144: Let's visit Greenland!

In Warhammer 40K, what is the name of the group of Space Marines that paint their armor blue?

The answer to that at the end of the show.

My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral.

Hello, dear friends.

Are you ready to unlock your inner puzzle-solving potential?

Are you ready to embrace the power of positive lateral thinking?

You are, because here at Lateral, we believe in you.

We know that deep down, inside each and every one of you, there's a genius just waiting to break free.

It's time to banish those negative thought patterns, to silence that inner critic that says you can't, and to say, yes, I can, probably,

maybe solve this weird question about Korean banknotes.

Here to let their mind wander, but hopefully not too far.

First of all, we have from the Terrible Lizards podcast and author of The Cursed Tomb, which is now out in bookstores welcome back to the show izzy lawrence thanks very much for having me back i am here to um be as lateral as possible i've been copying crabs since my last appearance and i'm getting

the last time i saw you was at the book launch for the cursed tomb and what i remember was someone from the british museum looking through one of your books and looking at an illustration going wait are those are naming an incredibly specific bit of clothing from history and you go yes yeah yeah i've got the illustrator to do that yes yes yes.

That was for a different one of my books.

That was for the Time Machine Next Door.

And I did, because Iron Age Britain, that was famous for their, so selling Rome their slaves, their dogs, and their duffel coats.

So the duffel coat was a big export from Britain because it was very waterproof clothing back in the turn of, you know, in 1 AD, it was a big deal.

So yes, that is...

That's the sort of level of pedantry that I bring to children's literature.

Historically accurate children's fiction.

Well, I don't know if any of that will stand you in good stead for the questions today, but very best of luck.

We also welcome back to the show from Escape This Podcast, Solve This Murder, from so many other things.

It is, I think, our most regular guest.

You are here for show number one.

We are back for show 10

a lot.

It is always lovely to see you.

We will start with Danny Silla.

Hi, Tom.

I love the intros to these episodes still.

I feel like last time we were here, we may have been convinced to vote for you for mayor or governor or something this time i started to get slight vibes that we were going to join your cult but i was happy all the same i was going to go for it the experimental nature of some of these introductions uh that they always seem to be placed with the with the returning crew just to to you folks are comfortable here we'll try something weird oh yeah it works for me

what are you working on at the minute what are you uh putting out into the world

besides all the normal stuff god what have we got so yeah we're still going regularly with escape this podcast a lot of our video game stuff is now out and available to the world, our golden idol work.

And we have been doing a big, hard push into Solve This Murder content.

So all our murder mysteries are going to be coming out this year.

We also have on the show, also returning from episode one and many others, the other half of Escape This Podcast and Solve This Murder, Bill Sunderland.

Hey, I'm back.

I'm still here.

I never left.

I've been in every episode since the first one, but you haven't heard me all the time.

You've just been lurking in the background.

Judging.

I got that one straight away.

We should have done that.

We should have had you just record a hundred or so little notes just to put in, just have some, have them murmuring in the background somewhere.

If you ever do a re-release with the guest commentary, you know that we'll be there.

Yeah, yeah, we'll do the behind the scenes, even for the episodes we weren't on.

Well, very best of luck to all three of you on the show today.

Let's take a deep breath, visualize success, and dive headfirst into the ocean of opportunity.

That is question one.

You've got this.

Thank you to Alex Reinhart for this question.

For 14 years, Ben posted the same 156 words every day on social media.

Why?

And I'll say that again.

For 14 years, Ben posted the same 156 words every day on social media.

Why?

He was obviously really into those.

When I type this statement, I do not give permission to Facebook to allow them to see my pictures and use them.

And they now...

Doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't work.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, Mr.

Reinhart.

Just not going to help.

Yep, that was exactly where my brain went.

A little furious that you've stolen it.

I mean, to be fair, he's a little furious that Facebook have stolen all his stuff.

So

that's true.

It all balances out.

I wonder how

important do we think which 14 years it is is?

Ooh.

It sounds like an early thing rather than a later thing, maybe.

And it couldn't have been Twitter, could it, in the early days?

Because wasn't that the character count lower?

Yeah.

Ooh, good point.

156 words.

No, yes.

Oh, yeah, words.

There's no way.

Sorry.

Yes, words.

I was listening.

Shut up.

So, um.

No, no, you absolutely were.

I wasn't calling you out on that.

You're correct.

The character count is 160 characters and you say it's 156 words.

But the words were not all posted at once.

Well, for people watching watching the video, you could see Tom's face.

He was calling her out.

Yeah, I mean, it's fine.

I'm used to it.

It's fine.

All I'll say is 156 is 13 times 12.

That might be significant.

Intriguing.

There we go.

How much do we have to focus on the maths of this?

Who knows?

I mean, there were numbers.

That's always a thing.

I don't think you'll be able to guess the maths of this, but honestly,

13 times 12.

Bizarre.

14 years.

It's 12, 13, 14.

Ah.

I'm going to keep my mouth shut because knowing that little bit of times tables,

it's not going to be a big clue, but.

I mean, maybe, does this person have an extra finger?

Because that would make sense if you're doing cuneiform counting your 12 times tables.

That's what sort of thing.

Well, that's how why everything's in twelves is because in the olden days, you'd count with your each little part of your finger.

So you'd use your thumb as the counter, and the top of the index, and the middle, and then the end.

And so you've got 12, and you've got a 12 by 12 count, which is 144.

So if you had an extra finger on this side, just an extra half little nub, if you've got your nub at the end, then you could count to 13.

You could get a few more into that.

Exactly.

Because it'd be 156.

Not really, no, but I'm panicking because I have no idea of the answer.

Well, I like what you've done because if this was every year and you've already split this up into 12 times 13, was it actually 13 words a month?

Something like that?

No, not quite.

But you are closer than you might think.

156 words every day.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

It's every day.

So copy of the date.

Did he start every single day by saying it was the best of times, it was the worst of times?

And just go for the whole thing?

That's probably 156 words, right?

I'm pretty sure I had that as a trivia question tiebreaker once.

How many words are in that sentence?

156.

I don't think it was that many.

I want to say it was 80-something, but I can't remember.

Way more than the Lord's Prayer and Patanostrin stuff.

Take your word for that.

How long is Laura Mipsum?

When you say best of times and worst of times, again, you keep circling the answer in ways that

I cannot make puns on right now without giving you the answer.

It was the 13 times, 12 of times.

I'm putting them together.

How?

I've never heard of so many correct-ish things get says.

Right?

I think we might be just missing the whole motivation of this person doing this.

So I'm assuming, we're all assuming that he's like, like us and therefore wanting to show off in some clever way.

So maybe this is just somebody, I don't know, who who misunderstands the use of social media and is just panicking and trying to sort of like googling the same thing every day, but failing i don't know oh it's grand it's grandma just trying to do her google searches yeah it could be it could be that i don't know there was only one word and it was posted 156 times so 156 times a day so what happened was

156 so and you've got 13 so it's once no it's not once an hour is it so oh hang on 12 so 13 13 words every hour so is it just the time uh kind of is it yeah it's kind kind of the time

yeah

it was the best of times and the worst of times which is why i didn't want to make that joke so so hang on so they're posting roughly on average 13 words every hour that's what we've got it it's not every hour because it's we we figured out 13 times 12 so it wouldn't be 13 an hour it'd be 13 for every a.m hour or from six to six yes it would yes okay yeah well i just assumed i i i assumed the natural you know working hours in a week type

yeah it it to me, this feels like, you know, how whenever it's 11-11, you go, oh, wow, it's 11-11.

Make a wish.

I think it's like that, but I don't know how many times that occurs in a day.

Like, it's one minute past one.

I like one, two, three, four.

Or yeah, but oh, yeah, one, two, three, four.

Are you trying to suggest that he's like posting the number five every time a five appears on the phone?

Every time a 69 appears, he's talking

nice.

I'm going to say, Billy, that happens very irregularly on a clock.

1690, which is half past five in the evening.

No, it's half past four.

1730.

1690 is 17.30.

On his metrics clock.

No, you're right.

You're right.

I'm going to read you the question again.

For 14 years, Ben posted the same 150-dong, doesn't he?

That Ben.

Ben.

Talk me through it.

I was going to make a statement saying, oh, it's ding-dong every time, but then I went, that's two words.

You're being silly.

When the clock struck 13 and he bombed 13 times.

Izzy, do you want to run us through what this was?

So Big Ben is the name actually of the bell rather than the clock, but it presumably has its own social media accounts.

And Big Ben, if you don't know, you've been to London.

There's a Big Clock.

It's outside the House of Parliament.

I actually know what's written around it.

I know the lyrics to the Ding Dong ding-dong, by the way.

Just so you know.

They have lyrics.

I mean, as an aside.

You do now have to quote the lyrics.

I'm sorry.

You don't have to sing them, but you don't have to.

Okay,

so everybody goes, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And it's, all through this hour, Lord, be my guide, and by thine power, no foot shall slide.

And it's written on the inside of the bell tower, apparently.

Anyway,

there's a fact.

I know something.

Big Ben obviously has its own social media account, and so therefore is telling everybody the time on social media, which roughly adds up to 156

words a day for the past 14 years.

And then for some reason, it stopped.

The maths on it is one plus two plus three plus four, all the way up to 12, twice a day.

It posted bong.

It just posted bong at one o'clock, bong, bong at two o'clock, and so on and so on.

This was an unofficial account.

This was just someone who in the early days of Twitter set up a bot to post that and found a lot of people following it.

There was a bit of a fuss when the actual managers of Big Ben decided that they wanted the account.

A bit of a kerfuffle there.

But yes, this was the unofficial Twitter account, Big Ben Clock, which was closed down in March 2024 when Twitter changed over to X and closed down all the old bot accounts.

Each of our guests has brought a question along with them.

We will start today with Danny.

All right, let's take a look at this.

This one has been sent in by Catherine Q.

Thank you so much.

Sometime in the 18th century, Hans arrived at an unfamiliar town in Greenland.

Even though he suffered from poor eyesight, he was able to get medical treatment, visit a minister, and stock up on fish without reading signs or asking for directions.

How?

One more time.

Sometime in the 18th century, Hans arrived at an unfamiliar town in Greenland.

Even though he suffered from poor eyesight, he was able to get medical treatment, visit a minister and stock up on fish without reading signs or asking for directions.

How?

I've got to assume this has got to do with the fact that Greenland is very far north and therefore it's dark for a lot of the year anyway.

And so they're not going to be able to rely on signs that much for normal people.

Poor eyesight doesn't make a difference.

Exactly.

So there must be a way that they're laying things out or indicating things that allows everybody to...

But I have no idea what that would be.

Greenland in the 18th century did not have much of a population i mean yeah there was there was one guy and he was a doctor a fishmonger and the third thing that he was well even now greenland is only just opening up to tourism hi greenland facts now

let's go they are just expanding the airport in their capital city Greenland has some US military bases that allow big planes to land, but other than that, only little airports.

I don't know if they've finished it or are about to finish expanding the airport and the capital.

So it can now have like direct large planes come in from America and Europe and land there.

So all of a sudden, after centuries of it being out of the way, like Svalbard, like Iceland, it's going to open up to tourism and it's going to change the place fast.

So I'm not sure of Greenlandic history.

for the 18th century and what was going on there.

18th is really weird because I know that Greenland was obviously it was populated by the Greenland Vikings, but basically, when the walrus trade reduced because people didn't want the walrus tusks anymore, basically, they all went bankrupt and they all had to leave.

And there are towns where like it was like really spooky and abandoned, nobody's really sure what happened, but ultimately people left because it was rubbish living there.

If nobody wanted to buy your walrus tusks, so I don't, I think, I don't know if it has it got anything to do with walrus tusks.

In no direct way does it have anything to do with Walrus Tusks.

That's all my facts gone.

Yeah.

It could be.

I mean, there would have surely been Inuit around there as well, but the name is Hans.

That does not seem like an Inuit name.

That doesn't sound like a Viking name.

That sounds like someone coming in from...

Germany.

Yeah, Germany, Austria, whatever was...

My history knowledge is not good enough to know which countries were which at that point in the 18th century.

No, yeah, or thereabouts.

Just trying to give indication that this person was definitely an out-of-towner.

Yeah, so he arrives, he has bad vision, but that doesn't matter.

He can find what he needs regardless of his capacity to read a sign that says, hi, I'm a doctor.

He sees a doctor.

He buys fish.

What was the third thing he did?

A minister.

Yeah, visitors a minister as well.

Is this because that was my first thought, that it's like that whole fact of like, oh, do you know that barbers and surgeons used to be the same thing?

You'd get your hair cut and then they'd just keep going.

Um,

but then I was, you know, that's why I was saying maybe it's doctors also sold fish and were priests in Greenland in the 1700s.

This is very likely.

No trick about that.

These are likely.

He went to visit three different people for these needs.

So if you're not using sight, what are you using?

Are they yelling their trades?

Do they have scents?

Is it a scent-based market fish?

Fish is easy for that one.

Yeah, fish.

We can take that one off.

That's okay.

The minister, on the other hand, incense.

well it could be exactly catholic we never know incense fish and blood so greenland i don't know if greenland had been settled

in any it would be centuries probably millennia ago they'd arrived if it's settlers from vikings or southern europe maybe what if all the towns were laid out the same Like they just had a plan.

They arrived, like here is the town hall and we for some reason always put the church just north of of that and the market is always just east of that.

It's basically the same town repeated time after time as you go around.

Like ancient Egyptians and breweries and

bakeries are always next to each other.

Look, it's not specifically about layout in that way, but you have identified there would have been some common threads between Greenland towns.

What if this was not...

Every town is the same, but this is just like, hey,

we're all from Frankfurt and we've gone over to Greenland.

And to feel at home, we've built a scale Frankfurt.

It's just Frankfurt, but it's it's we just rebuilt it here, brick by brick.

We copied that town that you're from and we made a new one here in Greenland so everyone feels at home.

That does sound like something 18th century people would do, but not relevant to this.

I was going to say that Frankfurt, which is, I believe, landlocked, would be a really bad idea to put presumably on a coastal.

Hey, I didn't do it.

That's true.

And nor did they.

So

yeah, no one's at fault.

So, okay, maybe this is to do with like auditory stuff.

So maybe there's some sort of,

you know, if we can't see and we can't ask.

No, but to get you on the right track, it is still, it's not about any of the other senses.

I think the fact that he had poor eyesight is mainly to say he wasn't going to be doing any reading.

And presumably also not like symbol stuff.

It's not like how all the ins called the red lion because they had a picture of a red lion sort of thing.

thing.

That is correct.

So that is exactly what we're trying to get rid of, dismissing the idea of text or symbols.

Is it because he arrived in summer and for whatever reason in Greenland they just get rid of all walls?

So they just have it completely open and so you just see everything.

Maybe,

I don't know.

You know what?

Actually, I think that that would be a big problem in this case.

Particularly with the mosquitoes you get there.

I don't think that would be a wise move in the summer.

I think I get to that to say a line that I do love saying as much as possible, which is, Izzy, quite the opposite.

They had so many what are the houses, are the buildings all like set shapes?

Like the doctor lives in a circle and the fishmonger lives in a rectangle?

Or it's all

technically indoors.

The town is just

in one building to protect it from the elements.

It's one big house.

It's just a big house.

I wish that were the answer.

Shapes is not right, but it's certainly pretty close.

They're not different textures of stone.

You build a church out of stone, you build a doctor's office out of sticks, and you build a fishmonger out of straw.

And the big bad wolf comes along.

And Hans is Hans Christian Anderson, and here.

And that's going.

You've gone straight to

children's nursery rhymes and also the shape block things as well.

I love the way your mind is, Bill.

It's very cute.

Do you picture, if you're picturing Greenland or perhaps a couple of the other Scandinavian places and you do picture their buildings, what do you get in your head?

In the 18th century, I'm picturing quite like, you know, I don't picturing a built-up town at all, even though, because I know that they got depopulated, so it's only been repopulated in the last sort of like maybe 500 years at this point.

So I'm thinking.

We are definitely still talking, I believe, colonial-ish

sort of building.

So this was a deliberate effort to be built.

I'm seeing like rows of wooden huts and houses.

You're making me think of some of the like geo-guesser things where you're like, red roofs, that's this place.

Is it that?

Is it the all of this?

Is it colours?

They're just painted completely different colours.

This is about colours.

I forgot about colour.

I forgot how colour exists.

Something about to burst.

Well, yes, but

it feels like I'm doing a travel brag story.

I've been to Greenland.

Oh, what a brag.

I once got to travel across northern Greenland and northern Canada in the High Arctic.

And one of the really big things that the Canadians on the boat pointed out is that you go to like far north Canada and it feels run down, like everyone's just kind of surviving.

There's a lot of shipping containers just kind of sat there doing workers.

It's like, yeah, we'll store stuff there.

It all feels a bit ramshackle.

You go to Greenland, it is sort of beautiful painted doors and painted houses, and it's it's colourful.

It feels like you're in Europe, just a bit colder.

Because it's a scale model of Frankfurt.

And the colours of the doors and the colours of the houses really stood out.

Yeah, this is absolutely intentional.

And nowadays, you can have a bit more of whatever you want, though some of this has stuck for tradition's sake.

But in colonial times, things were color-coded.

And some of the industries specifically were color-coded.

I did a Google of this.

I specifically Googled Greenland hospitals, and some of them, indeed, the pictures that showed up are still yellow, as was their color code back then.

Wow.

Exactly.

That's why.

So, yeah, yellow, hospitals, healthcare.

Red was churches, schools, or the houses of teachers and ministers.

Blue was for the fish factories, of course.

And black for policing.

How funny?

I like it.

That's just like, you know, it reminds me of a worker placement game somehow.

But I like it.

You know what?

One of the clues that was possible to give was, you could argue that the game SimCity did this, in a way.

So gaming, definitely in the cards.

Thank you to Hendrik for this question.

The Chilean government requires all residents of Villa las Estrellas to undergo a surgical procedure they don't need.

What is it and why is it done?

I'll say that again.

The Chilean government requires all residents of Villa las Estrellas to undergo a surgical procedure they don't need.

What is it and why is it done?

I might get to sit this one out.

Well, here's the thing.

I think I can also sit this one out and that would just be rude to Izzy.

Well, I'm going with it's it's it's a secret place and they've just ripped out their eyes so nobody can know.

Or taken out their tongue so nobody knows what happens where you don't actually know the answer to this question.

No hand they can't feel their way back home.

Exactly.

So it's it's unnecessary but you know this is why there is no answer to this question, because nobody's ever been able to answer it.

And therefore, I don't feel surprised.

Tom just really wants to know.

I did worry that this one might fall quickly.

Danny, Bill, where do you think,

I may have mispronounced this, where do you think Via Las Estrellas, Estralas, might be?

Well, let's just say Chile's already pretty far south, but I think you've got to get even further south.

You do a big old jump across the water.

You find yourself in Antarctica.

Was that Astralis at at the end?

Literally just for South?

A house in the South?

Astraus.

I don't know if that is South.

Could be connected.

Who knows?

And classically, there's a thing for people who are going on Arctic research,

Antarctic research jaunts, is they say, hey,

we don't want to make things complicated.

While you're over there, wouldn't it be terrible if your appendix started to burst?

That'd be

a hassle for everyone involved, right?

You don't need that anyway.

It's a pointless organ.

Let's just take that out now before you head down and we'll all be more relaxed.

So I actually wrote a trivia question about these Antarctic procedures some months ago.

And one of the interesting divisions was a lot of people would be yes, if you're going to be there on research over specific months.

I think I was looking at the Australian regulations rather than Chilean.

So I don't know how strict these things are and how much they're the same per country.

But it was, yeah, if you're going to be there during the especially cold, dark months, you're probably going to be stuck there.

You definitely have to get this procedure done.

If you're bringing your family, they should probably have it done.

Also, look into your wisdom teeth as well because that would be annoying too.

Yep, this is on King George Island.

It's a permanently inhabited Chilean territory off the coast of continental Antarctica.

All the inhabitants since 2018, including children, must have their appendix removed because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away.

That's not that far.

The average temperature there is about minus 2, minus 3, so we're talking about 27 Fahrenheit.

The population ranges from about 80 people in winter to 150 in summer.

And penguins.

And probably some penguins, yes.

Izzy, it is over to you for the next question.

This question has been sent in by Jordan Cook Irwin.

One morning, Margot opened the door to see the message.

Hard work, please mumble softly to me.

I can't make a pirate ship.

Unable to draw a parabola.

What did each part mean?

One morning, Margot opened her door to see the message.

Hard work.

Please mumble softly to me.

I can't make a pirate ship.

Unable to draw a parabola.

What did each part mean?

Did anyone take down all those acronyms?

No, no one.

I really didn't.

We could go one by one.

Hard work.

Hard work.

Well, HW is a pretty bad acronym.

You're right.

And the fact that we were said, what does each chunk mean, suggests that we should be able to look at that hard work and get something out of that without the others?

Sure.

Yeah, I immediately started writing down first letters, which were really hard, you'd think.

HW,

PMS, well, please mumble softly.

With his song.

I can't draw a parabola.

If I were you, I would think about the situation before you think about trying to decipher it.

Okay.

Yeah, so what was the situation?

Someone just opened their door and saw the message.

The message.

The message.

Well, it said the door.

It didn't.

It certainly didn't specify what door this was.

Her door.

Her door.

Her door.

Her door.

And so the message.

One morning.

One morning.

It's the morning.

This message comes from the sun.

Margot opened her door to see...

The message.

That's right.

The sun often says hard work.

Please mumble softly to me.

This is a known fact now.

Please mumble softly.

So why would this message be outside Margot's home?

If it was outside her home, that is pretty weird because I was going into all sorts of other doors and places where you might see weird words

not just when you're looking at anagrams, but you know, people who do voice software and they're trying to capture every sound in the language.

So they make them say nonsense sentences and combinations of words.

But if it's outside her front door, it's less likely.

It is outside her front door.

So when would you see a message outside your front door?

You live opposite a giant billboard outside Piccadilly Circus.

Unfortunately.

The only other thing that I'm going is in a

put smarties boxes on cats' legs, make them walk like a robot.

feels like

if there's a sign outside their door, has someone taken the letters and rearranged them into remarkably coherent sentences?

She lives opposite faulty towers, but they're getting really creative by this point.

Alas, alas.

I want you to think,

what I will say is the words were above full pictograms.

Oh,

that's helped.

No, I've got it.

I've got it now.

It's some kind of cursed tomb, and these are the hieroglyphs drawn on.

It's a modern-day situation.

i'll i'll give you that so you don't have to go back to ancient egypt i did see someone it was on tick tock or or some short form thing recently uh going around touring what they called japan's most english

which was

uh t-shirts and uh things in the wild where in the same way that stereotypically like some English and American people will just get tattoos of Chinese and Japanese characters that don't really make sense but they think they do just t-shirts with things like I can't draw a parabola, or hard work, or please mumble softly to me.

They're just

they have taken sentences out of context and they are being used as placeholder text because it looks good.

So I'm going to say that Tom's very, very close to the answer here.

Okay.

Okay.

That's exciting.

A message.

It's on a in the sky.

It's really poorly.

That's a long message to do skywriting for.

It's a long message to do skywriting.

On signs, on like pickety, like protest signs or picket signs or.

It's not technically a sign.

It's just a message.

Not a sign.

Think about the situation.

One morning, it's the morning.

Margot opened her door.

Why did she open her door?

And why did she see this message?

Yeah, that feels like a newspaper getting circulated.

The mail.

Danny said something.

Mail.

The mail.

All right.

What can we do with this?

These are on packages.

These are on some sort of package that's being delivered to her some mornings.

But what on earth are you receiving

every morning or some mornings that will have weird, badly translated or nonsense phrases on it?

I think you've almost got there, Tom.

You just need to put what your previous thought was with this thought, and you've got it.

So the idea of interesting translations, because it is possible that those first two, like hard work, please mumble softly to me, could I suppose theoretically have gone through some language to be this is fragile, please handle with care.

Boom!

Oh, and he's pretty much got it.

So you're correct.

What's the parabola?

Hard work.

Okay, no, let's try and work these out.

Because hard work must be heavy.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly that.

Heavy.

Yep.

What was the next one?

Please mumble to me.

Please mumble softly to me.

Handle with care?

Fragile.

Yeah.

Fragile.

Fragile.

Fragile.

Don't be loud.

Mumble softly to me.

What was the next one?

I can't make a pirate ship.

Oh, right.

I forgot about that one.

Oh, I can't make a pirate ship.

It's dang.

It's got a skull and crossbones on it, and they've bombed Jolly Roger.

Non-poisonous.

Do not

something.

It's a tricky one, this one.

Do not bend?

No.

Not that.

Oh, this is...

Is it this side up?

And they've drawn a picture to make it look like the sail of a ship?

Oh, that'd be so cute.

No, alas not.

Alas not.

What's things about a pirate ship that isn't true about a spaceship?

You can get it wet.

Boom.

Oh.

You do not want this package to be a pirate ship.

Sally's got it.

There you go.

Do not get wet.

And the final one, and you've already said it, is unable to draw a parabola or a parabola I got one say parabola and that's wrong isn't it it's parabola that do not bend

you can't you can't make the flat thing into a parabola there you go that's wonderful but why were they written this way The message was printed on the box of a kitchen gadget that was made in China.

However, the message had not been translated into English very well.

An online forum reached this consensus for the translations.

So we don't actually definitely know, but that is generally what people think.

I love it.

Thank you to James Bailey for this question.

People training to use the Valsalva maneuver are sometimes told to imagine being in a swimming pool to protect their back.

What are they doing, and how does this metaphor help?

I'll say that again.

People training to use the Valsalva maneuver are sometimes told to imagine being in a swimming pool to protect their back.

What are they doing?

And how does this metaphor help?

This sounds familiar.

I think this is bringing something, but I'm not getting there.

When I first read this question, it was the exact same.

I know, I've heard Valsalva maneuver.

It's somewhere in the back of my head and I couldn't quite remember it.

I'm just thinking about why a swimming pool would protect your back and what you do in a swimming tool to protect your back.

And I'm only thinking of diving.

I think it's not like, I think if you were in a swimming pool, this wouldn't protect your back.

But if you emulate the movements that you would make in a swimming pool, when you are in the situation to do the Valsalva maneuver, it will protect your back.

Not that's my so it's like if you look like you're trying to tread water, then you'll stay the appropriate angle during a skydive, perhaps.

I mean, a maneuver, obviously, I the only maneuver I know of is three-point turn and Heimlich.

That is the two maneuvers

Of those two, Heimlich's the closer one in this situation.

Okay, so that salva maneuver must be to do with something life-saving or to do with the body.

Some

to protect them.

But not choking, because we've already got Heimlich for that.

He's wrapped that up.

That's his thing.

Yeah, now, obviously, when people talk about protecting your back, usually that has something to do with lifting, I feel.

Oh, that tends to be the biggest time.

So why would you need to lift somebody to save their life or to save them from damaging themselves i'm presumably if we're

a firefighter perhaps that's that would involve lifting that's a fireman's lift we've got a message yeah that's true that's true

bottom by the head and walk that's not i've seen a there's a there's a thing that like you can teach carers to do for people who have who are caring for disabled or immobile patients to like lift them up and get them onto chairs and things like that, which is a very specific and complex maneuver.

You get them on your knee and you lean yourself back and then you can move to the, but I don't know how swimming would help.

I love that we could all hear from your mic quality that you did the lean back as you

had to act it out.

I've seen people lift people up in terms of they do a sort of weird like this forward roll over the top of them and it's like a fireman's

ranger roll or yeah they do they did that's not a valsalva maneuver i take it in this case the valsalva maneuver helps them achieve the thing they're trying to do without hurting hurting their back.

I definitely thought back to one of my first early industry training things where the very first test that you had to pass was just pass or fail.

And it was, there is a box on the ground.

It doesn't weigh anything, but you have to demonstrate the appropriate way to pick up this box.

And it was essentially, don't lift with your back.

It was bend your knees.

That's it.

If you use your knees, you pass.

If you don't use your knees, you fail.

I think, is this, is this a

squat technique about where you breathe during a squat?

And it keeps going.

You have to picture that the water, I've seen this technique being taught.

It's like you have to picture that there's water at like chest height or whatever, so that once you go down to like lift the bar during a deadlift,

you have to hold, you hold your breath when you're down and you only breathe at the top.

And it keeps your core...

tight and full of breath or whatever so that you don't relax halfway and then and then injure yourself.

You brace yourself during a breath.

Yeah, you brace yourself.

It keeps you braced to only only breathe at the top.

Yes, you've got it, Bill.

So

yes, filling in the details.

Valsalva maneuver, which was at the back of my head, which was, I think, at the back of a few of your heads, is exhaling against a closed throat, a closed glottis.

So you're just kind of

that kind of

you're trying to exhale, but you are stopping yourself doing that.

That is the valsalva maneuver.

which is used for a few things.

It can lower your heart rate.

It can, there's a few other medical things it can do, but in this case, it is the correct thing to do when you are weightlifting, when you're squatting with weights, like you said, Bill.

Gotcha.

Okay, I mean, just basically, if you do, if you're doing like a you know, high-intensity weight, like doing lots of like you know, got blitz squats and stuff, don't do that because you will die of lack of breath.

We all will eventually.

I mean, we can hope not to, but it might as well be while squatting.

I know, but I just think, I just think it's a bit extreme.

You, you can, you can still breathe and brace your core I mean if you're doing for a big lift then yeah but if you're doing like you know I've got a 12 kilo kettlebell I'm just doing some squats yeah you can brace yourself with and still breathe I just want people to know that don't don't collapse because you've got like 10 reps to do and you're not breathing until you're up and go

Yes, this is when serious weightlifters are training to do squat techniques where they can do injuries to themselves if they get the breathing wrong and beginners often get the breathing wrong.

Yeah.

But also, maybe there's a sort of psychological element to it because you're thinking, hang on, I'm in the water, therefore, everything's lighter.

It might well be.

But yes, they are trained to imagine standing in a neck-high swimming pool so that as they go under, they hold their breath, they perform the valsalva maneuver, and then sometimes it's exhale on the way back up.

Or just dome.

Bill, it is over to you for the next question.

All right.

This question was sent in by Nick Huntington Klein.

Benny Blanco is a successful songwriter and producer with credits on hits such as Katy Perry's Teenage Dream and Kesha's TikTok.

Why are all of his early songs set to a tempo of 120 beats per minute?

And I'll give you that again.

Benny Blanco is a successful songwriter and producer with credits on hits such as Katy Perry's Teenage Dream and Kesha's TikTok.

Why are all of his early songs set to a tempo of 120 beats per minute?

The minute you said Benny Blanco, I was like, oh, he's a songwriter,

he's a producer, and then you said the word songwriter and producer.

And that's...

Yeah, stole that knowledge right out from India.

I think I've got a solid guess here.

I think I've got a solid guess here as well.

Oh, no, I hate that.

The thing is, I don't know it.

No, I guess me either.

No.

All right, you.

I don't know it either.

Should we start with Damien then?

My best guess is, are we still on the safety train and he really wanted one of his songs to be the next staying alive for resuscitation?

On the assumption, Izzy, that our guesses are going to be close.

I'm going to drop in a pop fact here, which is that 128 BPM is known, I think it was, I can't remember, I think it was the Pop Bitch newsletter that came out with this.

128 BPM is like the kiss of death for Eurovision songs.

Because it's the easiest one to write in.

Eurovision songs have to be three minutes or less.

and if you want to do verse chorus, verse chorus, middle eight, final chorus

in three minutes it's 128 BPM.

It fits exactly.

So you choose that because it's the easiest one to choose and your song sounds like everything else and blurs into the background.

So I think

my guess would be it's got something to do with certain songs with certain beats for per minute being saved for a particular reason on certain playlists and therefore getting a lot of playtime.

Oh.

How does that work?

He's trying to game the algorithm.

Yeah, kind of.

So

it's to do with that.

But there is, for example, when do people listen to a lot of music?

And when do you get streamed a lot and played a lot?

What are you doing?

And that is, should I just say,

in the gym?

Like, you're looking for a playlist that's a certain BPM so you can run to it.

Boom.

So I think 120 beats per minute is a really good pace to run at, maybe, you know, with steps.

I don't know.

I don't run.

That might be ridiculously quick.

That would make sense to me.

I've run the city to surf a couple of times years ago now, and I couldn't have done it without a couple of very specific songs in my earphones keeping me going at a beat.

So that's why I think, you know, there is a particular thing, so maybe 80 beats per minute if you're going on the slight slow job, but 120, you can go quite slow because it's 60.

And also, that's probably a sprinting pace as well, is my guess.

But I don't know.

I will say, you're building a world in which

Benny Blanco sat out and went, I've crafted, I found this perfect number, I'm fitting it to that number, it's perfect.

That is not at all what happened.

Okay, so my guess is that this was his early work, right?

He was just,

I don't know his history, but I assume like a lot of producers, he started out in his bedroom with pirated software or free software or something like that.

And that his software was just locked to 120 BPM because the free version only lets you create songs at 120 BPM and that

you need to pay the 30 bucks to unlock it.

And he was like 15 at the time.

Now, no, no, I'm debating whether or not to give it to you.

No, not this soon.

It's close, but the way your face is looking, it's not, it's not.

What I will say is money was not, it wasn't that he didn't buy the software that could do it.

He wasn't refusing to buy it.

Like, by the time...

Look, once you've done one of Teenage Dream or TikTok or Kesha's TikTok, you've got enough money to do the other one with whatever you need.

It was not a commercial limitation.

So it is like the default setting.

He's just not changed it.

Is it?

He's using the same, so like there's a free track on each keyboard that you can use.

And he's just using the same free track.

That's the rock beat.

Yeah.

You are dancing, dancing around it.

It is incredibly close.

Did he just not know how to change the BPM?

He just didn't know how to change the BPM.

Useful.

He had all the money in the world, but not one friend to help him.

Yeah.

Why change something that works?

Hey?

He could find out if he really cared, but it doesn't matter because he's a massive success.

And none of us have written amazing songs for Kesha.

Yes, no, look, you're 100% correct, Tom.

120 beats per minute is the default, in this case, specifically the default in Pro Tools that he was using to construct his songs.

And a couple years into making hit songs, he didn't realize he could change the BPM setting.

So he just let it go by default, matched it to that.

Apparently, in general, Benny Blanco is not good with technology.

He doesn't like flying.

He doesn't have an email address.

He's not good with computers.

And this was a symptom of that.

He just went, look, it's work.

Eventually he figured it out.

But yes, he did not know that he could change the default beats per minute in his music software.

How did he think everyone else was doing it?

Could I just say, for Escape This Podcast and for Solve This Murder, I make original music and I write like two songs every episode to fit in.

Oh, wow.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

Sometimes I'll get to a point where I really think the song should slow down nicely and go from like 120 down to like, you know, like slow down, get to like 90 by the end of that scene.

And then I go, I don't know how to make it do that.

So I guess that'll just be,

that'll just be good in my mind, but I'm not going to try and figure it out now.

I have very specific techniques involving Photoshop and making layers and making masks for the layers and changing them.

And I'm almost 100% certain it's probably the most inefficient way of doing it.

But because this is the way I've always done it, I don't want to change it because it works.

And you just don't have that half a day to learn everything.

For the first like six months of making podcasts, I didn't know what compression was.

And I kept like normalizing to a certain thing and then reducing it, then normalizing it down, then cutting the pigs until I I could like manually compress the audio to get it even sounding.

I was just doing it by hand.

And then like six months later, I was like, you know, there's a button for that?

All right, cool.

It's sickening.

So for the first few years of his hit-making career, Benny Blanco did not know that he could change the default beats per minute in Pro Tools, the music software that he used.

Which leaves us with the question that I asked the audience at the very start of the show.

Thank you to Jordan Cook Irwin for sending this in.

In Warhammer 40K, what is the name of the group of space marines that paint their armor blue?

Now, we have had some Warhammer fans on the show before, Simon Clark most notably.

Does everyone know what Warhammer is?

I'm very aware of Warhammer because there is a lot of stuff, very light packages with no Chinese weirdly translated descriptions on them, that get delivered to my house and then I move them to the kitchen table and they get taken to a shed in the garden where the the nerds are.

So

I'm aware, but

I have no understanding.

I know orcs are in there, but that's as far as I go.

I inherited a whole big Tyrannid army at one point from a friend.

I had a couple of Eldar troops at some point.

Okay, so you know some of the names.

I know the answer.

I know the answer to this question.

Okay, these are miniatures that get painted when they arrive and then get used for fantasy war gaming,

a far science fantasy future.

Can I just encourage any of you who've got friends who you never know what presents to get them to get them into Warhammer because suddenly Christmas birthdays, it's so easy.

They want paint, they want brushes, they just want this specific thing.

Before you kick this one home, then Bill, Danny, Izzy, do you want to take a shot at the name of the group of Space Marines that paint their armor blue?

Yeah.

Yeah, they're Blue Tucks.

Yeah, I assume

there's got to be some way in here.

There is.

What can we associate with this?

And blue, the Neptunians.

I don't know where this goes.

I don't know their naming conventions outside of what Bill's just said.

The keywords are Marines and Blue.

Marines and Blue.

So the Sea Teals.

The Navy teals.

Oh, that's good.

That's really good.

I wish I'd thought of that.

But I believe, unlike there are so many different types of Marines, lots of different orders, I know the names of almost none of them, but I do know that the blue ones, well, they're pretty cool Marines.

They're ultramarines.

Yes.

This is a pun on ultramarine, the blue pigment that was traditionally made using ground-up lapis lazuli stones.

Thank you very much to all our players.

Let's find out what's going on in your life.

Where can people find you?

We will start with Bill.

Yeah, if you want to check out what we're doing, you can get Sins of New Wells, the new DLC for Rise of the Golden Idol that we worked on and we're very proud of.

And Danny can tell you the other one.

Danny!

I think that the best thing you can do, if you want to hear some murder mystery podcasts, everyone loves murder mysteries right now.

Check out Solve This Murder on wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you're hearing this now.

And Izzy.

You can find me at iszi.com.

If you basically put ISZI in a search engine, you'll find me.

And yes, if you want your children's fiction pedantic,

this is

for you, The Cursed Tomb out Now.

Thank you.

And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com where you can also send in your own ideas for questions.

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are video highlights regularly at youtube.com/slash lateralcast.

Thank you very much to Izzy Lawrence.

Thanks.

Sorry, I don't know what to say.

Danny Silla.

I'm doing finger guns at the screen.

And Bill Sunderland.

Thank you for having me.

That's how it's done.

I'm Tom Scott, and that's been lateral.