QI (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 14 - Episode #16.14 - full transcript
APPLAUSE
Hello.
Welcome to QI, where tonight
we've gone absolutely pathological.
Pathology is the study of diseases,
so let's examine
tonight's case studies.
The alarmingly feverish
Rhod Gilbert.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The worryingly pale Ed Byrne.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The incurably romantic Sindhu Vee.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And my own raging headache...
LAUGHTER
..Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, you can ring for a nurse
at any time.
So, Rhod goes...
- BELL RINGS
- Nurse!
Ed goes...
BELL RINGS
Nuuuurse!
Sindhu goes...
- BELL RINGS
- Nuuurse! Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!
Nurse! Nurse!
LAUGHTER
Sounds serious, yeah.
Alan goes...
MUSIC: The Funeral March
by Frederic Chopin
LAUGHTER
Hey-ho.
We begin in the Pacific Islands.
When is the best time for a coconut
to fall on your head?
Could it be just before you're
about to impersonate a horse
in a recording studio?
LAUGHTER
When you're feeling a little shy.
Come on.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
No.
It is in fact... When you're awake?
Yes. When you're awake, yes.
The answer is in the daytime.
No, you heal faster in the day.
In fact, you heal twice as fast.
I like the idea that your head
gets harder in the day
- and softens up at night.
- LAUGHTER
No, we have cells called fibroblasts
and these help heal a wound
when the skin is cut.
And they seem to kind of
switch on and off
in sort of day and night cycles.
It's likely that it's evolutionary
because historically
people were more likely to get
injured during the day.
And it has a really serious
medical application
because if you can trick the body
into thinking it's day all the time,
people who've had surgery
might mend more quickly.
Do you think that's going to change
now that most accidents happen
on a Friday or Saturday night?
Because eventually we will evolve
so that we heal quicker after that.
And also after a few pints.
We are slow to evolve
is all I can say, Ed.
Speak for yourself.
LAUGHTER
He was a lizard this morning.
Yes.
Was he upset?
Oh, he was desiccated.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Here's the thing, if you were
hit on the head by a coconut
in the Pacific,
in sort of the 19th century,
they might use the offending coconut
to patch you up.
They cut out the damaged part
of the skull
and then they replaced it
with coconut shell. No!
Yes, taken at a very precise
growth stage called niur,
and new bone would grow around it.
Would they also take the hair
off the coconut and just
put it on like a little wig?
No, it's a younger part of the
coconut, at an earlier growth stage,
when it wouldn't have
all the hair on it.
People would throw balls
at your head.
But you can also replace broken
or missing bones with wood
and the new bone would grow
around it. Really?!
I know. You'd think that
it's only an old thing
but it is absolutely something
that people are trying these days.
You use a coconut patch when
you're trying to wean yourself
off Bounty bars.
LAUGHTER
What you want to do is,
you want to protect the brain
so new bone can grow over it.
So does it expel the coconut part
or does it just become
a permanent part of your head?
No, it becomes a part of it.
It becomes like a scaffold.
But when you get dandruff,
you can put it in your rice.
AUDIENCE GASPS
APPLAUSE
There was a 2001 study
of the period 1994 to 1999
and one in 29 of all injuries
that were presented to the surgical
departments in the Pacific Islands
were related to the coconut palm.
85 people fell out
of a coconut tree.
16 people had a coconut
fall on them.
Three had the whole tree
fall on them.
LAUGHTER
One kicked the tree and injured
his foot.
LAUGHTER
And then a coconut fell on him.
And then a coconut fell
on his head.
Anybody know where the word
coconut comes from?
Is it something to do with the fact
that you can see a face in one?
It is that. So, Coco refers to a
character in Portuguese folklore.
The name means grimace
or grinning boogey man.
So it was basically Portuguese and
Spanish seafarers from that period.
And the three holes on the top
of the coconut represent the face.
In the Philippines... you've spent
time in the Philippines.
It's known as the
tree of life. Yes. The coconut tree.
They use all parts of it. You know,
they build their houses from it,
you eat it, they use every part
of the coconut.
Now, this is in the Philippines.
It's the Coconut Palace Court.
This is a government building
built entirely from coconuts.
Now, here's the thing, we were
going to try and open a coconut
but I don't trust any
of you boys at all,
so I've only given Sindhu
the coconut.
And what I thought is,
you could have the coconut
and a hammer and a screwdriver.
You don't need a hammer
and screwdriver? No.
Do you want the boys to mansplain
what you need to do to open it?
They're probably going to anyway
so do you guys want to get into it?
Actually, because we open coconuts
all the time,
whenever you do anything auspicious,
you start with a coconut...
LAUGHTER
OK. Yeah. This is the way it goes.
There you go.
APPLAUSE
Brilliant!
Oh, that's so impressive.
Here's the thing, it's something
you do before any auspicious prayer
or anything...
or when you get something new.
And, you know, people take it, like,
if your grandmother's involved,
she takes it very seriously, so,
when we got a new car, she did it.
Oh.
But... On the car? On the car.
LAUGHTER
And it didn't work because the car
is not concrete, so she said,
"This is very inauspicious.
You have to return the car."
LAUGHTER
How many cars did you go through
before you found one that...?
No, no, we didn't. We told her,
oh, you know, "Granny, go sleep."
And then when she woke up,
we said, "This is another car."
But did you just strike it
in a particular place?
Right.
And if it doesn't crack the first
time, it's your fault and you've
done something inauspicious and
your mother gives you a tight slap.
So, really, you just learn
from the beginning.
But what if the reason you want
to open the coconut is to drink
the coconut water inside?
These coconuts are not the drinking
ones. Those are the green ones.
It's "coconutally" nuts
how versatile the coconut is.
How can you tell the sex of this
skeleton by looking at its bones?
The pelvis.
The pelvis. You're absolutely right.
Why? What about the pelvis?
Is a man's pelvis wider so he can
take up more space on a train?
LAUGHTER
Yeah.
What is that about? How big
can a person's testicles be?
I mean...
LAUGHTER
I always find it weird that boys
have to shift it about a bit.
You never see a woman on a tube go,
"What's that doing up there?"
LAUGHTER
Anyway, nothing to do with anything.
So a woman has got child-bearing...
Something to do with
child-bearing hips.
So there is no 100% accurate way if
you look at a skeleton of telling
whether it is male or female,
but the pelvis is probably
the most reliable.
That's female, that one.
The way you can tell that's female
is there's a large sign under it
says female.
LAUGHTER
The pelvic gap - that's the space
between the top of the thighs,
it's wider on a female.
The hip bones flare slightly more
outwards. All of these things
allegedly aiding childbirth.
Never tell a woman actually
having childbirth that it's fine,
she's got the pelvis for it.
LAUGHTER
You can sex a watermelon, I think.
Or is that a myth?
But if you do, they throw you
out of the greengrocer's!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, trying to decide if a skeleton
is a male or female,
we use the Phenice method.
It was named after an American
physical anthropologist
called T.W. Phenice.
And it should only be used on
sexually mature skeletal remains.
And then it's 96% to 100% accurate.
So, for example,
we can't be entirely certain
because we don't have they full
skeleton, about the sex of Lucy,
who is our famous
Australopithecus ancestor.
She was found in Ethiopia and dates
back to about 3.2 million years.
We can't be sure it was a girl.
Because we only have 40% of the...
I'd go out on a limb, to be honest.
LAUGHTER
Especially with the name Lucy
as well.
LAUGHTER
I'm going to try and help you
with this, Rhod,
that's not a contemporary picture.
LAUGHTER
We only have 40% of the skeleton.
What we do have is a big bit
of the pelvis.
That's got a large pelvic knot.
And that suggests
that it is a female
but there is an awful lot
of ambiguity.
Does anybody know why she's
called Lucy? After Lucille Ball.
There was a popular song at
the time when she was discovered.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
was a popular song.
And they were so excited when
they discovered her remains.
LAUGHTER
That is a real picture, Rhod, if
that helps you. I was going to say.
So, during pregnancy, I love this,
the female secretes a hormone
called relaxin.
And what happens is,
the joints between the pelvic bones
loosen very slightly.
Yes. So why have we got a picture
of...?
That is a pocket gopher.
Why have we got a picture
of a pocket gopher?
They live in the pelvis?
They live... Yes.
They come out just like that.
That's it.
And what's most fascinating
is how they meet one another.
There was a professor
called Frederick Lee Hisaw,
and he studied the sex life
of pocket gophers.
They are small prairie...
He just kept looking in his pocket.
"Here we go, here they are.
They're at it!" Take notes.
Little tiny prairie animals live in
burrows, a bit like a mole.
And he discovered...
"I'm going to put you in
the other side in a minute.
"Get off her!"
Suddenly, I'm really anxious
that I've got one up my pelvis.
No, but you're the perfect host,
you see,
you don't even know it's there.
I'm not sure if
that was a compliment.
Anyway...
..he studied the sex lives
extensively of pocket gophers,
that's how he discovered
this hormone called relaxin.
But the pelvises of women,
as they get older,
they're about 8% narrower
than those of middle-age females.
And it suggests that the female
pelvis, it constricts
in older adults.
That's when that gopher leaves.
The surest way to sex a skeleton
is to poke around at its pelvis.
Describe an ancient Egyptian
pregnancy testing kit.
Surely, once an Egyptian becomes
ancient, they can't get pregnant.
One of them is a stand-up comedian,
by the look of it.
"I'll just do a quick five."
I think, once they start
wrapping you in bandages,
that's a pretty good sign
you're going to be a mummy.
GROANING AND APPLAUSE
I reckon it's something to do
with food cravings.
If some ancient Egyptian lady
was insisting on having
squirty cream on her camel's hoof.
It's like a Mary Berry recipe.
I meant camel's hoof as a food,
is what I meant.
Like mayonnaise on
chocolate fingers.
You know what I meant.
You know what I meant!
Strange food combinations
is what I meant.
No is the answer.
Right.
It's not squirty cream
on your camel's hoof?
Well, weirdly... I know!
What are the chances?
So there are various papyruses,
they're known generally
as the Berlin Papyruses.
And it contains the following -
another test for a woman
who will bear or a woman
who will not bear.
Wheat and spelt, let the woman water
them daily with her urine.
If they both grow, she will bear.
If the wheat grows, it will be
a boy. If the spelt grows,
it will be a girl.
If neither grows, she will not bear.
So, already they have some sense
of the chemical changes in a woman.
And in 1963, archaeologists tested
this ancient medicinal folklore.
Now, the girl/boy thing,
absolute hogwash,
but 70% accurate as a predictor
of pregnancy against non-pregnancy.
A pregnant women's wee would cause
germination of a seed?
Yeah. Whereas if she's not pregnant,
it wouldn't? Yes, correct.
Because there's, like,
a chemical in it?
Yeah, because of the changes
in the woman.
There's an even earlier test
described in the Brugsch Papyrus,
that's around 1350 BC,
and it involves a watermelon.
Now we're talking!
They have the squirty cream.
A watermelon pounded is mixed
with the milk of a woman
who has borne a son, and is given
to the patient to drink.
If she vomits, she's pregnant,
if she only has flatulence,
she will never bear again.
Hang on.
If she vomits, she's pregnant?
I mean, that's a pretty
good sign regardless.
I have to say, the other bit about
her farting, not proved to be true.
That's just a weird thing.
By the 1920s, they knew that
there's a specific hormone -
it's called hCG - is present
in the urine of pregnant women.
And they used to inject the urine
into sexually immature rabbits
and rodents, and then on the fifth
day, the animal was killed,
and autopsied to examine
the state of the ovaries.
And then pregnant women would
have had bulging masses
found on the ovaries.
So when I was a child,
it was the thing that women said,
because I grew up in
the United States.
They'd say, "How's Mrs So And So?",
and somebody would say,
"The rabbit died,"
and that meant she was pregnant.
The beginning of 2018,
IKEA advertised its range of cots
with a flyer in magazines.
It revealed a discount code when
urinated on by a pregnant woman.
So you ripped the page
out of the magazine,
and you peed on it, and if the
discount code was revealed,
you were a pregnant woman,
you could get money off your cot.
What, in store?
I don't think you did it in store...
It was fine to do it at home.
Pregnancy tests have come a long way
since the days of ancient Egypt,
but now, describe an
ancient Egyptian prophylactic.
Unreliable.
That is a really horrid
picture, isn't it?
Prophylactics from ancient
civilisation, they are always some
part of some animal
that the man puts over his...
That's what it usually is.
Probably a camel's hoof.
Could be. It's usually...
It's a pig's bladder or something,
except you have to ask the pig
to look away, obviously.
Can't you use, like,
from the segment of an orange,
with the...
I haven't heard that one.
Just, like, one little piece
of an orange, or...?
Just over the...
Yeah, I read that somewhere,
I read it years ago.
I'd need the whole orange, mate.
Wouldn't it be awful for the boy
who needs a mandarin?
So here's the thing -
Romans, Greeks, Egyptians,
they all viewed contraception as
entirely the woman's responsibility.
The only well-documented
contraception methods are
female-controlled, so 1550 BC,
that's how far back we're going,
there's a manuscript.
Women were told to grind dates,
acacia tree bark and honey together
into a paste, apply the mixture
to fibre from cotton plants,
so basically a kind of cotton wool,
and then insert that
where you would normally
keep a pocket gopher.
Actually, saying that,
the gopher itself is quite an
effective contraceptive.
There was a guy in 1928,
a Dr Declan,
he came up with anti-baby marmalade.
Two spoonfuls on bread
every morning.
It was mostly made of peas,
and it didn't work.
The German for the contraceptive
pill is anti-baby pill,
which is rather straightforward,
isn't it? Yeah.
So it does what it says on the tin.
By now, they could have
invented a baby pill.
Yes, save you all
that bother of the...
Oh, the bother...
Because the window of opportunity
is very small.
Yeah. So it didn't realise
for about two years,
you've got between about 4.30,
4.45 on Friday...
To make it happen.
You've got to be ready
to go, there and then.
Have you got to get in there while
the gopher's out, you mean? Yeah!
Have a look at this picture.
This is supposed to be the earliest
possible evidence of condoms.
It is from the Grotte des
Combarelles in France.
It's a cave painting, and it
supposedly represents a condom.
Yes.
I think it needs quite
a lot of imagination.
I mean, I suppose it's
a prophylactic if there's him
and then the bull
is the prophylactic,
and then the girl is
somewhere behind the bull.
Oh, yes, that's a good thing.
Now, time for an experiment.
I'm going to show you what happens
when water reacts with magnesium
and silver nitrate.
So I'd ask the panel
to put their safety goggles on,
please, and I have to charge this.
Are you ready?
Woo-hoo!
You didn't do that!
I did. Isn't that fantastic?
I love that.
So that is what happens when water
reacts with magnesium
and silver nitrate.
Can anybody tell me when a reaction
like that happens in the body?
When you've eaten a lot
of very spicy food and you have gas.
It's a really specific moment,
like that,
but on a much, much smaller scale.
Sneezing? Ejaculation?
Well, you're close...
Conception.
It is the moment when the sperm
and the egg meet
for the very first time.
ALAN SINGS OPERATICALLY
Sparks literally fly.
ALAN MIMICS EXPLOSION
So when a sperm enzyme
activates a human egg,
there is an explosion of zinc,
and the team from
Northwestern University in Illinois
took images of an egg's
zinc storage capability, each one...
This gopher with a tiny camera.
APPLAUSE
So, the human egg has got
about 8,000 zinc compartments,
and each one contains
around a million zinc atoms,
so at the point of conception,
they're all released in a display
that looks just like tiny fireworks,
and it goes on for about two hours.
So did you just fire semen at that?
Is that what that was?
Yes.
Different ones co... No!
But tiny, darling, it's not
as big as that...
Yeah, yeah, I realise that...
It looks just like a display,
and it goes on for two hours,
because you have to understand,
we've got 8,000 zinc compartments...
OK, we're going to have another go,
but I'm going to let you all
have a go.
I'm a 50-year-old man.
That's a bit far away.
Are you ready?
Yeah, so ready.
Ready? Pull it out now,
as it were...
What do we do?
Three, two, one, fire!
Whoo!
Come on, boys!
Oh, for goodness' sake...
No baby for you!
How was it for you?
APPLAUSE
I can go on for two hours, Sandi!
Did that one not go off?
No.
No baby for you.
Can I just say that I've been asked
to tell you not to try this at home?
I have no idea how you would
get hold of magnesium
and silver nitrate,
but please don't.
There we are. Do not do this, other
than in the presence of an expert.
That is amazing.
Do you feel like it reflects
on your manhood in any way
Yeah?
Yeah, I do, actually, yeah.
No, I...
A little bit, a little bit.
It was nothing to do
with the water pistol,
and everything to do
with the receptacle.
Typical.
We had a baby.
We did, we did make a baby.
If I'm honest, we were
a bit too quick, but...
Can I just say? It was fine for you.
Now, if you're feeling clueless,
it's time for the poisoned chalice
of General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
How much stomach acid
causes heartburn?
Too much.
So, not that.
It is NOT too much.
What does anybody else think?
It's not caused by stomach acid
at all?
No, not correct either.
Somewhere in the middle!
Not really.
Are you wanting us
to say too little?
It is too little.
The answer is too little.
Thank you.
Don't say that to Sandi Toksvig!
It's not true!
Can we point out
that you made that joke?
Don't try and project it onto me.
He's staying and you're going,
so there we are.
Heartburn, usually the result
of too little stomach acid.
If the stomach has less acid,
it's not so efficient
at killing microbes.
It gives yeasts and pathogenic
bacteria a chance to thrive.
These produce gas.
They increase the pressure
in the stomach to such an extent
that the oesophageal sphincter
is forced open,
and that allows the acid to escape
and to burn the oesophagus.
So acid reflux can be caused
by lack of acid.
What unusual physical trait
do these people have?
Yes?
What unusual physical trait
do they have,
or are they about to have?
What do they have?
Yes, Ed?
They've had ribs removed.
No, that's the weirdest thought.
No, they have not!
Have you never heard that urban
legend about various celebrities
who've had ribs removed
so they could auto-fellate?
AUDIENCE MURMURS
No, I genuinely have not.
Do not gaslight me.
Do not act like I have made this up.
OK, I've never heard of that. No.
Sindhu, help me.
I think they have too many joints.
Too many joints?
There's something going on.
Are they double jointed?
No. That's a common misnomer.
We think that people who are
flexible somehow have double joints.
They have a condition called joint
hypermobility or joint laxity,
and it basically means they can
move their joints
further than most people.
10-15% of people
have it to some extent,
so it's not all that uncommon.
But in order to qualify
as being hypermobile,
you have to be able to do it without
practising or without stretching.
It's just something that
you are born with.
So there are some tests we can do
to see if anybody here has it.
Can you bend your fingers
back over 90 degrees?
Which I simply can't do.
Anybody? No.
Try it in the audience.
Have we got anybody
who's hypermobile?
You are hypermobile, darling?
If you can just show us...
Oh!
Oh, yes!
Were you always able to do that?
It's something you are born with.
Can you touch your wrist
with your thumb.
Wow! OK.
Sindhu can do it.
Oh, yeah, you've got it.
Sindhu's found a loophole.
Yeah, I'm doing it.
And there's a scale
of how hypermobile people are.
It's not actually
always a good thing.
There's a guy called
Gary "Stretch" Turner.
He has an extreme case of something
called Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
It causes very loose joints,
but in his case,
he's got really stretchy skin.
Which one's him?
ED: They do say owners start
to look like their pets.
He can stretch his stomach out
into a table
that can hold three pints of beer.
It's not a good thing.
It can cause terrible joint pain.
What's going on with the dog?
Well, we think maybe the dog
has got it as well.
The dog looks much more confused
than that man.
The dog is like,
"Oh, God, I'm a bat."
I think the more unusual thing about
this dog is he's got human arms.
Now, what is a compound fracture?
Ed?
When you break more than one bone
at the same time.
I didn't say that!
I said more than one bone.
No, it isn't even that,
so if you were to break...
Fine, but that's not what I said!
I appreciate what I said
was also wrong.
APPLAUSE
I forgive you.
If you break lots of bones,
or you break a bone in many places,
it's just a multiple fracture.
If you have a compound fracture,
then that is a break like that.
GROANING
I hate to see that.
It's a break resulting in an open
wound, so it compounds the injury.
So the doctor has got
two issues to deal with.
They not only have a broken
bone to deal with,
they've also got a big hole
in the skin, basically,
where the bone is
sticking through it.
But there are lots of
different types of fracture.
There's a transverse fracture,
that's a fracture at right angles
to the normal way in which
the bone goes.
The green stick is really more
of a bend in the bones.
It's what happens
to children sometimes.
And this one here,
comminuted fracture,
when the bone fragments
into several different pieces,
and then an impacted fracture
is when the ends are driven
into each other.
Anybody broken a bone?
Not one of me own!
I just couldn't carry that off,
could I?
That was pathetic, Ed.
That was pathetic.
Let's have a look at you
being hard again.
I'm moving about
so I'm harder to hit.
I'm moving about
so I'm harder to hit.
It seriously looked like a gopher
was coming out your arse.
APPLAUSE
A compound fracture is one in which
the bone sticks out of the body.
Which plant gives your toothpaste
its flavour?
Mint.
There was originally mint in
peppermint, but here's the thing...
Can I have the "sorry," then,
please?
APPLAUSE
If you get a bad harvest,
and the crop is lost,
then you simply can't make
any toothpaste.
Much more reliable to make
synthetic menthol,
which is most commonly made out of
turpentine oil.
You get that by tapping pine trees.
So the mint flavour in most
toothpastes comes from pine.
All of which brings us to the
persistent pain in the neck
of the scores.
Entirely healthy,
but coming last with -12,
- Sindhu.
- APPLAUSE
Is that good or bad?
Is that good?
Running a slight temperature with -5
in third place,
it's Rhod.
APPLAUSE
Distinctly feverish, with 5 points,
Alan.
APPLAUSE
And hot, hot, hot, in first place
with 7 points, it's Ed.
APPLAUSE
So, my thanks to Sindhu,
Rhod, Ed, and Alan,
and I leave you with this tale from
Dr Travis Stork of Nashville,
Tennessee. A nurse once handed a man
a urine specimen container.
"The bathroom's over there,"
she gestured.
A few minutes later, the patient
came out of the bathroom.
"Thanks," he said,
returning the empty container,
"but there was a toilet in there,
so I didn't need this after all".
Thanks very much. Goodnight.
APPLAUSE
Hello.
Welcome to QI, where tonight
we've gone absolutely pathological.
Pathology is the study of diseases,
so let's examine
tonight's case studies.
The alarmingly feverish
Rhod Gilbert.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The worryingly pale Ed Byrne.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The incurably romantic Sindhu Vee.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And my own raging headache...
LAUGHTER
..Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, you can ring for a nurse
at any time.
So, Rhod goes...
- BELL RINGS
- Nurse!
Ed goes...
BELL RINGS
Nuuuurse!
Sindhu goes...
- BELL RINGS
- Nuuurse! Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!
Nurse! Nurse!
LAUGHTER
Sounds serious, yeah.
Alan goes...
MUSIC: The Funeral March
by Frederic Chopin
LAUGHTER
Hey-ho.
We begin in the Pacific Islands.
When is the best time for a coconut
to fall on your head?
Could it be just before you're
about to impersonate a horse
in a recording studio?
LAUGHTER
When you're feeling a little shy.
Come on.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
No.
It is in fact... When you're awake?
Yes. When you're awake, yes.
The answer is in the daytime.
No, you heal faster in the day.
In fact, you heal twice as fast.
I like the idea that your head
gets harder in the day
- and softens up at night.
- LAUGHTER
No, we have cells called fibroblasts
and these help heal a wound
when the skin is cut.
And they seem to kind of
switch on and off
in sort of day and night cycles.
It's likely that it's evolutionary
because historically
people were more likely to get
injured during the day.
And it has a really serious
medical application
because if you can trick the body
into thinking it's day all the time,
people who've had surgery
might mend more quickly.
Do you think that's going to change
now that most accidents happen
on a Friday or Saturday night?
Because eventually we will evolve
so that we heal quicker after that.
And also after a few pints.
We are slow to evolve
is all I can say, Ed.
Speak for yourself.
LAUGHTER
He was a lizard this morning.
Yes.
Was he upset?
Oh, he was desiccated.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Here's the thing, if you were
hit on the head by a coconut
in the Pacific,
in sort of the 19th century,
they might use the offending coconut
to patch you up.
They cut out the damaged part
of the skull
and then they replaced it
with coconut shell. No!
Yes, taken at a very precise
growth stage called niur,
and new bone would grow around it.
Would they also take the hair
off the coconut and just
put it on like a little wig?
No, it's a younger part of the
coconut, at an earlier growth stage,
when it wouldn't have
all the hair on it.
People would throw balls
at your head.
But you can also replace broken
or missing bones with wood
and the new bone would grow
around it. Really?!
I know. You'd think that
it's only an old thing
but it is absolutely something
that people are trying these days.
You use a coconut patch when
you're trying to wean yourself
off Bounty bars.
LAUGHTER
What you want to do is,
you want to protect the brain
so new bone can grow over it.
So does it expel the coconut part
or does it just become
a permanent part of your head?
No, it becomes a part of it.
It becomes like a scaffold.
But when you get dandruff,
you can put it in your rice.
AUDIENCE GASPS
APPLAUSE
There was a 2001 study
of the period 1994 to 1999
and one in 29 of all injuries
that were presented to the surgical
departments in the Pacific Islands
were related to the coconut palm.
85 people fell out
of a coconut tree.
16 people had a coconut
fall on them.
Three had the whole tree
fall on them.
LAUGHTER
One kicked the tree and injured
his foot.
LAUGHTER
And then a coconut fell on him.
And then a coconut fell
on his head.
Anybody know where the word
coconut comes from?
Is it something to do with the fact
that you can see a face in one?
It is that. So, Coco refers to a
character in Portuguese folklore.
The name means grimace
or grinning boogey man.
So it was basically Portuguese and
Spanish seafarers from that period.
And the three holes on the top
of the coconut represent the face.
In the Philippines... you've spent
time in the Philippines.
It's known as the
tree of life. Yes. The coconut tree.
They use all parts of it. You know,
they build their houses from it,
you eat it, they use every part
of the coconut.
Now, this is in the Philippines.
It's the Coconut Palace Court.
This is a government building
built entirely from coconuts.
Now, here's the thing, we were
going to try and open a coconut
but I don't trust any
of you boys at all,
so I've only given Sindhu
the coconut.
And what I thought is,
you could have the coconut
and a hammer and a screwdriver.
You don't need a hammer
and screwdriver? No.
Do you want the boys to mansplain
what you need to do to open it?
They're probably going to anyway
so do you guys want to get into it?
Actually, because we open coconuts
all the time,
whenever you do anything auspicious,
you start with a coconut...
LAUGHTER
OK. Yeah. This is the way it goes.
There you go.
APPLAUSE
Brilliant!
Oh, that's so impressive.
Here's the thing, it's something
you do before any auspicious prayer
or anything...
or when you get something new.
And, you know, people take it, like,
if your grandmother's involved,
she takes it very seriously, so,
when we got a new car, she did it.
Oh.
But... On the car? On the car.
LAUGHTER
And it didn't work because the car
is not concrete, so she said,
"This is very inauspicious.
You have to return the car."
LAUGHTER
How many cars did you go through
before you found one that...?
No, no, we didn't. We told her,
oh, you know, "Granny, go sleep."
And then when she woke up,
we said, "This is another car."
But did you just strike it
in a particular place?
Right.
And if it doesn't crack the first
time, it's your fault and you've
done something inauspicious and
your mother gives you a tight slap.
So, really, you just learn
from the beginning.
But what if the reason you want
to open the coconut is to drink
the coconut water inside?
These coconuts are not the drinking
ones. Those are the green ones.
It's "coconutally" nuts
how versatile the coconut is.
How can you tell the sex of this
skeleton by looking at its bones?
The pelvis.
The pelvis. You're absolutely right.
Why? What about the pelvis?
Is a man's pelvis wider so he can
take up more space on a train?
LAUGHTER
Yeah.
What is that about? How big
can a person's testicles be?
I mean...
LAUGHTER
I always find it weird that boys
have to shift it about a bit.
You never see a woman on a tube go,
"What's that doing up there?"
LAUGHTER
Anyway, nothing to do with anything.
So a woman has got child-bearing...
Something to do with
child-bearing hips.
So there is no 100% accurate way if
you look at a skeleton of telling
whether it is male or female,
but the pelvis is probably
the most reliable.
That's female, that one.
The way you can tell that's female
is there's a large sign under it
says female.
LAUGHTER
The pelvic gap - that's the space
between the top of the thighs,
it's wider on a female.
The hip bones flare slightly more
outwards. All of these things
allegedly aiding childbirth.
Never tell a woman actually
having childbirth that it's fine,
she's got the pelvis for it.
LAUGHTER
You can sex a watermelon, I think.
Or is that a myth?
But if you do, they throw you
out of the greengrocer's!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, trying to decide if a skeleton
is a male or female,
we use the Phenice method.
It was named after an American
physical anthropologist
called T.W. Phenice.
And it should only be used on
sexually mature skeletal remains.
And then it's 96% to 100% accurate.
So, for example,
we can't be entirely certain
because we don't have they full
skeleton, about the sex of Lucy,
who is our famous
Australopithecus ancestor.
She was found in Ethiopia and dates
back to about 3.2 million years.
We can't be sure it was a girl.
Because we only have 40% of the...
I'd go out on a limb, to be honest.
LAUGHTER
Especially with the name Lucy
as well.
LAUGHTER
I'm going to try and help you
with this, Rhod,
that's not a contemporary picture.
LAUGHTER
We only have 40% of the skeleton.
What we do have is a big bit
of the pelvis.
That's got a large pelvic knot.
And that suggests
that it is a female
but there is an awful lot
of ambiguity.
Does anybody know why she's
called Lucy? After Lucille Ball.
There was a popular song at
the time when she was discovered.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
was a popular song.
And they were so excited when
they discovered her remains.
LAUGHTER
That is a real picture, Rhod, if
that helps you. I was going to say.
So, during pregnancy, I love this,
the female secretes a hormone
called relaxin.
And what happens is,
the joints between the pelvic bones
loosen very slightly.
Yes. So why have we got a picture
of...?
That is a pocket gopher.
Why have we got a picture
of a pocket gopher?
They live in the pelvis?
They live... Yes.
They come out just like that.
That's it.
And what's most fascinating
is how they meet one another.
There was a professor
called Frederick Lee Hisaw,
and he studied the sex life
of pocket gophers.
They are small prairie...
He just kept looking in his pocket.
"Here we go, here they are.
They're at it!" Take notes.
Little tiny prairie animals live in
burrows, a bit like a mole.
And he discovered...
"I'm going to put you in
the other side in a minute.
"Get off her!"
Suddenly, I'm really anxious
that I've got one up my pelvis.
No, but you're the perfect host,
you see,
you don't even know it's there.
I'm not sure if
that was a compliment.
Anyway...
..he studied the sex lives
extensively of pocket gophers,
that's how he discovered
this hormone called relaxin.
But the pelvises of women,
as they get older,
they're about 8% narrower
than those of middle-age females.
And it suggests that the female
pelvis, it constricts
in older adults.
That's when that gopher leaves.
The surest way to sex a skeleton
is to poke around at its pelvis.
Describe an ancient Egyptian
pregnancy testing kit.
Surely, once an Egyptian becomes
ancient, they can't get pregnant.
One of them is a stand-up comedian,
by the look of it.
"I'll just do a quick five."
I think, once they start
wrapping you in bandages,
that's a pretty good sign
you're going to be a mummy.
GROANING AND APPLAUSE
I reckon it's something to do
with food cravings.
If some ancient Egyptian lady
was insisting on having
squirty cream on her camel's hoof.
It's like a Mary Berry recipe.
I meant camel's hoof as a food,
is what I meant.
Like mayonnaise on
chocolate fingers.
You know what I meant.
You know what I meant!
Strange food combinations
is what I meant.
No is the answer.
Right.
It's not squirty cream
on your camel's hoof?
Well, weirdly... I know!
What are the chances?
So there are various papyruses,
they're known generally
as the Berlin Papyruses.
And it contains the following -
another test for a woman
who will bear or a woman
who will not bear.
Wheat and spelt, let the woman water
them daily with her urine.
If they both grow, she will bear.
If the wheat grows, it will be
a boy. If the spelt grows,
it will be a girl.
If neither grows, she will not bear.
So, already they have some sense
of the chemical changes in a woman.
And in 1963, archaeologists tested
this ancient medicinal folklore.
Now, the girl/boy thing,
absolute hogwash,
but 70% accurate as a predictor
of pregnancy against non-pregnancy.
A pregnant women's wee would cause
germination of a seed?
Yeah. Whereas if she's not pregnant,
it wouldn't? Yes, correct.
Because there's, like,
a chemical in it?
Yeah, because of the changes
in the woman.
There's an even earlier test
described in the Brugsch Papyrus,
that's around 1350 BC,
and it involves a watermelon.
Now we're talking!
They have the squirty cream.
A watermelon pounded is mixed
with the milk of a woman
who has borne a son, and is given
to the patient to drink.
If she vomits, she's pregnant,
if she only has flatulence,
she will never bear again.
Hang on.
If she vomits, she's pregnant?
I mean, that's a pretty
good sign regardless.
I have to say, the other bit about
her farting, not proved to be true.
That's just a weird thing.
By the 1920s, they knew that
there's a specific hormone -
it's called hCG - is present
in the urine of pregnant women.
And they used to inject the urine
into sexually immature rabbits
and rodents, and then on the fifth
day, the animal was killed,
and autopsied to examine
the state of the ovaries.
And then pregnant women would
have had bulging masses
found on the ovaries.
So when I was a child,
it was the thing that women said,
because I grew up in
the United States.
They'd say, "How's Mrs So And So?",
and somebody would say,
"The rabbit died,"
and that meant she was pregnant.
The beginning of 2018,
IKEA advertised its range of cots
with a flyer in magazines.
It revealed a discount code when
urinated on by a pregnant woman.
So you ripped the page
out of the magazine,
and you peed on it, and if the
discount code was revealed,
you were a pregnant woman,
you could get money off your cot.
What, in store?
I don't think you did it in store...
It was fine to do it at home.
Pregnancy tests have come a long way
since the days of ancient Egypt,
but now, describe an
ancient Egyptian prophylactic.
Unreliable.
That is a really horrid
picture, isn't it?
Prophylactics from ancient
civilisation, they are always some
part of some animal
that the man puts over his...
That's what it usually is.
Probably a camel's hoof.
Could be. It's usually...
It's a pig's bladder or something,
except you have to ask the pig
to look away, obviously.
Can't you use, like,
from the segment of an orange,
with the...
I haven't heard that one.
Just, like, one little piece
of an orange, or...?
Just over the...
Yeah, I read that somewhere,
I read it years ago.
I'd need the whole orange, mate.
Wouldn't it be awful for the boy
who needs a mandarin?
So here's the thing -
Romans, Greeks, Egyptians,
they all viewed contraception as
entirely the woman's responsibility.
The only well-documented
contraception methods are
female-controlled, so 1550 BC,
that's how far back we're going,
there's a manuscript.
Women were told to grind dates,
acacia tree bark and honey together
into a paste, apply the mixture
to fibre from cotton plants,
so basically a kind of cotton wool,
and then insert that
where you would normally
keep a pocket gopher.
Actually, saying that,
the gopher itself is quite an
effective contraceptive.
There was a guy in 1928,
a Dr Declan,
he came up with anti-baby marmalade.
Two spoonfuls on bread
every morning.
It was mostly made of peas,
and it didn't work.
The German for the contraceptive
pill is anti-baby pill,
which is rather straightforward,
isn't it? Yeah.
So it does what it says on the tin.
By now, they could have
invented a baby pill.
Yes, save you all
that bother of the...
Oh, the bother...
Because the window of opportunity
is very small.
Yeah. So it didn't realise
for about two years,
you've got between about 4.30,
4.45 on Friday...
To make it happen.
You've got to be ready
to go, there and then.
Have you got to get in there while
the gopher's out, you mean? Yeah!
Have a look at this picture.
This is supposed to be the earliest
possible evidence of condoms.
It is from the Grotte des
Combarelles in France.
It's a cave painting, and it
supposedly represents a condom.
Yes.
I think it needs quite
a lot of imagination.
I mean, I suppose it's
a prophylactic if there's him
and then the bull
is the prophylactic,
and then the girl is
somewhere behind the bull.
Oh, yes, that's a good thing.
Now, time for an experiment.
I'm going to show you what happens
when water reacts with magnesium
and silver nitrate.
So I'd ask the panel
to put their safety goggles on,
please, and I have to charge this.
Are you ready?
Woo-hoo!
You didn't do that!
I did. Isn't that fantastic?
I love that.
So that is what happens when water
reacts with magnesium
and silver nitrate.
Can anybody tell me when a reaction
like that happens in the body?
When you've eaten a lot
of very spicy food and you have gas.
It's a really specific moment,
like that,
but on a much, much smaller scale.
Sneezing? Ejaculation?
Well, you're close...
Conception.
It is the moment when the sperm
and the egg meet
for the very first time.
ALAN SINGS OPERATICALLY
Sparks literally fly.
ALAN MIMICS EXPLOSION
So when a sperm enzyme
activates a human egg,
there is an explosion of zinc,
and the team from
Northwestern University in Illinois
took images of an egg's
zinc storage capability, each one...
This gopher with a tiny camera.
APPLAUSE
So, the human egg has got
about 8,000 zinc compartments,
and each one contains
around a million zinc atoms,
so at the point of conception,
they're all released in a display
that looks just like tiny fireworks,
and it goes on for about two hours.
So did you just fire semen at that?
Is that what that was?
Yes.
Different ones co... No!
But tiny, darling, it's not
as big as that...
Yeah, yeah, I realise that...
It looks just like a display,
and it goes on for two hours,
because you have to understand,
we've got 8,000 zinc compartments...
OK, we're going to have another go,
but I'm going to let you all
have a go.
I'm a 50-year-old man.
That's a bit far away.
Are you ready?
Yeah, so ready.
Ready? Pull it out now,
as it were...
What do we do?
Three, two, one, fire!
Whoo!
Come on, boys!
Oh, for goodness' sake...
No baby for you!
How was it for you?
APPLAUSE
I can go on for two hours, Sandi!
Did that one not go off?
No.
No baby for you.
Can I just say that I've been asked
to tell you not to try this at home?
I have no idea how you would
get hold of magnesium
and silver nitrate,
but please don't.
There we are. Do not do this, other
than in the presence of an expert.
That is amazing.
Do you feel like it reflects
on your manhood in any way
Yeah?
Yeah, I do, actually, yeah.
No, I...
A little bit, a little bit.
It was nothing to do
with the water pistol,
and everything to do
with the receptacle.
Typical.
We had a baby.
We did, we did make a baby.
If I'm honest, we were
a bit too quick, but...
Can I just say? It was fine for you.
Now, if you're feeling clueless,
it's time for the poisoned chalice
of General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
How much stomach acid
causes heartburn?
Too much.
So, not that.
It is NOT too much.
What does anybody else think?
It's not caused by stomach acid
at all?
No, not correct either.
Somewhere in the middle!
Not really.
Are you wanting us
to say too little?
It is too little.
The answer is too little.
Thank you.
Don't say that to Sandi Toksvig!
It's not true!
Can we point out
that you made that joke?
Don't try and project it onto me.
He's staying and you're going,
so there we are.
Heartburn, usually the result
of too little stomach acid.
If the stomach has less acid,
it's not so efficient
at killing microbes.
It gives yeasts and pathogenic
bacteria a chance to thrive.
These produce gas.
They increase the pressure
in the stomach to such an extent
that the oesophageal sphincter
is forced open,
and that allows the acid to escape
and to burn the oesophagus.
So acid reflux can be caused
by lack of acid.
What unusual physical trait
do these people have?
Yes?
What unusual physical trait
do they have,
or are they about to have?
What do they have?
Yes, Ed?
They've had ribs removed.
No, that's the weirdest thought.
No, they have not!
Have you never heard that urban
legend about various celebrities
who've had ribs removed
so they could auto-fellate?
AUDIENCE MURMURS
No, I genuinely have not.
Do not gaslight me.
Do not act like I have made this up.
OK, I've never heard of that. No.
Sindhu, help me.
I think they have too many joints.
Too many joints?
There's something going on.
Are they double jointed?
No. That's a common misnomer.
We think that people who are
flexible somehow have double joints.
They have a condition called joint
hypermobility or joint laxity,
and it basically means they can
move their joints
further than most people.
10-15% of people
have it to some extent,
so it's not all that uncommon.
But in order to qualify
as being hypermobile,
you have to be able to do it without
practising or without stretching.
It's just something that
you are born with.
So there are some tests we can do
to see if anybody here has it.
Can you bend your fingers
back over 90 degrees?
Which I simply can't do.
Anybody? No.
Try it in the audience.
Have we got anybody
who's hypermobile?
You are hypermobile, darling?
If you can just show us...
Oh!
Oh, yes!
Were you always able to do that?
It's something you are born with.
Can you touch your wrist
with your thumb.
Wow! OK.
Sindhu can do it.
Oh, yeah, you've got it.
Sindhu's found a loophole.
Yeah, I'm doing it.
And there's a scale
of how hypermobile people are.
It's not actually
always a good thing.
There's a guy called
Gary "Stretch" Turner.
He has an extreme case of something
called Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
It causes very loose joints,
but in his case,
he's got really stretchy skin.
Which one's him?
ED: They do say owners start
to look like their pets.
He can stretch his stomach out
into a table
that can hold three pints of beer.
It's not a good thing.
It can cause terrible joint pain.
What's going on with the dog?
Well, we think maybe the dog
has got it as well.
The dog looks much more confused
than that man.
The dog is like,
"Oh, God, I'm a bat."
I think the more unusual thing about
this dog is he's got human arms.
Now, what is a compound fracture?
Ed?
When you break more than one bone
at the same time.
I didn't say that!
I said more than one bone.
No, it isn't even that,
so if you were to break...
Fine, but that's not what I said!
I appreciate what I said
was also wrong.
APPLAUSE
I forgive you.
If you break lots of bones,
or you break a bone in many places,
it's just a multiple fracture.
If you have a compound fracture,
then that is a break like that.
GROANING
I hate to see that.
It's a break resulting in an open
wound, so it compounds the injury.
So the doctor has got
two issues to deal with.
They not only have a broken
bone to deal with,
they've also got a big hole
in the skin, basically,
where the bone is
sticking through it.
But there are lots of
different types of fracture.
There's a transverse fracture,
that's a fracture at right angles
to the normal way in which
the bone goes.
The green stick is really more
of a bend in the bones.
It's what happens
to children sometimes.
And this one here,
comminuted fracture,
when the bone fragments
into several different pieces,
and then an impacted fracture
is when the ends are driven
into each other.
Anybody broken a bone?
Not one of me own!
I just couldn't carry that off,
could I?
That was pathetic, Ed.
That was pathetic.
Let's have a look at you
being hard again.
I'm moving about
so I'm harder to hit.
I'm moving about
so I'm harder to hit.
It seriously looked like a gopher
was coming out your arse.
APPLAUSE
A compound fracture is one in which
the bone sticks out of the body.
Which plant gives your toothpaste
its flavour?
Mint.
There was originally mint in
peppermint, but here's the thing...
Can I have the "sorry," then,
please?
APPLAUSE
If you get a bad harvest,
and the crop is lost,
then you simply can't make
any toothpaste.
Much more reliable to make
synthetic menthol,
which is most commonly made out of
turpentine oil.
You get that by tapping pine trees.
So the mint flavour in most
toothpastes comes from pine.
All of which brings us to the
persistent pain in the neck
of the scores.
Entirely healthy,
but coming last with -12,
- Sindhu.
- APPLAUSE
Is that good or bad?
Is that good?
Running a slight temperature with -5
in third place,
it's Rhod.
APPLAUSE
Distinctly feverish, with 5 points,
Alan.
APPLAUSE
And hot, hot, hot, in first place
with 7 points, it's Ed.
APPLAUSE
So, my thanks to Sindhu,
Rhod, Ed, and Alan,
and I leave you with this tale from
Dr Travis Stork of Nashville,
Tennessee. A nurse once handed a man
a urine specimen container.
"The bathroom's over there,"
she gestured.
A few minutes later, the patient
came out of the bathroom.
"Thanks," he said,
returning the empty container,
"but there was a toilet in there,
so I didn't need this after all".
Thanks very much. Goodnight.
APPLAUSE