Lateral with Tom Scott - 155: The missing whiskey

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Tom Lum, Ella Hubber and Caroline Roper face questions about skull schemes, nicked notes and perilous plasticine. 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: Jeffrey Harris, L.P., Nicolas Meunier, Ryan Neary, Robert Grundulis, Ciarán Cooling. 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

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or go to explorevolvo.com. What sort of competitors might employ strategies such as avalanche, bureaucrat or toolbox? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. Before we begin, I want you to select a playing card. Not one of the obvious ones, like Queen of Hearts or Ace of Spades, pick one that you don't think I'll get. So I think it is a low card It's a black suit

And I'm going to say four of clubs Yep, thought so And now 1.9% of our audience thinks that I can read their mind Speaking of not quite having a full deck We welcome back today, the folks from Let's Learn Everything I'm going to start with someone who at the end of the last show they were in, said that they were going to hold their breath

until the next episode. Tom Lum, welcome back to the show. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Hey, it's so good to be back on. Thank you. Thank you. How are you doing, Tom?

Hi, good. Oh, doing great. Oh, my God. What else is going on in your life other than let's learn everything at the minute? I do YouTube stuff. Um, hi, you know, the name's Tom. You can drop the schick.

I'm feeling exhausted just listening to. But yeah, love the podcast and love Caroline and Ella. I sure wish they were here right now. Wow, okay. As if by magic, the next member, Lex Learn Everything Appears. Ella Hubber, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Actually, you know what? No, I retract that, thank you, because you just said we're a few cards short of a deck, which is horrible. Is this the second episode in the row where Tom Scott has mildly offended all of us before he's. Not even. I think it's every single time. Every single time. Producer David writes these scripts. I'm like, I'm just going to read the words in front of me. I will fully Ron Burgundy this script. And just like, you put the words in front of me, they will come out of, come out of me. I won't take David. You can't bring David down for your mistakes.

You can choose not to say a time. Also joining us today, the, I know I don't want to say last, that implies hierarchy. The other, member of Let's, I still, Caroline Roper, welcome back to the show. You can say best. The other one. You can say best. Why is it always me? What's going on? It's not deliberate, I promise. This is literally what the phrase last but by no means least stands for. But you didn't say that. Yeah, you didn't. All right, we're done. We're done to say time now. Caroline, we should probably just briefly plug the podcast at some point in this. I guess we should, shouldn't we? Us three, we're from Let's Learn Everything. We talk about science and

miscellaneous topics. We have talked about Drosophila and the meal deal in the same episode. In one episode. It was a combo. It was really great. It was so good. We talked about our location in the universe and carrots in another episode. It really is. That was also one? I forgot. Yeah, it was one episode. We're shocked by it. That's the energy of our show. Well, it seems to match what we have here. There is a entire shuffled deck of questions ahead of us. So let's find out who will be the ace and who will be the Joker, and deal with question one. Thank you to Ryan Neary for this question. In 1997, Microsoft Office's apps allowed users to type text into a box that could be moved around the screen.

Why did this upset one of their clients? I'll say that again. In 1997, Microsoft Office's apps allowed users to type text into a box that could be moved around the screen. Why did this upset one of their clients? This is interesting. Hopefully, that's what the show's about. Sorry, apparently we're all in sassy mode today. Oh, my goodness.

Imagine we just went, this is really, this is a really boring one. Next, can we skip? Can we get one pass, right? Welcome to Straightforward. Yeah. I think, I feel like this is, it could be something to do with fraud, you know, committing some kind of fraudulent act. Because now in PDFs, you can like type over things. to change, like, you could change the date, you could change, like, the amount of money someone was requesting.

So, like, you could do something fraudulent. So maybe it's something along those lines of, like, being able to move, like, cover text that you shouldn't be able to cover. Oh, interesting. Yeah. That's so much more sensible than where my brain went, which was just like... And we've got to know where it went, Caroline. Which is just like, man, I'm sure somebody got really upset that you could, like, write something inappropriate and then just put it right over the top of somebody's head in an image or something like that, like, make a meme.

Yeah. You know? I won't say what inappropriate words came to my head or the people that came into my brain either. But that's where we went. That's good because the actual text entered didn't matter. You write that this is about the boxes. Oh, my thought was moving text in a box.

My brain was like, oh, the dithering on the fonts was off and it made someone annoyed. I was thinking more technical. I was three personalities right there. my brain is still in you know maybe it's like someone uses this like one of the clients uses this for acceptance letters

to universities or something then you can like put a text box over that's you know like you are accepted or something but then why wouldn't you just edit it in the actual word document so that doesn't really make sense does it what was the year again? 1997 yeah

I'm wondering if it could be some kind of like an early hacking thing or some forgery or... Is it even that like a client had had like difficulty or had paid more to have that function and then all of a sudden everybody else had it as well and they were upset about that or... No, not that. Okay. There's no compelling documentary about like the text box races.

Because he's like, we're ruined! Dragging around text in a box. typing text into a box and moving it around. And the text doesn't matter. It's the movement of the box itself that was... What the box looks like and the fact that you can move it, yes. I really like that Tom London, because when we run out of ideas, instead of trying, you know, you can't think of anything else.

You just say the same thing, slower and more deliberately. That's my secret. And sometimes it works. Not this time, but sometimes. The shape of the box. You said the shape of the box was upsetting. Yes, what the box looks like. It was square.

And not rectangular? Nope, it was square, and the colour was a major concern. Oh. Interesting. I was just like upsetting square. That sounds like in severance when it's like, these numbers make you feel things. It's like, oh, the box. That's an upsetting box.

Did it look like something specific then, like a logo? It deliberately looked like something specific. Oh. Oh. Did it look like? like the Mac logo, right? Because that's a rectangle. I was like... Is it? That's an Apple. That's not a square box. I know one of the, at least the Finder logo or icon. I know some Mac logos. It's the

smiley face, right? With the in a square. Maybe I'm wrong. And maybe it's, but it's some, some Mac related thing, but I guess it's not that. But that would be a fun way to, to poke at your competition is to make something that's their logo, but... No, remember these are square boxes. You can put texting them. You can move them around your screen. The text doesn't matter, though. So it's like they fill in the box with a colour, and it's just a square with a colour in.

Oh, yeah. When you start these up, they're just squares with colours in. So did it look like the Windows logo or something like that? It looked like something. A sticky note? Keep talking, Tom. Was it the sticky note yellow colour? Yes, it was.

And was that just, like, not allowed? Is that, like, a very specific color they're protective of? And, like, a Post-It was, like, angry about that? 3M, the company that make Post-it notes, were extremely angry that Microsoft had added their product to Microsoft Office without permission. Wow. 3M sued them for creating computer representations

of repositionable adhesive notes yellow in color. Wow, okay, then. That's the pattern that's protect. Did they, like, successfully... Yeah, did they win that? Sue them? Well, they... It's believed they settled out of court.

Details a little hard to come by. 3M also had a software version of their Post-it notes, and that was what they were probably more angry about. So there is a documentary here. Yes, this is 3M who sued Microsoft for making a digital version of Post-it Notes. Ella, whenever you're ready, gives you a question. This question has been sent in by LP.

In 1937, paleontologist Ralph von Conningswald travelled to Indonesia in search of early human skulls. He paid the locals 10 cents whenever they found a genuine old skull fragment. However, Ralph had to stop the payouts. Why? Once more, in 1937, paleontologist Ralph von Conigswald traveled to Indonesia in search of early human skulls.

He paid the locals 10 cents whenever they found a genuine old skull fragment. However, Ralph had to stop the payouts. Why? Were they just finding modern skulls through bad means and trying to get the money? I feel like I shouldn't just immediately start answering your questions. Just, you know, roll through some ideas. I was like, it sounds like there's some... their grave robbing or like...

Yeah. So you said specifically the fragments of the skulls are not like the whole skull. Yeah, could... Oh my God, could it have been... Caroline, could it have been old skulls and they were smashing them up? I was thinking they were smashing the skulls because you said skull fragments, not skulls. They're not paying by weight. They're paying per fragment. Yeah. I mean, you've all got there pretty quickly.

The locals were smashing the fossils into smaller pieces. Wow. So G.H. Ralph von Conigswold traveled to Sanghaanjava and found a skull fragment of Pythacanthropus, or Java Man. He showed this locals offering up to one cent each for a tooth and ten cents for a skull fragment. After a while, he realized that some of the pieces he was being offered by the Javanese locals were fitting together too perfectly.

Oh, man. So in his book, Meeting Prehistoric Man, he wrote, Too late, I realized that my opportunist friends were breaking up the larger pieces behind my back in order to get a bigger bonus. The scheme apparently cost 700 guilders per month because the locals insisted on immediate payment until they'd search any further. However, many of them ended up being worthless and thrown away anyway. So you're getting just tons of skull fragments, which are maybe completely useless.

Some of them were useful, though. Thank you to Robert Grundelis for this question. In 2004, the Northern Bank of Belfast was robbed of 26.5 million pounds in cash. How did the bank get its own back, even though the thieves and the money had long since disappeared? I'll say that again. In 2004, the Northern Bank of Belfast was robbed of 26.5 million pounds in cash. How did the bank get its own back, even though the thieves and the money had long since disappeared? When was this, sorry, 19...

2004, okay, I was like, maybe, you know, the bank got its own back because they changed to euros and so the money was useless. Although that wouldn't make sense. Oh, yeah, really? Yeah, or was it like just old tender that wasn't used anymore? Yeah, that would have been a good...

They didn't realize. It's pounds. You said, oh, Belfast is like, no, Belfast is the Northern Ireland. God, please don't come at me. From my bad geography. This is Belfast in Northern Ireland, yes. So part of the United Kingdom. They made a movie out of it, and that was really cool.

And they got the rights to the movies, because the bank robbers aren't going to come back and be like, hey, actually, this is my life rights story. You can't use this. Huh. Oh, God, the currency conversion is a really, really clever thought, y'all. I keep going down that line. but Britain never joined the Euro No, of course. But down the currency, is it,

could it just be like old pound coins that were like not like, like, I'm trying to think of like why they would be defunct at that point. Miss Prince or something like that? It was actual money that was very difficult to trace.

Did you all ever like get rid of a penny or something like that? Well, we've had a turnover in types of money in the UK. So our, like, coins have changed shape, I think all of them now. And our notes have also changed as well to be more durable, mostly. So it, but I think that's a lot earlier, 2004 is a lot earlier than any of this stuff happened. Yeah, yeah.

Also, that wouldn't be the bank getting its own back. Yes. Hmm. Hmm. But you are closer than you might think. Was the bank trying to get rid of that money in some way? Oh, no, no. They got robbed.

They, okay. Absolutely. Successful heist. And the money was then, could, you know, whoever robbed them could, they used the money afterwards, fine. There was no like. Yep.

Okay. Yeah, after they pulled the bank notes out, they're bank notes. The phrasing of like the bank got their own back. Yeah. Got their own. Yeah, that's really. Oh, no, that is in the metaphorical sense.

Okay. It is a figure of speech. How the bank got revenge. Yeah. Yeah, it's just really weird to be like, they got revenge rather than, And, like, it was fine for the bank. You know, they didn't mind too much or something like that.

Were the robbers punished in some way, or did they get some comeuppance? Or is it just the bank being all right? I'm wondering, like, could these robbers specifically have, because they were using this old currency for like a long time when it would have been recirculated, they could catch them? Is it a thing of catching them or is it a thing of like they, the money becomes useless to them? Yeah, yeah. Let me try my strategy again. Belfast

Bank robbery I'm being very careful here this bank the Northern Bank of Belfast has something in common with some of the Scottish banks Oh oh they have So in Scotland they have their own notes

Scottish notes which in a lot of places people even though they are legal tender I know because I've tried to spend a Scottish 20 pound and people will not accept that sometimes So maybe this money was like an Irish or Northern Irish note that's specific to Northern Ireland

and then in this town or across Ireland the bank lobbied to say you can't accept that kind of money anymore in stores. You're nearly there. Combined that with some of the other things you've said before. Did they just like fully get rid of this specific kind of note? Yes, they did. But how did the bank do that? The Northern Bank of Belfast is there.

the one that prints those notes. Right. And they were like, oh, so they just stopped printing the money. Everyone using that now, you have to hand it back in to get your actual money back or something along those lines. Yep. To reduce the value of the hall, the bank hit on the idea of taking the entire stock of bank notes out of circulation, reprinting a new set, issuing new notes with a different logo

and colour. This is why at the start, you were talking about currency conversions and changes. It is kind of what happened. So anyone who, for some odd reason, had a large number of those old notes, would have to go to a bank and change them. Wow. Wow. And if you legitimately have some old notes, okay, that's fine.

If you have 20 million pounds worth of those notes, there are going to be questions. It was under my mattress. I just found them. I guess that's the problem of robbing such a big bank, is you're like, You're going to get the money, but they can also just be like, okay, no. Yeah, the Irish Independent reported that money launderers were putting 10 or 20-pound notes in car parking machines in order to get the change out. Oh, wow. And doing that for 20 million.

That's the thing, like, you can do that for 10, you can do that for 20, there's a point at which it starts being a problem. 20 million pounds in pennies. Similarly, automated checkouts across the UK will accept Scottish and Northern Irish notes have all just programmed. with the same thing. But still, that's 20 million pounds plus in banknotes. You have to somehow launder when they're not accepted anymore. Wow. Tom Lump, whenever you're ready.

This question was sent in by Nicholas Mernier. DJ is a Jamaican kickboxer in the Street Fighter Games. His trousers were supposed to spell the word mantis. But designers found it more convenient to use maximum instead. What was the reason behind this change? I'll say that one more time. DJ is a Jamaican kickboxer

in the street fighter games. His trousers were supposed to spell the word mantis, but designers found it more convenient to use maximum instead. What was the reason behind this change? Mantis. I do love, quickly, one of the clues here is

for the U.S. trousers are pants. I appreciate that localization. I appreciate that localisation not going the other way. That's good to know. Yeah, yeah. I just didn't know the Street Fighter games were a thing. Yeah. What?

Yeah. I did not know this was the thing. They're like, you know, like Tekken. There's Street Fighter and Tekon. No, like, it sounds like this is a mixed martial arts contest or something like that. You've never heard of the Street Fighter games? That's like a classic Fighting Arcade game, yeah. Oh.

Oh. I thought, I genuinely. I thought this too, Tom. It's okay. I thought it was like the Arctic Winter Games or the Olympic Games. Oh, like some sort of martial arts activity. I genuinely did not pass that as the video game series Street Fighter. Oh, in the Street Fighter games.

Yeah. That's embarrassing. That's embarrassing. This is a good start. It's a me question. It's going to be something. This question was assigned to me. It's a dorky one.

My brain was like. Is he getting a wedgy and the wedgy is like spelling mantis in some way rather than like anything else? The first thing that came to my head is you said that this is a Jamaican character. Not relevant. Not real. Oh, God, I was hoping it was like something to do with a flag shape and the way you could spell. Maximum versus Mantis using the flag.

That's interesting. It's, I mean, you're thinking about mantis and maximum and some of the, I'll say no more. Which, annoyingly, the switch to video games means I've got enough nerd knowledge that I think I've put this one together. So I'm going to hand over to the other two. That's funny.

We've never had... I love a delayed I've got this because of your confusion at first. Okay, Tom not getting it makes me think it's something you do with the technical side of the games rather than the visual side of it in terms of like programming it in some way that it's harder to do Mantis

than it is maximum. Is the S-shaped difficult? Like, is that the problem? I know why he's being quiet now. Oh. Is it the way that it moves, like, if it's spelling it, do we need to know how it's printed on the trousers?

Is that important? That will help you. I'm just guessing it. Maybe it's the way the character moves, and so when... Yeah. easier, you said, and not like, ruder for some reason. Because, like, it's like maybe he, the way, when he kicks in the air, it spells a naughty word mantis.

It's like a mad magazine cover where he, like, Yeah, exactly. The same gag on top gear. Anytime they put decals with words on the side of their cars, it will be something rude when you open the door in the right way. Okay, so not that. Is it something to do with like the symmetry of the word or? I hope it is.

Otherwise, I'm coming back into this question. Yes, but how, I will say. Is it the M's at each end of the word of maximum? Is this spelled like maximum like max on one like E on the butt, mum down the side? Someone's designed these pants. They're going to sell like hot cake. no you guys you guys have the pieces and i think i think you'll get you'll get it it does have to do with the symmetry of the word how does that fit in how would that fit into making this easier or or

for this game i've no bloody clue think about how yeah how would the how you were saying how the words are on the pants um how do you envision them in your mind up one leg is how you would normally do that kind of thing, I suppose. Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay. And then, so, like, was it the letters were sideways going down the leg, or were they, like, upright going? Because if they're upright going down the leg, then that is symmetrical each way. Whereas...

Every letter in there has bilateral symmetry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh! But, why is that helpful? And you could just mirror it rather than, like, reanimating the whole other side. Exactly. I feel so smart right now. Oh my gosh, Caroline.

Well done. Nail it, Caroline. These were 2D sprites in the early Street Fighter games. And so when you were facing the other direction, for most characters, you can just mirror them. Yeah. Exactly. When they flip sides. But if the word is mantis and you mirror that, it doesn't work.

But if the pants say maximum and you mirror it, it's just work. you mirror it, it just so happens to spell the same way, both ways. So yes, video games at the time were using 2D sprites. And to save, first of all, memory also, and having to draw them a second time, the sprites were simply flipped horizontally when the character moved in the other direction. The word maximum was written vertically down a trouser leg. And since the word is made up of letters that have vertical symmetry, the word still reads maximum even if the sprite is flipped over.

Our next question comes from Kieran Kooling. One day in 2025, at the Middleton Distillery in Cork, Ireland, 70,000 bottles worth of whiskey went missing. Despite this, the police weren't called, and no member of staff looked for it. Why? I'll say that again. One day in 2025, at the Middleton Distillery in Cork, Ireland, 70,000 bottles worth of whiskey went missing.

Despite this, the police weren't called, and no member of staff looked for it. Why? Is this one of the most up-to-date or like modern lateral questions I've ever heard? Someone must work there then. Someone sent this question in. Or they did this to be allowed. Announcing your heist through the medium of trivia podcast. A detective listening to Lateral being like, hey, I'm just, I'm just relaxing.

Wait a second. That's where the 26 million from the Belfast Bank went. Yeah. You know what? I've done so badly this episode. I don't even want to guess. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Okay, no, it's lateral. It's fine. I can get the juices flowing. Is missing a key word here? Or could it be like, you know, broken or lost or, you know, misplaced? A few other words would work in there, yes. Ella, I was going to say, you can have the honor of saying it slowly if you would like. Thank you.

I mean... A part of me wonders if it's like the alcohol was close. or was like passed at sell-by date or something. And therefore, staff were told, we must dispose of this. We must get rid of it and just like, took it home. I feel like if the idea of a winery being like, oh my God, this is so old, we gotta toss it. It's like, I don't think that happens with alcohol. Yeah, yeah.

Also, is it like, it wasn't sealed properly and they all evaporated, you know? Oh, that would be, you know, when you get like kind of close, Tom goes like, there's like a different serious face that he has. Well, my thought, kind of maybe related to that thought, Ella, is, well, what you said, and this is the phrasing, 70,000 pounds or dollars worth of bottles. Bottles worth. But what if it's just one bottle that's worth that much? Oh, that's fascinating. And then, I don't know how that, that's like one part, but I don't know how that would get us to, like, why they didn't.

Also, went missing, right? Maybe this is a brand that is, like, particular. expensive and difficult to come by. So you want to remove more from the market to drive up the price. Ella, you know how early on you're like, I don't have any ideas. I've not been doing well this episode.

You hit a keyword in there. You replaced, went missing with a very key word there. Was it evaporated? It was. It was. Evaparated. It just literally evaporated. 70,000 bottles worth.

Was it like, and you said it was like an alcohol distillery? Yes. Specifically. So it wasn't like a hand gel manufacturer or something like that. No, no, this is a whiskey distillery. Okay, yeah, cool. Did someone just leave it open, leave like a cask open, and then it just all evaporated? Did they leave it? Did they not, yeah, did they not store it properly? Did they leave it in somewhere that was slightly too warm or...

Oh, they stored it just fine. Maybe it's like part of the process of like aging the barrels They let it evaporate out of the barrels And so the barrels are aged for another round of whiskey to come in Come on this is a pass It's like a loss that you have to do to obtain something Yes, basically Oh

Ella, what on earth? It's a, oh You're basically right that it's part of the process Which part of the process is the bit That we need to hammer down Yes. What's one of the important parts of making whiskey? Is it storing it in barrels? Yes. Yes, you do.

Well, so it's not what I said. It's not like to, because with wine, so with wet milk, well, when you make wine, you can make like orange wine by putting white grapes into barrels that have previously been used to age red grapes, red wine. And that's like a part of the process. So, you know, you do other things. You can do things to the cask itself to try and change the flavors or the, you know, whatever. Are you like priming the barrels with like an initial coat that seeps in or something? That wouldn't really be evaporating. That wouldn't be... Right, right. You're right to talk about what it's stored in. You kind of touched on that.

Wine is matured in bottles. Whiskey's matured in barrels. Does it just go through the wood organically? It just goes through the wood. Oh. Middleton Distillery has the largest stock of maturing whiskey in Ireland. It holds two million barrels across many, many warehouses. And that means that every single day, about 70,000 bottles worth of whiskey just evaporates as it ages.

Oh, my God. That's wild. About 2% of their stock every single year. goes to what they call the Angels Share. Oh, I love that. That's great. I'm surprised they're not trying to find innovative ways to capture the alcohol from the air.

I was going to say, let the teens hang out on the roof and get a contact. Caroline, take it away. Lovely. This question has been sent in by Anonymous. On a zoo trip in 1965, George and Charlotte Blonksky saw an elephant pacing around while giving birth. This inspired them to patent a new birthing table to make labour easier.

How was it meant to work? One more time. On a zoo trip in 1965, George and Charlotte Blonsky saw an elephant pacing around while giving birth. This inspired them to patent a new birthing table to make labour easier. How was it meant to work? all that's in my head is have you ever seen one of those tables that you strap yourself down to it like rocks

back and forth like you get tipped upside down? Oh, for like pots diagnosis and stuff like that it's like a medical thing they do it is like a kind of medical table like an exercise. No it fully is yeah and they use it to if your blood pressure changes drastically they use it

to diagnose pots and things like that basically so if you have blood pressure issues oh gosh it stands for a thing and it's to do with the heart got it Yeah. It's also for Batman training. It's great if you want to hang upside down. It tips you upside down, though.

I don't think that would be great for labor. No. Against gravity doesn't sound like the best idea. Thank you, producer David. Postural, orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. There we go. And people get it, so like if you stand up and you feel like a little bit faint, it's basically a worse version of that.

Hence flipping you upside down on a table instead. Yeah. So they're not. So they're not flipping the birthing women upside down. No. Well, but, and... Well, actually, Caroline, you're wrong. It sounds like, I'm going to pitch the craziest thing.

What if? No. But actually, though, and I could be completely wrong, when you think about the anatomy of an elephant, they're on all fours, so their stomach is facing downwards, right? And that is flipped versus a human laying on the elephant. their back when they're giving birth, right?

I mean, you're still, you know, not upside down, though. Right. Well, your front, I guess, is what's the fronts of an elephant, right? Is facing downwards? That birthing position isn't necessarily the only way that humans can be positioned for giving birth. You can sort of, in whatever, that's like, it's a whole thing. Oh, actually, really?

So the birthing position people typically associate with giving birth now on your back with your like legs open is something that happened later and is like part of a kind of not so great medical history associated with women getting birth um it's much it's typically it's thought to be much better to you know be like squatting um yeah or in water for example so oh so is it something where they somehow are on all fours maybe moving their arms to like an elephant walking or, or is it just like a treadmill? You know, I think you get those machines, you know, the kind of, you pull them with your arms and your feet move at the same time.

Yeah, the walking machine. Cross trainers, cross trainer, yes. Cross trainer, cross trainer and elliptical. One of those for birthing? If we all do the emotion, will you say yes? I'm doing the movement right now for the listeners. Giving birth is generally not a dignified operation, but I feel like that's not adding much more dignity to it.

Um, okay, not that either then. Well, Tom, we should, Tom, long, we should go into some kind of business together and come up with some more birthing tables. We can be the best snake oil salesman, I mean, uh, sisters to birth in the world. Huh. Um, have any of these been, are we on, uh, are we on a track, Tom? Hold on, hold on. You said they patented this. You didn't say it actually went into. common use. I did not. What a fabulous observation. So it is the thing. It can be ridiculous.

Or did it go into common use as some for another purpose or it was just never used? No, this was never used. Okay. Well, I didn't think like the elliptical train of her birthing was an actual real thing, just to be clear. I want y'all, this is 100% transparency. I literally forgot that Tom Scott was also answering this question with us because we spent the last few minutes, Tom just looking at me and Ella coming up with wild ideas and disbelief and I assumed he was the one answer the question.

I wasn't getting involved in that mess. A few minutes ago, I literally, I asked Tom I was like, did we get the question right? And then I realized you weren't the one asking a question, mate. It was just your judgment and disbelief made me assume you were the one. You were both busy making cross-trainer gestures

with your hands. I'm like, I'm going to leave them to it. I cannot believe. It was the, the disbelief. belief was so strong. I assumed you were asking us the question. I'm so sorry. Come on. Let's roll it back. Let's get back in. We can do this. I believe in us. So this is a never widely used invention. They just saw an elephant giving birth and were like, humans should do that. Not necessarily that humans should do that because it was like,

it was inspired by the motion that the elephant was doing rather than the purpose of why the elephant was doing. Wait, what? So it's not, I thought this is to help women give birth. Yeah, it is, right? Oh, was it moonwalking? Wait, wait, wait. The elephant was not giving birth here. The elephant was just pacing around. The elephant was just pacing around. And this inspired them to patent a new birthing table. So it's the movement of the elephant that is, that's inspired. Was it moving in a particular way that isn't normal for an elephant? I've heard of it. I think I know. Yeah. Is this? Is centripetal force involved? Yes.

This has dredged something from Tom and my memories. We've seen this somewhere. And I'm so shocked that it took this long to get to this point because this is so, this is such a commonly memed-on thing, I think, that it's so great. This is the centrifugal birthing table. Yes, it is. What? What in the world?

Ella, have you never heard of this? No. What? Wow. This is a force assist. So honestly, those spinning tables we were talking about earlier weren't that far off in terms of... Wasn't even that far off, yeah, for sure. The elephant was just pacing around in circles, I guess.

So elephants in the wild will walk in circles whilst birthing to sort of deter predators. Other elephants will join in in this behaviour. And that inspired the circular motion that they were doing in. inspired the Blonkiskskies to devise a spinning, birthing table. Sorry, I just love that it wasn't even inspired by the thing they were trying to do. It's by what they thought it might be looking like. When you say, I must know when you say spinning, burthing table, what that actually entails a woman having to do, like sitting there and like rotating

violently around or woman lying on her back, giving birth, being spun around, a literal net at the other end of her, like in front of her, to then catch the baby as the centrifugal force helped the process of her giving birth. That's a torture device. That's, that's, that's, give it, give a dystopia another few years and that'll be wheel of fortune. Just don't land on bankrupt, baby. And yet, you'll all be like relieved to hear that, although the patent was grand. it was never built or even tested in real life.

It was purely inconceived. Because a patent doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be new. Can I just check something, the physics of this, very quickly? That's more than they did. Undergoing centrifugal force, you're like being pushed back, right? Like you get pushed back against...

I know, yeah. So... Or you get pushed in a direction. So surely the baby is like... You know when you're on a playground roundabout and you're going around quite fast and you're being pushed towards the outside of it? Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.

So really, this is the opposite of what you'd want in a birthing situation is for the baby to be pushed back. No, no, no, you've got the woman sitting in the middle facing out. The person giving birth is in the centre. There's a giant net around the outside of the table. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. It's insane.

Okay, I mean, it still doesn't work, but at least there is, at least there is some messed up logic in it. In comparison, Maya and Ella's ideas were tame. Yeah, no, for sure, compared to the centrifugal birthing table, absolutely. Let's just say we got to go to the patent office, you and me, Ella. Yeah. We have unlocked the shiny bonus question because there were some quick solves there. So, who would be wary of a strip of plasticine that is 122 centimetres long, seven millimeters wide, and seven millimeters high?

I'll say that again, who would be wary of a strip of plasticine that is 122 centimetres long, seven millimeters wide, and seven millimeters high? So it's like a square extrusion? It is. Because it's seven by seven on the... Seven mill by seven mill extruded to just over 1.2 meters. What does extruded mean? Like a Play-Doh machine.

You like push through a frame. So a light breeze, if this was put in front of your door? Yeah. Is it an... Who would be afraid of it? Is who are people? Yes. Oh, a people.

A wary of it, certainly. A wary of... So it's some kind of thing in your job, perhaps, that you... It's a task or a job you carry out way. If you see this, it says, don't go further than this. Oh, is it like runners, uh, sprinters, or something like that? It's like the start line. What?

Ella, you said earlier, you were having a rough episode. You're really not. You're getting very close here. Oh, wait, what? Yeah, so like the, oh, or like, um, uh, wary of, a triple jumper. Ella, yes. Absolutely. Talk us through it.

Talk us through it. What's you thinking? Okay, so in the triple jump, you do like one, two, and then you jump on the last bounce, but you cannot like, your foot cannot go over that line even slightly, the marking before you go into the sand. Yeah, I have long jumper here, not triple jump, but same basic thing. In the long jump, an athlete commits a foul if their foot encroaches beyond the edge of the takeoff board. And so to ensure fair play, there is a thin strip of plastic. scene lining the edge of the board.

So if there's an indent found there, the foot has gone too far. Which leaves us with just the question from the start of the show. Thank you to Geoffrey Harris for sending this in. What sort of competitors might employ strategies such as Avalanche Bureaucrat or Toolbox? Does anyone want to take a quick guess at that

before I give the answer for the audience? Avalanche Burekrat Toolbox. Well, my mind immediately went to Sudoku and Suddovian Championships because you get tactics like the swordfish and X-wing. But I know it's not that. Yeah.

My brain goes to, like, chess as well. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, kind of both close. It's that sort of competitor. This is definitely a mental game. Go, something like go. This is going to be another listing thing. We haven't done one of those this whole episode,

so maybe we can just have to go out there. What words might you associate with avalanche or bureaucrat or toolbox? What, like Scrabble? Right, Scrabble words? Oh, Scrabble. Um... A crossword. Um...

The bureaucrat strategy is sometimes called confetti. Wait, uh, so you sprinkle something over? Um... What would you sprinkle? In a board? Is this a board game? Is it like monopoly? What's...

What's confetti made of? Paper? A little bits of paper. Paper. Mm-hmm. Scrapbooking. Uh... Competitive scrapbooking.

Competitive scrapbooking. They're using the Evelish! That's not allowed. Competitive origami. Oh. There's another mind game that includes paper. Rock paper scissors. Keep going, Ella.

Rock paper. Oh. What? Oh, so confetti is just like, or bureaucratic is just playing like a paper over and over and over again? Yes, it is. What's the avalanche? Rock over and over again. And the toolbox?

Scissors over and over again. over and over again. Absolutely right. These are Gambits employed by rock, paper, scissors, players. Ella, what a comeback. This has been your episode. Gambit is a stretch.

Gambit is such a stretch of a word for what that is. Hey, there's game theory around rock paper scissors. There's tactics to it. Thank you very much to all of our players. Where are you all from? Ella Hubber.

We are Let's Learn Everything. A Science and Miscellaneous podcast, we cover literally everything. Caroline Roper, things like we have talked about autumn leaves and swearing or former cryptids and scary stories it literally can be anything all of those are paired together in episodes as well so it really is a mixed bag of stuff and where can people find you all tom long you can find us all at let's learn everything dot com 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 lateral cast basically everywhere there are video highlights at youtube.com slash lateral cast and full video episodes on spotting Thank you very much to Tom Lum. Woo! Caroline Roper. Thanks. Ella Hubber. Thanks.

Nice. I've been Tom Scott and that's been lateral.