109: The blue room

What flying animal is missing from this book title?

P is for blank, the worst alphabet book ever.

The answer to that at the end of the show.

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

Hello, welcome to Lateral and a little bit of behind-the-scenes info for you today.

We are recording the show at an earlier time than usual, so forgive us if we take a little bit of time to warm up.

We tried solving a test question just before we started recording and it turned out it was just the instructions for the coffee machine.

So we didn't solve anything, but I do now understand how to make a macchiato.

So there's that.

Here to see what's brewing, we have an all-Australian special today.

We start with YouTuber talking about city design and Melbourne.

Julian O'Shea, welcome back to the show.

Saying good day feels like the right thing to do today.

Yeah, we can do it.

Every time you say goodday, those Brits, they're like, what's going on?

What's he saying?

What are the words coming out of this guy's mouth?

But we can do it today.

We can tell who the rest of the panel is already, but Julian, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

I'm doing great.

Fantastic to be back.

Yeah.

You say it's an early start.

No, it's not, my friend.

It is evening time, according to three quarters of the panel.

Yeah.

What are you up to at the moment?

What's going on in your world?

Making videos, making videos for the National Broadcaster, which feels like a promotion.

Yes, so you can see my stuff on the ABC, the little Australian cousin of the BBC.

I do like how Australia and the UK refer it to like the ABC.

The BBC.

That's right.

America is just NBC, CBS.

They don't get the article.

That's right.

And

that pause just kind of matters, you know?

The elevation, the status, the.

Well, thank you for slumming it with us down in the podcast world today.

No worries at all.

You are joined by folks from our very first show, returning guests time and time again.

We will start today.

Bill, you spoke up earlier, so I'm deliberately going to go to Danny Silla first from Escape This Podcast.

Danny, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

I do feel like this is much earlier than we normally get to record.

I like that because there are three of us.

We got to choose this one.

We overruled you.

Yeah, you did.

I appreciate it.

How is the podcast going?

It's going very smoothly.

We've been finishing off a lovely run of some guest run rooms.

So I actually got to play.

I didn't have to do all of the design work for this half of the year, which is always a treasure.

And our third guest today, the other half, the other regular half of

Escape This Podcast.

Bill Sunderland, what sort of rooms have you been working on in the podcast lately?

Well, the thing that's coming up, so we've done this set of fun rooms from guests, which we do fairly regularly.

We have people say, I've written a room and I want you to play it.

These are escape rooms, to be clear.

These are audio escape.

Sorry, everybody.

They're audio escape rooms.

I should have put that in the intro.

That was on me.

You know what?

It doesn't.

People can figure it out through context, like a lateral thinking puzzle.

But yeah, we usually have guests on to play through the rooms we design.

Lately, for the last five episodes, we've had guests running rooms for us, which we've done regularly, escape rooms where we solve all the puzzles and escape.

And then I think following that, which by the time this comes out, will be already underway,

a series of connected escape rooms all set on a cruise ship with various players coming on and taking their turn at a short story on a cruise ship with puzzles and

enjoyment like that.

You are doing,

this is a really, really tentative link, but you are are doing the escape room podcast equivalent of The Love Boat.

Yeah, ideally, that's this, because it's quite episodic as well.

It will be.

It'll be the puzzle boat.

And you can bring in a different guest star each episode who's just there for that one bit of the cruise.

Yeah, but then everyone knows that that's the murderer.

Sorry, I think I watched a really unique episode of Love Boat.

Well, good luck to all three of you with coffee at the ready.

Let's see which questions will grind you down and which you'll get in an instant.

We're going to start with question one.

Why didn't any Apollo astronauts high five when they were on the moon?

I'll say that again.

Why didn't any Apollo astronauts high five when they were on the moon?

Okay.

Short and sweet.

First pitch.

High fives weren't invented till 1987.

You think it was old.

The first high five happened in 1987.

This is not something that I have ever researched before.

Julian, do you know anything about the history of high fives?

I'll be honest, not my specialist area, but you know, what is interesting is that everything does have to be invented.

And it's so weird to think about things.

There must have been, of course, a moment that didn't exist.

One I was looking at recently was the introduction of the first roundabout.

And you're like, of course, there was a moment in time when roundabouts didn't exist.

But just think about the Maverick who had to pitch it.

That's right.

You could be onto something there, genuinely.

I wonder if it was an era of handshakes, of gentlemanly fist bumps, of maybe gentle hugs amongst colleagues.

that classic Roman arm clasp where you grab each other's forearms and say, Salwe.

I find it so hard to believe that people weren't just high-fiving each other for fun.

I can only assume the one other logical reason would be that, much like the Simpsons, people didn't have the fifth finger yet, so it couldn't be a high-five.

Yeah.

Oh, they're doing the old mitten too.

Mitten too.

They did heaps of them on the moon.

Bill, we were expecting all sorts of diversions here about static electricity and moon dust and spacesuits.

And the thing is, you are exactly right.

Oh, come on.

Yes, he is.

I am absolutely on moon poison.

Yes, we are making the shortest podcast ever and we are down for it.

Think about it.

At Woodstock, right, they're holding up like two fingers, like a peace sign.

And then they needed more time.

They kept adding more and more as time went by.

Would they have only done two if they'd known that there were more options available to them?

The last astronauts to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmidt, in Apollo 17 in December 1972.

The High Five did not become popular until the late 1970s.

And obviously,

it is shrouded in the mists of time.

We're never going to know the true origin story.

Does anyone want to take a guess at where it might have been popularised?

What the big moment might have been?

Okay, late 70s.

Surfing culture.

Star Wars and Elvis died.

I wanted to go like basketball.

I could picture being a, like, you shoot, you leave your hand up like this, and then someone's like, nice one, baby, and they smack it out of the air.

It was sport.

It was baseball.

It was Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers high-fiving Dusty Baker after a home run in 1977.

Now, that's probably not the first high five in history.

They will likely have picked it up from somewhere, but that was the most likely high five seen around the world that meant that we now have that as a gentleman.

That's the patient zero of high fives.

What a contribution to culture.

Do you know what that also means?

Someone had to invent down low too slow.

You're right.

You know, we know when high five happens, so we know between then and now.

That's the window.

I'm sorry, there's still more.

The classic thing when someone is going to go high five, you can do download too slow is to do the Elvis hair thing, which meant for a while there was the Elvis hair thing, but not its usage as an anti-high five defense.

So anyone listening, there is a PhD topic up for grabs called the invention of all parts of the high five.

Yep.

Well, having blasted through that one very quickly, we'll go on to the first guest question, and Bill, we'll start with you.

Yeah, lovely.

This question was sent in by Jovi Thorne.

So if you have any problems, tell them about it, not me.

Here we are.

During the American Civil War, children would be required to write a number on a piece of paper, fold it up, and put it in their shoe.

And this allowed them to swear.

What was the number and why was this done?

And one more time for you.

During the American Civil War, children would be required to write a number on a piece of paper, fold it up and put it in their shoe.

This allowed them to swear.

What was the number and why was this done?

Not where I thought that sentence was going.

No, that was a constant set of unexpected words there.

Now it is worth remembering that the high five was not invented at this stage.

It is.

You need to remember the table.

That's right.

Nothing to do with the answer.

The number might be five, but that's not why.

I immediately went to those online things.

I love reading those on the internet.

That are,

I don't know if they're real urban legends or whatever of children in the US writing letters to soldiers overseas and a soldier opening up a letter from a child and one of the ones that went around the internet was just, hello, I hope you don't die.

Ah, kids, they write the darnest thing to soldiers.

Now, I am not on the right path, obviously, because my brain's like, you write the number down, so if the kid gets lost, you can just phone the parent.

You can just pick up the telephone, you know, that thing that exists at the time.

Just pick it up.

So I'm going to handball to someone else to chime in some thoughts.

My next nomination is that we come up with some Civil War era swears.

I remember reading something about how swearing changes over time, and it was about Deadwood.

the TV series.

So Deadwood is famously filled with modern profanity.

They talk like they're in the Old West, but there's a lot of F-bombs in there.

There's a lot of really modern swearing.

And they were trying to make it as authentic as possible.

And originally, they were using Old West swear words, which were things like tarnation, which would have been offensive back then, would have been horrible.

And it just sounded so corny that they decided to update the swearing to make it feel authentic to the audience, to make it feel blasphemous and profane

in a way that makes them not sound like Yosamity Sam from Looney Teens.

Core blimey.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that would have been God blind me way back when.

That's where that comes from.

It's a minced oath.

On that God, I did think I wonder if it did have something to do with some kind of religious link, some kind of, you know, when you say you're allowed to swear, some kind of

meanings of swearing.

Pre-approval of, you know, you've done your confession.

Here's your, like, here's your receipt.

You've earned a couple of naughties.

Or to promise.

Sorry.

Oh,

I said you do 12 Hail Marys, but you did 14.

All right, you got two swears.

That's right.

Someone somewhere is just getting ready to hammer just a treatise to your door with a nail there, Julian.

I'm not entirely sure that's how that works.

Okay, okay.

Do we think that the war part had anything to do with this, or is it just a coincidence that that's the error?

Well, I was thinking it might be swearing allegiance to someone rather than swearing with profanity.

That it might be part of some ritual or some rule that not conscripted them, but meant they were definitely on one side or the other.

Look, I will say the war is important.

Okay.

If there was no war,

this would not be relevant.

Be no shoe numbers.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

No numbers in shoes if there was no war.

And I will say as well, you're right to be thinking about different forms of the word swear.

What other forms are there?

You were very close.

Like, swearing allegiance, not quite, but that that sort of vein of...

Swear an oath, swear a, swear a, yeah, I think you are under something.

Is it?

Is it you've done a, you've done some kind of assessment or check, you've signed up for some cause, and you're swearing

a commitment to one side of the civil war, perhaps?

I mean,

the numbers almost like your barcode check to say, you know, you're pre-approved.

Long shot, Bill.

How about it's the number of siblings you have?

I will say...

And this is inadvertently saying no to the number of siblings.

Okay.

For everybody who did this, for all the children who did this, it was the same number.

Oh.

That absolutely threw out my last thought.

The same number.

If we knew the number, would it be obvious?

If you knew the number,

it might be, but

you'd be pretty much on your way there.

Interesting.

They got the same number.

Because these are kids, it's not the number where they like something triggered, like the age they'd be allowed to do something or this is the time they'd be allowed

Julian you are you are getting closer with the last thing that you said you're you're you're getting close to the idea okay no it was the idea that maybe it's a time or a trigger at some kind of point like

like when they become an adult when they become but it's all the same number right well when do people become an adult their their age Yeah, something about age of majority, the birthday that they hit that age of majority, things like that.

Oh!

wait, were some of these kids lying about their age?

The same way that folks in the First World War would sign up and claim they were 18 so they could go to war because they would want to be patriotic.

Oh, but Tom, they're not going to outright lie.

They're swearing an oath.

So, how do they get away with it?

They're not going to lie, Tom.

They would never technically lie.

That'd be unchristian of them.

They'd be saying

something like,

I'm 18, down to my feet.

And then the number 18 is written on the feet.

You're so close.

If you can figure out this pun,

there is an 18 on a piece of paper in their shoe.

So what do they claim?

On my soul, I'm 18.

That's pretty good.

That's not quite right.

That's reality.

That is good.

That is good.

It's not quite right.

I'm not going to let...

I'm not going to...

Look, the bell doesn't dismiss you.

I do.

And class is not dismissed until you can tell me the fun

all these children made.

I am above 18.

I am over.

I am over 18.

So the story here is

children wanted to join the war.

It was the civil war.

What else were you going to do?

other than join the war.

But of course, if you're under 18, they wouldn't let you enlist.

And you had to swear truthfully.

And so, for people who didn't want to lie, didn't want to incriminate themselves,

they would put a piece of paper in their shoe that said 18.

And when asked, how old are you?

They would completely coincidentally say, I'm over 18.

Fun fact.

Some of the war stories are a bit harder to get like a full, like, is this pure Apocrypha or are there any cases?

But there is one registered, like,

recounted, like, case where it happened in terms of voting,

where in an election, someone had put 21 in their shoes.

In 1833, H.

N.

Horan had put the number 21 in his shoes and sworn, I'm over 21,

so he could cast his vote.

And that is a documented case.

When you get an image in your head, just say, picture a Civil War soldier.

You don't picture like a 16-year-old little language troll.

Yep.

Yes.

so underage soldiers, most of whom I will say served as musicians, as drummers, or medical assistants, just trying to help out, not actually go to war,

who still wanted to enlist

would put the number 18 in their shoe so that they could truthfully swear they were over 18.

Thank you to Dave Matthews for sending this question in.

The Dave Matthews?

A Dave Matthews.

More than that, I couldn't tell you.

Mark Allen is a professional snooker player.

During matches, he sometimes pauses to speak to the referee, who replies with information that could help Mark win.

Despite this, his opponent doesn't object.

What's happening?

And one more time, Mark Allen is a professional snooker player.

During matches, he sometimes pauses to speak to the referee, who replies with information that could help Mark win.

Despite this, his opponent doesn't object.

What's happening?

I'll be honest, I've been this person in so many sports and activities where I'll be playing a game and be like, look, can I do this?

And due to my sheer like lack of ability versus whoever I'm playing, they're like, I'll allow this one.

Good luck.

Am I allowed to do this?

That's fine.

How much is that allowed just in a tennis match?

Can Nadal just go up to the chair on pirates?

Am I allowed to step over this line when I serve?

Sorry, just

wait, what happens after 40?

Is that right?

30, 40?

Nadal has had this long career, but he's like, he's like, look, I never actually asked anyone about what's the boundary.

And at this point, it's too late to ask.

It it would be embarrassing you you joke about that but when i was a kid like no one taught boys the rules of soccer like it was just assumed that we knew

them and like i and i didn't think this was weird at the time but like when i was like six seven years i have like going in for the first time in pa in school to do soccer like i didn't like you kicked the ball towards there i guess like i i didn't know what a corner was i didn't know what any of the rules were you just had to pick this up by osmosis because it was assumed you knew it.

You know what?

I remember a similar experience as a sports kid, specifically with soccer.

I didn't play much soccer.

I just went in and kicked a ball around.

And then at some point, someone yells, oh, offside.

No idea.

No one ever explained offside.

I still, as far as I understand, a lot of adults don't know what offside means.

Daddy's put on.

Australia only really discovered soccer in the last year or so when the Matildas crushed it in the Women's World Cup.

Yep.

I think it was a whole country just together going, so football, how does this work again?

Okay, I see what's going on.

I see this.

Good sport.

I have one idea.

The very few things I know about Snooker is it's got a whole load of different colored balls.

How color blind is this man?

Oh, that's such a good pick, man.

Is that a pink one?

Is that a blue one?

Is that a green one?

That is such a good pick.

I will accept no other answers.

Fortunately, you don't have to accept any other answers because you are entirely correct

out of nowhere

amazing yes we had all sorts of diversions here about the score about anything like that no Mark Allen has red green color blindness so he struggles to tell the difference between the 15 red balls and the brown of course daddy I as this question got asked I'm like I wonder if he like needs like assistive support.

I'm like, maybe he's blind.

I'm like, that doesn't make sense.

Surely.

You know, like playing snooker, blind.

Like, where's the ball?

That would have been a fascinating one to pitch and be told you're half right.

Why doesn't he have to do that all the time?

Like, what does anyone here know the rules of snooker enough to figure out why it's only sometimes he has to do that?

You start by hitting the red ones and then you move on to the next colour and things like that.

And eventually he'll run out of the ones that he cares about or that are difficult to tell.

True.

The brown is normally on its its spot.

Each of the colours has a specific spot.

But if at some point there was a big mess of a break and the reds went everywhere or everything got knocked up, you could lose track of which is which.

As soon as the brown is potted, most of the time it goes back on its spot and it's obvious where it is.

But sometimes

from context, it can be difficult to work.

Okay, so knowing a little bit about how snooker works would have helped.

Apparently not.

Just absolutely nailed it.

Thank you very much.

We will move on to the next question.

Danny, with that wonderful soul, we will rattle on to your question, please.

Absolutely.

I have a good feeling for all of you about this one.

No pressure.

The words donna, gyros, and schwama are used for three dishes that contain meat and flatbread.

What completely different thing do they also have in common?

One more time.

The words donna, gyros, and schwama are used for three dishes that contain meat and flatbread.

What completely different thing do they also have in common?

I don't know if it's helping, but I've eaten my body weight in these foods multiple times.

Like,

oh, there's nothing better at 2 a.m.

than a rotating slice of chunk of meat and some flatbread.

I will say, I looked at this question and I said aloud, we've got Australians on this show.

And it is regional.

Like, depending on which part of the world you go to, it'll be a different word that was imported for that based on based on which group from which country got there first.

Which part of Australia even matters?

Yeah, that's right.

All these Melburnians.

Yeah.

I don't remember.

It's in Melbourne.

Savlaki?

Euro?

It's time for some Donner conversation here because I went to Canada and found it's Donair there.

D-O-N-A-I-R.

With a local sauce that is basically sweetened and like evaporated milk-based.

And it's like you've mixed garlic and evaporated milk.

And I'm really not sure about that.

But

every region has its own.

If you want this to be a controversial podcast, just say.

And this type of food was, of course, invented.

It doesn't matter how you finish that sentence.

I can hear the complaints arriving already.

Click, click, click, click.

Okay, so there's another thing they have in common other than describing the food that they describe.

I have, again, a pitch that I worry is just too correct.

I'm going to get in

before you nail it, because

enough of your smarts.

Here's where my brain's going.

She said, Donna.

I'm like, that's a name.

These are names of things, I reckon, that are more than just the food item.

Are they names for a certain thing?

I mean, that's kind of a question.

That's

no, no, no, but like, I think it's, I think it's like a nana, I think it's a grandma, I think it's a family member.

Well, I was going to say, I thought, to me, Donna is the one that's throwing off my connection to the other two.

Okay.

Because when I hear a gyro,

for people who read it as they read it, or say it as they read it, that's a gyro.

Yes.

Like a gyroscope that's spinning around.

And if I was hanging around, coming up with an Arabic language word that sounded like I was spinning something around, schwama sounds pretty

spinny.

It's a schwama.

So, like, are they all words that are just like to spin or like a?

Because you've got spinning meat, you've got a wrapped up.

There is no way.

There is no way that hero slash gyro slash, however you pronounce it in your region, has the same root as gyroscope.

But you wrap it up in the meat spins, Tom.

You wrap it up in the meat spins.

I can't see where that comes from.

But you wrap it up in the meat spins.

You spin the bread, you spin the meat.

There is a gyroscread.

Famous.

There's a gyroscopter.

you know, Donna copter.

A schwamocopter.

They're all.

Well, Donna sounds so unspinning.

I can't think of a word that sounds less like I'm spinning than Donna.

Like, if it was Donna Minogue, that song would never have been written.

I mean, that is slightly unfair to Danny Minogue, but.

Hey, she didn't write that song.

So that's my thought that they're all kind of whirlpool-y spinning

schwamas and gyros.

That's just, I'm just saying.

But I don't know.

Well, you know what?

We've got some foodies here.

We've got some linguists here.

And sometimes you just have to go with what a word feels like.

Because once again, you're absolutely right.

No.

They all mean spinning and rotating in their various languages.

What?

They wrap it up in the meat spins, Tom.

That's so good.

There's no way.

How do we keep stumbling into these this episode?

Like, I can hear our producer unlocking the shiny bonus question already.

How?

That was a gag.

There's no way those have the same basis.

Really?

Turns out Greek is easy.

Tom, if you walked into a restaurant, if you're a Greek man and you walked into a restaurant and you said, hey, and I'm not doing the voice, if you said, hey, if that meat's spinning, he goes, yeah, that meat is spinning.

And you're going to take that spinning meat and you're going to put it on a piece of bread and you're going to serve it flat, right?

Nah, nah, nah, mate.

I'm going to spin the bread up.

Okay.

And you call this a, I call it a spin.

You'd be like, yeah, that makes sense.

You'd be like, yeah, it's a gyro.

I get it.

If you were going to name that, that's what you'd name it.

And I can't help you with the other pronunciations too far, but yeah, Turkish in origin, like dona, or

again, I'm not going to try, but in Turkish, dona, with some alteration to the pronunciation, I'm sure, means rotating.

Gyros in Greek, yeah, it's the same word, it means turning around.

And yeah, shawama also comes from a different Turkish one, meaning rotating.

All right, well, we got that one very quickly, so um, let's move on.

On one type of household appliance, you can see a picture of a man wearing a top hat and carrying a ladder.

What is the appliance and what does the symbol indicate?

I'll say that again.

On one type of household appliance, you can see a picture of a man wearing a top hat and carrying a ladder.

What is the appliance and what does the symbol indicate?

Surely it's the device to put your Monopoly set into the attic, you know?

Your old Monopoly set lifter, you know, that it's gotta be.

You've played Monopoly once, you don't want to play it for another 10 years, so put it up in the attic.

You've ruined one Christmas, let's not ruin another.

Grab your Monopoly lifter and chuck it up.

Why does that sound like an insult?

Oh, you Monopoly lifter.

I really thought, Tom, that expression on your face was just going to be a...

Oh, and you got it again too quickly.

Oh, no.

I was confident it wouldn't be, I'll be honest.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we could agree on that.

Quick aside.

Not enough top hats these days.

Just not enough.

I can't remember the last time I did housework in a top hat.

Yeah.

Right?

It's been at least a month for me.

I agree.

It's the death of culture.

What room are we feeling?

I mean, it's household appliance.

It might not be limited.

It might not be limited to one room, but where would you have your top hat and ladder appliance?

What do you think, Miss Scarlett, in the

kitchen with the candlestick, perhaps?

I think my thought has got to be this is like a

fun, inventive, sort of Twittery kind of way to describe, like, oh, when I saw this image, all I could see was a man with a top hat and a ladder, but it was actually like a person

with a, I don't know, I don't know what was on their head, but like, if it's an appliance, what if the ladder is like the grill of an oven

and it's like cleaning instructions for an oven?

It looks like a big pot, and it just sort of looks like it's on their head, but.

It isn't a top hat that they could be wearing.

The internet has been like, that's a kind of top hat.

Now I feel feel like I have to draw a man on a ladder with a top hat and then turn it upside down and see what happens very much mr.

squiggle upside down upside down

oh it's a lattice it's a it's a it's a lattice that the that your tomatoes are growing on and the top hat is the pot and the stick figure man is the is the tomato vine no that's not an appliance Bill let me tell you you're absolutely completely wrong that nothing to do with that at all

okay so the ladder feels like a no to me if they're holding a ladder, you know?

It's like a big diagonal striped yet.

Well,

am I wrong about the lattice or am I wrong about the misinterpretation of a symbol?

Bill, you are actually wrong in that whole concept.

It really is.

It shows a top hat and the ladder.

It really is a picture of a man with a top hat holding a ladder.

It is iconography.

It's not a clear photorealistic drawing, but that is genuinely what it's trying to portray.

Okay.

Top hats.

Special occasions.

Ladders.

You have to monopoly lifters.

That's right.

When there's a formal event, lift up this bit.

If you've got guests coming over, lift this part of the couch and the bed will pop out.

He's carrying the ladder, he's holding the ladder.

Like he's carrying the, like, he's not on it.

It's just a little infographic of like top hats and ladders.

You see it was an appliance, Tom?

Yes.

It's not, for example, on a ladder, perhaps.

No, this is definitely an appliance.

And

pretty much all houses except very traditional ones are going to have one of these.

On a microwave, a microwavi, if you will.

That's not one of the settings I've seen on it.

And this is reasonably common, by the way.

This is not just one obscure brand.

Having double checked.

Because I looked at this question.

I was like, I need to check this.

Now, there are multiple brands of this appliance that have that design somewhere.

What sort of

something that a traditional house would lack?

That makes it sound like it's quite built into it.

Almost.

Do you reckon the top hat

is part of the aesthetic, or that's just become the common symbol of it?

Is it like one of the washing machine settings?

This is the setting for your ladders and your top hats.

Washing machine.

It's a.

But it is a ladder.

I was going to say it's not a ladder.

It's a clothes horse.

It's a ladder in your stockings, yeah.

it's the it's the millennium millinery and stocking setting on your yes washing those are delicate i assume they're delicate hats and stockings the picture is a a quaint reference to the past

oh okay

you know what you might do back in the day in the top hat wearing era what chimney chimney sweep maybe okay so this is the this is the heater setting the the cleaning setting for your chimney the the Yes, keep going, Julian.

You know the clean chimney button?

What button do you press?

It can't be on a chimney because most houses don't.

I mean, most houses here don't.

Yeah, that's what the traditional houses have.

Yeah.

That's right.

So if you don't have that, you put a heater instead.

Yeah, I'm not giving you that right away, but yes, it is an icon of a chimney sweep.

And it is

associated with that.

So you've nearly got it.

I need to dial in what that might be representing.

So it does feel like we should go towards something heating related, right?

Maybe a, maybe a, um, uh, I always call it a fume hood, but it's not a fume hood.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

The fume hood over your over your oven.

You know, the fume hood, whatever it's called.

The exhaust.

Yeah, the exhaust.

Exhaust.

Yeah.

There's that.

Or like the oven itself, you might.

It's like a cleaning thing.

You're cleaning the hot thing that's in your house.

It's the symbol for where the smoke goes.

Yeah.

Bill and Julian, you've both kind of nearly said it.

You're in the right area.

It's more general than that rather than one specific thing.

Exhaust.

Smoke exhaust.

It's exhaust.

Exhaust.

Exhaust.

If we just say it enough, you'll give it a sign.

I reckon too.

Exhaust.

To find this picture, which you may not have noticed, you would have to press a special button or certain key combinations or something like that.

It's not just going to be on there and obvious, which is why you may never have noticed it.

Is it like an oven cleaning setting?

Like you put your oven into exhaust mode?

something mode yeah it is actually called chimney sweep mode chimney sweep mode on your roomba and then you put it in the oven no you're right that it's it's on a boiler you're right that's chimney sweep mode on a boiler it found sounds like he's talking to a lot of australians who don't have a lot of boilers down under

the very least a lot of people who live in apartments and don't have to engage with that sort of thing because someone else does it for them yeah what why might why might you put the boiler into chimney sweep mode which is is is slang it's self-clean is it is it Is it a flush?

You know what?

That's close enough.

It's maintenance mode.

It is the setting that allows you to go outside all of the normal parameters.

You might want to run it over the temperature it's normally allowed to go.

You might want to just have it only exhaust and not actually heat things.

Whenever you want to do something weird with it, with a professional around, you put it into what is known as chimney sweep mode.

But what you forgot about is that in Australia, when it's hot, we just want it to get really cold.

When it's cold, we all freeze in our cold houses and nobody is warm in the entire country.

And we're so sad and no one's ever tried to fix this problem.

And no one sympathizes because they just say, it's Australia.

How cold could it be?

Oh, yeah, it's not that cold.

And we're like, look, it's 10 degrees, but it's really cold.

Do you know what we could do with a boiler with a chimney sweep?

Where's our boiler?

Where's our top hat and our ladders?

Packages by Expedia.

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Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

The Unbelievable Truth is a BBC radio panel game where four comedians take turns to hide true statements amongst a plethora of lies.

Why did one listener re-edit every episode so that the order of the comedians was swapped around?

I'll say that again.

The Unbelievable Truth is a BBC radio panel game where four comedians take turns to hide true statements amongst a plethora of lies.

Why did one listener reiterate so that the order of comedians was swapped around?

What?

One or two episodes of this show.

There are some similarities with this, where there's a lot of fake information that occasionally some truth falls in.

But it's a different game.

I mean, there are a lot of British panel shows, including one that I've run in the past, where it's basically

just lying about things and working out which is true.

We had Call My Bluff, we have

Would I Lie to You?

We've got a lot of these.

So, why would the order of who's speaking be interesting outside of them just doing it as their own fun little thing, like reordering every episode in the order of most lies to fewest lies, or just no, I want to see these people in alphabetical order now.

I don't have, I can't think of

a gag on Taskmaster.

If you ever watch Taskmaster, in pretty much every version of it around the world, the comedians on the panel will be seated in alphabetical order.

And that is just a little thing that got put in at some point and became a rule.

It's the kind of nerdy detail you'd expect.

And now people do in-depth analysis of which seat is most likely to win, and so how likely you are to win based on the first letter of your name.

Well, actually, is it something like that?

Are you more likely to win that show if you go first or go second?

But even if that's the case,

why would you do an edit to reverse that?

You said you said reverse, not randomize, right?

It says re-edit so the comedians were swapped around, is what it says.

So it could be swapped in anyway.

Not necessarily reversed.

Because, yeah, that was my first thought as well: was for some reason, someone who's like,

No, the integrity of this game is ruined by the fact that to keep listener engagement, they always put like this thing in the for the last person, and the first person always said, and so to make it truly random, I'm gonna mess them around so people won't know what's coming.

There was someone on the Australian version of The Traitors who got cut out of the show for metagaming too much.

Ah, fun.

He's visible in the wide shots.

I mean, I haven't seen this.

I'm...

If the details on this are wrong, I'm getting this secondhand.

But

he's visible in the wide shots.

He's introduced a couple of times.

He doesn't really say much.

He just gets eliminated at one point and no one really mentions or cares about him in the edit.

And it turns out that's because it was season one.

He'd worked out how the game works.

And he kept saying things like, oh, well, those two came down to breakfast last.

So the producers clearly want us to think this.

So that means they're safe and they're not traitors.

And it just kind of,

it was really useful information for him, but just ruined the show for LWers.

So you got to keep to yourself.

Well, he didn't.

That's like when the casino kicks you out for counting cards.

I'm just playing the game.

I'm following the rules.

Yeah, but you're too good.

Get out of here.

So because he didn't win and he didn't really actually affect the game all that much, they just kind of dropped him from most of the episodes.

I suppose I would believe that some die-hard fan would have figured out the metagame and tried to rearrange things so that it didn't work anymore, so that they could still feel the thrill.

Well, there's plenty of shows that have that problem.

Like

if you are 27 minutes into a 30-minute show and they're just starting a game, they're probably not going to win it.

They've probably just been dropped in there to, you know, probably going to crash out early.

So with the ordering, instead of being comedian 1, 2, 3, 4,

the new order was 3412.

3412.

That doesn't even make pie.

Doesn't even make pie.

This is very intentional.

So it's basically 3412 basically just means they took the latter half and they made it the first half.

They want the end to be the start and the start to be the end.

Which is odd.

And they did it

because

Tom, you take it away.

I don't know.

Danny's the one who seen some episodes of it.

Were they colorblind?

No.

All right, I'm going to set a scene here.

Was there someone else involved with this?

Like, was the listener editing it and then playing this to someone else?

No, quite the opposite.

So they were a genuine fan of the show and doing it for their own reasons.

Because I was thinking that it might be those people who watch a game show.

while their partner is not around so they know the answers in advance and can pretend to be clever.

And there was some trick in doing that that,

nope, okay, never mind.

No, I've also got another, you know, like I've got all these ideas that don't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

Like, like it's aired at different times when you cross like somewhere and they started listening to it and they knew that when they crossed over, they'd get to the next part, like it would be restarting.

So it's like, well, I want to listen to three and four first.

And by the time on my regular drive, I cross over into

Wales,

they're airing it later, and now they'll be on one and two.

So that's what I'll hear when I get across the border on my regular truck drive.

But that wouldn't really make that much sense either because they would have already had the capacity to listen to the whole thing.

The timing of the listening to the episodes is key.

It's key.

Oh.

How is the show distributed?

Is this a radio show?

Is this a podcast?

It's radio.

Radio show and podcast.

It is a radio show.

So the way the show works is, yeah, each of the comedians is kind of a standalone piece.

I don't know.

I think this person's just quirky.

That is a quirky character.

Yeah, this is a quirky person.

That's it.

Now, the episodes of the show, they are fairly long, is something to note, which is part of it.

Do they always save the best guests for last?

And this person's just like, look, I'm going to fall asleep by the end.

So why don't I get the best guests first?

And then the other two while I'm falling asleep because I listen to podcasts when I go to bed or I download this and I listen to it when I fall asleep.

And so they're like, first two, boring.

It's always the same people.

That's always there.

They build up to the good ones.

You are so close, my friend.

It is about listening while falling asleep.

Finish it off.

There are plenty of shows that will reorder the

questions, the players, even the episodes in a season to move things around and make the dramatic arc better or just put the good ones first so people keep listening.

Mate, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're really close there.

The reason is they like to listen when they fall asleep, when they go to bed.

So

they listen to the last two, not just because they're the best, but because the first two are always the same hosts and they're one of the first two and they don't want to listen to themselves.

Or it gives them two versions to listen to.

No, because you could just pop.

Are they uncertain of when they fell asleep and then they have to listen to the other episode the next day?

Like the edited one is there so they can hear the bits they missed the previous night?

Spot on.

That's exactly right.

They listen to the show.

They hear comedian one.

They hear comedian two.

Somewhere along the way, they fall asleep.

They try again the next day.

They fall asleep at the same point.

So they get to listen to all the favorite show again and catch up with the ones that they're normally asleep by.

Interesting.

I should try that with a couple of movies.

I've got a couple of movies where I always fall asleep at the same point.

Deep in the

tri-memento for that.

That'll work well.

So, yeah, broadly, this gives you two listenings to the show.

The only like standalone, but the only downside is some of the callback jokes don't quite work.

So, give yourself a high five if you've done that to this show right now.

Yeah,

yeah.

As we suspected earlier, our producer has unlocked the shiny bonus question because there were some very quick solves in there.

This question has been sent in by Jeff.

Thank you very much, Jeff.

In 2017, why did a New York store open a robin's egg blue room so that people could fulfill a 56-year-old ambition.

I'll say that again.

In 2017, why did a New York store open a robin's egg blue room so that people could fulfill a 56-year-old ambition?

I've got a guess.

You've got it.

I've got a guess, so I might

draw something.

Well, Danny,

what was 56 years before 2017?

Well, that helped a little bit, possibly.

I could be super wrong, but I'm drawing it anyway.

2017

what is it 1960 yeah so like 1961 61 1961.

what was the what were the big bands of the time what was the big big events of the time oh there was the blue room band where they said everybody come and dance in the blue room everybody dance the blue room it's 1961 land i love the blue room dance with me and everyone's like i'd love that robin egg blue robin egg blue robin egg blue robin egg blue yeah yeah yeah that's the chorus i didn't i didn't think we could sing that though they might not have the light that's right Until you got to the third line of that bill, I was genuinely convinced that was a real song.

It's a real song.

It's about the blue room.

Now, that was my lie.

Hiccomb my truth.

When did breakfast at Tiffany's come out?

Can I show you my picture?

It does indeed say breakfast at Tiffany's, and that is the correct answer, yes.

My picture is two very fancifully dressed women with lots of jewelry eating some breakfast.

Yeah,

there must have been a blue room in that that movie.

I believe Tiffany's is associated with a light blue colour, right?

Oh well there you go.

So they had a breakfast nook.

Yes, they specifically opened a little dining room so that people could in fact have breakfast at Tiffany's, which was not possible until 2017.

Wonderful.

Which brings us to the question right at the start.

What flying animal is missing from this book title?

P is for blank, the worst alphabet book ever.

I think we've proven ourselves in tune with childlike trolls in this episode.

I think you can get that.

I feel good.

I don't.

I'm just thinking of like pig with wings.

Oh, pterodactyl.

It's pterodactyl.

I was going to say, Julian,

I think you had it and then kind of had that sniped from you, like a pterodactyl swooping right down and stealing.

I think it's pterodactyl.

So I was going to edit that in.

But anytime as I put my answer over the top, I'll go first.

Pterodactyl.

What were you going to guess, Bill?

What were you going to guess?

I was going to say it was penguin and it was bad just because it's incorrect information.

Yes, this is a book released in 2018 by Chris Carpenter and Raj Haldar.

It is full of words that use silent letters.

And this is something I've also heard, which is the devil's phonetic alphabet,

which has things like A is for owral, C is for Q,

D is for gin, and just lots of words like that.

I don't know what the original ones in this book are, but there are various alphabets out there that entirely rely on silent letters.

Love it.

Well done to all of our players for some very, very quick and efficient solving in there, and also some good conversation as well.

It's literally what the show is about.

Well, well done, everyone.

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

Where can people find you?

We will start with Bill.

Yeah, if you want to check out more of what we do, you can look for Escape This Podcast for audio escape rooms and Solve This Murder for audio murder mysteries.

Danny, what kind of things can people find there?

Oh, you'll mostly on Escape This Podcast find rooms that I or occasionally someone else have written and guests coming on and solving the puzzles and winding their way through the stories.

Tom, you're on a couple of episodes yourself, so those are a good place to start.

And if you want to hear what producer David sounds like, he's also on those episodes.

Oh, yeah.

And Julian, what's going on with you?

Where can people find you?

My name is Julian O'Shea, and that's the handle I use making videos about design cities and the great city of the world, Melbourne, Australia.

And you have previously held the camera for me on a shoot at Luna Park in Melbourne.

Thank you very much for that.

Indeed, I do.

So if you need a spare camera hand, then you go.

Thank you very much to all our players.

If you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com.

We are regularly at youtube.com slash lateralcast with video highlights.

And you can find us at lateralcast basically everywhere.

Thank you very much to Julian O'Shea.

Thank you.

Danny Silla.

Thank you.

And Bill Sunderland.

Thank you for having me.

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