117: Dull white powder

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Why does Graham regularly go to Beyoncé's Wikipedia page, even though he's not a fan of her music? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral.

Welcome to our partisserie of puzzles, where our clever chefs have been baking up a fresh batch of brain teasers. Our questions are like croissants, twisted, multi-layered, and sometimes pretty flaky.

But the more puzzles you try, the more you'll get butter and butter. Here to brush away the crumbs, we start with

data scientist talking about AI, tech, and self-learning on her own YouTube channel. Welcome back to the show, Tina Wong.
Thank you so much for having me. Welcome back.
This is your second appearance.

How was the first one? The first one was in the beginning. I was like, what are these questions? No, I think I'm kind of getting the hang of it.
Maybe. I don't want to say that now.

I not know what's happening. I think last time we talked to Soph, who's also on this show, about setting expectations low and exceeding them.

Yes, yes, yes. I think I've expected unexpected.
Always. What sort of stuff are you working on at the minute?

What can people expect to see from you?

I'm just continuing on talking about AI and tech stuff, basically how to self-learn using AI technologies and how to help people get careers that they love.

All in the YouTube channel. Very best of luck on the show today.
Also joining us, we have Science Communicator from her own channel, Soph's Notes, and at this point, a veteran of this show.

Welcome back. Sophie Ward, how are you doing? I'm doing very well, Tom.
I feel mixed emotions about being called a veteran, but I'll take it. Yeah.

Yeah, actually, it doesn't feel right to use the word that we use for like people in combat to be on the show.

I don't know.

Get pretty feisty in here. You can get pretty feisty.

Last time you were on, we said that you were working mostly on stuff that does not appear on the internet.

Is there anything that is heading internet words from you, or are you just like, I have my private life right now, and I'm happy with that?

I genuinely think to keep, if you want to know, you can look on my Instagram or YouTube and things might pop up there, but we'll see.

Yeah, there's a couple of things in the pipeline, but I think, yeah, just

watch this space, I suppose. I like Tina's thing of helping people find jobs they like, though.
Maybe I should do that.

Well, the third member of our panel, I think, has a job that he likes, Julian Hugitt, science communicator. And from That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, welcome back to the show.

You sound like my family. I think Julian has a job.
I'm not totally sure.

Assume.

I don't know how he pays rent, but yeah,

I do love science communicating and the podcast, That's Absurd, Please Elorate.

I do that with Trace Dominguez, and we goof around a lot too and try and answer the silliest questions that we can get from listeners. It's a good time.
And thanks for having me back.

What questions have you been working on lately? We had one, well, with you, Tom, the the one I still think about was

what if the moon was actually made of cheese? And we really got into like the origin of that saying and then what that would imply for like the moon. And it was quite fun.

And listening it back, I was so blown away because you had like a couple jokes and references that were so quick that I missed them.

Like when you called it a cheese thaw cycle as like a freeze thaw cycle.

You know what? I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna cheat my own horn, but I thought that was underappreciated in the moment. So thank you for that.
That was. That was.

Because I went back and listened to it later, and I was like, this man just came up with the best cheese science pun I have ever heard and none of us acknowledged it.

And I come here to humbly apologize for that. Unbelievable.

Let's move on. Let's swiftly move on.

Oh, this is getting cheesy. Yeah.
Tom, as we've mentioned, by the way, is very hungry at this moment in time. And no,

my script is about baking. Like, we have the croissant pun.
I announced the second part of that.

Our bakery is now open for business and I've tried to make the first question fairly easy. So

don't worry. Don't worry.
Pro.

You said it like cross-you said it the American way to a croissant or whatever it was. Croissant.

My dialect is always halfway over the Atlantic. You should talk like Girl's transatlantic kind of like 20s.
Like our bakery is now open for business and I gotta say,

you gotta prove yourself. Big star.
Only one of us in this call can do a transatlantic accent. And it is unfortunately from a 1920s femme fatale.

No, 1920s was silent. Never mind.
Moving on. Moving on.
Question one, folks. Good luck.
Tins of tiny dolomite, cotton, and cellulose particles can be purchased.

The contents are spread out in a thin layer. This helps to determine what.

I'll say that again. Tins of tiny dolomite, cotton, and cellulose particles can be purchased.
The contents are spread spread out in a thin layer. This helps to determine what.

Dolomite, cotton, and cellulose. So, cellulose being like the plant material, right? Like the plant wall stuff.
The stuff that gives plants like their actual structure and

shape. And dolomite cotton.
It's like dolomite is in from the dolomite. Not the blacksploitation film from the 70s.

Pretty sure there was a movie called Dolomite.

Is it rock? Is it dolomite rock? Because isn't there an area called the dolomites?

There is. In this case, it's the rock.
They are not specific. It's only dolomite if it comes from this region of Italy.
Otherwise, it's just sparkling rock. No.

Of course. Yeah, sparkling rock.
In this case, I've just looked it up. It is an anhydrous carbonate material.
It is calcium magnesium carbonate. Ah, anhydrous.
Yeah. No, so there's no H2O in it.

It's a bit like marble. Is it as if it had anything to do with like the wind? Like which way the wind is blowing?

I'm imagining like throwing these things into the air and it would tell you something about the strength of the wind and where that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Yeah, espretto in a thin layer and then if it blows

because it's it's giving it's like dusty vibes. So I feel like

dusty vibes is a 1940s femme fatale from a movie.

Oh, it's me again, dusty vibes, and I'm just putting my dollar mic on and cellulos on the ground. What's going to happen?

I knew she was in trouble when she spread her dolomite out in my office.

I don't just spread my dolomite for anybody.

I'm hydrous is getting me.

I'm hydrous, right? So

without water, like the water's been... So then maybe if water touches it, something happens.

If it would... soak up the water.
I don't know. This is me trying to dig out my older chemistry knowledge.

Is it like a scientific application or like agriculture or military?

Yeah, do we have to know scientific knowledge, which we should do as a bunch of science communicators? No, absolutely not. Okay, great.

Although, what it's helpful to know is that those are all fairly neutral, inactive ingredients. When you said dusty vibes, actually, yeah.

Dusty vibes. Dusty vibes.

Okay, so it's pretty nothingy.

So it's to work out. Do we mix them together?

They arrive mixed. Oh, they are.
Oh, so they're together already. And the ratio of it.

Yeah.

They would like cling to a thing or...

Yeah. Do we put them in water or is it in the air or just on the ground? It's in a thin layer.
That was in the question. It's spread out in a thin layer.
On what? Thin layer on what is the question.

If I tell you about it, it will kind of give you away. It will get away.
Okay, but that's good. That's good, though.
That's good.

So we care about where we're spreading it out. Okay.
On a croissant.

Does it cling to things? Because is it a flat surface?

Or is it kind of like a clean...

Yeah, you're just spreading things out on a flat surface. Oh, is it?

No, but why would you do that? I was like. Just say it, say it.
If you want to make sure something's really clean, maybe it's like you spread it out and stuff will cling to it.

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. But it's to find out if something is...

Or if it's really smooth, to find out if if to determine if something's really really smooth and then it'll just slide off i don't know when you say whether something is clean actually that's much closer than you might think for a guess you nearly didn't say so that's nearly there does it help determine some material contaminant

I'm thinking of like at an airport when you go through and they like swab your hands with like the cotton things.

Is it like looking for some sort of chemical? No, it's just inert stuff. Inert stuff.
You've hit quite a few few things. I think you just haven't quite put them together.

So let me sum up what you've got. It is dusty vibes,

and it is used to determine and test something. Yeah, but that's part of the question, Tom.
That's not that helpful. Yeah, I know.

Well, you also said which way the wind is blowing, and that's

not

technically right, but it's a lot closer than you think.

Okay.

Blowing is the wrong word in there, to be honest. Is it relative wind on like an airplane wing? What? Relative?

You ever see wind tunnels where they tape a bunch of pieces of string to the wings?

Depending on your perspective, the wind is absolutely blowing here. Oh, no.
But you wouldn't, you would. You and I would not describe this as blowing.

It sounds like something is moving through the air instead.

There's a lot of air moving. There's definitely a lot of air moving.

You're so cryptic. I'm being very cryptic because there's one key word that you've not quite got.

We're not testing blowing here. Sucking.
Sucking. Dusty vibes blowing.
It tests vacuums. Yes, you're trying if you're future words.

Oh, that was painful. Oh, my gosh.

When you said which way the wind is blowing, I'm like, that's technically right.

But.

I'm going to be honest, Tom. That question sucks.
Hey!

Yes, dolomite, cotton, and cellulose are the ingredients of DMT test dust type 8. And so it is a synthetic dust that you buy.
So it's literally uses as dusty as dust. Yeah.
This is what I get y'all.

You would basically there. It is synthetic dust used as a standard test for vacuum cleaners.

Yeah, that does make sense, right? Like the different densities and like air resistance of the materials. So you can tell, like, oh, if it's sucking up the cotton, but not the dolomite.

Like, it's not as powerful. And they're not affected.
They're not like magnetic or anything. You don't worry about any other confounding things.

That's...

You know, I never thought of vacuum testing being a necessity before, but it makes sense. I get it now.

Each of our players has brought a question along with them. We are going to start today with Tina.
Whenever you're ready. All right.

In recent months, David will pass something between his hands, sometimes more than once, when walking in the street. He does a pirouette on the spot occasionally too.

How has his life changed and what do these actions do?

I'll say that again. In recent months, David will pass something between his hands, sometimes more than once, when walking in the street, he does a pirouette on the spot occasionally too.

How has his life changed and what do these actions do? My first thought is that this is a question written by David the producer. This is a question.
And it is about something that he is doing.

Or that it's the thing that he'd have to put a random name in, and he was like, what's a name I know?

David moved to a dangerous part of town and now he carries a club with him. And occasionally, he just swings it round, does a pirouette, spins around

carelessly. People can come up behind you, Tom.
You've got to spin around. Yeah,

yeah, you've got to be ready.

To be fair, in San Francisco, like I've talked to people when they walk at night, in order to prevent people from, you know, jumping them, they kind of act in interesting ways to prevent people from

looking at them.

It's like I've seen that thing where if you're on a bus or a train and you don't want someone to sit next to you, but it's getting busy, everyone who walks past you should tap your seat and be like, sit here, sit next to me.

And I'm like, no, no one will sit next to you.

I've been to SF, and if I saw a guy randomly pirouetting, I would avoid him.

Very effective. Yeah, it would work.
I would keep my distance, regardless of what was in his hands. Don't think through on that track, though.
That is incorrect.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for walking us down that path and then telling us it's a dead end.
I just have to tell you that anecdote. Okay.

Is David walking with anyone?

Is he, I mean, you wouldn't say holding somebody's hand is like passing, and like switching hands with the hand holder is

like passing something between your hands and doing a I don't know. My thought was as well like passing like bacteria across his hands.

He's just putting his hands together and it just so happens that his bacteria is going from behind. And his communicators.
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Yeah, we think too granularly.

Pirouette, classically a ballet word. It could be a ballet.
He's just carrying his ballet diploma and then showing it off.

I do this thing when I walk my dog where like when I come to another person with a dog on the leash or a lead, as they would say in the UK, I...

Hate it because I always have to do like the dumb leash dance. You know what I'm talking about?

Where like we all have to like zigzag and cross because my dog wants to like be as inconvenient as possible and like smell the other dog and then the legs and then come back and like do you know what i mean yeah no it's like cat's cradle but with leads like you got you got that yes wait it's a dog wait i have this vague thing in my head that David the producer has actually got a dog recently.

Oh, so it is about David the producer. So he passes the lead between his hands and then he has to do a pirouette.
Is it easy to do?

He has to do a pirouette because the dog will run around and tangle up the leaves. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's just easier.

Every time I do it, like crossing the street in front of a cart, I'm like, I look like such an idiot. Like, wee, my little dog spin.
Because my 10-pound chihuahua is running the show. Like,

I am so impressed. I really, Tom, I mean, you know David really well, Tom, right from the beginning.
You were like, this is a real

thing. In fact, he wouldn't have put that name in the question otherwise, but I did not remember the dog thing until Julian put that together.
Yep. Yeah, there's the name of David.

And it's, yeah, when dogs sniff each other upon meeting, they circle around each other. They all get tangly.
And then you gotta like slop her hands around, do a pirouette.

I mean, that seems a little excessive. Do you really do that? Like, you just.

Well, when the dog runs on the other side of you, yeah, it's easier, especially if you're carrying something, to just like spin yourself around to untangle the lead, right?

But then when it meets another dog, yeah, you have to do like the leash shuffle with the other person.

And I hate it.

Yeah, proper pirouette where you spot and everything. You like a spot to lead.

No, my head is locked in.

I pick a spot on the horizon, bam, and then twist at the last second. Nice.

I do think that was an interesting choice of word, like pirouette.

I feel like I still can't pronounce that correctly. Is that just a very British thing? Like, you're like, let me just do a pirouette over there.
Is that what you do

these days?

Yeah, is that what they all say? It sounds fancier than spin on the spot, you know? Yeah. Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, we also say, oh, yeah, I just did a rendezge the other day, or we rendezvous or whatever it is.

You absolutely know what that is. Absolutely.
100%.

I dropped something on the ground and I assumed second position and did a plie to pick it up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll see me waiting for you on the corner.
I'm just in first position.

We all describe how our feet are pointing.

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Thank you to Oscar for this next question. If a professional geo-guesser player was standing still in a real-life location, they'll find it easier than the game in several ways.

In what major way is the opposite true? That being there for real is harder than GeoGuesser? I'll say that again.

If a professional Geoguesser player was standing still in a real-life location, they'll find it easier than the game in several ways. In what major way is the opposite true?

That being there for real is harder than GeoGuesser? Do any of you play GeoGuesser? What's GeoGuessing? Yeah. What about you, Self? I don't play it, but I know of it.

Isn't that the one where you're dropped in a random location, then you have to work out exactly where you are? Yeah,

you get like, you know, you try and estimate like how far you are from the actual location. It's just like based on Google Maps.

Like, it'll plop you down, and you can move around a bit, but you have to guess, like, based on the original location that you were dropped. Where are you? It's a Google Street View image.

You're shown a 360 panorama of Google Street View, and you have to pinpoint it on a map.

And sometimes you can wander around, sometimes it's locked in one place, but that is that's the basic game there. Some people are incredible, too.

They have like a world championship series, and like the best at it can guess locations within like 20 seconds. It's insane.
And they pick up on all these little things.

Like I was watching an interview with the guy where he says like, okay, I see this telephone pole and it's got these three horizontal yellow bars on it, which 99% of the time means I'm in California.

Stuff like that.

They're really, really good at it. Have you ever played it, Julian? I have with some friends on like a game night.
I'm not particularly good at it because I'm not very worldly, but it's fun.

Yeah, you can move around though, is like, to me, that's a big advantage, right?

Like you can actually travel huge distances in not a lot of time and you can find like a sign that has the county school name on it or something and that'll help.

Can you look up if you're like up or down? Yeah, it's you know full 360

if you're physically there, right? Because you can you like fly it? No, you can't fly. You're on street level.
Oh, okay. You're on street level.
It is just a picture of the world taken from a place.

If you're physically there, you would know what time it was. Maybe it's something to do with time and like this where the sun is.
And I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. That makes sense.
Or like.

I've seen professional geo-guessers know the latitude they're at based on the height the sun is in the sky. On geo guesser, can you zoom? Zoom on things? Like, is that...

Like, if a sign was far away, you can't do that. I mean, there's a limit to the resolution, but okay, fair.
But you can move closer to it in GeoGuesser. You can click on the road and keep moving.

Okay. I guess if you were there personally, you would know the travel time from whenever you started to you got there.

So if it's like 15 hours later, even if you were blindfolded, like I was definitely on an airplane.

But you'd be able to hear languages and all sorts of things. There's so many ways that's easier, yeah.
We're looking for something that makes being there for real harder than GeoGuesser.

People lying to you.

It's like, where am I? You're in Spain. You are in Boston.

Barbsicar and Havajard.

Fickle nature of trust in other people. That would make it more difficult.
Yeah. First of all.

Make it harder being there in person.

Do you have to stay in that one spot?

Can you move about? I mean, you can move quicker in Geogassa, probably. You can merely zoom around.

Oh let let's let's assume everyone's staying still here. Right, so game mode where you're staying still, you've got to you've got to stay still.

Well in GeoGuesser if you got dropped in a road you'd be fine, but in real life if you got caught in a road you'd get hit by a car.

Serious risk of vehicular injury.

But that's not the answer.

I do like where your head's at though.

You said something earlier, Tina, about looking up and down.

Oh, oh, I think we might have been on it where the

the sun doesn't move in the Google Street View images because it was taken at a specific time and always stays that way.

Or like your shadow? Like the shadow is always constant in GeoGuesser, but it's not in real life.

No, I don't think that'd help. You'd get sunburned in real life.

You wouldn't.

Sorry, I'm just thinking a different way. It's more precarious to exist.

Let me try looking up and see how I feel.

Real tiring, isn't it?

How are the Google Street View images taken? What's the process there? On a car with cameras all over it, right?

An immediate thing is you can see what side of the road the car is on, the Google Street View car is on, but then that doesn't really wheel it down that much.

I think in person you'd figure it out pretty quickly. Yeah, exactly.
And then in person, you'd figure that out pretty quickly. Yeah, it wouldn't take too long.

Okay, the car, but does the car, you can't see the license plate of the car. But it takes one simultaneous image in 360, right? So everything's frozen in the exact same moment.

Whereas if you're looking around, things move about but how would that make it more difficult perhaps phrase it the other way what might the google street view style of image and that car make easier what would the car so cars go on other sides of roads but you couldn't they have license plates you can't see the ground don't know what the weather is like you can't see the ground what can you see instead the bottom of the car i mean the license plate usually tells you the country or the state or the yeah but in you could see that in real life as well so what about the google car yeah as a car goes by i'm always thinking yeah

if you see the car itself if it's like a suv you know it's america and if it's like a little citroen you know it's europe or yeah basically that's it the car itself is the clue oh my god okay well google uses different types of cars yes okay

so google uses different cars for the google maps in different countries it's all subcontracted it is not the same car everywhere in the world so if you'd like to cheat a little bit at GeoGuesser, you can memorize which cars are used in which regions.

Oh, and that's why it's specifically the Google car that's used for rather than just you being there and seeing any random cars. Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Hot tip. I got some for the next game night.
If you look down, you can only see the front tip of the car. It might be Botswana.
If the car is red, it might be Ukraine or Belgium.

If there's a giant tent on the back, it's probably Mongolia. Like, GeoGuesser pros, and apparently this is a thing, will just have this memorized list of, oh no, it's that country because that

weird feature. I wonder if in any countries it's just like a guy with a selfie stick running around and you look at it.
Yes, it is.

Oh, there's

Tom or whoever.

There are a few places that cars cannot go that it's a guy with a backpack or it's on a trike or something like that, and they will memorize all of this. That's so cool.
That's a really cool job.

How do I get this job?

Julian, over to you for the next question. Okay, so this question was sent in by Jane Doe, a surprisingly common name, and Nate.

So, in 1942, the management at BBC Radio decreed that Bing Crosby's jaunty recording of the song Deep in the Heart of Texas should not be played for the good of the nation. Why?

In 1942, the management at BBC Radio decreed that Bing Crosby's jaunty recording of the song Deep in the Heart of Texas should not be played for the good of the nation. Why?

Stepping out of this one, it is a legendary British broadcast story and I am that sort of nerd. Oh, sorry.
Sorry, we've lost one. Gosh.
Okay, Tina. It's in 1942, World War II.

Yeah, so we're in the midst of World War II. Good of the nation, I feel like, ties into that as well.
Like, oh, for the good of all the people,

jaunty is making me intrigued. Like, what about his recording has made this jaunty and what? Like, why would that make the nation not be good?

Jaunty mean like get someone to find

it's catchy. It's

a bit like, ooh, it's a bit binge.

It's infectious, you know, like you can't help but like get into it. It's jaunty.
So you're like, too happy. You can't be happy because it's war.

No. Yeah, maybe it's more like, I think like a hat.
You'd wear a hat normally when it's jaunty. It's when you you put it on an ankle.
It's like, ooh, a bit

jaunty.

Like it's a bit like, I don't know. Maybe deep in the heart of Texas, he sings it a bit differently.
So it sounds a bit like he's saying something else. I don't know.

Or yeah. Deep in the heart of Texas, do we need to know these lyrics in any fashion? No.
Okay. Not a waste of my knowledge of deep the time.

The lyrics are not objectionable. That's not why the BBC took issue with this song.
Is it war-related? The reasoning is war-related. So how do you say deep into heart of Texas in a jaunty fashion?

Is it because of the pronunciation? Deep in the heart of Texas.

I don't know how Pink will have done it.

Yeah, the tune that goes along with it is jaunty.

There's, you know, like trumpets and.

Oh.

Is it because they think that it's time to go fight?

You think that would rile them up. But can you imagine a bunch of Brits like, for Texas?

This is for the lone star state.

Yeah.

Was there something in it that sounded like something else, that sounded like a siren or like something that was sad? Like, oh, you know, a bit that sounds like an air raid siren indeed.

Yeah, like with some hip-hop songs that make me think the cops are behind me when they come on. Yeah, exactly.
There is actually a little bit in that song, though.

There's a particular part of that song that

I would say has something like that. Not sounding like something else, but there's a particular bit of it.
Is that relevant in this situation?

It's not going to make everybody turn their lights off during the Blitz or anything.

Okay.

Right, okay, this is where I show my ignorance. Because at what point were America really getting involved? Is it related to...
December 7th, 1941. Okay.

Is when we started, it was when we joined the war effort. Good trivia knowledge.
Yeah. So a date which will live in infamy.
It's Pearl Harbor. Okay.

Good American, just general knowledge. Okay, fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We kind of have to know that.
We've only got like 200 years of history as a country. Like, we better know it.

It does not relate to America's involvement. It is not.
Okay.

Good of the nation. The good of the nation.
What else has been banned for the good of the nation? Like, what is considered not good for the nation in

England, in the UK?

What do you find not good? You've got the actual fighting of World War II, right? But what else is happening in England as part of the war effort? Rationing.

The song doesn't just list a load of delicious meals and people.

Like the top of the show. The lyrics are just croissant, butter, deep in the heart of Texas.
Loads and loads and loads of butter. Yeah.

Evacuation.

Women working.

So is it... A lot of working, really.
A lot of manufacturing going on. Is it encouraging people to be lazy?

Is the message behind it like deep in the heart of Texas? Put your feet up, kind of thing. Yeah, nobody does anything here.
We all relax, and it's great. We just need some barbecue.
Yeah.

Manufacturing is important to this, and the song is jaunty. What is jaunty like jaunty? So you put your hat wrong and then you fall away.

I think you've got a completely wrong picture of jaunty. Yeah, sorry, maybe I've missed jaunty.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah,

I just think of a jaunty hat. Okay, so, well, what if people dance? Would people dance to it and then they wouldn't be working because it was such a jaunty tune.
Oh, you're very close. Ooh.

They just like move their limbs in a rhythm. Oh, and then your heads get chopped off.
Like, your fingers get chopped off because you're just like, oh, whoops.

Honestly, like, Julie, I think it might. Do you want to give it to him? Well, do you know the song? Or

more accurately, if I was just kind of, I can't remember the tune, but, you know, in certain parts of America, if I was just, you know, shouting to a crowd, the stars at night are big and bright.

Oh, I see. So there's a bit where it's encouraged that one would clap, and then that would stop people from getting their hands into their work.

You are correct, Soph. The BBC banned it because wartime production was so essential.
They were worried if they played it on the radio, people would take those moments for the clap break and

it would impact production for even just those few seconds. It's just like a brief, the stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.

And that's repeated like six times in the song, and that was deemed unacceptable by the BBC, so they banned it. Wow, oh my gosh, what a great story.
Yeah,

it said you can still spot like a Texan anywhere by doing this, just like Tom did, which is funny.

I've heard stories of like wartime spies being caught because they're american because when they like cut their food they didn't they would switch hands because that's a very american thing to do uh so it's it's like that but for texans would they ban tea did they ban tea during

england why why would they even fight if they had banned tea you know like what's left for them at that point tea was rationed in the uk but there was like a particular part of the wartime government dedicated to keeping tea supplies going because it really was seen as that important for morale.

And isn't that just the most British thing you've ever

heard?

This question was sent in by Grian. Thank you very much.
Max Musterman hails from Quackenbruck in Germany.

Often he has a lot of explaining to do when phoning for a doctor's appointment or flying out to a different country for example. Why? I'll say that again.

Max Musterman hails from Quackenbruck in Germany. Often he has a lot of explaining to do when phoning for a doctor's appointment or flying out to a different country, for example.
Why?

So it's like something to do with his name and his documents, right?

It must be. Yes.
So Mr. Musterman in German would be her, right? Her Musterman.

Maybe it's something to do with what that. But then it's, but then he's going in.
The doctors is in Germany, right? So it's not going to be anything.

Yeah. Like, it must be a documents thing.
Max Musterman. Musterman.
Musterman. Quackenbrook.

Quackenbrook. Yeah,

is the city of where he's from important? The city isn't important. I think the question might just like the name Quackenbrook.
Yeah, it's a red hair. I do like the name Quackenbrook.

So, Max potentially short for Maximilian? Or Max? Maybe that's his. Maximilian Musterman.
It's so long. Yeah.
Or Max. I don't know, Maxwell, or Max.
What was the exact phrasing?

He has to do explaining when he goes to the doctor, or it makes it awkward. What was it? Yeah, both of those things, really.

It's just, his life is more difficult. Does it mean something in German then? Mustermann? Right.
Maximizing something is like max, like a maximum of something. Yeah.
Maximum cholesterol.

Yeah, yeah, like something like that. Yeah.
I feel like it would be hard when ordering like a schnitzel and they'd be like, oh, you want max mustard on it? And he'd be like, no, I.

But at the doctor, they don't have schnitzel at the doctor in Germany, right? I don't know how healthcare works in other places. No idea.
Not to my knowledge.

You were talking about documents, and I'd hone in on that. It's awkward situations where he has to show documents.

Is it because the name is transposed, like on documents, where it's like Musterman, Max? He is often slowed down at airports, but not outside Germany. Oh, not outside Germany.
No.

Is he just famous?

Is the name of a super villain that's on the loose in Germany. And he's his arch nemesis.
His min-mastermen. Yeah.
Min-masmy. Yeah, name-mastermind.
Min-curryman.

Yeah. Min-min-minim woman, yeah.

Max Musterman in Germany.

Nobody here speaks German, huh? No, no, my partner does, but obviously that's not loud. Yeah, what are the odds?

I mean, if your partner has spent long enough in Germany to have some cultural knowledge there, It's going to be easy.

Any Germans listening to this will have got it immediately. Yeah, but I'm not my partner, I'm afraid, Tom.
No, no. She's half German, so I really could use that right now.

But it's not about language, it's about that name. Yeah, so that name is like, is it a cartoon character? Is it the name of a cartoon character or the name of a criminal? It's the name of someone.

Yeah, like, it looks like a joke when he presents documents, and they're like, come on.

Yeah, so they think it's a fake documents because max mustermann is the name that was the name bing crosby performed under in germany

is it the president

except twisty is the president

deep is the heart of dussendorf

so you've got every aspect of this apart from that key bit at the end. What might it be about the name? What is he being accused of or accused of doing unfairly? Because people like forging documents.

Yeah, sometimes. Is it like the German version of Jane Doe where it's just like the stand-in name?

Julian, on the previous question when you said this was sent in by Jane Doe, I had this moment of going, oh no, oh, that's gonna be a giveaway. I think David's doing this intentionally.

He said all these things up brilliantly.

There's a meta to the show flow here. You are absolutely right.
Max Musterman and Erica Erika Musterman for women is the German equivalent of John Doe or Jane Doe.

Unfortunately, there really is someone called Max Musterman, and he really does have trouble in Germany because he will call up and do the German equivalent of asking for an appointment for John Doe.

Right. And they're like, yeah, sure thing, 14-year-old who got a hold of the cell phone.
Like,

hilarious.

And unfortunate. And those parents, they saw an opportunity and they took it, and I respect that.

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Soph, the last big question of the show is on you. Whenever you're ready.
Oh, big. Okay, here we go.

Thanks, Tom. This question has been sent in by Adam.

In 1999, BBC News reported that drivers of red and black cars in Cornwall and Devon were much more likely to be stopped for speeding than average.

Conversely, they claimed that white cars were more likely to be treated leniently. Why?

In 1999, BBC News reported that drivers of red and black cars in Cornwall and Devon were more likely to be stopped for speeding than average.

Conversely, they claimed that white cars were more likely to be treated leniently. Why?

Take it away, cuter guys.

Oh, shucks.

Alright.

In... Did you say Cornwall and Devon? In Cornwall and Devon, yeah, it's another BBC-based question.

Yeah, I have no idea what these towns look like, but are they typical English hamlets?

Those are counties. Hamlets.

No idea. Yeah, you're right.
Sorry, I went on to correcting them then. We didn't correctly just drill on hamlets, there was a word.
Is that what we call things? I don't know.

I don't know about you. I grew up in a classic British hamlet.

That's a type of small town, isn't it? That's a word.

No, it's a key. Yeah, it's a nice word.
Yeah, Cornwall and Devon are counties. They're big, big areas.
Okay. Those are regions.

Regions that contain various cities and towns. And they're off in the southwest,

kind of out on a peninsula on their own on the southwest. I don't think it counts a peninsula when it's that big, but it's a sticky out bit.
I'm just trying to imagine the buildings.

Are they white? Are they red and black? Is there... The buildings.
Yeah, like the towns. Like, what do they look like? I mean, I've got to describe Cornwall and Devon here, haven't I?

the the towns look like average british towns uh but

typical hamlets that's what i said yeah that's

but there's a lot of little coastal like they're really coastal counties there's a lot of little fishing villages and things like that out on the on the outskirts but if you're speeding you're going to be going down the like the big roads presumably okay it's in 1999 you said right um 1999 correct julian is this around the time when like speed cameras started getting installed around the area?

You know, like radar-activated speed traps and that sort of thing? Like instead of a constable enforcing this law, is it some technology? Is it related to that? It is not related to technology, no.

Okay.

What colour are the flags where football or whatever it is that people like there? Yeah, yeah.

Cornwall has a black and white flag and a small independence movement that will spray paint that flag over the English rose on tourism signs.

I see.

But the cars were red and black if they were more likely to be caught and white if they weren't. So I can't see that flag dying.
I don't know the flag of Devon, but I doubt it's

doubt it's to do with that. Your doubt is to be followed, Tom.
It has not to do with that. But Julian, maybe think more about what you were saying.
If it's not cameras,

who is in charge of this?

It's human beings. Yeah.
So that implies some bias

for some reason.

Good.

Is it.

You know, like a white car is easy to spot compared to a black car.

Does a white car just look like it's traveling slower? Is that cliche of motors like, oh, this car looks fast when it's standing still for like a red car? I wonder. I feel like it's cultural.

It feels like

it would be some sort of like cultural thing that happened and they're like i hate these colors like they're totally sucked all right but black or red you're dead bad yeah there is you're along the right lines there tina with kind of the targeting colours go on maybe they hate themselves sorry

is it that they're using like radar guns for this so they are pointing they're standing at the side of the road they're pointing and reading the speed like that.

And they're just more likely to hit black and red cars. Like they're more likely to point at them because

they think they're going faster. That's still a bit too much about technology, though.
It's not about the tech at all. It's about

their choice. It's a choice.
Yeah, some human bias is at play. Yeah.

What happened in 1999? Like in those regions?

Might not even be due to the regions. It might just be that's the force they picked.
I don't know. Okay, so maybe

it seems like from this that being a police officer at the time in that area was a bit boring. So maybe they were trying to make it a bit more fun

their jobs.

Oh, oh, oh.

Uh uh the cops would buy white cars and they would like race them and so when they got caught by other cops or like the other cops knew the person in the white car was a cop and they were like, oh, that's just you know Billy, let him go.

Everybody else, they're like, you're nicked, sunshine. Is that it? Yeah, we've just blown up the undercover, like, cops taking cars.
No, I'm afraid that's not it, Julian, but I like that.

Devon and Cornwall share a police force. It's not two regions.
It's not specifically these regions. It's just that's the force.

This is tied to one police force doing a thing. And did they, like, make a game out of it? Did you get more points for pulling over a car based on like the colour or something like that?

Yeah, no, keep going in that direction. Think about the colours again.
Red and black and black. We'd get ticketed more.
Oh, the Americans aren't going to get this, are they? I don't think so.

The Americans aren't going to get this. I don't think this.
Well, I don't know if it's a thing in America.

It is, and this is such a quiz question. Like, this is, did they get one point for a red and seven points for a black? Why would that be?

And no points for a white, because those are the values of the colours in snooker. Correct.
It's a snooker-based question. This is style.
Oh man,

I had no shot.

Dina and Julian do you have any questions? Oh, good point, Julian. I have seen

snooker a few times, like on just clips of it, and I'm like, I have no idea what on earth is going on here. It is incomprehensible to me.
Yeah, I feel that way about baseball.

It works. I knew very little about snooker as well, so when I got presented with this, I did a bit of reading around around it.
Tina, are you familiar with snooker at all? I have no idea.

I feel like I'm such at a disadvantage because I have no knowledge of American history and I have no knowledge of British history.

Don't worry, Tina, next episode is going to be all about your expertise. Yeah, where's the AI questions, guys? Come on.
Yeah.

Okay, so. Yes, police were allegedly playing motorway snooker.

It was claimed that Devon and Cornwall Police Force were playing this game, and allegedly they were trying to kind of get maximum points right similar to how you would do that in snooker right it's called a maximum break I looked it up

so yeah if you got red and black then 15 times and that would mean you get like loads of points right you get red then black then red then black and then you'd go through the order of the other colours yellow green brown blue pink and black so basically your their focus is on the red and black cars more than the other colours

but then obviously at some point you want to get the other colours there was one example where this guy john emsley was stopped on the m5 and this is when people started getting suspicious.

The M5 is a road, by the way guys.

And when as it's okay, I can speak American. And

when this guy was asked why he was pulled over rather than another car that had been driving at the exact same speed, he was told it was because his Alfa Romeo was yellow.

So literally these these are these people are kind of taking the money. At that point they've only got like five or six cars to go to get the second car.

Yeah, so they're feeling really tense about it. And of course a white car is equivalent to potting the white, so that would incur a penalty.

So, one driver in the area said that he'd driven his white car for seven years without being stopped.

Amazing. So, well done, he's just like,

Yeah,

just like driving straight over the hump of the roundabout, like

carelessly, yeah, exactly. He's like, I'm untouchable.

Yeah, so maybe the police did buy the white cars because they knew they would then be untouchable.

That's what I would do. Um, so well done on making your way to the answer, guys, considering two of you, three of us, if you include include me know nothing about snooker.

We really needed Tom for that one. He was the linchpin.
Oh yeah and I think that would have been impossible without you Tom

The very last order of business then at the top of the show I asked why does Graham regularly go to Beyoncé's Wikipedia page even though he's not a fan of her music before I let the audience in on that anyone want to take a quick shot at it?

Is he in charge of like up like a Wikipedia editor who's in charge of Beyoncé's page who has has to make sure that everything for her is up to date.

I feel like people must change a lot on her page, right? Add like queen and stuff.

Yeah, and he's

his dedicated job is going in at me like, no, she's not the queen of Beastan or whatever.

No, there's other pages he could have used, but Beyoncé is kind of one of the more popular ones. It's the one that came to mind.
Well, he's not updating when people die on

Wikipedia, right? And I'm sure they have a mathematical formula that calculates age. Like, he doesn't just have to go every time and be be like, now she's 57.
Like

outsource. It's one guy just going through all the birthdays and making sure that nobody's had a birthday since then.
I mean, Wikipedia does seem like he needs funding.

It keeps telling me that he needs to

pay all the birthday trackers, like Graham. No, he only stayed on the page for a few seconds.
So it was a mistake of some fashion. This Beyoncé.

Make sure the page is still up. He is still there.
Like the links aren't broken. Is his name Beyoncé?

No,

his name is Graham Coleman, and this is based off just one thing that he tweeted in 2019. Goes to Beyoncé's page regularly.
He finds it simpler than trying to remember hold down alt and press 0233.

Oh, there's the accent mark in Beyoncé's name. He goes and copies it and pastes it when he's typing.

Of course.

Yes. Wow.
Okay.

But then it would be slightly different. Oh, it's just stressful.
No, control shift V, paste without formatting.

Of course, of course.

Clearly.

Quote, I have a PhD in computing, says Graham. I am a senior accessibility consultant, but when I want to type E-acute on a Windows laptop, I go to Beyoncé's Wikipedia page and copy-paste.
Amazing.

Ah, that's great.

Amazing.

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

Yes, thanks so much for having me, Tom. If you want to find out what I'm up to, you can find me as Soph's notes basically anywhere.
Tina. Thank you so much for having me.

If you want to find out about what I'm up to, just type in Tina Huang on YouTube and I talk about my life there. And Julian.
It was a delight, Tom.

You can find me also on other podcasting places on the podcast That's Absurd. Please elaborate with my co-host Trace Dominguez.

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

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere and there are regular video highlights at youtube.com slash lateralcast. With that, thank you very much to Julian Hugitt.
Thank you very much, Tom.

Tina Wong. Thank you very much.

And Dusty Vibes. Thank you so very much, Tom, for having me.
That is Sophie Ward. Thank you very much to all three of you.
I've been Tom Scott, and that's been lateral.