LA

Lateral with Tom Scott

Tom Scott and David Bodycombe

Orangina Label Design and Conclusion

From 190: A second toastieMay 29, 2026

Excerpt from Lateral with Tom Scott

190: A second toastieMay 29, 2026 — starts at 0:00

Study . Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get... of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox Wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com/slash student offer. While supplies last ends June 30th, turns at aka.ms slash college pc. Why did an orange drink manufacturer print part of its label upside down? The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott and this is Lateral. Welcome visitors! You've arrived at one of the most modestly significant locations in modern podcasting, the Lateral Studio. If you look to your north side, you'll see our first exhibit, a wall featuring several coloured stripes. Experts believe these stripes were added to make the room appear slightly more interesting than it actually is. Please take a moment to admire the stripes. Opposite, you'll notice a metal object known as a boom arm. This carefully engineered apparatus performs the vital function of holding a microphone at roughly mouth height. Finally, you'll see that I am on a chair. Historians believe this is where hosts traditionally sit while attempting to find new ways to say, you're close, but that's not quite right. And no tour would be complete without today's guest curators. Or should that be cur ated guests? We have three wonderful players on lateral today, and we will start from buzzerblog, from twitch, and from the upcoming -2four4 hour game show marathon. Bob Haig, welcome back. Thank you. I'm so glad to be back here. I feel like I had a lot of fun the first time and I messed up a few times and you brought me back anyway, so I'm here for the fun. Tell us about the marathon. We play twenty-four game shows in twenty-four hours from the US, the UK, the world, and we raise money for a great charity called Child's Play to help children in hospitals, give them access to games, board games , VR headsets to make them feel like kids during very difficult times. But if you like quizzes, you like game shows, you like how to look see people answer questions at three o'clock in the morning with no sleep, this is the event for you. You're gonna love it. Good news. People answering questions with no sleep is also gonna be a lot of this episode as well. Yes. How long have you been doing this? Uh since 2012. You know, obviously with COVID happening, we took a year off, but me and my uh two great friends from back in college, and then we have another great friend we met a few years ago. We now have an audience, we have technical directors, production directors, we have a worldwide audience. It's been a lot of fun. And we have a theme song composed by the same um musician who did like the weakest link theme. So he gave us a he gave us a great theme song for it and it's fantastic. I love it. It is so good to see the skills get better each year and year and year. Like good luck with the marathon, good luck to the charity and all of you. And good luck on the show today. Our second player today, also returning to the show, uh, author of the history of art in one sentence and now run ning art museum comedy shows. Verity Babs, welcome back. Hello, thanks for having me again. I've I've got to ask about comedy in an art museum. Yeah, I mean we we go to different galleries, we're mostly in the national gallery at the moment and I'll ship in some stand ups um and they'll each choose a painting on the wall. I'll give them a you know a bit of um information about the artist and the painting and um each of us will then do uh a stand-up set inspired by that painting, but we do frequently uh frighten the security guards because the comedians will get within about this within you know within centimetres of these and completely priceless artworks. So it's also a good sort of cardiovascular workout for me uh during these during these weeks. Are you like doing a tour around the museum as well? Is it like the the the audience goes to the different paintings? Yeah so sometimes we're like just in one room. We have d one tours before. We we we sometimes do improv comedy tours um when the artworks on the wall are by artists who are still alive to avoid any uh any lawsuits. But the problem is you then have to go up to people in like art fair s and say, Do you want to have a see some improv comedy? And the answer is often no. Um and you can't and you can't blame 'em. Uh you can't blame 'em. Uh so we do all sorts, yeah, it's called art laughs. Well, good luck improvising your way aundro lateral. Today, our third player is brand new to lateral, and I believe taking a show to the Edinburgh fringe very soon. Rosalie Minnet, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm quite I'm quite nervous. I feel like the fact that you guys have done that, done it before, makes me quite stressed out. And you keep saying good luck, Tom, which is also scaring. No, I say that to everyone. Absolutely everyone. I think uh producer David normally tries to pair a new player with a couple of folks who've who've done the show before just to try and help help ease you in. Great. Tell me about the fringe. What are you taking up there? Uh so I took a show up in 2024, now 2023, 2024. Um I do a character comedy show called Clementine, which is a kind of Regent Sea fever dream girl, and I am currently on tour with it. Uh, and I'm bringing the sequel to Edinburgh Fringe this year, um, which is really exciting. And yeah, I'm just I've just recently developed uh the character into a Radio 4 pilot. Oh , congratulations and also really tested my sort of yeah, a bit. I realised I sort of have got no sense of how to make audio comedy, so that was a really fun journey for me. Um and also like my character is extremely visual, it's all about like her costume and her outf it and I just hadn't taken any of that into account when I thought sort of thought, let's make it work for radio. Um so yeah, I'm I'm sort of just kind of experimenting and seeing where I can take her next really. Well, uh see now I'm wary of saying this, but good luck with both the show and this show here. Uh the tour continues to the next attraction, namely question one . Thank you to Edmund Plomovsky for this question. In Major League Baseball, the annual award for pitching excellence is named after a player who still holds the record for most career losses. Why? I'll give you that one more time. In Major League Baseball, the annual award for pitching excellence is named after a player who still holds the record for most career losses. Why? Well, if it's one thing I know about Major League Baseball, is that pitchers are not really good batters. There's some exceptions out there, but normally a pitcher, because they're pitching so much, they usually have like a pinch hitter to help them because they don't want to like, you know waste the energy uh by swinging a bat so they might have someone pinch it for them. That's all that's my baseball knowledge is low. Bob you are surely our only hope here. If your baseball knowledge is low like Bob, come come on, through. We don't know anything about baseball here. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna let all the Americans down now. So I apologize. Is it is it a different type of pitching and actually he's like a marketing whiz. And he's like and he's and he's winning D like he's he's their marketing guy. Right. He's making pitch docs on Canva. Yeah. It's a Canva award. Oh, there's someone who's had to pitch a lot of things to various producers in their life. Oh yeah. A lot of I've got a lot of c canva docs here, Tom. My my entire career rests on failed canvas . Could it could it be like that he he was excellent in a different way? Like he was like he was sort of the most kind of like iconic, but wasn't very good. Like he was the sort of vipire of the team. Just like a super nice guy. Like it was like and like miscongen like miscongeniality. It's like we've all got together and we voted for you. He has a good smile. I'm sure he can pitch pretty well. Yeah, we just love him. Like most improved. Like he used to be worse. And now he's a little bit better. It's an effort award. Yeah. I mean baseball's all about averages. Like that's that's what they'd like to talk about. So I like the idea of like you start off really low, and maybe over time you just progress to a really high level. Um but out of all that, Bob, I'd say that over time is probably the best words in there. If it's overtime, is it like he's just pitched loads like he started as a little tot ? Now that's very close. Yes. But he still has the record for most career losses. Most career loss. But is it is it career losses that the team has lost so much, but he's great? Like he plays for, I don't know, Bob, a team insert American team and they've lost so much but he's great at pitching. It's it's I I see where you're going with that because he can be a great pitcher and um he can be a great, yeah. Cause here's the thing. If you're a great pitcher and you're getting strikeouts, you're trying to minimize the amount of runs from a team. So if he's a great pitcher, you would think the team he's on would hold their opponents to a very lower score, right? He does have the most career losses. He has another record as well. Is he like uh is little league baseball where they're all like he's seven. Oh no, this is definitely major league. Definitely major league. Okay. He's seven in the major league, so they've given him an award. Well, he he did do this for a very long time. See, I know, I think I know the name of the award , but I don't know if that helps. Oh, should I say it? Yeah, yeah. All right. I I I believe the pitching award is the Cy Young Award. Yes. Okay. Cy Young. So why might Cy have got the most career losses despite actually being very good and the team being very good? Is is he like the mascot? Does the mascot pitch first? No, no, just gen just genuinely, genuinely a pitcher. Oh okay, right. Like this is very much like over time. Over over a long time. Oh no. Was he playing when he was old? He was playing for many years. He just played a lot of games. Yeah, he's just played a lot of games. Not only does he have the record for most career losses, he also has the record for most career wins. Cy Young. Cy Young pitched for twenty-two seasons in an era when starting pitches routinely threw far more innings and far more often. He started over eight hundred games. Wow He has three hundred and sixteen career losses, and that simply reflects how long he was in the major leagues for. He also has the record for career wins, and that is considered unbreakable because modern pitches just don't stay in the game so long. Fascinating. I I knew I knew he played for a long time, but I didn't know it was that long to actually that's crazy. I guess stamina back in the day you can do much more much more pitching. Everyone's weak today. They're weak. Pitchers today basically have a managed workload, so they don't wear themselves out. Uh and they're just not gonna get the opportunity to match his numbers. Uh Greg Maddox is one of the closest ones these days. He retired in 2008. He had three hundred and fifty-five wins. Cy had more than five hundred. Wow. What a legend. But we see like one of those old those oldes timey athlet who are like huge and like constantly smoking because that's like this is what like peak male performance looks like in nineteen forty-two. Like campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline. That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impress ions . Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign turns the conditions apply. This spring, Uber Eats has you covered. Whether you're celebrating mom, dad, or your favorite grad. Not all of us are great planners, and with the Uber Eats gift hub, you don't have to be. Send flowers, perfume, champagne, or just their favorite meal straight to their door. Gifts arrive in as little as twenty-five minutes, and you can add a personalized video message for that additional so not last minute touch. So this spring, get a leg up on gift giving with Uber Eats. Last-minute gifts that land every time. Must be 21 or older to purchase alcohol. Product availability varies per region. See out for details . Each of our guests has brought a question along with them. We'll start today with Bob. Awesome. Okay. This question has been sent in by Ush Ian . In Wisconsin, there's a town called Belgium whose residents largely descend from Luxembourg. There's also a town called Luxembourg that was settled mainly by Belgi ans. How did they end up with each other's names? I'll read that one more time. In Wisconsin, there's a town called Belgium, whose residents largely descend from Luxembourg. There's also a town called Luxembourg that was settled mainly by Belgians. How did they end up with each other's names? School exchange. For like whole town. Whole town. For cultural. And they were like, this is great. This is convenient. We like each other's towns more. We'll just stay here. It's a nice place. W like when what when was this? Do we have a date on this? So this this happened in the year eighteen fifty-seven. Oh, that's specific. Mid mid-19th century this happened. So that isn't just a town that steadily had immigrants over the years. This is towns that were founded 1857 specifically with these names. Correct. Okay . Were they were the places named by someone else who was like fundamentally these places aren't that different. Or that that thing of like in the in the Muppets that the the Swedish chef in Sweden is called the Norwegian chef was fundamentally they're the same. They're the same thing. They were named by someone from the Netherlands who was just like this this will really mess them up. I okay. I will say, Verity, you're kind of on the right track there. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give the full ding ding ding on this, but you're continue with a similar thought with what you were just saying about that. So Jim Hanson was there. Was it just confusion somehow? Although it's not like you always name a town after the people who've settled there. Like they can be named after people or rivers or locations. It it's not usual to name a town after the old country. Were they just like it's probably one of them. Like were they just a bunch of Belgians that came over and they were like I'm from Belgium, so I'm I'm trying to figure out I should know this. I feel like I should know some kind of context. You were taught this. I was taught, yeah. We did this whole module of this. I feel like maybe a maybe a French person it someone did it to annoy them. Could it be that like, yeah, a Dutch person did it to annoy them? I don't know. Maybe they were all just speaking Dutch. Maybe the towns were made or ready for the settlers to arrive and they just went to the wrong one. The wrong one. Like we we've we've got a town called Belgium for the Belgians, we've got a town called the Oh, they've gone to the r who gave them the maps? Were they just looking to rebrand? Like were the Belgians like mm we just we'd like we'd love a change. We think that it would be cooler to be from Luxembourg. Was that are they looking for something like you know they're in a new country, they're looking for a new look? They're trying to leave Belgium behind. We don't want to be associated with Belgium. You know who's cool? Luxembourg. Luxembourg. Are they the is it just the like very last minute they thought they were like the Belgians thought they were in Belgium and the the Luxembourgians thought they were in Luxembourg and then they looked at the road sign and the wrong one had been put up? That is actually like on the edge there. Yeah. So I I I'll I'll lead with this, because Verity, you're you're two for two for like getting us to like the finish line right there. So think about because like yo, so I I gave the date, right? Think about what would it take to put these names officially? Like, how would you go about naming these areas, right? So you would put the town down and play saying this like it's Sim City. You you found the town. I actually don't know. I assume I assume there's there's a town hall or a post office. You you you create the admin building and then you file paperwork with the state, I guess? You said you said a keyword there, Tom. You said postal service. Yes. So oh because that's how American towns like you're a town basically if you have a post office and a zip code. At some point someone has to assign you. I mean it wouldn't have been a zip code back then, but someone would have had to go, all right, there is now a town called this, mark it down on the map. Correct, correct.ly But memory your first point when when you said something like so the the in the post office, they have the names there. What could possibly cause Did someone swap the names by accident? Exactly. It was a clerical era. So the names were submitted, but it was a clerical era where someone actually swapped the two names. So yeah, back in 1857, the two communities independently proposed the names reflecting the residents' origins. According to Robbie E. Gard's The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, the names were accidentally reversed while being processed by the U.S. Postal Service. So it was just somebody who got the names and made an accident and just swapped them. So that's how you got those those those two confused. Because back back then you didn't have like technology or fact checking or AI, right? You just had someone going, Yeah, it just looked right. Okay, we're good. And they just accepted that. They were like, I'm not gonna cause a fuss. We'll just we'll just run with this. They're all polite. They're all polite. It's Wisconsin, they are. Thank you to Katie Warning for this question. A snack bar in St Andrews, Scotland, offers its customers the option to pre-purchase a second cheese toasty for one pound , but only in case they don't finish the first one. What is this fee called? I'll say that again: a snack bar in St Andrews, Scotland offers its customers the option to pre-purchase a second cheese toastie for one pound, but only in case they don't finish the first one. What is this fee called? Wait, so you pre- uh you pre-order this before you finish the first one? Yeah, it's it's an add-on to the menu. Are you able to if you if you do finish the first one but you pre-order the second one, are you then not not allowed it? Are you is it withheld? Nope. You you won't you won't get it. Nope. I think I might have heard this. All right. So on . You sit out, Verity. This is on uh this is on Bob and Rosalie. Oh some kind of gluttony charge? That was the first word I thought about. Like we don't want that. It's about sin. It's about sin attacks. Immediately Catholic. I'm I'm What could be what could I mean there's something my my question is like, how did we get there? Like what was the w it was the issue that there there would be no sort of like spate of unfinished toasties and therefore is it like a I don't know. There had been a spate of something, yes, absolutely . Unfinished toasties. Um not you'll you'll see why I'm hesitating around that when we get to the end of the question. Is it like a seagull tax? Like Yes, it is! Is it? Yes! Yes! Oh my god, I did it! Okay. Yes! Talk me through your logic there. Okay, oh my god , I got one right. Ah Um I okay, because I'm thinking if people are leaving half-finished toasties out, the Seagulls are getting them, St. Andrews is on the coast, and it's uh a warning to people to not leave their half-eaten things about. Oh, not quite. So no, no, you got seagulls. That's out of nowhere, but but it's not a penalty for leaving the food unfinished. Oh, is it for the seagulls? Uh not willingly. What do you know about seagulls? What are they like? Awful. They mock you. They laugh at you. They mock and they wait. They wait for you to give them food. Do they? Always? I think they take it. I was in a McDonald's parking lot and there's like ten of them on my hood waiting for a French fry to be thrown out. Oh, is it that you can pre-order because so many of them have been taken from people's hands? It is seagull insurance. Yes it is. Oh my god, that's great . Verity, was that what you remembered? Yes, it was. And w we um have um lots of seagulls down here on the on the south coast and similarly there's there's a lot of like people having to cover their bins with like extra layers of like all sorts of things to keep the seagulls away. So they're they're nasty and they are gluttonous and they will they are sinning. They're sinning. They are you were right on gluttony. You you see why I hesitated on that earlier. This is the cheesy toast shack in St. Andrews. Uh they will offer you seagull insurance for one pound. Uh around 30 customers daily lose their sandwiches to aggressive seagulls. Profits from the insurance go to charity. Business owner, Kate Carter Largs, told Fife Today, quote, the gulls are super aggressive and actually terrifying. The minute customers hold the toasty up for a picture, so taking the Instagram shot, all the seagulls dive bomb them. Oh my god. People are left bleeding. Oh god. See, see, I'm I'm over here saying who would steal someone's delicious toasty? And I realize it's a a jerk of a bird. Verity, we will head to you for your question, please. This question has been sent in by Jovi Thorne. An art collector bought an unknown painting attributed to Rembrandt and had it cleaned. This ruined the picture and caused him significant embarrassment. But the public was both impressed and amused. Why? I'll read it again. An art collector bought an unknown painting attributed to Rembrandt and had it cleaned. This ruined the picture and caused him significant embarrassment, but the public was both impressed and amused why He made to the painting created a whole different scene that the public was like, oh, you know, that's new. I didn't expect that. So maybe it was a pleasant surprise to the public. We're all thinking the monkey Jesus painting, right? Yeah. We're all thinking that that painting of Jesus that got cleaned up and is now more famous because of the bad restoration job. Yeah. But sometimes restoration jobs make things look um worse but more accurate. There was the um they did a uh restored um the Van Eyck brothers uh Lamb of God, and it turns out that they'd given the Lamb of God like a really quite nice, pretty lamb face, and the original, which they restored, is horrible. So it's more accurate , but it's basically like it's like horrible sheep giving you a snog. It's quite unpleasant. So so so sometimes the restorations do make it more accurate, but worse. Lateral. A horrible sheep giving you a sn ug. Oh beautiful Is it that? Is it that that like the that there was it that that like there was a reveal of a crazy face or like the original looked way freakier or f weirder. There was a reveal. The question says attributed to Rembrandt. So it wasn't maybe it was maybe it was something like crap underneath and like some sort of like finger painting situation. A spike or a forgery. Yeah. Carry on. Did Rembrandt paint over something? Like did did the d did this original painting like did Rembrandt paint over something else that may have been contributed to some another artist or something? Now that does happen all the time. Canvases get reused because they're incredibly expensive. So I know art historians will sometimes do. Is it I'm I mean, I'm gonna use the wrong terms, but x-ray the paintings and investigate the paintings to find out what was hidden underneath on the old version. But if it's attributed to Rembrandt, maybe it was just painted over something that that was absolutely not a Rembrandt. I liked where you were going with forgeries, Tom. Okay. Forgeries. The cleaning must have revealed that it was a for gery. Mm-hmm. But it didn't it but there was the f I don't know how it c as uh I'm thinking like did it show really like like um that there'd been cop y marks underneath or some kind of tracing situation. You're so close. You and Tom together are so close. Okay . Okay. It was paint by numbers. Rembrandt Rembrandt found the it was the original paint by numbers stencil and we found it. He's cheeky. They started uh cleaning it and it turned out it was just inkjet printer, just smeared away into nothing. Dop matrix. No, that's pointalism, that is. That's good. That's good. That's good. Thanks. No one laughed, but I gotta I gotta that's good. I'll tell you. That's good. I guess I'm just looking now for what it would be that meant that the public were amused. I don't know any Rembrandt paintings. Oh um Rembrandt paint like like m massive the night watch? Oh yes. Um and lots of men in big frenny shirts vibe. But it but the name of the painting isn't relevant. It's it's not like it was it was the night watch and it turned out to have been painted on a uh an advert for a watch. No. Okay. Was it is it rude? It's not rude, but it is a bit cheeky. Cheeky. Lateral, not rude, but a bit cheeky. A bit cheeky. Ooh. It's like Bart Simpson-esque. Oh, well, okay. When when people say cheeky, was someone showing their bum on this ? Because Bart always said eat my shorts and he always like moon like uh other characters. No bums, sadly. No bums, sadly. Not all. No bums, sadly. Yeah. Okay . Did it Okay, did it just have this is a fake in big letters underneath the Ding ding ding ding! Ding ding ding. That's a plot point in Doctor Who . That is the the the I can't remember the name of the episode. It's the one set in Paris uh where there are several copies of the Mona Lisa and the doctor simply writes this is a fake on the canvases to be discovered years later. Someone actually did that? Yes, so uh Tom Keating, who was a very famous British art restorer, who basically um became a bit disenchanted with the art world selling um you know, only thinking about art as a sort of a financial investment. He turned to uh become one of the UK's sort of most famous forgers of art. Um, and it was self-taught, and he's like amazing and makes all these paintings that now actually hold some value because they're by him. But so he did lots and lots of copies of different works. And sometimes he would sabotage these works so that when later restoration happened or cleaning, they would be exposed as fakes, um sort of as a you know, uh put down to the art establishment. Um and so he was known to hide taunting messages such as this is a fake or ever been had in some works painting in lead white paint, which would be discovered by X-ray. Wow. Wow. I love that. It it was X-raying it, 'cause lead is is radio opaque. So the minute you put it in the X-ray, you get this incredible Oh, the look on that technician's face. Yeah . That would make a lovely greeting card. You need an X-ray to see the message up . I do know someone with an X-ray machine. And a b irthday coming up. Where is Daredevil ? On my air. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I believe we're gonna take this city back over Medicaid in an all-new season, now streaming only on Disney Plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. No . This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil, born again. Now streaming only on Disney Plus. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla. Smooth caramel, maybe, or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries . Thank you to Bob Weiss for sending this in. In 1910, the Glidden Tour motor race announced that it would go through Iowa. 380 miles, about 6 10 kilometers, of dirt road needed compacting to be suitable for cars. With minimal cost, how did the governor get the job done in one hour? I'll say that again. In 1910, the Glidden Tor Motor Race announced that it would go through Iowa. 380 miles, about 610 kilometers, of dirt road, needed compacting to be suitable for cars. With minimal cost, how did the governor get the job done in one hour? Okay. So as the American here. Tell us about Iowa. It is boring. So I told all our Iowa listeners. Um I mean I have friends from Iowa. Uh I feel like I mean th this it's it's just like a as you get to like the plains of the US, like the center of the US, it's just flat, it's dirt, there's nothing there. Um did the ra did the race take place all in Iowa or did it go through Iowa? I'm just wanna make sure that was passing through. It was passing through. So this was uh very early uh motor race in in the sense of it was more demonstrating that cars were a practical thing. go out to the dirt roads and just and just start like stomping and using tools and it was a c it was a community effort. Because if it was like in an hour, it had to be quick. You're most of the way there, Bob. I was gonna throw in in like a stampeding animal, like when people want their gut grass cut and they bring in sheep. Or like you went to be able to do that with guinea pigs. They feel like release guinea pigs into your garden, it'll sort you out. But is it is it is it like a stamp they caused a stamp ede of an animal to tr to trample it? I was gonna say, did they release uh did he did he say it on the radio? Did he tell everyone to go off did he do a kind of radio show? Ki w in what way? Like what what would that do? In that he s in that he it was like to get the group effort, he he kind of did like a countyw ide uh like call out on the airwaves and then got everyone to do it like that. I think I'm just gonna give you that question. Drag the road in front of their property at the same time. And these are road drags behind horses or behind vehicles just to compact the ground down. I think between the three of you, you've basically got all the elements. Yay. We did it. There were 700 farmers involved, and the work was done in about an hour. It is the river to river road from the Missouri to the Mississippi. That's impressive. You wouldn't get that these days. No. You wouldn't get that now . I I'd like to think you would. I'd like to think if there was something special come along, you you could, with with the right people and the right community effort, you could make that happen. We just about managed pots and pans in the pandemic, didn't we? So yeah, that's so true . For a day or two . Rosalie, we will go to you for your question, please. Great. So in 2025, why did an advertising agency install a kayak, an arcade machine, a tool chest, and a barbecue on a billboard in Newtown, Sydney? I'll say it again. In 2025, why did an advertising agency install a kayak, an arcade machine, a tool chest, and a barbecue on a billboard in Newtown, Sydney? Do we know if it was all at once or was it rotating? It's all at once. All at once. Okay. There is a self-storage company on the outskirts of London on one of the major roads in. And if you're ever driving in that way, every few months they will get a big old crane and they will move something else to the top of the self-storage unit just to to get attention. Sometimes it might be a dinosaur, sometimes it might be the TARDIS from Doctor Who. And I remember the name of that self-storage place despite never needing it . It's close. It's it's yeah, it's to sell something. To sell one product. So a kayak, arcade, tool chest, barbecue, you're not really using all four at the same time or in the same setting, I don't believe. No, because kayak and barbecue are both outdoors stuff, but arcade and tool chest. Yeah, that's more indoor. So it's something that brings the four together or when you would use them. And and that's why I like I liked yeah I like Tom's idea of a storage unit because yeah you hey you can store all this stuff here but if it's not a storage unit where else can you have all those devices. And a house? Is this some like landlord billboard? I don't I don't know what it is. They are all kind of entertainment things, right? They're all like fun times to have with friends. You're gonna go out kayaking, you're gonna go out to the arcade. Oh no . You're gonna go out doing DIY. That kind of fell apart, didn't it? Fun things you can do with friends, and then the advert is like you won't need these anymore because you should get your Netflix subscription. It's like you won't need to see anyone ever again. Does does the location have matter with this? Like you said within Sydney? Yeah it's in Sydney it doesn't have any it doesn't have any connection to the thing that it's trying to sell and actually the the objects themselves don't have a thematic connection necessarily but they're all trying to sell one thing. Were there other objects as well and it's a mnemonic? Is it like the K of No, no, but I thought you're you I think you're too almost too clever for that. It's kind of a dumb answer, if that helps. Okay. I was I was gonna say, are they just like like uh app icons? Oh no, that's like a picture of a kayak, a picture of an arcade, like a and like a consistent design methodology is so they're real things. So this the the it's not a picture of it's like a real kayak. Maybe they represent something else. Like I I love the app icons idea because like uh the the opposite of the generic graphics that means like no this this is a big old screen, this this kayak looks like the Gmail logo or something. Is it all sorts of stuff that people have tried to get rid of through eBay? That's a great idea. I it would be a great cafe. So close. It's it's like uh so people were people were invited to interact with the things and there was an obvious risk to the fact that these things were stuck on and that was noted at the time. And if people were Yeah. Okay . There was an advert in the UK years ago for a type of glue . And it was a television advert where they just uh and I assume they're all I think I've mentioned this on lateral before. I've mentioned this somewhere before, where they just, you know, glued a guy to a a board, you know, they put a stunt man over fire or water or something in the glue. Was it like if you can steal this off here, you can have it? So you've kind of got it in that it was it's to sell glue. I will I will give you that. So it's it was a glue company. The campaign was for Selly's liquid nails, which involved attaching real items to a billboard using the construction adhesive. So objects, including a cricket bat and large plastic marlins, were fixed to the structure rather than printed onto it. And the billboard invited the public to try removing them using the slogan, if you can take it, it's yours. And it was a real-world demonstration of how good the product was. That's really cool. Excellent . Which means we just have the question from the start of the show, sent in by Luca. Thank you very much. Why did an orange drink manufacturer print part of its label upside down? Do any of the panel want to have a quick shot at that? I do because, when I first heard this, I have whenever whenever I think orange drink, I have to go to the classic tank. I think with upside well, with upside down, is that for astronauts who are like upside down? They gotta read the label of it? Oh what a wonderfully American answer. Course that's and I don't and I don't mean that as like an insult. Like that's that's of course the most iconic orange drink in America is like the powdered tang stuff. Of course, that was astronaut drink. Um if I tell you this is a European orange drink, that might make a difference. I'm out. I iron brew? Oh it's made with girders, that is. I went really northern I I dropped the T and the H in with there. Uh in this case it is an orange drink manufacturer as in made with oranges. What an iron brewer is not full of full of orange juice. I don't know. Is it lovely lovely Orangina? It is Orangina. Be that being the iconic European orange drink. Is it when they tried to sell it to Australians or something? Is it some kind of down under joke? What I love about this is that it proves that decades of Orangina advertising has had no impact on the European side . This is great. Oh, um Orangina, you've got to shake it. Is it to turn it upside down to get the pulp in the right place? There we go. Orangina has had the instructions to shake the pulp for a long time because it contains actual orange juice and it is printed upside down so that people will turn the bottle to see what it says. The pulp gets redistributed around the drink, which is what they wanted, so you don't end up with a load of grit at the bottom. And in previous years that that slogan is apparently shake the bottle, wake the drink, which has not made the impact that those marketers hoped that it would. Thank you very much to all our players. Where can people find you? What's going on in your lives? We will start with Rosalie. Um you can find me on Instagram at Rosalie Minute and uh please come see me on tour. Verity. Uh yeah you can find me on Instagram at Verity BabsArt and uh if you look me up the gigs and things will appear and please buy my book . And Bob. You can find me online with BuzzerBob, and if you want to check out the Game Show Marathon, it's game showmarathon.com. And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com, where you can also join the l ateral producers club and send in your own ideas for questions. We are at lateralcast basically everywhere and there are full video episodes every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Bob Haig. Thank you for having me. Verity Babs. Cheers . Rosalie Minnet. Thank you. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral .

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