No Such Thing As A Second-Placed Helmet

23:14Well, I did end up with a lot of blue plasters on my digits. so they were quite sharp knives. Oh, really? They were sharp knives, yeah. Interesting. So they were good. And the other thing that will absolutely lacerate you to pieces is those little graters, you know, that you'd use for nutmeg and garlic and ginger. I had no knuckles for a few months. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

23:37James Harkin:Can I just quickly qualify who this Anthony Bourdain guy is because a lot of people might not have heard of him, but he was this sort of rock and roll chef. He was a bit counterculture. A lot of people relate him to people like Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because he had quite a debauched life and he did a lot of drugs. And even his origin story of becoming a chef, which he writes about in what became quite a cult, iconic book, Kitchen Confidential. He says that when he was 17, he was working as a dishwasher for a wedding reception. And later on in the evening, he saw the bride and the chef having sex by the garbage.

24:10James Harkin:And he thought, OK, that's the job for me. Yeah. and he he was a guy who made multiple different kinds of tv shows he went he makes that sound so much cooler in the book he really does you've read it haven't you i have read it yeah yeah he's got a very funny anecdote about his he's going up for this huge chefing job and the proprietor of the restaurant and the manager of the whole thing they're interviewing him and they're grilling him um and the owner says to him what do you know about me and and Anthony Bourdain doesn't know much about this proprietor at all he's going through in his head the whole chapter of the book he's thinking about how the ways he can answer this question shall I be honest shall I shall I say this shall I flatter shall I do a bit of you know criticism and eventually he decides to be honest he says next to nothing what do you know about me next to nothing and the interview goes incredibly badly from that boy Norwoods and he leaves and he doesn't get the job and four days later he's replaying it in his head like how did i get that so badly wrong and he realizes what he was being asked was what do you know about meat not what do you know about me and he says next to nothing it's just the worst answer unless it was a vegan restaurant exactly it wasn't a toby restaurant and he just yeah that's really funny i like how he became this big selling author because kistin's confidential i say a cult book at the time he was massive spent 44 weeks in the bestseller list in america translated into 22 languages it's still constantly in print reissued and it's all because while he was a chef he got drunk and he decided to write an article called don't eat before reading this and he sent it to the new yorker and he never intended it to be published he was just drunk and he sent it and they went this is amazing and they published it and it got such a response that publishers got in touch saying can you expand this into an entire book yeah i read that article yesterday and it's pretty i've worked in a kitchen and i would say it's pretty spot on really yeah yeah like for instance he says that all the new food comes in on a tuesday so whatever you do don't go to a restaurant on a monday yeah and also a lot of chefs take monday off so you probably don't have the best chef and you definitely don't have the best food this isn't in all restaurants but it's in quite a lot of them and he said that there was another thing called save for well done so if you find a piece of meat and uh it's like it's really not very nice or you drop it on the floor or it's just really awful you only give it to people who order it well done because they're such philistines that they wouldn't know the difference between good meat and bad meat that's great um have you heard of maybe my favorite um carver of all time just we're on slicing meat and all of this yeah a renaissance italian called Vincenzo Cervio.

26:58And basically, lots of houses used to have their own professional carvers. That was a sign that you were doing really well. Wow. I know. That was a sign you were doing really well. Yeah.

27:09That showed you were kind of Sir Billy Big Balls. It's like a 42-inch TV today. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And they would just arrive, slice the meat, slice off certain cuts, and they'd do a really good job of it, and then your guests would help themselves. Oh, they didn't live with you.

27:23James Harkin:They were hired for an occasion. No, there's some. There are records of courtly carvers from the 15th century where they would live and that was their job, which is just incredible. You would hold the carvership. It's quite a big deal. And this is sort of why the idea of Toby Carvery does feel a bit ancient and medieval, despite not being special. Sorry to cast aspersions. I love that you sold it like that. Have you been to a Toby Carvery before? That's why they call it the carvery, isn't it? It sort of sounds like you're partaking in this ancient... I don't know what it... I haven't been to one.

27:55What is it? And he plays green sleeves on his loot whenever he goes. You get 10 % off if you bring B-Y-O-L. It's the sort of place where you can get all the meats, isn't it? It's very much all the meats. It's a big franchise. All the meats. Oh, it's a big chain across the country. Anyway, Chervio could carve a goose in mid-air. While he was playing. Him or the goose? He would arrive. You're all asking the right questions. He would arrive holding a goose on a big fork, right? holding it up so the goose is impaled on the fork he's holding it upright it's been cooked it's done um and he would gracefully carve it away with his free hand that was the italian way of carving oh okay like basically all italians did it like that and it was the germans who did it where you stick a fork on the table and cut it that way how interesting because this he wrote this book with 86 chapters about the carving of particular foods and the duties of a carver and he said that carving on a plate is just incredibly pathetic and basic and anyone who can't carve in midair so the meat lands hot hot and perfect on the plate yes doing it wrong he was like the salt

28:59James Harkin:bay of his uh of his time yeah um zoe you were on master chef is that because you were a good chef or did you just put in a good audition with my availability anything i've ever been on has usually been aligned with my availability but I do like food yeah I like food a lot but I have such a I've got a very scattergun approach to cooking sometimes it's excellent sometimes it's really not and it took me a long time to get out of that thing of well if one chilli in it is good five is going to be amazing and I'm very proud to say that I have cooked something that Greg Wallace just took one bite of and went I can't actually eat that and I was like I made his face go numb I put so much I made a medieval chicken pie I don't know what I was thinking I was panicking at this point And I put so much clove in it I numbed Greg Wallace's face I think that's why he left Faster Chef in the end I think that's when the wheels started to come off So much clove Clove I think dentists used to use clove Didn't they For toothache It has a numbing effect And I was like this is tasty So I just kept putting more and more and more and more in And basically I made an anaesthetic pie What's a medieval pie?

30:20James Harkin:I feel like that's got like pigeon in it I was using quite a lot of clove and herbs Okay Yeah Yeah Clove is a veggie option Feels quite medieval Yeah Spices The emperor has no cloves Yeah

30:40James Harkin:Okay it is time for fact number three That is James Okay, my fact this week is that the steps to get semen from a shark are, number one, get the shark to lie on its back, and number two, remove the semen from the shark. The first of these is by far the hardest. Welcome to Shark Semen Academy. It's a two-part course. So first of all, semen, I'm talking about ejaculatory fluid, not sailors. Great point. Just got to make that clear. but this is an article that I read on interestingengineering.com and it was about an Australian team who are collecting semen from wild male leopard sharks to boost the population and genetic diversity.

31:22It's called the Great Australian Stegostoma Semen Expedition. It's easy for you to say. And the way that they do it is that they turn the shark upside down because if you turn sharks upside down, they go into something called tonic immobility where they're like hypnotized. Yeah. There's a few different ways to do it, but that's the main way. It's crazy that various animals, because it's sharks and a few other things have this tonic immobility, isn't it? I've heard some theories that humans do it. Really? I don't think this is true for sure, but like sometimes if people get in very, very stressful situations, they just kind of shut down.

32:00It's that kind of thing. I just find it crazy that some animals have effectively a factory settings position. You put the shark upside down and it happens. Yes. What I loved about this story was it's not all sharks. Hashtag not all sharks. And I read somewhere it went, it's less successful with great whites. And you think, I wonder how they found that.

32:25James Harkin:Well, this is the big question because we know that, you know, the famous thing of saying who was the first person to have the idea to pull the udders of a cow to get milk, who's the first person to flip a shark and discover not only that it goes into this state but it lasts for about 15 minutes this i wonder how many lives were lost in the same process one thing is that there have been examples of animals doing this to sharks so there was a witness um in california who saw a female orca holding a shark upside down to uh kill it basically to suffocate it to death because it couldn't breathe so it's possible the humans saw that and then copied the other animals yes that will be the possible is there an evolutionary benefit to tonic immobility for leopard sharks i don't know what it is if there is yeah it could be like that uh thanatosis where you pretend to be dead other animals will leave you alone yeah but it feels like they can't get themselves out of it like they can't stop after 10 minutes no they have to just wait until it wears off it's so weird i don't know it could be It could be just like a quirk of like, you know, their brain.

33:30Their design. Because they've got so many sensors, haven't they, on the front of their noses. Yeah. And they're really hypersensitive to it. Yeah, they've got things called ampoules of Lorenzini, which pick up electrical signals. Yeah. So they can almost, the same way that you can taste an onion, they can taste electricity through these ampoules. They can, I think I'm right in saying a shark can pick up when an animal is in distress because of the change in. Because they're screaming, their legs come off. There's a shark. Well, like heightened heart rate and the electrical impulses. Oh, that's so creepy.

34:08Okay, so the reason we're talking about sharks is because you have swum with sharks. Yes. Did your heart rate go up, Zoe? Yeah, well, I was aware of that piece of information when I was in the water with sharks going, I must appear calm in case they pick up on my electrical impulses going through the fucking roof at this point. What sort of sharks? I've dived with various sharks Bull sharks Tigers Oceanic white tips Reef sharks Whale sharks Scallop hammerheads and giant hammers All at the same time No different dives It's like Pokemon it feels like Oh Threshers This was training for experiencing Greg Wallace That was it That was all training just to numb Greg Wallace's face where I just rubbed him on his nose and he flipped over on his back.

35:01Are you trying to swim with as many sharks as possible? It feels like this can't be an accident. I used to have what I would call probably a normal level of fear around sharks. The first time I saw a shark in the water, I really did feel my heart rate go through the roof. It was in Egypt, diving in Egypt, and the shark came out of nowhere. But then once that fear went down, I went, my God, they're beautiful. They're so beautiful. so since then we've sort of tried to tailor our diving in order to see specific species and I'm slightly obsessed with just the beauty and shape of hammerheads and I always wanted to see a hammerhead and the first time I saw her I turned around I was on a dive in Mexico and there was one behind me and I just burst into tears in my mask yeah what's the biggest shark well the biggest one that we had was it was quite funny we were we were on a dive it was at a cleaning station where there were sharks being cleaned by little fish and we were watching these sharks and we were like these are beautiful, I think they were Galapagos sharks and black tips and all of a sudden my friend turned around and if you've ever wondered whether it's possible to hear somebody scream underwater I can tell you it is.

36:09Because going right behind us, obviously just looking at all of our backsides as we were facing the other way, it was an enormous tiger shark. Cracking ass. Cracking ass. They are very scary. as then they do attack if they're hungry. Well, they are less fussy about what they eat, shall we say. Okay. Yeah, so they will be a little bit more opportunistic. Yeah, yeah. But it was just clearly going past all of our bums going, not that one, not that one. That's got a bit of meat on it.

36:37James Harkin:And you could do the snote rubbing on a tiger shark. That does work as well. It is how people have saved their lives in the past. Yeah, or save sharks. Yeah, right. Or indeed save sharks. So obviously there's lots of sharks in the ocean with hooks affecting them and they're strapped in their mouths and there have been divers that have learnt how to calm them down and remove the hooks. That's incredible. That's such a sort of, gosh, you think people who do bomb disposal underwater approach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they are. But that is... We're not taking anything away from those guys. Sorry. On cast.qi.com, write in.

37:10If you're listening to this while you're disposing a bomb underwater, I do think you're pretty cool, actually. That's a very casual approach. My favourite fact about sharks I learned in researching this fact Shark semen As we were on shark semen at the start of this It's extraordinary Shark semen can last for four years Really? After deployment A female shark can keep sperm Inside herself for four years And then say go The time is right We've just moved into a new place Whatever we're ready

37:43James Harkin:Is that more about her than the semen though? As in if a shark let the semen out just into the ocean and you collected it four years later floating i don't think sharks have super semen which can just survive on the tides for four years i think it's inside the feet so something looking for clarity it's where the females keeping it so there was an aquarium in california which had a female bamboo shark she laid an egg which grew into a happy healthy young shark she hadn't been with any males for 45 months yeah and it wasn't because some sharks can do a kind of virgin birth partner genesis where they clone themselves effectively they produce an egg which just turns into the mother but yeah this was her and a male shark producing a new shark just imagine that yeah it's really clever i'm going on a date with someone and it goes well and then five years later you don't say meet your son exactly or meet your yet to be born son exactly it's like that isn't it it's not like you've got a five-year-old it's like we're about to have a baby yes yeah crazy we mentioned before about some sharks not being that fussy about what they eat most of them only eat meat but there is one omnivorous shark that i found which is the bonnet head shark so it's kind of related to the hammerhead but it's just got a really kind of rubbish hammer it doesn't go very wide it's quite a narrow hammer uh but they found that it has seagrass in its stomach um which is very unusual it's a type of vegetable you get in the water and what they think is that it eats it to kind of line its stomach and then it eats these really sort of spiky crabs and it means that the spiky crabs don't injure its stomach when it eats it like gaviscon for sharks that's incredible yeah that's very clever though yeah isn't it that's stunning yeah i've never heard of a bonnethead shark no i'm not on the list there's There's some weird-looking sharks out there.

39:38Have you ever seen a goblin shark? Oh, yeah. Oh, that is a... Oh, that's... It looks good, is it? Oh, it's gone really wrong.

39:44James Harkin:Well, it's named for the fact that it basically looks like a goblin. In fact, I think it... No, because it's gobbling people. Yeah, yeah, it is sharks, a goblin shark, aren't they? The raggy-tooth shark? Brilliant. It's just got... Oh, it's all over the place. Have you seen that? In British waters. Free Invisalign, yeah. It's just... It's all teeth are all over the place. What's the dream shark, then, for you to see? Oh, well, it was the giant hammerheads, and I've seen them, and I've been very, very close. Yeah, yeah. I've had a hammerhead look me in the eye. Right. Yeah. I've never been in the water with a great white, and I am cautious about that.

40:18James Harkin:Yeah, it does sound rather dangerous. Yes. I was reading about what you should do if you do find yourself with an aggressive shark or a shark that is coming for you. The University of Florida's international shark file says that if you are going to swim with sharks to sort of help your chances. If it's coming for you, leave the water immediately. So that's one of the bits of advice. Very good advice. Oh, gosh. I would never have thought of that. Yeah, but this is a great one. Ideally, do it with someone else so you don't become a solitary target. Yeah, well. Which is the old changing your shoes for running shoes so you outrun the other.

40:54James Harkin:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've sort of done that. Once on a dive trip in Egypt The Egyptian navy came and took our little dinghy away That we were using to get back and tooth to the boat It commandeered it to move some of their own stuff So it left us in the water With an oceanic white tip circling underneath us And the oceanic white tips are They're an interesting shark Because they're the ones that You know when you hear about pirates being eaten in shipwrecks Or planes going down and people being eaten by sharks It's usually oceanic white tips They're the sort of scavenger sharks in that respect. And it was circling underneath us and I was in the water with this German guy who I hadn't spoken to prior to that point and I just hung on to him because he was massive and I thought, well, if it does come for us, I'm hoping it'll prefer a German vorst.

41:51Rubbing clothes on yourself. Yeah, rubbing clothes. I'll just numb you. He's more yummy. I'm more nummy.

41:59James Harkin:I read an account of what it's like to be bitten by a shark by a man called Eric Norrie. And Eric Norrie says it is the scariest thing that you can go through. Even scarier, according to him, than some of the other things that have happened to him, which include having been struck by lightning, bitten by a rattlesnake, and nearly beaten to death by a series of monkeys. Wow. This ranks as the highest. He doesn't get travel insurance anymore, does he? Any prior claims? Hang on, what was the first one? Hit by lightning He got hit by lightning He was bitten by a rattlesnake And then he was beaten, punched up by monkeys two separate times And bitten by a shark And then bitten by a shark And that was the one His name is Japanese for seaweed, right?

42:44Nori So maybe he was just lining his stomach Yes, exactly

42:49James Harkin:Okay, I feel like we're avoiding it How do you get semen out of a shark? That sounds like the start of a joke. Very, very carefully. There are different methods. Some, it's because different sharks, you know, they're very. And sharks don't have penises in the classic human sense. All right, so you don't hammer the head. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. They've got these claspers, which are grooved organs used for delivery of sperm, which I have to say sound quite penisy to me. And they're inserted into the female's vent. Again, sounds a little bit penisy, doesn't it? And then they unfold in complicated ways.

43:22Aha! That's not what a penis does But you can Some of them you have to I believe Excite How do you do that? Dress up as a dolphin Cheeky little dolphin It's more of a manual thing I don't think there's a visual element to it Because they're knocked out at this point They're upside down But you can pop a stringent Or they'll just feel a little prick Or sometimes you can press on either side and out it pops. Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah, it does. It's quite the job though, isn't it? It is quite a job, isn't it? If that is your... I once met a bloke who took... He got venom from snakes in Australia for antidotes and that was his job.

44:11Like taipans and all sorts. I remember saying to him, that's quite a job. And he went, yeah, it's a bit of a dead-end career really.

44:20James Harkin:He's a stand-up comedian. Couldn't do what you do. God, what a fun alternative ending that would have been to Jaws. Richard Dreyfuss just flips the shark over and wanks him off at the end. We're going to need a bigger bottle.

44:40James Harkin:Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is, the British Olympic skier, Eddie the Eagle, once came second to his own helmet. Okay So Who's it for younger listeners? Eddie the Eagle Michael Edwards is his name And he represented Britain At the 1988 Winter Olympics He is an amazing sportsman And his story is incredible We'll get into it But the main thing to know for the fact Is that he was broke He did a lot of his training Completely broke He was sleeping in a caravan And he was eating out of bins Chefs having sex with a bride next to him I should have been a chef Yeah yeah Anyway So he had been training for a couple of years And he was so broke that his helmet was tied on with string And there was one moment where he finished a jump One of his early competitive jumps And his helmet just snapped off him Ping And it landed ahead of him I see So it's not like a ski race where it's top to the bottom quickest It's a jump where you have to go the furthest Exactly So I didn't know anything about ski jumping.

45:50He says, I may have been the first ever ski jumper beaten by his own gear. Very funny. And so, yeah, he was ski jumping. Britain didn't really have a tradition of ski jumping at all. He was the first person ever to represent Britain at the Winter Olympics. And he's just an incredible, he came dead last in the 1988 Olympics, but he won the nation's hearts. He won the world's hearts, didn't he? He was a global sensation. Yeah, yeah. There's been a film about him. And have you met him, sorry? Yes, I've skied with him. What? That's so true. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. He's such a lovely guy. He really is. So a few years I've done the Altitude Comedy Festival out in Austria.

46:30And on one of those years he was coming out and talking about the film that was just about to be released. So he was one of the guests on the festival talking about his film. And one day the producer went, do you want to go skiing with Eddie Deagle? And I went, do I? That's amazing. So, yeah. And the thing about him is we sort of concentrate on the fact that he was, You know, it came last in the ski jump. He's actually an incredible skier. Yes. He's a British skier. And I spoke to him and he was saying, you know, he wanted to be in the downhill, the British downhill team, but he wasn't good enough.

47:01So he thought, well, rather than give up completely, what's nobody doing? And they were like, ski jumping. So that's where he went. So he had the British record for ski jumping at the time. He was no, he wasn't like a complete slouch. He was ranked 55 in the world. He had a bad Olympics, I will say that. He came last by quite a long way. But he wasn't a bad ski jumper, really. Like New Zealand are in the Soccer World Cup and they're ranked 85 in the world. And he was 55 in the world at ski jumping. So that kind of goes to show that he wasn't. Exactly. And he was a brilliant downhill skier. Like you say, he was the ninth fastest amateur in the world.

47:37Like all the, I mean, he'd been training and he'd been a brilliant sportsman from a very young age. But he came up. The thing is, he didn't look like a sportsman, really. Like he had these round glasses, didn't he? Yes. That would mist up whenever he skied. So he couldn't see where he was going. Imagine doing a ski jump and you don't know. Where are you going? It's terrifying. He said one in three jumps. He couldn't really see where he was going. The thing about ski jumping is you go down this big ramp. You're going at about 60 miles an hour. There's a lift. You jump. And then you're trying to get as far down the slope before you hit the ground.

48:08So you're sort of moving down the slope like 10 or 15 feet above the ground. You're never like 100 feet in the air. But you're just trying to make yourself The ground drops away Have you ever stood beside a ski jump? No Oh my god I mean when you stand beside the ski jump It is terrifying It's utterly My dad lived in Norway for a while And there was one round the corner from him And when you see the structures You're like Wow the foot was standing at the top of that And just letting go I went to one of the big sort of finals of the year They do like the three I can't remember what it's called But it's like three jumps within a week of each other And one of them's at Garmisch Parking kirchen and i went to that mainly because the mountain is called the wank mountain oh this is why you went one of the best jumpers in the world was andreas wank wow um so i wanted to see andreas wank on the wank mountain yeah which i did and even it's in germany and even though he's german when he came on i was by far the loudest cheerer for him i think like i really got up and started cheering for him while the germans were a bit more quite a niche sports involvement there you tried to turn him upside down

49:17James Harkin:i really like uh the post career from the olympics of eddie because it's just a series of bumbling fun events it was things like he had a five-year sponsorship from eagle airlines and so he did adverts to them and so on but then people wrote songs for him in places like finland and he charted with them even though he didn't speak any finnish um he had one song which was called my name is eddie in the english version of it which it is called michael yeah yeah yeah but in fairness slim shady isn't evidence real good point good point and it was um it was written by a protest singer songwriter called erwin goodman and he was flown over to finland to sing it live on tv and when he got to the hotel room his phone rang and said unfortunately erwin the rider who was going to sing it with you has died um but we still need you to do it so he had to go on tv a few hours later singing a song that he didn't really know that he didn't do yeah phonetically learning yeah that's an easy language yeah exactly stunning but he got a hit with it uh there was another one called fly eddie fly which was written by mort schumann who wrote the song viva las vegas i think i remember that one because he was massive he was absolutely yeah yeah yeah the line about him which I really like is that he made it look difficult skiing which it is which it absolutely is and you know he'd been working as a plasterer he had been skiing from a very young age he had been training for a long time but the thing is there's also this story underpinning it which is about the snobby British skiing establishment so he actually had gotten into the English skiing squad right?

50:59Yeah but on day one he got into a row with one of the selectors at the club the skiing club they were at and he was sent home he said right you're not in the english ski squad anymore so he thought well i'm just going to skip that and get into the great british squad instead which he did which is amazing um and if he jumped if he jumped 70 meters he could qualify and so there's this constant undercurrent of like the british skiing establishment which is they would thought oh come on you're making us look a bit silly and he said when he did the actual olympic jumps uh the 90 meter event which was the biggie yeah he said everyone else uh competing in that event had done 30 to 50 ,000 jumps off that ramp in their lives i had done five so yeah yeah but he did host a four-hour press conference once because he was just such an entertaining voice he is the um

51:46James Harkin:the movie that you mentioned earlier that was made um great movie and it came about because matthew vaughn who made the film he was sitting down with his kids and watching cool runnings and his kids were crying with laughter i've had this experience recently because it was one of my favorite movies as a kid my boys were in floods of tears it was just the funniest thing they'd ever seen and he was like why don't we make movies like this anymore and as it turned out eddie the eagle was competing at the exact same calgary 1988 olympics that the cool runnings jamaican bobsled team were at so two stories where they tried their hardest but didn't have the tools to to win came out of that one olympics it's pretty amazing i love stories like that i was watching the most recent Paralympics, Winter Olympics, and there was a Haitian skier with one leg doing the downhill or the Super G.

52:36And I just thought, what an incredible, what an incredible achievement. Yeah. You know. Ralph Fethian, I think it's called. Yeah. One of the poorest countries in the world, if not the poorest, you know, and with one leg. And he got down the course. It was a really difficult course. The conditions were awful and not everybody made it and i just thought wow that is uh absolutely inspiring do you have an artificial leg for that event or you can you can but he didn't yeah yeah good grief that's amazing yeah incredible that's so cool so you if you're doing the altitude festival i'm guessing that you ski i ski yeah sort of and is that the downhill classic what i've been called

53:17James Harkin:i've broken the mold yeah it's like coming into brighton at the end of the marathon yeah yeah I love skiing I learnt to ski in Scotland and apparently if you learn to ski in Scotland you can ski anyway oh my god oh really yeah it's tough in Scotland in Glenshe over sheep and rivers why is it tough because the conditions are usually pretty grim yeah there will be when I was there as a kid there would be the odd sheep running about and and you do laugh but I have been blown up a mountain in Scotland not a euphemism I have literally been The wind and the conditions were so awful. Yeah, okay. That's what we mean by rough conditions.

53:56Whenever I've been, for instance, you just can only see like about two metres in front of me. Not for me. Having said all of that, and to give Glenshee and the other ski resorts in Scotland these dues, when the weather is good, it's fantastic and it's beautiful. You've never ski jumped, I assume? No. When I was younger, though, I would have given it a go. Do you think? I would have given it a go. The President of the International Ski Federation, Gianfranco Casper once said it's not appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view to ski jump because he thought their uterus might burst when they landed.

54:31Well, you know. And he said that in 2010. Oh, okay. That would have been the first ever Olympics. Can you believe it? 2010. Really? Wow, so must be correct, right? Yeah. Because the landings aren't very hard. That's the thing I didn't... Not if you do it right. Yeah. Because anyone can jump, you know, 10 feet down. That's fine. Like, you know what I mean? When was the last time you jumped 10 feet down? Okay, let's move on. But no, so I didn't know anything about ski jumping, right? I've never been skiing or anything like that. But the thing that's so cool looking at it is the way they make themselves more aerodynamic.

55:08And there have been all these techniques over the years of how to stay in the air. Because obviously a flying squirrel would be the perfect ski jump. Yeah, just like get those flaps out. Yeah. Come on Not if your uterus is going to fall out That's the thing about the sport Your costume has to be skin tight And these have been I'm sure you guys in the research found this recent scandal In the skiing world of the Norwegian Coaches And one former equipment manager Who were caught adding crotch stitching To make the surface area bigger And therefore Was there not a thing where people were putting injections In their penises or something So this is penis gate.

55:49And this, I think... That's an area of York, I think. Penis gate, I think, is still under investigation. Because basically, if you think it wouldn't have an effect just adding some extra stitching into the crotch, it doesn't sound like it would have much of an effect, right? Some research has been done which concluded a single extra centimetre at the crotch could mean you got four metres further. Wow. It's quite... Yeah, it's quite a lot. A lot further you can go with just a little extra fabric. which is why you're measured with a laser so that your costume is absolutely skin tight. Right. And some athletes have supposedly been injecting their penises with a kind of acid, sort of medical acid, to increase the circumference by a couple of centimetres.

56:31So it does give you more surface area. Which would give you more surface area and could lengthen your jumps. Not out in front.

56:40James Harkin:They're not coming second to their own helmets as well, right? Is what you're saying.

56:53James Harkin:Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this show, we can all be found online. I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram. James? Come join me on LinkedIn. Search my name. I'm on there. Offer me a job. Andy? I'm at Andrew Hunter M And Zoe, where are you? I'm at Zoe Lyons Comedy, I think Yes, I am, am I? Yes, thank you Thank you, Dad, yes And so, okay, you've got your pod which is very exciting and you discuss running and you have guests on all the time you had Alice Roberts on not too long ago Yeah, she's brilliant So give everyone a quick idea of what's here So the podcast is called The Running Joke I present it with my fellow comedian and fellow runner, Esther Minito and it's about all things running and we have lovely guests on talking about all aspects of running and taking the stigma out of running.

57:51So it's for anybody and everyone. And having read about Jeff Galloway's approach, I'll be Jeffing my way around a lot of runs.

58:00James Harkin:That's very cool. So available now where you get all your podcasts. If you want to write into us about any of the things that we've said over the course of this show, podcast at qi.com. Send us your best facts because we'll take those to Little Fish, the show that we do every Monday, or send us feedback about things and experiences you've had related to the show because Andy goes through the inbox, picks out the best, and that goes to Jewel, which is Drop Us A Line, our mailbag show, and that's a part of our secret club, which is called Club Fish. If you're not a member of Club Fish, go to patreon.com slash clubfish and check it out.

58:31James Harkin:There's multiple tiers, multiple things that you can do. Otherwise, just come back here next week because we're going to be back with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye.

58:43Thank you.