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eggshaped 1062161. Sat Mar 08, 2014 5:33 pm



http://soundcloud.com/nosuchthingasafish



There's not too much to it, just me and some of the other elves chatting about what we've found that week. Future eps will also include special guests doing the same.



Anyway. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out and let us know what you think. Next week, the QI elves will launch our new podcast 'No Such Thing as a Fish'. We've put a pilot up here:There's not too much to it, just me and some of the other elves chatting about what we've found that week. Future eps will also include special guests doing the same.Anyway. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out and let us know what you think.

tetsabb 1062176. Sat Mar 08, 2014 7:12 pm Ooh, exciting!

Hope you find QI stuff to discuss, then we can tear it apart here!

Leith 1062183. Sat Mar 08, 2014 7:33 pm Enjoyed the pilot. Good facts, entertaining banter and nice to get a little glimpse behind the scenes.



Glad you remembered Rosetta in then end, else I'd have had to have had a word!



Will keep an eye out for the next one.

nitwit02 1062190. Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:59 pm Very enjoyable - Thanks!

lyric911 1062247. Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:11 am Can you please enable the RSS feed for the podcast on SoundCloud? http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1209292-can-i-podcast-with-soundcloud- seems to have instructions to do so.

eggshaped 1062251. Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:59 am That sounds like it should be a good idea, Lyric - I'll get the tech elves onto it.



Thanks everyone for your kind comments. Feel free to tear things apart here - the point of the podcast is it's us talking about things before we've researched them properly - so there are bound to be mistakes aplenty in there!

knightmare 1062264. Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:41 pm http://soundcloud.com/nosuchthingasafish wrote: You need to update your browser to enjoy the new SoundCloud



Apparently promoting an updated browser, which doesn't exist, is more important than being able to play the hosted file.

julesies 1062265. Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:48 pm



Also, since you mentioned mushrooms, I have to add a picture of my favorite mushroom, the bird's nest mushroom, because it's such a cool mushroom. The "eggs" are spore packets:

So the taste receptors thing piqued my interest. It turns out that lots of organs express taste receptors and the entire taste signalling cascade including the digestive system, the respiratory system, the bladder, the pancreas, the liver, and the brain. Sperm also express them ( Source ). It seems like they are involved in sperm formation: "Sperm formation in animals without functional [taste receptor subunit] and [taste signalling subunit] is compromised, with malformed and immotile sperm." They add that "The nature of the endogenous ligands of [taste] receptors in testis remains to be determined" (i.e., we don't yet know what the receptors are tasting there) ( Source ).Also, since you mentioned mushrooms, I have to add a picture of my favorite mushroom, the bird's nest mushroom, because it's such a cool mushroom. The "eggs" are spore packets:

ConorOberstIsGo 1062269. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:05 pm I really liked it!



I am, however, one of those A-holes who tends to look at the negative first so here goes (although I wouldn't expect anything much from a pilot):



I think the musical breaks are very important because just speech for over ten minutes naturally loses people's attention.



I think compression is vital. It stops distortion at the high end and I'll bet you half your audience listens to podcasts on their commute and these volume levels will mean they can't hear a thing above traffic/tube noise. I mean you might be using an R1 unit (no Star wars jokes pls!) but fidelity is very important.



So how many elves are around the mic? Is it the right number and can the listener distinguish the voices? You might think it's easy and obvious to identify the voices because they are familiar to you but you might want to bring the listener in and introduce yourselves/your elves - maybe with an individual biographical factoid each - 3 secs or less. ( Answer Me This! deals with differentiating the voices by giving Martin the sound man a huge amount of reverberation, and after 3 episodes it no longer seems odd at all).



Let's see... anything else? Might be nice to have a very short klaxon buzzer that you, or your guests, could hit if they felt like it?



Wonderful to hear your voices, Jenny and eggshaped!



So is this a BBC production? Or is it a freelance podcast with the qualifications of the hosts being 'QI elf'? Squarespace seem to be sponsoring everything these days if that's any help or maybe you could join the podcast stable known as Nerdist?



Amazing trivia! Good job; for a pilot that was in excess of brilliant!

eggshaped 1062273. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:16 pm Thanks a lot for your feedback.



Conor, that was Anna (Annatash around here though she doesn't post much, if at all) not Jenny. Though I'm sure when Jenny's next in the UK we'll get her on.



It's not a BBC thing. Simply the guys in the QI office sat around the mic. And some non-elves will be involved soon, for example we are friends with Greg Jenner who consults on Horrible Histories and he will be appearing in a couple of weeks.



Julesies, thanks for the tastebud info, though not quite as much for the fungi pic! Ugh.

Janet H 1062275. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:24 pm erm, sorry to be obtuse, but how can I download it as an MP3 to listen to in the car?



Thanks in advance

Janet

Jenny 1062287. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:43 pm I wish I could have been there! It was so much fun to listen to, and picture everybody sitting around the table. Sadly, I'm unlikely to be over this year at all, though I hope I will be next year.

ConorOberstIsGo 1062292. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:48 pm eggshaped wrote: Conor, that was Anna [...] not Jenny.



Ah, I must have misheard. But that sort of goes to my point. Maybe make the Bio-fact different each week - even anecdotal! (e.g. I'm Conor and I set myself up on a blind date!) This will develop the audience relationship.



eggshaped wrote: Simply the guys in the QI office sat around the mic. And some non-elves will be involved soon, for example we are friends with Greg Jenner who consults on Horrible Histories and he will be appearing in a couple of weeks.



Oh, then I'm very impressed! It's very hard to come even close to the audio quality BBC podcast shows get (I am very into podcasts and so subscribe to a few radio 4 shows). I suggest getting a sponsor rather than asking for subscriptions/donations; the only podcast where donations have worked well(by that I mean begging for funding has not been intrusive) is The Bugle . You'll need to contact Andy Saltzman to know just how well it's going but I like the choose-how-much-you-pay model personally.



In terms of competition casts (though they are better called allies) you should give a listen to little atoms , Good Job Brain! , 99% invisible , Atomic Trivia war 9000 , We Don't Know Either and Answer Me This! AND on a more professional level, Infinite Monkey Cage , Freakonomics Radio , More Or Less and The Guardian's Science Weekly .



Brevity is important so I doubt that, if you put a message after the music that closes the show, it would be heard. I personally would skip to the next mp3 after 5 seconds of outro music (if there were no easter eggs/messages in the first few episodes at that point.)

ConorOberstIsGo 1062294. Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:50 pm Janet H wrote: erm, sorry to be obtuse, but how can I download it as an MP3 to listen to in the car?



Thanks in advance

Janet



Yeah, if you're not on iTunes in podcasting you barely exist but I guess we were a small test audience, so you'll work that out (Stitcher's big too).