497: No Such Thing As Oceans Eleven with Puffins

A happy place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with Certopro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certapro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as 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 were a podcast fan, if you were 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 Horrible Histories, but he has since become a nerdy superstar.

in his own right thanks to his podcast you're 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 e-book for the rest of September.

He also has an illustrated kids book called You Are History, and that is out in hardback and audiobook as well.

Look, just go to the place where you buy your books, ebooks and audiobooks 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 the 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 Dan Shriver.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and Greg Jenner.

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

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is 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.

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 sister, 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.

More like bartering.

Oh.

Oh, very good.

Very good.

It was good.

Yeah, so it would be,

it was good, Andy.

Don't let everyone tell you differently.

Yeah, so the system, yeah, God, yeah.

Well, it was just, it's the stories are great because people have written about how this works.

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 Pygmalion came out and he said,

oh, yes.

Pygmalion.

Pygmalion.

Should have been Spinach Malion.

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, he'd bring his cow to the theater, and he'd say, how much milk to get in to 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 would start to go in.

And in the anecdote, his wife was with him, and they said, are you not going to 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 were saying you'd put something.

Yeah, you handed your hum 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 a whole pig, maybe you got like a season pass.

Yeah.

But they accepted all sorts of, it wasn't just farm produce.

They accepted toothpaste.

snakes and underwear as well

which is good if you don't have a pig so you can

yeah with the toothpaste for for the snakes.

I mean, do they have teeth?

They have teeth, right?

They've got fangs.

They've got fangs.

Can you brush a snake's teeth?

Sorry, actually.

You rail the podcast.

You can milk a snake's teeth.

I love a great point.

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 a jar.

It turned out to be mud, so people were trying to counterfeit their way in there as well.

There was someone who did brig a 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 onto stage and and murder everyone so there was a there was 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 around one of these canes because he just kept making them and kept going to more and more shows.

That's cool.

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 amount of the thing that you're bartering with.

How much tax?

One slice of bacon?

Well, you know, 20% of your pig.

Or whatever.

That's the thing.

Like, there's that old story of Picasso.

Do you 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,

I think I know where you're going with it.

Picasso used to buy his meals by doing a tiny little doodle because it'd be worth more than the meal.

He did thousands.

They're now valueless.

Is that what I'm doing?

My mum's got one.

My mother

has been doing it all in the restaurants.

Curry houses.

I have a signed photo of Gary Lineker yeah yeah

like everyone and you can see like is young Gary was here oh Gary was here quite recently

like that's what he's doing I imagine that is what he's doing that probably is what he's doing he's probably getting free food well I don't want to smudge Gary Lineker I don't mind

the thing is though with um Picasso right so the 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

that's a story but the thing is What a wanker.

I don't think anyone's saying that Picasso wasn't a wanker.

Of all the artists, I think Picasso is very high in the wanker index.

But the thing is, like, 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 they could get around it is if Picasso, instead of just having lunch, if it was a business lunch and if the people in the cafe were going to put the picture up on the wall so that everyone in the cafe can enjoy it, so technically it's decoration, then they're both business expenses, they're both tax deductible, that's fine.

Why do you think accountants have such a reputation for

thank God James isn't at all these historical moments where Picasso lands an absolute zingo and he's going, well actually the tax implications of that?

Could he do a smaller drawing to be the tax?

No.

Yeah, 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, a 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,

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?

Yeah, it's not worth anything.

I'll buy it.

All right.

I'll buy the on-site Picasso that we know is definitely him.

Yeah.

Also, how do you verify that the music is by Mozart when it's just one bar of music?

Because it sounds like ABBA.

Right.

Barter.

Barter is a weird thing, isn't it?

Because there's a lot of debate about barter.

I definitely thought it's the thing before money.

So the baker bakes some bread and he goes to the butcher and

the butcher...

And the butcher has some meat and between them they have a sandwich.

Well they swap.

You 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 starves to death.

Nightmare.

So you need money.

That's the basic, and I say very basic premise.

But this is the weird thing about barter.

There's no, I don't think there's any,

actually, it seems like money produces barter systems.

Like after the fall of the Roman Empire, people resorted to barter because there wasn't a stable currency anymore.

There doesn't seem to be any good evidence of a barter society, like a proper barter society where someone says, I'll give you these grapes if you give me that cloth.

It just, it just doesn't seem to be any evidence for that.

Greg?

Oh, shit.

One evidence that I found in a short look.

I mean money's fascinating, right?

So coins are really new.

Like 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.

Oh, really?

The Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians don't have money.

Really?

And the first coin has got a little lion face on it and it's very cute and it's ancient Greek.

And I think at the city, I think it was maybe Lydia, I can't remember, but it's like 2700 BCE so 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 eighth ninth tenth centuries you get these coin hordes you know Viking coin hoards buried in the ground and you're never entirely sure to what extent they are someone going I'm gonna put that in the ground and come back for it later or it's someone's nicked it 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 is really interesting because there's a there's a lot of stuff we don't know but obviously barter 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

you're going to do that

go on do it

yeah solid why not yeah

i went straight from nothing to bitcoin that's what i'm saying we did but you are right that definitely when society breaks down or when there's problems in society we do resort to barter 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 got any rubles you'd just want to swap them for US dollars.

That's pretty much all you'd ever do with them.

And so when companies ran out of cash to pay their workers, the workers would 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 Volgograd factory where all the workers were paid in bras.

And then there was another factory in Volgograd called Aktuba, and they made navigation equipment.

But then they'd recently diversified into making dildos.

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, guys.

This happened.

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,

no.

So navigation to dildos.

Yeah, that's, I was, I was like, how do they diversify from that?

Like, yeah, yeah.

So it's what, from compass to come pass?

Is that wow.

Yeah, I.

Sexton.

You had sexted this right

sorry

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 1997

do you remember the story that guy who bought up a huge bulk amount of copies of Lance Armstrong's book it's all about the bike and then

it's all about the bike

did he no

your one it's not about the bike it's not about the bike which turned out to be

yeah, this guy suddenly had a warehouse full of these books and no one was buying them because this guy was an untouched celebrity.

He bought them before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was like just before.

He's like, did the deal and suddenly like news headline, Lance Armstrong.

That's bad jacket.

Wow.

That's so bad.

So was he sort of bulk ordering them in the hope of then selling them and I think they were remaindered and he thought, I'll buy them and I can do a trade of them somehow.

Yeah.

Here's a place that does have barter.

This is good.

Zoos operate a barter system with each other, even today,

because you need a permit to buy and sell endangered animals.

But in America, zoos are allowed to barter 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 snipe fish in exchange for the fish that they were going to give to Boston.

But the Boston people didn't have snipe fish.

So Boston had to.

Is this a riddle?

Hang on, Greg, hang on.

So they had to get some Japanese snipe fish, 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 the fox.

Yeah.

And the fox is in a submarine.

Yeah.

That's it.

Everyone's in 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'd just send someone off and say, I'd like two pandas, please.

I'm going to be an explorer, and they just go and get you two pandas, but you can't really do that anymore.

No.

And there was one.

Because of Brexit.

There was one aquarium that swapped 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.

The Picasso is a dove, dove of peace.

So it could actually, we could swap a dove of peace for 12 puffins, and then I could hit a bank and

take on a casino.

I don't know.

Are you also

the 13th puffin in the casino?

I'm 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.

Jetly, is he in the film?

Sorry, how did your mum come buy this picture, the Picasso?

Did you buy it?

No, she was gifted it, I think.

Because it's not value in, 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, oh thanks, that was really nice.

Here's a here's a big asset.

James, are there any tax implications to great demand for pursuing this

priceless book of if she got them as part of her job?

Yes, they would be.

All right, she's a French teacher.

Where do we stand on that?

Jeanne Ceta.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Annabe, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Greg.

My fact is complex, so I'm apologizing 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 um

we've got six hours yeah

now it's officially internationally it's the first day of the week the international standards committee or whatever they're called the they because i was always taught at school that it's sunday is the first day of the week yeah so in 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 and 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 that he hates.

There's a lot of great philosophers who do Mondays.

Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Bob Geldof, Garfield.

And

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 100 years old.

And so 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.

Took her to a park on Monday.

Met her for the first time Tuesday.

What's happening?

So that's the order that astronomically the planets 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 literally why is the days of the week ordered wrongly it's the the kind of thing you google at 3 a.m.

and they're like why

so Diocasius wrote a thing 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 fifth 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

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 listening at home.

The 20s, so this is cool.

This happened last year.

The 22nd of February, 2022, was a Tuesday.

Yeah, which means

it was Tuesday.

Well, Tuesday.

Very nice.

Yeah, Tuesday.

2-2, 2-2, 2-2.

Tuesday.

Really, please.

It was Tuesday.

That's nice.

That's the end of the fact.

Mondays cause lightning.

Cool fact.

Okay.

That's a good thing.

Well, it's not a good thing, actually.

It's just a thing.

So

it's because of car exhaust.

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.

And this is particularly in southeastern states in the USA.

And lightning strikes rocket because there's a bit more pollution in the air.

The air is moister.

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 really interesting.

I've got a Wednesday fact.

No.

Go on.

Is this your Wednesday?

It's my Wednesday.

Yeah, it's a day after tomorrow.

We're recording this on a Monday.

It's worth knowing, people at home.

According to one study, the best time to tweet or X is to

you 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.

Really?

Yeah, they've just scanned through where most have engagement and so on, and apparently that is

hump day.

Is that what?

I mean, that doesn't feel...

What's happening at 5 p.m.

on a Wednesday?

They they just found the engagement was higher that's wrong I don't like that stat I reckon it's because people aren't really trying as hard because it's not Monday anymore right 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 yeah you're looking at your phone it's 5 p.m.

and you're out that door I reckon you got any Thursday facts down 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 disprove this.

Was this fact three weeks old, in which case the universe hasn't been created yet until this week?

Was it always last Thursday?

It's always last Thursday.

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 Thursdayism says it's impossible to deny the theory.

It's infallible as a fact because it's impossible to find a glitch in.

Right.

Well, what if I 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 is you put it last Thursday.

Well, yeah, but I know I did.

But I wrote a label.

I labelled it Thursday.

No, I labelled it Wednesday.

I labelled it Wednesday.

I can't believe, Andy, that you found the hole in the theory.

Wow.

How come Andy's underpants that say Thursday on them are still in the wash?

Yeah.

I got a fact about Fridays.

Oh, yeah.

You want to hear that?

Do you know Dressdown Friday?

Dress Down Friday, yeah.

Do you know who invented that or why it was invented?

Military thing.

It's a military thing.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Like every Friday, you don't have to wear a uniform.

Yeah, you're still in 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

we think it'll 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 called, it was the Hawaiian Fashion Guild, actually, and they came up with the idea of aloha Fridays where everyone would wear a Hawaiian shirt into work, and then it just took off, and now we have people just wearing jeans on Fridays.

But do the people who work at the Hawaiian Fashion Guild have to go in in 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 it might 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 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 fact if that's what you're adding to

but it's absolutely not that okay go on let's hear your Saturday my Saturday fact is that on US ships and submarines they will have burgers for dinner just so they remember what day it is, so that they know and that that's because so you can lose track when you're on a ship or a submarine, they will have burgers and like ah Saturday.

Yeah, I feel like I'm losing track now.

Yeah.

Mondays, this is a this is a study from 2006.

Mondays, most of us apparently are tired and depressed on a Monday, and work that it requires emotional involvement or flare should be avoided.

Or flare?

I'm afraid so.

Oh, wow.

It's best to be alone.

Our lines of communication mentally are largely closed, and communication with each other is also poorer on a Monday.

So that's why we did this kick on a Monday, was it?

I think maybe we're proving it.

Very quickly, because I just thought something remembered: Fridays are obviously

Freya.

So these are the Germanic gods, right?

So Saturday is Saturn.

It's the only one of the days of the week that's named after a Roman god.

All the others are Moonday, Sunday, and then Germanic gods.

Who's Freya?

Freya, she's Anglo-Saxon and Norse goddess.

Very powerful, very cool.

Thursday's Thor or Thunor, Wednesday's Woden.

But the Romans called Venus the planet, not Venus.

They called it Lucifer.

Just suddenly occurred to me.

And the Greeks called it Phosphorus, like Giver.

So it suddenly reminded me that Friday is named after Venus, Aphrodite,

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.

This is great.

It's quite a scary name.

Although they didn't call it Lucifer, they call it Lukefa.

Latin.

Lucefa.

Lukefa.

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 ships.

So they will have steak on a Sunday.

And they're like, oh, it's a Sunday.

We're recording this on a Monday, by the way.

We're going to have to move on to our next fact in one sec.

Should we go for it?

I can can give you a quick Sunday fact.

Obviously, Sunday trading was a thing.

There were certain things you're 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 a working animal, but you weren't allowed to sell food for dogs because it was a pet.

often.

This is in Hamsad 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.

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.

Okay, 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.

You put them out, someone takes them away, polishes them.

Is that what happens?

Hang on, what?

I'll tell you what, we stay at travel lodgings.

Yeah, where are we going?

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?

It's spread, it's understood.

Is it?

You don't need to leave a note.

I feel like the hotels where I stay in, they would just get stolen.

Just by a round of cheers.

Has anyone heard of that in here?

Okay, a few people.

Who here hasn't heard of that?

Not enough for God.

Okay.

Can I retake my fact?

The fact was fine.

It was the following.

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.

So like late 19th, early 20th century.

This is from an interview with the head of Ford.

I was listening to a podcast the other day, which was interviewing him.

He's called Jim Farley.

And he was talking about the firm Detroit Electric.

They made early cars, like loads of the early cars when combustor engines 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 like physical.

The smell was particularly a big part of that.

Petrol steaks and it's all like 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'd just go straight away.

That's good.

Okay, okay, that tracks then.

Yeah.

And they had this 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 the seat.

From the back seat.

They had a rear-facing front seat so you could face your passengers.

Oh, great.

You put your passengers in the front seat facing backwards to you.

You can chat 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.

On the back of the boat.

So it's left to go right, right to go left.

Wow.

I know.

So you have to do it backwards from the back seat of the car, unable to see the road ahead of you.

Yeah.

So weird that.

The tiller thing is amazing.

So

Ben's invented the steering wheel in the 1890s.

Benz and Jerry's, yeah.

Benz and Jerry's, yeah.

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.

a car with a wheel would be a nerve wracker of the worst kind

imagine that a steering wheel it's amazing so it came back to your house fully charged yep and we're talking not lithium iron batteries we're talking what lead acid very yeah i don't know exactly what the batteries were how do you charge it for sure they were acid batteries i'm pretty sure okay um 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 but okay it was a lot of these places, which I think would be really cool now.

As someone with an 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 just go straight away.

Oh, that's a cool idea, yeah.

It's like changing horses.

Well, that's actually the reason they did it because people were used to changing horses.

Yeah.

And this was kind of the obvious way of doing it.

Well, it's what, like, you get up in the morning, you look outside your door, you get your nice polished shoes, go down, you take a fresh horse.

Someone has recharged your shoes.

Because, I mean, rechargeable batteries were invented in 1859.

Wow.

So it's quite early, right?

So that's Gaston Planté who invents them.

And that's quite exciting.

But that's already 20 odd 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, you know, Elon Musk.

But the electric car is so much more

established than fuel, than petrol.

Yeah.

And for a long time.

For 20 years, they couldn't recharge the batteries.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

Battery, finished it.

Yeah, throw the car away.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, yeah, I mean, you just chuck it and you get a new one.

The guy I I like is...

Have you heard of Sebrande Strating?

No.

No?

He's a 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 called Robert Anderson who maybe invented one in the 1830s, but we don't know much about it.

But Sebrander Strating lived in Groningen.

He was a Dutch chemistry professor.

And in 1835, he makes an electric car.

It weighs about three kilos.

It's a tricycle.

It can carry about 1.5 kilos, which is a guinea pig.

I don't know.

It's not great, 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 spoke 13 languages.

He built early electric light bulbs 50 years before Edison.

He fought a pandemic.

There was a malaria outbreak in Groningen, 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 going, yeah, I'll do a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of this.

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 just get back to the basics because it's really fascinating.

I've got a picture of the car here.

You can't see it.

Perfect for a podcast.

Sorry.

But it's.

God, that is an unbelievable picture.

And the genitals are so impressive.

That's so

polishing finish on those shoes.

But yeah, I just don't, I like him.

He's doing electric cars in the 1830s, way before Edison, way before Ford.

What's his name again?

I forgot his name.

It's called

Sebrandes Strating.

Dutch listeners will now yell at me for getting that horribly wrong.

But yeah, 1830s.

Very 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 17 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 that 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 to see if electric cars were better than 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 the time because there was so much other traffic in 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 a much better

lack of cranking.

That feels like that's a life lesson there.

So, that's the reason that electric cars didn't win the race against petrol cars is because

people stopped having to crank their cars into life.

So they invented a thing called the electric starter, which meant you no longer had to crank the car.

Electricity meant that the electric car failed.

Oh, no.

Dramatic irony.

Yes.

I mean, dramatic irony up the wazoo.

That's insane.

Yeah.

And there was another thing, the muffler.

The muffler was invented, which made petrol cars quieter.

Yeah.

Because, yeah, that was a big issue, right?

And they got cheaper and cheaper.

But it's also the discovery of oil, right?

Yeah, the discovery of oil was a minor third element, which hugely revolutionized.

I mean, Edison 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 in 1901, and it got electric buses called electro 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 poodling around.

Crazy.

We were saying we did a a show about suffragettes recently, but you do see these images where suffragettes are on electric scooters.

Yeah.

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 an electric car, but like a really cute, poodling 15 mile an hour one.

That's a Chris Nolan movie I want to see.

In order to defeat fear, you must become fear, but only at 15 miles per hour.

In America,

this is in the 50s now,

they used used to do mass car blessings.

If you got a car, you used to go to the church and have your car blessed just for

good karma, basically.

I'm mixing my religions there.

Oh, I did.

Oh, shit!

Oh, wow.

You stealth punned yourself.

Wow, that was cool.

Care to come back into the room, Mr.

Schreiber.

I'm just doing my victory lap, Andy.

I'm sorry.

So, yeah, so you would take it to church and you would have it blessed by a priest.

Is it like a drive-through?

No, but they did have en masse, so you would.

On masse.

Oh, fuck!

I am on fire!

I feel like if I put my shoes on you, they're going to recharge.

What pun's coming next?

No one knows.

I'm too nervous.

What am I?

I'm going to start start trying to think a word and I should just say it.

No, no, no.

I'll just stay in that state.

I'll stay in the zone, yeah.

Okay, so yeah, so they would do mass blessings and so on, and it would be thousands.

Yeah, pretty cool, hey.

We do need to move on in the second.

Yeah, yeah.

In 2010, Renault was sued.

Renault in France were 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 wanna maker?

It was, 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.

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?

Or, can I shine your bumper?

Case was rejected flat out of hand.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

From wine country weekends to scenic drives through the Sierra foothills, fall is the perfect time to explore California, and there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

With 17 fuel-efficient options like the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the Adventure-Ready RAV4 hybrid, or the spacious Grand Highlander hybrid, Toyota has the perfect ride for any adventure.

Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today so you can be prepared for wherever the road takes you this fall.

Toyota, let's go places.

See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

I do need to move us on to our final fact.

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 Seine before rescuing them and claiming a reward.

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 steak, 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.

So good.

Isn't it cool?

That's incredible, isn't it?

How long did the scam go before people went hanging on us?

It was only a few times.

Yeah, 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.

No.

I found an article in The Spectator from 1885 about a dog in Lake Ontario who had pulled a boy out of Lake Ontario and they'd taken him and they said he went to a confectioner's 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

example of unintended consequences.

Brilliant, isn't it?

I was looking into life-saving dogs.

Oh, 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 going to tell you what it said, right?

And then we can get into it.

Because the vice president of the training school was a woman called Donna Tella Pasquale, 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.

Because why can't you just have a boat?

But, okay.

They spent all the money on dogs, isn't it?

Exactly.

And she says, okay, okay, okay, Dan.

Okay, so maybe you don't have a boat on any of the 300 beaches where you station the dogs.

Here's what Ms.

Pasquale said.

The dogs are incredibly strong.

Our record is one dog towing 40 people at the same time.

What's the dog?

Are they Newfoundland dogs?

Are they Newfoundland dogs?

Who fucking cares, Dan?

It's 40 people.

Yeah.

One dog can't tow 40 people.

That's impossible.

Are they not on a Lilo?

Are they not on like a sort of system?

Are they like floating on the surface so you're still

surfing?

But why are the dogs towing 40 doctors?

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 past the surf on a boat, right?

So when you're swimming, if you're on a speedboat and the waves are coming in thick and high, you're gonna get flipped over.

You're not gonna make it out.

So that's why David Hasselhoff always runs with that little red thing that looks like a mini like micro surfboard and does that.

Now, let me ask you this.

Let me ask you this.

How much better would Baywatch be if he had a dog under his arm

and was able to conserve his energy?

There you go.

Not surf it, but like get out there in that sort of way, right?

It makes total sense.

Oh, well, you've put me back in my box, Dan.

I thought that was an insane thing, a dog towing 40 people, but you've made me see it's a very reasonable.

Well, no, because the reason I mentioned Newfoundland dogs is because a lot of rescue boats take Newfoundland dogs with them on it in order to that 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 cake winslet on the door, and you can be saved, right?

And there's a story, and Greg, I wanted to ask you about this.

And actually, 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, is what you're saying.

I mean, there's a billion stories about Napoleon.

Yeah.

You can never, ever rely on any of them.

So

yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Oh, I'm still upgraded to him.

I'm still taken by your vision of Titanic's closing scenes.

Get off the dock.

I've got some other hero dogs who might be villains, but not really.

They're not villains, but they might have stolen a bit of thunder from other dogs so the most famous one is balto you've heard of balto

balto he was a hero dog really famous because he he was part of a team of sled dogs uh sort of you know 120 odd dogs and 20 mushers 150 dogs i think it is who saved a town in alaska in 1925 called gnome 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 kind of sled dog mushers, I guess, volunteered.

And they had to take this medicine 670 miles in terrifying, you know, the worst possible Alaskan word that you can think of.

And it's called the Great Mercy Race for Gnome.

And Balto was the lead dog in the final leg and became like a Hollywood celebrity.

They put a statue up in Central Park, became really famous.

He was stuffed, put in a museum.

And everyone was like,

Balto was a crap dog.

Really?

Balto 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 musher at the end, a 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 was meant to finish 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 Gnome.

And so I did the final leg on my own as well.

So he did two legs with Balto as his 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 Borto, the kind of mediocre dog, and Carson, the, you know, but basically nabbed the headlines and ended up as the hero of this enormous sort of relay race to save a town.

Yeah, there's a bit of a kind of controversy as to whether he maybe nicked that from someone else.

And I guess they kind of don't care that much because it gets a story out there still, right?

Yeah.

And it's like the face of the story.

So that's really important part.

I've got another villain that I found out as well worth mentioning.

Have you heard of the DC superhero called Dog Welder?

No?

No one's heard of Dog Welder?

So Dog Welder, 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, dog welding.

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.

Wasn't he part of a team?

I think I remember vaguely, he was in a team, and one of the others in the team was

the defenestrator who carried around a window to throw people through.

And that was it.

I think you're thinking, because

he gets rid of now, I think you're thinking of Dog Welder 2, 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, and this is he turns into a good guy because he learns that actually there's a moment where the stars Sirius A and B are expanding.

And if they touch, they'll explode and destroy Earth.

And so

the dog stars, and he realizes he's meant to weld them together.

So, he punches some NASA astronauts in the face, steals their outfits, their astronaut suits, outfits, space suits,

and flies beyond the moon to the Sirius 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.

It's a brilliant thing.

When you weld a dog to a face, is it face to face?

Do you go dog face to human face?

Do you do dog bum to human face?

Do you do dog side to face?

Like a human centrepiece.

Human centrepiece.

Sorry.

Is it schnells or to schnells?

Is it, you know, where are you?

I would have thought the side of the dog to the side of the face.

I would think so.

But don't you have to have metal to weld things together?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh.

Oh, hang on.

Forrester, one dog can tow 40 people.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, you're right, Andy.

Let me write to fantasy land.

Care of James and Andy.

If we welded a Newfoundland to David Hasselhoff.

We must wrap up soon.

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 this centre and spending all of her weekends with him.

She sang him lots of songs in French, and she called him Mon petitchou 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, sit,

and he won't

do anything else.

Wackies!

I got a very, very quick story.

No, go for it.

We have a few more minutes.

Okay, so about clever dogs.

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 to such an extent that whenever any other newspaper would write about them, they'd say, Oh, this is yet another spectator dog.

But they would always get people writing in 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, it was going on forever and ever and ever.

And there was a dog in there, and it got restless.

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 going to 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 cassock,

dressed up as the boy, conducted the search.

Sorry, not the search that wasn't called

what's the free money thing at the end of church, of course?

Free money?

You're doing it wrong if it's free money.

Not the like

collection, the collection.

I was going to say the tipping, which is not, you know.

Can I just ask what is the tax implication of the

free money?

All righty, to wrap us up, guys.

That is 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 be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland.

James at James Hacken.

Andy at Andrew Hunter M.

And Greg.

Greg underscore Jenna.

Yep.

Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing.

Go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

You can also join Club Fish.

Any Club Fish members in here at Tennessee?

the end?

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, Soho, Theodore.

That was awesome.

Thank you, Greg.

We will be back again, as I say, next week.

Goodbye.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style whether you need a single chair love seat or a luxuriously large sectional anibay has you covered visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home right now you can shop up to 60 off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee shop now at washablesofas.com add a little

to your life Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

From wine country weekends to scenic drives through the the Sierra foothills, fall is the perfect time to explore California.

And there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

With 17 fuel-efficient options like the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the Adventure-Ready RAV4 hybrid, or the spacious Grand Highlander hybrid, Toyota has the perfect ride for any adventure.

Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today so you can be prepared for wherever the road takes you this fall.

Toyota, let's go places.

See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.