153: An unequal game

Chronic spontaneous urticaria or chronic hives with no known cause.

It's so unpredictable.

It's like playing pinball.

Itchy red bumps start on my arm, then my back,

sometimes my legs.

Hives come out of nowhere

and it comes and goes.

But I just found out about a treatment option at treatmyhives.com.

Take that, chronic hives.

Learn more at treatmyhives.com.

Every day, thousands of people in the UK see the bank card details of Mrs.

Natalie West, but her bank doesn't mind.

Why?

The answer to that at the end of the show.

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

Welcome to a 2025 vintage of Lateral.

Once more, we've uncaked seven questions to tantalize the intellectual taste buds and leave a lingering finish of satisfaction.

And speaking of things that are robust, earthy, and occasionally fruity, let's meet the players.

First, we have wine critic for the Guardian and regular on Sunday brunch, Hannah Crosby, welcome back to the show.

Hi, that was an amazing tasting note.

I'm very, very impressed.

Was it anywhere near accurate?

Because I do not understand tasting notes or anything like how they're...

How does that work?

Oh, well, I mean, you've just got to find a way to sort of bring the wine alive.

Although I will say, what was it?

Long and something.

A lingering finish of satisfying.

Lingering finish.

Which, honestly, as I read that, I thought that's a bit questionable.

It's a bit questionable.

I don't know whether you'll be able to, but yeah, long, satisfying finish is one.

And then I'll also say that probably won't make the cut, but I read the phrase creamy finish more times in a day than I would care to admit.

And that goes right past them.

But yeah, that was absolutely brilliant.

Thank you.

Well, good luck on the show today.

This is the fourth episode you've been on, I think.

How are you settling in?

I'm settling in just great.

I'm settling in just great.

Really enjoying my time here.

I always kind of always follow this pattern of being really quiet at the start and then being really gobby towards the end of the episode.

So we'll see if that happens.

Joining you today, we have two more returning players from the PsychEyes podcast.

It is Luke Cutforth and Corrie Will.

And last time we went to Corrie first.

We're going to go to Luke this time.

How are you doing?

Hello.

I'm good.

Thank you, Tom.

What I want to know is, am I the robust one, the earthy one, or the a little bit fruity one?

I feel like you're the only one who can answer that question.

If you want to lock down one of those three and pass the other two to the other players, you're welcome to.

I want to be a little bit fruity.

So, you know,

you want to be, you guys decide between you.

And apparently quite disappointed with that, Curry will.

Well, look, we'll say I'm more than a little bit fruity and very robust.

So

yeah.

Thank you for having us again.

Tell us about SciGuys.

What's going on?

What are you working on at the minute?

We're funny guys, and we talk about science a little bit, but mostly we try to understand the silly stories that we come across.

Isn't that right, Luke?

Is it right?

I hope so.

Yeah, especially me.

I'd really try to understand them.

Well, I have heard it on the grapevine that we're ready to go.

So let's raise our glasses for question one.

Thank you to David Ellis Dickerson for sending this this question in.

What is a Stravenue?

I'll say that again.

What is a Stravenue?

Surely a portmanteau of Street and Avenue, man.

Yeah, that's the first bit.

There's something more to it, though.

Well, when a street and an avenue love each other very, very much,

is it like a little alleyway that connects a street to an avenue?

What is an avenue, first of all?

Because I know there's boulevards, there's avenues,

there are lanes, there are all these different words for the same thing.

It's just a thing you either go down or a car goes down.

We don't need all the different names for it.

But what specifically is an avenue?

I think avenue probably does have a specific...

It's like, you know, how you have a street that is called something end.

I think that means it doesn't lead anywhere, something like that.

Oh, yeah, like a cul-de-sac.

Yeah.

And so I think avenue probably does have some some genuine meaning, even if like we kind of use them interchangeably now in sort of layman's speech.

Whether it's residential or

they do all have yeah, they do all have definitions.

I'm aware of that.

I just think they should all be abolished.

All streets are equal sort of thing.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're for the abolition of different words for streets.

Yeah, I walk on the left-hand side of the street.

Are you for that they all mean the same thing, or are you for we only use street and the rest of the other words are illegal

oh it depends on whether i'm authoritarian or not is that a word i don't know authoritarian words yeah yeah but avenue no longer is

so what what is a street a street what is a street a street is just a road but what's an avenue specifically is it is it something it feels like it's something that leads to something that's what all roads do they all lead to something else someone please please stop me, I'm spinning out.

Yes, yes, apparently.

Is it something that connects two streets?

Is it

more residential?

Is it more like a high street where there's more likely to be shops as opposed to people living or driving through there?

Does anyone have any memory in their life of something that was called street and something that was called avenue?

And can you think about them and try and figure out what was different about those things?

The only avenue I can think of is Shaftesbury Avenue.

Okay.

But I don't know what's on it.

Are avenues like pedestrianized?

No, Shaftesbury Avenue isn't pedestrianised.

And it's basically the same as

sort of Regent Street, Oxford Street.

But back in the day when it was named, was it

quite different?

True.

There are other famous avenues and streets.

Okay, yeah.

Is this Monopoly?

We're talking about Monopoly.

Oh,

I literally, this is like, you know, like there's that

Billy on the Street episode where he runs around going, for a dollar, name a woman.

And everyone's like, I literally can't name a woman.

Why can't I name a woman?

And Tom's like, name an avenue.

And I'm like, I can't name an avenue, Tom.

Not even for a dollar.

As we record this, an episode of Jet Lag the Game has just come out where we got challenged to name 100 women.

Right.

And once you start going to categories, I try to do like alphabetical order.

I like start with names with A, with B.

It's still so difficult.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, and a guy was doing a quiz.

He got the first nine questions correct.

The prize was £2,000.

And the tenth question was, name a fictional character.

And he couldn't.

And he lost £2,000.

Oh.

Any fictional character.

But it's hard when you're under pressure.

Right.

You know what I mean?

It's like saying, name a historical figure, and all you can think of suddenly is Sherlock Holmes.

That's so weird.

That was the character that I was just thinking of.

We're broken, fundamentally.

That said, if you can think of, particularly maybe in fiction, some famous streets or avenues you might know of,

you may stumble on the clue that solves this.

I mean, I think someone said it's street residential, because there's 221B Baker Street.

I live on a street.

It's called Street.

I live there.

It's my point.

Street Street.

I'm not going to dox myself, Corey.

How many of you have been to New York?

Oh, Fifth Avenue.

Okay, fine.

Oh, yeah, you've got Avenue A, Avenue, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Streets.

One of them will go sort of north-south.

The other one will go east-west, basically, because they're

diagonal?

Yes, it is.

Really?

An avenue is a street going the other at a right angle?

That's

it.

Traditionally, avenue is this sort of picturesque street with trees on both sides.

But you are right, Corey, that the definition in the modern day is just whatever sounds good on the end of the name.

New York's grid system, at least in Manhattan, has streets going one way, avenues going the other.

So does Tucson, Arizona.

And Tucson has some diagonal streets called Stravenews.

And they're not even slightly ashamed of that.

Really not.

Let's go to a question from our guests then.

We will start today with Hannah.

Okay, so this question has been sent in by Nick Bastion.

Why do thousands of women owe their life to the Hubble Space Telescope?

I'll say it again.

Why do thousands of women owe their life to the Hubble Space Telescope?

No, name a thousand women.

Very close.

Name them all.

Name every you-name every woman.

You're a non-sexist.

Name every woman.

I think we should just call them all Mary and be done with it.

That's it, you know?

Every woman, Shaka Khan.

She's every woman.

Hey!

I wanted to make that joke and I couldn't think who sang the song.

That's probably sexist on me.

So.

Well, there we go.

999 to go, guys.

Okay, so starting point, I'm guessing there's a bunch of technology that was invented accidentally adjacent to space exploration.

So I'm guessing that's a good thing.

Like, I think the MRI was to do with going to the moon or something.

So, this, and it's specifically saying, why don't thousands of women owe their lives to.

So, is it something to do with

mammograms or

cervical smears or something like that?

The two lady parts.

The lady parts.

The lady operations.

I would love a podcast of just Luke listing sort of

female, feminine sort of procedures.

I'd love that.

I want to see how long you can go.

Also, I don't know how the Hubble Space Telescope will be connected to cervical smears, but if that turns out to be the actual answer here, it's spectacular.

Well,

they're cleaning the inside of the telescope and the person's like, no.

Hang on a second.

No.

Telescopes use mirrors and you've got to use mirrors to kind of like see what you're doing when you're smearing.

Tell me you've never had a cervical smear without telling me you've got to never had a cervical smear.

With

three men.

Oh, blimey.

Okay.

Oh, man.

Yeah, it's just one guy cleaning the entirety of the telescope with a little tiny swan.

There has to be an easier way to do this.

Well, to be fair, like, because you have to, like, this is a total tangent, but, like, you do have to have, like, you know, when you have mirrors in space and things like that, you have to have such clean mirrors that I wouldn't be totally surprised if they had to go over it with, like, tiny levels of precision to make sure there was no dust.

But I don't think that's what the answer is.

It's probably cleaner than most people's cervixes.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Cervices?

Cervices.

Cervices?

The way they clean telescope mirrors is often with carbon dioxide.

with like dry ice because it will just blast all the dust away and then just sublimate off, leaving nothing behind.

Also, not a good plan for a cervical screen.

I tried to keep my face straight on that.

It didn't happen.

Okay.

So you're right, Luke, it is to do with developing specific technologies alongside the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope.

It's to do with a computer algorithm to find meaningful differences in brightness.

Okay.

I think the easiest way to think about this is if we look at something that we solved for men about

50 to 100 years before the Hubble telescope was sorted, we'll be in the right region for,

you know, when they sorted it for women.

That's usually how those things go.

I think Luke might have been on the right thing with mammograms then.

You know, guys, you both teased me for saying the two lady operations, but

one of those was the right operation.

So I'm guessing this is some kind of scan.

They're doing like a scan of tissue, right?

And

based on how much whatever they use to do a mammogram, like as in which type of is it like, it's not an x-ray, obviously, but whatever they're sending through to scan the tissue,

how sort of dense it is to detect, for example, a cancer comes up as brighter or darker.

And that technology was originally developed to look for something out of a picture from a space telescope.

Yep, you're pretty much there, so I think I'll just give it to you.

It was a spin-off project that helped to improve breast cancer detection.

So the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with a mirror, you're right to say mirrors, that had not been ground into the correct shape.

The optical error meant that the initial images were fuzzy.

Until a mission to fix the problem could be launched, scientists set about developing an algorithm to extract as much meaningful data out of the flawed images as possible.

But medical researchers recognised the similarities between working with fuzzy Hubble images and mammogram images and employed the same techniques to advance their own detection methods.

So you got there like pretty quickly.

I just wanted to hear you guys talk about breasts for a couple of minutes.

Well, most of it was about cervixes, unfortunately.

Well, you should listen to us talk off pod.

That's all us three talk about all the time.

Right, right.

Yeah, me, Tom, Luke, cutting it up about breasts.

Don't drag me into this.

Tom, you started the group chat.

Yeah, man.

I am delighted to say we have another live recording coming up.

We're headlining the UK leg of the Cheerful Earful Comedy Podcast Festival.

Our show is on Sunday, October 12th at the Clapham Grand in London.

Doors open at 12 noon for a 1pm start.

We'll be playing a regular version of the show with three fantastic celebrity guests.

Rhea Lena, Alastair Beckett King, and Izzy Lawrence.

To get your tickets, go to lateralcast.com live.

That's lateralcast.com/slash live, and hopefully, we'll see you there.

Honey punches the votes for all.

Today,

this podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So, if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at Progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates pet injuries and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

Thank you to Becky for sending this next question in.

Becky enters an English church and stands on a box.

She puts her thumb on her nose with her hand held vertically and fingers stretched out.

What is she about to do and how does this procedure help?

I'll say that again, and for those watching in video, we'll cut between what everyone else is doing.

Becky enters an English church and stands on a box.

She puts her thumb on her nose with her hand held vertically and fingers stretched out.

What is she about to do and how does that procedure help?

She's came to six.

Everyone has a different and wrong interpretation of what those gestures mean.

Okay.

At one point Corrie you had your hand horizontal which yeah I realized though sorry yeah firstly top did you say that this question was sent in by Becky and also the question is Becky is it about herself?

Yes, this is a personal anecdote from Becky.

So was it thumb or finger on nose?

Thumb on the nose.

Okay.

Hand held vertically, fingers stretched out.

Right, Curry, you got it right now.

It is one hand doing this.

It is basically thumbing your nose.

She's going ner-ner-na-ner-ner.

Yeah.

Okay.

In a church.

What is she about to do?

In a church.

On a box.

Is it to see how far away something should be from her face?

Like if she's wearing like a hood or a habit or something like that?

Yeah.

Too close and it.

Oh.

That's a very good deduction.

is it right?

Well, I would need to know what the thing might be, but actually that's straight there for measuring distance.

Same sort of thing that radio people sometimes do for microphones, like one hand span distance.

But there's there's a couple of other reasons that it's it's that specific thing.

Also, she's standing on a box.

She's standing on a box.

My mind goes to this might be just the film in me, but an apple box because she's too short behind the pulpit.

That's where my mind goes.

The pulpit's the bit from where you speak, right?

There must be some relevance to the fact that she's got all of her fingers stretched out rather than just the one finger.

Because when you're doing it to your mic, it's your finger to

your little finger, whereas she's got all of them stretched out.

So is this like, is it utilizing the third dimension in some way?

Or the second dimension, sorry?

No, actually, I think that's just a preference of

this.

I think you could do it either way.

Is it so something doesn't get damaged?

Is she restoring a painting and she has to stand on a box to be able to do that, but then can't be breathing too closely on it unless she kind of damages it?

Is Becky the lady who restored that painting in a really funny bad way?

Gosh, I forgot about that.

Wow.

Never forget, never forget.

That was actually that she just sneezed on the painting and she was like, okay, from now on, I'll always be one that stretched out hand away from the painting.

I fear there will be people listening to this who are younger than that meme in and of itself.

Right, yeah, that happened quite a while.

Kega history lesson.

Everyone needs to stand on a box here, and you're right, it is the height.

So, this is probably a height that was designed for men in the church.

So, she's standing on a box for that reason.

Well, what do they let men do in church that they don't let women do other than almost everything?

uh okay what do you do in okay so that you might like have a robe fitted uh in a church um

does it matter what sort of kind of church like as in what sort of denomination um because i know that sort of catholics and only a couple other sort of denominations tend to do sort of this repentance thing where you or whatever it is where you go and speak to someone in a box um they're in a box you're in a box you tell them all the stuff you did wrong, they're like, it's all good, you're going to heaven still.

But they can't be too close.

Like, oh my God, I can't believe that happened.

Like, just look through the gauze.

All right, is it.

Who are you?

The exact denomination isn't important, but this is an old English church.

Old English church.

Are there bells?

It's something to do with bell ringing.

You have to be a certain height.

If you are too far down on the rope, it will take considerably more effort to ring the bell.

And why is she doing this?

To, I guess, assess.

For those who don't know about bell ringing, how does it work?

You stand underneath bells with various people and you kind of like

ring them in order to create a beautiful tune, but you have to pull down quite hard on that bell and then it goes all the way back up.

So it's very important to let go.

Yeah, the bells are up in the tower, meters and meters above, and you've just got these long ropes dangling down.

And there is a lot of skill in timing that correctly.

But yes, you've got most of the pieces here.

She is about to ring the bells.

What's with the hand gesture?

Luke, you definitely got some of that.

Well, she can't be too close to the rope

for some reason.

Is it going to come up and smack her in the face if she's too close?

Yeah, that's it.

You're absolutely right.

It is really important to make sure that the rope is centered on your body and not too far away, not too close, because you need to be able to catch it when it comes down and it needs to not hit you.

So, yes, the reason that Becky goes into a church, stands on a box and puts her thumb to her nose is to make sure that she's not going to get hurt by the bell rope that she's going to be pulling.

Oh, wow.

God,

dangerous job.

Surprisingly dangerous, yeah.

Is the box because the rope is too high up and she can't reach it comfortably?

Wow, okay.

Corrie, your question whenever you're ready.

So this question has been sent in by Sam Valiant.

In a well-known board game, the pieces of one player are slightly larger than the other for psychological reasons.

Which game and why?

I'll read that again.

In a well-known board game, the pieces of one player are slightly larger than the other for psychological reasons.

Which game and why?

Chess for insecure men.

I've got to sit this one out.

Luke, Hannah, it's on you.

You know this already, Tom.

I.

Here's the thing.

I don't know, know this, but I'm pretty sure, and I'm going to gamble on sitting out on this one.

If it turns out I'm wrong, you can all mock me roundly for it, but I'm pretty sure.

But yeah, two-player game.

I was first thinking chess and the psychological reasons being that your perception of

dark pieces against a white background means that they appear smaller, so they make the black ones slightly bigger so that they seem like the same size?

I mean,

yes, but not chess.

But not chess.

Okay, what are them?

Drafts,

tiddlywinks, checkers.

I fear that this question is just going to become

board gaming games.

Yeah,

I mean, it's an ancient board game.

Oh, go.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Wow.

And, I mean, you've got it right.

It's go

because of that sort of optical illusion.

Dark pieces will look a little bit smaller.

So you make them a little bit bigger so that you don't feel like you're doing sort of worse or insecure.

Yeah.

Spot on.

Wow.

There was a brief moment where my brain went, it's those pool tables where the cue ball comes back to a different bit.

You know those.

Okay, you know, pool and snooker tables where you put like some coins in and you push, and the

balls only get to play one game.

The white ball

shouldn't go back in, yeah.

Right.

The white ball comes out, and I think they do that with just sizing.

Um, that ball is slightly smaller or slightly larger.

And that was where my grain was going before I put together that.

That is probably not what we're talking about here.

That would make sense if you wanted to like make an automated, like a scoring system before you had electronics.

If you had like the red balls are sorted one way and the white, the the yellow balls are sorted the other way ah but as it is it's it's it's go

it's go yeah quite literally in your username tom as soon as i started reading it i was like this is something that tom will just know i i know this tom scar is because he loves scar music tom scott go is because he loves go

thank you to mark for this next question as of 2024 This feat has been achieved by 12 different Olympic athletes.

The last seven to do so demonstrated great versatility.

The first five were fortunate with their timing.

What is the feat and why the difference?

I'll give you that one more time.

As of 2024, this feat has been achieved by 12 different Olympic athletes.

The last seven to do so demonstrated great versatility.

The first five were fortunate with their timing.

What is the feat and why the difference?

Threesome in the Olympic village.

Yeah, definitely more than that.

It's definitely more than 14 Olympians who've done that, Corrie.

No, they can't because of the cardboard beds.

They can't.

Yeah, they can't have threesome because of the cardboard beds.

Yeah, they made all these like strange like prefab furnitures to like literally prevent people from sleeping together.

Yeah, my dad worked on the Olympic Games in 2012 and I was told that like it was a real big problem because all these fit, horny people are just living together all the time.

Yeah, it is.

It's an actual problem.

I just, that was a dangerous sentence to start with.

My dad.

I was like, I don't know where this is going.

He's the reason the rule exists.

Where do you think I came from?

Oh, dear.

So 12 Olympic games ago, 48 years, what happened?

It was like, what did you say?

It was the first.

It's kind of like more or less split in half.

12 different Olympic athletes have done this.

The last seven demonstrated great versatility.

The first five were fortunate with their timing.

Is it winning more than one gold medal?

At the same time, at the same Olympics, like in two different sports?

No, apparently.

Timing.

Keep talking.

With timing, is it to do with breaking both a world record and an Olympic record at the same time?

Because those are different

things.

No, I think by definition, if you break the world record, you break the Olympic one.

True, yes.

Yeah.

But it's possible to break an Olympic record without breaking a world one.

Yeah, fair.

Okay, so they must have, like it must have been that a bunch of people did it accidentally, and then some people like developed the skill because a bunch of people had done it accidentally after that, like a Fosbury flop style moment.

Did the ones with fortunate timing come after the ones with great versatility?

No, the other way around.

Okay, yeah, okay, good.

You were right about winning two medals.

That bit was right.

Okay.

So it's winning two medals in two different

the reason I said that was because of the versatility bit.

So I'm thinking it must be in two different events

or at least two maybe two different sports or two different categories or lengths of like winning the hundred meter race and the 200 meter race.

Kind of.

I'm stuck on versatility.

I just feel like that has to do with

different

different events.

But I can't get my head around anything else.

Yeah, you are right.

Those last seven, the versatile ones, meddled in two different sports.

Did the five who were lucky, is it five that were lucky, did they all happen in the same year or at the same time?

Yes, they did.

So I remember there was one amazing thing.

This might be completely left of field.

I remember this one amazing sport where basically...

A team came up with this idea.

I think it was in the Velodrome.

I don't know if this was Olympics, but they basically went really slow

on their first lap, and everyone else could see it but then they then just went at normal speed and by the time they got to the end of the race everyone had forgotten oh sorry not really slow really fast in their first lap by the time they got to the end everyone had forgotten and these these this team basically all won by an entire lap because everybody had forgotten they were supposed to overtake them um i probably explained that horribly um i know what you're talking about look yeah they lapped them and then everyone forgot that they'd been lapped so they all thought that they were neck and neck um and kind of relaxed yeah when you know the other people were coming coming first up against them are the five so the five luckies are all on the same team they're all winning it at the same time uh no but it was all in 1924 i was going to say is this to do with one of the olympics where a

bunch of people didn't show up now i can't remember if it was

i feel like i'm mixing things because i know olympics were funny around wars but there was also a time when

that's that's an understatement um

I feel there was

maybe I'm making this up.

I feel

there was an Olympics where a bunch of people refused to go for some reason or another.

Oh, that's happened a few times.

Yes.

Yeah.

Is it to do with winning two medals for two different countries?

And the accidental thing was in 1924, one country became a different country.

Those seven, incredibly versatile, two different sports.

The first five have managed the same achievement,

but just with one sport.

There's something else that changed, that came along in 1924.

One sport was split into two different sports.

The sport wasn't split.

The people were split.

The genders were split.

Yeah, they were split.

They were split sex.

No, no, no, that wouldn't have happened then.

Women, no.

The country was split.

Oh, Germany, East and West Berlin.

Sorry, East and West Germany.

Austria, Hungary.

No, that would have been.

Something else was split or more invented.

Was were horses being used for certain sports?

Horses were invented in 1924.

Horses were invented.

I'm saying, like, horses got replaced by something in 1924, and then instead it becomes an equestrian sport.

Oh, it's not equestrian, it's a different category.

Oh, pole vault.

They invented poles.

If I tell you that the five athletes, the lucky ones, were figure skaters and ice hockey players.

So, okay, maybe the ones with incredibly lucky timing were already at the Olympics when ice hockey was invented or when it became an Olympic sport.

So they quickly competed when nobody else had a chance to enter.

Is it oh, is it winter Olymp indoor and out is this winter Olympics?

Or indoor and outdoor?

You've got the key word there.

Winter.

Winter.

Oh, did it.

Winter split in the Winter Olympics split from the Olympics?

In 1924, yes.

So what's the feat?

What have they achieved?

So they won in the main Olympics, and then the Winter Olympics was created that winter, and they won the same award again.

So ice hockey was in the 1920 Summer Olympics.

Figure skating was as well.

The Winter Olympics came along in 1924 and those sports switched over.

So you're right, Luke.

That's someone who could win in both.

So I'm just looking to put that together.

Like,

what did those seven athletes later on with two sports manage to do?

They won a medal at the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics.

Yes, that's it.

There are only 12 people in history who have both a Summer Olympic gold and a Winter Olympic gold.

Yes, the seven more recent athletes have medaled in both a summer and a winter sport, which is a hell of a skill.

The five athletes from 1924 and earlier had a Summer Olympic gold because there was no Winter Olympics for their sport.

And then they split the two apart, and so they have also got that accolade.

CRM was supposed to improve customer relationships.

Instead, it's shorthand for customer rage machine.

Your CRM can't explain why a customer's package took five detours?

Reboot your inner piece and scream into a pillow.

It's okay.

On the ServiceNow AI platform, CRM stands for something better.

AI agents don't just track issues, they resolve them, transforming the entire customer experience.

So breathe in and breathe out.

Bad CRM was then.

This is ServiceNow.

Say hello to the next generation of Zendesk AI agents.

Built to deliver resolutions for everyone.

Zendesk AI agents easily deploy in minutes, not months, to resolve 30% of customer and employee interactions on day one, quickly turning monotonous tasks into autonomous solutions.

Loved by over 10,000 companies, Zendesk AI makes service teams more efficient, businesses run better, and your customers happier.

That's the Zendesk AI effect.

Find out more at Zendesk.com.

Luke, whenever you're ready.

Okay, my question is from Lachlan C.

If you copied what Annie did in October 1901, you'd be fined either $10,000 or $25,000, depending on where you land.

What is it?

I'll ask you again, if you copied what Annie did in October 1901, you'd be fined either $10,000 or $25,000 depending on where you land.

What is it?

My mind immediately goes to Annie the Musical, but I actually don't know when that's set because I think I last watched it as a child.

And everything in the past is kind of the same era.

I think it was like 1920s.

Classic bit of Annie the Musical, where she's fined $25,000.

Well, no, if you did the same thing, you would be.

She wasn't because it's a musical.

Okay.

No one gets fined in musicals.

He says, starting, start like, I felt like there should be music soaring in the background.

Bursting into song.

Yes.

You're starting your own number.

I do recognize the name, Annie.

I've got to sit down for this one.

Okay.

So I'm wondering, like,

if Annie was in the air and whether it was something that she landed herself or whether she was landing from something.

I'm not telling you yet.

You can think about it for a while.

So Annie...

Wait,

Annie's landing.

And if you were to do that, you would be fined a lot of money.

Yes.

Depending on where you land.

Is Annie a human?

Annie is, as far as I know, a human, yes.

Okay.

Geneto bird, Annie the famous famous pigeon.

Not someone running around finding birds for $25,000.

So is this some kind of like Annie flying some aircraft that's illegal in some countries, but not others?

I was thinking hot air balloon for some reason.

Okay, I will

give you this now and head you off.

It is not flying any kind of aircraft.

Okay.

So it's jumping.

Where is it illegal to jump?

That sounds like a

Tom Scott YouTube title.

It's illegal to jump here.

It is.

That's fair.

Hold on, let me get my red t-shirt and grey hoodie.

Side note: me and I was at a party with Tom recently, and he kept on saying things that sounded like YouTube titles.

Just in person, he was just spewing YouTube titles in the middle of just a normal conversation.

Depending on where you land.

So it's not flying.

Yeah.

Are you if you jump on certain stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, do you get fined more depending on how beloved the celebrity is?

You might.

That's

not a problem.

It might be the case.

You can go stamp on Donald Trump's star and see what happens.

Yeah, you get money if you do that.

I know Muhammad Ali's star is on the wall rather than the floor because you didn't want the name of Muhammad to be trodden on.

No, very much.

I don't care that.

Yeah.

That's very nice.

It's totally irrelevant to this question, but you know.

Jokes on him when gravity decides to stop existing.

Maybe you're landing on something

endangered.

It's somewhere where you're not supposed to be, obviously.

So

maybe you're landing on something endangered or very angry.

Depending on whether you decide to land on an endangered animal.

It's $25,000 if you land on a leopard.

It's $10,000 if you land on a rhino.

I think the fine is least of your worries.

Did you say where it was, Luke?

I did not say where it was, but where it is is relevant.

So, Luke, hold on.

You said it's nothing to do with flying or aircraft.

It is nothing to do with the.

Yeah, the definition of the word flight you're using there is not

helpful to you.

So, is it it's so it's not someone, say, jumping from an aircraft or anything to do with that.

That's like going down the wrong track.

That is going down the wrong track.

Yeah,

where you land is

not landing any kind of vehicle.

Oh my God, hold on.

Land, is it to do with,

like, I'm thinking gambling or something?

Where...

Well, Corey, what you do in your spare time, that's up to you.

I don't just do it in my spare time, Luke.

I do it when I should be working too.

I do have the over-unders on who gets this question, by the way.

Very good, very good.

That's why you sat down.

Lucky is now sponsored by instant gambling betting apps.

Yeah, have a think about why you might be fined different amounts of money based on where you land.

In 1901.

For some reason, I felt like 1901.

I was in the US.

Yeah.

But maybe not.

1901 isn't necessarily particularly relevant,

but it's just that Annie did do this.

I mean, Annie did do this in 1901, yes.

But like, if you did it now, you would be fined these amounts of money.

1901, that's when Queen Victoria died, isn't it?

Is that relevant?

What else happened in 1901?

I mean, maybe she was doing this because Queen Victoria died, I don't know.

Am I right in saying, Luke, that those dollar amounts are not quite as different as they may appear?

You are right in saying that, Tom.

Yes.

You are, yes.

If you assume that dollars are the same for each of those amounts, then you would be wrong.

Oh my God, hold on.

Oh, my God.

This is going over Niagara Falls or something, right?

And if you land in the US or Canada, they have different currencies.

Both dollars, Canadian dollars, American dollars.

Spa.

Yes, that's it.

Well done, Cori.

Well done.

So this is the story that Annie Edison Taylor was the first person to survive, crucially, jumping over the horseshoe falls at Niagara Falls, which she did in 1901, in October.

She went over, she fell 160 feet in a large barrel, iconic, using a harness to stabilize herself and a mattress to cushion herself, and 200 pounds of ballast to hold her upright.

So the US-Canada border goes directly through Horseshoe Falls, and depending whether you land on the US side or the Canadian side, you will be fined $10,000

if you land in America or $25,000 Canadian dollars if you land in Canada.

And this is designed to discourage people jumping off of the horseshoe falls in a barrel.

Wow.

Man, things were really boring before we invented phones.

We have had a couple of questions fall quickly, so we have unlocked the shiny bonus question.

Thank you to Catherine Q for sending this in.

After reading The Night Before Christmas and several other festive tales, one can conclude that a common perception about Santa's reindeer is wrong.

How?

I'll say that again.

After reading The Night Before Christmas and several other festive tales, one can conclude that a common perception about Santa's reindeer is wrong.

How?

I'm worried that I do know this.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the night before Christmas, and I always keep on saying the nightmare before Christmas.

I'm thinking about the night before Christmas.

Does he mention Rudolph?

Because it doesn't fit within the original rhyme.

So I happen to have the night before Christmas like literally etched into my brain because my mum read it to us every night at Christmas, on Christmas Eve, without fail.

I don't think it does it mention Rudolph and now I'm questioning myself but it does say on Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer, on Vixen, on Comet, on Cupid, on Donna, on Blitzen.

I don't remember a Rudolph.

Oh, yes, sorry, Rudolph too.

Yeah.

Oh, and also Rudolph, yeah.

Oh, yeah, Rudolph, that guy.

It's many other Christmas tales or stories you mentioned as well, Tom, right?

Yes.

I am really worried.

I'm really worried I might know this.

So I don't want to give it away.

I might have to.

I might have to sit out.

All right, that's fine.

Oh, well, I mean, would it be that, I mean, the natural answer to what Hannah and I are saying is that there are not the commonly believed number of reindeer in Santa's set of reindeer.

Not for this one.

No.

You're right that Rudolph came along later.

Rudolph is not in the original poem.

Rudolph first appeared in 1939.

uh with a different author but this would actually apply to rudolph and at least one of the other reindeer possibly the fact that they can fly.

No, actually, they did find a species of reindeer that can do flying.

I think they land on the roof in the night before Christmas.

So

unless they can climb, which would be a real plot twist to Christmas.

Oh, that's a horror movie.

That's eight reindeer climbing up your walls.

Again, they can...

Wait, they can fly, right?

So why would they need to climb up the wall?

Well, if they can't, I mean, they must.

I know that they land on the roof in the story, I'm pretty sure.

So unless they can fly, then they must be climbing up the walls like some kind of horrible

creature.

Or Santa has a reindeer cannon, obviously.

Are they?

How does the end of that question go again, Tom?

What is something that we've misunderstood?

One can conclude that a common perception about Santa's reindeer is wrong.

How?

Are they all girls?

Yeah, well, yes.

Oh, yes, they are.

Why might that common perception be wrong?

And Curry, if you knew it, this is where you come in.

I do know this.

Yeah.

So, yeah, to do with the antlers.

So males and females shed their antlers at different times of year.

So in December, no male reindeer is going to have any antlers.

Yes.

Because they've shed them by that point, but the females haven't done.

What a good thing we have a massive nerd on the podcast.

You're absolutely right.

You even got the detail they shed by early December.

You nailed every detail on my notes.

Very well done.

Which brings me to the question from the start of the show, which, given the reactions of the panel when I said it, I think might also fall very quickly.

Thank you to Stuart Clary for sending this one in.

Every day, thousands of people in the UK see the bank card details of Mrs.

Natalie West, but bank doesn't mind why.

And that just fell for all three of you, I think.

Someone take it.

Is it just NatWest, Natalie West?

Yeah.

It must be NatWest, right?

The bank.

Natalie West.

Shortened to NatWest.

This is the dummy account that NatWest Bank use on their advertising.

If you see an advert where someone from NatWest is holding up a card, it will say on it, this is the card belonging to Mrs.

Natalie West.

Congratulations to all our players.

Some questions rattle through very quickly there.

What's going on in your lives?

Where can people find you?

We'll start with Hannah.

You can read my Guardian column every week and also follow me on social media at Hannah Crosby, C-R-O-S-B, to see when I'm next on Sunday brunch doing wines.

Curry will.

You can can find me and Luke at SyGuysPod everywhere, and you can find me at Not Corrie everywhere also.

And Luke Cutforth.

You can find me, as Carrie said, at SyguysPod on our podcast, or you can find me at Luke Cutforth everywhere else.

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.

There are regular video highlights at youtube.com/slash lateralcast and full video episodes on Spotify.

Thank you very much to Luke Cutforth.

Thank you.

Kari Will.

Merci.

Hannah Crosby.

Thank you very much.

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