Lateral with Tom Scott - 57: Computers that love '7'

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Toby Hendy, Matthew Schuchman and Julian O'Shea face questions about celebrity stars, film foul-ups and security systems. 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: Caitlin, Ben Downing, Matthew Schuchman, Zaki Muhammad, Patrick Lind. 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

Maple Syrup, we love you, but Canada is way more. It's poutine mixed with kimchi, maple syrup on Halo Halo, Montreal-style bagels eaten in Brandon, Manitoba. Here, we take the best from one side of the world and mix it with the other. And you can shop that whole world right here in our aisles. Find it all here with more ways to save at Real Canadian Superstore. On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which celebrity has their star mounted on a wall as a sign of respect? The answer to that at the end of the

show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. Why did the alien cross the road to the podcast studio? I don't know, but I've locked the door just in case. Let me introduce you to our Out of This World guests. We start all the way from Australia, from his own YouTube channel about design and things in the world. I could have probably given you a better intro than that. Julian O'Shea. Great to be here. Yes, out of this world, aliens. That's Australian. Same vibe, same energy. Now, this is your second episode. Indeed. How were you feeling about last time? Not bad. Not bad. That idea of just chuck random stuff at the wall, I'm good at, I think. Yeah. My bold strategy of name every idiom that ever existed was not a strong one, but you know, you got to start somewhere.

What are you working on at the minute? Because this episode is going to come out like a few months after recording. What are you working on right now that the audience will be able to see? So I'm doing some projects around design where I actually build some stuff. So, so far today, my YouTube channel has been a lot of showing interesting things in the world. Time to bust out some tools and become a bit of a bit of a maker. Also joining us from the same part of the world, from the YouTube channel Tibbies, Toby Handy. How are you doing?

Hello, I'm happy to be here. It's lovely to have you back. How did you feel about the last episode you were on? I feel like that was my chance to warm up and get used to this. So hoping to have some bangers to say this time. I believe that's the first time the word bangers has ever been said on this podcast. Short that one off. What are you working on at the minute that'll be coming out in the next couple of months? Always working on videos, but specifically tomorrow night, I'm hoping to do some astronomy stargazing for a video and filming my telescope setup. I'm

actually covering an astronomy exam and going through some of the questions. So that's what's on my brain right now. Oh, lovely. Are you heading out of the city? Are you going into the outback here or just seeing what you can see from the backyard? Yeah, I probably wouldn't say outback, but I'm going to try and drive for a bit and find some dark skies, somewhere with not too many trees in the way either. So I'm not sure exactly where I'm going to go yet. That's tomorrow night's problem. Also joining us today from the Overdue Rentals podcast, Matthew Shugman. Yes, thank you so much for having me back. You are the last one of this trio from the previous time you all were together here. It's almost like we block record these. How was your first episode? You know, it was, it's so strange sometimes when I listen to the

episodes that I'm not on, of course, you know, you get things right away. And now you're in, when you're in thick of it, it's like all of a sudden your brain just kind of overloads, but I'm there. I'm ready. I think I got the, I think I got the flow. And what's coming up for you on the podcast? You can join us basically every week. You can get a new celebrity guest, uh, actors, though, with the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA Guild Strike right now. We'll have some special guests, some stuff pre-recorded for everybody that each week they can come and listen to. Talking about movies that don't get talked about anymore. Well, good luck to all three of you. This show is a little like attaching a GPS

to a squirrel. It'll take you on a journey with more twists and turns than you ever thought possible, but hopefully with fewer fleas. I'm going to start you off with question one, which is this. A programmer types a command into a computer, requesting a random number from 1 to 10. After repeating the test many times, the computer always selects one particular number far more than the other nine. What is that number, and why isn't the programmer surprised? I'll say that again. A programmer types a command into a computer requesting a random number from 1 to 10.

After repeating the test many times, the computer always selects one particular number far more than the other nine. What is that number, and why isn't the programmer surprised? Because he leaned on the keyboard and just kept his finger on one key the whole time. The old elbow press. The Homer Simpson Y. Now, I know humans are pretty terrible at coming up with random numbers,

that if you ask people to come up with a number, you know, name a random number. There's a lot of seven, or name a number you know name a random number there's a lot of there's a lot of seven or name a random number between one and five there's a lot of number three so so is it something cheeky about the computer not being a machine but you know how that computer used to mean a person that commutes you know like like the actual person so that's a great idea hey hey sarah name a random number she's like seven you're like you always do seven yeah that the human computers yeah i thought you were going to say there was a small human

hidden inside the computer but no actually uh in in history the the computer meant a human yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna guess the number seven i don't know why but but you know that's what humans love to come up with first thing that came to my mind too it is the number seven yep yep I've heard an interesting tidbit that I don't know if it's how true it is but I've heard that the number seven in the lottery comes up the most often in terms of the lotto balls that get pulled out and obviously there shouldn't be any weight to any one number or the other, but it still tells you, hey, seven is a lucky number. It comes up a lot. It is lucky number seven.

Number seven. We're getting some lottery advice from Toby. So I'm going to take my winnings from this show, which are pretty generous, I understand, Tom. Oh, yeah, yeah. Number seven at the lottery. I think the last time you were on, I promised the prize as being distraction

before the heat death of the universe. So anything above that's a bonus, frankly. Which you can sell on the open market. Bit of distraction. Yeah. Seven's popping up because people, they like it. You know, if you went to a computer, right, and said, give me a random number,

they're like, one. You're like, oh, that's okay. But if they come back with seven, you're like, that feels random. You've done well. So maybe there's a feedback where people say, that was a good random number. You know, like, what do you think of the service today? It starts to learn.

It starts to do some learning algorithm and say that the punters love the number seven to be random. Yeah. I wonder if it's a crowdsourced. You're all dancing about the right answer very quickly. I'm going to keep my mouth shut at this point. Okay. I was initially thinking like a family feud type of crowdsourcing.

I asked 100 people what is their favorite number or most random number and seven has come up. So I read an interesting know you know that whole wisdom of the crowds thing where you know like on average people descend on the right thing so no one knows how many jelly beans are in the jar but if you ask the whole crowd on average they will know the jelly beans in the bar i saw a study that said that works even if the crowd is drunk so they tested with people when they were sober and drunk. The drunker the people were, the worse they guessed. But if you get the whole crowd drunk, it doesn't

matter. It still ends up the same result. So the point is the computer's drunk. I think that's what they're saying. The computer has been drinking, not me. Other than the computer being drunk, you've pretty much got it. There's one key insight that you haven't quite made the leap on yet. Why might a computer be doing all that rather than just returning a random number? Because it doesn't know how to return a random number. So it has its creative ways. Sometimes they do it with timestamps to get random numbers or quantum mechanics nowadays to get random numbers. I wonder if crowdsourcing was easier at some point.

Is this less about a computer's ability to pick up patterns from what it picks up from culture in an AI sense compared to what people normally type on a keyboard? If your fingers are on the home rows and you're just randomly typing, your finger goes up, it will hit the seven most often. So it picks seven. There was a little bit in there, Matthew, where you got the exact answer. God damn it. What might return seven? What might return that human bias rather than just hitting a random number button on a programming language? Is it like machine? Like, you know how the kind of chat GPT models, they go and get what

other people do. So what they've done is, a lot of people around the world are like, random number seven, random number seven. And it's gone, well, most of the time, or a lot of the time, seven comes back. So if I want to be a random number, I go and get seven. That is exactly what chat GPT did. You are spot on. If you ask chatPT for a random number, it will return seven more often than any other, because all it's doing is looking at what humans do. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. Over to the first of our guests for their question then. We're going to start today

with Toby. What have you got for us? All right. This question combines ideas sent in by Zaki Muhammad and an anonymous listener. In Nigeria, a cart containing 50 mobile phones goes around the city to help people. In Germany, a performance artist drags a cart of 99 phones around the city to cause a nuisance. What's happening in both cases? I'm going to sit out of this one. I have seen that news story and I love it. Julian, Matthew, this one's for you. People are crazy.

I'll read it again unless anyone else is going to pull out as well. In Nigeria, a cart containing 50 mobile phones goes around the city to help people. In Germany, a performance artist drags a cart of 99 phones around the city to cause a nuisance. What's happening in both cases? I feel like I've heard this story in Europe, but I've got no idea what it's got to do with Nigeria and what even it's trying to achieve.

So I think the GPS is on. I think that this is a maps thing that's what i was thinking as well i'm pretty sure i've seen that happen if if it's not maps and gps then you've got two people coming straight back in this question one little um point worth noting about this is that the answer is in two parts so there's there's two parts of the answer and they are different, meaning that what is happening in both cases is different. But that clearly means in Germany, it's an art piece. It's the GPS. They're drawing something that can be seen when you go look at the map of where they moved around.

Oh, no. The one I knew was someone dragging the cart around to block up Google Maps on certain streets because it looks like 99 cars are going very, very slowly down this road. So Google Maps suddenly goes, oh, there's so much traffic there. We'll just mark it as red and divert everyone around it. But is that only one of those stories? Yeah, you're right, Tom. So that is the answer to the second part of the question.

So that's what's happening the second part of the question. So that's what's happening in Germany. All right. So, and I kind of thought you might get that straight away because even I had remembered reading that one. And so that's kind of, it went viral, a video of this guy dragging the phones around in the cart. You're correct. It was to fool Google Maps into basically diverting the cars away. But the answer to what's happening in Nigeria is something else. So we've set the stage with performance art. Now, why in Nigeria do we have a guy going around with mobile phones? What's he up to? Are they tied together though? Is it have to do with Google Maps again and he's actually

helping map something that they couldn't get to? No, it actually isn't to do with Google Maps. Okay. You wouldn't need 50 mobile phones for that either. So taking phones to weird places. I saw an amazing video in China of all of those kind of creators that can get tips, you know, the people that are kind of live streaming. And what they did is they all set up in this rich neighborhood. So they just lined up wall to wall, you know, performing, singing, doing their craft because the GPS says they're here, which means it shows them to the local

neighborhood and you get better tips at the rich neighborhood. So this thing they could be doing in their home, wherever they drive across town, set up their ring lights on the outdoor street and perform. That is GPS located mobile. I saw that photo and I didn't see any of the context of that. Oh, strategic, that's right. They're being really thoughtful, they're being entrepreneurial. It's really clever. So sometimes being in the location of things matters is the point. Yeah. Sometimes location matters. of things matters is the point. Yeah. Sometimes location matters. I'd say in terms of this question, the fact it's in Nigeria and that being the location could clue you into what sort of things would be needed. I was going to say, is the mobile connection really bad, but it's Nigeria. I

think the mobile infrastructure there is excellent because the alternative is landline, which doesn't really exist. I think parts of that country jumped straight from nothing to mobile first. But I also can't see why you'd drag 50 phones around in a cart there as opposed to just putting them in a backpack or giving people phones. Your idea is right, Tom, that a lot of people there would have mobile phones. Is it a swap and go thing where there's not power or like it's almost like on a phone delivery service where rather than charge your phone, you swap out for fully charged phones?

You're very hot on that trail, Julian. So, yeah, the words around charge and swapping out phones. Okay, because I was thinking it was some kind of local Pokemon Go consultancy where you just kind of put all the phones in a truck and just kind of walk around for a while and the Pokemon get walked. Honestly, I don't know how Pokemon Go works. I assume you just have to travel around with things julian pretty you you very close to having it just sort of um tie up the loose ends of of what's going on i'll be honest i don't understand the cart unless it's

got to do with it's got a charger in it so they can charge while they while they walk around or it's got a solar charger in it so you can pick up someone's phone it'll go away for a couple of hours it'll charge from the solar panel on the cart and they'll do their rounds and hand it back to you a couple hours later yes tom uh you are correct mate mate this this is a service to help people it is a cart that is a movable phone charging system that charges people's mobile phones for a fee. Nigeria does not have electricity supply everywhere, yet many of its population has mobiles.

So an entrepreneur has set up this cart equipped with a solar panel to charge up to 50 mobile phones at once. Bravo. Oh, they're not dragging it around. They just drag the charger from place to place. People plug in for a couple of hours. From place to place, yeah.

It doesn't even have to be solar. It can just have a big battery attached to it. Yeah, and I read about another one that had Wi-Fi on it as well. Basically, you know, there are some towns that don't have the electricity and the facilities that you would see in a city, but the people there still want to communicate and use their phones to do things. And so this person is

bringing that service to them so they can use their phones. I remember reading somewhere that there are more people in the world with mobile phones and internet access than running water in their home, because that's how ubiquitous that's become now. That's how much it is required to exist in society. I've done a bit of work in Nepal, and that's a place where I think they have 134 mobile phones per 100 people. And yeah, some of those other resources, not in the same number. What a great question. Well done, Tom.

That was a good answer. No, no, you connected pretty much everything done, Tom. That was a good answer. No, no. You connected pretty much everything there, Julian. I just plugged it together. Team work. Team effort. Matthew, over to you for the next question.

All right. This question was submitted by me. Hey! Yay. In the classic 1941 RKO picture, Citizen Kane, one scene features a cost-effective rear projection of a dense jungle to enhance a party's lavish theme. What did keen-eyed moviegoers find strange about that? One more time.

In the classic 1941 RKO picture, Citizen Kane, one scene features a cost-effective rear projection of a dense jungle to enhance a party's lavish theme what did keen-eyed moviegoers find strange about that so i'm thinking they it's a rear projection the one thing in my brain could be the kind of orientation that that that perhaps i don't know there's something about a forest which makes sense in one direction but not the other maybe for example that i don't that snow lands on one side and melts on the other, or that it tends to blow in one direction because of the wind, or that moss grows on one side, but not the other. Yeah, that was also my first thought is some kind of mirror symmetry that is not the same,

like spirals on a shell go one way or not the other, something like that. But yeah, not sure. When you say rear projection, this is where they just project something into the background to then capture in camera. Correct. So you can like, so like the old shots where someone's driving a car, it doesn't look quite right. So just projecting the car behind them. Was this...

I'm going to use a fancy term here. Was this diegetic? Was this a rear projection in the movie's plot, like they are enhancing the party by putting a background of a jungle there for the characters

or is it for the audience of Citizen Kane, like this party is meant to background of a jungle there for the characters, or is it for the audience of Citizen Kane, like this party is meant to be in a jungle? No, I mean, it's both one and the same, almost. It was a jungle-themed party, in essence, but the props on set probably weren't enough to make it look real. Right. Okay, so it's a jungle-themed party, and the partygoers know that it's part of a rear projection. It's not like the audience for Citizen Kane is like, oh, this is actually being held in the jungle. Do the partygoers think that they are in the jungle? It's the latter.

The partygoers don't know it's rear projection. The partygoers think it's just part of their world. Okay. Because part of me wants to hold a party and just start showing Forrest and see if it just kind of raises the vibe, you know? Maybe that's the way you're meant to celebrate. Do ILM rent out that sort of fancy volume stage they use for modern rear projection just to move the cameras around and give people a bit of psychedelic trip

as the perspective changes? That actually, for parties nowadays, that's a good idea. Okay. Toby, you said they'd flipped it or something like that did they just put the film in upside down like it was flipped the other way and it looks fine because it's trees and jungle and then at some point some keen-eyed movie girl can go that parrot is flying upside down it it's not having to do with the orientation but it is very much the type of thing that somebody would pick up on otherwise

compared to what, in terms of what you just said. Could be that, could it be that they, you know how like people really know their trees. Now I, I met someone who does a radio show and he said that if you want to just like, if you don't have anything to do, you can just choose a natural item and say, do you guys know any birds? And they just get call-ins about people who love their birds. There are people that love their trees. Are they in a location? But all these trees are not from that location, so they've got either the wrong time of year or the wrong type of tree.

It's the right kind of road. It's the wrong kind of object. How metaphorical was that? Not too metaphorical, honestly. But if you're familiar at all with classic Hollywood, maybe think why would the wording of the question mention the studio? Was that RKO? Correct.

That is RKO. And they did King Kong. That's the only jungle themed picture I can... Was it a recycled background from some other film? You're very close. You're all very close to both of those. Okay. So you're at the party.

They think it's trees, but in one scene, you got King Kong just there doing, just waving in the background, just doing a cameo appearance. You know, that same way they do in like Toy Story and all the Pixar films. I mean, not that extreme. Can you see a finger?

Can you see a cheeky little bit of, just a little bit? There's something in my head about how they filmed that for King Kong and I can't remember. Didn't, okay, I haven't seen the original King Kong. I've only seen the Peter Jackson remake. Honestly, I kind of regret seeing it. But there is a whole sequence, a whole far, far, far too long sequence

with giant insects in there. And I wonder if one of the ways they did that in the original, if that is in the original, was just to film like grass and actual regular sized insects and maybe that's the film that they reused for citizen kate you're you're also really kind of there um but it's um it's not something that's that tangible, I would say. Okay. You really, you basically got it. There's just one small other significance about it.

And if thinking about that scene from the remake of King Kong, let's say, think about in other films in the King Kong, you know, massive amount of pictures they made based on it, what other kind of things may be there? Buildings? Could it be a shadow? The city's scape? I mean, there's also the dinosaur fight sequence.

Is there a dinosaur in the back of Citizen Kane? To save money, Orson Welles used footage from The Son of Kong from 1933, which had stop-motion pterodactyls in the background, and they did not notice it when they put it in the film. And then, of course, later on when it came to home video, when home video became a much larger thing, it started to get noticed and they had to erase it

from the home video releases in the future. Oh. They got rid of it. Release the pterodactyl cut. Release the pterodactyl cut release the pterodactyl cut you can find clips of it if you go on youtube you can find clips of it but this is like one of my favorite you know little tidbits from like film school that i learned that i always catch on to because it's like for some reason all these videos that every goes max make out goes out there to make you know all top 10 mistakes you never noticed in films. Nobody ever mentions it. They will now, my friends. They will now.

Next one's from me. Good luck, folks. A CCTV system was stolen from a convenience store. When police recovered it, three shopkeepers claimed the system was theirs, but the receipts and serial numbers had been long lost. How was the correct owner identified without advanced forensics? And one more time, a CCTV system was stolen from a convenience store. When police recovered it, three shopkeepers claimed that the system was theirs, but the receipts and serial numbers had been long lost.

How was the correct owner identified without advanced forensics? I mean, clearly they shot their own sex tape on it and just, it was them. The old sex tape evidence. I think just the humor, can I say, that just the ironic joy of stealing a CCTV camera system rather than other items. That is just, do you know what that is?

That just says I'm in it for the love of the game. I'm not here for your stuff. I'm just here to win do you know what that is? That just says I'm in it for the love of the game. I'm not here for your stuff. I'm just here to win, you know. Imagine just doing lock picking so you could put other locks inside another lock. That's what that feels like to me. Oh, respect. It's a weird thing to steal, but I wonder why three different

owners want to claim it. Is there something so valuable about this one CCTV? Like why are multiple people claiming that it was theirs? I don't know if that's, if there's something special about it or this is just a regular CCTV. It's got to be something like one of them was the owner, one of them is actually the thief

and somehow caught on the other one's CCTV. So they all want to get evidence to screw the other one over. Just to be clear, there was no footage left on this system. The police are trying to identify the rightful owner, but there's no data actually left there. There's no tapes, anything like that. I was so sure the answer was going to be just watch the footage

and it's their money. You see their close up on day one with the screwdriver. Yeah, when I read this for the first time, I was like, oh, it's obvious. But no, there was no one with the screwdriver yeah when i read this for the first time i was like oh it's obvious but no there was there was no footage with this system okay presumably if you're saying that it was stolen from you you've got like an empty spot in your store where you're saying it was stolen from so i'm wondering if you're needing to look at that empty spot and is there like a you know like a shadow where the dust didn't go for like 10 years or something like that. Or the paint has been bleached in the shape of the CCTV camera that used to be there.

Honestly, I'd say there wouldn't be any forensics required at all for this. I'd classify even that sort of investigation as forensics. And no, it wasn't a case of just kind of putting it back and seeing where the paint lines up because if i think i kind of like what you're saying toby the idea that maybe like kind of burns into the to the monitor or the light shining on it but it could be even simpler that if the person who says that's mine happens to be you know the fish and chip shop because it's like covered in fish oil grease or some kind of smell. You just walk by, oh, yep, yep, this one, this one belongs to the, whatever, the aromatherapy session, the aromatherapy business. When you say burns in, what do you mean, Julian?

Onto the screen. You know how like when you have a monitor on that's the same thing all of the time, it kind of burns in those lines. So maybe it's been on, pointing at something for days, weeks, months or years. So essentially, this monitor just shows it when it's off. I don't know how you skipped past all the clues that I still have to give about how this is an old CCTV system from many, many years ago that used a cathode ray tube

monitor, but you absolutely nailed it. This was, and this is apparently a true story, a CCTV system that the police could look at, go, oh, that's burned in, and that's that guy's shop. Oh, good work. That's cool. I like the fish oil answer, but this one works as well. You know, back when HDTVs were first becoming big, though, and it was plasma versus LED, everybody said, don't get plasma because they'll burn in. I still have, 10 years later, my Fujitsu, a 50-inch plasma,

and does not have a single point of burn in this whole time. So it was all a lie, and they fooled you. Oh, the idea of screensavers. They actually meant something. They saved your screen, genuinely. They moved stuff around to stop stuff burning in. So it's one of those kind of, you know, these days you could have anything or nothing,

but yet they carry on, you know? They carry on. I remember there being an arcade cabinet in an arcade I went to as a kid where the game was Gauntlet, which is one of the old, like, Dungeons & Dragons type ones that is just designed to suck your money out your pocket as much as you can.

Like, literally your life bar is how much money you've put in, and it just ticks down in time as well, even if you've not been hit. But the gauges and the numbers for that were just permanently burned into the monitor. Like, even if it was on another screen, you could still see them. It doesn't happen with modern stuff, I don't think. I feel like OLED screens can still get some burn in, but I can't remember if I'm getting my types mixed up there. Dead pixels are a bigger thing now, I guess.

Yep, this was a CCTV system where the old picture and old shop was literally burned in to the cathode ray tube monitor. Julian, just your question to go whenever you're ready. This question was sent in by Patrick Lindt. In 2008, someone posted a fake Craigslist advert for manual work. People were told to meet at a car park in Monroe, Washington, wearing jeans, a blue shirt and a yellow safety vest. They also had to bring goggles and a mask. What was the reason for the advert? I'll repeat that again. In 2008, someone posted a fake Craigslist advert for manual work.

People were told to meet at a car park in Monroe, Washington, wearing jeans, a blue shirt and a yellow safety vest. They also had to bring goggles and a mask. What was the reason for the advert? I'm thinking psychology experiment recruiting. When you say fake Craigslist ad, that's what I'm sort of thinking. I'm thinking it's a lonely person who wants to start their own flash mob, but didn't have friends to do it.

I, for some reason, was thinking the Minions movie, but I think 2008 is too early for that. I'm like, despicable me. I just see like blue and yellow and goggles and stuff. They're trying to create some photo opportunity for the Despicable Me movie. I think you're right. I think that is too early for it. Well, I can think of as minions now that you've said the goggles part because it makes so much sense. Yeah, sorry.

Is Craigslist still a thing? I haven't heard that name in years. Yeah, it still exists. That's for sure. Is it still a completely blank white page with like regular times new roman text on it i really hope they haven't updated it yeah the last i heard of craigslist recently and in terms of fake ads was apparently they used it to recruit the guy for the show jury duty where he was told he was going to be on a jury documentary or something and then he

shows up he thinks it's real jury duty but everyone else is an actor except him and all this crazy stuff happens i i feel like i heard that craigslist was involved with recruiting him it does it does remind me a little bit i mean i know this is not the one but reminds me of like what the basis of the movie safety not guaranteed was where somebody put a an article in the paper wanting somebody to come time travel with him safety not guaranteed uh but i don't know how that would fit in at all to the the jeans the goggles and all that other stuff so just confirm you're locking in your final answer is time travel is that what you're saying time travel for everything please they were all tight no no blue jeans yellow safety vest

goggles and what was the other thing they also had to bring goggles and a mask. What kind of mask, though? Is this like a snorkel or is it like a surgical mask, workman's mask? Yeah, a dust mask. Are they going swimming? And it was a fake advert, right? Some sort of scheme. To confirm, it was a fake Craigslist ad.

It was for manual work is what it said, but it was not for manual work. Because I remember a story of someone trying to convince 10 or 20 creeps who were interested in them online to all meet at the same place wearing the same thing. But I don't think you can do that with like goggles and a mask and a safety vest. That's not something that most people just have to hand.

Yeah, I know. That was like a woman who like went on dating sites, I think, and told 100 men to meet her at Bryant Park. And it was going to be like a tryout for who wants to date me. Oh, OK. I just thought it was a general prank of whoever was being creepy to this person. But just someone being a jackass. OK, fine.

Well, in this case, this motivation wasn't a prank. Huh. fine well in this case this motivation wasn't a prank huh we could have the classic police sting operation of trying to arrest all the people who come but this is weirdly specific with the uniform so not sure where that's going yeah if you're posting it on craigslist it seems like perhaps they don't care who it is that shows up to this one. No, it's just got to be loads of people wearing that. Did the person who posted the ad show up as well? Or was that person not there? So they weren't exactly there, but were in the area.

What was the location they had to go to? It was in a car park in Monroe, Washington. All right. So it's not like public place with a webcam on it or something like that it's it's not a prank or a stunt though it's when you say the person was in the area it makes me think they were watching so were they like flying overhead in a helicopter or something no they weren't really watching or recording wait sorry they were watching recording or not that they weren't no no they weren't so it or recording. Wait, sorry, they were watching or recording or not? They weren't, no.

No, they weren't. So it's not like they wanted to prove to their boss that they got the gang together to do the work, but they didn't do it, so they recorded a group of people. No. All right. I'm really having trouble,

and this says how broken my brain is with this sort of stuff at the moment, that I'm just having trouble not thinking that this is some sort of YouTube prank or someone being a jerk. Like, why do you need 100 people wearing that? No. The ad was for manual work, but there was no actual jobs on offer.

That wasn't the reason. There was a motive, and it was a nefarious one. But not a prank. Okay. Did this car park happen to need extensive work, and the government wasn't doing anything about it so they got people to show up to make it look like it seemed work was going to get done so that way they would get the officials to push this through? No.

Hold on, hold on. You wouldn't want to record it if... Is this a distraction? Has someone just robbed a bank or something like that and they are wearing really bright clothing that matches this? And so after they rob the bank and run out, they just run into the middle of this hundred people, blend in, and get to their car that's the getaway car? This is a terrible plan. If this is the right, like, surely this can't be right. If this is the right, surely this can't be right.

Tom, it is exactly right. Every word of that was correct from top to bottom. That could not have been more right. That was great. The goal of this was that, yeah, the right of the advert could rob a bank, literally a bank, while wearing the exact same thing. Oh, my God. They stole my idea. You said the word nefarious

and I was like, there's got to be some reason for this. And that was it. So Anthony Cucurio planned to rob an armoured car while he was visiting a branch of Bank of America and wore the outfit

of a manual labourer. So he kind of used the advert to lure people into the area wearing the exact same thing. So he grabbed $400,000 in cash. When the police arrived, they were surrounded by all these people with the exact same description. And so they stopped everyone and then searched through them until they found the one who was holding $400,000, I'm guessing? Turns out the reason he was caught was actually because a homeless man wrote down the license plate number when he was doing a dry run.

So that individual just thought, this guy's up to no good. actually because a homeless man wrote down the license plate number when he was doing a dry run. So that individual just thought this guy's up to no good. So he ended up getting sentenced to six years in federal prison, but he's now out in the world and he's on the public speaker circuit warning people not to do drugs and crime. Did they at least give the homeless man some reward money? I really hope so. $400,000 is a lot of money to kind of claim back. Final part of the show then. Thank you to Caitlin and Ben Downing for sending in the audience question that I asked at the start.

On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which celebrity has their star mounted on a wall out of respect? Before I give the answer, anyone want to take a quick guess at that? Is it Nancy Sinatra? Humpty Dumpty. Okay, Humpty Dumpty. I get the joke. Was that Nancy Sinatra you said?

Yeah, because these boots are made for walking. They'll walk all over you. Oh, it's a good guess. And that is the reason. It's to stop people walking over the star and the name. What might the reason for that be? What might be special about that name? Oh, is it like a religious name? So like a Muhammad or a Jesus, maybe Muhammad? Yeah. Muhammad Ali?

You got it. Muhammad Ali. His star is mounted on the wall because he did not want people to be walking over the name Muhammad. With that, thank you very much to all our players for surviving another round. Thank you for coming back. What's going on in your lives? Where can people find you? We will start today with Matthew. You can come listen to Overdue Rentals, hosted by myself and Cinema Blind's Mike Reyes on all your favorite streaming platforms. And if you need to reach out to us, just email us overdurentals at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from

you. Toby. You can find videos about maths, physics, the fourth dimension, all that on my YouTube channel Tibbies, which is T-I-B-E-E-S. And Julian. My name's Julian O'Shea. I make videos about design, about cities, about Melbourne.

And if you want to check them out, do so, or find me just strolling the streets of Melbourne filming random stuff. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com. We can also send in your own listener questions. We are at Lateral Cast pretty much everywhere. And there are video highlights every week at youtube.com slash lateralcast.

Thank you very much to Julian O'Shea. Great to be here. Toby Hendy. Bye. And Matthew Shookman. I've been Tom Scott and that's been lateral