No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Chris Nibble

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Anna, Andy, James and Rhys Darby discuss robots, railways, lost witches and found phones. 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 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Now, why am I talking to you before the show starts? Well, of course it is because one of us is away this week and it is Dan Schreiber. So in his place we have gotten the most Dan Schreiber person we can. In fact, the most Dan Schreiber person in the entirety of the world, arguably more Dan Schreiber than Dan Schreiber himself. It is the wonderful, incredible. You'll know him from Flight of the Concords, Tumanji, our flag means. death, of course, it is Rees Darby. Now, we always love to see Reese when he's in town and we are so

lucky that he is currently on tour in the UK. And that means that as well as enjoying him on our podcast, you can go and see his show. So if you are listening to this on the day it goes out, then quick, go to the internet and get tickets to his show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. And if you live in Brighton, Sheffield, St. Albans, Leeds, Swindon, Exeter, Bristol, Newcastle, go Manchester or Edinburgh, then you are also in luck because he is yet to do your cities. If you want to get tickets for that, you must go to reisdarby.com. That's R-H-Y-S-D-A-R-B-Y-Y dot com. All of the information, all of the tickets are available on there.

But for now, please enjoy the fabulous Torda Force. That is, Rees-Darby. Okay, on with the podcast. Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast, coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban. My name is Anna Tishinsky, and I'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin,

and the inimitable Reese Darby, who has joined us in place of Dan Shriver today. So without further ado, we've gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days in no particular order. Here we go. Reese, what's your fact?

Well, and thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. How are you? Good. The most highly decorated Soviet air unit of World War II didn't take part in the victory parade because their planes were too slow. Wow.

Can you tell us more? Why would a slow plane be useful in a war anyway? Well, funny you should ask. Do I now dive into the... Dive in. Mosquito. Yes. But what type?

The plane is. The plane, the mosquito. No, no, no. It was, in fact, a South Pacific mosquito. And that was its last flight before I killed it. Right, but back to me. Cool. So basically, this is the story of a unit that was in Russia during World War II,

the night bomber regiment entirely made up of females. And they were with ground crew and the air crew. And they flew very old biplanes called the Polikropov or the Po-2. Very old planes, made of wood. Wow. And they were super slow. They were slow, I think, because they were old planes. They were old like crop dusters, weren't they?

Yes, that's right. They were amazingly slow. Like, top speed 90 miles an hour. Yeah. That is slow. That is slow. I drove faster than out of my way to have nursery today. Okay, okay.

It is a 20 mile and hour zone. Yeah, but the idea was because they were so old and made of wood, they were really quiet. and so they could kind of get under the radar a little bit and do lots of bombing raids one after the other. And they were known as the witches, right? Yes. And do we know why they were called the witches?

Night witches. They were witches. There was no two ways about it. We've got some great pictures here of them. Poit-hearts. They had spells and all sorts of stuff. So it was quite amazing. But yeah, because they turned their engines off from their planes

and they did this so that they would come in silently. And so just to give you an impression of that one coming in, and then, drop the bombs, drop bombs. And then they would literally just drop bombs. And I don't know when they started their planes up again. like I guess once they've passed the bombing zone you know and then sort of back they fly so yeah so just to reiterate

I think the Germans felt that they sounded like witches on broomsticks coming in and just you know dropping bombs and let's not forget Marina Ruskova Ruskova the lead person in this group she had to really campaign to get it all happening. Obviously, it was mainly men involved in the battles back then.

And, you know, this is when Operation Barbarossa was on. So this was the entire German army literally trying to take over Russia. A very bold move. And as we all know, how to play out. It didn't quite work, but it did look good at the beginning. So there was like over 3 million German troops. They had, I think, three brigades. They had so many armoured divisions.

And there was really no opposition for a while. They really were making a lot of ground. And then it was a massive call-up for the Russians to defend their land. And the women as well were like, well, we want to help. You know, we're strong. Let's grab guns. Let's go. The whole family, all family in.

And then so this particular woman, Marina Roscova, she ended up really sort of... She recruited, didn't she? She recruited, I think, over a thousand women and did the training and, you know, sort of formulated. But she also persuaded Stalin and an element that's often smoothed over, I feel in the great stories of how heroic they were,

which they were. It's a fact that she was quite good mates with Stalin, which is how she managed to make happen. But it's okay, we didn't know a lot of what we knew now. You've got to get your foot in the door, right? She knew Stalin because she was one of the most famous women in Russia. Yeah. She was an avatrix, and she and her team had the world record

for the longest continuous flight and she was like a hero of the whole country and so when she came to say I want my women to take part in the war Stalin was not going to say no to her because she was so big. But did say no to the equipment like you're not having our

planes that these modern vehicles are not for you guys ladies so this is how it all sort of came together that they got the planes that were left that no one wanted Bip planes? Yeah it's crazy I didn't think biplanes flew in the second world I'm certainly not in combat, but just can we quickly say about her earlier flight, where she was the navigator for this cross-Soviet Union journey, right?

And it was 4,000 miles. And as they were getting towards the end, there are two versions of the story. One is that the plane was icing up, and they threw everything out to try and maintain height. And then she decided it's not going to be enough, I'm going to have to throw myself out of the plane. Wow. That's the final straws now. There are two pilots and her, the navigator. her clothing first.

These hippie boots have got to go. But I don't think she was naked when she jumped out. She wasn't naked because it was so cold, so she wanted a bit of protection. But they'd thrown everything else up to and including the compass, I think. She thought my navigating job is done. So, like, we're very nearly there. So that's one version. The other

story is that they couldn't find the airfield. And the navigator's cockpit had no protection. Either way, she did jump out of the plane shortly before the end. And she had no food or water for ten days. Eventually a hunter discovered her. And that sort of cemented her heroic stages. Can we just go back a little bit to her jumping out of the plane? Did she have a parachute?

Yes, she did. Did she? She parachuted, yes. Because actually the witches, the night witches didn't have parachutes, did they? No, they didn't. No. Just on this, another thing, sorry, I'm telling the oft-reported negative spin of the night witches, which you don't get very often, but you know in that thing where these three women crash landed, basically. So they were all lost. She was lost for 10 days, the other two were lost for a couple of days. I think she had a bar and a half of chocolate to survive on for 10 days, which I really

want to know what happened to the other half. But... Well, also, if you've ever had sobery at chocolate, it is utterly disgusting. Wow. Maybe it was better in the 1940s. I suspect not. But all I'm saying is you don't scoff it in the first moment. Like if it was a Mars bar, you'd be like, oh, delicious. But no, you wouldn't. I see. Maybe that's part of the ploy. The opposite of savouring it.

Yeah. But there was a rescue mission sent. out to save these three women and 16 men died. Yeah. But there were huge celebrations afterwards because they'd broken this record. And I think Salin thought, you know what, it's going to dampen the vibe if we mention the fact that 16 men have been killed from getting in a man. Can I just also say it wasn't like one man would go and look for them?

He would die and then another person would go out. They all died in the plane crash. Yeah, it wasn't like a scream. Shall I go see what he's doing back there? Someone's knocking them all off. I'm not going to go and have a lot. You're next. Yeah, and then Raskover, she got the first ever state funeral, I think, in any country in World War II.

Definitely the first one in Moscow. There'd be none in Britain, not in Germany, not in America, obviously at that stage. But yeah, when she died, her ashes were placed in the Kremlin walls, and they're still there today. Whoa. That's cool. It's mad thinking about these incredibly old slow planes that were being flown into combat, because they had to go at night because, not because they were loud, because they were slow, that's it. But the advantage was, I think, if the Luftwaffe were chasing them or trying to,

to shoot them down, if the Luftwaffe flew at 90 miles an hour, they would stall. Yes, that's exactly. Because that plays are too good to catch. Yeah. So in a sense, they had an unfair advantage, the night, which is all I'm saying. And they did it at night because that was the time to do the bombing. So there was no rest for the Germans, because during the night they would fix their stuff and they'd be being bombed so they couldn't.

So it was relentless. Yeah. They weren't the only female pilots in the war, though, because I think in Britain there was the ATA, the air transatl. Port Auxiliary, and that was mostly male pilots, but there was a sizable chunk of them who were women. And their job was to get planes from factories to airfields and things like that. By flying them. By flying them, exactly.

And it'll test them at the same time. Well, they had to know so many different kinds of plane, basically. I think these women were amazing. So, for example, Dolores Mogridge, an incredible name of the kind I think you don't really get anymore. She flew 83 different types of plane during the war. Wow. And she was once the subject of a complaint by a male RAF officer. He complained, it was dreadful weather,

and I can't believe not only was a woman flying me here, but she was reading a book. And she said, I wasn't reading a novel, those are my notes, I hadn't flown this type of plane before. And he nearly threw up when he realised. Just lovely. The other thing they had to do was, as well as flying planes to the airfield from which they'd fly into combat,

they had to fly the planes back when they were damaged. So they'd have an attack planes, no undercarriage, wing missing, and then would be like. Fly there, back, will you love? Yeah. It's got no wings. You'll be right. You'll figure it out.

That's amazing. Yeah, they're so cool. The last of them only died in 2022. I mean, so they lived, a lot of them lived really long lives. Yeah, Stella Edwards, I think, was the last surviving ATA girl as they got called. Well, you know, the night witches are all still alive. Of course. Even the one who had a stake funeral.

Yeah. She was the first to come back to life. Do you know the country which has the highest proportion of female pilots? Russia? No. Oh, I'm not talking about the... No, sorry, as in these days, commercial pilots. I don't think it's very guessable.

Oh, okay, I'm going to have a go. Rwanda. It's not Rwanda? Island. It's not Ireland. That's close, though. Oh. Northern Ireland?

No, India. Sorry, when I say close, I mean close alphabetically. It's very close alphabetically, isn't it? Yeah. That's almost bull's eye out of well time. That's my bear for not thinking alphabetically too. Silly meme. I remember when we flew to Australia

and we'd only be going for an hour or so and I said, are we close? And you said, yeah, we're over Austria. You've got Ralea to go. That's amazing. 13% of pilots are women in India. That's interesting. Global average is about 5%.

You know Douglas Bader. Oh, yeah. No legs. Ailer. But a dreamy guy. Flying ace. Oh, yes. He's famous because he had no legs.

So there was a guy called Alexei Maraseyev, who was a Russian guy, and he was in a crash. And like this woman, Raskova, he had to walk around Siberia, living on a handful of ants and half a lizard, he said. It's still better than this Soviet chocolate bar. Yeah, when they found him he had ten chocolate bars in his pocket. Desperately hunting for another ant. but he had really bad frostbitten legs

and he had to have them chopped off he then went on and carried on fighting in dog fights and became a national hero so Russia had its own Douglas Bada and Germany Hans Ulrich Rudl he was a German pilot he was one of the most decorated pilots of the war and he got shot

wounded in one of his legs had to lose his leg and then carried on and shot down 26 more with only one leg So they had one. He's still up one. To be fair. Got one leg, but that would be on the throttle. So, you know, he's got the advantage there. He was faster to get away.

He couldn't slam the brakes on. He didn't have to modify the planes or anything? Because I think Douglas Spade's plane was somehow rigged up so he could keep flying with no legs. I think that's true. But do you think it's interesting that all three of those countries had their own sort of legless? That's really interesting. That's kind of amazing. We could move on.

Yeah. You were in the Kiwi army, weren't you? Yes, that's right. Did you do any flying? No, that'd be the Air Force. Got it. Guys, you're a thick of a snake. Which one do you fancy today, the boats to play?

Or the on foot. Just get in the garage and have fun, guys. Okay, it is time for fact number two. That is my fact. My fact this week is that if you drop a wallet containing cash in Tokyo, you're three times more likely to get it back than if you drop it in New York. I was furious when I first read about this in a BBC article

which reported that 88% of phones that were lost deliberately by a researcher doing this study in Tokyo were returned but only 6% of those lost in New York were returned. Actually, it turned out that wasn't true. I looked at the study and 95% were returned in Tokyo but 88% were returned to the police and only 7% were returned to the person whose phone number was on the phone.

So he deliberately left contact details. Like, you know, call me if you find myself. And the Japanese are like, nope, I'm not going to ring you. Official channels only. Whereas in New York, like 75% or something, gave them back. Who writes the person? Who writes their phone number on their phone? They're quite weird, isn't it?

I'm thinking about doing that now. Yeah, it's quite a genius idea. I don't know if it is that genius. When you pick it up, you go, how am I going to call it? Yeah. I think you've got to write your best friend's phone number on it, maybe, or your mum's number, your house phone. But basically Japanese cults. is such that they're so set up for lost property.

Japan is basically a large lost property office masquerading as a country. As in people in Japan are so culturally wired in to hand in lost things. It's just absolutely the rules. It's just what you do. So last year, people in Japan handed in $4.5 billion in cash. It's still a very cash-based society. Yeah, but we don't know whether that was just a lot of 100 yen coins. So whether it was just one huge suitcase.

Well, they have a thing where you can hand in a coin. and if you had it into the authorities, they will then give you that coin back as a gift. It's an honour thing. So, yeah, it's about kind of, rather than the old, if you see a penny, pick it up and all day long, you'll have good luck, that classic one, they don't have that.

If they find something, I'm speaking for all Japanese people right now, I have been there, and I remember having a conversation with one chap about it, and he said, make sure you talk about this on a podcast down the line. All right, I will, I will. But anyway, long story short, they give it back to you and it's a gift. And so therefore you have received the coin that you've found as a gift.

And then honorably, you can then hold on to it. Brilliant. That's really cool. Worth the extra staff. I have actually done this in London, as in I found a wallet with some money in it, handed it into the police. You did skim a bit off the top, though, didn't you? Hey, eh, hey.

Well, this was the thing about... I think it had cash in and I didn't... I think it then got claimed. Because I was at the police station every day for the next six months. anyone turned up to claim that cash yet? But I think in the UK, genuinely, in the UK, if it's been three months or some period of time, and the money is not claimed, you can go as the finder. I did mean to say, yeah, did you take the money out?

Because in New York, one of the interesting things about, well, yeah, whatever, you would say that, wouldn't you? It wasn't that one day that you bought around in when we went to the pub, was it? I remember that so clearly that day. You're waving a 20-quit note. It was 2014, wasn't it? Yeah, it was great days. Just to say, before Andy is too proud of himself for handing this in, most people in pretty much any country will hand it in.

This is the thing that you don't get reported on much. So even in New York, you know, 80% of people are handing in wallets. But of the wallets in New York, the researcher dropped them with $20 in each, which is the amount you legally have to return if you find it in New York. And eight of the wallets were returned, but only six still have the money in. So I'm counting that in my percentages as returning six. high with the drops too. Were they? Skisgraper. Were they?

Yeah. People died actually. People died. The wallet drops. Returning the wallet is just embedded in the head of someone who was standing under the Empire State Building. That's really interesting. Do you think the person who takes the money is in their head they think you can find us fee? Maybe, maybe. Or was it a different person who took the money and then a new person found the empty wallet? If I was going to take the money, I might just take the money because it's not as identifiable.

But you don't want to take someone's driving licence, that's a huge fath for them. Yeah. You know. So in Tokyo, they have these things called Corban's and the tiny police stations and a city like Tokyo will have dozens of them. But in the countryside, there'll be just one or two in each village. And the idea is you hand your stuff in there and it's kept there for about a month. And that's in case someone sort of retraces their steps and goes back to the area where they were. They find the nearest Corban and they say, it's my 50p there or whatever.

And then after a zone, amount of time they're given to the big sort of lost and found in the middle of Tokyo or wherever. Okay, here's the thing that's lost in Japan. This is nuts. A big chunk of Japan has been lost. 20% of Japan, a big chunk has no easily contactable owner. And the property law is crazy there, as in it's very difficult. Property is distributed among airs, sometimes if there's no will, so it's kind of divvied up equally. There was a case where the government, they wanted to build a road, like really big road going into slash out of Tokyo. So important project for them.

They had to track down 148 airs of one patch of land. They sent 200 letters out. A lot of the people had emigrated, some of them had died. Like just nightmare situation. The unowned bit of Japan is bigger than which country? I'd like you all to guess. Is it close to Japan? No.

Oh. Not alphabetically. Not Jamaica then. I'm going to go with Russia. Yeah. Okay, 20% of Japan, I'm going to say Wales. Not far off. Belgium?

Denmark. Very close. The unowned bit of Japan, or the bit where they just have no idea who owns it, and it's a nightmare legally, is bigger than Denmark. Wow. That's crazy. That is bad. It's just demographics. You don't have to register when you own land.

It's not compulsory. You know this big building in Tokyo where all the lost and found stuff goes? Oh, the huge lost property office. Yeah, yeah. In 2016, they process 3.67 billion yen. of cash and 74% of it was retrieved. But then compared to that, the percentage of umbrellas that were returned

was 90 times less. Yeah, this is the thing umbrella's never given back because you wouldn't, would you? You wouldn't go and get claim your umbrella. You drop it on the tube. Because they're really, there's sort of a few quid to buy, you just buy another one. Yeah. And they all look the same. Apparently they've got like a see-through. Oh yeah. They have that self-fit. Yeah, yeah. And so, and

really, it's an open game for umbrellas. If you lose it, you can, and you find one, you don't have to hand that and you're not going to get a special gift. Is that right? It's like the purge, that film. Yeah, it's very similar to the purge. Like all umbrella crime is legal. And I don't know if they have the opening up of the umbrella inside being bad luck as well. I'm not sure where that came.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that must have gone through these suspicions. Do you know where that came from? No. So we've been told by the big umbrella shop in London that the reason that it's bad luck is it was invented by umbrella salesmen and they didn't want people opening their umbrellas inside

so that they would get all rotted and horrible and people would have to buy new umbrellas. That's what we were told. That makes total sense. When you buy an umbrella from that shop it's because it's in the centre it's only about a 10 minute walk from here.

It's amazing as well. It's like the oldest umbrella shop in the world. They're so classy the umbrellas in there. I bought one from there once as a real treat to myself. It was just after you found that money in the street, wasn't it? And I've lost it now

and I'm so gutted because it was this beautiful thing, but they give you a tutorial of how to open and close it. Like, they get a special... It's a bit embarrassing to go through it. And does that umbrella shop have lots of little umbrella shops

throughout the world? I think it's one of a kind. Oh, so it's not an umbrella organization. Oh, gosh. What? Whoa. You had to wonder where he was going with the question. I just love the way you walk straight into that.

Well, these guys are being decks as usual, but I'm glad Reese is interested in umbrella. umbrella shop logistics. Guys, if you found a wallet on the street, then would you be more likely to hand it in if it had money in? If it's got other forms of ID,

I hope I would just hand it in anyway. Regardless, even if it had a million pounds in it. How big is this wallet? What is it? What denomination and currency are we talking? Is it in crypto? What are you talking about? No, I think I would hand it in no matter what, actually. Yeah, I'm sure we're all honest people. You haven't piped up,

but we're just going to assume. Well, look, it depends on your circumstances, isn't it? We're all sitting here in a nice building, you know, we've got money. But I think if you didn't have anything, I think, you know, got to pick a pocket or two. Very good point. You've shamed us all into having a bit of perspective. But the truth is that if you drop a wallet with money in it, that's better than dropping one without, because you're more likely to get it back. And this really surprised people.

This was a study in 2019. which planted 17,303 wallets around the world. It's quite a big study. Did they need to do it? 70,000, did they need to do the last three? We're doing 17,300. I don't think that's a good sample size. Maybe there was three researchers.

They dropped the 17,000, and they realised they'd accidentally drop their own wallets as well. I think that was it. You're not going to believe this. I lost my own. Just grab one from the collection. Yeah, where the hell do they get them? Anyway, they dropped them in 355 cities all over the world.

So this is completely cross-cultural. And half of them had no money in them. Half of them had $13.45 in them. And 40% were returned when they had no cash, but 51% were returned when they had cash. Wow. And they thought, that's very weird, isn't it? So they did a follow-up study

where they put another load with $94 in. And the ones with $94, 72% were returned compared to only $60 for the $13. Because I guess the thinking being that someone might really need it. It feels a bit more like stealing if you've stolen $90 compared to 13. Mo money, mo guilt. Exactly. Yeah. Very wise. Can I do one test on you guys? Yeah, go on. I'm going to give you three words and I want to tell you which two words go together instinctively for you. This is related to this fact. So the three words are train, bus, track. Okay, train and track

alphabetically very close together. Well, he's running the game. What's the challenge? Trade track and bus Yeah, well trains go on tracks Do we pick two words Which two go together for you? Train, track, bus. Well, I normally track my wife

as she travels around on the bus every day So I'd say bus and track. Okay, we like that. I'm not thinking it seriously either. Reese, any further, any serious response to that? Well, like when I joined the army with the aptitude tests Just a lucky dip for me.

Train and bus. Thank you. For no good reason. You've given me the answer I wanted. Farms of transport. Yeah. So this is a difference between Eastern and Western cultures. And this is so part of this thing about Japanese people handing stuff in, like very different culturally.

Collective cultures dominate the East. Individualist cultures dominate the West quite broadly. And there are these huge differences. And one of them is that given those three words, most Westerners say train and bus. Because we think of things in categories. But most people from China or Japan or Korea will say train and track because everything is relational. So it's, so for instance, If you ask someone to describe themselves in the West,

they'll say, oh, I'm a QI researcher. Tall and handsome. I'm tall and handsome. You know, exactly. We also lie a lot in our culture, don't we? We too. And which culture do people say bus and track in, please? I appear to rule myself out of East and West.

Have you heard of the Andaman Islands? Oh, yeah. Uncontacted tribes. They're my people. This is not, this is slightly different. Forget the buses in the track. If you're Japanese or Chinese, you would, more likely say, I'm so-and-so's sister, I'm so-and-so's daughter, I'm employed by so-and-so,

I'm the friend of so-and-so, because it's all about like in relations. Anyway, we've thought that this is a difference between spiritual cultures and collectivism and things like that. And then there was an amazing study done in the border of like China and Russia, which looked at rice farming versus grain farming, and it's completely split on those grounds. And people with these more communal collective responses to things are rice farmers, whereas grain farmers are more individualist. And we think now it's just because rice farming involves way more cooperation.

That's really interesting. I read another study which I think is related to this, which is if you're in Starbucks, because I think it was done in Starbucks, and you need to get from one place to another, so from your seats to the place where you buy your coffee. If there's chairs in the way, Western people will sort of dodge around the chairs

and get to the place where they're supposed to go, whereas Eastern people will move the chairs out of the way and put them where they're supposed to be so that the next person can get there as well. That's nice. Wait, are there people on the chairs? No. And Andy, of course, turns all the chairs upside down and pours coffee on them.

What's your Starbucks coffee name? Oh, I use my actual name. Oh, really? Yeah. What do you use, Ruth? Chris nibble. Do you actually? But I always say the nibble.

Yeah. You tell them to definitely say the nibble. If you say Chris, you don't respond. Yeah. They need to say. say Chris nibble and then one time I got like something

there was edible and I was in the corner and I was just having really tiny nibbles on it for about half an hour and I left most of it behind and I wonder whether they thought

oh yeah that'll be him nibble by name they'll be thinking that's re-styleby it's also a test to see whether they know who I am

and then as I leave I knew you didn't Who I am? As if I was Chris Nibble. And you can keep the rest of this panini. Okay, time for fact number three. And that is Andy. My fact is that when trains were new in New Zealand,

an elderly lady flagged one down by standing on the tracks to see if anyone could give her change for a £1 note. Oh, wow. That's nice. This is a story of something that really happened. Wow. And it's related in a book called, Our Iron Roads by F.S. Williams and I'm doing a little bit of prop comedy here because I've brought

in a copy. Look at that. It's stunning. This was printed in 1883. Sorry, you said prop comedy. It's a very bland hard bike book. Wait for the comedy. I'm happy that New Zealand has mentioned in one of these old books. Yeah, because trains were not very late in New Zealand. Not much after the rest of the world. But it's quite a hard country to navigate around, isn't it, by train? Because a lot of valleys and canyons and things. Yes, yeah, I imagine. But there's this anecdote. It's paid 402 if you're reading along at home. The eccentricities of English travellers, however, if dangerous, are not so odd as some in foreign parts. That's in quotes. It is said, so big tongs there, that not long ago, an engine

driver in New Zealand noticed a lady energetically waving her hand at a siding where he was not time to stop. On pulling up his train, she was asked if she wished to come on board, also in quotes, when she stated that her object in stopping the train was to ascertain whether any passenger could give her change for a £1 note. There you go. Wow. So she wanted change. She just flagged it down. Like, presumably there was a coin operator machine that she was standing next to her.

Did they give the year there? It's no, not long ago. And this was printed in 1883. Okay. Well, I think the first trains were what in the 1870s. Oh, no, in the UK, 1830s? Sorry, in New Zealand. Oh, were they?

I believe so. 1860s, 1870s. That's really late. I think so. And the first ones were in the various different cities, and it was usually to get from the port to the city. So in Vicargo, there was loads of swamps you had to get past, so they put a railway line there.

In Dunedin, you had to go over some difficult land to get there. In Christchurch, you had to go over some hills. And so they all put these different railways in, but they all used different gauges. And so when they decided to put the whole country together, so the gauge is the width of the railway line. So when they decided to put the whole country together They were like, okay, this is going to be a problem

And in the end they went for this thing Which is three foot six inch gauge Which was kind of the smallest That's narrow gauge It's really narrow And the reason was because it was kind of cheaper Typical Kiwis Oh that's such a whole economy

Go with the cheap gauge Go with the cheap one But apparently if you ride on modern railways even It's like riding the Piccadilly line in London Which is very sort of jerky And rickety Oh really? Because of that gauge Yeah

Okay. Because the gauge that I've always been entertained by the most is the awesome. And everyone's got one. People got them. Save it for your spin-off podcast, Anna. My favourite gauge with Anna to Jinnis. Every week we ask a global megastar what their favourite gauge is. This week, Tom Cruise. Next week, Chris Nibble.

Guys, it's going to run and run, I'm telling you. You can keep the rest of that pinini. My favourite gauge is the Australian game. gauge system, which I'm sure you're very familiar with, which is mad. So they basically did what New Zealand did, but then they never put their country together properly train-wise. So it's also a joke involving an Irishman, a Scotsman and an Englishman. Because basically, we're in the 1850s. There was an Irish guy, Francis Shields. He's in charge of a rail company, New South Wales. He likes a broad gauge, the Irish gauge. Then Scottish James Wallace came along, took over shortly afterwards,

converted New South Wales and some of South Australia to a standard gauge. And then an English bloke came along, rocked up in Western Australia and Tasmania and Queensland and made them all do the cheap, cheap-ass narrow gauge. And then some other bloke said, let's do a completely different gauge to transport sugar cane. Four different gauges, never fixed.

Still to this day, if you go on forums about it, the kind of forums that I like to go on sometimes late at night, there are quite a lot of Australians going, what the fuck is wrong with our rail system. Are there bits where everyone has to get off and get on a train with a different gas? Yes. So you can be transporting freight across the country and you'll have to transfer your goods to new trains four different times. Oh, God.

But it really explains where that saying comes from with New Zealand and Australia. And that's the saying, it's difficult to gauge. That's what it is. It comes from, it comes from where I live. Isn't that satisfying now you know that? Yeah. Yeah. Are you all listening for a part in a children's transport show or something?

Always. Rees, have you ever been on the New Zealand Love Trade? The love train? Yeah. Not since the 80s. Okay. Well, it's been going, I think, since then. Okay.

This is, have you heard of a town on the South Island called Middlemarch? It's small. Vaguely. Population 186 is small, right? But every two years, the population absolutely blooms for one night, which is when they have the Middle March ball. And it's singles ball, because often, you know, if you're on the apps and the nearest matches 100 miles away, this is a problem.

So every two years they have a night where everyone gets the train down to Middlemarch and there is a special love train put on full of, you know, excited young people wanting to find love or certainly get off with someone that night, basically. And it's really, it sounds lovely actually. And then the day after the ball, there's a shame train to take people home who didn't get the train home the night before. Uh-oh. I'll see this movie. It sounds charming.

Can I just written, The Guardian, did a lovely report about it. So this is at the actual ball itself. on the dance floor heels are cast aside as the heady crowd grind against one another. Jesus, Andy. Sliced hot meats and buttered bread are served in the makeshift kitchen and two worn sofas placed beside the Ban Marie grown under the weight of courting lovers.

Oh my goodness. It's so disgusting as well as being innocent. It's really charming, I think. It is, although I think we all thought when you said sliced hot meats and buttered breads that was their euphemisms for the men and the women. I was thinking of sexual things there, but I thought it was just me.

Good to know it wasn't. That's amazing. Please write in to tell us if you've ever met the love of your life. Or if you've had an embarrassing failure to meet the love of your life. Better yet. So the main railway in New Zealand was built thanks to Julius Vogel, who is Prime Minister. Oh yes. I know the bread.

Do you? It's delicious. Vogel's bread. I'd never heard of that. Oh my goodness. It's the best bread and they don't do it anymore in Waitrose. Anyway, we'll talk after the podcast. But it's gone on.

the market here. Can you still get it in New Zealand? I was going to move back here too. Is it named after this Kiwi Prime Minister? Must be. Well, one can only assume. Well, he also, as well as his bread reputation, he has a reputation as being the first New Zealander to write a science fiction novel. Really? Yeah, it was called Anno Domini 2000 or Women's Destiny, and it was published in 1889,

and it anticipated a utopian world where women held many positions of authority. Well, that is New Zealand. Yeah, because he also introduced the first women's suffrage bill to the New Zealand Parliament. I was going to say they were the first country in the world, weren't they? No, he introduced a bill, and the bill didn't pass, and then he left Parliament, and then it passed a few years later. So he kind of started the ball roll.

That is cool. And had he written the sci-fi as a means of political change, saying this would be a good society to build? He introduced the bill in 1887. The science fiction novel was published in 1889, and suffrage was granted in 18903. So it's all happening around the sector. He tried the political method, and that had failed, so he thought, right, what other tool do I have? Sci-fi.

Sounds like he introduced the bill as a publicity stunt to sell more books that he knew he was going to write. Very clever. And that's the story of the first ever women suffrage. Some bloke trying to flog some books. That was really cool. The reason trains were needed in New Zealand was transport logs around. And it was mostly these cowrie trees, which are, how do you say it? How do you say it?

A cowrie. Coorie. Yeah, Coory. Coory. Yeah. It's hard to roll my ass, but if you can, you can. Yeah. I have difficulty with it.

Well, it was for curry. I felt like I was Bucket Middle March for a second. All the more. It's like sliced meat. Logging industry was huge. The curry trees used to cover basically all of New Zealand, and now they cover almost none because they chopped them all down. Very sad.

But they did this amazing thing. Their way of transporting them before they got all the trains up and running were these things called Kori dams. So normally you dump logs in a river and they could float downstream. They can't when they're these tiny little weak streams. And so... I've got a lot of weak streams in New Zealand. We do. It's a shame.

Okay, yeah. They would build dams and they'd leave the dams for a year or more, a year, two years. and they just pile logs up behind the dam. And then one day they'd come back and they could have up to 30,000 logs behind this dam and they'd whip up this drawbridge and suddenly 30,000 logs will descend from the mountains and this giant waterfall to the beach.

Isn't that amazing? And there are pictures of beaches just transformed. Suddenly you've gone for a day out on the beach. Oh my God. You're frantically flogging the donkey or riding. Faster! He's very old. He goes.

Get me ice cream. The Pumphant Judy Man is frantically rolling the canvas tight. That is amazing. Wow. It's really cool. That is stunning. Yeah. Your fact, Andy, was about someone getting changed for a one pound note.

Yes. This is in New Zealand where their currency is the dollar. Right. Not those days. Well, yes, exactly. So it's interesting that they did have the pound. Yeah. Until the dollar came in relatively recently, I think.

I know. That was one of the most. I think when they went, right, well, we're going to have our own currency. We'll still have the queen on it. So when they decided to go for the dollar, it wasn't obvious that they would call it a New Zealand dollar. They could call anything because they're getting their own currency, right? They didn't want to be a pound anymore. And so they sent it to the public, basically, and had a public discussion of what should we call our coin.

A lot of people thought they'd call it the Kiwi. Brilliant. The zeal, as in New Zealand. Nice. I like the zeal. The N-Z, E-N-Z-E-D. They almost called it the N-Z. The Moa, the Zach, the T-E.

These were all ideas to call it. And then because I think Australia had just gone to the dollar relatively recently, they decided, oh yeah, we should probably do the same. So typical. You could have had the T-U-I. T-U-I. Is that a bird as well? It's a bird, yeah.

Didn't you do this with your flag as well? A few years ago? You had a flag referendum? Yes, we did. So we tend to do these things and it costs a lot of money. And then everyone goes, oh no, I'm just keep with what would what would like. I think that's good. I think it's good to experiment sometimes.

I think we could do with more of that here. Although, where's New Zealand's something, Muxomthe-face spirit when it's naming stuff by public vote? You seem to be lacking that. Let's call something a really stupid name for the hell of it. Yeah, I think you're right. You actually get a lot of shit, I think, for your Air Force logo as well. In fact, to go back to Air Force.

You were in the Air Force, weren't you? Well, for a little bit, yes. So I put the different outfit on. You know what your Air Force? slogan. Yes, the Kiwi. This is the Kiwi. And everyone finds it very funny.

It's a flightless bird. But they worked hard over that. And they actually abandoned. It was a fern leaf before that, I think, in the 50s and 60s, which people then pointed out was just a white fern leaf that looks like a white feather, which is basically a symbol for surrendering. Which is a quite funny idea with your warplanes. We just can't get it right.

Can I tell you a really quick thing about rail and railways? when did the last horse work on British rail? Wait, so how did they work? They'd just been moving trains from one line to another. They're shunting, basically, shunting jobs. They were agile, they're cheap, obviously. They're good for these small jobs, not for massive great local roads. So they'd walk along the treks.

Pretty much, yeah, yeah. And there were shunting horses, and that's what they were now. Okay, I'm going to say there is currently a horse working in, and it sort of nibbles the plants at the edge of the track. I wish. That would be so good. No, they're not still in action. They're not still in action.

When was it? Okay, 1750. Thank you. 1967. Nice. So Charlie, the last British rail shunting horse, could have heard Sergeant Pepper, like while in work. Yeah.

What's a weird connection there is that Ringo Starr, of course, is the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine. And what's Thomas the Tank Engine's job? A shunting engine? Thomas put the horses out of business. Lovely. That's a superb connection. There was debate in the early days

about whether horses or trains would be better. Do you remember the Rainhill trials with this huge competition at Rainhill where... Stevenson's Rocket won, but there were about five contenders. There was Stevenson's Rocket, there were a few other actual trains, and then there was Cycloped, owned by a guy called Thomas Brandreth, which was a horse walking on a treadmill on top of a train.

And it was withdrawn. The horse got the thing to five miles an hour, and then the horse fell through the belt. And it just did not, it just didn't work. But it could have gone another way. It came sliced meat. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Okay, it is time for our final fact. And that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1936, a robot in California shot its inventor in the head. Reese, what would that have sounded like? Oh, no! Very good California accent now. That's the robot.

That's the robot repenting what it's done. So I was looking for something else in the newspaper archives. And I just saw this as a tiny little article in the Buffalo News of the 15th of February 1936. Amazing. And I had no idea what it was about. But then I've since done some more research. And it was something called the Mechanical Man. And it was at San Diego Fair in 1936, which was a big exposition.

and there was a guy called Henry C. May, who was a British inventor, and he toured it around America, and it was a six-foot giant steel robot that could stand up, sit down, smoke cigarettes, fire a gun, and answer questions. And I'll be honest, I've seen some pictures, and I think it was a man in tin foil. Oh, really, really?

I think, I can't really tell, but, like, it looks like a Doctor Who, baddie. Right, okay. But I've seen this in a television show. It might be Penny Dreadful or one of those type of shows. So there was a link to it. And yeah, there really was this mechanical man made many, many years ago. It's incredible. But I think there was a lot of cheating, wasn't there?

Well, maybe they weren't suggesting that it was operated properly robotically, but it seemed like a lot of them were people, which does suggest it was just a guy with a vendetta against the maker inside. Apparently, because he could answer questions. Someone asked the robot if he loved his wife. And he replied, of steel. I don't love nobody and nobody loves me. That's a guy in a seat. That's a single guy in a seat. When did the Wizard of Oz come out? Oh, 30s. 39, was it? Yeah. Okay. That's a good point.

It could be the tin man. Yes. You know? The world's first robot. I love nobody and nobody loves me. He's looking for a heart. He's looking for a heart. Yeah. Absolutely. It's all coming together. It's all coming together. It's actually a documentary, it turns out. Can I check James, did the inventor, who was shot in the head? Was he all right? He was fine. He was fine. Yeah. So there was an article in the New York Times. Again, a very small article. It said the robot showed more aptitude than Henry C. May expected. And he shot him in the head, but then it says he will recover. And then there's no more mention of him in any of the newspapers.

But I assume he must have recovered. Otherwise, it would have been in there. Wow. They underplayed news in those days, isn't they? Yeah. But this was a big exposition in San Diego Fair. Other things they had there was the gold gulch, which was like one of the first frontier villages like a fake Wild West village. They had

the Zoro Garden nudist colony which is basically a load of naked women and a few naked men which you could pay 25 cents to look at. I thought an exposition was for scientific stuff. I thought it's like we've got a new kind of toaster and you're telling me there's just a nudist village which I can pay a quarter and go and look at.

It seems like a perverse charter. Honestly, the nudist one was really bad because the basically actual local nudists were really upset. They were the ones who were the most upset because they're like you've got show girls in instead of getting actual nudists. That would have been paid top dollar too. And there was complaints to

the council from the San Diego Council of Catholic Women, the Women's Civic Centre and the San Diego Braille Club. I can't find any reason. About the nudism. Is that because you weren't allowed to touch them and it sort of discriminating against blind people? I need to know that they're nude. I'm coming through

now. I'm blind, but I've let me have a feel. Oh, that's not a proper nudist. And you can keep the rest of this, Panini. It's on Panini! Get your hands off. So anyway, that's the story of the San Diego Fair in 1936.

I think there was a sequel to this who became this big celebrity robot because there was a few years later there was the World's Fair in 1939 in New York. And the Westinghouse Electric Corporation paraded Electro, who again was a talking cigarette smoking robot. Cigarette smoking seemed to be the main thing people wanted from their robots. in those days. The back of the day it was the main hobby

wasn't it? It was. Yeah, yeah. And he again seemed to be operated by people behind a curtain. But all robots are? There's very few, even today.

Even today is this is, you know, when you think of Musk and what he's trying to do and what have you, there's always someone hidden behind the curtain with a radio control device. Is that with every self-driving car? Musk has employed a person

with a remote control somewhere. There's a teenager in the boot. Yeah, you can have a look. And they get paid a lot of money. I've got the t-shirt on, I've got little tiny controls. They like being in small dark rooms. The celebrity robot, 1939, went on to star in a film called Sex Kittins Go to College, which I just wanted to have any of you guys seen.

I thought it might be you. Because his career sort of ended after 1939, and we did a little bit of a world tour. Was everything going on in 1939, which might have made it less important to see a cigarette-smoking robot? I saw the sequel, Sex Kittins Go to the Front Line. Demobb, sex kittens struggle to adjust to post-war life. Very sad. Very sad one, man. I don't knock it until you've watched it.

It sounds really good. So this was 1960. Suddenly this robot became a celebrity again. Stared in a film, Sex Kittens Go to College, where he advises a college to hire this genius as a science professor who turns out to be a stripper. And then there's lots of stripping scenes. But that's just the great career of the world's first ever celebrity robot.

Reese, do you ever drive in autonomous cars? Have you got an autonomous cab anywhere? Things like that. I've seen a lot of them. I was almost hit by one. Okay. Really? Yeah, I was pulling out of the car park in my car.

And you know, when you go out, you sort of go a little bit too far out into the road. And there's oncoming traffic, you think I better pull back in a bit. And well, the oncoming traffic was the Waymo. And so I put into reverse and go back a little bit because my nose was sticking out. And then just as I did it, the Waymo straight past me. didn't alter its path at all. And if it was a human, you would have actually altered your path as well.

Yeah, you just not to bear. Yeah, a bit of shove and a bit of give or whatever. But this one, as soon as I reversed back, and I thought to myself, well, if I hadn't have pulled my nose in a little bit there, would it have hit me? That's weird, because that is like a legit way way to get out of the junction, isn't it?

You just edge a little bit and hopefully someone will notice you and they'll stop for you. Yeah, you go down. You peep and creep. Yeah. Sorry? That's what I'm doing on the last. I'm up train.

I'm up in the luggage compartment. No, but this is, because that's one area where there's loads of progress, isn't there? Or certainly people have predicted. I mean, I know Elon Musk has been predicting full self-driving for like 15 years. He said, we'll have it next year. Yeah, he's raving on about them. They are on the way. I just mention this because Kawasaki at the moment,

there are lots of, like, should robots look like humans is a big debate? Like, should, is a bipedal humanoid figure the most efficient use for a robot? normally no obviously but Kawasaki are working on a robo horse oh I've seen this too it sounds so good it's a motorbike with legs basically

it's called corleo really which I think is weird because callios is the first letters of Corleone which is the family of the godfather which does feature a horse right? Head of one yeah yeah

but they're developing sensors so hopefully it'll respond to you just like a horse does as in you're moving your body around you know you're digging in with your heels or you're bouncing up and down or you're literally or you're squeezing your thighs or I don't write horses but whatever clearly

but that would be pretty cool I think a robotic horse would be awesome yes and I've seen I mean I've seen videos of these so there must be a prototype out there and terrain wise they can do the same things that an animal could better than wheels and I think that's the

that's where we're getting with but do they look like their walking property because we've tried to make humanoid robots look like they walk properly and they still don't They're getting pretty close now. I've seen the one that claims to be closest and I still think it looks like a very elderly shuffling person. I met the first robot that could run by Piedle one. It wasn't programmed to run but it saw you coming, didn't it?

Stop offering a Russian chocolate. What was it called? It was the Honda one. Asimo. He was a guest on QI. He was a guest on QI and I danced with him. I remember. And he did look like the most human one there, actually.

But yeah, then he ran. And that was like at the time, which can only have been 15 years ago. Yeah, 12 years ago. That was the biggest thing in robotics. But now it's crazy. But now, but now, I don't think that has been left behind that much. And again, doing basic tasks. Like Google DeepMind did a big brag last year about how it's got a robot to tie a shoelace for the first time ever.

And it's two massive arms, incredibly ungally and incredibly slowly, only doing the bow bit. Anna, Anna. As soon as they can tie our shoelaces together, that's where they could take over the world. Exactly. Then they'll be able to make nooses. And do you know what they're going to use those for, Anna? Us. Right? Reese, do you think we're all doomed? Yes. When robots are ready to go, and this is what my show is actually about. I'm touring here in the UK. And my show is about the demise of humanity because of AI and robotics. And how can we stop it? And why does AI have to be in the creative world? Can we please not have it? Because once it takes, all of our creative jobs away from us. What are we doing? And that was written by ChatGTPT, that show, was it?

No, I've had a couple of goes with Chat GPT, and we just don't get on. Who doesn't like whom, though? Oh, I don't think it likes me. Do you know my favourite AI, if we can call it AI? Sure. It was invented by the AI pioneer, who sounds awesome, Marvin Minsky, and he was around in the 1950s. He went to MIT, and actually his boss said when he'd

joined MIT, don't work on anything that's going to take less than 30 years. We're playing the long game here, which is a dreamy thing for robots to say. So he had to have something to entertain him, little projects on the side. So he invented this thing called the useless machine. And it was a robot capable of doing one thing, which was that if you turned it on, it ejected its hand out and turned itself off again. Wow. Isn't that so great?

I love that. What happens if it stops working? You usually have to turn it off and turn it back on again. Yeah, I don't know. Just while we're on this fact, a robot in California shooting its inventor, there's a Wikipedia page of unusual deaths in the 20th century and it's stunning.

Oh, really? It's so good. Okay, R. Stanton Walker, right? Yeah. This guy called R. Stanton Walker. In 1902, he was watching a baseball game with friends and a ball, a foul ball, hit him in the hand. Unfortunately, he's halfway through passing his friend a knife,

a large and sharp one, which then is driven into his chest, And he dies within a few minutes. I mean, this is final destination, isn't it? It sort of is, isn't it? Yeah. The designer and builder of the first ever offshore lighthouse, Henry Wynneley. Oh, this is a little longer ago.

Comedy is more acceptable about it. 1698, he builds it. It's offshore in Devon, right? And, you know, a very wild bit of coast. The Eddystone rocks. He says it's going to survive the greatest storm that could ever be. Five years later, he is inside it for the great storm of 1703. He is never found.

Neither is the lighthouse. It just disappears into the sea. I know, tragic. Do they have Robbie Williams in there? Because I'm pretty sure Robbie Williams is the name of the first person to be killed by a robot. I didn't find him. I mean, it's a long old list. This is from memory, but I think he was working in a factory that had robotics there.

Yeah, in the 70s. Yeah, it was like something that builds cars, that kind of thing. It was the arm of a machine that whipped him. But he was called Robbie Williams. Now he's loving angels instead. Ha! Ha! Ha!

That is all of our facts for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to get in touch with any of us, we can be found in various bits of the, you know, internet universe. Andy, where are you? I'm on Instagram at Andrew Hunter-Rem. James. My Instagram is no such things James Harkin.

Reese, do you have any kind of presents? Yes, Rees-Darby present. And I'm also in your theatres for the next few weeks. So please, if you're listening in the UK, come and see my show. It's Rees Darby, the Legend Returns. And where do you get tickets? online, reesdaby.com.

It's all listed there. There you go. Do it. So there you go. If you want to get in touch with Reese, apparently you just have to go to one of his shows and shout whatever questions you've got from the audience. Oh, Chris Nibble. We've got a coffee for you.

Audience full of Starbucks employees. Oh my God. And if you want to get in touch with us as a group, you can email podcast.cui.com or go to at no such thing on Twitter or out no such thing as a fish on Instagram. Or if you go to No Such Thing as a Fish. You can get all of our old episodes. You can go to the live bit, which gives you links to various live shows we've got coming up.

We're very excited. We're going to be playing at the Crosswire Festival in a month. Go there to get your tickets now. And if you want to join our super secret exclusive club that we publicize all the time and isn't secret at all, then please join up to Clubfish where we post loads of nice bonus content, ad-free episodes. Us just jollying around, we read out emails from listeners, which are better than anything we've got to say. So get there, that's clubfish. And if you don't want to do any of that rubbish, then just come back again next week, where we'll be back again with another four facts.

We'll see you then. Goodbye.