No Such Thing As A Sea Cucumber In A Haunted House

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0:27You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. Hi, guys. Andy here. Before this week's show starts, I have a very exciting announcement to make, which is that I have written a book, and it's out in a few days' time. It's brand new. I know many of you have bought my previous books, and I'm so grateful you did. I hope you enjoyed them. This one is the book that

1:05I have wanted to write for about 20 years and have spent the last five years actually writing. It's about the idea that there are a million lives you could have lived but only one you can live right now. It's funny and sad and true. I think it might be the most personal thing I've ever written. If you like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, the way they make you laugh and make you think, this might be the one for you. I'd say it's also got notes of Matt Haig and Dungeon Crawler Carl. The title of this new book of mine is Everything Happens So Much. It's about to hit shops in the UK and in the USA under my new pen name, Andrew H. Murray. If you search Everything Happens So Much, you should find it.

1:49In the UK, Waterstones and your nearest independent bookseller will have special signed copies. And if you prefer to listen to your books, the audiobook is read by the fantastic Izzy Sooty. You will know her from Peep Show and so much more. She has done a terrific job. She's absolutely nailed it. I'm so proud of this book, guys. This is November, so all the big guns have their own books out. But if you buy this book for yourself or for the fish fan in your life for Christmas, I can guarantee you will give them a wonderful read. And if you order it now a few days before publication, that will make a huge difference to its visibility. And finally, free me up to write the book of 1,001 things that are surprisingly named after a person. Thanks again for this. The title, once again, is Everything Happens So Much.

2:30And now on with our spooky Halloween podcast. 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 Andrew Hunter-Murray, James Harkin, and Anna Tyshinsky. And once again, we have gathered around the microphone, but this time for our very special Halloween show. So we've brought our four. Thank you, Andy. We've brought our four favorite spooky facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go with fact number one. And that is Andy. My fact is that some 17th century coffins have faces. Do the whole show in that voice. Let me take you to Farley Hungerford Castle in Somerset.

3:37Oh, have you been there? I haven't been there, but I do want to go, but I will read the National Trust book just as a non-combatant, you know, just to find out what's on at all the places. It's fun if you want to go but i will read the national trust book as a just as a non-combatant you know just to find out what's on at all the places to find out if you want to go sometimes and is that where you got this from that book exactly so i was reading i was just reading the entries about what's what the national trust has on its books and they've got in this place farley hung of a castle these human shaped lead coffins which have these quite crude faces stamped into them or molded out of them and they look really eerie.

4:05They're from the 17th century, around the time of the Civil War, proper Civil War, English Civil War. And the point about these coffins is that bodies are put in them and they would be embalmed in spirits. Ghosty word. Spirits and spirits. And I think the idea was to keep you together for resurrection, to keep you all united for resurrection. So you might... And this actually is a belief that dates back to, I think the idea was to keep you together for resurrection, to keep you all united for resurrection. So you might, and this actually is a belief that dates back to, I think to ancient Egypt. The reason their coffins are all human shaped was that if your body crumbled or if the mummification didn't work,

4:34at least you had your coffin, which was shaped like you, which had a face. Because like you say, the Egyptians had faces on their coffins. Romans, some of them did as well. Like it's not that massively uncommon in history that people put faces on coffins. Romans, some of them did as well. Some of them, yep. Like, it's not that massively uncommon in history that people put faces on coffins. No, you're right. But in the UK, quite unusual, I think. Yeah. No, wait, you're saying the idea was that if your body inside is totally disintegrated, you can't resurrect just a hip bone, so you get the coffin instead because it's less gross. That was the Egyptian idea, certainly. And some Egyptian coffins had little wooden hands pegged to the sides.

5:06Really? Which was quite fun, actually. What were they for? Just to be your hands in the next life. Oh, I see. Just in case you needed them. Yeah. I was on the National Trust's website where they talk about this, and apparently, they say they drilled holes into these coffins. They'd give you a straw, and you could taste the embalm alcohol. Yummy. Have a little sip. That's changed these, the National Trust no longer. Not even if you're a member. Because of woke. I thought if you're a member you got free parking and you got to taste the embalming fluid. That's true. Taste the member. Yeah. Oh, gosh. But then surely that will slowly over time remove the embalming fluid. I think it did. And I think that's why they don't do it anymore.

5:50Yeah. And I think probably it was only ever something for the very bravest National Trust members to do. And I can't work out what that would do to you. Would you have a bad day the next day on the toilet? Would it potentially kill you if you had too much of that stuff? I think if you had too much of anything, it think if you had too much of anything it'll kill you and that stuff would for sure but i think actually if it's spirits it probably just get pissed yeah lovely wow this place farley is uh it's pretty spooky because they've got all these stories from the past so the people who were buried are the hungerfords there was one guy who was called sir edwardford, and his second wife was a widow who was living there.

6:26Her name was Agnes Cottle. Agnes Cottle murdered her first husband in Farley. And then he married, he decided that she was safe to marry. There was a big old question of whether or not he was complicit to it. But what happened was that they put him into the fire in the kitchen, into the furnace and just... The first husband. Yeah. The husband that was killed. He's like, damn it, I knew I should have listened to all my friends who said she was a murderer. This is the worst wedding night ever. Okay. So, Dan, I just want to point out, when you started speaking about Sir Edward Hungerford and his widow and the murder, that exit light started flickering. Did it really? There's a little green exit light

7:10and it started flickering on and off and it's still flickering a bit now. And so is it Edward Hungerford? What's he doing here? You know? Maybe the picture of that guy on the fire escape fleeing out of the door is based on Edward Hungerford. That's him. I've always wondered who that's based on, so that might be... Sir Ted. That might be true. Dan, I actually didn't get the throwing on the fire bit. They got a kitchen, it was Sweeney Todd style. They threw the corpse of the first husband into the fire to get rid of the body, and then she was just widowed. And it was only after he died, when she became a widow a second time, she was found guilty of the murder for the first husband. Yeah. Ah. Yeah.

7:48So it's got a lot of spooky stuff there. Sounds spooky. Nice. Yeah, very spooky. Other coffins that sort of have the corpse's picture on them were in Australia. This is, I didn't know about these, but this is tree trunk coffins. And these seem to exist in archaeology all over the place. There are quite a lot in Britain dug up in the Bronze Age, people who were just buried inside tree trunks. You'd dig it out. But in Australia, the Yongu people of the Northern Territory, they buried people in tree trunks for millennia, but they're naturally hollowed out by termites. And so you lift the body up and you slot it all the way in, and then they put a little window in for them to look out of. And then they decorate the tree trunk with the tattoos that were on the person's body.

8:31Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, it's a bit like a robot outfit. That's how didgeridoos are made as well, isn't it? Like termites hollowing out tree trunks. I didn't know that. Really? Fairly sure, yeah. That's awesome. That would be a very skinny person for the didgeridoo. It would. Bury them for the didgeridoo. It would. Bury them in the didgeridoo. Do you know what the difference is between a coffin and a casket? Because I didn't until I researched this fact. I just thought it was a word that was used in America. Casket versus coffin. They're completely different things. They're not completely different. Let me row back. They're both used for the storage and transportation of dead bodies. Coffins have six sides.

9:05They're hexagonal, which is interesting, isn't it? When you think we're all buried in hexagons. That is interesting. The sides, and then the shoulder bit at the top, and then the top. Six sides. That's a hexagon. Call me a liar. You can't. Right. Caskets are rectangular when viewed from above. Yeah, I see. And they were brought in supposedly because people were a bit grossed out that coffins are slightly anthropometric, i.e. person-shaped. Yeah, I see. And they were brought in supposedly because people were a bit grossed out that coffins are slightly anthropometric, i.e. person-shaped. Yeah, yeah. But actually, I mean, I don't think many people have really found that off-putting or disturbing in any way.

9:35It's really unusual that the anthropometric one came first because presumably it's much easier to make a rectangular coffin, right? Yes, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're a bit grander. They're often a bit bigger and they've got that big lid that opens. It's like looking at modern day architecture. Like the old town of London is stunning, right? Versus these kind of new builds that look a bit more... I just completely disagree. I love... You love a new build? 20th century architecture, yeah. Wow. So hang on, you like the caskets. You love a casket. You're all about the coffins, Dan. I'm a coffin man. I'm going to be put in a niche and what's that a crack in the ground or space under a tree root or something just pop me in there your whole body

10:11yeah is that a thing that people do or it's the thing people used to do yeah before the coffin yeah and i think it sounds rather charming for me a niche would normally be a small part of a room like a little corner yeah yeah wouldn't mind that wouldn't mind that depending on the room don't want to go in the utility room probably so you want to go and hold that's like that might be a solution for all the pothole problems in london when you're dead just pop you in a pothole sorted yeah it's not quite the natural thing i was thinking of but you like cycling i love cycling and the worst thing for cyclists is a big old pothole that's very true so you would be helping your fellow cyclists i would love that and I would happily ride over you time after time.

10:48So coffins with faces brings us to Egypt, obviously, sarcophaguses. I probably would have realized this but didn't really think about it, that the images didn't look like the person who was inside, right? Tutankhamun didn't really look like that. Didn't have a gold face. oh didn't have a gold face he didn't have a gold face and they were basically idealized to make them look more like osiris who is like the god of death or whatever he was the god of the underworld so it would have looked a little bit like him but not much now if you weren't the pharaoh then it probably looked nothing like you and might have looked actually more like the pharaoh and the main reason seems to be this is according to something i read from the website of leeds

11:30museum because they have a mummy from the reign of rameses the 11th and they said that the coffin makers would use the same face almost all the time because then they only had to memorize one face and so like when rameses the 11th was in charge everyone had to have one that looked a bit like him so you might still you know if you had sideburns and glasses they might do rameses the 11th with sideburns and glasses to make it look a little bit like you but mostly you'd look like him that's nice and that'd be a great version of guess who wouldn't it well you've got all these sarcophaguses in front of you. Yes. Does he look like Ramesses XI? Yes. Oh, great. There are three sea graveyards in the UK.

12:13Didn't realize that. What's that? So let's say that you're the deceased, love the ocean, maybe was in the Navy or something, and they want to be buried at sea. There were three official spots where you can bring a coffin out there and dump it into a graveyard as such. Gravesend? Is that one of them? It's not, it should be. It's New Haven in East Sussex, the Needles Spoil Ground near the Isle of Wight, and Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear. Those are the three spots. And the reason for this is they're designated that so that the tide doesn't carry a body back into the bay. You don't want bodies just rocking up, right? No. So do you go, they don't bury the coffin at sea. Do they put you in at sea without,

12:56without a coffin? Yeah, I think, I think it's just you, but I think if you did have a coffin, it needed to be really solidly held together so that the body doesn't escape. yeah yeah you know zombie are you are you weighed down you must be otherwise you'd just float at sea this is crazy why yeah wow or do they not burn people and then put the ashes down there or do they do like the vikings did and then put you in a boat and set it on fire that's the dream isn't it yeah so no it's it's the body in this case because you are allowed to just scatter ashes at any point in the sea. That's a legal thing. Well, you can scatter ashes anywhere you like. No, you can't. Oh my goodness. I know you have. I know you will have done, but there are all sorts of places

13:36which say, can you please stop scattering ashes here? Because there are lots of beauty spots where just people come and they're so popular that actually the ground is slightly sludgy now because everyone's done it. It's quite self-selecting because eventually they become so sludgy now because everyone's done it it's quite self-selecting because eventually they become so sludgy and ashy that no one wants to have their ashes put there anymore yeah yeah i can't believe you can be buried at sea yeah and sorry just a few more details on that so it is bodies that go in and so they make sure it's these spots because you can some bodies can occasionally drift and if they do drift they can go into shore so you also

14:04have to have identification tags on the person in case they do rock up on a, on a beach front and you can go, Oh, we know exactly who this is. So yeah, that is done by the way, just related. Have you heard of Coffin Bay Cemetery in South Australia? No. Okay. Do you know why it's called Coffin Bay Cemetery? Why? Because of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin. Yes. First Baronet Officer of the Royal Navy. Very nice. You already know and trust Hardy, the number one brand of siding in North America. Now meet Hardy Artisan, the premium siding and trim, redefining what fiber cement can do. Deep shadow lines, clean mitered corners for a crafted finish, and boards twice the thickness of standard hardy siding.

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16:26Piano fell out of the sky just in front of me. Saw five ghosts. Clowns are back. Well, this is kind of what they were trying to do. This is a lady who is only known as SM by the initials SM. Sarah Millican. Spike Milligan. Oh, yeah. She's in her early 60s. That's what we know about her. But she's wanted to remain anonymous. But back in 1994, it was discovered that she's had a complete destruction of her amygdala in her brain. That's the bit that helps us to identify fear and so on. With that gone, she just doesn't experience it. And so she's become known as the woman with no fear within the scientific community. And one of the most neurologically important patients that they've had for the last few decades, because

17:15she's up for being studied. They do take her to haunted houses and make her walk through it and see if anything jump scares her. They do bring her to pet shops and they get animals like snakes and spiders put in front of her and she picks them up and just nothing. To me it feels like they're the same study, right? It's crazy. They keep doing things that would scare a normal person and she keeps on not being scared. Oh, this'll do it. This'll do it guys. Why don't we... It's the same idea. What if we play her some scary music? I don't think if she touched the tarantula, the scary music is going to hack it. Because the tarantula thing is kind of interesting because she knows that it's scary and knows that spiders and snakes can be dangerous.

17:54But when you actually give them to her, she doesn't get scared. So it's not like she doesn't know they're scary. She just doesn't find them scary and her body doesn't react in the same way that our bodies would. Exactly. There was a bit where she was attacked at knife point and that was a very scary situation to be in, She just doesn't find them scary and her body doesn't react in the same way that our bodies would. Exactly. There was a bit where she was attacked at knife point and that was a very scary situation to be in, but she wasn't scared. And when the ordeal ended, she just walked off. She didn't run off. She just walked away. It's really strange. So we've mentioned that before on a show, but what's worth pointing out is that wasn't

18:19part of the study. That was an event that happened in real life. She probably thought it was the scientists. She was like, oh, you guys again. That's the thing she won't a rare, that was an event that happened in real life. She probably thought it was the scientists. She's like, oh, you guys again. That's the thing she won't know now, will she? Genuine danger. I just want to say in defensive scientists, you're definitely not allowed to randomly attack someone at knife point without them knowing they're being attacked. But she does have quite a lot of unpleasant experiences for two reasons. She comes from quite a rough place that has a lot of crime anyway. But also, if you don't feel fear, there's a reason we feel it, obviously,

18:49so we can escape difficult situations. So she just approaches them. And I find it really interesting that it's particularly with people and personal space where she's completely comfortable going nose to nose with someone, like, touching the nose of a total stranger. She feels comfortable. With her nose? With her own nose, yes nose of a total stranger, she feels comfortable. With her nose? With her own nose, yes. She's really comfortable on a panel with Rory Stewart. It's amazing. Have you seen that video of him this week? No. Oh, yes, I have. He just stares at this lady. It's not even the stare. It's the thrust forward. But yeah, her ideal distance to be from someone i think is 1.1 feet which is about half oh that's close as far as

19:33most of us so very awkward person to talk to yes she has something called erbach vief disease uh that's what they call this thing where you're not really scared of anything. And that's named after two people. They were both Austrian. One of them is Erich Bach, who was head physician in a dermatology department in Vienna, but he had to escape Nazi persecution and ran to the United States in 1938. And Camillo Wief served as a frontline physician during World War I. So they both in their lives had quite extreme fear, I would say. And then they studied this and gave it the name. And they have found the one thing so far that can scare them, haven't they? They did a study a few years ago where they exposed her to carbon dioxide inhalation.

20:22And that triggers a reaction in your brain that makes you think you're suffocating, even though you're not. Because our brain can't detect an absence of oxygen. It can just detect too much carbon dioxide inhalation and that triggers a reaction in your brain that makes you think you're suffocating even though you're not because our brain can't detect an absence of oxygen, it can just detect too much carbon dioxide. And so they made SM inhale 35% as in they didn't make her, she can always say no to this. They asked her to inhale 35% carbon dioxide and she had a panic attack. And not only was she terrified, she was more terrified than most people are and they actually did this experiment on two other people who have her illness as well and they also had

20:50that reaction and so it seems like it's something to do with like that fear is triggered by an internal chemical signature because it's something that's going inside your body rather than something you've seen or something you've heard so they succeeded she was terrified they succeeded i don't know if they're still studying the lady. She seems to still be a part of studies, not for fear, but just for other elements now to do with the condition. There have only been about 300 cases recorded, haven't there? It's a very, very rare thing. Only a few hundred in the medical literature. Here is an example of some people who like fear. This is an interesting one. If you're on a date fear can be a good thing okay so there was an experiment in the 80s by

21:30dolph zillman and norbert mundorf just good normal names um they showed a load of uh male students i think this was american college students the film friday the 13th part three which i gather is a spooky one and they were paired up with a female partner right now unbeknownst to the men the students who are watching the film the female partner was actually a scientist a research assistant okay so they were but then she took off her glasses and they went oh my god you're beautiful and so the women could control their responses based on what the scientists wanted, right? And if the women showed distress during the film, the men reported enjoying the film twice as much. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

22:15Yes. Why? I'm in that category. Can I give you my reason for why I am on that side? And see if it matches up with the science. Creep. Thank you, James. Creep. Thank you, James. Creep is one. No, on a date, if you are watching a scary movie, it tends to mean that your partner, if they are scared, might hold into you. And that's a really fun experience on a date. So yeah, that for me is a better experience. If I'm out with Fenella and we're watching a scary movie and she grabs at me because she's scared, that's great. Did better experience If I'm out with Fenella and we're watching a scary movie And she grabs at me because she's scared That's great Did the resurgesons jump into his lap? So is that what they said?

22:51Is it about tricking people into hugging you? It's not tricking, it's a byproduct Let's just gloss over I think it's nice because they wet themselves And then the actual hot guy's going gloss over. That's nice. I think it's nice because they wet themselves. God. And then the actual hot guy's going to be like, you're disgusting, go away, and I'm the only option left. Is that it? And that's how I make your mother. God. Why? Why do they enjoy it? I would actually imagine it is about the vulnerability of the person next to you. It makes you feel closer to them. So that probably is something. And in fact, this is interesting. They did it on women undergraduates too. So actual women undergraduates who were paired with male researchers.

23:34And apparently the women reported that they enjoyed the film more if their male companion appeared calm. So that is actually the opposite. I remember reading studies like they sent people on dates i think they might have even made tv shows like this where you put them in a scary situation like on top of a tightrope or something and they're having dinner on top of a tightrope tightrope and that's supposed to make you because you've had a shared experience yeah yeah that makes sense i think i think there is research that shows horror film is a good thing to go to or a scare house i mean what i don't like about all these studies is that they assume things that aren't objectively scary are scary,

24:07such as Halloween 3 or whatever that film was. You know, they always pick quite crap films. Or, you know, who's really been scared of a haunted house over the age of nine? Not me. You get, like, jump scares. Not me. Okay. For sure. But jump scares affect anyone. It's Halloween now. You go to the cinema, watch a horror movie. People will jump when the jump scares come. Yeah, exactly. I had to stop watching that film, The Woman in Black. And that stars literally Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe. Yes. Right? It is a scary movie, though. It's so scary. He's not wearing his wizard's hat. I know. I was 40 minutes in and I just got a bit spooked and had to turn it off. And that's fine. That's unbelievable.

24:43But there is a thing as well that if you meet someone in scary situations and slightly traumatic moments you mistaken your connection with each other and statistically you will end up breaking up with that person further down the line why um i'm not sure it's not a real connection it's only the spooky exactly and i don't know if that's right that was just the final moment in the movie Speed, where Sandra Bullock explains that statistically that will happen. Because that's her and Keanu Reeves, right? Are they together for Speed 2? No. Aha. So the science works. She was right. I think about that as well, is that when you say you enjoy a scary movie, a lot of people do enjoy being scared right and there's actually a person who studies

25:25fear called margie kerr who is also pennsylvania's main haunted house sociologist in residence which i love that they have that in residence does that mean you're walking through the hearts of houses she comes out with a clipboard it's the scariest thing you can imagine she's about to analyze your personality i think you basically sign a waiver at the start that says i will allow myself to be studied as i enter this haunted house and she'll like get your reactions as you go through and she's learned lots about fear based on this but she says one of the things is that she tests skin conductivity because that's one of the best ways to tell if you've been scared because you sweat a bit more if you're scared and then it's more conductive. And she finds that the more stressed you are going in,

26:07the more relaxed you are coming out and being afraid relaxes you. Huh? And actually, it does make sense, I think. And I think, James, you're about to take a guess. What I think is like when you do exercise, you feel tired afterwards, right? So if you exert the kind of fear, then you don't have it in your body you exorcise it oh this is a company that we need to do exorcise sorry exercise oh it's like peloton but with ghosts yeah okay i'm in or take all of my savings you're you're on a peloton or a treadmill, murderer behind you chasing you. Yes. There's a thing that exists which I've done. It was an app. I don't know if it still exists, but it used to be called Run Zombies. Zombies Run. Oh, Zombies Run.

26:54Yeah. And you would like go on a jog and then you would have some music playing and then it would be like, oh my God, there's zombies coming. You had to run faster for that amount of time. I've got the app on my phone and I've never dared do it. Oh, I've done it. Yeah. Is it great? Yeah, it's fun. I only did it for like a week. Sure. Do you know who the lead writer on Zombies Run was? No. Naomi Alderman, who's a brilliant novelist who wrote that novel, The Power. Yeah. Where women develop the ability to zap. She's a Doctor Who writer as well. She's deeply into the nerd world and all of this. And she wrote an app where she just had to write the words quick, there's a zombie run. I imagine she doled it up a bit. Yeah yeah there was it was like it kind of sets the scene

27:30that where you're in and then suddenly the zombies come that sounds fun but andy would have to turn it off after six minutes yeah are you are you scared of the amount of running you'd have to do or is it the zombie that is scaring you you're running away from zombies that's scary i've said before that i've been on zombie walks in london slash runs and then there's real actors who are the zombies and then you get to a certain place and then they come and attack you and you have to run to the next checkpoint yes uh and i broke my rib doing that i remember you doing that yeah wow tried to run around them they tagged me on the back because they don't bite you they tag you push me into a wall broke a rib out of action for six months wow you sued didn't you you got and you won big you destroyed that

28:10company yeah they lost an arm and a leg i regretted that as i was saying i regret a simple pure comedy anyway look that's not why this woman... Actually, I think that probably could be why, and it's related to why I can relax this. But this also really makes sense. So when you're being really scared, then your lower regions of your brain, like your limbic system, just the animal regions, are really kicked into gear. So the stuff that's really worrying you, that's occupying the upper regions, your cerebral cortex areas, it's overtaken by the animal regions. So it's a bit like meditating, right? Seeing a horror film is like meditating. You go through the haunted house and it's just these instinctive limbic regions

28:50that are activated. So you come out and you've meditated. You can't think about all the stuff that's worrying you. You can't worry about your mortgage when you're being chased by a mad killer. Exactly. You can't think about the really awkward faux pas that you made earlier that day. Precisely. God, yeah. Do you know what America's biggest fear is on this subject? There is a survey that's been running for 12 years. Is it woke? It's not woke. It's something surprisingly close to what you guys are describing. The Democrats? No. It's transgender toilets, isn't it? It's not. Shall I say it? Two words. Government corruption. Oh, really? That's the biggest fear on the list drain the swamp i know others included things like economic collapse and cyber terrorism what happened to

29:33speaking in public you know spiders they must have they must have primed these people they must be in the middle of a survey of like who you're gonna vote for you know who do you think was best for the economy are you worried about china yeah yeah but that genuinely for the last 10 years the top fear has been government corruption that's actually the scariest room in the haunted house that you open the door and there's a few senators sort of colluding there's just a man city player in the corner. And he doesn't get it, but he likes it. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that before lions could be reintroduced to Mozambique, the spirit lions had to be consulted.

30:24I swear, I only remember we were doing a scary episode halfway through that fact. This is the biggest move of lions ever in 2018. 24 lions were shifted from South Africa to Mozambique to repopulate it with lions, which had been hunted away because their prey was all hunted, all the game was hunted away. And so there were no lions left in central Mozambique at all and this was around a place called the Marimo Game Reserve and the conservation effort was spearheaded by this hunter actually called Mark Haldane who was a South African guy and he wanted to reintroduce lions there and he bought up this plot of land but he wanted to check that the local people were okay with reintroducing a very deadly predator

31:05onto their land um and so by happy coincidence he had a chat with them and it turned out these people worship lions even though they don't have them anymore they really revere lions and they all believe that um lions are kind of their ancestors and all great people turn into lions when they die and so it was perfect and they said okay reintroduce the lions but warning it's not up to us whether they live or die it's up to the spirit lions as in our ancestors who are now lions and their chief is a guy called chief toza and the chief gave his personal blessing but said they had to have a ceremony which they did and they had a big ceremony where the whole village came they offered some coke which which I think is Coca-Cola.

31:47I can't be sure. Some Coca-Cola, some beer and some tobacco in plastic cups for the spirit lions because that's their favorite thing. You all put cocaine in plastic cups. No. I don't know how a spirit lion snorts Coke though. So that might actually be the best way. Maybe they just dive in like Al Pacino style into the cup. And yeah, they said, enjoy this beer. Do you mind protecting the village from the lions when they come? And sounds like they've said yes, because it's been quite successful. But yeah, it's a very cool conservation effort. And you see them doing the ceremony with this lion lying down asleep, fortunately. I couldn't tell if it's an ancient idea of theirs that's been going for a long time.

32:21But certainly there seems to be a recent origin story, according to Chief Toza, because it was his great-great-grandfather who was at home one day, and an invading army came from a neighboring village, and 12 of their best men came into his room with spears, and he somehow managed to kill 10 of them. And then the last two just got him in a corner, and he then said, okay, stab me, stab me right in the chest. And as they did, he died. And then a great spirit of a lion came out. And the two men ran out and said, there's a giant lion in there. And the town was left on its own. Yeah, and it's weird because normally those legends go so far back that it's like lost in the mists of time. And you can be like, oh, so you do believe that he actually turned into a lion.

33:01But he is like, yeah, it's my granddad. Yeah, he just turned into a lion after he died. But yeah's my granddad yeah he just turned into a lion after he died but yeah i think they revered lions anyway as is very common it's a belief in a mondoro it's often called across actually many many parts of africa and it's been actually a problem in the past because it means you're more likely to get eaten by real lions because because you go up to the lions you tolerate tolerate them closer to you? It's not that. It's because when people have been attacked by lions in the past, an example of this was this outbreak of man-eating lions in Tanzania in the 1940s. They were called the Njombe man-eaters. And they believe that the reason they've been attacked

33:38is because the lion is the spirit embodiment of someone who hates them or that the lion has been cursed by a witch doctor. And so they refuse to believe that it's possible to get rid of the lion population because they're like no it's the gods are at work here we can't do anything so they'd have people saying look tell me where you see the lion report it and we can kill the lion and they'll often say no that's really stupid these are the spirit lions okay they know what they're doing i'm gonna grass up my nana exactly yeah we'll get in even more trouble um so like these ones were left completely untroubled for about 15 years and killed some people say over 100 people in the 1940s the problem with those guys was basically there's a

34:18pest called rinderpest which is really bad and you got it around there and it would kill all of your cattle and so what they did to control rinderpest is they killed all of the prey animals and then the lions didn't have anything else to eat and so that's when they started going after the humans. Oh, don't take away their food. Yeah. Go for you. And the hairless lions are the worst. Maneless males, which I didn't know was a thing. Balding males, and it's caused by the same thing as baldness in human males oh yeah male pattern baldness is testosterone oh really causes it it's not that if you've got more testosterone you go bald it's just some people react to testosterone this way but lions with more testosterone give bald people that anna just

34:57give bald guys the thing of like oh you've got more testosterone actually you're a complete machine like jason statham just let them have that come on jason statham bruce willis and you virile you know how you know it you're shining pate exactly thank you you know females kill more humans than males do they yeah lions um lion yeah certainly not in humans i'm sad to say but um in lions yeah um lionesses tend to kill humans but they do it like as a one-off usually, and then they go back to the normal diet. But if you have like a group of lions who consistently are killing humans and doing it again and again and again and again, then they're going to be the males. Just overall females kill more.

35:38They get it, but the males get a taste for man flesh. Yeah, sounds like they do like the taste of it. I don't want to anthropomorphise it quite that much. I'll do it. I'm trying to get on the side. So they like and respect lions in the real world as well as the spirit lions. Yes, yes, they do. I think it's very interesting because I assumed when you hear about animal worship, I thought, oh, like the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats, right? And then you look into that just a fraction more and you find out they didn't worship cats in, like the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats, right? And then you look into that just a fraction more, and you find out they didn't worship cats in anything like the way that we would consider they should have done.

36:10Did they not? They didn't put like a shrine in the corner and put a cat on top of it and gave it milk and stuff. Oh, or Evian or anything like that. They didn't, no. I mean, what you do, James, is much closer to actual cat worship, right? I also will shave my eyebrows whenever my cat dies. But the whole system did not involve being nice to cats. Basically, they thought any kind of animal, or lots of animals, could be vessels for the divine. So that includes cats, ibises, falcons, bulls, whatever. And then the thing you would do is, you know how if you go to a church, there's somewhere where you can buy a candle for like 20p, and then you light it up and you leave it there, and that's the thing for you to say a prayer they also they don't

36:49check that you put the money in by the way exactly you can just light them ka-ching the number of 20ps i've saved it adds up you are beating the system, James. Fuck the man. I'm going to keep some in my pocket when I'm buried, just in case there is an afterlife and I can be like, oh look, sorry, I did forget my... I've kept them in my coffin. You'll need those in hell. But they mummified cats in the same way that we would think of candles for the church. You would buy a mummified cat and you would leave it as an offering for the gods. These temples were basically massive cat farms where cats were raised, not treated very well, killed, mummified. And that's why at these temples they found literally millions upon millions of mummified cats,

37:39two million ibises, thousands of baboons, all mummified. And it's basically just an indication that you can you know use that as an offering yeah they had like cat gods didn't they they certainly had ibis gods and baboon gods where it's like half baboon half human yeah exactly exactly um but but it may be how we got cats domesticated in the first place it's because the the least wild ones survived longer or you know were bred for that and eventually some of them were kept as pets right they didn't love cats they didn't have any sort of nice cat stuff in the way that we would think of them having it i know they weren't watching cat videos all the time james have you ever bought your cat a costume no i haven't and nor would i

38:20okay then you're part of the 83 percent of pet owners who have not bought their cat a costume what constitutes a costume do you think like what about a hairband with ears not a costume to me that is why have you got cat ears on it yeah yeah you put human ears you didn't say cat ears they could be elephant ears or human ears yeah which is and that is a costume thank you for stepping in as my defender and because as i said it i thought they wouldn't need the ears hairband yeah yeah i think that's not quite a costume. I think if you dressed it as Marianne Tournette, that's a costume. Okay. Although that sounds amazing, actually. I saw a guy in Margate recently who was walking with his pug dog and they were both dressed the same.

38:54They were wearing the same cap. They were both naked. And pissing on a lambo step. I had to bag up his poo and hang it on a tree. Yeah, no. What were they wearing? in a little dress the same and he wears glasses. It's like you're saying you can't put lipstick glasses on a pug. I also like you saying I didn't have time to follow them to find out what was happening, rather than asking them. I'm not going to get into a conversation with the guy who dresses a dog. No way. I'm just going to follow him until it's clear what's going on here. When do you think it would have become clear? When he got to the dog and human fancy dress party. There we go. There could have been a dog lookalike competition competition going on oh yeah dogs and their owners dogs and their owners that does

39:50happen do you know lions according to some traditions cats were created when lions sneezed oh okay beautiful which is quite nice in fact and i say according to some traditions i mean islamic tradition and it was on noah's ark that it happened so this is one of the hadiths yeah you'd be like stowaways if you were noah where did you come from actually it was noah who did it himself interesting there was a mouse problem on noah's ark which is weird because i thought there was only two mice um and again this is according at the start of the voice you got two mice good point shouldn't have got different genders should you but what's the point in saving them i did what you said god another terrific point two males of every species and i know

40:32from reading the bible that you love this kind of thing god oh god yeah the first few noah's fucked up um noah wife going, what's wrong? Oh, you're not going to fucking believe what I did. Again. It would be Noah's wife, but Noah's best mate. Yep. Sorry. There was a mouse problem on the ark and all the other people on the ark complained. And so Noah said, okay, I'll ask God to do something. I'll ask Allah to do something. And Allah made the lion sneeze and out flew from its nose, cat. That's nice. And then they're mounted. That's the first recorded cat allergy as well. Yes, is that an allergy if you're sneezing out a cat? Yeah, I think it must be. You're right. Hey, I've found another way in which the Mozambique lion has influenced the world.

41:25In 1969, Tippi Hedren, the actress, was over in Mozambique filming a movie called Satan's Harvest. And while she was there, they saw Pride of Lions moving into a vacated house, and they decided that they would center a movie on the theme of this, in which the lions were the main players of the movie. It's Roar, a sort of comedy adventure using real lions on low budget. There were a number of insane injuries. Basically everyone on set, virtually everyone was bitten on the head by a lion at some point. You had the cinematographer who was mauled by a lion on set, over 120 stitches were needed in the scalp, the back of his head uh you had noel marshall who was one of the directors and the husband of tippy hedren um and he was

42:11attacked multiple times tippy hedren was attacked while she was on a tree and the thing is is that all these shots made it into the movie the gentleman died no but a bunch of lions did because there was a flash flood down in the valley where they were filming. This film just gets funnier and funnier. It's a Halloween special! Sorry. Terrifying stories! And a lot of famous lions from the local area were brought in, because they couldn't import lions from Mozambique, which was the initial idea. So you had celebrity lions. So the antagonist was supposedly played by a tiger that was previously owned by Anton LaVey, who's the founder of the Church of Satan. Sorry, you're saying that a lion was played by a tiger that was previously owned by anton lave who's the founder of the church of satan sorry was you're saying that a lion was played by a tiger sorry

42:50is that what i said yes no i i don't want to get i don't want to get all union on your ass but i do think that if you have a lion in a movie it should be played by a lion you are so woke james okay just more tiger actors available we need to do stripe blind casting for this no it was played by a lion but weirdly a lion called togar so uh what close to tiger oh sorry oh so there were no tigers involved no someone called their lion toga yeah the church of satan yeah, as a result of this, the movie bombed, but Tippi Hedren set up the Roar Foundation, which is looking after all the lions that need looking after in America. And it, to this day, is one of the biggest charities out there for lions.

43:37I'm not really worried about the lions. I'm mostly worried about the filmmakers who set up a charity for them. God, the premiere must have been crazy, mustn't it? The carpet wasn't red to start off with. Monitors beeping. Voices overlapping. Somewhere in it, a heartbeat you have to catch. That's the stethoscope exam. Every shift. Technology's changed how you practice almost everywhere else. But the stethoscope has barely changed in over 200 years. Until now. Meet the Echo Core 300 digital stethoscope. One twist and you switch instantly between traditional analog listening and powerful digital sound. With 35 times amplification and active noise cancellation. Go up to a month between charges with analog listening always there. Thank you. EchoHealth.com to get Black Friday pricing on the Core 300, plus a risk-free 30-day trial.

44:46That's E-K-O-Health.com, EchoHealth.com. This message is brought to you by Avocado Mattress. When you're shopping for a mattress, you can spend hours reading reviews and scrolling through photos. But the only way to truly know if a mattress is right for you is to feel it for yourself. That's why Avocado invites you to come lie down. Every Avocado mattress is GOT certified organic, assembled in our California facility with organic cotton, wool, and latex. No polyurethane foams, no fiberglass. Certified, made safe, and EWG verified. It's a difference you can feel. So curl up. Try any of our Avocado mattresses in person at an Avocado mattress store or 600 premier retail locations nationwide. Find out which of our five comfort levels is right for you.

45:30Because buying a mattress shouldn't be a guessing game. And there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to better sleep. Find your comfort. Come lie down at Avocado. Shop the holiday sale now and get up to 20% off at AvocadoGreenMattress.com or select retailers nationwide. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that zombies exist, but only in the sea cucumber world. Very nice. So this is an article from Discover magazine about a species called Solus fabrici, which is a species of sea cucumber whose severed tissue can survive for years after you remove it. And that was basically a group of scientists from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences,

46:28headed by someone called Rachel Sippler. And they found this kind of tiny foot from a sea cucumber. It's called a tube foot. It's what they use for feeding and for moving around. And they realized that it had been in seawater for ages and it hadn't decayed. And not only had it not decayed, but it seems to be doing quite well and they thought this is strange and then they did a load more experiments and they found that these tiny bits of sea cucumber can live for a long long time and after it was shut you'd be sure that they're dead and they're not attached to any other bit of sea cucumber they've staying alive and no one really knows why and in the paper they call them real life zombies are they eating they seem to be somehow absorbing dissolved amino acids directly from seawater

47:12yeah and obviously i've just read that directly because i don't really know what it means uh but yeah they can somehow get some kind of nutrition and they've not seen them grow into a complete sea cucumber yet but we do know that sea cucumbers can regrow from very small parts yeah what they seem to be saying is that it's it's like when a lizard loses its tail it will grow back a tail but this is a case where they're suddenly wondering is the tail going to grow back a lizard it's it's a bit that should not regenerate back into a sea cucumber yet it's still alive do you know the craziest thing about this is is that they studied? three little bits of Just sections of a sea cucumber that should just die and rot for three years

47:53They studied it and then they published their paper and because they published this result They decided let's stop the experiment and just chuck it away. They hadn't even died at that point Yeah, so you're three years ago and we don't know how long this would go for. They don't even know how it would fare in a haunted house. They haven't done that experiment on it yet. Sometimes you run out of funding. You can't afford to keep that seawater tub in the corner. It is mad. I really like it. It's incredible. Sea cucumbers in general are just totally loco things. They're actually episode one of No Such Thing as a Fish veterans. Really? Yeah. I had a little look back at all the times, because we mentioned them in a few places over the years.

48:35Episode one, they breathe and eat through anus. Do you know we've mentioned them, and I just feel like we need to apologize to sea cucumbers at this point. We've mentioned them 11 times, and eight of those 11 times we were specifically talking about their anuses so I just think I want to say they've got good anuses but there's more to them than that shall we just quickly talk about the anuses for a little while just for a little while because yeah they poo out a lot of stuff right one sea cucumber poos out about 1.3 ounces of poo every day if you were to take all of the sea cucumbers who live on a particular reef in australia called heron island reef they make enough to poo out five eiffel towers worth of material right a day that's a

49:20year that's still a lot still a lot it's 300 times less than you thought but it's still i know oh yeah your bar for what is an amazing amount suddenly it's a bit questionable i've got very broad parameters on what i'll be amazed by but here's one interesting thing that i think right so they poo out nutrients into the sea and that includes calcium carbonate and corals can use that calcium carbonate from the sea cucumber poo to create the coral reefs nice and then another fact we probably said on this show is parrotfish like to eat coral reefs and then they poo it out to make sand on some coral beaches and so that coral sand on coral beaches could have been pooed twice before it became sand. That is crazy.

50:06That's so good. That's perfect. Because they have this nickname, the janitors of the sea. But they're the janitor who cleans by pooing, you know? Hey, you know that book you were going to write about really skillful janitors? Oh my God. Hong Kong phooey. Genius janitors. Hong Kong phooey. Jon Bon Jovi. Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. And a secret cover. janice's hong kong phooey um john bon jovi john bon jovi matt damon in um goodwill hunting goodwill hunting we only need another 997 no but it is really important for coral reefs and various other ocean environments that they're doing this pooing because they make nutrients that were buried in sediment available to the corals by eating the sediments and then pooing them out.

50:45So they're keeping the whole thing in circulation. So it's called bioturbation. Not a word I've heard before, which is pretty cool. I just think they're brilliant. They are, and they come in such amazing variety, partly because they don't have skeletons. They used to have skeletons hundreds of millions of years ago, evolved after them, didn't need them, so their bodies can be moulded and shaped into all sorts of different contortions. And so you get beautiful ones. You get sea pigs, which genuinely look like pigs. They've got snout suckers on their snouts that look a bit like pigs. Any sea pugs? With glasses and a flat cap? Oh, in Margate, probably. Some hipster will be walking in Margate. It was a sea pug, wasn't it?

51:29I remember going to my sea cucumber human lookalike competition. And you inflated and deflated your legs, as they do. Yeah, so that's how they get, because i watched footage of it walking this little uh piggy and it does look like they're moving their legs but it's all hydraulics isn't it yeah they squirt water into them and it churns up the floor so it has the advantage of stirring up food on the floor so it can eat it and they live in the abyss which i didn't know that it had a specific definition in the sea the abyss is any sea floor that's six kilometers down or lower and it's not the lowest um because the lowest is the hadel zone and that's where you get the abyss which is the lowest of the like flat sea bed but then the hadel zone uh is i thought

52:18it depends on like how much light can get through or something um oh the diagrams i've seen are like um it probably is exactly the same either way, but like the abyss is three to six kilometers and then Hadal is the trenches that you get, which go down even deeper. Is that like Hades? Yeah, it's like Hades. Nice. Back onto the anuses. Oh, yeah. One fact that we've said on this before, multiple times, I think, might have been that you get fish who live in the anuses of sea cucumbers one part i didn't know about that is there are some rare sea cucumber species who don't like the fishes living in there like normally they don't really mind it so much because i don't know why maybe they just keep them clean or something but they they kind of put up with it but there

53:01are some species that don't like the fish living there and they've developed anal teeth to keep unwanted fish out of their anuses evolution is just wonderful isn't it anal teeth is amazing yeah metal band that is a good name for that um one more thing on the rain this is um so sorry guys i'm sorry no but their defense is very interesting and i don't think we've mentioned it so one of their defenses, which we have mentioned, is that they can just get into a niche, as I will, after death, and then go hard. So they go very, very rigid once they're in the niche, and then they cannot be got out for love or money. Brilliant. But then the other thing they can do in extremis is they can violently inject their innards from their anus,

53:43and those are coated in poison. So if something's trying to eat them, they just get coated in this poisonous goo, and then they flee and will grow them back over many months. You know, it takes ages to recover from that. But if the attack persists, even after they've expelled their innards, they have one more button that they can push. And this is a thing called the cuke nuke. So good. They explode themselves, basically. The predator is just blasted with these sticky tentacle organs, which then expand 20-fold in size. So it's like having horrible, poisonous, expanding foam gunk inside you. And it blasts and sort of holds the predator in place. And the Z-cucumber tries to escape that way. Yeah, I think they're like spider webs, aren't but way more scary uh like silly string actually it's a better example it's exactly

54:31like silly string and you just get all in a tangle and make a fool of yourself there's a permutation on that which is the sea apple which is a type of sea cucumber and they look amazing they've got tentacles which are all feathery they look really beautiful but they also shoot mucusy stuff out of their butt whenever they need to hit a predator. And then their version of what you said with the nuke moment is they expand their body to twice the size. It means that the current just picks them up and swooshes them out. So it's almost like pulling a parachute open. Oh yeah, that's really cool. It's an ejector seat naturally built into them. What do they have in common with sheep? Sea cucumbers. Yeah.

55:09With sheep. With mythical sheep. Oh. Right. Okay. Specifically. Maybe someone escaped from a cyclops by hiding underneath them. You've got almost exactly the right answer. Very good. Almost exactly. It's not a cyclops because they're them? You've got almost exactly the right answer. Very good. Almost exactly. It's not a cyclops because they're not real, of course. But as you say... You said mythical. Yes, I know. They have this in common with mythical sheep, but in the real world, it can't be a cyclops. Why did your pub quiz fail, Emma? Look, I'm giving him 99%. So Odysseus, of course... That was it, the percentage-based scoring system. Yes, I recall that. How did you do at the pub quiz? Well, I got a 2-1, so...

55:56I don't know. Sorry. Odysseus, of course, escaped the Cyclops by clinging to the underside of a sheep and sea pigs. In fact, the forementioned sea pigs, when scientists went down and studied them on the ocean floor, they found that baby crabs ride underneath them to hide from predators. And they, in fact, found that 96% of young king crabs were found on the underside of sea pigs. That's basically where they live. That's amazing. Yeah, so nice. Very nice. Well done, James. You get a free bottle of wine. Can I give you the name of some sea cucumbers of sea pig basically where they live that's amazing yeah very nice very nice so well done james you get a free bottle of wine can i give you the name of some sea cucumbers and you have

56:29to tell me why they got that name oh yeah yeah difficult sea cucumber um this is um holothuria difficile difficult to find not quite difficult to buy for yes very good order really specific stuff in a restaurant like gluten intolerant, lactose intolerant, vegan. It probably reflects the taxonomic challenges researchers faced when identifying it. Cool. The impatient sea cucumber. That's who's dining with the difficult sea cucumber. Just fucking order. I'll have the difficult sea cucumber. I'm just fucking ordering. I'll have the burger as is. No, the impatient sea cucumber, which is Holotheria impatience, is probably because when scientists got it for the first few times, it just expelled its insides really, really quickly.

57:22You know, doing that mucusy thing. But whenever they got it, they just did it straight away and the stubborn sea cucumber very hard very rigid therefore stubborn uh not that no uh and it's also not that when they go to a restaurant with the other two sea cucumbers they say i only had the starter uh refuses to uh change its ways if put into a different environment that's good I only had the starter. Refuses to change its ways if put into a different environment. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I'm going to give you that. Well, I'll give you a first for that. Basically, the aquariums have a very hard time keeping them alive. And so they're stubborn because they keep dying. What? That's a great information if that's kind of your first.

58:04That's sea cucumber Blaming isn't it They are really hard to track Scientists find it a complete nightmare to track a sea cucumber Because They are They look like sausages don't they They're just ocean sausages really So you think most scuba divers are going Well that's just a sausage No People looking moist Do you see any sea cucumbers down there? No, just sausage after sausage Thousands of eccentrically colored sausages Weird No, it's because they can't be tracked So if you attach a tracker to them They just get rid of it If you inject a tracker into them They just push it out of their body If you dye them, the dye disappears They're like the Jason Bourne of the ocean in that they cannot be traced.

58:48I love that. I've never seen the Bourne identity, but that actually makes me want to. Oh my God, it's so good. So stuff is inserted into him and he's constantly expelling it. Yes. Sounds amazing. It's a really good film. He shoots a lot of baddies, but not with a gun. It's anal mucus. And of course, Matt Damon's very used to playing janitors so this was a fitting role okay that is it that is all of our spooky spooky facts and if you thank you andy again and if you would like to write to us about any of the things that we've said, we're all online. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram, James. I'm on Instagram at no such thing as James Harkin. Andy? I'll follow you. I'm at AndrewHunterM, so you'll see me when I follow you on social media.

59:43I don't think you follow anyone who follows you, do you? I'm constantly on broadcast mode. Sorry for being a professional. It is tiring, though. You can get to us as a group as well. Anna, where do they go? Yeah, you can go to Instagram at nosuchthing or email podcast.qi.com. Yes, podcast.qi..com send us all of your best facts there because we will pick them out and use them as part of our bonus monday show which is called little fish we love love love getting them so do send them in and if you don't have a fact you want to share but you've got an extra bit of knowledge about a thing that we've said then write in as well because andy collates those and brings all of that to our bonus secret show,

1:00:25which is called Drop Us a Line. And that can only be found if you're a member of the secret club fish. Patreon.com slash club fish. You'll find all the details there. Otherwise, come back next week. We're going to have another episode ready for you. Thanks as ever to Ling Li, Ethan Ruperalia, as well as the larger fish buster gang here at QI Towers. And we will see you again next week. Goodbye. What's the best thing about the holidays? Snow days? Eggnog? How about cash back on just about everything you need to make the holidays feel, well, holiday-y? With Rakuten, you get cash back on gifts for everyone on your list, from stores you love, like Crocs, Neiman Marcus, and Ulta. You save even more when you stack cash back on top of the season's

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