Lateral with Tom Scott - 204: An insane village

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Ria Lina, Dani Siller and Bill Sunderland face questions about data dichotomies, alcohol apologies and textual T-shirts. 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: Rebecca Gossett, Alex, Fiona Doran, Matthijs, Romilly Carson. 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

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. How is your data the opposite of your toilet? The answer to that at the end of the show.

My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. Welcome, participants. You have successfully entered the Lateral Escape Room scattered around you, a puzzles, hidden compartments, and some unhelpful-looking objects that are either vital to the solution or just bad interior design. Your mission is to unlock the correct answer

before time expires or morale collapses. Please remember the standard escape room rules. Do not force the furniture or climb the host. UV tortures won't reveal secret messages, but might find some dust. And if something starts to rattle, don't worry, that's just the producer. Attempting to get out of some tricky situations today. First, we have from Mock the Week, from her own Rehbellion, comedy tour, and from the Lateral Live show, welcome back, Ria Lina.

Hi, thanks so much for having me back. Well, thanks for coming back. First time that you've been doing this show, not in person. I know it's very strange. I'm used to everyone having legs and I worry it's going to affect how I answer questions, but I'm going to do my best. How was it being up there on stage with the live audience watching? Because you're a lot more used to it than I am. Yeah, I'm a theatre person. So I'm very used to that environment, but it was still absolutely thrilling and scary and equal measure because I hadn't done it before. So you always are worried about going on to a show for the first time and breaking it. And I was like, I don't want to be the one that broke it.

Thank you. Thank you for not breaking the show. Well, this is the first time where the way that I work was an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Normally I go on, like with my weird autism and people just go, I'm not sure she should come back again. Whereas this time, you just went, you think sideways instead of forwards. And I went, yes, pain of my life. So I'm so pleased to be back. Thank you.

Well, very best luck on the show today. You are joined by two old hands at the game. I'm really glad that I pronounce the emphasis on the right syllables there. Welcome back to the show. The folks from Escape This Podcast, we will start with Bill Sunderland. How are you doing? I'm getting my lawyers together to sue you for intellectual copyright, copyright. You can't be doing escape rooms on lateral. I don't do lateral thinking questions on Escape This podcast. I mean, maybe. Maybe we do. We did just do a two-night's riddle. where one only told the lies and one only told the truth. But with a twist. Ah, and to see what the twist is. You'll have to listen to the episode. Yeah, okay, fine. Also joining us, Danny Siller, also from Escape This Podcast, many other things besides, how are you doing?

Well, conversely, I feel very thankful that you've made us feel so welcome by bringing things that I hold near and dear to my heart, like toilet jokes. I'm really looking forward to hearing the answer to that one. Yeah, we started not working blue, but perhaps working a little bit brown, and I regret saying every part of that sentence and I'm going to move on. Very best of luck to all of you. The door is locked, the clock is ticking, and your first clue is question one.

This question was sent in by Mattis. Matt wants to say they're happy, but let's go of something and becomes amazed. What is the something? I'll say that again. Matt wants to say they're happy, but let's go of something and becomes amazed. What is the something? It's his jaw.

He'd let it drop and he's amazed. Oh my God. He just smiled too big. That's what you're going to? Yeah, he smiled too big. I was going to say he had lock jaw and had an apple or something stuck in his mouth. But he was happy because it's hard to eat with lockjaw.

But then the apple fell out and he's like, oh my gosh, I'm amazed. There's still a little bit. bit of action left. I don't have to eat anymore now. That is the unfortunate ending of lockjaw, isn't it? Yes. No, sorry, that wasn't the actually answer to the question. I was agreeing on unfortunate ending of lockjaw there, not saying that was the correct answer to the question. I feel like we've at least opened a padlock in the room. Oh, yeah. Yes. Totally. Yes. We're making progress. We've started at 0-0-0-1 and we're working our way up. Oh, and it's a four-digit padlock as well. This is going to take a while. I don't know why I did that. I

could have made this much. You could have made it three or even two. Was the wording here that he wanted to say or show that he was happy or say he was happy? They wanted to show that they were happy. And then dropped something and became amazed. Yes. Well, let go of something. Let go. His ego. How good are we with our sign language here? I said earlier in the year, I should totally learn that and I have made no progress towards it. We had a technical problem before this call where none of you could hear me. And, and so, something came on, I read this a while, and excuse me, I can't remember the source of it. Like, imagine how often you would use sign language if everyone knew it.

Like, the number of times you would be able to not shout across a crowded room or be able to keep going on a Zoom call. I'm like that. That'd be brilliant. Oh, I'm going to see that, and I'm going to raise you. As a mother with children, the number of times I wished I'd taught them enough sign language to that when they're misbehaving across a room, I could say to them, just wait till I get you home, but no one else would know. I was saying. So if you have young children teach them sign language, you will find it so useful in public. So he wanted to be happy. Did you say he wanted to be happy? He wanted to say that was why I went to sign language. And you're not a million miles away with that. You're not

close either, but you're not a million miles away. So if it's not sign language, maybe it's literal sign language. Maybe he was doing a big sign. It could be a microphone. It could be a megaphone. It might not be holding with the hands. It could have been towards the start where there was an apple in the mouth. I feel like it might be like literal on a sign. Like there's a word that said from happy to amazed if you let go of a letter or something dropped. So he wanted to say he was happy. But then.

I'm going to repeat that it's let go, not drop. Yeah, didn't drop. Let go. Maybe it went up. A balloon went up. He was holding happy birthday balloons. And then he let go. And they flew away and now it just said,

I think, Bill, you're right with big sign. Ria, you're right, this is some other way of communicating. I'm really trying now to think about that. Like,

trying to think just what could I let go of that would then amaze me to look at whatever it's done then? Yeah. I feel if you're under 30, you should let go of, you like, get over your childhood.

Because, like, everybody under 30, I'm like, let go of it. You'd be amazed at how happy you would be if you just... If you are under 30, you might be less likely to get this question. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. It involves a physical book.

Morse code. Not Morse code, Ria, but still closer. Think of other ways that folks might be communicating. Semaphore. Braille. Under 30s hate braille. They're never doing braille, those kids. No, they're always using the stairs, and it's always in the signs

in the lift, isn't it? So are we talking emoticons? That sort of thing. Danny, keep going. Wingdings! Because they've got to be older, right? It's got to be older. Yeah, yeah.

I'm older than 30. I don't know how to say I'm happy in wingdings. You said emoticons, not emoji. Oh, oh, let go of shift. Yes, Bill. Let go of shift. Yes, because, okay, I've got it. I've cracked the case.

Oh, my God. It's emoticons instead of emojis, because as we're all old enough to be emoticon people, not emoji people. I have no idea what an emoticom... I thought emoticons were emojis. No, so emoticons are when you build a face out of punctuation. Like, you know, like cool kids, like us.

But emojis are when they are replaced by the symbol. So like, a picture of a smiley face is an emoji, but colon hyphen, closed parentheses is a smiley face, emoticom. I am today years old, finding that out. I don't think back in the good old days we differentiated. The word emoji was just newer than us. Well, emoji is because it's Japanese and

and g means character. So it's emotional characters. It's emoji. And that's so it's a Japanese system. But emoticons. And so if you let go of shift accidentally, when you're about to press that closed parentheses, it turns into a zero instead. And the face, instead of being smiling, is going, whoa, oh my gosh, I'm amazed. Bill, I am amazed. Yeah. You've even gone through all my notes there. This is a personal anecdote from Mattis. I know there's no live audio. I just, I've thought to be. I am so impressed by that. I care about a mo- I went painstakingly had people on the, we have a discord for our podcast where people can talk. And I was getting so bothered that whenever I did an emoticon, it auto-filled it as an emoji. And someone showed me in the settings to go in and change the

settings so it no longer does that. So I can do colon-hyphen parentheses and it stays looking like that. Whenever I text Bill, I use emoticons and leave them that way because I know he cares strongly about it. I mean, I remember, you know, in those dot matrix printers, you'd have those, it would print out an entire person going, ah, you can't see this, but that. Or the ASCII art. And I remember always going, who has the time? Like, who's sitting there designing that? Did anybody, do you remember the, if you were looking up like walkthroughs for a video game in 2002, like, to be like, how do I beat this level in Zelda?

They would always start with some ASCII art of the title screen of the game. They would, like, do the title screen in all, like, slashes and punctuation. They might draw maps in ASCII art to tell you where to go. Have we lost the under-20 demographic yet, Tom? Elder-Millennial podcast now. We'll move onwards.

But yes, Bill, you're absolutely right. It's a personal anecdote from the question writer who was using a laptop, didn't want to find where the emoji was, and so just slipped or trying to do a smile. face. With that, we will go to Bill's question whenever you're ready. This question was sent in by Fiona Doren.

Thank you, Fiona. In 2002, Shelley Jackson wrote a short story that was 2095 words long. It was not intended for publication on paper or screen. Why were many of the 553 people involved in its production, particularly angry or disappointed about how the process ended? I have an idea. Well, before your idea, I'll do it one more time. In 2002, Shelley Jackson wrote a short story that was 2095 words long.

It was not intended for publication on paper or screen. Why were many of the 553 people involved in its production, particularly angry or disappointed about how the process ended? I'm not certain, but I may have a sit back for this one. Oh, okay. I'm willing to gamble up. All right. Weirdly, the 2095 sounded familiar to me.

Of all things. I've been trying to do maths here and divide 553 into 2095, and the answer is no. Well, it's just under four, right? It's like, yeah. It's like 3.8. So is it pie? Does it go in exactly pie times? Oh, off the top of head, not quite.

No, okay. I would say no. If it's the thing I'm thinking of, that wouldn't matter. Okay, so we're saying it's not, wait a minute, is it just me and Tom on this? Dan, who you're sitting this one out? Yeah, I'll give some teasing hints unless Bill says something that makes it woefully clear how wrong I am. The two people who run an escape room show are the ones in charge of the question now. Oh, we're never getting out.

I hope you brought sandwiches, Tom. Okay, so it's not intended for screen or print, which leaves either a live performance or I'm going to say audio performance. Oh, for some reason. Now, I don't know why. My brain went to like knitting. I cannot explain where that connection has come from, but I'm like, is this something that is being, just because like, it's a big, complicated thing that is being made collaboratively. I'm remembering like collaborative quilts and things like that. I don't know why my brain went that way. That'd be so nice. Tom, I think it's a very good way for your brain to go despite being fundamentally incorrect. Despite being completely wrong around. But it is legitimately, it's a good, it's a good path.

that led you to a bad place. Okay. Yes, so we agree that it's a collaborative process of 553 people. And can I just say I would love for any of my artwork that I write to have 553 people willing to come in and help me create it. That would be incredible. But I would feel a lot of pressure for them not to feel disappointed at the end of the process. And they said process as well, which is, I feel, Tom, why you felt like it goes into production.

Oh yeah. Yeah, you're right. Also, maybe it's some sort of Kickstarter or crowdfunding thing, something like that, where all of these people have paid for a thing to happen and it's gone wrong. You are weirdly getting very close. A crowd is very reasonable. Funding not quite the right thought, but crowd, very much part of it. Though, Bill, if I'm right, much like a Kickstarter, 553 was disappointing. Yes, that was not enough people.

That was not enough people. So she wanted one person per word? Ah. And she only got 553 people? Oh, man, don't you hate it? When you need 2,095 people to realize your vision and only 553 people show up. Only 500 people coming to help. Oh, what a bummer.

Okay. So did they start? So at the end of the process, they each performed one word, so we only got 25% of the way through and nobody knows how it ended? You're very, very close. What I will say is they didn't perform the words. They didn't sort of, because you wouldn't really be angry if you, say, said a word out loud and then you'd just be disappointed. You wouldn't be angry about it.

Oh, they're angry. So, all right. So our clues are crowd. They aren't enough people. Yes. One word each was a great thought. But they're angry. Like, I still feel like it feels incomplete.

It feels like there's a lack of completion because there aren't enough people. Yes, that is the key issue. 553 people. That's not enough people for the 2,095 words. But they were pretty disappointed. It wasn't an easy thing to just sort of shrug off and move on. Was it, is it to do the actual content of the story? Are they in the story?

So the fact that not enough people were there meant that they didn't get... And it's not funding. Like you said they're not paying to be here. They're not... To be fair, they probably would have... They may have had to pay for it. Unclear.

Did the author pay or did they pay themselves? Someone paid for it. A service was rendered that needed money change, where the author organised that or the people themselves. You were good early thinking about knitting, Tom. It's like a weird medium. It wasn't knitting. Okay, so it's not screen.

not print, it's not knit. No. Are we putting crocheting in the knitting basket? No, I'm not. No, absolutely not. No, I agree. I agree. No, no, no, no, I agree. One needle versus two. Yeah. Tom is always saying that knitting and crocheting is the same thing.

Don't you, don't you get the knitters on me? Don't you dare, Bill. Okay. Engraving or like chisling something into a wall. You're getting closer and closer because it is, the medium is odd, but it is not engraving on a wall. It's an odd medium. Oh gosh. Okay. So we are... It is sort of printed, I suppose. It is words that can be read to make the story. But it isn't knitting. It isn't paper. It isn't screen. It isn't chiseling it into stone.

But it is something that would leave the people involved pretty angry that never got finalized. Oh, my God. Was it tattoos on their body? Yes. It was tattoos on their body. The story by Shelley Jackson was a short story called Skin. And the ideal method of publication was that every single one of 2,095 people would have a word tattooed on their skin and the story would exist out there within those people on those people. And she started this before having 2095 volunteers. Well, I think the issue may have been. she had too many volunteers. Apparently the project generated about 22,000 emails of volunteers

willing to do this. And the organization perhaps, or the administration might have been more than she was ready for. So after 553 people finalized this, they got their words. Some people had the capacity to reject your word, but you wouldn't get another word to replace it. You could just say, no, I don't want that word on my body. But only 553 people actually. went through with it and trying to organize the rest became too big a project and it never quite got finished. After about 20 or 30 people in a row got tattooed on them, some of them got suspicious and thought it was a big joke. Oh my goodness. I feel like she could have edited it down, maybe. Do you know what I mean?

Like I think it could have been... Yeah, take those stories, those words, rearrange them into a new story that's only 554 words long. Or just have one person represented. represent the word the and one person represent A. The ones that are like, it's my only tattoo. Just have A. Just have the. You can be ore. Or if you're setting up like a project like that, any words that don't go out to the public, you have to get. Oh, that's cool.

There's just 1,500 tiny words on the arm. This was a funny one for me. And yet the 2095 was the bit that stood out for me because I had, I've heard this story. I had no idea that it went unfinished. Oh. What was really weird is it was just the screenplay for Memento? Yes. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at PMCFWR. Walk.ca. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system.

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don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on espresso.com. Thank you to Romilly Carson for this question. Hope is at a large gathering of people. Everyone is given a t-shirt with a one, two, or three-digit number on it. Her t-shirt reads one-two-one. What is the event and what did her number mean? I'll say that again. Hope is at a large gathering of people. Everyone is given a t-shirt with a one, two, or three-digit number on it. Her t-shirt reads one-two-one. What is the event and what did her number mean? Sometimes you get these lateral questions where it seems like so unilateral. There are so many perfectly reasonable explanations you can come up with for this. I've done this. Mass wedding. Mass wedding. I haven't done that. Mass wedding. And they

paired up based on number. I'm looking for one to one. We're getting married in 10 minutes. But also it says a large number of people. We need to know whether the number of people equals or doesn't equal the number of T-shirts because they could just be sequentially numbered. It does not equal the number of people. For large, I'd say maybe a couple dozen maybe at most. Oh, okay, fine. So 121 is 11 squared, isn't it? So that in itself... Oh, that's nice.

Is it not? Am I going first? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sorry. I just wasn't thinking of what makes these numbers interesting. Oh, that's always my first thought. Oh, it's a great idea. It was a big mistake on my part. Asian in the room.

So it's 11 squared, which could mean that... There's two other people with the numbers 11 on their shirts. One, two and three digit numbers. Aw, they got to make little families. You have to find your square roots and grab them. And then you win the party. Yeah. Is that it, Tom?

Is it a square root party? Ah, ha. You were weirdly close there. Ain't no party like a square root party. I'm going to let you keep talking because you're good for now. Interesting. I think that that's why we've been told 121. There's got to be something about the fact that it's 11-squip.

Maybe it's a Times tables party. It's not a maths thing. Now I'm looking at 1-1 was a racehorse sort of situation here. Yeah. 1-1-1-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1. So many things. That's true. Could be palindromic.

Could be palindromic number. Is it a palindrome party, Tom? It's not about the qualities of the number itself. Do you think we should completely change tactic and try to figure out who this group of people is? That would help a lot. The one idea that has been in my head that apparently I think must not be true is, I just saw one to one to one and I thought it was like, this is the type of conversation I would

like to have at this party. I would like to have one-to-one conversations. Which as an autistic is a perfectly reasonable t-shirt to wear. Yeah, and I was like, great, I'll have a one-to-one conversation with you. You are right that this t-shirt helps a... skip the small talk. Is this a family friendly question or a not family friendly friendly question? It's an extremely family friendly question.

That is the best question all episodes so far. Okay. It's extremely family friendly friendly. This is number of children. That's a lot of children. It's a hundred and twenty-one children. The number is one-to-one, not one-two-one. Oh, one-to-one.

It's the structure of your family. I have one partner, two kids, one dog. That's very, very close. When you said, Danny, oh, they're making little families. Not little. I have one elephant, two blue whales. Why might you get a large group of people together? Family reunion.

Family reunion, yes. I'm cousin number one, two one. They're all from the same sperm donor. And they're trying to figure out. Are they branches on a family tree? It's like I'm from... Yes, they are. You go, it's like, it's...

I'm grandparent one, uncle... Child two. Of, yeah, there's like layers. I'm the first kid of the second kid of the first kid. There's a great grandparent somewhere. That is correct. Yes. That's so cool.

There's some magician at the end with 777 there. Yeah, right? The third kid is six, six, six. They're always. It's always the third kid, isn't it? Out of four. Romilly saw a family with these t-shirts on at a family reunion. You often see like group t-shirts, like family reunions and outings to theme parks and things like that.

I'm with one-two-one. Yeah. So this is to skip the small talk. You don't need to say, oh, who are you? Oh, you have one-to-one. That means you are the first child of the second child of the first child in this group. God, I can't wait to hear those conversations once they've had a drink or two. Ria, we'll have your question, please.

This question was sent in by Rebecca Gossett. Thank you so much, Rebecca. And it is. Elle arrives at work to find Queen Elizabeth I and Napoleon demanding her attention. After hearing their complaint, she says, Sorry, last night's shift didn't use enough vodka. What are they angry about? Wow.

I will repeat. that? El arrives at work to find Queen Elizabeth I and Napoleon demanding her attention. After hearing their complaint, she says, sorry, last night's shift didn't use enough vodka. What are they angry about? And I can see why I was given this question, because as soon as I read that, I was like, oh, yes. No, but genuinely, I know, I, oh boy. Okay. All right. I have, I have a question before we get started. I just want something clarified. Is it, is it E-Double-E or just a big capital L? It is E-D-L-E as in legally blonde. Thank you. Lovely. And not death note. I was wondering if you were going to go, not the guy from

death note. I did. And that's exactly where I went. Yeah. Right. Who's the biggest vodka enthusiast among us? Queen Elizabeth the first. Of course. Well known. Yeah. Okay, under what circumstances could you not use enough vodka outside of just getting drunk, some sort of creme brulee situation? You're asking probably the right questions, but not the questions I want answered, which is what a Napoleon and Queen Elizabeth first doing here. Oh, that made perfect sense to me. I see them every day, but it's vodka.

That's the thing that I have to think about. But vodka? That also jarred my autistic brain. I just went, why are they in the same room? Yeah. Does anybody understand? Yeah. It's ridiculous.

I'm just, I'm going to stand back. You've got a time? Just pulled a fact out. I'm going to stand back. Oh no. Danny, it's just you and me. This is left to Australians to answer. What do they do in the Tower of London?

They do tours where they show off the Ravens, Queen Elizabeth I first, and Napoleon's there. Look, I haven't seen Napoleon there, but I was there 22 years ago. It's not going to be fresh in my memory. Oh, yeah. It was before Napoleon. I mean, to be fair to you, that was fresh in Tower of London's memory. I assume it remembers. In Animal Farm is the horse called Queen Elizabeth the first?

No, I think it's called Boxer. Because the pig's called Napoleon. Oh, yeah. But I think the horse is boxers. I think that's, yeah, that doesn't help at all. All right. Okay, so there was that. You said Queen Elizabeth and I was going straight.

Yeah, money. But the Queen Elizabeth first, less certain of that. Yeah. It just really feels like they're just people in dress up. You would think so. I think that that is the closest thing you've said so far. Oh, okay, I was worried that you were going to start the QI claxon at me for that. No, no, no, no.

So that's good, that's good. But then it's not going to be like Madam Tussau or anything because they said something. Unless that was the vodka was too much now that it looks like the wax figures are talking to me. Well, well, when Al said, sorry, last night's shift didn't use enough vodka, is the quote. Yeah, last night's, to clean something. Oh, okay, that knocks out where I thought this was. Oh, fantastic. Get back in here.

Oh, he's coming back in here. No, I think the reason is still there because I was thinking it's like horrible histories on stage or something like that. Sure. But that's... Queen Elizabeth I played by Matthew Bainton. Yeah, but shift. Shift doesn't seem right for that. No, no.

Okay. Well, I wouldn't just throw that away if I were you. I would still keep it on the table. What would the vodka be doing? I still... All I can do is go to desserts. Well, yeah, let's assume... Let's get it at them.

They're probably not just drinking a lot of vodka, and the complaint was we're not... I really assume they're setting it on file. We're not drunk enough or someone else wasn't drunk enough. I think, yes, this takes... I was about to say, this takes a lateral... You need to take a lateral look at vodka, but that's why we're here. That's why we're here. Vodka doesn't freeze, so maybe something should be thawed out because it was going to have enough vodka in it that doesn't freeze.

Not impossible. Do you... But... disinfect things with vodka, probably it's much, much better options like disinfecting alcohol. Well, again, we are in a ballpark. Okay. We are definitely in a ballpark now. Okay.

They're wearing the costumes that the previous shift wore, but they're big, heavy costumes that you sweat in, and to avoid fungus growing in their costumes, they put, they dows them with vodka, and they go, wait a minute, look at these gross, sweaty costumes full of of fungus, athletes foot, but in the corset of the queen and they said,

ah, they didn't use enough vodka, deal with it because your minimum wage workers dressed up as Queen Elizabeth. If Bill is wrong on this, I need to come back in.

Okay, am I right? Bill is correct on this. Except for fungus, bacteria. It's bacteria. They spray costumes with vodka, right? Yeah, so we do this in cabaret. So we do this

In Cabaret, we keep vodka in spray bottles because you can't wash your costumes in a normal washing machine. And you can't even really dry clean them. The only way after a shift, you spray everything, you know, you spray the pits and everything else with vodka in order to keep it fresh. I have a spray bottle of vodka in my room for that, for that reason. While, I spray my skating stuff with eucalyptus antiseptic spray. So I guess that's the same thing, right? That's way more expensive than cheap vodka. Oh, is it? Oh, I, I've never bought vodka in my life, so good to know. I'll keep this in mind.

Yeah, no, just get cheap vodka, sprayed all over. And because it'll evaporate with little to no scent. But eucalyptus smells nice, so. Yeah, so they'll just be a brief moment while I'm, well, I'm finishing off exercising, but all the other skaters will give me the side eyes. And they'll be like, that's why she was so fast. So with the shift, was this like in theatre doing clear, or was this like a tourist attraction? No, so they were, I mean, it could be in theatre, but it's,

could be a tourist attraction, but in the theatre, you would have the, you know, the wardrobe department at the end of their shift should have sprayed all of the costumes. So that's why the word shift applied to the wardrobe department. And they didn't spray the shift. It's a fun, double meaning. Thank you to an anonymous listener for this question. In medieval England, King John wanted to travel to a hunting lodge near Gotham, Nottinghamshire. When the king's officials arrived, looking for a good route to the lodge, why did Gotham's villagers go insane? Say that again.

In medieval England, King John wanted to travel to a hunting lodge near Gotham in Nottinghamshire. When the king's officials arrived, looking for a good route to the lodge, why did Gotham's villagers go insane? Do we mean literally insane the way that they did in medieval times, or do we mean they got angry? Or they just like, whoa, King John! Yeah! That kind of insane.

insane in the sense of losing their sanity. Oh, okay. Just like every shopping center in 2007. What? Sorry, was that not a global chain? Sanity, the CD and music selling chain? No. No, absolutely not.

The advent of the iPod, as we all switched it, MP3. Look, for the people living in Australia, that was a pretty good bit. It was great. I think that's the Virgin megastores over here. Oh, sorry, yeah. Just go back and say the peasants were losing their virgin megastores, and we'll make the joke work. Did we say peasants? No, he won't!

Hey, Billet, Billy, somewhere nearby, you've got a copy of Robin Hood and his merry men, and I just can't help, but have noticed a few key words that struck out. Nottingham, King John. Stuck out to me. Yeah, we've got Nottingham Shoe, we've got a King John. That's true. That's close. But beyond that, King John, 1215. Runnymede.

We're out of my knowledge. Go to him. How do you spell Goetum? G-O-T-H-A-N. Oh, Gotham! Gotham City, New York. And there is a connection here, but it's so obscure that I don't think it's relevant to the question. Oh, right, okay.

They went crazy because of Joker's laughing gas. They had to be put in Arkham. Did we solve it? I'll tell you at the end of the question. Gotham is one of the old language. for bats, I assume. I think we have something real to say. Oh, no, I was going to say,

were there penguins everywhere. That's it. That's even better. The officials brought penguins. Okay. So they want to get to a hunting lodge. A hunting lodge is normally in the middle of a wooded area. Let's say, Sherwood Forest, for lack of a better name.

I think that would have been Sherwood Forest. It would have been, right? It just would have covered all of Nottingham Sherwood. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so he's, so King John has a hunting lodge in the middle of Sherwood Forest. When the officials show up trying to find a route through the forest, the villagers lose their sanity. They go insane. So we, we're thinking either it's some kind of environmental thing that they've brought with them. Could it be that they've, because John went, I don't know how historical this is, because he was off on the Crusades. No, wait, was it William? William was on the Crusades and John stayed behind. He was, no, so William was on the crusade. Richard, sorry.

Oh, Richard, yes. So, wait, it was John who stayed and Richard who went on the crusade. So John wouldn't have gotten any weird and wonderful disease, but he might have had smallpox. So does smallpox make you... Siphilis is the one that definitely makes people go mad. Yes. Well, my thought, we're talking about royalty and hunting.

I feel like the classic theme of every time hunting is mentioned in the Middle Ages, is you're not allowed to hunt on these lands. It's the king's lands, you're not allowed to hunt on the lands. You're poaching. Did you kill the king's stag? Did you shoot the king's boars? This all belongs to the king. You're all, you know, if you're a local lord, you can go somewhere and you might be out of

hunt, but you've got permission because you're not a peasant. You can hunt here. And it's all very much about who's allowed to hunt in the forests. And I wonder if, like, this is an unused hunting lodge. All the peasants are just like, king's not going to rock up. Let's just hunt away. Maybe the only legal defense for poaching was to say, It was to plead insanity and be like, oh, I've never even, what's a deer?

I thought I was shooting my friend and I'm a murderer. That's better than poaching. Like, do they all just be like, pretend they're crazy because the hunt, because the king's finally here, someone's here to check? I think if they were hunting the rabbits, they could have all gotten mixomatosis though, you know what I mean? Oh, everyone's a loud rabbits. That's a peasant food. No, you can't. The rabbits and the grouse.

All of it's sacred. Bill, you are correct that they were acting. as if they were insane. The king himself never reached the village. Yes, it was just the officials. Yeah, the reason that you had behind it, not the right one, but yes, they are acting as if they were insane.

Was this when they were worried about that plague that went around England where everybody danced until they died? The dancing plague? Do you remember this one? Does everyone remember this one? The dancing plague? St. Vitus Dance.

Everyone was dancing around and then they all died? It might have just been everywhere in Europe. They danced or they died. There was. There was a dancing thing, wasn't there? Yeah. The dancing play. Hang on. So they want to prevent them from getting to the lodge. That's why they're pretending to be insane.

I was wondering if they were trying to, they knew that they had great animals and they wanted them for themselves. So if they pretended that all the animals were making them sick and crazy, then maybe the king would change his mind and not hunt there. Or the lodge is not there anymore. Or someone else is living in the lodge. Do you know what I mean? Like, they need the officials to not get to the lodge. They dismantle the lodge, so they just cannot let you get to the lodge. Yeah, you're all along the right lines here. They are trying to discourage the king from, not from the lodge.

From the town at all, because they've got silver mines. And they do not want the king to know they've got silver mines. They don't want to pay tax. They don't want to have to serve him while he's there. I was going to say, they'd probably have to give something. Exactly. If he's there in the hunting lodge, then the village is going to suffer. They've got to look after him.

Yes, spot on. Under medieval custom, any road used by the king, regularly used by the king, could be designated to public highway. That brings taxation. That brings maintenance obligations. That brings traffic through your village. So, the wise men of Gotham pretended to be insane. They tried to drown an eel in a pond.

They put a fence around a cuckoo's nest. They rolled cheeses downhills to send them to market. And when the king's officials came along, they decided that perhaps the king should not go through the village of Gotham. It's a silly place. And we still roll cheeses to this day. Different village, probably a different reason. But yes, you talked about Gotham and New York.

Washington Irving, the writer later used that story to mock New Yorkers. He called the city Gotham. and the mispronunciation stuck got picked up by the folks who were writing the Batman comic, and that's why Batman lives in Gotham. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire. and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. You gotta try breakfast. You gotta try for your dog. And what better way than with a delicious pre-organic coffee? Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast.

I'm participating in W locations in Ontario. Danny, we'll take your question, please. Excellent. This question has been sent in by Alex. Thank you so much, Alex. While making deliveries in Western Norway, Alex sometimes uses this rule of thumb. Four lines? Nothing to worry about. Three lines. Be slightly cautious. Two lines. Be very worried. Zero lines. Usually fine. What does this mean? And one more time, there was a lot in that one. While making deliveries in Western Norway, Alex sometimes uses this rule of thumb.

Four lines, nothing to worry about. Three lines, be slightly cautious. Two lines, be very worried. Zero lines, usually fine. What does it mean? That is not a linear sequence, and that's confusing me. Done. Is it about tides going in and out,

and so it's about how much is revealed in terms of whether the boat can come in? I think he's making deliveries by boat. going up and down coasts and fjords in his Norway dream boat. Yes, they do that. There's the Houteruton, I think it's pronounced. No, the ferry. The Houtieruten, sorry, Norway.

At least I didn't say Hurtigruten, which is how it actually looks in English, which starts, I think, in Oslo, and goes all the way up western Norway, all through all the fjords. Yeah, so was it about heights of water in terms of being able to get boats in and out? It's actually not. Oh, it was a really good guess.

It wasn't boat deliveries that he was making. Like, the Australian in me immediately went to like, well, it's just markings on snakes and what you need to avoid. That's, you know, four snakes, full markings, that's fine. But, you know, one of two, that's pretty poisonous. Classic, classic. But that's not an issue. I'm trying to think of anything in Western Norway that might kill you. I mean, a sardine?

Well, yeah. Is it any animal you need to? Is it an animal thing? Because I feel like these are classic animal-based nymonics, right? Like, four stripes, it's all rips. Four lines on the antlers is fine, but the three or two antlered deer, elk, moose, are more likely to attack you because they're young and territorial.

And the ones with... And if they have zero, they're female. Or they're just very young. Which is usually fine. Until they've fallen off, then that doesn't matter. That's when they're hibernating. No, I would say your first direction with the boat was closer in this. Animals are not particularly involved.

Boats are better than animals. Okay, so four were fine. So it's a bell curve of some kind because four is nothing to worry about. Zero is nothing to worry about. But three and two were like, I'm assuming one. We've skipped one. And there is no one. You cannot ever have one line.

One would be particularly weird. it would be very unusual for there to be a one. It would, yeah. And very unlikely. And we called them lines, did we? Lines. Definitely lines. Lines.

Okay, I'm going to go for my Western Norway stereotypes. There's a lot of it. Snow and ice. Definitely. Okay. So, well, okay, so when I said water heights, I wasn't far off. I just had it in the wrong, like, state. I thought that it would lead you further in the wrong direction than the right direction

if I said, ah, you're close with water, sort of. Okay. So is it like, do you have like a stick that you stick in the snow and it's like, or ice on a lake? No, there are no like devices or anything involved in this that you would need to learn about their existence. Everything here, you know it exists. Or cracks of ice. Cracks of ice on a lake. If you walk around, if there's four of them, you're like, that's fine.

but two means it's about to break. Someone who once fell through a frozen lake would have been useful to know. Wow. Tom, did you make it? Thank you. It was less dramatic than that makes it sound. I was kind of prone at the time

and just trying to get over the ice and misjudge the ice. And it wasn't so much falling through was just the ice failing under me and steadily sinking down. Oh my gosh. thought was, oh, my phone's in my back pocket. Everyone else watching is worried about all my friends like, oh my God, he's in the...

I'm saying, oh, damn it, now I've got to get out of this ice. Otherwise, I'd love this. How far away were you from the not ice? I basically had to shove myself up on the ice like six or seven times and have it crack under me before I got back onto solid. Like a sea. Okay. Well, thankfully, we're dealing a little bit more with the snow side than the ice side. The thing about 432 and 0 is that, and I know.

know this isn't relevant to snow, but I feel like it laterally connects. You can have a chair with four legs. You can have a chair with three legs. You can just about sit on two. You can't sit on one, zero, you're on the floor. And I'm wondering if it's something to do with like skis on a snowmobile or something like that. Something about the stability of, because you can... He was definitely sitting and thinking vehicles. Great idea. Okay, I'm thinking road markings. If you can see four lines on the road,

I don't know what those four would be, you're fine. There's not enough snow to cover them. If you can see none of them, you're fully in snow mode. If you can see some lines, there might be a load of ice down. That doesn't... Yeah. You are very near the right area, but as you're saying, trying to say it out loud like that,

there's something not right there. But you are very, very warm, ironically. Is it about putting chains on the wheels of a car? The thickness of the tread on the tires. Chains don't need to be involved. Tires certainly do. Oh. It's tread about your snow tread?

I don't know much about tires. And I can make sense of this question just fine. Oh. So lines. So we've got vehicles sitting, snow. Lines on a road, but not lines on a road. Lines on tires? You are.

Not lines on tires. The spokes of the wheel attached to the tire. You know, the fake spokes. No. The lines are. But lines can be a distancing thing. The lines are not like drawn or painted or... No, they've been left behind in the snow.

Yes. That's the thing. They're imprints. It's imprints. Yes. Oh, so are you looking at four lines as four wheels of a car? No. If you saw a road and you saw like four imprints.

Two out, two back. Yes. So it's going to be fine. Because people are coming back from here. If it's... People... Yeah. If it's only two, it means that no one can come back this way?

No, well, yeah, it means that people have gone in and out. You have a road that will get him to the... Two, where he's going and come out. That's four. Three means that they've shared the middle lane. So the people going in have shared the lane coming back out again. Two means they've gone, but they haven't come back. Zero means either there's no snow or no one's been.

And one means they've been on two wheels. all the way round pulling a stunt. It's just a cool motorbike, Tom. It's fine. Or it's only motorcycles. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot about the existence of motorcycles there. Yes, you have absolutely nailed it there.

These are the lines made by tyres in the deep, deep snow of this mountainous area. And this is how you can judge how safe a road is likely to be when you can't see the road markings themselves. How easily have two sets of cars been able to pass each other? So exactly as you said it, really. If there are four lines, it means a car has gone one way and back the other way, and they've passed each other, no problem. Three lines meant they had to share a little bit of the middle. Two lines means this is essentially a one-way road. Be scared.

So there is just one order of business left. The question from the very start, how is your data the opposite of your toilet? I will accept valid alternate answers for this one if you've got them. Very difficult, because mine are ideas. It's much harder to flush the data. They're both full of cookies. Well, I feel like, I mean, in my head it was like places I would put a tech billionaire. Hey.

You know, but I mean, the opposite of your toilet, I mean, your toilet's full of germs and data can be sanitized. Oh. Yeah, there are fewer viruses in my toilet. I, well, true. Data is a plural, toilet is a singular. That's it. There was a grammar question the whole time. I have to technically accept that answer, but it's not what's on my card.

Yeah. You do or don't want something to happen to these things. Well, you don't want your data flushed. What would the opposite of flushing that be? How would you make sure that doesn't happen? You encrypt it. You keep it. You store it.

You keep it in. You do want to flush your toilet. You don't want to. You don't want to let your data go out everywhere. Like, you do want to shut the lid on your toilet when you flush. There's a specific word for keeping the data. Backing it up. And a toilet shouldn't be back.

Oh, you don't want it backed up. You do want your data backed up. You don't want your toilet backed up. Thank you very much to our players. Where can people find you? What are you up to? We will start with Bill. Yes, you can find more escape room content.

If you want to hear fun guests play audio escape rooms, then check out Escape Room. this podcast. Just Google it, it'll pop up. Danny. Guys, under my breath, I just said the words da-da-dump. Don't follow me anywhere. And, Ria. You can find me on the social media channel of your choice, but you can also find me on Patreon where I do Paper Jam,

which is a weekly therapy session for the news. Come find me. Just come find me, say hi. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcass.com. We can also send in your own ideas for questions, or join the Lateral Producers Club. We are at Lateralcast, basically, everywhere, and there are full video episodes every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Ria Lina.

Thanks. Danny Siller. Thank you so much. Bill Sunderland. Thanks for having me. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.