Lateral with Tom Scott - 26: The car crash 'dummy'

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Xyla Foxlin, Jordan Harrod and Becky Stern face questions about cheapo chicken, problematic passwords and bountiful bananas. 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://www.lateralcast.com. HOST: Tom Scott. QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe. RECORDED AT: Podcasts NZ Studios. EDITED BY: Julie Hassett at The Podcast Studios, Dublin. MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com). ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Marion Halim, Tom Hartley, Marcus Cameron Bent, Marian. FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott. © Pad 26 Limited (https://www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the 21st of August, 2017, one NASA Twitter account blocked another for two hours. Why? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. Three brave pilots are going to send their starships of truth through the asteroid field of pitfalls and red herrings to reach the planet of answers. I regret writing that joke. Please welcome our guests. We start with maker and YouTuber, Becky Stern. Hello, great to be here. How are you doing? This is your first time on the show. How are you feeling about it? First time guest, not first time watching. I'm super excited. This is my kind of jam.

And I have to ask, this is going to go out maybe a month or two after recording. Is there anything you're working on right now that you can tell the world about, that you're excited about? I have a new craft video out on my YouTube channel. All right. You know what? I was going to ask for more specifics, but we're going to just leave it there and people can find it out for themselves. Also joining us, AI expert currently working on a dual university PhD, returning to the show despite clearly not having time for this, Jordan Harrod. Thanks for having me again. I know nothing about space, so your joke went completely over my head. To be honest, I had less confidence in that joke the more time went on.

To be honest, I had less confidence in that joke the more time went on. Since we last talked, like chat GPT has come out. As someone who's been studying this for a while, like how are you keeping track of a field that is changing while you're studying? I mean, if anyone who follows me has probably noticed my increasingly inconsistent upload schedule. And part of that is because it's a field that has been growing exponentially and has been increasingly harder to keep up with.

But I think, you know, on some level, it's been really interesting. The chat GPT stuff in particular has been really interesting, but it's also definitely pushed me to look into things that aren't language models that I might be interested in making content about. And rounding out the show, we have maker and YouTuber Zyla Foxlin, who I most recently saw sending a Christmas tree into the atmosphere on a rocket for the second time.

Yes, I do like explosions and chaos. Thanks so much for having me. How are you feeling about lateral thinking questions? Is this in your normal wheelhouse? I am typically really bad at thinking really hard if there's a camera on, so we're going to find out how it goes. That's why all of my videos are in voiceover. I've got to think about it in hindsight. All right, well, we have questions that you need to look at from a variety of angles. So good luck with the mental protractors. We go with question one. Most hotels have room numbers in the place you'd expect them about eye level outside your room door. However, a few hotels also have a second room number sign positioned about one foot above the floor. Why? I'll give

you that one more time. Most hotels have room numbers in the place you'd expect them, about eye level outside your room door. However, a few hotels also have a second room number sign, positioned about one foot above the floor. Why? Small robots. The dogs that can read. Yeah, I second. Dogs that can read.

Yeah, thank you, Becky. Babies. Babies that can read. The babies that can read yeah i second dogs that can read yeah thank you becky babies babies i can read the babies that can read um for like the toddlers that escape their room and they can't find their way back you know like when a toddler grabs the wrong dad's legs i don't i don't either but i feel like at some point during my childhood, I would have done that. And just my parents have never told me about it. I love that you seconded the tiny dogs that can read over the robots. I just stayed in a hotel the other night with my dog and he had the most fun time finding the room by smell. He didn't need to read to find the room.

He's like, I was there before and he found his way back. That's so cute. Yeah. read to find the room. He's like, I was there before. And he found his way back. That's so cute. Yeah. Like, this is our room. I also used to clean hotel rooms in high school at this, like, really gross truck stop hotel in my hometown. That's a great high school job story to have. It's my first time I got to work alone. And I realized, like, oh, this is great.

I could have my headphones on. And although, like, I had to wear big gloves and was not very pleasant otherwise like at least I got to be by myself you know and chilling out um so I'm trying to think like because I wheeled a cart around and like the cart blocks the door but not like the eye level part of the door this is an entire tangent but I'm going to go with it anyway I remember reading a news story about there being training schools in Las Vegas for people who clean hotel rooms. But there is like a standard and it's now such a hyper-efficient optimized system that they're expected to do everything in like so few minutes that they now have to pay for their own training,

which feels like another failure of the system somewhere. Yeah,'t love that wait they have to pay for their own training yeah like in the same way that a lot of companies won't hire an engineer without a degree a lot of hotels won't hire someone unless they've been to one of these schools so they don't have to train them themselves i see this is kind of cake keeping thing to keep the quality of a certain level and also but also like if they work at the fancier hotels, the fancier tips they get. So maybe it works out if it's the more expensive hotels. I don't know.

I just have a feeling that it doesn't work out, but that's me. That was not my experience. I required no training. Okay. Still untrained. That's a good title for a podcast. That is a good title. That's a good title for a podcast. That is a good title.

That is a great title. I think I know the answer. Oh, you're just going to come. Let's go for it. In case of a fire and you're crawling on the floor and the fire, people need to be able to find which room. Oh, my God. Becky, big brain.

Wait, why don't all hotels have that then they want you to die in a fire yeah okay I was recently at a hotel where um I was in the shower and the fire alarm went off and I was like crap I'm like literally naked in the shower um so I kind of like finished up and I dried off and the fire alarm still going out. And I like poke my head out and people are kind of poking their head out and no one has left the building. Like I looked,

I walked down the hall and looked out the front door and no one left the building. And I was like, do we not believe in fire alarms anymore? Like we've all lived through so many false alarms. It's just usually a drill. It just doesn't matter. Yeah.

Because everyone's like, it's probably a drill. Statistically. Do they do drills at hotels? They do drills everywhere they have a fire alarm. It's the law. I mean, at least where I live. Okay.

I've been outside a hotel at night like three or four times in my life now, and it's just a lot of grumpy people. But the alarm's so loud that there's nothing you can do about it. It's just, I felt like, well, either I stay in my room and get hearing damage and possibly die of a fire, or fine, I will put on a coat. I'll get outside. But everyone, everyone was grumpy about it. When I was at university, if there was a fire alarm in the block I was in, you could go to like the center of the quad and the admin building and read off the fire alarm whose room it was that set off the alarm.

That's brutal. We found that out in like the first week of like, because we're all like freshmen, 18, 19. No one knows how to make macaroni and cheese yet. We're all outside and it's like two in the morning and a delegation arrives from like the house three doors down, led by a drunk scotsman wearing a dressing gown who is being pushed in a shopping cart by someone else who's just like who's room nine it's that guy what were you doing it's like smoking and it's like could you not like yeah okay

fine wonderful that was the best deterrent anyone had knowing that you were going to be publicly shamed for setting the fire alarm off. Exceptional. Yeah, I was about to say, I wish that happened in my undergrad. I got written up for having, or I had to write an essay for disciplinary reasons

in college on fire safety and dormitories. And okay, I'm just gonna say if you don't want rocket metters in dorms, then like give rocket people fire safety boxes. Anyway, so I ended up pulling the fire logs for the entirety of like the history of the fire, like safety records of my university and 25% of fire alarms in freshman dormitories were caused by Easy Mac. Yes, Becky, you are absolutely right. I'll try and drag this back from the fire anecdotes. You're absolutely right.

It is accessibility. It is so that if there is smoke from a fire and you're crawling along the floor, you can find your way out. But also firefighters coming in can look down and check the room numbers. Each of our guests has brought a question along. As usual, I don't know the questions. I definitely don't know the answers.

We're going to start with Jordan. What have you got for us? All right, here's my question for all of you. In the UK, McDonald's sells chicken strips called chicken selects. A man found a hack to buy four chicken selects from McDonald's for less than the price of a three pack of them. What was it? And I'll repeat the question. In the UK, McDonald's sells chicken strips called chicken selects. A man found a hack to buy four Chicken Selects from McDonald's for less than the price

of a three pack of them. What was it? I think I might've done this at some point. Were you the man? This is actually a question about Tom Scott. I think this might've been independently discovered at some points. I can't actually remember if it was me or someone with me who, I'm going to sit out of this one because I, if not, I have a

different hack that lets you do it as well. It's you and me, Becky. I've never bought chicken strips in the UK. I feel a disadvantage. Oh, these are just, the US would call them chicken tenders. So does it matter? It doesn't matter that it's the UK versus the US. It has nothing to do with like the currency or anything like that. No, it doesn't have to do. Okay. So it could, it could be in the US and we could change it for chicken nuggets. Does it, does it matter that it's chicken selects? Why is it called chicken selects for starters? That's like, we don't want to admit that it's fully chicken. No, it is because it's, um, it's real pieces of chicken instead of chicken Play-Doh. And we didn't really have the phrase chicken tenders

until like America imported that a few years ago. So they just gave them a different name. Oof. I don't know what they call them now here, but in order to have it be like a real contiguous piece of chicken, it's called something else than the chicken nuggets, which are put together with with um with glue meat glue i will never get the term chicken play-doh out of my head did you not see the like pink chicken goo thing from mcdonald's when we were all in like middle and high school i did i just didn't put it in my brain as chicken

play-doh yeah i. I think in the UK, for it to be a chicken tender, it actually has to be like a whole chicken tenderloin. I'm not sure that's true in the US. Contiguous. So I think we have to use a different name. I would believe that's not true in the US.

That also has nothing to do with the answer to this question. Dang. Okay. So it could be, it could be chicken nuggies. It could be chicken tendies. It could be chicken fingies. It could be anything.

Does that have something to do with there being like a meal price? I used to work at my very first job when I turned 16 was at a Dunkin' Donuts and you could charge someone for, you could like ring up something without the cup and you have to like ring up the item and then subtract the cup. So like, is there like a meal minus extra meal items i love that all these questions so far have something to do with your high school jobs becky this is like the slumdog millionaire episode of this and it's all yours next are we going to talk about stocking christmas ornaments at the craft store because I also have a lot of experience doing that.

In terms of does it have to do with an app? No, it does not have to do with an app. Becky is on a closer track. OK, is it like there's a there's a deal where you can buy a certain number plus a drink, but you're allowed to subtract the drink? Not the drink. Fries. Can you replace fries? The three pack overpriced?

It's not a meal. If you get selects and a fries but you can substitute the fries for an extra select. Is there like a bonus? There's like, I think if they come, if they come in a three pack,

like how would you even get four unless there's like some kind of way to order for like the kiddie meal or something. When you started talking about numbers like four and three, I was like,

oh, what you do is you get a three liter jug and a five liter jug and you pour in the, that's not how chicken works. Well, if we're still on the chicken play-doh track it works if it's oh okay so before before it's made into the chicken you have to bring your own chicken jordan i'm not convinced that the US actually has the same menu as the UK

So I think there might be something that the Americans are missing here There's a lot that Americans are missing, I think Yeah, but I don't know a lot about the McDonald's menu in the first place I always get a chicken nuggets, which used to be six pieces And now it's ten pieces And I'm like, yes, I am 40% fatter Thank you for noticing. So it has something, you think it has something to do with the structure of the UK menu that's different than the

US menu? I guess what's offered on the menu, what else is offered on the menu? Okay. Is it like, if you buy a burger, oh, you can get, is it a kid's meal? A kid's meal, you could get like two of them for cheaper. and so you could get two kids meals for the same price as a three-pack adult sized you're very close or it's like the cardi b and offset meal where like as long as you bring your boyfriend who likes the double cheeseburger you can get the discount on the chicken timbers i'm sorry is that the actual thing is that is that like yeah it that the actual thing? Is that like... Yeah, it's an actual thing. You actually have to bring Cardi B with you to the McDonald's.

Then they'll give you as many chicken tenders as you want. Oh, yeah, they will. Chicken select, sorry. Just be Cardi B, actually. I'll go with that answer. You have to be Cardi B. Final answer. No.

Okay, the kids meal comes with an extra... Can I try dropping a hint in here? Go for it. It's worth thinking about how fast food places tend to construct like special stuff. Like if they've got a single... If they've got a new thing on the menu, it's often just stuff they've already got moved around.

Something to do with the dollar. The McDonald's menu is McDonald's, right? No, not the dollar menu. But it's not the dollar menu. Well, first of all, the dollar menu is barely the dollar menu that it used to be. I don't know, I was thinking of marketing. Fast food marketing things that I've heard of. Becky, we're embarrassing ourselves with our lack of McDonald's knowledge.

I'm not embarrassed that I don't go to fast food restaurants very often. That does not embarrass me. Yeah, this is my poor student hack from years ago for me. Okay, I'm going to come in. I'm going to see if my hack's the same as the one in the question, Jordan. McDonald's in the UK sells wraps. I know like most of the world, like Europe, Australia, New Zealand, right, okay. So they will sell a snack wrap, which is just a tortilla with some stuff in it.

And so they made it because they want some kind of vaguely healthy looking lunch option, even though literally all they're doing is replacing. Do they put a chicken tender in a tortilla and call it a new item? They put two chicken tenders. in a tortilla and call it a new item. They put two chicken tenders. They put two in there and a bit of lettuce, a bit of mayo,

and they sell two of those for cheaper than just three of the chicken tenders. Wendy's used to do a chicken Caesar wrap that had two chicken tenders in it, which was cheaper if you bought two than the chicken tenders. Yeah. I know this. Yeah, this is the student being cheap question it was

it makes absolutely no sense apart from the fact that people are still willing to pay more for just a box of three chicken tenders if that's what they want i think if this question i might have got guessed something like that if the question were around taco bell because like i think now they think of like tortilla you know like i think of Taco Bell's menu as more of a mix and match uh separates outfit planning I've literally never eaten at a Taco Bell so I would totally bomb that question I don't know if I've ever been to a Taco Bell sober but I've been to Taco Bell plenty the answer to this question is that he bought two chicken wraps but told the restaurant to remove everything else except the chicken. So he orders two chicken wraps. Each wrap contains two chicken selects, so four chicken selects in total. He then removed all of the optional ingredients, cucumber,

lettuce, tomato, and mayo, as well as the tortilla wrap itself. This left just the four chicken selects on their own, which costs less than three chicken selects. And apparently this hack was posted by someone named Daza on Facebook in December of 2022. Of course it was someone called Daza. Of course it was. That's exactly the name. This is the sort of thing you can do

at those like ordering kiosks because you don't actually have to make the awkward request to a person. The next question is from a listener. It was sent in by Marion. And I will tell you in advance that you don't need to write down the exact sequence of things I'm going to say.

The password JI32K7AU4A83 has been found in over 100 data breaches. Why are so many people using that set of characters? I was about to say no. I can see Becky prepping to write it down anyway. Looking at my keyboard. I'll give you that one more time. The password JI32K7AU4A83 has been found in over 100 data breaches. Why are so many people using that set of characters? Now, for everyone listening to this and going oh my god do i have to write that down no you don't i'll give you that in advance you

don't need to memorize that sequence is it something that like uh one of the auto password generators has kind of like glitched and like latched onto and inserts it into a lot of random passwords. Does anyone here use a password generator? Because I still do. I have a password manager who just makes them for me. Okay. Literally everyone here. Good.

It's almost like makers and nerds and people who are doing PhDs are good at operational security for some reason. I can't imagine what that would be. Or our YouTube channels have been hacked at some point and we learned our lesson. Crossing my fingers that I don't have that called it's called identifying as female on the internet also that it sounds like an okay password except it doesn't have any special symbols in it how many characters is it long ah now that is 12 characters seems pretty normal okay so that's longer than yeah is it an example password used in a blog about, like, how to make a good password?

It's a random string of characters. Oh, that's a good guess. For example, J-I-K-7-2-something-something. You remembered way more of that than I thought you would. It's sadly not an example. That's a good guess, though. Oh, thanks, Maggie. Googling, like, make a good password.

Google how to make a good password. I can see myself doing it. That's a good guess though. Oh, thanks, Maggie. That would be like Googling, like, make a good password. Google how to make a good password. I can see myself doing it. I could see myself, I could see younger me when I did stuff like this, set up a website that was like, how to generate a password or like automatic password generates your password generator. And it's just the top of Google. It's just the same thing every time. Enter your email address and we'll generate a password for you. So the answer to the question is in an alternate reality,

past Tom Scott made a website that did this. It's just you've been pwned repeatedly. 20-year-old me is angry that he didn't make that now. Is it some sort of like, I don't know, I feel like if everyone is using this password, it can't be like a cryptography't know. I feel like if everyone is using this password,

it can't be like a cryptography thing. But is there some very easy... It was found in breaches. That doesn't mean it was actually used as passwords, does it? Does that mean that like there could be some kind of interpretation of the leaked database where some entry is always getting somehow converted into... Are all the numbers... I guess, is this the password that people have actually used

or something else? Yeah, people have actually used this password. Is it a password that was like auto-assigned by a really large company to a bunch of employees and then all the employees signed up for stuff and then it got breached? No, this is all independent. People are independently coming up with this password.

Yeah. Was it on TikTok? Is this password? Yes. Are they all? Secret hack. Make your TikTok account more secure with this password. Mr. Beast said to set it as your password and all the teens set it as their password.

Is it? So I study other languages. So is it a keyboard from a different language yeah like chinese is it a chinese password yeah uh it's i'll give you that it's although no i'm not gonna give you that quirky but into vorzhak i'm not gonna give you it's chinese for political reasons. So where might it be? Taiwan? Yes, it's Taiwan. This is the Taiwanese keyboard layout who are typing in what is roughly, I'm not going to explain the full thing,

but they are typing what is basically my password. And after going through various translation systems and then putting it into ASCII characters, what you get is that sequence of letters. It is basically just my password, but typed in a different language and then translated back. Wait, but okay. Maybe I fundamentally don't understand. When I've typed in Chinese, it's like you type out the pinyin and the tone and kind of just like pick a character. Or wait, are passwords, I've never said a password in a character language.

Are they actually the character? Like, does the person typing in the character or is it they have to type something in in a like standard keyboard or like an ASCII? It's gotta be. I'm just gonna read my notes here because I'm not gonna try to understand how Taiwanese text entry works.

It is the Yujing Fuhao system. I'm trying to get that as close as I can. The tones will be wrong. It allows Chinese characters to be typed on a QWERTY layout. So they're typing in four characters that are my password. And so you have letters and numbers from those that get turned into ASCII I do not understand how this works all I know is that enough people in Taiwan just typed in my password when asked to enter my password that it turned up in breaches wow this is the trouble with having a

load of people that understand computers and a question about computers. If people didn't, if I had a question about farm animals and it involved some extreme detail, no one would ask any follow up questions. And right now I'm sweating because I don't understand what's, I don't quite understand what's in front of me. Sorry, my parents do now have a farm in upstate New York. So I will try not to ask any more questions about farm animals. Yes. I'm sure whatever your next question is, it'll relate to Becky's high school jobs, though, so.

Yeah. Do you want to relate this one to my current job? I teach a bunch of international students in the class I teach at School of Visual Arts, and several of them have this keyboard layout, you know, like they're always swapping back and forth there's keyboard layout and i'm sure they would know the answer know the answer remind me never to play a trivia game actually against becky this is totally your slumdog millionaire episode good luck with it i'm not good at sports so yes that long string of characters is my

password typed on a taiwanese keyboard and sent through a lot of computer stuff. Our next question is from Becky. Please tell us it's something about what you did in high school. It very well could be, yeah. Okay, so here's your question. Coincidentally, this listener question has been sent in by both Marion Halim and Tom Hartley. and sent in by both Marion Halim and Tom Hartley. Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the GameCube and Wii consoles simultaneously. The Wii game is a mirrored version of the GameCube game. Why?

I'll read it again. Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the GameCube and Wii consoles simultaneously. The Wii game is a mirrored version of the GameCube and Wii consoles simultaneously. The Wii game is a mirrored version of the GameCube game. Why? Like mirrored, like it's flipped. Inverted. I might know the

answer to this because I play games. Alright, I definitely don't know the answer to this because I don't usually play games. There's a lot of good games that debuted on the GameCube. I didn't have one personally, but it's still the best version of Mario Kart. 100% I had one growing up. So yeah, it's great. Yeah. Just the ability in Mario Kart to have two teams of two, which for like four people in college just meant there was way more shouting

than usual as you actually try to coordinate with someone as well wait if there's a two person mario kart team is one person like controlling speed and the other one's controlling direction or is it you both have your own car no one person's a driver and one person's the gun oh that's right oh yeah okay that's amazing if you both push a button you can swap over which meant that halfway through you'd be like you're're driving terribly, it's my turn. And you're just now on the back throwing out shells at someone behind you. That sounds really fun. And the person on the back, this is one of the last big video game memories I have,

is being in a college dorm room and having the shoulder buttons. Because the person on the back, as the gunner, you also could like save your cart from going off a cliff by like shifting your weight by pushing a button rather than actually like shifting your weight.

But it's like, oh, you're about to go over a cliff. Nope, saved you. And it was great until he pushed the wrong button and sent over a cliff and someone punched you in the arm. I might have some memories

from back then. Just, I had less stuff stuff going on you know more time to play video games i think i did play zelda in high school but not at work but but for me it's playing video games and my college dorm experience and for becky it's like crap jobs she had in high school so i feel like one of us is getting the worst deal here well this it looks like the we came out in 2006 so So, yeah, I would have been not in high school when this game came out. But, you know, the Zelda franchise is long enduring. So why do you mirror an entire video game?

I mean, Jordan's just going to get to sit here smug. Are the controls flipped? If you've played Zelda.da i've never played zelda i've never played on a wii and i've never played on a gamecube and i really am feeling a little inadequate the wii definitely has like motion controls right so um because i remember like the wii is the one with the the weird stick of a controller that you can like bowl with and like throw things with. So is there some reason that you would want to use your left hand? The control, a standard game controller, like a lot of the primary actions are on the left side

and a Wii is typically held on your right side. And then the nunchuck, the like joystick thing is on the other side. Wait, is this the one where you draw back a bow? Is this a Zelda game where you have to repeatedly do this motion where if you've got the Wii controllers, you're holding them up and pulling back and drawing a bow and firing arrows? The description does not mention that as being the action. Link is about the regular weapon that Link usually uses.

Oh, is it then that you're holding your sword in your right hand instead of pushing the left hand button to spot the person who can't remember how the controls are laid out? Like, normally you're pushing the left button to swing your sword, and now No, why would you swing? Why would you

mirror the entire... It has something to do with the character trait of link oh man i have no idea oh man you've got jordan's jordan is literally jordan's played because jordan's played zelda i actually coincidentally just learned this the other the other night i'm not a huge zelda fan haven't played it in a really long time and i did not know this person this character trait i had a we and a game keep growing up and you can use game keep games on the wii so i experienced this oh jordan like just just put us out of misery here you had it from the start link is left-handed oh and most players on the wii are right-handed they mirrored it they mirrored the entire game

so that um on nintendo you wouldn't have to on on Nintendo, you wouldn't have to... On the Wii, you wouldn't have to play with your left hand. On the Wii, you wouldn't have to play with your left hand. Exactly. It was a lazy way to accommodate for Link canonically being left-handed, but the Wii controller is going to be usually used by somebody in their right hand, and it's kinetic, like you mentioned. We were close.

We were very close. I'm just not up on my Zelda lore at all. I wonder if Link is left-handed because some animator many, many years ago when they were designing like the first pixel version of that character just was like, yeah, sure, it's easier this way.

And now years later, someone is having to mirror an entire game because of it. It's kind of like lazy move. But also brilliant if they're like, what are we going to do? lazy, lazy move, but also brilliant. If they're like, what are we going to do? Yeah. I mean,

I feel like I assume this was like ready for deployment. And then somebody was like, Oh no. And they were like, just mirror the whole game. It's fine. They tried to play it. That's what happened is they tried to play.

Oh, my, my producer, sorry, Becky, I know this is your question, but my producer has just popped up on my uh on my screen here saying that uh shigeru miyamoto who created uh the zelda series is left handed so i was completely wrong where i was like is it some lazy designer no it's the creator going

i'm gonna make him like me representation it's like how ariel ended up redheaded. Wait, what? The Little Mermaid? Wait, explain. I think it was just the producer was redheaded. And like, she's not redheaded in the original fairy tale. And they were like, what if we just gave her red hair? I did not know this. In the original games, Link is left-handed. However, the Wii had the facility of the Wii Remote for such things as sword fighting. And since most people are right-handed,

it made sense to turn Link into a right-handed character for the Wii version. And rather than remodel the character, they lazily mirrored the entire game world. Next one's from me. Good luck, folks. South Korean supermarkets have found an ingenious way of reducing the number of bananas

that people throw away at home. How do they package them? I'll say that again. South Korean supermarkets have found an ingenious way of reducing the number of bananas that people throw away at home. How do they package them? You had a look of such excitement on your face there, Zyla. Well, OK, I think I saw the answer to this on Twitter and I was like, oh my God, it satisfies all the parts of my brain

that need to be satisfied. All right, you step back from this one. I'll leave it to Jordan and Becky. Oh God. I've seen bananas with their stems wrapped with something before. I don't know how you package this. So it's, they packaged it in a way

that reduces food waste, I guess. Yeah. So it makes the bananas, they make the bananas last longer before they go bad? I'll let you talk this through for a while. It just says it reduces the number of bananas that people throw away.

Oh, they pack, oh, they package it with a recipe for banana bread. Oh, that's a lovely idea that's amazing so when you're like oh my bananas are sad oh i know what i'll do but not again there's a lot of banana bread made for that reason but uh unfortunately not this time i guess i don't really eat bananas um so i'm thinking about this in the context of avocados. And why do I throw out... I mean, I throw out avocados because they all get ripe at the same time. Do they give you bananas that some of them are ripe and some of them aren't?

Yes. You're nearly there, but bananas are not... You can't normally sell bananas in a way that that's possible. Because they come in bunches. So this way is not selling bananas in bunches? It's simple as that. You've got it between you. Zyla, what did you see on Twitter?

It was bananas in this like beautiful gradient from green to yellow. And so it was like each one ripens. They're each harvested like a day apart so that they ripen sequentially. Yeah, that's it. The key part is they break them out of the bunches and package them up over several days of ripeness. So you have essentially a week's pack of bananas available to buy. Wait, so question. As someone who doesn't consume bananas but belongs to a household full of people who do, Someone who doesn't consume bananas, but belongs to a household full of people who do. I've totally gone to the store and like had a bunch of bananas and then like taken a banana off of the bunch and bought that banana.

That's allowed. I think everyone does that. Yeah. Like, is that not a thing? So you could do this yourself, even if it's not offered. Okay. Yes. I just needed to clarify that. This is something that, like, you can do.

And it does mean that you now have a plastic wrapped package of bananas, which is arguably not the best. So you should just go to the store and do this yourself, and just break out seven bananas from seven different bunches, and then... But then, you're going to be putting them in, like, one of those plastic grocery bags anyway, though,

to keep... No, you have to bring them and remove them them from the bag or else they will all ripen faster. I don't know. I don't really eat bananas either, but I watch them go bad a lot. I mean, when I do the avocados, I'll like buy a couple avocados and then I'll like I'll intentionally buy a couple and then go back to the store like three days later and buy a couple more. And then the ones that I originally bought, I can eat. And the other ones are like, do you put them in different parts of your house? Yeah. Warm,

a warm place or a cooler place. I definitely buy two different like, yeah, I was about to just assume that Becky had a high school job on a banana plantation. So trying to think of a head of high school. I don't think I didn't have a high school connection with bananas. Sorry.

I worked at a photo shop and cut a lot of bananas. So I'll cut you a lender. You can phone a friend on this one, Becky. Great. Yes. South Korean supermarkets started packaging up bananas as a gradient of ripeness. Our last guest question of the show then is from Zyla. Whenever you're ready.

I'm actually, I'm very excited. In 2022, a pickup truck hit a car outside a shopping center in Roseville, California. Although the driver fled in their vehicle, police investigating the wreck soon arrested the culprit. They needed a little mental agility rather than witnesses or CCTV. How? And I'll read that again. In 2022, a pickup truck hit a car outside a shopping center in Roseville, California. And although the driver fled in their vehicle, police investigating the

wreck soon arrested the culprit. They just needed a little bit of mental agility rather than witnesses or CCTV. How? Okay, my immediate thought, and that's because we've talked a lot about animals in this, is that there was just a dog driving the car accidentally. It had just got in, it had hit the accelerator, and just kept going. But was it a dog that could read hotel numbers? Yeah. It had actually just checked out of the

hotel next door and just done a really bad job of reversing. Okay, so not all states have a requirement of the front and back license plate, so I don't know if off the top of my head if California requires a front license plate. Maybe Zyla can answer that question. California does require a front license plate. I drove around for a really long time without one, and my excuse was going to be that I couldn't figure out how to use a screwdriver to put it on.

I wanted to see if I could get away with that. Good one. Yeah, if they didn't Google you, then sure. So I'm going to guess guess and i feel like this is a pretty far-fetched guess the pickup truck license plate made an imprint on the car and they just had to read it backwards that is correct and actually this happened to one of my friends one of my friends drove his brand new car off of the lot was like super excited was on a waitlist for this car for a while got rear-ended like took the bumper off and they caught also got hit and run they caught him because it they left an imprint of

the license plate on the bumper i'm really surprised i thought that was pretty far-fetched i would never have got that british license yeah just printed they're not raised up one of the hints is that this method doesn't work in the UK. It only works in the US where they're embossed. Not all, some license plates in the US are printed also. I think the new Connecticut license plates are printed and not stamped. I could be wrong. This is the part where we learned

that Becky worked at the DMV in high school. I didn't. It wasn't until he used the word embossed that my brain went, oh yeah, they're not printing out like big X's and sticking them on with. No, they just get a stamp and put it into the metal. Of course they do. It has taken me until today to realize that that's how those license plates are made, that it's just stamped in.

I'm really surprised. If I had thought that was right, I wouldn't have guessed so early. It was a fantastic guess. Yeah. Yeah. So that was right, I wouldn't have guessed so early. It was a fantastic guess. Yeah. Yeah. So that was exactly right. An imprint of the truck's license plate became embossed onto the car that it hit. And so they just had to read the license plate number backwards and identify the correct vehicle.

So one final thing for the show, then we have a question that I asked the audience at the start. Thank you to Marcus Cameron-Bent for sending this one in. On 21st of August, 2017, one NASA Twitter account blocked another NASA Twitter account for two hours. Why? Wasn't there an eclipse? Yes, there was. So who blocked who? Oh, oh, did like the moon block the sun?

Moon blocked the sun. Like the moon block the sun. Moon block the sun. Yep. And NASA's moon Twitter account blocked NASA's sun Twitter account for two hours on the 21st of August, 2017. That's adorable. That's cute.

Thank you very much. Thank you to all our guests. Let's find out where can people find you? What's going on in your lives? We'll start with Zyla. I am Zyla. I build stuff and I fly stuff on the internet. I don't fly things on the internet.

I just build things on the internet and then I fly myself elsewhere. And I fly stuff on the internet. I don't fly things on the internet. I just build things on the internet and then I fly myself elsewhere. And I am currently in the middle of building a sailboat. So if you are interested in that or in any of my flying adventures, you can find me at XylaFoxlin on anything. Jordan.

I talk about artificial intelligence and how it's going to impact our lives and these days how GPT is going to gaslight you. So, at Jordan Harrod on all the things. And Becky. I'm a maker. I make things and document them

and share them on the internet. A lot of electronics, a lot of crafts. I'm beckystern.com and you can just search me and find my YouTube channel. If you want to know more about this show or send in a question yourself, you can do that at lateralcast.com.

You can find us at Lateral Cast pretty much everywhere and there are video highlights at youtube.com slash lateralcast. Thank you very much. It is goodbye from Becky Stern.

Bye. Jordan Harrod. See ya. And Zyla Foxland. Bye. I've been Tom Scott and that's been Lateral.