165: Donut security

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Where in Spain can you find a dial that can be turned to tomato, wine, or olive oil?

The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is lateral.

To find the correct path, you must pick the correct door. One door's guard always tells the truth.
The other door's guard always lies. And the third guard wonders why he doesn't have a door.

And the fact that our three guests are here means that they have chosen the wrong door. Welcome to the lateral.
We're here for the next 40 minutes or so. Can't win them all.

We have the folks from Lunchbox Envy, the podcast. Welcome back to the show, everybody.
Hey.

So, hoping they don't take any more wrong turns. First of all, Mana on Rio, welcome back.
Hello, thanks for having us. You should explain Lunchbox Envy.

So it's a podcast where we look at the weird and wonderful stories behind art, like the things we eat every day.

So it's me and my fellow QA elf, Jack Chambers,

and our lovely friend, Rosie McKean, who is a chef and food writer. It's all brought together by our lovely producer, Alex.
And yeah, it's so much fun. And we eat so well

every time we record. And thank you for introducing the other players today as well.

Jack Chambers, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much.
It's lovely to be here. I was obviously impressed enough to come back.

We have, I think, assembled some food-related questions again for the second time. Some of them are very tentative, but there should be some links in there.

I don't know if that's going to give you an advantage or not, but I suspect on food facts, you are the people to go to. Yeah, I think so.
As Manny said,

we discuss the things that we eat every day, but also some of the things that we've, you know, people rarely eat, in fact.

And often for good reason. There's some disgusting things we bring up.
But no, the stakes are high, given that it's our specialists.

And the last member of our trio today, we have the show's producer, Alex Bell. Welcome back.
Hi, Tom. It's good to be back after such a long time.
Was it five minutes since we've been in last episode?

Don't spoil the magic. Don't spoil the magic.
Despite the fact that we're all wearing the same clothes and in the exact same locations with the same haircuts. Like, yes, welcome back.

I should ask what you are working on researching and producing right right now because it's going to be months till this episode comes out. What is Lunchbox Envy coming out with soon?

Well, we actually, I was just looking into apples. We've been doing Adam Apple research, and I actually went all the way to

the tree that

Newton saw an apple fall from and was inspired to come up with his theory of gravity. And that's an amazing tree.
I actually can't remember the name of the house where it is now, but it's.

and it's this

fantastically, very, very old, but very, very healthy apple tree, which still fruits loads of apples.

And you can go there and visit, and they give you apples, and you can make apple crumble, which is what I am doing. Am I right in saying they send cuttings from that all over the world?

I'm sure I've seen Newton's tree somewhere else. Yeah, Newton's all over the place.
Yes, they've got one in Cambridge, at his college.

They've got ones in all sorts of other famous, like Apple Institutes.

They love a Newton tree.

They sent it into space as well, actually. A little bit of bark.
I think they sent an apple into space. Yeah, they've really got their money's worth from that one.

Well, good luck on the show today to all three of you. Unlike our door guard, I won't lie to you.
It's time to get on with the show and accept the truth. That is question one.

Thank you to Phil Thompson for this question. Who might be forced to turn around because they've left their taco at home? I'll say that again.

Who might be forced to turn around because they've left their taco at home? I mean, I would.

There's no real choice in it.

Is taco, is it going to be an acronym or initialism? Yeah. Oh, that's a good idea.
I was just thinking that taco does sound like an acronym, doesn't it? I mean, the only one I know is quite political.

It's Trump all his chickens out, but that one idea.

What could a taco be? We did the cube rule and the sandwiches episode, and a taco is the sort of structural starch of any food can be defined in different ways. Sorry, the cube rule?

This is Jack's bonker theory that he found on the internet. It's absolutely ridiculous.
So the cube rule, you basically define,

it started, I mean, you have to listen to the episode to get the full story, but it's basically about the structure of food and where the structural starch is according to the faces of a cube.

So if you've got structural starch on one of the faces of a cube, then it's toast. Regardless, like cheesecake is toast.
Pizza is toast. Right.
Okay. It goes all the way up to six.

There's basically six types of food and one of them is taco. Yeah.
So a pierogi is type six because it's on all sides of the side. It's calzone.
Kalzoni, in fact, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But taco is three because it's three sides, right? So if you have three sides connected, then that's the taco. I mean, that's almost certainly got nothing to do with it.

You're absolutely right. It's nothing to do with it.

Is it something to do with the business? In my head, it's like serious. His livelihood depends on this taco.
If you're returning home for your taco, yes, forced to turn around is right there.

Forced to. Is it like literally forced turnaround? Like it's like something that stops your steering wheel from working.

Ooh.

Yes. I mean, I'm not sure if it actually immobilizes it.
Is it law enforcement? Or is it physics?

There's a game show there. Is it law enforcement or is it physics? You're right, that forced has several different levels there.
This is law enforcement. Okay.

So if you don't have a tacker, you have to... physically turn around.

So is there some sort of safety device attached to a steering wheel known as a tacker? Steering wheel is out of nowhere.

That is correct. You do get those ones where you can lock the steering wheel, but we don't necessarily know it's a car as well.
It might be a different type of vehicle.

Oh, you keep hitting things.

Is it a helicopter? I'm getting the hang of this game. Or a luge.
Helicopter.

Eluge.

What has a steering wheel that isn't a car?

Well, it could just be a lorry or something.

It could.

You're absolutely right. Yes.

so you're right a truck driver would be forced to turn around if they left their taco at home and it is a legal requirement and it is uh

something to do with steering wheel and everything like that

i

don't quite know how to kick this home because you've got the bits of the question

that were meant to be the slightly harder ones first oh i see so is this in america uh no britain as well is it like you know how you like have big furry dice in uh new home?

And it's like legally you have to have a cheery little taco. There's a lot of like culture around truck driving and I said, but that's not a legal thing.
I think that's,

yeah.

Is it to do with having a rest? Yes, it is. Yeah.

Okay, good.

Yes. Oh, is it a neck pillow? Actually, no, that would encourage you to sleep while you're on the job.

What do you mean by having a rest? Like, go into that one for me. So it's obviously quite dangerous if you're driving an enormous lorry

tired because you could fall asleep at the wheel and then crash. So, is it like Mr.
Beam? He's got like the toothpicks in his eyes.

No, because that wouldn't be legal. Yes, that's true.
You can't legally drive a lorry tired. Is there something that actually measures how long a lorry driver has been driving for?

Yes, it is the tachograph.

This is the tachograph. It records how long and how fast a vehicle has been driven.
Wow.

These days, it is a credit card-shaped thing that you plug in to the vehicle's digital log. But it used to be an actual piece of paper.

It made a tacho. It used to be made of panels.

It would go behind the steering wheel. And as you accelerated and decelerated, a little bit of graphite, like in a pencil, would move up and down and act as a log of your speed and driving hours.

So that if you got into an accident, the police could look at the tacho, do forensics on it, and even work out things like how bad the crash was, what speed you were going at that moment.

Wow, this is like a black box. Yes, if it was really bad, the graphite would just write out shit.

Yes, this is the tachograph, which is the now digital record of driving hours known as a tacho.

Each of our guests has brought a question along with them. We will start with Jack.
This question has been sent in by Peter Young.

During World Expo 88 in Brisbane, Australia, the City Council took out full-page newspaper adverts that implored residents not to fill their rubbish bins with mangoes. Why?

And I'll read that again.

During World Expo 88 in Brisbane, Australia, the City Council took out full-page newspaper adverts that implored residents not to fill their rubbish bins with mangoes. Why? Wow.
Wow.

What's happening at World Expo 88? So I'd looked into this.

You know about these sort of World's Fairs that have just developed into expos. It was kind of a sort of welcome to the future.
The theme was

leisure time in a technological world or something. They basically always built a monorail.

You build a big structure out of glass and then when monorails are invented, you build monorails and that's what they really do. See, a monorail World's Fair.
Yeah, yeah. And they did have a monorail.

I don't know if if it still exists. That's slightly different.
Space Needles, World's Fair. Biosphere in Montreal, World's Fair.

World's Fairs are amazing. The Sun Sphere in Knoxville, Tennessee, I think, was just it.
It's a big building with this golden sphere on top. Sure, yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that just gets built for World's Fairs. Anyway, nothing to do with mangoes, I'm afraid.

So is it, I feel like the two angles here are either

residents were going to fill their bins unusually full of mangoes for whatever reason, and then

the government are basically like, please don't do that because it's a waste or something.

Or

there are some, like, a normal amount of mangoes are going in the rubbish all the time, but it causes a problem.

I'm thinking, like, they want to clean up their city because they've got the World's Fair, and you know, rats eat, but they really, they really love mangoes, so they're like, Can you just hold off on the mangoes for this week?

You know, when, like, you know, when, like, Boris Johnson during our Olympics, like, sprayed all of London's streets with like a sticky chemical that made the pollution stick to the roads instead of dealing with actual like pollution solving.

He just was like, oh, just for just for the Olympics, we'll just stick the pollution to the ground. Yeah.
Also, why don't we use that all the time if it's available?

Like, why don't we save it for the Olympics?

Okay.

World expos go on for a long time.

As we record this, the one in Osaka is still happening, but that's like a months-long expo. Like national governments spend a lot of time and money building the pavilions.

Like, this goes on for months.

Clearly, that might help you. The

ads began appearing shortly after the event had started. What city was this again? Brisbane, in Australia.
Was it reverse psychology? Did they want them to throw mangoes?

Why would you want to do that? I don't know.

Mangoes are naturally occurring around Brisbane. I was about to say, is some government just shipping in huge amounts of mangoes?

But no, no, they're natural there. I like that, yeah.
So they they're just on all like the street trees and stuff until they started going in bins.

Were they being collected and used for something else?

Like they had some exotic animals in the

fair and they were like, wait, we can feed them to the animals.

But most people put them in the bins.

There's also like a date, this is definitely not it, but there's a dating thing where people are putting pineapples and like their shopping baskets and there's like pineapple mania for single people.

I think it's in America.

Oh, and like, yeah, growing swingers, like growing thing, If you're swingers, you grow stuff on your front garden, yeah. It's like put a mango, put a mango in the bin.
Someone

I think I've been left out of something here because all three of you clearly know about this.

No, that's the wrong way to get on. I don't know.

I have boldly claimed on shows in the past that,

oh, yeah, I know I've been somewhere and I've never seen that, so it's not a real thing.

But I've been to Brisbane a couple of times, and I can't remember there being a huge surface of mangoes being put into bins, but maybe I wasn't there in the right season.

Well, are you looking in the bins though? Because that's true. That's true.

But like maybe everyone, but that's the thing, maybe there's like a culture where people pick up the mangoes when they fall on the floor and they put them in the bins and it's just like a quite a good thing because people put away I imagine the problem is that they're rotting, right?

And they're like going off and smelling. That must be where all the bins are going.
Link it to the expo because that would be happening all year round.

So there's something at the expo where they they're going and they're like collecting loads of mangoes.

And then they're returning from the expo and putting them in the bin, but then they're rotting in the bins and the council's like, we can't handle this much rotting fruit.

Or is it normal for Brisbaneites? I don't know with Brisbaneites,

to put their mangoes in the bin because they have too many mangoes. And instead, they're being asked to take them to the expo.
No, it's not that. They don't normally have too many mangoes.
Okay.

So the mangoes are there are more mangoes about in circulation because of the World's Fair. Correct.
And Manu's right.

They're bringing them home and then throwing them away. And are they putting whole mangoes in the bin or are they like eating them and putting the leftovers? I think they're whole mangoes.

So another way in is to think:

so the expo was a major event that the city celebrated, and

the celebrations went on well into the night. Partying with mangoes.

Mango partying. Walking with dinosaurs.

Partying with mangoes. With Kenneth Branner.

No, so what sort of things happen when you celebrate?

Not you specially in your own home, but like

when a city is celebrating a global event. They make a mess.
You make a mess. There's lots of noise.
There's a lot of street mess. Lots of noise.

Hold on.

Drunk koalas.

All right.

Let me put a thing forward. I want to make a mango party as top.
The mangoes go in the bin with a little bit of alcohol that's left over from something.

They ferment

like prison wine.

And the koalas are getting drunk on fermented mangoes and falling out the trees. I just fit a lot of Australian stereotypes in there.
I'm really sorry, Australia.

The problem is, Tom, that sounds like an amazing time, so I don't know why any order to stop that from happening.

The waste collection services couldn't deal with the volume.

But that's not, I mean, that's just a side effect of this quite interesting problem that they had. Did they plant loads of mango trees, more mango trees, because of the World's Fair?

That's a good point. So think local fauna.
Ooh.

So these are animals that would eat mangoes. Correct.
So rats or ants or birds. Yeah, birds.
What's the combination between a bird and a rat? Pigeon. A bat.
A bat. A pigeon?

This is not the way we're supposed to work out the answer to this. I was thinking metaphorical, and then you're like, no, you just portmanteau the words, just put them together.

Well, in French, they're known as flying mice, I think, aren't they?

Okay, so

the

bats eat mangoes, they're sweet, aren't they? And bats like sweet things. Correct.
And why would the bats not be doing their job? They're not eating the insects.

Well, no, to cut out the insects. They're not eating the mangoes.
Oh, because the partying has scared them all off. Correct.

So that there were fireworks every night of the expo, which were scaring the local colonies of fruit bats. And they would normally eat the mangoes while they're small and green, destroy the crop.

But they were so scared away, and it ran for six months, that then the mangoes were able to ripen, fall into people's yards, and then they were binning them.

And because they're quite heavy fruit, the bins got too heavy to lift.

And a mature tree can drop hundreds per week.

But yeah, just the sheer volume of fireworks every night scared away the fire. That's why I didn't see the mangoes.
The bats have eaten love. Exactly.
Yeah. Did you see loads of bats flying around?

Yes, actually. Really? It was a colony of flying foxes in Melbourne, but close enough.

That's unbelievable. And also, I can't believe that that was their solution to the issue rather than, yeah, maybe we should stop scaring an entire population of bats away.

Like screwing the ecology of the area. That's unbelievable.
Yeah, that's a good fact.

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Thank you to Michael for this question. One weekend, some of the founders of justin.tv, the forerunner of Twitch, were trying to get their website to work.

Soon, they realized it was essential to call a pizza shop. Why? I'll say that again.
One weekend, some of the founders of Justin TV, the forerunner of Twitch, were trying to get their website to work.

Soon, they realized it was essential to call a pizza shop. Why?

I mean, I can't think straight when I'm hungry, so my immediate thing is like, you need snacks when you're solving a hard problem.

Could it be a specialist tool that only a pizza shop has? Would that be like a wood-fired oven or a paddle or a moped?

All essential tools when you're launching an online robot.

Maybe some chopped pineapple, controversial. Or somebody there or somebody who worked there, like, knew have the solution to their problem.
Because I'm thinking, we did this in the pizza episode.

Like, the pizza was always at the forefront of technology and the internet and online, right?

Like, the first ever food ordered online was a pizza. The first tracker, like, use of GPS to like track domestic stuff for civilians was with dominoes, I think.

So, like, it maybe they tested something by ordering a pizza and then they had to ring them up to like check that that's what actually happened or something like that.

And then there was that one guy we had so many emails from listeners to say, You didn't mention this fact, but it was mentioned on QI, I think, which is why we ignored it but someone in sort of 2009 paid something like 50 Bitcoin for a single pizza back when Bitcoin's worth a fraction of a dollar and you know so extrapolating that's you know the most expensive pizza ever made anyway we're off on a bit of a tangent I think you have hit a couple of things though

yeah we did the scattergun approach yeah yeah if we talk about enough things one of them is going to happen

you're right that delivery uh was an important part there jack you mentioned the moped. Yeah, that's that sort of thing.
Okay. Oh, were they...

Okay, so I'm trying to think of the era here. So if it's a precursor to Twitch, it's going to be,

I don't know, 2010. Maybe Twitch and Golden, I think.

Around then. Sure.
So like midway through the internet's history so far. Yeah.
And like online and delivering and tracking is like well in full flow. So

is it something to do with a GoPro? Manu, you're dressed like you work at at Pizza Express right now. What at all?

Any ideas?

What? That's a compliment. They're very well dressed like Pizza Express.
I mean, their doughballs are amazing. I'll take that.

Is it to do something to do with speed of tracking an order?

Were they developers or were they sort of front of camera? Oh, developers. Justin TV was originally just a live stream yourself site.
So veering away from the video game angle.

There's also that, just this is just the other thing that reminds me: the first ever webcam was set up to monitor a coffee machine so that people could see when the coffee machine was empty.

It's unbelievably lazy.

Like, is it something like that?

Is it like Liz Trust and the Lettis? They had a pizza decomposing. Like, screw, that was their first Twitch.
Or maybe it was to sort of calibrate something so that, like,

you could tell if there was lag on the system if like the doorbell went that's so convoluted

no

i know

this is an insight into where my brain goes the pizza shop was in tahoe on the california nevada border oh it's to do time zones it's oh no

I'll just head you off at the past there, having dealt with them before. It's not time zones.

Were they ringing the pizza place? It It was specifically to do with pizza and tracking.

It wasn't just that they picked a pizza place because of its location, say, but it could have been the shop next door. I hate to say this, but neither of those answers.

It's not about tracking the pizza. Okay.
But it would have to be a pizza shop. But you can ring a pizza shop because it's open late at night as well.
So maybe it was the middle of the night.

So it was one of the only things that was open back then. Yep.
It was also on the weekend. Maybe they had a special offer on.

Is it something to do with the jurisdiction between Nevada and California? Were they running a competition, and the whole point is that it's live video and that people

they could get pizza, prove that they were live by getting a pizza ordered to someone. They didn't actually order any pizza.

But it's something about the live, it's something about the being live, right? Because if the whole thing is about streaming live video, no. Not really, no.

No. They were trying to get the website to work, remember? Oh, I see, yeah.

What wasn't working about the website? Oh, basically everything.

Okay.

Oh, is there a rival faction that I know

again? I don't know where my brain is. Thinking there was some sort of mutiny amongst the developers.

Not quite, but you're starting to think in the right lines here. Yeah, so some of them were they the ones who were working late?

Did one of them have a second job working at the Pizzeria? Pizza Place. What do you know about Tahoe? There's a lake.
Mm-hmm.

And a pizza place.

Yes, yes. Quite a lot of other stuff there as well.
Large swathes of of the godfather 2 is set there i think oh okay

but i don't think that helps is it something is it at one end of silicon valley no it's it's a really well-known vacation spot oh for divorces

sorry what

well that's nevada generally i think it had in the mid-20th century had much more liberal divorce uh okay the opposite of gretner green yeah yeah basically yeah but you've already said it's not a due to the jurisdiction the tahoe itself is it due to geography?

Is it on a plateau or something? No. Vacation spot's important.
Vacation spot.

So I'm just going to picture the scene for you. Yeah.

Some of the founders can't get the website to work.

They call a pizza shop in vacation town of Tahoe.

What might that shop be able to do for them that they can't do themselves? Maybe like contact people in some way. If they're really popular.
They're holiday makers.

Yeah, it's perfect day. And they could write something on every pizza and be like, visit the website or something.
Or is there a colleague of theirs that's having pizza at the shop?

And they're like, He's not having it at the shop, he's not having pizza at all, he's having it at home. They don't know where he is, but they know he's gonna order pizza, so they're like, every pizza

goes out, Alex. I need you to kind of completely invert that what you just said.
Okay,

they want to lose a colleague.

You said they you said they don't know where he is,

but they know he's having pizza.

They know where he is, but they don't know what pizza he's having. They do know where he is.

He's on holiday. They need to send him a message.
Yep. And because he's on holiday, he's out of offices on.
He's not checking his emails.

So they need to send him a pizza with like a customised gift delivery note. Yes.

Yeah, one of the co-founders, Kyle Voigt, had taken a rare vacation, leaving the others to look after the site. It had broken.
They couldn't fix it. and they couldn't get him on the phone.
Oh, wow.

But they knew where he was.

He's like, Talk about words like boundaries.

Yeah, alone.

So they rang a pizza shop nearby. They didn't order a pizza.
They just sent them some money and asked them to courier a message to him.

This is pre-GDPR, I'm assuming.

It's like that

guy who broke up with his girlfriend and then she blocked him on every single on

social media, his number and then he just like bank transferred a penny saying please call

as the reference

manu whenever you're ready it's your question okay this question has been sent in by anonymous one morning sarah was required to bring in donuts for her co-workers in the name of corporate security why

so one morning sarah was required to bring in donuts for her co-workers in the name of corporate security. Why? I have something completely random.

This has propped into my head, but there's a thing with

internet companies that

deal in cybersecurity, and they often have to generate a lot of random numbers and code. And it's very, very hard for computers to generate random numbers and code because they're computers.

And so often a method of doing that is to take something that's truly random in the real world and, like, say, for example, film it.

So, there's a company that does like cybersecurity that famously has a whole wall full of lava lamps with a camera pointing at it.

And then the specific, obviously completely random and unpredictable movements of the lava lamps are interpreted down into some numbers, and that creates random things.

How much of that actually goes into their randomness is up for debate, but yes, exactly. Certainly, the publicity stunt is yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And I wonder whether

like ordering a dozen random donuts from Krispy Kreme is a key part of their business model.

No.

I love it. I love it.
There's a thing called pen testing, penetration testing, which is can you get past the security? Oh, yeah. And that can be digital or it can be turning up with a thing.

Like the old British standard is that you turn up to a construction site with a high-viz and a tray of tea or a high-viz and a clipboard and everyone will let you through.

But when you say, Can you open the door? My hands are full.

Yeah,

like a box of donuts will let you tailgate in. That feels like the American version.
But

her colleagues, like it was, it was, she was asked to bring it in by her colleagues. Was one of them on holiday?

No,

I think the kind of physical element is really interesting. Like, you should, you can follow that.

Okay. Like

the jam inside the donuts.

Yeah, more the kind of action of physically going

and breaching security is.

Yeah. I suppose if you, so is it about the bringing in a set of doughnuts and going around to every person's desk with a donut? So you get to see everyone's screen or something like that.
Ah, yeah.

Or it gets everyone away from their desk at some point as they go to pick up a donut. Yeah, everyone runs to the donuts.
Yeah.

I was thinking it was a more personality test. You bring a variety and then the one who picks the sort of pink glazed one is the weakest

of the pack. I tell you what, it would be so embarrassing if their security is thwarted by everyone going, oh, donuts.
Everyone runs over in their doughnuts.

And then you just sit down and look to their email. It'd be so embarrassing if the psychological profile was based on donuts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True, true.

In the name of corporate security. So, okay, who could have ordered these? So, like, is it going to be like human resources? Or is it going to be

someone from inside the company, or is it going to be someone else? Is it going to be like the FBI? Or like it does sound like an unpleasant job if she was required to do it.

She didn't volunteer, I presume. Yeah, I feel like she's walking in like a hostage negotiator, like sweating, like shaking with the donuts.
Like,

she wasn't the one to suggest bringing donuts in, and she wasn't following a company policy. Oh, is this um

is this like corporate espionage? So, was she working for Coca-Cola and Pepsi? We were like, oh, deliver these donuts.

Well, she might be working for a donut company. Yeah.

It might be like a recall or a rival donuts or something. And they're testing to see whether they've been nicked.

I think going back to the going around the office looking at other people's computers is really good. But I would flip that on its head.

Going around with the people's computers looking at their donuts.

So do you mean by drawing people away from their desks by putting the donuts somewhere and seeing who leaves their computer unlocked?

It's like kind of the opposite. So

the donuts are more of the end of the story. They're the consequence.

Is it like Homer Simpson spilling donuts on his, like on the control panel? So it's the irresponsible employees that eat donuts at their desk.

Is it that she didn't tell anyone she left them in the kitchen?

And then the last person to get a donut was clearly the best at staying at their desk which is a quite dystopian way to measure productivity that's already security isn't it

you guys are so

i can feel it oh um she like she is the one that's messed up

oh so she's apologizing with the donuts oh

there are places where if you screw up the corporate culture is you apologize with a thing yeah it's like a forfeit right yeah right

it's like um if you get a hole in one in a golf club, you have to pay for like a round of drinks for the whole day. Okay, yeah, yeah.
If you click on the phishing email,

not exactly, but you are very, very close. She leaves her laptop on a train.
She worked for the government.

And because of the massive lack of accountability in this country, all she has to do is buy some donuts. Oh, it's so, it's so good.

She left her computer unlocked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry, I'm just measuring your reactions to every word I say.

So she left her computer unlocked, and then they changed the password to you have to buy us some donuts. Oh,

that is so close.

I think you got that. So the office had a policy that, yeah, employees had to lock their computers when leaving them unattended for any length of time.

Sarah left hers unlocked for a while and a co-worker used it to send an email around as if they were Sarah

offering to bring in donuts.

And this caught honors like a kind of company culture. If you left your computer unlocked, it became like a competition to go and like send that email to everyone.
So you had to buy donuts.

That's quite nice. That's actually quite nice.
Yeah. It's really nice.
I remember doing something similar when someone left Facebook open, and I'd be like, is stupid as a status?

Oh, I remember that.

So embarrassing. Yeah, so good.

Thank you to Louise Hubbard, Ben and Jake for sending this next question in. In November 2018, a large department store in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England spent a small fortune on their festive display.

However, a nearby branch of Gregg's simply turned their sign around.

Why? I'll say that again. In November 2018, a large department store in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England spent a small fortune on their festive display.

However, a nearby branch of Gregg's simply turned their sign around. Why? Is this one of those ambigrams? That's what I'm thinking, where you can read it something different upside down.

So there's some word for pasty or something that I'm going to read differently when it's upside down.

It does make me think of possibly the best Christmas branding on the high street is Leon, the fast food, like healthy place, which just changes theirs to Noel.

Oh, brilliant. Leon.

Is it like the back of the sign is a mirror or something? And they were opposite the display. And then they were like, We're just going to use the reflection.

Oh, oh, keep going, Manu.

Oh, that's as far as I got. Okay, reflection of the

basically it. Yes, there's, but why would they do that?

Why are they going to use the reflection all of a sudden? Because they, because the first shot made a massive backwards Christmas display.

So, if you look at the reflection, it's going to be the right way around. Well, presumably, Greg's want to turn people towards Greggs.
Yes. And probably away from the department store.
Mm-hmm.

You even hit the key word there, which was reflection. And is this linked to Christmas? I'm trying to think what's reflection displayed.
Yeah, festive. You're right.
It said festive just moment.

It didn't necessarily say Christmas, actually.

It is the Christmas display. Yeah.
It's a time for reflection, isn't it?

The light

being reflected off the display. Yes.
Pinging. Oh, you're so close here.
I wouldn't imagine.

This must happen quite a lot.

Have a think of the scene here where where are you setting the scene okay in my mind you're already within the department store there's like a santa's grotto under the escalators and there's a branch of greg's like within uh you know visible distance uh we are not inside the department store here okay so you're opposite the department store

like on the high street yeah yep this is a high street window display like a lot of the department stores have like just they just instead of having the clothes and whatever, they just have a big old festive display.

And is and is the reflection in the window of Gregs? No, it's got to be in the department store, I think. It's

oh, you're so nearly there. I'm just a little bit.

OAC, so the department store's reflect like display was very mirror-based and you could see the Gregs

inside the display. No, but then Greggs wouldn't have to do anything.
Why would they have to turn the sign around? Because they're backwards in the mirror, so therefore you...

Oh, so Greg's just flipped the sign so that you could read it. You've got all the keywords apart from mirror here.

Like it is, I guess, technically a mirror, but there's something else more obvious for a high street display. Disco ball or a, oh, it's just the glass.
It's just the glass. It's just the glass.

It's just the glass. This is a high street shop with a big old window display in front.
Okay. So why? Taking photos, taking selfies? Yes.
Taking photos.

So

the shop has set out its display behind the glass. Folks are coming up.
They're gawping at the display. They're taking the pictures and posting them to social media.

And in the background of every one of those is the reflection of Gregg's the right way round. Oh, that's so good.

That's so good. That's so cool.
Because, yeah, it'll be backlit, won't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This big old bright Gregg's bakery logo is just ruining

every single shot of that display.

That's so good. I love that.
That's so clever.

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Alex, over to you. This question has been sent in by Oliver R., G.
Norman, and Casey Ford.

Thanks to a necessary change in the shirt layout, beer company Molson could proudly advertise itself as the hidden sponsor of PWHL.

What was the change and why was it needed? Thanks to a necessary change in the shirt layout, beer company Molson could proudly advertise itself as the quote-unquote hidden sponsor of the PWHL.

What was the change and why was it needed? Oh,

I think I might be close to this one.

Okay.

Should I save my thoughts? Yeah.

All right.

I

am thinking, and I hope I've not gone straight to this, Pee Wee Hockey League.

PWHL. You are on the right lines.
You haven't got it all right. Oh, okay, okay.
But Molson's Canadian, so I was thinking hockey. Yeah, well, I think you should stick on that road.
Okay.

I think it's somewhere else. It's like the

can't think of anywhere in Canada, maybe P, but you know, Pennsylvania Women's Hockey League or something. Okay, yes, even closer, yes.
Okay, so, and then I'm also thinking, like, did they,

this it's a specific phrase, the sort of shirt structure. Did you say shirt design? Uh, yeah, so I

layout, the layout, the layout, yeah. So, I think they might like have some buttons or something, and so that when you

open it, as you do every hockey game to reveal your bare chest um it's something to do with like the the the thing being split in half and reading differently yes you're all you're on another right track there as well it reminds me of um this is a bit of a tangent it's related in the six nations the welsh rugby team was sponsored by a brewery uh and they were called uh they were called brains in fact which is quite a good name for a brewery and then when they played in france there are different laws about advertising alcohol so they weren't allowed to wear the shirts.

So they had new ones made that had the same font and it just said brawn, which I thought was great.

Nice. Nice.
Clever way around.

Is it maybe like rolling up the sleeves

or something to do with as the shirts compressed somehow?

What do we know about Haki? Don't they wear pads? Like shoulder pads? I'm trying to think.

And it was a necessary shirt layout.

It was thanks to a necessary change in the shirt layout. So they had a shirt layout.
It had to be changed.

On a women's hockey league. Yes.
And then thanks to that change, the beer company could then advertise itself as the hidden sponsor. Or is it

something to do with making room for boobs? That's the only difference I can think. But I don't know where stuff would be hidden, so that's not.
Yeah, I would carry on down that road.

Really?

Not necessarily specifically that, but like that, and that you're you're in the general area of like,

it's a good thought. It's a good thought.
When you say general area,

no, not that area.

Molsons make cause, don't they?

C-double-O-R-S.

I see where you're going.

No, it's not.

No, it's not that.

Is there something around the chest area of a shirt?

No. It's on the back.
Or the sleeves, maybe. Yes.
They're the three parts of a shirt.

Yes. Yes.
Or collar, maybe.

And we don't, I assume we don't need to guess the P. That's not going to help us.
No. No.
It's just a location or a university. No, you've got the important letters already.

So maybe the design changed because they based it on the men's hockey uniform

and then had to change something for the women's. It's a bit more cinched in at the waist.

One of us is going to get in trouble here, Jack. Yeah, I know.
I'm dancing around something. something.

But you're definitely, you're on the right lines of they changed the design because of that.

Wait, is it on the back or on the sleeves? Yes, it's on the back. On the back.
Is it like physically fitting in more letters? Is it to do with spaces?

You're on the right lines. Yeah, it's about spacing and letters and yeah.
Is it to do with their shirt number? It's actually not to do with the number. That's the only bit that it's not to do with.

I don't know much about hockey. I genuinely thought that sentence was going to end with women.
I'm really sorry. I don't know why.

I think maybe try and picture

the back of one of these players and what's on there and what you're seeing. Oh, is it a ponytail? Yes, okay, yeah.
This is okay.

Okay, yeah. I was just trying to think.
Keep talking, man. Yeah.
All right. So the ponytail's in the way.

So they have to like change the spacing of the letters so that the ponytail doesn't fall in front of one of them. Or like

change a design so that their hair can flow back.

That's 100% the that's 100% the gist of it, yes. So this is such late-stage capitalism that you have to change your shirt so that the hair doesn't get in front of the sponsors.

Okay, but think about the question though. Thanks to a necessary change in the shirt layout, beer company could now proudly advertise itself as the hidden sponsor of EWHL.
Hidden sponsor.

So did they move the name down to like the lumber or somewhere and swap it with the the sponsor yes that is exactly what they did so this was the professional women's hockey league which was founded in 2023

and quickly it became apparent that the shirts had a design flaw if the players had long hair which women are more often tend to do and have ponytails the surname at the top of the shirt was obscured so you couldn't see which player it was so they moved the player number sorry they moved the surname to below the player number so that they could read it and they had to then put the sponsor somewhere else.

And under the initiative, quote, see my name, the Canadian beer company Molson stepped in to sponsor the top of the shirt, which is no longer of any use.

And then one of their taglines read, We covered our name so hers could be seen. So they're a bit kind of softboy about it, but you know, um, yeah, that's that's it's brilliant, I love it.

Yeah, so cool. That's kind of like, um, yeah, it was the opposite of late-stage capitalism, but actually, maybe just sort of even more, you know, they found a way to make it work, didn't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, amazing.

One final thing, then, which is the question I asked right at the start of the show. Thank you to Katie Waning for sending this one in.

Where in Spain can you find a dial that can be turned to tomato, wine, or olive oil? Does anyone want to take a shot at that before I tell the audience the answer?

We've we've done this. We've done all those three episodes, yeah.
Yeah. Oh, I thought you'd done this specific thing.
Oh, no, we have. No, man, who knows? Yeah, I do.
We do. Do you remember it, Jack?

We got so excited about this for QI research. It's a washing machine setting.

That absolutely is. Yes.
Wait,

explain it. Oh, so it's for different stains.
So some of them have blood as well. Like, it's not just blood.

It's so funny. Yes, these are certain brands of washing machines for the Spanish and Portuguese market, which have particular settings for tomato stain, wine stain, and olive oil stain.

Thank you very much to our players. Where can people find the podcast? What's going on there? We will start with Jack.

So you can go to qi.com slash lunchbox or you could just go wherever you find your podcasts and find us. We're Lunchbox Envy and we're on social media at lunchboxenvy pod.

And Mano, what sort of things will they find there?

So we've just done a load of research on sandwiches

and I brought in a historical one which was carbon carb goodness, Mrs. Beaton's toast sandwich and everyone loved it, Alex in particular.
It was really really delicious.

And Alex as producer what is the worst food you've had to deal with on that show so far? I think without a doubt turnip ice cream, which is, I think, I made it.

I keep making these horrible foods and I never tried them and that was maybe one of the worst ones. I think everyone really hated that one.
Well, thank you very much for running our gauntlet today.

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

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are full video episodes every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Alex Bell.
Thank you, Tom. Manuel Onrillo.
Thank you. And Jack Chambers.

Thank you very much. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral.