- 37 minutes ago
First broadcast 7th January 2011.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Phill Jupitus
Ronni Ancona
Robert Webb
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Phill Jupitus
Ronni Ancona
Robert Webb
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Oh, well, well, well, well, well.
00:03Howdy, howdy, howdy, doody.
00:06And welcome, welcome to a QI that's all about hypnosis, hallucinations and hysteria.
00:11And with me tonight are the hypnotic Ronnie Ancona.
00:18The hysterical Robin Wend.
00:24The histrionic Phil Jupiters.
00:30And his majesty, Alan Davis.
00:40With such a theme, we're all buzzing with excitement, of course.
00:44And Ronnie goes, you're feeling sleepy.
00:48And Robert goes, very sleepy.
00:53And Phil goes, your eyelids are heavy.
00:59And Alan goes, so, if I hypnotized you, but then cut off your leg, how much fuss would you make?
01:09Doesn't it depend what you've got in for the hypnosis for?
01:13I mean, if you'd gone in to stop smoking, I'd be a bit miffed, really.
01:18That's a very good point.
01:21Assuming, assuming you'd gone in because you had, you know, gangrene or you needed to lose your leg.
01:26But they've never used hypnosis as an anesthetic, have they?
01:30Surely that would be screaming in agony.
01:32Oddly enough, no.
01:33It was used before ether in the 1830s very commonly.
01:37Well, reasonably commonly at least.
01:38Once Mesmer had sort of, as it were, introduced the world to the idea of hypnotism.
01:44What seems to be the case is that most of the discomfort we feel,
01:48even in an operation like sawing off a leg, is the anxiety of pain.
01:53If you can relieve yourself of the anxiety, enormous amount of the pain goes.
01:57And a good example to prove this is people who are in some way allergic to or resistant to anesthetic
02:04and so can't be put under because it's too risky.
02:07And so they're injected with Valium, which is an anti-anxiety drug.
02:12And all it does is tranquilize them, doesn't send them to sleep.
02:15It just makes them feel less anxious.
02:18And you can do extraordinary things to someone in that condition.
02:20I think if I was going in for surgery, I'd feel quite anxious when I saw the man in the
02:25top hat with the crazy eyebrows.
02:27It would be a worry, I agree.
02:29But it has a long history.
02:32As I say, in the 1830s, there was a Scottish doctor who did a lot of operations in India
02:36where there's a really unpleasant disease called filioriasis.
02:39And it causes hydrosolese of the scrotum.
02:43Now, anything scrotal, you might say, is a worry.
02:45Makes your scrotum go into a triangle.
02:48No, that would be isosceles.
02:52This is hydrosolese.
02:54And he never ate darely again.
02:58These are large tumors.
03:00And the operation was so uncomfortable, people would go for years not daring to go to a doctor.
03:04But this meant the tumors grew very big.
03:06And when I say very big, oh, I mean 46 kilograms scrotum.
03:13People literally, there was a case of a man who was using his scrotum as a writing desk.
03:47Sorry, but that is true.
03:48A Scottish doctor whose name was Estelle, he would put them under and it worked.
03:52He saved a lot of discomfort.
03:53Your eyes are feeling heavy.
03:56Nor as heavy as my testicles, doctor.
04:00It's quite, you're kind of sort of suggesting that sort of a lot of pain is just a manifestation of
04:08anxiety, isn't it?
04:09Yeah.
04:09Yeah, I mean, the fact is pain is created by the brain.
04:12I mean, it's not a real thing.
04:13It's just information, isn't it?
04:14It's information.
04:15And if you have a brain can create it, the brain can be told not to.
04:19It's bloody sore information.
04:21It doesn't help if you, you know, land a big mallet on your thumb.
04:23It's just information.
04:24It's just information.
04:25It doesn't really help.
04:27I tried to be hypnotized to stop smoking once and he was such a nice man and it so wasn't
04:32going anywhere, I faked it.
04:34I know you mustn't.
04:35Even when it's a nice man, just to, you know, save the embarrassment, you mustn't fake it.
04:40But I did.
04:41Did it work?
04:42Do you smoke?
04:43Have you given up?
04:43No, no, it didn't.
04:44I did give up, but with prescription drugs, not with...
04:48Superb.
04:48Well, there we are, yes.
04:50Hypnotic anaesthesia can be surprisingly effective, though it seems to work mostly by helping you relax.
04:55You need answer only one of the following.
04:57What's the best way to hypnotize either A, an alligator, B, a tiger shark, or C, a chicken?
05:04I've seen them do it to sharks.
05:06And what do they do?
05:07That they lie on their backs or something.
05:09Exactly right.
05:10You flip it over.
05:10But I thought that if sharks have to keep moving in order to survive...
05:15Which is why whales have learnt to tip them over in order to make them suffocate and that actually will
05:19kill them.
05:20There's a very small hammerhead shark being...
05:22That is a toy shark.
05:24It's a toy shark.
05:26Or a really big diver.
05:31A frighteningly big diver.
05:33I think we'd have heard of him.
05:35I think we'd have to be honest.
05:36Leads are hay.
05:38I think I'd know how you do chickens.
05:40Yes.
05:41It's weird because it actually looks like you're oppressing them quite violently.
05:46But you have to hold them to the ground and draw a line.
05:49Yes.
05:49You draw a line from their beak.
05:51Yeah.
05:52Along.
05:52And they just stare at it.
05:56That's what they do.
05:58It's called tonic immobility in animals.
06:00And that is the example of chicken.
06:01There's another way of doing it.
06:02The chickens apparently...
06:03You take a stick or a paddle.
06:05In this case, this is a light flagellation paddle I happen to have in the house.
06:09And you fix eyes to it and you hold it up to it.
06:12And it will apparently stare at it forever.
06:14Though our producer tried it on his.
06:16We are the kind of show whose producers have chickens.
06:18That's how cool they are.
06:20And he says it didn't work at all.
06:22They just went off to eat things.
06:23You just made that up, didn't you?
06:25No, no.
06:26It is in all the books, it says.
06:28That is a way to hypnotise them.
06:30In all of the books.
06:31In all of the chicken hypnotising books.
06:34Yes.
06:35How many are there?
06:36Which is why you can't ever let your chickens watch the Muppets.
06:43Frogs, lizards, crocodiles, sharks.
06:45All going to a trance if they're turned over onto their backs and held there for just a few seconds.
06:49Rabbits and guinea pigs will do the same thing if you stroke them or roll them over a few times
06:53first.
06:54Do you know how you wake them up, rabbits and guinea pigs, if they're in that state?
06:57How you...
06:57You let a dog in.
06:58No, I...
06:59That might be doing it.
07:01The kind of way is to blow on...
07:03The kind of way is to blow on their nose.
07:05Blow on their nose?
07:06Yes.
07:07A little blow on the nose will do it.
07:09I have...
07:10What have I hypnotised?
07:11Do you know?
07:11Hugh Laurie.
07:12No.
07:13No.
07:14I did it on a television programme.
07:15When I was in Maine doing this documentary about America.
07:19What's the most famous animal going on?
07:20Maine.
07:21A lobster, man.
07:22A lobster.
07:22We have a lobster in here.
07:24There we are.
07:25There it is.
07:27Now, how did I do this?
07:31I stroked it.
07:32I remember.
07:33There you are.
07:34You stroke him here.
07:35That's it.
07:36He goes...
07:36He goes completely still.
07:38And I remember the one I did in Maine.
07:42It was...
07:42I could actually stand him up on his own.
07:44You can see it.
07:45Oh, there it is.
07:45Look.
07:45There, yeah.
07:46They seem smaller there.
07:49But there it is.
07:50He's completely still.
07:51He's not moving a muscle.
07:53Do you do that?
07:53A muscle.
08:01There he is.
08:02Completely still.
08:03And if I lift him up, his tail will come up usually.
08:05And he'll wake up.
08:10Have I killed you?
08:13Oh, there he is.
08:15He's all right.
08:16He's still asleep.
08:18Anyway.
08:19There we are.
08:21Oh, he's quite active now under there.
08:25So, dinner's sorted.
08:28He's going back to the zoo.
08:30Of course, we're going to throw him back into the sea.
08:33Naturally.
08:34You truly are a renaissance man.
08:37I wear tights.
08:38Put it that way.
08:40What about, though, I mean, that's humans hypnotising animals.
08:45Can animals hypnotise humans?
08:48There was a dog, Oscar the hypno-dog, who was, uh, who had a, there he is.
08:53Look.
08:55Those are pretty amazing eyes.
08:57I'm feeling it, I'm feeling it now.
09:00I'll go and get the biscuits.
09:04And the thing is, he could keep up that stare into a human's eyes for a very long time.
09:09And he's...
09:11Depending on what human wants to be stared at by that.
09:15Yes.
09:16Does he charge early?
09:17Pack it in, Oscar.
09:18Stop looking at me.
09:19Stop it.
09:20So, Hugh Lennon was his trainer.
09:23He did go missing in Edinburgh and a reward was posted for his return,
09:26although members of the public were warned not to look into his eyes.
09:31Does that sound like a publicity stunt to try and get tickets at Edinburgh?
09:35Oscar the hypno-dog is loose.
09:36Don't look at him, don't look at him.
09:38I've seen him.
09:39He's in the park.
09:41Presumably, when he's running around Edinburgh,
09:43if someone thought they'd find him, they go,
09:45it's Oscar the hypno-dog.
09:47I'm not the dog you're looking for.
09:51I'm a Pomeranian.
09:55So, yes, dogs can apparently hypnotise humans.
09:58Snakes, maybe not humans, but rabbits,
10:00they're said to be able to sort of freeze a rabbit by staring at them.
10:04They're very gullible rabbits, aren't they?
10:06Aren't they?
10:06They're quite grumpy rabbits.
10:09Grumpy?
10:09Yes.
10:10They can be aggressive.
10:10They're not supposed to be very good pets.
10:12They're very grumpy.
10:14I like those big Dutch ones that you can ride.
10:18Sure.
10:19Huge.
10:20They're massive.
10:21Okay, maybe not ride.
10:23Yeah.
10:23Right.
10:24Crush.
10:25That is a rabbit costume.
10:27A Dutchman wearing a rabbit costume.
10:31Okay.
10:31Okay, I'm wearing a shovel.
10:32It is time to go.
10:35I love rabbits.
10:38Oh, my.
10:38Wow.
10:39I'm thinking maybe I should have had a smaller celebrity.
10:43So, yes, many animals can be put into a trance, but it's probably best to practice on the ones that
10:49are lower down the food chain first.
11:19So, you're at death's door.
11:21That's my theory.
11:23That's my theory.
11:23It's, I love it.
11:25Very, very hard to disprove.
11:26It's hard to disprove.
11:27Except in quoting a letter from Admiral Beaufort, who gave us the Beaufort scale, too.
11:34Is he Beaufort?
11:35Beaufort.
11:35Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort.
11:37Yeah, he had a narrow escape from drowning in Portsmouth Harbour in 1795.
11:41He saw everything.
11:43Each circumstance minutely associated with home with the first reflections.
11:46They took a wider range.
11:47Our last cruise, a former voyage and shipwreck, my school and boyish pursuits and adventures.
11:51Thus, traveling backwards, every past incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection in retrograde succession.
11:57In minutest detail.
11:59And there are many examples of people talking about it.
12:02So, why would we think this happens?
12:04Is it just some sort of panic response?
12:06It's just like the brain just downloads everything.
12:10Yes.
12:11Or like a final disc clean.
12:12It's doing your best bits.
12:14Doing your best bits.
12:15Well, it's the montage.
12:17Maybe it's your brain trying to find a piece of your life that can help you in your present situation.
12:23Yes.
12:23Very good, Ronnie.
12:24That is the current and most convincing theory.
12:27That essentially, if you're in a crisis situation, your brain, which registers almost everything that happens to you in your
12:32life, not always consciously, it goes in.
12:35And something weird happens and it plays back all the incidents of your life to find a match, as it
12:41were.
12:42This happened and then this.
12:43There was a recent case of a man who was attacked by a great white shark.
12:46And he was just about to die and he remembered a DVD his son had been watching years before in
12:52which someone said, you know, if the shark comes, plunge your hands into the gills.
12:55And he did that and he saved himself.
12:58It's quite risky though, isn't it?
12:59Oh, yes.
13:00If you're on the brink of death and you're rerunning and you're like, no, not my dad's 70th birthday.
13:06No, no, no, not that time.
13:09Probably nowadays.
13:10Not that time.
13:11Well, the point is, I think, is that if you're a doctor or a fireman or something like that with
13:15a certain level of expertise, you're in a bad situation.
13:17All kinds of similar scenarios play out and with what seems to be uncanny instinct, you say, we need to
13:23do this.
13:24Sometimes even before the event has happened, before a building has fallen, because you've been in buildings where things have
13:28fallen and you've unconsciously registered a creek here, a bending of the wall there.
13:32What have you missed?
13:33And you say, get out from here.
13:34But the point is, when you're dying and you're drowning, there is nothing.
13:37And so your brain just, as you say, dumps everything.
13:40It tries every scenario that seems mismatched and people genuinely don't.
13:43It would be quite handy if you get the end of your life flashing before your eyes and then there's
13:47a Scottish woman who says,
13:48and now that life is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
13:52Yes.
13:53Or if you lose your keys, just put your face down in the basin and start drowning yourself until you
13:58get to the point where you last hundred.
14:02Did that work?
14:03That's quite fine.
14:04Yeah.
14:04How does that work?
14:07It would be terrible if you're drowning and then you, it's Topol's life.
14:12Yeah.
14:12Yes, that would be someone else's life.
14:14Oh no, Fiddler.
14:16I wasn't in Fiddler.
14:17Or Brian, bless it on the birds.
14:18What did you do on the trees?
14:20Oh God, he said, yay!
14:22I've been up Everest, you know.
14:24Do you think with rising crime that Death's Door has become more security conscious?
14:32Do you think they've got an entry phone or a couple of shades bansons?
14:37Well, we used to be able to leave Death's Doors open, but now we have kids coming in, knitting bodies,
14:42trinkies.
14:43You see people sitting for longly on Death Avenue saying, I put the wrong number in three times, I've got
14:48to wait an hour before it accepts my next input.
15:21Is there some way you wouldn't mind being turned away from there?
15:23Death's, PhD, CHT, DAPA.
15:26I mean, that's a pretty good series of, I would say.
15:30A hell of an anagram.
15:31Yeah, hell of an anagram.
15:33Is she invisible?
15:33Because there's nobody there.
15:34Is he an animal hypnotherapist?
15:37She is an animal hypnotherapist.
15:40She's a cat.
15:42Aye?
15:43Zoe D. Katzer is a cat with a PhD, a CHT, and that diploma.
15:50Oh, Zoe.
15:51Oh, yeah.
15:52I think Oscar's sitting opposite her.
15:55Yeah.
15:55It's a man called Steve Eichel, who is an academic, who wanted to demonstrate the ease with which you can
16:01get a doctorate online, or any of these apparently important professional hypnotherapy association qualifications, all of which were given to
16:13a cat.
16:13Oh, great.
16:14The point is, once you get one, you can then use the other to parlay until you get a whole
16:20list of them.
16:21And she has got a doctorate in counseling psychology from a mail-order university.
16:25The CHT is certified hypnotherapist, the National Guild of Hypnotists, no less, and the DARPA, DAPA, is a diplomat of
16:34the American Psychotherapy Association, both qualifications which are supposed to connote genuine professional standing.
16:41So there you are.
16:42So do be on the lookout, gentlemen and ladies, when you go to see them, if you can get a
16:46cat.
16:47It's terrible.
16:47My cat's only got a BA.
16:52It is astonishing, isn't it?
16:54There are also what are called diploma mills and degree mills, which give out either a fake diploma from a
17:00real university, or, as it were, a real one from a fake college that doesn't exist.
17:06Like, they make up one, they say Christ's College Oxford or something.
17:09Are those hats falling from the sky, or are they being, are there hands beneath them?
17:13Yes, there are.
17:14Is that how you get your hat, they're dropped out of a plane and you have to catch them?
17:17I'm sure it's in the air with your excitement at having got a degree.
17:21I like to think that underneath that photo there's about 60 cats.
17:26Well, the thing is, is that if you were a cat and you went, because of the tassels, you wouldn't
17:32leave alone, would you?
17:33You, you, you, you, you're so wouldn't.
17:42You can, I've got, erm, I've got diplomas for all of you, Alan.
17:45Oh, thanks very much.
17:46There you, you've got one.
17:47You can put that on the wall.
17:48That's worth.
17:48Abso.
17:49Ronny.
17:50Abso.
17:51It's a QI award.
17:52That would be of advanced banter.
17:53But it actually has, yeah, Robert.
17:55Do you get letters from the American Biographers Association, or something, and they say, erm, you have been selected as
18:03one of the men of the year.
18:05Oh, don't.
18:06That's a scam.
18:06By the American Biographers Association.
18:08You're for expertise in your field.
18:10All you have to do is pay $700.
18:12And it, and it says, yeah, if you would send $695, we'll send you a plaque.
18:18I've got 12.
18:21Well, there you are.
18:22Yes.
18:23Pseudo-credentialing.
18:24It's a big issue.
18:25Other qualifications, which the same Eichel who gave Zoe the cat, er, her, or managed to get her these qualifications.
18:31He found energy therapist qualifications easily got, er, past life regression therapist, and alien abduction therapist.
18:41It's just sad.
18:43Oh, yeah, I want to, yeah, I want to, yeah, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get a guinea pig and
18:47make it an alien abduction therapist.
18:49Show me where they probed you.
18:52Are you qualified for that?
18:54Yes, yes, I am.
18:56Yes, Zoe the cat is a cat, but that doesn't make her a bad person.
18:59Listen, I need your help.
19:00How can we persuade the audience to elect me pope without them noticing that we've done it?
19:08Um, that's odd.
19:12That's wrong.
19:16My hand is not that liver-spotted.
19:21I'm not having that.
19:23I'm not going to wear such a cheek, how can it?
19:25No, I wouldn't either, no, that's so odd.
19:27Um, is there a technique?
19:29Well, suppose I wanted to sell them something without telling them that it's...
19:32Some sort of mass suggestion.
19:33Subliminal, uh, advertising.
19:35Ah, subliminal advertising.
19:37Do you mean that?
19:38Do you mean that?
19:39You're sprawlingly, sprawlingly cruel of me to try and pull it out of you and then punish you for it.
19:45No, it is, the fact is subliminal advertising has never been shown to work.
19:49It's a complete myth.
19:50Although it's banned by most broadcasting authorities or FCC in America and things like that,
19:55it's not actually ever been shown to work.
19:57And in fact, the person who invented it in 1957, a man called Vickery, in 1962, he admitted he'd falsified
20:02the evidence.
20:03He claimed he'd used it and sold lots of cola and burgers by putting in a flash frame, a single
20:08frame, out of 24 frames a second.
20:11Obviously, the eye doesn't consciously register it.
20:14LAUGHTER
20:16Um, but it just hasn't been shown to work.
20:18I remember they did one in The Young Ones, in addition.
20:20They used to do it all the time in The Young Ones.
20:21Yeah, they did, didn't they?
20:22I'm going back to my childhood and, yes, I'm remembering it all now.
20:25Your childhood?
20:26Well, um, yes, Ronnie, deal with it.
20:29LAUGHTER
20:31Anyway, sound, what about audio subliminal messages?
20:34Do we know any stories of any famous...
20:36Oh, the court case is about backwards, backward masking, they call it.
20:40Yes.
20:40Which is, you know, satanic messages.
20:42Worshiping them.
20:43Which was Judas Priest?
20:44Judas Priest is the story that's perhaps the most alarming, was two boys who committed suicide, attempted suicide.
20:49Yes.
20:50And their parents took Judas Priest to court.
20:52They did, indeed.
20:53Do you know what the message was, supposedly, in the track?
20:55Er, it was...
20:57It said, do it, do it now.
20:59Do it, do it now, yeah.
21:01And so, Halford, as part of the court case, Halford went in with a load of records and played, played
21:07them backwards and then just read out a list of things that you could hear in records when played backwards.
21:12Yeah.
21:12Just to show how...
21:13He also said, I don't wish to paint myself as greedy, but if we were going to put a message
21:17in, it would be buy more of our records.
21:20He also said, do it doesn't mean kill yourself.
21:23Stephen, the song was called Suicide Solution.
21:25Oh, was it?
21:26Yeah.
21:31OK.
21:32All right.
21:33Finally, being in a pop quiz pays off.
21:37Oh, of course, yes.
21:38But they say that you could put things under your pillow.
21:41Students have lectures on tapes and they put them under the pillow while you're asleep.
21:45Yes.
21:46Hypnopedia, it's called, which I know sounds like...
21:50Sounds like interfering with a child while they sleep, but it's not.
21:53Yeah, we fought and we found one of them hypnophiles.
21:56Yeah.
21:57Hypnopedia is in Wikipedia, encyclopedia, learning, and hypnosleep.
22:02And there are pillows you can buy now that actually have speakers built into them, but frankly, there's no real
22:08evidence that it works in terms of what's being taught.
22:11But if you sell someone classical music and say, contains subliminal music, that will increase your self-confidence, it is
22:19shown that that will work, even if it's just the music.
22:21Back to the self-hypnosis thing, what about that thing where if you bang your head on the pillow the
22:26number of times?
22:27Do you know, weirdly, I found that worked.
22:29What's that?
22:29I found that when I used to do that, because to get up early to raid the kitchens and things
22:33like that and do stuff.
22:34I didn't ever do that, Stephen.
22:36If you want to wake up at four, you bang your head four times on the pillow before you go
22:39to sleep.
22:40Or you have a child.
22:40I know it sounds mad, but...
22:44Or you have a child, obviously, yeah.
22:47It's just the power of suggestion, this is the thing, isn't it?
22:50Yeah.
22:50But auto-hypnosis, it's if you keep telling yourself something's going to happen.
22:55Yes.
22:55A self-fulfilling prophecy.
22:57Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like auto-hypnosis, isn't it?
22:59It kind of is, yeah.
23:00So, other subliminal images have been seen.
23:02Lenin, for example, was seen by some in the Labour Party Rose.
23:07I don't know if you can...
23:09There.
23:09There's a sort of...
23:12Someone from Planet of the Apes.
23:14It is more like that, isn't it?
23:16But, there we are.
23:17So, yes, subliminal advertising doesn't, Stephen Fry for Pope, work.
23:22Seriously, that would be great, please.
23:23Anyway, what kind of behaviour would you expect from a superstitious pigeon?
23:28They always wear their feathers in exactly the same colour and in exactly the same order.
23:32Every day.
23:34Well, it is just that sort of superstition that pigeons have been found to exhibit.
23:39It's quite interesting.
23:41A very well-known American psychiatrist from Harvard called B.F. Skinner.
23:45He found that if you feed pigeons at predetermined intervals, the pigeons, because they can't quite predict when the food
23:53is coming, they seem to register what they were doing at the time the food arrived and repeat the action
24:00to make the food come next time.
24:02Which is a very human thing.
24:03It's like the humans blowing on dice before a game of crap.
24:06So, they will walk in anti-clockwise circles because maybe twice they were walking anti-clockwise and the food arrived.
24:13And they make the leap that that must be why the food comes.
24:16That's not superstitious.
24:17That's just hopeful.
24:18It's superstitious.
24:19It's kind of doing it.
24:20It's like last time I won this game, I was wearing one red sock, one blue sock.
24:23So, I'm going to wear a red sock and a blue sock again.
24:25And sportsmen do it all the time.
24:27So, it's just repeat actions that happen before.
24:30People do this.
24:31People do it all the time.
24:32People do it all the time.
24:33Yeah.
24:33It's called magical thinking where you think you're having an effect on the world.
24:36Exactly.
24:36And you're not.
24:37You're not.
24:38I can't watch this match because the last round I didn't watch having one.
24:43Yeah.
24:44That's right.
24:45Or I was standing up.
24:46I was standing up when England scored a goal.
24:48So, I've got to stand up for the rest of the match.
24:50I'm going to go to the toilet now.
24:51We'll definitely score.
24:52All that.
24:53We do it all the time.
24:54My uncle, when he lights the cigar, we always score.
24:56Yes.
24:57It happens always.
24:59I know.
25:00You're all dead now because I killed them.
25:03It's almost like a form of megalomania, isn't it?
25:06It is.
25:07It's a bizarre sort of way.
25:08That we can possibly affect the outcome.
25:10Yeah.
25:10But, I mean, that's the nature of superstition.
25:12It's quite hard, I'm afraid, it has to be said, to find any definition of superstition
25:17that doesn't also cover religion.
25:18I mean, it makes the same promises, the same suggestions of individual actions.
25:24It's quite fun to feel.
25:25You convince yourself that you're involved in the world somehow then.
25:28If I wear my lucky scarf, then I'm really in the game.
25:32Yeah.
25:33Yeah.
25:33You're just wearing a scarf.
25:34Yes.
25:35That's right.
25:35It is.
25:36And, of course, for each religion, we'll regard other religions as superstition and theirs
25:40as not being.
25:41I am religious, you are superstitious.
25:43In the Catholic Church, it is a sin to be superstitious.
25:46You'll change that when you're Pope.
25:48I'll change that when I'm Pope.
25:50I'll change that when I'm Pope.
25:51I'll change that when I'm Pope.
25:52Oh, no, stop.
25:55What are you going to do with the gold?
25:56And as Pope Stephen walks out onto the balcony underneath a ladder with a grenade with several black cats.
26:05Yes.
26:06The fact is, American psychologist B.F. Skinner managed to train pigeons to be superstitious
26:10by giving them arbitrary food rewards and keeping his fingers crossed and best of luck to him.
26:14Now, what's hysterical about wandering womb trouble?
26:21Hysterical as in, that's Janet Leigh in Psycho.
26:23It certainly is.
26:24She didn't have a wandering womb.
26:26She was being stabbed to death by a maniac.
26:28She was.
26:30She was hysterical for a very good reason.
26:32Yes.
26:32What does hysterical mean?
26:34Where does the word come from?
26:35Feeling sleepy.
26:37I think this is something to do with, like, hysterectomy.
26:40Yeah.
26:41Originally...
26:42The Greek word for uterus is...
26:44Yeah.
26:44...is hysteria.
26:45So the word hysteria...
26:46Yes.
26:47It was Hippocrates, also, that thought that there was a correlation between mental unbalance
26:55and the womb becoming...
26:57...wandering around the body.
26:58He thought the womb literally, like an animal, moved around the female body.
27:01I know because I've got a very good friend who's a gynaecologist who was telling me...
27:06But that is how the word hysteria came about.
27:08It was associated entirely with women from, as you say, the same route as hysterectomy.
27:13She's hysterical.
27:13Slapper.
27:14Slapper.
27:14Yes, Slapper.
27:15That was the attitude that men had towards women's illnesses, or particularly neuroses,
27:20that somehow was to do with their being women.
27:22And women of a certain age were associated with all kinds of what were called hysterias,
27:27hysterical responses.
27:29But it was Freud who said that almost for every real condition you might have, you could have a hysterical
27:36version which was created by the mind, but it was as real.
27:38It wasn't famed, that's the point.
27:40This was before hysterical became a synonym for hilarious.
27:44Yes.
27:45So you have a hysterical condition where it doesn't feel very hysterical to me.
27:49Yes.
27:50But there is such a thing as hysterical blindness and muteness.
27:55People will lose the ability to see, although physically there is nothing wrong with their eyes at all, in fact.
28:02Yes.
28:02So, what about Hitler?
28:04Yes.
28:04What about Hitler?
28:05You leave Hitler alone.
28:07Week after week, are we going to go at Hitler?
28:10Do we know about Hitler and blindness?
28:12I mean, he's not blind there, obviously.
28:14But do you know any stories about his blindness?
28:17No.
28:18I thought he was colourblind.
28:19No, in the First World War, after a gas attack, he apparently went blind and dumb for some time.
28:25Oh, God, that was close, wasn't it?
28:26Yeah.
28:27Well, unfortunately, he was in...
28:28Someone else would have taken his place.
28:30It was in hospital during that cause that he had the vision that he would lead Germany to greatness, unfortunately.
28:36But what's quite interesting...
28:37That went very well, didn't it?
28:38That vision.
28:39Yeah.
28:39Don't ignore...
28:40Don't listen to visions when you've just had a gas attack.
28:43Yeah.
28:44It would be terrible if that was actually an evil Labrador like Oscar and it just said,
28:48You will rule the world.
28:51And he's a hypno-dog.
28:52Hypno-dog, yeah.
28:53There was an American psychiatrist called Walter Langer who wrote a report on it during the war,
28:58which is quite interesting.
29:00He said both that he thought it was hysterical blindness and speechlessness.
29:04There were definitely that.
29:05But he also predicted...
29:08This is a Freudian analysis.
29:09That in Hitler's symbolic vision, as it were, Austria is his father, in 1914, old, exhausted, dying.
29:16While Germany is his symbolic mother.
29:19Young, vigorous, married to Austria and about to be violated.
29:22And whatever you make of this, it is undoubtedly the case that, unlike almost all Germans,
29:27Hitler called Germany Mutterland, not Vaterland, called him motherland, not fatherland.
29:32And this Langer went on to say that the most likely outcome of Hitler's life was that Hitler will commit
29:37suicide.
29:38Probably, he said, in a symbolic womb, which is quite, quite impressive piece of prophecy in a way.
29:45So maybe there is something to this Freudian lark after all.
29:48Anyway, there you are.
29:49Hysteria, as Ronnie rightly knew, used to be attributed to the womb roaming about the body, interfering with other organs.
29:55Doctors thought it would cause anything from a nervous breakdown to blindness.
29:58And now a question which will test your reflexes.
30:01What's the film, here, of the setting sun?
30:04All I want you to do is hit your buzzer at the moment the sun has dropped below the horizon.
30:11Speed it up, obviously.
30:20My leads are hay.
30:22It was, you got there first, sir?
30:28Well too late.
30:29Well too late.
30:31It's, that is the moment at which the sun is below the horizon.
30:35What?
30:35What we see is a mirage.
30:37I know it sounds crazy, but it's true.
30:40You're looking at me and you're saying, Stephen...
30:42Is this to do with how far away it is and you're seeing...
30:45It's to do with the bending of light and the eye not accepting it, essentially, but it is genuinely below
30:50the horizon.
30:50Physically, in other words, the earth has turned such that it is not there.
30:56I know you're looking very cross and upset and angry and that can't be true about it.
31:00But that's a film of it, though.
31:04I know, but you can get a film of mirages and there is nothing there.
31:08On the roadside, the water puddles.
31:09You can get a film of rainbows, yes.
31:11Yeah, I mean there, that's a photograph.
31:13But it's not there, there's no water there, there's no shimmering, it's just air.
31:17Now, I'll try and explain it to you.
31:19Light from the setting sun passes through our atmosphere at a shallow angle.
31:22It's gradually bent as the air density, I mean the pressure, increases.
31:25Not dissimilar to the image of your legs when you sit in a swimming pool.
31:28The effect is to artificially raise the sun in the last few minutes of its decline.
31:32And by coincidence, the amount of bending is pretty much equal to the diameter of the sun.
31:37So it's exactly, exactly as it's, you know, there that it's actually disappeared.
31:43I hate this show.
31:45Oh!
31:46Oh!
31:47Be interested and please.
31:49Because the sun is there.
31:51I know.
31:52And you're going, no.
31:55No.
31:56Here is the sun.
31:57Not there.
32:00Mirage.
32:01Mirage.
32:03Have you ever seen a mirage?
32:06Yes.
32:07Where?
32:07Well, in travelling through the desert in America, you see them all the time.
32:10I mean, you see the standard ones in the roads.
32:12I've seen what appear to be huge puddles of shimmering lakes of water, which are not there.
32:18You must have seen those in the roads.
32:19Yeah, but I grew up in Scotland.
32:21And they are there.
32:23Okay.
32:24Yeah.
32:26Fair enough.
32:27Yeah.
32:28In New Zealand, you get sun strike, quite a bad sun strike off the roads, causes accidents.
32:33And what does that entail exactly?
32:35Well, it's the sun.
32:35Because New Zealand is so low on the planet, if you see what I mean.
32:39And the sun comes through quite a lot of atmosphere to get to it.
32:44And at the angle of it, when it hits the road, causes a lot of blindness in the eyes of
32:48drivers.
32:50I dare say that the drivers in New Zealand, as they see the sun setting, are reassured to
32:55know that it's not there.
33:08Yes, the fact is, despite Phil's reluctance to understand it, that the setting sun is actually
33:14below the horizon at the moment that its lower edge seems to touch the sea.
33:18And so to the place where everything you think you know proves to be an illusion.
33:21Isn't the nightmare that we call general ignorance?
33:24Fingers on buzzers, if you'd be so good.
33:26Oh, yeah.
33:26What shape is this staircase?
33:28My leads are heavy.
33:30Yes, Phil.
33:31It's not there.
33:33Now, Phil.
33:41Very sleepy.
33:43Spiral.
33:44Oh!
33:47Oh!
33:50Very happy for you.
33:51My leads are heavy.
33:52Is it a helix?
33:53Yes, it's helical.
33:54Well done, exactly right.
33:56I know it's terribly pedantic, but the fact is that a spiral is when it gets bigger and
34:00bigger and wider and wider and wider, and a helix, it stays the same as a staircase does.
34:04I knew that!
34:05No!
34:06You just wanted the forfeit, didn't you?
34:09There you are.
34:10So, what's that?
34:12A double helix.
34:13A double helix, exactly.
34:14And that is...
34:15That is...
34:16What is that?
34:17Tell me what animal that is, Stephen.
34:18I can't tell you by looking at it and afraid.
34:20That is a hypno-labrador.
34:22Hypno-labrador's DNA.
34:25We've got a lot of it in our bodies.
34:27If it was all stretched out, how far would it reach?
34:29Is it something mega, like to the moon and back?
34:33It's so much more mega.
34:34A tenth of a light year, outside the solar system.
34:37That's how long, how much of it is.
34:3950 trillion cells, 23 chromosomes per cell, 220 million base pairs per chromosome.
34:45That really does kick that if you'd get your skin out.
34:48It's half a tennis court in the knackers, doesn't it, that one?
34:50Half a light year.
34:52Yeah.
34:52A tennis court!
34:54So, do you know about the Argentine bluebill, or lake duck?
34:57It has a part of its body that is corkscrew shaped.
35:00God, is it going to be its neck?
35:02It's not going to be its neck.
35:03It's legs.
35:04Nor its legs.
35:05It's, it's penises.
35:07That could be, yes, there are quite a few animals that have spirals.
35:10When they procreate, is it kind of spinning like a screw?
35:16And, if push comes to shove and you're in Argentina, with a bottle of Merlot.
35:29It's a win-double, because you get, you get your, you get your wine out, and you get a pleasure
35:33duck.
35:33I'd only say, you don't want any, you don't want any pleasuring in your wine, are you?
35:40Well, this is corked.
35:41Yes.
35:45You'd ask the wine waiter to bring you the bill.
35:47That's, um, no, but should.
35:49No.
35:50The, um, not only does it have a corkscrew, it has the longest penis, relative to its body size, uh,
35:57of any vertebra.
35:58It's the length of its whole body.
35:59Do you know that, or did the duck tell you?
36:01But what about the, uh...
36:03You should say no, it's as long as I am.
36:06What about the earwig? Hasn't the earwig got a penis on?
36:09But, the earwig doesn't have a brush at the end of its penis, like that animal does.
36:12A brush?
36:13It has a brush.
36:14Well, you can clean up after.
36:15Why do you think, what do you think, what, what do you think the brush is for?
36:21Get you out of the curtains.
36:22No.
36:23What do you think the brush is for, on the, on the late duck's penis?
36:27What is the one aim of the male of the species?
36:29Brushing the, uh, feathers out the way of the lady ducks doodah.
36:32No.
36:34What is the purpose of males?
36:35I'm sorry, the lady, that's Narnie.
36:36Releasing spermatozo into the, to...
36:39Yeah, but releasing yours.
36:42Oh, right.
36:42Not anybody else's.
36:43That's why you fight, males fight with other males fight.
36:45Though the brush is to remove any sperm from a previous drake that may have been there.
36:50No, stop it.
36:50So you clean out.
36:51You clean out the previous sperm, so it's yours.
36:55A little sprinkling.
36:57A little sprinkling.
37:00A little sprinkling.
37:02The nightmare is that the, the lady duck, her vagina...
37:06The lady duck.
37:07Her vagina is corkscrewed, but it's corkscrewed in the opposite way.
37:11Oh, what a nightmare!
37:12So you get frustrated.
37:14Can't believe it.
37:14Left down Fred at this time of the night.
37:18It is quite astonishing, isn't it?
37:20It really is.
37:21I feel bad when talking about that duck.
37:22You know what, and you know the other thing, Stephen?
37:24Male ducks imperial, lady ducks metric.
37:26Nightmare.
37:28So true.
37:30Ridiculous.
37:30There you are, nature.
37:32Wonderful nature.
37:34Erm, so, strictly speaking, a spiral staircase is actually helical.
37:38So, why are there so many lavatories in the Pentagon?
37:42Er, er, er, er, one each?
37:45One each?
37:46Do you know how many people work in the Pentagon?
37:48Thousands.
37:4923,000.
37:50Whoa!
37:51There aren't 23,000 lavatories, so, you know, I'm afraid it's a really ghastly reason.
37:55Where is it?
37:56Virginia.
37:57Virginia.
37:58Virginia.
37:58Virginia was a southern state, and it had laws.
38:03Oh, no.
38:04Oh, no.
38:04Oh, no.
38:05Racial segregation.
38:06It was a law that you had to have one lavatory for white people and one for black people.
38:11So there were double the number.
38:13I'm afraid it's true.
38:13It's a horrible truth.
38:15It shouldn't have happened, because it was built in the 40s under the presidency of FDR,
38:20who had specifically outlawed racial segregation in federal, because he couldn't legislate
38:26for the states, but he could at least say that no federal building.
38:28And so when he arrived for his first inspection, he was told that he was furious that there were
38:33all these lavatories.
38:34Well, it's not very PC, that's true, but have you ever been for a queue in the ladies' loo?
38:39I mean...
38:39So it's nice to you that there are so many...
38:41Yes, in a way.
38:42You racist.
38:43No.
38:45They didn't actually go through with it.
38:47I mean, although they built them all for that reason, they were banned from using it,
38:51and they were never racially...
38:52And look at all the tennis courts they've got as well.
38:55That centre bit alone, just to give you a sense of the scale, is five acres.
38:59Just the middle bit.
39:01Seventeen and a half miles of corridor, and these 284 lavatories.
39:06Six separate zip codes, just the Pentagon, but apparently it takes only seven minutes
39:12to walk from one place to another.
39:15Only one cleaner they have.
39:17Yes, poor darling.
39:19Racial segregation in Britain, did it ever happen in the Second World War?
39:25I assume yes, judging by that.
39:27For one reason and one reason only.
39:29Because of the Americans.
39:30Because of the Americans.
39:31And in fact, it is at least something we can be perhaps vaguely proud of,
39:34is that the Americans in the bases who would use pubs insisted that they have pubs of whites
39:41and blacks only, and the British public said,
39:43we're not going to do that.
39:44And the white Americans would come in and see black people there and start fights,
39:47and the British would fight with the blacks against the...
39:50We just thought it was intolerable.
39:52Do you know those propaganda films that they showed American GIs
39:56who were going to be stationed over here before they came,
39:59where, sort of, with a little old lady coming into a railway carriage
40:05and there's a black GI and a white GI,
40:07and she says, oh, you must come out for some tea, both of you.
40:10And the voiceover is, you know, you know, this would never happen in our country,
40:14but you will have to be prepared.
40:15And they were preparing GIs that the British would...
40:18The British would invite black people.
40:20Yes, yes.
40:20Yes, preparing them for the horrors of tea.
40:24Yes.
40:25It's all rather eye-watering to think that in our parents' lifetime
40:28such a thing might have happened.
40:29You may be offered buns.
40:31Yeah.
40:33These are safe to eat.
40:35Anyway, there we are.
40:36They built twice as many restrooms as they needed in the Pentagon
40:39so they could keep them racially segregated.
40:41Name something invented by Vyacheslav Molotov.
40:45Very sleepy.
40:48A Molotov cocktail?
40:50Yes!
40:51Woo!
40:54Woo!
40:56Woo!
40:57Woo!
40:59He didn't invent the Molotov cocktail.
41:01He invented the slow, comfortable screw against the wall.
41:10Which is drinking there, you may say.
41:11Yes, having one right now.
41:12Yeah.
41:13Vina colada.
41:14Well, he invented some grim things like death lists,
41:17there's a Molotov line rather like a Maginot line,
41:19a defensive line, various other things.
41:21He was a Bolshevik.
41:21He was a Bolshevik.
41:22He was the foreign minister under Stalin and all the way...
41:26He lived till 1986.
41:27Very exciting job.
41:29It certainly was.
41:30Foreign minister under Stalin.
41:30I can't imagine.
41:32Absolutely.
41:33Every day.
41:33What are we going to do today?
41:34I don't know.
41:35Yeah?
41:35He hasn't woken up yet.
41:36The fact is he claimed his country in the war against Finland
41:39was dropping food parcels when in fact it was dropping cluster bombs.
41:42So the Finns called them Molotov's bread baskets,
41:46these bombs that came down.
41:48And when they fought against the Soviet tanks,
41:51don't forget the Finns beat the Russians.
41:52It was quite an amazing war.
41:54They used petrol bombs and they said, you know,
41:56these are Molotov cocktails to go with the bread you're giving us.
41:59So it was a kind of their joke.
42:01But they humiliated Russia, Finland.
42:03It was an extraordinary achievement, really.
42:04Very, very well done.
42:05Yeah.
42:06Very well done, Finland.
42:07Absolutely.
42:08Which brings me to the real matter of the scores.
42:10And my goodness, are they interesting or not?
42:12Well, they are quite interesting.
42:15I'm afraid in fourth place with minus 32,
42:18it's Robert Webb!
42:25And in third place with minus 17,
42:30Ronnie Ancona.
42:35In second place, Alan Davis with minus eight.
42:38OK.
42:42Which means our runaway winner, our solar sceptic,
42:46with minus two, Phil Jupiter.
42:57That's all from QI.
42:59So it's goodnight from Ronnie Robert, Phil, Alan and me.
43:01And I will leave you with this thought.
43:03You will tune in again next week.
43:05You will.
43:06Goodnight.
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