128: The cow's jaw

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Speaker 3 Los Angeles is sometimes called LA, while Orlando begins with the letters O R L.

Speaker 3 What does this help you remember? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral.

Speaker 3 The Netflix series Stranger Things features this magical, evil world called the upside down.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm happy to announce that Lateral is set in a similarly magical land, land, but slightly less evil, called the Sideways.

Speaker 3 It's not quite as bad, except when you're trying to get a coffee out of the machine, which can get kind of messy. Speaking of stranger things, let's meet the players.

Speaker 3 We start with singer-songwriter and music YouTuber Mary Spender. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 5 Hello, thanks for having me again.

Speaker 3 Hello, everyone. Well, thank you for coming back.
It has been a while.

Speaker 3 The new studio looks wonderful.

Speaker 5 Thank you very, very much. I'm very proud.

Speaker 3 What are you working on at the Minix? I know you've just been going through a bit of a change in what you're putting out.

Speaker 5 I'm working away on YouTube videos this year. I put out an album last year, so I now have to write the next one.
And you know how it is?

Speaker 5 You have your whole life to write your debut, and then you have five minutes to write the next one. So

Speaker 5 YouTube is a happy balance where I can work away on, you know, ideas in music history and music business and then write some songs in the spare time.

Speaker 3 Well, very best of luck on the show today, Mary. You are joined by one half of the podcast, Sad Boys, Jarvis Johnson.

Speaker 4 Hello.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having us.

Speaker 3 I didn't know as I read that off my script whether I should call it sad boys or sad boys. Where's the emphasis?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's a puzzle we've cracked.

Speaker 2 But we can come to a decision by the end of the show. But I like the way you said it.

Speaker 3 What's the podcast about?

Speaker 2 It's a podcast about feelings and other things also, but more...

Speaker 2 More or less, it's us kind of ranting and raving about our daily lives, talking about mental health and also just pop culture, goofing and gaffing with friends. It's very formless podcast

Speaker 2 that's very long.

Speaker 4 And we are joined.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure that's technically the best pitch for it, but it's what you went with. And I did notice you slipped the tagline in there.

Speaker 3 And our third player, new to the show, the other half of the Sad Boys podcast, Jordan Attica, kind of made finger guns at the screen at the tagline drop there.

Speaker 4 Sorry, yeah, not loaded.

Speaker 4 It was purely, purely for

Speaker 2 he's in America now. He's very, he's exercising open carry.

Speaker 4 Yes,

Speaker 4 I mean, I can help. The emphasis is very, very, very, very quiet, sad, and a really loud voice.

Speaker 4 Sad voice.

Speaker 3 Oh, don't, don't, because now I've got to do that.

Speaker 4 And our audience is going to have a nightmare if I say that every time. I'm going to, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 3 I'm just going to get an advanced warning of it. It feels a strange question to ask for a podcast like that, but what have your topics been lately?

Speaker 4 Well, I think a lot of the time what tends to happen with sad boys is we go in and we have a certain intention of something we might talk about, and then we get very, very excited about some Dragon Ball Z lore, or we get really invested in Magic the Gathering.

Speaker 2 Recent topics include coping strategies around ADHD and the fact that Elon Musk has been pretending to play his Path of Exile 2 account.

Speaker 2 So like those are the...

Speaker 2 Like that's kind of... Those are the two extremes that we allegedly, just to be clear, allegedly.
Allegedly. Allegedly.
Those are the two extremes that we bounce between.

Speaker 4 No, it's like you know, if someone's listening and they really like Elon Musk, me too. And if someone, if someone's listening and they're not insane, but yes,

Speaker 3 but hopefully, you will still be sane by the end of this podcast. Welcome to the sideways.
Good luck to all three of you.

Speaker 3 And there is only one mind flayer on this podcast, and that is the question editor. So let me invite you to step through the curiosity door towards question one.

Speaker 3 This question has been sent in by Nate. In 2004, the Libertarian magazine Reason had 40,000 subscribers.

Speaker 3 Their June issue covered concerns about large data collection services and their effects on privacy. In what brilliant but chilling way did the cover image demonstrate this? I'll say that again.

Speaker 3 In 2004, the libertarian magazine Reason had 40,000 subscribers. Their June issue covered concerns about large data collection services and their effects on privacy.

Speaker 3 In what brilliant but chilling way did the cover image demonstrate this?

Speaker 5 Was it something voyeuristic, like peering through a window? I don't know.

Speaker 4 You said 2004?

Speaker 3 2004, yes.

Speaker 4 Ooh, a spicy time for the paparazzi.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 2 I think that the spook in my mind would have to be, what is some information that reason has about its audience that

Speaker 2 that it can expose.

Speaker 2 And so my first thought was like a map with like little points on the map where all of their subscribers are located.

Speaker 5 Would that be chilling?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 5 So is it chilling? It's chilling to the audience because the audience are there being like, oh my god, they know something about me.

Speaker 4 I'm wondering, is this, was this as much of a concern in 2004? But going on instinct, is it your web history will be leaked?

Speaker 4 Because I don't think people were being that prolifically creepy online compared to now at the time.

Speaker 4 But I also think if you were like relatively proactive on what was kind of the internet, and then somebody was like, oh no, you know that thing you searched, and we don't know where the private browser is yet because it's the past.

Speaker 5 I definitely got caught by my parents looking at things I should not have been looking at, age 14, I think, 2004.

Speaker 2 To back up, it is a libertarian magazine, and this is like

Speaker 2 in the like Patriot Act America

Speaker 2 9-11. So, there is like a lot of like the government is spying on you type stuff that could be out there.

Speaker 4 Um, also, Batman Begins, so it could not be like, yeah, true.

Speaker 2 Also, lost lost did premiere in 2004.

Speaker 3 Is Batman Begins the one where he turns the entire cell phone network into a spy device, or was that one the way to the point?

Speaker 4 I believe that's a Dark Knight. And the ethical debate they have is, should I have done that? Yeah,

Speaker 4 Yeah, I should have actually for because of the joke.

Speaker 5 What was everyone doing in 2004 on the internet? I was on MySpace thinking I was going to get signed. So I was like already, I feel grateful for this now.

Speaker 5 I was kind of like trying to be professional on my MySpace and Bebo pages as a singer-songwriter in the south of England.

Speaker 5 in a very small town.

Speaker 4 My crazy ass was on Bebo making a Matrix fan page.

Speaker 4 For the Matrix Reloaded, the only one I'd seen.

Speaker 3 You've actually hit most of the main points between you, but there's kind of a bit of this you haven't got. Jarvis, you were right with subscriber data.
That's what they had.

Speaker 3 And Jordan, you're right that this is something that people would freak out about much less 20 years later.

Speaker 5 Is it like money, finances, like sharing your credit card details on the internet somehow? Because people were scared of that, weren't they? And now we have every, like we buy everything online.

Speaker 3 I go further with Jarvis's maps idea.

Speaker 4 Oh, okay. Okay.

Speaker 4 Oh, oh, I'm thinking, okay, what's a

Speaker 4 shock journalism? What's a topic that really catches people? It's something about family security.

Speaker 4 Your kids' school will be leaked, or your office address.

Speaker 3 This is a cover image, and it used highly advanced printing technology for the era.

Speaker 4 Is it glow-in-the-dark?

Speaker 4 I'm pretty sure that's older than 2004.

Speaker 3 But that would be just you just get the magazine and it looks perfectly innocent and then you turn the light off and it just glows something creepy. A ghost.

Speaker 2 This is maybe off.

Speaker 2 Maybe this is off

Speaker 2 the direction that we're going. But when I was in middle school, we had a

Speaker 2 yearbook cover that was photos of all it was like all of our class photos as a collage colored such that it would like pixelate an image.

Speaker 2 You know, that it would create an image like when you're zoomed out. So I'm wondering, it's like obviously they don't have photographs of all of their subscribers.

Speaker 3 They don't, but they do have access to something. In 2004 that was a lot less well known.
Right now this would not freak anyone out.

Speaker 3 But then it was surprising.

Speaker 5 I'm playing on JavaScript. I'm just speaking out loud.
It's a map. And what do we use now? We use maps as directions, which we're fine with.
and we tell people where we are and when we're going.

Speaker 3 A map wouldn't quite be creepy enough.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, a map.

Speaker 5 Street view or something? Like street view of your house?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Pretty much it's not street view. That's a little too early, but.

Speaker 2 Okay, so it's not a map, but it's not street view. What is something in between?

Speaker 3 It's literally the thing in between.

Speaker 2 Like satellite view?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So is it the satellite view of the region that you're in because they have like the regional data?

Speaker 3 Creepier than that, Jarvis.

Speaker 2 Oh, so they went, they wait, okay, so did they print out a satellite view of every individual's house?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 Of 40,000 houses. Yes.

Speaker 2 I just didn't think that that's so custom for 40,000 individual prints.

Speaker 3 Highly advanced printing technology for the time. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 3 They sent out 40,000 different covers of magazines. The front said the subscriber's name, they know where where you are, and a custom photo of your house from above.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 what they mean is, I know where you are. Yes.

Speaker 3 But you got to remember, in 2004, that wasn't well known.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 2 Well, you raise a good point because I don't know what it's like in the UK, but we had phone books that were like distributed locally.

Speaker 2 That was just like everyone in town, here's their, like, here's the name and address or whatever, their phone number.

Speaker 4 I was, um, I once complained to, I'm from Gloucestershire, and it felt like

Speaker 4 that was a small enough environment where the yellow pages should be able to summarize everything I need. And I remember calling into, because I was so near to the

Speaker 4 Stroud News and Journal, I think it was.

Speaker 2 You just wanted to find the nearest hill that you could cheese roll off.

Speaker 4 That's just transit.

Speaker 4 The West Country has this weird expectation that everything is so local despite its scale and despite the fact that people don't move. So I remember going into the Stroud News and Journal and saying,

Speaker 4 well, at the time, I was like, you know, we've got a bit of an issue with the more yellow pages.

Speaker 4 My friend Callum's not in here.

Speaker 4 I wanted my child friend, my six-year-old friend, to also just be in the yellow pages in case a stranger has to call him

Speaker 4 on his landline. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 5 It must have been very expensive for them to do that kind of printing back then, individualized.

Speaker 4 It absolutely was.

Speaker 3 40,000 individualized covers of magazines sent out.

Speaker 4 Do they mean big government knows where you live? Is that the

Speaker 2 - I think that might be what they're trying to communicate, but what they've illustrated is that

Speaker 2 our magazine knows where you live.

Speaker 4 Big libertarian.

Speaker 2 Yeah, which is a requirement for the service.

Speaker 3 So, yes, Reason Magazine combined their subscriber database and a set of satellite images to try try and prove to their audience that they know where you are.

Speaker 3 Each of our guests has brought a question with them. I don't know the question.
I definitely don't know the answers. We're going to start with Jarvis.

Speaker 2 This question has been sent in by Simon B.

Speaker 2 In 2024, online retailers experienced a huge sales boost of a massage gun that people applied to their index finger. How was this caused by a cartoon hamster? Reading that again.

Speaker 2 In 2024, online retailers experienced a huge sales boost of a massage gun that people aimed at their index finger. How is this caused by a cartoon hamster?

Speaker 4 This is a trick, right?

Speaker 4 This is a trick.

Speaker 4 Not a trick.

Speaker 3 I mean, they're all tricks on this show, to be honest. True.

Speaker 4 Index finger caused by cartoon hamster.

Speaker 2 The hamster has your location.

Speaker 4 Mary, are you familiar with any cartoon hamsters? I'm struggling to think of a contemporary cartoon hamster.

Speaker 2 I will say that this is not a cartoon hamster that you'll know.

Speaker 5 No, I was just thinking of who was the Aardvark we used to watch?

Speaker 4 Otis. Otis the Ardvark.

Speaker 5 Otis the Aardvark.

Speaker 4 That's my favourite.

Speaker 3 That's a reference to Weston Jarvis.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, I was like, I know an anteater named Arthur, and that's an idea.

Speaker 3 Oh, they were probably cousins.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Let's talk Blue Peter

Speaker 4 while we're on the topic.

Speaker 3 I'm just making hand gestures. Like, how do you apply a massage gun to one finger? Like, the things are are big.
Unless it's like some kind of

Speaker 3 like special

Speaker 3 T-Mu slash AliExpress, like, tiny little individual massage gun.

Speaker 4 With one of those really long titles with every tag in it. Yes.
Massage gun, index finger, party solo, groups.

Speaker 3 Yep. Hamster, hamster, gerbil.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Cartoon. What would you, what is the, what is the equivalent of carpal tunnel? Is that maybe what it's what could an indie?

Speaker 5 Well, I'm thinking is like musical instrument. Like, that's what you'd, like, it would, I could kind of do with with one, you know, after you've played guitar for a while.

Speaker 4 Yeah, when you rendezvous gets kind of twisted.

Speaker 5 But how does that do, how does that have had anything to do with a hamster?

Speaker 5 Or even the advertising crew being like, we need, what we need right now is a hamster.

Speaker 4 Is that possibly what it is, cartoon mascot hamster? That's maybe the, for the ad,

Speaker 4 like the Geico Lizard.

Speaker 4 Or Juan Sheet for plenty.

Speaker 3 Maybe the cartoon hamster somehow encouraged people to injure their fingers.

Speaker 5 Oh, because it nibbled their fingers or something.

Speaker 2 Tom, I would say that in a lateral way, that is.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 That is.

Speaker 4 Could be true.

Speaker 3 You don't actually want to use a massage gun on your finger, I think. I know

Speaker 3 there's a workplace injury called vibration white finger.

Speaker 3 Like the folks who work with like jackhammers, pneumatic drills, things like that for long periods of time, you can start having all sorts of circulation troubles.

Speaker 3 So I'm not entirely certain this is an actually healthy thing to do.

Speaker 4 So immediately when you mentioned that, I'm like, wow, I've never heard of it. And then you said manual labor.
I'm like, okay, I've never heard of it. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 That might be a typing base.

Speaker 2 Jordan's like, I have Princely Fairfingers. These have touched a

Speaker 4 simply for the ivories.

Speaker 3 Princely Fairfingers, incidentally, plays for the... No, sorry.

Speaker 3 I can never be bothered to finish that joke. I start off with the it's a name joke, then I just peter out.

Speaker 4 It's not worth it. Too many options.

Speaker 3 Peter Out also plays for for the...

Speaker 2 He's a baseball, he's an American baseball player, yeah.

Speaker 4 Can I ask for a hint? Is that a line? Well,

Speaker 2 I'm going to give you

Speaker 2 a small bit of direction.

Speaker 2 Where are people using their index fingers these days in 2024? So this is a, we're in 2025 now, but this was just last year.

Speaker 4 Scrolling.

Speaker 4 This has to be scrolling.

Speaker 4 Or tablets.

Speaker 4 I'm so thumb-oriented on my phone. I'm wondering.
Oh, well, supporting the phone, actually.

Speaker 4 I get a little bit of cramping from just holding the phone in place with my index finger.

Speaker 2 Interacting with a device.

Speaker 4 Ooger.

Speaker 3 So it's some sort of thing where you have to just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap a lot, and it's starting to.

Speaker 4 A mouse?

Speaker 5 Wasn't there that app where you had to hold your finger down for like five days to win? Wasn't it a Mr. Beastly?

Speaker 3 Oh, yes, there was.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 4 Beastly finger.

Speaker 5 It's not anything to do with like fingerprint

Speaker 5 identity. No.

Speaker 4 Ooh, removing your fingerprint. We're back on libertarian mindset, but removing your fingerprints for I did once try to remove my fingerprints.
It didn't work. Oh, blimey.

Speaker 5 What were you running away from, Tom?

Speaker 4 What had you done?

Speaker 3 I am going to refuse to elaborate on that.

Speaker 4 That is not worth telling that story right now.

Speaker 2 Being familiar with Tom's content, I'm just not surprised.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Okay,

Speaker 4 an app,

Speaker 5 doom scrolling,

Speaker 5 identity, fingerprints.

Speaker 2 A massage gun for my doom scrolling is a funny concept.

Speaker 4 And then a hamster. I'm almost kind of

Speaker 4 couching the hamster because I just don't think, I do not know how I can integrate that.

Speaker 3 Maybe it's the mascot of the app or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Maybe. Little ham.

Speaker 3 So what is the hamster encouraging you to do? Tickle the hamster? Poke the hamster? Click on the hamster?

Speaker 4 Oh, we were all playing tickle the hamster. I was going to forget it.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, you remember that app?

Speaker 4 Can you tickle me?

Speaker 5 Wow, a massage gun. Do you know what?

Speaker 5 The other day I did see a viral video where someone was put their drum kit next to a metal door and then was using the massage gun on the metal door and making the most heavy...

Speaker 5 sound ever and I was like I need a massage gun I've never needed one before for massaging I just want it for sound effect.

Speaker 3 What if the massage gun isn't for healing? Like, it's not to make the finger better, it is to make the finger vibrate or to make the finger like tap a lot on a thing.

Speaker 2 So, I think you should combine that with

Speaker 2 kind of you guys have been on the right track.

Speaker 2 We've talked about mobile devices, we've talked about tapping,

Speaker 2 and now you've talked about using the massage gun to make music, make music, but also most recently tom to uh make your finger vibrate uh is it people wanting to uh

Speaker 4 rapidly like

Speaker 4 every tinder match

Speaker 2 that is such a it's like the wrong answer that fits in the constraints i'm just a dog what can i say

Speaker 4 yeah it does it does it does kind of fit when you're out on the pool

Speaker 4 what else could you need to tap really rapidly so actually the thing that we're missing is

Speaker 2 what did they gain from

Speaker 5 they won a hamster.

Speaker 2 What is something

Speaker 2 in 2024 that has changed economically in terms of like the economic options that exist for purchasing power?

Speaker 4 Is it NFT or crypto adjacent?

Speaker 2 Yes, it is. Okay.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 Is there a mechanism of crypto mining related to tap? That would be new to me, I guess.

Speaker 2 Well, you're right on the money because

Speaker 2 there's oftentimes many

Speaker 2 gamified ways to mine crypto.

Speaker 4 Oh, no.

Speaker 3 Every time you tapped the hamster, it gave you some cryptocurrency.

Speaker 2 Basically, yes.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow. Every time you tickled it.

Speaker 3 It's hamster tickle coin.

Speaker 2 The hamster hamster, it is called hamster combat.

Speaker 4 And it was a viral, allegedly,

Speaker 2 news to me, viral 2024 computer game that had in-game scoring backed by cryptocurrency. Players simply had to jab at the screen repeatedly to collect coins.

Speaker 4 Terrifying.

Speaker 2 Applying the massager to one's index finger allowed players to tap their mobile screen much faster than they could normally.

Speaker 2 The online retailer Wildberries reported a 179% increase in sales for percussion massagers.

Speaker 2 Percussion, like the door.

Speaker 2 Some retailers even emblazoned the game's logo on Adverts for the massagers. That's wild.
Anything to sell, I guess.

Speaker 4 In the end,

Speaker 2 and you could have guessed this, but in the end, even the top players who'd been racking up their scores for months only earned a few hundred dollars out of the game.

Speaker 4 Well, covers the cost of the massage gun.

Speaker 3 And the physical therapy afterwards.

Speaker 4 No, honey, it's for cryptocurrency.

Speaker 3 Thank you to M. Andres for sending in this next question.

Speaker 3 In August 2000, television viewers complained to CBS Sports that that they weren't always being fed live audio from the PGA Championship in Kentucky.

Speaker 3 No major technical mistakes were made, so what gave away the TV producers' deception? Give you that one more time.

Speaker 3 In August 2000, television viewers complained to CBS Sports that they weren't always being fed live audio from the PGA Championship in Kentucky. No major technical mistakes were made.

Speaker 3 So what gave away the TV producers' deception?

Speaker 4 Was the commentary wrong? It's a hole in one that they just missed completely.

Speaker 5 Were the players boycotting it somehow, like trying to hide what they were saying? Hmm.

Speaker 2 Was there some sort of natural disaster or event that interfered

Speaker 2 that people would know obviously should be affecting the

Speaker 2 sport?

Speaker 3 Of those three initial guesses, Jarvis is closest, in the right vague, vague ballpark.

Speaker 4 They were playing baseball.

Speaker 4 I don't think this is live.

Speaker 3 The video was fine.

Speaker 4 The audio was fine. Was Tiger Woods not playing, but he was...
Was he in trouble?

Speaker 4 Oh. But was in the game? What year was it? 2000.

Speaker 2 That was a Tiger Woods. I don't know if that was the Tiger Woods controversy year, but.

Speaker 5 I think that was a bit too early, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 It could be too early.

Speaker 4 So the audio was incorrect.

Speaker 5 Natural disaster, wind,

Speaker 5 weather.

Speaker 3 Natural disasters not right, but of the of the things. Jarvis is closer.

Speaker 2 Right. Like there's something happening in the world.
So I think maybe the Tiger Woods angle doesn't feel that different where something is incongruous.

Speaker 2 Like our state of the world, like the state of the world that the public has has updated and the audio has not.

Speaker 2 And that's my imagination of like why we're seeing like a dissonance between these two things. I was like, there's someone on commentary who had some sort of of issue and couldn't possibly be there.

Speaker 4 Earthquake? Oh, that would definitely be a desertion.

Speaker 3 The vast majority of people wouldn't have noticed this.

Speaker 4 But they're

Speaker 4 pedantic enough to write into CBS people.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And it's 2000, so they would probably have written in.

Speaker 4 Seasonal?

Speaker 4 Anything to do with the outdoors? Is there something just incongruous with the season? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Not with the season, but something's incongruous. Have a think about the TV coverage on golf.
What happens between the different shots of the golfers?

Speaker 5 Some aerial footage of the golf course.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they'll be establishing shots.

Speaker 5 So audio while they're

Speaker 5 on an aerial shot is...

Speaker 5 But most people wouldn't notice it, so it can't be too controversial.

Speaker 4 The competitors aren't mic'd, right?

Speaker 3 No, but there are a lot of mics around the course.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, is this audio of the environment or audio of the on-mic talent?

Speaker 3 Audio of the environment. That's a key point there, Jarvis.

Speaker 4 A tiger.

Speaker 5 Some wildlife problem.

Speaker 2 So something, yeah, there's got to be something that doesn't sync up, right? Something in the aerial shot that's not, that's not present in the audio or vice versa.

Speaker 3 Not necessarily. I'd stick with wildlife.

Speaker 3 Like, it's not a tiger. There's not suddenly a tiger appearing in the audio.
But if you're a keen viewer and you know certain things, you might spot that the TV producers are lying to you.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow. Is it birds or something?

Speaker 5 What else would be in a golf course?

Speaker 3 Birds. Keep going, Mary.

Speaker 4 They were sucked into the rotor of the helicopter. Oh, no.
Oh, no. I think it's a Sullivan-style situation.

Speaker 3 You don't hear the helicopter during the big aerial shots. You don't hear from the mics that are way up on the towers.

Speaker 5 Wait, so if you don't have. So you've got the mics on the ground somewhere, you're hearing the environment, they're birds, wildlife of the said location.

Speaker 5 But you've got the aerial shots from the helicopter.

Speaker 3 Are you?

Speaker 4 Is it the wrong sounds for the birds locally?

Speaker 3 It's the wrong birds.

Speaker 4 You're absolutely right, Jordan. It's the wrong birds.

Speaker 4 Dynamos kicked down. Wow, that truly is.
I think if I received that feedback from an audience member, I would be like, that's okay. Don't watch.
Yep.

Speaker 4 Go away forever.

Speaker 2 I wonder, like, because bird watching, was it more popular?

Speaker 2 We had less things to do in 2000.

Speaker 4 Social media had rotted our brains. We didn't have any hamsters to tickle.
I suppose I'll get to Avian watches.

Speaker 3 Yep. CBS filled the gaps in the commentary and the action with ambient sounds and footage of the area.
But sometimes the ambience was pre-taped.

Speaker 3 And a few people complained that the call of a white-throated sparrow was audible, which is not native to Kentucky.

Speaker 2 You're supposed to be birdie-watching, not bird-watching.

Speaker 4 Hey!

Speaker 4 But their complaint was that they thought it wasn't live the whole broadcast as a result, or just they were like, This is inauthentic.

Speaker 3 This is inaccurate. What else are you lying to us about?

Speaker 3 If this is faked, what else is?

Speaker 2 It's not that they want to smooth out the broadcast because there's going to be lots of dead air otherwise.

Speaker 3 The vice president of CBS Sports said they tried to use local bird song where possible. They did have a tactic for trying to get that.

Speaker 4 Lav mics on the birds.

Speaker 3 CBS put a microphone microphone down and put something next to it.

Speaker 2 Oh, like some bread?

Speaker 4 Yeah, birdseed.

Speaker 3 They just put some birdseed down next to a microphone to try and get some local birds on when they couldn't get.

Speaker 5 They were too busy eating. They wouldn't be singing right there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the bird sounds just chomping. Nom, nom, nom.
That's the chomping of the white-bellied plug feather.

Speaker 3 Yes, the producers of that year's PGA championship footage had used taped bird calls for the wrong bird.

Speaker 3 Mary, it is your question. Over to you.

Speaker 5 Okay, this question is based on an idea sent in by Daniel Edgardo. What has lateral got in common with a cow's jaw and an army of ants?

Speaker 5 What has lateral got in common with a cow's jaw and an army of ants?

Speaker 3 This is our very first meta question.

Speaker 4 I was going to say, this is meta. Does the formatting of the text confirm that the...
is it like in italics to confirm it's the show or

Speaker 4 is it possible to be it must this is indeed referring to lateral this podcast yes a cow's jaw well cows chew like should or whatever cud could i think could could and they chew with four stomachs well they don't chew with four stomachs but they have four stomachs four guests is that is there any possible well it's three guests you have an army of ants

Speaker 2 i can't see four making an army of ants this is very silly but it's like an army, as in like the audience is working together as a hive mind, and we're supposed to chew on the riddles that they give us, like a cow does.

Speaker 3 Lateral has four players, a cow has four stomachs, an army of ants has

Speaker 3 many ants.

Speaker 2 Oh, and they have a queen, right?

Speaker 5 Every podcast has, well, not every podcast, but most podcasts have something that sort of unites them as a.

Speaker 5 I'm hoping I'm not giving too much away here.

Speaker 3 You're absolutely not.

Speaker 5 And I guess it's sort of uh I am

Speaker 5 I'm into sound and the podcast is is audio.

Speaker 5 I'm just think I'm saying which part of the podcast to focus on.

Speaker 4 It's it is it a tie to microphones?

Speaker 5 What has lateral got in common with a cow's jaw

Speaker 5 and an army of ants?

Speaker 5 So maybe

Speaker 5 a combination of those two things?

Speaker 3 We all chew on things, but that's not specifically a cow's jaw. But lateral chews on and digests questions metaphorically.
A cow's jaw will chew on something, and an army of ants will,

Speaker 3 I mean, if they're particularly vicious ants, they will chew at things, but I'm not convinced about that. I started so well on that, and then the metaphorical.

Speaker 2 I mean, I had the chewing idea as well, but but they work toward a common goal.

Speaker 5 I'll give you

Speaker 5 the clues I'm definitely allowed to give. The cow's jaw still has the teeth in it.

Speaker 3 Does it have the rest of the cow attached?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 Oh, what happened?

Speaker 5 So a jaw, and then what happens to the jaw if you introduce a load of ants?

Speaker 4 Oh.

Speaker 4 Did they

Speaker 4 create a hive? Inside the.

Speaker 4 That's kind of a horrific image.

Speaker 5 It is quite gruesome what the ants do to the jaw.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 4 I feel like ants don't have a lot of hobbies. Their main thing is picking up a thing they found and taking it home.

Speaker 3 Or nesting inside it. Do ants like hollow out cow bones and nest inside them?

Speaker 4 Like the podcast.

Speaker 4 Yeah, just get away from me a little.

Speaker 5 Well, there is

Speaker 5 a process that happens when ants.

Speaker 5 Maybe they're not very nice ants. They're not very nice ants.
Well, they're hungry ants. They're hungry ants, basically.

Speaker 4 Do they eat enamel? Like, are they eating teeth?

Speaker 5 Flesh?

Speaker 4 Gums?

Speaker 2 Do they make the jaw move?

Speaker 5 The jaw doesn't move by itself.

Speaker 2 Right, but do something the ants do cause the jaw to like they comedically puppet it

Speaker 5 the ants have a job of eating the flesh. Right.
And then there is something sonic about this.

Speaker 3 Sonic.

Speaker 5 But not necessarily done by the ants.

Speaker 3 I mean, it sounds like there's an instrument made out of a cow's jaw, but I don't know what that instrument could be.

Speaker 5 You are very much along the right lines. And it has something to do with lateral.

Speaker 4 Is it a wind instrument?

Speaker 5 No, it's not a wind instrument.

Speaker 5 I guess you could say it is like a percussive.

Speaker 3 Does our theme tune have that instrument in it or something like that?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 4 Whoa. Really?

Speaker 5 Yes. In the theme tune for lateral, you can hear a distinctive rattle sound.

Speaker 3 I thought that was one of those vibraslap things that.

Speaker 5 It's a vibraslap,

Speaker 5 but I think I can reveal this right now. So the jawbone is a rattle that you can hear in laterals.

Speaker 3 Theme.

Speaker 5 And then the vibro slap was developed from a traditional Latin American instrument called the chiada.

Speaker 5 And this was made by taking the jaw of a donkey, horse, or cow and putting it into a bowl of ants.

Speaker 5 The ants remove all the flesh, leaving only the teeth and jawbone.

Speaker 5 And when the bone is struck, the teeth make a distinctive rattling sound.

Speaker 4 Oh my god.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that literally means jaw in Spanish.

Speaker 4 Kudos to the creator of that instrument because everyone thought they were crazy.

Speaker 5 So if you don't know what a vibra slap sounds like, this is how it sounds.

Speaker 4 Tom, does that change your relationship to the theme song of the show at all?

Speaker 3 I'm assuming it's a synthetic one. I'm assuming that whoever put that song together just hit a vibra slap or grabbed a sample rather than an artisanal, original, cowbone-eaten rice.

Speaker 4 They could use a VST, but they chose to get the real one.

Speaker 5 A lot of musical instruments had kind of gruesome beginnings, like I play the viola, but obviously the Baroque viola had gut strings and it was genuine gut.

Speaker 5 And then you go along those lines, and there are other, you know,

Speaker 2 snare, well, not drums with obviously like sinew and hyde is used as like, yeah, hides.

Speaker 5 A lot of animals have contributed to music.

Speaker 4 Not willingly. Not willingly.

Speaker 3 This question's been sent in by Sammy.

Speaker 3 In 2017, a user of the operating system, Unix, found that if you used the command for a manual page at 0.30 hours, the system would reply with three identical words. What were they?

Speaker 3 I'll say that again. In 2017, a user of the operating system, Unix, found that if you use the command for a manual page at 0.30 hours, the system would reply with three identical words.

Speaker 3 What were they?

Speaker 4 Deferring to Jarvis on this one.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, Jarvis, you, I remember meeting you at the point where you just kind of transitioned out of doing computer stuff.

Speaker 2 I know, but I don't know. I mean, I can provide a little bit of context here.
This is 2017.

Speaker 2 And then what was the time?

Speaker 3 0.30 hours.

Speaker 2 So that's midnight 30 is that right in in other in normal time

Speaker 2 uh and then the other thing i can provide is that uh a manual page in unix the command is man

Speaker 2 uh so you'd be typing in man space and then the name you'd be looking up the manual page for a program and a lot of times developers will put Easter eggs and fun little things into

Speaker 2 man pages or

Speaker 2 whatever.

Speaker 2 And I'm wondering what sort of program would say the same thing three times.

Speaker 2 And my guess would be it's a pun that like it completes a word. So if it was like man something

Speaker 2 like man a war or man, you know, like, I don't know,

Speaker 2 that would cause it a triple.

Speaker 4 That's a good instinct. My default was that it would be, you know, and this assumptions are only also based on tech time, would be it's a pop culture reference.

Speaker 4 That was the other thing that jumped into my head.

Speaker 3 You've got most of it. And Java's just for context.
When you say like type in,

Speaker 3 what are you seeing on your screen?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, so, okay. So you're opening up a terminal.
So imagine like a black box with a blinking cursor that's waiting for you to type in a command.

Speaker 2 And then you can type in things like,

Speaker 2 you know, list the directories in the folder that you're looking at and things like that.

Speaker 2 You can also type in to start a program. If I, If I type in like Chrome on my,

Speaker 2 more or less, if I type in Chrome on my thing, it'll open up my Google Chrome because certain programs have

Speaker 2 command line.

Speaker 3 Yep, you've got all the important parts of this. Yeah.
Jarvis, you've identified the program.

Speaker 3 Between you, you figured out that there's something weird about how I'm saying the time. And Jordan, you've got that it's a pop culture reference.

Speaker 5 So I'm lacking right now.

Speaker 4 Is it 2017

Speaker 4 era era pop culture reference?

Speaker 3 Why do you think that, John?

Speaker 4 No particular, just I'm wondering if the.

Speaker 2 Well, why would the year be provided?

Speaker 4 I guess it's it can't be after 2017, but that's there's a bunch of culture from before 2017. There's like 10 years.

Speaker 3 There is, and I think this is the bit that Mary might be able to fill in.

Speaker 4 Oh, dear.

Speaker 5 So something musical.

Speaker 4 Hmm.

Speaker 5 Man of skin. I'm trying.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to think of like man reference.

Speaker 5 Is man one of the things?

Speaker 5 Can we confirm that or is that still part?

Speaker 3 Yeah, man is the correct command. Yes.

Speaker 5 Man is correct. So man music.

Speaker 3 What time was that again?

Speaker 2 030 hours.

Speaker 2 Is there a song that just says the

Speaker 2 says the same word

Speaker 2 three?

Speaker 4 Like ring, ring, ring or hello, hello, hello.

Speaker 2 I'm like imagining like what would be in a song.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 you've got all the constituent parts of this and you're going to kick yourself when it actually loads.

Speaker 5 Oh my goodness. No.
Okay. So it's a popular song with a repeating.
Jarvis, do you know? You had like a cheeky look on your face.

Speaker 4 I don't know. No, no, no, no.
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Ring, ring is actually a song by the same band.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow. Sleigh bells?

Speaker 2 30 minutes after midnight.

Speaker 2 Something after midnight.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 3 At some point, the penny is going to drop and I do not want to spoil that for you.

Speaker 5 Why do I feel like it's like Lincoln park or something midnight minutes midnight minutes after midnight is a minute isn't that a lincoln park album

Speaker 3 if you just say the command and time a few times it might land

Speaker 4 man midnight man man

Speaker 2 man on the moon man after midnight

Speaker 2 what was that what was that jarvis i i said man after midnight man on the moon man

Speaker 3 man after midnight does that ring any bells for anyone oh is it it's not elton john it's not but that scale of artist, they're Swedish.

Speaker 4 Oh, it's ABBA?

Speaker 5 Wait, oh my god, Mary.

Speaker 5 I'm letting myself down. I'm letting my whole...

Speaker 5 I need a man after midnight.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what?

Speaker 3 It's a bit just before that.

Speaker 3 You've got the song.

Speaker 5 Is it gimme, gimme, gimme? Gimme, gimme, gimme, a man after midnight, Mary.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God, Mary.

Speaker 3 Yes, if you type the command man into certain Unix systems at exactly half past midnight, it will send the reply it's meant to and then it will tack on gimme, gimme, gimme.

Speaker 2 That's so funny.

Speaker 4 I was so locked into mamma mia.

Speaker 4 Mama manned after midnight. Gimme a man.

Speaker 3 It's an infuriating thing because you've got man after midnight, but then you have to move your brain backwards in the song and that's almost impossible.

Speaker 2 Without knowing the song, I did the best I could.

Speaker 2 I was like, I understand the structure of of a riddle.

Speaker 4 That was good. That's like an Ocean's 11 where we need, we need the safe cracker.
We need the acrobat. Yeah, yeah, that's me.
That's me.

Speaker 2 You guys have to make sense of this.

Speaker 4 I don't know. With the guy behind the chair.

Speaker 3 This Easter egg was found when someone's system started breaking because of it, because they ran a test at half past midnight and it caused a problem.

Speaker 3 And then they had to just kind of pare the Easter egg down a bit. So it only happens if you actually just type in man.

Speaker 3 Jordan, your question whenever you're ready.

Speaker 4 This question has been sent in by Nate. Eric Radomsky was the co-creator and lead artist of

Speaker 4 1992's Batman the Animated series. In what way did he reverse the animation process to achieve the show's signature aesthetic? One more time.

Speaker 4 Eric Radomsky was the co-creator and lead artist of 1992's Batman the Animated series. In what way did he reverse the animation process to achieve the show's signature aesthetic?

Speaker 3 Despite having never seen the series, this fact is tucked away in the back of my head. So, Marion Jarvis, this one's on you.

Speaker 4 Oh, no. We're already down one.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen the show. I think I've maybe seen the show as a child.

Speaker 2 Reversing the animation process. What does that mean? Can we unpack that for a second, Mary?

Speaker 5 I guess so. End result is the animation.
Animation. And done the old-fashioned way, I assume.

Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 So, images.

Speaker 2 Right. Like, so 1992, the things I know about animation, it's it's drawn on cells.

Speaker 2 Uh, sometimes, you know, for very advanced animation, like I think in Snow White, they'll use rotoscoping and stuff where they trace over like real actors and such.

Speaker 2 Um, I don't know what it is about

Speaker 2 the, I don't know the style of Batman the Animated series. I was more of a Batman Beyond guy.
Uh,

Speaker 4 So, brother.

Speaker 5 So, maybe it's a bit more sophisticated than a flipbook being reversed.

Speaker 4 I will say, Jervis, to that point,

Speaker 4 Batman Beyond has the similarly noir, iconic noir aesthetic as the animated series.

Speaker 2 So, reversing the animation process.

Speaker 2 Is it literally reversing, like playing something in reverse? Like,

Speaker 2 what if things were animated backwards and played forward to create like a choppy effect?

Speaker 5 Or is that anything to do with the actual filling in of the art and it being finished, a finished picture, to then being like the sketch of the picture?

Speaker 4 I think

Speaker 4 what you've highlighted about the era and the way animation was done, methods that maybe would not apply now, is very appropriate. You could do it now, but the era made it.

Speaker 4 It makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 2 I'm just checking that I've got the right thing here when mary said that it's it's more about how the the animation cells are made and drawn yes it's more it's more about that than anything temporal yes it's exactly that a you could it is more uh art design driven than uh production processor like animation production so 24 images per second or i think in animation there's like uh potentially less yeah but uh so my first thought was like thinking about modern animation, thinking about like the Spider-Verse movies and how they,

Speaker 2 to create the comic book aesthetic, they like layered additional, they kind of drew on top of the existing cells.

Speaker 2 And so I'm wondering if there's something like that where they drew something in a traditional fashion and then like sketched over it or like made it

Speaker 2 like or even took away frame. Oh, wait, you said it was in the design and not necessarily the production?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I would say you've

Speaker 4 you're right on it, nail on the head with the

Speaker 4 reversing the method that they would create these individual cells. Uh, less about the um,

Speaker 4 like the pairing of those cells, but the actual artistic process was so.

Speaker 2 The things I know about the artistic process that I think I know about them in animation cells, right, is that you have, you have background art and then you have

Speaker 2 the actors, like the actual figures that are moving on top of that, so that you can change out those cells and not change the backgrounds because it would be, you know, expensive to paint or redraw

Speaker 2 all these backgrounds.

Speaker 4 Think also about what the

Speaker 4 iconic color palette of Batman is and how he appears in the world. No, black and white.

Speaker 5 I'm thinking Sin City, but old school.

Speaker 4 I think Sin City is a good reference point as far as its high contrast and splashes of vibrant color.

Speaker 5 Is it red, black, white, and red being the only colours?

Speaker 4 No, it's a lot of vibrant colors, but the

Speaker 4 predominant theme of Batman is

Speaker 4 important to the way these cells were constructed.

Speaker 2 I want to go back to reversing, because is it like normally you draw something and then you color?

Speaker 2 I already said this, but like, uh, one idea of reversing is like you draw something and then you color it in.

Speaker 2 And then another way is you color in first and then you draw afterward.

Speaker 4 You're bang on with

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 4 how they change the linear process of making the art.

Speaker 4 But the

Speaker 4 not quite that.

Speaker 3 It's more the background, as I remember, Jordan.

Speaker 4 It is indeed.

Speaker 4 This, uh, this decision made animating daytime scenes more difficult oh they've like they like maybe they oh i don't know did they use like black as the background instead of white as like a base it was drawn on black paper wow

Speaker 4 okay

Speaker 4 which it and i see that the challenge of even when i read it the first time i'm like it is animation but it's not the animation right that is that's yeah the tricky part but it i mean you can definitely tell it's it's very uh stark high contrast.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 4 An interesting note also included here was that uh they issued the order that all artists use, uh, all artists, um, should have it so that all backgrounds had to be drawn on black paper with bright colours applied on top of them, um, the opposite of the normal system, and it allows them to have that really gritty feel.

Speaker 4 The Batman in that universe is almost like the absence of the world design, where uh, in a lot of scenes, he has no detail, he's just a silhouette with eyes.

Speaker 4 Kind of like Batman Beyond, but without the red.

Speaker 5 I'm going to have to watch it later.

Speaker 4 It's fab. I mean, there's a very good Batman the Animated Series movie about Mr.
Freeze.

Speaker 2 It's like

Speaker 2 he's like OLED screens, right? It's like the pixels are off. You know what I mean? To get the true black.

Speaker 4 Yeah, for the process of creating Batman the Animated Series, the creative team, instead of... drawing on a white background and creating the characters on top of that, they started with

Speaker 4 black paper, and then added vibrant colors and basic whites to help bring that alive.

Speaker 4 Created an issue with the daytime scenes because layering white art, brightening a dark background, was more challenging than darkening a white background.

Speaker 3 Which brings me to the question I asked the audience at the very start of the show. Los Angeles is sometimes called LA, while Orlando begins with the letters O R L.
What does this help you remember?

Speaker 3 Does anyone want to have a quick shot at that before I clue the audience in?

Speaker 4 Jervis is something of a Florida man.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the airports in LA, you know, is LAX, and then Orlando is ORL, I think.

Speaker 3 No, Orlando is MCO. Orlando's executive jet airport is ORL, but Orlando Airport is MCL.

Speaker 2 I never fly out of Orlando, so that makes sense.

Speaker 3 What connects Los Angeles and Orlando?

Speaker 2 Disney.

Speaker 3 Keep talking.

Speaker 2 There's Disneyland, Disney World, Disneyland in California, Disney World and Orlando. Yep.
Oh, LA for land and ORL for world. So

Speaker 4 brilliant.

Speaker 2 Like ORL. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 3 Los Angeles is LA and that's in Disneyland. Orlando is ORL and that is in Disney World.

Speaker 3 I have to remember which Disney theme park is where.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much to all our players. Let's find out what's going on in people's lives.
Where can they find you? We will start with Jordan.

Speaker 4 YouTube.com slash sadboys. We put out an episode every Friday, and we also release a second episode on our Patreon, patreon.com slash sadboys.

Speaker 3 And that is Sad Boys with a.

Speaker 4 With a Z.

Speaker 3 And Jarvis.

Speaker 2 I've just received word from Jordan's doctor that I am now 100% of the Sad Boys podcast, which you can call, which you can find on youtube.com slash sad boys, posting every week.

Speaker 4 So unprofessional.

Speaker 2 Hate that this is how you have to find out.

Speaker 4 And Mary.

Speaker 5 I'm also a YouTuber, so Mary Spender, just type that in.

Speaker 5 And also I have a debut album on Spotify now. And well, anywhere you can listen to music.
It's called Super Sexy Heartbreak.

Speaker 4 Woo!

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are regular video highlights at youtube.com/slash lateralcast. Thank you very much to Mary Spender.
Thank you. Jarvis Johnson.

Speaker 2 I'm the only one.

Speaker 4 Jordan Addick.

Speaker 4 Ditto.

Speaker 3 I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral.