Why vandalise four tall posts?
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- Опубликовано: 16 сен 2023
- Rowan Ellis, Katie Steckles and Bill Sunderland ('Escape This Podcast') face a question about a vexatious piece of vandalism.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Rowan Ellis: @HeyRowanEllis, / heyrowanellis
Katie Steckles: @KatieSteckles, / stecks
Bill Sunderland: @consumethismedia, / escthispodcast
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. 
Развлечения
This is one of the few moments, where I had a plausible idea immediately, without actually knowing it, that turned out to be … absolutely right.
Figured it out as soon as tom said it and it drove me mad how the others couldn't catch on. First clip that I just had to skip to the very end haha
@@SpiderElm- Yeah, I had it immediately too. I just thought it was a radio transmitter above the tree-line instead of power poles - but same idea, create a situation where one can be rescued by repair workers.
Same. It took me no more than two seconds, and I thought "It can't be this obvious, right...?"
I was immediately like was it a Ned Kelly cutting down the telegram poles type of thing and I was pretty close
I like how Katie is participating from the control room of a 1960s TARDIS.
And has enough filter on to make her face look like it has only 2 dimensions
@@pikekeke🤦🏻♂️
Tom you absolutely should do a video about "the slash" between Canada and the US. Basically, its 20 feet wide all across the whole border. There are also over 8000 border markers placed along it.
There's a great CGP Grey video about it
and the idea of only being able to work in their ten feet is weirdly accurate
I've heard people write fiction about it, but maybe I'm mixing things up.
@@twojuiceman True, this one: ruclips.net/video/qMkYlIA7mgw/видео.html - thanks for the reminder!
We used to joke that you should take fiber optic cable out into the wilderness with you. Then if you got lost, you'd bury it and wait for the backhoe to come dig it up. Then you follow the backhoe to civilization.
You could have a logger with dual citizenship, they could be registered in both countries.
According to Wikipedia, each country is responsible for clearing 10 ft from the border on their side. But I guess they just plan maintenance together and give the loggers permission to work on both sides of the border
Yeah, that obviously the practical reality :-) Don’t know why they questioned it that way.
@@lucbloom- Because 'obvious practical reality' has nothing to do with government bureaucracy.
Niche business model but the demand is there
@@BD-yl5mhHave an immigration officer (or two) tag along
The International Boundary Commission keeps 'The Slash' deforested each year. The avg American taxpayer pays one-half cent to them yearly to keep that border clear.
And the avg Canadian taxpayer pays the other half cent?
@@Kumimonoor the equivalent conversion to canadian dollars
@@cheetahman79 The US has 10x the population, so one would surmise that you do the Canadian conversion, then multiply by 10. So more like 8 cents.
@@jamesphillips2285 makes sense for canadas tax reputation
My thought almost the entire time was that he was involved in one of those lumberjack competitions.
Absolutely shocking behaviour!
He’s a real bright spark for thinking of it, though.
@@ihathtelekinesis I gotta cut you guys off. These are horrible puns
I would have loved it if this was some hermit who wanted to send a CLEAR message that they are NOT gonna pay the power company no matter what.
I watched some of Series 16 of Only Connect last month and I had a very peculiar moment of "Wait where do I know her from? Why do I even think I do? What's going on?" and bent my brain backwards to remember. I guess the world of British puzzle quiz shows is a small one.
I _KNEW_ that's where I'd seen her before!!
Due South is a very good serie. Have tried to find it with subtitles for some time now.
What language's subtitle are you looking for?
"Carry a saw?" All Canadians are lumberjacks, it's a well-known fact.
I seem to recall some remote stretch of coast with telegraph lines running along adding a phone on each post, using a shared line, so hipwrecked mariners could come make distress calls
That's lovely! And I also like the idea of hipwrecked mariners - I'm imagining pensioners with sailor's outfits now.
I imagine the governments just gave a logging company special permission to cut the trees down without having to worry about border issues.
The International Boundary Commission does it. Every American taxpayer pays around one-half cent each year for them to keep it clear.
They have an annual budget of around $1.4 million to use to keep every inch of that border clear.
@@J.C... Cool. How many other borders do they maintain?
#' . . I cut down trees, I wear high heels, suspendies & a bra! '# Poor Mama : )
@@MegaLokopothey also put all the water in the moat between the USA and France.
The discussion of the border reminds me that Toronto is mentioned in 'My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe' by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Mind you, so is Bradford 😄
I heard 'Remote Canada' and pretty much nailed this one. I thought it was a radio transmitter being knocked down, but fundamentally the same idea. Of course, I'm Canadian, so I should think of that pretty quickly.
2:50 I'm just imagining a Canadian lumberjack dropping one of their tools while clearing their side of trees then being arrested for working in the US without a permit/visa when they step forward to retrieve it. :)
I'm so glad I found this series! Ive been binging it all day.
My 1 second guess was just a wood chopping competition.
Bill is a MVP wouldn't be against him co-hosting this damn thing tbh
Always a banger when he's in the mix
Why the person had a saw is quite likely:
1. Collecting firewood for winter heat
2. Clearing land around his cabin
Carrying a chainsaw to clear fallen trees when out on remote ATV or snowmobile trails is not uncommon.
My thought was: He was hit by the fourth pole, and didn't survive it.
I can't get this parallel out of my head now: the opening theme for Lateral is pretty close to a bit from Jungle Japes from Donkey Kong
edit: I wrote this before I heard the word "japes" used within this episode! That felt bizarre
that's actually a pretty smart thing to do, not very friendly to the people affected but yeah
I wonder why didn't he follow the wires to that community, assuming he was lost and not stuck or hurt
It's probably like hundreds of miles away.
@linuxsbc and you have to know which way is the right way
@@27pattywhack2 You would either end up where the power is being used, or where it's generated. Both places have people in them.
The Canadian back country is full of wetlands and other impassable geographic features that power lines can cross but a solo traveller cannot.
@@user-mu4bf3ts7h Or the power is generated by an unattended source like hydro, wind or solar. Or you get to somewhere where the lines get buried underground. Or you just get exhausted and dehydrated as you walk.
Found this one interesting as I figured I might have been on the right track when they mentioned light posts as I was thinking it was someone trying to turn off some bright lights that were affecting bird migration patterns.
Although then my thoughts drifted to how if it were me and I saw power lines, I'd probably just follow them until they connected with civilization rather than commit major acts of vandalism.
Probably depends on how urgent your situation is -- these places can be many, many miles away from living humans and you're not going to know how long you'll have to walk before you find help, which could kill you.
Try many hundreds of miles through thick forest.
Oh wow, I actually guessed this one immediately and I was correct!
You can see the "Slash" separating Finland from Russia.
Yesss please more Bill he is most definitely a fan favorite
Wait. Wait. WAIT! If there were power poles and you knew they were built by people, wouldn't you just follow them?
And then I realized you have a low chance of finding civilization depending on how far away from the ends you were or if they just ended at a substation.
Follow the sun West in a desert, you'll hit the sea eventually. Eventually doesn't account for death from being in a desert
@@paninisauce6949As a person in a desert (Arizona), if I followed the sun west, I would wander north and south over the days depending the time of year, for hundreds of miles and have to cross multiple mountains long before I reached the sea in the Pacific Ocean.
That said, I live in _southern_ Arizona. If I chose to head opposite the north star and go due south, I'd end up in more desert, and less safe desert, but I'd also be only 90 miles from Mexico and would eventually run into Border Patrol or one of their emergency call boxes with water. If I can find I-19, there are communities, I can also look for ranches.
North from my area would take me towards Phoenix, which is mostly desert along the way but if I can find I-10 and follow it, there are communities along the way, and the area's safer than going south, but the random open desert isn't patrolled like to the south.
To the east lies hundreds of miles of desert and chapparal (desert grasslands) towards rural New Mexico. Unless I follow the highway, no hope lies that way.
So, lost in the desert of Arizona at least, unless you can find a road that leads you to a highway or to people, walking in any given cardinal direction is just hundreds of miles of remote rugged terrain, except south where it is 90 miles of that plus other safety concerns, and very little chance of finding any sort of sea. Or river with water for that matter. What you do is you come prepared to survive in the desert and you do so and work on finding shelter from the sun and a source of water, and you don't walk through the desert at all, if you do it will probably be at night.
Also, imagine you were in the Outback with your closest major city being Brisbane, and you went _west_
Also, it's possible he's not alone, and he's with someone who's sick or injured.
Yeah that would make sense being in a similar industry we have to go out.
I heard the story before but where?
I knew this already .... I listened to No Such Thing as a Fish E362 in Feb 2021 ....
I used to think I knew stuff then IQ, NSTAAF, and Lateral came along and now I know a lot more ....
What? You're lost, sure. You found a power pole. Follow the wires!
Why does that comma in the title bug me so much?
I thought it was going to be an ELF antenna protester.
As a Canadian, I've never heard the word "japes". Had to look it up
English isn´t my first language, so I don´t know either. Will my algorithm be ruined if I search this?
jape
_jāp_
*intransitive verb*
1. To joke or quip.
2. To make sport of.
(For those as lazy as me who wished the definition was here rather than in another tab/app)
I'm an American, and I first saw it decades ago in the title of an early Philip K. Dick novel, "The Man Who Japed". I see it shows up in the long version of the Python "Travel Agent" sketch in the Hollywood Bowl. As far as I can recall, those are the only two places I've encountered it in my entire life.
Hello northern neighbor! As an American, I had to look it up too.
I'm an American, and had never heard the word before.
Oh, this wasn't claim jumping?
eh Katie Steckles? the leader of the Puzzle Hunters who won one of the championships in Only Connect? Damn!
There just isn't much interesting to do in Canada.
And here I was assuming they just went through his land and he didn't like it.
✌
Guys, does anyone know who actually writes the questions for the show?
These days, slightly more than half are based on ideas sent in by listeners (and credited as such by Tom on the audio podcast and its show notes). The others are written by me. -- David (producer)
Thank you so much, David. You are great!@@lateralcast
Tom, the US and Canada have been close allies for decades. It's the Koreans who can't decide who should cut down a tree.
I do find it funny that whe was lost, but like ... if you follow the lines ... they go somewhere? So ... follow them?
I was thinking Russian spies the whole time
Why not just … follow the poles to the city
Trying before watching: Is it a luberjack competition? Seen a few videos on youtube.
Edit: I was wrong.
So he had the skill to make a tool to cut down wooden poles but didn't have the skill to navigate out of the bad weather or survive in it?
"Remote Canada" -- 99% of Canada, right?
Perhaps he'd cut some kind of power/communication line which would trigger an immediate response of a helicopter being sent out - which will save him from his freezing death.
My immediate guess is that he cut the posts down because they blocked his view. Haven’t finished the video yet, but this seems kind of too obvious to be the answer.
I'm from the U.S. Since ever and all things that. I've also wondered about what goes on with the border as I live about 150 miles from there. Used to go to a neighboring town on the regular when I grew up about 30 miles south. Never known about any swaths. Which would address my wondering. Any of those questions about who maintains what area on which side, I would be interested in knowing. If you want to follow up on that. I've heard nothing regarding this topic or existence. Kind of makes me wonder also if it was even there when I was growing up. Or more recent instead. They also didn't used to pack guns at the customs shack in the small border town - or towns. Backyard to backyard. Oh, but I did know about the dude who chopped down phone lines to get attention. I think about that when I consider getting lost in the lower 48. Evidently, you can't go more than about 35 miles in the 48 without hitting a road. And I also live next to the largest area of undeveloped natural landscape here, over in the North Idaho panhandle. I've idly wondered what the border was like north of there. I've visited the trackless Kootenai. Gives a bit of a sense of getting progressively north. But towards what? Never checked. So there's some news going on about that in the show here. Kind of bugs me that I never considered the story of downed lines and subsequent rescue. I knew that one already, dangit. Yeah, you got any more news going on, I've also followed a number of shows. Interesting podcast, this.
I assumed was a cutting contest. Guy cut four poles in 57 seconds, next guy took 73. Not like they do anything with the regulation sized poles they cut. Someone else cleans up.
My guess: He was stranded or lost and cut down a telephone or power line so that the power or telephone company would come to fix it and rescued him in the process.
Edit: Nice, I was right for once.
Without watching, he's stranded, needs help, so cuts down infrastructure to attract a repair crew.
Initial thoughts: posts blocked his view, or it opens a new path, but that's not Lateral. I will go full Canadian on this one, and say that it was controlled removal of the posts; the alternative being castors (woodchucks) taking them down and maybe damaging his property doing so.
Of course a Canadian in the backwoods has a saw upon their person. Seriously, of course we actually do.
Hang on, why not just follow the wires? surely there would be help at either end.
It's rural Canada who knows when the next settlement would be.
Maybe got exhausted following the wires and decided to take a chainsaw and cut them down?
Power lines can easily be thousands kilometres long.
@@PassiveDestroyer maybe he wouldn't have gotten so exhausted had he not been carrying a chainsaw
Probably too far away, remote Canada is a really big place. At walking speed he might have been more than a week away from town.