Lateral with Tom Scott - 144: Let's visit Greenland!

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Iszi Lawrence, Dani Siller and Bill Sunderland face questions about miniature marines, technical techniques and prudent procedures. LATERAL is a comedy panel game podcast about weird questions with wonderful answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit https://lateralcast.com. HOST: Tom Scott. QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe. EDITED BY: Julie Hassett at The Podcast Studios, Dublin. MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com). ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Jordan Cook-Irwin, Katherine Q, Nick Huntington-Klein, Alex Rinehart, Hendrik, James Bailey. FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott. © Pad 26 Limited (https://www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Adidas. When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back. To tell us we'll be okay. To remind us of our ability. To believe. Because their belief in us transfers to self-belief, and reminds us of all that we're capable of.

We all need someone to make us believe. Hashtag YouGotThis. In Warhammer 40k, what is the name of the group of space marines that paint their armor blue? You got this. Dear friends, are you ready to unlock your inner puzzle-solving potential? Are you ready to embrace the power of positive lateral thinking? You are, because here at Lateral, we believe in you. We know that deep down, inside each and every one of you, there's a genius just waiting to break free. It's time to banish those negative thought patterns, to silence that inner critic that says you can't, and to say yes, I can, probably, maybe, solve this weird question about Korean banknotes. Here to let their mind wander, but hopefully not too far, first of all we have from the Terrible

Lizards podcast and author of The Cursed Tomb, which is now out in bookstores, welcome back to the show Izzy Lawrence. Thanks very much for having me back. I am here to be as lateral as possible. I've been copying Krabs since my last appearance, and I'm getting there. The last time I saw you was at the book launch for The Cursed Tomb. And what I remember was someone from the British Museum looking through one of your books and looking at the illustration going, wait, are those a naming an incredibly specific bit of clothing from history?

And you go, yeah, yeah, we've got the illustration to do that. Yes, yes. That was for a different one of my books, that was for the Time Machine Next Door, and I did, because I'm in Age Britain, that was famous for their, selling Rome, their slaves, their dogs, and their duffle coats. So the duffle coat was a big export from Britain, because it was very waterproof clothing. Back in the turn of, you know, in 1 AD, it was a big deal. So yes, that is... That's the sort of level of pedantry that I bring to children's literature.

So there we go. Historically accurate children's fiction. Well, I don't know if any of that will stand you in good stead for the questions today, but very best of luck. We also welcome back to the show, from Escape This Podcast, Solve This Murder, from so many other things. It is, I think, our most regular guest.

You are here for show number one. We are back for show a hundred and a lot. It is always lovely to see you. We will start with Dani Silla. Hi, Tom. I love the intros to these episodes still. I feel like last time we were here we may have been convinced to vote for you for mayor or governor or something.

This time I started to get slight vibes that we were going to join your cult, but I was happy all the same. I was going to go for it. The experimental nature of some of these introductions, they always seem to be placed with the returning crew. Just to... You folks are comfortable here, we'll try something weird. Oh yeah, it works for me. What are you working on at the minute? What are you putting out into the world?

Ah, besides all the normal stuff, what have we got? So yeah, we're still going regularly with Escape This Podcast. A lot of our video game stuff is now out and available to the world, our Golden Idol work, and we have been doing a big hard push into Solve This Murder content, so all our murder mysteries are going to be coming out this year. We also have on the show, also returning from Episode 1 and many others, the other half of Escape This Podcast and Solve This Murder, Bill Sunderland. Hey, I'm back. I'm still here. I never left. I've been in every episode since the first

one. But you haven't heard me all the time. You've just been lurking in the background. Judging. No, I got that one, by the way. We should have done that. We should have had you just record a hundred or so little notes just to put in. Just have them murmuring in the background somewhere. If you ever do a re-release with the guest commentary, you know that we'll be there. Yeah, yeah, we'll do the behind the scenes, even for the episodes we weren't on. Well, very best of luck to all three of you on the show today.

Let's take a deep breath, visualise success, and dive headfirst into the ocean of opportunity that is Question 1. You've got this. Thank you to Alex Reinhardt for this question. For 14 years, Ben posted the same 156 words every day on social media. Why? I'll say that again. For 14 years, Ben posted the same 156 words every day on social media.

Why? He was obviously really into those, when I typed this statement, I do not give permission to Facebook to allow them to see my pictures and use them. And they now doesn't mean anything. It doesn't work. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Mr. Reinhardt. It's not going to help. Yep. That was exactly where my brain went. Little furious that you've stolen it. I mean, to be fair, he's a little furious that Facebook have stolen all his stuff, so... Makes sense.

Is that true? It all balances out. I wonder, how important do we think which 14 years it is is? It sounds like an early thing rather than a later thing, maybe. And it couldn't have been Twitter, could it, in the early days? Because, wasn't that... the character count lower? Yeah. Ooh, good point. 156 words.

Not even. Oh yeah, words. There's no way. Sorry, yes, words. I was listening. Shut up. So, um... No, no, you absolutely were.

I wasn't calling you out on that. You're correct. The character count is 160 characters, and you said it's 156 words, but the words were not all posted at once. Well, for people watching the video, you could see Tom's face. He was calling her out. Yeah, I mean, it's fine. I'm used to it. It's fine. All I'll say is 156 is 13 times 12. That might be significant.

Intriguing. There we go. How much do we have to focus on the maths of this? Who knows? is 13 times 12. That might be significant. Intriguing. There we go. How much do we have to focus on the maths of this? Who knows? I mean, there were numbers. That's always a thing. I don't think you'll be able to guess the maths of this, but honestly, 13 times 12... Bizarrely moved.

And for 14 years, it's 12, 13, 14! Um... I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Because knowing that little bit of times tables, it's not going to be a big clue, but... I mean, maybe. Does this person have an extra finger? Because that would make sense if you're doing cuneiform counting your 12 times tables. Say what? That's what I'm saying. Why everything's in 12s is because in the olden days, you count with your each little part of your finger. So you'd use your thumb as the counter and the top

of the index and the middle and then the end. And so you've got 12 and you've got a 12 by 12 count, which is 144. So if you had an extra finger on this side, just an extra half little nub, you've got your nub at the end, then you could count to 13. You could get a few more into that. How interesting. Exactly, so it'd be 156. Not really, no, but I'm panicking because I have no idea of the answer. Well, I like what you've done because if this was every year, and you've already split this up into 12 times 13, was it actually 13 words a month? Something like that. Now, not quite. But you are closer than you might think. 156 words every day. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's every day.

So it can't be the date. Did he start every single day by saying, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And just go for the whole thing. That's probably 156 words, right? I'm pretty sure I had that as a trivia question tiebreaker once. How many words are in that sentence? 156! I don't think it was that many. I want to say it was 80 something, but I can't remember.

Way more than the Lord's Prayer and Paternoster and stuff. Take your word for that. How long is Laura Mipsum? When you say best of times and worst of times, again, you keep circling the answer in ways that I cannot make puns on right now without giving you the answer. It was the 13 times, 12 of times. I'm putting them together. I've never heard of so many correct-ish things get said.

Right? I think we might be just missing the whole motivation of this person doing this. So I'm assuming, we're all assuming that he's like us and therefore wanting to show off in some clever way. So maybe this is just somebody, I don't know, who misunderstands the use of social media and is just panicking and trying to sort of like, googling the same thing every day, but failing. I don't know. Oh, it's grandma just trying to do her Google searches? Yeah, it could be. It could be that. I don't know.

There was only one word and it was posted 156 times. So 156 times a day. So what happens? One word, 156. And you've got 13… so it's once… no, it's not once an hour, is it? So… oh, hang on. 12… so 13 words every hour? So is it just the time?

Er, kind of, is it? Yeah. It's kind of the time. Yeah. It was the best of times and the worst of times, which is why I didn't want to make that joke. So hang on. So they're posting, roughly, on average, 13 words every hour.

That's what we've got. It's not every hour, because we figured out 13 times 12. So it wouldn't be 13 an hour, it'd be 13 for every AM hour, or from 6 to 6. Yes it would. Yes. Okay. AM hour or from 6 to 6. Yes it would. Yes. I just assumed, I assumed the natural, you know, working hours in a week types. Yeah. To me this feels like, you know how whenever it's 11 11, you go, Oh wow, it's 11 11. Make a wish. I think it's like that. But I don't

know how many times that occurs in a day. like it's one minute past one. I like one, two, three, four. Oh yeah, but only a one, two, three, four. Are you trying to suggest that he's like posting the number five every time a five appears on the clock or something? Every time a 69 appears, he comments nice. I'm going to say Billy, that happens very irregularly on a clock. At 16... 90. Which is half past five in the evening. No, it's half past four.

No, it's half past four. 17. 30. 90. 1690 is 1730 on his metric clock. Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. I'm gonna read you the question again. For 14 years, Ben posted the same 156 words every day.

Oh, he says bong, doesn't he? That's been... There we go! It's been a min-ben! Talk me through it. I was going to make a statement saying, oh, it's ding-dong every time, but then I went, that's two words. You're being silly. When the clock struck 13, and he bonged 13 times. Izzy, do you want to run us through what this was? So, Big Ben is the name actually of the bell rather than the clock,

but it presumably has its own social media accounts, and Big Ben, if you don't know, you've been to London. There's a big clock that's outside the House of Parliament. I actually know what's written around it. I know the lyrics to the Ding Dong Ding Dong, by the way. Just so you know. They have lyrics! I mean, as an aside... You do now have to quote the lyrics to the Ding Dong Ding Dong, by the way. Just so you know. They have lyrics. I mean, as an aside...

You do now have to quote the lyrics. I'm sorry. You don't have to sing them. Okay. So everybody goes... Da da da da da da da da da. And it's... All through this hour, Lord be my guide.

And by thine power, no foot shall slide. It's basically... And it's written on the inside of the bell tower, apparently. Anyway, there's a fact. I know something. Big Ben obviously has its own social media account, and so therefore is telling everybody the time on social media, which roughly adds up to 156 words a day for the past 14 years.

And then for some reason it stopped. The maths on it is one plus two plus three plus four, all the way up to 12, twice a day. It posted bong. It just posted bong at 1 o'clock, bong bong at 2 o'clock, and so on and so on. This was an unofficial account. This was just someone who, in the early days of Twitter, set up a bot to post that and found a lot of people following it. There was a bit of a fuss when the actual managers of Big Ben decided that they wanted

the account. A bit of a kerfuffle there. But yes, this was the unofficial Twitter account, Big Ben Clock, which was closed down in March 2024 when Twitter changed over to X and closed down all the old bot accounts. Each of our guests has brought a question along with them. We will start today with Danny. Alright, let's take a look at this. This one has been sent in by Katherine Kew, thank you so much.

Sometime in the 18th century, Hans arrived at an unfamiliar town in Greenland. Even though he suffered from poor eyesight, he was able to get medical treatment, visit a minister, and stock up on fish without reading signs or asking for directions. How? One more time. Sometime in the 18th century, Hans arrived at an unfamiliar town in Greenland. Even though he suffered from poor eyesight, he was able to get medical treatment, visit a minister, and stock up on fish without reading signs or asking for directions.

How? I've got to assume this has got to do with the fact that Greenland is very far north and therefore it's dark for a lot of the year anyway, and so they're not going to be able to rely on signs that much for normal people. Poor eyesight doesn't make a difference. Exactly. So there must be a way that they're laying things out or indicating things that allows everybody to… but I have no idea what that would be.

Greenland in the 18th century did not have much of a population. Yeah, there was one guy and he was a doctor, a fishmonger, and the third thing that he was. Or even now, Greenland is only just opening up to tourism. Hi, Greenland facts now! They are just expanding the airport in their capital city. Greenland has some US military bases that allow big planes to land, but other than that, only little airports. I don't know if they've finished it or are about to finish expanding the airport and the capital.

So it can now have, like, direct large planes coming from America and Europe and land there. So all of a sudden, after centuries of it being out of the way, like Svalbard, like Iceland, it's going to open up to tourism and it's going to change the place fast. So I'm not sure of Greenlandic history for the 18th century and what was going on there. But it can't be. 18th's really weird because I know that Greenland was, obviously, it was populated by the Greenland Vikings, but basically when the walrus trade reduced, because people didn't want the walrus tusks anymore, basically they all went bankrupt and they all had to leave. And there are towns where

it was really spooky and abandoned, nobody's really sure what happened. But ultimately, people left because it was rubbish living there if nobody wanted to buy your walrus tusks. So I don't know if it has got anything to do with walrus tusks. In no direct way does it have anything to do with walrus tusks. But that's all my facts, Scott. It could be... I mean, there would have surely been Inuit around there as well, but the name is Hans. That does not seem like an Inuit name.

That doesn't sound like a Viking name. That sounds like someone coming in from... Germany. Yeah, Germany, Austria, whatever was... My history knowledge is not good enough to know which countries were which at that point in the 18th century. No, yeah. Or thereabouts. Just trying to give indication that this person was definitely an out-of-towner.

Yeah. So he arrives, he has bad vision, but that doesn't matter. He can find what he needs regardless of his capacity to read a sign that says, hi, I'm a doctor. He sees a doctor, he buys fish. What was the third thing he did? A minister. Yeah, visited a minister as well. Because that was my first thought, that it's like that whole fact of like, oh, do you know that barbers and surgeons used to be the same thing? You'd get your hair cut and then they'd just keep going. But then I was, you know, that's why

I was saying maybe it's doctors also sold fish and were priests in Greenland in the 1700s. This is very likely, no trick about that. These are likely, he went to visit three different people for these needs. So if you're not using sight, what are you using? Are they yelling their trades? Do they have scents? Is it a scent-based marketplace? Fish is easy for that one. Yeah, fish! We can take that one off, that's okay.

The minister, on the other hand. Incense? It could be exactly Catholic, we never know. Incense, fish and blood. So Greenland, I don't know if Greenland had been settled... Anywhere it would be centuries, probably millennia ago they'd have arrived. If it's settlers from Vikings or Southern Europe, maybe. What if all the towns were laid out the same?

Like they just had a plan, they arrived, like here is the town hall and we for some reason always put the church just north of that and the market is always just east of that. It's basically the same town repeated time after time as you go around. Like ancient Egyptians and breweries and bakeries are always next to each other. It's not specifically about layout in that way, but you have identified there would have been some common threads between Greenland towns. What if this was not every town is the same, but this is just like, hey, we're all from Frankfurt and we've gone over to Greenland and to feel at home, we've

built a scale Frankfurt. It's just Frankfurt, but we just rebuilt it here, brick by brick. We copied that town that you're from and we made a new one here in Greenland. So everyone feels at home. That does sound like something 18th century people would do, but not relevant to this. I know. I was going to say that Frankfurt, which is I believe landlocked, would be a really bad idea to put presumably on a coastal. Hey, I didn't do it.

That's true. Nor did they. So, yeah, no one's at fault. So, okay. Maybe this is to do with like auditory stuff. So maybe there's some sort of, you know, if we can't see and we can't ask in the language. To get you on the right track, it is still, it's not about any of the other senses. I think the fact that he had poor eyesight is mainly to say he wasn't going to be doing any reading.

And presumably also not like symbol stuff. It's not like how all the ins are called the red lion because they had a picture of a red lion sort of thing. That is correct. So that is exactly what we're trying to get rid of, dismissing the idea of text or symbols. Is it because he arrived in summer and for whatever reason in Greenland they just get rid of all walls. So they just have it completely open and And so you just see everything. Maybe. I don't know. You know what? Actually, I think that that would be a big problem in this case. Particularly with mosquitoes you get there. I don't think that would be a wise move in the

summer. I think I get to that to say a line that I do love saying as much as possible, which is, Izzy, quite the opposite. They had so many... How did the buildings all set shapes? Like the doctor lives in a circle and the fishmonger lives in a rectangle? Or it's all technically indoors. The town is just in one building to protect it from the elements. It's one big house! It's just a big main hall. I wish that were the answer.

The long house. Shapes is not right, but it's certainly pretty close. They're not different textures of stone. You build a church out of stone, you build a doctor's office out of sticks, and you build a fishmonger out of straw. And the big bad wolf comes along. And Hans is Hans Christian Andersen, an hero. I love the way you've gone straight to.

I have cracked it. You've gone straight to children's nursery rhymes and also the shape block things as well. I love the way your mind is, Bill. It's very cute. What do you picture, if you're picturing Greenland or perhaps a couple of the other Scandinavian place and you do picture their buildings, what do you get in your head? In the 18th century, I'm picturing quite like, I don't want to picture a built up town at all,

because I know that they got depopulated. So it's only been repopulated in the last maybe 50, 100 years at this point. So I'm thinking- We are definitely still talking, I believe, colonial-ish sort of building. So this was a deliberate effort to be built. I'm seeing like rows of wooden huts and houses. You make me think of some of the like GeoGuessr things would be like, red roofs, that's this place. Is it that sort of, is it all the, is it colours? They're just painted completely different colours?

This is about colours! I forgot about colour. I forgot how colour exists! Oh, oh! Come to Spatsburst. Well, yes, but it feels like I'm doing a travel brag story. I've been to Greenland. Oh, what a brag. I once got to travel across northern Greenland and northern Canada in the high Arctic.

And one of the really big things that the Canadians on the boat pointed out is that you go to, like, far north Canada and it feels run down, like everyone's just kind of surviving. There's a lot of shipping containers just kind of sat there doing work as like, yeah, we'll store stuff there. It all feels a bit ramshackle. You go to Greenland, it is sort of beautiful painted doors and painted houses, and it's colourful. It feels like you're in Europe, just a bit colder. Because it's a scale model of Frankfurt! And the colours of the doors and the colours of the houses really stood out.

Yeah. This is absolutely intentional, and nowadays you can have a bit more of whatever you want, though some of this has stuck for tradition's sake. But in colonial times, things were color coded, and some of the industries specifically were color coded. Wow. I did a Google of this, I specifically Googled Greenland hospitals, and some of them indeed, the pictures that showed up are still yellow as was their colour code back then.

Wow. Like bile. Exactly. That's why. So yeah, yellow hospitals, healthcare. Red was churches, schools or the houses of teachers and ministers. Blue was for the fish factories, of course, and black for policing. Amazing. I like it. blue was for the fish factories of course and black for policing.

How fun. Amazing. I like it. That's just like, you know, it reminds me of a worker placement game somehow. You know what? One of the clues that was possible to give was you could argue that the game Sim City did this in a way. Gaming?

Definitely. And the cards. What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled rib eye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Thank you to Hendrik for this question. The Chilean government requires all residents of Villa Las Estrellas to undergo a surgical procedure they don't need. What is it, and why is it done? I'll say that again. The

Chilean government requires all residents of Villa Las Estrellas to undergo a surgical procedure they don't need. What is it and why is it done? I might get to sit this one out. Well, here's the thing. I think I can also sit this one out. Oh no! And that would just be rude to Izzy. Well, I'm going with it's a secret place and they've just ripped out their eyes. So nobody can know. I was taking out their tongues and nobody knows what happens to where

you don't actually know the answer to this question. No hands, they can't feel their way back home. Exactly. So it's unnecessary. But you know, this is why there is no answer to this question because nobody's ever been able to answer it and therefore I don't feel so Tom just really wants to know. I did worry that this one might fall quickly Danny Bill Where do you think I may have mispronounced this where do you think Via Las Estrellas might be? Well, let's just say Chile's already pretty far south, but I think you've got to get even further south. I think if you do a big old jump across the water, you find yourself in Antarctica. In was that Australis at the end, literally just for south?

A house in the south? Estrella. I don't know if that is south. Could be connected, who knows? And classically, there's a thing for people who are going on Arctic research, Antarctic research jaunts, is they say, hey, we don't want to make things complicated. While you're over there, wouldn't it be terrible if your appendix started to burst? That'd be a hassle for everyone involved,

right? You don't need that anyway. It's a pointless organ. Let's just take that out now before you head down and we'll all be more relaxed. So I actually wrote a trivia question about these Antarctic procedures some months ago, and one of the interesting divisions was a lot of people would be, yes, if you're going to be there on research over specific months. I think I was looking at the Australian regulations rather than Chilean, so I don't know how strict these things are and how much they're the same per country. But it was, yeah, if you're going to be there during the especially cold, dark months, you're probably going to be stuck there. You definitely have

to get this procedure done. If you're bringing your family, they should probably have it done. Also, look into your wisdom teeth as well, because that would be annoying too. Yep. This is on King George Island. It's a permanently inhabited Chilean territory off the coast of continental Antarctica. All the inhabitants since 2018, including children, must have their appendix removed because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away. That's not that far.

Ha ha ha! The average temperature there is about minus two, minus three, so we're talking about 27 Fahrenheit. The population ranges from about 80 people in winter to 150 in summer. And penguins. And probably some penguins, yes. Izzy, it is over to you for the next question. This question has been sent in by Jordan Cook-Irwin.

One morning, Margot opened the door to see the message. Hard work, please mumble softly to me. I can't make a pirate ship. Unable to draw a parabola. What did each part mean? One morning Margot opened her door to see the message. Hard work, please mumble softly to me. I can't make a pirate ship unable to draw a parabola. What did each part mean? Did anyone take down all those acronyms? No, no, I really didn't. We could go one by one. Hard work.

Hard work. Well, HW is a pretty bad acronym. Right. And the fact that we were said, what does each chunk mean, suggests that we should be able to look at that hard work and get something out of that without the others. I… Sure. Yeah, I immediately started writing down first letters. Which would be…

Okay. You'd think. HW. PMS. What was it? Please mumble softly. With his song. I can't draw a parabolo. If I were you, I would think about the situation before you think about trying to decipher it. Okay. Yeah, so what was the situation? Someone just opened their door and saw the message. The message. The message. Well, it said the door. Her door. Her door. And so the message.

One morning. One morning. It's the morning. This message comes from the sun. Marga opened her door to see the message. That's right. The sun often says hard work. Please mumble softly to me. This is a known fact. No. Please mumble softly. So why would this message be outside Margo's home? It was outside her home. That is pretty weird because I was going into all sorts of other doors and places where you might see weird words, not just when you're looking at anagrams, but people who do voice software, and

they're trying to capture every sound in the language. Oh, yes. So they make them say nonsense sentences and combinations of words. But if it's outside her front door, it's less likely. It is outside her front door. So when would you see a message outside your front door? You live opposite a giant billboard outside Piccadilly Circus and... Unfortunately.

The only other thing that I'm going is in a put Smarties boxes on cats legs, make them walk like a robot. It feels like if there's a sign outside their door, has someone taken the letters and rearranged them into remarkably coherent sentences. She lives opposite faulty towers. But they're getting really creative by this point. Alas, alas. I want you to think, what I will say is the words were above four pictograms. Oh. That's helped. No, I've got it now. It's some kind of cursed tomb and these are the hieroglyphs drawn on... Oh. That's helped. No, I've definitely got it now. It's some kind of cursed tomb, and these are the hieroglyphs drawn on...

It's a modern-day situation, I'll give you that, so you don't have to go back to ancient Egypt. I did see someone, it was on TikTok or some short form thing recently, going round touring what they called Japan's Most English, which was t-shirts and things in the wild where, in the same way that, stereotypically, like, some English and American people would just get tattoos of Chinese and Japanese characters that don't really make sense but they think they do, just t-shirts with things like, I can't draw a parabola. Or, hard work.

Or, please mumble softly to me. They're just... They have taken sentences out of context and they are being used as placeholder text because it looks good. So, I'm going to say that Tom's very, very close to the answer here. Okay. Okay.

That's exciting. A message. It's on a, in the sky. It's really poor. That's a long message to do skywriting for. On signs, on like pickety, like protest signs or picket signs or... It's not technically a sign. It's just a message. Not a sign. Think about, think about the situation. One morning, it's the morning, Margot opened her door. Why did she open her door? And why did she see this message? Paper. Yeah, that feels like a newspaper getting so close.

The mail. Danny said something. The mail. The mail. All right, what can we do with this? These are on packages. These are on some sort of package that's being delivered to her some mornings. But what on earth are you receiving every morning or some mornings that will have weird, badly translated or nonsense phrases on it? I think you've almost got there, Tom. You just need to put what your previous thought was with this thought, and you've got it.

So the idea of interesting translations. Because it is possible that those first two, like, hard work, please mumble softly to me, could, I suppose, theoretically have gone through some language to be, this is fragile, please handle with care. Boom! Oh! Oh! Fanny's pretty much got it.

So, you're correct. What's the parabola? Hard work, okay, no, let's try and work these out. Give us a second, because hard work must be heavy. Yes! Yeah, exactly that. Heavy, yep. What was the next one?

Please mumble to me, please mumble softly to me. Handle with care? Fragile, yeah. Fragile Handle with care? Fragile. Fragile. Fragile. Don't be loud. Mumble softly to me. What was the next one?

I can't make a pirate ship. Oh right, I forgot about that one. Oh, I can't make a pirate ship. It's got a skull and crossbones on it, and they've gone through Jolly Roger. Non-poisonous. Do not something. It's, it's, it's a tricky one, this one. Uh, do not bend?

No. Not that. Oh, this is, is it, is it this side up? And they've drawn a picture to make it look like the sail of a ship? Oh, that'd be so cute. No, alas not. Ah, okay. Alas not. What's things about a pirate ship that isn't true about a spaceship? You can get it wet.

Boom! So? Oh. Okay. You do not want this package to be a pirate ship. Danny's got it. There you go. Do not get wet.

And the final one, and you've already said it, is unable to draw a parabola. Oh, a parabola. I got one to say parabola, and that's wrong, isn't it? It's parabola. Oh, a parabola. I got one say parabola, and that's wrong, isn't it? It's parabola. That's do not bend. Ah. There you go. You can't make the flat thing into a parabola.

There you go. That's wonderful. But why were they written this way? The message was printed on the box of a kitchen gadget that was made in China. However, the message had not been translated into English very well. An online forum reached this consensus for the translations. So we don't actually definitely

know, but that is generally what people think. I love it. Amazing. Thank you to James Bailey for this question. People training to use the Valsalva maneuver are sometimes told to imagine being in a swimming pool to protect their back. What are they doing, and how does this metaphor help? I'll say that again. People training to use the Valsalva maneuver are sometimes told to imagine being in a swimming pool to protect their back. What are they doing, and how does this metaphor help?

This sounds familiar. I think this is ringing something, but I'm not getting that. When I first read this question, it was exactly the same. I know, I've heard Valsalva maneuver. It's somewhere in the back of my head and I couldn't quite remember it. I'm just thinking about why a swimming pool would protect your back and what you do in a swimming pool to protect your back. And I'm only thinking of diving. I think it's not like, I think if you were in a swimming pool, this wouldn't protect your back. But if you emulate the movements that you would make in a swimming pool, when you are

in the situation to do the Valsalva maneuver, it will protect your back. Not that's my so it's like, if you look like you're trying to tread water, then you'll stay the appropriate angle during a skydive, perhaps. Or like... I mean, manoeuvre, obviously, the only manoeuvre I know of is three-point turn and Heimlich. That is the two manoeuvres. Of those two, Heimlich's the closer one in this situation. Okay, so that's how the maneuver must be to do with something life-saving or to do with the body.

Some, yeah. To protect your back. But not choking, because we've already got Heimlich for that. He's wrapped that up. That's his thing. Yeah, now obviously, when people talk about protecting your back, usually that has something to do with lifting, I feel. Oh.

It tends to be the biggest time. So why would you need to lift somebody to save their life or to save them from damaging themselves? I'm particularly- If you're a firefighter, perhaps that wouldn't involve lifting people. That's a fireman's lift. We've got a nice- Yeah, that's true. That's true. That is bottom by the head and walk. That's not- I've seen it. There's a thing that you can teach carers to do for people who are caring

for disabled or immobile patients to lift them up and get them onto chairs and things like that, which is a very specific and complex maneuver. You get them on your knee and you lean yourself back and then you can move to this But I don't know how swimming would help that we could all hear from your mic quality that you did the lean back I've seen people lift people up in terms of they do a sort of weird like forward roll over the top of them And it's like a fireman. Yeah the Ranger roll. Yeah, they did that's not a Valsalva maneuver I take it in this case the Valsalva maneuver, I take it. In this case, the Valsalva maneuver helps them achieve the thing they're trying to do without hurting their back.

I definitely thought back to one of my first early industry training things where the very first test that you had to pass was just pass or fail, and it was, there is a box on the ground. It doesn't weigh anything, but you have to demonstrate the appropriate way to pick up this box. And it was essentially don't lift with your back. It was bend your knees. That's it. If you use your knees, you pass. If you don't use your knees, you fail. I think is this, is this a squat technique about where you breathe during a squat.

And it keeps you, you have to picture that the water, I've seen this technique being taught. It's like you have to picture that there's water at like chest height or whatever. So that once you go down to like lift the bar during a deadlift, you have to hold, you hold your breath when you're down and you only breathe at the top and it keeps your core tight and full of breath or whatever so that you don't relax halfway and then injure yourself. You brace yourself, keeps you braced to only breathe at the top.

Yes, you've got it, Bill. Valsalva. Yes, filling in the details, Valsalva maneuver, which was at the back of my head, which was I think at the back of a few of your heads, is exhaling against a closed throat, a closed glottis. So you're just kind of... —Gnk! —Gnk! That kind of... —Ahhh! —You're trying to exhale,

but you are stopping yourself doing that. That is the Valsalva maneuver, which is used for a few things. It can lower your heart rate. It can... There's a few other medical things it can do. But in this case, it is the correct thing to do when you are weightlifting, when you're squatting with weights, like you said, Bill. Gotcha.

I mean, just basically, if you're doing like a high-intensity weight, like doing lots of like, you know, goblet squats and stuff, don't do that, because you will die of lack of breath. We all will eventually. I mean, we can hope not to, but... It might as well be while squatting. I know, but I just think... It's a bit extreme. You can still breathe and brace your core.

I mean, if you're doing for a big lift, then yeah. But if you're doing like, you know, I've got a 12-kilogram kettlebell and just doing some squats. You can brace yourself and still breathe. I just want people to know that. Don't collapse because you've got like ten reps to do, and you're not breathing, until you're up and going... ...

Yes, this is when serious weightlifters are training to do squat techniques, where they can do injuries to themselves if they get the breathing wrong, and beginners often get the breathing wrong. Yeah. But also, maybe there's a sort of psychological element to it, because you're thinking, hang on, I'm in the water, therefore everything's lighter. It might well be. But yes, they are trained to imagine standing in a neck-high swimming pool, so that as they

go under, they hold their breath, they perform the Valsalva maneuver, and then sometimes it's exhale on the way back up. Or just don't. It's hard. Bill, it is over to you for the next question. Sometimes it's exhale on the way back up. Or just don't. It's hard. Bill, it is over to you for the next question. Alright. This question was sent in by Nick Huntington-Kline.

Benny Blanco is a successful songwriter and producer, with credits on hits such as Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, and Kesha's TikTok, why are all of his early songs set to a tempo of 120 beats per minute? And I'll give you that again. Benny Blanco is a successful songwriter and producer with credits on hits such as Katy Perry's Teenage Dream and Kesha's TikTok. Why are all of his early songs set to a tempo of 120 beats per minute? The minute you said Benny Blanco, I was like, oh, he's a songwriter and then he's a producer.

And then you said the words songwriter and producer. And that's... Yeah, stole that knowledge right out from Undyne. I think I've got a solid guess at this, but I'm not going to. I think I've got a solid guess here as well. Oh no, I hate that! The thing is, I don't know it. No, I don't know it either. I'm guessing you... guess at this, but I'm not going to... I think I've got a solid guess here as well. Oh no, I hate that! The thing is, I don't know it. No, I don't know it either. I'm guessing you...

No. All right, you... I don't know it either. Should we start with Damien, then? My best guess is, are we still on the safety train, and he really wanted one of his songs to be the next Stayin' Alive for Resuscitation? On the assumption, Izzy, that our guesses are going to be close, I'm going to drop in a pop fact here, which is that 128 BPM is known—

I think it was— I can't remember, I think it was the Pop Bitch newsletter that came out with this. 128 BPM is like the kiss of death for Eurovision songs, because it's the easiest one to write in. Eurovision songs have to be three minutes or less, and if you want to do verse chorus, verse chorus, middle eight, final chorus, in three minutes, it's 128 BPM. It fits exactly. So you choose that because it's the easiest one to choose, and your song sounds like everything else and blurs into the background. So I think, my guess would be it's got something to do with certain songs with certain beats for

per minute being saved for a particular reason on certain playlists and therefore getting a lot of playtime. Oh. How does that work? He's trying to game the algorithm. Yeah, kind of. So it's to do with that. But there is, for example, when do people listen to a lot of music?

And when do you get streamed a lot and played a lot? What are you doing? And that is, shall I just say, what I think is… Oh, in the gym? Like, you're looking for a playlist that's a certain BPM so you can run to it? Boom. So I think 120 beats per minute is a really good pace to run at, maybe. You know, with steps. I don't know. I don't run. That might be ridiculously quick. That would make sense to me. I've run the City to Surf a couple of times years ago now, and I couldn't have done it without a couple of very specific songs in my earphones keeping me going at a beat. So that's why I think, you know, there is a particular thing, so maybe 80 beats per minute if you're going on the slight slow job, but 120 you can go quite slow because it's 60. And also that probably a sprinting pace as well is my guess. But I don't know.

I will say you're building a world in which Benny Blanco said out, went, I've crafted, I found this perfect number, I'm feeding it to that number, it's perfect. That is not at all what happened. Okay, so my guess is that this was his early work, right? He was just... I don't know his history, but I assume like a lot of producers he started out in his bedroom with pirated software or free software or something like that, and that his software was just locked to 120 BPM because the free version only lets you create songs at 120

BPM. And that you need to pay the 30 bucks to unlock it, and he was like 15 at the time. Now, no, no, I'm debating whether or not to give it to you. No, not this soon. It's close, but the way your face is looking, it's not right. What I will say is, money was not... It wasn't that he didn't buy the software that could do it. He wasn't refusing to buy it. Like, by the time… look, once you've done one of Teenage Dream or Kesha's TikTok, you've got enough money to do the other one with whatever you need. It was not a commercial limitation.

So it is like the default setting. He's just not changed it. Is it? He's using the same… so like, there's a free track on each keyboard that you can use, and he's just using the same free track that's the rock beat. Yeah. You are dancing, dancing around it. It is incredibly close. Did he just not know how to change the BPM? He just didn't know how to change the BPM.

Beautiful. He had all the money in the world, but not one friend to help him. Yeah. Why change something that works? That's true. He could find out if he really cared, but it doesn't matter because he's a massive success and none of us have written amazing songs for Kesha. Yes.

No, look, you're 100% correct, Tom. 120 beats per minute is the default, in this case specifically the default in Pro Tools that he was using to construct his songs. And a couple years into making hit songs, he didn't realize he could change the BPM settings. So he just let it go by default, matched it to that. Apparently in general, Benny Blanco is not good with technology. He doesn't like flying, he doesn't have an email address, he is not good with technology, he doesn't like flying, he doesn't have an email address, he's not good with computers, and this was a symptom of that. He just went, look, eventually he figured it out, but yes, he did not know that he could change the default beats per minute in his music software.

How did he think everyone else was doing it? Could I just say, for Escape This Podcast and for Solve This Murder, I make original music and I write like two songs every episode to fit in. Oh wow. I get it. I get it. Sometimes I'll get to a point where I really think the song should slow down nicely and go from like 120 down to like, you know, like slow down, get to like 90 by the end of that

scene. And then I go, I don't know how to make it do that. So I guess that'll just be, that'll just be good in my mind, but I'm not going to try and figure it out now. I have very specific techniques involving Photoshop and making layers and making masks the layers and changing them. And I, I'm almost a hundred percent certain it's probably the most inefficient way of doing it, but because this is the way I've always done it, I don't want to change it because it works. And you just don't have that half a day to learn everything. For the first like six months of making podcasts, I didn't know what compression was. And I kept like normalizing to a certain thing and then reducing it, then normalizing it

down, then cutting the pigs until I could like manually compress the audio to get it even sounding. I was just doing it by hand, and then like, six months in I was like, you know there's a button for that? All right, cool. It's sickening. So for the first few years of his hitmaking career, Benny Blanco did not know that he could change the default beats per minute in Pro Tools, the music software that he used. Which leaves us with the question that I asked the audience at the very start of the show, thank you to Jordan Cook-Irwin for sending this in.

In Warhammer 40k, what is the name of the group of space marines that paint their armour blue? Now, we have had some Warhammer fans on the show before, Simon Clarke most notably. Does everyone know what Warhammer is? I'm very aware of Warhammer because there is a lot of stuff, very light packages, with no Chinese, weirdly translated descriptions on them, that get delivered to my house and then I move them to the kitchen table and they get taken to a shed in the garden where the nerds are.

So... So I'm aware, but I have no understanding. I know orcs are in there, but that's as far as I go. I inherited a whole big tyrannid army at one point from a friend. I had a couple of elder troops at some point. Okay, so you know some of the names. That's helpful. I know the answer to this question. Okay, these are miniatures that get painted when they arrive

and then get used for fantasy war gaming. A far science fantasy future. I'd just encourage any of you who've got friends, you never know what presents to get them, to get them into Warhammer because suddenly Christmas birthdays, it's so easy. They want paint, they want brushes, they just want this specific thing. Before you kick this one home then, Bill, Danny, Izzy, do you want to take a shot at the name of the group of Space Marines that paint their armour blue?

Yeah, the Blu-Tacs. Yeah, I assume there's got to be some way in here. What can we associate with this? And blue, the Neptunians. I don't know where this goes. I don't know their naming conventions outside of what Bill's just said. The keywords are marines and blue. Marines and blue. So, the sea teals.

The navy teals. Oh, that's good. That's really good. I wish I'd thought of that. But I believe, unlike there's so many different types of marines, lots of different orders, I know the names of almost none of them, but I do know that the blue ones, well they're pretty cool marines. They're ultramarines. Yes.

This is a pun on ultramarine, the blue pigment that was traditionally made using ground-up lapis lazuli stones. Thank you very much to all our players. Let's find out what's going on in your life. Where can people find you? We will start with Bill. Yeah, if you want to check out what we're doing, you can get Sins of New Wells, the new DLC for Rise of the Golden Idol that we worked on and we're very proud of.

And Danny can tell you the other one. Danny! I think that the best thing you can do if you want to hear some murder mystery podcasts, everyone loves murder mysteries right now. Check out Solve This Murder on wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you're hearing this now. And Izzy. You can find me at iszi.com. If you basically put ISZI in a search engine you'll find me. And yes, if you want your children's fiction pedantic, this is for you, the cursed tomb

out now. Thank you. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com, where you can also send in your own ideas for questions. We are at Lateralcast, basically everywhere, and there are video highlights regularly at youtube.com slash lateralcast. Thank you very much to Izzy Lawrence. Thanks.

Sorry, I don't know what to say. Danny Siller. I'm doing finger guns at the screen. And Bill Lawrence. Thanks. Sorry, I don't know what to say. Danny Siller. I'm doing finger guns at the screen. And Bill Sunderland. Thank you for having me. That's how it's done! I'm Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral.