520: No Such Thing As A Prehistoric Air Fryer

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

Anna Tushinski is still off on her hollybobs, and so we have for you a very, very special guest.

It is Melanie Bracewell.

Now, those of you down under will know who Melanie is.

She is a regular on television in Australia and New Zealand.

She's recently been on New Zealand Taskmaster.

If anyone outside of New Zealand has naughtily managed to get hold of that on the tubes,

you'll know her from that.

But we've actually known Mel for many, many years.

We first met her when we did our New Zealand tour many years ago.

We've been wanting to get her on the podcast for ages and ages.

And finally, she is in the UK and she came on the show.

And actually, that brings me to the fact that she is touring the UK at the moment.

So if you listen to this podcast, you like what you hear, I know you will because she's absolutely brilliant.

She's so funny, then definitely get down to one of her gigs.

You'll have to get in there fast because she is already right in the middle of that tour.

But if you listen to this as soon as it comes out, then you just about have enough time to get to her gigs in Stafford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Cambridge, and Birmingham.

That's all happening in the next week or so.

And of course, if you are in Australia or New Zealand, then she's doing loads of gigs down there.

And actually...

in the UK she'll be back to do the Edinburgh Festival in the summer.

So if you want to know any more about Melanie, go to melanybracewell.com.

And if you want to know where she's playing, then go to melanybracewell.com forward slash gigs.

Really hope you enjoy the show.

I'm absolutely certain you will.

So let's just say on with the podcast.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Melanie Bracewell.

And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Mel.

Yes, my fact this week is that a study of magpies in Australia has revealed that magpies do not like to be studied.

So, this was a study that they did at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

They were trying to track flight patterns and things of magpies.

They developed these very special trackers that were only 1% of a magpie's body weight.

They're like, this is perfect.

And they put these trackers on the birds and they quickly just started picking them away.

And they went, oh, they're not being very successful.

It'll be okay.

And then the other magpies came and just helped them pick the trackers off of them.

So

at first they were sort of, you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

And they were picking them off each other.

But then they found that other magpies who didn't even have a tracker in the first place were helping the other magpies to get rid of their trackers.

So they were showing behaviors of like altruism.

And so they were like, actually, this is quite a good study.

So that's how they know.

I was hoping they decoded like some calls of theirs and they'll translate this as piss off, mate.

Probably.

Actually, you know, 1% of your body weight being

almost a kilo.

What are my clothes?

What do my clothes weigh?

I don't know.

Let's weigh your clothes now.

No, let's not take them all off now and weigh them.

But you do have a good point because magpies do have a reputation for being dicks.

But falsely.

So basically, only 8 to 10% of magpies will swoop people.

Only the male magpies and only in one month of the year.

Hashtag not all magpies.

Exactly.

Well, this is a really interesting thing because magpies are over on this side of the planet as well.

But Aussie magpies, they're actually a different species to the European magpie.

That's just not anything to do with each other.

So I remember saying to people, oh, magpies swoop, and that being an alien concept here, but you live in Australia.

You know the danger, the fear of walking down a street and a magpie swooping on you.

And the problem is, is because they're very smart and they recognize faces, if they decide that they don't like you, they will target you so some people will just get swooped every day on their way to work yeah and so that's why they've earned that reputation have you have you been swooped I have been swooped once in my life but my boyfriend loves birds a lot and he has decided when we first moved to Australia he was gonna become friends with magpie

so that's the other thing because they can recognize your face you can actually make a friend for life yeah and they stay in the same neighborhood so if you move into a neighborhood and there are magpies there they will be the same magpies for like 20 years.

It's really high stakes when you move in.

So you've got a chance to make a good impression.

And if you blow it, long-term grudges are held.

Yeah,

but they only usually live for about five years.

Can't the family, like in the mafia,

remember and bear a grudge.

Didn't we say ages?

I mean, that was crows we were talking about ages and ages ago, I think.

Crows bear a grudge.

They do, yes.

And

school children are often targeted by magpies because they often wear school uniforms.

So if one child has thrown a rock at a magpie, they will then view all children as threats.

And so they'll just attack.

Same with like if they determine if you're wearing like something covering your face or your head, say a bike helmet, they view that as a threat of like, what are you hiding from?

And then they will then swoop you for that.

Has anyone come across Emma Glenfield when you're doing this research?

No.

So we were talking about school kids.

She was in Australia and she'd been watching people be swooped by these magpies and she thought, it seems to me like they're going for bold people more.

The bold teachers, they seem to be going for the bold teachers.

And she asked her mum, is this a thing?

And her mum said, well, I don't know if it's a thing, you know, do your homework or whatever.

And anyway, she decided to do a study.

So she went to her school and she watched as these magpies swooped people and then did a survey of anyone who'd been swooped saying, you know, how tall are you?

What's your hairstyle?

What sex are you?

All that kind of stuff.

What's your hairstyle?

None.

Well, then she spoke to about 100 people around the school.

But then it went online and she got 30,000 people to participate on her survey online.

And she found that statistically, magpies are more likely to go for bold people.

And according to a magpie expert called Daryl Jones, her study is the first time anyone's ever examined this link.

And so she's doing brand new science and learned this about people.

So you know what bold people should do then?

Draw a face on the back of their head.

What?

Magpies are less likely to go at anything that has eyes.

And so if you're, if they're sweeping from behind, they're just seeing a bold head altogether.

Oh, that could be ice.

Yeah.

So

there are a few things that people think they've worked out that magpies won't sweep at.

One is if you have eyes at the back of your head.

So people often, cyclists might often wear glasses, sunglasses on the back of their head, facing that way to give the impression there are eyes.

A bit like in, is it in Africa?

We might have said before, where they draw eyes on the bums of cows to stop them being attacked by lions.

Yeah,

because you can't be sneaked up on.

Yeah, yeah.

It's so funny.

They're a protected national species.

So if a magpie attacks you, you can't attack it back.

You kind of just have to let it happen.

Really?

Yeah.

That's funny.

And so, what they do then is if they've identified an aggressive magpie, they have to ship him out of there.

But there's a minimum distance, which is like 25 kilometers or so, because they'll just fly back.

They don't respect the restraining order.

Have you heard of the Windsor Road monster?

No, that's an Australian magpie.

specific one, which was especially aggressive and had to be put down in the end.

But it took a very long time.

I have to say, the Windsor Road Monster was given multiple chances to learn and change.

And it attacked...

Well, there were more than 40 complaints.

One person had a heart attack shortly after being swooped.

Which is not the fact.

You know, there could be other things happening in that person's life that makes them more susceptible to a heart attack.

It's not necessarily the,

no, you're right.

But it was going for people's faces.

It was going under cyclists' helmets to get them.

Even for an Australian magpie, it was being especially aggressive.

You bowled under them, mate?

Where are you hiding?

They're just trying to protect their ground.

They spend most of their life just protecting their area.

So they choose their radius, and it's quite small, and they will just spend the whole time just standing like as bouncers on the edge of their patch, being like, don't come in here all the time.

There was one cyclist who I read about called Dr.

Richard Osborne who came up with this new cycle helmet.

I think I've seen this.

Does it have a face on it?

No, it doesn't have a face.

Can you guess what it is?

He uses a thing I have around my house to scare them away.

So I know this, so I won't guess.

Yeah, okay.

That could have seemed really cool.

Stop using James's personality to work out with

a golf club.

What do you know about things that happened in my life in the last two weeks?

In the last two weeks?

Yeah, yeah.

Weeks.

All my family members.

Your kid has had a birthday.

Yeah.

Your daughter was two years old.

Yeah.

So, you see, you put the hours in with people, Dan.

What a way to find out that's your daughter's birthday.

Oh, no, Uncle Dan hasn't forgotten about it.

No, no, he's been very busy.

I'm sure the gift's on its way.

Oh, my God.

She's built a helmet to ward Dan away.

Does the bike have a model baby pinioned on top of it

or a doll?

It has, you know, these party blowers where you blow them and they go

and they kind of stick out.

He has those attached to his helmet and there's a tube attached to them so that whenever a magpie comes near, he walks into the tube and they all go, is this what you were thinking, though?

No.

I had to see the guy who had tied a lot of cable tires to his head.

That's very funny.

And does he,

has it sort of caught on and more?

Yeah, well, no, it's not caught on because he looks like an idiot.

But he said it seemed a bit safer than carrying a stick and waving it around, which was his other option.

Or having spikes, which a lot of people do.

They're not sharp spikes, but they are sticky out.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

So the best thing to do is to just be nice to them.

Yeah.

Because they will remember you being nice.

So what happens is people run away and they go, oh, you are guilty.

Why are you running?

Therefore, it just fills this prophecy in their head.

But to be nice to them, if you're in their area,

how can you be nice?

You just feed them.

You just leave them out like little peanuts and things.

That's what my boyfriend has been trying to do, like leaving peanuts outside our yard and getting them to come.

And yes, and then when they like you, they'll bring their kids along to be like, here's my kids.

You missed their birthday.

But one nice thing that you can do for them is actually something that will get you in trouble with them, which is if you see one of their babies struggling and you go to help it, they will view that as you hurting their babies because they haven't introduced you to it.

So be careful how nice you are.

And that's why you didn't give a gift.

You might be viewed as a threat.

Playgrounds are like that, you know.

Are they?

Well, if you see a child that's struggling and you go over to help it, their parents might think, who's this guy who's approaching my child?

This guy's the fence.

I've got to remember not to wear my costume while I'm doing that.

I'm weighing my clothes.

Do you have lots of superstitions about them

in Australia?

I have heard of these superstitions, but I don't think I follow them in my day-to-day life Because that's pretty much what they're well known for here, right?

Yeah, I follow quite a few.

So do you, when you see one, do you say, like, hello, Mr.

Magpie?

Where's your wife or something?

It's good morning, my lord, and how's your wife and children?

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And do you do that?

I do.

Yeah.

A lot of it.

And if you see one on its own, seeing two is fine, three is fine, whatever.

Anybody, one on its own, bad luck, so you quickly, you know.

Because in Australia, that's a lot to get out while it's coming for your eyes.

Yeah, exactly.

That's it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what people were saying.

Yeah.

But no, there are all these things like um the magpie landed on the cross when Christ was being crucified, or the tongue of a magpie contains a drop of blood from the devil himself.

I think if they open their mouth, there is a little bit of red in there, isn't there?

I think that's why they associated with

that's why if you scratch its tongue with the edge of a silver sixpence and put a drop of blood into the wound, it will gain the power of speech.

We've all been in the

there's so much slander about them from back in the day, particularly religious.

So the one about the crucifix, apparently it was the only bird not to cry when Jesus was crucified.

And that was big news.

And then in the 19th century, there was a vicar who said it was the only bird that refused to go on Noah's Ark.

Rather, it just wanted, it hung outside swearing instead.

In France, the idea is that a magpie is a reincarnated evil nun.

We can see it, I guess.

British magpies eat a lot of dog poo.

Well, that's good.

Yeah.

Even if there's other food around, they'll eat the dogpoo.

No, really?

Yeah, yeah.

And to such the extent that people in parks have noticed that they'll, because they're quite smart, obviously, magpies, they'll go to the dog poo bins, pull out a bag of dog poo, rip open the bag of dog poo, and then have a little snack.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

What?

That's awful.

That's nutritious.

Might taste great.

I've never tried it.

I don't know if it's good or not.

Oh.

I just said, we don't know.

You said might taste great.

Yeah.

And I heard you say mine tastes great.

And I just go, actually, I'm just going to gloss on and move past it because, you know, we've got a guest.

You guys at a park is that you're trying to go through the dog poo.

You're naked at a playground.

The whole image.

James has got party blue and scamming out his head.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

They do have them in New Zealand.

They do, yes.

Yes, don't they?

But they've come over from Australia.

Apparently, no one's trying to get rid of them in New Zealand.

You know, like in New Zealand, there's quite a lot of invasive species and they're trying trying to get rid of them.

Well, they're not doing it with magpies because it's too hard, basically.

You get rid of two magpies from an area, and then the next two will move in.

But apparently, what I read is they've got a bad reputation in New Zealand, these magpies, because they're big, showy, noisy, and according to the article, it must be said Australian.

That really does rub us the wrong way.

I can understand that.

Did you hear of these acclimatisation societies?

Because that was

Australian magfies, but they were introduced to New Zealand by societies saying...

I'm not sure what the rationale was, actually, because it was not as though they were going to be hunted.

Well, they thought that there wasn't enough nice animals in New Zealand.

In fact, I've heard that a lot, yeah, famously.

Well, they were like, you know, there's not...

There's no endemic

mammals to New Zealand apart from a bat.

So like any mammals, they're not really there.

They got there and they're like, where's the rabbit?

Yeah.

You You know, where's the tweeting birds?

We don't know where they are.

But I feel like it's such a bird-heavy place, or certainly would have been in the 19th century.

As in, why would you introduce more birds?

I guess so.

Yeah, there may be some that can fly would be useful.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Like the kakato.

That's in New Zealand.

Yeah, but a lot of them kind of hide in the middle of the night.

Yeah, even the kiwi bird, I don't think I've ever seen one.

Really?

You go to the zoo and they say they're in there, but I don't reckon they are.

I think it's just they put a red light in a like cave-looking area and they go, there's Kiwi in there.

Tasmanian devils.

I've gone every year to see a Tasmanian devil at Taronga Zoo in Sydney and you never see one.

You never see them spinning around like a tornado?

Yeah, no, no.

You do hear women in the background, but yeah.

Okay, it is time for fact number two.

That is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that the sport of netball was invented because its its creator thought basketball made women grow bitter and lose control.

Wow.

As a player of both sports, I will say this is true.

Okay.

I play social netball, you know, and it's always very wholesome.

The slogan of netball is just, you know, here if you need, it's so beautiful.

This is just what you say a lot, you know, when you've passed the ball, you go, here if you need, like, you know, like, pass it on to me.

You say, here if you need, like, I'm over here.

It's very wholesome.

But then I play basketball and I become a feral beast.

Wow.

That is so interesting.

So what's the key difference that causes that?

I don't know if this is.

Well, basketball is technically no contact.

But you're trying to take the ball off someone and you can run beside them.

So basics of netball is once you catch the ball, you can't move.

Right.

If you're taking a shot, no one can defend you.

So you can't get away from it.

They can't

be three feet away, which is, I would argue, too many feet.

And you can't dribble along the course.

You can't dribble.

Okay, okay, yeah, okay, okay.

So anyway, this all comes from a a woman called Clara Bear,

who was working at Newcombe College in New Orleans.

And she'd been asked to come up with a new sport for women to play because this was an all-women's school.

And she decided, she came up with a few ideas, but her main one was to adapt sports that were being played by men.

So basketball had just become really popular.

It had been invented by James Naismith a few years earlier.

And so she wrote to him and asked for the rules.

She got the rules and said, right, we're going to play basketball.

But anyone who was there said it was a mad game in which the the women grew bitter and lost control.

Even she herself said it was not entirely satisfactory.

And so she thought, Well, I'm going to have to invent a new game which doesn't have all this stuff because this is just not appropriate to women.

And so she came up with netball.

Interesting.

You say that netball is a non-contact sport, but I don't think it actually is because non-contact would be something like tennis where you genuinely don't touch anyone else.

But netball, there are certain rules.

So if I was to run into the space to get the ball and someone else is running in and I shoulder barge them on the way.

That is completely within the rules of the game.

Like there is the art of learning to play netball is to learn how to be very aggressive within the confines of the rules really.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

We used to play it at school and I went to a

Steiner school.

So I think that was more, it feels like a made-up Steiner sport, really.

Steiner's a very hippie, non-competitive kind of thing.

And it feels like instead of basketball, let's do netball instead.

So can I check a few more rules?

Yeah,

so Mel, do they still...

No shouting or talking during the game.

So that's still observed.

Interesting.

Where is that from?

Is that from the most recent rule to replace it?

Well, that's from Clara Bayer's founding rules.

Right.

You can't talk back to the umpire, so you couldn't say, oh, okay.

In the first rules for sure, if you spoke, if you said anything in the game, it was a foul.

Right.

Even here if you need.

Yeah, you won't say that.

I read no falling over was also a riddle, which I can't.

I'm struggling to compute.

That seems a bit harsh, doesn't it?

It does.

It's a weird rule that there's sort of a hangover that if you catch the ball and you fall over, you're not allowed to move with the ball.

But if you are on the ground, you can't throw the ball from the ground.

So you have to make your way back up to standing before you can throw the ball.

But you have to keep your feet planted.

So where your feet landed when you fell over, you have to just weirdly stand up.

You look like one of those inflatable car-selling balloon guys.

You just have to rise up, yeah.

That's great.

That's brilliant.

That's a good rule.

I like that.

She also said no needlessly rough play was in her rules.

And all shots had to be taken with one hand

because there was a thought that by throwing it with two hands, it was unladylike and might somehow make women less feminine.

It was the idea.

I read there would be inclination of the shoulders forward with consequent flattening of the chest.

Oh, precisely.

And that would not be a graceful position for girls.

That's what they said.

But it's interesting because the one-handed throw was in netball from the very start, they had one-handed throw.

but in basketball there was none of it until about the 1930s it was all two-handed throwing into the baskets as a rule was it no it's just that was the way that was the way they did it yeah yeah i love as well that she basically she originally was starting basketball as a female version of it and um she called it basquetball um she just changed it to q-u-e tt

what happened there is she wrote to naismith who came up with the original thing and she said here's my new sport what do you think it's women's basketball and he wrote back saying well it's not really the same as basketball, so you should change the name a little bit.

Yeah.

And she said, okay, I'll change it to basketball.

And then part of the rules were developed because she just misunderstood what he'd sent back.

There were dots all over it.

And she took that to mean seven different zones.

So you would be stuck in your zone.

And that, yeah, that got applied to the initial rules, which is not still today.

Yeah, yeah.

Still, a goalkeeper is still in one-third of the court.

A center can go in most of the court, but not the two.

It's very complicated.

It's not very sociable, is it?

Yeah, there's some people who who never really see each other exactly like i i will chat to a goal shooter as a goalkeeper a lot but i will never see my team's goal shooter i just go oh well done

but it's safe and the women look very womanly as a result so

what a relative vision has remained from clara bear do you play volleyball as well mil i don't i just play netball and basketball yeah um because apparently volleyball may have been nicked basically a month after the first game of newcomb ball, which was another thing.

Clara Bear invented Newcombe Ball, but you throw the ball into the other team's area so it hits the floor

without them being able to catch it.

One month after that first game was written up, William Morgan, the YMCA director in the USA, he invented volleyball.

And it was basically, apparently, for older businessmen on their lunch hour, was how it was described, which I think it has not stayed true to over the years.

Volleyball.

If you know a beach volleyball, there's an official rule that you're only allowed to wear one watch.

Oh,

it's in the actual rule.

It says only one watch.

What possible advantage do you get in from two watches?

What do you think?

Oh, interesting.

You would know what time it is in another part of the class.

Do you know the answer?

I think I do.

Okay, so what advantage would you have?

I mean, you're never going to.

I have a punt.

Is it that people were doing sponsorship deals with multiple watch companies?

I can't believe that.

That's amazing.

Wow.

Because there's actually some rules about how many tattoos, like temporary tattoos you're allowed because people use those for advertisements.

Obviously, don't have.

It's a small real estate.

Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Netball is so funny, isn't it?

Because netball is so big in New Zealand and Australia.

I wasn't sure how much you guys knew about the sport.

I know you play it in England, you've got a very popular team.

But I was like, oh, I wonder what's some unknown facts about netball.

So, of course, I looked it up and I found an article titled Fascinating Facts About Netball That You Never Knew.

Okay.

Number one was, How long is a netball game?

Okay, well, let's try.

Does anyone here know how long?

I do not know.

I will guess it's 80 minutes.

Oh, I think it's less.

I've watched games, but I can't remember how long they were.

I reckon maybe 60 minutes in quarters.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

I'm trying to work out.

Is it quarters as well?

And so, I'm going to say 60 because I heard you just say yes.

Yes, I acknowledge your answer, and it's incorrect.

No, no, it is actually.

It's for 15-minute quarters.

Nice, fascinating fact.

Yes, fascinating fact.

Number two, what is netball?

I come across.

I love the way that the first thing you need to learn is how long it is, and then the second one is what it is.

It's like, do you want to play netball?

Well, how long will it be?

It's got two watches on.

Well, you're right.

So, I grew up in Oz for my teenage years.

Netball was massive there.

And I assumed it was globally massive.

It's an American invention, but in America, it's not really played.

It's getting back now.

And particularly, Aussies and New Zealanders keep going over to schools to try and reintegrate it.

So, Ross Day is someone who went over to try and get it done.

And she said, one of the biggest challenges, I can't believe this is true.

It must be tongue and cheek.

She says, one of the biggest challenges is that when we're pitching netball, is that because of our accents being Aussie in New Zealand, everyone thinks we're saying nipple?

Yes, I get this a lot.

I will say something about netball on TV.

I'll be like, oh, there was a great netball play, and it has a whole different meaning.

And the comments will be like, what are you talking about

wow so someone will come up to you and say do you want a better netball play and you're like how long will it be

quick double check it is what you think it is what is nipball

that's so funny i like um the early um forms of basketball were interesting as well i like how they first started with like a peach basket but they didn't think to put a hole in the bottom so like in the early games they would have to stop the game to go retrieve the ball from the basket and like climb up a ladder.

I suppose in a way if you have a hole it's not always certain if the ball's gone in.

Yeah that is true.

Is that that producer?

Sometimes if I shoot and it like because you go for the swish sound but sometimes you could just shoot so far that it just hits the net and makes that sound anyway and you go oh I'll count it all right.

In football there's been in

In soccer there's been this thing where you have like a board next to the goal.

I think it was in Queen's Park Rangers, and they scored a goal and it hit the board and then bounced straight back out again.

And the goal didn't get given because, yeah, I don't understand how that so it hit the board next to the so it's gone into the net.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't explain that very well.

So you've got the goal, the goal posts, and you've got the net, but then you've got an advertising board right behind the goal.

And so the ball goes in, hits the advertising board, bounces straight back out again, and the referee goes, well, I didn't see it go in.

Oh.

And it has happened quite recently where there was a hole in the net, as in one that wasn't supposed to be there, a bigger than the normal hole.

And the ball went in and it went through the hole, and no one could tell whether it had gone in or not.

That's good.

That's a good thing for a goalie to do when the action's happening at the other end, selectively saw through the net, and then you'd be

sore.

Did you, when you were sort of part of the New Zealand netball scene,

do you know anyone who played for the masturbators?

Do you remember this?

No.

Okay.

I mean, it was just a cheeky little fun New Zealand thing, but there was a

Sydney World Masters games where all netball teams were coming and there was a lot of New Zealand teams that were coming over and they named themselves the Masturbaters.

And

why?

Well, it was a Masters.

And they were baiting.

So with the Master baiting teams,

they're baiting.

What are they baiting?

Baiting the other teams.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

I didn't come up with it.

I like how the sport of netballs evolved quite a lot.

There's different versions of it.

There's fast five, which is basically made it more like basketball.

There's five people on the court, and you can shoot three-pointers or two-pointers and things.

The Northern Mystics used a new move called the Harrison hoist because

you have to be three feet away.

And so they have been practicing like a cheerleader lift.

And so she lifted her up

and she was able to bat the ball over the air as it was going in the middle.

Is it allowed?

And yeah, it's allowed.

It was in the

game.

And they were going to go, oh, we'll save this for the finals.

But then they were like, okay, we might not get a final.

So they had to do it in like a qualifying match.

Wow.

It's one of those things that they don't do all the time now because in theory, if you knew it was coming, you could kind of counter it.

Because you could only have two defenders in the circle.

So they had to use all of their resources.

But if you didn't see it coming, you were like, oh, just a shot.

And, you know, and then suddenly she's in the sky.

So it's like a rugby throw-in, throw-in, basically.

Yeah, they're lifted into the air.

You're not allowed to do that in football, by the way.

Yeah, well, what's in the rules?

Officially in the rules.

Isn't it?

As in

piggybacks.

I've spoken like a true athlete.

And it's in the air and you want to head the ball in.

You think, well, I'm going to give my mate a piggyback.

It's not allowed.

It's ungentlemanly conduct.

It's called it's an indirect free kick to the other team and both players should be cautioned.

Get out.

Wow.

That's unfair.

I think if you've got the web order to put together a piggyback in that time, you should be allowed to get it.

That was in my because I trained as a football referee.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was one of the questions that came up.

It's like, what do you do in this situation?

Wow.

You give them a stern finger.

I really want to watch Andy's version of football, though.

He's going to be inside.

It's a corner kick.

He's gone for the piggyback.

It's got it.

Oh no, someone sawed through the back of the nap and he's gone right through.

No points.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.

My fact is that when the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs hit, there was a brief burst of radiation so strong it would have immediately cooked some dinosaurs through.

Whoa, like an air fryer.

Yes, exactly, like an air fryer.

This is uh it's much less fun than I've made it sound for the dinosaurs, but what a you know for a bunch of.

It seemed for like the mammals survived, did they?

So could they have come out and eaten some dinosaur cooked

yes yes they probably could yeah but you say for a brief moment so it was perfectly cooked and then they were charred beyond oblivion is that it's like because you could say oh here is my roast for a brief moment it was amazing but

it is a pile of ash now

yeah that moment no you're right you're absolutely right i think a lot of there weren't precise settings on this is from a fantastic book i've just read uh it's called not the end of the world by hannah ritchie and it's a it's about completely different stuff, actually.

It's about sustainability and the sort of big planetary challenges.

But she's writing in this bit about, you know, extinction events and how fascinating some of those have been over the past.

And this is about the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

66?

66.

A while ago.

And the asteroid hits.

It was an old book that you read.

Wasn't it?

Thing hits.

There's a shockwave that moves at 17,000 miles an hour.

It's quite hard to get your head around some of this stuff.

And then this huge amount, like cubic miles of rock get lifted up by the impact.

They then, so they've been liquidized into these little glass balls, which go all the way around the planet immediately, and then that falls.

Literally, the kind of sky falls down.

It rains glass.

Yeah, liquid rock, basically.

And lots of it gets blasted by friction in the atmosphere because it's coming back into the atmosphere, if you see.

So then the energy is released as infrared radiation, which turns into this massive blast of heat.

Crikey.

And if you're a dinosaur out in the open, it's bad news.

And it's really interesting because why didn't everything burn immediately at that point?

And basically, there was a study in 2016 by a scientist called Sean Gulick who found out that either it was like being in a toaster for a few hours or a pizza oven for a few minutes.

It's bad news if you were out in the open.

Okay.

Wow.

So would there be some dinosaurs who are the furthest away that would be nicely cooked?

Medium rare.

So they get cooked by the radiation.

Their innards are just complete.

They're just cooked.

So they die immediately?

Or is it kind of like radiation where if you were out in the open, there's a very good chance you would have died at that point.

Because it's such a blast of searing heat for such a for a relatively long time, longer than you'd be comfortable with.

It's not just like a sauna.

No, it's not.

For a brief moment in time, their muscles were very relaxed.

It is nuts reading about it.

I mean, it's pretty

big old rock, wasn't it?

A big old rock.

I found one weird thing.

This is good.

Right, so I think we've said before it was the size of Mount Everest, the rock there.

And it was traveling 20 times the speed of a bullet.

It was really,

really huge.

Big and fast.

Big and fast.

And it was so big and fast that when it arrived, it was pushing the atmosphere in front of it so rapidly that the crater from the impact started to form before it hit.

Oh, yeah.

It just pushed the surface of the earth down.

Oh, my God.

It's amazing, though, isn't it?

Yeah.

it's insane.

I became friends recently with the dinosaur hunter who, well, she's a paleontologist who's the person who has verified that the asteroid landed in spring.

I think you guys met her very briefly in Belgium when we were at Nerdland at the festival.

It was all to do with the specific fish that, as it was being carried in the tsunami, which was not just water, it was also earth, like an earth tsunami.

The glass that had come down went in through the filters of the fish, like went through the mouth and were inside.

So, when they found the fossilized versions of these fish, they found the glass.

And these specific fish are the type of fish that have growths in their body that change per season.

Oh, during spring,

during spring.

Yeah.

So, during spring, they grow these extra little things.

So, they spotted that and they went, Well, that could only happen in spring.

Therefore, in spring on the side of the planet that it's on, that's where that happens.

That is pretty nuts.

Yeah, you know, you're going to deal with an asteroid and hay fever at the same time.

I was looking at

extinct meat because a cultivated meat company in Australia made a mammoth meatball last year.

Yes.

Yes.

I've heard about it last year.

Using

a DNA sequence from the mammoth myoglobin, which is the protein that gives the meat its flavour, and filled in a few gaps using elephant DNA.

And then they made this meatball.

They did not eat the meatball,

but they just put it on display to be like, this is a mammoth meatball.

I don't know.

I i think they were just they were like we haven't really tested this whether this is safe for human consumption so just make the meatball i guess probably to get a bit of press and it's the size of a normal meatball because you think if it was a mammoth meatball you would deliberately make it much bigger wouldn't you yeah exactly i didn't get it wasn't next to like a can of coke so i'm not sure

but it looked regular meatball size maybe you wouldn't because then it would just confuse the purchaser or the person looking at it go oh i get it's mammoth it's big it's like just not even considering the extraordinary science that has gone into this.

I would have eaten that.

You would have

without knowing the health implications.

Yes.

It's interesting.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

And he's putting it.

I feel like they've grown it.

No animals have been harmed.

Yeah.

So I'm a veggie, but I would love to.

Yes, I think the same thing because my boyfriend's vegetarian and he says that if we reach the point where we could just have cultivated meat made from the actual cells, then he'd go, oh, it's fine, I'll eat that.

And I think

they they've it's come a long way in the last few years I think the first patty they made like a mince patty I started just with mince patties was I think three hundred thousand dollars so quite an expensive burger um but it's come down now where they think that they could you know release to like 200,000

yeah release them into supermarkets so it's rapidly yeah I experiment quite a lot with those I tried some salmon the other day which I have to say was not there

oh yes like the fake salmon

like made from actual

Sorry, yeah, yeah, that's right.

I think they just keep adding salt until it has some kind of flavor, and then it's fine.

I had a vegan domino's pepperoni pizza a couple of nights ago.

That's not been ad.

And I could not taste the difference.

Genuinely, genuinely could not taste the difference.

I will just say for the listeners at home, he does have a dominoes tattoo on.

He's wearing two watches, one of which seems to be a dominoes.

What's that?

Oh, pizza time.

Can I ask, did it have cheese on it?

It did.

Well, no, but it had vegan cheese.

It has vegan cheese on it.

Yeah.

It's a vegan pizza.

They used to have a vegan pizza express.

See it as we're talking about pizza dance.

They used to have a vegan pizza express down the road from here, which only sold vegan pizzas.

And it was the most disgusting thing.

The cheese, like, they just couldn't do good vegan cheese.

Maybe they can now.

It's all about the mouthfeel.

That's the

and the stretch.

That's your Tinder bio.

The mouthfeel and the stretch.

I I found an essay in a scientific journal called Evolution, Education and Outreach, and it asked which items a Jewish time traveller would be able to eat because they were kosher or not.

Can you guess the headline of this article?

50 points to anyone who does is gettable.

Oh, is it a pun?

Back to the Jucha.

That's not that.

So it's about the food.

It's about the food that

you might be eating.

Is it to do with time travel?

It's to do with a very famous dinosaur-based franchise.

I like it.

Jurassic pork.

Jurassic pork.

Beautiful.

Jurassic pork.

Beautiful.

And it was that's a good headline.

Yes, that's good.

And it was about what

basically a Jewish time traveler who wanted to eat contemporaneous food would be allowed to eat.

And basically, very few dinosaurs are kosher, it turns out.

Some of them are birds, but even the bird ones lack the sort of toe that you have to, if you're allowed to eat particular meats for the kosher, it's because the like chicken, they've got a particular opposable toe, I think.

Right.

um mice are not allowed that's probably not relevant now so sorry jew rassic pork they actually just went with jurassic they just went with jurassic uh yeah i jew rassic pork i think they were correct in that

jurassic pork is

it's sitting there i yeah i guess there are other complaints like that

We said earlier 65, 66 million years ago with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Sure.

But do you know how long ago that is in a galactic year?

I'd never heard of the galactic year before.

That must be something to do with

traveling through the galaxy.

How long did it take the galaxy to go on once?

Exactly.

I think it's three years ago in galaxy years.

Galactic year is 225 million years.

Uh-oh.

Roughly.

Factor of 10.

Yeah.

Incorrect.

Really?

So the dinosaurs were here 3.5 months ago.

Oh, wow.

In a galactic year.

So the dinosaurs were on Earth, but if you had a time machine, like, you know, what does Doctor Who have?

It's like a

TARDIS, yeah.

You go into the TARDIS and you come back exactly in the same position in space,

but different time, the Earth won't be here anymore.

Yeah, we'll be further in space.

Yeah, yeah.

So you have to.

And if Dr.

Ju was going to

appeal.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that in the 1980s, you could download video games over the radio.

What I would have to do

to a certain generation, that's going to be like, there used to be a thing called MySpace.

Have you heard of DVDs?

I was alive in the 1980s, and I never heard that.

Yeah, no, I didn't think of this either.

This was the very early days of computers, whereby hard drives were incredibly expensive.

So they used to have an audio cassette like you would in a stereo.

You could could put a cassette in and that's where you would keep all the data of programs that you were loading up so someone made the connection that actually if you're able to record onto a cassette you should be able to transfer multiple different kinds of data over the radio and why not video games so what people used to do is they used to tune in to radio shows that basically just played data over the waves you'd put your cassette in and you would press record and then you take it out put it in your computer and there's your video game so these were dedicated radio stations it wasn't like yeah that was talking talking heads

now time for tetris like

so what did the audio sound like well

for people

probably older than you but younger than me it would sound like you know when you had dial-up internet yeah and you would or if a fax came through on a on a phone line it's just like

yeah that that it's exactly that and the computer just takes that and if it's a high sound it's a one and if it's a low sound it's a zero and it just turns it into zeros zeros and ones and makes games out yeah and to be fair that could be confused as a very popular type of

techno

industry

um yeah so this was this was done for ages and then suddenly obviously modern technology and prices you know the equivalent of the mammoth burgo coming down from 300 000 uh they suddenly were able to afford to have hard drives and computers and so it slowly got wiped out but um yeah that was a thing that happened it's bizarre to think that um that you could you could take a video game grand theft auto by just listening to the radio and recording it um i'm not used to the idea that data could be transmitted in ways that we can hear and understand if you know what i mean yes yes yeah and obviously data could be transmitted in ways we can hear and understand because i i'm talking to you all and i understand but yeah yeah

and there was weird things that were done using this kind of novelty i guess it was radio west do you ever hear radio west champions i think it's bbc and they just call it radio west so it's sort of you get your local bbc in an area there used to be a host who was called um

uh what was he called sorry hang on a sec there used to be a host called joe tozzer who used to work for um

how did you forget that name

and did another six this week joe tozzer and the masturbators

sorry joe if you're listening

but also how was school was that That was a rough word.

How do you spell it?

It could be Toza.

Toza, yeah.

I'm not sure what he says, Toza.

As in Faye Toza from Steps, her sir.

We're piecing it together.

It's definitely a different name.

T-O-Z-E-R-O.

Sorry, Joe.

But yeah, so he once broadcast

the data sounds of what ended up being a pixel image of one of Charlie's Angels' angels.

So the star, Cheryl Loud.

you recorded it down, put it into your computer, and slowly it pixelated together 40 by 80 pixels of the star.

40 by 80.

40 by 80 at sexy resolution.

Is that a boob or a head?

And of course you could do it with anything, you could do it with vinyl as well.

And there were some computer game magazines that would put little vinyls on front of the magazine and it would just play this noise, which your computer then would recognize as zeros and ones and would turn into a game.

It's all because you didn't have enough memory on your computer.

That's exactly that, yeah.

So your memory had to be on your cassette.

Yeah.

What are the limitations of it now?

So in theory,

could we do it for a more complex game than Tetris or Black?

We could, for sure, I reckon.

But the problem is, because I used to have one of these computers with the cassettes on, it would take about 30 minutes to load any game onto your computer.

Okay.

And they were all really shit games.

They were fun, but

the graphics were terrible and whatever.

And often you would get to the end of the 30 minutes, and one of its zeros or ones would have been read wrong, and the whole thing would be knackered.

You'd have to start again.

And so, if you wanted to put like Grand Theft Auto onto that, you'd probably have to make it play for about 40 years.

Yeah, okay.

That would be great to know because the games are so massive these days.

Mel, you're a gamer, aren't you?

I'm a little bit of a gamer, yes.

Can you get Boulder's Gate 3

audio form?

They did end up releasing very specific audio blank cassettes that you could get called Basicode.

So it would guarantee compatibility with your computer, as opposed to, I imagine there were a few audio cassettes out there that didn't quite do it.

And so, yeah, you would tune into either like Datorama or Hobby Scoop, which were specific radio stations that

are influenced.

You can just put on Radio 4 and listen to the shipping forecast and make that into your own game, I find.

We used to do this as as kids, actually, and we would have to guess whether it was rising slowly or, you know, I don't know if it's the pressure or something.

They go, Dogger 75, rising slowly.

Yeah, right.

So you had to guess what it was going to be.

That's good.

Who's the host of the shipping forecast?

I don't think it's got a host name.

Well,

the person who reads.

I don't know.

I remember.

I think it's been the same person for about 40 years.

She's very famous.

Yeah, she's married, I think, to Claire Balding.

She,

I was on a show with her once, and I was asked, do you want to have any questions for her about the shipping forecast?

I didn't know what to ask because I'd never heard it.

So I said, What's your favourite ship?

And she asked,

That's a good question.

It's a good question.

Did she have an answer?

No, she was like, You haven't heard my show.

Have you?

And I said, No, I haven't, dude.

And she said, What's your favourite fish?

Yeah.

Did you hear of the game Great Britain Limited?

I was looking at some early Spectrum games.

No.

In Great Britain Limited, it was a government simulation simulation where you managed the British economy.

And you love it.

There's no way to win.

It was very easy.

This is easy.

Yeah, you would like change little things, and then the inflation would go up, or the unemployment would go down, or vice versa.

And then every five years, you would have an election, and depending on how well you've done, it would say you've been kicked out, or you've got another five years.

Wow, that is so funny.

That's really good.

What was that?

80s, yeah, early 80s.

Wow, and it was government-made?

No, it was just

a lot of these games in the 80s, they were just made by kids in the bedroom.

Which was mad.

I went over to the home of a rider friend of my other friends, and she was like, I want you to meet him.

He's really cool.

We went over and he just pulled out a whole archive of cassettes of games he invented.

Yeah, and that was the first time I ever learned that games could be put on an audio cassette.

cassette.

It was a good time for creativity, but just in a very shitty medium.

Much like the podcast.

Do you have any really weird games, Mel?

Do I have any weird games?

At one point, because I have quite an addictive personality when it comes to games, there is a very stupid game on Steam called Cookie Clicker.

And it's literally a cookie.

cookie and you just click it and you get another cookie but then you

keep clicking and then you can buy like uh you know a cafe that makes cookies so you just it's basically i feel like it feeds the endorphins in your brain because you just like keep clicking and then you can buy like an automatic clicker with the cookies and then it will automatically click it for you and then you could buy a factory of cookies and you keep and it's but you have to keep clicking but you could you could leave it for like an hour because you've run an automated system yeah and then you come back and you're like i've got four billion cookies and you just it just feeds the endorphins in your brain because you're like, I'm doing, I'm getting better at this game.

So it's so simple.

It's on Steam.

A lot of that's what is Steam.

Steam is just

so embarrassing.

But just for other people who don't know what it is,

idiots listening at home.

No, I'm just kidding.

Steam is just a game library, essentially.

So if you're on a PC, you can download games.

And almost all games, unless they're like console exclusive, will be on Steam that you can download.

And a console?

I think you guys aren't gamers.

I've actually got Steam.

You have got Steam.

What games do you play?

Don't play many games on it.

No, really.

I play Fortnite, right?

I play Fortnite against eight-year-olds around the world and I lose.

I tried Fortnite and I was just too embarrassed to continue because the skill cap of that game is so high.

And these 14-year-olds that are doing playing since they were nine

are just so good that you couldn't possibly just start a game now and be anywhere near as good as them.

So it's just...

It's true.

If I put myself in the mind of a 14-year-old playing this game, would it be immediately obvious which one Andy was?

Oh yeah, yeah, I think so.

I'm the guy hiding in one of the buildings just trying to have a nice afternoon.

There's a cookie.

I'm trying to take him there.

Yeah.

He's soaring on the back of a ned.

Trying to escape.

Here's a fact about the guy who invented video games, arguably.

Yeah.

And it's sent in by a listener.

This is sent in by Grant Wynne-Jones, who sent in the fact that nuclear bombs and video games were created by the same guy.

Yeah, that's actually a deleted scene from Oppenheimer.

Well, it's not Oppenheimer, but it's a guy called William Higginbotham, great name, who did invent the first screen-based video game.

It was called Tennis for Two.

And it was in 1958.

Sounds like Pong, right?

It's pretty Pong-y.

It's like 2D tennis.

There was nothing to play it on.

So you had to play it on an oscilloscope, which is a device to measure voltage waves.

And that, because there were no, you know, no consoles, no screens, nothing.

And he also worked on the Manhattan Project, and he was in charge of the team which made the electronic triggers for the first nuclear bombs.

So

that's a fact.

It stacks up.

That's great.

And he played the accordion as well.

And his daughter wrote a memoir about him called Accordion to Willie.

While we're talking about sort of like the founding figures of video gaming, one person who's known as the father of the video games industry, and I believe this is the person who kind of took it away from PC and said, the television, why are we not getting it on the television, was an engineer and inventor, and his name was Ralph Bear.

Oh,

he spelled the same as Clara.

Yes.

Wow.

Turns out that they are.

No, they're not.

I couldn't find any relation.

I was so excited when I saw the connection name, but no.

That's so funny.

Last game that I played to any regularity was Mario Kart.

Oh, yeah.

And there's a really nice economic theory that the world should be like Mario Kart.

Okay, that's all I can kind of see what you mean.

Oh, really?

Yeah, if you're in the front in a game of Mario Kart, your power-ups are less powerful.

So if you're first, you will get like maybe a banana peel to throw behind you, which, yeah.

But then if you're last, you will get a power-up that's like turns you in a torpedo.

A giant bullet guy.

Yeah, a giant bullet guy that can go to the top or the blue shell which automatically wipes out the person in first.

So I guess

in the sense that it kind of evens things out in society a little more.

It's like reverse iron rand basically.

And it's known as rubber banding and the idea is that anyone at the back of society gets a huge boost and it helps everyone in society, especially as those people at the bottom tend to be like farmers or, you know, people who are helping at the base of everything.

Right.

And apparently that would be a great way of doing it, apart from good luck finding anyone to vote for it.

That's really interesting.

It's a lovely idea,

yeah.

In 2004, someone made a device that is a Game Boy, and the Game Boy is also attached to a kind of thing that goes over your mouth, which gives you nitrous oxide and basically makes you pass out.

And this was for children.

To stop them playing?

No, no, not to stop them playing.

But as in you have enough nitrous oxygen, you do well enough at the game, you pass out, you stop playing the Game Boy?

No, it's not that.

Any other thoughts why you might do this?

It's for children.

It's for children.

Make children pass out.

So if they're going into surgery and they need to

surge.

So the idea is it's hard to give kids anesthesia and keep them calm while you're doing it.

If you give them the Game Boy to play, then they're distracted and they get the anesthesia.

That's when it was designed, but never used.

Never used.

Well, it's unfair on children who are not good at video.

I'm not very good at video games, so I would still be on lying there as they said, Surgeon's ready to go home.

Night is falling.

It's just the tutorial.

Come on!

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on various social media accounts.

I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland.

Andy.

at Andrew Hunter M.

James at James Harkin.

And Mel at Melanie Bracewell.

Nice.

Or you can get to our group account on Twitter by going to at no such thing, or you can email us at podcast at qi.com.

And if you want to just hear all of the episodes and find out about our secret membership club, which is called Club Fish, you can go to no suchthingasafish.com and you can find all of our previous episodes there, as well as the doors to the secret members club.

Mel, you're on tour right now in the UK?

Yes, touring around the the UK, and then I'll be touring Australia, and then I'm coming back for Edinburgh in August.

Amazing.

I'm hopping around.

Have you found dates?

MelanieBracewell.com/slash gigs, I think.

Yes.

Okay, that's it.

We'll be back again next week, and we'll see you then.

Goodbye.