Lateral with Tom Scott - 170 Please Dont

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Charlotte Yeung, Annie Rauwerda and Alexis Dahl face questions about medieval mercenaries, alarm apps and backpacking bandages. 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: Elliot, Calum, Emily, Conor Slevin, Fearghal McGuinness. FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott. © Pad 26 Limited (https://www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What type of workers are named after the mercenary knights who toured Europe after the Crusades? The answer to that, at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. We've got so good at making this show now that we can strip it down to its bare essentials. Here we go. There are questions. There are guests. And there will be confusion. And if anything else happens, that's honestly a bonus. Let's meet the three players that are going to be confused today.

We start returning to the show from the depths of Wikipedia, Annie Roder, welcome back. Hi, I've emerged from the depths. What depths have you been plumbing recently? Oh, boy. I was just reading about in Darwin, Australia, there was, in the 1970s, there was a group that did rock sitting as an activity. There had just been a big hurricane, so there was really nowhere to hang out. And they would sit on rocks, drink beer, sometimes for large stretches of time, and they're still doing it in their 70s. So I was reading about them. I'm a big fan. Shout out to Darwin.

Wait, for a moment when you said rock sitting, I got that in the idea of babysitting. They're not keeping someone else's rock. No, they're sitting on rocks. But there were babies there. Many of them got married. Many of them are still friends. It turns out when you sit on a rock for two weeks straight, sometimes you find love. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay.

I realize this is not the point of the podcast, but two weeks straight sitting on the same rock? Yes. It's a big rock. Do they sleep on the rock? Yes. Okay, we're going to park that one and we're going to meet our next guest, but I'm sure at some point that we'll get added to Wikipedia.

Annie, thank you so much for coming back on the show and just immediately dropping an interesting fact in. Our second guest, also a returning player, last time I introduced Charlotte Young, it was as one of the players on ITV's The Genius Game. That is now well in the past, and I now get to introduce Charlotte as a PhD student, Miss London and finalist for Miss England.

Congratulations on all that, and welcome back to the show. Thank you so much, Tom. Yes, so I needed to check more things on the box, so here we are, Miss London. But on the same reign of not always winning, Miss England Finanist. The thing is, we could have filmed this a couple of weeks ago, at which point you would have been like, it's the final, I don't know what's going to happen, but you get finalist no matter what? Yes, yeah, I'm just taking all those finalist titles as much as I can. Oh, oh, spoilers for anyone, I wasn't, hasn't watched the genius game there as well. Although, if you haven't by now, really.

I should ask about Miss London and Miss England, because I think a lot of people still have the notion that it is this swimsuit competition and a beauty contest and nothing else. Yes, I think that's a common misconception. So England was actually the first country to completely strip away the swimwear competition. So there's no swimsuit walking all around. And I actually think it's much more of who you are as a person, more about what you kind of believe in, what you stand for, what kind of cause you want to partake in, what cause you want to push forward. It's about beauty with a purpose now, and that's Miss World's slogan. England, Miss England has been one

of the best opportunities I've had, and I've had a lot of fun doing it. And although this time it wasn't successful. Perhaps in the future, who knows? I think finalists are successful. Yeah, right. Thank you. That's just me. I agree. I'll get in on that. Well, also joining us on the show today, a first-time player from her YouTube channel about science and history in Michigan. Alexis Dahl, welcome to Lateral. Thanks. Glad to be here. You are a first-time player, so absolutely tell the audience, what do you do? What's your YouTube channel about? What are you working on right now? Yeah, absolutely. So I am a science communicator and Tom, like you mentioned, I run a series that's basically just about figuring out why my home state of Michigan is the way it is. And sometimes that means I look at weird cliffs and I ask why they exist and what rocks they're made out of.

Sometimes it means a story I'm working on right now. So it's winter in my corner of the world, which means all the good rocks are covered up now by snow. but I'm trying to figure out what's the deal with. So in the Upper Peninsula, there is the only, I think only, according to them, full-length natural luge course in the United States. And I would like to figure out what the deal with that is, and I want to see if they'll let me go down the hill. Right. So that's what I do.

The number of videos on your channel where I've gone, I wish I'd known about that. That's the a or dox. I would have absolutely filmed the oadocks, and I would absolutely go down the luge course. That's the whole thing, is I just wander around going, I've lived in the state my entire life, and I did not know this was here. Well, very best of luck to you with that.

Very best luck to all three of our players with the challenge today. Let's begin our extremely efficient chaos with question one. On a 2002 album by the band System of a Down, why do some record shops put a sticker saying, please don't? I'll give you that one more time. On a 2002 album by the band System of a Down, why does some record shops put a sticker saying,

please don't? I want a copy of that sticker. I could put it on stop signs. I could put it on anything. Oh, gosh. I could really mess up the world. Well, my first thought is that it's commanding you, what if the album is commanding you to do a crime?

Like, I don't know. Please yell. Please steal this. Please. Maybe it wouldn't say please if it's system of a down. steal. Yes. Oh no.

That was a fast. I'm terrible at this game. That was no fun. No, no, that's fine. We've got the first bit of it there. You are right. Why is the album telling you that? It is telling you to do a crime,

and it is telling you to steal. But we've not quite got all the way there yet. Is it the title of the album is relating to the crime? Yes. And given we're going through this so quickly, I'm going to need the name of the album. Oh, oh, okay. Oh, kill.

So it's an album, and it was the early 2000s. Is piracy involved? Oh, sort of, yes. You wouldn't steal an album. Exactly. Yeah, I think I'll give you that. The album is called Steal This Album. Oh, and it's because of the anti-piracy ads.

Well, sort of. Maybe. It's partly a reference to Steal This Book, which was a famous counterculture book. It's also a bit to do with piracy because unfinished versions of the album had leaked onto the internet. Oh.

There's one last thing that you haven't quite caught, though, which is, again, 2002, in that era, how was piracy being done? What might this look like? Have I gone back too far? Was there, like, copying of CDs? Yes, there was.

Was that the primary thing? Okay. It was just starting to get taken over, internet piracy then. But yeah, like, thinking about that. So what might this have looked like? Was the idea to please steal this album from your local store, share it around with your buddies and everybody burns a copy? It was more like someone had already done that. At least it looked that way. Okay. Well, just, you're going to the record store, because those were a thing back then. It looks like a CD instead of a black record label, like record, if that's possible.

This was when you bought CDs in the record store. Sorry, I just realized that that is ambiguous to someone who is your age. The record store in the sense of buying whatever format of music is currently available. So, yeah, they were... Did they have running water back then? There would have been stacks and stacks of CDs there for you to buy, and this one looked a little different. Did it just look like a crummy rainbow CD with, like, Sharpie on it?

Yes, it did. Sis for the Downs album, Steal This Album, has a jewel case that looks like someone has scrawled the title on, like you have pirated it for a friend. I love it, that's wonderful. So there was a very real chance that someone would go into a record store, think that was a pirated copy, and go, oh, they're not selling that. So some record stores print out little labels that said, please don't. Each of our guests has brought a question along with them. Annie, we'll go to you. Okay, well, this question has been sent in by Callum.

When Jack Woolums was a test pilot for the Bell P-59-era Comet, he sometimes wore a gorilla mask, a bowler hat, and a cigar. Why? When Jack Woolham's was a test pilot for the Bell P-59-era comet, he sometimes wore a gorilla mask, a bowler hat, and a cigar. Why? This is the first time where we've had a question. and all three people were looking down during it.

I don't know if that was just thinking and avoiding eye contact or if all three of us are taking notes this time. I got Gorilla hat. No, Gorilla Mask, Boehler hat and cigar. I got no notes. These all cover different areas. Well, how would you use a cigar if you've got a mask on? Is this a really old plane and there are paparazzi on the,

on the tiny runway that it's taking off from. It's before 1950. Oh, okay. That's not what I was thinking at all. Okay. The obvious thing would be, it's a practical joke. But why... Why a gorilla in a bowler hat with a cigar?

It's either very specific or it's very random, and I'm not sure which. I've been doing a load of research for some stuff on film. at the moment, and I have found that there are so many old references that, so worldwide sometimes, or maybe just in one country where everyone knew them for about five, ten years, and then they just dropped out of pop culture entirely. So I'm wondering if there's some pop culture reference to cigar, bowler hat, gorilla,

that we don't know anymore. Gorillas do sometimes smoke. Have you ever seen this? What? What? There's a, I don't know which great ape. I'm not very good at the primate terminology, so somebody's going to be listening to this just like, er. But there's some animal at the Pyongyang Zoo named Azalia who's addicted to smoking. And it's really funny, the pictures of it, but then it's also kind of sad.

And they also, I mean, they'll also like get Coca-Cola. They love all our vices. That's not related to the question. No, it's not. It was wonderful. Any famous man with a bowler hat taking a cigar, I feel like there must be someone in history. Winston Churchill, but no, that's just a cigar.

That's not a bowler hat. That wasn't his style. Do you think maybe he tried it out one time just to see if that's him? Oh, thank you to producer David. Azalea is a female chimpanzee at the Korea Central Zoo. Oh. Reportedly able to light her own cigarette smoked up to a pack a day. Right, the pilot was cosplaying Azalea.

Sorted, done. Salt. Okay, so he was pulling. a prank that had practical benefit. Oh, okay. Oh, and the P59 was a new type of plane. Was he trying to get noticed by someone else while flying the plane? Because they're quite ostentatious items.

I'm not going to say yes or no, but keep thinking about that. Okay. Okay. You said before 1950, right? So that's too early for the jet engine. Or is it? Oh, oh, is my hit... Okay, it's... Okay, so he's an early jet fighter

test pilot. Hmm. Was this the first jet engine plane? Also, I assumed fighter. Like, this has to be a wartime or is it a Second World War thing then? Yes. We are in the depths of

the Second World War. Is it to get noticed by allies? Think about being noticed. It's not to get noticed. Is it to hide which country has that plane or hide the identity of the pilot somehow? He was concerned as to what other pilots might say.

Hmm. Huh. And remember that during wartime, all of these, all this research was done in secret. Oh. Oh. No, hold on. Okay. I'm going to set the scene here. I'm going to imagine you're on an air base somewhere and you are some junior fighter pilot

who is going up in the old place. in the reliable ones, and you're going to try and tell the lads back in the barracks that you saw this shiny, new, impossible plane. And it was being piloted by a gorilla. No one's going to believe you. Yes. That's pretty much it.

Anyone who saw his secret test flights would not be believed, because how is a gorilla mask With a bowler hat and a cigar flying a plane. You're seeing things. In the 1940s, Bell aircraft was secretly testing the P-59-era comet, America's first jet fighter. Jack Wollums, one of Bell's senior test pilots, occasionally joined formations of ordinary propeller aircraft, flying close enough for other pilots to notice him. A jet aircraft with no visible propeller was already strange. But Wollums went further.

He donned a gorilla mask, a bowler hat, and a cigar to make the entire air. encounter utterly unbelievable. It was part prank, part security measure. Any pilot who returns to base claiming to have seen a mysterious aircraft flown by a cigar-smoking gorilla would be laughed at. On other occasions, Bell fitted a fake wooden propeller to the nose to help disguise the jet. Wow. That's interesting. Although the P-59 never saw combat before World War II ended, its testing helped pave the way for later American jet fighters. Our next question is from Connor Slaven. Thank you very much. When trying to set his morning alarm, Connor found that the range of options for his alarm ranged between 1 o'clock and 439.

Why? And one more time, when trying to set his morning alarm, Connor found that the range of options for his alarm ranged between 1 o'clock and 439. Why? It was summertime, and after 4.39, there's already sun, so you're waking up to the sun. I don't know how this helps if it does. Is this a 12-hour clock or a 24-hour clock? It is a 12-hour clock, but that wouldn't really make a difference. Well, I personally never ever set an alarm for 1 o'clock or 439. In my life, if I'm setting an alarm in an alarm in between those times, oh no.

Is that an impact? A lot-time alarm going off. Yeah, I have to be right back. I have an emergency if I sleep past 10. This goes off. This never happens because I don't like to wake up at weird times. That's perfect. That was a paid actor.

I'm always up at one and if it's 1 a.m. I'm trying to go to sleep. I'm just thinking he's a weird sleep schedule. That's all. Maybe he works third shifts. That's, you know. Is it that the alarm itself? cannot physically be set past four hours, 439 a.m. Or is it that he himself would never go and do that?

I'm going to just give you the phrasing in the question very carefully. The range of options for his alarm ranged between 1 o'clock and 439. The range of options. So I'm going to take that as you cannot go any further than 439. And 439, what, o'clock, hours, minutes? Like, what if you, what if you, I mean, like when you have a baby, you wake up every two hours at least. So maybe it's like you only get a certain block of sleep. I don't know.

That seems terrible. I'm going to go real weird here. Is he on earth? Oh, that's, you figured out how to play this game very quickly, but in this case, it is, it is very mundane. In fact, a very mundane type of alarm as well, the one we probably all use these days. Was it broken? Did it just, did it like, you know how they're, like, there are like block, block numbers? Did certain blocks go out?

Not that type of alarm. Okay, I was thinking digital. Oh, it is, but chances are most people don't use an actual alarm clock anymore. We use our phones. Yes, we do. Not all of us. His REM sleep cycle was like, you best sleep for four hours. And so if you use this hour,

app will only let you sleep for the next four hours and 39 minutes. App is the correct word in that. So he's not using alarm. He's using a very specific niche app. No, he's actually using the default alarm on an iPhone, actually. But he can only go to 439? The range of options. Okay.

A range between 1 o'clock and 439. Was it nearing the end of the year? And so you couldn't actually go further into the distance of, for example, it stops at 31st of December. But then I feel like it would stop at like, what would it stop at 2359, not 439? So maybe not. Okay, so I have just like a, something to add that I saw online one time. And it was that somebody scrolled and scroll and scrolled through the times on the iPhone alarms. And it wasn't a loop. They didn't loop like 1 to 12 or 1 to 24. They just kept listing them. And so you could reach the end.

if you went some ridiculous distance of scrolling. So maybe this is relevant. I don't know. I don't know that 439 is really throwing me off. Annie, exactly right. Darn it! All of these submitters should be my friends because we definitely have the same feeds.

But I'm still, I don't, 439 is throwing me off. What's 439? So the iPhone clock widget, if you'd like, the thing where you scroll up and scroll down, it looks like a loop is actually just a really long list of options that starts with 1 and 0-0. And it turns out that if you scroll and scroll and scroll, however many options are allowed on that list,

means it stops repeating at 439. And the reason that was cagey about 24 hours is that's the next one over. If you say it to AM and PM, that's the third option. If you set it to 24 hours, then it'll probably end at a different point. But yes, you are spot on. 439 is... And that's why it was so cagey about the range. Like it ranges from 1 to 439.

There's just a few thousand other options in there, as you get. Alexis, over to you, please. Absolutely. All right. This question has been sent in by Emily. Thanks, Emily. Elyla is packing for a hike in Australia. While organizing her first aid kit,

she packs large bandages. with rectangles printed on them rather than the cheaper plain option. Why? Go again? Ila is packing for a hike in Australia. While organizing her first aid kit, she packs large bandages with rectangles printed on them

rather than the cheaper plain option. Why? When I think, so I, my mom is a pediatrician, and so growing up, I had tons of fun band-aids because that's the stereotype. Like, oh, you're going to have band-aids, So she would carry them in her purse, and she would always have the coolest ones. And so, like, growing up I had, I don't know, whatever was the cool kids show, I always had cool bandits.

And let me just say, rectangles, not that exciting. You can do better than rectangles. I want some hallo kitty ones. Yeah. I'm going to Australian stereotypes immediately, which is either creatures that will kill you or the flying doctors. If you're going for a big road trip in Australia, you're probably going to be on that road for hours and there's nothing around.

And there are remote air strips where the... I can't remember their official name, but they're known as the Flying Doctors. They turn up as emergency medics in a plane to whichever remote airstrip needs it. So I'm like, is there something about being visible from the air when you slap your bandages on or something...

Some Australian stereotype that means that this this wards off rattlesnake, not rattlesnets, wards off tithnypans or something like that. The most I will tell you is that there is a connection to an Australian stereotype. All right, it's time to offend Australia, here we go. Okay. Not a particularly offensive one, I don't think. Okay, so what are some Australian stereotypes laid back? Getting sunburned all the time?

Lots of spiders. Spiders is on the right track, for sure. Okay. Just like humans have fears of spiders, do spiders have fears of rectangles? Oh, no, but that might make sense. Like, if there's... Yes, but you wouldn't need that for a bandage.

You don't need to ward a spider off somewhere that it's already bitten. What if she passes out, Isla does, because she gets bitten by a spider, and she was able to call the plane medic in time, but they don't know what the... injury is, is there something like this rectangle is a code for spider emergency? It is not a code, but it would be quite helpful if you were bitten by certain types of

spiders. Something about this bandage. And that's not the big ones either. The big ones that people are scared of and not the spiders that'll bite you and cause a problem. You need to look out for the tiny ones. Are there reactions based on like venom or poison of spiders or even snakes? There is no reaction within the band.

no. I'm guessing as time goes on, perhaps, I don't want to say they change color, but there might be some sort of visual implication. And then that tells you how many hours it's been if you are unable to time it yourself. So spider bites, some sort of visual change on the bandage, those things are very warm. Think about what you might do in the immediate aftermath of this kind of spider or snake bite. Scream, freak out. Okay, after that, tax out. Between the screaming and the passing out, what might happen. Never go back to Australia again. Call the medic and say, don't wear your gorilla mask this time. I just need a normal doctor.

Okay, but you're going to try and maybe put... Are you carrying anti-venom with you? Are you trying to inject... No, because you've got to identify which spider bite it is, if you're figuring that out. It's perhaps not as fancy as you're imagining. You just want to stop the blood from coming out. You don't want to bleed out.

That's what plasters are for. So if it's not just blood that's coming out of the wound, if you've been bitten by something venomous. Oh, you need to know what the thing is. You know you've been bitten, but you might not know what the thing is. So does it like sample the venom that's left in there? Less fancy. So lower priority than that.

know you've possibly been bitten by something venomous. It will tell you whether it's venomous or not. Let's just assume you either know it is or you know there's a risk. We would all just die, clearly. We don't know. Goodbye, world. So you've been bitten by this thing. You know, there's quite a real risk that venom has gone into your body.

You're in the outback, and you know it's going to be some amount of time before you can make it to the hospital. this bandage is going to serve some function that allows you to get from point A to point B. Or it's going to keep you safe in the interim. Oh, you're like tying it. No. And you're stopping the blood flow. Yeah, that's very warm. That is very warm.

It's more of a tourniquet than a bandage then. It cuts off blood supply somehow. If you would like, I can give you the name of the technique that this bandage does. So the technique is called. the pressure immobilization technique. So you're trying to slow the movement of venom. So these are, I read some reviews of these bandages. They're often given to people, you know, as Christmas gifts. They're not necessarily just something that a medical professional might have. Your average person might take some of these out to the, you know, out to a hike.

You know you're going to want to immobilize the area. You're not a trained professional. Is there anything these rectangles could help you figure out? and they're evenly spaced across. Is that how many times you should wrap? Like the spacing of the wrapping that you should do? Spacing is close. So the rectangles are an instruction of some kind. You do look as you're applying this bandage.

You use the rectangles to figure out if you're applying it correctly. Well, does the rectangle indicate that there's a lot of blood flow happening? And so it's like, well, turn a kit harder. No, so think about, you. you want to put this bandage, you know, tense over a wound to keep the area locked in. What we're looking for with the rectangle, it's just a very simple physical change. So think about a band-aid or about a bandage. What happens when you move it around?

You're tying it on a wound. You're stretching it over an area. What's going to happen to those rectangles as you're yanking the band-aid around? They get elongated as well as much as you put it. Oh, and so you want to, it's just testing, like, you really want to pull this thing. So you want this rectangle to stretch all the way around or something like that? Very, very close.

Maybe not all the way around. But what happens if you stretch a rectangle? It gets to be a thinner rectangle. When it hits the other end, it becomes a cylinder. It becomes a square. It becomes a square. Yay. So the deal with these bandages is, so from bites from snakes or funnel web spiders,

use the pressure immobilization technique to wrap a limb and slow the movement of venom. these compression bandages have a rectangle on them that when you have stretched it to the correct tension, the rectangle becomes a square. And that's how you know you've done it correctly. That is really clever. Yeah, I was just like less fancy than you're thinking. Wow. I'm so glad that I'm not bit by a spider right now.

And I don't even have to think about that. I feel similarly. I've learned that there is perhaps one type of venomous. spider in Michigan, and I'm now convinced that every spider I see is that type. Deeply unlikely, but these are my fears. Okay, well, yay, new thing to be afraid of. Thank you to Fergal McGuinness for this question. In 1964, Frank built a concrete wall in the Maruilla Valley of South Island, New Zealand.

It doesn't form a boundary or enclose anything, and three quarters of it is underground. Why would Frank be disappointed by the wall's longevity? Say that again. In 1964, Frank built a concrete wall in the Maruilla Valley of South Island, New Zealand. It doesn't form a boundary or enclose anything, and three quarters of it is underground. Why would Frank be disappointed by the wall's longevity? He built a wall, but he wanted to come down. First thing I thought was just art installation.

I was thinking, I mean, if he's upset by the longevity, is it not that the wall has broken down, but maybe. it no longer belongs to him or maybe because it's underground you couldn't say that that's your land yeah the underground thing is interesting concrete as well what's happening under new zealand i've never even thought about this there's probably volcanic activity um maybe there are weird reservoirs i don't even know maybe there's a secret club down there What's happening under New Zealand is a very good question there, Annie. Oh, now I'm imagining a club.

Okay. I'm thinking of all the little animal burrows as they come around. They're doing the club, they're having a little party at the concrete wall. There's just one very disappointed mole who's been digging that way for one to... Dunk! Dunk! Don't remember, do not make jokes like that in my authoritative factual voice. It doesn't worry about it.

Well, Tom Scott said there's a single Kiwi mall. So I know very little about New Zealand, but I live in a corner of the world where everything underground is a mine. Is there mining in that region of New Zealand? No, I think Annie was certainly closer with volcanoes. Not that close, but certainly closer. Okay, so I'm not close but closer, and I will take it. Let's like a volcano.

Lava tube? Mineral degradation? Why did he build three-quarters of underground anyway? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What's the point? What was the point of this board? Did he expect it to erode?

And then it would all erode away or something? Erode isn't the right word, but yes, that was kind of the point of it. We are in a remote mountain setting here. So I'm wondering what it's indicative of, if it signals some kind of change that would be happening underground, like it's a measurement tool in some way? We're measuring. Is it to measure, like, the fertility of the ground?

Like, how good it could be for growing vegetables or... No, I'd say you're still closer with volcanoes and things like that. New Zealand is... Is there a tectonic plate boundary in New Zealand? Yes, there is. This is so exciting. Wow. It's a timer for measuring when the next earthquake will will hit.

That's very close, Charlotte. Oh. Oh, if the wall, maybe it was built at the boundary, and if the wall was to crumble, it would indicate that there was a lot of tectonic movement, which indicates that an earthquake is imminent, or a large one, a scale. But this guy's disappointed that it still exists. Maybe he just wants the world, he wants the world. to be destroyed.

Maybe he wasn't expecting it to be so soon, and then the next day, an earthquake was coming. You've got most of this. This is Frank Everson, a geophysicist, who commissioned a building of a concrete wall across the Alpine Fault, which is the boundary between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates. You've got that, but you're right,

he's a geophysicist. He doesn't want to, he's not trying to bring on an earthquake here. So why is it disappointed that it's still standing? Was he predicting that an earthquake was going to come within the next year, for example, as a geophysicist? And then a year had passed, and it turned out that it was still standing, so he was wrong on his prediction. But he wanted to prove that he was going to be right. He was testing a theory, or at least trying to provide data. Did you say what time frame this was, Tom?

1964. Oh. So this is right when they found out about tectonics. It is. It's amazing how late the world found out about tectonics. Yeah, right? The earthquakes were, huge earthquakes were happening, and they were like, I wonder why. The Richter, I don't have the exact quote, but the Richter guy from the Richter scale,

he has all these really snarky quotes about like, stop trying to predict when it's going to happen. We, like, barely even know what tectonics are. Oh. Just focus on the basics. Oh. Yeah. But if I had the exact quote, it would be a lot more than here, because it was, I remember it being kind of profane. You've hit a key point there, Annie, which is that this was the very,

early days of figuring out that there were tectonic plates and they moved like this. So why might you build a wall across a fault in 1964? Did they think that these things were really trucking along? And it's like, oh boy, they actually move so subtly that it's hard to measure? So close. Really, really close. I think the key phrase in there, Annie, is move so suddenly. What might he have been trying to figure out?

Is it just as simple as he was trying to figure out what the speed was? Yes. Oh. Yes, he was. Oh. The intention of the wall was to shear at that junction so they can figure out visibly, obviously, how fast do these plates move? So why would he be disappointed that it's still standing? Because they move really slowly.

Oh, yeah. But they still have big effects. Mm-hmm. Oh! Oh, well, the trouble is they don't always move really slowly. Oh, okay. Well, I don't know. In my head, they do. That's the stereotype, I guess. I mean, why do we have earthquakes? What is an earthquake? Yeah, it's just sudden movement on a fault.

Keep going, Alexis. Okay. Sudden movement on a fault. One side shifts dramatically compared to the other. Yep. Where does the wall come into that? You know what? I'm going to give you that. It is, you talked about sudden movements. So this is a wall built across a fault line

designed to measure how much the plates are moving over time and eventually the wall will shear and it will be obvious and you can measure it. He would be disappointed, were he still alive? Because that fault has not shifted at all because that is not how faults move. Faults move very suddenly causing earthquakes. At some point, yeah, that wall's getting torn down. But it hasn't happened since 1964

because that fault hasn't moved in that direction. Oh, okay, that makes sense. This is Frank Everson, a geophysicist, built the wall with the intention to shear it at that junction, but the wall remains resolutely straight, but they did learn that the tectonic plates move in large jumps rather than a slow, gradual creep. Hmm, cool.

Charlotte, whenever you're ready. Okay, this question has been sent in by Elliot. Between the 1980 and 1986, annual motorcycle thefts in West Germany fell from around 150,000 to 50,000. Policymakers were surprised but delighted. What caused the drop? And one more time, between 1980 and 1986, annual motorcycle thefts in West Germany fell from around 150,000 to 50,000. Policymakers were surprised but delighted. What caused the drop? Well, my first thought when I think about Germany

and anything that moves is the Autobahn. Yeah? Maybe that opened and everyone was like, well, we can just cruise in our cars. I'm just going to say, where it's Mercedes-Benz. That's such a decrease, though. That's two-thirds of motorcycle thefts not happening. My first thought is that it's a reporting error.

Like anything like this. Oh, has crime actually gone up? or are people just reporting more crimes? Are motorcycles actually being stolen, less, or are people just not believing that their motorcycle is worth reporting anymore? Like, it won't get solved. But two-thirds? I will say it is the actual number of motorcycle thefts that decreases.

See, I don't know numbers, but that seems like a lot of thefts before. Yeah. Is there something special about West German motorists? cycles from this time period? Like, did they become more available so people didn't need to steal as many of them? 1980 to 1986. I can't think of anything that was happening in West Germany about them that wasn't also happening earlier or later. Um, when did the Berlin Wall go up? Go up or down? Well, it was down in 89, right? Okay. Yeah, so it was up well before then.

Mm-hmm. Did they open a motorcycle factory in East Germany? And so people were no longer sneaking out to steal. The competitors. That's the thing. If you want to cut off crime like that, removing the economic reason for it, is often a really good way of doing. Like, try and cut it off at the source rather than what the end result.

that people are stealing motorbikes because it's really profitable to steal motorbikes, or really, or really easy to steal motorbikes. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about the policy makers were surprised but delighted bit. I was like, well, what did they do that turned out better than expected? What's the new rule? Easy is definitely more on the hot side. So why did it suddenly become more difficult to steal motorbikes in the 80s? Hmm.

And I will say zoning in on. the policy makers is a good idea. Did they just require registration of motorbikes? Was it just that in 1980, whatever, spreading through Germany, they just required motorbikes to suddenly have like a registration number or something? And now you can track them after they've been stolen. It's not that, but there was a requirement of something. Oh.

Licenses? A motorbike license? I'm hoping anyone that's driving a motorbike already has a... Helmets? I was going to say... Yeah, did they just... you have to wear helmets now and it's less cool to steal a motorbike.

No. Okay, that is, that is correct, Alexis. There is a law, there was a new law introduced for helmets. But why, why, it's not, it's not that it made it look less cool, but why would that make it, why would that make the drop from 150,000 to 50,000? Oh, visibility of faces. If you're going out to steal a motorbike, you've got to take a helmet with you, or the police are going to stop you on your motorbike that you've stolen without a helmet.

That's it, that's it, Tom. That's exactly it. Brilliant. So in the 1980s, West Germany, motorcycle thefts were often committed by opportunities. People who saw a bike unattended, jumped on, and then rode off. But when the government introduced mandatory helmet laws, these casual thieves suddenly faced a practical. practical barrier. riding bareheaded was illegal, conspicuous and dangerous. Furthermore, they were unlikely to be carrying a helmet when the opportunity arose. The number of spur of the moment

thefts collapsed as a result. That's lovely. Wow. That's why I take a helmet everywhere I go because of the opportunity strikes. I will be stealing. Which brings us to the question from the very start of the show, what type of workers are named after the mercenary night? who toured Europe after the Crusades. I'll give the audience the answer in just a moment, but before I do, does they want to take a quick shot at that? I've heard this fun fact before, and I remember it was really fun, and I can't remember it.

So I'm so excited. My only guess is that it's related to bees or ants. Why do you think that? Worker bees. Ah. No, unfortunately, but these were mercenaries available for hire. Ah. Technically this word still counts as mercenaries available for hire.

It's just the industries are very different now. Assassins. Is this where freelancers comes from? Yes, it is. Why might that be the case? All I can tell you is I got free plus lance. Which is where the word comes from. Yes, freelancers were originally free lancers.

Mercenary knights whose lancers, whose weapons and military services were available to hire by any lord who would pay them. The term was popularised by Sir Walter Scott in his 1819 novel Ivanhoe, where he writes, I offered Richard the service of my freelancers, L-A-N-C-E-S, and he refused them. And yes, it became a military term, then it became a metaphor,

and now we have freelance designers and freelance developers who honestly would be so much more cool if they had weapons. Thank you very much to all of our players. Where can people find you? What's going on your lives? start with Alexis.

Yeah, you can find me at YouTube.com slash Alexis doll or on Instagram at Alexis.com. And that is D-A-H-L? Yes, yep. Charlotte. You can find me on Instagram at Miki Char. And that is C, and that is, you know what?

I'll ask you to spell that one. M-I-K-I-C-H-A-R. And Annie. Hi, I'm on Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, X, sometimes, Debs of Wikipedia. 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 and there are full video shows every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Annie Roedah. Yay, thanks. Charlotte Young. Thank you. Alexis Dahl.

Thanks. I've been Tom Scott and that's been Lateral.