready, baby.
- LAUGHTER - Say the words, lady.
Bill, shut the fuck up.
LAUGHTER
CHEERING
Claudia, I'm going to bring out a yacht...
I'm excited about it.
..and you're going to say, "Is it something to do with the wind?"
I'm going to do it! I'm going to do it. Snapper!
- LAUGHTER - Go ahead. - Shush!
Put the wine away. Put your wine away.
God, it's just like being at school.
LAUGHTER
"Put your wine away!"
LAUGHTER
- "Shut up, put your wine away!" - "Shut up, put your wine away!"
- I'll tell you what. - Happiest days of our lives.
Bloody hell.
Bobbington Gurney Primary was rough!
School of Hard Knocks, I'm telling you.
"Here, Bailey, put your wine away and shut the fuck up!"
LAUGHTER
Right, quiet!
LAUGHTER
Dear God, I need a drink!
Right, here we go.
Nobody knows for sure how to separate the sardines
from the pilchards. In theory...
LAUGHTER
..how fast can this boat sail?
Claudia, what do you think?
- Is it...? - # Oh, what a night. #
Has it got something to do with wind?
Yes!
LAUGHTER AND CHEERING
LAUGHTER
We've got wine over here!
You've been whining for two hours! Come and sit down.
- LAUGHTER Come and sit down. - Come on, and I'll say, "Snapper."
- Yeah, sit. - Sit down.
LAUGHTER
Stupid game anyway.
Snapper!
♪ Oh, what a night! ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh. ♪
- Has it got something to do with wind? - No.
- LAUGHTER OK. - Stupid game, anyway.
HE MUMBLES
- It is to do with wind. - Really? - How fast can it sail?
Oh!
It's difficult because, after a while,
the wind will blow you quite fast,
but then it'll suddenly going into a spiral and take you up into the sky,
so does that count?
How many times have you been sailing?
LAUGHTER
So, there must be a maximum speed.
- What would you say, maximum... - 13, 14?
- 15, 15 knots. - Don't have the number.
- Is it faster or slower than the wind? - Slower than the wind.
Oh... KLAXON BLARES
You fell right into that.
LAUGHTER
OK, so, imagine that the wind is coming from here,
so you're sailing directly downwind,
- it's known as running. - Yes. - So the wind...
LAUGHTER
Sorry.
- The wind... - Sorry, Miss!
The wind will simply fill the sail
and it won't be able to go as fast as the wind
because, of course, there's resistance from the water.
However, if you are sailing across the wind,
the wind blows across the sail and this generates lift.
So it's a bit like an aeroplane wing.
So, it's sucked along as well as pushed along,
and if you add those two forces together,
you can sail faster than the wind.
The modern hi-tech racing catamarans have taken this one step further.
They don't even have a floppy sail any more,
they have much more like an aeroplane wing.
So if you look here, the AC72 catamaran, it has a rigid thing,
the same size of wing as the Boeing 747.
So using aeroplane technology
and the fact they lift out of the water onto hydrofoils.
They have speeds of up to 2.79 times the speed of wind.
Unbelievably quick.
ALAN BLOWS RASPBERRY
LAUGHTER
Do you know, people often say to me,
"What did Stephen say to you as he left?"
And the truth is he shook his head and went, "You have no idea."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Boats sailing across the wind can go much faster than the wind itself...
Oh, stop going on about the bloody...
LAUGHTER
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It's so awful.
Oh, thank God you're here.
LAUGHTER
A boat sailing across the wind can go much faster than the wind itself.
Indeed there is no theoretical limit to its speed.
OK, which of these are there more of?
Trees on earth, stars in the Milky Way or neurons in your brain?
Yes, Bill?
Neurons in your brain!
- Ah! - KLAXON BLARES
♪ Oh, Carol... ♪
Stars!
KLAXON BLARES
Your chance to be really clever!
- Wait, wait, wait! - No. Claudia's go!
♪ Oh, what a night! ♪
- Is it trees? - Yes!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
In 2015, a paper by Yale researchers
estimate the number of trees on earth is 3.04 trillion.
That is, rather pleasingly, 7.5 times more
than was previously thought.
So, they used a combination of satellite imagery
and forest inventories
and super computer programs, and that's a huge number.
Stars, obviously quite tricky to count.
NASA do their best.
They don't really know the number of stars in the Milky Way,
but probably between 100 and 400 million,
but that would be ten times fewer
than the trees on planet Earth.
So the wind blows across the sail...
LAUGHTER
Brain cells, estimated number of neurons,
and that is your brain cells in the human brain,
it varies between 83 and 200 billion.
If you count the number of synapses,
so the connections between the brain cells,
you're looking at as many as a thousand trillion
or one quadrillion -
so 300 times as many synapses in your brain
as there are trees on Earth.
- Wow. - That's not every brain.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
And sand, there are apparently 7 quintillion grains of sand
- on Earth. - Oh, shut the front door!
I know, 7,000 times more grains of sand
than there are synapses in your brain.
Not if the Jamaicans nick it.
It's difficult to comprehend.
Trees, stars, neurons, grains of sand.
Let's just say there's a hell of a lot of all of them.
And at the end of that onomnasiological obfuscation,
we reach the scores and I've never been more pleased in my entire life.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
In last place, with -35,
- it's Bill. - Yes!
CHEERING
In third place, with -19, it's Phill.
CHEERING
Where's my cheese? I want my cheese.
Second place, with a magnificent -16,
it's Alan!
APPLAUSE
And the winner, with a really breathtaking five full points,
it's Claudia.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And this week's objectionable object prize is a cheap knock-off replica
Swiss watch from China which is inside your claw grabber game.
If you can grab it, you're welcome to keep it. Good luck with that.
It only remains for me to thank Claudia, Phill, Bill and Alan,
and I leave you with this.
The great conductor Sir Thomas Beecham
described a musicologist
as somebody who can read music but can't hear it
and a gentleman as someone who can play the bagpipes, but doesn't.
That's all from QI this time. Thank you very much.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE