163: Lightning in a bottle

Speaker 1 I am so excited for this spa day.

Speaker 2 Candles lit.

Speaker 1 Music on.

Speaker 3 Hot tub warm and ready.

Speaker 1 And then my chronic hives come back.

Speaker 4 Again, in the middle of my spa day.

Speaker 1 What a wet blanket. Looks like another spell of itchy red skin.
If you have chronic spontaneous urticaria or CSU, there is a different treatment option.

Speaker 4 Hives during my next spa day?

Speaker 1 Not if I can help it. Learn more at treatmyhives.com.

Speaker 2 In 2020, why was there a sudden surge in adverts for jobs based in a small town in Coos County, Oregon? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral.

Speaker 2 Thank you for calling Lateral. We are currently experiencing high levels of confusion.
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Speaker 2 You are in queue position one,

Speaker 2 which sounds impressive, but you're the only one who somehow found our phone number.

Speaker 2 Our guests today are jamming up their number keypad in frustration, but it is no use because you are still here and you will still, unfortunately, only get me.

Speaker 2 First of all, welcome back to the show, Wine Critic for the Guardian, among many other wine-related things. Hannah Crosby.

Speaker 1 Hello, hello, thank you so much. I think this is my one, two, three, four, fifth time.

Speaker 3 Fifth show, yes.

Speaker 1 Whoa, that is flowing past.

Speaker 3 We have

Speaker 2 regular guests here. It's a lovely little community we're sort of steadily building.

Speaker 2 Welcome back.

Speaker 2 I am always slightly wary of asking, what are you working on? Because the answer may well be wine. But what are you working on?

Speaker 1 Yeah, wine. I think that's totally fair.
Wine, wine-related things.

Speaker 1 Funnily enough, today I just got a haircut. So I'm going to pretend it's for the purposes of last draw.

Speaker 1 So, yeah for those listening along at home you might not be able to see and if ever there was a reason to switch to youtube that that that would be it's spotify sorry sorry shall i shall it shall i

Speaker 2 how are you finding it being back here after a little while away because the questions seem to steadily be getting harder They do, don't they?

Speaker 1 I feel like you were kind of easing me in because I remember the first episode that I was on, I did really well.

Speaker 2 You did.

Speaker 1 Wow, I'm really good at this. And then the last time I was on, I didn't get anything.
So I think that it's a real, it's a real ego shave.

Speaker 2 Let's try and thread the needle on this one.

Speaker 2 Let's do about as well as our other two players today joining us again. Evan and Caitlin, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 Yay, thanks for having us.

Speaker 2 We met at open source in California just a few weeks ago as we record this.

Speaker 2 What was the coolest thing you saw there? This was a maker convention and like a big old adult science fair. What did you see there that you really liked?

Speaker 3 The coolest thing we saw was our friends. Hey!

Speaker 3 Very wholesome.

Speaker 4 Actually, we had a hard time getting out onto the floor very far. So, most of the cool stuff we saw was videos that our friends took.

Speaker 4 There was a really neat Titanic door simulator

Speaker 4 where people could get on the door and try to balance and see, like, would you survive or would you succumb to hypothermia because you can't stay up on the door?

Speaker 3 Was there really room for two on that door?

Speaker 2 It had a banner on it that said, Would you survive the Titanic? And I feel like, no, would you survive the movie Titanic?

Speaker 3 But it was a really good guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. What are you working on at the minute?

Speaker 3 We are working on an ambitious project, a dress made out of resin.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 3 Ha ha?

Speaker 4 Well, we're still figuring that out.

Speaker 2 Stupid question. You're still figuring that out.

Speaker 3 But we are going to be walking it in a fashion show. Caitlin's going to be on the like raised like walk.
The runway. The runway.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 You can see how experienced we are with things like fashion.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so wish us luck.

Speaker 2 Well, good luck to all of you today. It is time to put your number keypads down.
Who will be the star and who will make a hash of it? Let's patch you through to question one.

Speaker 2 Thank you to Neville Fogarty for this question. Why does Huckleberry Hound wear a bow tie? I'll give you that again.
Why does Huckleberry Hound wear a bow tie?

Speaker 1 Great start. I've got no idea who that man is.
Or dog.

Speaker 4 No, I know he's a cartoon dog.

Speaker 3 Yes. He's a cartoon character.
I was guessing that from context.

Speaker 4 And he talks. Like he's

Speaker 4 not just like a dog dog. He's like an anthropomorphic, like, well, not really anthropomorphic.
He looks like a dog.

Speaker 3 But he like talks. Yeah, but like not Tom and Jerry, who just communicate through bonking and stuff, right? Correct.

Speaker 4 Pretty sure he talks.

Speaker 3 That's all I got.

Speaker 1 Is he on a particular TV show, comic strip?

Speaker 4 I think it's a TV show, but

Speaker 3 it's older, right?

Speaker 4 That's not to say that it didn't originate as a comic strip or something, but he's like a TV cartoon character.

Speaker 3 I wonder if it's due to like some animation trick, like the bow tie separates the body from the head and it lets them animate it in a more

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 streamlined way or something.

Speaker 1 Oh, is it because bow ties are really cool?

Speaker 3 It could also be that.

Speaker 1 Is that it?

Speaker 2 Of those two suggestions, yes, Evan, you have pretty much nailed it there. In fact, I'm going to ask you to drill down a little bit more here.

Speaker 2 Huckleberry Hound for younger listeners is currently on Jellystone, which is a modern animation series, but he is much, much older than that.

Speaker 2 Can anyone kind of guess what era we're talking about here?

Speaker 4 I feel like he was...

Speaker 1 he came about in like like the 50s or something it's an old cartoon yeah yeah what's What's the name of Mickey when he's on the steamboat and he's kind of got like that?

Speaker 1 That's sort of like the era that I'm thinking. Or is it not as old as that?

Speaker 3 A little later than that.

Speaker 2 He was Hanna-Barbera in the 50s and 60s.

Speaker 3 Oh, I love Hannah Barbera. So

Speaker 3 I wonder,

Speaker 3 were they hand-drawn back then? Yes.

Speaker 3 So I wonder if they had like a common set of bodies and they matched the bodies to the head in

Speaker 3 two different

Speaker 3 sheets so that you can mix bodies and heads differently.

Speaker 2 Absolutely right. You've nailed it.

Speaker 3 The technical term is cells.

Speaker 2 Animation cells. They were on cellulose transparencies.
And this meant that they only had to draw a new head for each position and talking.

Speaker 2 The body could just stay the same from shot to shot or even get reused. They did not have to draw the entire character.
every single time the mouth moved.

Speaker 1 Oh, well done, Evan.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 4 You did really good. Now I'm like picturing so many cartoon characters, and I'm like, do they have like a collar or something right there?

Speaker 2 Have a think about other characters from that era and from that studio. We're talking Hanna-Barbera in the 50s and 60s.

Speaker 3 Flinty-doos. Flint stuns, Scooby-Doo.

Speaker 2 Yeah, have a think about all those characters. What do they have in common?

Speaker 1 Fred's got his necktie. Fred's got his.
Fred's got a jumper. Yeah.
Scooby's got his collar. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 They all have separate heads. It's all a lie.

Speaker 2 Loads and loads of the Hanna-Barbera characters all have some form of neckwear or some kind of disconnect.

Speaker 2 Fred from Scooby-Doo has a thing tied around his neck.

Speaker 3 The ascot, yes.

Speaker 2 It is all there so they could separate the head from the body on the animation cells.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 Smart.

Speaker 2 Evan, after that spectacular solve, it's your question.

Speaker 3 This one's wild.

Speaker 3 In 1921, a 14-year-old boy was plowing a potato field in Utah. He suddenly had an idea he later called capturing lightning in a bottle.
What was his bright idea?

Speaker 3 In 1921, a 14-year-old boy was plowing a potato field in Utah. He suddenly had an idea he later called capturing lightning in a bottle.
What was his bright idea?

Speaker 1 Wow, that is wild.

Speaker 2 Bright idea is doing some work in there, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just like,

Speaker 1 I guess, inventions that are helping.

Speaker 1 maybe he's doing his potato farming at night best time to do potato farming and he is frustrated uh about the fact that you can't see anything so maybe he decided to invent something that would make his life a bit easier using potatoes fireflies fireflies fireflies which i which are not a thing in britain like i'm sure they exist in some rural bit i was um

Speaker 2 Sorry, on the trip to open source, I've headed to a few other places. Like, I'm just walking through, I'm seeing little flashes of light, and I thought there was something wrong with my eyes.

Speaker 2 It's not, it's just fireflies flashing in sync. I've not, I've not seen that in years and years.

Speaker 2 Anyway, my thought is, like, has he somehow lured fireflies into a bottle?

Speaker 2 Uh, like lightning bugs or something like that, which is lit, I mean, it's very literal for a show called lateral, but like, it's lightning bugs in a bottle, and that's how he's illuminating the work at night.

Speaker 4 I'm also wondering, because when I hear potatoes and light, I think of like, potatoes can be used as a battery, right? Can't you turn a potato into a battery?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, because of the um, I mean, you can, yeah, I've seen those videos where you can like plug things in and make an alarm clock out of them.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can make one LED light, maybe, if you're lucky, and that was not a thing in 1921.

Speaker 3 Like the. Oh, 1921.
In 1921, you use a candle.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of thinking whether to work backwards, like what the invention is, so whether it's like a glow stick or a lantern and how that could have been inspired, or like 1921.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, I'm going to step in with like a few little clues to help guide in a certain direction.
Perhaps this is, this is, this is going to be a tough one, I think.

Speaker 3 He used horses to plow the field. The horses would pull a mechanical plow and they went back and forth across the field.

Speaker 3 And that's what he was doing when he kind of had this idea. They were plowing straight lines in the field.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Back and forth.

Speaker 1 So it's not necessarily to do with light?

Speaker 3 It does have something to do with light.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 I mean, that certainly helps the mental picture.

Speaker 4 This is really tricky.

Speaker 4 Okay. I'm like, what does the like the horses plowing the field and the fact that they're going back and forth in straight lines have to do? with light.

Speaker 1 Is it something for the horses to aim for so that they can go in a straight line at night?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's true. You're not going to be able to see where you're going.
But I know the horses, horses generally know where they're going, right?

Speaker 2 The old joke about putting the cowboy back in his horse when he's drunk and just like giving the horse a push and it'll find its way home.

Speaker 1 Horses know what's up.

Speaker 3 Also, 14-year-old.

Speaker 2 Like, I recognize this in the 1920s, but 14-year-old.

Speaker 3 This is an incredibly smart 14-year-old. Okay.
And Caitlin, he had like a Evan level jump from one thing to another thing,

Speaker 3 much, much bigger than you might think.

Speaker 4 So it's a 14-year-old with ADHD.

Speaker 3 Perhaps.

Speaker 3 Very, very smart 14-year-old.

Speaker 1 It's automatic. In terms of...

Speaker 1 Because what is he using? He's using an automatic play. What does that look like? Because even if it's being drawn by a horse, surely that's unmanual.

Speaker 2 It's going to be blades digging into the ground. Like maybe there's some rotating system there to churn the earth.

Speaker 4 I'm wondering if he was looking at like the process of the plow and he was like, mechanically, this could do something that would like power light.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, it could. It's, you could, well, no, you could put a dynamo on it.
But again, 1921, that is well past that being invented. Like, the hydroelectric plant was well before then.

Speaker 2 Like, the principle was known. But how are you going to put an electric light on there when again, you could just have a candle?

Speaker 1 Oh, could it be one of those wind-up lights? I don't know.

Speaker 4 It's hard because I'm like trying to figure out what technology existed

Speaker 3 in 1921 and what did not.

Speaker 3 That's a good path to go on. Keep on going down that path.
What didn't exist in 1921 that someone might invent that is revolutionary, will change the world.

Speaker 3 Not just farming. It's bigger than farming.
It's bigger than farming.

Speaker 1 And it's to do with light. Is it a different kind of source of light? So maybe like a chemical source of light?

Speaker 3 Or...

Speaker 4 Or like, I mean, there's different types of

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 bulbs.

Speaker 2 He invented the word horsepower.

Speaker 3 That was what I was thinking.

Speaker 3 I was like, come on, man.

Speaker 3 So remember, he's drawing straight lines in the ground.

Speaker 4 So is it something about the pattern of the lines going back and forth? Does that have anything to do with light in any way?

Speaker 3 That I'm just not understanding because I'm not smart enough.

Speaker 2 Hold on. That is sometimes what a light bulb looks like on the inside.
Like you have a resistive wire that gets coiled back and forth.

Speaker 1 What, like crop circles, but for a light bulb filament?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's like, oh, we're going back and forth. But

Speaker 2 does he like take that design and apply it to something else? Like he realized, oh, this, this, this back and forth, back and forth

Speaker 2 can also be used for

Speaker 2 physics for heating for lighting for something

Speaker 3 so this this 14 year old boy was an electronics prodigy oh well there we go

Speaker 1 it's not just some 14 year old

Speaker 1 electronics because yeah because it's not um when you're plowing it's not just a straight line it's you're looping and

Speaker 2 is this

Speaker 2 late enough for television? Television didn't become mainstream until much later. But is this like Logie Baird or someone like that? Because I'm thinking you're drawing a line.

Speaker 2 And that's what old CRT televisions do. They draw a line across the screen and then they go back.
They draw a line, they go back and they draw a line. That's how they do the picture.

Speaker 2 So was this the guy who went on to invent television?

Speaker 3 Ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 2 I mean, I needed drawing lines back and forth and electronics prodigy. Like, I'll take some of the credit there, but really

Speaker 3 I was really wondering how I was going to get you guys to guess this with minimal clues as much as possible. I was like, how much do I let them want?

Speaker 2 You really put the emphasis on back and forth there.

Speaker 3 That helped. Back and forth, straight lines.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm glad you got it. Who was this? Philo Farnsworth took inspiration from straight rows in the fields he was plowing.

Speaker 3 As a self-taught electronics prodigy, he realized it might be possible to transmit a television signal by line and reconstruct it somewhere else in the world.

Speaker 3 That's a huge jump for a 14-year-old plowing the farm, which is crazy. So, Farnsworth patented his idea in 1927, one year after John Logie Baird demonstrated his more mechanical system in the UK.

Speaker 3 Farnsworth used the cathode ray tube to display images was a major step towards modern television.

Speaker 3 After a series of legal batteries with RCA Radio Corporation of America, Farnsworth successfully defended his patent rights. He gave the first public demonstration of his electronic system in 1934.

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Speaker 2 Thank you to an anonymous listener for this next question. Research from 2024 reported that 12% of U.S.
adults under 30 were licensed to operate a class SSGN submarine.

Speaker 2 Who would find this useful to know and why?

Speaker 2 And one more time, research from 2024 reported that 12% of U.S. adults under 30 were licensed to operate a class SSGN submarine.
Who would find this useful to know and why?

Speaker 3 I'm going to refrain. Oh.

Speaker 4 Do you know?

Speaker 2 Okay, it's on Caitlin and Hannah.

Speaker 3 Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 All right, let's do this, Caitlin. Let's do this.

Speaker 4 So 2024, this is recent.

Speaker 4 12% of U.S. adults are licensed to

Speaker 4 use

Speaker 4 some class of submarine. Why is this useful?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 An SSGN submarine is a guided missile type submarine. It's the big U.S.

Speaker 1 Navy. Of course.
Of course. My bad.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes. Of course.
I knew that.

Speaker 1 I'm wondering whether it's through some kind of freak technicality, as these things sometimes are, because I can't imagine that 12% of Americans have accidentally taken a submarine test.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And the question, just to clarify, is like who would be interested in this and why?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm wondering whether there is a other form of transport that 12% of Americans are licensed to drive that have very similar controls to a submarine. I've never been inside a submarine.

Speaker 1 I don't know what they're like, but maybe it's slightly similar to a certain kind of truck or something else.

Speaker 1 But I don't know who would be interested in that kind of information, apart from all of us, obviously.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because it definitely, it sounds like it is bundled with something else. So like you take some sort of, you know,

Speaker 4 course to get licensed to operate some other type of vehicle and there's just some sort of like technical bundle.

Speaker 2 I'm going to steer you to the path you said right at the start, Caitlin. That 12% figure doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you're right. It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 Huh.

Speaker 3 Now I'm questioning if I am on the wrong. Oh.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 1 Come play. Come play.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Okay. I'm just going to throw this out there.
Does it have anything to do with video games?

Speaker 2 No, it doesn't.

Speaker 3 Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 You can play.

Speaker 2 What were you thinking?

Speaker 3 Well, because I know that

Speaker 3 this is a little random fact I have in my head. The U.S.
Navy used to

Speaker 3 design and manufacture their own custom controllers to operate submarine parts. And it cost thousands, like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It was a wild expense.

Speaker 3 And then they just switched to Xbox controllers made by Microsoft to save a ton of money. And then they have spares, and it works really well.

Speaker 2 And it also turns out that most of their recruits already know how to use them.

Speaker 3 Yes. So I was thinking, like, in my head, okay, there's a portion of people that are already familiar with it.
I'm thinking video game players might have the skills. But I think when it comes to.

Speaker 2 It's about the right number. But yeah, no, in this case, the figure is nonsense.

Speaker 3 Nonsense. The figure is nonsense.

Speaker 1 You keep on putting emphasis on the fact that it doesn't make sense and it's nonsense. Was this a

Speaker 1 typo?

Speaker 1 Was this not was this inaccurate data that was put out?

Speaker 2 Inaccurate data, definitely.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 Maybe a decimal point was in the wrong spot. Maybe it's supposed to be 1.2%.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this was very carefully phrased. Research from 2024 reported that.

Speaker 3 Reported. Okay.

Speaker 3 Reported. Oh, reporting doesn't mean truth.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, so maybe, yeah, maybe you're right, Caitlin. It's a shift at a dissimal point, or it was just completely omitted entirely.

Speaker 1 But then who would be interested?

Speaker 1 The editor of the submarine magazine that reported it.

Speaker 3 The Navy? Was the Navy like, wait, what?

Speaker 2 Hannah, you are closer than you might think there, but they weren't studying anything to do with submarines. Oh.

Speaker 3 I'm guessing it might have to do with, you said the editor of a magazine. Are they worried about getting sued? Are they worried about legal issues?

Speaker 4 Maybe it's the lawyer for whoever published it.

Speaker 2 Now, not the editor or lawyer, but again, getting closer there.

Speaker 1 The journalist that wrote it?

Speaker 2 The way they phrased it, they wouldn't be worried about this. But they'd want to know.
It would definitely be useful.

Speaker 1 It would be useful to know about an incorrect statistic. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 really useful.

Speaker 4 The submarine manufacturer company.

Speaker 2 No, nothing to do with submarines, remember.

Speaker 1 Is it the

Speaker 1 did they not put the decimal place in because their

Speaker 1 full stop was not working on their keyboard? So the keyboard manufacturer, it was of interest to know.

Speaker 2 Well, even that, 12%, 0.12%? No, that's nowhere near the number. There's a few thousand people in America.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 does it have to do with like the database they were using or like something that might cause other errors besides just this one report?

Speaker 2 Yes. And I think I'll give you that for like halfway towards the question there.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Half a point. You're trying to find other errors with this.

Speaker 3 Okay. So since this was a very obvious error, they're like, wait, 12%, this can't be right.

Speaker 3 That means that they need to look back at their system and find were there other reports and research that they put out that might also have erroneous data yes this is like the the herring and the the coal mine right well i wonder if like the whole total population was uh there was like a typo or something on that and that caused all the percentages to be off so evan when you say canary in the coal mine exact absolutely right

Speaker 2 that's that's the first half of the question sorted

Speaker 2 Okay. But there's something more specific they're trying to find with this.

Speaker 2 You're right. It's all sorts of data that's wrong.
But the category isn't just this whole report, or there's a certain category here.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Why might you get that answer? Why might 12% of U.S. adults under 30 licensed to operate a submarine come out of your data?

Speaker 4 I mean, poor questioning, poor like survey, something wrong with the submarine.

Speaker 2 Keep thinking, Caitlin. That's it.

Speaker 4 So people answered yes. So the question was misleading in some way.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, the question wasn't misleading.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 4 people are dumb.

Speaker 3 Yes!

Speaker 2 That's not necessarily the, I mean,

Speaker 2 that might not be quite the right word, but you're really close.

Speaker 3 Okay, okay. So there was a survey.
Yes. And people filled it out incorrectly.
Yes.

Speaker 4 More on the fault of the people than whoever produced the survey, it seems. Yes.

Speaker 1 Is it like people thinking that they could ride a submarine, like how people think that they could take on Serena Williams at a game of tennis?

Speaker 2 It could partly be that. There are other reasons that someone's going to tick a box to say they're licensed to operate a submarine.

Speaker 3 Are you licensed to operate a submarine?

Speaker 2 You are overthinking this, I promise you.

Speaker 4 Is it that the question was like

Speaker 4 split between two pages? Like the first half is on the first?

Speaker 2 Really, literally, just imagine a big screen that says, are you licensed to operate a submarine? Yes, no. Why are 12% of people clicking yes?

Speaker 3 Are you licensed to operate a submarine?

Speaker 2 The question could have been any number of other things.

Speaker 4 Just people like clicking yes.

Speaker 2 People like clicking yes.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 What? What?

Speaker 2 That's so funny.

Speaker 2 There are a few other reasons. You're right.
It might just be incompetence.

Speaker 2 It might be positivity bias. People like clicking yes.
That's one of the reasons. And also lying to qualify for more surveys.
And

Speaker 2 also

Speaker 3 not caring.

Speaker 2 You are, if you are being paid to take this survey, yeah, you may just go through going click, click, click, click, click, or you may just not really speak English well.

Speaker 2 And oh, yeah, I'll get, I'll get two dollars if I fill this online survey. I'll just click some buttons at random.

Speaker 3 So that is like, so, so, oh, that's such a canary Nicole mine. Cause, like, yeah, they should include a question like that in every survey.
They do. That's the canary in the oh,

Speaker 3 that's the key. Yes.

Speaker 2 12% of people in the 18-29 age bracket said yes. 5% for those aged 30 to 60.
1% for 61 plus. Wow.

Speaker 2 17% of adults under 30 also said that they had recently purchased a private jet, climbed the Karakoram Mountains, learned to cook Haluski, which is an East European noodle dish, or played Hialai.

Speaker 3 Wow. I don't even know what that is.
No.

Speaker 3 Neither do they.

Speaker 3 Wow. So surveys are

Speaker 3 of

Speaker 3 you always got a question.

Speaker 2 You've always got to have the canary in the coal mine.

Speaker 2 Hannah, whenever you're ready, you've got the question.

Speaker 1 Let's go. Pamela owns a large ceramic coin, about two inches in diameter with a pronounced edge.
Why does she sometimes put it in water? I'll say it again.

Speaker 1 Pamela owns a large ceramic coin, about two inches in diameter, with a pronounced edge. Why does she sometimes put it in water?

Speaker 4 I'm trying to picture what it means to have a coin with a pronounced edge.

Speaker 3 So it's just like a raised lip.

Speaker 2 A raised lip. So in front of me, I have one of the little silicone coasters that I put my mug on.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is, yeah, it's a little bit larger than that, but it's circular with just a rim to stop the mug falling off if you knock it or something like that.

Speaker 3 I'm guessing that's what it looks like. Okay.
So I'm guessing this ceramic coin has some function to it.

Speaker 2 About five centimeters across and ceramic. You two are the makers, Caitlin.
What's special about ceramic?

Speaker 3 Ceramic absorbs water.

Speaker 3 Oh. Well, it depends on how it's finished.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because it has the glaze on it. Ceramic is just the base material.
It can be finished in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 3 But I'm guessing if she...

Speaker 3 Does she get the whole thing wet?

Speaker 1 The whole thing does get wet.

Speaker 1 I'll say that much for this early on. The whole thing does get wet.
It's in the water.

Speaker 3 Ceramic would slowly evaporate that and it would get cool.

Speaker 4 Like once you take it out of the water.

Speaker 3 Yeah, once you take it out of the water. Ceramic

Speaker 3 is pretty fragile to impacts, but water wouldn't really change that.

Speaker 4 I wonder if it's like,

Speaker 4 you know how there's like self-watering planter

Speaker 3 things?

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 4 Self-watering planters.

Speaker 3 So it's like planters that like absorb or slowly give water to the plant via some method.

Speaker 4 And so I wonder if it's like you take this little coin disc and you put it in water, and then you put it on top of your planter, and it releases the water at a more slow and controlled rate so you don't overwater your plant.

Speaker 1 I will say that you're in the, well, I don't know where, what room of the house that you keep plants in, but I will say that the room that she uses this little ceramic coin in is the kitchen.

Speaker 3 The kitchen. The kitchen.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 There is.

Speaker 2 No, that's completely different. I was thinking of the lucky fish.

Speaker 2 There is a fish made of iron, and in areas with iron deficiencies,

Speaker 2 you put it in the cooking water, and that gives people enough iron.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 2 it doesn't work with ceramic, that you don't have ceramic levels.

Speaker 3 Do you get the ceramic coin wet

Speaker 3 on purpose? Or is it just an incidental thing that it gets wet as a result of something else?

Speaker 1 It's on purpose. This coin serves a function.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm still stuck on, like, it goes in boiling water for some reason, like for a cooking thing.

Speaker 3 Hmm.

Speaker 4 Yeah, like, would

Speaker 4 something ceramic, like

Speaker 4 if you're like cooking pasta or cooking rice, would that do anything?

Speaker 3 I'm trying to think. Like, ceramic.

Speaker 4 Or would it help like your

Speaker 3 pan like hold up over time?

Speaker 3 I don't think so. Also, it's only like what?

Speaker 2 Two inches, five centimeters. So, like, yeah.

Speaker 3 it's really small. It's pretty small.
It's very, really small. Are there more than one that they use or is it just that one?

Speaker 1 She only needs one.

Speaker 3 She only needs one. Okay.

Speaker 2 Coin-shaped with a, with a ridge or a lip around the end.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because if you're just putting it in water just to like float, why does it have the lip? It almost feels like...

Speaker 3 It wouldn't float. I think it would sink.

Speaker 4 Well, no, sorry. No, what I'm saying is if you're just putting it in water.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 it doesn't need a lip. Like, why would the lip be added if it's just, if you're just putting it in the water?

Speaker 3 I was thinking it's like a spoon rest, but like,

Speaker 3 there's no brain twistiness around that. Well, and then why would you put it in water? Maybe I'm too lateral-pilled.
Like, it needs to, like, it needs to like have a twist. What's the twist?

Speaker 2 Could this be an accessibility thing?

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 2 Okay, because there are a load of kitchen gadgets that are like as seen on TV, like those infomercials. Um, the story is, I don't know if this is true.

Speaker 2 The story is that a lot of those as seen on TV gadgets that seem, well, why would anyone want this, are designed because someone might have limited motor skills or limited strength.

Speaker 2 And the market is made bigger by also selling them as convenience stuff for home shopping.

Speaker 2 So what is a two-inch ceramic disc with a lip going to let you do if you have limited motion, mobility,

Speaker 2 something like that?

Speaker 1 Yep, so you're right. You're walking down the right path.
Pamela does have an impairment, but it doesn't have to do with motor skills.

Speaker 4 Okay. I wonder: is it like if you

Speaker 4 put it in boiling water, like by the time the or in water, cold water, by the time it's boiling, is the ceramic doing something else? Like, do the bubbles knock it around the pan?

Speaker 4 And then you can, like, well, I guess you could hear the water boiling.

Speaker 3 So you can hear the water boiling. That's it.
Well done. That's it.
Yeah. That's it.
Well done, Caitlin. Hey!

Speaker 3 Boiling water assistive device.

Speaker 4 So it makes it more audible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Pamela is visually impaired. The pot minder, also called a boil alert disc, is used by visually impaired people to know when their pan of water is boiling.

Speaker 1 When the water boils, the air bubbles cause the ceramic coin to move slightly, creating a distinctive rattling sound. So yeah, that's why you need the lip so that the air bubbles can pool underneath.

Speaker 3 Oh, so I wonder, so it's probably lip on both ends symmetrically.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it sits on the bottom. The air bubbles form and it just lifts, lifts, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 3 Ah, so clever. And I'm guessing it's probably not metal because metal would be too heavy.

Speaker 2 And it might scratch your pan.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And the ceramic slider.
Now, ceramic is very hard, also. Okay.
It probably wouldn't work for like a non-stick pan.

Speaker 1 I think it's also probably a more pleasant sound. Like if your pasta's ready, you don't want to hear like a clank.
You're like, oh, God.

Speaker 3 Pasta's ready.

Speaker 2 You hear some nails on the chalkboard.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Well, that's really cool.
I'm glad that exists.

Speaker 2 Thank you to Thomas Bellikins for this next question. One winter, Jackson is bored and decides to join the 300 Club.
This involves getting naked and walking around a pole.

Speaker 2 Vladimir hears about this and plans to join the 200 Club, which is even more extreme. What do the numbers mean? And one more time.
One winter, Jackson is bored and decides to join the 300 Club.

Speaker 2 This involves getting naked and walking around a pole. Vladimir hears about this and plans to join the 200 Club, which is even more extreme.
What do the numbers mean?

Speaker 4 So it's interesting that the numbers descend as it gets more extreme, which makes me think maybe it's like related to

Speaker 4 like, oh, only 300 people have done this. Or like, then when you get more extreme, only 200 people have done this.

Speaker 4 That doesn't make sense if people can just join on their own because then the number would change. But

Speaker 4 it is interesting to note that the numbers descend.

Speaker 1 Did you say the poll or a poll, Tom?

Speaker 2 I said a pole.

Speaker 1 A pole. I thought you said the pole the first time.

Speaker 2 Why would you think that?

Speaker 1 Just because you said the pole, I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 maybe it's kind of like, as you're saying, Haitlin, sort of like a deadly, arduous task. Maybe they're kind of going around like one of the poles on the earth.

Speaker 3 North or South Pole?

Speaker 2 Keep thinking that.

Speaker 3 Keep thinking. Keep going.

Speaker 1 Is it some kind of like horrible Christmas hazing ritual where

Speaker 1 in order to open your presents, you need to go around the in order to get your presents to go around one of the polls, the North Pole?

Speaker 2 So not a hazing ritual, but you're most of the way there already. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it Christmassy?

Speaker 2 Well, it's wintertime, certainly.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Wintertime.

Speaker 4 Okay, so it's not hazing per se, but it does seem like maybe something people do to like if you're not.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like the polar plunge, right? Is what I'm thinking.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's like

Speaker 3 a challenge. It's like, oh, yeah, can you do this? But yeah, why would the more extreme be lower? That's kind of what I've been wondering the whole time.
It's like, is it 300

Speaker 3 Kelvin versus 200 Kelvin? No, that'd be, that's still, that still doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 No, is it how many degrees it is from the pole?

Speaker 1 So, however many meters or kind of like latitude, degrees of latitude it is from the pole.

Speaker 2 If you were to combine what Hannah said and what Evan just said, you've basically got it.

Speaker 2 It's not Kelvin.

Speaker 3 Yeah, is it another unit of

Speaker 2 temperature? Jackson is in the 300 club, and Vladimir is in the 200 club.

Speaker 1 Two different areas of the

Speaker 3 world.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 1 Obviously, I don't think Jackson, and if we're kind of going off names alone, maybe they're living in two different space places.

Speaker 3 Yes, they are.

Speaker 2 They're about 800 miles away from each other.

Speaker 3 800 miles away.

Speaker 2 But they're both on the same continent. And you're right, Hannah.
It's the South Pole.

Speaker 2 Jackson is at the South Pole.

Speaker 4 So Jackson is, if we're going based on what you were saying earlier about it being like the angle of degrees, like

Speaker 3 from the pole.

Speaker 2 Evan's right.

Speaker 2 It's not Kelvin, though.

Speaker 3 Okay, yeah, I was like,

Speaker 3 I know that there are lots of different ways to measure temperature.

Speaker 3 And I'm trying to rack my brain for like I'm trying to

Speaker 3 rustle it up. Okay.

Speaker 1 You don't need to. Are we talking about Celsius and Fahrenheit?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes. Yes, we are.

Speaker 2 It's 300 Fahrenheit and 200 Celsius.

Speaker 2 So why is the 200 one more extreme and what are they doing that has numbers that big?

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah.
200 Celsius. I was thinking like negative temperatures.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I was thinking cold temperatures.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like 200 Celsius is be ha ha.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So maybe it's something that,

Speaker 4 like, with, since the temperature is so high, you can only do it at a place that's really, really cold.

Speaker 3 Spot on, yep.

Speaker 1 What fun, hot things can you do in a cold place? Putting a very hot piece of metal through some ice,

Speaker 1 which always looks really fun when I see it online.

Speaker 4 And it has something to do with, like, he went around the...

Speaker 2 the pole. Yes, it involves getting naked and walking around a pole.
There's one other step as well.

Speaker 3 Oh, oh, oh. Is it like walking on coals?

Speaker 2 No, you're not walking on them.

Speaker 4 You're laying on them?

Speaker 2 You're very near them.

Speaker 3 You're naked, there's coals, there's a pole, you're spinning around it.

Speaker 3 This sounds like a party.

Speaker 2 I mean, I wouldn't associate this with the Antarctic. I'd associate it more with Scandinavia.

Speaker 3 Oh, is it like a

Speaker 3 sauna? Yes. Yay! Oh!

Speaker 2 So, what is the 300 club and the 200 club?

Speaker 2 What's the temperature there?

Speaker 1 Is that kind of the upper end of how hot a sauna can get and how much people can handle?

Speaker 2 I mean, sort of. Like, you've basically got all the bits.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 So there's a sauna.

Speaker 3 So it involves a sauna, then running outside and running around a pole, then probably going back into the sauna. Yes.
But the temperatures, is it the temperature differential?

Speaker 2 It's the temperature differential.

Speaker 2 The 300 club is having a sauna at the South Pole and then running around outside and experiencing a temperature differential of 300 Fahrenheit.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 At Russia's Vostok station, which is also in Antarctica, the equivalent is the 200 Club, a steam bath at 120 Celsius.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 2 Followed by a spell outside where the temperature regularly goes as low as minus 80 Celsius.

Speaker 3 That sounds horrible. Yes, it does.
People need hobbies. They need a different hobby.
Well, it's very boring out there isolated. You know, people go a little crazy.

Speaker 3 That's wild.

Speaker 2 Caitlin, whenever you're ready, over to you.

Speaker 4 This question has been sent in by Peter Gould.

Speaker 4 In 2024, the city of Nagoya employed people to stand still for around 30 seconds at a time while wearing a giant yellow foam hand on their back. What was this for and what was written on the hand?

Speaker 4 In 2024, the city of Nagoya employed people to stand still for around 30 seconds at a time while wearing a giant yellow foam hand on their back. What was this for and what was written on the hand?

Speaker 3 Were they like stop guard crossing people? Or like crosswalk people?

Speaker 2 I know from time in Japan, a while back, that there are a lot of Japanese jobs that simply do not exist or have been automated away in the UK and the US. Like

Speaker 2 there were some road works that involved

Speaker 2 pedestrians having to step out briefly into the traffic lane. And it's all signed off and it's all barriered off.
There's no way.

Speaker 2 But there is still someone parked at each end of this 20, 30 meter diversion with a little, look, hi, Viz Best, flashing lights, pole, just telling everyone, watch your step, watch your step, watch your step.

Speaker 2 That's the entire job. The human touch.
So I'm wondering if it's... some sort of like information service reminder thing like that.

Speaker 4 It is like a like public information reminder kind of thing.

Speaker 3 So so this place is in Japan? It's in Japan. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, we should just go and find out.

Speaker 2 Okay, stand still for 30 seconds at a time implies they are moving between these times. Like stand still for 30 seconds, then you've got to do something, move somewhere else, cross the street.

Speaker 2 I'm obsessed with like road safety at this point for some reason.

Speaker 2 And then for 30 seconds, you stand still.

Speaker 2 So, where are you moving?

Speaker 3 The fact that it is 30 seconds at a time does kind of make me think traffic to some degree or construction, you know?

Speaker 1 And why do they have to kind of keep swapping? Is it something that only happens a few times a day? Is it not something that's constantly happening?

Speaker 1 Is it something that only happens for 30 seconds out of a day? And why is the foam finger on the back?

Speaker 3 Or 30 seconds at a time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, 30 seconds at a time, not necessarily 30 seconds. It's not just 30 seconds of a day.

Speaker 1 And why is the foam finger on the back?

Speaker 1 Why not just on their hand?

Speaker 2 I'm envisioning one of those things at sports games where you've got like the giant foam hand with one finger raised, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that.

Speaker 2 It could just be a giant anatomically correct model of a finger.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a each person wears an entire hand. Okay.

Speaker 4 It's a yellow foam.

Speaker 3 yellow foam thing i forgot yellow foam yep okay like you're you're not exactly on the right track with like construction and stuff but it does happen in a busy area like a train station busy area like a train is it like like people management i know sometimes it gets really crowded in japan it might be like for like the flow of people and everything like that like i would say you're on

Speaker 1 management with that yeah foot traffic management Yeah, you need to keep your distance at the length of this hand so you can't be going up behind someone unless without bumping into the hand, or a follow-me thing, follow the giant yellow finger to lead you somewhere.

Speaker 4 So, so just because you are getting hung up on it being a finger,

Speaker 4 I'll describe the shape that the hand is in. All five digits are extended, like this.

Speaker 3 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay, so that's a stop.

Speaker 2 That's a stop.

Speaker 1 And is it on their back stuck out like a fin?

Speaker 1 Or is it on their back like flat?

Speaker 3 It's flat against their back. I think it's probably to prevent people from crossing a road or from crossing like

Speaker 3 some something dangerous. And I think that they must like hold people back behind them for 60 seconds.
And then

Speaker 3 30 seconds. And then they like turn or move or whatever.
But like, I think that like Caitlin was receptive to the fact that it's like people, people movement management.

Speaker 2 Now, I've seen something like this leaving a concert at Wembley Stadium. It is not a giant foam hand.
It's the mounted police on horses.

Speaker 2 And it's the most effective crowd control.

Speaker 2 When the tube station is full and no one can go any further, the police officers just turn their horses.

Speaker 2 to block traffic like there's some sort of rotating gate and then when it is safe to continue they move the horses around so they're facing the crowd and there's there's gaps to go through is this something like this is a giant this this is a row of people with giant foam hands on their back all going stop stop stop stop stop and then when it's safe they can turn to the side and let people buy i like your idea that is not

Speaker 3 at all

Speaker 3 this is gonna be yeah this is gonna be great that's so creative are we right with stop and go though you're right that it does mean stop.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 4 There's not necessarily a like

Speaker 4 go option.

Speaker 4 There's not like a movement or something that indicates go.

Speaker 3 So for 30 seconds at a time, it's indicating stop.

Speaker 3 And I'm guessing that's towards people.

Speaker 3 Where would it be a situation where every third or for 30 seconds people need to stop

Speaker 3 in Japan?

Speaker 1 Okay. For some reason, I'm still, I'm kind of like hung up about it being a train station.
Yeah. But

Speaker 4 it would definitely be at a train station.

Speaker 3 That's one of the places

Speaker 3 that could be used.

Speaker 3 Okay, so there's a whole bunch of people in a whole bunch of areas that have stop on their back that are stopping some amount of people

Speaker 3 for 30 seconds. It's interesting that it's 30 seconds.
Yeah, what's

Speaker 3 the 30 second activity or scenario?

Speaker 1 Train stopping, doors opening.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 1 What do you need to stop for?

Speaker 4 So while the clue doesn't outright say other places, this could happen based on context clues. This could happen in a busy area like a mall

Speaker 1 as well.

Speaker 4 Yeah, maybe airports, perhaps like a large convention center.

Speaker 3 Is it like people fainting and like the like the vests stop to like give people space or something like that?

Speaker 4 People don't faint for 30 seconds.

Speaker 1 This one guys, I'm okay.

Speaker 4 Although the people with the foam hands on their backs were standing still, they were moving.

Speaker 3 It's

Speaker 3 the conveyor belts. No, no, escalators.

Speaker 3 People, people, you know, you don't want them running up the escalators. They're like, don't, don't rush past me.
Oh, and it's an escalator. It takes about 30 seconds.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 4 I was holding off in that clue for so long because it's like, y'all were so close. You were so close.
And I knew that that would give me a lot of time.

Speaker 2 I would never have got to that.

Speaker 2 I'm in London. If you block an escalator that people want to walk up, you will get elbowed out of the way.

Speaker 3 That's why I didn't cross my mind too. Normally in America, it's like you stand on the right, you go on the left, right? Yes.

Speaker 4 So the purpose of the hands on the backs were to stop people from walking on escalators, and they said stop.

Speaker 4 Nagoya's authorities felt that standing on escalators would reduce accidents and improve the overall capacity.

Speaker 4 So they had a stand-and-stop corps of people paid up to 18,000 yen per day, which is 110 US dollars, to ride the escalators and discourage people from walking on them.

Speaker 4 So they had giant yellow foam hands on the backs, on their backs, with the word stop in English and in Japanese.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 They've tried a not with the giant foam hands, but in London,

Speaker 2 the tube network tried a pilot at one station where they're just like, We're changing the rules here.

Speaker 2 You should stand on both sides and more people will get through. And they are right.
If both sides of the escalator are standing, the crowd will get through faster. And no one followed it.

Speaker 3 Everyone was angry.

Speaker 3 Like that that concept of doing it that way is so foreign to all of us that none of us even like imagined a scenario of, like, yeah, that's what they're going for.

Speaker 3 We're all walking on escalators here.

Speaker 3 You know, it depends on the energy levels, but like, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which means we are back to the question from the start. Thank you to Raynath Nagel for sending this in.

Speaker 2 In 2020, why was there a sudden surge in adverts for jobs based in a small town in Coos County, Oregon? Anyone want to take a shot?

Speaker 3 COVID.

Speaker 2 You are right, but I'm going to need a bit more detail than that.

Speaker 3 Remote work was possible. This was a town with like a low cost of living and they had excess of housing for some reason.
And they're like, come stay with us. We got good internet.
Escape the city.

Speaker 2 I thought you'd got it in the first sentence there, Evan.

Speaker 3 You haven't, but I thought you had.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 So it does maybe have to do with remote work. That was the beginning of your sentence.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. All right.
COVID and remote work. Yep.
And remote work. Yep.

Speaker 4 But it doesn't have to do with cost of living per se.

Speaker 2 No, no. Definitely to do with remote work.

Speaker 1 Is the place important?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yes.
Small town in Coos County, Oregon.

Speaker 1 Is there a town called remote work?

Speaker 2 Yes, there is a town called remote work.

Speaker 2 It's not remote work, Oregon, but it is remote in Coos County, Oregon. So when adverts were being posted online, the location would be advertised as remote and automated systems did the rest.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's great. I finally got one.

Speaker 1 That was the dumbest question of the show.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much to all our players. Where can people find you? What are you up to? We will start with Evan and or Caitlin.
Whoever wants to do it.

Speaker 4 You can find us on YouTube at Evan and Caitlin.

Speaker 3 And everywhere else at Evan and Caitlin.

Speaker 2 And what sort of stuff's there, Evan?

Speaker 3 We do DIY projects, but we also do gaming projects. We do cooking.
We have like a lot of channels. So just search Evan and Caitlin and see what comes up.
And Hannah.

Speaker 1 You can find me on Instagram at Hannah Crosby, C-R-O-S-B, and every week at The Guardian.

Speaker 2 And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com where you can also send in your own ideas for questions.

Speaker 2 We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are full video episodes every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Hannah Crosby.
Thank you very much. To Evan and Caitlin.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having us.

Speaker 2 I've been Tom Scott and that's been Lateral.