Lateral with Tom Scott - 147: The blank homework

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Ali Spagnola, Evan Heling and Katelyn Heling face questions about edible engineering, careful characters and African airlines. 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: Raquel, Matthew B., Crashington, Jacob, Lucas, Bob Weisz. 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

Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go Network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. What rule gave rise to the self-proclaimed title of Salad Engineer? The answer to that, at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. This is something of a maker special on Lateral,

as we welcome back three familiar faces to the show, who are all looking to better their performance from their last appearance. Like a butcher's shop on Mount Everest, the stakes have never been higher. Bravo. Here to face a grilling once more. We start with Alice Spagnola. Welcome back to the show.

Hi, thanks. So glad to be here. Last time on the show, I don't think we really appreciated just what a wide range of ridiculous things you build and make and work with. What have you been doing lately?

I'm trying to make crocs out of wood because that's sensible. Ooh. I was trying to portmanteau crocs and clogs there. and it really doesn't work. Croggs? Crocs? Clocks?

Yeah, that's difficult. So we'll see. But, yeah, the world's most comfortable shoe. I'm just trying to make them extremely uncomfortable. Is that like carving and polishing it and everything? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not even that far into it, but it's happening, hopefully. Well, very best luck to you with the project and with the show today.

You are joined by two people in the same room, who will always hide their notes from each other when they ask the question. Evan and Caitlin, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? We're doing good. Happy to be back. I'm ready to exercise my brain again.

Well, thank you very much for coming back. Last time I saw you, you had just completed the annual pumpkin. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's crazy. A lot has happened since then. Yeah? Yeah, we've been working on a few interesting things.

Evan built a custom ergonomic laptop. That is transforming. Okay, so that, how do I describe this to the people watching an audio? That, is that so you don't have to look down at the screen? You can keep you... So it's on like telescoping arms, the screen, it just kind of comes up to any height? Yeah, it's selfie sticks. That's wonderful.

Wait, so, hold on. Now I'm confused. Did you, like, reroute all the wiring through the selfie sticks? Where does it go? It's Bluetooth, so it's wireless. It's actually just a tablet on top and a Bluetooth keyboard joined together with laser-cut parts and selfie sticks and camera hinges. That is magical. That's so good.

All right, well, very best luck with the show today. No more mincing of words. We will get straight to the meat of the matter. There's a lot of meat puns. I'm butchering them. Sharp, here's question one. This question's been sent in by Jacob. Why could the flag of Guinea be seen on Air Marley airplanes?

I'll say that again. Why could the flag of Guinea be seen on Air Marley airplanes? First off, I need to figure out what is an Air Marley airplane? Yeah, like where is that airline from? Because it would make sense if it was from Guinea. Yeah. That would be very obvious. There's just like two words I don't fully understand.

Allie, do you have any insight? Yeah, it is a word salad. Didn't we open with the salad thing? Sounds like you threw magnetic poetry onto my fridge, and now it's a question. I think this might be an accent thing, because you will have heard that as the name Marley with an R in it, because I have a British accent. This is M-A-L-I, the African country. Oh, Moly. Yep. Okay.

That's what happens. That makes more sense. You know what, I don't actually know what the local pronunciation of that country is. I just said it with my accent. I was just trying to hide the fact that I didn't know geometry, geography. Geography. So yes, this is the flag of Guinea, the country, seen on Air Mali, which is the now defunct national airline for the African country.

Well, I know that in Africa, there have been a lot of rearranging of countries and renaming of countries and like there's been more shuffling of that in Africa to some degree than in other continents as political and geopolitical situations change and and stuff like that. So I wonder if it was something like that. Or I wonder if it's just something where like, you know, one line of planes was purchased by another country or something. I can see the that too. Is the Molly flag? Is that how you pronounce it? We'll go with it. Sure. Really simple. Could you accidentally put that in your branding? Because it is just a logo that you designed and oops, it's also a flag. So, not that, but it is something about designs and flags. It is a property of the flag and the plane. I can't say more than that,

right now. Oh, so it's not that the countries are so close that you just look out the window and there's a flag down on the ground from the other kind. Okay. Because that was the other option. Is it, is one country's flag a subset of another country's flag? Like, is a portion of one flag the flag of another country? Like within the design? Within the design. Subset is not the right term, but you're starting to think in the right area there. Oh. It's not like one of those things where Australia and New Zealand have the Union Jack in the corner. It's not like that. Okay, okay. That's where I was going with the thought. I wonder if it's backwards. The logo was first and then the flag happened. I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Oh, are we on the right track.

I feel like we are. You are, but not in the way you think. Dang it. He's saying that I'm on the right track and it's not useful. You said the right words. I wonder if one of the flags is pretty simple. Like it's just one color and there's like a circle cut out of it. But the circle is like a window that's cut out in the airplane. So the airplane makes another country's flag on accident or something. Now you're getting close. Oh.

Okay. Because something that Tom said made me think that it has to do with the airplane specifically. So there's a feature on the airplane that modifies one flag and makes it look like another flag. Yes, absolutely right. The flag's printed on the headrest in a way that moves it around, printed. No, it's on the outside of the plane I'm getting. It could be, it is. It could be like on the tail and the tail cuts something off

because the tail isn't like a rectangle and it cuts off like an identifying feature that differentiates the two flags. No, sorry. But you start to think in the right direction. It's a quirk of how the flag is painted on the plane. Does it have to do with degrading over time? It becomes perhaps sun bleached and it changes the color. No, both the flags were on the plane.

Both the flags are on the plane. And they're painted on. Yep. And we got the most positive response when I said there was something like a window or something like that, but it's not going to be a window. It's a quirk of how flags are painted on planes, basically anyway. How are flags painted on planes? Which makes me think it either has to do with, like, how it would have to work around and, like, accommodate around features like windows or how it would have to work around or accommodate, like, the curvature of the plane or, like, the shapes of, like, the tail or the wings or something like that. Not quite that.

Have a think of, let's say it wasn't painted on there. Let's say that they actually just put flagpoles on the side of the plane, because that's what they're trying to emulate. It, like they put it on backwards so that the plane flying forwards it's like going the other direction. You said earlier, Allie, I wonder if it's backwards. And I went, oh, and then you said something about a different topic. I was like, oh, that's not what you meant by that,

but you said the right word. You absolutely said the right word. Yes, flags on planes are painted as if they were flying from a staff and the plane is going forward. So if you ever look at the right... hand side, the starboard side of like a U.S. Army plane, then the flag will be apparently backwards because you are seeing as if it's flown from a staff. So put it together, what's special about the two flags? They are inverses of each other. Yes, they are both trick-a-law flags with three

vertical bars. They are the reverse of each other. So, Air Mali, painted backwards to look like a flagpole, is the flag of Guinea. Evan, it is over to you for the next. question. This question was sent in by Matthew B. In 1915, Anzac forces evacuated their position in Glippoli, now part of Turkey. One soldier improvised a device consisting of two tin cans, one of which had a small hole in it. How did he save tens of thousands of lives? In 1915, Anzac forces evacuated their position in Gli, now part of Turkey. One soldier improvised a device consisting of two tin cans, one of which had a small hole in it.

How did he save tens of thousands of lives? Now, I feel like for the Americans on the call, I need to give a little bit of context here. I had to do a little bit of digging on this, too, to refresh some memories. So Anzac is the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. I don't know. The AC might be something else,

but it's Australian and New Zealand forces. and Gallipoli was a bloodbath. It's in popular culture, just a very dark time in Anzac's history. If you would like to feel very bad for a while, if you listen to the band played waltzing Matilda, it is in Australian, New Zealand popular culture as the bloodbath. So this is a dark question, but you said save tens of thousands of lives? Yes.

Okay. One soldier improvise a device. With two tin cans and one has a hole in it? Yeah, a little bit of an inventor-tinkerer. Okay. I mean, I did this exact thing, I'm sure, when I was six, and it's telephone. Is it not speaking between the two of them? Obviously, that's the first thing that comes to mind, but it would be two holes.

That's what came to mine on to. Yeah. Now, there was still a piece of string. Okay. And I'm assuming that these were connected into one singular. system because it's referred to as a device, like a singular device. So it's not like you throw one over there and you keep one here. Now, the two tin can did interface with a third thing besides the string.

The inventory we have is two tin cans with one small hole and there's something else a piece of string involved. Yes. My initial idea would be that it would be super complex and the tin cans are just one small piece of a really big, complex, confusing thing. but not if it's just three things or four things. And so whatever this device did, it allowed, what was it like,

do you see 10,000 people to, like, retreat? Yeah. So they were able to, like, run away. And so that makes me think, like, did this, like, I wonder if it, like, imitated something that it wasn't. Like, if, like, something about the hole made it, like, like, you could spin it around and it would make, like, like a sound like it's something else.

Caitlin was kind of a little bit on the right track, generally. I think you guys are getting there slowly. Okay. So maybe it imitates something else or like, like seemed like it was something other than two tin cans and a piece of string. It can't be something as simple as like a trip wire or something like that that, that detected something. Yeah, I'm also trying to think of, like, why is there a hole in one of them?

Hmm. You know, is it because, like, was that hole, like, an attachment point and it attached to something else? Or did something go in, need to go into the hole or come out of the hole? Like, could they put something in there and swing it around? And, like, there was, there's no swinging. There's no swing in it? Okay. I don't want you to, like, go too far down that rabbit hole.

Okay, because I was briefly thinking, like, remote minefield detector. where you're just swinging a thing around. But this is a lateral question. It's not going to be something grim. This is going to be about saving lives. One can was placed above the other. Okay. Okay.

One above the other. Water filtration. When it's tipped, you hear it? It specifically allowed them to retreat. I didn't say that. Oh, that's why I'm clarifying. Or did it just say it saved them? It saved tens of thousands of lives.

Okay. Okay. If one's on two, stacked tenuously and it gets tripped in falls that's a mere cat being like hey something's coming and then 10,000 people yeah Tom was on somewhat of a tangential track with water water is involved somehow okay okay it's not filtration or sanitation it's like what else would you find you'd have like helmets you'd have like rope you'd have like rope you'd have like rope is just big string.

Water. Was it in a river of some sort? No. I'll give you a small hint. The can with the hole is the one that had the water in it. Okay. So the hole is either for putting water in or pouring water out. You could also use it for telling time.

If you have a can that drains at a known speed, you could use it for, I'm running out of things to use it for. Tom was on the right track a little bit. There was a little bit of a time element to it. The drip over time was a key part of the design. You're making tiny stalactites. And so the other can is fully closed? No, no.

Oh, it's an open can. So there's an open can. So there's a can that has a hole in it and water's dripping out of that. That makes a sound. It's something to do with the audio. You know, I'm going to go back and add a clarification, because Caitlin did point something out. So in 1915, Anzac forces evacuated their position. Oh.

So you were right. It was during an evacuation. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So they did leave where they were because of this can thing. Yes. Okay.

This is trench warfare. Are they trying to convince someone that there's. still someone at home? Like, are the people still in there? But how would you do that with? And making sounds. Could the sound of the dripping water somehow, like, mimic, like, the sound of, like, an army being there in some way?

Yeah, like, home alone when he puts all those people up in the windows, and it's, like, definitely a family here. It is very home alone-ish. Okay. I'm noticing you're having to cover your face, Evan, so you don't give anything away. Well, okay, so the only home alone things are either convincing people that you're still in or setting booby traps. Yes. Like, is this a way to make the trench unsafe for someone following so they've got time to retreat?

So it's not a booby trap. It's more convincing someone that's home, but dripping water isn't really that loud. what would be around that would really make a louder sound during trench warfare? A gun. This device pulls a gun trigger somehow via water or a string.

On a delay. Keep on going. It's on a delay. Yeah. So it fills the can without the hole and the weight of that once it's enough, it pulls the trigger. You guys got it.

And that convinces the enemy that you're still there. They're still there. And it's not safe to come in. because someone might be shooting at you, which gives the troops time to retreat. Yes. When the troops decided to evacuate in December 1915,

Lance Corporal W.C. Scurry invented what became known as the drip rifle. Water slowly drained from one can into another that eventually became heavy enough to pull the trigger of a mounted rifle via a string. The sporadic firing of rifles convinced the Turkish forces that the lines were still occupied long after the evacuation is finished. Wow.

Since the Turkish troops were close by, it's estimated that without the distraction, up to half of the 80,000 Anzac troops would have died. In reality, only half a dozen casualties were taken because of this invention. That's incredible. Makers! Yeah, let's go.

Yeah. Thank you to Lucas for sending in this next question. When filming the Endor scenes for Star Wars Return of the Jedi, one character often had to be accompanied by workers in high-vis vests. Who was it and why? One more time, when filming the endor scenes for Star Wars Return of the Jedi, one character often had to be accompanied by workers in high-vis vests. Who was it and why?

Okay, so the end-door scene is snowy, white. What blends in with white, more white. Was it the, like, was it the snow monster? And he had to be escorted by people in high viz vests because he wasn't visible? You have unfortunately confused Endor with Hoth. Oh, my God. Oh, that's embarrassing.

Oh, my nerve credential. So embarrassing. I was going to say something, but, you know. What I like is we all let Evan just carry on with that. He's like, well, someone's going to have to tell him. I was like, he's going to get it. You were so confident. Okay, so Endor.

That's the forest one, right? Yes, the forest moon of Andor. Okay. I love that scene. The thing that they're around is dangerous. Other people need to see whatever they're surrounding the character. What character would be dangerous to other people versus the other way around? Hmm.

It could also be that they're blending in, too, because in that battle, there were Ewoks. Were those the small? Yeah, Ewox. Okay. Ewox were present in that scene, and maybe they were too small or they blended into the forest too much. Yeah, it could go either way.

It could go either. It could be that it was dangerous for the character being escorted or the character being escorted. Everyone else needed to be aware of where they were because there was a danger if they didn't know. Do we think it would help if one would have seen? seen Star Wars when answering this question? Probably.

Probably. I mean, I've seen it, but it's been so long. Even as someone who's never seen all the Star Wars films all the way through, I know this. I think most people who've, if you know pop culture, you would be able to answer this one. Okay. So I'll describe some scenes that I remember. So there's the ATAT Walker, it gets smashed by two logs, but I think that might have been a miniature because they were doing practical effects back then.

There were a lot of battle scenes. There was a lot of fighting. A lot of EWalk fighting. Were the EWalks kids? They're small, right? Were they child actors? I don't actually know. But it seems like that doesn't matter.

It doesn't, no. Which means you can rule out EWox. Okay, rule out EWX. Okay. I was really going hard, like, into the EWalk direction because I was thinking like something everyone knows if you haven't watched it. Now there's the rebels or the Empire forces.

Yes. Mainly like stormtroopers and stuff like that. I'm also trying to think of stuff that's like iconic to Star Wars that you would know even if you don't watch. Yeah. There's also something that is iconic that is outside the world of Star Wars here. And have a thing about where they might be filming this. They need a forest scene.

Where are they going to go for it? Redwoods, maybe. The trees were big. They were big. And that makes me think of Redwoods. Were they, but there's not like, my brain was about to say, like, were they wearing Hyva's vest so that, like, hunters didn't shoot anyone on set. But I don't think there's hunters in the Redwoods.

Keep thinking. This could be a different forest where there are hunters. Oh, my gosh. Wait, wait, wait a second. I'm going to let you keep on going. Oh, wait. Oh, no. I know.

I think I know. I think I know. Okay, well, I don't know where the forest is, but... It is the Redwood State Parks. It is Northern California, yes. Okay, I think the character at risk was chewy. Yes, Chewbacca. Yeah, and I think it's because, like, they were worried that hunters would shoot him,

thinking he was, like, a large animal, or, like, Bigfoot. Or, like, Bigfoot. Bigfoot's the key word there, yes. Oh, that's great. I love this question. Yes. That's so good. The crew were worried that Chewbacca, or actor Peter Mayhew,

would be mistaken for Bigfoot in the dense forests of Northern California, because Bigfoot hunters had searched in there. And there were some shots where he was off in the distance. So they put a couple of folks with high-vis vests near him at all times, just in case there was some hunter nearby who was like, I'm going to bag Bigfoot. I would feel like that's not enough. If I'm playing Chewbacca, I feel like we need a better contingency planning.

That's great Ali, whenever you're ready This question has been sent in by Raquel Sarah is spending a relaxing evening at home After a while she sighs and decides she needs to tink After tinking for a while She sighs again and decides she needs to frog What is causing her to tink and frog?

Yoga physicians And again, Sarah is spending a relaxing relaxing evening at home. After a while, she sighs and decides she needs to tink. After tinking for a while, she sighs again and decides she needs to frog. What is causing her to tink and frog? Very interesting question. Very interesting. So we can use some context clues. We know tinking is something that takes a while to do, because it says she tinks for a while. Yes. So it's not like. She tinks for a while, smart. You do.

She also, before tinking and frogging, she sighs, which to me a sigh indicates it's got a little bit of like a reluctance. Like, yeah, I should do this. I guess I got a tink now. Yeah, got a t. Now, I wonder if those are T stands for something, I stands for something. What are those called? Like an acronym. Acronym.

It could be an acronym or some kind of like slang that we're not understanding. It's very skibbiddy. It's very Sigma. Oh, no. She's rizzling right now. Oh, no. Tink and frog. Tink and frog.

I'm trying to think, is there any link between those two? Yeah. T-I-N-C-F-R-O-G. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. They're both four-letter. Four-letter words.

Words. maybe acronyms. She's at home. She's at home. Yeah, she's home. I will confirm it is T-I-N-K. T-I-N-K. That makes me think

that maybe it is either an acronym or it's short for something where, like, it being a K instead of a C is relevant. For some reason, when I was hearing the question being asked, I wanted to add, like, letters to it to complete it, like think or,

I don't know what frog would turn into, but, like, maybe there's like a, like a, what's like like the pig Latin, you know, like where it's like, yeah, you know, like where one word kind of means another word through some formula. Hmm. Like it's code. Like it's code. You're on the right track. The word tink is, has a clue in it.

Tink. Okay. Tink. So Tink is short for Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. I don't know which adaptation of Peter Pan but so now I'm making a load of Disney connections in my head you've got Tinkerbell and you've got the princess and the frog

and you've got a load of old fairy tales and things like that but I don't know what that could be a metaphor for metaphor for. So she pretends to be Tinkerbell for a while and then she pretends to be Kermit the Frog for a while. Okay, no I would say not that track. We went too far. Okay.

And you're right about the sighing. She's trying to undo some mistakes. So you're thinking correctly here. She's trying to undo a mistake. She's like, oh, I'm going to tink for a while. T-I-N-K. This is tickling something in the back of my head. Like crochet.

I don't know why. My brain has just gone like crochet. That this is... Like the noise of needles. It was when you said undo some mistakes. My brain went to like crafting, and then I feel like I've heard frog. There's a linguistic concept called priming, right? Where, like, you hear one word, and then the bits of your brain associated with other similar concepts.

Just gently light up, so you've got more. And, like, I heard undo mistakes and frog, and suddenly the crochet word in my head lit up. You are so close. If that's the case, my mom is going to be yelling at the screen. I wonder if, you know how when you're tying your shoes, you go over the this and you go under the that and you remember what you're supposed to do in what order by like saying like, you know, we remember an acronym. So maybe like Tink is like together in not. Not. K something.

You know what I mean? What action are you doing? Oh my. Oh. oh you're knitting you are knitting you are specifically knitting have a look at the words tink with it oh it's backwards it's backwards so if you're undoing if you're undoing knitting

you're tinking yeah oh oh oh my god tinking is undoing knitting so what would frog be do you want to do you want to try to figure that out too So if tinking is, I'm doing knitting. So Tinking is knitting backwards.

I mean, this one's a little obscure. It's not, it's not a wordplay thing here. Like, yeah. So it's not gauphing backwards. So, wow, you guys are incredible. I didn't even have to give you any, any notes here. Like, you got everything that I was supposed to give you is clues. So what's frogging?

So we need to figure out frog. So Sarah's knitting and she made some mistakes that you got to. that that's why she's sighing. Tink is to go backwards to the place where you made the mistake. So knit backwards. And frog is to unravel several rows of stitches. If you realize that the mistake happened much earlier, the name is a pun on rip it, rip it, rip it, rip it, unravel it, rip it back, mimicking

ribbit noise that a frog makes. Rip it, rip, rip, rip, right. Wow. People who knit are very clever with their terms, and I like it. I like the playfulness. Playful, yeah, very, very good. That's awesome. Thank you to Bob Weiss for this question.

In 2019, a professor in Japan set a class assignment to write an essay about their recent trip to a museum. One student turned in a blank sheet of paper and she was given top marks. Why? I'll say that again. In 2019, a professor in Japan set a class assignment to write an essay about their recent trip to a museum. One student turned in a blank sheet of paper and she was given top marks. Why? It's a minimalist art museum, and we're just not putting anything on the page because that suits that style.

Or I wonder if like, like there's any reason why the, it might have been like invisible ink or something. Ooh, it was a spy museum. Spine museum. Because we don't know what you might not be an art museum. Yeah, I know I assume art. I wonder if it has to do with 2019. This was before the pen. I'm going to cut you off.

Caitlin, you're right. It absolutely is invisible ink. That is half the answer. But I'll let you work out the rest. Okay, okay. Oh, wow. So what kind of... Good job.

Thanks. Yeah. So that makes me wonder, what kind of museum? Was it like a science museum somehow where it's like the ink is revealed with UV light, like something like that? Or a history museum?

and, like, you know, some exhibit in the museum had to do with something where, like, secret messages were needed and, I don't know. Some sort of old-timey national security museum. Yeah. Again, Caitlin's the closest there. I don't know what's happening. She's already done too much. Let her take a break.

Caitlin's secret life is a spy, confirmed. Spy is not the right term. National security FBI CIA Those are all spies Okay I feel like it could go back to like

ancient Egyptians and stuff like that I feel like they would do stuff like Invisible Ink They had little sneaky secret things that they did My guess is that Egyptians didn't have invisible ink I don't know I feel like they could have used like

They did I don't know It was just putting something you're carved hieroglyphics. It was like, you carved the hieroglyphics, and then you just plaster over them. Plaster over them. I was thinking, like, I don't think they had inky at all.

Wasn't there, like, papyrus? Yeah, there absolutely was. I don't know why I was a dick about that. You're absolutely right, that was true. Yeah, there was a slab of rock in front of the other rock. I think I was thinking like clay tablets, that's just the wrong civilization. The civilization in question is important, though.

Like, because the word civilization was used, it makes me think it is like an older civilization. This was a professor in Japan. Oh, Japan. Samurai. The calligraphy of some sort is big. Oh, calligraphy. So it must have been some sort of secret letters between lovers, maybe. So he said it doesn't have to do with spies.

Maybe it's like discrete messages between lovers. Spies is closer, sadly. It's not the right word. It's closer. I think... Are they romantic spies? I've been hesitating with spy because you've been thinking like CIA

and code books and that sort of thing. We're in Japan and we're talking about Japanese history. Ninjas. There we go! That's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Cooler spires.

Because you're right. Like that is basically a spy but we were looking for ninjas. This was a. museum concerned with Japan's feudal era 13th to 17th centuries. The professor said he would give high marks for creativity. This was Professor Yuji Yamada and first-year student, Amy Haga, decided to write her essay in Invisible Ink, employing the ninja technique called Aburidashi. She even made the ink herself out of soybeans. Wow. Wow. She deserved. Yeah, she deserved that,

those high marks. Summer is Tim's ice latte season. It's also hike season, pool season, picnic season. And yeah, I'm down season. So drink it up with Tim's ice lattes, now whipped for a smooth taste. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Impact site located. Entering spacecraft.

Content, but identified life form. I'm Tim. We were safer in space. FX's Alien Earth, an original series streaming August 12 on Disney Plus. Sign up today. 18 plus subscription required TNCs apply. Caitlin, it is your question.

At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., there's a machine that gives you a guaranteed 2% profit on your money. Why? Again, at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., there's a machine that gives you a guaranteed 2% profit on your money. Why? My guess is it's some sort of donation matching because if it was just straight profit for you, then everyone would just be getting infinite money.

So there has to be some sort of a glitch. And the only thing I can think of is like some sort of donation matching, like some foundation will say, hey, if you give $10, we'll make it $12 or something. That's not profit. it for you, though. I'm going to sit out of this one because I think I saw one of these very recently. It's in my head.

If I'm wrong, feel free to mock me, but I'm going to let you'll take this one. A money machine. I need to go there right now, make 2% on whatever I put in. You would only see this type of machine somewhere where there

might be, like, tourists. Isn't one of those things where you, like, stick in a quarter and you roll it, and it like flams it out and changes it into another shape. I was thinking penny crusher. But 2% increase. You always put in your own penny. That just destroys. There's no longer legal currency, right? The reason I was thinking penny crusher is that I saw one of these recently. And actually, now I think about it, the 2% profit doesn't make sense. But I saw one of these where they supply the pennies, because I think there

might be something illegal about, like, mutilating currency. So they have blanks in there. But that doesn't make sense. That's not 2% profit. I was really sure about this. And now it's still paying the 50 cents to the correction or whatever. Yeah. So you guys are very close. So something around the crushers, something for tourists. Actually, for people who haven't seen these, does someone want to explain the penny crusher? So basically what it is is you stick in some sort of malleable metal currency. Pennies are good because they're fairly malleable. And the person who's paying turns gears, which pulls the coin in, and there's a dye, a metal die on top and bottom, and it re-imprints a new type of imprint onto the coin. And generally, it's fat, flat and oblong versus a coin shape when you're done.

Yes. They'll crush it down and add a little design of wherever you happen to be. Yeah. But yeah, the one I saw just had a credit card reader on it. supplied their own penny blanks, which kind of defeats the purpose. Like, it was for the cashless world. You scan your credit card, you turn the gear, souvenir comes out. But for some reason, you're not paying. They're just giving you the penny. Right. Or is there some sort of, is payment in the work that you're doing? Are you adding some sort of value and then they give

you a penny so you're actually getting paid for? That was a wonderful bit of artwork that I've heard of, which is the minimum wage machine. It's just a crank on the side of the box with a load of pennies inside. And as long as you turn the crank, it will pay you the current minimum wage in pennies, which as an artistic statement is wonderful and a bit bleak. Because people are not willing to turn that crank. Yeah, trade your life for pennies. Wow. Mm-hmm. So you guys are like, you're so close. So one thing I will say, is there are two machines next to each other. So one's just broken?

I have a guess. You can swipe a card and pay $1.20 or whatever for a pre-crushed penny, or you can pay a dollar for a penny that you crush yourself. So how are you making money? So you're making money by crushing yourself. So this is something where anyone, even if you're not crushing pennies, could make this 2% profit.

So could it be like a... No. Never mind, that's a stupid idea. I would love to hear it. Well, how do you're doing? I'm thinking like a change machine. Like, you swipe your card. It gives you a dollar to use...

Or how much... Yeah, it gives you a dollar to use the machine next door. And two pennies? But... That's it. That's a dollar in. And the two pennies come out. With the dollar.

You almost didn't say it. You almost didn't say it. So the machine in question that guarantees a 2% profit is a machine that supplies pennies for a souvenir penny press machine right next to it. So basically it's a change machine. You insert a dollar. It gives you four quarters, which you can use to pay for the penny press and two pennies to use on the penny press.

So technically, anyone can use it. a profit. You could just be put dollars in there all day and make your 2% profit. But it's meant for the penny press. Wow. So the quarter allows you to play for the operation of the penny press. The pennies are the coins you crushed with it. Given that the zoo makes a substantial profit from the machine, they don't mind losing 2% from the change machine. Yeah. Nobody's going there paying a dollar for a couple of pennies. And you've got to pay for admission to the zoo. And you need a large wheelbarrow. For all those pennies. For all those pennies. If you're going to try to actually turn a profit from that. You can you imagine walking into the zoo with a giant wheelbarrow?

Might be a little suspicious. Giant cash of a stack of ones. And a convincing disguise. Ugh, Evan and Caitlin are here again. Yeah. So one last order of business at the top of the show asked a question that was sent in by Crashington. What rule gave rise to the self-proclaimed title of Salad Engineer? Does anyone want to take a guess at that? It makes me think it's something like in a kitchen, like some kind of guideline for kitchen sanitary standards or something

where like increased guidelines of strictness were involved and so the person felt justified in calling themselves an engineer because they had to like adhere to more rules. I don't know. I went the other way around. It's an engineer that it's about an engineer are not someone making salads. You guys are probably right.

I was going the other way, too. Like, an engineer who's a salad engineer is like a certain variety of engineer based on some like OSHA rule or something like that. Or maybe it's an engineer that does a little bit of everything. Toss it together in a salad. Mmm. Yeah, toss it all together. Salad is a mix. The rule is you should use many disciplines when engineering.

This did involve actual salad. Kaelin's more right What rule So some rule Implemented in a kitchen Oh Engineers with great body fat Oh well so in kitchens

Often you do like assembly line Yes for efficiency So maybe there was like a new rule About like salads needing to be made In more of an assembly line process Wait I have a guess The rule is This is at like

subway or something like that. And Subway allowed employees to set their own job titles and someone named themselves salad engineer. In the same way, they have sandwich artist. Yeah. Yeah. Is it that the rule is that you have to work through lunch. Oh. And so you're eating your salad while you continue to engineer. So I'm hesitant to give hints because you're right about some of the details here. Who's right? Honestly, most of you. Like, a lot of the details in there. We're talking about rules. We're talking about assembly lines and things like that. It's just... Yeah, okay. So you can eat with one hand while you're continuing to do something with the other hand because it's a salad. It's the same thing that Earl of Sandwich did well. He played poker.

But employee is the wrong word. Oh, so is it the customer? It's like, be your own salad engineer at store. Yeah, at the salad mart. And so if it is like a salad bar, then you do kind of start on one side and end up at the other. And there are like, there is like a proper order in a way where like, you know, you do the dressing last. You don't do the dressing first like a crazy person, you know? And there's another rule there, some of these. What rule?

What rule? Where are there salad bars anymore? Pizza hat is what comes in mind for me. Yeah, you're right, Ally. This was at Pizza Hut. Oh. What? Okay.

Pizza Hut. That back in the day when you could just sneeze on everyone's food, we don't do that anymore. Yeah, what rule? It makes me think, like, maybe there's some sort of rule placed on the salad bar, like, oh, there's limits to this, or there's limits to that, or you can't do this or that. And so they were finding clever ways around it, and because they had to, like, carefully calculate how to get around these rules, then they, like, gave themselves the title. All I need you to do. is identify the rule. Weight limit.

No. Volume limit? The engineering really was on the volume. Okay. Well, I wonder if, like, they put the heaviest stuff on top to, like, crush it down so that it would fit in the bowl. Like, you had to keep it in the size of a smaller bowl. Oh, has to fit in one plate.

Yes, you could only visit the salad bar once. You could get one plate of salad. So, talk me through what they were doing. Okay, so they were figuring out how to structurally maximize how much they could fit on one plate, like build walls with chicken strips and things like that to, like, maximize how much could fit. That's a hell of a salad. That's awesome.

You are absolutely right. At some branches of Pizza Hut, they had a one salad plate per person rule, and some customers developed elaborate strategies and operations to stack the food as high as possible on their one plate, and they call themselves salad engineers. That's awesome. In China, a real-life engineer developed a technique that started with a rim of carrot batons

to widen the base, stacked circles of cucumber to form a cylindrical tower that could be up to three feet high using dressing as glue. If someone could pull that off, they deserve that solid. And with that, thank you very much

to all three of our players. What's going on your lives? Where can people find you? We will start with Evan and Caitlin. the same room, which one he wants to take it? Go watch my ergonomic laptop video. I'm really proud of it. I had fun working on it.

I worked on off and on for like a year or three. It's one of those like background personal projects that I'm just like... That we turned into a video eventually, yeah. Yeah, so just Evan and Caitlin on YouTube. And Ali. Yeah, go see me on all of the things. I'm Ali Spagnol everywhere. And yeah, my YouTube channel will have me probably making.

the hardest cracks on the planet if I can actually pull it off. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com. We can also send in your own ideas for questions. We are at Lateralcast, basically everywhere, and there are video highlights on YouTube and full video episodes on Spotify. Thank you very much to Alice Bagnola. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.

To Evan and Caitlin. Thanks for having us. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Latrial. Thank you.