A couple of things found on the interweb tubes:
Firstly, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson talk to The Big Issue aboutQI, and they’re hugely enthusiastic about knowledge and curiosity. Some great quotes from them both:
Mitchinson:
What [the education system] rewards isn’t much more than having a retentive memory. There’s a terrible moment around the age of eight when a child learns that it’s a more successful strategy to pretend to know things than to go on asking questions.
Lloyd:
No child should, even for an hour, go to a lesson where they don’t learn something amazing. Every child ought to go to school singing and jumping and go home telling their friends they learned something extraordinary today about whatever –atomic physics, Greek philosophy or how frogs walk.
I haven’t always been entirely convinced by the product (and there was certainly a phase when it seemed the show was focussed more on piddling points of pedantry than interesting facts) but the philosophy behind the show I find highly admirable. Mitchinson and Lloyd (the one-syllable name always goes last, it just sounds better that way) are the anti-Victoria Coren(s), and more power to them.
That article in full: This issue is a BIG issue
And a curiosity. Which hit UK game show is looking for Saudi national women fluent in Arabic?
