Funny You Should Ask . . . Again: More of Your Questions Answered by the QI Elves

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Colección de preguntas que los oyentes mandan al programa QI (juego de palabras entre "IQ", cociente intelectual, y las iniciales de "Quite Interesting". Un programa curioso pero inútil by design).

que las erratas que convierten una palabra permitida en otra también permitida, evitando así que nos avise el corrector (ej: un saludo/un salido) se llaman "erratas atómicas" (atomic typos), que la pizza de piña fue inventada por un griego que tenía un restaurante en Ontario (y la llamó Hawaiiana porque en el bote de piña ponía Hawaii), de dónde salían las piedras con las que se asediaban los castillos con catapultas en tiempos medievales, cómo comprobar que las semillas detectan la gravedad para saber hacia dónde lanzar las raíces y hacia dónde los tallos, por qué hay que subir las ventanillas de los aviones en el despegue y aterrizaje, por qué los fines de semana duran solo dos días, por qué el café sabe peor de lo que huele, por qué sabe a rayos el zumo de naranja tras lavarnos los dientes, por qué el rojo es parar y el verde avanzar en los semáforos (con una historia muy interesante sobre los primeros trenes: el "avanzar" era blanco, pero un cristal rojo de semáforo se cayó y quedó la luz blanca de detrás, lo que causó un accidente. Ahí el blanco dejó de usarse para indicar avanzar), por qué los pulpos tienen sangre azul y no roja... I had to look it up and apparently it’s been nine years ago that a colleague introduced me to my favorite podcast ever: No Such Thing As A Fish. Funny You Should Ask is just what it sounds like – the ‘QI Elves’ as they style themselves take turns answering questions sent to them by… The public I guess, or listeners to the podcast or… Someone? Anyway – it’s awesome, it’s fun, it’s super educational and it’s just great. It’s a perfect little side dish to the podcast. This is the 23rd QI title to be published by Faber. Worldwide, QI titles have sold almost 4.5 million copies.If you’re not familiar It’s a podcast made by the people behind the British quiz show QI and it’s basically just a show about fact. Each week the four hosts take turns presenting facts they’ve been researching and it’s not only super interesting, but also often hilarious and very entertaining. So when I heard they wrote a book, I jumped at the chance. Anna’s and James’s book is as joyful and fact-filled as you’d expect from the QI Elves, but the storytelling is utterly involving and entertaining too. You’ll be rooting for a Taiwanese tug-of-war team, be outraged by croquet skullduggery, admire the audacity of sporting history’s greatest cheats and discover the pure delight that is Puppy Bowl. It will whet even the sports refusenik’s curiosity because all human life is here: the rise of civilisation, psychology, war, money, substance abuse, success, loss, redemption and even Bhutanese archery. It’ll be an absolutely winning Christmas read.’ At the end of the day, it’s a book of two halves, and we’re over the moon to have had the chance to write both of them. We always gave 110%, and we couldn’t have done it without the team at Faber, who really brought their A-game. But clichés aside, we’ve been excited for a long time to give the QI treatment to the world of sport. Sure enough, our research uncovered some incredible characters and unbelievable stories. We hope sports fans and non-sports fans alike will love learning about them as much as we did, because you don’t need any prior sports knowledge to enjoy what is really a book about human behaviour in all its weirdness. As another old sporting cliché goes, “you just couldn’t write it” . . . except we did.’ Entre las muchas preguntas que responde el libro, averiguamos de qué lado debe colgar el papel higiénico al ponerlo en el soporte (lejos de la pared, según la patente original),