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00:00Thank you
00:30Good evening, and welcome to QI, where tonight we'll be struck by wave after wave of, well, waves.
00:39Making waves, it's Phil Wang.
00:44Surfing the waves, it's Sarah Pascoe.
00:50Mewing the waves, it's Tom Allen.
00:54And already waving a white flag, it's Alan Davis.
01:00Let's wave hello to our guests.
01:06Phil goes.
01:10Ooh, Sarah goes.
01:15Tom goes.
01:20And Alan goes.
01:21Bye, bye, baby, baby, goodbye, baby, baby, bye, bye.
01:29Right, let's dive right in with question one.
01:31What is 4.8 inches long, begins with W, and is guaranteed to invigorate a frigid hamster?
01:39Phil Wang.
01:41Phil Wang.
01:43Phil Wang.
01:44LAUGHTER
01:45APPLAUSE
01:47We're off and running.
01:49The experiments have proved very successful.
01:51Yeah.
01:52What were you going to say, Phil?
01:53A warm hamster, perhaps?
01:54Oh.
01:55A heated up one.
01:56Yeah, mine just gently microwaved.
01:58LAUGHTER
01:59Can I just say that, out of nowhere, that is exactly the right answer?
02:01Oh!
02:02Oh!
02:03APPLAUSE
02:04I thought we were all going to rip into you because 4.8 inches is too big for a hamster.
02:07Is this a monster hamster?
02:08OK, so I didn't necessarily say that the hamster was 4.8 inches, did I?
02:09I said, what is 4.8 inches long, begins with a W, and is guaranteed to invigorate a frigid hamster.
02:22Wheel!
02:23No, it was the microwave.
02:24You got the right answer and now I'm having to tell you what it was.
02:37But microwave doesn't start with W.
02:39Well, it is the waves that start with W.
02:41Oh, it's going to be a long night, isn't it?
02:44LAUGHTER
02:45It is the waves that start
02:54The very first domestic sized microwave oven was invented to bring half-dead hamsters back to life. Oh
03:03So quick primer on how microwaves work. Anybody know how they work do they heat things up from the inside out?
03:08So they have electromagnetic waves and by definition the wavelength can be anywhere from a millimeter to a meter
03:15But they fire a wavelength of 4.8 inches with our thing that I asked about and that is just the right size
03:22For the energy to be absorbed by the food or in this case by the hamster
03:27So the energy in them is transferred to the food and don't try this at home
03:33No, no, it's a very bad idea
03:39Frequency of microwaves that make the water molecule shake and that's what heaters. Yes, you're absolutely right telling
03:44It was really in-depth there Phil. Yeah, I thought I was just coming here to mess around. Yeah
03:49But you knew about the frequency of water molecules
03:52I can't believe you've advised for the test
03:56So 1950s there was a British scientist called James Lovelock and he was working on a project to freeze and then
04:03Reanimate cell tissue. Okay now you can see that that could serve all sorts of useful medical purposes
04:09So preserve tissues for transplant would be a good example
04:12So I don't think you'd be allowed to do this now. He gave hamsters an hour-long ice bath of minus five degrees Celsius
04:22Yeah, it was not good. The heart stopped beating they stopped breathing and what you said a lot of the water in their body froze to ice
04:29So they've got this for us in hamsters and I like this they experimented with various ways of reviving them
04:35He tried throwing them out with intense beams of light and and this is all I've got on this hot spatulas
04:43I think it explains itself really really. Yeah, weirdly it didn't work and some of them sounds like a seedy late-night show doesn't it?
04:51cooking based
04:57Anyway, it won't surprise you to learn that some of these poor hamsters then got severe burns
05:02Then Lovelock decided that he would try firing microwaves at them now
05:06I mean what on earth is going through his mind at that point?
05:09I don't know. I don't know. He's frozen them. He's tried to heat them up with
05:13hot spatulas
05:15And now he's going do you know what? Let's just ding them in the microwave
05:19He had only stuff from the kitchen
05:24Cutlery drawer
05:27Oh, thank goodness. He didn't have an air fryer
05:29That was next
05:33You have to understand there were no domestic microwaves at this time
05:36The only microwaves were owned by the government who'd used them for various purposes like radar and stuff anyway
05:42He fired microwaves at the hamster which was frozen and after a few seconds it got up and started wandering around
05:51Anyway, he never used it for cooking a lovelock. He just stuck to the hamster thing
05:54You think it'd be quite how you'd be exhausted at the end of the day. It would have been really handy for him to have a microwave meal
06:00The person who thought of actually building a similar thing specifically to cook food
06:05Was an american physicist called percy spencer during world war ii
06:09But the one he made weighed over 340 kilograms and was six foot tall
06:13So
06:15Possibly not the one for your kitchen i would say also it was designed so like organ transplants and things could be
06:21Imagine waiting there on the trolley about to have it done. Yeah, and then you hear
06:25ping
06:28It's ready
06:30What would be worse is if they said do you mind if we try some hot spatulas?
06:33Hot spatulas must be good for something it must be must be a few people who've had heart transplants and it's still a little bit cold in the middle
06:45Take it out and stir it halfway
06:49Now on to crime waves imagine you are a full-time
06:53wig thief
06:55What would be your technique?
06:57Oh, i've failed so many times
07:02It's harder than it looks what worries me about this question is the full-time aspect of it
07:07So you'd have to make a lot of money what's a time in the history when you might have made a lot of money from
07:12Georgian times yes, so where are we were in the in your face phil
07:19Why am i the enemy because we're doing history now and we're all playing for ourselves
07:22It's humanities no, oh no bring it back to math
07:29So 18th century there's a wave of wig thefts
07:34Right because they're worth stealing right every day powdered wigs nothing special cost equivalent of 100 quid today
07:40But there were some that were so elaborate that they would be 5 000 pounds in today's money
07:45And that's where we get the expression big wig from he's a bit of a big wig
07:48So what would your technique be do you think first i would get a monkey for some reason
07:55Yes, that is one way of doing it they often train small children and animals to steal them
08:00So you might get for example a child in a basket carried on somebody's shoulder be just the right height
08:07To whip the wig off and then the wig snatching team would run in opposite directions
08:11Wig snatching team
08:12I know I would be more subtle so first thing
08:15I might not want the person who's wig i'm stealing to know so i'd want to swap it for something of the same weight
08:20Really really quickly like indiana jones just the yeah yeah on the head yeah
08:25Or i would pretend i was a wig inspector and say um you've contravened some rules
08:32For wigs also i've got i think you've got fleas can i get rid of them for you
08:37And then i've got it haven't i or what about if you put um velcro on the inside of a of a tunnel or a bridge and
08:46As people walked through they'd be like lovely going through here going through here suddenly in the light
08:51Yeah it's gone where is it it's stuck in the tunnel but by that point it's too yeah you've closed the tunnel
08:56Close the tunnel yeah you've only got to wait 200 years for somebody to invent velcro in your office
09:02I like the people who go through the tunnel going going through here going through here
09:06Yes that's what i do in tunnels i would run up and say your wig's on fire it's on fire it's on fire it's on fire and then i'd grab it yeah
09:14Imagine being how undignified it would be like don't you you give me my wig back i know what you're doing you're trying to steal my wig
09:22Going through here going through here stop that man he's got my wig
09:26So jostling somebody was one way of doing it you get two boys and a dog for example one boy jostles a
09:31Beweegged man the other grabs the hairpiece tosses it to the dog and they all go off in different directions
09:34So you might see a dog running past with a wig on
09:39Why do you think wigs were so popular people had terrible heads
09:45Because there's no conditioner back then so everyone's hair looked terrible
09:50A lot of it's to do with syphilis syphilis was rampant it caused men to lose their hair
09:56Whaaat
10:03I don't know what you mean
10:06Wig crime why did it stop
10:09Wigs went out of fashion correct
10:11Two points
10:13So there was a supposed wave of detergent theft in the united states in 2015 there was supposed to be a great wave of people were stealing it
10:19They had to lock it to the shelves
10:21Was that because of drugs?
10:22Well so there was one police officer who said he had seen people buy drugs in exchange for sort of six bottles of detergent
10:29Like the dance doorstep challenge isn't it?
10:34Would you consider swapping your usual heroine
10:37It's something everybody needs it's untraceable it's easy to steal you can get rid of all the evidence
10:52I was in the supermarket the other week and the bottles of olive oil
10:56Were in perspex cases lock boxes wow on the shelf because they were 10 pounds each
11:04That's the state we're at now. I always thought like the price of when people talk about the price of oil going up
11:08I didn't know they meant extra virgin
11:11Oiling yourself up for a hot spatula is more expensive
11:15We'd want to be oiled up if you had a hot spatula
11:24In 18th century london it was easier for crime to pay
11:33Yeah, I like that it kind of slid off the edge of that noise
11:37Now what wouldn't you want to find in a hairdresser's pocket?
11:41Uh my husband's phone number
11:45I'm not saying they're all hussies no some of them are statistically
11:52More hair that they stick back on when you're not looking because then you've got to come back
11:57What happens is you go off on a tangent and get quite close to the real answer?
12:01Okay, the whole show is about waves what were waves early waves in the hair perms perms absolutely right
12:08Early perms short for permanent wave and they were sometimes called pocket perms by hair stylists
12:14Because it was such rough chemicals that what would happen is that large chunks of hair would break off
12:20And the stylist instead of telling you that
12:24Would grab it and not want you to know and stick it in their pocket. So you yeah, and you were sticking up from earlier
12:32Have you ever had a perm? Have you had a perm? I wanted a perm mum wouldn't let me. Why?
12:37Because she's a bitch
12:39Well, you'd be a very good therapist then
12:51Just right to the heart people in one question
13:00My mum's I'm under such strict instructions to never mention her in any of my comedy
13:05All right, and I'm trying so hard and I can't believe that slipped out
13:09I can't believe that slipped out
13:12She does watch qi and she's a really lovely woman. What's her name? Gail
13:16Gail, can I just say we'd like to dedicate this whole show to you?
13:21And we're sending sarah home with a perm
13:27So the very first perm machine was invented by a hairdresser called charles
13:30Nessler in 1909 in paris
13:36That's a milking machine
13:39This thing is he didn't really bother about health and safety his wife was his very first volunteer and he burnt all her hair off
13:47Oh no
13:48Yep scalded and blistered her scalp several times
13:50He blistered her scalp is so funny
13:52And
13:57Sorry
14:00He basically applied an alkali substance to his client's hair so he started with cow's urine
14:08Later moved to borax that is the chemical we use today in laundry detergent and for rat poison
14:14Um, and then he wrapped hair around heavy rollers which were 100 degrees centigrade
14:18But each one of those rollers weighed a kilo
14:21And so he had to have that contraption the counterweights to try and take the strain off the head and they had to sit like that for six hours
14:28It's impressive she won miss america without on her head
14:31Now can you recommend a reliable way of having a brain wave
14:40I always find just as i'm about to go to sleep the most relaxed i could be while still conscious that's when
14:45I'll think of business people say that they call it the shower principle instead of being in water
14:50Okay, that's that's big so between you you've had an idea which is exciting
14:55So water and being on the edge the precipice of something sitting on the edge of a bath
15:01I
15:05That's how they came up with the idea for the towel
15:09There's a professional inventor in tokyo called dr yoshiro nakamatsu
15:14And he comes up with his best ideas underwater
15:17Okay, but his method is to bring himself to the brink of drowning right he believes that the lack of oxygen is what engenders his creativity
15:26He says half a second before death. I visualize an invention and he dives down with the waterproof
15:32Notebook and pencil his own invention and he sketches out his ideas. He's applied for three and a half thousand patents in his time
15:38These are his boots that he invented. What do you think they do?
15:42Are they for stealing wigs?
15:45100% could do that because they're just for bouncing so that was his idea. He nearly died for that
15:51Yeah, so does someone else wake him up like who's in charge of the okay, he's about to die get him out
15:57I think he just comes out of the water at that. So he's in control of all of this. This is the theory until he died
16:02I mean unless he's very best idea and we never would know stays for an extra half a second
16:07It's kind of like auto erotic asphyxiation but for ideas
16:11He runs into dragons den sopping wet
16:26In his soy sauce spray bottle I think is very clever. You can evenly spritz your sushi. That's quite good. Well, that's a good idea
16:32Yeah, it's not worth nearly dying is it no when there's other ways of getting soy sauce on things like those little fishes
16:39Yeah, they are good. Yeah, but you get the rice the rice gets soaked and it falls apart
16:44I don't mind if he downs by accident because that's a really good invention
16:49Okay, he also invented an electromagnetic condom again
16:55Does it cure syphilis asking for a friend
17:02Oh
17:06Is that just so you can find true north is that?
17:11Currently what do I know the motion of copulation induces a small current in the bloodstream and that increases pressure?
17:17Would you have to plug it in?
17:26Darling you don't want to be plugged into the mains well, that's how that's what i'm thinking
17:29Yeah, you're going to have to get out an extension lead
17:32What I love is that the elves know they're sending me a message saying it's wireless. Thanks guys
17:43Anyway, he calls himself dr nakamats
17:46Since he was 42 he has taken a photograph of every single meal that he has eaten
17:52Yes, I'm glad he said meal I don't know what he was going to say
17:58I mean have you been on instagram? That's what everyone's doing
18:02Did he invent that as well?
18:05She's been doing that since he was 42 he was in his mid-90s
18:08Oh wow
18:08But he analyses his food and lifestyle and says he will reach the age of 144
18:13Oh
18:14There is an extraordinary culture in japan though of sort of curious ideas
18:17They have a word for it called chingdogu and it means weird tool the selfie stick is one that came out of japan
18:241995 20 years later was you know they're ubiquitous. There is a hay fever hat
18:33So you've each got a prop next to you see if you can guess what they are for
18:37These are weird tool inventions that hay fever hat is by kenji kawakami. I mean mine are
18:43Right
18:45So phil
18:49That is a daddy nurser
18:51It's called the daddy nurser is great
18:52But actually there's all kinds of people who might want to breastfeed their children who can't for whatever reason
18:57People who adopt or people whose milk just doesn't come in or they don't have a big enough supply
19:01So I know it's really silly but it's also quite a beautiful invention
19:04Right what have you got ellen? I mean they're plastic glasses and they've got little funnels on them
19:08Mm-hmm. So you could pour
19:12Um
19:13Eye drops is exactly right darling. They are eye drop funnel glasses so that you don't spill
19:24Together alan we could get some pretty precise milk in those eyes
19:27You're getting very clean eyeballs
19:34What have you got sarah?
19:35Well i've got a toilet plunger but it's got a ribbon on so you know it's a girl
19:41What do you think you might do with it though it's not a toilet plunger i can tell you that
19:44Is this to get my milk to come in?
19:46It is a portable subway strap so what you do is you're on the subway
19:51You stick it to the roof no i worry it's not going to be oh hello
20:01So if you put it above your head yeah it would be like
20:05I see what you mean so just yeah when you have to get off that must be difficult
20:13Right what have you got darling now there should be some toasters oh yes there is oh
20:17I didn't know if that was sarah's i thought you'd ordered a snack
20:22Open the stick oh oh yes and have a look oh i bet i know what this is going to be is it butter
20:28It's a butter stick for buttering your toast oh look it works oh that's good oh look it's lovely
20:35And would you take this with you to events
20:37It's so qvc you know it's so elegant i think if i saw somebody with that i would think gosh i wish i was them
20:54Then you can do a little bit on your wrists and your neck and then you smell a bottle all day long
20:58True maybe put it on your spatula
21:02Or if you are swimming the channel you could put it on your chest
21:04Yeah
21:06It's a really good idea i think we're all trying to use less single-use plastic though aren't we
21:10You could make it of wood or another fabric which was a material which was more
21:15Denim
21:16Denim
21:16There's a lot of jeans get ripped
21:19I'm convinced yeah i think there's a market in that
21:22I can't understand why the two of you have not made a fortune so far
21:26I've got other things as well what's that those are just tissues in case you get butter on you now
21:30Right it's time to wrangle with the tangle that is general ignorance fingers on buzzers please
21:38What happened when war of the worlds was first broadcast on the radio
21:43Everybody panicked they thought it was real
21:45They set you up man they set you up
21:50Is it the case that it was a news bulletin about it that caused the panic and not the actual broadcast
21:57I mean the whole thing is a sort of myth that's built up around it
22:00So orson wells who you can see directing this is a rehearsal and you can see him directing
22:03Because it was about an alien invasion and people thought it was real
22:06Well they didn't they didn't it's 1938 it was trailed for weeks as fiction and
22:11Welles told people before the broadcast and after the broadcast that it was fiction
22:15It was interrupted four times to tell the listeners it's just a play
22:20And anyway only two percent of the population listened to it aliens would say that though wouldn't they
22:25They were invading they would say it's just a play
22:28Imagine if that happened with other tv programs imagine if like every five minutes in gavin and stacey they had to tell me and go
22:34I'm not really called this my name's james
22:38There are very few isolated instances wells agreed to compensate one man from massachusetts for a pair of shoes
22:44Since he had spent the money he had saved for a pair of shoes
22:48To get a train ticket to escape the martians and he said i'll buy you some shoes because you're an idiot
22:55Ten years later there was an actual riot after a radio adaptation of the same play in quito ecuador
23:02But the you know this was much more understandable there'd been no warnings there was a sister newspaper that had deliberately posted fake
23:10ufo sightings the play used impressionists to pretend to be actual politicians and so on and that riot did result in seven deaths
23:17but the original
23:191938 um everybody was pretty much fine now where would you find the longest heat wave in living memory
23:28sahara desert that's hot isn't it they don't have
23:34Spain have you seen a place in the sun
23:38you remember our japanese inventor docker nagamatsu oh yeah japan and the underwater doctor
23:45Underwater underwater is the longest heat wave on earth was in the north pacific so off the western coast of the united states
23:51It lasted 711 days from 2014 to 2016 so we get a large mass of unusually warm water
23:59It's basically a heat wave for the sea oh i just thought it was someone weed in the water
24:04Which is very bad when it happens so algae thrives which is very bad news for lots of species like salmon
24:09And they swim away to somewhere so they need to put their arm in and just swoosh it about yeah
24:13Just keep getting it moving the other end of the bath
24:16But if the fish go because it's too hot or it's too unpleasant then the seabirds die
24:22And during that heat wave it was the cause of the biggest known mass die off of a single species four million guillemots died
24:29So I mean we need to pay attention the way in which marine heat waves are defined is quite different to land heat waves land heat waves
24:34It's a period of at least five days when temperatures are at least five degrees above average
24:40So 2013 antarctica had a heat wave reached heights of minus 30 degrees celsius
24:47The longest heat wave that we know was in india and that lasted in 2024 lasted for 24 days there was a british heat wave
24:531976 which was
24:56Well, oh my goodness, and so there was a minister called dennis howell and he was made the minister of drug
25:01Oh
25:04Look at the colour of his bath water
25:08He was charged by the then prime minister james callaghan to persuade everybody to use less water and even
25:14Persuaded to do a rain dance on behalf of the nation outside number 10. That's when politicians really gave it their all
25:21Anyway days later there was an enormous amount of rain after his dance and he was made minister of floods
25:27Are they not taking it seriously in the old days? I don't know because two years later he was the minister of state for snow so
25:35He did all the weather. Yeah, and this was a professional picture. This wasn't like
25:40This wasn't like leaked
25:42I don't know if it's his tinder profile
25:46What's the largest animal in the world that's not a whale?
25:51Oh
25:53Christopher biggins
25:58I love christopher biggins biggest non-whale on the planet. Is it still in the water though? Yes
26:06I'd say an octopus because they've got those really long tentacles haven't they okay?
26:10I can tell you it's about one and a half times the length of a london bus
26:13It's always buses isn't it? It's always buses
26:16Okay, the biggest non-whale on the planet is a whale
26:20Shark we're always talking about buses. Yeah, right and I don't want to do that
26:25So what we're going to do is we are going to use people
26:28So what I do when I come out beginning of the show, I learn the names of everybody in the audience
26:34Which is nice because then I can speak to them so joe where's my friend joe right?
26:38So joe is going to hold up a sign at this end. I want to show you
26:42How big a whale shark is and then where is my friend neil?
26:47Thank you neil darling. So neil's going to stand up
26:49So from neil to joe that is the size of a whale shark
26:56However, this is not even cracking into the top 10 of animals
27:00Obviously, we have to go to the large blue whale for something really big
27:04And I don't think we've ever been able to do this before but my darling could you go all the way to that wall with your sign
27:11Thank you so much neil and if he walks all the way to that wall
27:16There that is the size of a blue whale. Do you not think that is remarkable?
27:21And we wanted to show you rather than tell you it's just so many buses. So well done boys. Thank you so much
27:26Thank you
27:33All of which wibbling and wobbling brings us to the straight matter of the scores. Oh is it the end?
27:40You won't want to know the end because in last place
27:43All washed up with minus 27 it's tom
27:53In third place on the brink of a wipeout with minus 19 it's sarah
27:59In second place wavering on the edge with minus eight it's phil
28:02Oh
28:06Our winner tonight riding the wave with a whole minus four
28:22So i wave goodbye to sarah tom phil and alan and i leave you with this wise crack from the late former u.s
28:28First president jimmy carter my esteem and the country has gone up substantially
28:34So that now when people wave at me they use all their fingers
28:38thank you
28:58Thank you
29:00Thank you
29:02Thank you
29:04Thank you
29:06Thank you
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