Lateral with Tom Scott - 38: Edward's buried paint

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

From 'Jet Lag: The Game', Sam Denby, Adam Chase and Ben Doyle face questions about copyright chicanery, microstate melodies and fruitless flights. 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: The Podcast Studios, Dublin. EDITED BY: Julie Hassett. MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com). ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Paulo, Tim, Asger Harpøth Møller, Tom, Ben Tedds, Alex L. 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

What did William Shakespeare do in 1582 that Adam Shulman did in 2012? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott and this is Lateral. I've assembled three guests who have mastered the art of pondering so deeply they make Descartes look like a casual daydreamer. I've been saving that intro for a Rene Day. First, we have, from Jetlag the Game, Ben Doyle. Hi.

How are you doing, Ben? Thank you very much for joining us. I'm very excited to be here and to show off my apartment to all of the lovely listeners of Lateral. So most of the times you've been on camera before, it has been out there in the world with jet lag. Are you okay showing off a little bit of domestic life there? There's not much to go off of here. I dox myself all the time.

If you want to know where I live, you can figure it out. I guess I shouldn't say that. Don't tell people that. Stop saying that! Okay. Moving on. I was going to try and save the reveal, but also joining us from Jetlag the Game

is the whole crew. We'll go to Adam Chase. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Tom. I don't know if anyone here follows me on Twitter, but if you do, you'll know that I spent the last day trying to sell my couch. And for a while, nobody wanted to buy it, Tom,

but someone has in fact agreed to purchase the couch. So I'm riding high. As if this wasn't chaos enough, we also have the final member of the Jetlag the Game team, Sam Denby. Hi, Tom, I'm sorry. I feel bad. Your setup premise was very good of revealing one by one member of the jet lag the game team sam denby hi tom i'm sorry i feel bad your premise your setup

premise was very good of revealing one by one that we were each from jet lag the game and now i feel bad for ruining it i want to apologize it's fine this is this is a jet lag the game special of lateral i should have led with that we are professional fact knowers all three of us have worked on half as interesting and when i listened to the podcast this morning as a little refresher to get my brain going i i think i i think there were four questions i listened to and i knew three of them just so just so you can get scared about me breaking the game tom all right i know that's the thing that you hate most oh no no it's just lovely that a guest has come in just aiming high and kind of bragging

because you have just set yourself up as the villain. That's, that's a problem. If we have that narrative structure. I think it's a great way to make friends is to lead with threats of ruining Tom's podcast. Sorry, we're going to do terrible except for Ben and Adam. They're going to do great. I'm going to do terrible. I'm the underdog. Ben and Adam are doing great. And they know so much. They went to, you know, they went to Ivy League schools, them two of them. You know where I went? I went to Scotland. I couldn't even get into American colleges. I know you need to move on, Tom. And now you've insulted Scotland. So on that, let's get on with the quiz. We're going to start off with the first question. Wait, that's a complete mischaracterisation of that. We start with a question that's been sent in by Tom.

I don't know which Tom, but whoever you are, thank you very much. It's not me. In 2015, Peter Shankman bought a $5,000 return ticket from New Jersey to Tokyo. Soon after the 14-hour flight landed, he got back on the same plane and went straight back home, much relieved. He took only his

laptop and phone on the trip. Why? I'll give you that one more time. In 2015, Peter Shankman bought a $5,000 return ticket from New Jersey to Tokyo. Soon after the 14-hour flight landed, he got back on the same plane and went straight back home, much relieved. He took only his laptop and phone on the trip. Why? He was playing something called Jetlag the Game. Yeah, I feel like we do this basically all the time.

Adam and I did this once going New York to LA and then back in the same day for a game once and it was one of the worst days of my life. So shout out to that guy for having probably a terrible couple of days. We did kind of skip over what jet lag the game is. And you know what? We'll fill that in at the end, but there's a lot of travel involved.

Does this have to do with points and airline reward programs? Why do you say that? Because what is often done, and something that, to be honest, I have done, is you get to the end of the year and you have a certain tier that you need to pass to get a certain airline status level. And you need to accrue, you need to get a certain number of like flown miles or something through the year to get past that. So if you're, if it's like December 15th and you're like, oh, I, I, my, all my travel plans are done. And I just have this tiny bit more. Some people take these, these, they call them like mileage runs.

But the relief makes me think that maybe that's not the case here. Yeah, you're right. That's not why he did this. Okay. That was a very diplomatic way to frame that, which is you're right, Sam, about having been wrong. Well, that's half the game. Process of elimination. Okay, I have a question for you, Tom.

So, and I apologize, you may have mentioned this in the question. How long was he in Tokyo for? Not very long at all. But sorry, but if I could push just a bit. Is not very long, like a few minutes or like a few hours? He went back on the same plane, I'm told. Oh, oh, wow. Okay.

Does it have something to do with like a lost item? Did he like forget something like his wallet or something like that? I think there's a cheaper ways of getting your wallet back than a $5,000 flight. Well, people do silly stuff, Tom. That's true. That's the whole thing of this podcast. This is kind of a... I think a lot of people would describe this as silly, but it was effective for him.

Is there something he needed to do upon landing in Tokyo, or was the flight itself the completion of his task? Good question. It was the flight itself. Although completion of the task is actually a little bit closer than you might think. Wait, wait, wait a minute. Sorry, Tom. This is a real dumb question, but I do feel that I need to ask it. This guy wasn't the pilot of the plane, was he? No, I think much relieved, kind of gives you that. And also he bought a $5,000 ticket.

To the best of my knowledge, pilots do not have to buy tickets for their planes. Okay, I had forgotten about the ticket thing, but I think you have to admit that it would fit all the parameters that if this guy had to fly this flight, he was like, man, I'm real relieved that I flew. Yeah, but pilots don't come back on the same flight.

They have crew rest requirements. Okay, well, I don't know that. Okay, okay, sorry. So, task, that makes me think, does this have anything to do with, like, a game show or some sort of competition or? Not this time. Damn it. I thought it was going to be like Taskmaster where they have to get as far away as possible. And some guy just really committed to the bit. And for some reason, Taskmaster was in New Jersey. The US version of Taskmaster was in California and it was terrible, but not this time.

I'm a bit stumped. I mean, what kind of seat would $5,000 buy on a flight like that? Oh, you know, that's a great question, actually. I hadn't even really clocked that. It was super expensive. So was he like in first class? Yeah, he would have been up in business class on this. Were there other people on the plane? Oh, yes.

Yeah, standard commercial flight. Was he doing an experiment of some sort? No, he did, however, have a personality trait that made this kind of necessary for what he wanted to do. Oh, okay. Interesting. Why might you want to spend 28 hours on flights in a very short space of time? Ooh, ooh, ooh, I have one. I have one. Can this dude only sleep on planes?

Can this dude only sleep on planes? Now, the verb in that sentence was wrong, but the rest of it was pretty close. Oh, there's something he can only do if he's on a plane. It's something that he's helped with enormously in that environment. What is it about that flight environment, about that long trip that meant he could do a thing? He can only get boozed up on planes. He can only... Okay, wait a minute. What are...

I know some people, like, ride on trains specifically to write because it, like, helps them concentrate. It feels like that's it's along those lines. Tom's nodding. He's nodding. Yeah.

You've nailed it. What, right? There are no outside stimuli, no other connections to the world. He is locked in a box

with his laptop for 28 hours and has spent a lot of money to do it. So you are absolutely right, Sam. This guy bought

those floss so he could get his manuscript done before the deadline. Wow. Has he heard of trains? You still have a mobile phone connection there. Oh. If you want an isolated box, I know some flights have

Wi-Fi now, particularly in the US, but like Transcontinental in 2015, this is a locked, isolated box that you have paid money to be in, that is a very, very good reason to actually start working on your damn manuscript. I would like to make an offer that if anybody would like to spend $5,000 to be in a box without their phone, I will personally build a box for them in exchange for that $5,000 and I will take their phone away from them. This is my new incredible business.

So that's sort of been done before. Douglas Adams, who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide, was once locked in a hotel room with his editor for three weeks, voluntarily, but just so he would actually try and meet the deadline this time. I think most writers just get, like, cabins. I mean, yeah, this was just a business class cabin. This is the most expensive Walden I've ever heard of. Expensive what? Oh, Walden.

You know Walden? When he went to the woods so he could live honestly? Up in Maine, I think? Henry David Thoreau, I believe it was. You've exposed a hole in my knowledge here. Wow. The Brit doesn't know about the great American authors. You should title this episode

Tom Scott Humiliated on His Own Podcast. Yes, Peter Shankman bought a $5,000 return ticket to spend 28 hours cut off from the world so he could finish his manuscript. Each of our guests has brought a question along. I don't know the questions. I definitely don't know the answers. Sam, what have you got for us? Yeah, so this listener question has been sent in by Tim. In 1683, why was it vital for scouts to walk through the cellars of Vienna with musical instruments and a bag of dried peas. So I'll repeat that. In 1683, why was it vital for scouts to walk through the cellars of Vienna

with musical instruments and a bag of dried peas? Does it have something to do with pests? Yeah, that's my initial thought. Like 95% no. But 5% yes! Unless you thought of a broader definition of the word pests. I'm assuming that you meant when you said it was 5%, right? Did you mean like, were there people? Was it a thing where like there might have been people there and the musical instruments and peas would help to kind of flush or uh thrash those people uh out from where they were i about 70 of that is right yeah when i hear music and see peas i'm i'm there i you can lure me anywhere uh does it does it have something to do with like plague or like sickness

no okay wait a minute so so so let's just back up for a second though i just want to remember all of the question they were where they were like underneath vienna is this right and they were described as scouts yeah they were in like cellars and stuff like that, you know. These P-men, are these bad men or good men? We're just going to go with P-men, are we? We're just going to let that one

fail up into the ether. They're scouts, Ben. I think that's a tough question to answer, Ben, because, you know, history is written by the, whatever the rest of that phrase is. Do you personally think that what they were doing was good or bad? Listen, I don't I don't want to open up. I don't want to get into my political opinions.

I want your opinion on what they were doing. I like the idea of a version of the podcast that you can only ask subjective opinion questions about if what happened was good or bad. Yeah, I don't want to make a statement on the politics of this. OK, OK. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I feel like I feel like the answer of that 70 percent of that was right. I'm sure I want to figure out what 70 percent of it was right. Were there people down there that they were trying to interact with in some way via the peas and musical instruments yes sort of yeah yes ish they were they were ghost hunting but yeah it's well known you can

attract ghosts with like peas and musical instruments that's i'm sure that's a that's something i've read somewhere somebody somebody quote tom Tom Scott in an article saying that. You are a noted authority on facts. And I want that spread around everywhere. Tom, it's just about the opposite of that. They were super, they were babies. Babies? Babies. They weren't ghosts.

They were babies. Wasn't that what the Pied Piper did? He was like killing children. Oh, that's got to be what it is, right? They were, oh, no, that's got to be what it is. They were killing children. There were babies? No, no, no, no, no. that's got to be what it is right they were oh no that's got to be what they were killing children there were babies no no no no this has got to be what it was people okay i've got it i'm gonna i'm about to monologue this whole thing and then you're gonna be like that's exactly right okay in the 17th century when people would have babies they

didn't want what they would do is they would throw them below the streets of vienna to get rid of them and so to go and check and make sure that they're to them below the streets of Vienna to get rid of them. And so to go and check and make sure that they're to get to gather up the babies, to put them in orphanages, you would go around with musical instruments and peas to get them so that you could put them like orphanages or whatever. That's so messed up that they did. That is I think that is incorrect to like an impressive level. Like the level of creativity that that took is impressive. So there are no babies involved. I can confirm there are no babies involved.

Wait, wait, but Ben and Tom, when I was saying that, did you, were you like, he's got it? I was a hundred percent. Oh convinced absolutely convinced it's kind of a dark question for the show but so i think it's worth trying to maybe figure out what musical instruments what application could be useful when you're underground and maybe drums big whacking drums yes oh hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. If you're trying to, if you're using a drum, then there's a load of bass and it's going through walls and ceilings

and things like that. So are they trying to find, are they trying to map something underground and there was someone above ground listening to the bass and trying to track where the drum is? You're getting pretty close, but I think once again, you're kind of at the opposite of what it is, Tom.

Were there people below them? There could be people anywhere. There could be people anywhere? Okay. There could be people above. There could be people below. There could be people around. There could be people anywhere. Were they trying to find people whose locations they didn't know? Well, actually, no. I think there's a little bit more detail we need.

Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. Were the people dead? No. No, remember, opposite of ghosts. They are tax collectors trying to track down people and... Are drums and dried peas... Are the dried peas in the drums? Are they also part of the percussion? Have they got like

maracas that they're shaking back and forth that are filled with dried peas or something like that? The peas are directly interacting with the drums. Do you put the peas on the drum? Yes, Adam. And you bang the drum and it like spreads the

peas out? No? you got close and then you went oh oh oh i've got one i've got one how about this if i were to okay if i were trying to pick up sound right and figure out if there's sound happening what i might do is put a bunch of peas on a drum and then if there's like a vibration the peas are going to rattle on top of the drum and what kind of sound would you be trying to find out footsteps movement voices what might be a really bassy sound underground that you're trying to avoid a subway what in 1683 oh it's a monster it's a monster yeah that was the answer it was a monster in 1683 you're so close was there something important that happened in 1683

in Vienna was there a war of some kind was it a thing where the enemy was there right like the guns or a cannon or something no they were making enemy sounds sort of but but

were they trying to figure out if they were trying to tunnel No. They were making enemy sounds. Sort of, but... Tunneling! Were they trying to figure out if they were trying to tunnel in the seat? Yes, there you go. There you go. So basically, peas were vibrating on the drumheads, and that was a warning of enemies tunneling in. Our next question has been sent in by Ben Tedds.

Thank you very much, Ben. From 1947 until his death in 1969, many customers commissioned John Cura to infringe BBC copyright on an almost daily basis. Despite the legal issues, the BBC allowed him to go about his work. What special service did he provide? One more time.

From 1947 until his death in 1969, many customers commissioned John Cura to infringe BBC copyright on an almost daily basis. Despite the legal issues, the BBC allowed him to go about his work. What special service did he provide? So the first thing that comes to mind is like that was like the heyday.

My understanding is like that was the heyday of like pirate radio. But that doesn't feel quite right. oh oh oh here's a question for you um i know that a long time ago like archiving of television was like not like easy to do like there's a ton of tv that's just like completely lost was this dude like like recording the bbc broadcasts for his own personal archives which the bbc was like oh well that's fine because we're not recording them anyway so like this way there's a record yeah that's a long way to the right answer. It's not quite that the tapes were being wiped back then. It's too early even for that.

But you're definitely along the right lines. This is, I think, before the, it may not be before the invention of videotape, but it's before the widespread use of videotape. I mean, was like he filming his own television set? Close. Very, very close. Does this have anything to do with him bringing

the information into an area in which, or context in which it's not normally available? Yeah, you've got most of the puzzle pieces here very quickly. He is archiving. He is preserving.

But there's one key piece of the puzzle here. We are pre-videotape. And you couldn't have a film camera at home. Those were ruinously expensive. So there's one other thing here. So he was recording the audio of, like, the news, like the radio station? Was he transcribing it? Was he just like typing up all the words? But that wouldn't

violate copyright, would it? I think technically it would, but I don't think that wasn't it. There's one bit of technology and one key thing about television in that era that you haven't quite hit. Was he, like, doing some kind of, like, colourising? No, you'd need film to record that. He was not recording video. Okay, wait a minute. You keep saying he wasn't recording video, but you also said it's not that he was recording audio. saying you keep saying he wasn't recording video but you also said it's not that he was recording audio and i will say tom that my understanding is that television mostly consists of video and

audio so this is throwing me for a loop what about smell-o-vision yes they had that what if that was the answer that would rock so hard i would love to hear tom in his british accent be like, yes, he was recording the smell-o-vision of the BBC. The BBC did once do a charity smell-o-vision thing for a charity telethon. Gotcha. This was in the 90s, but they distributed like scratch-off cards with like a dozen cents on them. And they would just put a number on screen during various shows and like get you to scratch that off at the right time.

Obviously not a common thing. It was just for a charity thing, but it has been done. This is not what he was doing. Well, I do want to tell you, Tom, that that is the most fun thing I've heard all week. That is fun. You should do it for Jetlag. It would just smell like sweat.

It would just be a card with sweat. Yes, smell-o-vision, what we smell like after three hours of running around, or three days of running around trains. You're so nearly there. He's not pointing a video camera at the screen. He's not pointing an audio recorder at the screen, but he's... Oh, he's just taking pictures. He's just taking pictures because that was all you could do at home for a cheap price back then absolutely right so why archive preservation yes why are people hiring him to do this is it like when

people appear on the news i'll give you that it's close enough it is the only record that people had that they had worked on a show that they had had been the director, that they had done the lighting, that they had performed or done the makeup. The only way that you could get a record of a live broadcast, because this is pre-videotape, there is no archive being made of this. So they took telesnaps.

And there are shows that have been reconstructed from his telesnaps, from audio recordings that other people were doing. This is John Cura, who was commissioned to photograph his television screen. I like the bit where Adam does 95% of the work and then I get the credit for it. Pretty fitting. Good job, Sam. I will say that it really undermines you, though,

when you admit that I did 95% of the work because then I am getting the credit. Next question is from Ben, whenever you're ready. Okay. The microstate of Melosha once used Albania's national anthem, but now uses one from the former Zaire. Its flag is the same as Sierra Leone's, flown upside down. What is the identical reason behind both statements? And then that question again. The microstate of Melosha once used Albania's national anthem, but now uses one from the former Zaire. Its flag is the same as Sierra Leone's, flown upside down. What's the identical reason behind both statements?

Okay, I'm looking at Sam immediately. Because on the geography knowledge, this... Sam, you should know every micronation. This feels like a Wendover video. Was it, was it M... Can I get the spelling of the micronation? M-O-L-O-S-S-I-A. See, I think I've heard of that one um i i'm i'm like very not confident but

i think that's one that's like along the danube maybe um or somewhere around there but i have no clue and so okay zaire that was that was like Southern Africa, right? Yeah, I think that's now the DRC. Really? I thought it was a little further south. I'm very not confident, but... But you're right that it's Sub-Saharan Africa. Ben, I'd like to go ahead and answer the question.

Is the reason they did these things because they're a bunch of silly guys? They are not a bunch of silly guys. In fact, these guys are very not silly. Okay. Good to know. They, I actually, I looked up a picture of the guys on Wikipedia. They looked like they scared me. Yeah. Zaire is now Democratic Republic of the Congo. Okay. So it's that region of Africa.

So flag upside down. And Sierra Leone, I think that's Western Africa, right? That's along the Western coast. Everyone's blankly looking at you, Sam. I hope that's right. I'm pretty sure. I just want to say there was a time in my life where I could label every African country on a map in sixth grade.

And now I can't do it anymore wow there is a time in my life when i could recite the entire animaniacs nations of the world song and i've forgotten most of that and also loads of those countries don't exist anymore but okay so flag upside down that is often used as like a distress call right it's like the whole idea is like, if you put the American flag upside down, it's like democracies in distress. And some people have made like political statements off of that.

And what was it with Albania's national anthem? Used to be Albania. It's now the former Zaire. I assume they changed their anthem when they changed their country name as well. Is this micronation recognized by like any legitimate entities this micronation has no recognition okay like how many people are in this micronation

and how big is it are we talking like a few dozen fellas it has 33 citizens including dogs is what my documents including dogs including dogs i don't know how many of those are dogs. They might all be dogs. Okay, I'm like 50. No, I'm like 30% sure this is the Micronation along the Danube. 30% sure it's the one in like Nevada. And 40% thinking that I don't know at all. I'm 20% luck, 30% skill, skill 15 concentrated power at will sam you said three

things one of them was correct but one of the options was that i don't know what i'm talking about so that is inherently one of those is correct okay it's either the danube or nevada then is it the danube one no all right is it is it the nevada one it is near dayton nevada okay so now i know the one that we're talking about this is like a fairly famous micronation that gets tons of press coverage but to be honest that helps me zero percent at all um yep all i know is that i know the one we're talking about let Let me get this straight. You're telling me that these guys in Nevada are using...

They've got an anthem from African nations and there's 33 of them including dogs. Yep. And you said they're very serious fellas. You know, I they might be a little silly. It depends who you ask.

I'm scared of most people. Well, he, he wears, like, dictator outfit. Actually, the, the guy in charge, he wears, like, the outfit almost of, like, a dictator with, like, all sorts of medals and stuff. Not like a, not like a chill democratic leader. Yeah, it's, like, silly scary. Like, the question was, what,

why did they change their anthem from Albania to Zaire? And why is their flag Sierra Leone's upside down? The reason is why were they using an anthem from those other countries? And why were they using Sierra Leone's flag? The answer is the same for why they were doing both of those things, not why they changed anthem. Is it like a copyright thing? Is it a thing where like those were the countries that didn't care

if they stole them and they were too lazy to like make their own stuff? As far as I know, it has nothing to do with copyright. So what comes to mind for me is like all these, all these micronations, they do everything possible to like assert their sovereignty. Cause a lot of them are like veiled political statements about like, I think it's like, it's like vaguely aligned with like, you know, like the sovereign citizen movement and like stuff like that. Like it kind of hits on some of the same themes. So I'm wondering if it has something to do with like asserting sovereignty and in their eyes doing something with these national symbols helps them assert their sovereignty no well adam could you elaborate on your last point i think that that there was a nugget of something in what you said

about like that they didn't want to make their own things yeah okay um i, my thought is, if you've only got 33 people and dogs, the process of making your own flag and composing your own anthem seems like it would potentially be an onerous process, right? So it's like, why do your own thing when you could just steal from somebody else, right? Like. That is correct. You've got it. The answer is to save time, effort, and money. So they use the national. That feels very straightforward for Lateral. I was thinking that.

That's the answer, okay? Who knows what could happen on this podcast? The national anthem was based on the tune of Albania's, but after some complaints from Albanians, it was changed to the one which is used by the former Zaire. And then similarly, to save having to spend money designing and manufacturing their own flag, they took Sierra Leone's and just turned it upside down.

Next up, we have a listener question. Thank you to Alex L. In 1968, NASCAR driver and race team owner Smokey Yannick found a way of allowing his cars to refuel significantly less often. He did so without making any efficiency improvements, nor breaking the regulations on the maximum fuel tank size. How? I'll give you that one more time. In 1968, NASCAR driver and race team owner Smokey Yannick found a way of allowing his cars to refuel significantly less often. He did so without making any efficiency improvements nor breaking the regulations on the maximum fuel tank size.

How? They drove slower. Okay, that would... You know what, Sam? It's a genius answer, but I'm going to rule that out as an efficiency improvement. Okay. It was specified this was a NASCAR driver, right?

So I do think that driving slower would have been potentially an issue. But no, that's not a bad thought, because I guess if you drove slightly slower, it might be made up for in the lack of refueling. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it would be a winning strategy. Sam, you should know this. You love your race cars. I love Formula One. NASCAR is just circles. Don't at me. A fun fact about me is that I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,

where NASCAR is very popular. is that I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where NASCAR is very popular. And at my high school, the two largest buildings at that high school are both named after NASCAR drivers. Is that interesting? I thought it was kind of interesting. Did you see the guy who, in NASCAR,

drove, like, blasting his car into the edge of the circuit around a curve? Did that rock? It's the circuit around a curve. That rocks. It's the same sort of thing. This is a loophole that was closed later, that was technically allowed in the rules at the time. Like, yes, occasionally someone comes up with a strategy, like just on the last lap,

ramming your car into the boundary and, you know, speeding around the final corner that then gets outlawed. This is that same kind of hack. Did he find a shortcut? No, I think the question specified he was able to drive for longer. Yeah. So same speed. Yeah, this is not an efficiency improvement.

The only change from the outside, if you like, is the cars go for longer. This is kind of what the answer would be if this guy lived in a Looney Tunes cartoon, but I'm going to put it out here and hope that it maybe gets us closer. Now, what I'm envisioning, Tom, is if I wanted to not have to ever refuel, here's what I would do. I would put a big old tank of gasoline right in the middle of the track and I would get a real long hose. And I would connect that hose to my car and I would drive around the inside lane and it would always be pumping new fuel into my car and I'd never have to stop. That's it. Did I get it?

You're actually close. You're actually close. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. I got it. I got it. You're actually close. You're actually close. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. I got it. I got it. It's a reverse Hacienda 172.

You know what I'm talking about, Adam? No. That's the plane. That's the airplane. Yeah. Ben gets it. That was the plane that stayed in the air for like 50 days because they drove a pickup truck under it.

And then because they drove a different plane to refuel it. No, no, no. They drove a pickup truck and then they would fly low and then take a line from the pickup truck. Here, airplane down to the NASCAR. Oh. Give it to me, Tom.

You're both really close, but both of those would have broken the regulations on fuel tank size. Wait, why would it have? I'm saying the fuel tank can be the same size. You just keep refilling it with fuel. Not if you connect it

to another bigger fuel tank. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I got it, I got it. Not to a fuel tank, Tom, to an airplane. I got it, I got it. So there's another car, right? Like the other team's car.

It's pushing this car from behind. Oh, that is further away from me. Again, I love all the hacking that's going on here, but honestly, you're so close. Okay, wait a minute. You keep saying that we're close here. So was there some mechanism by which

the tank was able to refuel without stopping? No. Were they siphoning fuel? So they weren't siphoning fuel from anywhere else? No, it was all within the car. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I've got one. Another thing that I could do is, what if, right, if I'm in a car,

if there's some space next to me, I could put a big fuel tank in the passenger seat. That's fuel tank regulations. No, but it's not a larger fuel tank in the passenger seat. That's fuel tank regulations. No, but it's not a larger fuel tank. It's just a different fuel tank that I switch out. That is a larger fuel tank. That's a larger fuel tank. No, it's different.

It's not larger. It's different. Here's the thing. No, it could even be a smaller fuel tank. You could have this argument about this loophole, but it's not a separate fuel tank it is a little bit more clever like you put a second fuel tank in your car everyone goes that's clearly against the rules this is just a little bit more clever than that were they using the same amount of fuel they were able to fit more fuel in there. Okay. Did they compress the fuel so

that there was more in the same sized tank? No, fuel's pretty incompressible. Was the composition of the fuel any different, or was it the same fuels? Yeah, exactly the same. When you get this, you're all going to complain at me that this is, in fact, a bigger fuel tank.

But according to the regs, it wasn't. They just have, like, water bottles of fuel that they But according to the regs, it wasn't. They just have like water bottles of fuel that they would chuck in the back or something? No, that's what I was suggesting. But then Tom said that's a bigger fuel tank. But maybe it's not a tank. Maybe the fuel's going somewhere else. Now we're getting there.

See, he's nodding. There's actually like two separate hacks. There's a whole set of notes here on another thing this guy tried. If you also find that, I'll give you it as well. But this is really specifically some hack that made this work. I would argue that this probably is a bigger fuel tank.

Maybe this wouldn't work, but where is a fuel tank kept, right? In like an area of a car. What if I filled that whole thing with fuel? It wasn't the fuel tank. Where could you put more fuel without having- The hose! Oh, super long hose! Super long hose! There it is! Oh.

Oh. There it is. Not just a super long hose, but a super wide hose. He managed to fit an extra five gallons, so like 19 liters of fuel, in a super long, super wide hose that was six feet of pipe, half an inch wide. Originally, it became an 11-foot pipe that was two inches wide. So it wasn't the fuel tank. It was just the pipe that got the fuel in there. What was the other hack? He put a basketball in the fuel tank that could be inflated pipe that got the fuel in there. What was the other hack? He put a basketball in the fuel tank that could be inflated when they were doing the test for fuel capacity

and then deflated afterwards. That feels like, nah, that's not a hack. That is cheating. Yeah, it's a fine line. It's always a fine line. Adam, over to you then for your question. This question has been sent in by an anonymous listener. This question has been sent in by an anonymous listener. In 1881, British visual artist Edward Byrne Jones was hosting a garden party. Suddenly, he rushed into his house, grabbed a metal tube of brown paint, and buried it in his lawn. His work was never quite the same again. Why? I will read it one more time. In 1881, British visual artist Edward Byrne Jones was hosting a garden party. Suddenly, he rushed into

his house, grabbed a metal tube of brown paint, and buried it in his lawn. His work was never quite the same again. Why? Did he use the paint after burying it ever at any point? I do not believe so. Did he like use the color at all after? That's what you could infer from the question. My first thought, because this is 1881, is that this is some magic radioactive stuff that he'd been sold. And someone had just come along to him and gone, oh, that's not safe anymore. He's like, oh, I must bury this away from where it can be found.

But that wouldn't be radium. That'd be glowing green paint or something like that. The paint was not dangerous so far as... The paint was not a danger to his health. So I do know that back then, a lot of paint colors were made of very creative ingredients. And so some paints were really, really expensive because the ingredients were rare. Some specific colors and other... It was not as easy as today when you had like you know i think simpler techniques um there was mummy brown which was made from ground up mummies like from from egyptian

tomb looting um but i doubt that that was this i don't know i don't know why i suddenly feel like you had to rush in and put that back in the ground tom i'm gonna be honest with you uh you you've nailed it my friend oh my god it's mummy brown what really i didn't think that was gonna be a thing you've hit the nail directly on the head okay why is he suddenly burying mummy brown did he feel guilty he's like i gotta put the mummy back. Yup. Yeah? The only reason I know that is I once filmed at the pigment library in Harvard and it is just a library of rare colours

for like testing antiquities and things like that. So if someone comes along and says oh we've got this pot that's made of this blue they can do analysis on a sample of the pigment and a sample of the antiquity. And the curator there happened to mention mummy brown as a thing that just stuck in my head. Wait, oh, Tom, is this where you

filmed the video about the pinkest pink? No, no, that's, that's some guy in the UK. That's Stuart Semple. That's, uh, and he's lovely, but I'm sure they have a sample of his paint somewhere in there, but it's a, it's a separate thing. I think this game is fundamentally unfair considering Tom has been to everything, everywhere. Says the person who runs a channel about interesting facts and a channel about travelling the world. Yeah, but you've been there.

Okay, so what, did someone just suddenly tell him what the paint was made of? What's the story? A long time ago, there was a pigment called Mummy Brown, which literally was ground up Egyptian mummies, which this dude who was a visual artist did not realize it was literally that.

And when he found this out at his garden party, he insisted on giving his last tube of Mummy Brown a proper burial. And why was his work never the same? Presumably because he never used Mummy Brown again. It was apparently a really good brown. Wow. Yeah, I mean, clearly if they dug up the mummies for it, yeah.

The last part of the show then, at the very start, I asked what did William Shakespeare do in 1582 that Adam Shulman did in 2012? Does anyone want to take a quick guess at that before I give the answer? Who's Adam Shulman? If you knew that, you'd know the answer to this. Wrote Romeo and Juliet. Oh, that's a fun one, yeah. Like, did... like staged a production of Romeo and Juliet or something. Was Adam Shulman like a director? No, not quite. Any other Shakespeare facts, like biographical facts that come to mind?

Died. Did he die? Shakespeare died at some point. Did this guy also die? Shakespeare's a myth. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Marianne Hathaway is Adam Schulman, Anne Hathaway's husband. Yes, he is. Adam, congratulations. The final non-existent point of the show goes to you.

And you get to be the first person in the group that's plugging everything you're working on. Tell us what's going on in your world. Wow, well, my plugs are going to be really different than Ben's and Sam's. I'm on a show called Jetlag the Game. It's a fun show that's on YouTube. And also every episode goes up one week early on Nebula, where we play like travel competition games.

And at the time at which this podcast comes out, I believe it will be in the middle of releasing our sixth season, which is Capture the Flag across Japan. We are very, very excited about it. I think we all think it is potentially our best season yet. So go check it out. It's fun. And it's with Scotty from Strange Parts, who's great if you know him or his channel. Ben, over to you. You need to plug something that is not jetlag the game. Sometimes I bake really good

cookies, but you can't have any because they're just for me and sometimes Adam and Adam's girlfriend. I thought you were going to plug like half as interesting or something like that. Something else you run for. Sam can play that. Yeah, Ben, you also bake good Doritos Locos Tacos, right?

Or half as interesting. No, I've really messed that one up, honestly. That was all Amy. Sam, over to you. We also have two other channels, one of which Ben had every opportunity to plug because he works on it, half to you. We also have two other channels, one of which Ben had every opportunity to plug because he works on it, half as interesting, and made me have to pull double duty.

And the other one, of course, is Wendover. That's the one I work on most, and it's about things. And if you want to know more about this show or send in a question yourself, you can do that at lateralcast.com. We have video highlights at youtube.com slash lateralcast and we are at lateralcast pretty much everywhere. With that, thank you very much

to Sam Denby. I'm waving. To Ben Doyle. Bye. And Adam Chase. I'm saluting. I'm doing a salute. I'm Tom Scott and that has been Lateral.