QI

Sandi Toksvig hosts an extended edition of the comedy panel game on the theme of Ultras, with Jordan Gray, Jason Manford and Sara Pascoe joining regular panellist Alan Davies.

Topics

- You can identify an ultramarathon runner by their feet by looking at their toenails, or rather their lack of them. It is an occupational hazard of the sport to lose the nails. Ultramarathons are defined as any race that is longer than the standard marathon distance, but some are hundreds of miles long. Some runners avoid this injury by having their toenails surgically removed in advance. Other runners sometimes wear T-shirts saying: "Toenails are for sissies."

- Tangent: Jason cannot run because he had an operation on his ankle a few years ago, where as part of the operation he had an MRI scan of his feet, and the doctor told him that his feet were not for running. However, his heart was the opposite. His resting heart rate was so low that it is good for running. Jason compares it to having a Ferrari engine in a Skoda.

- Tangent: Men generally run faster over shorter distances, but in longer distances, including ultramarathons, women are faster. In a 5K race, men tend to run 20% faster than women, but in a standard marathon men are about 10% faster, in 100km races men about 0.5%, and once a race gets to over 195 miles, women typically run faster times. This is due to attitude, women's muscles fatiguing less quickly, oestrogen probably helping to utilise fat stores better, and women having smaller stomachs which allows them to cope better with extreme stress. In 2018, Courtney Dauwalter won a race in Utah which covered over 200 miles, taking 58 hours, which was ten hours less than anybody else. For one race, she lost her sight in the final 12 miles, so her husband had to run alongside shouting instructions.

- Tangent: In 2019, Jasmine Paris won the Montane Spine, running along the Pennine Way. Not only did she beat the previous record by 12 hours, she also stopped at all the aid stations along the route not just to take on water, but to express milk for her 14-month-old child.

- An ultra useful use of empty crisp packets is to decontaminate water. If you turn the packet inside-out, you can use them to reflect UV light. This stops bacteria and viruses from reproducing. In Australia, a group of people used this system to deflect the sun's rays and clean water tanks in Papua New Guinea. The packets work so well that it reduced the very high E coli levels in one sample of water to almost undetectable levels within 30 minutes. This is also useful in terms of waste as crisp packets cannot be recycled, but they can be repurposed.

- Tangent: Discussing crisp flavours, Jason expresses his anger at Walkers, because they put cheese and onion crisps in blue packets, and salt and vinegar in green, instead of the other way around like most crisp manufacturers. He is also claims all packets of crisps go out of date on a Saturday.

- Tangent: Humans cannot see ultraviolet light because of the wavelength. Our lenses can only allow us to see light from red to violet. However, if you have your lenses replaced with artificial ones, you can see more colours. Sandi has had this done, and say that her view of colour is astonishing now. Bees can see ultraviolet light. The fur of wolves absorbs UV, which means they show up as black against the snow, so reindeer can see the predators.

- Tangent: Jordan says that in a documentary that she watched, if an alien has eyes on the front of their face, facing the same direction, it would be dangerous because that alien would have evolved to be a predator, as it does not need long peripheral vision.

- The most expensive thing in Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is the blue paint. The ultramarine paint was made from crushed lapis lazuli, and it was the world's most expensive paint because at the time it was only found in certain mines in Afghanistan. It was used in the construction of the Taj Mahal, the eyebrows on Tutankhamun's death mask, and in paintings of the Virgin Mary as a way for the church to demonstrate its wealth. Patrons wanted to be seen as spending a lot of money, so paint was listed separately on the invoice. (Forfeit: The pearl)

- Tangent: Vermeer never called Girl with a Pearl Earring by that name. It was described as a tronie (Dutch for a face or head) painted in the Turkish style. The painting was a way of demonstrating the artist's ability to show somebody's expression. We do not know who the model is, the pearl earring is too big to be an actual pearl, and the last time the painting was sold in 1881 for just under a pound (two Dutch guilders).

- XL Tangent: In 1824, a substitute for ultramarine, now known as French ultramarine was created, and it reduced artists' cost by 90%.

- XL Tangent: We know very little about Vermeer. He died in debt aged 43, was known as the Sphinx of Delft, and there are no journals or memoirs about him. It is possible he included himself in his painting 'The Procures', but no-one knows for sure. He only did about three dozen paintings in his life.

- A tarsier sound is one humans cannot make, because they call in ultrasound. Tarsiers are small primates found in Southeast Asia. They are about 10cm long, their eyes are about 10% their body size, and one single eyeball is as large as or even larger than their brain. They can turn their head 180 degrees on both sides, meaning they can see 360 degrees, which they need as they are prey for owls, snakes and lizards. People used to think they yawned a lot, but it was later discovered they are vocalising in ultrasonic. Ultrasound occurs at a frequency 20,000 hertz or higher, and tarsiers cry at 70,000-90,000 hertz, which is akin to echolocation in bats, and they use it to warn each other of predators.

- XL Tangent: Other animals which emit noises we cannot hear include the North American Richardson's ground squirrel, aka the flickertrail. Dr. Lloyd Davis discovered that the calls we cannot hear were warnings to others. However, he encouraged them to emit these calls by throwing Frisbees at them.

- XL Tangent: Before being used to track babies, ultrasound machines were used for locating welding faults in shipyards, and to check on the foetuses of non-human animals like manta rays. Foetal mantas fold their wings about themselves in utero, and it makes what the researchers called a "manta burrito". They had to attach the machine to manta rays using peanut butter, as it sucks the moisture from the slimy skin of the fish.

- Tangent: The panel are show a photo of an ultrasound being carried out on a pregnant elephant called Tamar, where one of the vets has to slide themselves into the elephant. When using ultrasound on animals there can be problems. Okapis lick the gel off themselves, while rhinos are too fat for the ultrasounds to penetrate, so you have to go up the rectum instead. Elephants gestate for 22 months, and often they lose the first calf. Sandi say the conversation is getting depressing, so Jordan presses her buzzer of jolly sailor music, to which Sandi responds by shaking her hand.

- Tangent: German designer called Rebecca Weiss developed an ultrasound contraceptive for men, which involves dunking the testicles in warm saltwater for a few minutes every day, while a machine shoots ultrasound at them. After two weeks the man is no longer fertile for about six months.

- Tangent: A Holosonic speaker is a machine which can focus sound exactly. The speaker fires out a very narrow beam of ultrasound that is inaudible in the air, but when it hits something solid like a person or a wall it becomes audible. Sandi demonstrates one by moving the speaker across the audience, who can hear the QI theme tune as the speaker moves. The audience put their hands up when they can hear it, creating a very calm Mexican wave. You can use this machine in cinemas for example, so you can play a film but each person can hear it in their own language.

- XL: London's oldest umbrella shop, James Smith & Sons (established 1830), did not let you open umbrellas indoors because it was too small. Umbrella sellers wanted you to believe you should not open the umbrella indoors because then if you left a wet umbrella closed, it would go mouldy, and you would have to buy a new one. The shop in question today does allow for umbrellas to be opened in the shop because they claim to have countered the bad luck by having a giant horseshoe inside the shop as well. The shop today is much larger, but it does not have proper foundations. According to one story, during the Blitz a bomb struck nearby and the entire shop jumped off the ground and landed in one piece. (Forfeit: It's unlucky)

- XL Tangent: The first gentleman in Britain to use an umbrella was Jonas Hanway, and he was mocked constantly for it while walking in London. One time, a cab driver tried to run him over because he was so incensed by him carrying an umbrella. In response Hanway hit the driver with the umbrella.

- XL Tangent: In Japanese folklore, neglected items cause mischief. One such creature is a sentient umbrella called a kasa-obake, which comes to life after 100 years of abandonment. It has a massive tongue, and is harmless unless it witnesses someone being wasteful. However, if you pick it up after 100 years of abandonment and use it as a regular umbrella, it will carry you up into the sky. The Japanese phrase "under one umbrella" sounds a bit like "love"' and it is common for Japanese sweethearts to write each other's names under a drawing of an umbrella, symbolising love. This is illustrated with a drawing of an umbrella with Sandi and Alan's names in Japanese below it.

- XL Tangent: A Chinese start-up business in 2017 lent people umbrellas. They put 300,000 GPS-tracked umbrellas around 11 cities, but they forgot to tell people how to return them, and they didn't charge a fee if you didn't return them, so after three months all the umbrellas had gone. The company lost $9 per umbrella.

- XL: A shaved Dalmatian is useful for examining very small objects. Ultramicrotomy is the practice of slicing things into very thin pieces so that you can view them under an electron microscope. The slices are about 50-70 nanometres thin, which is akin to cutting a human hair in 2,000 pieces lengthwise. To move the samples around without damaging them they use chopsticks with tiny hairs on the end, and the best hair to use is that from a Dalmatian as they taper to a very fine point.

- XL Tangent: The panel are shown some examples of items sliced under ultramicrotomy, namely a mouse colon, the root of lily of the valley, and the small intestine.

- XL Tangent: Dalmatians are named after the Dalmatia region of Croatia. There was a Dalmatian language, the last known speaker of which died in 1898, passing away on the island of Krk (pronounced "Kerk"). The island has a form of dry white sparkling wine made from the Zhlatina grape, found nowhere else in the world. They make it by fermenting it underwater, because it is guaranteed the perfect 12 degree temperature. When they bring the bottles up, it is sold straight from the seabed, with coral and shellfish attached to the bottle.

- The item of underwear most useful to a spy is the bra. During the Second World War, silk was used to print maps on, but when the maps were out of date, they got repurposed as underwear. One such set of underwear belonging to Countess Mountbatten is in the Imperial War Museum. Sara gets the question right and Sandi shakes her hand.

- Tangent: Jordan jokes that the best item of underwear is none, because in order to qualify as a spy you have to spend some time as a commando. Sandi shakes her hand again.

- XL Tangent: The First World War caused a great surge in popularity for bras in North America, because a campaign to save steel for battleships led to the corset going out of fashion. 28,000 tons of steel from corsets was collected.

- XL Tangent: The N95 face mask was originally used for bra cups by 3M. A woman named Sara Little Turnbull, one of the first US industrial designers, created these medical masks in 1958, also created space suits. She was called "Little Sara" because she was only 4'11".

- XL Tangent: When Disneyland opened in 1955, it had a lingerie shop. It was called the Intimate Apparel shop, and it had the Wonderful Wizard of Bras, which was a mechanical character who spoke from a revolving stage utilising tape recorder technology. The shop only lasted for six months. Jason jokes it was run by Goofy.

- Tangent: Under British law, houses that back onto each other have to be at least 21 metres apart. The law was written in 1902 to protect women's modesty. Two men decided to walk away from each other until one of them couldn't see the other's nipples under their shirt, and the law hasn't been updated since.

General Ignorance

- The airline that flies to the most destinations is courier company UPS. They fly to a total of 755 destinations. The nearest commercial airline is probably American Airlines, which flies to 350. The HQ of UPS is at Louisville International Airport, from which there are no international flights whatsoever.

- Tangent: Jason jokes that he did a corporate gig for UPS three weeks ago. It was on a Tuesday, but he went on Thursday to see how they like it. Sandi shakes Jason's hand for the gag.

- To the nearest thousand, the number of elvers eaten each year at the Elver Eating World Championship is zero. Elvers are baby eels, and in Frampton on Severn there used to be a competition where people tried to eat a pound of elvers (about 900) fried in bacon fat the fastest. The current record is 43 seconds. However, following a huge decline in numbers in the 1980s, contestants started eating a processed whitefish instead called surimi. Alan gets the answer right so Sandi shakes his hand.

- The pentaceratops dinosaur had just three horns. They lived about 80 million years ago, had three horns like a triceratops, but also two sharpened cheekbones. It is the largest skull of any land vertebrate that ever lived. There are many ceratopsians, one of which is the unescoceratops, which is named after UNESCO, but they found only one bit of one jawbone. (Forfeit: Five)

Scores

- Jordan Gray: 10 points
- Sara Pascoe: -13 points
- Alan Davies: -14 points
- Jason Manford: -15 points