Futility Closet - 260-The Rugged Road

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from the orphans of the Titanic to Aristotle's mistake. This is episode 260. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1934, two English women set out to do what no one had ever done before, travel the length of Africa on a motorcycle. In today's show, we'll follow Teresa Wallach and Florence Blankiron from Algiers to Cape Town on a 14,000 mile adventure that many had told them was impossible.

Starting point is 00:00:50 We'll also anticipate some earthquakes and puzzle over a daughter's age. When Teresa Wallach first saw a motorcycle, she said, I got a message from it. It was a feeling, the kind of thing that makes a person burst into tears hearing a piece of music or standing awestruck in front of a fine work of art. Motorcycling is a tool with which you can accomplish something meaningful in your life. It is an art. Unfortunately, she'd been born in 1909 in Buckinghamshire, and her parents disapproved of her interest in engineering and travel, which she'd inherited from her father. She dreamed of visiting Africa, the Grand Canyon, and Paris, but they expected her to become a dutiful homemaker, as did her school and her friends. But in 1928, her father agreed to let her pursue a course in mechanical engineering at the

Starting point is 00:01:33 University of London, and there she made friends with other motorcycle enthusiasts, and one of them taught her to ride. She started wearing unladylike trousers because her skirt would flap in the wind. Her parents disapproved of that, too, but she didn't tell them the reason. She bought a secondhand motorcycle and kept it hidden in an old shed, and she'd time her arrival at the house to make it look as if she'd taken the train. But she couldn't hide her dreams forever. Eventually, she revealed the motorcycle to her parents, they asked her to abandon it, and she left home. She wrote later, If you were not going to be like everyone else, you had to have the courage to go ahead alone. You can't go forward and take the world with you. If your environment holds you back, then you must leave it behind. In 1932, she entered her first

Starting point is 00:02:15 motorcycle race, which she won, and the following year she met Florence Blankiron, known as Blank, another woman who had conceived an early passion for motorcycles and became an expert rider and mechanic. In 1934, she would become the first woman to break 100 miles per hour on a motorcycle. The 1930s were a golden age for motoring, motorcycling, and aviation, and as the two gained experience, they won more and more trophies in increasingly difficult competitions. Blank had been hoping for some time to get to South Africa to catch up with family members, and eventually Wallach suggested she make the journey by motorcycle. Blank said at first, don't be funny, but soon she followed up by asking, would you come with me?

Starting point is 00:02:51 They spent just over a year planning and preparing while learning as much as they could about Africa. The desert had been thought to be impassable by any means other than camels, but in the 1920s, several expeditions had made it across using motor vehicles. If the two of them could cross the desert and continue all the way to Cape Town, a journey of 14,000 miles, they'd be the first to complete a north-south crossing of the African continent by motorcycle. They couldn't find anyone who would give them help, especially since they were both women. But finally, a motorcycle company called Fellon & Moore agreed to sponsor the trip, and Blank & Wallach chose a motorcycle from their catalog,

Starting point is 00:03:24 a 600cc Panther that was air-cooled and wouldn't need water. With a sidecar and a trailer, it should be able to carry everything they needed. They arrived in London for the official send-off on December 11, 1934. Wallach was 25 years old and Blankiron 30. They were seen off by Lady Astor, who had been taught to ride a motorcycle by Lawrence of Arabia. She said, I am an unrepentant feminist and convinced that whatever a man can do, women can do too. About a thousand Londoners saw them off, and they crossed the Channel into France and then took a steamboat to Algeria, which at the time was a French colony. In Algiers, a gentleman stopped them on the street and said, are you the two ladies intending to cross the desert

Starting point is 00:04:01 on a motorcycle? He said, change your mind and don't go. It is too dangerous, which is exactly what their friends and acquaintances had told them, and indeed what people would continue to tell them halfway through Africa. In Algiers, a captain of the French Foreign Legion inspected their equipment and formally gave them permission to enter the desert. At about 10 a.m. on the day after Christmas, a crowd gathered along the main street to see them off. They were escorted by other motorcyclists and by journalists for the first 30 miles as they climbed into the Atlas Mountains. Then they said their last goodbyes and headed south. The Flint Rock track constantly punctured their tires, but it led them safely to their first stop, the ancient commune of La Gouette, where they found Arab boys

Starting point is 00:04:38 selling three-day-old newspapers announcing their departure from Algiers. Already they were famous. Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion stood to attention and shouldered their arms when they approached. They browsed the market and filled their water containers for the next leg, 130 miles to the oasis of Gardaia. The way you crossed the Sahara Desert with a motor vehicle in 1934 was to connect six dots spread across a distance of 2,000 miles. Each dot was an oasis with a radio outpost. If you didn't arrive promptly at any one of them, a search party would be sent out to look for you, and you'd be charged for the search. Gardia was the first of these outposts. The way was marked only by low stone cairns, and already it was much hotter here. Their eyes burned, their lips cracked, and by the end of

Starting point is 00:05:19 the day they were very weary. But from here on they had a curious sense that the desert was their home. There was no need to look for a campsite because they had the whole world to themselves. Wallach wrote, the outdoors became our living room. At Gardaia, they went through another routine that would become familiar. The local captain of the French Foreign Legion congratulated them on their progress, but said he couldn't possibly allow them to go on as the next section was far too hazardous. Then they argued him down and got permission to go. The same thing happened at most of the other oases they visited, but they always won. The stones that marked their way were sometimes hidden by drifting sand, but they always managed to reach each outpost before

Starting point is 00:05:54 the deadline, though once only by minutes. Certainly it was difficult, but that was part of the point. Wallach said later that even if they'd known all the dangers involved, they would still have chosen to go. She felt a constant war between her conscience and what she called her vagabond spirit, between the responsibility to reach the next destination safely and her desire to taste her freedom and gather as many new experiences as she could. At the El Golea Oasis, which they reached on New Year's Day 1935, the wireless operator let them hear the news from home on the BBC in English. Wallach wrote, The chimes of Big Ben, the knell of the time-honored London clock, struck a contrast between there and here, bringing home to me

Starting point is 00:06:30 something more clearly than the period of time. In my mind, I could picture the crowds, culture, cuisine, concrete, and folk in their humdrum jobs at home, secure in a challenging world, at a time in my life when the standard set for women was regulated by those who themselves did not live by them. I would rather grapple with the sands of the Sahara than the sands of contemporary society. As they entered the zone of the Tropic of Cancer, the motorcycle got stuck continually in soft sand, and they had to pull it out with a rope and tackle. Wallach says their progress was like swimming in syrup. At the hottest part of the day, they would lie under the trailer to escape the sun. It was bearable in January, but during the hottest summer months, the ground would become almost too hot to stand on.

Starting point is 00:07:08 They hoped to be long out of the desert by then, though it was enormous. After the third oasis, they had come a thousand miles from Algiers and were still only halfway across. Above the clear, clean atmosphere, the stars did not twinkle, and in the morning, the glare on the sand was so bad that the rocks cast no shadows. Atop a plateau one night, they found that the moon was so bright they could read and write by its light. Wallach wrote, standing beside me was a big black thing that suddenly moved and scared me. It was only my own shadow. At Taman Rase, the fifth oasis, Arabs and Tuaregs gathered around them to see the horse on wheels. This was the first motorcycle that had ever reached this place. The captain wouldn't let them proceed with the trailer, so they arranged to have it mounted on top of one of the infrequent

Starting point is 00:07:48 vehicles that made their way through the desert. They drove off loaded with bread. Wallach had misplaced a decimal point at a local bakery and ordered 10 times as much as they'd needed. They were still getting stuck in soft sand, but they made steady progress, and even here they were reminded of their notoriety. One morning, a light plane passed low overhead, and they found out afterward it had been sent by a London Weekly publication. There's a little incident at the last oasis that I've marked with the phrase, amazing, calm, effective resourcefulness. They had a flat tire, and their tire pump didn't work. When a local man failed to fix it, Wallach did it herself. She cut the leather tongue out of one of her shoes, soaked it in engine oil, and inserted it into the body of the pump to form a diaphragm for the plunger rod. It worked. The rear tire

Starting point is 00:08:29 inflated. She's got sort of an engineer's mind, I think, when she's writing about all these colorful and dramatic incidents and just sort of flatly tells you what happened rather than waxing lyrical about how amazing it was. And she doesn't take a lot of pride in all these amazing fixes. But I'm not even telling, you know, nine-tenths of the things that she did. At one point, they needed a lug in the middle of nowhere, literally in the Sahara Desert. And there happened to be the ancient wreck of a car nearby, and they managed to find a lug that was close enough and then machined it using the tools available to them just to get it to work. But they always found a way through. It's just amazing.

Starting point is 00:09:02 And it's not a long book, but her modesty about all this is one of the things that strikes you when you read it, because she just doesn't make a big deal out of any of this, and all of it deserves to be really made a big deal out of. With the worst of the desert behind them, they rode across the open Algerian border into French West Africa and hit a new problem. They had just finally shifted into a higher gear when the engine clattered and stopped. The heat had thinned the lubricating oil and the connecting rod bearing had broken. They pushed the motorcycle through the night and finally some nomads spotted their dust and came to investigate. They towed them on horseback 75 miles to Agadez, where the captain arranged to send to Fellin and Moore, the motorcycle's manufacturer in Yorkshire, for

Starting point is 00:09:42 replacement parts, which were flown to Algiers and after a month's wait arrived at Agadez by a desert vehicle. The manufacturer had included a note. The operation of completely dismantling the Panther engine should be done in the nearest Sheikh's tent, preferably one with a good carpet on the floor as this saves the mechanic's knees and also prevents ants from crawling in and making a mess of the oil filter. The company had packed it in a carton that had once contained a bottle of whiskey. Another note said, sorry, we didn't have room to include the original contents. With the help of a French mechanic, they rebuilt the Panther engine. It ran well as soon as it was kick-started, and they finally set out again on March 4th.

Starting point is 00:10:19 As they passed into sub-Saharan Africa, they were entering a different world. They had to learn to be watchful for wildlife. They were surprised by a snake slithering across the trail. The road was often a single pair of deep wheel tracks, which were hard to negotiate on a motorcycle. After three days, they reached the British embassy at Maduguri, where the ambassador invited them to stay at the residence, and they had breakfast in bed while the mechanics serviced their engine. But in the French equatorial colony of Chad,

Starting point is 00:10:44 the rutted road finally brought disaster when their whole front wheel collapsed. But again, with the help of strangers, they managed a repair. A French truck driver drove them to a mission station, and they sent the wheel by mail truck to Bangui, 450 miles further on, to be welded. When it came back, they reattached it to the motorcycle and set off again on April 19th toward the equator, which was still a thousand miles away. The landscape was constantly varied. As the rainy season approached, they passed into the Belgian Congo, where they were surrounded by bird calls and the chatter of primates as they rode through the Ituri forest. They were only on the northern edge of the jungle, but the leaves

Starting point is 00:11:18 were so thick that sun couldn't penetrate, and they rode with the headlights switched on. At length, they arrived at the small town of Buta at the very center of the continent, and over the next 250 miles, they encountered 18 rivers, none with bridges and some more than half a mile wide. Bantu boatmen paddled them across, chanting in deep voices to warn away hippos and crocodile. One Hyundai tribesman carrying a smoldering branch

Starting point is 00:11:40 brought forward others to witness their passing. They had never seen a motorcycle or white women before. The next day, after a torrential thunderstorm, they were collecting their belongings when they found that the soap was farther away than the wind could have carried it. When they picked it up, it bore the distinct marks of fangs or claws. Every turn seemed to bring new experiences. When they reached the equator, Wallach drew a line on the road and each of them did a handstand on it. Two great gorillas leapt across a ravine when they were riding through it and they found a geyser where they washed off some mud and did their laundry. Shortly after they passed into Uganda, they beheld an active volcanic crater high in the night sky. They were now a month overdue at Cape Town, so

Starting point is 00:12:18 they didn't mind making further delays to see the sights, following Wallach's vagabond spirit. She wrote, to have arrived in Cape Town as planned would have meant we hadn't truly traveled, since traveling to us was the time spent in different places, rather than riding tightly to schedule. The scenery was beautiful. They passed Mount Kenya, covered with snow, and saw zebras, giraffes, and rhinos, which Wallach said looked more beautiful and majestic in the wild than any she'd seen in a zoo. In one sense, the going was easier now, since they were encountering more people and riding well-traveled routes. But the motorcycle was a patchwork, and they still had 3,000 miles to go. Absurdly, one afternoon in the foothills of the Singida Mountains of Tanganyika, after riding more than 10,000 miles through every

Starting point is 00:12:58 conceivable condition, they had their first collision. A car came north around a blind turn and struck them in the side. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The driver was an Indian merchant who represented a Ugandan cotton company. He later sent them a check from Bombay as a token of friendship and suggested they title their book The Rugged Road of Africa. They had the sidecar repaired by a Bantu mechanic in Dodoma and passed on. In northern Rhodesia, sand from the Kalahari Desert was continually blowing north onto the road and they were plagued by mechanical problems, a broken throttle cable, and endless flat tires. The motorcycle was now held together with wire, string, rubber bands, and even chewing gum,

Starting point is 00:13:33 but Wallach's constant inventiveness kept it going, and the road kept improving. The mayor and mayoress of Livingston greeted them on their arrival, and they spent a full day and night at the Victoria Falls. Finally, on July 11th, seven months to the day since they'd set out, they crossed the Limpopo River into South Africa. They travel 13,000 miles now, and the motorcycle was nearly spent. There were front-page headlines in the Transvaal newspapers, and a crowd of well-wishers escorted them to a reception in Pretoria. At Johannesburg, barriers had to be put up near City Hall so they could make their way

Starting point is 00:14:03 through enormous crowds, and they were given a civic reception there on July 23rd. Two days later, they passed into the Cape of Good Hope province, the final stretch of their long journey, and rode across the magnificently named Great Karoo, a barren plateau 300 miles long. Wallach wrote, Soon we would be going home. Again we would be asked, as we had many times already, why did you do it? Again, we would be asked, as we had many times already, why did you do it? We would be asked about people and ethnic groups, wildlife, lions, elephants, and snakes, of our many adventures and why we broke away from the conventional and lived our own lives. Along the lonely Karoo, I recalled the scenario of the seven-month, 14,000-mile journey down the African continent,

Starting point is 00:14:44 as an artist who cannot see the sun tries with dark and light colors to convey sunrise or sunset across a landscape. Despite the hardship, we had the time of our lives. There were occasions for despair, but with our self-reliance and clear objective, we never lost enthusiasm. It was not an easy task, but we gained more worldly wisdom out of it than we ever expected. They rode into Cape Town among a throng of well-wishers and international press to City Hall, where the Governor General of the Union of South Africa greeted them in the sunshine. The Earl of Clarendon joined them to celebrate their record, the first north-south crossing of the African continent by motorcycle. Wallach wrote, our journey was at an end. In her book, which she did call The Rugged Road, she summed up her impression of the whole trip with a few lines from Edgar A. Guest. Somebody said that it couldn't be done, but he, with a

Starting point is 00:15:24 chuckle, replied that maybe it couldn't, done, but he, with a chuckle, replied that maybe it couldn't, but he would be one who wouldn't say so till he tried. So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin on his face. If he worried, he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn't be done, and he did it. Thank you. is our Patreon campaign, as that gives us an ongoing source of support so that we can commit to the amount of time that the podcast takes to make. Patreon also gives us a good way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like extra information and discussion on some of the stories, outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show. You can learn more about our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset,

Starting point is 00:16:26 or see the support us section of our website for the link. And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show. We wouldn't still be here without you. A few listeners wrote about the discussion in episode 253 about tweets traveling faster than an earthquake's seismic waves. Gareth Fabro wrote, Bula, Sharon, and Greg, and Sasha, and explained, I currently live in Fiji where Bula means hello slash cheers. I was listening to you talk about the ex-KCD comic about tweets traveling faster than seismic waves, and you suggested this might be useful. I thought you might like to know that this is already used to give early warnings in Japan, and California is building a similar

Starting point is 00:17:16 system. Neither actually use Twitter, but instead send out electronic alerts as soon as an earthquake is detected. As these alerts travel faster than the seismic waves, it can give up to maybe 30 seconds of warning. This is enough time in Japan to shut down nuclear power plants safely and to stop bullet trains so they don't derail. I also thought I'd add some information on the speed of seismic waves. Earthquakes produce many different types of waves that travel at different speeds. The fastest waves, P waves, travel at about 6 to 7 kilometers per second, depending on what rock they are traveling through. However, P waves aren't that damaging.

Starting point is 00:17:50 The most destructive waves, surface waves, travel much slower, only 1 to 5 kilometers per second. This is why you often see videos from earthquakes where the shaking will start slowly as the P waves arrive, and then after a few seconds will suddenly get much more violent when the surface waves arrive. and then after a few seconds, we'll suddenly get much more violent when the surface waves arrive. Keep up the good work. And Diego Hernandez wrote,

Starting point is 00:18:10 Your last episode made me think of an application for electrical impulses being faster than seismic waves. As you might have read, Mexico City is in a highly seismically active area. In 1985, a severe earthquake hit and devastated the city, killing over 8,000. Two years ago, on the same anniversary of the 85 quake, another significant one struck. A few years ago, a seismic alert was deployed. Given that most of the earthquakes that affect Mexico City originate in the same area of the Pacific, sensors were placed along the coast, about 400 kilometers away, that trigger an alarm, think tornado sirens, throughout the city. These alerts give the city around a minute's warning before an event,

Starting point is 00:18:50 which is enough to take cover. So I didn't know anything about this before, but it turns out that several countries now have earthquake early warning systems, including Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy, and Taiwan, which wouldn't be possible if we didn't have some forms of communication that can outrun seismic waves. Japan is considered to have the most advanced earthquake warning system, with their nationwide system employing more than 4,000 sensors, while other countries, such as Mexico and the U.S., have implemented their systems only in select areas. Mexico, which is in one of the world's most seismically active regions, has one of the oldest warning systems, which began operating in Mexico

Starting point is 00:19:30 City in 1991 in response to the terrible 1985 quake, and has since evolved to include a few other cities. As Diego indicated, because many of the earthquakes that hit southern and central Mexico often start hundreds of kilometers away, that gives the system time to trigger alerts through television, radio, municipal loudspeakers, and more recently, a smartphone app, giving residents a minute or so of warning for most earthquakes, though the warning time can be much shorter for quakes that begin closer to a city. This was demonstrated by two earthquakes that hit Mexico City in September 2017. On September 7th, residents got almost two minutes of warning before strong seismic waves

Starting point is 00:20:11 hit the city, but there were only a few seconds of warning before the city started to shake on September 19th. In the latter quake, some residents reported feeling the shaking before even hearing an alert, as due to the proximity to the epicenter, rather strong P waves hit the city at almost the same time, or even a few seconds before the warning sounded. So even though the alerts did precede the stronger waves, Mexico City residents had started taking precautions after feeling the first shaking. That September 19th quake also unfortunately occurred on the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 one. And Mexico holds nationwide earthquake drills annually on that date. And with the quake starting only two hours after the drill,

Starting point is 00:20:51 there were some reports that some people may have thought that the real warning was actually still part of the drill. That's terribly... Very unfortunate timing. Japan is also in one of the most seismically active regions in the world, and according to an article on the BBC, about 20% of all earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater occur in Japan, and seismometers record some kind of event in that country an average of every five minutes. Japan's earthquake early warning system was originally developed specifically for slowing high-speed trains, but a devastating 1995 quake motivated the development of a nationwide system,

Starting point is 00:21:29 which began issuing public warnings in 2007 by sending alerts to television, radios, and cell phones. The U.S. is rather behind countries like Mexico and Japan in developing an earthquake warning system, even though it's estimated that in the next 30 years, California has a 99.7% chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or a larger quake. A system called ShakeAlert has been in development for the West Coast of the U.S., and in 2012, it began sending test alerts to some test groups, such as hospitals, utilities, and schools,

Starting point is 00:22:02 while more recently, it's been slowly expanding to include public notifications in some limited areas. Currently, VATS system has a little more than half of its planned 1,675 sensor stations built. As earthquake warning systems don't predict earthquakes but only measure current activity, the amount of warning that they give is generally measured in seconds, which may not be enough time for significant precautionary measures, but which may allow for some safety measures, such as breaking high-speed trains or evacuating elevators, or for workers to suspend potentially dangerous operations and surgeons or dentists to pause during delicate procedures. It can allow people to get into safer positions and for emergency

Starting point is 00:22:45 responders to take precautionary actions, such as opening firehouse doors that might become inoperable. Unfortunately, though, the systems are generally able to provide more warning time for milder quakes, as areas closer to the epicenter of an earthquake are more likely to be hit with stronger seismic waves, but also may not be able to receive significant warning time because of the proximity. That's a problem, yeah. The sensors and algorithms in these warning systems often have a window of only seconds in which initiating sending an alert will be of any use. And at this point, the systems can't completely accurately predict the ultimate intensity of an earthquake from such early data. So one of the issues that

Starting point is 00:23:25 the designers of these warning systems have to grapple with is whether to err on the side of giving more false alarms or to increase the risk of not sending desired warnings. Several sources I read suggested that most people want the systems to err more on the side of lower thresholds for alerting, even if that does mean more false alarms, which the systems do sometimes have. This was recently borne home to the developers of ShakeAlert. That system rolled out an app to residents of the Los Angeles area in January and got its first real test in July, when two of the strongest earthquakes in almost 20 years hit Southern California. However, the more than 500,000 people who had downloaded the app received no alerts, which quite upset many of the users.

Starting point is 00:24:06 The system did actually work as intended, as after a great deal of debate, the researchers had set the minimum threshold for alerts at a predicted level of shaking that would be strong enough to cause significant damage, and neither of the two quakes rose to quite that level. But after the outcry from the public last month, the threshold level was lowered, despite officials fearing that issuing too many warnings, especially for milder earthquakes, might lead to people starting to ignore the alerts. That could be a reasonable concern, but so far, though, that doesn't seem to have happened in Japan, where there have been a few instances of some major false alarms, but still 90% of Japanese citizens said in a survey that

Starting point is 00:24:44 they do approve of their warning system. Yeah, I think I'd rather have a, within reason, I'd rather have a false positive than a false negative, you know? Yeah, definitely. Me too. And on a lighter topic, Elaine Lansing, who very carefully explained the pronunciation of her name because people screw that up way more than you would think, sent an email explicitly

Starting point is 00:25:03 to our trusty podcat. Dear Sasha, are you hiding something from your parents? I have been catching up on back episodes of your humans podcast since I discovered Futility Closet a few months ago and have been amused by episode 161, which had the lateral thinking puzzle involving round doorknobs as a bear deterrent and all the follow-ups. I know that cats are smarter than bears,

Starting point is 00:25:24 but I haven't heard any mention of the fact that cats can open doors, even those with round doorknobs as a bear deterrent, and all the follow-ups. I know that cats are smarter than bears, but I haven't heard any mention of the fact that cats can open doors, even those with round doorknobs. At least my cat could. Did she commit a faux pas by revealing this skill to me? Yay, bad pun! I first learned about this skill one day when I was home alone, working in my office. I had the door closed because Alex, my female rescue cat, had chronic rhinitis, which resulted in an amazingly loud snore from a tiny cat, and I had some conference calls that day. I was reading emails when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around to see the doorknob on the office door slowly turning. In a panic, thinking about how some random murderer was about to chop me into pieces, I froze up for a second. Then the door opened, a furry black creature flopped back

Starting point is 00:26:05 down onto all fours, and Alex casually strolled into the room. She did this several times during the 19 years she spent as my constant companion, once scaring the heck out of a houseguest whom Alex decided needed some company in the middle of the night. I told houseguests to lock the bedroom door after that. I once caught her in the act, trying to get into a room my husband was in. She was up on her hind leg, stretched out with a paw on either side of the doorknob, pushing up on one side and pulling down on the other to get it to turn. She attempted to open doors far more often than she was successful at it, but she was successful often enough. Alex passed away over a year ago, and I miss her terribly. She was such an amazing cat in so many ways. She stole the hearts amazing cat in so many ways.

Starting point is 00:26:49 She stole the hearts of everyone who met her. Anyway, I'm up to episode 200 and there hasn't been any mention of kitties being able to open round doorknobs, just camels. I can only assume you've chosen to hide this feline skill from your parents. I'll keep your secret. Love the podcast and love seeing your exploits in the behind the scenes posts on Patreon. Scritches and purrs. Well, I am really impressed by Alex's talents, but it doesn't seem that Sasha has actually worked out how to open doors yet, thank goodness. If she figures out Alex's trick, this podcast is going to have a lot more interruptions. I don't even want to think about the issues we might have if she learns how to open doors. And we have mostly levered door handles, too, so those would be even easier to open. That's true. All she has to do is reach high enough.

Starting point is 00:27:28 I hadn't thought about that. It hasn't occurred to her as far as I can tell. And thankfully, we don't have any bears or camels in our area either. So for now, at least our closed doors are staying closed. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're always sorry that we can't read all the email that we get on the show, but we really appreciate hearing from everyone. So if you have anything that you'd like to add, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And extra thanks to those who send me pronunciation tips.

Starting point is 00:28:01 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation, and he's going to try to figure out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Powell Shopes, who tried to give me some help with his German name and said, just give it a try. I am looking forward to hear how you butcher it. I'm sure I did. And Powell's puzzle is, my daughter is younger than the children of my sister, although they have existed for a shorter time. How does that work?

Starting point is 00:28:30 Oh, my gosh. Okay, my daughter is younger than the children of my sister. In other words, she's younger than her cousins? Yes. So they're in the same generation. Yes. Okay. Although the cousins have existed for a shorter time.

Starting point is 00:28:47 Existed? Mm-hmm. Can I, okay. Let's talk about the cousins. Okay. They're human beings? Yes. Is there anything artificial about this?

Starting point is 00:28:56 No. Oh, really? So they were just born naturally? Yes. On Earth? Yes. Not in some orbiting? Oh, that's right.

Starting point is 00:29:03 The cousins were born on a different planet. Yeah, or traveling at a high velocity. Okay, well, so they've existed for some period of time. And when you say... When we refer to their age, the cousins' age, we're talking about the time they've existed. Just nailing this down. This is getting metaphysical. Not sure what...

Starting point is 00:29:22 Well, I'm just looking for some... Because I've defined age as the period of time you've existed so his daughter's existed for a certain amount of time how do you define age well let's say his daughter's precisely a year old okay that means she's existed for a year the time that's the last since between her birth and today yes yes that is a year can we just for the sake of the puzzle, say she's a year old? Yes. Is that all right?

Starting point is 00:29:46 That's fine. Okay. So that means between the moment she was born and right now, a year has elapsed. Yes. Okay. And, okay, so we're saying her cousins have existed for less than a year. In other words, it's been less than a year since they were born? Incorrect.

Starting point is 00:30:05 Has it been more than a year? Do you know? Yes. Okay, it's been more than a year since they've been born. Yes. We're getting somewhere. So they're older. So they're older than his daughter. But their age, is that what it was?

Starting point is 00:30:17 Their age is less, is lower? No, they have existed for a shorter time. So their age is greater, but they've existed. Correct. Existed. All right. So, all right. That seems very specific.

Starting point is 00:30:32 So they were born before she was. Yes. But they've existed for a shorter time. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. So that would mean that was his daughter somehow, seems impossible, in the

Starting point is 00:30:47 womb for longer than her cousins were somehow? That doesn't seem right. Because you said there's nothing really artificial about this. There's nothing artificial about this, but I'll say yes to your question. So the key to the puzzle is what happens before birth is what I'm getting at. Yes. So really his daughter is the key here, not the cousins. No, it's the cousins.

Starting point is 00:31:07 The cousins spent less time in the womb than his daughter did? Yes. Were they just born premature? Yes. That's very premature. Yes, so they existed for a shorter period of time. Powell says, My oldest daughter, Elizabeth, was born on May 26, 2015.

Starting point is 00:31:24 My sister had triplets who were born on May 1, 2015. But because triplets are almost always premature, they were sired after my daughter was sired. So they have existed a shorter amount of time, but are older because they were born before my daughter. That makes a great puzzle. So thanks to Powell for that puzzle and his helpful pronunciation tips. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it and any appropriate pronunciation

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Futility Closet - 260-The Rugged Road

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