Futility Closet - 270-Kidnapped by North Korea

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 a butterfly map to a presidential loophole. This is episode 270. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1978, two luminaries of South Korean cinema were abducted by Kim Jong-il and forced to make films in North Korea in an outlandish plan to improve his country's fortunes. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:38 we'll tell the story of Choi Yun-hee and Shin Sang-ok and their dramatic efforts to escape their captors. We'll also examine Napoleon's wallpaper and puzzle over an abandoned construction. In the early 1970s, Shin Sang-ok seemed to have it all. He was the most famous film director in South Korea, making films that were loved by audiences, critics, and his colleagues. He was rich and healthy, and he ran the most successful film company in the nation's history, jointly with his wife, Choi Yun-hee, a brilliant and beautiful actress known as the Elizabeth Taylor of Korea. But in 1975, it suddenly fell apart. The South Korean government revoked Shin's film certificate for failing to remove a kiss that had been barred by the censorship board, and Choi learned that he'd had a child out of wedlock with a younger actress. She divorced him, but the loss of their film company's license left them

Starting point is 00:01:34 without support, and that endangered a performing school that Choi had been running. 700 students now faced the loss of their education, so in 1978, when she received an offer to direct a film, she pursued it. The offer came from a man who called himself Wang Dong-il, who said he ran a film studio in Hong Kong. He sent her a script, and she agreed to fly down to discuss it. Before she left, she called Shin to ask his opinion. He said that it seemed strange that someone from Hong Kong would ask her to direct a film. She had earned her fame as an actress,

Starting point is 00:02:04 and Hong Kong already had many famous directors at its disposal. She thought perhaps he was resentful or jealous and decided to pursue the offer anyway. In Hong Kong, Wang showed her the city but spoke relatively little about business, and Choi noticed two men following her and taking pictures. One day, a friend of Wang's suggested they visit a man at Repulse Bay who might be able to help with their project.

Starting point is 00:02:25 When their car stopped by the water, the friend motioned Choi to a motor skiff, saying that the villa was ten minutes away across the bay. Choi hesitated, and the crew of the skiff leapt out and grabbed her. She woke aboard a freighter, where she remained a captive for six days. When they reached their destination, a short man in his mid-thirties was waiting for her on the pier. He said, Thank you for coming, Madame30s was waiting for her on the pier. He said, Thank you for coming, Madam Choi. You must be exhausted from the journey. Welcome. I am Kim Jong-il. Choi didn't know it, but she was at the center of a vital new project.

Starting point is 00:02:54 The head of North Korea was still Kim Il-sung, the Red Army officer whom Stalin had installed at the end of the Second World War, when Korea was divided in two. The region had been a hotbed of Cold War tensions through the 1950s, and as the 1960s ended, South Korea was becoming a regional power. Kim Jong-il would one day succeed his father as leader of the nation, but now he was cultural arts director of its propaganda and agitation department. He wanted to revitalize the nation through its film industry. The country was so insular that its filmmakers had no foreign influences and tended to produce the same stories over and over. Kim Jong-il had seen Western films, and he had unlimited resources, but he knew nothing about making movies. If he could get

Starting point is 00:03:33 the help of experts from abroad, he could remake the industry, not to produce internal propaganda, but to make legitimately great films. These would raise the nation in the eyes of the world, winning respect for North Korean culture and attracting investment from around the globe. Choi Eun-hee was the first step in that plan. They drove her to a villa where they took her South Korean passport and identification card. She would live there for nine months. Every day, Kim Jong-il sent her flowers and a doctor checked her health. The house had been stocked with every amenity, but it was surrounded by a concrete wall and barbed wire, and armed soldiers patrolled it 24 hours a day.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Kim Jong-il began to invite her to dinner parties held in another walled compound in Pyongyang. These were influential affairs. The other guests included key members of the party and the Politburo, generals, and film and stage stars. She seemed to be there as a trophy. About a month after her abduction, Kim invited her to his home to observe his birthday. When he asked whether she was uncomfortable with anything, she asked whether she might be allowed to return to South Korea. He said he understood her dilemma but said, quote,

Starting point is 00:04:34 I have some plans for us. This problem will soon be resolved. When his wife had disappeared, Shin had begun to investigate and learned that the people she'd met in Hong Kong had connections in Pyongyang. He began to wonder whether Choi had been abducted by North Korea. He didn't have long to pursue the question. He was in Hong Kong himself pursuing new business opportunity when four men blocked the road and pulled him from his car. They tied him up and took him to a motor launch, then to the same freighter and indeed the same cabin that had held Choi. They told him that he was being taken to North Korea, quote, to answer the call of the great leader. He found himself in a villa an hour outside Pyongyang.

Starting point is 00:05:10 It was stocked with clothing that fit him perfectly, and he was fed his favorite meals. He would spend two months there. He never met Kim Jong-il, but he was told that all of this had been done at Kim's order. In the villa, he began his re-education. His keepers led him through two hours of ideological study in the morning, and in the afternoon, he began his re-education. His keepers led him through two hours of ideological study in the morning, and in the afternoon he was shown two or three dreary North Korean films chosen by Kim Jong-il. Like Choi, he was in a compound surrounded by a concrete wall patrolled by armed guards. But he was determined to escape. He made two attempts.

Starting point is 00:05:39 In the first, he stole a car hoping to drive 100 miles to Chongju in the northwest corner of the country and then cross the Yalu River into China, where he hoped he might reach the American embassy in Beijing. He got within 10 miles of the Chinese border but was intercepted by guards when he tried to jump a train into China. That landed him in prison for three months and then a new house with bars on every window. Still determined to escape, he hid behind a radiator for three days, hoping the guards would abandon the house to search for him. But he was discovered. They took him to prison number six, the so-called Enlightenment Center,

Starting point is 00:06:11 where he was formally convicted and put into a tiny cell where he had to sit cross-legged, head down, and motionless for 16 hours a day. This was called the torture position, and he endured it for two and a half years, resisting the pain by rewriting, reshooting, and re-editing all his old films in his head over and over again. At length, he realized that the fact that they hadn't executed him outright meant that they still expected him to be useful to them somehow. He wrote letters of contrition to Kim Jong-il, and at last the Minister of People's Security asked him, if you could live with Choi Eun-hee, would you stay in North Korea and stop

Starting point is 00:06:42 trying to escape? He said he would, and in February 1983, they let him out of his cell and read a Choi's re-education had been going on all this time. She was moved through a succession of residences, told continually about the great leader, and encouraged to learn songs that praised him and his son. She attended daily lectures, though she came to realize that her teacher knew no history before 1945 and no geography beyond North Korea's borders. Her keepers insisted that the whole world was engulfed in famine, conflict, and injustice, except for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which was thriving thanks to the great leader Kim Il-sung. She was required to write down everything they said, and in her free time, she had to read biographies of the Kims. Kim Jong-il had begun to tell her that Shin was coming to join them, and finally, at a party in

Starting point is 00:07:33 March 1983, a woman approached her and said, look who's here. She was shocked to see her ex-husband. He was so gaunt that she didn't recognize him at first. He hadn't seen her in more than five years and hadn't even been sure she was still alive. Kim Jong-il announced to the crowd that Shin was now his film advisor, and they applauded loudly. Shin and Choi were driven back to the first villa that Choi had been kept in. There they told each other their stories in the bathroom with the tub faucets running in case the house was bugged. They agreed to devote themselves to escaping North Korea. They needed a way to let the world know where they were and proof that their story was true. It was illegal to record the leaders of the party, but Shin resolved to do this, and on one shopping trip, he managed to acquire a small

Starting point is 00:08:13 tape recorder. Choi hid this in her handbag during a meeting with Kim, and over 45 minutes, she actually recorded him describing the planning of the kidnappings, the meager state of the North Korean film industry, and how Shin and Choi might help to promote the national interest by revitalizing it. At the end of the meeting, he revealed that he would be sending them abroad as ambassadors for North Korean cinema and to show that they hadn't been imprisoned. The goal was to participate in foreign film festivals, win international awards, and maybe even get commercial distribution abroad. Kim promised them $2 million a year in funding. They'd have the whole national film industry at their disposal and could choose cast and crew, request any

Starting point is 00:08:49 equipment they needed, and oversee other directors and producers. Choi would run an acting academy and star in as many films as possible. Shin and Choi played along. They announced plans to make 40 films a year and requested a staff of 230. They were given passports and flown to East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Their hopes rose, but it turned out that when Kim had said they could film anywhere, he'd meant anywhere inside the Iron Curtain. In East Berlin, they caught sight of an American flag floating over a building behind heavily armed gates. Choi pulled on Shin's sleeve, but he told her they mustn't risk it until success was certain. Kim Jong-il seemed pleased

Starting point is 00:09:25 with their efforts. He thanked them for helping to reduce criticism and giving the impression that, quote, you are working freely and doing as you please. As his spirits improved, he gave them more freedom. In Budapest, Shin managed to elude his minors and speak with a friend who was a Japanese journalist. He explained the situation and gave him the tape. When the tape appeared in Western media, Kim Jong-il was concerned, but surprisingly calm. Either he suspected that someone else had done it, or he didn't want to blame Shin and Choi for fear of appearing to have failed to convert them. But now at least the world knew where they were. They held a news conference in which they said that Kim Jong-il had approached them in West Germany to invite them to make films for him, and that they had accepted.

Starting point is 00:10:02 The story probably rang false. They couldn't explain why they'd vanished for five years or why Shin was on record worrying that Choi had been kidnapped, and it seemed odd that the North Koreans hadn't made more of this propaganda coup, but Kim Jong-il said he was happy with the performance. So they carried on with their work, making seven films altogether for Kim while they waited for a chance to escape. In doing this, they became the most famous people in North Korea, besides the Kims themselves. From a purely filmmaking perspective, both said later that Kim was the best producer a director could ask for. If they needed a fan to simulate wind, he gave them a helicopter. If they needed snow in spring, he had it flown in from a mountaintop.

Starting point is 00:10:38 If they needed extras, he gave them an army. And if they needed a train to blow up, he gave them one. Choi acknowledged afterward that they'd been allowed to make films with artistic value rather than just propaganda, but Shin called the North Korean ideology wretched lunacy. With each new award and good review, Kim relaxed their restrictions a little. After six films, Shin needed something sensational to pitch to the world in order to maximize their chance of an escape. He settled on Pulgasari, a knockoff of Godzilla, about a giant medieval monster that eats iron. This was such a gigantic hit in North Korea

Starting point is 00:11:10 that two separate defectors have recalled seeing people crushed to death in crowds to see it. Kim loved the film and wanted to exhibit it internationally, in part because his country was now nearly broke. So he formally approved Shin's plan to establish a full-time office in Vienna, where they could begin work on a film about Genghis Khan. He trusted them completely now. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. On March 12, 1986, Shin and Choi arrived in Vienna, accompanied by three bodyguards.

Starting point is 00:11:35 Among their meetings, they planned a lunch with Akira Anoki, a Japanese journalist who was a friend from the old days. They told their keepers that meeting with him would help to convince the West that they were working with Kim of their own volition, and their bodyguards agreed not to ride in the same car with them or even sit in the same room when they were giving the interview. They asked Inoki to appear outside the hotel at 1230 with a taxi waiting. When they were near the car, Shin suddenly pushed Choi and Inoki inside and told the driver to drive around the city center. The bodyguards, realizing what was happening, waved down a taxi of their own.

Starting point is 00:12:06 Choi told Enoki that they'd been kidnapped and were trying to escape. They wanted to get to the U.S. embassy. As she said this, she spotted a white taxi behind them with the three bodyguards inside. As they were racking their brains about what to do, a couple of cars slipped between them and the white taxi, and then by good fortune, they slipped through an intersection just before the light changed. Shin told Inoki, we have to do it now. Please help us. Before he could reply, a dispatcher radioed the driver asking where he was headed so that he could inform the car behind them. Inoki pressed a fistful of money on the driver and said, tell him we went the opposite

Starting point is 00:12:38 direction. The driver took the money and called in the wrong destination, and they told him they wanted to go to the U.S. embassy. Shin wrote later, Choi's face was white as a sheet of paper. My heart was racing like a motor, fearing we might run into the white taxi on our way to the embassy. The U.S. embassy was five minutes away. It felt like five hours. They were within 50 yards of the embassy when traffic brought them to a halt. Shin asked Enoki to stay and watch them,

Starting point is 00:13:01 and then he and Choi got out and sprinted up the hill toward the embassy door. Shin said, We tried to run as fast as we could, but it felt like we were in some sort of slow-motion movie. At last they reached the door and got safely inside, ending a captivity that had lasted eight years. No one knows exactly how Kim Jong-il reacted to the defection, but thereafter it was forbidden to mention Shin's name in North Korea, and his films were removed from circulation. Whatever hopes Kim had had of rescuing his country through cinema, they weren't realized. By 1998, as many as a tenth of his people had died from famine.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Shin and Choi were granted asylum in the United States in exchange for telling the CIA everything they knew about Kim and North Korea. They gave a series of interviews to the Washington Post and wrote a 900-page memoir that was published in South Korea. Eventually, they moved from Virginia to Hollywood, where Shin produced the Three Ninjas films about three kids who use martial arts to fight crime. They were wary at first of returning to South Korea, where they feared they might be accused of defecting and might even be abducted again by Kim Jong-il. But in 1999, 21 years after their abductions, they returned to Seoul. but in 1999, 21 years after their abductions, they returned to Seoul. If any good came of any of this, it's that the experience drew Choi and Shin closer again, and they were remarried shortly after reaching the United States.

Starting point is 00:14:16 When the producer Paul Fisher asked Choi whether they would have remarried had they not been abducted, she said, no, we had no plans. We were moving in different directions. Raven Norlander McCarty wrote about the puzzle from episode 264, so spoiler alert here. That was the puzzle about a doctor who had created some books of arsenic-containing wallpaper in order to warn people about the dangers of the wallpaper, only many of the books had to be destroyed as they were toxic themselves. Raven said, Hello, I was so delighted to hear the puzzle in episode 264 while working this morning. I'm a paper conservator, and I'm currently working on cleaning and repairing the wallpaper in a lawyer's office that was installed around 1810, thankfully prior to the period when all these toxic pigments were in use.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Arsenic-based wallpaper pigments are a well-known problem in our tiny field, so we're always very careful to wear personal protective equipment, take precautions when creating dust, etc. Fortunately, the worst offenders were mostly removed when this issue became widely known, so there aren't too many poisonous wallpapers left to be preserved. Arsenic was previously only thought to be present in a particular shade of green pigment, French green, that was very popular in Victorian times. But recent research by Lucinda Hawksley for the National Archives in the UK has revealed that arsenic and other toxic compounds are present in many other pigments as well. Her book, Bitten by Witch Fever, contains several anecdotes about illnesses caused or worsened

Starting point is 00:15:50 by living or convalescing in wallpapered rooms, including Napoleon, whose corpse was found to have very high levels of arsenic when exhumed years after his death. There was considerable suspicion at the time that he was intentionally poisoned. Arsenic was also commonly used as a medicine, including by Napoleon, and as an aphrodisiac. There was considerable suspicion at the time that he was intentionally poisoned. Arsenic was also commonly used as a medicine, including by Napoleon, and as an aphrodisiac, as well as being included in many other products, and the toxic effects famously build up slowly over time, so it's difficult to know for sure how this might have contributed to his death, but perhaps more than one factor was at play here.

Starting point is 00:16:25 Hawksley's book also contains many, presumably non-toxic, digitally reprinted samples of the wallpaper patterns that she found to contain especially toxic pigments. It's a beautiful and fascinating book that I recommend, even if you're not a wallpaper nerd like myself. Thanks for the many hours of delight and edification that you have provided me over the years. So that was a really interesting email from Raven, and we don't get too many emails from self-described wallpaper nerds, and it prompted me to look more into the topic of these suspicions about Napoleon being poisoned by arsenic. Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821 at age 51 on the island of St. Helena, where he had been imprisoned since 1815. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be stomach cancer, but apparently there have been suspicions of foul play since his death.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Techniques became available in the 1960s to measure trace elements in hair, and analyses of Napoleon's hair showed high levels of arsenic, which led to theories that he had been slowly poisoned while on St. Helena. Skeptics of this theory note, as Raven did, that the use of arsenic was actually not that uncommon in that time period, and it was used in many household products, such as dyed fabrics, candles, and soaps, and even in some candy wrappers. It was used in some face and hair powders, and Napoleon did powder his hair, and in various medicines and medicinal tonics, some of which, according to the American Museum of Natural History, were sold into the 1950s.

Starting point is 00:17:48 And as we learned from the puzzle in episode 264, arsenic was used in wallpaper, and even in some wallpaper pastes. A sample of the wallpaper from Longwood, Napoleon's prison home, was taken by a visitor in the 1820s and put into a family scrapbook where it was found in England in the 1980s. When it was tested in the 1990s, it was found to contain arsenic, which could have vaporized in hot, damp air and been breathed in by Napoleon. The fact of arsenic in the wallpaper doesn't seem to be disputed from what I saw, but I did see differing opinions as to whether the

Starting point is 00:18:22 amount of arsenic in the wallpaper would have actually been enough to increase the amount of the element found in his hair samples. Overall, it seemed to me that the consensus these days is that Napoleon was not deliberately poisoned and that he very likely did have gastric cancer, given the specific symptoms that were noted both that he had and that he didn't seem to have. For example, he didn't seem to have any of the skin changes that are typically seen in chronic arsenic poisoning or the expected progressive weight loss. Instead, based on sketches of him and measurements of the waistbands of different pairs of his trousers, it appears that he gained a significant amount of weight between 1815 and 1820, when he

Starting point is 00:19:00 suddenly started rapidly losing weight, which is much more consistent with the cancer diagnosis, as is the detailed description of a large lesion on Napoleon's stomach that we have from the 19th century doctors who autopsied him. Further evidence against the arsenic poisoning theory comes from a 2008 Italian study that found no significant differences in arsenic levels between samples of Napoleon's hair from when he was a boy to when he was imprisoned on the island of Elba in 1814 to hair from the day that he died. Further, the levels of arsenic in Napoleon's hair were similar to levels found in hair from his son and from his first wife, the Empress Josephine. Another interesting finding of that study was that although arsenic was found to be present in all the hair samples taken from 10 living people, the levels in the hair samples from 200 years ago were all about 100 times higher

Starting point is 00:19:50 than the more current levels. And one more wrinkle that I'll add to the topic of hair analyses for arsenic levels is an article that was published in 2008 in the Journal of Clinical Chemistry. The authors of this article caution that there is a fair amount of unreliability in the Journal of Clinical Chemistry. The authors of this article caution that there is a fair amount of unreliability in the measurement of trace elements in hair samples. Levels can vary considerably between different hairs from the same person, and hair levels of arsenic are only approximately related to levels that have been ingested. The authors cite a study that found that two people from the same household who had been equally poisoned by drinking well water containing arsenic

Starting point is 00:20:25 had hair concentrations that differed by a factor of 10. Further, the authors state that hair analysis can't distinguish between ingested arsenic and external contamination, and suggest that the arsenic found in Napoleon's hair could have come from hair powders, and or the common practice of the time of adding an arsenic compound to hair to preserve it. So all in all, it seems that Napoleon's death was most likely due to stomach cancer, but possibly hastened through a variety of medications he was given that were likely toxic. It's hard to be sure what role arsenic may have played in his health issues, and we at Futility Closet do not recommend using wallpaper or any other products

Starting point is 00:21:06 that contain arsenic. Yeah, I'm glad I live in this century. Oh, but don't you wonder what they're going to find, you know, 100 years from now that we're poisoning ourselves with. In episode 264, I also continued our discussion on speeding and some of the ways it's being handled in some different countries. First, I have a follow-up on the topic that I recently saw about a pilot program in Estonia that is testing out giving some speeders a timeout instead of a ticket. An article on Jalopnik from September reports that the police are offering some first-time speeding offenders a choice between paying the usual fine or having to wait on the side of the road for a specified amount of time. Drivers who exceed the speed limit by 20 kilometers an hour or less will

Starting point is 00:21:50 need to wait 45 minutes, while those who were driving 21 to 40 kilometers an hour over the limit will have to wait an hour. Apparently, Estonia was experiencing a sharp increase in traffic fatalities, and so they're looking for new ways to try to change drivers' behaviors. An advisor for the Estonian police said that they think that drivers might engage in conversation with the officers during their time out, and that might give the police better insights into why the drivers were speeding. And this story reminded me a little of the rather creative punishments that are used in the 24 Hours of Lemons race that we discussed in episode 263. For example, making drivers that were driving unsafely march around and shout, we're bad drivers. I'm sure it wouldn't be legal, but I

Starting point is 00:22:30 thought if they're looking for a more innovative deterrence, maybe they should check out some of those examples. Would you do that? Would you wait 45 minutes? On the side of the road? Yeah. I don't know. I guess it depends what the fine is, but probably not. That's a long time. That is a long time. But I was thinking if you had to wait with, say, a sign on you that said, I'm an unsafe driver, wouldn't that be even more effective? As the traffic whizzes by. Bob Carroll's let us know about a different kind of experimental project to get drivers to slow down. In 2009, a Swedish advertising firm, to slow down. In 2009, a Swedish advertising firm, DDB Stockholm, devised a contest for Volkswagen Sweden called the Fun Theory, which asked participants to submit ideas for improving a social problem, such as speeding, in a more enjoyable kind of way. In 2010, San Francisco

Starting point is 00:23:17 resident Kevin Richardson won the contest with his idea of a speed camera lottery, in which motorists who aren't speeding are entered into a lottery to win a portion of the fines collected from the speeders. Richardson said that all the attention goes to people who are breaking a law, but there's no attention given to the people who obey it, and he thought that if drivers were given more positive incentives to limit their speed, they might actually do so. In a demonstration of Richardson's idea, a speed camera lottery sign was erected on a multi-lane street in Stockholm that showed drivers their current speed along with a thumbs up or a thumbs down symbol. It wasn't clear in the articles that I could find on this how much publicity the test was given and how much information was shared with the city's residents about the scheme, though a YouTube video on it shows that at least some drivers were aware of the lottery aspect.

Starting point is 00:24:04 though a YouTube video on it shows that at least some drivers were aware of the lottery aspect. The results of the three-day test showed that the average driving speed dropped from 32 kilometers an hour before the test to 25 kilometers an hour during the test period, even though the people running the test were not actually able to assess fines on the speeders. But one lucky driver did receive a check for 20,000 krona, or about $2,000. And I think the idea of a speed camera lottery sounds rather fun, and I see no reason why it wouldn't be effective, but I was unconvinced that these results demonstrated the effectiveness of the concept, as they are often reported as doing. I thought that just showing drivers what their current speed was and showing them that it's being recorded in some way might be effective on its own. And a quick internet search seems to bear me out on this as it does seem that radar

Starting point is 00:24:47 speed signs, as they are sometimes called, that simply show drivers their speeds do slow drivers down and at about the same amount that the Stockholm sign did. Still, if the program were run for longer and maybe there was a fair amount of publicity given to some of the winners of the lottery, then I could see that it might be an effective technique. I also wondered if they might not get some extra traffic on the roadways, though, that are part of the campaign as people might deliberately drive there in order to be entered into the lottery. I don't know if anyone has considered that possibility.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Yeah, I started thinking people are either going to try to game the system or there will be unexpected effects like that. I did want to quickly mention another entrant into the fun theory contest that was rather amusing. In a subway station in Stockholm, a stairway next to an escalator was made to look and act like a giant piano, so that people's steps would trigger tones as they went up and down the stairs. And it was found that 66% more people chose to take the piano staircase instead of the escalator, compared to the average pre-piano day. There's a cute video on YouTube showing the piano stairs for those who want to see how they worked.

Starting point is 00:25:47 That's a neat idea. I'd take the stairs. That'd be fun. That would be fun. And while looking into the story on the speed camera lottery, I came across an article from May 2018 in The Guardian about a similar experiment that was run in the Dutch city of Helmond. A speed meter money box was installed on a stretch of road notorious for speeding problems.

Starting point is 00:26:08 Every vehicle that was observing the 30 km per hour speed limit as it passed would add a tenth of a euro to the monetary figure being displayed, up to a maximum of half a euro per vehicle per day, with the money to be used for a community project. In its first three-week test, the campaign achieved its goal of raising 500 euros to upgrade a local playing field, and the idea was to move the project around for a few weeks at a time through the province of North Brabant, with each city setting for itself the speed limit, the amount collected per vehicle, and the community project. They don't know whether

Starting point is 00:26:39 this will change drivers' behaviors in the long run, but they're hoping that the project will at least make drivers more aware of their driving speeds and that that might have a beneficial effect. I like the idea because, like the speed camera lottery, it's a way to reinforce doing the right thing rather than simply focusing on punishing people for doing the wrong thing. And I like the idea of thinking more creatively about how we can find more ways to do something like that. Yeah, I agree with both of us. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We love how much we learn from our listeners. If you have any comments or follow-ups for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. And as usual, a special thanks to those who have been providing helpful pronunciation tips.

Starting point is 00:27:28 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he's going to try to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Paul Sloan and Des McHale's Remarkable Lateral Thinking Puzzles. It was built, it was filled, it was used. Over a hundred years later, it is still full, but it is no longer used. What is it? It was built, it was filled, it was used.

Starting point is 00:27:53 You said over a hundred years later? Yep. Um, okay, how do you attack that? Is it a vehicle of some kind? Why do I think that? No. No. No. A container.

Starting point is 00:28:07 Would you say it's fundamentally a container? Oh, wow, you have to think about that. Maybe in a broad sense. I don't know. Not what you would normally think of as a container. Does it have a name? The thing that was built and filled and used? Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:28:23 Okay, so it's something I've heard of. Yes. And it's something I've heard of. Yes. And it's... Built, filled, and used. So it's something with a name that was deliberately built, and it's unique. There's only one of these things, would you say? Yeah, I mean, it's like a specific example of a broader category. Like Sasha is a specific cat.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Or a ship. Like there's an individual ship with a given name that's unique. But ships, obviously there's many more than one ship. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Okay. That's progress.

Starting point is 00:28:56 Filled. Would it help me to figure out what it's filled with? Maybe. And then used. Could it be used without being filled? No. Not for its intended purpose. So it's filled then used. Could it be used without being filled? No, not for its intended purpose. So it was filled and used. And you say it's still?

Starting point is 00:29:11 It's still full. Full. But no longer used. Okay. Do I need to know? Well, I was going to say time period, but I guess I know that, don't I? Yeah, and the time period's relevant. Was it the 20th century?

Starting point is 00:29:26 Yes. Early 20th century. Yes. This thing was built and filled. Yes. And theoretically, it could still be used today, but practically speaking, it would be almost impossible for anyone to use it. It really feels like I had a was it filled with water it's hard to guess this if i don't even know what i'm talking about it was filled with water something was built and filled with water yes and that enabled it to be used yes and it was used yes this is a good this is really

Starting point is 00:30:00 lateral puzzle because it's the kind of thing once you get it it's like oh of course yes it is like that it's just like that something that has a name and is unique to that extent is full of water well it doesn't have like i don't know like this table doesn't have a name other than the table in sharon and greg's house but but it's something i've i'm familiar with yeah yeah is it a um is it like a geographical? Nothing geographical. Like a lake or something. Right. Not like that.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Right. Nothing geographical. Well, you wouldn't build a lake. This is part of something famous. The something famous has a name, but it's part of the something famous. Okay. Is this, would you say, big? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:47 Like, is it a landmark? No, no, no, no. Like a dam or something? No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. Smaller than that? Yes, yes. And by full, you mean, I can't even ask that.

Starting point is 00:31:01 It's not just containing, it's not just, never mind. I withdraw the question. Would it help me to know its location? Maybe. Is it still in the place roughly where it was built? No. Is it still in the original place it was used? Not exactly.

Starting point is 00:31:24 Remember, you discovered it's full of water. Yeah, but what the, I mean, you know how many things are full of water? Was it transporting water? Is that what it's used for? No. Liquid water? Liquid water. Fresh water? Uh, no, actually, it wasn't, and it wasn't originally, and it's not now full of fresh water.

Starting point is 00:31:44 Salt water? Yes. Wow, that really ought to help me a whole lot. it wasn't and it wasn't originally and it's not now full of fresh water salt water yes wow that really ought to help me a whole lot it has a name and it's full of salt water is it is it a little more than 100 years ago i keep wanting to say it's a ship well it's part of a ship it's not the whole ship what we're referring to because you don't normally fill a ship with water on purpose. So something that was built, filled, and used, and it's still full of water, but is no longer used. And it's part of a ship. Famous ship. A little more than 100 years ago.

Starting point is 00:32:17 Well, I keep wanting to say the Titanic. It's part of the Titanic. What would you fill deliberately with water on the Titanic? Well, ballast tanks, but that's very specific and unlikely to be true. Well, not swimming pools. Yes. They had salt water in them? Yes, they had a heated salt water swimming pool on the Titanic.

Starting point is 00:32:36 And it's still full of salt water, but nobody's using it anymore. That's totally fair. We can always use more lateral thinking puzzles. So if anyone has one for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Thank you. Feline Overlord. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 trivia tidbits, the Futility

Starting point is 00:33:32 Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 270-Kidnapped by North Korea

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