No Such Thing As A Fish - 497: No Such Thing As Oceans Eleven with Puffins

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Greg Jenner discuss why weekdays are confused, why electric cars were not all there, and why children were in Seine.  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 another episode of No Singers A Fish. This is another live show which was recorded at the Soho Theatre in London and who is our special guest today. Well, if you are a podcast fan, if you are a fan of amazing books, if you were a fan of the TV show Horrible Histories, then you'll know who I'm talking about. Our guest was the historian Greg Jenner. So like I say Greg first came to prominence I suppose as the historical consultant on the Horrible Histories, but he has since become a nerdy superstar and his own right thanks to his podcast Your Dead To Me, which you definitely if you haven't I'm sure you've heard it, but if you haven't heard it you definitely should check that out. But he also has written

lots of books, the latest of which are called Ask A Historian and Dead Famous and Unexpected History of Celebrity. And the very exciting thing about those, if you are super quick off the blocks, is that at the moment they are both 99p on ebook for the rest of September. He also has an illustrated kids book called U.I. History and that is out in hardback and audio book as well. Look, just go to the place where you buy your books, ebooks and audio books and search for Greg Jenner and you will not be disappointed. And I hope you will also not be disappointed with this week's podcast so let's just get on with it. On with a podcast! Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming

to you live from the Soho Theater in London! My name is Jan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Greg Jenner, 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 my fact, this week, my fact is when Virginia's Barter Theater first opened in 1933, it paid playwrights their royalties exclusively in Ham,

except for George Bernard Shaw, who was a vegetarian, and managed to negotiate his payment to be in spinach. That's superb. Yeah, so this is an amazing thing that happened during the Great Depression in America. And this guy, who was an actor, he was a very young actor at the time called Robert Porterfield, he found that all these actors were out of work.

The theaters weren't running because no one could afford to go to the theaters. But then he also noticed that there were a lot of farmers who had a lot of produce that they weren't able to shift. So he thought, what if I set up a bartering theater whereby you could trade ham for hamlet? That would be the system, right? So you could come in and you could then give, you know, any kind of produce that you wanted

and that would get you a ticket. And the bartering system worked very much like how bartering does, you know, you negotiate as you're doing it. Well, like bartering. Oh. Oh, very good, very good. It was a good idea. Yeah, so it would be, it was good, Andy.

Don't let everyone tell you differently. Yeah, so the system, be our god, yeah. Well, it's just, the stories are great because people have written about how this... You know, a lot of these playwrights, so when George Bernard Shaw was first asked, he said, I'm not really into it, and then Pigmalion came out, and he said,

Oh, yes! Pigmalion, Pigmalion. Should have been Spinach Malian. Should have been, yeah. So all the stories that he collected over the years, people got interviews out of him, and it's really fun. So there would be examples of, say, a farmer who would bring his cow to the theater,

and he'd say, how much milk to get into see the play. And they would tell him. And then he'd go to the side and milk the cow to the amount that they said, hand over the bucket, and then he'd go to the side and milk the cow to the amount that they said, hand over the bucket, and then he would start to go in, and in the anecdote, his wife was with him, and they said, you're not gonna get your wife to come in as well, and he said, she can milk her own ticket.

I was wondering how they did change at the theater, because I thought you would say you did. Yeah, and then you're home, and you get a little bit of bacon back. Yeah, kind of. I mean, you could have a pig, which was worth 10 tickets. Wow. So I think if you traded it a whole pig,

maybe you got like a seasoned pass. Yeah, kind of thing. But they accepted all sorts of, it wasn't just farm produs. They accepted toothpaste, snakes, and underwear as well. LAUGHTER It's good if you don't have a pig, so you can just go to the nose. Yeah, with the toothpaste for the snakes. Having, do they have teeth? They have teeth, right? They've got fangs. a pig so you can just go. Yeah, we're supposed to place four the snakes. Do they have teeth? They have teeth, right? They've got fangs.

They've got fangs. Yeah. Yeah. Can you brush a snake's teeth? So, you can, you can milk a snake's teeth. Hello, right, Paul. One ticket. There was all sorts of weird, like there was a boy who said that he had some jam or some kind of substance in the jar turned out to be mud, so people were trying to counterfeit their way in there as well. There was someone who did Brigha Pig saying, I'll pay with my pig, but then the pig got

loose and all the actors had to chase their money down the street. And weirdly, there was a jail that was directly underneath the barter theater. So while they were doing the plays, there was always this slight concern that one of the jailmates would break free and sort of come on to stage and murder everyone. So there was a added conflict, you know. Yeah, it sounds like it was an amazing place. And one of the things was a guy came in, he was a mountaineer and he said, I don't have any food, but I make coffins, do you all want a coffin? And they said, no, we're fine. He said, well, I make canes as well.

And he made so many canes that apparently every major actor in Broadway was seen walking round with one of these canes because he just kept making them and kept going to more and more shows. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, to me, I know I am an ex-accountant but it does sound like a massive tax dodge.

Oh, yeah. Like, bartering is all well and good, as long as you pay the tax on the actual amounts of the thing that you're bartering with. Oh, yeah. How much tax? One slice of bacon? Well, you know, 20% of your pig. Oh, whatever. That's the thing.

Like, does that old story of Picasso remember he was in a cafe? I mean, I don't think this is true, but he was in... It is true. Is it true? Yeah, my mum's got one. Wow. So Picasso... If I... Yeah, I true. Yeah, my mum's got one. Wow. So, Picasso... If I... Yeah, I think I know where you're going with it.

Picasso used to buy his meals by doing a tiny little doodle because we work more than the meal. He did thousands. They're now valueless. Is that what Gary Linderker has been doing? In the restaurant. Curry House. You can't have a sign photo of Gary Dernica. Yeah, yeah.

Like everyone, and you can see it like, as young Gary was here, oh Gary was here quite recently. That's what he's doing. I imagine that. That probably is what he's doing. It's probably getting free food. Well, I don't want to be a spursh, Gary Dernica. Oh, I'm going to mind, don't you know?

The thing is though, with Picasso, right? So, this story goes, one of the story goes that he did this doodle, and they said, well, Mr. Picasso, will you sign it? And he said, well, I want to pay for lunch. I don't want to pay for the entire establishment. Oh, great. That's the story. But the thing is...

What a wanker. That's what I want to say. That's so fucking... I don't think anyone's saying that Picasso wasn't a wanker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of all the artists, I think Picasso is very high in the Wanker index. Yeah. OK. But the thing is, I think Picasso is very high in the Wanker index. Yeah.

Okay. But the thing is, if you're an artist and you draw something and you're in a cafe and they give you some food, there are tax implications of that. And really, it is against the law to do that. The only way to get around it is in Picasso, instead of just having lunch, if it was a business lunch, and if the people in the cafe were gonna put the picture up on the wall so that everyone in the cafe can enjoy it. So technically it's decoration.

Then the both business expenses, the both tax deductible, that's fine. Ah. Why do you think accountants have such a reputation for? Ah, Godness. Thank God James is an at-all-these-historical moment. Where Picasso lands an absolute zingo,

and he's going, well, actually, the tax implications of that. Could you do a smaller drawing to be the tax? No. Yeah, he could, in fact, I believe in some places in America sometimes they have accepted artwork as tax payment from artists who couldn't afford to pay their tax and have done that. So that is possible, in theory, yeah. I can't believe we're accepting this fact, given how much shit I took many episodes ago,

when I said that if Mozart was on the street and he was passing someone who asked him for some money, a beggar homeless person was asking for some money, that he would say, I have no money, but here, let me write you some music and he would be like, Rask, give it a goody and give it to them. And then they you some music and he would be like, RASKIBI DAGADUDI and give it to them. And then they would take that and they would... Do what? Sell it. What would you do with your Picasso?

You can sell it for a lot of money. But you can't, no, you can't. Because my mum has one and you can't do it. Has your mum been trying to sell it? It's not worth anything. I'll buy it. All right. I'll buy the on-site Picasso that we know is definitely here.

Yeah. How do you verify that we know is definitely here. Yeah. How do you verify that the music is by Mozart, when it's just one bar of music that he... Because it sounds like Abba. Right. Barter. Barter is a weird thing, isn't it?

There's a lot of debate about Barter. I think I definitely thought it's the thing before money. So the Baker-Bake's some bread, and he goes to the butcher and the butcher, like, and the butcher has some meat and between them they have a sandwich. Well, there's what, like, they have two sandwiches. Exactly, you end up with two sandwiches and everyone's happy.

But of course, what if the butcher doesn't want any bread, the baker starts to death nightmare? So you need money. That's the basic, and I say very basic premise. But this is the weird thing about butter. There's no, I don't think there's any, there's actually, it seems like money produces butter systems. Like after the fall of the Roman Empire,

people resorted to butter because there wasn't a stable currency anymore. There doesn't seem to be any good evidence of a butter, like a proper butter society where someone says, I'll give you these grapes if you give me that cloth. It just, it just, it just doesn't seem to be any good evidence of a proper barter society where someone says, I'll give you these grapes if you give me that cloth. It just, it just, it doesn't seem to be any evidence for that. Greg. Oh, yes.

Yes. I mean, evidence that I found in a short look. I mean, money's fascinating, right? So coins are really new. In terms of the history of the world, coins are, like, they're like 2,700 years old, give or take, they're really, really new. So you've got these sort of enormous societies

in the Bronze Age. The Egyptians don't have money. No, really. The Samirians, the Babylonians, the Acadians don't have money. Really? And the first coin has got a little lie and face. And it's very cute in its ancient Greek. And I think the city, I think it was maybe Lydia, I can't remember,

but it's like 2,700 BCE. To prior to that, you have economic structures and you've got kings and you've got people with power and you have got distribution of wealth of a sort, but it's not cash. And even in the sort of eight, nine, tenth centuries, you get these coinholds, you know, Viking coinholds buried in the ground. And you're never entirely sure to what extent they are, someone going, I'm going to put that on the ground and come back for it later. Or it's someone's nicked ill. Or someone has been killed in battle.

Or, you know, we're never quite sure, because the money's not in circulation. So the history of money's really interesting, because there's a lot of stuff we don't know. But obviously, Barton must have been part of that equation that's certainly in the Stone Age. No, you're going to tell me there's no bartering in the Stone Age.

Do you know you're going to do that? No, no. Go on, do it. Yeah, sort of. Why not? Yeah. Straight from nothing to Bitcoin. That's what I'm saying. We'll do. But you are right. But definitely when society breaks down or when there's problems in society, we do resort to Barton.

That's definitely true, right? So in Russia, in the 90s, there's a lot of it going on. So there was not much, certainly in the late 90s, not much demand for rubles. If you've got any rubles, you just want to swap them for US dollars. That's pretty much all you'd ever do with them. And so when companies run out of cash to pay their workers,

the workers will often just accept, you know, whatever you're making, you would take some of them home and then you'd be able to swap that for dollars. There's no point in having the rubles in between. And so there was like Siberian workers who were paid in coffins, as we were saying before. There was a vulgar ad factory where all the workers were paid in bras. And then there was another factory in vulkrad called Aktuba, and they made navigation equipment. But then they'd recently diversified into making dildos.

LAUGHTER And the workers decided, well, we're not going to get paid otherwise, so we'll just accept the dildos as payment. This is in the economist's guys, this is happening. LAUGHTER And so they got all these dildos, and then went to the local sex shops to try and sell them and get some US dollars.

But it turned out that just around the same time, the world had moved on to electronic vibrators and their dildos were virtually worthless. Oh, nice. So, navigation to dildos. Yeah, that's... How did they diversify from that? Yeah, yeah. So, it's what, from compass to compass, is that? Wow.

Yeah, I'd... Sextant. You had sex to this. Sorry. Sorry. LAUGHTER Wow, is there a heartwarming end to the story? Where they all use the Dildos to build a new... There's no heartwarming ending to any story that begins in Russia in 1912.

OK. OK. Jim, in the story of that guy who bought up a huge bulk amount of copies of Lands Arms' Strong's book, it's all about the bike. And then... It's not about the bike. A thing to do to books. Did he? No. It's not about the bike. It's not about the bike. Which turned out to be... It's about the drugs, yeah.

And... LAUGHTER Yeah, this guy suddenly had a warehouse full of these books. It's not about the bike. It's not about the bike. Which turned out to be. It's about the drugs, yeah. And... Yeah, this guy suddenly had a warehouse full of these books, and no one was buying them, because this guy was an untouched celebrity all of a sudden. Did you buy them before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was just before. It was like, did the deal and suddenly, like, New Turdline, Lance Armstrong. That's bad luck, isn't it?

Wow. So was he sort of bulk ordering them in the hope of then selling them and making them? I think they were remainedered, and he thought I'll buy them. I can do a trade of them somehow. Yeah. Here's a place that does have butter. This is good. Zeus, operate a butter system with each other, even today, because you need a permit to buy

and sell endangered animals, but in America, Zeus are allowed to butter their creatures. So in 2014, there was an aquarium in Boston that needed some fish. And North Carolina's aquarium had some of those fish. And North Carolina wanted jellyfish and snipefish in exchange for the fish that they were going to give to Boston. But the Boston people didn't have snipefish. So Boston had to...

It's this and riddle. It's this thing. Hang on, Greg, hang on. So they had to get some Japanese snipefish, swap them for some bloodfish that they did have in Boston, then they sent North Carolina those. But they can't be on the craft at the same time as a fight. Yeah. And the fox isn't a submarine.

Yeah, and... That's it. Everyone's in the... The zookeeper was the mother. That's it. That's really cool. And it's because in the olden days, if you had a zoo, you just send someone off and say, I'd like two pandas

Please yeah, you're gonna be an explorer and they just go and get you two pandas, but you can't really do that anymore. No There was one I've ever ex it There was one aquarium to swap 800 mackerel for a dozen puffins. Does that feel like a good deal for you? I'd love a dozen puffins. Yeah? I feel like a dozen puffins is exactly the right number of puffins.

I feel like that's a bank job. It's like Ocean's 11, but puffins. I genuinely think if your mother put up that Picasso, you could trade that for 11 puffins. That Picasso is a dove, dove of peace. So we could swap a dove of piece for 12 puffins, and then I could hit a bank and... LAUGHTER

Take on a casino. No, no, no, no. Are you also the 13th puffin in the casino? I am George Clooney puffin. Yeah, nice. And then we'll have Brad Pitt puffin, Matt Damon puffin, and other puffins I've forgotten who else is in the film. Gently? Is he in the film? I don't know. So how did you, how did you want to come by this picture

at the Picasso? Did you buy it? No, she was gifted, I think, because it's not value, and it's just got, it's not enough value to be worth anything. So it's a gift you give someone in return for, like, I think that was really nice. Here's a, here's a big asset. James, are there any tax implications to Greg's mom?

I see him as price is worth a few. If she got them as part of her job, yes, they'll look the... All right, she's a French teacher. Where do we stand on that? You're doing this, I'm back. Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Hi, everybody. Just wanted to let you know we are sponsored this week by NetSuite. NetSuite are a company that provides business and accounting software and there are three

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My fact is complex, so I'm apologising in advance for it. But my fact is this, at different times in history, Mondays have been considered the first day of the week, the second, the third, and the seventh. Wow. And what is it now? Right. So...

LAUGHTER We've got six hours, yeah? Yeah, we've got six hours, yeah? Yeah, we've got six. Now, officially, internationally, it's the first day of the week. The International Standards Committee or whatever they call the... Because I was always taught at school that it's Sunday is the first day of the week. Yeah, so in the religious Christian calendar, Monday is the second day of the week now. It used to be the third day of the week, because in the Jewish calendar, it was the third day.

Sabbath, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday became the third. But then when you get Christianity becoming dominant in Rome in the sort of second or third centuries, they move Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. And so Monday becomes the second day. But the really tricky thing about it is that the Industrial Revolution gives us Mondays, as we know them. The Garfield one, the Monday.

The Garfield Monday he hates. Yeah. There's a lot of great philosophers who do Mondays, Plutarch, Deocacias, Bob Gildoff, Garfield. So our Mondays is an economic Monday. Our Monday is the post-industrial revolution where you get the invention of a brand new temporal structure called the weekend, right? The weekend is a new thing, it's about a hundred years old. And some Mondays get redefined. But in ancient astronomy, Mondays are wrong. So the days of the week should be, according to astronomy, it should be Saturday, Thursday, Tuesday, Sunday, Friday, Wednesday, Monday. Poor Craig David, he'd be so good to you.

So good to a bar call Monday. Meta for the first time Tuesday. What's happening? So that's the order that astronomically the planet should be in. And we've got this really lovely ancient book that we don't have, we've got the title of by Plutarch, and the title is literary. Why is the days of the week ordered wrongly? It's the kind of thing you Google at 3am,

you're like, what? What? I'm a Tuesday. So Diakassius wrote things saying, what's happened here, is it's because there's 168 hours in a week. There are 24 hours in a day, which the Romans are very keen on. Each hour gets assigned to a god. The first hour goes to the god,

and that god gets that day named after them, the second hour, next God, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and then you're back to the first God again. By the time you get to the 25th hour, you're on to the second God, so the day gets named after him. Oh, yeah, okay. And so you end up with the days being in the wrong order.

So our Mondays are wrong, and the Romans are like, oh no. We'll just have to live with it. And we have, we've lived with it ever since. That's amazing. That is incredible. I've got a fact about Tuesday. Is it Thursday, Tuesday, or Saturday, Tuesday? I'm going to go for my Tuesday, which is tomorrow, yeah.

So we're doing this on a Monday, we should say, for the audience, about listening at home. So this is cool, this happened last year. The 22nd of February, 2022, was at home. So this has happened last year. The 22nd of February, 2022, was a Tuesday. Yeah, which means it was Tuesday. It was Tuesday. It's very nice. Yeah, Tuesday.

Two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, stay. Really, please. It was Tuesday. That's nice. That's the end of the fact. It's fine. One day, it's called Lightning. Fact?

OK. It's a good thing. It's just. It's fact. One day it's caused lightning. In fact, it's a good thing. It's not a good thing actually, it's just a thing. So it's because of car exhausts. So more people commute on Mondays. So scientists counted lightning strikes in the USA for a decade and worked out where they fall, where the distribution is. So this is particularly in South Eastern states in the USA. And lightning strikes rock it because there's a bit more pollution in the air.

The air is moisture, there are low-lying clouds. That creates the perfect conditions for lightning. So yeah, for hundreds of miles, you get more lightning on a Monday. That's very interesting. I've got a Wednesday for that. No. Go on. Is this your Wednesday or...?

It's my Wednesday. Yeah, it's a day after tomorrow. We're recording this on the Monday. It's worth knowing. People are home. According to one study, the best time to tweet, or X, is to... Oh no! Oh my god.

No, no. If you're staying in with Elon, you creep. Apparently, if you want to get maximum impact, it's 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, is when you should send that tweet. Yeah, they've just scanned through where most have engagement and so on, and apparently that's what we've drawn. Hump Day. I mean, that doesn't feel that, what's happening

in a 5pm on the Wednesday, that we're all... They just found engagement was higher. That's real. I don't like that stat. I reckon it's because people aren't really trying as hard because it's not Monday anymore. But you also haven't left early because it's not Friday. It's just like the perfect time.

So you're stuck in the office. You're looking at your phone. It's 5 p.m. and you're out of that door. I reckon. So you got only Thursday facts down. I do. I do. There's a theory that the universe was created last Thursday.

It's called last Thursdayism. And the idea is that, and it's very hard to just prove this. Was this fact three weeks old, in which case the universe hasn't been created yet? It's always this week. No, it's always last Thursday. It's always last Thursday. Right. The idea is that every memory that you have, everything that's on our planet,

everything has been set to seem like it's been here for millions and billions of years in the case of the age of the universe. So last Thursday, as I'm says, it's impossible to deny the theory that it's infallible as a fact because it's impossible to find a glitch in. Right. Well, what if I put something in a box last Thursday

and then I open the box today? Your theory falls over. No, it doesn't, because your memory has you put it last Thursday. Well, yeah, but I know I did. But I wrote a label. No, it doesn't, because your memory as you put it last Thursday. Yeah, but I know I did. I put a label. I labeled it Thursday. No, I labeled it Wednesday. I labeled it Wednesday. I can't believe, Andy, that you found the hobble in the living room. Wow.

How come Andy's underpants say Thursday, I'm them, I'm still in the wash. Yeah. I've got a fact about Fridays. Oh, yeah. You want to hear that? Do you know Dress Down Friday? Dress Down Friday, yeah. Do you know who invented that or why it was invented? Military thing.

Military thing. Yeah. Yeah, like every Friday, you don't have to wear a uniform. Yeah, you're starting the city, but you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Yeah, exactly. It's fun. It's good for morale. It's bad for camouflage, but it's like, Hawaiian shirt. Yeah, exactly. It's fun. It's good for morale. It's bad for camouflage, but...

What do you think of it that'd be fun? Yeah. Well, I gave you a clue there. It was invented by people who made Hawaiian shirts to sell more Hawaiian shirts. Oh, really? Oh, really? This was in the 60s, yeah.

It was a company... It was the Hawaiian fashion guild, actually. And they came up with the idea of a low-half Fridays, where everyone will wear a Hawaiian shirt into work, and then it just took off. And now we have people just wearing jeans on the way. But do the people who work at the Hawaiian fashion guild have to go in at a three-piece suit on a Friday?

Just while we were talking about military on Fridays as well, there's a thing on Japanese Navy ships and submarines that they have curry every night on Friday nights, because on a ship in my, you might lose the track of the days, and that's a way of them going, oh, it's Friday, we're having curry, it's a thing on the menu that allows for them to remember. Yeah, because you do lose track.

And on a Saturday, you feel like, you know? Yeah. No, that's, no. That's, I do have a Saturday. No, that's, no. I do have a Saturday fact, if that's what you're entering to a lot of you. But it's absolutely not that. OK, let's hear you say a Saturday fact.

My Saturday fact is that on US ships in submarines, they will have burgers for dinner just so they remember what day it is so that they know. And that's because so you can lose track when you're on a ship or a submarine. will have burgers and like ah Saturday Yeah, I feel like I'm losing track now Monday's this is a this is study from 2006 but Monday's most of us apparently are tired and depressed on a Monday and Work that it requires emotional involvement or flair should be avoided

Or flair I'm afraid so Oh, it's best to be alone. Our lines of communication mentally are largely closed, and communication with each other is also poor, a holiday Monday. So that's why we did this kick on the holidays. I think we're proving it. Very quickly, because I just thought something remembered. Fridays are obviously friar. So these are the Germanic gods, right?

So Saturday, Saturn is the only one of the days of the week that's named after Roman God, although there's a moon day Sunday and then Germanic gods. Who's frayer? Frayer actually used to use the angus accent in the North Scotts. It's very powerful, very cool. First day's Thor, or Funor, when the Wednesday's won, but the Romans called Venus the planet, not Venus. They called it Lucifer, just something... Oh, yeah.

...and the Greeks called it Phosphorus, like Giver. So it just... It's something reminding me that Friday is named after Venus, laugh or dity, but they didn't call the planet Venus, they called it Lucifer. So they would see Lucifer in the sky and go, There he is. Oh, that's great. It's quite a scary name. Although they didn't call it Lucifer, they'd call it Lucifer. They would see Lucifer in the sky and go, there he is. Oh, that's great. It's quite scary, man.

Although they didn't call it Lucifer, they'd call it Lucifer. Latin. Harsk. Lucifer. That's awesome. Go on, Dan, tell us your Sunday facts. So, on Sundays, in order for US Navy ships and submarines,

to know what day it is, they have steak, because you can lose track of time when you're on ship so they will have steak on a Sunday and they're like ah, it's a Sunday. We're recording this on a Monday by the way. That's what I'm saying. We're going to have to move on to our next fact in one sec.

Should we go for a minute? I can give you a quick Sunday fact. Yeah. Obviously Sunday trading was a thing. There were certain things you were allowed to sell on Sunday, certain things you weren't. And so if you're a shopkeeper, you're allowed to sell food for horses because they were working animal, but you weren't allowed to sell food for dogs because it was a pet. Often.

This is in Hamzad in 1968, they were discussing this. And apparently, the reason that they wanted to change the rules is because it was such nonsense that a man could go into a shop and say, I have a pony who only eats dog biscuits. LAUGHTER Can I have some dog biscuits for my pony? And they had to give him the biscuits. And that's when they thought maybe we need to change our rules a little bit.

That's so good. That's amazing. MUSIC OK, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that the first electric cars were taken away each night and delivered back to your door fully charged in the morning. So they were like, shoes outside hotel rooms, basically. We put them out, some takes away, polishes them.

Is that what happened? Why? I tell you what, we stay at travel lunches. Yeah, we go and talk. Where are you staying? Yeah. What are you talking about? That's a What happened? I'd tell you what, we stay at travel lodges. Yeah, we're at the hotel. Where are you staying? Yeah. What are you talking about? That's a thing, and I feel like I'm immediately distracted

from the main point of the... But that does happen in hotels. You put your shoes outside the room and then they... Like, if you want them polished, you don't have to... What? Do you leave a note on them, say, please? No. Ah, okay.

It's weird, it's understood. Is it? I don't need to leave a note. I feel like the hot sauce rice day and they would just get stolen. Yeah. Well, just by a round of chews, has anyone heard of that in here?

Yay! OK, a few people. Who here hasn't heard of it? Not enough for God. Yay! OK, can I retake my fact? Yeah. The fact is fine, it was the following.

The first electric cars were taken away each night and delivered to your door, fully charged for the morning. A unique occurrence. When are we talking? First electric cars. So early, early days. Not the first, like, late 90th, early 20th century. This is from an interview with the head of Ford.

I was listening to a podcast the other day with which was interviewing him. He's called Jim Farley. And he was talking about the firm Detroit Electric, who they made early cars, like loads of the early early cars when Cabas Trains were just starting, were electric, and the electric ones, they were kind of marketed at, they were marketed at women basically. The idea was they're a bit daintier, You don't have to hand crank them to start, because that's quite a physical,

you need a smell of petrol. The smell was particularly a big part of that. Yeah, petrol stains and it's very... Yeah, and also Wikipedia claims they were sold to women drivers and physicians. No idea why. Well, I think the idea was, if you needed to go and save someone's life really quickly,

because they were sick, you wouldn't have to do all the cranking, you just go straight away. That's good, okay, okay, that tracks then. And they had the system with the doors where they didn't have the charging capacity in your home, obviously, because most houses weren't even on the electric at that point. And they sound like mad cars. They were operated, this is incredible, from the back seat. So amazing.

Yeah, this is incredible. They had a rear-facing front seat, so you could face your passengers. Oh, great. You could put your passengers in the front seat, and see the back of the seat, you can check to them as you drive. But you can't see the road. And they also, and they had instead of a steering wheel, boring, they had a tiller.

Yeah. Because that was nice and it was nice and calm. It was like having a lovely sailboat or something. What's a tiller? Like a rudder, basically. Oh, right. So it's left and it was nice of calm. It was like having a lovely sailboat or something. What's a tiller? Like a rudder, basically. On the back of the boat. Yeah, yeah. So it's left to go right to Gillette.

Wow. I know. So you have to backwards, from the back seat of the car, unable to see the road ahead of you. Yeah. So we're the... The tiller thing is amazing. So Ben's invented the steering wheel in the 1890s.

Ben's in Jerry's, yeah. Ben's in Jerry's. Ben's in Jerry's. But Americans just stuck with this tiller the whole time. in the 1890s. Ben's and Jerry's, yeah. Ben's and Jerry's. LAUGHTER But Americans just stuck with this tiller the whole time. And there was a journalist writing around the time who said, few have adopted that foreign freak, the steering wheel.

LAUGHTER A car with a wheel would be a nerve-wracker of the worst kind. LAUGHTER Imagine that a steering wheel. It's amazing. So it came back to your house fully charged. Yep. And we're talking, not lithium ion batteries. We're talking what led out this. Oh, very... Yeah, I don't know exactly what the batteries were.

The batteries were, yeah. How do you charge it? For sure, they were acid batteries, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, okay. But I think what would happen most of the time is they would replace the battery. Yeah. And then the battery would go back somewhere else to be charged, which might take time, I don't know.

It was a lot of these places, which I think would be really cool now as someone with electric car. I'd love to just instead of plug in, they just take the battery out and put another one back in and you go straight away. That's a cool idea. Yeah. Changing horses. Well, that's actually the reason they did it, because people were used to changing horses.

And this was kind of the obvious way of doing it. It was what, like, you get up in the morning, you look outside your door, you get your nice polo shoes, go down, you take a fresh horse. Someone has recharged your shoes. Because I mean, recharged people batteries were invented in 1859. Wow. So it's quite early, right? So that's Gaston Plonte, who invented them, and that's, that's Connie Sainte.

But that's already 20 years after the first electric car. It's really amazing how early they're, because we now look at electric cars and we kind of go like, oh, Elon Musk, but the electric car is so much more established than fuel than petrol. And for a long time, the early 20 years, they couldn't reach out to the batteries. That's the thing. Yeah, the battery finished it. Yeah, the car away.

Exactly. I mean, you just chuck it and you get a new it. Yeah, I brought the car away. Yeah, exactly. Well, you just chuck it and you get a new one. The guy I like is, have you heard of Sibranda's thrutting? No. No. He's Dutch guy. He sort of deserves more renown. He's quite cool.

And he possibly invented the first electric car that's like decent and we know about. There's a Scotsman who called Robert Anderson, who may be invented one in the 1830s, but we don't know much about it. But Subran Dashtarating lived in Gruningen. He was a Dutch chemistry professor. And in 1835, he makes an electric car.

The way he's about three kilos, it's a tricycle. He can carry about 1.5 kilos, which is... A guinea pig? I don't know. It's not grimy, is it? It can go for 20 minutes. And it's 1835, nearly 200 years ago, and this thing is already electrified. But he's very cool, because he also,

he spoke 13 languages. He built early electric light bulbs 50 years before Edison. He fought a pandemic. There was a malaria outbreak in Gruningen, and he built a small chlorine factory to create disinfectant for the people. And he built an electric boat.

So this one sort of chemistry professor in the mid-1830s was just sort of guy, yeah, I'll do a bit of this, bit of that bit. But yeah, electric car. And so. Why don't we know his name? I think he's sort of been slightly forgotten. And I discovered a PhD thesis by a Dutch historian who's been trying to like, just get back to the basics

because it's really fascinating. I've got a picture of the car here. Like can't perfect for a podcast. Sorry, yeah, but like it's got that as an unbelievable I Impress it And the polishing finish on those shoes But yeah, I just like him I think he's electric cars in the 1830s, way before Edison, way before Ford. What does his name again?

I forgot this. It's called Cybrandus Strattin. Dutch listeners will now yell at me for getting that horribly wrong. But yeah, 1830s. Sorry, cool. And it's very cool. In 1908, there was a race, Philadelphia, between Mrs. Laura Duval,

who owned an electric car with a top speed of 70 miles an hour, and a guy who owned a petrol car that could go 60 miles an hour, whose name appears to have been Driver Middleton. So his first name was Driver. I don't understand that really, but it was in the papers, this is true. And they decided to have a race through the city to see who would be the fastest see of electric cars, with better petrol cars. And the slight twist in kind of a top-gear style is they had to stop at a few shops and do a few things on the way through the city. And the woman who had the electric car, she won by 10 minutes. And the reason being that she didn't have to crank it. And the thing is like, you couldn't really go much faster

than 20 miles an hour in the cities in a time, because there was so much other traffic and the roads and people in the roads and stuff. And so really, that was the fastest you could go, even if you had a 60 mile an hour car. And so the lack of cranking meant it was much better. Yeah, I have cranking. That feels like that's a life lesson there.

Yeah, yeah. So that's the reason that electric cars didn't win the race against petrol cars is because people stop having to crank their cars into life. So they invented a thing called the electric starter, which meant you not only had to crank the car. Electricity meant that the electric car failed. Oh, no.

Grammatic irony. Yes. I mean, dramatic already up the wazoo, that's insane. Yeah. And there was another thing, the muffler. The muffler was invented, which made petrol cars quieter. Yeah. Oh, because yeah, that was a big issue, right? And they got cheaper and cheaper. It's also the discovery of oil, right? Yeah, it's the discovery of oil. It's the minor, it's third element. It's huge. Yeah, I'm evolutionised. Because I mean, Ederson is talking to Ford, I think. They're having conversations about

whether to go big and produce electric cars on mass. Because at this point, you know, so London got electric tube trains in 1890. It got electric trams 1901, and it got electric buses called electric buses in 1907. And they were powered by batteries. So if you go on YouTube, there's footage of like, Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus in like 1908 or something.

There are electric buses pothling around. Crazy. We were saying we did a show about suffragettes recently, but you do see these images where suffragettes are on electric scooters. And I mean, it's basically London today. Popping a wheelie. Yeah, exactly.

How they were getting to, you know, throw bricks at Parliament and stuff via electric scooter, which is mad. And one of the big things, I guess, is that there was so much resistance, not only from members of the public who might not have thought that this was a useful thing, but by the rail workers as well, because trains were, you know, everyone would be out of a job if suddenly these electric cars worked. So early cars were being hit by a whole group and whole industry,

because they just thought, no way, we don't want. My favorite electric car from this era is called the Electro Bat. Oh yeah. 1894. I feel like Batman in electric car, but like a really cute putling 15 mile an hour one. That's a Chris Nolan movie I want to see. In order to fit fear, you must become fear, but only at 15 miles an hour. In America, this is in the 50s now.

They used to do mass car blessings. If you got a car, you used to go to the church and have your car blast just for good karma, basically. I'm mixing my religions out. Oh, I did... Oh, shit! Oh, wow! You stillned yourself. Wow, that was cool.

Okay, to come back into the room, Mr. Schreiber. I'm just doing my victory lap, Andy. So, yeah, so you would take it to church and you would have it blessed by a priest. Could you drive...is it like a drive through? No, but they did have on mass. So you would, the one on mass. Oh, fuck!

I am on fire! I feel like if I put my shoes on you, they're going to reach out. What puns coming next? No one knows. I'm too nervous. What am I? I could have started trying to think of one, and I should just say it.

Stay in that state. I'll stay in the zone, yeah. OK, so they would do mass blistings and so on, and it would be thousands. Yeah, pretty cool, hey. LAUGHTER Oh! Oh!

We do need to move on in a second. Oh, so it wasn't? Yeah, yeah. In 2010, Renault was sued. Renault in France was sued for trying to call Oh! We do need to move on in the cycle. So, yeah, yeah. 2010 Renault was sued. Renault in France was sued for trying to call their new electric car the Zoe. Can you guess why? The Zoe.

Okay, so was it by another person called Zoe, who didn't want to be Zoe Wanamaker? Well, it was by two married couples who both had daughters named Zoe Renault. And their surname was Renault, it's just a name, you know. And so they said, our children's, our daughter's lives will be irreversibly damaged if you call your new car the Renault Zoe. And they basically brought a case saying, first names are for humans, not for cars, it's so French.

But listen to this. This is from the reporting of the time, right? The lawyer also argued that all of France's thousands of Zoys could be affected with playground teasing, and as they grow older, comments in bars such as, can I see your airbags? Oh! Can I shine your bumper?

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It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1908, the New York Times reported on a dog in France that was deliberately knocking children into the scene before rescuing them and claiming a reward. LAUGHTER So yeah, this is a thing that happened.

It was in the New York Times that the headline was dog, a fake hero. And they said that he was doing it to win beef steaks. And yeah, basically a child had fallen into the river and he'd gone and saved the child and they'd given him a big old stake, and he thought, well, I could do with a bit more of that. And sure enough, over the next few days,

more and more children started falling in the sand. And the same dog kept saving them. That's amazing. It's so good. Isn't it cool? That's incredible, isn't it? How long did the scam go before people went hang on us? It was only a few times.

All right. The newspaper article said it wasn't too long before the jig was up. So yeah. But actually, this isn't the first dog who's done this. I found an article in the spectator from 1885 about a dog in Lake Ontario, who had pulled a buyout of Lake Ontario, and they'd taken him.

And they said he went to a confectioners and given him a variety of cakes and other sweets. I'm not sure if dogs are allowed to eat cakes and other sweets, but they did anyway, but yeah, sure enough, he started pushing kids into the... It's such an example of unintended consequences. It's brilliant, isn't it? I was looking into life-saving dogs.

And I've had a report, this is from 2009, right, that Italy had 300 life-saving dogs. Yeah. And I've had a report, this is from 2009, right, that Italy had 300 life-saving dogs that were stationed at beaches. Okay, I'm just gonna tell you what it said, right? And then we can get into it, because the vice president of the training schools, a woman called Donna Telet-Pascarly, and she said that I'm quoting here,

the dogs learned to tow their instructors out to sea, so they had the medical strength to give attention to drowning swimmers. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Does it? Well, if you don't have a boat, if you don't have a boat... That's the if, that's the big if. Yeah.

But why can't you just have a boat? But, okay. They spend on the money on dogs, is that it? So, actually... Okay, okay, done. That's okay, so maybe you don't have a boat on any of the 300 beaches where you're stationed with the dogs. Here's what Ms. Pascuali said. The dogs are incredibly strong. Our record is one dog towing 40 people at the same time.

Are they new from the dogs? Are they new from the dogs? How the f**king cares, Dan? It's 40 people. Yeah. One dog can't tow 40 people. That's impossible. Are they not on a lie low? Are they not on like a sort of, are they like floating on the surface at your stale?

Exactly. They're not swimming. Why are the dogs towing 40 doctors? On the say, like, at that point, I feel get a boat. Sometimes Andy, and I only know this because I do watch a lot of Baywatch. You can't make it out, pass the surf on a boat, right? So when you're swimming, if you're on a speed boat,

and the waves are coming in thick and high, you're going to get flipped over. You're not going to make it out. So that's why David Hasselhoff always runs with that little red thing that looks like a mini- like micro surfboard. Oh, yeah. And does that? Now, let me ask you this.

Let me ask you this. OK, go on. How much better would Baywatch be if he had a dog under his arm? And he's able to conserve his energy. And he's a dog. There you go. Not surf it, but get out there in that sort of way, right? Is it?

It makes total sense. Well, you've put me back in my box, Dan. I thought that was an insane thing about a dog towing 40 people. But you've maybe seen it's a very reasonable... The reason I mention Newfoundland dogs is because a lot of rescue boats take Newfoundland dogs with them on it in order to... They're amazing at saving people. They're these big, fluffy life rafts, basically.

They get into the water, you can lay on them like your crate winslet on the door, and you can be saved, right? And there's a story. Greg, I wanted to ask you about this. I'm actually full disclosure. It's the only time I've ever asked a guest whether or not this is true. And you said, no, but I'm going to ask you anyway.

Apparently, Napoleon fell off a boat and a Newfoundland dog jumped in after him and saved him. No. So your answer is still the same as before the show. I mean, there's a billion stories about Napoleon. Yeah. You can never rely on any of them. OK, right.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. Oh, I'm still. I'm still... I'm still taken by your vision of Titanic's closing scenes. Get off the dog! I've got some other hero dogs who might be villains, but not really. OK. They're not villains, but they're not villains,

but they might have stolen a bit of thunder from other dogs. So the most famous one is Boulto. You heard of Boulto? Boulto. Boulto. Boulto. He was a hero dog, really famous, because he was part of a team of sled dogs, sort of 120-odd dogs and 20 mashes, 150 dogs, I think, who saved a town in Alaska in 1925 called Nome,

and they had a terrifying outbreak of a really horrible disease, I think it was diphtheria. They couldn't get the medicine to them because it was just frozen, the planes wouldn't get there, the ships wouldn't get there, and a team of sled dog mushers, I guess, volunteered. And they had to take this medicine 670 miles in terrifying, you know, the worst possible, the lascon world you can think of. And it's called the great mercy race for no, and Balthow was the lead dog in the final leg and became like a Hollywood celebrity. They put us that you are in Central Park, I'm kind of really famous, he was stuffed to

put in a museum. And everyone was like, Balthow is a crap dog. But really, Balthow, the hero dog, he was never a good dog. There were other dogs, really that dog, that dog. And it sort of turns out maybe that the masha at the end, the guy called Gunnar Carson, he had been doing the second to last leg.

And he got to the kind of way station and found the other guy who's been finished the run was asleep. And he says, oh, well, I didn't want to wake him up and delay. I thought we just had to get to know. And so I did the final leg on my own as well. So we did two legs with both sides of the lead dog.

But there's a sort of controversy as to whether he stole this guy's thunder, stole the other dog's thunder, and the balto, the kind of mediocre dog, and Carson, but basically nabbed the headlines and ended up as the hero of this enormous sort of relay race to save a town. But there's a bit of a kind of controversyotpsy as the whether he may be nicked that from someone else.

And I guess they kind of don't cut that much because it gets a story out there still, right? Yeah. And it's like the face of the story. So that's kind of the important part. I've got another villain that I found out as well, worth mentioning. Have you heard of the DC superhero called Dogwelder? No? No, it's not a dogwelder. So Dogwelder, he was a villain and what he used to do was weld people's dogs to their faces. That was his thing. And he has, you can

read a sort of bio on him, so powers and abilities, abilities, dogwelding. Obsession has a strong compulsion to weld dogs on people's faces. Equipment, welding equipment, weapons, dogs, which he welds onto people's faces. And so this was a DC comic? Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the part of a, I think I remember, to vaguely, he was in a team, and one of the others in the team was the, that's right. the defenestrator

who carried around a window to throw people through. So, that was it. Yeah. I think you're thinking, because he gets rid of now. I think you're thinking of Dog Welder, too, who was basically there was a husband who one day goes to an antique shop.

He's possessed by original Dog Welder's welding equipment, which happens to be in the shop. And then he immediately gets very obsessed with welding dogs and welds, the family dog to his children's faces. His wife is furious, she divorces him. And so he's like struggling with it because he wants to get back with these kids.

He's like, why am I welding dogs to people's faces? I don't understand what's going on. And then it turns out, this is he turns into a good guy because he learns that actually there's a moment where the star is serious A and B are expanding. And if they touch, they'll explode and destroy Earth. And so, he docks stars.

The docks stars. And he realizes he's meant to weld them together. So he punches some mass of astronauts at the face, steals their outfits, their astronaut suits, outfits, and flies beyond the moon to the serious stars where he welds the planets, the stars back together, and he dies in the process. But so he turns good in the end, dog welder.

Um, what's a brilliant thing? When you weld a dog to a face, do you go dog face to human face? Do you do dog bum to human face? Do you do dog side? Is it work? Like a human centipede. Human centipede. Is that...

Is it snows or snows? Is it, you know, where are you? I would have thought the side of the dog to the side of the face. Right. That's why I was thinking. But don't you have to have metal to weld things together? Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Oh, hang on. Sorry.

One dog can tow 40 people. Yeah. No, you're right, Andy. Let me write to Fantasy Land, a pair of James and Andy. If we welded a new Finland to David Hasselhoff. LAUGHTER We must wrap up soon, but... Can I tell you one last thing? Yeah.

In 2015, the Telegraph reported on a stray dog called Archie, who had been rescued. It was a really nice story and coached back to strength by a volunteer. Jack Russell, little dog. And it was a lovely French nursery school teacher who had been volunteering at the Centre, spending all of her weekends with him. She sang him lots of songs in French,

and she called him Monpetit Shoo and all of this. And him. She's sang him lots of songs in French and she called him Monpetitou and all of this. And as a result, Archie now only reacts to commands given in a French accent. And if you want Archie to do anything, you have to say, Zit, any one, do anything else. Wokey's in. Exactly. I got a very, very quick story.

No, go for a few more minutes. Okay, so about clever dogs. Yep. So the spectator, which is where I told you about the second evil dog, they actually got a bit of a reputation in the 19th century for sort of clever dog stories, at such an extent that whenever any other newspaper would write about them, they say, oh, this is yet another spectator dog, but they would always get people writing them with these stories, and they all said they were definitely true. So there was one person who said that they were in church,

and there was a new priest, and the priest was saying a sermon, and it was going on forever and ever and ever, and there was a dog in there, and it got restless. And the dog knew that an altar boy would always go around with the plates to collect money just before the end of the Church service and so what he did was while this Pastor was sort of droning on he went over to the boy who always took it and sort of looked at him Just stared at him and said when are you gonna do your bloody thing?

And then when the boy didn't do anything He started to beg for him to do the passing the plate round. And when he didn't do anything about that, he started nuzzling him and trying to push him around the church to try and get him to do this part of the mass. And then knocked out the boy, took his casook, dressed up as the boy, conducted the search. So not the search, it wasn't called the...

Like that. Was the free money thing at the end of the church? Free money? Conducted the search So not the search, it wasn't called the... LAUGHTER What's the free money thing at the end of the show? Free money! Did it wrong? Give it free money No, the collection The collection, I don't know, that's in the tipping, which is not... Yeah, can I just ask, what is the tax implication of the... Free money

LAUGHTER All right, I need to wrap this up, guys. 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 be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on our Shriberland, James at James Harkin. Andy at Under 100 and Greg. Greg on the school agenda. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing. Go to our website. No Such Thing is a fish. .com. All of our previous episodes are up there.

You can also join Club Fish. Any Club Fish members in here, Turner. Oh, wow. Quite a few. Okay, cool. Join them. They sound fun. And we will be back again next week with another episode. Thank you so much, so, Hoh Theodor. That was awesome. Thank you, Greg. We will be back again, week with another episode. Thank you so much, SoHo Theatre. That was awesome. Thank you, Greg. We will be back again, as I say, next week.

Goodbye! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE you