This is the Technical Difficulties, we’re playing ‘Citation Needed’.
Joining me today, he reads books y'know, it’s Chris Joel.
I thought o'summat on t'train, but it’s gone now.
Everybody’s favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.
So in the end I just stocked up on booze from the Tesco’s,
had a massive dump and went to sleep.
And the bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.
And this is what a live studio audience applauding sounds like!
And today we are talking about 'Acoustic Kitty'.
Is it when you don’t put the jack in before you squeeze it?
What?
Acoustic kitty.
Electric kitty!
Right, yes.
You’re playing a cat with a feedback pedal, I get where you’re going with that.
I didn’t get the 'jack' bit and I thought it was like a car-jack or something.
No, just grab the tail.
No, that’s elevated kitty.
Yes, if you did it with a cat’s tail they do get, generally,
a little bit higher each time.
Top Cat!
And when you take it out, low cat.
Is it like some kind of loud bank?
Oh, get out.
Get out!
I’ve just worked that one out.
Get out.
You’ve going to have to explain that one.
Isn’t a kitty like a fund or something?
Yes, it is.
That got a boo!
I’m all about the groaning today!
Today, may I say, on behalf of us and the entire audience,
you are the f***ing worst.
Oh, harsh(!)
Surely every cat is acoustic?
I'm telling you, man, not necessarily!
So since Bob Dylan electrified his cat, then…?
You’re actually in roughly the right era.
So 1960s.
Yes, absolutely.
And it’s an actual cat.
Yes, it is an actual cat.
But, it’s not like cats were silent until the '60s.
It’s not like no one had ever, I don't know, surprised one
or stood on its tail, or actually not fed one
because, trust me, they are f***ing acoustic when they’ve not been fed.
I know, but until 1916 they used to have another, smaller cat
following them around with a series of placards saying “meow” on them.
Until, one day, the first cat burped, and went...
And they found their first talkie.
I just had the worst and best idea at the same time.
Teach your cat to hook a little flag onto its tail
that says what it actually means.
How would you train the cat in the first place?
One of the flags it would need would be the flag to say,
“Don’t train me to hold up flags!”
Can I just say, in the five seconds that I had there to work this s*** out,
at no point had I thought this through.
That’s abundantly clear!
Right, I thought, “Oh, you could do that”.
By the time you started going, I went, “Oh, you really can’t.”
It’s fine.
That’s how the process of discovery happens.
Well!
Look before you leap.
Don’t nail flags to cats without considering the consequences.
I did not mention nails!
I said hook.
It’s a little thing like that, like you get on a-
What? A ringworm?
No!
I know the thing, it’s on the top of an orange juice carton.
One of those-
- Ring-pull? - Yes!
How will that hold a flag on?
- Glue! - You want a ring-pull feline?
Why just not nail it to the cat then?
A ring-pull's for taking things off!
Yes, but I’m finding another use for it, for f***’s sake!
Oh, you’re recycling now!
Yes!
- First buy your orange juice. - Yes! Yes!
- Pull the tab, place to one side. - Yes!
Drink the orange juice, cut the flag out of the orange juice…
So hold on, this is basically a cat saying,
“orange juice” for the rest of its life?
On the one side it says orange juice...
...on the other side it says nothing!
On the other it says, “Food” or, “Toilet” or, “I hate you” or, “Ow.”
And you’re going to train the cat to get a different one...?
Yes, I am, there’ll be...
But they can’t use the scissors to cut out the orange juice carton!
They have a HUMAN HELPER!
You haven’t thought this through!
I know!
Stop judging me!
I have all these ideas, all the time!
You’ve managed to catch one in the nth-of-a-second
that the idea existed as a thing in my mind.
Anybody else want to take a swing,
just while we’ve got him on the run?
While he's down?
The thing is, amidst all that, Gary…
- Oh god. - Don’t tell me he’s got a point.
You were talking about terrible ideas that briefly sounded like a good thing,
and I’m giving you a point for it.
Yes!
Here we go…
Isn't there a thing in 'Monty Python' where they hit mice to make an instrument?
Is that like an acoustic kitty but with-
You’re thinking the wrong way round here.
You’re thinking production of noise.
A listening cat?
Espionage?
F***!
So, you feed the cat LSD to achieve mind control,
put on your tinfoil hat and send it to listen.
- You’ve got one part of that right... - Tinfoil hat!
and it’s not the LSD or the tinfoil hat.
Tinfoil cat!
So, they’ve strapped a tape recorder or something to a cat
and let it wander in places.
A big reel-to-reel on the back.
A big Uher on the back!
I’ll give you the point,
they did attach something to it but it wasn’t a big reel-to-reel tape.
Oh, it’d be a radio transmitter...
Rockets!
Yes…
No.
It’s got to get there, and they don’t walk far.
You’ve absolutely right.
You’ve also used the word ‘strap’,
I’m giving you a point for radio transmitter,
but strap is definitely not right.
Implant?
- Absolutely right. - What?!
Apparently, I’m the sensible one this episode.
Yes.
So, me putting my cat in a dress for medical reasons is weird
but implanting a microphone in a cat, totes normal.
That’s the way today’s going for everybody.
Yes, in an hour-long procedure a veterinary surgeon implanted
a microphone in the cat’s ear canal
Oh...
a small radio transmitter at the base of its skull
Oh!
and a thin wire into its fur.
Agh!
That’s what the cat said.
I like the fact it’s a perfectly normal looking cat after this,
apart from the aerial with the red flashing light on top.
Who might’ve done that?
Is it... is it... is it Russia?
No.
Is it... is it... is it America?
Yes.
Yes, it was the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology.
How the hell did the CIA manage to out-weird Russian intelligence?
They probably didn’t, but we don’t know what the Russians were up to,
because of Russian intelligence.
While they were implanting microphones in cats
the Russians were firing theirs into the icy vacuum of space, let’s face it.
With even bigger antennas!
Yes, it was the CIA from America.
The idea being that the cat would wander into a place
and just be surreptitiously recording things.
Let me guess, the cat didn’t wander where they wanted it to wander.
Because it's a cat.
Yes.
What they did they have to do another operation to get around?
Oh no, this isn’t the old woman who swallowed a fly is it?
They don’t end up sending an elephant in to distract from the cat?
They’ve invented, by the way, the Cyberman cat there, incidentally!
Because they've been replacing parts.
Make them bionic.
But, how can you…
I can only go in grim places to what they had to do to fix…
They bypassed the cat’s sense of hunger, apparently.
- Oh, for... how?! - What?!
- Grim. - I’m just quoting what it says here.
It is grim.
Cats are always hungry.
Yes, that was one of the problems with it.
The CIA really know what tuna sounds like.
(Is that what cats eat? I’ve never fed one.)
So, how much did this cost?
To get a cat, to do the research-
Well, the cat’s cheap.
Yes, to be fair, the cat was probably cheap but the entire project here,
according to Victor Marchetti, former CIA officer,
how much did they spend on a... on a cat?
Was it a dollar sign with the word "ridiculous" after it?
Hang on, Price is Right rules?
Yeah, Price is Right rules, closest one without going over.
We’re in dollars, yes?
Yes, we’re in US dollars.
US dollars in the 1960s,
so it’s about half what you have now.
I’m going to say half-a-million.
He’s saying half-a-million.
“One million dollars.”
Now, we know what you do now.
Is he going to do the $1 bid, or is he going to go high?
Well, I’m not going high, I was going to say $150,000
but you pointed to him first.
Well, you’re correct but you’re not even close, $20m.
F***!
So they got the cat.
No way, really?
They implanted things in the cat.
Where did they release the cat?
Okay, not... surely not in the abroads?
No, it was in America, I’ll give you that.
Embassy Row, if there is such a thing,
in New York, or Washington or something.
Yes, you’re absolutely right, the Soviet compound in Washington DC.
So, someone walked up to the Soviet compound,
- bunged a cat over the wall... - threw a cat at it!
Or was it parachuted in?
No, the first mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park out...
...sorry, parachuted?!
Yeah!
I’m not entirely convinced that a cat is going to be really good at pulling its rip-cord.
It’s coming from low-altitude, it’ll have the wire that...
- It's a static line. - Oh, wire attached to it.
Ha-ha!
Not so stupid now.
They released it.
It did wander towards the park bench.
What happened?
It died of hunger because they’d bypassed its hunger centre.
I was going to say, they bypassed its hunger centre,
but it'd go in to the kitchen and eat all the lovely tuna
that had been left cooling on a window-sill, or something like that.
Put a wee flag up saying, “I’m a spy.”
Did it immediately have a dump?
Yeah, mark its territory.
And that’s all that was recorded.
Marking its territory, yes.
It is, sadly, a little bit harsher.
Oh, hit by a car.
Yes, hit by a taxi immediately.
Oh, we're all the worst...
The twenty million dollar cat...
“We can rebuild it!... oh actually, never mind.”
...was hit by a taxi almost immediately.
Are these guys with dark glasses,
dark car parked over the round from the compound,
releasing the cat out of the boot of the car...
"Good work agent, and now we..."
The former Director of the CIA Technical Service
said that’s an urban myth, and the actual problem with it was what?
It walked off.
Yes, training the cat, I’ll give you the point for that.
The project was considered to be a failure and a total loss.
What happened to the cat?
Well, you just said it got run over.
Did it have a proper military burial?
No, this is the alternate story.
This is what the CIA-
Did it defect to work for the other side?
I like that idea because clearly the Russians have better tuna.
It goes through the gate, on the other side is a Russian Blue.
“Welcome, Agent Tiddles.”
If the Russians had better tuna...
they’d be able to pick up on the frequencies transmitted by it better.
Tuner, oh…
Radio tuner, oh my god.
Four. It’s passed the boundary.
Snuck over.
Yes, I’m sorry, it’s an ugly four, though,
it really is, it’s off the edge.
According to that CIA Director,
what happened to that cat once they ended the program?
Did it just go and live with other people all the time,
picking up on hilarious conversations
that could be made into an excellent film now I’ve just thought of it?
There’s a cracking kids’ book in that.
Yes.
Yes, the equipment was taken out of the cat, the cat was resewn.
Hang on, that’s two massive things you’ve just skipped over there.
One, "the equipment was taken out of the cat" is a sentence
that I’m pretty hopeful would only be heard in this room today,
and, “The cat was sewn up.”
Yes, it was, and lived a long and happy life afterwards.
I’m going with hypothesis A somehow.
I can only imagine that it actually got shipped off to Portmeirion
and it’s now wearing a little blue blazer
and being chased by just a normal sized balloon down a beach.
It’s a slow burning ‘Prisoner’ reference there.
That was a slow burn.
This is getting some weird reactive wave.
Anyone who’s seen ‘The Prisoner’, that landed, that was good.
I’m envisioning the whole thing now.
You can see the whole title sequence, can't you?
Entertain yourselves, this is a good half-hour for me now.
I have managed to pull up here something from
the actual National Archives of the United States,
a redacted document.
About a cat?
What did they think they could do with cats?
Distractionating!
While a better trained animal
actually goes and does the listening.
What, like a chimp with a little microphone?
And a suit, and shaved.
Obviously, you’ve got to blend in.
In fact, just a small person.
We could even use full-sized people.
We could call them spies!
“That’s a step too far, agent.”
“Okay...!”
I suppose, the only thing a cat can do is
just wander in unexpected and everyone be fine with that.
Yes, you’re absolutely right, trained to walk short distances.
That was $20m and high-tech cat bug equipment-
- To go 5 metres? - Yes.
And only if they wanted to go that way anyway.
Why don't you just lob it?
Again, however, and I’m quoting here,
“The environmental and security factors force us to conclude that,
“for our purposes, it would not be practical.”
“But, damn it, we tried”, basically.
Have you ever had an essay where you know your conclusion is terrible?
Yes.
But you have to write a conclusion anyway.
“The work done on this problem over the years reflects great credit
“on the personnel who guided it, particularly... 'redacted',
“whose energy and imagination could be models for scientific pioneers.”
S***, I probably know the guy, yeah.
There is a connection here to an article labelled ‘remote control animal’.
What?!
Is that an animal used to remote control or remote control of an animal?
Remote control of an animal.
Ohh…
'Cos the other way round they use pigeons for bombs.
I was going to say, pigeons in bombs.
The Brits did that, I think.
They put a pigeon in a bomb and they trained it to peck on cities.
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
It pecked on a bit of glass and which bit of glass they did
pulled a lever which made the bomb turn,
and then it went down to the ground.
It landed.
Well done there, that was worth it.
So, it wasn’t that?
No, it wasn’t, but that’s a brilliant story.
Yes, it was BF Skinner’s pigeon controlled guided bomb.
How do you think that worked?
What, for the pigeon it sounds pretty s*** either way, I'll be honest.
What did we call this weapon, incidentally?
Er, Project Pigeon.
That’s a shame.
Clever. Clever.
I was going to go for the V-Coo.
Did Churchill not like the idea?
Is this one of these where you could flick a coin
and on Monday he’d like it and on Tuesday he’d hate it?
"Our problem was no one would take us seriously."
Well, if you’re going to call it Operation Hilarious Pigeon Bomb,
or whatever they called it…!
There was also the Bat Bomb.
They attached incendiary bombs to bats
and then dropped a casing with 1000 bats on woodland.
F... what?!
Incendiary bomb: thus.
Bat: that.
Small incendiary bomb.
What, like matches basically then?
Firecrackers.
Yes, the idea being that it was on somewhere
that had a lot of tinder and kindling,
and if you have hundreds of bats, one of them’s going to find the target.
- That is horrific. - Yes.
I like the fact that the first time they tested it
they're flying over the target, the pulled the lever on the bomb bay,
and the bats are just hung upside down in the bomber.
And on the clipboard he just writes,
“maybe try night-time” or something like that.
It’s just a bloke in a white coat.
“Hmm, yes.”
“Bats insufficiently motivated.”
It did, apparently, work.
Astonishingly enough.
What, dropping 1000 small incendiary bombs caused a fire?
One is stunned!
The bats seem incidental to this process actually, right now.
They were more about distribution, where did it set fire to first?
- The bat houses. - The plane.
Yes, pretty much, an auxiliary airbase where they were testing it and it got away.
It’s not great, have a point.
“Wait a minute, it’s night-time!”
“S***.”
“We used homing pigeons!
“And for some reason they keep coming home.”
The bats incinerated the test range and roosted under a fuel tank.
Fuel tank?!
- Fuel tank, yes. - Whaaa!
It worked.
It was effective,
and then computer control came in a few years later when the war ended.
What, of bats?
Well that’s where we started, isn’t it?
This is a tangent.
Can you imagine that at the start?
“What caused the fire?”
“Bats.”
“How did the bats start a fire?”
“I strapped a bomb to them.”
“What happened?”
“Went in the fuel tank at night.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. What else have you done?”
“Homing pigeons.”
“Oh no, no, no, no, no.”
“Salmon with warheads on.”
“Oh s***, they’re going to come back aren’t they?”
Are there still bats out there that have to be defused, I wonder, after the war?
I don’t think bats live that long, I'll be honest with you.
‘Warning, unexploded bat.’
Did they evolve to have incendiary bombs in them?
That’s... not how evolution works.
Yet.
Tell that to the bombardier beetle.
There was also, and this is a brief and quite dark story
but I’m going to go with it anyway-
Oh yes, because that will change the tone of the episode.
The anti-tank dog.
Alright, yeah, okay.
One louder, fine(!)
Was it a dog that really didn’t like tanks?
Well it didn’t when it hit 'em.
Quite the opposite.
Trained to associate the image of a tank with food,
run towards it with...
- Bomb on. - Yes. Spot on. What was the...
Well, Spot was all over it by the end of it.
“Run Spot, run...!”
There was one slight problem.
This was a Soviet plan, what was the problem with the plan?
'Cos they actually got to the point of releasing dogs on the battlefield.
Ran towards T34s instead of Tigers.
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
They were trained on Soviet tanks so they ran towards the Soviet tanks.
I am thick as mince,
and even I can see where that’s going wrong, right?
Just make a cardboard cut-out.
Or a balloon, or something like that, yeah.
There were some successful deployments
but they eventually realised that was not a great idea.
I think that may have to be where we call this-
On that massive downer.
Well, I was going to say, “On that bombshell,” but...
At the end of the show, congratulations Matt, you win this one.
Yay!
Very clearly, you win this one.
You win some rice, raw fish and seaweed in the shape of a luxury car.
It’s a sushi Rolls Royce.
With that we say thank you to Chris Joel.
Bye then.
To Gary Brannan.
To Matt Gray.
I’ve been Tom Scott, we’ll see you next time.
And thank you to you.
Thank you so much.
Man, that got dark.
Yeah...