British Comedy Guide
QI. Image shows from L to R: Alan Davies, Sandi Toksvig. Copyright: TalkbackThames
QI

QI

  • TV panel show
  • BBC Two / BBC One / BBC Four
  • 2003 - 2025
  • 324 episodes (22 series)

Panel game that contains lots of difficult questions and a large amount of quite interesting facts. Stars Sandi Toksvig, Stephen Fry and Alan Davies.

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Series V, Episode 6 - Volatile

QI. Image shows left to right: Alan Davies, Aisling Bea, Sandi Toksvig, Michelle Wolf, Mark Watson
Sandi Toksvig presents a volatile episode of QI with Aisling Bea, Mark Watson, Michelle Wolf and Alan Davies.

Topics

- If a volcano suddenly appeared in your garden, you might try to make money from it. In 1943, Mexican farmer Dionisio Pulido saw a volcano literally grow in his cornfield. There was a depression in the ground where people liked to picnic because it was warm. Suddenly, the volcano started to come out of the ground. Within a day, the cone had grown to be 70m wide and 30m tall. After a week, it was five times taller. After a year, it was 365m tall. He and his family fled to a nearby town, but just before he left he put a sign up saying: "This volcano is owned and operated by Dionisio Pulido." The volcano then destroyed the neighbouring town, but within nine years it went extinct. It was the very first time volcanologists were able to study the full life cycle of a volcano. It is the only volcano in recorded in history that came into existence, grew and died in less than a human lifetime. It was able to get so big so fast because as well as emitting lava, it also expelled volcanic rock fragments known as lapilli. Nobody knows what happened to Pulido after the volcano was formed.

- Tangent: Aisling says that as her partner is Australian, he would try to put a grill on it and start a barbeque. Aisling does an Australian accent during her answer, but the others mock her for doing it poorly.

- Tangent: Heart Mountain, Wyoming, had a huge landslide 50 million years ago, travelling at over 100 miles an hour for 30 minutes. The mountain now stands alone, 62 miles from the original mountain range, and the top of it is 300 million years older than the base of it.

- Tangent: Volcanoes can be great for farmers, because the deposits they emit are rich in elements such as magnesium and potassium, making for very fertile soil. In Lanzarote, there are volcanic vineyards. In the Azores, you can cook meals in pots placed in the geothermally heated holes. In Iceland, the Kjot and Kunst restaurant serves meals cook on outdoor geothermal stoves. Another kind of rich soil comes from kimberlite pipes, the main source of diamonds, which naturally take between 1 billion to 3.3 billion years to form. The pipes are vertical structures where the pressure builds up in the Earth's mantle, and eventually magma rain outs as searing hot rocks, inside of which are diamonds.

- The reason we don't throw all our nuclear waste into volcanoes is because they are not hot enough to destroy the waste. Thus, if the volcano erupted, it would spout nuclear waste over a wide area. Volcanoes only reach 1,300ÂșC, which is not hot enough to melt glass. It is a serious issue because the waste can remain radioactive anywhere between 10,000 and a million years.

- Tangent: Due to the time length it takes for nuclear waste to eventually become safe, there is a problem when it comes to communicating to people in the future that any site containing waste may be dangerous. For example, we don't know what language people will use in the future, so writing about the waste in any particular language might not work. In semiotics, the study of signs, one problem is that pictorial signs can have different meanings. For example, skull and crossbones can mean death, but it could also mean pirates. In 1981, a panel of scientists called the Human Interference Taskforce, considered things like extremely hostile-looking stone spikes and language-independent signs, but they failed to agree on anything. Thus, two philosophers, Francois Bastide and Paolo Fabbri, created a two-step plan. First, breed or genetically engineer cats to glow green when exposed to radiation. Secondly, create lots of folklore and customs, powerful enough to persist for thousands of years, that green cats should be avoided at all costs. This idea has been picked up by The Ray Cat Solution movement, which is working to insert ray cats into the cultural vocabulary. Alan mentions that he had a cat called Ray.

- A Tesla might give you the shits and destroy the Empire State Building by starting earthquakes. Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented an earthquake machine that was small enough to fit in your pocket. He claimed to have caused an earthquake in Wall Street, Manhattan in 1898. However, a more realistic purpose for this machine, which Tesla himself did, was use it as a treatment for constipation, with the machine literally shaking the shit out of you. He tested it on Mark Twain, using a steam-powered plate that jiggled the patient as you stood on it. Twain said it caused him to regain his old vigour. In the 1920s and 1930s, vibration was used as a cure for constipation in what was known as the Golden Age of Purgation.

- XL Tangent: The question is illustrated with a photograph, featuring a blurry Tesla in the background, Twain on the left, and on the right the actor Joseph Jefferson, who was the most famous comedian of his day in the USA. The photos shows an experiment where Tesla is running electricity through Twain and Jefferson, sufficient to light a lamp between the two of them.

- Tangent: In February 2023, a company called Vibrant Gastro received FDA approval for an ingestible pill that shakes the faeces out of you, and once you've swallowed the pill you can track the movement of it on an app. The pills are not reusable.

- XL: Until 1980s, the world's largest battery was stored in the Statue of Liberty. The statue has an iron framework, a copper exterior, and due to years of people not looking after the interior properly, water got between the layers. Simple batteries consist of two pieces of metal connected by a salty or acidic solution known as an electrolyte, and electricity is made when electrons travel through the electrolyte, from one metal to another. The statue ended up turning into the world's biggest battery, although it only produced about a quarter of a volt. This was still enough to corrode the iron, and thus extensive renovations had to be carried out.

- XL Tangent: Voltage is named after Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist who invented the battery, and is also credited with discovering methane. However, the credit for methane should really got to a woman named Teresa Ciceri, who lived on Lake Maggiore, and discovered an area of water on the side of the lake which was constantly having bubbles. Volta observed this too, wrote about it and he ended up getting the credit. Ciceri also introduced potatoes to Italy, and has 12 children. This leads to Aisling talking about going on a midwifery course with her sister, and when talking about contractions, the teacher said: "And these are the Braxton Hicks contractions, named after the man who invented them", to which Aisling was somewhat critical of in terms of the description. Volta created the first battery in 1800, after he saw experiments by Luigi Galvani. Galvani has used the transfer of electrons between metals to make frogs' legs twitch. At first he thought he had brought a frog back to life, and he called it animal electricity, but Volta realised the frogs were irrelevant, and he went on to make his battery.

- XL Tangent: There was a time when early tooth fillings were made with multiple metals, and if saliva got into them you could make a simple battery, which sometimes made people's teeth explode. Today, fillings are made with a single alloy, so this doesn't happen. You can create a tiny battery by touching your filling with a metallic sweet wrapper. For the purposes of this the panel each of a bar of chocolate called "Sandi's Choc-svig". Michelle says she has experienced the battery filling herself because she has some fillings, and she accidentally got a piece of foil wrapper in one of the fillings. She says that something happened in her mouth which was not pleasant.

- There was a sport created especially for fascists. Volata was created by the chairman of the Fascist Part of Italy who wanted an alternative to football and rugby. It consisted of two teams of eight players, played over three periods of 20 minutes each. When you have the ball, who can pretty much do what you like with it. Volata was based on many different games, including football, rugby, handball, and the ancient Roman game of harpastum. The inventor of volatta claimed that soccer was full of verminous mercenaries, and he wanted was an explicitly fascist sport. The party thought it would overthrow football as the national game, but then Italy held the FIFA World Cup in 1934, which cemented football as the country's national sport, and Italy won the tournament.

- Tangent: Alan says that Italy only won because England did not enter that World Cup, and would not enter the World Cup until the 1950s because they believed it was beneath our dignity. Alan tries to tell Sandi about the Battle of Highbury, a violent match between England and Italy in 1934 at Arsenal's old ground which England won 3-2, but Sandi is so bored she gets out a cushion and tries to sleep.

- Tangent: The panel talk about other sports which are a mixture of already established sports. There is carjitsu, which is jujitsu in a car, where you can use anything in the car to subdue your opponent.

- XL Tangent: Phone booth boxing is where you box inside a traditional British red telephone box. Shotgun golf was a sport invented by Hunter S. Thompson and Bill Murray, where the golfer tries to get the ball in the hole and gunman tries to shoot the ball while it is in midair.

- Tangent: Vigoro was a combination of tennis and cricket, popular in Australia after WWI and played almost exclusively by women. The main difference between it and cricket is if you hit the ball forward then you have to run. Skyaking is where you jump out of a plane in a kayak and try to land in a lake. The most famous combined sport is chess boxing, which consists of 11 three-minute rounds, with a minute between each round to get the gloves on and off, with a three-minute round of boxing, then a three-minute round of chess, and so on. About 60% of matches are won during the chess. The rules say that nobody is allowed to talk during the chess rounds. You can talk during the boxing rounds, but not about chess.

General Ignorance

- The panel are give toy guns with sponge missiles, and safety goggles, and are asked how far you have to be to fire at point-blank range. Point-blank is the distance where you can fire your gun, and you don't have to aim a bit higher in order to take account of the effect of gravity. Thus it can be up to 300m. It also depends on the size of the target. If you target was to shoot at the surface of the Earth, point-blank is pretty much everywhere.

- Tangent: During the segment, the panel keep firing their toy guns, which turns out hurts a hair amount. Sandi ends up firing at Aisling's mouth. Aisling asks for the editing department to get a slow-motion shot of when Sandi fired at her, and this is played.

- XL Tangent: The usual idea of firing at a person at point-blank range, i.e. when you are right next to them, doesn't mean you will kill them. Wenceslao Moguel was fighting in the Mexican Revolution, when he was sentenced to be executed by firing squad in 1915. He was shot eight times by soldiers, then shot straight in the head, and survived all of it. He ended up touring the America as El Fusilado, "The Shot One", until his death in 1976. This question is partly illustrated by the Goya painting 'The Third of May 1808' which depicts someone being shot by firing squad. The painting is described as the beginning of modern art, because it was the first time somebody showed the real horrors of war.

- The panel are asked to point to their mental protuberance. It is the chin, and comes from the Latin "mentis", which is your mental nerve which puts your teeth on edge. Snakes have a mental scale in their lower jaw. (Forfeit: Not there!)

- The panel are asked to point to their mamillary bodies. It is found between the brainstem and the cerebrum, and is to do with memory. (Forfeit: Not there!)

- Alan is asked to point to his vagina masculina. He cannot because it is inside him, and is a small indentation in the prostate, which enables ejaculation. (Forfeit: I don't have one)

- XL: In the 17th century, the people who were defeated in the American Revolution were the Spanish. Before the 18th century Revolutionary War, the Pueblo Revolt was a series of battles between various Native American groups and Spanish missionaries, which took place in New Mexico in 1680. Many of the locals did not like being told what to do by the missionaries, so revolted against Spanish religious, economic, and political institutions imposed upon them. The Pueblo Revolt is the only successful native uprising against a colonising power in North America. A holy man and war captain called Po'pay was publically whipped, and to organise his troops, consisting of a dozen groups speaking six different language, he sent out runners to all of the different areas with a knotted rope. Po'pay gave ordered to untie a knot every day, and when you untie the last one that would be the day to attack. His forces won, the Spanish missionaries were expelled for 12 years, and when the missionaries returned they were much more tolerant. Po'pay is the man credited for allowing the Pueblo groups to secure their traditions and languages to this day. (Forfeit: The British; America)

- XL: The best place to stand in your house when a nuclear bomb goes off five miles away is the corner of the room. The Protect and Survive leaflet, given out between 1974-80, advised you should stand in a doorway because the lintel would protect you. Being in a corridor or doorway is a bad idea because the hot winds will be fired through the narrow area. (Forfeit: Doorway)

- XL Tangent: Alan was in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1980s. The man who invented the CND symbol was inspired by a man standing with his arms outstretched in Goya's 'The Third of May 1808'. A photo is shown of a CND protest with two people wearing masks of Thatcher and Reagan in a shelter people were advised to make by the Protect and Survive leaflet, which consisted of a taking a door, lean it against a wall, and if anyone died you had to put them in a bin liner and leave them outside. Alan protested at Greenham Common, which is now once again a common. Sandi also protested at Greenham Common. To this day, the common still has missile silos.

- XL Tangent: When Sandi was in school in the USA in the 1960s, she was taught the duck and cover method, where you would lie under a table to protect yourself from the blast. It is better than getting up to look out the window at the blast, because the slower shock wave would shatter the windows.

Scores

- Michelle Wolf and Mark Watson: 2 points
- Aisling Bea: -30 points
- Alan Davies: -45 points

Broadcast details

Date
Tuesday 26th November 2024
Time
9pm
Channel
BBC Two
Length
45 minutes
Recorded
  • Tuesday 5th March 2024, 14:45 at Television Centre ('Volatile', with Aisling Bea, Mark Watson and Michelle Wolf.)

Cast & crew

Cast
Sandi Toksvig Host / Presenter
Alan Davies Regular Panellist
Guest cast
Aisling Bea Guest
Mark Watson Guest
Michelle Wolf Guest
Writing team
James Harkin Script Editor
Anna Ptaszynski Script Editor
Sandi Toksvig Script Editor
Will Bowen Researcher
Anne Miller Researcher
Mike Turner Researcher
Jack Chambers Researcher
Emily Jupitus Researcher
James Rawson Researcher
Lydia Mizon Researcher
Miranda Brennan Researcher
Tara Dorrell Researcher
Leying Lee Researcher
Manu Henriot Researcher
Lieven Scheire Researcher
Joe Mayo Question Writer
Production team
Diccon Ramsay Director
Piers Fletcher Series Producer
John Lloyd Executive Producer
Nick King Editor
Jonathan Paul Green Production Designer
Gemma O'Sullivan Lighting Designer
Howard Goodall Composer
Helen Ringer Graphics
Chris Reid Graphics
Sarah Clay Commissioning Editor

Video

What would you do if a volcano appeared in your back garden?

The panel discuss a local volcano. It would be pretty inconvenient.

Featuring: Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, Aisling Bea, Mark Watson & Michelle Wolf.

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