Lateral with Tom Scott - 90: Manhole Easter eggs

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Karen Chu ('Good Job Brain'), Bob Hagh and Lizzy Skrzypiec face questions about rough recreations, reluctant referees and Rubik's records. LATERAL is a comedy panel game podcast about weird questions with wonderful answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit https://lateralcast.com. HOST: Tom Scott. QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe. RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin. EDITED BY: Julie Hassett. MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com). ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Dean, Jim Grandpre, Kunmi, Nick McFetridge, Cassie, Kyle, Devin, David Werner. FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott. © Pad 26 Limited (https://www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The DQ freezer, home to all the Blizzard flavours of the past, is opening to bring back the salted caramel truffle blizzard for a limited time. It's too good to share. Everyone has to get one for themselves. Hurry before it's gone. DQ, happy tastes good. Which gentle activity uses the phrase, stab it, strangle it, scoop out its guts and throw it off a cliff? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is Lateral. He's Script He's Script is such the jerk, a producer might put order in that word's random.

These are not getting any better! Joining us today, we have the trivia trio back for a second episode. First up, we have comedy improviser and question producer for various British game shows, Lizzie Skipieck. Welcome back to the show. Hello! I'm less hungover now. That's good. We're getting there. It's not a secret that we block record these, so I'm glad that we are steadily, steadily making you feel better over time and not just adding more things to your brain. Thanks.

How's the hydration going? It's going well. I've got some orange squash, which is comforting and hydrating. We didn't talk about Murder She Didn't Write last time. Tell me about that. Hmm. It is a funny murder mystery. Because murders can be funny when they're fictional.

But yeah, I often play the old detective Agatha Crusty. I love it. Each time, each show, we have a different crime to solve based on audience suggestions. And one member of the audience picks the victim and the murderer, and the rest of the audience have to guess. So it's a little puzzly, but mainly silly and farcey and funny. Which also sums up, hopefully, this episode of the show. Good luck to you.

Next up from trivia podcast Good Job Brain, Karen Chu, welcome back to the show. Hey-o! It's me, I'm back and I'm on my fourth venti coffee. I was wondering where that enthusiasm was coming from. This is your second episode, you were a new player last time, how did you find it? It gives me a little bit of escape room vibes where the first thing when the doors close and the timer starts, you're like, okay, okay, what to do, what to do. And I always overthink.

I always overthink or overcomplicate a puzzle or think, oh, okay, the number of lights on the ceiling is going to indicate a braille. Really. And it's like, oh, there's a big number four on the window and that's what you had to do. So I had that tendency to do that. Hopefully, now this is my second show, I can kind of put up some boundaries, some healthy boundaries in my brain. Okay, but also, braille overhead lights is a really good idea for an escape room puzzle. That's really good.

I know you've had the Escape This Podcast crew on Good Job Brain as well, they're regulars over here. Yes, yes, I love them, I love them. They're so fun and Dani is just, her brain should be declared as an Australian national treasure for her to create all these puzzles all the time, always. It's amazing. Good luck to you today, Karen. We go to the last member of what I'm gonna call the trivia trio now. We have Twitch star and editor-in-chief of Buzzer Blog, Bob Hey. Hey, I'm glad to be back. I love this show. And if it gives me a reason to take off work to do a fun trivia podcast,

I am here. I am here. Thank you very much for taking that sacrifice for us. How was your first episode? You know, I want to echo what Karen said, because sometimes I can get so deep into the inner channels of my brain, but sometimes it's like the simplest solution is sometimes the best. And that goes back to escape rooms and just trying to dissect the question.

But I love puzzles. We all love puzzles. So it's rewarding, rewarding when you actually get an answer correct. So I just loved it so much, I decided to take off more time from work to be right here. Well, I can promise you that none of the questions in today's show have their words in random

order. Even though it might seem like that from time to time, I'm going to start you off with question first. This question has been sent in by Devon. Thank you, Devon. In the 1840s, why was it common for a group of people to simultaneously say the word prunes? I'll say that again. In the 1840s, why was it common for a group of people to simultaneously

say the word prunes? It's just really pleasing to say. Oh, oh no, that's silly. Share it, share it. Say it, say it, say it. Okay, well you know when you say cheese for a photograph? Did you say prunes for a drawing? For a portrait? For a five hour portrait? Poo, poo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, this is to do with posing for a photograph early, get them to drill down on the exact reason. Ohhhh. Pfft. Oooo.

See, I'm making like an oo sound, like a oooo. Kissing face, like a kissy, lovey face, or duck face. Wedding photos, like marriage photos, like a... Pfft. Oooo. Ohhhh. Like a prunes. Ooh, prunes. Oh! Nobody's taking a screenshot. Prunes, prunes.

It's lost all meaning, Tom. I'm really struggling. It's the 1840s. What might have been different that means people said prunes rather than cheese? Teeth. Cheese wasn't invented yet. Oh! What?

People had teeth, but maybe not good ones. So maybe it hit your teeth, did it, when you were like, prunes? It did? Yes. I still need you to drill a bit further in there. You're right. Dental hygiene was not great. There were diseases like syphilis or anything like that, like people's teeth were not something they wanted

to show off. That is one of the reasons. There is another reason in the 1840s why you might not want to be smiling in a photo and showing off your teeth. Oh, was it considered common to smile? Was it classy to be miserable? Oh, so classy in the 1840s. I Haven't smiled in 60 years. Lizzie, you're three for three. Like you identified the photographs, you identified the teeth, and you identified the stiff upper lip that was fashionable back then. You did not smile in photographs.

It was undignified. It was flirty. So instead... Oooh! Oh! You've basically got everything there. Congratulations, we will roll straight onto the next question. Lizzie, we will go over to you. You're scoring high on the non-existent scoreboard here this episode. Let's give the others a chance to catch up. We'll take your question. OK. This question has been sent in by both Cassie and Kyle. Rubik's Cube in the fastest time at an official competition. Keaton's 5.09 seconds easily beat the previous record, yet his time was never officially recognised. Why?

On 21 November 2015, Keaton Ellis set a new world record for solving a 3x3 Rubik's cube in the fastest time at an official competition. Keaton's 5.09 seconds easily beat the previous record, yet his time was never officially recognised. Why? Ooh. I know with Rubik's Cube competitions, you always start like blindfolded and you have your hands on some type of like mat to start the timer.

And then you take, then they reveal the cube, you take your hands off, you do the cube, and then you have to slam the mat again to stop your time. And I'm trying to think if there was some malfunction where maybe he didn't even got to do it, he slammed it it but the clock kept running. That's what I'm kind of leaning toward, a technical difficulty, possibly. Yeah, those time amounts work by putting both hands on them, which like, preps it, and then it times from the moment you take your hands off to the moment you put them down. So it means you don't have like, a human on a stopwatch trying to start-stop. It's including the time to grab the cube and throw your hands down afterwards.

Unless there was a human who had to be there to verify the time, and he actually did do it, but no one was there to verify it. He's just looking around going, I did the thing, but nobody's here to record it. I would feel bad. What is that like if a tree falls in a wood and no one's around? If a man saws a Rubik's Cube and no one's around to see it? Does it happen? There's a story about people trying to break the world record of making the world's biggest

sandwich and they made it. The sandwich was there, but people ate it before the official could come and verify it. So they spent all this time making the world's longest, it was the longest sandwich, and it's like, oh, the official's here, and people are like with full mouths, be like, what? Whoops! All those food records have to be eaten as well. Like, the official Guinness rules, and heaven knows why Guinness are the arbiters of it, but the official rules say to avoid food wastage, if you want to officially get their record, one of the rules is it has to be eaten and

not wasted afterwards. So like the biggest pancake or all of that stuff, like they have to be eaten. You'd better have enough people there. I mean, we're on Rubik's cubes for this, but... Yeah. Okay, okay. I can confirm Rubik's cubes for this, but... Yeah. Okay, okay. I can confirm Rubik's cubes were not eaten during this competition. You did say fastest person there, and I'm just wondering if this is actually a person. Did Keaton Ellis invent a Rubik's cube-solving machine or something like that that meant

it didn't count? Oh! I was thinking airbud as a it's a dog, but that... I like machine. With no opposable thumbs as well. It's amazing. Just like, snout and paw. That would be really cool, but it was all humans.

I thought Tom got it on that one, because of the machine. So I don't know if you can answer this, Lizzie, but was this like technical difficulties, or was it maybe just... I don't know if you can answer that question. There were no rules broken or technical difficulties, no. Okay, so maybe like an honest mistake. Maybe like an honest mistake that something didn't get recorded, possibly. Something unexpected did happen.

Was Keaton actually trying to break the record for a Rubik's Cube? Like, someone just handed some stranger a Rubik's Cube and they went, oh, this is easy. Turns out, turns out they do that automatically. No, because he said there were no technical problems, like they were still doing the timing. And it was at an official competition, so unless it was like a passerby that was like, what's that? Yeah, yeah. Because the time was recorded as five, what, 5.09 seconds?

Was it just a rehearsal solve? Like it didn't really count? Was it just for shiggles? It was like, oh, let me just do this and see what happens. So is it something like, it only took five seconds, but the thinking time counted then under the rules or something like that? No. And the event was all legit, but something really unusual happened. That's not when the clocks go back, and that's a stupid idea, but like,

he happened to beat the record at the exact moment that an hour changed in the clock. That is just not how time works. No, it's not. You're supposed to yes and me here. You're an improviser. Oh, sorry. Yeah, and that's not right, Tom. So something unusual happened that day that meant that this wasn't officially recorded as the quickest time. Did someone forget to sign a piece of paper or something like it's like you have to have a signature. Just as silly as that sounds, I feel it's some part like just some process that you needed to do to officially verify this

time is the fastest. Was someone's signature forgotten on a piece of paper or something? It was all legit. Okay. Oh, you did it in 5.09... 0.09 seconds. But something unexpected happened, and that was not an officially recognized quickest time. Did someone get in quicker? And it wasn't before. We follow that, Karen, yes. This is a competition. Did someone else just get the record first? Or like, fast enough that it never got to Guinness or whatever?

Exactly that. A thousand points to you. A thousand? A thousand? Why not? What? This isn't Who's Lattice It Anyway. Who's it?

The points aren't made up, they're just non-existent. So yes, just to round it off, literally later on that day, the same day, Lucas Etta set a time for 4.90 seconds and became the fastest. your business. Contact a licensed TD Insurance Advisor to learn more. Imagine you're in Ottawa strolling through artistic landscapes at the National Gallery of Canada. Oh. Then cycling past Parliament Hill. Ah. Before unwinding on an outdoor patio. Oh. Then spending an evening on a cruise along the historic Rideau Canal. Ah. Exploration awaits in Ottawa. From O to Ah.

Plan your Ottawa itinerary at autowatourism.ca. Good luck with this next one, folks. The manhole covers in the centre of Oklahoma City have an ornate design with a white dot on them. What does that indicate? I'll say that again. The manhole covers in the centre of Oklahoma City have an ornate design with a white dot on them. What does that indicate? Well, when I think Oklahoma, I think tornadoes. So I wonder if something has to do with were these manhole covers picked up during a tornado and they can easily identify them as... flying debris, the cause of human nature and sorry you got decapitated. I apologize.

I don't know. We escalated that quickly from, oh, there's bad weather over home, there's tornadoes, to decapitated by manhole cover. But it has to be some type of identification, I feel like. When we think of symbols and a white dot, why does some, it's some, right Tom, some of them have the white dot on it? All of them in the center of Oklahoma City. Presumably there are occasional exclusions if they need to bring in a replacement manhole

cover or something like that, but the ones in the centre have an ornate design with a white dot on each. Utility cover. I believe that's the people trying to adopt the utility. Ah, rather than manhole. Manhole cover is more fun to say because... It includes the words man and hole. Yeah!

Yeah. You got it. Okay. This white dot ornate design. White dot ornate design. Is it a map? Oh, are there? I've seen Manhole covers with like maps or the city maps or, you know, kind of like,

like the cityscape. And if it's a top down map, what if the white dot signifies where this actual hole is, where you are? And it's like a you are here thing, like what you see at the mall. Karen, you've nailed it. Absolutely spot on. The ornate design is a raised map of the city centre and the white dot added with paint to each manhole is the you are here. What a great design solution!

Wow! That's clever, I like that. That's really clever. Better than decapitation. Yes. Bob, over to you for the next question. This question has been sent in from Nick McFettridge. The 1967 NFL Championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers started

like any other, with the head referee blowing his whistle to signal the start of the play. However, the referees refused to use their whistles for the rest of the game. Why? I'll say that one more time. The 1967 NFL Championship between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers started like any other, with the head referee blowing his whistle to signal the start of play. However, the referees refused to use their whistles for the rest of the game. Why? Refused. Refuse is such a strong word.

Like, I'm not gonna, it's like, no! It's a very strong word, yes. It's a weird thing because it's not like a noise thing because surely there's like noise at the game or battle. God, I know nothing about sport. There's a sleeping baby somewhere in the crowd, and the entire auditorium, the stadium, the word stadium, we established that before, the entire stadium, and the referees never just, okay, we'll let the child sleep, we'll play this game in silence. Ooh.

Wow. That's a good challenge. The Vegas Betts did not have that on the books. Were the crowd just bringing their own whistles to confuse? The home team just had a load of people whistling in the crowd just to annoy the referees and throw them off and give one team an advantage? You know, funny you say that Tom, because I know, especially here in American sports, I don't know if it happens elsewhere, but there are moments sometimes where referees have to tell stadiums and crowds to actually

reduce the amount of noise during some plays. Because if you're in a home stadium, it can get so loud, whether that's, mostly NFL games, to bring the noise level down. College football, bring the noise level down. Yeah. I know there's at least one stadium where I think you get hearing damage on the pitch if you don't have earplugs in or something because the whole stadium is just a bowl that focuses the crowd noise and it is deafening. Oh, I don't want that.

It's a magnifying glass for sound. Wow. I got an idea. I got an idea. Were there lots of dogs in the local area? You can say that whistle is going to send them crazy. So you don't use it because you don't want to upset the local dogs. I will say these are just normal whistles. Nothing was wrong with them. Just normal whistles. Or like a Pied Piper rat situation where the whistle noise is going to awaken the rats

at the stadium. Ooh, I wonder if the stadium comes into play, like the location of the stadium or where they are. Cowboys is Texas. Packers is Green Bay. Wisconsin. So that's about as far south and as far north as you can get in the US. The Frozen Tundra, that's the nickname.

But also, was this just a game or was this like a bowl game or a Super Bowl or something like that? This was the NFL Championship game. So Green Bay Packers, its nickname is Frozen Tundra. So was it like super cold or something and they didn't want their lips out? Cold whistle. If the whistle is cold and then you put it to your mouth, you'll get a whistle stuck in your mouth. That's how science works, right?

Yes. That's legit. Yes. Oh my gosh. Uh, I will say that is how science works and that is actually the answer. So you're exactly right. So the game was played in Wisconsin and, um, well, what happened is so cold up there. It was down to negative. The kickoff was at negative 26 centigrade, which is negative 15 Fahrenheit, a windchill

of negative 44 centigrade, which is negative 15 Fahrenheit a windchill of negative 44 centigrade which is negative 48 Fahrenheit But Lizzie you're right because the whistles were metal it would get stuck to the referees lips Oh my god, how funny when they pulled it off their lips within believe So what happened yeah, so what happened throughout the game they just improvised using hand signals, and just talking, like back and forth. So voice commands and hand signals that they usually do. Oh, it's the NFL, so they'll now have invented extremely expensive whistle warmers that all referees have in their pockets. Just to do that.

Actually, the NFL does use plastic whistles now because of that reason. So they used metal back then, they used plastic, and this was called the ice bowl. The famous ice bowl that you may hear from sports history that was played in Wisconsin on the 31st of December. So it was so cold that referees couldn't use metal whistles because they would get stuck to the lips. I think not just stuck. I think the really colorful word you used was ripped off their lip skin. I like how we all got there in one way. We had pieces together from Tom, then Karen, then Lizzie's like, oh! Science! Good luck with this one, folks. Levi puts down a bottle of cola on a flat table. When he returns the next day,

he sees that the bottle's cap is now three inches higher than the bottle, even though no one has touched it. How? I'll say that again. Levi puts down a bottle of cola on a flat table. When he returns the next day, he sees that the bottle's cap is now three inches higher than the bottle, even though no one's touched it.

How? This is a science thing. Yeah, this feels science. Science-y. Air pressure, heat, the expansion of materials. So this has to be one of those screw caps then. It probably screws off, because then it goes in height. So something may be turning the bottle cap, possibly? Windshear! Science! I don't know. be turning the bottle cap possibly? Windshear! Science! I don't know.

They trap octopus in bottles to see if they can like escape and open and they now can open they can unscrew bottle caps and just kind of squeeze out, ooze out. This is not the solution. When Tom said Levi, I was like is this something to do with Levi's pants for a second? Like why were you saying Levi? I'm still stuck on trapping octopuses in bottles. Sorry. That's a thing? They're amazing. They're amazing escape artists. It's almost beautiful to watch. It's not torturous at all. Glad you clarified that, thank you. If you're concerned. This is not Levi's genes.

Levi, in this case, is an arbitrary name that has been put in by a question team. It was a bottle of what? Cola. A bottle of... Cola. Cola. So which is carbonated. And we've all done the Mentos in the Cola, but it's three inches, so it's like a steady,

it's like, it's not like blowing away, it's like at a steady three inches. Yeah. Above the bottle. So it's like resting on something. Yeah. So will the cap still be touching the bottle then at that point? It's three inches. It could be, it could be like something got frozen or solidified in the bottle and that it has risen to the top and it's pushing, pushing the cap or, or some sort of movement there. Oh yeah.

I mean, at Lambeau field, it was, this Coke was left on the coldest day. Yes. That's basically it, but keep talking me through it. What's happened here? Oh my gosh. So this happens to me because I like to put my bottle of water in the freezer sometimes to get it extra cold. So when the... And sometimes I forget it because I'm a dummy. So then I come the next day, it's a solid block of like water and ice. But over time, it's when it starts to like, you get the room temperature. It still has this form of ice in the middle of the bottle.

I don't know if that's do something with that, like pushing it up or expansion of the plastic. He took it out from the freezer. So I've I've done this with Prosecco. You'll be unsurprised to know. In the past, I'm not saying anything about my lifestyle, but I have put a bottle of Prosecco in the freezer, forgotten about it, and then the next day it's exploded. So I think if cola is the same as Prosecco, which I can only assume it is, then it's the bubbles when you freeze it is going

to expand and push the cap off. In the same way I lost a few bottles of Prosecco that day. Yes. This is absolutely right. There is a photo of this happening a couple of times. If you leave a glass bottle of cola, the ones with the like, pop bottle caps on them, outside and it's cold enough and the conditions are just right, then the expanding liquid will force the cap off and steadily create a column rising up

with the bottle cap resting on top. About three inches levitating above the top. And my producer would like me to point out that Levi was not an arbitrary name, it was a pun on levitating. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo been sent in by both Jim Grand Prix and Kumi. In 2022, several US companies, including Olive Garden, Wendy's, and Chick-fil-A began adding in an ingredient to some of their food items. The ingredient was relatively expensive, bland, unnecessary, and lost them sales. Why did they do it? Once again, in 2022 several US companies, including Olive Garden, Wendy's, and Chick-fil-A began adding an ingredient to some of their food items. This ingredient was relatively expensive, it's bland, unnecessary, and lost them sales. Why did they do it?

I have seen this news story and have to sit out. Leslie, both of you. Oh, I have a thought. So sometimes with namings of foods, you've got to be careful. You can't call a food a certain type of food if it doesn't have a percentage. Like for example, sausages, if they aren't a percentage pork, a certain percentage pork, you just call them meat sausages. Bangers, I believe they're calling in Britain. Like, a banger is not a protected term.

If you see something being sold as a banger, it does not have that much actual meat in it. So if it was like a chicken nugget, that you're like, well, this hasn't got enough chicken in guys to call these chicken nuggets. We've got to up the percentage of like a chicken nugget that you're like, well, this hasn't got enough tricking and guys to call these trick and nuggets. We've got to up the percentage of like chicken. I mean, you're on the path of like, this is to get around, you know, something a little bit of a, a manipulation or a tactic. Ooh, is it? Okay. Second thing, Ooh, is it? Okay, second thing, scrap that thing. So is it big to call something like fresh? It's got to have like a bit of freshness in there. So the other like, well, we'll add

this fresh ingredient to it. So we can call the whole thing fresh, even though it might not be fresh. Is this? I see I was thinking of something along the lines of like some like marketing ploy, like, you know, somehow, like if you try to say like something like to your point, this is much fresher and your brain's like, oh, they said it's fresher. I taste something that's different, even though maybe they really didn't change it. That may have caused us to stop going to that establishment and not buying the food. So because they mentioned Olive Garden, Wendy's and Chick-fil-A specifically.

Now I know Chick-fil-A is known for their chicken. Wendy's also sells chicken. Olive Garden pasta and breadsticks. Yes, they have chicken, but they also maybe have salads and greens and lettuce or something. And lettuce is bland. But they said they added an ingredient that has no taste. It's unnecessary. See, if this was like bag food, I would say you just add air. It's like, oh yeah, it's unnecessary. You get 50% less crisps in there, and then all of a sudden it's like,

oh, I'm not gonna buy this no more because I'm getting ripped off. I felt like they were getting ripped off for some reason. Maybe the prices went up and they lost sales because of that. Yeah. Also, air is traditionally free as an ingredient. Oh, right. I forgot.

Yeah, but you know they'd sell it to us if they could. They would. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like in Spaceballs. Karen, just to check here that I'm on the right lines when I say I know this one, it's not that the ingredient itself has absolutely no taste, it's just you wouldn't be able to taste the difference, right?

Yes, I would agree. The ingredient, I wouldn't say bland. It definitely tastes like something, but I think it's trying to say that you're not adding this ingredient for its taste or for its flavor. Oh, is it like when they added to bread, like iron and stuff, so it was like healthier? Is it like an added mineral? Oh my god, is it like actual iron? I think it's iron. It is not an added mineral, but that is one of the clues is that some bread manufacturers also adopted and made this change. Also when you say is it actual iron, like you know you can extract the iron from cornflakes if you do it right? I have seen this.

If you mush up cornflakes, put them in water, like just create a slurry that stuff can move around it and use a powerful magnet. For some brands of like fortified cereals, you can actually pull the iron out of the cereal. No! Okay, hold on, let me put this on my to-do list. Buy balks of cereal and just blend it all together. Make a smoothie out of it.

It's your standard kids science experiment that you can do with a box of corn flakes and a magnet. See, this is driving me crazy because I have eaten at all the establishments, but only not recently, and it's 2022, so I feel like I should have... I feel like this is such an American thing to do here, and it just screws over a lot of people. Lost sales. They lost sales, so it probably made it taste worse.

In the same way that chips, if they're made from like real potato taste one way, but there's a way to make them more delicious than that is. Like my favorite sausage, I don't know if I'm allowed to say my favorite sausage, but I like it. I like a Richmond. I'll say it. And Richmond are quite low pork percentage. I don't know why I'm hooked on sausages, but it tastes good to me. And actually some of the posher sausages with more pork, I'm hooked on sausages, but it tastes good to me and actually some of the posher sausages with more pork I'm a bit like the postages. Oh that didn't work I was sure that was gonna work as a pork manto, and then it just didn't Postages doesn't work doesn't work. I

Will say one thing that I find unnecessary with some foods like when I like order a sandwich from a local sandwich shop and they say, hey, you want to add salt to this sandwich? I go, doesn't the meats have salt already? Why would I add more salt to a sandwich? So I wonder if there's something along those, like, is it something like salt that they're adding to it to make it, like, it's just so unnecessary for it? There's no culinary advantages or disadvantages. Like the taste. There's nothing to do with flavour or taste. You were talking about workarounds and ways to deal with regulations.

I'd stick with that. Oh, okay. Are they like adding something, like for something to be a cake, it's got to be like sweet? So are they like, we don't have bread here, we just have cakes. Either side of our burgers. So, they're like, we don't have bread here, we just have cakes. Either side of our burgers. Because like, the sugar content is so high. I mean, that was Subway in Ireland, wasn't it?

They got ruled that their bread was actually cake or something like it. Subway in Ireland, I think, had a ruling from the court that they could not call their bread bread, because the sugar content was too high. I remember that. Wow. I just learned recently that Americans were famous for sugar in our bread. That is people complain about. And I was like, oh, I had no idea.

We're also getting foot long cookies from Subway soon. That is the most American thing I've ever heard. That sounds great. I want to go. And Bob, you talked about having eaten at all of these places. What's something that Wendy's and Chick-fil-A have in common and maybe some bread manufacturers have in common? Describe what you would eat at Chick-fil-A. You would have a sandwich, sandwich bun, hamburger, chicken sandwich, salads.

You have salads there. Yeah, think about what kind of laws and regulations that food manufacturers and restaurants now have to be more conscious of and more aware of. Is that the calorie counts of foods? Or allergens? Allergens. Oh, have they put peanuts in everything? So you can't, no, wait, Lizzie, keep going down.

Keep, okay. If they put allergens in everything, a certain allergen in everything, then they don't have to try and regulate avoiding it, right? So they'll just be like, oh, all of these have sulfites in, so we just... That's... So we're not going to say they don't. And you don't have to mitigate against whether they actually do. And what would be the allergen? Oh my god, is it peanuts? Is it peanuts? Hamburger buns was the one you nearly got there, Bob.

Hamburger... Oh, seeds! Sesame seeds, poppy seeds. Sesame seeds. I remember this news story because a friend of mine is just incredibly angry about it. They just started adding sesame into all sorts of products because, I'm right, Karen, the threshold for it changed or something like that. They had to declare it more carefully or something like that. And the response was not, oh, we'll be more careful with our products. It was, okay, we'll just put sesame in everything. It's marked up as an allergen now. Enjoy! Oh wow. Yeah, so 1.6 million people in the US are allergic to sesame. And so the US government

passed a law stating that products containing sesame have to be clearly labeled and that products not containing sesame would have to be carefully prepared without contamination. Rather than avoiding contamination, which is difficult and expensive restaurants and places just choose to add sesame to almost everything to sesame free products and then just mark them as contain sesame to avoid avoid cooking and preparing separately. And I've seen that exact wording that now that you mentioned it contains I've seen that exact Dang it. Wow

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makes looking your best a total breeze every single day. Buy your Shark Beauty tools now at sharkbeauty.ca or all hair kai. We have rattled through some questions very quickly, folks, so we have unlocked the rare shiny bonus question. Sent in by David Werner. Thank you very much, David. What specific connection is there between a boa constrictor and tyrannosaurus rex? I'll say that again. What specific connection is there between a boa constrictor and tyrannosaurus rex? I'll say that again, what specific connection is there between a boa constrictor and a tyrannosaurus

rex? Neither has opposable thumbs. They're both villains in movies. They're both Pokemon. The trouble with a question like this is there are plausible alternate answers. And you know, villains in movies, you do have the one from Disney's Robin Hood, Sir Hiss, and you have plenty of T-Rex villains in movies. Jurassic Park.

In this case, that's not quite what I'm looking for. Also, was the T-Rex in Jurassic Park a villain? Actually no, yeah, he was a... Antagonist, possibly. He was lost. Yeah, he was lost. He was on a hero's hero's journey. I would say that T-Rex in Jurassic Park is actually kind of the hero at points because he saves

the people from the velociraptors at the end. Oh, spoiler alert, but if you haven't seen Jurassic Park, you should like, I mean, it's been a while. I'm trying to think of it's something like biological where like if a boa constrictor eats his prey, it's somehow like it's, you know, it expands. But T. rex is huge, so I don't know why that matters. Maybe like their skin, maybe they had identical skin textures? Tyrannosaurus? It's not actually to do with any features of the animals themselves. Boa constrictor.

Boa has three letters. Rex has three letters. Are they…? It's not exactly that, but you are now in the right ballpark. The names! Are there species names? Shorten names for actual names of the animals? The species? The actual species name that we use. Yes. Karen, you've got it. The Latin name for boa constrictor is? Is boa...

Ah, boa constrictor! And the Latin name for Tyrannosaurus rex is? Tyrannosaurus rex. Tyrannosaurus rex! Correct. Yes, they are both animals where we use the Latin name as the common name. Wow! That's awesome. That's cool. I'm sure it's called scientific name or something like that.

Hopefully no one's going to quibble me enough to say that's not real Latin. It's fine. It's fine. Genus species. Wow, that's awesome! Thank you, producer David. Binomial name. There we go. That's your term. Binomial. David, binomial name. There we go, that's your turn. Binomial. One last order of business then.

A question sent in by Dean from Edinburgh. Which gentle activity uses the phrase, stab it, strangle it, scoop out its guts, and throw it off a cliff? Pumpkin carving. Oh! That was the first answer that came to mind when you said it at the beginning of the episode. I'm gonna say pumpkin carving.

Scoop out its guts, I see why you said that, yeah. Stop it. It is a craft activity. And you're right, Lizzie, you're running through this in your head. It's a mnemonic to remember how you do something. Scoop out its... I feel like I've been told this. I feel like I've been told to scoop out something's guts and it's driving me mad. And throw it off the cliff. So it has to be biodegradable, hopefully. Why the cliff?

It's not like... oh my god. It's not like knitting, is it? Yes! Yes it is! Oh my god! What? Something in your brain reacted to that. Yes, it's a knitting activity.

Do you want to talk through what that might actually be? Oh my god. Damn it. Damn it. Scoop out its guts. Oh my god, is that like how to start tying off a needle or something? I feel like I did this during lockdown and it was another unsuccessful craft that just ended up in the cupboard. Yeah, it's a basic knit stitch in knitting.

You stab it with the needle, you strangle it by wrapping the yarn over the needle, you scoop the wrap of yarn through the stitch, and you take the original stitch off the needle and you throw it off a cliff. It is a gory and gruesome way of remembering the four stages of a regular knit stitch. And if I've got any details of that wrong to the entire knitting community, I apologise. I do not want to be on the wrong side of you. I have seen what you can do. With that, congratulations to all our players. Thank you for being here and getting through the episode. What is going on in your lives? Where can people find out about you?

We will start today with Karen. Well, I'm now starting to come down from my five vent anti caffeine high. You can find me on goodjobbrain.com, which is a trivia podcast available on all podcast apps. Lizzie. Yep, search degrees of error on the various social medias. We have most of them. And we've got some shows coming up with Murder She Didn't Write throughout the year.

We'd love to see you at them. And Bob. You can catch me streaming video games and interactive games at twitch.tv slash buzzerbob and also going to buzzerblog dot com for all the latest news and game shows in the US, UK and around the world. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast dot com where you can also send in your ideas for questions. You can see us multiple times a week at youtube.com slash lateralcast where there are video highlights and we are at lateralcast basically everywhere.

Thank you so much to Bob Haig. Woohoo! We did it! Lizzy Skipieck. Enchanté. Karen Chu. Cheerio! I've been Tom Scott and that's been Lateral.