No Such Thing As A Forbidden Panettone

0:02Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, where we were joined by someone who a lot of you will be very excited to hear. Yes, it's the return of Anne Miller The comeback Our colleague Anne joined us for this week's episode It was so nice having her back on She had a classic Anne fact, which you're about to hear And it was just great It was a really nice episode, it was lovely to have her back Does she have anything that we can plug at the top of the show this week? She does actually She's got a book coming in I think it's coming in a few months time But it's available to pre-order now And it's called Monster Diaries I think there are going to be a few of them I hope so anyway and basically it's kind of classical stories where there's often a monster.

0:42Like Greek myths and stuff. Exactly, but from the monster's point of view. Oh, very clever. So the first one is about the Cyclops, but it's the Cyclops getting to tell his side of the story. And it's just, it's a lovely idea. They're beautifully illustrated. I've seen the drawings that have been going into them. So that is highly recommended, The Monster Diaries. By Anne Miller. And indeed, if you go to the places where you buy books, you'll find all of Anne's other books. She's written a whole lot of them. Yes, exactly. And one more thing to say before we start. go on christmas is coming the goose is getting fat please put a penny in the old man's hat feels stingy um but you might be thinking about what to get your loved ones for christmas yeah and you might be thinking oh it's so hard to buy a physical object for people i'm thinking what to buy my wife well what she really loves to hear is my voice more and more she doesn't get nearly enough of it absolutely well james you should buy her access to clubfish oh yeah Ah, it's the members club that we have where you can get extra content.

1:41You can get ad-free episodes of Fish and you can get all sorts of stuff. And there are a few different tiers you can do up to the very top tier where we're going to be doing a quarterly quiz. The first of those is coming up soon and it's going to be so much fun on Zoom with all of you members. So it's really fun. It's a great present to give someone because it's an experience. Absolutely. I'm going to get my wife one straight away. I'm going to send that sports car back. she'll be delighted excellent James how do people find out more about this club fish place I would imagine you probably go to patreon.com forward slash no such things a fish I think you're right you are right that's where you go patreon.com slash no such things a fish go and check it out it's so much fun it will make a lovely present for anyone in your life who likes fish well you know what you deserve a present too you sure do treat yourself alright I think that's it isn't it that's all we have to say Merry Christmas to come on with the podcast on with the show

2:52Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Anne Miller. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go, starting with fact number one, and that is Anne. After you bake panettone, you have to hang them upside down like bats. So cute. I would say this is a vintage Anne Miller fact, in that it's interesting, but it's also quite sweet.

3:28Well, thank you. What a return. Yeah, what a return. And Christmas is coming. Christmas is coming. So why? Why do you have to hang out? So I got very interested in a big deep dive about how you make traditional panettone. And the result was I became desperate to eat very high quality panettone. How deep is the deep dive on panettone? I'll send you the links. Some great articles. Basically, traditional panettone is wildly uncommercial to make. It's a lot of very expensive ingredients, butter and eggs and fruit. Actually, half the volume of panettone is butter on a proper one. That's why they taste so good.

3:59I heard that. so great and it's just made me think i've never had a good panettone because i think of it as being a dry unpleasant so i did see someone saying that if you need to butter it it's not a traditional one it's also a really lengthy process um and at the end after all this care you've made to your panettone if you don't flip it upside down really quick possibly as quickly as 20 seconds the dome will start to cave in so the picture i found online which i love is this big wire rack with panettone is hanging upside down which suggests if you were to examine as i will do this christmas the bottom of your panettone and you see little holes where the wires have gone through so they're hanging upside down to cool or another method is you can pop it upside down in a wicker basket and it's about like eight hours of upside down hanging for it to settle well that's what i read i've never made a panettone i wanted to until i read this so you've not done this i decided it was going to take one man was 86 and has been working since he was a child and i can't compete with that Dan?

4:54It sounds so hard. When you make some food or make anything in life you don't have to compete with the person who is the absolute best at it. I want to sample this one not have a very inferior one made by me. But you have picked the extreme end of panettone making in your example it's like saying I decided not to become a footballer because David Beckham exists. Well exactly I don't play football Dan. Yeah but she is a QI researcher and she's the best QI says a lot about us yeah and was this nicola fiasconaro i think so it was so he is a sicilian master baker and uh the the profile of him started out with saying this is a man who has baked panettone for not one not two but three different popes that is clearly good but we've had quite a few popes we've been through a run of them yeah yeah it's not impressive and what killed them We don't know.

5:47One of them was interviewing this master pantoni maker and they said, we rang the shop to make sure he would be there ahead of our visit. And they said, he is always here. Right. Lovely. But it's amazing. So they also have this special yeast. And in one bakery, they have been using the same locally sourced yeast since 1922, has to be fed with flour and water every four hours. What? Every four hours since 1922. I can see why you've now pulled out of getting involved. That must be. It's amazing. Well, yeah, I mean, Italy's been through a lot of upheaval since 1920. They've had fascism, they've had the war.

6:22How long has Italy actually existed? It's 1870s, I think. Yeah, so it's not much longer than that. That East is almost as old as Italy. That's amazing. You, Andy, just mentioned that it possibly took out three popes. Yeah, I'd like to write back from that a bit, yeah. But what's interesting is it most likely hasn't because God is on the side of the Panettone. Great. because we're assuming that God is on the side of those popes as well. Absolutely. They're not still here is all I'm saying. I think God is Italian. Yeah, God is Italian. Because the patron saint of choking and sore throats and so on is connected to Panettone, San Biagio.

7:01This is an amazing character. Saint Blaze. Saint Blaze, for those who speak non-Italian. Other languages are available. But yeah, I mean, interesting character. born in Armenia, lived in the third and fourth centuries, and he got beatified and made into a saint because of miracles that were to do largely with saving people from choking. At least that was the main one. There was a kid that was choking on something and he came, managed to take it out. And it was a miracle. He convinced a wolf to return a stolen pig. That was another reason for him being beatified. Returned him to the house, but it was made of straw, so it had already been blown down.

7:39When you said Patriot's Eight of Choking, I couldn't quite work out what, it's more like the patron saint of not choking sore throats he's also being saved from just to say as well he is a patron saint of wool combers so wool combers are people who comb sheep and they use really really long sort of like a head brush but it's like got nails in it these wool combs but he's the patron saint of that and the reason he's the patron saint of wool combers is because before he was beheaded he was beaten with wool combs oh no right just Yeah, they're off the page of the saint of something that killed them.

8:14Doesn't seem right. Doesn't seem right. It's not fair. I think panettone might be a classic Harkin singular plural problem. Oh, interesting. Panettone E with an I is the plural. And panettone with an E is the singular. Interesting. So should we all be saying, are we saying it wrong? Should we be saying, would you like some panettone? I would say panettone does feel weird when you say it. they don't usually eat more than two yeah no like stop at two stop at two, they're half butter it's no plural because no one's ever had two panettone it's mentioned in a book by a chef called friend of the podcast Bartolomeo Schappi oh yeah, spelled scappy was he friend of us four?

8:58he was friend of the podcast he is the one who cooked for many popes and made incredible elaborate dishes and banquets and then a new pope came in and said no I just want to I just want a boiled egg from now on. And so he kind of lost it. But he wrote one of the first big cookbooks. So it was mentioned, we think, in a book by him. But there are all these kind of enriched breads, which are fruit and fruit peel and, you know, all of this stuff. So it's a bit murky where it truly originates. One of them is the baba. I don't know if you know about babas. You get babas from Poland and other Slavic countries.

9:30But I think they probably came from panettones and then they turned them into babas. but the way that you make them is really regimented it's almost like the babba is a baby so men are not allowed to enter the kitchen while they're being made you have to whisper while you're cooking it in case it starts crying oh i guess that's lovely and also you have to leave it to rest on a piece of eider down before putting it in the oven upside down or regular way regular way uh the advice has changed since the 1960s you were you used to have to put it upside down but never put it in with the parents or do you always put it in with the parents i can't um do you know what it means panettone i read one etymology that it was um invented by a guy called tony i love that so much i mean it can't be true right no i think it just means big bread because the one uh means big as a suffix so it's pane obviously an one and um i didn't know this You know in Italian Calzone Oh yeah That is a big Legging What?

10:32Calza is a legging What do you mean legging? Calzone Like a legging Like you wear leggings A tight Oh like tights Yeah like a tights Yeah so calza is a legging And calzone literally means Trousers So when you order a calzone That's what you're ordering It's actually It's a sleeve basically It's a sleeve for your legs Which is what I call my trousers And it's Yeah Full of hot Wet meat I suppose Cheesy Do you know where like alexi and do you know who the best panettone makers in the world are we said that it might be this italian who's been doing it for 80 years but not according to the world championships oh there's panettone world championships there are and they won in 2025 which nationality do you think won the prize if you guess it i will give you 10 million pounds oh are we allowed to cheat as in i don't know cheating let me qualify the cheating i have a fact about panettone eaters so I'm thinking it might be from that country.

11:23Have a guess. Peru. Nope. Mongolia. Closer, but no. Mars. Mars? Oh, she got it. No, they're from Taiwan. They won it in 2025, and they won a load of gold medals for the best chocolate one, the best general one, the best gelato, panettone. But an interesting rule in the panettone championships is if you don't wear a hat, you lose a point. and actually it's anyone in your team if anyone from your team doesn't wear a hat you lose points for your panettone what's the reason they just have a very specific uniform that you have to wear and the uniform has got very specific it's black shoes black trousers a special jacket that you get given by the organizers an apron and a hat and if any of them you don't wear you lose points interesting i did read you have to use a proper italian mother yeast oh yeah to to enter and You're not allowed any accoutrements, really.

12:16You're allowed dried fruits, but you can't put like a Kit Kat on top or something. But there is a chocolate round. Yeah, and again, they have very special things that you're allowed to put on. So it's on skill rather than like creating new flavors. No Kit Kats, no Milky Ways. Yeah, right. No crunchies. Why do these fun competitions always sound so intense? Like you'd have a heart attack halfway through doing it. This is serious stuff. Also because you've eaten a panetone that's half butter, probably in preparation. Like your doctor will be checking that out. But I think they're very strict about it in places like Milan.

12:46So Milan, according to the Milanese Chamber of Commerce, I believe they ruled that a traditional panettone has to be 20 % sultanas and dried fruit, which to me is insane. That's insane. I always pick them out. Well, you're going to be doing it a long time if you buy a proper trad one, yeah. I don't even like a spotted dick with fruits in it. Really? Yeah, I hate those dried fruits. So you're not a fan of fruitcake? No, absolutely not. I'm going to have to change my office bake now. in this piece about the fiasco narrow factory they said they use manna as the sweetener i don't know if you guys saw this the the food of the gods from the old testament that's why it's expensive because you have to go into the desert for 40 years and eventually you get some of the well it's this it's this resin which you get from ash trees and it's naturally quite sweet um and a journalist asked one of the fiasco narrow family well this is brilliant you've but you've only reduced the sort of white sugar that you put in.

13:40Why don't you just use manna? And she said, we can't just use manna because manna has laxative properties. Which implies the existence of an experiment that went disastrously wrong. Would you like the forbidden Panettone?

13:58Do you reckon that's what happened to the popes? Unquestionably. Unquestionably. That's amazing. But another thing I didn't know about Panettone, so So the saint, Dan mentions Saint Biagio, Saint Blaise, because he saved this child from choking. There's a tradition that when you have your Christmas panettone, you save a piece. And on February 3rd, Saint Blaise's feast day, you toast it because it will be stale by that point. You are allowed to butter this one and then you eat it. And that's meant to ward off sore throats. Yes. So I was reading more into Saint Biagio. And there is this really fun thing, which is I think I found what was one of the original Heimlich manoeuvres from this period.

14:35So he was third to fourth century. This was being practiced in the 6th century, right? So what would happen is if a bone was stuck in your throat, if after initial attempts to get it out, sometimes they would say put a bit of bread in and so it would go down, it would be pushed down by the bread. I think that's still the advice, isn't it? Right, okay. It's what I do. You eat more when you're choking. Okay. Yeah. If you've got a little bone stuck, you just have a bit of bread. It just sort of envelops it and takes it down. It probably depends on the size of the bone. It does. It does. But no, that is still...

15:03What happens if the bread gets stuck? then do you send, you know, a curly whirly down there or something? Yeah, it's the middle-aged man who swallowed a bone. If anyone's choking while listening to this, please, please, please look up the NHS website. Don't take my advice. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's always worked for me. Yep. Well, here's what I'll be doing. So if you want to try some sixth century advice and the bone's not coming out, what you need to do, and this is a quote, is to go around and face the person who's choking and yell at them, come out, bone, if you are a bone, or whatever you are, come out like Lazarus at the voice of Christ.

15:39Come out of the tomb. And Jonah from the belly of the whale. And then that will get the bone out. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, if it is a bone. If it is a bone. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do ring NHS 111, I think is what we're trying to say. Imagine if you rang up NHS 11 and they just shouted down the phone, come out bone if you are a bone.

16:01Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that those giant walking keyboards that Tom Hanks plays in big have existed in India for 500 years. Whoa. Brilliant. How did they find it? It's just there. It's in a big old temple. You can't miss it, really. You can't tell when you're watching the film that he's in a 500-year-old Indian temple. It's really interesting. No, he looks like he's in the famous toy shop in New York, FAO Schwartz. Yeah, but that's the magic of film, isn't it? It's green screen. No, so basically these are musical temples in India, which I read about.

16:38And there's lots of them around, especially in South India. And they have various bits of architecture which make music. And the one in particular that I'm talking about is called Eravatasvara Temple. It's situated in Dharasaram near Kumbhakanam in the Tanjabor district of Tamil Nadu. Yeah, okay. I was lost until you mentioned the final location. Imagine, if you imagine India as a giant upside down triangle. Yes. It's just up a bit and to the right a bit of the bottom angle of the triangle. I understand. Yeah, yeah. May I say, you took those fences like a pro. That was just like, great. I have them very phonetically written out on my paper.

17:22But this temple, it has a staircase where every time you step on one of the steps, it makes a note and it makes a note of a scale, which is effectively the same as that. If anyone doesn't know the 1988 film with Tom Hanks, he is a 13-year-old boy who turns into an adult and plays around in toy shops and one of them, the most iconic scene probably, he plays one of these giant floor pianos. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Yeah, that's right. If I was a monk in one of these temples, what I would do is I would climb up six of the steps and I would jump off somehow and that would irritate all the other monks in the temple because they'd be waiting for the final, you know, do-do-do-do-do.

17:59Yeah. Oh, yes, yeah. Well, then you can go to the bottom.

18:06Actually, that's not what it would sound like because they are of the Carnatic musical scale. They're suarez. So they're not normal sort of A, B, C, D, E, F, G notes. They are a double harmonic. So that's a scale with a D flat and an A flat for music nerds like Anne's husband. So when you play it, If you play that scale, it sounds like you're in a 1980s movie and a snake's about to come out of a basket. Do you know that kind of Eastern sound? One way to explain it is, you know in the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, when they go, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, can you do the fandango? That da-da-da-da-da-da-da is in that kind of scale.

18:51So that explains kind of what it would sound like. Did they use the steps to record that or did they use it in the studio? They didn't. You know what steps you'd go and record on those steps? I mean that would be a music video It would be hard to, I don't know if you've seen a video or a picture of these steps but firstly they're hard to get to because they're in a cage now so there's this big cage that goes around them John Cage more like, go on John Cage and steps together at last Just getting all my modern references in there And yeah, it's an interesting staircase because it's not a classic staircase the full length of the stairs are the height of a man uh in the video i watched is a man who's standing on the side of it and it's quite fun because he's tapping the side and you can hear all these notes but yeah they're very they're very thin in terms of you've got the staircase itself and the two barriers on the staircase you'd almost have to walk single file with your feet with one in front of the other in order to get up but yeah listening to it is fascinating as you say very odd uh scale because it's the seven notes of classical indian music they do have other musical temples across india which i love and so there are some which have musical pillars which ring with different notes when you strike them um and there are i think some blowing pillars basically like a big cot you just blow into the pillar and it makes it it's like an organ pipe or a like a conch shell like a recorder like a recorder yeah yeah or a trumpet or a we can all name woodwind instruments did you read about the temple in japan where it's it's got 1000 steps and step number 27 is always wet and mossy and the other steps are fine and do we know why uh the legend is that somebody died there but the probably a spring a natural spring under the step but they're all dry apart from one 27 club moss that is a tortured joke that's the worst i've ever oh no it's not even top 100 you have to go through about a thousand steps to get to that joke beautiful beautiful there we go um big the big the movie the big piano yeah it's a brilliant film oh yeah i hadn't i hadn't seen it for years and years and years i watched it last night oh you lucky dog it's so good i think it's slightly problematic oh i think it was probably problematic at the time i think there is there is a bit which people tend to gloss over the fact that it's a 30 year old boy who then has sex with a full-grown woman albeit in tom hanks's body oh yeah that is that's that's an interesting psychological question definite or is it implied or is it uh i know they don't show it because it's you but it is a brilliant film though it's really good it is good but the reason i think it might have been known to be problematic at the time is because there's an actor called deborah winger and she was originally considered to be the the main actress in this movie uh she couldn't take the part because she was pregnant but she knew the director and she said to the director why don't we switch the gender and have it as a girl who becomes big and the director said well then you've got a teenage girl having sex with an adult man albeit in your body and um they realized that that was problematic they didn't make that extra a step that it was all problematic but that was the 80s for you it was the 80s and the so it's got an amazing behind the scenes crew on it so it was co-written by ann spielberg who is steven spielberg's sister and steven spielberg was originally asked to direct it wanted to direct it but then he thought this will probably take away from my sister's role in it she'll be shadowed by it so it went to penny marshall um who's a brilliant director and that scene with the piano was because it existed in that shop you mentioned fao schwartz in america and and spielberg was in there saw it and immediately ran back saying we've got to write this into it now this is just going to be a game changer i mean what a weird insight to think that this is going to make the movie which it kind of did in terms of its oh yeah in its cultural footprint um also weird that ann um spielberg never did anything else according to her imdb yeah she's she does one or two little things but nothing you've heard of guess she was cancelled after the whole 13 year old boy

23:06interestingly about the 13 year old boy tom hanks really thought how am i going to act like i'm a 13 year old boy inside the body of an adult and one story goes quite a few stories of how it was one story suggests that the little boy who was actually playing the kid would do all the scenes that tom hanks would watch the scenes with him doing it and then he would emulate what the boy was doing then in the scene just to really get it something he did with Forrest Gump as well emulated the character of the kid to create the role of Forrest Gump the adult I watched it like I said last night and I had read that as well and you can kind of see if that's true you can kind of see it like the one point he sort of dismantles this toy and he does it in exactly the same way a child would do and you think either he's a brilliant actor or he copied a child or both have you seen so one of my favorite like body swap films is Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle have you seen jack black playing oh yeah 14 year old guy yeah so good they're such solid films i have so good friend of the podcast reese darby in that one oh yeah no one swaps his body though do they no no he's the welcome to jumanji character when they're in arriving the game i wouldn't want his mind in my body no you can't give him coverage um big was the fourth body swap movie released in eight months.

24:25Isn't that weird? Is that original Freaky Friday time? It was, there were three, the three others that preceded it were called Like Father, Like Son, Vice Versa, and 18 Again. And just, this was this huge ratio, like we think of it as one of the archetypal body swap movies, along with things like Freaky Friday and 13 Going on 30. But it was, it was just following this very long tradition. People like it. It's often what happens in Hollywood, isn't it? You've got Armageddon and Deep Ed Pact at the same time. Movies sort of arrive Oh, yeah, when it's Ant and Bug's life at the same time. Yeah, exactly.

24:55I think Vice Versa, there was a novel called Vice Versa, and we might have mentioned it on this before. I think that's what it was based on. Just going back to the keyboard, they play a couple of different songs on there. One of them is Chopsticks. So you know Chopsticks? It's one of the first things you learn as a kid. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Do you know who wrote Chopsticks? Ooh. It's the one you've never heard of, so. Oh, that's the name of the project. I'm only guessing. No, it was written by Mozart's sister. What? No. Yep. Mozart Allen, his sister Euphonia Allen, wrote that. She's called Euphonia.

25:33She's named after an instrument. Well, she's named after the Greek for beautiful voice. Well, it's the Euphoniaum, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And he was named Mozart because their parents was really into music and wanted his kids to be really musical. Are you allowed to do it? I guess it's like getting in early with your... It's like calling your child tennis champion, isn't it? is just kind of yeah your colors to the mast early well it was this was we're talking 1870s so it's quite a long time ago to be giving your kids wacky names yeah i think i mean i say that as a parent of someone with a relatively uncommon name but he was like a famous dance choreographer decided he wanted his kids to get into music called his daughter euphonia she wrote chopsticks called his son mozart and he went into music production right so yeah does she work is it like happy birthday where she's still it's in copyright it will be out i guess by now but she must it's well out of copyright yeah she wrote it when she was like 15 or something right uh do you any of you recognize the name primo saraceni not the way you say it

26:41saraceni rimo saraceni yeah maybe saraceni it could be anything who even knows but he was the inventor of that great piano that we see in big amazing character he was born in 1935 in italy he was an inventor ever since a child he had a really interesting moment where he made a kite from a poster of mussolini when he was a kid which resulted in a visit from the secret police you can't string up mussolini like that we'll see yeah they gave him an official warning about anti-fascist activity i apologize i knew the people at home couldn't see my nod of approval that i gave to that joke and it's not fair because we take the piss when you do bad ones yeah it's true yeah i can't wait there's no winning yeah yeah i'll keep doing yeah yeah um yeah no amazing inventor he made this piano he made lots of different gadgets he made this incredible one which was a stethoscope stereo system so basically you could dance to the rhythm of your own heartbeat um he a lot of inventions were to do with touch body and voice problem yeah okay you put in the stethoscope to your heartbeat you're dancing you get a bit more energetic because you're dancing your heartbeat gets faster you dance faster you get more energetic your heart gets faster still where does it end this thing has killed two popes not a little known fact but dan did you say his his origin as a working where he was between 1965 and 69 no i didn't he was a rocket scientist he was working for nasa working on the the re-entry systems their electronics.

28:07He's really a proper really skilled engineer. And he has invented some musical stairs as well, just to bring us back to the temple. So yeah, cool guy. Have you guys tried the singing lift at the South Bang Centre? No. Yes, I have. It's so great. What does it do? It sings, Dan. But what do you do? Oh, you just choose your floor and then as it goes up it will sing to you like, ah level three. It's so great. So it was done by Martin Creed who won the Turner Prize and it follows the scale and then it sings your floor to you so next time you're there what happens if the lift gets stuck does it have to sustain the note and you just hear it take a breath i haven't been stuck in it so i can't personally say you just hear it go

28:56okay it is time for fact number three and that is my fact my fact this week is that three months after Alex Honnold became the first person ever to free solo climb El Capitan, his mum became the oldest woman to ever climb it. Stunning. That's amazing. Yeah. Such a cool family. Yeah. So this is Alex Honnold. This was an Oscar winning documentary made with National Geographic. The New York Times called what he did one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind ever. He free climbed, which means no ropes. It's just his hands, his feet, climbing up a 2 ,900-foot route of a mountain face. No one had ever done it before.

29:35No one has done it since. And this was in 2017. Three months later, his mom, not doing a free solo climb, but you can also climb El Capitan via the actual route which goes through. There are different routes. Exactly. Made it up herself three months later. Amazing. Becoming the oldest person, yeah. She's called Deirdre. She is. She's incredible. didri volovnik volovnich she's called didri she's stunning she did the lurking fear route to get to the top because all these routes have different weird names reassuring names i think you're the first to climb you get to name yeah reassuring exactly um and has anyone seen the film no seen the trailer it's unbelievably exciting and you you sort of know that he doesn't die because they released the film yeah but can i ask a question yeah are we certain that there wasn't some body swath between Deidre and Alex and that he climbed up it in her body.

30:30That's a great premise for a film. He was there to help her climb up it, I think, when she did. So that would have to be her in his body. I feel like we're focusing on the wrong bit of this extraordinary story. It's an amazing climb. It's an amazing climb. El Capitan is this huge, it's like a sheer face of granite. I've been there. Have you? Yeah, yeah. Did you free climb or did you take the lurching fear route? Did you start? No, I was a good few meters away from the base and just far enough back that I could see the whole thing. Right. It's terrifying. It is. It's absolutely terrifying. And even the route that she took is very hard.

31:06Now, what's extraordinary is she did this at age 66, but she only started to learn climbing age 60. She taught herself to swim at age 40. So this is someone who is quite a late bloomer in general sporting. And then she went on to break the record again, breaking her own record, age 70. climbed it a second time age 70 and she did it with a foot injury as well it's the whole family is nuts absolutely nuts she's a really impressive woman she's run marathons she's conducted orchestras she's been a publisher uh you know professor of five languages and when they climbed el capitan together the first time he said okay well we'll do it you know we'll just go up and down so they took about 19 hours he said that's a reasonable time he did not tell her normally people take four days to do this so he said right come on mom let's just yeah we've got a day yeah they're absolutely bananas it's amazing she says that when he was a child he was climbing on kitchen appliances before he turned two so she knew he was going to become a climber but i would say that's pretty much old kids that's yeah that's true it's just like climbing on stuff right he's it's a pretty it's a pretty amazing story and i don't know how much andy this is shown in the documentary but he basically had climbed up this route multiple times before but with ropes So this was the first time he was trying it on his own.

32:23And he memorized the entire route. He knew exactly where his hand was going at every single point as he was going up. And once he finished it, you would think probably, okay, let's step away now. Let's go home and thank our lucky stars that nothing bad happened. What did he do? Well, because it was a documentary and they needed extra shots, he spent five more days reclimbing certain sections of it so that he could get better drone shots of it. For pickups. He did pickups on El Capitan. Legend. can i just say he does wear sticky shoes what he wears well it's a special kind of sticky rubber that helps you especially if you can't really get much of a grip with your fingers because you're basically on with your fingernails it just means that you're not gonna he's not wearing brogues he's not right he didn't even do it in bro it's even a record at all in my head he was like do you know batman from the old 70s shows where he just walks sideways up a wall he just goes horizontal yeah just walks up it yeah it's no you do you see him in the film he makes all these notes because you have to study the roots so much and you have to say like this this is good if you've got two fingers and you just need to hold your weight on two fingers while you get your foot across here so it's incredibly detailed the mapping out and it's it's um you might leave a chalk mark to say like put hand here it's absolutely terrifying and you often he like he ends up hanging by one or two fingers above this oh this absolutely insane drop i listened to a i listened to an interview with him recently because he was talking about his attitude to risk and he says i actually don't think i am a high risk person he says i am a low risk person in lots of ways the the individual climbing moves i make are very they're low risk but they are high consequence yeah i see he doesn't seem to feel fit no it's like doing russian roulette with a thousand chambers and one bullet like you're probably not going to shoot yourself but the one in a thousand chance of you losing that's it it's all over yeah yeah yeah he kind of said that actually the most worrying thing when he does these climbs is not the climb itself but it's all the extra things going on around him so while he was climbing el capitan there's some there was someone at the top doing a tightrope walk.