No Such Thing As A Fish - 604: No Such Thing As Crown Jewels For The Cookie Monster

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Dan, James, Andy and Melanie Bracewell discuss currents, biscuit tins, jam dodgers and all sorts of pi. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things a Fish where we were joined by the fantastic Melanie Bracewell. Melanie's a really good friend of ours. We've known her for many, many years. She's a regular on Australian television in New Zealand as well. She's been on New Zealand Taskmaster. She hosts a TV show called Cheap Seats Australia. But you'll have seen her on TV in the UK as well. She's been on QI a couple of times. And she has very recently been on Richard. Osmond's House of Games. She's a brilliant stand-up comedian as well, though, and so if you would like to see her on tour, great news, she is coming to the UK, and her tickets are available at Melanie Bracewell.com slash Tor. And you will not be disappointed if you go and see her, because she is an absolutely brilliant stand-up comedian. Anyway, not much more to say, apart from On With the Podcast. Hello and welcome to a fish, a week of

a weekly podcast this week coming to you from four undisclosed locations around the globe. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and special guests, it's Melanie Bracewell, And once again, we have gathered around 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. My fact this week is that a congested tunnel in Australia has installed moving lights that you race against, and it has helped reduce stop, start traffic by 70%.

And I drive this tunnel frequently. Do you? And you've done the racing? against the lights? Yeah, I mean, when I say race, I don't think that's what you're actually supposed to do. It's what I do. Essentially, it keeps pace with kind of the slowest traffic in the tunnel. Therefore, the pace is consistent, and people aren't like driving super fast and then stopping and then

driving and then stopping because that's what causes traffic. I had a look at it. From the look of it, I mean, I haven't driven it, obviously, but it looks like a ring of light around the edge of the tunnel, which sort of pulses through the tunnel and you drive level with that ring. Is that right as it moves? Yeah. So if you look in your left and right, there's sort of these green lines that you are trying to keep pace with. And it feels really bad when one of the green lines overtakes you. Yeah. Maybe it would have been better. Like, it doesn't have to be lights,

right? What about like a Pac-Man coming and trying to hear you was something? Oh, yes. But what, so you see it in your review mirror? Hang on. Yeah, yeah. You're the ghost in this situation. Oh, maybe, wait a minute, you're the Pac-Man. You've got to be the Pac-Man. The ghost is chasing it. We can't have a like, you're the baddie in this situation. I caused a collision, but I did get a high score. Can you eat the strawberry turn around and then you can drive backwards through the tunnel? That's right, yeah, yeah.

So from the sound of it, the problem is that people drive downhill into the tunnel, they drive along the tunnel, and then they drive up on the way out. But they slow down on the way up because they don't really register that there's an uphill slope on the way out. So naturally you just slow down. And that causes a ripple effect going on. all the way back through the tunnel and then everyone slows down. Yeah, and so since this has been installed, there's been a 17% increase in speed. When there is traffic, it returns to the normal speed,

95% faster compared to before they were installed. That's really good. I heard there's like a lot less breakdowns as well because usually trucks are like stopping and starting with their brakes, but when they're not using their brakes as much, there's less things that can go wrong. I thought you meant emotional breakdowns and that too. Can I just quickly say

This is an absolute nightmare though For a super villain to hack And then set the lights going to 200 miles an hour Wow, that is a great That is a great plot Any supervillains listening But then the police can kind of slow them right down When they're doing the chase, can't they?

Yes, I hadn't thought of that James, let's talk scripts later But I think we're on this up here So this is a tunnel in Melbourne And James, you just mentioned about trucks Stopping and starting. Trucks seem to be a big problem for tunnels in Australia generally, and there are a few management systems have been put in place to help them. So the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, they have a system in place for trucks that are constantly ignoring signs that say, your truck may be too high, stop if you are at this height, and they'll get to the entrances of this tunnel.

They'll crash in, stuck, right? So this new system is in place there. A sheet, like a waterfall, will go over the front of the tunnel, and then they later. project a giant stop sign onto the waterfall. So it's literally in front of them and you can't ignore it. You have to stop. Wow, it's like a log flume. I love that.

You'll be like, ah, no, it's a trick. It's going to move at the last second. Yeah, yeah. If I've seen any cartoons, and I have, I know I'll get through here. Are you saying that that exists, Dan? Yeah. In the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and quite a few other tunnels. Yeah, so it literally, as an emergency moment,

You've got to see it, though, but the only way to do it is that you have a truck too high. Honestly, next time we're in Australia, I am hiring a truck and I am flying towards that tunnel. I'm very tall. I should just get like to stand on top of a car and make it happen. So do you have a drive around in Queensland, Mel? Not often. Okay. Okay.

It's a big country, Andy. No further questions. Well, it's more just like, it's not where I live. so if I was to go to Queensland, I'd be more likely to order a cab or go on a bus. You don't do interstate trucking in Queensland, is what I'm hearing. Not so much. Not so much these days. That is a shame, because if you do, the highways are basically a large, slow pub quiz. So Queensland is seven times the size of the UK, just for context.

And, you know, you get people driving. You get the road trains. Do you get those in Queensland? I think you might do. Anyway. Sorry, Andy, Andy, Andy. What is a road train? Yeah, you just put two words together that don't really feel.

fit together. It's like a convoy of trucks and you know it's it's halfway between just normal logistics and mad max because you're driving across Australia with a load of trucks and it's a road train. Anyway, if you're a trucker in Australia, in a road train or out, it's obviously really boring and there are long stretches of just nothing for ages and ages and ages. And so you have to keep drivers engaged. And so Queensland's authorities have put a pub quiz basically on the signs around the state. So you will see a sign saying, which animal is the fastest on earth. And then like five miles later, you'll see a sign saying,

it's the peregrine falcon when it's diving. Is it counts as on earth if it's diving? It's a good point. No, you're right, James. I mean, quibble. Do write in to the Queensland. Maybe that's what the next sign says. No, no, we do realize that it's not actually on the earth.

No, okay, let's have another couple. Just to see if you're as smart as a road train captain. What is the coldest town in Queensland? It'll be like Wollongong or something like somewhere south? Is it right? It's Stanthorpe. Of course. How silly of me?

Listeners around the world have been screaming, screaming at their phones. Okay, the last one. When is rabbit breeding season? Oh, that's all the time in Australia, isn't it? All right. Yeah, correct. Oh, a trick question. I'd be so pissed off after five miles if I got handed by a trick question.

Beautiful. That's great. The roads in Australia are pretty much. The longest road in the world is the one that goes around Australia, Highway 1. It's 9,000 miles long. And if instead of putting it all the way around Australia, they decided to go from Perth outwards, they could have got all the way to London. Stop it. Whoa.

Why didn't they? They should try that. Fools. The flights are so tedious. If I could just have 15,000 pub trivia questions. it would be done in no time the scale is mad It is

It does suck Because if you break down as well In 2017 There was a tradesman Who crashed his car Out in the Outback On one of these roads And the closest help he could get

Was I believe 150 kilometres away Which he had to walk So he did Yeah So he did this walk Survived initially on water Had to start drinking his own urine

And finally got found After he'd walked about 100 or 120 kilometers. So he only had like 30 to go before he could have rocked up to this town going, you won't believe what I just did. Please, I'm so thirsty. Can a very oversized truck go through this tunnel? Have you, so Mel, have you heard of the Outback Way?

Because I don't know if this is the road you're talking about just there, Dan. So this is, it's a series of roads and it runs from the middle of Western Australia to the middle of Queensland. So that is over 2,500 kilometres. It's really long. I think much of it is not paved. And a lot of it, you need permission to go over. And some bits are just for remote indigenous communities.

And it's known as the world's longest shortcut. Because it does technically shave time off your route, as opposed to going up and then right, like around Highway 1 that James was talking about. But it was made by this guy called Len Beedell. Is he a household Dame in Australia, Mel? Oh, Lynn Beedell. Plus, he started on Lynn.

Okay. Oh, my, Lynn. Did he win Dancing with the Stars this year? I'm pretty sure. Okay, so he's not a household name But he's just an amazing guy So he wrote a load of books about his type He just made roads all his life

And his books include Beating About the Bush Too Long in the Bush Still in the Bush Blast the Bush And Bush Bashers And he named them all after members of his family So there's the Gary Highway

There's the Connie Sue Highway The books were named after the members of his family This one's after my daughter Bush Bail But the amazing thing about him was he was also a bush dentist, right? So he knew that he was going to be out with a road building crew for ages. So he took a course in tooth extraction in case anyone got a toothache, you know, because obviously you're hundreds of miles from the nearest dentist.

So by the time that he and his crew had finished the gun barrel highway, which was his first really long road, he'd taken 29 teeth from his crew. Wow. That's stunning. Those can't all have been necessary. Yeah, I think he's got, I've got the qualification. and I'd be stupid if I don't use them. I had a fact for James, actually, on this one.

So there's a road in Australia, which James would probably find so attractive. Any pictures from the other two as to why? Oh, because you can play... It's got golf holes all the way through. I mean... Am I that one dimension still as a character? Sorry, James. I'm so sorry, James, but the...

Is it pronounced Nullabba? Yeah, Nolabba plane. Nolabba lynx is... You already know it, James. Nalaba means no trees right So that's also a good place to play golf There's no trees But also Andy

Mel is a New Zealander who's just emigrated to Australia Give her a break I don't know What's the warmest town in Western Australia What is the name of Len Bidale's upcoming book Because we all know it I'm so sorry about you're right You're right.

That famous bush dentist we all talk about. So the Nullarba Links is the world's longest golf course. It's 850 miles long. Oh. Is it still 18 holes? Or is it? I believe it's still 18 holes, but they are spread out. Oh, I see.

So you play one hole and then you drive 100 miles to the next one. You can walk, but you're going to need to drink a lot of your own wee on the way. You play golf with me before. You see Andy come up, covered in piss, missing six teeth. What's going on? Do you guys know who doesn't have issues with traffic? Oh. Ants.

Have you guys talked about this before? This is the study that they did in 2019, looking at the way that ants moved, because they do follow sort of roads leading from food back to their colonies because they lead these sort of chemical trails. And they found that even with a lot of congestion, that the ants never had any trouble with traffic or buildup. And I love the way that they did this study,

which is they made tiny little bridges for ants and increased the width of the bridge, or narrowed the width of the bridge, and found that they would find alternative routes, or they would kind of move in this kind of constant state of travel, and they had no traffic issues. And that means the problem with traffic is just us. If we all just drove at a constant speed

and had an eye out for each other, then we'd all be better off. I think that's really wise, Mel. And I think, actually, what I try and say sometimes is, I don't say, I'm sorry, I'm late, I was in traffic. I say, I'm sorry, I'm late, I was traffic. Wow. Do you know what I mean?

That's so beautiful. Yeah, he's really cool to work with Mel. It's a shame you go, don't get to experience these day-to-day. Absolute zingers when he walks in. Okay. It is time for fact number two. And, well, actually, because she sent in so many great facts, we're going to go and give her another fact. First time we've ever done this. It's time for fact number two, and that is Mel. Wow. Oh my gosh. I'm flattered. My fact this week is New Zealand decides new laws to debate in Parliament by pulling them at random out of a 30-year-old biscuit tin. That's amazing.

What I thought when I heard this a while ago was that they pulled the actual bills out, but they have numbered tokens, numbered 1 through 90, and they are assigned to a specific bill. Very important bills were pulled from this. Gay marriage was pulled from this. Really? Euthanasia was pulled from this. It's a lot of significant stuff in this biscuit tin.

I know, exactly. Proofing the theory that no biscuit tin can. It contains biscuits. It's like sewing supplies or laws, you know. You go, oh, yummy, a biscuit. Oh, no, it's the water care amendment bill. New Zealand is often a socially progressive country and a few things are passed there ahead of the world. And it sounds like it was because of the biscuit tin and having this system, these things might not otherwise have come up. It's not every law. It's not, it's basically ones that are presented by maybe some minor parties. that don't have the floor to discuss everything. It would be insane to have every law, like just randomly aside from a biscuit in.

Oh, murder's legal in New Zealand because it hasn't come out of the biscuits in yet. Sorry, that's what the lucky dip says. Murder is now allowed. There's some stuff lurking in there. So I think it's, I think that's right. It's called a member's bill. And I think Britain has an equivalent.

We have one in our parliament. A private member's bill is the British equivalent. So if it's not part of the agenda, but you're passionate about it. calls that you believe in. One thing that's interesting, I think, is that in the past, obviously this biscuit tins only existed for 30 years or had this role for 30 years. It might have pre-existed. I don't know. But before that, you would have a bit of time when you can have these special members bills. And to decide which laws you would debate, you would basically

have to get to the clerk first. So they would say, okay, Thursday, we got a bit of time. We're going to do this. And everyone would leg it to the clerk saying, I want my law in. I want my Lauren or they would even queue up overnight like they were trying to get tickets for Wimbledon or something just so that they could get their law debated because would they would they would the did you say it was the clerk you needed to find yeah that's right would he or she ever hide and it's kind of if you find the clock there's a thing in the UK here that I'm sure James you and Andy will know about but the division bell for UK parliaments which is also to do with voting so if a vote needs to happen and there's a

division, this bell goes off, which gives MPs eight minutes to get there to register their vote. But because people are so spread out, division bells are all over Westminster, so some local pubs will have division bells, or there will be a direct phone call to a landlord to ring a particular bell, or it'll be in cafes. And so everywhere, so you'll be sitting maybe in a pub, a lot of MPs having a pint of beer, this bell goes off and they'll just bolt out of there to get back to vote. Is that still true, Andy? I think. thought they might have changed the pub one a few years ago. I don't know. I think the red line

is a pub. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's still there, actually. I think the plan was to start phasing it out of pubs in 2021, but I think, yeah, it's possible that there might be a few, but there's 384 division bells, let's say, before the phase out. Amazing. It's still having a bat signal.

Basically is what it is, isn't it? Like, it's just, but you need to go vote on a law. Like, it's an unsexy bat signal, but it is cool. Yeah. It's on pubs and Parliament, New Zealand Parliament has a pub now. It did have a pub. It was closed down. The pub has reopened.

It's called pint of order. That's great. I think it's great. And on the wall of the pub is the first, they say proper bill to be passed by a newly independent parliament. So not under the colonial governorship. And it was for allowing parliament to circumvent the liquor laws. That was the first thing.

We wanted to do. That is the first pint of order. Yeah, put that bill in the biscuit tin 90 times. So we've just talked about the French Parliament. That is shaped. So the British Parliament is two benches. And the one side is on the left and one side is on the right and they argue. I can't remember what the New Zealand one is.

But the French one is like a semicircle. And the reason it is that is it's based on the school of surgery in Paris. It was a place where you would cut up bodies and everyone had to have a good view of you cutting up the bodies and then they chose the Parliament to be based on that which I think is really cool. And there is one country in the world that has their parliament in the shape of an athletic stadium.

Can you guess which it is? Is this an especially athletic country? Maybe. You've got a guess. That's a fun quiz. A load of Olympic long-distance runners are from Kenya, aren't they? So I'm going to say Kenya. But they don't... Is it somewhere in like South America or something?

You're close to Mel. But like long distance runners often aren't in the stadium. They're running like marathon running or 10K is outside the stadium. So who runs in a stadium? Sprinters. Keep going. Like Usain Bald. Yeah, who is from?

Jamaica. Well done, Dan. Yes. Oh! On the shoulders of giants. I was using a tailwind. Yeah, so Jamaica have got an athletic stadium-shaped parliament That's great

When you say athletic stadium-shaped Is there a bit in the middle where you get to like Throw the javelin? Yeah, like what does that mean? It's just because there are nine countries in the world with circular chambers There's quite a lot of them have got hemispheres Like France and like the European Parliament

Quite a lot I've got the same as the British Parliament but theirs is kind of an elongated circle. That's great. Right. That's really good. There's the thing that happened in Australia a number of years ago, about 20 years ago now, which is that the parliament banned all the security staff

from saying, good-day mate, when people walked in. They were like, mate, mate is not a word that we want to be encouraging when George Bush is walking through our doors. And the then Prime Minister John Howard would often call Bush, mate. It was just, they were like, we don't like this word. Security staff were told, you can't do it anymore, and the ban lasted less than 24 hours because Australians said, no way, mate. It was just like, are you kidding? That's a national pride, that greeting and that word. Well, New Zealand has a list of words that they've deemed

unparliamentary. So these are words that are insulting or unbecoming and had to be retracted. 1949, the phrase, his brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides, had to be retracted, it was deemed unparliamentary, energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral, that was 1963, that was deemed unparliamentary, and this phrase, I feel like, I just want to say it in my day today, this is 1946, idle vaporings of a mind diseased, oh my goodness, good, it's so mysterious. I found a great little nugget, which is that our UK Parliament, they have their own internal library. Back in 2013, they looked into the list of the most borrowed books from this library. The number one most borrowed book from Parliament's Library was a book called How to Be an MP. For dummies. Yeah, exactly. It was a self-help book, and it had like amazing chapters called, you know, how to dilute boredom, how to write an abusive letter.

How to write an abusive letter? Yeah, yeah. How to convince voters that MPs never stop working. How to climb the greasy pole. Things like that. Previously for five years, there was another book that was the number one most borrowed book. And that was called, oh, sorry. How to Borrow a Book.

Yeah, that one was called How Parliament Works. So that was the previous, yeah, most borrowed book. Speaking of libraries, actually, the New Zealand Parliament has a library. And in 1968, there was a big storm that hit Wellington. It was a really famous one, some boats capsized and stuff. So it was really, really bad. But the water from the storm surge started going towards the parliament. And the people working there thought, we need to get the books out of here.

So they took all the books and they took them onto the roof to keep them away from the water. and this is according to a tour guide who does a tour of the New Zealand Parliament and they say for mysterious and unknown reasons they did this in their underwear and I can't work out why if you're going to take books out of a library and put them on a roof you would do it in your underwear

and no one explained why no one says there's no written record of her there had been a big storm but it was a storm surge which can come after the rain, so I don't know if it was raining or not. I think that makes sense, because you don't want to get your clothes. If the storm surge arrives

and you're in your heavy, heavy cotton ruffles or your wool, then you're going to get seriously weighed down. That's true. So they put the books on the roof, you say. On the roof, yeah, which suggests that it might not have been raining at that point. Yeah, okay, right, right, right.

And also, Andy, whenever it rains, do you just get completely naked? Not completely, but I think it's good, sometimes if you've got a job to do in the rain, it's actually better to have fewer clothes on. It's like how if you're dealing with a pest or like an invasive animal in your home, like a mouse or whatever,

you don't want to get it. What? Get up, of course. Can I please finish? I don't want that mouse crawling up my trouser leg. I'd rather see it on my leg. Do you know what I'm saying? No, not really. Well, no, but keep going.

Keep going. Look, it's more upsetting to have a ferret in your trouser leg than it is to have a ferret on your bare leg. That's all I'm saying. This is why you were kicked out of that petting zoo. I've just got one thing about biscuit tins. Oh, yeah. I think I found the third most valuable biscuit tin ever,

which I know. This sold in 2019. It was from about 1910. Beautiful biscuit tin, shaped like a bus. Lovely. Any guesses as to how much it went for at auction? Is there any reason why it was particularly expensive? Just very nice and historic a thing.

Yeah, I don't think it wasn't a celebrity one. It wasn't historical. 200. $300. Oh, thank God you didn't ask me for mine. I was a cool. You want to really overshoot it? I was 1.5 mil, yeah.

Okay. Well, Dan, do you want to have another crack at the value of the second most valuable biscuit tin ever? 1.5 mil? Well, it's great. Thanks, Dan. Thanks a bunch for absolutely torpedoing. fun game. Mel, would you like to guess? It may be a sensible guess as the value of the second most expensive biscuit tin that I've been able to find. Let's say 800. Thank you. How much was the

first one? Well, the first one was 3,100. So Mel, you have lowballed it rather, given that this is more valuable than that. We know that. Well, it's more. I thought you said it was least valuable. No, this is the second. That was the third most valuable. This is the second most. We're going uphill for some jeopardy, Mel. I don't. Actually, I did not say the current. that doesn't help It doesn't help But I didn't say I would say

I would say Bitcoin Yes 800 Bitcoin Exactly Okay James I go for one Bitcoin

Okay How much as they were For that 80 grand Loads This is more Oh thankfully Thankfully No

This was an Isle of Man Man who was caught With 150 £150 worth of heroin In a biscuit tin Oh Wait a minute Andy

How much of that value Is the biscuit tin Without the tin it's worth nothing So Your Honor What I did was I paid 150 grand for a biscuit tin I didn't know what was going to be in there And then the most valuable biscuit tin ever That I've been able to find

Okay so inside it Was Hitler's Apology for the Second World War You're so close There is a Second World War link You're so close But it's a British tin Is the tin the valuable item here

Or is the item inside it I think we've worked out but the tin is irrelevant to the price of it. Okay, I'll go 1.5 mil. This is a really interesting episode of Antiques Roadshow. I love it.

1.5 mil, let's go 2 mil. Dan, would you like to just completely nuke the game again by guessing like 300 billion quid or something? No, 17 million. You know what? I think it might be more than that. What? Priceless. Oh, okay.

In the second month. So I wouldn't have been nuking the game. It would have been pretty accurate, I think, is what we've worked out. Why haven't I been asked us to quiz? And please, no one ever let Andy write the quiz questions for those long roads in Australia because I swear to God I'd be crashing my car and drinking my piss before I needed to see another question. You're like, you've done the first one. Okay, now the seventh most valuable biscuit tin as far as we know.

And again, I'm afraid I have to say allegedly for this one. But allegedly, allegedly, during the Second World War, the Crown jewels themselves were kept in a biscuit tin. That's actually what I was going to guess. God damn. I was going to say, silly. No, it doesn't mean anything now that I've, out of that, you've already seen it. In fact, I think it's pretty well sourced.

They were kept in a biscuit tin at Windsor Castle, and it was buried on Castle grounds. And they were the most precious jewels from the Imperial State Crown. and they were in a tent just in case. Very nice. There you go. Someone came to steal some cookies, the cookie monster. Oh, damn.

These are useless. Okay, it is time for fact number three. And, oh, do you know, it's Meligand. Well, my fact this week, guys, is that a man in New Zealand, was reunited with his work swipe card 21 years after losing it in Wellington. It was found by researchers in Antarctica. And that is a really long way.

That is a really long way. Thousands of miles? You've come up with another game. So this story is, this is actually a music producer on a RNZ, the public radio broadcaster. In 2003, David McCor lost his card, which gave him access to the Wellington Town Hall.

And he had his briefcase in his car and someone saw it, broken, took the briefcase. A few days later, the police found the briefcase. It was sopping wet. And everything, there was a few things inside, but his work swipe card was missing from the briefcase. And then fast forward to 2016,

about 20 kilometres north of Scott Base in Antarctica, which is the New Zealand sort of research facility in Antarctica. Rod Bud was diving, and he found this swipe card under the ocean and thought, oh, that's interesting. That doesn't often see weird objects down there, and so he took it and saw that it said Radio New Zealand on it, to then figure it must be someone who's visited Scott Base, didn't think anything of it, just sort of set it aside for eight years,

And it wasn't until they were like, hold on, this guy, they got in touch with him. He's never been to Antarctica. That's when they went, oh, this is so, this is so strange. So question, could it have been that the person who broke into his car was a scientist? So there's some theories. They don't have a concrete answer. No one's come forward saying, I'm the scientist who broke into his car. but it goes against the natural ocean currents

unless one theory is that it hitched a ride on something buoyant so it sort of followed the surface ocean currents that are a little bit more malleable or someone who happened to visit Scott Base somehow had a swipe card. I guess one more question, sorry Dan. Did it still work? That's what I wanted to know as well.

I was like so tempted to email him and be like, Does it still work? I don't think so. Had you been waiting at the barriers for 21 years? Honestly, I feel like I've been at work and I've left my, I've quit my job. And they've turned off my swipe card before I've even finished for the day. So I swear I've been in hotels and they've made a swipe card and by the time I got to my room, it didn't work. Right.

Yeah. Mel, you sent around a link about this story as a source of it. And it just has such a terrific opening line. It kicks off. You've heard of finding a needle in a haystack, but what about finding a swipe card in the vast expanse of the world's oceans? What a good saying. It's so true.

And we'll probably never know, right? As in he said he wants to know. I don't think we'll ever know. But it's just one of those crazy coincidences. To lose something in for it to come back into your life, but through very odd means. Yeah, it would have been interesting for it to come through the currents because like you say, Mel, I don't think that's kind of how

the currents go around there. In fact, there is one current that goes all the way around Antarctica. That is the reason that you get penguins all over the continent, because penguins originally came from New Zealand. And then they kind of, penguins really use the currents to swim. And they reckon that the reason you find them all over Antarctica is because they go in this sort of lazy river that goes all the way around the continent. And the ones that you find, like, in the north up near the Galapagos Islands,

that's when the current has got a little bit slower and sort of. flung them off to the north. It is fascinating, isn't it? It's sort of nature's travelator where you can lose your energy levels, jump into that and get there faster than if you were actually swimming. And dolphins will actually swim on the edge of currents when they just want

that extra little bounce as they're going along. The way scientists study them is also unbelievably interesting. So this one, you're talking about James, the Antarctic circumpolar current, the ACC. I think it might be the largest current on Earth. And scientists want to know when it started, because it's incredibly useful for various things like climate science and it's that one is so cool because it's like a buffer

between the warmer waters to the north and the very cold Antarctic waters to the south it's like an elastic band all the way around and scientists are trying to work out when it began and so what they're using is fossilized fish teeth from 50 million years ago because you can detect from fossilized teeth what the water column was like was it Pacific or Antarctic water in that location at that time because you can date the water and you can track the location. And those teeth were pulled by a dentist in the bush. I so wish I remembered his name.

I know he's so popular. Len Beedale. Len Beedale. I can't believe I forgot Len Beedale. Go back to New Zealand. What are you doing? Australia. Kylie Minow, you've got Paul Hogan and Len Bidale, all right?

Keep those in your head. You'll be all right there. Yeah, what they think, Andy, I think, is like, you know, South America and, like, there's a tip of Antarctica that are kind of relatively close to each other. They kind of all both point out towards each other. And probably they were attached at one stage. And then when they opened up, suddenly there was a chance for this current to go all the way around. Because all of the currents, eventually they hit a bit of landmass. But this one doesn't.

This one, you can just, once you get stuck in it, you're there forever. That's so interesting. Have you guys talked about the ever laurel before on the podcast? This is a cargo ship in 1992 that was containing bath toys that got into some stormy water knocked over, knocked all of the containers into the ocean. And these bath toys have washed up all over the world and researchers have gone, this is an amazing opportunity.

They've been able to track the ocean currents using these little rubber duckies. Wow. Because some would end up in England and some would end up in New Zealand. and they would be able to chart. They were like, we wouldn't want to pollute the ocean on purpose, but this is a happy thing to come out of this disaster.

Yeah, yeah. If you find one of those, by the way, probably I would say, according to my research, the most expensive bath toys you can get. So I wonder if anyone would like to guess. James, don't do it. They don't appreciate it.

200 quid for a duck. Okay. I'll say five million pounds. Oh, Andy. This is like I'm playing the heel here. No, do you have a price? Yeah, well, around $1,000. Really?

Wow. So, that's pretty close, I guess. Who's buying? Is it the scientists? No, they kind of collect his items now. There's like a few different people who collect them. So when one comes on the market, they all try and bid for it. But quite often, they find them and they're not the right ones because they all have special sort of barcodes on them.

So you know they're from this particular ship. But of course, if you get a little toy on a beach, that could have come from anywhere, right? So every now and then you get news stories saying, oh, another one of these rubber ties has come up, and then everyone gets really excited, and it turns out it's just something someone's left at the beach. I mean, if I found out that people were paying $1,000 for a rubber duck, I would try quite hard to forge those. Yeah, I'd flood eBay immediately. But there's not that just those.

There was also 4.8 million Lego pieces that were dropped by another boat. 34,000 hockey gloves that were dropped by another boat and thousands of Tommy Pickles cartoon heads that were dropped from another boat and they're all being sort of measured by these oceanographers. This is too suspicious that these are all little floating things. I feel like scientists are driving jet skis into cargo ships go, oh, whoopsies, I guess we get some information.

Do you know my favourite currents are when they take people in boats and put them hundreds of miles away from where they're meant to be. Those great stories, you know, when they survive, their wonderful stories. Well, give us one that. I'm not really aware of these stories. This is a Len B-Dell situation for me. No, you know, you know, two people were out at sea and a canoe and a current came and it took them and they were found hundreds of miles out drinking their own piss and so on, all that stuff.

A lot of these facts are about drinking their own piss. You brought these facts to the table, Mel. Starting to see a connection. So 2011, two guys who were from the Pacific nation of Kiribati were out at sea. They were ironically driving to get gas when they ran out of it and their GPS system was down. And so they just floated off and they disappeared and they were out at sea for ages and ages until they eventually 600 kilometers from home rocked up against a little atoll. So they were safe. They were able to get food and so on.

But one of the guys discovered his long-lost uncle who had been missing for 50 years. Who had also floated off. Yeah, who was presumed drowned. Who was presumed drowned. They rocked up. He was there. Had a whole new family. He was like, oh, hi, hi, guys.

Oh, we had a new family, did he? There's a lot of things to get stuck on in this fact. But one that's throwing me is, would you say it's ironic to run out of fuel when you're on your way to go get fuel? I would say there's most likely time you would run out of fuel. That's a good point. So maybe it wasn't the fuel situation. Maybe their GPS went down and that they just wandered off. I'm sorry, 50 years ago, this guy's uncle clearly flees his old life and maybe some debts we don't know.

And then his infuriated. He had a biscuit tin in a dream. Because he must have felt absolutely busted when he saw his long, long, long. nephew turning up, floating slowly towards him. He's going to... No, no, hide, hide, guys, hide. Behind that tree. Go to the other side of the atoll, for fuck sake.

So there you go. Wow, that's a heartwarming story down. Oh, there you go. Okay, here's one more quiz, just because they've all gone so well so far. The fastest ocean current on Earth, is it faster or slower than the world's fastest running insect. God. Oh gosh.

What's the fastest running insect? That's the Australian tiger beetle, Andy, as well, you should know. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was tipping my tongue. And the fastest current is the Florida current, which is the beginning of the Gulf Stream. Okay. I think the current is faster than the beetle. Okay, Dan.

Beetle faster than the current. Andy, not got many options left. I think they go at the same speed. You're correct. They both go at 5.6 miles per hour. Oh, you grubes. I'm you. If it's a hawking quiz, there's a sting of the tail.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show. And, oh, guys. What an admin cock-up this is. Mal, somehow it is you again. How, okay, I feel like I need to make it clear. This is not my idea. I'm not commenteering the podcast but my fact this week

is that the Australian Bureau of Statistics have revealed that 3.14% of bakers are women living in South Australia which they released as a pie graph about people who make pies including the number pie. And that's my fact. I'm going, I'm leaving now

this. I'm done. That's the best fact. That's the end of this podcast now. You can't beat that fact. Yeah. Incredible. So is it 3% of what? 3.4. 14% of Australian bakers are women in South Australia. Yep. Yes.

I think it's 3.14% of bakers are women living in South Australia. It's got to be. Because otherwise that's an enormous amount of bakers. Yeah. To live just in South Australia. It's not a huge place. They must have really had to talk to the figures to get. It feels very much like a harkin fact where they've got right.

We need to get to 3.14. I think you might be right. How many decimal places did they do it to? Is it like pie and the eternal number of bakers are South Australian women? This comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as I said, and they just release fun little graphs, and I follow them on Facebook, and I thought it looked fun. That's my research, guys.

It's basically a name. But I love pie in all forms. When I was at school, it was written on the walls all around my maths class, And so I learnt 50 digits or so To see you from Yeah, it was me and my friend would compete Over how many we could I know 50 digits

It's pretty impressive, that's a lot Can anyone beat that on this call? James, have you got a memory of pipe? I could do probably 5 or 6, I reckon Right. Do you think, so Mel, do you think you could still do the 50? I could, but it's, I don't know if it's an impressive thing to do on a podcast.

We got a time to film. I can close my eyes and do it. Anything to stop Andy from another biscuit quiz, please. I just want someone to randomly tune into this part of the podcast and be like, what is going on? Okay, you ready? Does anyone have pie up on screen?

No, we can get it. Okay, I've got it. I've got it here. I'll give you one free number, Mel, three. Oh, crap. You've thrown me. Okay, 3.14-159-265-35-8-9-7-9-3-4-6-2-8-0-8-209. Fucking hell.

What do you think? It sounds impressive, but if you think it, it's just like, if you learned 10 phone numbers, you can remember things. That was insanely impressive. I've got to say the number after the nine is a seven, so you should have rounded that up really. Oh, shiver me timbers. Okay. I think you've got 55. Did I?

Oh, yeah. Oh, man. You always want to undersell yourself. It's not quite the world record, which is 70,000 decimal places. That was a podcast I loved listening to. Yes, this was in India. I love the people who learn pie to that number of decimal places, because I find that very interesting. So pie goes on forever.

It's been calculated to 106 trillion digits. But actually, NASA only bothers with pie to 15 decimal places. So all these people letting it to 70,000 places, NASA even, don't bother with that. So I read a great piece by someone from the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA, Mark Raymond. He said, look, if you calculate Earth's circumference from pi to 15 decimal places, and then you use pi to hundreds of decimal places, the distance between your two calculations would be 1.30,000th of the width of a human hair. So for all practical calculations, like if you're landing a rocket,

you simply don't need pi to more than 15 decimal. Like, that is accurate in any real world calculation. Not every rocket launch is successful, though. So it could have been... Well, maybe Elon Musk is only using, like, three on his rocket launches. That's true. So, Pye Day is a very big thing. I don't know if you celebrate it, Mel, but March 14th.

One of the people who were championed on that day is Albert Einstein because he was born March 14th. And so I look to see if there are any other great mathematicians who are associated with. with Pie Day, went through a big old list, couldn't find any. But... What? Well, there's other people, but I hadn't heard of them. I was going for big, big time name, so I had to shift. So other people born on Pie Day include Mrs. Beaten, who had a lot of pie recipes in her book.

Very good. And then the only other one who really caught my attention was Chris Klein, star of American Pie. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. Very good. We've known about pie since at least 1,550 BC. There's a papyrus called the Rhyme Papyrus, which was written by someone called Achmos. And it gives like a puzzle of calculating the size of a circle, if you know, like the size of a square around it.

And it doesn't say, doesn't use the letter pie or anything like that, but it basically gives us the answer to the question. And they work out the pies around 3.16, which is not. had for 4,000 years ago. Should we say what Pi is? Oh yeah. It's the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. So it's a constant?

Because that ratio is always the same. So if you take any circle and you measure the distance all the way around it and then you divide it by the longest line you can draw in it, then you will get 3.14-15, blah, blah, blah. And the way they calculated it back in the day

was to, so this scribe put a circle in a square. and then Archimedes improved on that he put the circle in a hexagon and then a smaller hexagon inside that and basically the more sides on the shape that you're using in comparison with the circle the more accurate.

So there's a Persian mathematician called Jamshid Alcashi who calculated Pi using a polygon of 800 million sides and he worked it out to 16 decimal places i.e. the accuracy that NASA has today and he did that in the year 4. 1424.

Wow. So he had NASA level accuracy back then. I just find that stunning. And there's a guy called Ludolf van Kulen in 1594. And he used a polygon with 32 billion sides. And published a value of pie, which had 20 decimal places. And he was so proud of it. He had it engraved on his tombstone.

What? And then 50 years after he died, Isaac Newton came up with a way of working it out that you don't need to use polygons at all, so his was completely useless. You could just, yeah. Can we say who named it Pye, first of all? Because he's a really interesting mathematician. He's called William Jones.

He was a Welsh mathematician in the 18th century, born on a farm, received an incredibly basic education, but he was a bit of a savant, and he was the first person who appreciated that Pye was irrational and non-repeating and infinite. And he named it Pye after the Greek letter, and there's a theory that it was because of periphery. It's about the circumference of a circle, so perifery, Greek letter pie. But Jones was for a brief spell in the English Navy, apparently as a math teacher on a warship, and I can't find much more evidence about what he did during his time. Ballistics? Probably ballistics. That's great. Yeah, yeah. He also worked in cafes. Like, this was a thing in the 17th century.

They were called, known as Penny Universities. And basically, you'd go to Starbucks. and there'd be a mathematician sitting in the corner and you'd pay him a penny and he would teach you some maths. That's so cool. Oh, that's a great idea. Do you know about his son? His son was really interesting.

He was part of the popularization of the language that's now known as proto-Indo-European. Or pie. Isn't that cool? That's so cool. Yeah. Hey, check this out.

I found out that there's a state part of the Zhou Dynasty in China that was called Pi, and they existed in the year 314. No way. Yeah. That's amazing. It's very cool. Now, Pi, in Chinese, pie, you've got two pronunciations.

So I think this might be called P, like P-E, and isn't that how we should be pronouncing Pi anyway? Wasn't that the Greek pronunciation? Might be. I think it would be. Yeah. But that's not how we pronounce it, so. I'm now connecting the final dot to Mel's four facts that are all pee-based that she is secretly snuck in.

Have you guys ever heard of the language of pylish? Yes. Mel's got over there. This is such a, I'd never heard of this. This is such a cool way. It's a part of a thing that's often known as constrained writing. So when writers apply rules to themselves. So, for example, Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss was told 50 of the most basic words for kids can only be used.

Or people have sometimes never used the letter E in an entire novel. Pielish, this pie language, is when you write a piece, but you have to match the letters of each word to where the next digit in pie is. So you start with well, because that's three. Well, I. Because that's four. Sorry, sorry, Dad. Sorry, how are you spelling well? Oh, a tragic fall of the first, first hurdle.

Turns out that Dan doesn't even know pie to one decimal place. Wait, I'll cover my eyes, so four point. Yeah, no, so let's, I mean, we all know three letter words, right? Can't think of any right now. I'm thinking of a few four letter words right now, Dan. Can I do another pie mistake while we're on that? So Kate Bush has a song called Pi. And in it, she sings the number up to the 78th decimal place.

But then she misses out a load and then starts again on the 101st and finishes on the 137th. And she also gets the 54th decimal wrong. Interesting. But then BBC show, more or less, the radio show who does like math stuff. They came up with a thing called the Kate Bush conjecture because Pi is an infinitely long number, and we think that it doesn't repeat itself. And if it doesn't repeat itself, then that means that all series of numbers are in there somewhere. So maybe Kate Bush was not singing it from the start. She was actually singing it from 12 trillion numbers.

Wow, true. And we just haven't got there yet. Right. Seems like a long way to go to exonerate Kate Bush. Flawed That's very funny Kate Bush is also one of the books written by Len Bedele

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 have said Over the course of this podcast We can all be found on various social media accounts I'm Sreiberland on Instagram, Andy.

I'm on Instagram at Andrew Hunter M. James. My Instagram's no such thing as James Harkin. And Mel? I'm Melanie Bracewell. We know that, but what's your... Presumably on everywhere, right? Melanie Braswell. Yeah, mostly or Melodoodle.

Anyway, you can also get through to us at podcast at QI.com. Send us emails there. We do a great bonus episode as part of our club. Fish, where we read out the best of your facts and your feedback. Just send them. And he gets all those emails. Go to our website as well. No Such Thing as a Fish.com. You can check out all our upcoming live shows. Do come to those if you can. Otherwise, just come back here next week because we will be back with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye. Thank you.