Guinness World Records: Behind The Book

From the most tattooed man and a 103-year-old skydiver to homemade LEGO limbs and the largest testicle in the animal kingdom, Craig and the team look back over a year of record-breaking at Guinness World Records.

Join Craig for an eggnog or two in The Golden Plover, the virtual pub at GWR HQ. For this annual record-breaking round-up, Craig is joined by Social Media Manager Dan Thorne, who unveils the year's most explosive tweets, YouTube videos and Tik-Tok posts; Life Sciences Record Manager Megan Bruce returns with her favourite skydiving centenarian; Lewis Blakeman introduces us to two record-holders who've used technology to craft ground-breaking prosthetic limbs; Science Editor Ben Hollingum shares with us his favourite robotics record (and reveals that we DO have a record for first human killed by a robot!); and Animals Editor Adam Millward enlightens us on the animal that's spent the longest time in cryobiosis (as in, which creature has spent the longest time frozen before being defrosted and brought back to life... how festive!)

Why are we humans preoccupied with collecting the likes of bagpipes, lip balms, traffic cones and spoon rests? For some, it’s an all-encompassing lifelong obsession that can cost them thousands, if not millions, of dollars. And everything’s up for grabs, with the records limited only by the collectors’ imagination.

In this episode, Editor-in-Chief meets some of the more obsessive collectors from the archives, and shares his favourite holders from the new Guinness World Records 2020 edition. He also explores WHY people go to such extreme lengths to get their collections into the record books.

Follow GWR: Behind the Book on Twitter @gwr and @craigglenday – just search for #GWRPodcast. Please leave us a review or rating, and if you have any questions, just ask and we’ll answer them on a future episode.

Read more

Guinness World Records 2020: http://bit.ly/GWR_2020  

The largest collection of coprolite: http://bit.ly/GWR-dinosaurpoop

The fast food fanatic with the largest collection of hamburger items - http://bit.ly/GWR2017-burger 

Why grow your fingernails to a combined length of nearly nine metres? And how do you use the toilet if your thumbnail alone is 90 cm long?

In this week’s episode of Guinness World Records: Behind The Book, Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday (who, as he explains, nearly died from biting his fingernails!) explains the history of VERY long nails and tells you about the people who have earned a place in the record books because of them. We also hear from Lee Redmond who grew her nails for more than 30 years, setting the record for the longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female) at 8.65 metres.

Want to know more?

Learn more about Lee Redmond and her record-breaking nails: http://bit.ly/GWR-leeredmond

Why the man who had the longest nails ever record on a single hand had them cut after 66 years: http://bit.ly/GWR-nailcut

How to grow record-breaking nails: http://bit.ly/GWR-YaniNails

More about Guinness World Records 2020: http://bit.ly/GWR-2020

Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday reveals how a heated debate during a boozy dinner in Ireland led to the founding of The Guinness Book of Records and also the book's original purpose. Plus, he answers the question: what does the book have to do with Guinness beer?

Got a record-breaking question of your own? Get in touch on Twitter tagging @GWR or @craigglenday and using the hashtag #GWRPodcast

You can find out more about Guinness World Records 2020 at: http://bit.ly/GWR-2020book

Guinness World Records’ new, weekly podcast in which Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday reveals the stories behind the superlatives, asking questions such as: Lee Redmond really survive for a month eating nothing but her 9-m-long fingernails? New episodes out every Thursday from 24 October.