Lateral with Tom Scott - 192: Picnic by the prison

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Michelle Wong, Bill Sunderland and Dani Siller face questions about stamp selections, diplomatic diagrams and worrisome wordings. 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: Melvin, James Dominguez, Vic Chao, Thomas, Lucas Waldhauer, OMacMacca, Karen Zheng. 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

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Why is it often a good idea for coin collectors to buy stamp collections?

The answer to that, at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. Good day to you. Before we begin, I'm required to inform you that this episode has been approved by the Department of Questions, countersigned by the Subcommittee on Mild Confusion, and rubber-stamped by the Office of Tangents and Adjacent Thoughts. Form Q1A has been completed in triplicate.

Form Q3B was misplaced, but we're calling that part of the process. Vesta, Beta and Gamma have passed a basic background check, confirming they can sit in chairs and respond audibly. Please remain seated until the questioning light turns green. First today, we have, from Lab Muffin Beauty Science. Welcome back to the show, Michelle Wong. Lovely to be here. I don't see this green light though, so I'm a bit worried. I'm reliably informed it will be added in post.

And, no, I'll be honest, I just made that up, and I've just given the editor a hard job to do. Sorry about that. Welcome back. There is a question I've not asked you before, which is, why lab muffin? Okay, maybe I shouldn't have asked that question. I ask myself this all the time. Because you're a cosmetic scientist, right? Well, kind of. I started off in medicinal chemistry, actually. I was doing a PhD, and I was like, I really want to start a blog on some sort of science. And it ended up, it was actually a toss-up between cosmetic science and at the time I was also doing a lot of pole dancing. like, I was like, one or the other.

And it ended up being cosmetic science. And I was like, I wanted to start for ages. And then eventually I was like, I'm never going to start. I just need two words that will give me good SEO. Yep. There are worse ways to gain a name. What have been working on lately? Oh, I've been actually doing a really interesting sunscreen study.

I'm trying to convince the government to let sunscreens like influencers talk about sunscreens again, which actually isn't allowed in Australia. Huh. It's a loaded topic here right now. We take sunscreen very seriously. Well, very best of luck with that, Michelle. And joining us and chiming in there on this all-Australian, apart from me, episode of Lateral, which of you all wants to go first? We'll start with Danny.

Welcome back to the show from Escape This Podcast, from many other things from our very first episode. Danny Seller, welcome back. Hello, thank you so much. You triggered me hard with that rolled R because I cannot roll my R's. But then Michelle brought me right back into my comfort zone with pole dancing. So I feel great now. Australia, we've got skin cancer and pole dancing.

What have you been working on lately, Dannings? It's been a while since you've been on the show. Oh, goodness. We've been having a bit of a return to normal this year. We're just plugging along with our shows and trying to make them consistent and good. So trying to get more murder mysteries out there. I've done a nice medieval inheritance-themed series of escape rooms that's about to finish up.

Brilliant. Well, let's talk to your partner in crime. Bill Sunderland, also from Escape This Podcast and many other things in our first episode, welcome back to the show. Yeah, was I supposed to mail this in? Because I've got Form Q3B here, and I just, I figured someone would come collect it,

and they never did. Technically part of the process. But also, I appreciate you calling back to the intro that I was going to say most of our audience have already forgotten about. I'd forgotten about and was briefly confused when you held that up. And I remember. The form number too. You did. I've got it written down in front of me.

I didn't remember that. This is why you create the escape rooms and the murder mysteries, and I sit here with the script. Yeah, that's it. Ability to memorize three numbers in a row, is all you need in an escape room. That's a four-digit code! What am I going to do? Well, good luck to all three of you on the show today.

Your application for curiosity has been accepted, and processing begins with question one. This question was sent in by Lucas Vaultour. While stationed in West Germany in 1958, Elvis Presley had his ivory-white BMW 507 repainted. What colour did he choose and why? And one more time, while stationed in West Germany in 1958, Elvis Presley had his ivory-white BMW-507 repainted. What colour did he choose and why? Elvis is not my strong suit, but I'm pretty sure he was known for a somewhat pink car.

But I don't think that was a BMW. I think that was a Cadillac, wasn't it? Could be. And we've hit the most that I know about cars now as well. If I'm trying to think of colours that are Elvis associated, there's also, I feel, blue. Did he do blue Hawaii? What was his one of the movies? Blue suede shoes, obviously.

And like Danube, I feel like that's blue or some sort of blue. But he's American. So did he take his car with him to Germany? Like, was he with the car? Or did you just send it off as, you know, pop stars do? He's Elvis. He's going. car people to take that thing anywhere.

If he says get my car to West Germany, they'll get his car to West Germany. Was it Elvis who wanted to go to war at some stage, but then America, the leaders said, no, you're too valuable. We can't send you. Ah, the reverse BTS. And he's like, well, I need to go to Germany anyway to get my car painted. Yeah, he did say he was stationed in West Germany. Yes, he definitely joined the army for a while, because I remember that being quite a big story. Also, it's a BMW in West Germany, so while I don't have the history there, it may have been the car he bought locally. Yeah, that makes sense.

Filled in the right form. Started out white, ivory white for reasons. Very curious that it's that detailed. And that was either that was bad or some other colour was real good. I mean, he's stationed in West Germany. It's a military thing. It's, what, 58? So this is...

Yeah, 58. So I remember two numbers this time. But is he not meant to have his own? Like if you're stationed there in a military capacity, you're probably not meant to be driving around in a white. Did he paint a camouflage coloured? Yeah, did he make camo? He's like, now it's a military vehicle.

I have to, you got to let me keep driving it. Oh, I thought you were saying now the top brus can't see it. We can't be terrible. They keep turning up to army base and be like, where is everybody? This is terrible. Now it's in the base. Everybody take his shirt off. The generals are here.

This wasn't about any sort of fashion or resale value or anything like that. It was more to stop a recurring problem. Is it people noticing that Elvis is there? People, like, people west, it's just coming to be like, oh my God, that's Elvis's car. The iconic ivory, white BMW. We all love Elvis. Let's rush the base. We all love Elvis would be the... Did birds poop a different color?

Oh! That's a big... That's a completely different direction. I love it. Interesting. Well, here's the thing. It is a completely different. direction. It's nothing to do with birds, but that sort of temporary cosmetic damage, let's say. Oh, yeah. Ivory white would get camouflaged by that, unless the birds pooped a different colour. These are not the birds, and they are not pooping, but it is a different colour.

Yeah. I was debating. Elvis had pretty dark hair, right? Did he wear, like, hair stuff, and he would bang his head on his car a lot? Well, I don't know. Tom tried to correct me on We Love Elvis. So maybe it was instead we... hate Elvis, let's throw these tomatoes at his car. Oh, now, not a correction there, Bill. It really was people loving Elvis. Did they kiss his car a lot? They kissed the car, went.

Did you see that? You threw that at me. No, I didn't. My pen just came apart in my hands. Sorry, Danny. You were right, and in my enthusiasm, I threw my pen at your, well, half of my pen at your face. Would you mind saying that again?

They loved Elvis so much. and people just couldn't stop kissing his car? Yes. The female fans were kissing the car. So, what colour did he paint it? Big bright red or pink or whatever the prevailing lipstick colour was. Yes, to camouflage the kisses from the fans. During his US Army service in West Germany, fans quickly learned where Elvis was stationed.

His recently purchased BMW originally came in ivory white, but admirers repeatedly covered it with lipstick, kisses and message. So Elvis had its resprayed bright red, discouraging further decorations. Do you think it actually worked, or do you think that they really wanted their lips there and they compensated? And that's when goth started. I was going to say, if there was a goth fad in 19th, actually, I imagine goths in sort of that area of Europe means something very different. Yes, good point. With half a pen in my hand, Danny, it is over to you.

Amazing. All right, this question has been sent in by Vic Chow. Thank you so much. A chef prepares a hearty stew called Changkornabe for his athletes. However, especially during tournaments, many athletes will only eat the chicken version of this stew and avoid beef, pork or fish. Why? And one more time, a chef prepares a hearty stew called Chanconabe for his athletes. However, especially during tournaments, many athletes will only eat the chicken version of this stew, avoid beef, pork or fish. Why?

I've got some knowledge of this, but not an answer. I suspected that might be the case. Then start us off, Bill, because I've got nothing. So I'm pretty sure that Tancunabe is what sumo wrestlers eat. It's like famous sumo food. I think that is true. I was going French. Oof, terrible languages. I'm not 100% sure of the title. It could be something different. Maybe people like, Like, no, you're thinking of some very, very similar word. But I think that's like a traditional sumo food.

I have no idea why before a sumo tournament you want to eat. Oh, well, now I have a vague idea, but I don't think so. You want to eat chicken instead of beef or pork. I just, I like that Bill has just been steadily going. I think, oh, I think, oh, well, I'll be honest. I've got nothing here. Have you got anything, Michelle? I was about to refer to the wrestlers as sumo tori,

which I think is the word for sumo wrestlers, which, and Tori is also the word for chicken. So I didn't, I wondered if there was a fun connection there, but I think maybe that's nothing. It is the word for bird, right? Yeah, Tori is bird, but I think it might be written, well, it's obviously written differently, but I think it might be Tori. I don't know. I don't know.

Someone who knows more about Sumo can tell me that I'm wrong. Danny, how close is he? You've definitely got the main thrust of it that the sumo part is correct. I don't think the linguistic similarity of the word Tori is part of it, though. No, I don't think so. I'm drawing a blank, but I'm going, what is special about food in Asia? And it's like, well, we're very lactose intolerant. But I don't think that can be it.

No. Because it's basically chicken instead of any other meat. Instead of pork, instead of beef, instead of fish, you eat the chicken version. So is there some association either culturally or religiously or actual sports scientifically with why chicken is best for people before they wrestle? chickens are light on their feet and sumo wrestlers have to be light on their feet.

Heavy in their waist and light on their feet. If it was about what the animal is like, I feel like chicken is not the creature that you want to imitate if you are a sumo wrestler. I filmed a thing years ago with a flock of chickens in Australia, actually. And I... There's just, there's not much going on

up in the head there. Like, I try to have sympathy for animals, and there just wasn't any light behind the eyes. They may have been the least intelligent appearing creatures I've ever seen or worked with. They just kind of bobbed around. So, I don't feel like chickens would be attacking each other and trying to, like, you surely want, like, cow.

I think that's a pretty famous crime, the series of crime rings that do, do that. Oh, oh. There are. Oh, but. Cockbite. I'm not, that wasn't leading, just a point. Oh, you make an excellent point.

I was, I was going to say chickens don't, like, chickens just run around and avoid each other. But yes, quite famously, Danny, you're right, that's not what happens. I also don't think of cockfighting question is quite right for lateral, but we'll see. I wouldn't necessarily go in that direction, but some of the sort of general vibes that you've been floating

have actually been very good and very close to a good, eloquent way of putting what we're going for here. Is there anything about, like, how cooked the meat is? Because what was it? Beef, fish, fish, pork compared to chicken. Oh, pork you would fully cook. Never mind. It is definitely less about the science than the sort of general animal-y vibes

that you were going for before. Yeah. Is it basically saying, if you're a sumer wrestler, you want to be like a chicken. So eat chicken, so you can be like a chicken, because chickens, when you move around, their heads stay still because they have really good balance and their self-balancing animals. Yeah, yeah. If you put an iPhone on the head of a chicken and you held its body, you get a perfectly smooth shot. Look, I would say you're in a good place and you're in the right direction. I would say more, like, you don't even need to go that specific. Just compare it to

some of those other animals. Like, two legs. Two legs is kind of it. Sumerese, you've got to be pretty two-legged. Think about the positions of the, like the other animals. They have to stay on two legs. You have to stay on two legs and squat down, and that is a chicken-like position? Yeah, you absolutely can't. You certainly can't be like a four-legged animal, and you definitely can't be like a fish.

You can't put your arms down in Sumo. You can't put anything, no, Sumo, you can't put anything other than the sole of your foot on the ground. Even the top of your foot, even if you drag your toes on the ground, you'll lose because it's only soles your feet. So you have to be very staying upright, hopping on one leg while you're trying to,

and throw the person off the side in whatever summa wrestlers call a... And thus, so does the chicken. Yeah. Yeah, so it is essentially emulating the animal that is good and stable on its two legs and nothing that needs any other part of its body to be touching the ground. That's fun. So yeah, Bill, you're absolutely right at the beginning that the chunk on ivy. It's kind of one of the big staples eaten by suma wrestlers.

It really keeps up their weight as well as a big thing. They'll sumer wrestlers, you can probably tell a little bit, they have to be really diligent about their diet to maintain this sort of weight. So some fun facts, they'll eat this twice a day. They will then sleep immediately so that everything they've just eaten will do its best to turn straight into body fat. And they'll also have about six pints of beer with these meals. That seems counterintuitive to the whole staying on your feet thing.

This question was sent in by Oman. Thank you very much. In 2016, New Zealander Chloe Phillips Harris arrived in Kazakhstan with the correct paperwork. Yet border officials detained her, insisting her documents were wrong. When they brought her a diagram, to prove the point, Chloe realized she was in serious trouble. Why? I'll give you that one more time. In 2016, New Zealander Chloe Phillips Harris arrived in Kazakhstan with the correct paperwork.

Yet border officials detained her, insisting her documents were wrong. When they brought her a diagram, diagram to prove the point, Chloe realized she was in serious trouble. Why? I get to sit one out. I get to sit it out. I appreciate you doing your own cheerleading. That was wonderful. It doesn't happen often. It doesn't happen often. All right, Michelle, Bill, this one's on you two. Oh. So, going from New Zealand, over to Kazakhstan, you've got the correct documents, but a chart shows you deal with it. Sorry, go. And they drew this chart.

Or they at least brought it out. Maybe they had it on hand. Do you know what's on the New Zealand passport? I feel like, I don't know, New Zealand's such a small country. My brain's going to, like, there's something weird about New Zealanders, which I'm sure there's lots of weird things. But sorry, we have to diss them. They're like our younger brothers. No one else is allowed to diss them.

Their former prime minister is coming to live here. Come on, guys. Get it together. I mean, is it a New Zealand thing? Do you think it's a Kazakhstan thing? Like, what was going on? When did Kazakhstan had a thing recently of changing their capital and then changing it back again? They went from, was it Astana to Noor-Sultan?

And then they're like, no, we're doing, we're going back. Either location, or do they just change the name of the city? I can't remember. So maybe she was like, you could go anywhere in the capital, which is Astana. And then they went, oh, here's our chart that says it's now New Sultan. Sorry, you're not allowed to do anything here. You have to go home until we change it back in a few years. I don't think so, but this is one of my few Kazakhstan facts.

And apparently, as you can see, as you hear from, I'm saying it, not much of a fact. Half-remembered fact. I would say you're not going to require much Kazakhstan knowledge for this. No, no, you're not. But I have one piece. Okay. Is it the fact that on a lot of world maps, they don't even put New Zealand. It's a famous thing New Zealanders complain about, where they leave New Zealand off,

the map. That is extremely relevant, Bill. Yeah. So do they have like a chart of all the countries that are allowed to come to Kazakhstan and they're like, New Zealand isn't a country. Oh, it's just like colored green for everything except. Yeah, we've coloured every country based on what they're now to do. You're not coloured in because you're not on the map, sorry. I think I have to give you that, Bill. It wasn't so much coloured in on the map. But I said, point to your country? Pretty much, yes. The guards did not know that New Zealand was a country. Sure. Chloe insists that yes it is and here's my visa, the guards go and get the map that they have,

and New Zealand, as you've said often happens, is not on the map. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, what are you going to do at that point? Draw it in with a pen. Here I am. It was a similar sort of thing that some Americans seem to go through when they're from New Mexico. And so they'll show their credentials to someone

and they'll say, you're from Mexico. I'm going to need to see a bit more information to show that you're allowed to work in this country. Michelle, earlier you said that New Zealand was kind of like Australia's little brother. You were actually very close there with what the guards thought was going on. What might they have thought about New Zealand? It's a state of Australia? Yes, they thought it was part of Australia.

Yes, they do. And yet apparently technically somewhere, that's true that we can just accept them as a state if ever they agree to it? We've pre-accepted that New Zealand's allowed to be like, okay, we'll be a state and then they're allowed in. Wow, really? Yeah. Which is weird. I'm currently reading the Australian Constitution and I haven't reached that part yet. That'll be where it gets really juicy. How long is your constitution?

They're not that long. Every section of it, like there are a hundred and something sections, but each section's a tiny paragraph of one to two sentences. So it's nothing crazy. It just sounds really academic when you say that's what you're reading. Bill, we will head over to you, please. This question was sent in by Thomas. Thank you, Thomas. At the 1987 F1 German Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Macaile Alberto wore a seemingly normal helmet. When he opened his visor before the race, other teams complained and the helmet was banned.

Why? And I'll give it to you a second time. At the 1987 Formula 1 German Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Michaelae Alberto wore a seemingly normal helmet When he opened his visor before the race, other teams complained, and the helmet was banned. Why? Had kisses all over it. No, no, he'd painted it to get rid of all the kisses.

No, that's not true. Oh, man, already said. Car stuff, not my forte. No, it's all you, Tom. Oh, no, this is worrying. I mean, my suggestion was that it was just an imposter inside. He had one of those tinted prizes on the helmet, and he actually couldn't be bothered to do the Grand Prix that day.

So they got the substitute in. Substitute flips up the helmet. And they're like, you are not name I didn't write down and therefore I can't remember it. McKayle? Macaile. It's like Michelle, but presumably in a masculine form, and pronounced McAle.

I'm trying to think what you can add to a helmet because my husband has a motorbike and he's obsessed with adding stuff to his helmet. This sounds juicy. This sounds relevant. Stickers. He's trying to make me enjoy riding on the back of his bike so he's added stuff to mine as well.

It's got like a... Did it have a microphone? Like, did it have like a little speaker so he could like listen to advice from someone? Oh, that's a point. These days in F1, that's the thing that happens. All the teams are radioed up. They do the broadcast.

But this was 1987. Maybe they flipped something like, you've got a microphone under there and none of us have. So it's not like tennis where they say no coaching from the side, but it might have been back then. That's not true.

That's not correct. I would say in, general, the helmet generally was within safety regulations, it was within normal helmet specifications. But it does feel like rules loophole-iness. There's a lot of that in F-1. Rules loophole is a very good thing to think about. Rules loophole is actually RuPaul's full name. Sorry, I regret that joke. That's good.

Oh, it would be easy if this was a RuPaul question. Sir, what do we think? I don't know. The helmets have to be. be there to save you if you're in a crash and not let horrible racing G-forces hurt you too bad physics. And this helmet would do both those things. The helmet was the thing banned, right? Not the visor. I mean, both together. The visor was a big part of the problem. Was it not actually a visor? Was it like the party guy grids? They could put like, you know, put a racing line on it because it's going to change? Again, too early to have some kind of magic heads-up display in there, but maybe there were markers in there to help him guide on difficult turns?

You're in the right place with markings on the visor. In fact, the issue was a single red stripe along the top of the visor. And they were worried about it in terms of fairness issues, but not about race performance. That's interesting. He mentioned a line across the top, and I was going, oh, you know, like to block out extra sun or something like that, but that would all be performance-based, surely. What it's blocking out is also very relevant, but not for performance. Is it blocking out the crowd? No.

No? What could it be blocking out that isn't about affecting his performance? The sweat dripping down his face. I will say, Tom has made a fatal mistake at the start of this question, and he'll never solve it because of that. Wow. I have no memory of what I said, so good luck to the other two. What have I assumed?

It's not what you'd have assumed, it's what you'd forgotten, Tom. That the name was McKayley. The name was McKayley Alboretto. That is M and then Alboretto, A-L-B-O-R-E-T-O. Oh. Yeah, you're right, Bill. That was a fatal mistake. to forget the name Malboretto.

Huh? Oh, now Tom's got it, and he's made us wonderful success, and Danny will never get it. Well, it is, and I wonder if this might be because I'm in my 40s, and I remember the days when you had cigarette advertising. Follow that? What? Does Malboretto sound like a little Marlborough?

It does, and their brand colour was red. Okay. Did he just have Marlboretto? Like, because you can have your name on your helmet. Yes. Did he have his name in the Marlborough font and colour to get around the advertising rules? It looked like he was advertising these cigarettes. He did.

He did have it in the exact same font, but Tom, his name is Marlboretto, not Marlborough. And you never addressed that red line on his. visor either. Was it covering up the last couple of erroneous letters? It covered up the ET to make it say Marlborough straight up in the original text on the side of his helmet when he lifted his visor. Yes, so yeah, 1987 Marlborough had been sponsoring the Ferrari F1 team, but Germany had banned cigarette ads.

So because of it was in Germany, they couldn't advertise cigarettes since 1975. Ferrari decided to get creative with it and set up Michaela Arboretto to lift his visor and have it say Marlborough right across the side of the helmet. Was that even his real name? My name is M. Albreto. Oh, and my name's Grammel Cigarettes. Thank you to Karen Zhang for this question.

Lee is reading a book and comes across something he doesn't know. After carefully writing it down, he finds out its meaning in a dictionary. which two pieces of information did Lee need? I'll say that again. Lee is reading a book and comes across something he doesn't know. After carefully writing it down, he finds out its meaning in a dictionary. Which two pieces of information did Lee need? I feel like there are some straightforward ways to go here.

How to spell it? Where the dictionary was. That could help. Bill, you and I were doing this just last night, because we have some Japanese coffee. of a couple of books and you know Japanese better than I do. So I was looking at the Japanese book and trying to work my way through it. You were helping me out.

But occasionally you needed to look up some of the kanji yourself. So you know how to look up things. Occasionally is very, very generous. Constantly, I think. I just went straight. For some reason, reading a book in your own language, totally not the first thing that came to my mind. I went straight to, oh, must be something in another language.

I went the same way. I thought that he needed... to know what language it was, first of all, and then... Maybe it was the writing it down carefully part. He needed to know what it meant in Italian and then what that meant in English. I wonder if it's... I don't know if... Maybe is it something that doesn't have an alphabet, so it's not as easy to look up in a dictionary.

I mean, yeah. It could well be. Yeah, keep going. Oh, excellent. Again, Bill, you have a Japanese dictionary on your phone. What do you do when you need to look something up? Yeah, because they use Chinese. Chinese characters be the same for looking it up in Chinese, which is you sort of break them down,

break symbols into their radicals, and then those are organized by how many strokes it takes to write them. So everything's listed numerically rather than alphabetically. So it's like... Like the first stroke, I think it's like, yeah, first stroke and how many strokes in the radical and then how many strokes in the other one? Yeah. So my... Yes.

Yeah. Oh, beautiful. So he needed to know how many strokes it took to write it. It is odd to read a lateral question and then find out that not only... did Lee in the question do this, but two of our guests were doing this yesterday. He is reading Chinese.

I will, to avoid letters coming in, I will say that while Chinese, Japanese, and Korean glyphs are similar, they are not identical, and that is, oh, that is a really contentious issue in the Unicode Consortium. And we'll just, we will flag that, and we will move on.

But yes, the two items are the number of penstrokes, required, and the order of those strokes. Amazing. And in order to figure that out, you have to write down the character. Oh, yep, that makes sense. That checks out. That's a good way to do it, to know it.

Fun random trivia. So my Chinese name, the last, like Chinese names are three characters. The last character, because my parents went to a numerologist. This is like a whole thing. They go to a numerologist because of the number of strokes and stuff. Like you want an auspicious number of strokes in your child's name. It didn't, they couldn't find a name with the right number of strokes. So they just added a dot to my last one.

Like, read the same, just added a dot. I love it. So I guess it's like the Chinese version of like those made up names that people keep knocking. Every time I went to Chinese school, like I'd see the role, the class role and everyone's got like, you know, normal computer printer names. And then you'd see the teacher had like added a dot there to the photocopy. And so I just had this blob in my name. That's nice. Embarrassing.

One day, you're negotiating. with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time. TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. Michelle, over to you, please. This question has been sent in by James Dominguez. Established in 1851, Melbourne's notorious Pentridge prison stands beside a scenic park that's long been a popular picnic spot with locals. Why is this prison next to a park? Let's go through that again.

Established in 1851, Melbourne's notorious Pentridge Prison stands beside a scenic park that's long been a popular picnic spot with locals. Why is this prison next to a park? All right, we get to get out all our horrible Melbourne stereotypes that we know now. I have interesting Melbourne prison trivia. Oh. I have interesting 1800s Melbourne prison trivia. This sounds like it might be.

It's completely irrelevant. Oh. But for a while, because of prison population and set up an infrastructure in Melbourne, I think early, like early white settlement in the area, they had prisons. They just had two big floating prison ships that they sat in the harbor, in the bay of, like, Melbourne Bay, and they would just fill them full of prisoners. And it was hellish and terrible. But they just had these giant ships and they barred off every. They turned every room into a brig and they filled them and they shocked them full of prisoners because they didn't have the infrastructure to do all the prisoners on land. You're right. That is interesting but seemingly irrelevant.

Interesting and completely irrelevant. It sounds a bit like what they did with COVID with the people on cruise ships. And the good news is if they needed to throw an officer in the brig, he was already there. So that's... Yeah, exactly. So why is it next to a park? Did people love to watch the hangings? Yeah, how grim can we make this?

How grim is this? If the prisoners escaped, we wanted a long, clear space for them to be running through with nothing in the way. Where are we going here? There are other prisons next to parks. I mean, Wormwood Scrubs in London is a famous prison, and there is Wormwood Scrubs park next to it. No, it isn't. I promise that's the actual name. It's a Dickens villain.

That's a Dickensian villain's Wormwood Scrubs. And now I'm Wormwood Scrubs. No, I haven't seen any boys around here. No, don't look in my basement for the boys that you're looking for. Is this why the family and Matilda are the Wormwoods? It's me, Wormwood Scrab. That's, I'm sorry, Tom. I'm now doubting that I've got the name of this right, by the way,

despite the fact that it's famous in British pop culture. It's definitely a prison and there's definitely a park next to it. The British loved parks and prisons. It's so you could build more prisons and you had the clear space where you're like, well, we're definitely going to have more prison. We'll just keep building down the parkway. I feel like what you were saying before about like locations. for prisons is kind of dancing around the answer.

Do people not want to live near a prison? So, like, well, no one's going to live here. May it make it a park. Make it a park. Can't put a house. Going to make it a park. Definitely seems believable. Or the land was contaminated for some reason. You can't build on it because... Think about not all parks are going to have people having picnics on them.

And not all prisons. So there's got to be something nice about the place, which might be linked to... prisons. It's the only place in Melbourne that has sun. Similar. So you're putting a park. So is the idea this isn't a nice public park for people to hang out? There's some other... Oh, it is. Oh, it is. It is. Yeah, it seems that there is something in particular that would draw people to this park that would not necessarily draw them to other places. Apart from prisons, yes. Is it a psychological thing, right, where you put a park and a prison with the same purpose,

which is look at the beautiful view. And if you're a park goer, you go, what a wonderful view. I'm so free, I'll enjoy it tomorrow. And if you're a prisoner, you go, oh, what a wonderful view. I'm so trapped. I can never get out to that beautiful place. Oh, the psychological, I'll repent. I'll change my ways.

I'll never do it again. Just let me go out into that beautiful view. Is that the idea? Kind of. It's like the reason the view is nice is because it's a prison. or it's next to a prison so there's a link there and I guess maybe think about

in the 1800s how might you make a prison really secure Big bricks Lots of dogs Is this like Alcatraz Very close What? What a moat? Oh it's in the bay

It's next to the prison ships It's out on a big island And it's a lot of lovely spot for picnicking, you can see all of Melbourne from it, but also it's quite difficult to swim from it. It's very close, really close. I think this is quite inland, if that helps. It needs to be something that is difficult to break out of, but easy to go to for picnicking. So I'm thinking a high cliff, on a tower, on a viewpoint. It is, it is so close. What Bill said about bricks. It's very directly linked to the bricks.

You stick it in a quarry. Yes. Well, there is a quarry. The quarry. What is good about big rocks? What do you do with a quarry? How might you make a quarry into a nice picnic spot? You flood it. You have an old quarry lake. They're all over the place. So you quarry the rocks out to build the prison so you don't have to take the rocks very far. And then you're like, well, we've got this big rock quarry.

Let's fill it with water. Make it a lovely. Now it's a beautiful park. It's a beautiful lake. People want to hang out because we've got this quarry space. The only reason that there's a park and a lake there and a beautiful picnicking spot is because that lake was excavated to make the prison. Exactly. Yeah.

So the basalt rock that was there, they used it to make the prison. And then obviously they had a hole. They filled a full of water and it became Coburg Lake. So that's the centrepiece of the park. Everyone goes there for picnics, even though it's right next to Maximus Security Prison, although the prison closed in 1997. So I guess it's maybe a bit nicer now, more mentally anyway.

Have they turned it into a tourist attraction yet? Yeah, now it's all ghost to us. Which means we just have that audience question from the start of the show. Thank you to Melvin from New Zealand for this one. Why is it often a good idea for coin collectors to buy stamp collections? Anyone want to take a guess at that before I give the audience the answer?

Got to diversify your portfolio? Is it like one is cheaper, so it's like training, sort of like those stock market games? Like you play a fake stock market game and then you go into the big guns. Then you're not a coin collector anymore. Then you're a multifaceted junk collector. You've got too interesting a personality now. It does feel like there is somehow some sort of numismatist laundering going on. And I don't know what that would be, but I don't understand regular money.

money laundering at the best of times. Not that, but it's closer. Because this wouldn't work in every country. It wouldn't work in the UK anymore. We've changed our stamps, but there are still countries where this would work. I got a stamp. It's a rectangle. It's got a picture. It's got a cost

in dollars and cents in the corner. Always? Every time. I've no idea. Not in every country. Really? What do they have in other places? have a distance that it can go? Well, British stamps until a couple of years ago

just had first or second class a lot of times. Some of them had prices on them for bigger things. And these days, they all have little barcodes attached so they can be tracked. But up until a few years ago, it was just first or second. God, I love it when I feel too young for a question. Yeah, is there some way of separating them out into your collections various importance based on.

Not really keeping them. They're not keeping the stamps, did you say? Oh, you just use them to send your coins places? Yes, you just use them to send your coins, Bill. That's absolutely right. All right, great. Do you want to talk through why that might be? That's what stamps do, Tom.

Stamps let you send these places. There's nothing to talk about. That's a stamp. Coin collectors will often find themselves in flea markets or estate sales where there is already a stamp collection being sold off cheap. And the value of that stamp collection

may be lower than the value of all the individual stamps inside it. Oh, that's so sad. I'm so sorry, stamp collector. Your hobby's just subtracting value. In many countries, those old stamps still can be used, particularly if, like in Britain up until recently,

they just said, first. It doesn't matter if you bought them for four pence 50 years ago, some postal services will still honour that stamp. That's cool. Thank you very much to our players. Thank you for running the gauntlet. Where can people find you? What's going on in your lives?

We will start with Bill. Yeah, check out Escape This Podcast. If you want to see fun guests, maybe even Tom Scott, playing through, and David Boddickam, the producer who you can't see, the invisible man, playing through audio escape rooms. Check it out at Escape This Podcast. It's a good show. Danny Seller.

You can also find our murder mysteries at Solvithsmirder.com, probably. We have websites. Don't send us mail. We don't know what stamps are. And Michelle Wong. I'm at Lab Muff and Beauty Science. I'm on all the platforms.

Yeah, I talk about the signs behind beauty products. And if you want to know more about this show and send in your own ideas for questions and join the Lateral Producers Club, you can do that at Lateralcast. We are at Lateralcast, basically everywhere, and there are regular weekly video episodes in full on Spotify. Thank you very much to Michelle Wong. Thank you very much.

I'll fill in the phones on my way out. Danny Seller. Thank you so much. And Bill Sunderland. Thank you for having me. It was great. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral. Hey, y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.