It's quite common to make army animals a higher rank than their handler, making it a military crime to mistreat them.

Recently found out my grandfather served with Sgt. Reckless. I was so proud

1:15 My privates are out-ranked by horses as well. I'll admit it. :P

"Most of the horses I've seen were civilians". That's fantastic.

All my Horses scratch their itchy ears with a foot and maintain standing while doing so, so a Horse could technically salute

"The Marines taught Reckless survival skills" isn't nearly as funny when you remember to capitalise the name.

We should all send that in to Mythbusters. "Could a rider on a fast horse safely escape the delayed explosion of an anti-personnel landmine?"

I now want to make a steampunk outfit and carry a cat around. "Terry Google of the Wiltshire Googles how may I be of service?"

I love how, everytime there's a guy (or gal or mare, as the case may be) who's somewhat badass, these guys' imaginations run wild and make them ten times greater.

Damn. I was hoping he was going to say she had 51 confirmed kills in a single day.

I know this is old, but right around 15:45 Gary mentions the lift doors opening. I lived in a college town and they had a gaming and anime con. I brought my daughter that was probably 2 1/2 years old. She decided that she wanted to wear her bear outfit. If ever there was a place you could get away with it, that was the place. At one point we came up the elevator in front of the information desk at the commons. I was in the corner of the elevator, and she was right in front of the door. The look on the face of the people working at the desk as the doors open and all they saw was a little person in a bear outfit... priceless.

"Episode 50's just going to be us going, 'Heh heh, cocks'" - Tom, from Episode 24 of the podcast. Turns out civility held out longer than expected... Happy 50th episode!

A bit late to the game here, but I just wanted to say how appropriate it is that the prize of a still-needs-to-be-caught pigeon went to the ornithologist.

Would this imply that the USA let female horses serve in the military before female humans?

15:16 you can hear Matt struggle to find the word carousel and not say horse tornado.

A horse in a ballgown with medals in a lift is among the funniest mental images I've ever had

Poor Reckless, gets promoted to Staff Sergeant (E6) and almost everything referring to her including her biography get her rank wrong. You'd think the Commandant of the Marine Corps hanging a rocker on you with your Purple Heart would make it official enough for people to remember it.

Rewatching this just makes me disappointed that we never had an episode about Wojtek, The Soldier Bear.

Gary needs to start a kickstarter for his comic autobiography of Sgt. Reckless.

I am now imagining "Mad" jack churchill riding sgt reckless into battle

Also Anti-Tank mines are more blast-based, whereas Anti-Personnel mines are more shrapnel heavy.

We need someone to animate "The Adventures of Sergent Reckless"

How do you zip line en masse to the poop deck? The poop deck is at the very rear of a ship and thus is usually higher than the main deck. You would have to zip line from somewhere up one of the masts and you normally don't get many people climbing the same bit of rigging all at once. Also, imagine Jack Churchill atop this horse. They'd be unstoppable.

also 2:26: Tom explaining glasses to THE ONE PERSON AT THE TABLE CURRENTLY WEARING GLASSES!

You buggers! This shit's really addictive!!!!!

I love the amount of time they spent discussing and rationalising glass for a horse! "Formation skydiving" nearly made me spit my drink out.

Alright, somebody get to work on the Sergeant Reckless comic book! Now!

"Sergeant Reckless the movie", A blockbuster waiting to happen!

Now I want to know if Sgt Reckless received custom dress blues to wear. That would look awesome

They call them operation theatres because in Victorian times (could be older I can’t remember) they would do surgeries in a big theatre full of spectators and medical students etc so everyone could see. Heroic age of medicine and all.

I’ve been re-watching every episode of the Technical Difficulties on KZfaq, I genuinely think this one is my favorite Citation Needed. Absolutely hilarious story, Gary’s impressions of the war-torn horse were brilliant, the visual concept Chris came up with of Reckless just running along a minefield was brilliant. Top tier

anarchy with the mystery biscuits

You don't salute Sergeants, Tom! They work for a living! Even if they're horses.

5:44 That was pretty much my reaction when I heard that Google had bought Boston Dynamics.

Six years later. Still hilarious. Yes I am rewatching tech diff starting from season 1. It took me a month on and off to get to here, but it is worth it.

C'mon Matt! How did you miss the opportunity to say "HORSEpital"

This episode is actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Sargeant Reckless.

14:05 Actually, horses are incapable of vomiting.

I had a great idea for an end show prize :D A stylish propulsion machine presented by a famously voiced panda with an all groin waxing: Jack Black's Back Pack Jetpack and Back Sack Crack.

The horse was known as originally named "아침해" (Ah Chim Hai, Korean pronunciation: [a tsim hæ]) in Korean, which translates to "Morning Sun"

The old happy valley raccourse on Hong Kong Island (famed for been in a street of sky scrapers) use to have the parade ring on top of a sky scraper and all Horses would go up and down in a horse lift

Was Sergeant Reckless ever ridden by Jack Churchill?

I like the Citation Needed videos, but this one was just brilliant. I litterally have tears in my eyes now. Keep up the good work!

Terry Google & Sons is my favourite folk band

@Tom about the heavy glasses thing: those are heavy glasses for a _human,_ where the visual acuity has to be high so they still need to use a perfectly transparent medium. A horse doesn't need to see as much detail, in fact it would probably benefit from seeing a slightly fuzzy world, so you could use Fresnel lenses for thinness and lightness.

Damn, it's three years later that I watch this episode, and I had no idea that Boston Dynamics were purchased by Google.

I love this show :) makes my day

Honestly when Chris said "b a n g" I actually cried.

about that thing of moving fast enough to not get caught by the explosion of the mines in the minefield. It was supposedly discovered during The Great Toyota War, the conflict between Chad and Libya 1986-1987, that a Toyota pickup doing over 100km/h could clear the blast of the mines in time and not get hit.

This show is one of my all time favourites. Hope this will continue a long time.

No alliteration for the prize at the end?!

How would you even go about horse optometry? You can't ask the horse if its vision gets better.

This show is literally the best thing I've found on KZfaq in a long time. I'm going through the older episodes now, and it's great. I wish I had friends like you guys, you're awesome. Can't wait for the next episode! Keep it up guys and thanks for the great entertainment!

Third difference to add to the list of differences between anti-tank and anti-personnel land mines. (Low hanging fruit here). One of them is a much bigger explosion than the other, because one of those targets is way harder to kill.

Love the new content, Tom! Question though, when Matt asks about the horse's sister having a prosthetic leg, you called it an "Open Modifier". At the same time I called it a "Dangling Modifier". I ask you, the linguist, if there a difference between an Open Modifier and a Dangling Modifier? Is it a culture thing? I'm in the US. My searches were not conclusive. :)

I can't figure out why the hell I find Tom so entertaining.

surely the prize for Matt guessing that a horse had been involved in an amphibious landing should be Mystery Seabiscuits?

Every single member of a military or uniformed group: “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SALUTE SERGEANTS YOU NUMPTIES”

One of the absolute best you've ever done. This was amazing!

Fun fact: Boston Dynamics was bought by the Japanese based SoftBank Group in 2017.

Hands down one of the best episodes

Just look at Tom's expression at 10:01 . It almost matches "Flags and water" exasperation.

I really want to see a graphic novel detailing your version of the exploits of Sargent Reckless

Gary's description of Sergeant Reckless makes her sound like an equine Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica

When they talk about the horse outranking the privates in her platoon - I think that's actually true. From what I understand, military dogs, by official U.S. military policy, outrank their human handlers. This is so the handlers don't mistreat or abuse the dogs.

For anyone interested, Boston Dynamics isn’t owned by Google anymore, it’s currently owned by Hyundai Motor Company

These videos are great! I love the random trivia and interplay of the "contestants".

I really want to see that Comic that Gary's writing.

Funny that they described "If Google Was a Guy"

I can just imagine Julie D'Aubigbyn riding Sgt. Reckless into the night

I'm surprised no one remarked on Tom's "reckless battlefield survival skills"

Discovered that this episode is now mentioned on Sergeant Reckless' article

This is my all time favourite episode of citation needed

As an optician apprentice I feel obligated to comment - nowadays mineral glass (Silicat glass) or what we actually call “glass” in day-to-day life is rarely used for spectacles. Almost all of the time the lenses are made of plastic of sort (like polycarbonate) which can have a higher, or at least the same refractive index as silicat glass meanwhile being much lighter and less prone to break. It does scratch more easily, so it requires protective coating, however it does not affect the weight of the spectacles whatsoever. Although it is quite individual and sometimes it can be beneficial to use flint glass, but again - rarely. About 90-95% of the lenses I have ever handled at work were plastic. 2:30

Hey Tom, ever heard of aspheric polycarbonate lenses or simply policarbonate, bit less fancy ones or even cr39, glass lenses are getting rearer these days, and most glasses are actually made of plastic and they are much much lighter than glass lenses. Added UV protection and HMC layers reduce amount of light that comes trough but they don't really whey any more.

The big question that nobody asked is what did the horse spend its sergeants pay on?

You guys have way to much fun

Made a quick calculation here: Blast radius of a anti-personal mine:5-10m Delay of such mines: few seconds to minutes. Assuming 1s delay and 10m radius, minimal speed for surviving a ride through a minfield: 36kph Speed of a well trained race horse : 56-64 kph Conclusion : there is a big enough margin that this would probably work. Picturing a horse running with explosions going off behind her and a cigarette in her mouth

It does delight me that if one goes to Sergeant Reckless Wikipedia page, under "In Popular Culture" this episode is referenced. There's also apparently a horse musical show based on her life, and that intrigues me.

You people make me smile. :)

I could not breathe during half this episode I laughed so much.

poly-carbonate lenses are extremely light, the real question is why are you wearing glasses with actual glass?

I love this so much it's ridiculous! Also, the bit about filing cats and kittens, I found it interesting...

an antipersonelle mine explodes after you let go because then it ties up multiple people trying to save the guy on the mine, and opens them up to sniper fire and ambush.

Just discovered this series and watching in order. It seems that every time I say, "that's my Favorite episode, I LOLed so much" I get an ever more amazingly funny one. Love you guys

Still the high light of KZfaq for me keep it up guys.

That was the most hilariously tranquil episode so far. Keep 'em coming! Cheers from Mexico! :D

3:23 a chestnut is a red horse. brown horses are called bays

It was considered that her bumping you while you were eating was an order to share food.

This may be my new favorite episode.

Holy Christ. I don't know the last time I laughed that hard. Great episode

Hey now. Rex Harrison's Doctor Doolittle gave General Bellows' horse a pair of corrective glasses. Admittedly, they did hang from the neck as well as the bridge of its snout.

i knew someone who got kicked in the crotch by a horse hard enough to physically pick him up and huck him backwards.

Funniest video I've ever seen. I've never laughed this hard before. This video is a classic.

"If you were giving me cat videos to file..... I would do them by category!" Well done that man!

8:36 one might call them illicit biscuits of illiscuts

A horse charging through a minefield faster than the mines can activate? Code Geass: Boukoku no Akito, episode 4 It's more like a mechanical centaur, but that still counts, right?

I do love the fact that this _horse_ technically outranked some humans in the military. Imagine you go through the brutal process of becoming a soldier only to be outranked by a former race horse.

***** I just watched this episode with KZfaq's automatic subtitles, and hilarious is a severe understatement.

TIL anti-personal mines and anti-tank mines are different.