- 5 hours ago
First broadcast 24th October 2014.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Sue Perkins
Frank Skinner
Josh Widdicombe
Andrew Boothroyd (as Professor Andrew Boothroyd of the Physics Dept. Oxford University)
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Sue Perkins
Frank Skinner
Josh Widdicombe
Andrew Boothroyd (as Professor Andrew Boothroyd of the Physics Dept. Oxford University)
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01Good evening!
00:05Welcome to Q.I.
00:08and to an evening of levity, let's see who's got the light stuff.
00:13The light fantastic Sue Perkins!
00:18The light-footed Josh Whittacombe!
00:24The lightly armed French Skinner!
00:31And the light's on, but nobody's home.
00:34Alan Davies.
00:40So, light up your lamps.
00:42And the Latin L, which is, of course, 50 in Roman numerals,
00:46if you can tell me what they have in common,
00:49all these little buzzer noises.
00:52Sue goes.
00:54Josh goes.
01:00Frank goes.
01:03And Alan goes.
01:08Any thoughts?
01:10They're all noises made by Jeremy Clarkson during the intimate act.
01:17We've kept you two apart whenever we've done it for good reasons.
01:22Yeah.
01:22He's got an owl.
01:23He howls like an owl.
01:26He squeal like a pig.
01:31It definitely, definitely ends.
01:38That's the final rip for the founder.
01:42It's hard not to say that you probably...
01:44That's when Richard Hammond pops out.
01:49That's the final rip of Stonewashed Denim, isn't it, that noise?
01:53Would it help if I said it was L for law?
01:55Law with a W, not an O-R-E.
01:57No.
01:58Jewish law, which is known as for eating...
02:01For kosher.
02:02Kosher.
02:03And I said levity was our theme.
02:06Leviticus.
02:07Leviticus.
02:08Leviticus.
02:09Shellfish and...
02:10Well, we didn't hear any shellfish, did we?
02:11No, we didn't.
02:12We heard an owl, a beard being shaved, the rending of cloth, and a pig.
02:20So they're all things prohibited by a pig.
02:21Anything to do with a pig is forbidden.
02:24Yeah.
02:25Brian, Brian, bless you, don't, don't, don't, don't, Brian, bless you, no, Brian, bless you,
02:29he's not kosher, no.
02:33So that's what they have in common.
02:34And all your buzzers are forbidden by Jewish law.
02:38That's very awkward, because I'm Jewish.
02:40So I can't take part in this for the rest of the show.
02:44Also, if I were to go around and say, Josh, and have sex with you, just on the top of
02:47my head,
02:48that would also be...
02:49That would also be your pick.
02:53That's not the bit I had an issue with.
02:55It's kosher sex, I've never heard of kosher sex.
02:57That would be an abomination, according to Leviticus.
03:02So, they're all things that are forbidden in the book of Leviticus.
03:04You mustn't eat an owl, trim your beard, tear your clothes, or have anything to do with a pig.
03:09Sorry.
03:11What, what, what does it mean, nothing to do with him?
03:13What if he comes up to you, you just have to kind of...
03:15It's a sunning, Josh.
03:17Blanket.
03:19Sorry, mate, not interested.
03:21Like a jogger in the street.
03:23Send you on your phone.
03:25Sorry.
03:27One of our questions tonight is lightly lavatorial.
03:30See if you can flush it out by going for a spend-a-penny bonus.
03:37All you have to do is brandish your baton and buzz your buzzer.
03:42And there are lots of points for it.
03:43Lots.
03:44It's really worth risking that the answer might be something lavatorial.
03:49But first, here's a lark.
03:50You each have a balloon, as I do.
03:54And what I want you to do is a levitation trick.
03:57It's all to do with statico, as it is, you might have guessed.
04:02Well, the idea is to...
04:04Oh, that's already...
04:05Oh, that's...
04:07Oh, oh, oh, no, that's...
04:09Oh, no!
04:11Yes!
04:12Yes!
04:13Yes!
04:15Yes!
04:17Oh!
04:18Alan got it.
04:20You charge up the plastic and the balloon.
04:22Oh!
04:22You have to charge both of them.
04:24Oh!
04:24Yes!
04:26If anybody's hair can do this, it's Alan's.
04:29I take that as a slight chance.
04:31I know, that's the problem, it sticks to your fingers, you have to just...
04:35Oh!
04:35And now...
04:36Oh, not quite.
04:37No.
04:37Yes!
04:38Yes!
04:39Oh, brilliant!
04:44That's in the guan in The Prisoner, there.
04:47Very good.
04:47Do you know...
04:48That sort of fatal thing they get in Star Trek, but they don't have any money.
04:51No!
04:51Oh, I put some music on it.
04:53Or in...
04:54Oh, in a red top.
04:59Thank you, Alan.
05:00We can show you now Zara, one of our runners, who turned out to be rather a master of this
05:05art or mistress, if you prefer.
05:07Here she is.
05:09No.
05:10Yeah.
05:10That's weird.
05:11Burn her!
05:12Burn her!
05:13Burn her!
05:14Is that not just the draft from the balloon?
05:16Yes, it is.
05:17Well, it looks a bit like it, but actually, if you try that without having
05:20chances, it won't do that.
05:21How's her head staying up?
05:22That's the way...
05:24Why is somebody falling left and below?
05:27It's the Black Theatre of Prague.
05:29Yeah.
05:29The fact is, yes, scientifically, you should be able to do it repeatably and predictably,
05:33but it's quite hard.
05:35But, I promise you this, I will show you, before this evening is over, a levitation effect
05:39that will blow your socks off.
05:41Not literally, but will really impress you.
05:43That's going to come.
05:44Meanwhile, what's the funny thing about lightning?
05:47Oh.
05:48That's the funny thing about it.
05:50Well, given that it is a natural phenomenon that mankind has been aware of for all the
05:55time that we've been on the planet.
05:56We're still captivated, freaked out, and surprised by it.
06:00We're captivated, and surprised, and don't understand it.
06:02Oh!
06:03We can't explain it.
06:04We know a little bit about it.
06:05Oh, we know.
06:06We know that thunderbolt and lightning is very, very frightening.
06:11It's white, it's forked.
06:13Yes.
06:14Or sheet.
06:14It's electric.
06:15Or sheet, you say?
06:16No, not all sheet.
06:17Sheet lightning is the same as fork lightning, it's just hidden by a cloud.
06:21Oh, so it's an illuminated cloud that gives that band of...
06:23Yes, basically, exactly.
06:24Okay.
06:24Exactly.
06:25But one of the myths about it is that it will always strike what part of a building?
06:30Highest.
06:31The highest part.
06:31And that's not true.
06:32We've got a photograph to show you how untrue that is, of it hitting Grant's tomb there.
06:36There's a little branch of it hitting the top, but the huge part of the fork there is hitting two
06:40-thirds of the way up.
06:42Half of lightning goes up from the ground, about 300 feet up.
06:45They meet each other.
06:46What?
06:46I know it's weird.
06:47Lightning goes upwards?
06:48Oh, yes, absolutely.
06:49Wrong.
06:50No.
06:5290% of strikes on the Empire State Building, for example, are ascending strikes rather than descending strikes.
06:58I know it seems astonishing, but photography allows us to see this phenomenon of it coming up from the ground
07:04and meeting with sky forks.
07:07Sky forks?
07:08Sky forks?
07:09Really?
07:10My dad used to...
07:11Whenever there was lightning, we had to open the knife drawer and put a tea towel over the knife and
07:16fork
07:17to avoid it coming to the wind and striking and turn the TV off.
07:21It's the only time the TV was ever turned off.
07:23It's quite a big thing.
07:26Is that not doing it?
07:27You'd open the drawer to cover it with the tea...
07:29No.
07:30Individually covered?
07:30See, do you know tea towels have got that, um, earthy quality?
07:34Did you not have anything else that was metal?
07:38Just the miles of hooks.
07:40No, I think that's all we have.
07:42Can I say we have no piercings in us?
07:46How can lightning be beautiful?
07:48Can you picture a beauty that comes from lightning?
07:50I mean, obviously, there's something stark and amazing about photographs of lightning, which is not un-beautiful,
07:55but actually the effect of lightning can be staggeringly beautiful.
07:59Oh!
08:00It's called a Lichtenberg figure after a very remarkable scientist called Lichtenberg.
08:05And he noticed when people had been struck by lightning, there was a very remarkable...
08:10Oh, yeah.
08:10Um...
08:10Yeah, and he, uh...
08:12And if you can see it here, um, and you can see pictures of it there.
08:16No, I'm holding one.
08:18That's a...
08:19This is artificially produced.
08:21And it's like a beautiful, ferny kind of thing.
08:24Would you get that level of detail, would you, on the skin?
08:26Yeah, absolutely.
08:26Well, you'll show it on the human skin.
08:28There.
08:28It actually has rather beautiful nipples as well.
08:30It's not...
08:32Do you know what?
08:33It's not a price worth paying, though, for that, is it?
08:35It looks like a tattoo where there's a plant on the side of his face.
08:38Yeah.
08:40Around the back there's a massive pot.
08:42Yeah.
08:44Does that remain like that?
08:45Let's just say one wouldn't throw it out of bed.
08:50Actually, that would be cruel.
08:51Unless it was on fire.
08:51It should have been struck by lightning.
08:53Let's all just say that.
08:55Yeah.
08:55So, um, from lightning to lighthouses, how many men does it take to crew in a lighthouse?
09:03Crew in?
09:03Work it.
09:04Yes, crew it.
09:05Oh, yeah, go on.
09:06It's zero these days.
09:07You're right.
09:08These days it is zero.
09:09But we're talking about the past.
09:10Oh, sorry.
09:10How many used it to be before they were automatic?
09:13One.
09:14Well, no.
09:15Two.
09:15The fact is, it always used to be two in the early days of the lighthouses until something
09:20rather unfortunate happened off the coast of Pembrokeshire, where Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith,
09:26whom you would never guess, were actually Welsh.
09:28And they were a two-man team in 1801, and they were known to quarrel.
09:33And, unfortunately, Griffith fell ill and died.
09:37Hmm.
09:37And Howell was rather worried because he thought people might imagine he killed him, so he
09:42wanted to preserve the body, so he made a sort of wooden coffin and lashed it to the
09:46outside of the lighthouse.
09:48And, unfortunately, a storm arose and smashed this coffin.
09:52And so the hand of Griffith started waving as if beckoning Howell.
09:57What?
09:57And Chip started thinking, oh, that person's calling us over there.
10:03By the time, weeks later, he was relieved of his duty, he had gone almost insane.
10:08People didn't recognise him.
10:09He was described as just about demented because he just wanted to keep the body to prove that
10:15he hadn't killed it.
10:16So it meant because he was frightened because the corpse was flailing around?
10:20Well, he was frightened that people would say, oh, we all know that you had roused with
10:23him and you killed him.
10:24And so he wanted to keep the body as fresh as possible to show that it hadn't been poisoned
10:27or beaten.
10:28But, of course, by lashing him to the edge.
10:30I think that makes him look more guilty.
10:31It does, I know.
10:32It's most unfortunate.
10:33He killed him.
10:34But people believed him.
10:35It's a kind of quite a niche scenario that you've gone, well, in case that happens again,
10:40we should get another person in.
10:41I know it doesn't make sense as much.
10:44They're all sitting around here.
10:45I'm only here in case one of you two kills each other.
10:51Don't lash him to the side, because his arm will do that when he sees it before.
10:55It's true.
10:55Sorry, I did kill him in the night.
10:56Oh, you idiot.
10:58It does seem potty, I grunt it.
11:01Who's the most famous person who kind of kept a lighthouse?
11:04What about Grace Darling?
11:06That's the one we're after.
11:06Who I think her dad was the lighthouse keeper.
11:09Her dad was the lighthouse keeper.
11:10And there was a shipwreck and she rode bravely out and saved many lives.
11:12And there she is in Lady Bird book fashion, doing exactly that, looking utterly transcendently
11:17beautiful and lovely.
11:18She's completely dry.
11:20Yeah.
11:22Yeah.
11:22Yeah.
11:23Just thinking, go on, it's out.
11:24Yeah.
11:25It was in 1838.
11:27It was a stormy night off the coast of which part of Britain did she come from?
11:30Do you remember that?
11:31Scotland?
11:31England?
11:32A little bit further down.
11:33Was it?
11:34England?
11:34I thought it was your end or something.
11:36No, it wasn't Cornwall.
11:37It was Northumberland or the Northumbrian coast.
11:39She was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Humane Society and she was sent 50 pounds by Queen
11:45Victoria.
11:46And poems were written about her by William Wordsworth, Algernon Swinburne and even more
11:52excitingly, William McGonagall, which is fantastic.
11:56And she had crowds of tourists flocking to see her.
11:59She was the celebrity of her age.
12:02They rescued nine survivors from a shipwreck off the Northumbrian coast, which was what made
12:06her a hero or heroine.
12:08Well, there you are.
12:09They had three men in every lighthouse in case one of them died and gave the other the
12:13willies.
12:14What's the most famous lighthouse?
12:18It's legal now.
12:19It's fine.
12:20It's legal.
12:20What is the most famous lighthouse in the world?
12:23I don't know.
12:24The one on the needles is quite famous.
12:26Needles is quite famous, yeah.
12:27I mean, there was one that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
12:31Oh, which is in Spain, is it not?
12:32Or is that Hercules' Tower or something?
12:34There's something Hercules.
12:36Feros.
12:37Feros.
12:38It's the Alexandrian lighthouse.
12:41I love the way you look to me so I've got that right whilst telling me that every
12:44aspect of it.
12:47I love that.
12:49It made me feel good about myself.
12:50You were wrestling the puppy knowledge.
12:52Yeah, yeah.
12:52Actually, all those lighthouses, the Edison, the Kenilworth, might be known by quite a section
12:58from the population.
12:59But this one, everyone knows the name of this one.
13:01What they probably don't know is that it was originally a lighthouse.
13:05Empire State Building.
13:06Not the Empire State Building.
13:07The Statue of Liberty.
13:08Yes!
13:08The Statue of Liberty, well done.
13:10Of course.
13:10Absolutely right.
13:11There it is.
13:11It was visible from 24 miles out to sea.
13:15It was a gift to America from France.
13:18From the French, yes.
13:20And originally, what colour was it?
13:23Orange.
13:24What's that?
13:24Red and white like, oh, like that.
13:27Well, it was always intended to go green because it's copper colour.
13:29That's the gayest lighthouse I've ever seen.
13:32It's copper colour.
13:32You're absolutely right, Alan.
13:33It has a thin sheet of copper leaf, as it were, over it.
13:37Oh, good.
13:37Originally, it shone copperly, but like all copper does.
13:41Oxidises.
13:42It's verdigree.
13:42And so you get copper carbonate, and verdigree is the name for it, exactly.
13:46You see those domes and things of that green colour that is Lady Liberty.
13:50And there's her torch.
13:51And in 1986 was the centenary, and they decided to give her a bit of a makeover.
13:58And actually, the one bit that didn't need the makeover was the copper skin, except in the torch.
14:03And it needed a special technique called repoussé or repoussage.
14:08And no American craftsman could be found who could do it.
14:11So a French team came over.
14:14And Americans, we think of them as very, you know, capitalist, as America is a capitalist country.
14:18It was fat.
14:19But it's also very fat.
14:20It's also very unionised.
14:22And the American labourers were totally antagonistic.
14:26They're teamsters.
14:27They gave the French, yeah, they were like teamsters.
14:29They gave the French workers a complete cold shoulder.
14:32The French workers wore uniforms, and every lunchtime set up a long table with a tablecloth and had wine.
14:39The Americans sat alone eating burgers and other things and letting their stomachs push out further and further.
14:45And the French used this wonderful technique of little hammers.
14:49Marteau, you know.
14:50And someone from the French team said, we did everything by hand.
14:54The Americans couldn't believe that the best way to revit is with hammers.
14:57It's cheaper, faster and better.
15:00But they were always trying to find some machine.
15:02And that is absolutely, you go ice fishing with Americans, they have these, you know, extraordinary motor augers that drill
15:09a hole.
15:10Oh yeah, like in Fargo.
15:10Yeah, like in Fargo, exactly.
15:11In the, yeah.
15:13The Titanic Museum in Belfast, which is quite good.
15:17They.
15:19They'll help me here without an order of better.
15:21They're quite good, aren't they?
15:22Yes.
15:22You better do better, they're a Belfast guy.
15:25Yeah, not good enough, really, for Alan.
15:29That's one of his best ones.
15:30That's what?
15:31I've thrown that on to French.
15:33You go around and they've got the kind of reconstruction of the building of it, and that's the best bit.
15:36And lots and lots of the rivets were done by hand.
15:38Yes, they were.
15:39And you've got hundreds of riveters, and they would do an incredible number of rivets in an hour.
15:44Yeah.
15:44And in awful conditions, very cramped, hot.
15:47But, yes.
15:48It's really quite absorbing.
15:50It's amazing.
15:50I bought a, I bought a journal.
15:52I was at the airport in Belfast, and I bought the journal of the Titanic Society, a sort of a
16:00photocopy, but quite a fat thing.
16:02And I read it, it's about, I suppose, a hundred pages, and lots of stuff about the captain and the
16:07way it was put together.
16:08Not one reference in the entire book to the fact that it sank.
16:15I love, I love it when people are positive.
16:19With the Titanic Society, their ship is always half empty of water.
16:28There's a wonderful Thomas Hardy poem called The Convergence of the Twain, and it takes the point of view of
16:34the iceberg and the Titanic, and the two converge.
16:38And what's rather wonderful is each verse is the shape of the Titanic.
16:41It has sort of two or three words at the top, then a long line, and then a shorter line,
16:45then a shorter line.
16:46So it looks, each verse is boat-shaped.
16:48He should have done it, so it wasn't just that, but it animated.
16:51Yeah, I know!
16:52The iceberg coming out there.
16:54I can't think of them.
16:54Yeah, I can think of them.
16:56Was it, was it Bill Tidy who did the most fantastic cartoon of all time?
17:00And it was a, it was a queue of people.
17:02Oh, I love this one.
17:03And it said, um, information of, uh, about Titanic, and people are queuing up to find out about survivors, women
17:11in shawls.
17:12And at the back, there's two polar bears standing and calling, any news about the iceberg?
17:19I love that.
17:21It's so great.
17:22Perfect.
17:23But I've always thought, had I been on the Titanic when it hit that iceberg, even though you know you're
17:28going to perish,
17:28seeing, like, 40 penguins fall over is probably about as funny as I get.
17:34The possibility of seeing penguins in the North Pole or the northern reaches of the planet is pretty remote.
17:42They come from Antarctica.
17:44There are penguins in the Arctic.
17:45Down that global warming!
17:47It's now floating all over the place.
17:49A fox's glacier mint, probably.
17:51What did happen to the iceberg?
17:53It moved on with its life.
17:56Did it?
17:57Yeah.
17:57It didn't face any punishment.
17:58I think it was bought by...
17:59Now, it would be followed around by the press.
18:02I held it.
18:04I held it.
18:05I held it.
18:05Raking over his knife, you know.
18:06Who is this bastard iceberg?
18:09He's always been a bastard, he's foreign.
18:12I think it was, uh, other foreign icebergs we hate who've ruined our good stuff.
18:17Nigel Farage exactly is good.
18:20He probably got bombed it.
18:21Yeah.
18:21You don't want an iceberg moving in next door to you.
18:24I think it is.
18:29No idea.
18:31Anyway, uh, the Statue of Liberty used to be a lighthouse, and, uh, in those days, it
18:35was brown.
18:36Knifersen light relief.
18:37What's the most interesting thing you can do with a sausage?
18:41Uh, well she's used hers for a hair piece of it.
18:45How can I hold that round?
18:47A lovely little, yeah.
18:48The most interesting thing...
18:49It's gotta be sunny to do with the loo.
18:52With the loo.
18:53It's gotta be.
18:53Yes.
18:54I'm going to give you the points, because there is a way, which is very lavatorial, in which
18:58you can improve a sausage, which is quite interesting and very surprising.
19:01What, poo in it?
19:02Yes.
19:03Oh, come on.
19:04Really?
19:04Baby faeces in a sausage.
19:06Will improve a sausage.
19:08No.
19:08Oh, no, no.
19:09I've been throwing them away.
19:12Bear with me here.
19:13You need to get some casings and eat down, right?
19:16Bear with me here.
19:16Right.
19:17According to a study in the journal Meat Science, you make sausages healthier by adding bacteria
19:27extracted from baby's faeces.
19:29Now, the point is, many sausages, pepperoni...
19:32What are they doing in laboratories for God's sake?
19:34What they try and do is improve things for us to make us healthy.
19:38And pepperoni and salami are made with bacterial fermentation.
19:41Oh.
19:42And the best way you can do that is to use what are known as probiotic bacteria, i.e.
19:46bacteria that are said to be good for you.
19:49And, oddly enough, this Catalonian team decided that one of the best types would be baby faeces,
19:56because, by definition, they would have passed through the human system and passed out again,
20:00and because baby faeces are easy to obtain, in fact, the study used nappies provided by mother
20:05and baby support groups.
20:06Still don't make it right.
20:08Professional tasters confirmed that sausages tasted the same.
20:11Who does that for a living?
20:13I know.
20:14They tasted the same, you wouldn't notice.
20:16That's a rough day down the job sector, that is.
20:18They are lower in both fat and salt.
20:21But it's poo, Stephen.
20:23It's literally poo.
20:24It gives a no meaning to potty mouth.
20:28But it does mean that Alan gets his spend a penny bonus.
20:31That's very good news.
20:36Well, in fact, that was a supplementary question, because the original question involved the use of sausages in history.
20:44Sausages such that a country where we showed you a photograph that shows a country that is really fond of
20:50sausages.
20:50Germany?
20:50Yes.
20:52It's so useful with the sausages for Germany at a particular time in history that people were banned from eating
20:57them, and they were banned in Poland, in Austria, in northern France.
21:02Were they using it as part of the war effort?
21:03Yes, World War I.
21:05The Germans had a very impressive weapon which terrorized London.
21:09The Bratwurst lasso.
21:11They had a human head up at 100 patients.
21:14The Zeppelin is exactly right.
21:16The Graf Zeppelin, the Count Zeppelin invented this.
21:19Are you saying that's one enormous sausage?
21:22They flew and they dropped baby excrement.
21:25What made it lighter than that?
21:28Helium.
21:29Not helium, no.
21:30Hydrogen.
21:31Hydrogen.
21:31That's why they were so dangerous and so combustible, because hydrogen is very combustible.
21:35And they would go over London, and the chappy at the bottom there in the little gondola would drop a
21:39bomb.
21:40Lovely, the little chappy would go over London.
21:42But the thing is, the hydrogen would easily leak from the patches, and they found that sausage skins would go
21:47over the joins, and they would latch onto each other, a bit like Velcro.
21:52They would stick to each other, and they would seal the whole thing so the hydrogen wouldn't leak.
21:56Well, no, more bad news for pigs.
22:00It was cattle rather than pigs, it was beef sausages.
22:03So, they would just fly like an apocalyptic cow balloon over the top of London and just drop?
22:09Yeah, and bullets would go through and there wouldn't be enough to bring it down, and it took two years
22:14for the British to learn how to use incendiary bullets to cause the hydrogen to blow up.
22:20Were they ever struck by lightning?
22:22Yes.
22:22Three zeppelins were done by lightning.
22:25Yeah, how about that?
22:26That's brilliant.
22:27It shows that God was on our side.
22:30A quarter of a million cows, they used per zeppelin.
22:34That's pretty impressive.
22:35Right.
22:35So, a quarter of a million cows, whether it's the making of a zeppelin.
22:39Which is why they had to stop the Germans, the Austrians, the Poles, and those in northern France at the
22:43time from getting their sausages.
22:45What a shame they didn't do a big cow's face on the front, Mitch.
22:49They just don't have those artistic flourishes, the Germans, do they?
22:52They're very functional.
22:54That was my problem with the Nazis.
22:58We spoke earlier about lightning in the Empire Strikes...
23:00Empire Strikes...
23:01Empire Strikes!
23:03Confusing me, you're driving me into the Empire State Building.
23:07What's the connection between the Empire State Building and big dirigible balloons?
23:10It was a mooring place.
23:12Yes, a mooring place.
23:13They originally thought that they'd be able to land passengers on the top.
23:16Yeah.
23:17This way.
23:18That one of these did actually moor itself in 40-mile-an-hour winds.
23:23What they needed to do...
23:23For a few minutes.
23:24They needed to rob the top of it with a towel.
23:29Somebody robbing the top of the airship.
23:31That would have done it.
23:32Then what is the mast for?
23:34I mean, do you know what the mast is?
23:35The mast was only there to be taller than the Chrysler Building.
23:38You're absolutely right.
23:39And the Chrysler Building...
23:40Yay!
23:45Were they built at the same sort of time and competing?
23:48Yeah.
23:48And the Chrysler Building was going to be the taller one.
23:50And they took the mast up the inside of the Empire State Building and stuck it on the top at
23:54the end.
23:55The Chrysler Building, I think we can all agree, is more beautiful.
23:58Yes.
23:58Although they're both quite sort of marvellous.
24:00They are.
24:00Yeah.
24:01But the Chrysler Building is stunning.
24:02Well, there we are.
24:03The linings in German airships caused a sausage shortage in World War I.
24:08What was the charge for the world's first charity single?
24:13Oh, it's not going to be band-aid, is it?
24:14Is the Clune charge?
24:16Yes, it certainly is.
24:17The charge of the Light Brigade?
24:18Well done, you.
24:20No.
24:20Absolutely.
24:21So, that's the beginning of the puzzle, opened up.
24:24So, how can the charge of the Light Brigade have anything to do with a charity single?
24:28You can't say they didn't release a single.
24:31Well, not a single.
24:32It wasn't called a single in those days.
24:34Tennyson, there are cylinder recordings of Alfred Lord Tennyson.
24:38So, maybe, maybe he read the charge of the Light Brigade.
24:41He may have done his voice.
24:43I am Alfred Tennyson.
24:45You do hear that, absolutely.
24:46He did live into the age of the phonograph, as it was then called.
24:49But this is actually slightly more touching in a way.
24:52There was actually a bugler who recorded the charge, which is a particular call on the bugle.
24:58And he was himself a survivor of the charge of the Light Brigade.
25:04And I'll give you all the full details of it.
25:06He plays the charge that he blew on the day, on a bugle, was used at Malaclava,
25:11which had also previously been used at Waterloo.
25:14It's a heck of a historic bugle.
25:16That's a pedigree, yeah.
25:17It was recorded as a charity single to raise money for veterans of the charge
25:20who had fallen on hard times.
25:21And we can play it.
25:22That's the last thing they want to hear, though, isn't it?
25:24Oh, yeah.
25:25Well, they didn't listen to it.
25:27Oh, my God!
25:29You can hear it now.
25:43There you are.
25:44That was Martin Landfried, who was a bugler.
25:47And he made that recording in 1890, and the Light Brigade was 1854.
25:52Incredible quality.
25:52The bugle itself is not bad quality, really, is it?
25:55And that was to help all veterans, or just specifically veterans of that particular failed?
25:58Well, specifically veterans of the charge, yeah.
26:00So the call we hear brought the line from a canter to an all-out gallop.
26:05But almost all of what we would call a charge was actually a trot.
26:10So the whole thing was called an advance until the last 200 yards,
26:13when the charge was sounded, and then bang!
26:16But at Malaclava, they did more galloping than they would at a normal British charge,
26:20which is one of the things that made it so hopeless and extraordinary.
26:22Half a league, which is a mile and a half, because a league is three miles.
26:26So half a league, half a league, half a league onward into the Valley of Death road.
26:29And is that why they failed? Because they sort of peaked, they kind of...
26:32Well, they failed because they simply rode into guns.
26:34I mean, it was insane.
26:36The fact is, the charge of the Light Brigade was a pretty disastrous thing.
26:39Effing disaster.
26:40But it did cause the first charity single.
26:42So, bugler Martin Landfried lifted the spirits of the Light Brigade at Malaclava.
26:47How did Chicago get completely screwed up?
26:51Er, they put Catherine Zeta-Jones in it.
26:56You are a naughty girl.
27:00I love that film.
27:01You know, she was Oscar.
27:02No, I'm joking.
27:03Actually, she was really good.
27:05It was brilliant, that film.
27:05I loved it.
27:05I liked it.
27:06The sort of Bob Fosse-style choreography.
27:08They boarded it up with screws.
27:09Well, sort of.
27:10Is it a literally screwed up thing?
27:11It was literally screwed up.
27:12Is it to do with prohibition?
27:13Not because it's windy, no.
27:15Or Barack Obama.
27:16Is there always prohibition of Barack Obama?
27:17No, it was before either.
27:19Valentine's Day massacre.
27:20Is there always prohibition of Barack Obama?
27:22Before any of those things, though.
27:24So, before all that.
27:25So, it's what, Victorian?
27:26Literally the founding of Chicago.
27:28It was a huge stop off on Lake...
27:30It's in Michigan.
27:32Michigan.
27:32Lake Michigan.
27:33And, unfortunately, it was built on a swamp.
27:36And, typhus and typhoid were absolutely ravaging the population.
27:40So, they decided, with good old American know-how and sort of optimism,
27:45they would jack the city up.
27:47They would screw it up with screw jacks, as they'd call it.
27:49And, there you can see the grey bit all along the bottom.
27:51Yes.
27:51They literally were screwing it up while people were living in it.
27:55There was the Tremont Hotel, for example, which covered a whole acre,
27:59which they screwed up.
28:00There it is.
28:01They screwed it up.
28:02And, they didn't even close the hotel while it was being lifted up off the ground.
28:05And, underneath, in the air, the space, the crawl space, you might say,
28:08they put sewage and fresh water and so on.
28:11And, it was a resounding success.
28:13And, Chicago became...
28:13There wasn't someone who went to bed in that hotel and woke up and went,
28:16what the hell is going on?
28:17What a new floor!
28:21And, also, the river was full of sewage.
28:23It flowed into the clean Michigan.
28:25And, so, the ingenious system of locks, they made it reverse in the other direction.
28:29And, once a year, they dye the river, which goes beautifully,
28:32like a Venetian canal.
28:34They dye it green.
28:35And, why would they do that?
28:37Paddy's dye.
28:37Indeed.
28:38Because there are lots of Irish in, they have the bagpipes and so on.
28:41And, it's a beautiful, beautiful city.
28:43I haven't to love it.
28:43That is actually for real.
28:44We haven't done that with Photoshop.
28:45That's it.
28:46Really?
28:46Yeah.
28:47That is how it looks.
28:48So, what dye...
28:49Green dye.
28:49The trouble is...
28:54The trouble is...
28:55I'm sorry, I can't be better than that.
28:56No, no.
28:56I wish I could help.
28:58The trouble is...
28:59The towns and cities further down the river get St. Patrick's Day on the wrong...
29:06Yes.
29:07The entire city of Chicago was jacked ten feet in the air to make room for the plumbing.
29:11Now, let's lighten the mood with a little light general ignorance.
29:14Fingers lightly on your buzzers, please.
29:16Name one of the rules in a walking race.
29:18You're not allowed to run, are you?
29:20Well, you certainly can't run.
29:21You used to be walking.
29:22How do you judge that?
29:23Isn't it that some part of your foot has to be in contact with the ground?
29:29Time.
29:30There you are, you see.
29:32No.
29:33On the ground.
29:33Are those shorts strictly legal, though?
29:36No.
29:36There's a little bit of...
29:38Oh, God.
29:38You can't really see it.
29:39Just cover that with your hand.
29:41Oh, dear.
29:41Oh, that's really...
29:42Please make that stop.
29:43Oh, dear.
29:44Make that stop.
29:45Oh, dear.
29:46Oh, dear.
29:47Oh, dear.
29:50Oh, dear.
29:51God, no.
29:52No.
29:52Look at the feet.
29:53God, no.
29:54I feel like we've gone back to the sausage round.
29:56Oh, dear.
29:57It's gone.
29:58It's gone.
29:58Look at the feet.
30:00Don't look at the feet.
30:00Is that...
30:00That isn't a tip to one of the rules we should know, is it?
30:04No pants.
30:05A swinging basket.
30:06Keep the junk in the trunk.
30:08No.
30:10The fact is, I will read you the rule if you want to know it.
30:13It's from the International Association of Athletics Federations.
30:16The rule book says,
30:17Race walking, as it's called, is a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact
30:21with the ground so that no visible to the human eye loss of contact occurs.
30:26All Olympic walkers, when you slow them down on TV, have moments, a few milliseconds sometimes,
30:30when both feet are off the ground but it's not visible to the human eye.
30:34But, of course, nowadays you can freeze frame just about anything incredibly accurately.
30:38So, Olympic Games broadcasters and Olympic judges get absolutely bombarded with calls
30:42from people who are furious because they've seen both feet off the ground and they're convinced
30:46that must be against the rules, but actually it isn't.
30:48How do you get into it?
30:50I know, because it looks so silly.
30:51The bottom swinging.
30:52Yeah.
30:53We've all, I know people that are fast walkers, but you never go, no, you should go for this.
30:58No, I know.
30:58It's that.
30:59With the elbows on, I find it.
31:01It's very hard to talk about it without finding anything.
31:04It's like when you talk about a spiral staircase and you do that.
31:06It's like, I'm feeling my bum going now.
31:09Have you seen that?
31:10Until you picked several stitches out of this obstacle.
31:12Have you seen that video of the two women finishing, trying to finish the walking race?
31:17I'm not sure if it's the Olympics.
31:18And they end up crawling.
31:20Oh, no.
31:20They're so, it's absolutely.
31:22They're so exhausted.
31:24Both their legs have gone, I've never seen legs go like jelly.
31:27My legs went to jelly.
31:28I did this thing with Bear Grylls where I had to do this rappel down a sheer face.
31:32I was the, I was never being so terrified in my entire life.
31:35I got that and I'm sorry, you repelled down Bear Grylls' face.
31:38Yeah.
31:40Kind of, if you may.
31:41He chose the face.
31:44And then your legs went to jelly.
31:48The really frightening thing was that he, you know, he took me to the edge and then there was 45
31:53minutes.
31:54Sorry, Bear Grylls took me to the edge.
32:00And then what, there was, there was a little tantalising 45 minutes.
32:04I mean, that's a waste.
32:05That is a waste.
32:06That's high tensile, that is.
32:08I'm so sorry.
32:08You're real.
32:09Yeah.
32:10Just to be on the cusp of 45 mil.
32:13There was 45 minutes of crew talking about safety things and about the sound people hiding themselves in nooks and
32:20crannies so that a helicopter shot could go round.
32:22Top draw porn.
32:23But the, there weren't any aerial shots there!
32:31Once I got down this, this sheer face I found my legs had excellence, did you see?
32:50You see, that's why dogs don't wear trousers.
32:55It was terrible.
32:57Anyway, racewalking is often seen as a comical event
33:00and someone once described it as like having a competition
33:02to see who can whisper the loudest.
33:04Now, here's the crew of the International Space Station.
33:08Why are they weightless?
33:11Er... Oh...
33:12Yes.
33:14Because they're in zero gravity.
33:15Oh, dear!
33:18Yes.
33:19A common misapprehension.
33:21Yeah.
33:21No, that's not it at all. There's a huge amount of gravity.
33:24They're very close to the Earth. The Moon is...
33:26Oh, so they weren't in flight at that point?
33:27No, they weren't. They were orbiting the Earth.
33:29But they're in freefall, a bit like skydivers.
33:32Unfortunately, unlike skydivers,
33:33they're also travelling sideways at the same time.
33:36If they weren't, they would crash into the Earth.
33:38So there's certainly not zero gravity, there's a lot of gravity.
33:41The Space Station and the astronauts in freefall inside it
33:44is plummeting towards the Earth
33:46but because of its curvature, the ground is falling away from them
33:49at the same speed as they're falling towards it.
33:52To put it another way, the Space Station is constantly falling
33:55but its tremendous horizontal speed means that it always falls over the horizon.
33:59They love karaoke, don't they? They love it.
34:02But it's not that there's no gravity acting on them.
34:04There's a huge amount of gravity acting on the spacecraft
34:06or it would just be lost in space.
34:08So you didn't do so well on that.
34:09So maybe you'll do better on this.
34:11Why does spacecraft get hot on re-entry?
34:14Wow.
34:15Why do they get hot?
34:16Friction.
34:17Oh!
34:18Oh!
34:19You're welcome.
34:20I've kept for that.
34:21Yeah.
34:22Well, you came to the right place if you wanted idiots.
34:24No!
34:25You're not idiotic.
34:26Most of us would have said friction.
34:27Right.
34:27It's not friction actually.
34:29It's what's called a bow shock.
34:30It's the pressure on the air in front of it, like a bow wave of a ship.
34:34And the faster you go, the hotter it becomes because of this enormous pressure on the air.
34:40And there are other examples of that sort of effect, like a sonic boom, for example,
34:45when you're going faster, which is also a sort of bow shock.
34:48Everything I know about space is entirely taken from Sandra Bullock's performance in Gravity.
34:53You couldn't do better than that.
34:54Everything I know about space comes from reading the right stuff.
34:56And I know that if you get it wrong when you re-enter, you can skip off the atmosphere.
35:02Oh, absolutely.
35:03And then you'll just never come back.
35:05Yeah.
35:06Then you just never come back.
35:07Then you just keep going.
35:07Yeah.
35:08Well, the fact is spacecraft heat up on re-entry because of the bow shock, not the friction.
35:15What do beavers eat?
35:18Good beaver shot?
35:19Yes.
35:21Oh.
35:22Um, wood.
35:25Is the right answer?
35:27We were hoping you might say fish.
35:28They aren't completely vegan.
35:30They just eat wood and plants and algae, seaweed, things like that.
35:33I mean...
35:34Absolute nightmare at a dinner pie.
35:36I thought it...
35:36So they're down the river just for breeding purposes.
35:39They're down the river just for breeding purposes.
35:40They're down the river just for breeding purposes.
35:40They're down the river just for creating a lodge.
35:42And...
35:42I've seen one.
35:43I've stood on one.
35:44You stood on one?
35:46Yeah, you can.
35:46They're really solid.
35:47You can walk.
35:48Yeah.
35:48Did you deliberately stand on it?
35:50Yeah, well, you can...
35:51You can.
35:52You invited to.
35:52It's like surfing.
35:53It's like a tourist thing.
35:54They don't mind.
35:54They don't seem to mind.
35:55You know, you can get from the bank onto it and it's this great construction of logs and
36:00branches and...
36:01Oh, you...
36:01I thought you stood on a beaver.
36:02You didn't stand on a beaver.
36:06I thought you were beaver surfing.
36:12You've all got the internet after all.
36:15Beaver surfing is quite different.
36:18I'll tell you a very interesting beaver fact, though.
36:20If you take a beaver out of its natural environment, which is by a river, and put it in the
36:24middle
36:24of a forest far from a river and turn on the tape recorder, which has the sound of a gurgling
36:29river, it will build a dam.
36:31It doesn't need to see or feel the water.
36:34And, unfortunately, in Scotland and places like that where there have been attempts to
36:38try and reintroduce the beaver, people wrongly think they eat fish and that they'll threaten
36:42the salmon or the trout or whatever.
36:44But, of course, they don't because they don't eat fish.
36:46They just destroy forests.
36:48Well, yeah.
36:49Well, they have a nibble anyway.
36:51And, finally, who fancies a quantum-locking levitation lark?
36:55And, to help me tonight, we have Professor Andrew Boothroyd of the Physics Department
36:59of Oxford University.
37:00Hello, Andrew!
37:03So, here we go.
37:05This is going to go over my head, so I'm going to duck.
37:08Ta-da!
37:09There it is.
37:11An exciting tray, and what looks like a bit of, sort of, scale-extric.
37:14Let's just line it up there.
37:16Now, we've got a little bucket here.
37:17What's in this bucket, Andrew?
37:18That's a bucket of liquid nitrogen.
37:20Liquid nitrogen, which, as you know, is extremely cold.
37:22And, I'm going to dip a rose into it, just to show how cold it is.
37:25I'd better put these gloves on, first.
37:26Health and safety.
37:27Destin Blumens out.
37:28It's the people who see it.
37:30That's it.
37:31Oh, and these.
37:32All safety.
37:34Safety.
37:34Safety.
37:35Safety.
37:36As long as you're safe, that's the main one.
37:37Yeah.
37:39Here we go.
37:39So, I'm going to dip a rose into this.
37:42You might have had this to...
37:43Ooh!
37:43Bubbles away.
37:47It's really cold now.
37:49And it might even...
37:51shatter.
37:53Ah!
37:54Look at that.
37:54Like glass.
37:56Shall I not touch a bit?
37:57This landed on me.
38:00So, is this burning into your skin?
38:01It shatters like glass.
38:03I've got a little wart on my finger.
38:05Is this a chance to burn it off?
38:07You might get a little crying.
38:09And the rest of your hands.
38:11It would be a great way of dumping someone on Valentine's Day.
38:17So, what have we got here, Andrew?
38:19We've got here a piece of ordinary-looking black ceramic,
38:23which, when we cool it down to very low temperatures,
38:26acquires a very extraordinary property.
38:28Okay.
38:28So, would you just like to cool it down with liquid nitrogen?
38:30I shall baste it with liquid nitrogen.
38:32Oh, that works.
38:35There we are.
38:35And we have a second one over here.
38:37All right.
38:38I'll do that one too.
38:38I'll cool that as well.
38:40This is like the beginning of every pop video in the 80s.
38:44Tell me what's particular about this.
38:46It becomes...
38:46It loses all its resistance, its electrical resistance,
38:48and becomes what's known as a superconductor.
38:50Ah, yes.
38:51That's one thing.
38:52Yeah.
38:52And the other thing is that it acquires the property
38:55that it can bend magnetic field lines in such a way
38:59that it will always try to resist any motion,
39:02even if that means hovering above the ground.
39:05All right.
39:06So, let's just pick it up and pop it.
39:08Whoops.
39:11There it goes.
39:12Oh!
39:13Cool.
39:14Yeah, it's pretty good, isn't it?
39:15Literally.
39:17That makes no effect.
39:18And you can just give it a tip.
39:20Oh, that's very strange.
39:23Oh, yeah.
39:24And as it warms up, it'll slowly sink.
39:26Oh, wow.
39:28There you go.
39:28Is this what you do most days at the Oxford University?
39:32Almost every day.
39:34Not a bad old job.
39:36So, this one here is very exciting.
39:39And now it's nice and slidey.
39:42Oh, wow.
39:42But, look at this.
39:46And what's happening there?
39:48What's making it...
39:48It's the magnetic field, isn't it?
39:50That's correct.
39:50It's interrupted by this sort of conductivity.
39:52It's not like a normal magnet, because a normal magnet would repel when it's up that way, and then it
39:56would just fall off.
39:57Yeah.
39:57So, this is both repelling and attracting at the same time.
40:00I'll give it one more little go, and then we can try it on the track.
40:04I thought you were going to say, and then we can try it on Alan.
40:08No!
40:09Upside down in a bucket of nitrogen.
40:12There we go.
40:13Pop it there.
40:15Oh, wow.
40:17Fantastic.
40:18Round it goes.
40:19That's good.
40:19That's amazing.
40:20Isn't it good?
40:21It looks like...
40:21Can someone pass the satellite?
40:23And it's got a little steam train.
40:24It can go the other way.
40:25We could put the wrong type of leaf on the track.
40:32And is this going to get us to Mars?
40:34That's the main question.
40:35Well, what do you think, Andrew?
40:36Are there any practical applications we can think of?
40:38Well, you could use it as a piece of transport like that, but it's quite expensive because of the cost
40:42of cooling the nitrogen.
40:43Oh, right.
40:44So, it's not efficient.
40:45But, if we could find a superconductor that worked at room temperature, then it would be viable.
40:51Right.
40:51Are you working on that?
40:52We are, yes, indeed.
40:53Yes, I am.
40:53I trust you.
40:54I know they're not.
40:56They're just playing with this all the time.
40:58That's what I do.
40:59I know.
40:59Isn't it gorgeous?
41:00So, you'd think it would almost be like a maglev train, you know, one of those...
41:03That's what it would be like.
41:04Oh, there we go again.
41:05Oh, I love it.
41:06And this, of course, can go in here as well.
41:09Oh, it's...
41:09Oh!
41:10Oh!
41:11Oh!
41:12Oh!
41:13Oh!
41:15It's all right.
41:18What a pussy!
41:23It's actually coming out of everyone.
41:25That actually...
41:26Boing!
41:28Oh, it's coming down.
41:29It's coming down.
41:30It's coming down.
41:30It's coming down.
41:32It's coming down.
41:34It's doing pretty well.
41:35It is.
41:36Oh, my God.
41:36That's coming for me.
41:39Cool.
41:40Oh, there you go.
41:41That would be like the best Christmas present in the world.
41:45So, you need...
41:46What is the magnet made of?
41:47It's rather exciting names.
41:48Boron and...
41:49The magnet is made of neodymium, iron and boron, and that's what the track is made of.
41:52Neodymium.
41:53Neodymium and iron and boron.
41:54Wonderful.
41:55Very good element.
41:55The magnet is made of gadolinium, barium, copper, and oxygen.
41:59But you can just use sticky bag plastic...
42:02...in a very liquid bottle.
42:04Well, there you have the miracle that is quantum levitation.
42:08Amazing.
42:09Thank you, Andrew.
42:10Amazing.
42:11Thank you, Andrew.
42:12Thank you so much.
42:18For once...
42:20For once I can say, what could be cooler than that?
42:23That's all the levity we've got time for.
42:25So, let's have a look at the scores.
42:28It's very exciting.
42:29I'm afraid, bringing up the rear with minus 14 is Sue Perkins.
42:37With minus 7, in third place, is Frank Skinner.
42:44Well, in a brilliant second, is Josh Widdicombe with 5.
42:50All right.
42:54He stole my pulsing member in first place.
42:58And 11 points is Alan Davis.
43:07Thanks for watching, and good night from Sue Frank, Josh, Alan, and me.
43:12We leave you to ponder upon the last words of the French satirist François Rabelais in 1553.
43:18These were his dying words.
43:19I have nothing.
43:20I owe much.
43:21The rest I leave to the poor.
43:23Good night.
43:24Here you go.
43:24It'sona.
43:24It's a welcome.
43:24Here we go.
Comments