132: Yacht, Mug, Chair, Kite

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When is burning something the opposite of ripping it?

The answer to that at the end of the show.

My name's Tom Scott and this is lateral.

On today's show, we welcome back three people who've all been on the show before.

It's always great to know that we have three people here who will bounce off each other.

Why they're all wearing Zorber balls, I have no idea, but we start today with Bill Sunderland from Escape This Podcast.

How are you doing?

I'm strapped in.

I'm ready to bounce.

I'm knocking them both off this mountaintop.

I didn't realize this was going to be a versus battle of the game.

Oh, it's like a Mario Party mini-game.

You guys are going down.

I'm making 10 coins.

Last time we were here, I think you were working on DLC for the video game.

Yes.

How's things going?

Oh, it's going great.

The DLC, again,

I'm not sure

in the context of recording this versus releasing of that.

I'm not sure if it's yet available.

But when it is, I think people are going to love it.

If you love

Mafia movies and

noir movies and solving murders and tracking down weird people, you're going to really enjoy the sins of New Wells, which is the name of the DLC,

for Rise of the Golden Idol.

Also, presumably, if you enjoy puzzle games.

And if you enjoy puzzle games and playing and having fun, I suppose you'll like it as well.

Also joining us today back on the show, the other half of Escape This Podcast.

Danny Silla, welcome back.

I'm going to be the Luigi of this mini-game where I just get to sit back, not move, and the others will all fall off on their own.

Sounds right.

In a Mario sense or in an assassinating CEO's sense.

Interesting, interesting.

Allegedly assassinating CEO.

I mean, that was topical when we recorded this.

It's going to be a few months.

Tell me about Escape This Podcast.

Like, what are you working on right now that's going to be out by the time this airs?

We are just powerhousing our way through a 2025 season, writing audio escape rooms, bringing even cooler people than we've ever had before on.

Like, forget all of the other guests.

I don't even remember their names anymore.

No, no, no.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, no, some Tom guy.

Can't remember the details.

I think it was, I don't know.

I think his name was Scott.

Oh, yeah.

Tom Lum we had on the show.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, he did.

There we go.

Very best of luck to both you and to Bill.

Our third guest today, returning to the show, author, magician, podcaster, Nicholas J.

Johnson.

Welcome back.

Thank you so much for having me.

If this is a game of Mario Party,

I have Joy-Con Drift.

I am barely having anybody

guys.

Oh, I do not understand that reference.

I'm not in a Zorbball.

This is just what my body looks like.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

I didn't think you'd mention it, Tom.

It was rather rude.

I'll put a shirt on.

I'm sorry.

Last time we talked about the podcasting, Nicholas, tell me me about the author part of it.

What have you got out at the minute that the audience would like?

Yes, I've got two crime novels.

And I've also got, I sat down to write my autobiography, but I decided to write it as a kids' book so my kids could read it and understand why I am the way that I am.

And I failed so miserably in writing my autobiography that the end result, Tricky Nick, was nominated for an award for speculative fiction.

I have a nomination for science fiction award.

Alright, Zorb balls at the ready, then.

Let's get the show rolling because, as always, we've rounded up interesting stories in every sphere of knowledge from around the globe.

Let's give question one a whirl.

Thank you to Kelly for this question.

When the Beatles went to perform in Japan in 1966, the police officer in charge of security made a change that affected the entire force.

What was it?

I'll say that again.

When the Beatles went to perform in Japan in 1966, the police officer in charge of security made a change that affected the entire force.

What was it?

I know the pun here.

Anybody who

knows about weird things that Japanese people like to do, they will often as kids take like rhinoceros beetles and they'll have them fight each other.

They'll collect the beetles and then they'll be like, oh, let's get them to fight.

And those were the beetles that were performing in Japan.

It was just a set of, just a child had found a couple of beetles.

and then the Japanese police made it illegal to fight Beatles.

I've solved it, Tom.

I should have said that I already knew.

I should have to take myself out of that one.

Yeah,

that must be embarrassing for you, Tom, to have such a question.

Yeah, sorry, Tom.

Like,

ruined your show.

Yeah, alas, the question is when the Beatles went to perform.

Not some Beatles.

It is the Beatles.

Yeah.

It's one of those situations where, you know, how people say when you're giving CPR, you do it to the tune of staying alive or another one bites the dust.

There's also a Beatles song that's even better than all of those.

And Japan picked up on it, that one guy.

Now, I'm sort of, I'm rubbing my face here because you're so far away.

You're massively embarrassed.

You're just massively.

I'm just embarrassed.

I'm just embarrassed.

I'm rethinking the guest list.

It's just there is a weird

link that is possible, and I will explain it later, between

CPR and making that more likely to happen for bystanders and things like that and this question and what's going on here.

Oh, how funny.

Well,

I think I might know.

Oh, a knowing guess.

If that's a clue that solves it for you, go for it.

Okay, so the only thing I know about the Japanese police, and this might be wrong, is that they wear gloves.

That's the thing that I know about Japan.

They wear white gloves.

I do.

I was going to say the same thing.

They're glove lovers.

Were the white gloves introduced?

Because there were so many people and people needed, somebody needed CPR, and someone was like, where's the police?

And there's all these hands in the air, and they couldn't figure out where the police were.

So they made them wear white gloves so that you can spot police because they're the ones wearing the white gloves.

You have identified the gloves.

That is the reason, but that's not quite the connection I had to CPR, which has apparently become a major clue out of nowhere.

But you are right.

The change was gloves.

Why?

Yeah, because it is a thing.

Yeah, the Japanese police always have the gloves i always like i thought it's about like you said like like um directing traffic or like being like just to make their hands super noticeable like look at my hands

like a monkey magician would wear gloves a magician oh yeah i should have said magician the thing that i am yeah

forest and the trees situation there what other reasons might there be to wear gloves Could it be about touching people?

Yeah, everything else is filthy.

Wearing white gloves, I worked briefly in a library in a collection of rare magic artifacts.

Sorry, sorry, when you say magic artifacts.

How cool.

How impressed should we be?

Is that like

fantasy, weird magic artifacts or magic the skill artifacts?

Because that's a very different story happening there.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

And anyway, and there was this cast and it opened and this spirit came out and there was a whole thing.

Thank you.

thank you.

Thank you.

Have you seen Ghostbusters?

No,

like magic props.

But we were basically like, and it was,

we only wore the white gloves when we were handling metal.

And anything else, they said, no, no, don't wear white, don't wear the white gloves because they're just really hard to do things with.

And in fact, magicians, like, sometimes will wear white gloves like.

they used to anyway for in order to for the make the props stand out against your hand you know if you're holding a coin on a white you know in white or a playing card in a white glove, it's easy to make it stand out, but it's actually much harder to hold onto objects than to use it.

A lot of archives will insist that people visiting to look at documents don't wear gloves.

You just must wash your hands and wear no lotion

because you are more likely to damage something because you haven't got the touch sensitivity while you're wearing the glove.

Hmm.

There's a good mice and men reference in there somewhere about lotion inside gloves, but I can't remember the name of the character.

You're talking about touching people.

Aren't we always?

Follow, follow that.

Is there a gender-based thing at all?

Like, yes.

As a man, you shouldn't touch a woman, but if you wear white...

There would be a lot of teen girls at Beatles concerts.

That's the connection.

Oh.

Don't want to be creeps.

We're going to have to manhandle a lot of teen girls at this time.

I'm sorry, it's just going to happen.

You're going to have to wear gloves.

That's basically it.

Yes.

Fair enough.

Yeah, the police knew they would be dealing with crowds of young women.

And the officer in charge, Hideo Yamada,

decided that for propriety, they would put on white gloves to deal with this.

I thought it was because teenage girls are gross.

I thought it was because they're weird and sweaty and gross.

And if you touch them, you'll just stuff will come off on you and you'll go home smelling of, yeah.

deodorant and spearmint gum.

And then you absolutely can't look through the archive documents.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yep.

Why did I say earlier that there was a connection to CPR that was a lot closer than you might think?

You really got to touch someone if you're doing CPR.

Oh.

Okay.

Was there somebody who

passed out and needed CPR,

but

maybe police didn't want, no one wanted to give her CPR because they, because of the impropriety of touching a young teenage girl, and so she died?

There's definitely stories like that that go around online.

I haven't looked into the veracity of them, but some suggestions that women are given CPR less because of awkwardness.

Yeah, women are more likely to die from a heart attack if they have one

because people are less likely to perform CPR on them because the first instruction is remove clothing and you have to push hard and all the CPR dummies are male.

So all the training is on men.

And yeah, women are more likely to die because a bystander is less likely to go is it okay to do this so that was that was the connection the the white gloves on japanese police officers are there because in 1966 they would have to crowd control a lot of young women

danny it is over to you for the next question all right this one's exciting The visual artist Russell Weeks released a simple A5 sized pamphlet.

It was stapled twice, once in each direction, right through the center of the cover.

Its title was, A Study into the Effects of

what?

And one more time, the visual artist Russell Weeks released a simple A5-sized pamphlet.

It was stapled twice, once in each direction, right through the center of the cover.

Its title was, A Study into the Effects of What?

So I will translate for the folks who don't use A paper sizes.

That is

that is like half a standard page.

It's your standard pamphlet size like

sort of zine that would get handed out somewhere.

I feel like this is one where a huge part of it is going to come into having the right mental picture for this description.

It's stapled twice in the center both directions like a cross like it makes a like a cross.

Yeah, that's what I'm imagining.

Yeah.

So

I will tell you exactly what they mean by this once on each side because that will impact things.

So what it means is basically you got got the paper in front of you, you put the stapler against it, you staple down, lift the stapler up, flip the paper over, and then staple on the other side of the paper.

Oh, okay.

So two staples going in opposite directions.

That's the axis we're on.

Oh, I see.

Staple at the front.

Staple at the back.

In some configuration, yes.

Can I check?

Does that mean that you can't open the book like it's now stapled shut?

Or is it just through the cover?

Yeah, I mean, I guess you can fold it down.

Actually, you've raised an interesting point: this would make it kind of difficult to open.

So you can look at it very easily.

The staples made it all the way through to the front cover.

Well, one of them was through the front cover.

The one that went through the back came all the way to the front cover.

It's like a, like a, like, almost like a locked pamphlet.

Like, here you go.

Just a little bit.

Yeah, it's not like it's just stapled weirdly at one end.

One of those is at the top, one of those is at the bottom.

So basically, the pages are all just completely locked together.

Yeah, you are correct.

It is not that one of the staples staples is at the bottom and one is at the top, though.

They are not that far away from each other.

Central.

Okay.

Hmm.

Now, this is nothing, but I did picture if you're at the end of one staple right above another staple, it kind of looks like an angry face emoji.

Yeah.

Of the two little curved parts being eyes,

and then the bar of the other staple.

Is it Danny's?

Wait, hold on.

Danny's looking at me like this isn't nothing.

Danny has a look on her face that's the opposite of an angry emoji.

I was gonna say that it's just like a study in frustration, that it's just

designed to irritate the reader.

And then you said like angry face emoji.

I'm like, wait, is this actually a study in frustration?

It's just meant to be a little face.

Yes and no, it's not frustration.

It is absolutely a little face.

Oh, well done, Bill.

Is it a study in pareidolia?

A study into the effects of pareidolia is exactly what it is.

Necklace.

Can you tell people what what that means?

Pareidolia is when you see faces appearing in

anywhere, literally, anywhere where a face should not be.

And so

it's when you look at the top of a cigarette lighter and you see a little face, but it's also when people see the Virgin Mary in a cheese toastie or something in clouds and that type of thing.

Most commonly, I'd say, in PowerPoint sockets, like wall sockets.

Oh, they're all the faces.

They're all horrified faces at what's happening to them.

And to keep the Beatles theme going, that is the subject of the song, I've Just Seen a Face.

I'm going to steal that.

Danny,

your questions keep falling so quickly on these episodes.

I'm so proud of your.

So these staples have been punched through the paper so that one of them looks like eyes, one looks like a mouth, and it is a study into the effects of paridolia, seeing faces and and things like that where there technically aren't any.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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Thank you to Timothy Green for this next question.

In 1974, why did psychologist Lars van der Leith, a sign language researcher at the University of Copenhagen, ask for a demonstration from Valerie Sutton, an American dancer training with the Royal Danish Ballet?

I'll say that again.

In 1974, why did psychologist Lars van der Leith, a sign language researcher at the University of Copenhagen, ask for a demonstration from Valerie Sutton, an American dancer training with the Royal Danish Ballet.

Was he writing the official book of sign language and wanted her to use her, to basically use her body to

be the official expression of those signs?

It does feel like we'd want to find some connection.

It feels like there is an automatic connection between sign language and human who moves their body in certain positions for a living.

Yeah.

My brain, like my first thing is like one of these sort of

like sign language facts that I found interesting.

And by fact, I mean,

let's call it a factoid.

I don't know.

Something called.

Yeah, a thing.

A thing that exists somewhere that could have been a lie.

But people talk about this a lot, that sign language, some people will often think about as being just like, well, you're just signing in English.

But they're not.

They're signing in, it's like sign language is its own language.

It's rather than just the same as English if you're speaking English or the same as French if you're speaking French.

But apparently, one of those things about that difference is that British sign language and American sign language are actually from whole different strains of sign language.

And in actual fact, American Sign Language is more interchangeable with Chinese Sign Language because they both come from the French school of sign language.

So there's actually more kind of mutual understanding between American and Chinese signers than there is between American and British, in at least some cases.

So did this Danish person need an American to dance sign language at a Chinese person to translate for them?

Is that how it works?

Because it's a psychologist, right?

It's not, but I love how far that got.

My favorite thing about sign language, or at least some sign languages, is how

you set a scene.

So in English, you would use pronouns, you would use he, she, they, it, whatever.

In sign language, you basically set a scene in physical 3D space.

So you sign someone's someone's name or the object thing, and then you can place it, and then you can just kind of point to it and refer to it and move it around.

That's so cool.

It's amazing.

It's a thing that spoken language absolutely cannot do.

It is, unfortunately,

really not that related to the question other than the word sign language.

Which is frustrating because you made it sound so irrelevant.

I know.

I know, I know.

You have correctly identified that there is a connection between sign language and dancing.

They are both things that involve moving your body.

Yeah, and Nicholas, you were just saying, like, it's a psychologist, right?

Or

someone who studies psychologists.

Someone who's studying to the brain.

Would that include like sort of like brain scan stuff?

You know how people do a lot of that, like what parts of your brain activate during certain activities?

Yeah.

I'd be more likely to be a neuroscientist.

This was a while ago.

Were we in brain scan territory back?

No,

1974.

No.

This is someone who's specifically researching sign language.

Okay.

Okay.

And if they're researching, so they're not writing things or making any

they're trying to

measure some sort of measurable effect on the world, right?

I'm not going to answer the very specific question that's in there, Nicholas.

Certainly, Vanderleith, the sign language researcher,

was hopefully preparing papers and research notes and all sorts of things.

We didn't.

We didn't call into question with this, and I have no idea of this.

This ballet dancer, was she a sign language user herself?

No, she wasn't,

but the university researchers saw a news report about something she was doing.

I mean, is there some connection to like ballet in general is trying to tell a story wordlessly through movement?

Was he trying to be, was it

into the idea of whether or not not people who spoke sign language were better at interpreting

the meaning behind dance

because they're practiced at inferring meaning from movement?

It was far more practical than that.

Okay, get away from the arts brain.

Yeah,

I was going to go artsia.

I would go less artsy on this.

Oh, okay.

She's a dancer, doesn't pay well.

She has a second job fixing printers.

And he just needed to print the paper he was writing.

So he called in the dancer

um

come on no but again you're talking about the paper he was writing he's writing the paper it's the 70s he's he's on a typewriter he's typing up a paper and he gets jammed and the little feet it look when a when a when a typewriter jams it looks like a ballerina's feet kicking together and getting stuck and he thought I'll call the dancer and it was a really bad idea.

It didn't help.

You're onto something there.

I think that's.

I think think this is it.

Just keep going.

Keep taking.

I'm passing the ball.

You've all clued in on the fact that this is a researcher writing papers.

Think a bit more about that.

So he specifically, so she read in the paper that she can do something or had done something.

And then he asked her.

She had invented something.

Let's go with that.

Had invented something.

Okay.

And then she, he then asked her to demonstrate it.

So whatever it was was

probably useful, either useful for people with sign language or useful for him in his own kind of research of sign language.

So, something that he could use to

measure or to

explore sign language.

You've nailed everything about this apart from what the invention was.

She'd come up with something, the researchers had seen it on the news, and they were like, we need that.

Invite her over.

I have to say this, or my brain won't give up on it.

It's not that like

big collection of metal pins that can take an impression of, so he could like make a hand, make a sign and then put it in the thing and then he's got a solid impression like, I could just stamp that on the paper.

That wouldn't work for ballet and it wouldn't really work for sign language.

I thought those were all just red herrings.

You're getting closer.

Had she invented a way of,

I mean, a language, I guess, for

describing the human body.

So a way of describing different ways of positioning the human body that could then be used to also talk about sign language yes valerie sutton created dance writing and it is a way to systematically record dance moves and teach it to other people in 1974 when home video equipment and smartphones could not just show you choreography that's fantastic and so the sign language researchers were like can we adapt that for sign language, invite her over, and they created Sutton Sign Writing, which is now the most widely used system for writing down the body movements used in sign language.

I have just googled this and it like to me it looks almost like windings.

Like it's not like just writing stuff out or making notes.

It's its own kind of notation.

They're like abstract shapes of like this moves this way or this moves this way or like angles or flags.

It's really cool.

I googled it as well and I literally just got signs for the city of Sutton.

But yes, this is Valerie Sutton's Sutton Sign Writing, which is now the most widely used system for writing down the body movements used in sign language.

Which brings us to Bill's question.

Whenever you're ready.

This question has been sent in by Oliver Voiger.

Oh, a lateral contestant.

A lateral contestant.

He can't get enough.

The phone app, SMTH, was immediately banned from Apple's App Store and broke the phone of at least one reviewer.

Yet it has a decent 4.1 out of 5 rating on Google Play.

The SM represents send me.

What does the TH mean and how do you play?

And I'll give it to you again.

The phone app SMTH was immediately banned from Apple's App Store and broke the phone of at least one reviewer.

Yet it has a decent 4.1 out of 5 rating on Google Play.

The SM represents send me.

What does the TH mean and how do you play?

I saw this news story.

I got to sit out of it.

Yeah, I can nail this.

It's send me top hats.

It's like a sort of service magicians use, where we basically, if you need a top hat, short notice, you just click a button and, you know, like a sort of Uber, but for top hats.

And then Apple was like, magic is the same as con artistry.

Oh, we don't support that kind of business here.

This is my Apple voice.

Yeah, yeah, Tim Apple.

And they went, hang on.

These guys are bigger nerds than us.

I just like the idea that that probably got pitched at the point after Uber came out when all the apps were going for like Uber for anything.

Uber for like fancy clothes and tailoring was probably pitched at some point as an app for rich people.

Like, I need an outfit for this tonight.

Go.

And someone turns up at your door with the correct sign.

Like, that must have been pitched.

If not, someone's going to.

All right, so surely the only reasons things would get removed from the app store is one, outrageously offensive, two, a big old scam, or three, breaking stuff, as it seems like it broke at least one person's device.

Villain broke a device.

That's interesting.

I'm thinking of those, I mean, those

devices, you know, like a USB and you plug it into the side of your laptop and it breaks your laptop.

Or someone else's.

It's probably best not to put it in your own laptop.

That kind of, so it might be like an app that is specifically designed to kind of kill your phone, maybe for security purposes.

Send me to hell.

It's send me Trojan horses.

Perfect.

Yes.

Send me Trojan horses.

There you go.

That is great, but I don't think anybody would download that, surely.

I don't know.

Some of the Greeks are really big fans.

Yeah.

A friend once sent me a file that was notavirus.txt.

And I'm like, it's a text file.

It cannot contain a virus.

They're just being a jerk.

I'm like,

I'm not opening it.

I don't believe you.

It is very smart.

It was the notavirus.

Yeah, yeah.

It just very clearly.

And he's like, it clearly said it wasn't a virus.

I'm like, I'm not.

I'm not.

Yeah.

It's like that guy's I'm not a terrorist shirt from last episode.

Yes.

It is not, it is not semi-Trojan horses.

We can cross that off your list of THs.

Well, the phrase was, how do you play?

So it's a game, this app, apparently.

Yes, yeah, it is a game.

You do play it.

Was it something like I remember this is dating me a little bit, but when CD-ROMs first came in, this wait after when you had the little cartridge, but when they first introduced the tray that popped out, I think it was Coca-Cola had like a file that was like pressed, you know, down, you know, it was like free drink holder, and you'd click on it, and it would say, here is your free drink.

And it would just open your

little diss tray, which it was very funny in 1997.

But

I tried it like maybe 10 years later, and as soon as I downloaded it, it got flagged as a virus, as malware.

Is it something that's kind of fun but just gets flagged as being dodgy because it maybe just, you know, skits.

It did break something.

Yeah, oh yeah, I guess so, yeah.

I seem to recall Coca-Cola stopping the release of that

lap because people did actually try and use the CD tray as a drink holder and broke it.

I will say this being flagged wouldn't have been an automated

at least not just like, oh, this is registering as this type of file.

A human made the decision, at least somewhere down the line.

What games could be involved that would send me, send me to something?

I assumed break means like it broke the phone, like it bricked it, but maybe it's physically not

bricked it.

Yeah.

Like maybe it's like a...

I don't know what the acronym, but like it's like a...

tennis game, but you use your phone as the ball.

You know, like something like that.

Send me to heaven and you throw it right up in the air and see what happens.

Yes.

Danny, the app is called send me to heaven.

What?

And

you throw it right up there.

Are you kidding?

Was it just like the gamers try to see?

It tests your altitude.

Yes.

It uses the inbuilt gyroscope.

Do phones have an inbuilt altometer?

It's the accelerometer.

It measured how long it was in free fall.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, and so it would measure that to give you a score of how high you have thrown your phone into the air.

How well you could send it to heaven.

The me in this case is the phone.

Okay, the most outrageous part of that is only one person, you said, broke their phone?

Let's say at least one.

Definitely at least one.

If this had been, if I had been a teenager when this happened, oh boy, I would have lost some phones.

It was released in 2013.

Ah, just missed.

So you just missed out.

Yes, you did use the sensors in the phone to detect how high in the air you had thrown it.

Apple noted the game was encouraging behavior that could result in damage to the user's device.

It is still available on the Google Play Store to this day.

The app before you play it does say, be careful not to injure yourself or others.

Be always aware that there is enough space above you and around you.

Do some training to learn the right skills to get best results.

Good luck with this next question, folks.

Darius went around completing high fives with people he's never met.

This caused bemusement and then amusement.

What was clever about his actions?

I'll say that again.

Darius went around completing high fives with people he's never met.

This caused bemusement and then amusement.

What was clever about his actions?

I think I know this one.

I think I'm

90% sure I know this one.

Then it's on the Escape This Podcast team.

You can see how lateral breaks your brain.

Because as soon as the question started, I was like, ah, Darius, this will be referring to the ancient Persian emperor.

That's the only one I've got.

And then, or the ancient, like, or, or, uh, oh, what was Darius?

Something's one of the ones that started with A.

But, you know, the ancient emperor Darius I, and then it was high fives.

And I went, oh, wait.

We also figured out on a previous lateral that that did not exist before the 70s.

So it can't have been an ancient Sumerian high five.

Also, when I was reading this question, and this is how my brain went, I went, oh, Darius, that must be the guy from Pop Idol.

So...

Readly, same guy.

Yeah, British version of American Idol from like 2001.

And

it's not that Darius.

It's not that Darius.

Not that Darius.

Okay, Danny.

Danny, it's just you and me.

We've got to learn another Darius quickly.

These two guys next to us, they know they're looking at us, they're judging us.

I can see it in their eyes.

They're saying these fools don't know anything about high fives.

I know.

I was here with the previous question.

What's going on?

It doesn't get any easier.

Okay, okay.

High-fives.

You go up and you high-five someone, right?

And they're like, why would you high-five me?

This is ridiculous.

Oh, I get it.

What's the turning point?

The problem is that I'm on ancient Persian Darius and I'm assuming that it's warfare.

No, no, no.

And that it's making sure they don't have weapons.

I think we've got to go back to, I think we've got to go back to novelty shirts.

It's like he high-fives you and then you turn and his shirt says, I only high-five cool people.

And then they go, oh, thanks, Darius.

And then he high fives them again, and everybody's happy.

And it's one of those really wholesome pranks from the Wholesome Prank channel.

It's like, so he high, did he high five them twice?

Just the ones.

One high five, two high five.

Oh, so it's not a, it's not a one high, one low.

Hmm.

He high fives them, but pow.

They get, it was annoyance and then unannoyance.

What were the exact, what were the emotions?

Amusement.

Amusement and amusement.

Yeah, it's really well phrased.

It's amusement and then amusement.

Yes.

Okay.

They're confused and then they laugh because they got a high five from Darius.

And you did say wholesome prank from the wholesome prank channel.

Honestly, pretty accurate there.

It's a pretty harmless prank.

Okay, it's a harmless prank.

When I was in year seven, so I was 12 years old for April Fool's Day, I would put slime on my hand and then shake hands with my friends.

Is it what?

Don't, don't.

Hey, kids at home, don't slime your hands.

This is why the Japanese police need gloves when they touch teenage girls.

They're always sliming their hands and touching their friends.

Well, yeah, now my next thought is, is something being transferred in this?

Here's my thought.

Just good vibes.

Darius, he hides behind a little, he hides behind a little bush.

Doesn't seem like it's going to be a wholesome prank.

Feels like he's going to get someone, but no, he hides near.

A taxi rank.

And all the people there go, taxi, taxi, and they stick their hands out.

And then he runs down the street and goes,

like he's a marathon runner, getting the crowds as he goes past.

And they all go that's not a taxi it's a funny man and then they they're very amused you have identified almost all the bits of the question other than it's not a taxi rank where else do you put your hand out nazi rallies i think i was about to yeah

and that he does it he goes to nazi rallies and he's just high-fiving nazis and they're going what are you and it's very wholesome that's not the fuhora but then notably their sense of humor kicked out germans famous yes

Okay, okay, okay.

When do you stick your hand out, not expecting a high five?

You stick your hand out for a taxi, but that's off

most of the time.

You put your hand out to see.

He waits above people's windowsills when it looks like it might be raining outside, but not quite sure.

And so when they stick their hand out to check, he goes, oh, wow.

I gotcha.

Now off to slap cars in San Francisco.

I'm fully on transport now because all I can think of is bus stops.

There would be quite a few people attempting this.

Basically, any hour of any day

in this place,

you can find people to high-five.

Yeah, it's very place-specific, isn't it?

At a certain place, they're all reaching out.

It's the set of the movie Gravity, and people go there and they recreate reaching for things.

They're all trying to.

They're actually all posing for a photo oh is it the is it the is it the leaning is it people put the lean they like go to they like hold up the leaning tower of Pisa and then he comes up and he goes snap and they and they go what you're not the tower of Pisa yes this is Darius Grozer who made a viral video that I assume at some point Nicholas you've seen it's in the back of your head uh where he in his words troll high-fived the tourists by completing the high-five they had seemingly started by holding up the Tower of Pisa.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Honey bunches of votes for all.

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Nicholas, over to you for your guest question.

Okay.

Olive goes into a computer shop and sees four very similar items.

On On the packaging is an office chair, a mug, a sailing yacht, and a children's kite respectively.

What are they and how do these images help?

I'll read it again.

Olive goes into a computer shop and sees four very similar items.

On the packaging is an office chair, a mug, a sailing yacht, and a children's kite respectively.

What are they and how do these images help?

Getting out the notebook, that's all.

For everyone drawing along at home, I can tell you that drawing those things does not immediately help.

Okay.

It's not Olive

Popeye's girlfriend.

Unless the sailorship is really relevant.

Olive is not relevant.

Okay, good.

That's good.

Ooh, we got a secret.

I mean, I'm sure Olive's lovely, but not relevant.

Ah, you've given in your question and now you don't exist.

No, no, you haven't met Olive.

You said four identical products apart from the logo logo on them, right?

Or was it just four products?

Very similar items.

Okay.

Very, very similar.

Not identical, but very similar.

They're similar items.

The biggest difference being they each have a different label.

One is labeled with a chair.

One is labeled with a boat.

One is labeled with a mug, or they all have all four labels.

From the packaging, obviously those symbols, those pictures are the biggest difference.

but the items themselves have another important difference.

That is exemplified by these different logos.

Because my immediately thought was that a sailing ship, if you're drawing just a very basic label of a sailing ship, that's triangly-y.

So, I went straight to trying to think of the basic shapes of these things.

But things like an office chair,

I don't know what you're doing with that.

Office chairs are boba, sailing ship's a key key.

You're right, right.

Okay, uh,

Ship, mug,

chair.

And what was the last one?

Chair, mug, yacht, kite.

It's an office chair, a mug, a sailing yacht, and a children's kite.

What do I buy at a computer store?

It could be a computer.

I will say, Tom, that the way in which you just described those

is more helpful than the way that I describe them.

Chair, mug, yacht, kite, I think I said.

Yep.

As audio escape room designers, we have had a lot of times where the answer was to say those four words over and over again, and they sound so once you know the answer, it's like you're just saying the answer out loud.

Chair Mug Yacht Kite, Chair Mug Yacht Kite.

I've had

yeah, I'm getting that right now.

Yeah, I've had 20 minutes in a, in a, on a video call with Alex Horn screaming Uncle Og, Uncle Og, until we both realized that it was unclog was the answer to a puzzle.

So, is that it?

Does that help anybody?

Look,

I feel like the way in which you're saying it right now to me feels very obvious because I know the answer.

So, yeah.

Oh, no, it's happening.

Are they like rhyming words?

Like,

this is a flare, so it rhymes with chair.

This is a pug.

Um, I don't

chemogyotkite.

Chemagyotkite.

Tamagotchi.

No.

Oh, this is infuriating.

Right?

So, like, if you collect all four of these, does it make a thing?

Or is it just the four variants that

you do need all four of them?

Yeah, you will need all four of them, but you won't need them necessarily all at the same time.

time,

which is, you know, but you will, you know, so you might come in and buy one, you might come in and buy four, might come in and buy three.

You know, it really depends on you.

In a computer shop.

Computer shop.

And they and they seem very, very similar.

You look at them and you'd be like, those are four similar objects,

but you'd buy them differently.

What's their

electronic do you get multiple of with small differences?

Chair.

Mug.

Yuck.

Kite.

Yuck.

Kite.

Chair.

Mug.

Yuck.

Kite.

Chair.

Mug.

Oh!

Oh, it's the first letter.

It's the first letter.

It's the first letter.

It's the first letter.

Yeah, okay, I see it.

C, M, Y, K.

These are ink cartridges, aren't they?

Yes, they are ink cartridges.

Didn't help that the first time I wrote down ship instead of yacht.

Yacht was so good, Tom.

You had yacht the word.

We couldn't do it.

Ink cartridges come in cyan, magenta, yellow, and K for coal for black.

And

are these like HP brand cartridges?

I'm sure I've seen this somewhere.

These are brother

ink cartridges.

So this is a set of four

CMYK printer inks, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

The K is the last letter in black.

The manufacturer represents these with the first letter of the objects, C M Y

and K for kite,

so that it's harder to buy the wrong colour.

This question was inspired by the Brother Printer Company, which uses similar images on their LC220 range of ink cartridges.

However, they use a different reasoning by putting seemingly random images such as an apple, a guitar, or Jupiter, on the cartridge boxes.

It makes it harder to buy the wrong cartridge.

A customer simply has to look for the one with the Apple rather than LC227XL.

The printers have a sticker of the correct photo as a reminder in case they've thrown the box away.

And this is good for colorblind folks as well.

It's just, ah, yeah, okay.

Fine.

This is the second printer ink question that we've experienced on this show, personally.

I can't even remember the first one.

Why are they so interesting and full of fun facts?

I've got to say, they kind of are.

I think Tom is in the pocket of big ink.

I think all of those overpriced prints are.

You had the option to say big brother.

Which brings us to the question from the start of the show.

Thank you to Lois for sending this one in.

When is burning something the opposite of ripping it?

And I suspect from the ages of the folks in this call, you may all get this one.

Anyone want to go for it?

I believe I mentioned being a teenager in the noughties.

Yes.

Nicholas already hinted earlier with his Coca-Cola CD tray

bit.

It's very much been the millennial episode of the podcast here.

Nicholas, do you want to kick this one home?

Oh, look, no, I don't think it's fair that I do because I literally did not know the answer.

Because all I saw burn and rip, and then you even talked about teenagers.

And I mean, yeah, I've got this.

It's obviously smoking weed.

Like, you burn one weed.

That's what we're talking about, right?

And then you mentioned CD tray.

And I, oh, we're talking about burning CDs.

Yes, because you rip a CD when you copy it from, and then you burn it when you copy it to.

It's not a drug reference.

Not this time, no.

Congratulations to our hard players.

There may be drug references in future.

Who knows?

Let's talk about what's going on in your lives.

Where can people find you?

We will start with Nicholas.

Yes, you can find me at conman.com.au where you can get all of my back catalogue of scammer palooza episodes.

And Bill.

Yeah, and look, you can check out our shows.

If you've checked out Escape This Podcast already, why not try Solve This Murder where we do audio murder mysteries and try and solve those over a series of like five to eight episodes each.

They take a while.

They're great fun.

And Danny.

And if you're still hankering for video games instead, check out our puzzle game, Rise of the Golden Idol.

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 or questions.

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere and there are regular video highlights at youtube.com slash lateralcast.

Thank you very much to Danny Silla.

Thank you.

Bill Sunderland.

Thanks for having me.

Nicholas J.

Johnson.

Thank you very much.

I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral.