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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 03/02/2026

It's the last new episode of the W Series tonight and we're looking at a whole range of WHATNOTS with Sandi, Alan, Andrew Maxwell, Joanne McNally and Sally Phillips! BBC Two, 9pm.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 20/01/2026

In the 14th century, a high-spirited person was known as a 'great-willy'. Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two we've got a WILLY NILLY episode with Sandi, Alan, Catherine Bohart, Russell Kane and Josh Widdicombe!

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 06/01/2026

There are about 6,500 species of mammal, 15,000 species of ant and 200,000 species of wasp. Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two there's a brand new episode of QI all about W Animals starring Sandi, Alan, Nabil Abdulrashid, Sam Campbell, Holly Walsh and several chickens!

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 16/12/2025

Wonder Woman was created by the inventor of the lie detector. Tonight on QI we're looking at everything WEIRD AND WONDERFUL in a brand new ep starring Sandi, Alan, Melanie Bracewell, Roisin Conaty and Patrick Kielty. BBC Two, 9pm.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 03/12/2025

Bobcats climb cacti to escape predators. Thanks to their tough, thickly-padded paws, they don’t get injured by the spines.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 02/12/2025

Your heartbeat will synchronise with your date if the date is going well. Tonight we're looking at WOOING in a brand new loved-up episode of QI with Sandi, Alan, Maisie Adam, Larry Dean and Rosie Jones! BBC Two, 9pm. 💕

A graphic advertising tonight's show featuring Sand and the panellists

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 25/11/2025

Freddy Mercury’s original title for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was ‘The Cowboy Song’. Tonight we're headed to the WILD WEST in a brand new episode with Sandi, Alan, Eshaan Akbar, Jo Brand and Alex Brooker! 🤠

A promo graphic for tonight's show featuring the panellists

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 24/11/2025

Thresher sharks can jump up to six metres out of the water. (📷: Steve Momot)

A thresher shark that just jumped remarkably high out of the air

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 20/11/2025

The Voyager probe, launched in 1977 to explore beyond our Solar System, contains this picture of a balding man eating a slice of toast.

A picture of a woman licking an ice cream, a balding man eating toast and a man drinking water from a jug.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 19/11/2025

Swedish writer Fritiof Nilsson Piraten’s gravestone inscription says: ‘Here below are the ashes of a man who had the habit of putting everything off until tomorrow. But in his last days he improved, and did actually die on 31 January 1972’. (📷: jorchr)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 18/11/2025

Cloudflare has a wall of lava lamps in their San Francisco office to help with their entropy-gathering system. (📸HaeB)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 17/11/2025

Lemurs’ vaginas have no permanent opening. For 24 to 72 hours in July of a good year, their vagina will open, there’s a brief frenzy of mating and then they close up again.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 10/11/2025

Chinese slang for a combover is ‘The local authorities provide support for the central government’. (📷: Nesnad)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 04/11/2025

In 1899, G.E. Dudley patented an electrical anti-masturbation device for men that consisted of a tube connected to a bell that would ring if the penis, inserted in the tube, became erect.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 29/10/2025

The first paperback vending machine was installed at Charing Cross Station in 1937 by Penguin books. They called it the ‘Penguincubator’. (📷: STML)

A black and white photograph of a man collecting a book from a vending machine

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 28/10/2025

Tonight at 9pm on BBC Two we'll be looking at WINGS AND WHEELS in a brand new episode with Sandi, Alan, Aisling Bea, Desiree Burch and Hank Green.

A graphic featuring the panel and broadcast information about tonight's show

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 21/10/2025

Baby blue whales put on 4kgs an hour until they’re 8 months old. 🐋 Tonight at 9pm we'll be looking at lots more whale facts in 'Wales, Whales and Wails', a BRAND NEW QI episode with Sandi, Alan, Elis James, Griff Rhys Jones and Kiri Pritchard-McLean!

A graphic advertising tonight's show featuring the full QI panel

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 20/10/2025

QI Fans! Brand new QI Series W launches TOMORROW NIGHT at 9pm on BBC Two and iPlayer.

A promotional graphic for QI Series W featuring Sandi Toksvig and Alan Davies

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 17/10/2025

The vertebrate with the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio is the bony-eared assfish.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 06/10/2025

Ponyhenge is a collection of rocking horses in an open field in Lincoln, Massachusetts. No one knows where the ponies come from, or who is donating them - but the herd continues to grow. (Image: Jenn Forman Orth)

Outside in the snow, a circle of dozens of rocking horses

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 06/10/2025

Word of the Day: BLOBBERY - a garden made of shrubs and bushes shorn to look like blobs. (📷: Paolo)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 30/09/2025

The scientific term for dog zoomies is Frenetic Random Activity Periods.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 30/09/2025

QI XL has been nominated for a TV Choice Award in the Best Entertainment Show category! If you wanted to vote for us, which would be lovely, you can do so at www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/vote/

A screenshot of the TV Choice Awards voting website

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 28/09/2025

Samuel Pepys' diary entry for this day in 1665 recalls a stay at Mrs Clerke's house, where he left a surprise (or two) in the chimney...

A diary entry that reads 'So I to bed, and in the night was mightily troubled with a looseness (I suppose from some fresh damp linen that I put on this night), and feeling for a champer-pott, there was none, I having called the mayde up out of her bed, she had forgot I suppose to put one in there; so I was forced in this strange house to rise and shit in the chimney twice; and so to bed and was very well again.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 26/09/2025

In 1879, ‘Punch’ predicted video calls: In this cartoon, parents ‘set up an electric camera obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece, and gladden their eyes with the sight of their Children at the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire’.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 22/09/2025

A thermal image map of Saturn's moon Mimas looks remarkably like Pac-Man eating a dot. (Image: NASA/JPL/SSI)

A thermal image of a moon that looks like Pacman

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 19/09/2025

What NOT to do if a grenade is thrown at you.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 18/09/2025

In 2010, sick of having their sign stolen, the residents of Shitterton bought a 1.5 tonne block of stone and had the name Shitterton carved into it.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 12/09/2025

Word of the Day: MOMIJIGARI (Japanese) - The act of leaf-spotting, or visiting areas with vibrant autumn colours.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 10/09/2025

A marine worm called Ramisyllis multicaudata has a single head and hundreds of bums. Its body branches off in all directions and each branch has its own butthole. (Image: Sarah Faulwetter)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 09/09/2025

The tree goats of Morocco have learnt to climb argan trees so they can eat their delicious fruit. (📷 Elena Tatiana Chis)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 08/09/2025

In a recent Estonian production of Romeo and Juliet, all the parts were played trucks, diggers and lorries. (📷: Siim Vahur)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 04/09/2025

The ingenious way the Soviet Union caught American spies.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 02/09/2025

One of the world’s most photographed trees is That Wānaka Tree in Lake Wānaka, New Zealand. (Image: Tom Hall)

a tree emerging from the middle of a lake

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 28/08/2025

The Estonian National Opera’s car park has music-themed barriers. (📷TheGoodEndedHappily)

A car park barrier that looks like a conductor's hand holding a baton

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 21/08/2025

Slow lorises have venomous armpits. (📷: Vladimir Buynevich)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 20/08/2025

Romans thought that penises could ward off evil and would carry winged phallus charms for protection.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 20/08/2025

In 2007, a US theatre company staged ‘A Klingon Christmas Carol’, performed in Klingon with English supertitles. ‘Bah, humbug!’ is ‘BaQa' in Klingon (📷: Commedia Beauregard)

Two people dressed as klingons on stage fighting

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 19/08/2025

From 1559 to 1779, this fountain in Treviso, Italy was filled with free wine during festivals. One breast provided white wine and the other provided red wine. (Image: Didier Descouens)

A stone statue cupping its breasts with a hole in each

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 14/08/2025

This is the coat of arms of Zheleznogorsk, a closed town in Russia that was dedicated to the production of plutonium.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 13/08/2025

Three Victorian gentlemen illustrate the workings of a cantilever bridge, ahead of the Forth Rail Bridge’s construction in 1882.

a black and white photograph of three men against a wall. The two on the edge are holding a long piece of material that they are also sat on. At the end of the material are stacks of bricks. The man in the middle is supported by the material, demonstrating the strength of the bridge.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 11/08/2025

The margay cat has ankles that can rotate 180 degrees to help it run down tree trunks vertically. (📷: Supreet Sahoo)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 08/08/2025

After reading Tennyson's 1842 poem 'The Vision of Sin', mathematician Charles Babbage wrote him this letter.

In your otherwise beautiful poem there is a verse that reads:“Every moment dies a man Every moment one is born.” It must be manifest that, were this true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read:“ Every moment dies a man. Every moment 1 1/16 is born”Strictly speaking this is not correct. The actual figure is a decimal so long that I cannot get it in the line, but I believe that 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 29/07/2025

‘Vexations’ (1893) is a piano piece by the composer Erik Satie that is supposed to be played very slowly 840 times. The first performance, conducted by John Cage in 1963, went for more than 18 hours. At the end, one audience member shouted ‘Encore!’ (Image: Sonia y natalia)

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 28/07/2025

If you plot the sun’s position at the same time every day for a year it makes a figure of eight pattern called an analemma.

A composite image with lots of photographs of the sun making a figure of eight in the sky

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 18/07/2025

The Initial Teaching Alphabet was a phonetic alphabet taught in some British schools in the 1960s. It was supposed to teach children to read faster. Instead, it created a generation of children who were unable to spell. (📷: Philip Howard)

A textbook with the sentence 'Donkeys are clever patient animals. Every boy and girl loves to ride a donkey' written in a strange phonetic text.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 15/07/2025

QI's REFLECTIONS episode is on BBC Two tonight at 10pm. The only episode where Alan sits on the wrong side! 🤯

A screenshot of QI with Alan sat to the right of Sandi

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 11/07/2025

A London tennis club attempted to train dogs to replace ball boys and girls at Wimbledon. The trial failed because the dogs didn't want to give the balls back.

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Quite Interesting @qi.com · 03/07/2025

In the 1920s, Arthur Conan Doyle’s wife became a medium. She often channeled a spirit called Pheneas who insisted on them buying a nice house in the New Forest, asked to paint one of the rooms mauve, and didn’t like that Conan Doyle worked too much.

Text says: You are to walk a mile morning and afternoon whatever the weather is like. No tea. No work before eleven, nor after six. Dr Westcott will work on you at night. Take bismuth twice a day. The hut is good. Don't have the phone there. The tired feeling will then quickly go. You must. Yes, it is vital.

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